Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

I sat down beside her and took off my hat. William watched at a distance. ‘I was not called until he had been found, long dead.’

She smiled a sad smile. ‘It was a chance we took. It was a slim hope, but a hope all the same. We knew he was dying – I have seen dying men before. We had seen you pass only a few moments before, and we doubted you would be yet sleeping. We hoped you might hear him and find him, find him in time to help him.’

‘I heard nothing.’ For the tenth, twentieth time I cast my mind back to that night and tried to listen again, tried to hear what I had not heard then. There was nothing, nothing but the noise of the storm, drowning out whatever else there might have been.

‘Neither you, nor Mistress Youngson?’

‘Not even she.’

She pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders. ‘Ah, well. It was not to be. It was his lot to die.’ Then she looked up sharply. ‘He was not drunk, though, Mr Seaton, whatever they might say. It was not a natural death.’

I knew this already, and was anxious to get on. ‘He spoke to you though, did he not?’

She showed surprise that I knew this. ‘Janet?’ I nodded. ‘Aye, he did. He babbled two or three times about “James and the flowers”. We could not make head nor tail of it, but he was very anxious about it.’

‘And he said nothing else?’

‘Nothing. His senses were beyond him by the time we got him to the schoolhouse.’

Something in this was troubling me. ‘But how did you get beyond the pend and into the house, for I know I locked both door and gate.’

She looked a little proud at the memory. ‘We grew up at the smiddy at Fordyce, Mr Seaton. There is not a lock or bolt we do not know how to turn. And as for getting over the gate to open it, well,’ and here there was a trace, just a trace, of the old sly smile, ‘my sister and I are famed for our agility.’

These little mysteries were of no great consequence at this moment, though. ‘But what is this to Lang Geordie that he should tell you to run? Why, after all this time, was your sister driven from the town, and why do you flee?’

‘Because we were seen. And it was made known to us that we had been seen. Geordie beds down at the same house as my sister and I. The message came through him to us that we were to be gone from the town, before daybreak, or face our own fates.’

‘What, for helping a dying man?’

‘For seeing who it was that killed him. Someone was watching. They watched us and I would stake much that they had watched you before us. Someone was watching, to make sure that he would die; I would stake all that I have on it.’ All that Mary Dawson had amounted to very little, but I did not doubt the sincerity of her vow. And I, too, had been seen. But I had not yet had my warning.

At that moment a shout went up from the captain that all who were going aboard should be aboard now or lose their passage. Mary gathered up her bundle and scrambled to her feet. I grabbed at her arm. ‘Mary, wait, who was it? Tell me who it was.’

She pulled away from me. ‘You’ll not have it from my lips. It will not be laid at my door that anyone had it from my lips.’ She was running now towards the ship.

‘Mary, wait, please. How will you live?’

‘By my trade and by my wits. But I shall live, have no fear of that. I will never see Scotland again. Farewell, Mr Seaton. Be careful who you trust.’ I tried to go after her but the sail was already up and the anchor weighed – less than a moment from her embarkation the vessel was pulling away from the quayside. I made to leap the distance but a strong arm was pulling me back. It was William.

‘Leave her be, Alexander. I have seen fear in many witnesses; you will have nothing more from her.’

We stood and watched as the ship carrying Mary Dawson from her homeland pulled away into the distance, the moonlight illuminating the white of its sails in the night. I uttered a prayer for her under my breath. ‘Amen,’ said my friend William Cargill. We turned our backs to the departing vessel and began our weary trudge homewards to William’s house.

My sleep was fitful and filled with nightmares. Several times through the night I found myself awake, listening in the darkness to sounds of the sleeping house. Each time I slipped back into the realm of sleep only to find myself in some new place of terror, with an unseen assailant awaiting me. Always I was in chains – under the altar of a ruined church; in a vault filled with the dead, my own dead; at my desk in Banff, with the cold hands of Patrick Davidson clasped to my wrist. In each dream the terror came closer till I could almost smell the warmth of human flesh. At the last, I thought I caught a sight, a glimpse only, of the face of my assailant. When I awoke I could not tell who it had been. I did not sleep again after that, but lay in the darkness for long hours, while the town bell tolled the stages of the night. Before six, I rose and threw some water over my face. I looked out over the garden but little stirred: the animals were at their rest; the cock had not yet crowed.

I took a spill to the still glowing embers in the hearth and lit the candle by my bedside. From the small kist at the foot of my bed I took out the letter and turned it over in my hands. It was addressed to Walter Watt, Provost of Banff, and sealed by the ring of George Jamesone. Turn it a hundred or a thousand times, yet nothing could be seen of what was written inside. This pastime of espionage was new to me, but I was certain that no great intrigues and treacheries could be drawn up in so short a time, no message of any great import given in the few lines I had seen Jamesone scribble.

I put the letter back in the kist and threw on my outer clothing. Down in the kitchen all was warm and busy. Elizabeth was not yet up, but William was already at his breakfast and giving his instructions for the day, principally that the mistress should not be allowed to over-work and should be made to rest.

‘Have no fear, master, she’ll not get the better of me.’ The old manservant had due respect for his master, and love too. The mistress that had once been a kitchen maid was no match for his benign dictatorship of the house.

When William looked up to greet me I saw at once that he had slept little better than I had. ‘I see we have been dreaming the same dreams,’ he said.

‘May God forbid that you or any other should have the dreams that I had last night.’ I sat down and accepted the bowl of hot porridge that the serving girl offered me. William bade the girl go see to the goats, but to his houseman he said nothing.

‘Have you found any answers, after the events of last night?’

I shook my head. ‘I have questions, more questions, but few answers.’

He broke a piece of bread from the loaf on the table and smeared some butter on it. ‘You have no idea who it might have been that the women saw as they carried Patrick Davidson to the schoolhouse?’

‘None. Well, no. That is a lie. I am over-laden with ideas. By the time the clock had struck four this morning there was not a soul in Banff I did not suspect.’

William smiled. ‘Aye. For all my exhortation of you to tell her nothing of all this, I was hard put myself not to waken Elizabeth and ask her her views on the matter. For the whores to be tolerated so long and only now to be banished, forced to flee for fear of their lives, can have little to do with the nature of their profession. They must indeed have seen the murderer – and been seen by him. But who could take the risk of sending a warning message to them by a known vagrant?’

‘I do not know, but I suspect it may have been Lang Geordie, or one of his band, who was used to call Jaffray away to Findlater on the night of the murder.’