The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

There was bread baking in the oven and its aroma filled the room. The warmth of the kitchen enveloped me so that I too felt I might sleep. In childhood I had often sought out the kitchen and the window seat. From there I would watch my mother at her work and listen to her stories of her Ulster homeland. There were many legends, of kings and princes and giants, and of the fairy folk, tales that would have had my mother up before the session, just for the telling of them, had it been known. To me the saddest story was not of princesses, or sea-folk or fairies, but of a young woman, a wealthy burgess’s daughter of Carrickfergus. The girl had fallen in love with a Scottish soldier returning to his homeland by way of Ireland from exile in France with his master. The young woman’s father had been opposed to any match between them; his daughter had not been brought up to be the wife of a mere soldier, a hammerman to trade. She had been educated in the ways of a lady to be the wife of a lawyer or civil servant or wealthy merchant. He forbade his daughter to see any more of the soldier. Three weeks later, the laird of Delgatie set sail in the night with his men up Belfast Lough and away towards Scotland, far away from his lovely daughter. But when the maidservant went to wake the girl in the morning she found the girl was gone, gone sailing to Scotland with the laird of Delgatie and his armourer, Andrew Seaton, my father.

I never tired of hearing the story as I sat silent in the window seat, watching as my mother kneaded bread and plucked birds and gutted fish; I watched as she rubbed the ointments Jaffray had prescribed from the apothecary into the sore and calloused hands that had been meant for sewing and drawing up household accounts and playing the lute. Or I would sit there working at my Latin and Greek until the light faded or my father found me and called me instead to the smithy, where he and his apprentice toiled before the roaring furnace over axes and hunting spears and swords of every description.

‘The girl is exhausted.’ It was Mistress Youngson’s voice that broke into my daydream. ‘Did she ride with you all the way from Banff, or did you meet with her on the road?’

‘I saw her on the ferry. She took a good deal of persuading before she would consent to get up on the horse. She had been of a mind to walk.’ A thought crossed my mind as Mistress Youngson’s question repeated itself in my head. ‘The child is not mine,’ I said. ‘I never spoke to her until this day. I–’

The old woman smiled. ‘Calm yourself, boy. I know whose child it is. The girl should never have been sent to work in that man’s house. My own sister, your master’s wife, told me what manner of man he was, and I warned her uncle and aunt not to put her there.’

‘And they did it anyway?’

She nodded.

I wondered what sort of home the girl was returning to, what kind of place in this world she was bringing her child into. ‘Will they take her in?’

‘Aye, they will. But she’ll have a hard time of it.’ She went wearily over to the hearth and stirred the pot from which the smell of mutton stew drifted over to me. I remembered my commission from her sister, forgotten in all the business of Sarah, and handed her the packages.

Mistress Youngson’s eyes lit up. She had a child’s delight in receiving a gift. There was hardly a mystery about the first package – four fresh herring, bought before it was light at the shore of Banff. The second package revealed a pot of honey, a gift from the hives in the laird of Banff’s great garden. There was a letter, which the old woman set up high on the mantel, for when she could take her time and read it on her own. Last was a soft, bulky parcel, wrapped in a muslin cloth and tied with hemp. A note was stitched to the cloth. Across the table I could read the words as the minister’s wife unfolded a knitted woollen shawl, the colour of oatmeal, with a tiny silken bow stitched at the corner: for Sarah Forbes’s bairn. How had I ever reached such a pass, to have lost the affection and respect of a woman of so stern demeanour and yet so replete with quiet kindness?