The Redemption of Alexander Seaton
- Автор: Маклин Шона Дж.
- Серия: Alexander Seaton #1
- Год: 2009
- Язык: английский
- Год: Quercus
- ISBN: 1847247911
- Жанр: Исторические детективы
Электронная книга - «The Redemption of Alexander Seaton». Краткое содержание книги:
Is the young man merely drunk or does his tottering walk suggest something more sinister?
When he collapses, vomiting, over the two whores who find him on that dark wet night, they guess rightly that he’s been murdered by poisoning.
So begins this gripping tale set in the town of Banff, Scotland in the 1620s. The body of the victim, the provost’s nephew and apothecary’s apprentice, is found in Alexander Seaton’s school house. Seaton is a school master by default, and a persona non-grata in the town – a disgraced would-be minister whose love affair with a local aristocrat’s daughter left him disgraced and deprived of his vocation. He has few friends, so when one of them is accused of the murder, he sets out to solve the crime, embarking on a journey that will uncover witchcraft, cruelty, prejudice and the darkness in men’s souls.
It is also a personal quest that leads Alexander to the rediscovery of his faith in God as well as his belief in himself.
Among her many strengths, Shona MacLean is brilliant at evoking period and place. You feel you are in those cold, dark, northern rooms, eavesdropping on her characters. You are totally involved in the rich, convincing world she has re-created.
I laughed in return. ‘Mistress, it is the unaccustomed luxury of your linen kist that kept me at my slumbers. We simple fisher folk know but coarse blankets and howling gales in our desolate dwellings. I dreamt I had fallen amongst the luxuries of Babylon, and was loath to extricate myself from their embrace.’
Elizabeth wagged an admonishing finger at me. ‘Mistress Youngson shall know of this loose talk, and then we will see how coarse are the blankets she will find you.’ It had been in the kitchen of the old schoolhouse in Banff that William had first met the girl who would become his wife.
She bade me sit down at the table and ladled steaming porridge into a bowl before me. ‘And then you will have eggs. My hens give the finest eggs in all the town. I sing to them.’
I made to protest that the porridge would do me fine enough, and she had better need of the eggs herself. She would not hear of it. ‘You need restoring. You have got so thin and gaunt, Alexander. Please, let me care for you a little. To see you better will do me more good than all the eggs in Scotland.’
Humbled, I did not know how to respond. The kindness in her was almost more than I could face. She saw my discomfort and made light. ‘Besides, if I consume many more eggs, my child will be born with feathers.’ She chattered on about what a fat wife she would be to William, who made her eat while she was not lying down and lie down while she did not eat. But I knew how worried he was. She had always been a pale girl, and slight, and while her pregnancy had brought a joy to her eyes, her cheeks were faded and those eyes tired. The weariness of her body, with five months of her burden yet to carry, was already evident. I thought of my friend, who had all of the promises life could afford a man in his hand, and prayed God that, if He still listened to me, He would not take them from him.
With a full stomach and a warmth of heart I had not felt in a long time, I set out on my morning’s business. My first call would be at the bookseller’s. David Melville’s shop on the Castlegate had been to me a place of greater delight than all the taverns of Aberdeen, and light though my purse now was, I set off along the street with the anticipation of a child on a holiday morning. The day was sunny and already warm. I decided to take the shorter route to the Castlegate, and avoid the noxious smells of the crafts already rising from the direction of the Netherkirkgate and Putachieside, where the tanners and dyers had been at their work several hours now. I glanced to my left at St Nicholas kirk. It rose, magnificent, dominating the skyline of the town. I had aspired, in the quiet, honest moments when ambition overtook calling, to a pulpit in that kirk. The building had been sectioned into two to allow a more fitting form of worship, now we had severed ourselves from the blandishments of Rome. But I would never preach in either kirk, East or West, now. I passed by a cobbler’s shop; through the open shutter I could see him working at the last, a fine piece of leather turning and moving in his hands. I coveted that leather – my feet were sore and my shoes almost beyond the power of the cobblers of Banff to mend again. I had meant to buy new boots, but the money to pay for them and much else was now in the greedy hand of Sarah Forbes’s uncle in King Edward. Perhaps, before I left town, I would try one of the cheaper cobblers who worked beside the tanners near Putachieside, at the Green.
At the Castlegate, I found the door of David Melville’s bookshop open. I could smell the piles of new books and the rows of well-bound older ones before I was fully in the shop. The bookseller had his back to me, a piece of paper in his hand as he checked a row of Latin grammars on the shelf. Affixed to the inside of the shop door were lists of books for the use of the town’s schools, which all clustered around the back of St Nicholas Kirk on the Schoolhill. I ran my eye down the list for the grammar school. Editions of Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, better and newer editions than Gilbert Grant knew of or I could afford. Melville finished counting off his catechisms and turned to greet me with a furrowed brow and then a broad smile. ‘Well, if it is not Mr Seaton. I have been expecting you these last few days. You said you would be here before the end of March.’
I shook his hand. ‘We have been much busied at the grammar school. The presbytery and council make their visitation at the end of April, and Mr Grant is determined that they will have no cause for fault-finding on this occasion.’
The bookseller gave a weary sigh. ‘The presbytery and council will always find fault. That is what they are for. But they will have little cause for complaint over your books. I have here the Cicero you wanted, and the Buchanan, and this Greek grammar.’
Melville tied up my books, then turned a page in his ledger to check the rest of my order. He went to the back wall of the shop, stacked from floor to ceiling with Bibles, and ran his finger along the shelf until he found what he was looking for. He carefully eased out a book bound in soft red leather, almost twice the size of those near it. ‘Here it is. Your good Master, Mr Gilbert Grant, asked me many months ago to find him a Bible printed large enough for his failing eyesight. And I think I have found it. I scoured the country,’ then he smiled, a little sheepish. ‘Well, at least I sent to Edinburgh, and here it is.’ I looked at the imposing volume he held out to me, the print large enough for my friend to read indeed, although I suspected every word of it was already imprinted on the old man’s heart. The bookseller was proud to have managed what he had been asked, but I was a little discomfited.
‘Mr Grant made no mention–’
Melville held up a conciliatory hand. ‘It was many months ago he asked me. He can send payment down from Banff with another courier, once he has the book in his hand. Now, for Dr Jaffray.’ I looked at the mounting pile of books on the counter and began to pity the horse that would carry me home. The bookseller went to another shelf and selected two medical textbooks which he brought over and untied for my examination. I paid Melville what he was owed for the doctor’s books and my own, and sadly declined to look at the most recent works of theology he had from Antwerp. Similarly, I shook my head to the offer of the latest tracts and pamphlets to have landed in Aberdeen from the Low Countries and the North of England. Arguments over the correct form of worship, of kneeling in kirk, of vestments and prayer books were of little interest to me now, although I did not judge it wise to confide that to the bookseller. He pointed to the ceiling above him, to where Raban, the burgh printer, plied his trade.
‘Raban is near worn out with the thing. Dr Forbes and Dr Baron and the other ministers do not let their pens lie idle on the matter. And I fear there will be much more of it to be heard yet. Anyhow, if I cannot tempt you to join in the pamphlet war, perhaps there is something more pleasant I can show you, if you do not have it already.’ From a shelf behind him he passed me a slim volume in quarto, printed here by Raban only three years ago. Poetical recreations of Mr Alexander Craig of Rosecraig. I thought of Charles Thom in the darkness and squalor of the tolbooth in Banff. What good might it do him to have the volume of Craig in his hand, summoning images of clear rivers, and freedom and love to his mind? The price of the volume was reasonable. My boots could be mended one more time. I arranged with the bookseller for the delivery of my purchases to William Cargill’s house.
It was only midday, and I was not to meet with Principal Dun at the university until tomorrow. I had one more errand to perform and then the day would be mine to fill as I wished until William returned from his business. I had a letter from the provost in my pocket. It was addressed to George Jamesone, artist, New Aberdeen. I did not need to ask for directions to Jamesone’s house. It was on the Schoolhill, not five minutes from Cargill’s place on the Upperkirkgate. I retraced my route of the morning and in a short time was presenting myself at the street door of the artist’s imposing house.