Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

And that night with Archie had been the last of my wild nights. For two years after that, I had immersed myself in my divinity studies. My mother had died in the second winter after my graduation to Master of Arts. She had been ill a long time by then, too ill to travel. My father had not come to hear me present my theses – he had no Latin anyway. For those two years my head was buried so deep in my books, and she and her mother came so rarely into town, that I hardly saw Katharine above a dozen times. I do not recollect what nonsense I spoke to her the first few times. The harder I struggled to say something that would imprint my image on her soul, the worse the nonsense became. But one day, nearly two years after Archie had left, I walked from Old Aberdeen to the house in the New Town. The Hays were preparing to journey back to their fastness for the winter, and I would not see them again for several months. I went to bid them safe journey and farewell, as Lady Hay had asked me to do. We ate a cold dinner and drank the good wine that his lordship did not wish to leave in the house. Lady Hay busied herself with many questions about my studies and my progress and the comfort of my college room. His lordship, wary now of too close a familiarity with matters of religion, plied me for the college gossip. And through it all, as I held my conversations with her parents, my thought, my mind, was all on Katharine. She was a child no longer – had not been these last three years – and the knowledge of her proximity engulfed me.

The meal ended all too soon. The parting was over quickly. But as Katharine passed me at the entrance, just as she was about to step out onto the Castlegate, a huge careless hound bounded past her to join his master’s train, and toppled her into my arms. I felt the softness of her through her winter furs, and the warmth of her breath against my neck. The heat of it ran through my whole body, and I held her a moment longer than was needed. She steadied herself, and I could see the flush of confusion on her cheeks. She left, with no spoken farewell.

I did not see her again until the Yuletide festivities at Delgatie. The kirk session might fulminate as it liked, but the laird of Delgatie would have his Christmas feasting, and all his adherents would know his hospitality as if there had never been a reformation of religion in our country. The dancing and the music and the storytelling, more raucous with every new teller, went on for three days, and by the end of the first I had danced, spoken, laughed, sung with Katharine more than I had in the previous two years. At first, in the dancing, the thrill of being able to touch her in full view of all the company without attracting notice or censure almost paralysed me. Her red silk gown, embroidered with golden flowers and tendrils, and the sparkling jewels set in her pale blonde hair, made her seem like a visitor from some winter world of fable. By the end of the evening I did not want to relinquish my hold on her. I could not sleep that night; I could not eat the next morning. I could not pray; I could scarcely read the lesson in the castle chapel. My lord would hunt after breakfast, but I, a student of divinity, was spared the obligation to attend him on his hunt. Katharine’s mother was overseeing the work of the kitchens, in preparation for the night’s feasting to come.

And so it was that I came upon her on the stairs. No great work of chance, really. In truth, I know I had been looking for her, as I think she had for me. The great turnpike stairway of Delgatie was broad enough for us to pass with ease, but not so broad that we could not somehow contrive between us a slight stumble, a touch. A brush of her shoulder against my chest. ‘Alexander.’ She said my name and called to every part of me. I pulled her close into me and held her as if my very breath depended upon it. We were there a long time. How it was that no one in the castle came upon us I do not know. I feared that if once I should let her go she would be gone for ever, that I would never recapture that moment, that feeling of pure existence, a complete engrafting of my whole self upon the world. But loosen her I did, eventually. She did not run, or evanesce, but took my hand and led me further up the stairs then down the three steps to her own chamber. I had not set foot in the room for years, not since as boys Archie and I had crept in there to steal a doll, which we then set on a stack in the castle yard and burned as a witch. From that day her mother had forbidden us to cross the threshold.

The room I stepped into had lost many of its childish trappings – it was a lady’s chamber. The wall hangings and bedding were of rich damask. A tapestry showed a knot of berries and flowers. A Venetian looking glass of the finest quality hung on the wall. Katharine took my hand and led me to a settle by the fire. She took rugs from the chest beneath the window seat and cushions from the high, heavily canopied bed. On a table was a box of the deepest ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I had been with Archie when he had bought it for her, the last gift he gave her. I knew it to be filled with her grandmother’s gold and jewels, kept for great occasions; at other times she preferred to wear but a single cream pearl at her neck. Outside, although it was not yet midday, the sky was darkening to a heavy and deep grey, and snow began to fall. A candle flickered under a copper burner, filling the room with a warm incense of winter. She bade me build up the fire and went down to the great hall to fetch wine, cold meat, cheese, nuts and pastries from the side table laid out for those who would take a midday meal. Two or three times she went back and forth between her chamber and the hall, and was remarked by no one. We spent the remainder of the day together, with the rugs wrapped around us by the fire, holding each other and talking of how long we had loved until now, and how we should manage our secret until Archie came home. We could not marry until I had completed my divinity studies, until I had a man’s station in the world. Until Archie came home to plead the case of the friend who was not worthy of Katharine’s hand. We would not speak our love to any other until Archie came home.

The months passed, the yuletide festivities were long over, I passed my course in divinity to the approbation of all my teachers, and still Archie did not come home. I took up my teaching post in the grammar school of Banff while waiting for a kirk to fall vacant. The kirk of Boyndie in my own presbytery, not four miles from the town of Banff, fell vacant, and I was invited to preach there, to commence on my trials for the ministry. Still Archie did not come home.

And then the news arrived that he was dead. ‘They will weep for the Master of Hay!’ he had said. And they did weep. The whole of the North wept, a torrent of unceasing grief for the heir to Delgatie. The best and bravest of our youth, the hope and pride of his family, slaughtered in the German mud. I had been with him seventeen years, different as black and white and closer than brothers. I should have been with him then. I should have walked beside his horse through the mud; I should have put my body between his heart and the bayonet that killed him; I should have cradled his head in my lap as he died, leaving me worthless and alone.

Archie’s family was not to be consoled. His mother cried as if her very heart had been ripped out. His father looked into the long tunnel of death with no light behind him. They wanted me with them every hour of their blackest days. For I was of Archie, no substitute, no second or third best, but of their boy. They looked at me and they saw us climbing trees at seven. They saw us diving into waterfalls at twelve, fishing, hawking, laughing. They saw us ride through the castle gates at fifteen, to King’s College and all the delights of Aberdeen, riding to manhood and to our future. In my eyes they still saw their son’s brilliant smile. In my hearing, my Lord Delgatie begged forgiveness of God for grieving so deeply for his son. The God of Scotland gave children and He took them and His will was not to be questioned. I watched the old man’s heart break.