The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

TWO A Dead Man’s Face

And it was so. The stench reached my nostrils before my foot ever reached the bottom of the stair. Mistress Youngson had waited for me as I groped for my cloak and threw it over my shoulders, and she had led the way downstairs by the light of her candle, but when we reached the door of my schoolroom she hung back, as if not wanting to attract Death’s attention. I moved past her into the dimly lit room. The windows to the west that afforded some light to my scholars for the greater part of the day remained shuttered. The only candle was at the far end of the room, in the hand of her husband, Gilbert Grant, my friend and master in the grammar school of Banff. He had taught every scholar to come from the town in the last forty years, but now, in truth, I performed more and more of his duties as the weariness of age crept over him. He raised his eyes towards me and said sadly, ‘The boy is dead, Alexander; he is dead.’

His wife, still keeping to the doorway, added, ‘I have sent the lad for Dr Jaffray.’

I shook my head slowly as I drew closer. ‘Jaffray is not there. He was called out late last night, to Findlater …’ There was little point in continuing. I could see that Jaffray’s skills were, for Davidson, by several hours redundant now. The lifeless form of Patrick Davidson slumped across my desk, his head to one side in a pool of his own vomit, had a strange inevitability to it. The left arm stretched, palm outwards, in front of him, in an ultimately futile effort to support his head; the right hung down to his side, a few stray blades of the same grass that swam in the vomit before him still sticking between the fingers. I had never met the apothecary’s apprentice, but the agonised features of the corpse now lying not eight yards from where I stood were, I knew, also those of the man whom I had left in the gutter the night before. I had known from the moment I had stumbled from my bed that they would be. God had started with me a new game.

Grant and I kept a sombre vigil over the body while we awaited the arrival of those who had to be informed of such things. The boy who had been sent for Jaffray had also been told to call up the baillie and the two town serjeants. A servant girl had been sent for the Reverend Guild. The doctor and the minister: one powerless to help in this world, the other powerless now to help in the next. The sins of Patrick Davidson would be called to his account regardless of whatever sentiments Mr Guild might intone.

‘He was a good lad, you know,’ said Grant. ‘A good, bright lad.’ He smiled at me. ‘Like you yourself. And he kept much to his own company, as you yourself would have done had it not been for the Master of Hay.’ There was no hurt in this; he spoke the truth. Gilbert Grant had known me as long as any other soul living, and there was no need for dissembling between us. ‘My memory is failing me though, Alexander. Were you ever in the school together as boys?’

‘I do not think so. I would have been gone to the college by the time he came up from the song school. My mother may have mentioned him, but in any holiday from my studies I was more often at Delgatie than I was here in Banff. And when I was home I was far too lofty a personage to bother myself with the younger boys.’

Grant’s eyes twinkled in a sad smile. ‘Aye, it has always been so. The young scholar returned to his native burgh is too grand to look down and see where he came from; you weren’t the first to leave with no mind to return.’

He was right: others like me had gone before me and not returned for many a year. But my return had been different. Nine months ago, I had come back. I had come back the much-lauded scholar, the attestations of my divinity professor glowing in the paper in my hand. I had been pronounced well-versed in the biblical tongues, the handling of controversies, ecclesiastical history, and to be sound in matters of faith and doctrine. There remained but the sixth and final trial before the brethren, the ministers of this presbytery – to preach a sermon before them and the people that would meet with the approbation of both. And so I had preached at Boyndie kirk, whose people wanted me for their minister, and I had taken as my text Micah, chapter 7, verse 9:

‘I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him until he plead my cause, and execute judgement for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.’

How could my sermon on that text have found favour? And yet it did. I who had lived a life blessed, who did not yet know the indignation of the Lord, who covered my own sin, even from myself. The words ought to have choked me in my throat for the shame of it. And yet they did not. My sermon had found favour with the people and with the brethren too. True, the Reverend Guild of Banff had raised one or two objections, but these were of no consequence and were treated as such. And later, in presbytery, the words that would have licensed me to open my mouth to preach as a minister of the Kirk of Scotland were already on the lips of the Moderator when the sudden entry into the kirk of Sir Alexander Hay, laird of Delgatie, Archie’s father and the benefactor of all my school and college days, stopped them where they were. Before the whole brethren he had declared his fervent opposition to my being accepted into the ministry and denounced me as a debauched and scandalous person unfit for so godly a calling. He further declared that my sin could not be countenanced amongst honest men and begged that the presbytery would treat no more of me as an expectant for the ministry. And on that bright, clear June afternoon in Fordyce, in that ancient and holy place, all the walls of my deception had come tumbling down around me. The Moderator, Mr Robert Dun, minister of Deskford, a just and godly man, refused to condemn me on the word of one person and I still remembered the kind pleading in his eyes as he had turned to me and offered me the floor to defend myself. Struck dumb with the realisation, at last, that the laird of Delgatie was right, I had offered no word in my own defence and stumbled from the kirk as a blind man from a burning building. Such had been the glorious homecoming of Alexander Seaton. And here before me was the homecoming of Patrick Davidson. I could not believe that he deserved his as I had done mine.

‘How did he come to this, Gilbert?’ I asked.

He looked down at the body, a corruption of the work of God to something abhorrent. It was not a thing that could be comprehended in his universe of the schoolroom. ‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘I truly do not know. Perhaps the doctor will tell us, or the baillie, no doubt. But it should never have come to this. I saw another life marked out for him.’ He paused. ‘And never such a death.’

‘What was his life, Gilbert?’ I asked.

The old man turned from the image before him and sought a recess of his mind. ‘A life of love,’ he said at length. ‘His was a life of love. His father, a lawyer in Aberdeen, died while Patrick was still a baby, and he was taken then by his mother to live with her sister here in Banff. Her sister was Helen – Walter Watt’s first wife – although he was not provost then, but a prospering merchant. Walter and Helen had no child of their own; she was with child often, but she never carried one a full nine months. Jaffray did all he could for her, but not one of them lived. I think she would have,’ he hesitated, ‘I think she would have given much for just one of them to live. But she was not blessed. It wore her out in the end. She was not thirty when she died. But the boy – this boy, Patrick Davidson, her sister’s son – was the light of her life. They loved that boy as much as any parents could. He was always to be seen around Helen’s skirts in the market place, at the kirk, or atop Walter’s shoulders as he saw to his cargoes at the quayside or walked for pleasure along the cliff tops in his rare periods of leisure. But then the boy’s mother married again, and took him with her when her new husband, a minister, was called to the charge of a kirk in Fife. Helen’s heart was finally broken, and she died soon afterwards. When Patrick was about fourteen, he matriculated at the university at St Andrews. I do not think he came back here often until he returned to take up his apprenticeship at Arbuthnott’s. It is a pity you could not have known him. He was a fine boy.’

I watched as he stroked the cold forehead. He uttered not another word. His thoughts were evidently of the child the man had been, mine of the staggering stranger calling for compassion, of the dying man dismissed as a drunkard. The gnawing shame in my gut might have been too much for one who did not live each day with such a sentiment. I could find no words to comfort my old friend and so said nothing. I do not know how long we sat there before the strange companionship of we three men was interrupted by the arrival of Mistress Youngson with a bowl of porridge and warm milk, which she handed to me. ‘Take this up to your room and dress, Alexander. The baillie and his men will be here soon, and there will be little enough time for food and drink after that.’ It was nine months since she had uttered my Christian name, and so surprised was I by the unwonted tenderness that, forgetting to thank her, I ascended the stairs without a word.

I re-entered the schoolroom perhaps a quarter of an hour later, to find the officers of burgh and kirk already there. In the room, aside from Gilbert Grant, were five other living souls: Baillie William Buchan, self-appointed arbiter of all things moral or otherwise in this burgh; the two town serjeants; James Cardno the session clerk, whose report of my movements on the previous evening would still, I had no doubts, be ringing in the baillie’s ears, and Mr Robert Guild, minister of Banff and brother to Geleis, the provost Walter Watt’s young wife. Guild was no friend of mine – he had been none those nine months ago at Fordyce and he was none now. I was glad to see him there, nonetheless – his well-known antipathy to William Buchan promised that the baillie would not have all his own way in whatever was about to unfold.

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.

‘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.

‘The household knows not to disturb me at my work at night. Anyone going out would have gone by the outer stair, into the back yard.’

The session clerk’s voice was alive with anticipation. ‘And what night work have you on hand that must be carried out in such secrecy, apothecary?’

Arbuthnott did not disguise his disdain. ‘Calm yourself, Cardno. You know nothing of my trade. It is quiet I work in, not secrecy. You will have to look elsewhere for the black arts you crave.’

The session clerk’s breathing grew agitated, but he could not master his tongue to respond before the provost intervened once more. ‘What of your wife and daughter? What do they say of his movements?’

‘My wife and daughter?’ The apothecary’s voice dropped. ‘There is such a mourning in my house this day, sir, that I have had not a word that can be understood from either of them since my neighbour woke us with this terrible news.’

There was a moment of silence and then the session clerk spoke. ‘And where is Charles Thom?’ The suddenness of Cardno’s question struck me like a cold knife. All of last night’s conversation with Charles and the doctor came back to me. And through it all James Cardno had listened.

Arbuthnott was hesitant now, answering slowly. ‘I do not know.’

‘What do you mean, man?’

‘I mean what I say. I do not know where he is. I have not seen him since we sat at table last night. He was morose, as has been the case with him for some time now. I supposed he had taken early to his bed.’ At this the session clerk snorted, but Arbuthnott paid him no heed. ‘My neighbour arrived with this news at about our normal time of rising. Charles is often tardy in the mornings and I did not think it strange not to see him then.’ I smiled to myself as I thought of the regular sight of my friend flying past my window to the song school long after my own scholars were well settled. ‘I wonder that he has not joined us yet, though. Perhaps he is comforting the women …’ But his voice trailed off, and even I, who was probably Charles Thom’s greatest defender in that room, did not believe it.

Cardno murmured something in the baillie’s ear, and Buchan nodded. I had no doubt that the baillie had already been well apprised of Charles Thom’s conversation and demeanour in the inn the night before, and of the time at which he had left it. Buchan turned to the two town serjeants who had been waiting all this time at the doorway. ‘Find Charles Thom and bring him here. Look first at the apothecary’s, and if you do not find him go to the song school, though I doubt he will be there. There were urchins enough on the road as we came here.’ He turned accusing eyes on me. ‘There will be much wickedness in the streets of Banff this day with neither song nor grammar school at its work.’

I looked at the body of Patrick Davidson, still lying on the provost’s great hall table where it had been laid. ‘There has been much wickedness on the streets of Banff already,’ I said quietly. Even at a time such as this, when a young man of good family and great promise lay murdered by some unknown hand, the authorities of the burgh thought of nothing before they thought of public order.

When the serjeants had left, the provost sat down wearily on a settle near the fire. He called for a servant and asked for the fire to be lit and for refreshments to be brought. I noticed for the first time how tired he was. Dark circles beneath his eyes spoke of many a disturbed night, and the effort of standing up to the news of the last hour had taken the strength almost entirely from him. His usual demeanour was one of great strength and assured purpose. The son of a successful merchant burgess of Banff, he was not of humble origins, but it was clear, and no one doubted of it, that he intended to end life at a higher rank than he had begun. He was the first of his family to attain to the position of provost, the foremost citizen of the town. And indeed, he was the first provost in several generations not to have sprung from the Ogilvies, lairds of Banff and of many surrounding strongholds and estates besides. Walter Watt was the coming man, and those of sense could see it. Forthright, and with little warmth or humour, he was not a man to my own tastes, and I doubted whether, regardless of my own disgrace, we would ever have been friends.

Above the great stone hearth by which he sat was the portrait by George Jamesone which I had heard of before, but never seen. I knew little about painting, and suspected the provost knew scarcely more, but I understood the portrait of Walter Watt and his first wife, Helen, to be a signal of intent. It had been painted not long before Helen’s death, and well before her husband had attained to the heights of the provostship. Walter Watt would be somebody. No portrait of Walter Watt and his present wife, or their four children, the seedlings of his dynasty, adorned the walls. He loved Geleis Guild well enough, that was clear. Perhaps, though, no matter how many strong and healthy sons she bore him, she could never take the place of the pale young woman who stood silent by his side above us, in her hand a bunch of delicate flowers, of which several had already fallen to the floor.

The baillie took up his stance in front of the provost and with his back to me. The provost indicated a seat and, to my surprise, the baillie took it. It was his custom, when on public duties – and I had never seen him employed on any other – to stand towering over those with whom he had to deal. Spare of build – his very frame declaring the asceticism of his life – William Buchan was nonetheless a tall man, and he used his height to give force to his words. That he and the provost, constrained though they were to have daily dealings with one another on the business of the burgh, had little enough to say to one another at other times, was well known. It was not an antipathy such as existed between Buchan and Robert Guild, the minister, where one would gladly have seen the other ousted from his position; it was rather a discreet avoidance. Whatever he might think of the provost’s life, Baillie Buchan well knew he could never oust him – I doubted indeed whether he would even want to. For his part, the provost well knew he would never be usurped by William Buchan. Yet there existed between the two men a palpable and mutually understood dislike. It was as if the understanding of this was the very basis upon which they could continue to function together. Having made himself as comfortable as his principles would allow him to be, the baillie continued with his investigation.

‘When did you last see the boy?’

The provost considered a moment. ‘It was on Sunday night, after the evening service. He was here a little after six – he was to dine with myself and Jaffray. The doctor is ever anxious for news of the continent, and the war.’

At this Gilbert Grant nodded, having said little since our arrival at the provost’s house. ‘Aye, poor Jaffray. I sometimes think he only took part of his heart home with him when he returned to Banff. He is here with us, yet I believe in his mind, somewhere, he is still in Helmstedt, or Basel or Montpellier, with those dear friends of his youth, now so far dispersed.’ I knew what Gilbert Grant said to be true. Jaffray’s greatest recreation was to read and re-read the letters of those companions of his student days. Some of course had pre-deceased him, but only a few. Now, though, he hardly knew who lived still and who was dead. The ravages of this infernal war, tearing the Empire to shreds these last eight years, had distorted the old lines of communication to the extent that many no longer existed.

The baillie had no interest in this diversion. ‘You say “was to dine”. Did he not wait on his dinner?’

‘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!’

Gilbert Grant went across and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come, my friend. You cannot undo what is done. It is God’s will.’

The provost’s wife returned, followed into the room by a servant bearing trays of dates, nuts, bread and cheese, and another with wine and goblets. Geleis Guild took the wine herself and poured generous measures for those who would take it. Then she took the trays from the servant, set them on a trestle near the fire, and urged us to eat. It was early in the morning for wine, but I suspected the provost kept a good cellar and I accepted a goblet gratefully. I was not disappointed. The others all ate and drank sparingly, save the minister, whose enthusiasm for sating his appetite was, I thought, misplaced. We were thus engaged when the sound of some commotion in the street reached us from the doorway. I turned towards it in time to see my drenched and mud-splattered friend, the master of the music school, thrust through it by the two town serjeants, who hastily shut and barred it against the jeering mob. Though thick, the door could not keep out the repeated cries of ‘murderer’ and the shrill sound of one voice screaming, ‘You will hang, Charles Thom, you will hang.’