Jaffray had told me before that this woman forgot nothing about the lives of those in whom she took an interest. ‘He makes progress, but at the moment he dreams of nothing but being a soldier.’
‘That is as it should be. And your daughter, what age is she now?”
I told her that Deirdre was almost seven.
‘Then she might make a pupil for you, my dear.’
In my anxiety to avoid the undiminished odium that
radiated from the eyes of Isabella Irvine, I had not noticed Christiane Rolland, the young sister of the French master, Louis, seated rigidly on a stool a little to the left of her, quietly sipping at her wine. She seemed a small thing, a delicate article of fine china, in this room of power and substance.
‘Christiane, I am sorry, I had not noticed you there.’
She nodded back, attempting a smile. ‘Mister Seaton.’
Lady Rothiemay was pleased. ‘You know my young friend then.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Her brother is a former scholar of mine, and a friend.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. That is something in her favour.’
I dared not glance in Isabella Irvine’s direction to gauge her reaction to this remark, but I was certain Lady Rothiemay had, and I began to suspect that her companion’s hostility to me had not gone unnoticed. Her Ladyship waited a moment, then continued, ‘Your business here today is not with Baillie Lumsden, but with me. You may have heard that I have it in mind to found a school for girls here in the burgh of Aberdeen. I had my own schooling here, and whatever my troubles in the world have been since then, they would have been a lot worse without it. I intend to provide for a schoolmistress who will teach the girls to write and sew, and do anything else whereof they might be capable.’
‘Which is often much,’ I said.
‘Indeed it is, and has to be. A woman without husband
or father to protect her must live on her wits, and without lawful employment is a person at once vulnerable and suspect everywhere she goes. If it is in my power to prevent even one young girl from falling prey to the evils that the world holds ready for her, then my money will be well spent. The town council will only accept my gift on the understanding that they have a voice in the appointment of my schoolmistress. I made it known that I wished you to be that person.’
‘Me?’ I was somewhat surprised. ‘I am … honoured, but why me?’
She looked at me a long moment. ‘Because you are a Banffshire lad, and will not be caught up in the interminable politics of this town. And also, I know something of your wife, and I am of the view you are not a bad judge of women.’
There was nothing I could say, and she seemed pleased with this state of affairs. ‘Christiane here is one of the candidates for the post, and I have had several others. I wish you to be present at their trials in two days’ time, to give me the view of the college on the candidates that I might make my decision.’
My heart sank at the very thought of it, but I knew I was unlikely to find a way out of the task.
‘Now,’ said the lady, addressing the other two, ‘I have some other business to discuss with Mr Seaton, and it is not for the ears of young women. Isabella, you might profitably spend an hour with Christiane here – see what George
Jamesone plans to do with that garden of his. You would do well to remind Jamesone that it was myself that recommended those fellows to him in the first place, and Lady Lindsay is now in very high dudgeon with me after his poaching them.’ As Isabella was following Christiane Rolland out of the room, Lady Rothiemay added, ‘And Isabella, I will detain Mr Seaton here no longer than a half-hour, then you may safely return without fear of encountering him again.’
Her young companion curtseyed and made her exit, partly confused and partly infuriated.
The light outside was fading and the room becoming cooler, despite the fire that already burned in the vast sandstone hearth of the hall. ‘Pull over those drapes, would you, Mr Seaton? Little enough light gets in at those windows anyway. I would be happier in the small parlour, but Lumsden thinks he must keep me here in state. We could light another candle, though – I can hardly see your face.’
I did as I was bid, then took a seat in the velvet armchair across from her.
‘You must give Isabella a little time. She has nursed her wrath against you many years, and I had not warned her to expect you here today. Perhaps I should have done.’
‘She has grounds for her dislike of me. She has been a constant friend to one I badly wronged.’
Lady Rothiemay shook her head impatiently. ‘It is nonsense, and I have told Isabella that. Katharine Hay would have had no life with you, disgraced and penniless as you
were. You knew that nine years ago, do not pretend otherwise.’
‘I … I was angry at what I had lost myself. I did not think of her, at first, I …’
It was so many years since I had spoken of this, and to so few people, that I could not believe I was talking of it so openly to the woman before me.
‘Well, whatever your reasoning, the outcome has been the right one, and Isabella understands less of the affairs of men and women than she thinks she does. I fear she may have made a bad choice of her own.’ She pondered a moment then put the thought aside. ‘No matter. That is a subject for other ears. What I want to talk to you about is Seoras MacKay.’
I sighed heavily. ‘There is little I can tell you, your Ladyship. You know the events of the last two days?’
She nodded briskly. ‘That he was sent from Downies’ Inn in the company of his foster brother, and has not been seen since.’
I could not see the direction of her interest. ‘I had not realised that Seoras was … known to your Ladyship.’
She sniffed. ‘Hmf. You are scarcely a man of the world Mr Seaton, if you do not know that I am related to half the country round. There is a degree of cousinage between the MacKays and my own family, and Seoras’s father and I are friends of old: the Forbeses have long been allies of the MacKays in the north. I hear you yourself saw Seoras in Downies’ Inn the night the recruiting officers were there.’
I acknowledged that I had done.
‘Then I fear there will be no happy outcome to this tale.’
I did not know how to tell this woman who had suffered so much unjust loss that not every misadventure must end in tragedy. I chose my words carefully. ‘The boy will be coming to in the back room of some drinking place, or lying low until he thinks the furore over his absence has passed. It has happened often enough like this before, and they always come back.’
‘Not this time. His companion has already been found, has he not? In what condition was the boy?’
So I told her of Hugh’s cuts and bruises, his sodden clothes and the weeds in his hair.
She stared away from me, into the fire. ‘Tell me exactly what happened, what was said in Downie’s Inn the night before last.’
And so I did, although I could not see what purpose it would serve. When I had finished, she was silent a few moments before saying,
‘Then Seoras MacKay is dead, Mr Seaton. He is dead.’
Her words startled me, and before I could respond, we were interrupted by the arrival of Matthew Lumsden’s wife, and all chance of asking Lady Rothiemay how she could pronounce with such certainty upon the thing was lost, but I reflected on it that night, and on several after.
Sarah had had little to say when I told her that evening of Lady Rothiemay’s good regard of her. In fact, she had looked almost displeased by it.
‘She meant well by it, you know.’
‘I have no doubt she did, but it would please me better to know that no one in Banffshire remembered my name.’
‘Sarah,’ I sighed, ‘it was a long time ago, and of those who remember it at all, none will blame you.’
I knew the minute I said it that I had done wrong. I wanted to bite back the words, but it was too late. When her response came, it was slow, and deliberate.
‘Will they not? That is very good of them.’
She had never forgotten, could never forget, the jeers and the stones hurled at her as she had been driven, pregnant by her brutish master, from the burgh of Banff nine years ago, and while we had made, over time, this life for ourselves here in Aberdeen, I had never once been able to persuade her to return to that town with me. It was a matter we rarely spoke of, and I was glad to leave it now.
‘Do you think I am a fit person to judge who will make a good schoolmistress?’
Her face softened, and a mischievous look came in to her eyes. ‘You are a terrible person to judge such a thing. I do not know what her Ladyship was thinking of. You think a stocking well-turned if your heel does not go through it at the first wearing, and letters well learned if the Catechism can be recited back to you.’ She glanced at Deirdre, who was busied in plaiting a strand of my hair with one of her own ribbons. ‘Look at you. You appear beyond comprehending that little girls might ever need the slightest discipline. If left to you, the schoolmistress’s post will be awarded to the one who can best look up at you with the eyes of a lost doe.’
I pulled her towards me. ‘And when did you ever look up at me in such a manner? A she-wolf more like, indignant that I should even speak to you.’
She laughed and teased herself away from me. ‘You had not yet learned to pay a proper compliment.’
I had glanced at her casually when I’d mentioned Isabella Irvine, but seen little reaction, voluntary or otherwise, in her eyes. I had told her, years ago, of everything that had passed between myself and Katharine Hay. She had known most of it anyway, through rumour and gossip, and we had rarely spoken of it since, but I had never mentioned to her Isabella’s friendship with Katharine or consequent dislike of me. To talk of it now would be to threaten something in her that I knew was still fragile, and perhaps always would be.
Neither had I told her of Lady Rothiemay’s pronouncements upon Seoras MacKay. On hearing of the young man’s disappearance, Sarah’s first response had been that the recruiters had taken him, and no reasoning on my part could shake this conviction from her. I had called on the master of the grammar school on my way home from Lumsden’s house. David Wedderburn had told me that the boys in the school still had nothing in their minds but the recruiting ship, to the extent that he had abandoned normal lessons and taken them instead through the Spaniard Cervantes’ account of the Battle of Lepanto. No sighting of the recruiting sergeant had been made anywhere near the school yard that day, and Wedderburn was vigilant on the matter, on account of the fears of the mothers of the burgh. I did not tell Sarah of my visit to the schoolhouse. It would do her little good to know that the matter that so exercised her fears did mine also.
It was a little before seven when William arrived to accompany me to the weekly diet of the kirk session. He had been called to the eldership of the kirk several years before I had, and had never known, as I had, the shame of being forced to sit in sackcloth on the stool of repentance before the whole congregation. Whether that made me a better judge of my fellow man, I could not tell.
It was a short walk down the Netherkirkgate to Correction Wynd and the Kirkyard of St Nicholas, and given the cold and the hour, few were out on the streets. I took the chance to castigate William for not having forewarned me
of Lady Rothiemay’s presence in town, and he laughed heartily. The dullness of his own day had only been enlivened by a fight between two cottars from Woolmanhill over accusations of a stolen horse. ‘I nearly took a dunt on the head myself, helping Baillie Lawson to separate them.’
‘And it would have been well deserved, I am sure.’
We arranged our faces and lowered our voices as we went in by the door of the East Kirk. William smiled as he saw me glance up at the pulpit that would soon be mine. ‘Have you your sermon written yet?’
‘Nine years since,’ I said, under my breath.
Steps took us down to the small chapel of St Mary’s below the kirk, where the session was to meet. The others were already gathered there, under the groined stone vaulting of the roof. A fire had been lit in a brazier, but could do little to dissipate the cold echoing from the very stones of the place. My breath was in front of my face when I spoke. There was a great deal of stamping of feet and rubbing of hands, and I heard the hope expressed more than once that we would not have over much business to attend to tonight.
Dr Barron, the Moderator, opened with a prayer that the Lord might grace our assembly and grant us wisdom in our judgments. Mr Andrew Melville, reader in the kirk, read from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter twenty-four, and the clerk followed by reading to us the order of business. An apprentice tailor and his master’s housemaid were brought
before us for the third time to answer to an accusation of fornication made against them; they had denied the charge three times and it had not yet been found proven. The tailor’s wife having accompanied them gave assurance that the girl, to her absolute knowledge, was not with child, and the pair were admonished to see in future that their carriage did not draw suspicion of loose living down upon themselves. Several more townsfolk came before us and were similarly dealt with. Last to be summoned was a cooper, Gilbert Wilson, made to appear at the instance of Archibald Wallace. The cooper had promised to marry Wallace’s daughter, but had delayed time and again in setting the banns before the kirk. When questioned, the young man, whom I recognised from the night in Downie’s Inn, produced a testimonial from Lieutenant Ormiston showing that he had signed for the Scots Brigade. The session accordingly loosed him of his obligations to Wallace’s daughter, much to that man’s displeasure, and prayed God’s blessing on the holy enterprise against the forces of the anti-Christ. The reluctant bridegroom made his escape with profuse thanks and evident relief.
The subject of the recruiting ships seemed to exercise one of my fellow members, Deacon Gammie, particularly, for he twitched and worked at his gums continuously through the examination of Gilbert Wilson, as if there were matters of mighty import to be discussed instead. The sound of Wilson’s feet on the flagstone stair had not yet faded when Gammie came half-way out of his seat to pull at the sleeve of the Moderator.