Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

‘It is God’s will, mistress,’ said the baillie. ‘We must seek out the evil in the hand that accomplished it, but we must not question His will.’

Drawing his young wife a little closer to him, the provost answered, ‘You must forgive my wife, Baillie. She is young and over-tender yet. She welcomed the lad to our home, and loved him well, for my late wife’s sake and for my own. And all in all, it is a bad death. A bad death,’ he repeated, more to himself than to the rest of us gathered there. The baillie held the provost’s gaze for a moment, but said nothing further of God’s will. Geleis Guild gradually extricated herself from her husband’s embrace and searched her pocket for the lace handkerchief with which she wiped her eyes. The provost held her a little away from him and said, ‘Go you to the children now. Do not let them be upset by this. I doubt the girl Arbuthnott will not be here to help you today. Now go.’ Eventually comprehending, she nodded slowly and left the room, without having uttered a word.

The provost turned to face the rest of us, and it was clear that his tender manner had departed with his wife. A large and imposing man, he was well over six feet tall with thick dark hair down to his shoulders, and eyes set wide in a broad brow. His clothes gave the appearance of being simple, but their cut was good and the plain dark material of high quality; the fine Dutch lace at his cuffs gave some hint of the wealth his strong hands had garnered. I felt the full force of his personality as he again strode the length of the room to where the body had been laid. He pulled back the mortcloth again and touched the cold cheek. I heard him murmur quietly, ‘Oh, Helen, that it has come to this.’

‘May God preserve us all from such a judgement,’ intoned the minister.

‘You would do well to see to your sister, sir,’ responded the provost, not quite mastering an evident contempt for his brother-in-law. The minister left reluctantly, and much to the satisfaction of the baillie. The latter was the next to feel the provost’s ire. ‘And you think it God’s will, do you, William Buchan, that a boy such as this should die choking in the gutter on his own vomit, like any common vagabond?’ As the baillie opened his mouth to reply, Walter Watt raised a prohibiting hand. ‘Spare me your sermon, man; we have ministers enough. As to your proper concerns, tell me what you know. Are the reports I hear correct? He was found in the schoolroom, covered in filth and vomit?’

It was Gilbert Grant who replied. ‘It is true, alas, true. The boy John Durno found him at about a quarter to six, when he came to light the brazier in Mr Seaton’s schoolroom.’

The provost turned a suspicious eye on me. It was seldom nowadays that I found myself worthy of his notice, and of that I was glad.

‘You were with him last night? Drinking? When were you with him?’

‘I was not with him. I never … we never met.’

‘And how did he come to be in your schoolroom, in such a condition and at such an hour? How did it come to be, Mr Seaton?’

‘That I cannot tell.’ The half-lie almost stuck in my throat, for I suspected some involvement of the Dawson sisters, but I was at a loss for any idea of its nature or how it was managed. ‘I returned from the inn a little before the hour had struck ten. I locked the schoolhouse door – the mistress is very particular about that.’ At this Grant murmured his sympathetic agreement; he had heard me harangued loud and long on more than one occasion on the hazards of leaving one’s back door unlocked at night. To Mistress Youngson, it was little less than an invitation to the Devil himself to come take what he would. ‘The house was quiet, and dark. The master and mistress always retire to bed before nine in the winter, and the serving girl rarely much later. There was no one in the schoolroom as I passed.’ And what had made me look in? I wondered. I did not know.

‘And you saw nothing of my nephew in the house at that time? You know not whether he was there then?’

‘He was not there,’ I said, my voice dull.

‘And you had had no dealings with him in the evening?’ The provost seemed determined to have me Davidson’s companion on his last night on this earth.

‘None,’ I answered emphatically. A vague chill began to creep over me as I realised there would be some in the burgh who would suspect me of having a guiding hand in the death of Patrick Davidson. The provost, thank God, pursued the point no further. He strode again the length of the room and back.

‘And the doctor? Where is he? What does Jaffray say? Was my nephew dead many hours when he was found? What does Jaffray say to the manner of death? Was the boy drunk?’

So again, this time for the provost’s benefit, the story of my lady Deskford and Jaffray’s summons to Findlater was relayed. Arbuthnott had not yet heard it. ‘What? Then Jaffray is a madman, on such a night.’

‘But Jaffray has always been a madman in matters of the child-bed. It is as if by saving one woman or child he will one day expiate the sufferings of his wife.’ The provost spoke only as one who knew and who had endured what Jaffray had endured, could speak. I had seldom glimpsed the private man that lay beneath the veneer, but I thought I glimpsed him now. Cardno and Buchan, however, looked up sharply at this. Such talk, in their ears, lay somewhere in the morass of sin that led from Popery to witchcraft, and I doubted whether it would be long before the provost’s name was raised at the session in the same breath as one or the other of these manifestations of evil.

Gilbert Grant hastened to turn the conversation again to the matter in hand. ‘I would say the boy had been dead a good while before he was found. And,’ and he breathed deeply here, ‘and I believe he died in that schoolroom.’

Arbuthnott nodded. ‘Aye, for the dead do not vomit.’ He looked at me directly. ‘If the lad was found in the state that I have heard it, he died at your desk.’ Of course, it could not have been otherwise. But I would have given much to have been able to believe that Patrick Davidson had not died his filthy and abandoned death at my desk as I slept only thirty-seven steps above him.

‘Was Davidson at home last night?’ The question was addressed to Arbuthnott. It was understood that the ‘home’ the baillie spoke of referred to the apothecary’s house rather than the provost’s. An apprentice lived in his master’s home, over his master’s workshop, regardless of who or where his own family was.

‘For a while.’ Arbuthnott was running the previous evening through his mind. ‘He took his dinner with us, but ate little. My wife chided him for it. I left them at around seven – I had work in hand in the workshop. The lad would often help me in the evenings, but I had no need of him last night. He did not seem in his usual good humour – for in general he was as pleasant as Charles Thom was gloomy – his company was often a tonic for my wife and daughter on the dark nights while I worked.’ The baillie’s eyes narrowed on Edward Arbuthnott, and again the session clerk’s face registered his malicious satisfaction. The apothecary was not to be cowed. ‘Let the sin be in your mind, James Cardno – for there is no blemish on my daughter’s name.’

‘Have a care that there is not.’

The provost had no interest in such fencing. ‘This is hardly the matter in hand, James Cardno. Keep your imaginings for the session. Go on, Arbuthnott. Did you see the lad go out?’

‘No, I did not. I was in my workshop till after nine. And heard nothing of the comings and goings in the house. I heard nothing but howling wind and the crash of the sea.’

The baillie looked at him with some suspicion. ‘Surely you would have seen anyone pass out into the street?’ Arbuthnott’s workroom gave directly onto his shop and thence onto the market place.