Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

The provost was not yet there when I arrived at the tolbooth, and I was directed instead to his house on the Castlegate. I had hoped to see Charles before I left, but the town serjeant was under strict instruction that no one – and something in his manner implied that it was myself in particular who was meant – was to be permitted access to the jail. It was becoming clear that Charles was to be kept from any communication with his friends.

As I drew near to the provost’s house I saw him waiting for me in the open doorway. He hailed me from a distance of ten yards. ‘Mr Seaton. I am glad you are about your business early. You will reach Aberdeen in daylight?’ There was no apology for his lateness and I had expected none.

‘Easily. I have Gilbert Grant’s horse, and I will change mounts at Turriff.’

He cast a practised eye over the animal. It was no thoroughbred, but it was a sturdy and dependable beast. ‘Keep a watchful eye around you as you go. There are vagabonds aplenty on the roads who would not scruple to attack a schoolmaster. The map must not fall into the wrong hands.’

‘I can take care of myself well enough.’ There was nothing Walter Watt could tell me about vagabonds on the highways. Three times in four years Archie and I had been set upon as we returned from the college to his father’s stronghold of Delgatie. But Archie had been taught to manage a sword before he could manage a pen and, from the very beginning of our friendship when, small boys though we were, he had realised what a hopeless knight I was, what he knew he had taught to me. From each assault we had come away with our purses and our pride intact.

The provost seemed satisfied. He handed me a leather pouch with the chosen map inside. ‘You know what you are to ask Straloch. And remember that – you are to ask him. Our business here in this burgh is none of his.’

‘I know little of this burgh’s business, provost; only that on which I am sent.’

‘I’d wager you know more than that. I did not entirely speak the truth yesterday, when I told the minister I knew little of your ill repute. I know it all, Mr Seaton: the drinking, the whoring, the attempts at self-harm. You have had a wild time of it, six months or more.’

‘All that is past.’

‘Perhaps. The baillie for one is of a mind that it may be so, and that is something in your favour. I care little for the censure of the Kirk, but I have seen you in sack-cloth on the stool of repentance. I know nothing of the state of your soul or the extent of your repentance, but I know of your humiliation before the whole town. Better men have been banished from this town for little worse than you have done.’

‘I know as well as any man what I have been and what I am, provost. For the state of my soul I cannot answer, but my repentance is complete. If I had the choice, I would not still be here. But I have no other place in this world.’

He looked at me, but said nothing. As well as the map, and a private letter of his for delivery in Aberdeen, he held a written authority to Straloch to treat me as the representative of the burgh of Banff. He handed me them all with a final instruction. ‘You must tell no one of the purpose of your visit to Straloch. There will be bloodshed and dissent in this town should the fear of a popish plot become generally known. You have been entrusted with a matter of great importance. Do not disgrace this burgh. Or yourself.’

He turned away into the darkness of his doorway and I bade my farewell to his back. As I left the house, early in the day though it was, I heard the sound of a child crying from over the garden wall. I took a step towards the gate and stopped: a little girl, the provost’s daughter, perhaps three or four years of age, was lying on the stony path where she had just fallen, her chubby arm grazed and bleeding. I would have gone to lift her up, but Marion Arbuthnott, unnoticed by me until now, was there before me. She lifted the child tenderly then gently examined the injury. Murmuring some words of comfort she softly kissed the curly head and carried the girl in to her mother. As she was about to step through the door she turned to me and nodded, briefly, in acknowledgement. She had not taken the sleeping draught then; she had not hidden herself away. All would be well with the girl I had had such fears for but two days ago at the Elf Kirk.

When I reached the sandbar at the mouth of the Deveron the larger of the two town ferries was waiting. The tide was high, unlike the day twelve years ago or more when Archie and I had been riding from Banff to Delgatie. He had insisted that the water was low enough and the sandbar wide enough for our horses to ford the river with ease. The horses had made it, just, but only the diligence of Paul Black, the ferryman, had saved their two young riders from drowning. The tongue-lashing he had given each of us once he had pulled us both to safety at the end of his boatman’s hook was as nothing to the leathering we both received at the hands of the laird’s stable master for risking the horses. Eight years later, that same stable master had sent his only son to the Bohemian wars to serve the young Master of Hay, and the two fathers, master and servant, had wept together when they received the news that neither would return. Yet here was I still: on a borrowed horse, little more than a messenger, of no great worth to those who thought themselves my friends and of none to myself.

Paul Black still held the tack of the ferry. He hailed me from a distance, an identical boat hook in his hand. ‘Bring him round this way, Mr Seaton.’ He helped me settle and tie the animal. Having seen to the other travellers he did not cast off, but instead came over to talk with me. ‘I am sorry, Mr Seaton, you will be inconvenienced today. The smaller boat is not out.’

‘I have no need of the smaller boat,’ I said, not comprehending.

‘No, but it means we will have to wait for Sarah Forbes.’ He nodded back in the direction of the town and I followed the line of his vision. The name Sarah Forbes was something familiar to me, but I did not know why. Then, as I looked towards the town, I remembered, and the bleakness of it filled me. A crowd, not large but notable none the less, was making its way past the Greenbanks towards the ferry landing. At its head was the town drummer who struck out a relentless beat. The image in my mind was of George Burnett, master mason. He had sat in the kirk last Sunday on the stool of repentance, as I myself before the whole congregation had often done. His public shaming was in recompense for his having been found guilty of the sin of fornication, adulterous fornication, with one of his servants, which he had denied until Sarah Forbes’s six-month swollen belly gave him the lie. He would sit on the stool another two weeks, for the good of his soul and the edification of his neighbours, and he would pay a six-shilling fine which would be put into the hand of the presbytery divinity bursar such as I had once been. As for Sarah Forbes, who could take her punishment but not pay her fine, she and her unborn child had been condemned to banishment from the burgh, never to be found again within its bounds, on pain of death. Such was justice in our godly commonwealth.

At the sound of the drum I had thought immediately of Mary Dawson. I had not seen her since Monday night, and had not heard of her about the town since her sister Janet’s banishment. I wondered what fate had befallen her.

As the procession came to a halt, the town’s officer read out the terms of Sarah Forbes’s banishment one more time. A woman spat; another hurled a stone that missed the girl but caught the drummer on the cheek. Some filthy names were called and then the performance was over. Paul Black helped the girl and her meagre belongings onto the boat and the crowd turned away, the mundane business of the day calling their attention once more. Once aboard, the girl reached in a small leather pouch and brought out a coin which she held out to Paul Black. He shook his head and closed her fingers back over it. She settled herself at the end of a bench opposite me and looked directly ahead of her out to sea. She spoke to no one and no one spoke to her on the short crossing to the other side of the Deveron. As we landed on the east bank of the river, I had to wait for Paul Black to help me off with the horse, and stood back as he reached for the girl’s bundle and then her hand to steady her as she stepped warily down the gangplank.