The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

And he did. He told her of William Cargill and his wife Elizabeth, of their need for a servant and their coming need for a nurse. She listened to all and then looked enquiringly at me.

‘William Cargill is my friend,’ I said. ‘I have known him many years. He is a good and kind man. His wife was kitchen maid in the schoolhouse of Banff. She will be a good mistress.’ I turned to Duncan at this point and he nodded his assent. ‘And they will take the child in also. It will be a good home for you both. Will you go?’

‘I will,’ she said.

It did not take five minutes for Sarah Forbes to gather her belongings – the same bundle she had carried from Banff, only the precious shawl now added to it. Her aunt gave her hand a squeeze as she passed through that doorway for the last time, and Sarah bent a little to kiss the cheek of her dead mother’s sister. While Duncan steadied the pony, I helped Sarah Forbes up onto the cart. William’s servant looked at me suspiciously, but said nothing. Some mischief must have been in me, for just before I mounted my own horse, I whispered in his ear, ‘The bairn is not mine, you know.’

He continued to busy himself about the bridle. ‘Aye, well, it could have done worse, I dare say.’

Before she turned towards the road that would take her away from here for good, Sarah Forbes looked at me and her lips opened to mouth a silent ‘Thank you.’ The word echoed through the breeze and carried me the six miles home, to Banff.

I could feel the nearness of the sea long before I saw it, but there was something else in the air of the falling dusk too. There was fear. As I headed the brae at Doune Hill and started to descend down by the Gellymill, I saw a thick pall of smoke rising from the heart of Banff itself. I could hear nothing, nothing but the sound of God’s retiring creation around me, but the wind was changing, and soon it would bring the smell of that smoke into my very nostrils.

I was in luck that the ferry had not yet put up for the night and I would not have to spend it in the ferryman’s mean hut on the east bank of the Deveron. It was one of Paul Black’s sons who had the watch that night. I hailed him across the river and he came slowly to his feet and stood looking at me for a while before going to untie the boat. Even at this distance across the river mouth I fancied I sensed some reluctance in him to come across for me. When he finally came to the shore on the other side he did not look at me.

‘It is Martin, is it not?’

‘Aye, Mr Seaton,’ he replied in a low voice, still avoiding my eye.

‘What is the matter? What is happening in the town tonight?’

He made no reply.

‘Martin, come, you know me. Whatever they say, you need have no fear of me.’

Now he looked at me. ‘It is not you, Mr Seaton, it is … the town. Everything has gone wrong in the town. I think,’ he hesitated before continuing, ‘I think we have been damned.’

‘What has happened?’

His eyes glazed over and he seemed to look past me, at nothing. ‘Marion Arbuthnott is dead, by her own hand. Her body lies at Dr Jaffray’s.’

I spent some effort in persuading him to ferry me back to the other side. The coining I handed him once the beast and I had disembarked fell from his hand to the ground, but I could not tarry any longer over Martin Black. I mounted Gilbert Grant’s poor horse and sped him into a gallop, books and all, towards the town. Within minutes I was at Jaffray’s door. Tying the beast hastily in the stableyard I hammered on the back door, but to no avail. I ran round to the front, but was not answered there either. I pushed the door open – it was not on the bolt – and went, calling out for the doctor, to his surgical room. Ishbel came stumbling to meet me, her face streaked with tears. I pushed past her into the room. All was in disarray. Glass bottles smashed on the floor, a chair turned over and broken, instruments strewn across the work table and desk and onto the floor, and a bloodied winding sheet trailing from the table on which I knew he laid the dead. The stable boy was trying to make some order in the chaos. In the midst of it all sat the doctor, his clothing torn, an angry gash on his cheek. He stared blankly ahead of him.

My voice was hoarse. ‘Jaffray. What in the name of God has happened here?’

He shook his head and slowly looked up at me. ‘Hell has been here, Alexander. Hell has been here tonight. They have taken her, taken her poor dead body from this room, from that table, and burnt her for a witch.’ His head sank forward. Tears of utter despair rolled down his cheeks.