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.
He quizzed me. ‘Is that all you see?’
I looked again and shrugged. ‘Well, no. I see a window, some heavy, rich draperies, a table, some artefacts. There is a box on the table with a necklace hanging out of it. There are some portraits on the wall behind the countess, and there is a chess board with some pieces on the table.’ He continued to eye me expectantly. I lifted my hands in resignation. ‘I am sorry. That is it.’
He smiled and took a clean brush in his hand and used it as a pointer. ‘You look, but you do not properly see. You see the Countess of Rothes and her two daughters. Yes. You see a window – is it simply for light? I am not a painter of windows. Look again – the arms of the family are stained in the glass – there is nobility there. And should you doubt it, regard the portraits behind her – there is lineage, too. The jewel box on the table; has she been careless, and not put things in their place before the painter should arrive? I think not. There is wealth, opulence in the world displayed for all to see. And the chess board – again untidy. A game shortly played by the countess and her children – why no doll, nor rattle nor spinning top? Because these are no childish games this woman and her children play – theirs is a game of strategy; these are girls of good wit and learning. Yet there remains one feature you have not mentioned.’ I looked again. The painter studied me as I did his picture.
‘The cherries?’
He nodded. ‘Indeed, the cherries. Did you think they were just an affectation of colour, a painter’s indulgence?’
I had to confess that I had not thought much about them at all – they were simply there, as fruit often is in such portraits.
‘You see a portrait of the Countess of Rothes and her daughters, no sons – for there are none. The fortunes of the family may rest with these two little girls. So see displayed their lineage, their nobility, their wit, their learning and their wealth. But more than all that, one thing is required of them – fertility. And look, look again, Mr Seaton. See how fertile, see how ripe they will be.’ He turned away and walked back to the window, where he stood looking out at his wooded garden and its delicate blossoms.
I said nothing, being now a little discomfited by the picture. He turned round and indicated a set of shelves behind me and, as I cast my eye over them, several things that had puzzled me on first entering the room now made a little more sense. He came across to me and picked up the human skull that grinned horribly from the bottom shelf. ‘I am not, as you know, a medical man. I have no interest in this skull other than its use to me in the depiction of death, the certainty of death. These shells you see here were, indeed, gathered on a happy walk along the shore on a summer’s day with my wife, and are to me a memento of things pleasant, but in a painting they would become the symbols of wealth. If you look at these books here, you will see by their titles that they are of no great consequence. Those books of true interest to me are downstairs, in my library. These books here are again mere props, but they have been used many, many times to symbolise the learning of some of my illustrious sitters.’
I began to understand. ‘And this lute?’
He picked up the instrument that had been left leaning against a chair. ‘The lute – as many musical instruments – is a symbol of human love, even lust.’
‘So that is why you have not had the broken string mended, because it is never played?’
‘No, I wish that that were the case. Not all affairs between men and women are as happy as the union by which I am blessed. The broken string is for disharmony.’ He was silent a moment and then smiled and said briskly, ‘So now you are an expert, Mr Seaton. When you look, you will see.’
‘I wonder. I doubt if I will ever see what is truly there.’
‘I think you speak of more than paintings.’
‘Perhaps.’
He replaced the lute by the wall. ‘For all my draughtsman’s tricks I am no expert on the nature of men. I think there is perhaps more of a story to be told in their faces, if I could but unlock it. That is why I am of a mind to take this commission from your provost, to see what story the lines in his face will tell me of his life since I painted him last.’
I laughed a little. I did not want to be drawn too far into this line of conversation. ‘I think you might have better luck were you to study the fine cut of his clothing, the size of his house, the number of his adherents.’
The painter was not convinced. ‘Such things might tell me much about his fortunes these last few years, but it is his face that will tell me of the man.’ He regarded me for a moment, his head tilted slightly to the side. ‘I think there are things your face can tell me.’
Vanity overtook me and I was aware of a strong need in myself to know what others saw when they looked upon me.
‘What things?’
He motioned me to come closer to him and I sat before him at the window seat. ‘I know from my wife that you are a schoolteacher, an undermaster in a burgh grammar school. There is intensity, earnestness in your eyes, yet you say little. I think – though I may be wrong – that you are a man of great learning. If so, you seem too old for your current station in life. What age are you? Thirty-four, thirty-five?’
‘I am in my twenty-seventh year.’
He nodded, biting his upper lip. ‘Then you are younger than you look. And you are not of Banffshire stock – too tall and spare of build, although the gauntness, I think, comes from self-neglect and not nature; and your eyes … they have a quality in their grey – almost green, in this light – that is not found hereabouts. And your hair is too dark – like an islander, or some of the Irish. Am I close to the truth or have I covered myself in folly?’
‘I am of Banffshire stock, for my father and his father and back for many generations hale from that part of the country, but my mother was an Irishwoman, of native Irish lineage. You are right also in that I am too old to be an undermaster in a school – I had hoped to do other things with my learning, but that was not to be my fate, and–’
He shrugged. ‘And you do not wish to speak of it to a man who but twenty minutes ago was a stranger.’ The painter saw more than he would own. I waited another five minutes while he penned a reply to the provost, then took my leave of him. As I was about to descend the stair he said, ‘Mr Seaton. I hope to see you again in Banff. If you would permit it, I would gladly paint your likeness – as a study. Yours is not a blank canvas.’
I had planned to spend the afternoon studying more closely the list I had got from David Melville, the bookseller, of books he was commanded by the council to supply to the grammar school. I did not want the scholars of Banff to be disadvantaged in their trial for a bursary. My mistake, once back at William’s house, was to lay myself down on my bed to work, rather than sitting at the table. I was soon asleep. I was awoken in the late afternoon by a familiar voice in my ear.
‘Oh, Alexander, Alexander, make haste; you are late for the lecture.’ I jumped out of bed, scattering books and papers around me as I did so, and it took me near a full minute to understand it was now 1626, and not 1618, and that I was no longer a student in the King’s College, in peril of the ire of my professors. As I came, with little dignity, to my feet, I was greeted by the broad smile of William Cargill. ‘You have grown lazy in your old age, Alexander. You were never one for backsliding. Do you teach your scholars in the afternoon at all – or do you have them plump your pillows instead?’
I stooped to pick up the fallen papers. ‘In the mornings I teach them their grammar and to fear God; in the afternoons I teach them to mistrust lawyers with soft linen.’
He laughed and sat down on the crumpled bed. Then he looked at me in seriousness. ‘You are a man exhausted, Alexander. Must you really return to Banff so soon? Can you not stay here with us a while longer? We can make you well – give you food, rest and friendship.’