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.
‘Mary, you know me. Why do you run?’ Still she struggled, but I held her firm. ‘Mary, it is Alexander Seaton. You know me.’
At length, when she realised she could not release herself from my grip, she stopped struggling. She looked directly at me through defiant, and yet fearful eyes. ‘I know you, Mr Seaton, and I know you to have goodness in you, but you have not fallen far enough in this world for me to trust you. Let me go, for you will have nothing of me.’
‘A few words, Mary, that is all I ask, a few words.’
She looked suspiciously at William. ‘Who is he?’
‘A friend, no more.’
‘He has not been sent after me with you?’
I slowly loosened my grip on her arm. ‘What do you mean? Mary, I have not been sent after you. I never knew you were here until this night, not half an hour ago as you left Maisie Johnston’s house. You think I was sent here after you, to bring you back to Banff?’
She was rubbing her arm where I had gripped her, and let out a hollow laugh. ‘Back to Banff? I will never see Banff again all the days of this life, unless it is to hang from the gibbet or be drowned at the shore. You nor anyone else to come will ever be sent to bring me back, but I fear one might be sent to see to it that I do not.’
Now I understood her terror; it was some of that same creeping terror that had been coming over me these last hours, but in Mary Dawson it had taken such a hold that no one could reason with her, such was her certainty of some awful retribution. For what, I began to guess, but from whom I did not know. ‘Tell me what you know, Mary.’
She shook her head fiercely, like a madwoman lost in herself.
‘You have nothing to fear from me. I swear before God, I am not one of them.’ I had no earthly notion who this ‘them’ might be, but my oath seemed to calm her a little, although her lips remained tightly shut. I had to try another tack. ‘There is something your sister told me …’
Her eyes flashed up at me. ‘Janet? Where is she? Is she here in Aberdeen?’
I put my hand out to calm her, to let her down as gently as I might. ‘No. She is not here. I do not know where she is now. I last saw her three days ago. The hangman and the town serjeant were beating her from the bounds. They drove her out to the west, on the Cullen road.’
Mary’s eyes were still eager. ‘Then they do not have her? She is safe?’
‘As far as I can tell you, she is safe. I do not know where she is gone, but I know,’ I hesitated, but there was no good in keeping it from her, ‘I know she was bound never to return to Banff, on pain of death.’
These tidings did not seem to trouble Mary as I had expected them to. She was nodding slowly, smiling to herself. ‘Then she is safe. She will go to our cousin in Strathspey. She will be safe.’
‘Strathspey is a long journey, over hard terrain.’
Mary was not concerned. ‘She knows the country well. The last frosts are almost gone. She will make her way. She will be safe. May God keep her.’ I realised then that Mary Dawson had no expectation of ever seeing her sister again. She was silent in her thoughts and I let her be for a while, but I knew time was passing and that neither tide nor captain would wait, so neither could I.
‘What is it that drove you from Banff in such a way?’
She looked at me curiously. ‘You truly do not know?’
‘How could I know? I am not privy to the magistrates’ council.’
She almost snorted with contempt. ‘The magistrates’ council!’ And then, more softly, she said, ‘It was not the magistrates’ council, but the beggar chief that warned us to leave Banff. His warning is not to be taken lightly.’
‘The beggar chief? Lang Geordie? But why?’
She answered, and I knew I had guessed the thing right. ‘The apothecary’s apprentice – I never knew his name. We found him, Janet and I, at the bottom of Water Path. He was sick, near to death. It was us who set him at your desk.’ She looked up. ‘And they say you never saw him until he was gone?’
I sat down beside her and took off my hat. William watched at a distance. ‘I was not called until he had been found, long dead.’
She smiled a sad smile. ‘It was a chance we took. It was a slim hope, but a hope all the same. We knew he was dying – I have seen dying men before. We had seen you pass only a few moments before, and we doubted you would be yet sleeping. We hoped you might hear him and find him, find him in time to help him.’
‘I heard nothing.’ For the tenth, twentieth time I cast my mind back to that night and tried to listen again, tried to hear what I had not heard then. There was nothing, nothing but the noise of the storm, drowning out whatever else there might have been.
‘Neither you, nor Mistress Youngson?’
‘Not even she.’
She pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders. ‘Ah, well. It was not to be. It was his lot to die.’ Then she looked up sharply. ‘He was not drunk, though, Mr Seaton, whatever they might say. It was not a natural death.’
I knew this already, and was anxious to get on. ‘He spoke to you though, did he not?’
She showed surprise that I knew this. ‘Janet?’ I nodded. ‘Aye, he did. He babbled two or three times about “James and the flowers”. We could not make head nor tail of it, but he was very anxious about it.’
‘And he said nothing else?’
‘Nothing. His senses were beyond him by the time we got him to the schoolhouse.’
Something in this was troubling me. ‘But how did you get beyond the pend and into the house, for I know I locked both door and gate.’
She looked a little proud at the memory. ‘We grew up at the smiddy at Fordyce, Mr Seaton. There is not a lock or bolt we do not know how to turn. And as for getting over the gate to open it, well,’ and here there was a trace, just a trace, of the old sly smile, ‘my sister and I are famed for our agility.’
These little mysteries were of no great consequence at this moment, though. ‘But what is this to Lang Geordie that he should tell you to run? Why, after all this time, was your sister driven from the town, and why do you flee?’
‘Because we were seen. And it was made known to us that we had been seen. Geordie beds down at the same house as my sister and I. The message came through him to us that we were to be gone from the town, before daybreak, or face our own fates.’
‘What, for helping a dying man?’
‘For seeing who it was that killed him. Someone was watching. They watched us and I would stake much that they had watched you before us. Someone was watching, to make sure that he would die; I would stake all that I have on it.’ All that Mary Dawson had amounted to very little, but I did not doubt the sincerity of her vow. And I, too, had been seen. But I had not yet had my warning.
At that moment a shout went up from the captain that all who were going aboard should be aboard now or lose their passage. Mary gathered up her bundle and scrambled to her feet. I grabbed at her arm. ‘Mary, wait, who was it? Tell me who it was.’
She pulled away from me. ‘You’ll not have it from my lips. It will not be laid at my door that anyone had it from my lips.’ She was running now towards the ship.
‘Mary, wait, please. How will you live?’
‘By my trade and by my wits. But I shall live, have no fear of that. I will never see Scotland again. Farewell, Mr Seaton. Be careful who you trust.’ I tried to go after her but the sail was already up and the anchor weighed – less than a moment from her embarkation the vessel was pulling away from the quayside. I made to leap the distance but a strong arm was pulling me back. It was William.
‘Leave her be, Alexander. I have seen fear in many witnesses; you will have nothing more from her.’
We stood and watched as the ship carrying Mary Dawson from her homeland pulled away into the distance, the moonlight illuminating the white of its sails in the night. I uttered a prayer for her under my breath. ‘Amen,’ said my friend William Cargill. We turned our backs to the departing vessel and began our weary trudge homewards to William’s house.