The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘I was so glad at the time to see a kind face that I did not question it. She told me she gave no credence to the notion that I could have murdered Patrick or anybody. She spoke of her anxiety to see Marion again, alone, for they were companions, and she knew how hard all these things would be on her. I think in truth that Marion was her only friend. She was anxious to see her, but she could never escape the baillie’s watchful eye, still less get past him at the apothecary’s door. I hope to God she did not get to see her, or she will be in danger now herself.’

‘I would have little fear on that score. I think the provost’s mind is bent upon protecting his wife from whatever there is yet to come.’

‘I think, then, that he is a wise man,’ said Charles, quietly. ‘You will ask Jaffray about it, though?’

‘I will,’ I promised him. Charles was greatly wearied and looked ready to sleep. I would not tax or question him further. As his eyelids flickered and then closed, I moved quietly from my chair. I had never wondered about the baillie’s home, never considered him as a private person, for the life of the individual was always to him a thing of wickedness and impiety, an offence to God and a threat to the commonwealth. There was little comfort in this room, and little more, I suspected, in the small chamber leading off from it where he had gone to wash and where he now slept. William Buchan was a merchant who carried out a steady trade; he must have been a man of some wealth, yet there were few – if any – signs of it here. There were no wall hangings, such as even in Banff could now be found in the homes of some of the wealthier merchants, but one simply embroidered canvas above the door to the baillie’s chamber. Each corner was adorned with a small symbol of the seasons of the year – a lamb, a cornflower, a russet apple, a sprig of holly – but it was the wording in the centre that caught the eye. I knew, without the neat legend beneath it, that it was taken from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians; it was a verse I had pondered often myself: But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord. At the very bottom corner, in tiny lettering, were the initials HB and the date 1610. I had, in my lifetime, seen many verses from the Bible rendered in thread and canvas, but I had never seen one such as this. Was this then what drove the baillie, what lay at the heart of his inhumanity? Was it that his own mother had set him on this course of coldness towards his fellow man in some supposed pursuit of godliness? I could think of no other who could have done so.

The room itself was scarcely less bare than the walls. The only furnishings were the two hard wooden chairs on which Charles Thom and I sat and the table and bench to the side of the room. A kist with a strong lock – keeping the papers of business, I assumed – was below the one small window. There was no rug or matting on the swept wooden floor, and no ornament of any sort – what bowls and plate there were were either wooden or of coarse, local work, not burnished or painted. A low bookshelf was set against one wall, and it was to this that I gave my attention. It was from here that Buchan had picked the Bible as he had gone to his rest, yet another Bible remained. I took it from the shelf and opened it. Inscribed inside, in a thin and uncertain hand were the words: To William, walk always in the fear of the Lord and in the certainty of your mother’s love, Isabella Farquhar. 1596. The baillie could scarce have been ten years old when his mother had given him that Bible. But more, I realised that whoever had stitched those words that had condemned him to a lifetime of arid loneliness, it had not been his mother.

This was not the place to set my mind to that mystery and I resumed instead my examination of the baillie’s small library. The Psalms. Some tracts and pamphlets against the Catholics, the Jesuits, the government of bishops and the perils of assuming one’s own will, all in the vernacular. All as I would have expected, all save one. For William Buchan too had an edition of Craig’s poetical works, identical to that I had bought for Charles so recently in Aberdeen, yet this copy was well thumbed, well used, evidently oft read. This was not a man whom I thought poetry could have touched. As I wondered at this, my foot struck against another kist, long and low, beneath the shelf. On this one there was no lock. I bent down and opened the lid as quietly as I could. Inside, bound together, were little exercise books such as I would allow the better pupils to keep, like diaries or commonplace books. I carefully unbound the pile nearest the top and took the first book in my hand. On the front was written, in the baillie’s small and steady hand, ‘Sermons, March 1624–June 1625’, and inside there were notes and meditations on every sermon he had heard in those fifteen months. The whole pile of notebooks beneath it went back year upon year, month upon month, week upon week as far as my own childhood and beyond. A lifetime of the man was in those books, and I would have given much for the freedom to peruse them, but I was too conscious of the low, rasping breathing coming from just the other side of the door.