Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

I knew it was the hunger for the witch-hunt, rather than the ancient pagan charms and potions, that Jaffray spoke of. For too many of my fellow citizens, there was not a misfortune that could not be ascribed to the diabolic agency of another. Ignorance, carelessness, folly and sloth: when their fruits could not be blamed upon a stranger, the malediction of some friendless neighbour could be looked to instead. The vulnerable and friendless were well advised not to call attention upon themselves in times of ill fortune. ‘And does the session not see that the apothecary’s daughter and his apprentice have good cause for their plant-gathering?’ Something in the doctor’s expression made me hesitate. ‘Or is there more to it?’

Jaffray sighed deeply. ‘In the fetid minds of the session there is always more to it. If Marion Arbuthnott be found anything less than pure and virtuous, there are souls enough in this burgh who will see that she pays for it. That a healthy young man and a pretty young woman could wander abroad on their own and not fall prey to carnal lusts is more than our good baillie and his henchmen could conceive.’

I looked long into the dregs of wine at the bottom of my pewter cup. ‘Perhaps they are right. I cannot tell.’

Jaffray did not indulge me. ‘This is not a way for a young man to live, Alexander. You must give it up.’

‘I cannot, doctor, for it will not leave go of me.’

‘Then run from it, for it will poison you. I have known other men, good men, who would not let go of such bitterness; they are old now, and dead in their souls. Run from it, Alexander.’

‘I cannot. I have nowhere to go.’

We had both said our piece, and so sat in silence a while, but away from his own hearth, the doctor was not comfortable with silences. He called for more wine from the innkeeper and returned to our earlier conversation as if there had been no pause. ‘Besides, I do not think Marion is completely lost to our young song schoolmaster. The more her mother presses the interests of Master Davidson, the more the girl will incline to Charles instead.’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘It is the way with women. My own dear wife, God rest her, only agreed to marry me because her mother could scarce tolerate the mention of my very name.’

I knew this last point to be one of Jaffray’s most self-deprecating and favoured lies. When he had returned from Basel to his native burgh almost thirty years ago, clutching his medical degree in his hand, the summa cum laude of his laureation not yet grown dim in his ears, every mother in Banff had thrust her daughter in his path. He had had the pick of the crop, and he had chosen, as he often told me, the most beautiful and delicate flower of them all. For thirteen years, blighted though they were by the repeated tragedy of lost children, he had lived with the love of his life, until the last of the lost children took her with it. He had never tried to marry again, and I knew he never would.

‘Marion’s mother is a formidable woman all the same. Charles will not have it easy. I have never yet seen the apprentice – he does not come here in the evenings.’

‘Greater attractions at home than you and the shore porters?’

I laughed. ‘Aye, perhaps. He has no need for further schooling and I have had no cause for recourse to the apothecary since you left for the south, so we have not met.’

‘And you have not been asked to sit down at the provost’s dinner table?’

The question was in jest. I doubted the provost would wish to encourage a friendship between his nephew Patrick Davidson and myself, and the doctor knew quite well that he would not. He also knew that I would care little. ‘I cannot believe that you have not made yourself acquainted yet though, doctor. You have been back from your season in Edinburgh almost two days now.’

‘Aye, and should have returned before that. The place is full of ministers, and not a smiling face amongst them. They spread their misery like a silent plague. God forbid their like should take hold in these parts. The Reverend Guild trumpets here in Banff as he might, but we may comfort ourselves that no one listens to him.’ Cardno twitched and Jaffray gave me a sly smile. ‘It will be many a long day before I venture there again, or for so long. As for the apothecary’s apprentice – yes, I had hoped to meet him at the provost’s last night, but he was not in attendance. A pity, for there is much we could have talked of.’ He mused silently for a moment and then recalled himself from his reverie, an idea evidently having presented itself. ‘But of course. I will invite him to his dinner tomorrow night, and you also, Alexander. With him only lately returned from the continent he is well placed to tell us how things stand. It pains me to think what you have never seen, what you may never see, the great cathedrals and cities laid waste by this insanity of war. Gaping chasms your divinity professors at Aberdeen were powerless to fill.’ He nodded to himself. ‘But Patrick Davidson and I shall fill them for you; we will pick the continent to the bones. And I have a very fine piece of venison for just such an occasion.’

‘You have been treating the laird of Banff again, then?’ Jaffray, I knew, was in regular attendance on the laird, who was no more able than were the rest of his rank hereabouts to stay out of trouble and the reach of the point of a sword.

The doctor leaned closer towards me with a conspiratorial smile and a cautious glance in the direction of the session clerk. ‘Indeed, no, but his steward was remarkably grateful for my assistance in the passing of a stone not long since.’ He sat back, satisfied already with the evening now taking shape in his mind. ‘Yes, I have some ointments to collect from Arbuthnott tomorrow; I will engineer myself an introduction to young Davidson and he shall be sitting across from you at my table by seven tomorrow night. You’ll be well rid of your charges by then?’

‘Well rid.’ In the summer months it pleased the burgh council and almost everyone else in Banff that my scholars and I should be in attendance upon one another at the grammar school from seven in the morning until six in the evening. When the winter nights began to draw in, some human pity and common sense impressed itself on our good magistrates, and they allowed that the children might arrive at eight and go home at five. Even so, I knew that in the coldest months of the year, many of my pupils had to stumble a good half of their journey home in the dark without a coat to their back or proper shoes to their feet. If it were not for Jaffray and the few like him there would be many more. My doctor friend practised what others preached. His wealth, he said, was held in stewardship only, and in life he returned to God that which was God’s. He had told me once that as the Lord had taken back into His own care all the children He had granted him, then he would care for those He had left behind. Many an orphan and a poor man’s child in Banff owed their education to the intensely personal piety of James Jaffray. One of them had been Charles Thom.

‘Will Charles be joining us?’

Jaffray regarded me with dismay. ‘Alexander, I’ll swear I never saw a more intelligent man with less good sense than yourself. What in the world is the good of me removing Patrick Davidson from Arbuthnott’s table tomorrow night if not to give Charles a clear field? I shall stop at the song school on my way from the apothecary’s and tell our friend the good news, so he might make his preparations. I may even give him a few words of advice myself.’

‘I should start then by advising him to dispose of that scowl he sported tonight.’

Jaffray nodded vigorously. ‘Indeed. On more than one occasion I was constrained to glance at Cardno by way of relief.’