Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

‘No. Patrick drank a little wine with me but would not stay to eat. He said he had business at Arbuthnott’s – I took it to mean the preparation of medicines or some such work. He left after perhaps half an hour, before Jaffray arrived. The doctor was greatly disappointed.’

Arbuthnott, who had thought his part over, looked up. ‘He had no work to do in my workshop at that hour. Whatever his appointment, it was not with me.’

‘Perhaps, then,’ suggested the session clerk, by whom no opportunity for malevolence was allowed to pass, ‘he had business with another of your household “at that hour”.’

It was I who eventually pulled the apothecary from the throat of the session clerk. Gilbert Grant was too old and too disgusted, the provost too lost in his own concerns, and the baillie … he watched as a vagabond boy will watch a cat play with a mouse – with a morbid curiosity to see what will happen.

Safe at a distance of about five yards from the apothecary, Cardno continued with his tack. ‘You cannot deny that your daughter has been much in company with Mr Davidson since his return to this burgh. It is known and remarked upon throughout the town.’

The apothecary mastered his anger and I loosened my grip. ‘The town might remark what it likes. She is my daughter and he my apprentice. He lived under my roof and dined at my table. How should they have been anything but in one another’s company? You might as well suspect my wife.’

I exchanged a covert smile with Gilbert Grant. The charms of the apothecary’s wife were considered limited to say the least.

‘The point remains: Marion has been much in Davidson’s company outwith your house and shop. They have been seen together at the Greenbanks, on the Hill of Doune and at the Elf Kirk. It is not fitting that a young unmarried woman should keep company out of doors, in such places, with any man. You should look to your daughter, Arbuthnott. It is not fitting.’ This from the baillie, who in truth was more moderate on the matter than I would have expected him to be.

Despite his earlier fury, the apothecary acknowledged the point. ‘Aye. You are right. But I thought no harm would come of it. No more did her mother. She said Marion would be able to tell him where he might find the best plants, seeds, herbs and other things I needed in my work, for the girl knows these things almost as well as I do myself. And … well.’ He hesitated.

‘Well?’ insisted the baillie.

‘I thought Marion and Charles Thom, the music master …’

The baillie nodded slowly and Cardno could not contain his pleasure. ‘Another young man lodging under your roof, Arbuthnott, who finds his diversion not far from home.’

‘There is no dishonour in what Charles feels for that girl. If there is any shame on that score, it is in your own thoughts, James Cardno.’ The session clerk’s astonishment at my words can scarcely have been greater than my own, but I felt the first stirrings of a long-forgotten freedom as I uttered them.

Baillie Buchan responded before his henchman recovered himself. ‘It is not of feelings, but deeds we treat here, Mr Seaton. And as for shame and honour – those are not matters for one such as you to judge.’

At this Gilbert Grant rose heavily to his feet. ‘If there be a blemish on Mr Seaton’s name you will name it now, William Buchan. He has paid his penalties. He has endured nine months of such dark rumblings. He will endure them no longer. Mark me, it will not go on.’

The baillie bowed his head and, his tone conciliatory, said, ‘I merely meant that it was for the session, not any individual, to judge of such matters.’

The provost rose to his feet and turned on the baillie. ‘Might I remind you, William Buchan, this is not the kirk session. I am provost of this burgh, you a baillie of this burgh. Be about your duties. It is of my nephew I would know, not the petty doings of the schoolmaster here.’ Turning to the apothecary he continued. ‘Arbuthnott, how stood things between my nephew and the music master? Was there an enmity between them over your daughter?’

The apothecary considered. ‘I cannot say I marked it if there was. Charles was perhaps a little gloomier than his wont – but he has never been a young man of high spirits. They were friendly enough together, but each was much taken up with his own work. I would not think them natural companions, but neither were they enemies. As for my daughter, you will find no scandal, look as you might.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Her heart, I think, is broken.’

Baillie Buchan had heard as much as he needed to regarding the music master. Any further questioning on that matter could wait. His interest now was in Patrick Davidson himself.

‘Tell me, provost,’ he said, ‘and with all due respect to yourself, Arbuthnott, and to your calling – God given and honourable in that – how was it that a young man of your nephew’s family and education came to apprentice himself to an apothecary?’

The provost, even more it appeared than the apothecary, was discomfited by this question. But it was a good question. After graduating from St Andrews University Patrick Davidson had, not unusually, set forth across the sea to the Low Countries and then travelled to the great centres of learning of France and Switzerland. I had had this all from Jaffray, though I had paid him little heed at the time. Patrick Davidson’s was an academic journey that should have ended with a higher degree, in medicine perhaps, rather than an apprenticeship in an apothecary’s shop in a small northern Scottish burgh.

Walter Watt shifted a little in his chair, but could not get himself comfortable and eventually stood with his back to us, leaning against the mantel of the now lit fire. For a man whose life was an endless pursuit for self-betterment, his nephew’s career choice, and its realisation in this burgh, can have given him little pleasure. ‘Who is to say what fancies take a young man’s mind? He was, as Mr Grant there will doubtless tell you, a lad of great promise. His mind was quick and agile, able. From his youngest boyhood my late wife had him marked out for a lawyer, although his mother would have had him a minister.’ This last he said rather contemptuously, no doubt for the benefit of the Reverend Mr Guild, who had somehow found his way back into the room.

‘The year of his graduation from St Andrews, he came to visit me here in Banff, and here met Geleis for the first time. It is a memory that I have treasured – that I will treasure. I had not seen him since the year of Helen’s death, and I was proud of the fine young man he had become. His intention was to make for Leiden and prosecute his legal studies there. I myself arranged for his passage on a boat from Aberdeen, in whose cargo I had some trading interest. He did not tarry long at Leiden however – he found the lectures dull and his tutor duller. The place was awash with medics and he fell in with some medical students from Edinburgh, headed for Basel and Montpellier. He had heard much of these places at this very hearth, from the mouth of Doctor Cargill himself.’

James Cargill’s name was well known to me, although I had never met him. He had been an Aberdeen physician who had gone as a poor student to Basel to study medicine. There he had become fascinated by botany, and on his return to Aberdeen he had maintained an active correspondence with the foremost minds of the day on the subject. He was one of Jaffray’s most dearly missed companions, and his nephew, William, had been one of the closest friends of my own student days. The provost paused in silent reminiscence before bringing himself back to the matter in hand. ‘Anyhow, Patrick made for Basel with those fellows, and though he matriculated in medicine, he had nothing in his mind but botany. From his letters it became ever more evident to me that he would never graduate. As the situation in the Empire became more grave, I wrote more than once beseeching him to return to Scotland and pursue his interests here. I promised to find him a place with Arbuthnott, for I knew he loved the country hereabouts, and that he would find plenty material for his studies.’ He turned around and gestured towards the bier. ‘And look what has come of it now!’