Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

As ever, the baillie was dressed entirely in black, save for the plain white collar at his neck. The slight stoop to his shoulders and the ever-watchful eyes gave him something of the aspect of a carrion crow watching its prey. He addressed me without turning his head. ‘You have joined us at last, Mr Seaton. Evil has been at work here.’ He glanced slightly in my direction. ‘You were abroad late last night?’

‘Late. Late enough.’ I walked the length of the room to my desk.

The baillie was ever alive to the possibility – probability – of evil in the doings of his fellow townsmen, but I knew as I looked again into the face of the dead man that on this occasion at least, he was right. The eyes of Patrick Davidson were frozen in a grotesque comprehension of what was happening to him. There could be no doubt: this had been no natural death, no accidental consequence of too much bad drink. Some external human agency had been employed in the ending of this earthly existence. I spoke my thoughts. ‘Poison.’

‘There can be little doubt.’ It was the baillie who spoke, but the others murmured their assent.

The minister, having kept silent long enough, sought to assert himself. ‘Has Jaffray …?’ but he did not finish his question. Gilbert Grant shook his head. ‘My good wife sent for the doctor the instant the boy – John Durno – found him. Jaffray was not at home. He was called out to Findlater late last night. My Lady Deskford …’ His voice dropped. ‘It would have made little difference.’ He brushed a little hair back gently from the corpse’s forehead. ‘He was cold. Long cold.’

No, Jaffray could have done nothing. Patrick Davidson had called for help hours earlier as he stumbled in the shadow of death, but the man who could perhaps have saved him had passed by on the other side. I said nothing further, and found myself, for the moment, ignored. Cardno murmured something to the baillie, inaudible to the rest of us, and the baillie nodded once before turning to issue instructions to the town serjeants standing silently by the still-unlit brazier. The session clerk made for the doorway, followed by the serjeants. He addressed Mistress Youngson as he passed, hands already at the keys on his belt. ‘We’re away for the mortcloth, mistress. Have your girl clean him up.’

The old woman looked witheringly at the clerk. ‘That is no work for any girl, James Cardno. If it is beneath you and your men to do the boy this service, I’ll do it myself.’ And with that the schoolmaster’s wife headed slowly towards the back courtyard and the well, more hunched and frail than I had ever seen her.

The minister spoke again. ‘And see that it’s the best cloth, Cardno. It is the provost’s nephew.’

The session clerk looked towards the baillie, and only on gaining the latter’s assent did he continue on his way. Guild’s displeasure was as impotent as it was evident. Since the day and hour he had been appointed to the charge of Banff, Buchan had been his nemesis, a shadow who thwarted him at every turn. I knew Guild to be a man of inferior intellect, formality rather than faith and great worldly ambition. It seemed part of God’s just punishment that such a one should have been amongst those to sit in judgement upon me, and pronounce me unfit to join the ranks of their ministry. To Buchan’s credit, it was Guild’s lack of fervency in preaching, his lassitude in prosecuting the discipline of the kirk, and his regard for rank that had earned him the enmity and mistrust of the baillie. Buchan’s ascendancy on the council and constancy at the session gave him a degree of influence amongst the townspeople that the minister could never hope to wield. As the door of the schoolroom closed behind Cardno and the town serjeants, the baillie turned to the minister and spoke directly to him. ‘I think there should be little mistake here, Mr Guild, before you claim kin in virtue of your sister. As you well know, it is the nephew of the provost’s first wife, who lies buried in yonder kirkyard and has done these eight years past.’ His point being thus made, he turned his back on us both and said nothing more.

Little more than half an hour later, I joined in the grim little procession that made its way through an unusually sombre gathering of the townsfolk from the schoolhouse up towards the Castlegate and the provost’s house. Though the hour was still early, rumours of what had occurred in the night had already begun to gain currency in the town, and as our cortège emerged into the nascent daylight, we were greeted by the murmurs of the small crowd that had already gathered outside the schoolhouse.

‘A great loss to the provost.’

‘Aye, and Arbuthnott too.’

‘It’s well to be out of it.’

‘A scandal on the town.’

‘God’s will be done.’

The storm of the previous night had completely abated, leaving little trace of itself, other than the sodden streets, which made the pace of the pallbearers necessarily slow. The usual morbid interest occasioned by the sight of the mortcloth was much increased as news spread of the identity of the murdered man. I looked back towards the town: along by Lord Airlie’s lodging amongst the old Carmelite yards, derelict for seventy years now, and the great wall of the laird of Banff’s palace garden, more and more of my fellow townsmen paused in their early morning labours. Many, though, had seen such things too often before, and soon continued on their way to the marketplace and the setting-up of their booths, or to their workshops and backyards. Edward Arbuthnott had joined our procession; I looked for Charles Thom beside him, but Charles was not there.

There was no sign of life as yet at the Market Arms, and little stirred in the kirkyard opposite. Janet and Mary Dawson had little truck with the citizens of Banff in the daylight hours; indeed, they had little truck with the daylight hours at all. I could not believe that it was only last night that I had laughed here with the town whores, while Patrick Davidson staggered in agony towards his death. My sense of discomfort mounted as we progressed up the Water Path, and I was glad of the distraction afforded by the necessity of offering an arm to my elderly colleague. He took it gladly, and nodded his thanks. The force of the previous night’s rain had scoured the gutters clean. No mark remained where I had seen Davidson stumble and fall the night before, stumble again and try to pick himself up. There was an echo, though, of words I hadn’t heard through the ferocious wind, but which I knew had been spoken. Words I had ignored: ‘Help me.’

Near the top of the Water Path, close by the entrance to the castle grounds, we passed the site of the new manse the minister had finally succeeded in persuading the council to build for him. The land, to the general astonishment of the burgesses, had been granted for the purpose by the provost himself – the toft where his own former house had stood, the house that had been his before his fortune had been made; the house he had shared with Helen. And now he had granted it for a manse for his brother-in-law. His new wife was thought to be the agent of this change. At the head of the cortège, Guild allowed himself a complacent smile while Buchan stared determinedly ahead.

The great oaken doors of the provost’s house stood open, awaiting our arrival. Walter Watt and his wife, Geleis Guild, the minister’s younger sister, stood a little apart at the far end of the great hall of the house, on either side of the unlit hearth. Quality of craftsmanship was evident in every aspect of the room, from the carved oak panels of the ceiling to the tiling of the floor where others would have only flagstones or wood. A great Dutch side table stood against one wall, a cabinet carved by the same hand against another. Candlesticks on the mantelshelf and holders in the wall-sconces and suspended from the ceiling were fine and intricate work, better than our local craftsmen could supply. And yet it was a sombre place; only the necessary draperies, no tapestries, no painted panels to add relief and colour, only one solitary portrait hanging from the wall. Watt came forward gravely to meet the baillie who, like the rest of us, had removed his hat on passing through the doorway. The baillie inclined his head towards the provost and said something I could not hear. Watt nodded and stepped closer to the pallbearers. At a signal from Buchan, Cardno drew back the top of the mortcloth, far enough to reveal the young man’s waxen, but now mercifully clean face. The provost’s wife gave out a groan and then collapsed into uncontrolled grief. ‘It is him,’ said the provost after a long pause, staying a moment longer to gaze on the dead face before going to comfort his wife. I think I envied him that task. I had known her since we were children; her nature had always been kind, and was not belied by her beauty. She was better loved in the burgh than either her husband or brother.