I had been blind. Stupid. He had all but told me more than once. He and Ormiston – Ormiston, who had been waiting to take the host after him, were not recruiting for the Protestant forces at all.
‘I wanted to tell you, I started trying to tell you, the last time I was here, but then the child woke up, and the moment was gone. I did not want to lie to you.’
‘Spain?’ I said at last, my voice scarcely audible.
He nodded, seeing that I had it now. ‘Of late, yes. But for most of the last nine years I have served in the Habsburg armies of the Emperor. When I left Mansfeld’s rabble, I joined with the other Scots and Irish in Wallenstein’s
Catholic army, under Colonel Daniel Hepburn. You see, there are thousands of us on both sides, and it is not always what we have left behind that shapes the choices we make.’
‘And Ormiston? When did he make his choice? Did he ever sail with MacKay’s regiment, or was that a lie too?’ It seemed to me that Ormiston was brazen enough to lie to the face of Lord Reay himself.
Archie took another draught of his wine. ‘He is not the man you think him to be, Alexander. He has greater honour than you give him credit for.’
‘And yet he raises troops to die abroad under false promises. They think they go to fight in the Protestant cause, for the King’s sister, and all the while they are but fodder for the cannons of the Habsburgs. And Ormiston has the gall to receive honour from Lord Reay.’
Archie’s face hardened. ‘He well merits it. He fought for six years in MacKay’s forces, saw his brother die …’
‘Is that what turned him?’
‘Turned him?’
‘Is that what sent Ormiston scuttling over to the Habsburgs? That his brother died in the Protestant cause?’
Archie regarded me a while. ‘You see it all in such simple terms.’ He sighed. ‘No, he did not come over then. The first time I met him, I was with Colonel Butler’s Irish forces, defending Frankfurt an der Oder against the armies of Gustav Adolph. Ormiston was still with MacKay’s regiment then, and though they were victorious, his own commander praised the valour of Butler’s defence.
Ormiston told me of it when next we met, and I think it created a kind of brotherhood between us, despite the slaughter we had both witnessed in that town.’
Within me yet, for all my anger with him, for all the distrust of him that had welled up within me in the last hours, something winced at his talk of brotherhood with the lieutenant, a brotherhood I knew I would never be able to share in.
‘It was two years after Frankfurt, at Freistadt, that we met again. By that time, I had met in with two of our old acquaintance, Walter Leslie and John Gordon, risen high in the Imperial armies. We were in a stand-off near Nuremberg, and one afternoon, while on reconnaissance, we were captured all three of us by a party of Scots in MacKay’s regiment, serving under the Swedish king. With Leslie and Gordon I had been openly Archie Hay, but as a captive I was again humble Sergeant John Nimmo. Five weeks we stayed with our captors, until ransom was paid, and a merry five weeks they were.’ I realised it was the tale Ormiston had told us aboard his ship two nights before, but he had not told all, as Archie did now. ‘The causes for which we fought were put aside, and we revelled in our shared nationhood, and a comradeship of arms far from home. While Gordon and Leslie were royally entertained by their fellow officers, I was under the watch of a young ensign. That is how Ormiston and I came to meet again. We spoke over our memories of many shared battles; in time we came to speak of what we had lost through the war – he of his
brother, I of all my family and friends at home, and finally, as men will do, of what faith we had. And so, in time, he conceived a desire that when Leslie, Gordon and I should finally be released to rejoin the Imperial forces, he should come with us, and so he did, and he and I have fought and travelled together ever since.’
I saw now that Ormiston was far from the mere acquaintance that Archie had first presented him to be, and that the officer’s knowledge of and dislike of me probably stemmed from the same roots as did mine of him. I went over to the window and looked out at the murky darkness. ‘And so all your talk of spying, of travelling across Europe, of Brussels, Madrid, that was just a fantasy for my amusement, my entertainment.’
‘No, Alexander. The difference is that I walked openly, was welcomed in Vienna, in Brussels, Madrid, but that in other places I had to pass with caution, in the shadows, not make myself known. And the lieutenant …’
I spun round. ‘I do not care about the lieutenant. What I want to know is …’ I swallowed, cast my eyes up the stairs to where Sarah was probably still awake. ‘ … Is what you told me about Madrid true?’
‘The child?’
I nodded.
‘It’s true. What’s more, Matthew Lumsden saw him too.’
I went back over to the fire, my voice lowered. ‘Matthew?’
‘It was he who first spotted the boy. I have to confess, my eye was more taken by the mother, but it nearly stopped
my heart when Matthew said to me, “Is that child not the image of Alexander Seaton?” It was all I could do not to take the boy in my arms and whirl him round the room. In the years since the loss of my own darling child, it was the greatest joy I have known.’
I wanted to be where he had been, in that room, in that Jesuit house, in that city of heat and wonders, and see what he had seen. Not Roisin, for I had never cared enough for Roisin and could only with difficulty picture her face, but my son.
‘Are you certain?’ I said, my voice almost a whisper.
‘As certain as I am looking at you. I asked the woman outright. She dissembled at first, but she was no good at it. And so she told me that yes, he was your son, but she begged that I should tell no one else, for she and her child were dependent on those who believed he might one day follow in the footsteps of his father, and that that father should not be a university teacher from a cold Scottish town.’
I sat down, my head in my hands, my heart thumping so loud I could hardly think. Archie crouched down in front of me. ‘They are cared for there, Alexander, safe and honoured in your cousin’s name. And these Jesuits whom you so despise, and Lady Rothiemay and all the other recusants, here and in Ireland, see to it that they and many others like them will not go hungry, nor dishonoured, nor without shelter. Nothing you could do would make life any the better for them, or for you. You are a great one for the will of God. Accept it in this.’
And so we talked on, and I came to understand, I think, what drove my friend. He had not lied to me before when he had said his one aim was that the war should end, and that he believed only a victory for the Habsburgs could end it. And so he recruited in that cause. By the end, I was no longer angry with him, no longer disappointed, and I wondered even that in the life he had led since our youth, it should still matter to him that I thought of him at all. I felt, as we sat across from one another in the warmth of my small kitchen, that the night had strengthened our friendship, not destroyed it.
‘But there is one thing, Archie. You know I cannot let you take those boys you have on the ship away to fight for the Empire. You know they must be released. And I must name you, and Ormiston.’
He was resigned. ‘I don’t know whether to be sorry or proud that you are still so incorrupt, so constant. Proud, I think, but I also would beg of you one day’s grace.’
I shook my head. ‘No. Not a day. You must be gone tonight, and in the morning I will go to the sheriff and have them name you, and Ormiston, and Charpentier, and what your purposes have been. The sheriff’s officers will board your ship and those boys will be taken ashore and sent back to their own parishes and towns, or put under Lord Reay’s charge to go south with his men if they still wish to fight. This will be their last night aboard that ship, and you – I care not for Ormiston – but you must leave this town tonight, and you know you can never come back.’
It was as if I had not spoken. ‘One day’s grace, Alexander, that’s all I ask.’
‘What? So you and the lieutenant can spirit that ship away, with its unsuspecting cargo?’
‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘So that I might go and see my father. Come with me, Alexander. To Delgatie. Let us go the old road together one more time.’
The town was still a mire of darkness and fog when I set out early the next morning for the college. Already, Lord Reay’s men were abroad, continuing their futile search for the son of their chief. Nodding to them as I passed, I did not go directly to the Broadgate, but rather took the path down St Katharine’s Hill until I came to Shore Brae from where I could reassure myself that the recruiting ship still sat steadily at anchor off Torry. It did, and I offered a silent prayer of thanks to God. Others around the harbour had less to be thankful for, anxious as they were for the arrival of some cargoes or the departure of others. It was a fog of the sort that could lie over the sea for days, or be burned off in two hours. I must have been the only man in Aberdeen who wished to see it last.
Sarah had still been awake when I went to bed late the night before. It might have been tiredness, nothing more, but there was a look on her face that was almost haunted. I did not think she could have heard the conversation that passed between Archie and me, and yet I had found myself
unable to talk of small things, things of no consequence that might put her mind at rest. She asked me, almost blankly, if we had made up our differences, and I told her that we had. I told her too, of Archie’s wish that I should go with him to Delgatie.
‘Do as you will,’ she had replied. ‘My blessing will alter nothing.’
She was cold through, and though I held her through the night, I do not think she ever got warm.
‘I love you, Sarah,’ I had said as I left.
‘Maybe that will be enough.’ She turned and smiled at me at last. ‘Be safe, Alexander.’
I was not to meet Archie until the afternoon, and had my classes to see to in the morning. I drove my scholars hard, setting them exercises of translation from Latin to Greek and thence into Hebrew. I allowed them to discuss any difficulties with one another, and soon enough there was a steady murmur that covered the silence of the room. For there
was
a silence, emanating from the bench where Seoras MacKay and Hugh Gunn had always sat together. This silence seemed to accuse me, for I had hardly thought of them these last few days, so quickly had they faded from my concern in the face of the other things that had happened in the town.
When the bell went for the midday meal, I dismissed my scholars quickly and left the college the back way, through the gardens. The image of Christiane Rolland as we had found her had haunted me for two days and nights, and I
did not wish to remember the girl that way. Before I went to meet Archie, I was resolved to look upon her one more time, at rest, where she lay in St Ninian’s Chapel on the Castlehill. As I went out at the back gate, I was met by the figure of Ossian coming along the path towards me. I had to look twice to be certain it was him. Instead of his usual tunic and plaid, he was dressed in a long, belted, academic gown and wore a cap over his usually free-flowing locks. His face registered my surprise, and he broke in to a smile.
‘Is it my attire that confuses you, Mr Seaton?’
‘No, no,’ I began and then, ‘well, yes. Until now, you’ve been every inch the soldier. I hadn’t expected to find you today in the garb of the learned physician.’
He looked down at his garments. ‘A soldier on the march is a soldier on the march, and must dress accordingly. But here in your college, I have the leisure to attend my patient in a proper room, with a bed in it and clean water, linen, and abundant medicines to hand. It seemed more fitting and respectful that I should dress here as Dr Dun, Dr Gordon and Dr Johnston do. I am on my way now to eat with my good colleagues while I have the opportunity.’
‘Hugh can manage without you, then?’ I asked.
‘He manages better every day. But I haven’t left him entirely alone. Your young friend Peter Williamson has been assiduous in his attentions.’ He laughed. ‘Neither knows a word the other says, but they seem to manage together well enough. He tells me he has a desire to study medicine, and I think he may have some aptitude for it.
I’m of a mind to put in a word to Lord Reay that he might assist him, for I have the impression he has not two pennies to rub together.’
‘I’d be surprised if he had one, never mind two,’ I said.
Ossian looked down at my own clothes, my academic gown replaced by a riding coat, my cap by a hat.
‘You are making a journey?’
‘I have some business to attend to out in the country,’ I replied. I could not tell him the same lie I had told Dr Dun to cover my absence – that I had heard word someone of Seoras’s description had been sighted in the town of Turriff. ‘But first I thought to take a moment’s prayer in St Ninian’s Chapel to seek God’s guidance in all these troubles.’
Ossian nodded. ‘Then you will find Hugh there, where I have just left him. He keeps a vigil over her. This has been a heavy blow to him, after all that has already passed.’
I bade farewell to the physician, and as he went his way through the winter vegetable garden back into the college, I went out past the backlands to the chapel in the precincts of the long-gone castle that had once guarded our town.
I was glad to see two of Lord Reay’s men at the chapel door. Despite Ossian’s confidence in my friend, I did not much like the idea of Hugh Gunn out and about in this burgh with only Peter Williamson to protect him.
The chapel – no longer used as a place of worship – was familiar to me from its occasional use as a court, and as a common meeting place of our presbytery. It was also, increasingly, the favoured place of lying in rest of the
wealthy and influential of this town. In the normal run of things, a girl like Christiane Rolland would never have been placed here, but Baillie Lumsden had done it as a mark of respect to Louis, and in some way to comfort him.
Inside, the place was almost bare of any adornment. There was a bleakness to the sturdy walls and flagstone floor that gave it a special solemnity as the resting place of the dead. The only furnishing was at the far end of the chapel, where the chairs of the consistory court were ranged along the side walls, and the massive carved oak altar, endowed by a burgh provost over a hundred years before, had survived the destructive rage of the iconoclasts.