Nigel Tranter: Lord and Master

He rode down the narrow kennel of South Street, where pigs rooted amongst the mounds of garbage that half-filled the causeway outside every door, squawking poultry flew up from his pony's hooves, and the wooden house gables that thrust out on either side all but met overhead, enabling wives to exchange gossip above him from one side to the other in their own windows. Many of these timber houses were being pulled down, and the new stone ones being built by the Reformers out of the convenient quarries of the Cathedral and a score of fine churches, priories, nunneries, seminaries and the like, were set further back from the cobbles, so that one day the street would be wider, undoubtedly. But meantime the transported stonework lay about in heaps everywhere, along with defaced statues, smashed effigies and shattered marble, greatly adding to the congestion and difficulty of passage. The smells and the noises and the sights of St. Andrews, though all familiar, were not without their effect on the banished student

David turned in at the arched entrance of St, Mary's College. He dismounted, left his pony loose amongst the cattle which grazed on the wide grassy square within, and made for the corner of the great quadrangle where was the Principal's house, a handsome edifice, formerly the college chapel. He approached the door, and rasped diffidently on the tirling-pin. Needless to say, he had never before used the front door of this august establishment, whatever he may have done at the back – but his instructions for the occasion, from his father, were positive.

An arrogant man-servant answered his summons – and would have sent him packing with a flea in his ear, as one more presumptuous and threadbare scholar, had not David declared that he sought Master Davidson on an errand from my lord of Gray. Grudgingly, suspiciously, he was admitted, and thrust into a dark and book-lined room to wait.

He had to wait, indeed. Though he could hear the Principal's sonorous and slightly nasal voice echoing, now from the room next door, now from the hall, it came no nearer than that as the minutes passed and lengthened into an hour. Undoubtedly Master Davidson had more important matters to attend to than such as he represented. David waited as patiently as he might. After a while, greatly daring, he glanced at some of the books on the shelves, and found them dull stuff, in Latin. He went to the window, and gazed out He paced round and round the perimeter of the stone floor, avoiding treading on its precious covering, one of the fine new carpets such as even Castle Huntly could not boast Sometimes he listened, ear to the crack of the door, not for the well advertised presence of the Principal, but for the possible sound of Mariota's voice. She must be somewhere in the house. He would have liked to see her before he spoke with her father – though liked hardly was the word but he did not see how this was to be achieved.

It was nearer two hours than one before the door opened to reveal the impressive figure of Principal Andrew Davidson. He was less lean and hungry-looking, was less hairy, than the generality of the Reformed clergy, being amply and comfortably made, and of an imposing presence. His beard, indeed, was only wispy – which must have been a sore trial to him, with the Old ' Testament prophet as the approved model – and it was said that the large flat black velvet cap, which he was rumoured to keep on his head even in bed, was to hide the tonsure which painfully laggard nature was failing lamentably to cover up. He was dressed in the full pulpit garb of black Geneva gown and plain white bands, now as always – though once again scurrilous student whisper had it that if the wind off the North Sea waxed more than usually frolicsome around a St. Andrews street corner, and the voluminous gown billowed up, much silken and ungodly coloured apparel might be glimpsed beneath. He swept into the room now, and the door slammed shut behind him.

'You are David Gray, for want of a true surname,' he declaimed, in his stride as it were, as though in continuation of a previous discourse, hardly glancing at his visiter. 'A whore-mongering idler and a trifler with women, whom it seems, God pity me, I must accept as good-son because you have taken gross and filthy advantage of my foolish daughter. I cannot and shall not welcome you to this house that you have presumptuously defiled and outraged. God is not mocked, and his righteous wrath shall descend upon the heads of all such as yourself. Nor shall any dowry come to you with my unhappy and ravaged daughter, upon whom the Lord have mercy – think it not! Such dowry as she had, you have already lasciviously possessed, in fornicating shameful lust!' The resounding well-turned words and phrases slid in sonorous procession off what almost seemed to be an appreciatively savouring tongue. 'The carnal appetites of the flesh shall not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, nor any goods and gear of mine. Jacta est alea! What provision has my Lord Gray made for you both, boy?'

David was so overwhelmed by this flood of oratory and part mesmerised by the ceaseless and remarkable perambulations of the dignified speaker, that it was some moments before he realised that a question had been flung at him, and that the last sentence had not been merely one more rhetorical pearl on the string of eloquence. He gulped, as he found the other's imperious if somewhat protuberant eyes upon him, en passant, as it were.

'I… I do not know, sir,' he faltered.

'Almighty and Most Merciful – grant me patience! Grant a ravaged father restraint! Hark at him – he does not know! He knows how to steal a helpless lassie's maidenhead! He knows the sinful antics of the night! He knows the way to my door, with offers of marriage! But he does not know how to support the creature whom he hath got with child! What is my lord thinking of? He fobs me off with you, you – dolt, bastard and beggar – and sends no word of what he will pay! You have no letter, sirrah? No promissory token…?'

'None,' David answered. 'My lord said that… that all was arranged.'

'Arranged! Aye – arranged is the word for it, I vow! Arranged to cheat and defraud me! All a plot, a trick! By the holy and blessed Saint Mar… h'mm… by the Sword of the Lord and His Kirk – does he esteem me a babe, a puling innocent to be foxed and duped? You are sure, knave, that there is no letter coming, no privy word?'

'I do not know,' David reiterated. 'All my lord told me was that all was arranged. That you would be satisfied – satisfied with me as good-son. And that the marriage was settled for ere the month's end, before, before,..'

'Aye – before yon fond fool through there thrusts her belly's infamy in the face of all who walk St. Andrew's streets, to make me a laughing-stock and a by-word before all men!' The reverend Principal had noticeably increased the pace of his promenade, in his agitation, so that now his gown positively streamed behind him. 'Father in Heaven – was ever a humble servant of Thine so used! Was ever the foul fiend's work so blatantly… boy – you did say satisfied? Satisfied was the word? My lord did declare that I would be satisfied with you as good-son – God help me! Aye – it must be that. Mean that I should be satisfied… receive due and proper satisfaction. Aught else is unthinkable. Perhaps I have done my lord some slight injustice? 'Fore God I hope that I have! Tell you my lord, fellow, that I await his satisfaction eagerly. You have it? Eagerly. Aye. Now… weightier matters await me, boy. You may go.'

David gasped. 'Go?' he repeated. 'But, sir… that is not all, surely? That is not all I came to see you for?' 'All, fool? Enough and enough that I should have spared you thus much of my time. I am a man with great and heavy tasks upon me. I have the care of hundreds ofsouls in this place on my hands and heart I have to see that God's will is done in this University and city. How much more of my time would you have?'