Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

‘When he meets his calling?’

‘Yes,’ he said, as if he had only just now realised it. ‘When he meets his calling.’

‘And that is what, in truth, you are sailing to tomorrow? To meet your calling?’

He unbuckled his cloak and let his hat fall to the floor. ‘Well, it is not here that I will meet it. I cannot play the fool all my life. One day I will have to return here, return to Delgatie, take my father’s place, have charge of the lands, the tenants, the family debt. I will have to fight my neighbours as they will me. I will have my honour slighted and trample on that of others. I will marry me a wife I do not love and father as many bairns on her as she can bring forth into the world. I will die and I will leave my son my debt and my lands and my quarrels, and so it will go on. But, Alexander, do not tell me that is my calling. I cannot believe that God in his heaven does not ask something else of me on this earth.’

I had known always that there was more to my friend, to the foster brother that he had declared himself to be, than the laughing, drinking, dangerous, adored noble son, but it was a part of himself that he took pains not to reveal, even to me. Tonight though, there was to be no dissembling, for either of us. There would be no mysteries, no unanswered questions, no lack of understanding to carry down the years to our deaths, should we never meet again.

‘And do you think, Archie, that in these foreign wars you can do something that you could not do at home? You have no need to prove your honour or your courage here.’

He poured wine into the glasses, finer work they were than I would have thought to find in this house, and handed one to me. ‘What passes for courage here is but a case of me doing what it is known I shall do, what those who went before me did. It will change nothing. But the wars on the continent have greater stakes than our petty doings on these shores. I have a choice. I do not have to go there, but I choose to go; I wish to play in that great game, and to make a difference.’

I was silent for a moment, searching for the right words that he would carry with him. ‘I think you are wrong,’ I said.

‘How so?’

‘I think there is a difference to be made here. Changes in the world need not always proceed from kings and their causes. A change in one man, howsoever lowly he be in the beginning, can affect many in the end.’

His eyes twinkled and a smile played about his mouth, just as it did when he knew he had a better hand of cards than I, or when I had made a careless move on the chessboard. ‘And there you have it, Zander. I could not have put it better myself. As ever, you give yourself away without knowing that you do.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘It is in your words, Alexander, in your words. You speak of a change in one man. That is your calling, not mine. Your mission is to change what men are. Mine is to change what men must face, to put right by force the damage done when those of your vocation have failed. Mine is to seek to alter the destinies of kingdoms from the top, yours from the very smallest component in them. Neither of us will succeed alone, but we may one day come close to one another in our paths.’ He drained his glass and refilled it. ‘Until then, though, there is food, there is drink, and there are women, by God, there are women.’ His face, his mood had reverted to their old selves. His well-accustomed mask was in place; he had told me what he had to and we would not need to touch on the subject again.

‘Archie …’

He looked up briefly from the chicken leg he was gnawing at with some gusto.

‘Archie, there is something I have wanted to tell you, to talk to you about before you leave. I …’

Again the twinkling eyes, the playful smile. ‘You are in love with my little sister.’

I felt the breath go out of me, and could say nothing for a moment.

He shook his head and laughed. ‘Oh, Zander, you think me a dullard after all. How many years now? One, two? Half the pretty girls in Aberdeen and Banff have thrown themselves at your feet, while I have had to make do with the wanton ones, and you have shunned them. Twelve months or more ago, my friend, I realised that you were in love. It did not take a great casting about to find the object of your affections. At first I was bemused, I will confess. The idea that my sister could be seen by any man as other women are seen by me had not occurred to me. And then for a while I reasoned that it was simply that she talked more sense than I that led you to seek out her company, but in the end I could not deny what to others had been long obvious.’

‘To others?’

‘Why, aye. To my mother and to yours.’

This was horrible; I felt I would vomit.

‘Och, Alexander. You have the colour of a dead fish, and much the same expression. Bear up, man. It is not so bad. My mother is a little pleased, your own delighted, and of course your father does not know.’

‘God be thanked. And yours?’

Archie shrugged and reached for a mutton chop. ‘My father knows, but he trusts my mother in these matters, and Katharine can put her heart where it pleases her.’

‘That is your father’s view?’

He nodded. ‘In as far as he takes a view. He knows you are a good man, and the son of the best of men. He loves his daughter and would see her happy. Trust in me, Zander. I will return from these wars covered in glory. I will marry me that fertile, rich bride of my parents’ choosing. Katharine will be of less consequence than a brood hen. They’ll let her marry whom she wants.’

‘I hope to God you’re right.’

He tossed a mutton bone to his dog, lying between us on the floor. ‘Of course I’m right, Zander. Am I not always right? Besides,’ he sighed as he got up and went to the window, looking out over the blackness that was the burgh at night, ‘my parents love me well, too well. I shall ask them, and she will be yours.’

As ever, he had run on to a thing decided, leaving little space or time for reason. ‘But what of Katharine? Will she have me?’

He looked at me, astonished. ‘You do not know? You have never tried her on it?’

‘I have never … I did not think … No.’

He shook his head in amused exasperation. ‘Well, Alexander, on that score I cannot help you. On that you must shift for yourself. But I think you will find a willing listener to your pleas. And then we would be truly brothers, and there would be nothing dearer to my own heart.’ He smiled at the thought and presently his smile took on a look of mischief. ‘And you shall have the kirk at Turriff, or King Edward or Banff, and thunder from the pulpit at my wicked and wanton ways.’ And thus he tried to make light of our parting, thanking God that he would soon be relieved of my ‘lang dreep’ of a face. ‘If ever there was a minister born it’s you, Zander. You will sermonise the life out of them.’

We laughed, and as the rumble of our laughter receded, we remained in companionable silence a few minutes, he kicking at a log with the toe of his boot, I watching the candle flicker and splutter in the draught. I wondered when next I would see that loved, arrogant, noble face, hear that roaring laugh. I wondered how war would change him, how living out in the world, away from our charmed college life, would change me, how my practice of the word of God would measure against my knowledge of it.

He broke into my reverie by throwing his unbuckled sword at my feet. ‘Enough of this lovesick nonsense, Mr Seaton. Tonight you will accompany me on my farewells to the “ladies” of Aberdeen. You must not be completely out of practice when you get my poor deluded sister to your bed and I … I must not disappoint the ladies, for tomorrow I sail from our safe harbour, and how they will weep for the Master of Hay!’