The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

FOUR The Maps

The grammar school was held again the next day, after its macabre holiday. Sounds of high spirits and excitement came from Gilbert Grant’s classroom, but my own scholars were more subdued than I had expected them to be. A little before midday, one of Gilbert Grant’s scholars came bursting into my room. He was breathless, and his words tumbled over each other. ‘Mr Seaton, Mr Seaton. You are to go at once to the tolbooth. You and the master, for you are both wanted there. You are to lose no time.’ In the room next door, Gilbert Grant had already replaced his robe with a good thick cloak and confirmed somewhat breathlessly that we had been sent for. The sense of apprehension that had been my constant companion since the previous day grew. I gathered my own hat and cloak and we set off for the tolbooth, leaving word with Mistress Youngson that there would be no school that afternoon.

At the tolbooth, we were allowed to pass without question, and were soon shown with little ceremony through the great timber door of the council chamber. I had entered this room only once before – on the same occasion that Gilbert Grant had taken us boys to the tolbooth jail two floors above, he had also been allowed to bring us into this hallowed place. I could still remember the words of the old provost, whose name I had now forgotten – another Ogilvie, no doubt – we stood in awe in the oak-panelled room with its huge, finely polished table and its ornately carved chairs. ‘The room above, boys, you must ever strive to avoid. This, this,’ he had repeated with a proprietorial sweep of his hand, ‘is what you should aspire to.’ I never had.

Waiting for us in the room were not only the provost and the baillie, but also Edward Arbuthnott and Thomas Stewart, notary public of the burgh of Banff. For the notary, unlike for Baillie Buchan and James Cardno, the world did not begin and end with the kirk. He was not ungodly, but he was a man of the world, a measured man who understood the needs and failings of his fellow creatures without seeing sin at the root of them all. Where he had been yesterday I did not know, but I was heartily glad to see him today. Stewart did not look up when Grant and I entered the room, engaged as he was on the removal of some papers from the open chest at the far end of the room. The apothecary looked somewhat shaken, ill at ease, but it was the demeanour of the provost that I marked most. His complexion was of a greater pallor than I had ever seen it, and his hand shook so that he had to steady himself by leaning on the back of a chair. He never once took his eyes off Thomas Stewart and the papers.

My companion was the first to speak. ‘We have come, provost, as we were sent for. What business here requires us?’

Walter Watt, scarcely hearing, I think, made no response. It was the baillie who replied. ‘We require your assistance, and that also of Mr Seaton there,’ he nodded towards me in a perfunctory manner, ‘in the examination of these papers.’ He indicated the chest over which Thomas Stewart was again bent. ‘The notary and I went to Arbuthnott’s this morning with the purpose of examining Charles Thom’s belongings in the hope of finding some evidence of evil intent against Patrick Davidson, since he denies involvement in the crime. I am glad to say – and I pray you would mark this, Mr Seaton – that we could find nothing amongst the belongings of Charles Thom to suggest anything other than a blameless life on the part of that young man.’ The involuntary relaxation of my shoulders and hands must have been noticed, for he continued, emphasis on his next words, ‘However, the absence of evident guilt is not the same as the proof of innocence, and that we have not found.’

‘Nor will find,’ I responded, ‘unless Patrick Davidson arises and tells you the name of the one who slew him.’

The baillie probed me with his long, unflinching gaze. ‘Charles Thom is at liberty to talk for himself, but chooses not to. If his reasons are known to you, you would do well to divulge them. It would go the better for you both.’ His eyes searched mine for a moment, but he returned to the matter in hand. ‘It is not in the case of Charles Thom we require help from yourself and Mr Grant. The papers we wish you to examine belong to Mr Patrick Davidson.’

Now I thought I understood something of the provost’s pallor.

‘What are these papers?’ I asked.

Stewart turned the first of the piles and passed it across the table. ‘That is what we would like you to tell us, although we know, broadly, what they are. What we would ascertain is what they mean.’

I pulled over a chair for Gilbert Grant but remained standing myself. Buchan placed a new-lit candle at the older schoolmaster’s elbow. My own eyesight was far better than my colleague’s. At first glance I saw what the papers were. I would have to choose my words with care.

‘These are maps,’ I said.

‘Indeed,’ agreed Buchan. ‘But have you ever seen such maps before, Mr Seaton?’

I looked again and shook my head. It was the truth. I had seen town sketches, and maps, in my college days. Yet, for all I had seen before, I had never seen such work as this. The maps, perhaps a dozen in all, were not printed copies but original hand-drawn sketches, showing natural coastline features such as bays, river mouths, sandbars and rocks – all annotated and named. The Collie Rocks were there, Meavie Point, the Maiden Craig, the Bow Fiddle Rock, and many more besides. The hills and cliffs that rose above them were named. But there too were the man-made features – the new harbour works at Banff, the harbour at Sandend, the fastness of Findlater above the bay at Darkwater. And roads there were, and bridges, kirks, townships, strongholds. The whole coastline from Gamrie and Troup Head to Findlater and beyond to Cullen was sketched out in a manner which, to one who knew these places, could not be mistaken. At the edge of each sketch an arrow, next to what could only be a roadway, annotated ‘to Elgin’, ‘to Turriff’, ‘to Strathbogie’. It was this last that began to give me the clue, if I had needed it, to the possible significance of the discovery of these documents, and the unrest they caused to those in the room, not least the provost. Gilbert Grant passed me paper after paper. ‘These are astonishing; I have never seen such work.’ He looked towards Thomas Stewart. ‘I had not thought the coastline here to be mapped.’

‘It is – or rather was – not,’ replied the notary. ‘The fishermen have their charts of course, but these are rudimentary and obscure, and can only be understood by those with great knowledge of the sea hereabouts.’

Grant shook his head in wonder. ‘Then where did he get them? Whose work are they?’

‘His own.’ Baillie Buchan’s voice was dry and deliberate.

‘You cannot be sure.’ Again the provost was in a rash of panic. The baillie lost patience and almost spat.

‘Arbuthnott confirms it.’ He thrust a paper towards the provost. ‘Do you deny yourself that it is his hand?’ And then another, and another. ‘Or this? Or this?’ The provost nodded slowly then sat down on a chair, his head in his hands. I picked up the papers he had let fall to the floor. Not maps these, but notes, numbered notes and symbols with their meaning. A symbol for a bridge, for a well, for a mill, for a farmstead, a ferry, a ford. Notes on strongholds and the names of those who held them – Findlater, Inchgower, Carnousie, Delgatie, Rothiemay, Frendraucht – all and many more were there. To my surprise, Buchan seemed to address himself to me rather than to Gilbert Grant. ‘What do you make of these documents?’

I chose my words with care. ‘I have some little knowledge of mapping, but I do not claim great expertise.’

‘And it is taught at neither of the colleges in Aberdeen?’

I considered. ‘No. There is some talk of a mathematics professor at Marischal College, but no man has yet been found to take the post.’

The baillie nodded, satisfied. ‘Mr Grant?’

My elder colleague sighed. ‘I can add little to what Alexander has said. The craftsmanship, the penmanship is of a high quality – but as to cartography, I know near to nothing of that.’

‘And why should you?’ asked the baillie, ‘for maps are scarce the business of honest men.’

Notary Stewart cleared his throat and the provost roused himself. ‘Have a care, Buchan. You might not slander the dead, but you risk great slander of the living. Robert Gordon of Straloch is known to have an interest in the matter of maps.’

Buchan was unbowed. ‘A Gordon is not above suspicion. Straloch may well have a hand in this. Did the boy speak of any commission, any patron in this work?’

Arbuthnott, to whom the question was chiefly addressed, asserted, with some vehemence, that Davidson had not spoken of this work at any time. The provost also denied ever having heard mention that his nephew was engaged on such an enterprise.

The baillie returned to me. His view that maps were not the business of honest men did not, it appeared, preclude a conviction that I knew all about them. ‘What would you say, Mr Seaton, is the purpose of these maps?’

‘I cannot answer that, baillie. Only Patrick Davidson and whoever sponsored him can answer that.’

‘You guess at more than you will admit, Mr Seaton, or you would not talk of “sponsors”.’

The baillie was correct, loath though I was to admit it. I knew more of maps and mapping and their cause and their uses than I wished to say, for Archie Hay had written to me of them. Archie, who had never looked at a map in his life, had never needed to for the whole of the terrain of the north was written into his very soul, had discovered his great God-given gift when he had left the shores of Scotland for the great wars of the Empire. He had discovered the value, the necessity to the foreign soldier and the foreign army, of maps. It had been with the greatest of difficulty, and relying almost completely on me and my powers of dissuasion, that Archie’s parents had prevented him from throwing up his studies in Aberdeen and going to the war in Bohemia as soon as he heard of the defeat of the Bohemian forces at the White Mountain. The Elector Frederick, newly chosen king of Bohemia, the Winter King, champion of Protestantism against the papist Habsburgs, had suffered ignominious defeat. As Archie had told me, indiscreetly and on more than one occasion, he cared not a jot for the Bohemians or the Protestant cause, but he would die in the defence of Frederick’s queen, Elizabeth Stewart, daughter of King James and sister of our present King, Charles. In 1622, four years ago, Archie had left home, family and country to fight to the death, as he said, in the defence of the Winter Queen.

When he could, Archie wrote to me, a small handful of letters I kept with me still. He wrote of the fighting, of the filth, the privations, the brutality of the Habsburgs and the suffering of the peasants. And he wrote of maps. Archie, who had been hard put to attend one lecture in three in our college days, fell upon the art of cartography with a passion. He learnt the art and its uses from students of the new French and German military schools. He used spies and eventually went himself, under cover of disguise, into enemy territory to chart and learn the lie of the land. At the time I had marvelled at the letters, at Archie’s enthusiasm for this new type of knowledge, and I had marvelled at the knowledge itself. And I knew what the documents Baillie Buchan was holding out towards me very probably meant. The baillie knew it too, but would have it from my mouth.

‘Why do you think Patrick Davidson drew these maps, Mr Seaton?’

The room fell silent. There could be but one answer that made any sense. What Davidson had drawn was a plan for an invasionary force, landing on the Moray coast and marching – marching where else but southwards – to Aberdeen, to Edinburgh, to London itself, but first by way of Strathbogie. Strathbogie, the centre of Gordon power, the heartland of the Marquises of Huntly, commanding the North East, and ever ready to rise, in concert with their sovereign or against, in the name of Rome. Forfeiture, banishment, death on the battlefield or by the executioner’s axe had failed to slake the thirst of the Gordons for a return of Scotland to the thrall of the papacy. And Strathbogie lay not twenty miles from where we stood. But I would not lay that charge at one I had never met, whom I had already so wronged, and who could no longer answer in his own defence.

It mattered little: the words that stuck in my throat came soon enough from the baillie’s mouth. ‘I think it is evident, is it not, Mr Seaton, that Patrick Davidson was a papist spy?’

He had dropped the words into a silent room and opened the door to a tempest. As I tried to frame some response, Gilbert Grant stood up, rage and dismay contending in him for the ascendancy. ‘That is an outrage, Buchan, that the boy should stand accused of such a deed. He had a thirst for knowledge, for that you would condemn him as a papist and a spy?’ He turned imploring eyes on me. ‘Alexander, tell them, tell them what nonsense they speak …’ But my old colleague’s voice fell away, drowned out by the silence of the certainty that now filled the room.

The notary was the first to speak. ‘I think it well that these papers be kept in a place of security. I propose, Provost, that after we have made more particular examination of these documents, the chest be placed under lock and key in the charter room here in the tolbooth.’

The provost assented, having come to himself somewhat. Thomas Stewart and I lifted the chest to the table, away from the fire, which Walter Watt called to have lit. The baillie told the apothecary he might leave us, with a strict admonition that he should spread no word of this conference. He also spoke a word, an unaccustomed kindly word, to Gilbert Grant, that he need not tarry with us longer if he did not wish to. My elderly colleague rose stiffly. ‘I will go gladly, for I have not the stomach for this. He was a fine boy, a fine boy.’

The provost clasped his hand firmly. ‘Thank you, Gilbert. You do him justice.’ As Grant and Arbuthnott were leaving, the serjeant was told to have the minister fetched. This again was the suggestion of Thomas Stewart, and although the baillie and the provost, I was sure, would have objected if they could, we all assented that it was right that the minister should be informed of what had been found. The provost then took his accustomed seat at the head of the table and invited the rest of us to be seated also.

It was not long before the minister appeared. As Mr Guild somewhat breathlessly removed his hat and cloak, the notary commenced on an abbreviated account of what had transpired at the search of Patrick Davidson’s room.

The minister looked truly astonished. ‘A spy? A papist, I will not believe it!’ No mention of papist had been made by Thomas Stewart, for none was needed. What other enemy could our country have? The minister looked to his brother-in-law. ‘Provost, this cannot be true, man: he was your nephew.’

The provost, who had sat silently throughout Thomas Stewart’s narrative, maintained his composure. ‘I would rather lose my own life than believe it. Never has there been such a taint on my family name. Never. No hint of Romanism, of disloyalty to Church or Crown has ever attached itself to me or mine. I pray to God that it be not true, for the boy’s sake and for the memory of his aunt that is dead, for she loved the child to distraction, and he her.’

To my surprise, the baillie, who was not much given to sentiment, added his voice in agreement. ‘It is known and well remembered that she did. And never did a child have a more Christian example before his eyes. If it be found that the boy did stray into the path of Rome, no blame will attach itself to her memory.’

The minister, ever ready to set himself at odds with Buchan, did not altogether like this. ‘Nor yet to that of the provost, Baillie Buchan. Or to his family.’ In all this, as in all else, the Reverend Mr Guild’s concern was for himself. He was never slow to recall to all who listened that his own sister was now the provost’s wife, but any hint of dabbling with Rome by that family might leave its mark on himself. For Walter Watt, perhaps, the risk was greater. He had worked his whole life to garner position, influence, wealth and power, and aimed higher still than the provostship of Banff. What of all he had gained in this great life’s work would be left to him if his family name should be tainted with the odour of treachery? He could not even approximate to the position of the Marquises of Huntly, forgiven again and again by their indulgent monarchs. The king did not know Walter Watt, Provost of Banff, from any other middling creature in his kingdoms. Both for Watt and for his brother-in-law the minister, the revelation of Patrick Davidson as a papist spy would be a personal disaster.

The baillie seemed unconvinced, uninterested even, in the minister’s assertion in defence of the provost. ‘Whether any blame attaches itself to the provost, his present family or indeed to any other indweller of this burgh remains to be seen, Mr Guild. When our community is threatened by the blackest of evils, as it is now, vigilance, vigilance in the Lord, is all.’

The provost leaned forward, his eyes cold and hard. ‘There is none more vigilant for the good name of this burgh than am I, baillie, as well you must know.’

Buchan was unperturbed. ‘And the good of its soul, provost? For make no mistake, what we deal with today is the good of its soul.’

The notary, used to the endless shifting for position between baillie and provost, waited silently while they spoke out their piece. When the natural pause came, as he had known it would, he took charge once more of our discussion. ‘I hope it will be understood and agreed amongst us that we must take great care how this business is handled. Any suspicion of inhabitants of the town having truck with foreign enemies will cause poisonous division in the burgh. Accusation will be hurled against accusation, suspicion grow like a fungus in the hearts of the indwellers. Trade, and the security of the burgh, will be disrupted.’ How quickly Stewart had cut to the heart of the matter. While some, like the minister and provost, might fear first of all for their own position and others, like the baillie, might have genuine fears for the immortal souls of the inhabitants of Banff, in the end, the real concern was not for Kirk or king, but for the security and trade of our town. ‘This business must be addressed with the utmost secrecy.’

‘But how can that be?’ spluttered the minister. ‘If some higher authority should come to know of it from other mouths than ours, then we might all be held guilty of apostasy and treason.’

Thomas Stewart sought to assuage the Reverend Mr Guild’s concerns. ‘Great care will be taken over the security of these papers, minister, and as soon as we have some better knowledge of their true import, they will be delivered to the sheriff. On this you have my word.’

The minister was still not satisfied. ‘I am not assured that this secret can be kept. I would call into question, for instance, the presence in this room of Mr Alexander Seaton. Neither by position nor repute is it fitting that he should be one of our number and privy to this knowledge.’

To my surprise, Baillie Buchan spoke in my defence.

‘Mr Seaton is here as one who has particular knowledge of the matter before us. You will be aware, I am sure, of the great friendship that existed from boyhood between him and the Master of Hay?’ The minister was bursting to interrupt, but Buchan would not permit it. ‘Sir Archibald Hay died in the cause of our faith and the defence of our Church against the idolatrous forces of the Empire. In the course of that service, as you will recall from the funeral oration given by the Earl Marischal, he became expert in the drawing and using of maps. Also in the course of that service, he wrote many letters from the lands of Germany and the Low Countries to his childhood friend, Mr Seaton.’ He looked towards me as if awaiting some protestation. ‘It is known, Mr Seaton. Few letters enter this town without my knowledge. What I know of their contents depends upon the gravity of the times. I believe it likely that Sir Archibald would have revealed to you at least some of his new knowledge and his practice of it.’ I knew, as did everyone, what were the centres of power in our community, and yet I had not understood until that moment the true extent of Buchan’s control of knowledge in the town, and would never have foreseen his frankness on the matter. There was little point in protesting a desire for privacy or outrage that it had been infringed; such protestation would be taken as little less than an admission of complicity in some act of treachery or private vice. I simply agreed that he was correct in his belief, and that Archie had written to me a good deal on his new passion for the cartographer’s art. Buchan nodded, satisfied. ‘I thought as much. And it is fortunate indeed that he did, for I could think of no other in the town who would have been able to advise us with any sure knowledge of the matter.’

This was not enough for Mr Guild. ‘To cite Mr Seaton’s old friendship with the Master of Hay in his support – it is known throughout the country that the laird will no longer have him in the house, that he it was who barred Mr Seaton’s way to the ministry – is beyond endurance.’ The minister could scarcely contain his impotent outrage. ‘You should have consulted a higher authority before taking such a step.’

‘He did,’ interrupted the provost. ‘Mr Seaton’s position in the burgh may well be lowly, but he is acknowledged a man of great learning and I know of no other in this town with any understanding of maps. As for his repute – I know little and care less for your tittle-tattle, but I know there has never yet been any suggestion of heresy or collusion with the forces of idolatry in his carriage, public or private.’

‘But his mother, the Irishwoman–’

‘Is dead,’ I said. ‘My mother is long dead.’

The minister thus chastened said no more of my unfitness for this trust, but simmered silently at the double-edged affront to his dignity and his person.

It had been many months since any save my closest friends in the burgh had treated me with anything other than either wary suspicion or open contempt. There were those of course like the Dawson sisters, the shore porters, the journeymen labourers – those on the margins of our community – who had been little impressed by my college learning and my progression towards the ministry and so were little shaken by my fall. Most of the rest found it expedient to avoid me now. All save my closest friends. I had never cared to claim friendship of casual acquaintances, and in the first few months after my rejection by the Presbytery at Fordyce, I had eschewed the company of even my few good friends – the doctor, Charles Thom and Gilbert Grant in Banff, and the two or three companions of my student days who still lived in Aberdeen. They, a wonder to me now, had persevered with me throughout my darkest days of self-loathing.

My astonishment at understanding, at last, that I really was not fit to be a minister had, for a while, almost robbed me of my senses. Days of wandering wildly along the cliffs and shoreline, eastwards then westwards with little consciousness of where I was had ended, not with my death on the rocks as might well have been expected, but with an exhausted collapse on the shore below Findlater. I had been found there by a local wise woman who many accounted a witch, but I did not believe she was. She dragged me – God alone knows how – the length of the beach to the cave in which she dwelt, summer and winter, and nursed me there. When my delirium was finally broken, she sent word to Jaffray of where I was to be found. The fact that I still lived was a matter of joy to him as well as to Gilbert Grant and, even then, to Mistress Youngson. It was not a matter of joy to myself. I drank, I wallowed in self-pity, I drank more, I railed in bitterness at my fate, in anger at all who came near me; I went with women and hardly knew their names. Three times I had been brought before the session, three times forced to sit in front of the whole kirk and proclaim a repentance I did not feel.

For nearly six months it had lasted, until all who were left were James Jaffray, Gilbert Grant, and Charles Thom. No one else of any decency or standing would look me in the eye, and from my scholars I had little respect and deserved less. Mistress Youngson, the childless Mistress Youngson, who had taken me to her home and loved me as if I were her husband’s son, could scarce bear to look at me. Six months, until at last I stood on the precipice between existence and death. I was not dead, and though I did not live, I might exist. At first I relied almost entirely on Jaffray: he had persevered belligerently and relentlessly with me regardless of my assertions that I did not need him; Charles Thom in his own passive and morose way had done the same. Gilbert Grant had simply waited, waited patiently for me to rediscover at least some civility, as he had known I would. My shame at my carriage towards him, when I eventually dragged myself out of the trough of aggressive despondence, was profound. His forgiveness was quiet and complete. But his wife could never forgive me; she could never forgive the hurt I had caused her husband – and even herself – and as she once told me, she had now seen the dark side of my soul. And here now, in this chamber, in the provost’s defence of me, a door had opened slightly offering a passage back towards the world of men. And there might be respect in that world, and it mattered all the more because the hand that had pushed open the door was not that of a friend.

I nodded my head a little towards the provost in a gesture of thanks. ‘I will be of what assistance I can in this business. I can make no claim for great knowledge of the art of mapping, but what I was given to understand from Sir Archie you will know entirely. As to my discretion, Mr Guild need not fear: what is spoken of here will not be noised abroad by me.’ In enforced retreat, the minister favoured me with a look of practised contempt.

The baillie, paying him no heed, strode towards the chest. ‘Then let us bend our necks to the task, for enough time has been wasted already.’ For the next three hours, until the light began to fade and other duties called the attention of the notary, baillie, provost and minister, we pored over the maps. As our examination progressed, the question arose as to what military uses they might be put to. One or two suggestions were somewhat fantastical – the minister claimed to fear the burning and desecration of the marked churches by the idolatrous horde. I believed it more likely that the churches were indicated as landmarks, and that an invading force landing many miles from the centres of power would be unlikely to tarry in the presbyteries of Fordyce or Turriff to burn churches. Of greater concern were the great lengths to which Davidson had gone in describing the bounteous contents of the laird of Banff’s gardens and orchards, as well as the nature and times of the fleshmarket in the burgh and the location of the great barnyards of Delgatie and Rothiemay – brimful of corn and barley. An invasionary force coming by sea and with a long march ahead could provision itself well with such information. There was little doubt in any of our minds that the enemy would be papist – the question was simply from where. The minister and the baillie, united for once, suspected France. I, along with Thomas Stewart the notary, inclined towards Spain.

The baillie was in little doubt. ‘The French – long a godless people and ever the enemy of Scotland. France would have had us in her snare sixty years ago, when we had scarce yet freed ourselves from thraldom to Rome. The late king’s mother was but a pawn in their schemes. It grieves me greatly that her grandson should have fallen in with yet another French marriage, for no good will come of it.’ King Charles had only succeeded a year ago, yet within two months he had married himself a French bride. This ‘dabbling with Rome’ had made many uneasy, myself included.

The provost turned to Thomas Stewart. ‘You think Spain the more likely foe. What is your reasoning?’

The notary pushed one of the maps across the table to the provost. ‘We are agreed that a substantial landing force could be disembarked here or here?’ The provost nodded, and the notary traced a line with his finger slightly north and eastwards of the sea at Banff. ‘Any invasionary fleet would be most likely to come in here. A journey up the west of Scotland and around Cape Wrath or even the Orkneys would be fraught with navigational perils and could not hope to escape detection for long enough to surprise us. But that is the way the French would have to come, for they could scarce sail up the English Channel and hope to progress up the eastern coastline of England without attracting notice. But think of the Spaniards. Think of the Netherlands.’ What he said was true; since the revolt of the Dutch twenty years ago, Spain no longer held the northern Netherlands, gathered now into a republic under the auspices of their States-General. But they still held the south, and soldiers and ducats flowed from Madrid to Antwerp and Brussels, sustaining a network of Spanish spies and intrigue on a seemingly limitless supply of gold from the Americas. Perhaps Patrick Davidson had simply been one more cog in the great Spanish wheel that drove the Habsburgs’ will through Europe and beyond.

The provost began to nod his head slowly, evidently thinking the thing out for himself. ‘A fleet – armada they call it? – could set sail from Flanders and possibly avoid detection sailing north. A favourable wind would bring them to our shores in little enough time. But why here? Why so far north?’

The minister could hold his tongue no longer. ‘In God’s name, do we tremble to say it? There is not one among us who does not suspect the hand of Huntly in all of this.’

Walter Watt would have restrained him. ‘Have a care–’ but for once the minister would not be cowed by his brother-in-law.

‘No, provost, I will not. How long must we live in fear of the papist Gordon backsliders, who would sell our nation into Roman whoredom for the price of a mass?’ What he said was true. It was common knowledge that the Gordons had never accepted the Reformation of religion in our country, and were ever striving for a return to Rome. They did not blanch at treachery or civil war in their efforts. And now, with the king in England and the whole continent of Europe at war, might they not well intrigue with Spain as they had done before? The provost addressed me.

‘And have you anything to add, Mr Seaton? How seems the Spanish answer to you?’

I worded my reply with caution. ‘I believe that if our country is to suffer an assault from the Spaniard, it will be because the king himself has brought them to it.’ These were dangerous words, I knew. Dangerous words to use in the company of men with no reason to wish me well. The provost, whom I did not like but was coming to believe I could trust, spoke first.

‘On what grounds do you hold this view?’

‘On the grounds that are known to us all: that after his accession, King Charles lost little time in abandoning his father’s policy and showing himself the enemy of Spain. England will always be the prize for Spain, but they might reason soundly that much might be achieved in England by striking our king first in his Scottish kingdom, and where else would the Spaniards find so firm and well-placed a friend as the Marquis of Huntly?’

Thomas Stewart seemed somewhat ill at ease. ‘I feel we are all of one agreement: that if our nation is under threat from a foreign force, then that force will come from Spain, and that if Patrick Davidson was spying for anyone, it was at the behest of Madrid. And yet–’

‘And yet,’ interrupted the provost, ‘we have no proof whatsoever that my nephew was engaged on any such activity; these maps may be the fruits of a blameless pursuit.’

I felt somewhat as a fly might do when led into a trap by a spider. The provost had allowed us to entangle ourselves more and more in a web of speculation of our own making, and now he was ready to pounce upon us in his dead nephew’s defence. I felt that I was as responsible as anyone, in my failure to speak up for him when Gilbert Grant had asked me to.

‘I am no expert in these maps, provost, and I have no interest in calumniating an innocent man.’

The baillie was swift. ‘Even to save your friend?’

‘Even for that.’

He nodded. ‘Good. It is as I thought.’

I did not know what to make of the baillie’s words, but I had little time to pursue the enquiry in my mind. Thomas Stewart eyed me levelly. ‘Whatever we do will not be lain at your door, Alexander; you have done no more than we asked of you, and that well, yet I believe we should not proceed further in this matter without first taking further counsel.’

The minister was wearied of listening to the views of others when his own were so clear to him. ‘And to what reprobate must we now turn before we may proceed as any group of godly and honest magistrates?’

The slur on me was let pass as the notary responded in a steady voice. ‘Robert Gordon of Straloch.’

The minister snorted derisively and the baillie rose from his seat in some alarm. ‘The risk is too great.’

‘Straloch is no papist,’ asserted the notary.

The Reverend Guild snorted again. ‘No papist? He is a Gordon! They drink in incense with their mother’s milk.’

The notary repeated himself, an edge to his voice being sharpened by his growing impatience. ‘Robert Gordon of Straloch is no papist. He is a Justice of the Peace and one of the best-respected men in the kingdom. The king himself does not scruple to seek his counsel.’

‘Aye,’ retorted the minister, ‘and Huntly does not blow his nose without consulting him first.’

‘Perhaps so. But many’s the time it has been the restraining hand, the measured counsel of Straloch, which has held the Marquis back, when his own impetuous nature would have precipitated us all into disaster.’

When the baillie spoke his words were slow and deliberate. ‘And what say you, provost? Should we consult Robert Gordon of Straloch on the matter of these maps?’ He was watching the provost closely, as if hoping something in the man’s reaction would reveal complicity or innocence in his nephew’s doings.

It was a moment before Walter Watt began his reply, and as he spoke, I understood what it was that had set him apart from his peers. Walter Watt, when he chose, could speak and reason with a degree of authority that silenced other men. ‘I too am uneasy about approaching so close to the centre of Gordon power on a matter so potentially dangerous for us all. Nevertheless, we cannot proceed on an investigation relating to these maps without expert opinion of their nature. It is known that there is not a man in the whole of Scotland who has a greater understanding than Straloch of the art of cartography. That he is a Gordon and a confidant of the marquis cannot be denied, but what the notary says is true. He is respected as much as any man, and may of times have been the one voice that counselled against catastrophe. We should consult Straloch. We should ask him for his opinion on the basis of one map – only one. For if my nephew had fallen into such a blasphemous treachery as he may have done, I am resolved that these papers should burn to ashes and never another eye look on them.’

Minister, baillie and notary were all, at length and to varying degrees brought into agreement with the provost as to the way to proceed. There remained the question of how the chosen document should be transferred safely to Straloch. Under the present circumstances, with a murderer either walking abroad in the burgh or lying untried in the tolbooth, neither the notary nor the baillie could be spared. The minister declared that it was not his intention to break bread with the idolatrous Gordons, and the provost was no message boy. The gaze of the baillie fell upon me. He must have known what I myself in the maelstrom of the past two days had almost forgotten – that I was committed to travel to Aberdeen the very next day. He himself would have signed the authority to release me from my duties for a few days. His gaze began to weigh heavy on me and I cleared my throat. ‘I am bound to journey to the town tomorrow. Two of Dr Liddel’s scholarships at Marischal College have fallen vacant and one of my most promising scholars could make something of a claim to compete for one of them. I am travelling to Aberdeen to ascertain what I can of what will be required of the boy in his trial for the bursary, and to purchase some books required by the grammar school here. My journey will take me within two miles of Straloch.’ And so, after much protest from the minister, silenced by the provost, and no further comment from myself, it was resolved that it should be I who carried the map to Robert Gordon. I was to tell him as much of its tale as we knew and were prepared to apprise him of, and ask him for his opinion on its nature and import. I had never met the laird of Straloch, but I knew him by repute to be a man of great learning and wide experience. I did not fear, as did the Reverend Guild, that I would be infected with popery simply from dining at the table of a Gordon. I was distant, very distant from my God, but I knew without question that mine was still the God of Calvin and Knox, whatever the Reverend Guild might fear I had learned at my mother’s knee. The light was dull now, and the sea pulled the clouds in from the west as the town bellman marked the hour as five. It was agreed that I should return here at seven the next morning. The provost would meet me and release into my care one – only one – of the maps drawn by his nephew.

I made not to my lodgings and the promise of Mistress Youngson’s meagre but wholesome supper, but to Jaffray’s. With all the broken links of my life these past few months, the doctor had become the only tonic that I knew.