‘Yes, Deacon,’ said Dr Barron, in a manner which suggested that he had no great faith that what the Deacon was about to say would be of any relevance to our proceedings at all.
Gammie got to his feet like an excited child kept waiting too long for his turn to speak.
‘While we are on the matter of the soldiers, it has come to my ear that Matthew Lumsden has been sighted in the burgh.’ He pursed his lips and nodded curtly in the direction of where William and I were sitting. Matthew was an old friend from our student days and the nephew of his namesake, Baillie Lumsden, whose house I had been in that day. Unlike his uncle, Matthew had never settled to a respectable trade or business, and was known to be a willing sword in any cause of his master, the Marquis of Huntly, the most powerful nobleman in the North of Scotland and one whose family had ever about them the whiff of Rome. Gammie clearly felt that the mention of Matthew’s name should be enough to put the session on the alert.
This point had escaped the Moderator. ‘And what would you propose we do with this information, Deacon?’ he asked.
Gammie was taken aback. ‘Be vigilant! The man is a Papist, out and out, and may draw others in his snare.’ Again he looked pointedly at William and me.
William smiled. ‘I can assure you, Deacon, that I am ever alert, in my lawyer’s mode, to such snares, and in twenty years of friendship with Matthew have side-stepped them
with ease. And as for Alexander, given his calling, I think you may rest easy.’
‘Besides,’ I said, ‘I was at Baillie Lumsden’s house today – there was no sign of Matthew there, nor indeed the Marquis of Huntly either.’
There was a great deal of suppressed laughter at this, but Gammie was none abashed. ‘You may mock, Mr Seaton, but these are dangerous times, and the poison of the war on the continent may seep into our own body soon enough if we do not look to our own imperfections.’ I regretted mocking the man now, for he was right – much though I loved him, Matthew was a blemish, a wound on the body of our kirk and commonwealth which, if not kept in check, might thoroughly infect the whole body.
‘Quite so,’ said the Moderator, ‘and we should study to avoid such a calamity.’ There was much shuffling of feet and murmured agreement from the embarrassed elders.
Matters of discipline and rumour thus dealt with, and all who were not members of the session being gone, the clerk became grave and warned us that what we were about to discuss was not to be noised abroad in the burgh, for fear of encouragement of superstition and unrest. A report had come from the kirk session of St Fittick’s Church in the parish of Nigg, across the mouth of the Dee, of a demonic Sabbath thought to have been held at the kirk only two nights since. Lights had been seen, for which there could be no lawful cause, and a great howling heard. Dancing amongst the gravestones and flight through the
trees above the kirkyard had been witnessed by the minister himself, who was now in a state of terror and constant calling for succour upon the Lord. The session of St Fittick’s begged our prayers for the restoration of their minister’s senses, and urged vigilance upon us lest the coven take mind so to pollute the kirk of St Nicholas. Fervent prayers were duly said on behalf of Mr John Leslie, minister there, and resolve was taken to keep a nightly watch on our own kirkyard.
‘Have you seen anything of Matthew in the town?’ I asked William, after we had bid goodnight to Dr Barron and the others at the kirkyard gates.
He shook his head dismissively. ‘No. Old Gammie sees Papists under every bush, and besides, when do you think Matthew ever learned discretion? If he was come home from whatever the Marquis has him at abroad, you and I would both be nursing sorry heads and empty purses. I was so drunk the last time he was here it was only by the quick thinking of one of my clerk’s boys that I escaped the notice of our good deacon myself.’
‘What, after you had refused to come home with me?’
‘Aye. Young Willie Dodds noticed Gammie creep in to Madge Ronald’s inn on his rounds, and threw a sack over the top of me before I could be spied. He and Matthew then sat on me until Gammie was safely gone.’
‘No chance of such times now,’ I murmured, after our laughter had drawn the attention of passers-by. ‘Between my tours of the inns in search of students who might be
tempted to sign up with Ormiston, and taking my turn at the kirkyard watch, I will be lucky if I can get home to my own house one night in three.’
‘Ach, it will not be for long,’ said William. ‘Ormiston will be gone in little over a week, I’ll wager, once he has toured the lairds in the country round and conscripted a few of their sons. Besides, he cannot tarry here much longer if he is to reach safe to the Elbe and have his recruits securely quartered with their regiment before winter sets in.’
‘That will be a relief to the whole town.’
Although we had gone our separate ways from the minister and other elders, he leaned towards me and lowered his voice further. ‘And as for the minister of St Fittick’s, you’re as like to find
him
in an alehouse as you are one of your students, and that is the cause of his demonic visions.’
‘John Leslie? No.’
‘But aye, John Leslie. Surely you know the man is seldom sober?’
‘I did not know,’ I said.
‘Well, my friend,’ he said, raising an eyebrow at me, more than half serious, ‘if we are to make a minister of you, you will have to learn to listen to gossip, for some of it will be true. For instance, Elizabeth told me six weeks ago that Gilbert Wilson only agreed to marry Jeannie Wallace because he’d lost a drunken wager and was desperate to extricate himself from his promise from the moment he woke up sober. The arrival of Ormiston’s troop ship has been as a blessing from God to him.’
‘I know it; I saw him sign up myself.’ My mind went back to the image of the young cooper eagerly putting his name to the paper the lieutenant’s men had set in front of him. And then a thought struck me. ‘William, the night in Downie’s Inn, when Gilbert Wilson signed for the regiment, Hugh Gunn was planning to also. I had the strong sense that it was to take himself out of the shadow of Seoras MacKay. Did you ever hear of bad blood between them?’
‘I never heard their names until yesterday, but I have heard tell of more than bad blood between them today.’
I stopped, conscious of a vague stirring of hope. I hadn’t been back to the college since the morning. ‘Has Seoras returned?’
‘Not by the time I met Baillie Lawson when I was leaving my chambers tonight. It seems Hugh Gunn is accused of having had a hand in his foster brother’s disappearance. Hugh claims to remember nothing of what happened after he and Seoras left the inn, until he was found in the cooper’s yard yesterday morning. But that he was in a fight is clear, and the state he was found in has led to rumours that he drowned his foster brother. The baillies have agreed that the boy might remain under the custody of Dr Dun in the college, although how he is to shield him from the wrath of Strathnaver, I do not know.’
Nothing cheered by what William had told me, I bade him goodnight him on Correction Wynd, where he had business to attend to. Lady Rothiemay’s words, asserting that Seoras was dead, returned to me. But what had I told
her to convince her of it? That I had stopped Hugh Gunn from signing up with the lieutenant? Surely she could not believe the boy would murder his foster brother over that? And yet I could not think, on a night like this, that Seoras would be hiding away of his own accord, although of course out in the town, there were places where a man might secrete himself, briefly, if he so wished it.
A half-hour’s walk to clear my head before I went home would do me no harm, and I found myself going deeper in to the town, in the hope that I might come upon some hint of him. My feet took me along lanes and wynds, where gates and doorways set into high walls might lead to secret places, narrow pends giving off on to dark courtyards, forgotten gardens, places where the hopeless poor slept amongst the derelict dwellings of men long dead, but I doubted that Seoras MacKay would have been able to evade discovery in any of them for two days and nights. Even in the darkness, a man could not hide from his thoughts, and those that dogged me could not be shaken off, evaded, by a sudden turn into an unexpected close. Images came, unbidden, unwanted, to my mind’s eye. Lady Rothiemay’s words echoed again in my head; the look on Hugh Gunn’s face as he had pushed past me in Downie’s Inn, the bitterness in his voice as he’d addressed his companion would only leave my mind to be replaced by the memory of the state he had been in the previous morning, and the weeds which had hung from his sodden clothes. A terrible thought came to me and I tried to push it away, but it kept coming
back like the body of a drowned man, brought inevitably to the surface.
At some point in my wanderings, a strange notion that I was not alone attached itself to me, but no matter how often I turned, I saw no one. Nevertheless, I was glad to finally emerge back on to the Schoolhill, where the moon in the clear sky reflected blue light off the frost that covered the ground. I could see my way before me now as clearly as if I had a lamp in my hand. Again though, after a moment, I almost believed I heard footsteps shadow mine, stop less than a heartbeat after mine had stopped, but I realised my foolishness when I saw a well-known figure hurry past a doorway only a few yards ahead of me. Louis Rolland.
‘Louis,’ I called softly, for fear of waking those already in their beds. He did not hear me. ‘Louis,’ I called again, and this time the French master visibly jumped before he turned, startled, to face me.
Relief flooded his face. ‘Mr Seaton!’
‘I’m sorry, Louis, I didn’t mean to frighten you.’
‘I, no, it is all right …’ It took him a minute for his breathing to return to normal.
‘You are late abroad.’
‘Yes,’ he said, still breathing heavily. ‘I was in the old town, where I have some pupils. I had hoped to be back home before now.’
As I took a step towards him, I could see he was trembling, and not with the cold.
‘Louis, what’s the matter?’
‘It’s nothing, just foolishness.’ He looked around him, then lowered his voice. ‘I have been listening too much to Christiane. She’s convinced someone has been watching the house. For the last two days she has been on at me about it, and I didn’t take her seriously. When you appeared so silently from that close, I thought for a moment …’ Then he laughed. ‘Dear Lord, I have let her nonsense turn my head. The council will have my licence from me if they suspect me of such foolishness.’
‘And who would teach their merchants and young gentlemen the intricacies of the French tongue then? I suspect you and your licence are safe enough. But let me walk as far as your house with you – I had wanted to hear more of what you know of Hugh and Seoras anyway.’
Louis Rolland kept his school in a small house at the far end of the Schoolhill. His grandparents had fled Paris with their daughter, Louis’ mother, in the wake of the massacres of St Bartholemew’s Day, and he and his younger sister had been brought up in the tongue and manners of its people as much as they had the Scots. His lessons were in growing demand among the merchants trading in French goods, and students who aimed at higher studies in France or the Swiss cantons. I had tried to persuade him before that he should address me now as ‘Alexander’, and see me as a friend rather than the Mr Seaton who had taught him for the only year he had been able to attend the college. I tried again now, and he acceded, if a little uncomfortably.
‘I’m not sure there is anything I can tell you of the pair
that will be of any use. As I say, they have been coming to me for lessons since the summer. Seoras’s father had a mind, it seems, that it would do his son no harm to serve a term in the
Garde Eccosaise
, and Hugh, of course, would go with him.’
It seemed likely enough. Since our country was presently at peace with France, the Marquis of Huntly was free to assume his hereditary position of captain of the personal bodyguard of the king of France, and many young men of good birth seeking favour and preferment followed him. ‘And so they came to you, to learn the French tongue?’
He nodded.
‘And do they progress?’
He stuck out a bottom lip in a manner I had observed in other Frenchmen. ‘Well, Seoras in particular seems to have a natural gift. Hugh has to work harder, but to good purpose. By the time of their graduation next summer, I think they will both be ready to make their way in Paris unhampered by difficulties in language at least.’
I sensed we were coming to the grain of the matter. ‘But there are other difficulties?’
Louis seemed unsure as to how he should continue. ‘I know what’s being said about Hugh around the town and I have no wish to give credence to such talk …’
‘You may speak to me in confidence.’
He nodded. ‘Very well. I do not dislike Seoras. In fact, there are times when he is very good company, but he is …’
‘What?’
‘Difficult. Volatile. He’s not a person with whom I would ever truly feel at ease. Hugh can manage him – seems to understand his moods before they become dangerous – but of late he’s had less and less patience with him. It has made Seoras goad him all the more. These last few weeks there’s been a hardness between them that I did not see before.’
‘You have no idea what’s at the root of it?’
He shook his head. ‘None. Seoras has always been hard work for Hugh, but there had been an affection there. Of late, I do not see that affection. I think Hugh’s tolerance with his foster brother is almost at an end, and I don’t see how they will travel happily together to France if the matter is not resolved. The atmosphere between them has become so unpleasant of late that I have stopped Christiane from joining in our classes – she used to come in to help me accustom them to conversation in French. I don’t think she’s sorry to have been relieved of that duty.’
‘She has much on hand in any case, it seems, with the schoolmistress trials and her help to George.’
Louis smiled. ‘That has been a blessing. Although I fear it too might lead to problems. She has conceived a great liking for Guillaume.’