Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

Banff, 26 March 1626, 10 o’clock

The younger of the two whores rifled the man’s pockets with expert fingers. She cursed softly. Nothing.

‘Leave off, then,’ said her sister. ‘The baillie will be here any minute.’

Mary Dawson rolled the man back over onto his face. He groaned, then retched, and she cursed once more as he vomited bile over her foot. ‘Pig,’ she said, and kicked him. The wind sent a barrel careering past them down the brae to smash into a wall below. Somewhere, a dog took up a demented howling.

‘Leave off,’ insisted her sister.

Mary turned away from the form slumped in the overflowing gutter. Janet was right: there was nothing to be gained here tonight. A quarter-hour would see them out of this tempest. She took her sister’s arm, ready to make for home, and then she froze. A hand had come from the ground and held her ankle. The words came in a ghostly rasp. ‘Help me,’ he said.

Unable to shift her foot, Mary looked to her sister in silent, distilled fear. The other lifted a finger to her lips and came slowly towards the dying man. Mindless of her already filthy clothes, Janet knelt down in the gutter and brought her mouth to his ear. ‘Say it again.’

The words came with even greater labour this time. ‘Help me,’ he repeated. Another convulsion took him. He gave up his grip on Mary’s ankle and his face sank into the mud.

Janet Dawson looked up slowly at her sister, who began to shake her head. ‘Oh, no. We cannot. There has been evil here. This is no drunk. Think who he is. The baillie will come soon; they will have us for this.’

‘We cannot leave him,’ said Janet.

‘Please,’ her sister pleaded. ‘They will have us. Let’s get us away.’

‘He’ll be dead by morning if we leave him.’

Mary looked at the still convulsing form at her feet. ‘He’s dead anyway.’ The bell above the tolbooth clock began to toll the hour. Her voice was urgent. ‘It is ten. The baillie … Let’s get us away.’ But she knew her words were useless.

Janet Dawson, on hands and knees now, heaved the man’s left arm about her own neck and looked up at her sister. ‘Well? Am I to do this alone?’

At length the two women got him to his feet, but all strength was gone from him, the paralysis spreading through his body slowly disabling him. They half-carried, half-dragged their burden across the cobbles of the Water Path towards the old schoolhouse. The wind whipped their hair across their faces and the rain lashed into their thinly clothed backs. His head, beyond his power to lift now, lolled first onto the one and then the other. Words came, forced from his constricting throat, but were lost in the darkness as the storm took hold of the night.

The bolt on the pend gate leading to the backyard of the house gave little trouble to the sisters, and they passed through, taking the man the last few yards of his journey. A gust slammed the gate shut and the tableau was gone from view. The schoolhouse was all in darkness: no light from lantern or candle glimmered from the cracks in its shutters as it loomed three storeys over the narrow street below. No sounds came either of disturbance in the backland, of startled animals, no knocking on the door. It was not many minutes before they came out again the way they had gone in, not three this time but two.

‘Do you think they will find him?’ asked Mary.

‘They will find him.’

‘Aye, but in time?’

Janet was weary now, anxious for her rest and to be out of the storm. ‘I cannot tell; we have done what we could. It is in God’s hands.’ They closed the pend gate behind them and went swiftly up the Water Path. As they forked to the left, Janet looked back. She had not been mistaken, then: they were watched. The figure met her eyes for a brief moment then disappeared into the darkness. She would not tell Mary whom she had seen, not until they were safe home. Perhaps it would be better not to tell her at all.

Banff, the same night, two hours earlier

The old woman lifted her candle the better to observe me.

‘You would not think of going out tonight?’

‘Aye, mistress, I would.’

She fixed me with a look I knew well. ‘On a night such as this, no honest man would stir from his own hearth.’

‘Indeed he would not, mistress,’ I said. ‘But as you have often assured me, I am no honest man.’ I took down my hat and, bidding her no farewell, I went forth into the remorseless storm.

The wind, which from my attic room in the old schoolhouse had wailed through every crack and crevice like a legion of harpies, was transformed out in the night into the implacable wrath of God himself. No lantern could withstand its force and every window was shuttered against its blasts. The sea raged over the harbour walls and soaked me with its spray. There was not a single light in the town of Banff to guide a decent man on his way. As for me, I knew my way well enough. I pulled my great furred cloak more tightly round me and pressed on. All manner of ordure rushed past my feet through the open gutters towards the sea. Many foul things could be disposed of on a night like this and tomorrow the streets would be washed clean of them. I was glad of the darkness.

Some way ahead of me, perhaps only ten yards apart, lay St Mary’s kirk and the Market Inn, the one offering redemption, the other damnation. Once, I had believed I knew where each lay. Once, but not now. At the kirkyard I turned right and presently pushed open the door of the inn.

Jaffray, of course, was already there. Charles Thom sat opposite him, but did not lift his head when I entered, despite the fearsome blast that followed me through the door and caused the shutters to bang on their hinges. The shore porters looked up for a moment from their gaming by the hearth, but seeing no one of interest, returned without comment to their dice. In a gloomy corner, furthest from the fire, watched James Cardno, the session clerk. My arrival prompted no greeting other than the slow smile of satisfaction which spread, ill-masked, across his lips. He was the eyes and ears of Baillie Buchan who, by some oversight on the part of Beelzebub, could not be in two places at once. I wondered what unfortunate soul the baillie was visiting himself upon on this hellish night.

Jaffray hailed me as I approached his table. ‘An ill night, Alexander.’

‘It is that, doctor,’ I replied, taking my usual seat beside him.

Charles Thom said nothing, but continued to gaze in misery at his ale. Such misery was best left alone; I would not press him. Jaffray, however, was determined to draw him out. He addressed himself again to me.

‘Charles is not in the best of spirits tonight, Alexander. I have been hard put to extract two words from him this last half-hour.’ He sucked ostentatiously on his pipe. ‘I have pulled more compliant teeth.’

The young master of the burgh song school looked up at this. ‘What would you have me say? It is an evil night? The ale is good? My pupils sang well today? The kirk was cold yesterday and is like to be so again tomorrow? Take your pick, doctor, please.’ He returned to the contemplation of his ale.

I shot Jaffray a quizzical glance. ‘Marion Arbuthnott,’ he replied, not quite under his breath. And louder still, ‘and our good provost’s nephew – an interesting fellow.’

This was enough to rouse Charles once more from his indifference. ‘And what, precisely, is so interesting about him? That he has travelled? Well, so have you, doctor.’