The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

It was with heavy steps and a heavier heart that I climbed Strait Path to the Castlegate where the provost’s house was to be found. He had left word at the tolbooth that he could not wait longer on me there and had to go home to his wife. I had little inclination now to waste further time and effort on his errands, and little interest, if truth were told, in the question of his nephew’s maps and papist plots. There were greater dangers, greater evils being made manifest before us as we woke and walked and slept in this very town than anything that threatened from without or in the future. And horrible as the death of Patrick Davidson had seemed to begin with, it was worse now, and perhaps there would be worse to come. What Charles had most feared had come to pass. Marion Arbuthnott was dead and that death was part of the chain that had begun with that of Patrick Davidson.

The burgh, as far as I could see, was returning to its usual state and rhythm of life, the only sign of last night’s debauch being the whiff of smoked wood the wind carried with it. But perhaps, as Gilbert Grant had hinted, such perversions had always been lurking in the hearts of my fellow townsmen, never far beneath the surface of their neighbourliness and godliness. How easily the good neighbours had taken up the call of Lang Geordie, an idle beggar, a masterless man, usually feared and reviled. How ready they had been to follow the lead of one they would gladly otherwise have seen hounded from the burgh. I banged on the door of the provost’s house, the noise loud and echoing in the empty street.

Walter Watt himself opened the door to me. He had a dishevelled air and his eyes were shot through with redness from lack of sleep. He also carried with him the smell of smoke from last night. I realised the man had not yet been to his bed, and I felt a little shamefaced.

‘I am sorry I did not come to meet with you at the appointed time.’

He waved away my apology as he left me to shut the door behind myself. ‘I would not have had the leisure to see you much earlier than now anyway. I have been busy with the baillie and the dean of guild most of the morning.’

‘The baillie is recovered, then?’ I asked in surprise. I had not thought to ask Jaffray about his patient of last night.

He eyed me shrewdly. ‘The baillie is a man driven. Where others would have buckled and collapsed, he sustains himself on a determination not of woman born. I would have no fears for the baillie.’

‘The dean of guild, last night, I did not notice …’ again my voice trailed away. I did not know which side the leader of all our burgh’s craftsmen had taken.

The provost took my meaning straight away, though. ‘He was with us, thank God. If he had not been, we would be in a worse case than we are already in.’

I thought of the quietly industrious burgh I had passed through that morning. ‘You think the commerce of the town will suffer?’ I said.

He smiled at me, but there was no humour in his eyes. ‘You are a man of learning, Mr Seaton, but a craftsman’s son also. You must know that nothing passes within the burgh that does not in some manner affect trade and good government. And, I would suspect, your mind was much on other matters this morning. Did you, for instance, pass the coopers’ yard?’

I confessed that I had not.

‘How many of the baxters were calling their wares in the marketplace this morning? And were you, by chance, out by the tannery? Can you smell them?’ Sometimes, with the wind blowing from the west, the nauseating smells of the tanners’ work were wafted down to the burgh itself, and could be caught in the air and in the throat. But not today. The provost was watching me and saw that I began to understand.

‘Half the tanners are in the tolbooth. With three of the baxters. Master and apprentice alike. Most of the coopers, along with the chandlers and God knows how many of the domestic servants in the burgh, as well as two or three merchants whose names would surprise you, have been parcelled out between the laird of Banff’s strong room and the castle dungeon. Had the moderator and his brethren been half an hour later, the back of the burgh would have broken under the strain. It was curbed with scarcely more minutes to spare.’ He looked at me and spoke with a coldness that sent a shiver through my body. ‘They were at the point of going after the living as well as the dead. Your friend Charles Thom would not have survived the night, had their madness been allowed to grow. And then we would have had more murderers on our hands than all the dungeons in Banff can hold. The town is quiet today, yes, but it is not at rest.’