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.
‘Did you know the girl, when she was in the burgh?’ he asked.
I considered the question, and that not for the first time. ‘I cannot say that I never saw her. I knew by name and from some of your talk here that she was a friend of Ishbel’s.’
Jaffray continued to study me, working as he did so at something stuck in his teeth. ‘That was a good thing you did, Alexander. Neither you nor your friend Cargill will have cause to regret it. Sarah will be a good help and companion to her mistress. And,’ he added, ‘a good mother to her own child.’
Charles glanced up from his scrawling. ‘What is this? Are you speaking of women, Alexander? Mistress Youngson will have much to say.’
I laughed. ‘Mistress Youngson has always much to say. I am not convinced Gilbert Grant has not perfect hearing, but only feigns his deafness.’
‘Without question he feigns it,’ rejoined Jaffray.
As Charles returned to his composing, the doctor pressed me further on my trip to Aberdeen: With whom had I met? What gossip had I heard? When I mentioned George Jamesone, his interest quickened. ‘You went to see George Jamesone. Now why was that?’
I told him of my commission to the painter from the provost. And then, with some trepidation, I relayed to him William Cargill’s concerns about my involvement with the painter and the possibility that his time in Antwerp and connection with Rubens might have led him into a relationship with Rubens’ Spanish masters. Jaffray frowned. ‘I remember Jamesone. He came to the burgh, as you know, several years ago, to paint Walter Watt and his wife. He was a clever man, and good company, too. But I think your friend is being carried away with rumours if he fears Jamesone is a spy.’
Charles had put down his pen and was listening now. ‘Why should a painter be feared, simply because he has travelled? What can it have to do with the trouble in our town?’
Jaffray looked at me, as the one most qualified, albeit reluctantly, to speak on the matter. ‘It is to do with the maps, Charles,’ I said.
‘The maps,’ he said slowly to himself, ‘the baillie’s maps.’ He looked at us, some understanding dawning. ‘When I was in the tolbooth, the baillie was asking me night and day about maps – what did I know of maps? Had Patrick Davidson spoken of maps? Had I seen any maps in our chamber? What had Marion to do with the maps? And yet he would not tell me anything about them. I truly did not know what he was asking me about, though after dwelling on it a while – I had much time for thinking – supposed he must have found some maps amongst Patrick’s belongings.’
‘He did,’ I said. ‘It was not simply that Patrick Davidson possessed maps, but that they were of this part of the land, from the sea coast as far as Strathbogie, with markings for Elgin, Turriff, and Aberdeen. They were in Davidson’s own hand. It is likely that they were drawn, or at least rough sketches drawn, on his gathering expeditions with Marion. Some of the further away ones may have been done – probably were, in fact – before he reached here.’
Charles looked up at me with an air of resignation. ‘So that is why they were away so often and so long. I did not think it was the season for many plants, yet I know so little of flowers and their seasons I did not question it, for fear of showing my ignorance. For fear of shutting myself further out of their bond.’ He looked away. ‘Then Marion must have known of these maps. Do you think perhaps that is why she too was killed? But why should anyone fear a map, kill for a map?’
Jaffray shook his head. ‘Oh, Charles. You are too innocent. The rest of the country sees invaders on every wave, with their books and their bells and their beads.’
‘Papists?’
‘Aye, papists,’ the doctor answered, ‘if it suits them so to be, as pretext for overrunning our country and overturning our church.’
‘I had not thought you so fervent for religion, doctor.’ There was no sarcasm, no sly humour in Charles’s observation. Just a statement of fact, which was daily evident.
‘Oh, do not mistake me, boy. I am no zealot; no James Cardno or William Buchan, but I have my faith and I know who will judge me when the Lord sees fit to lift me from my travails here. The Kirk, though, it is more than the ministers and the session and all the fulmination from the pulpits of idiots or sainted men. The Kirk is who we are: it is our freedom, and without it, we are lost.’
I had never heard him talk in this manner before, not of the Kirk. I leaned forward further in my chair. ‘What do you mean, James?’
‘I mean that we are servile to no man. We can look at a king and know he is, like us, only a man in the face of God. Our nation will bow and scrape to no man and to no power so long as the Kirk of Scotland is by law established in this land. And that is why I would fight for it, fight against all the Spaniards and the French the legions of Rome can send against us, and against Charles Stuart himself if need be, for without it we are not men and we have no nation.’ And then I understood what I had wondered at but never before realised: James Jaffray, who seemed in his mind to live still in the great universities and cities and towns of the Europe of his youth, could only ever have called one place home, and he had been drawn back to it as an eagle to its nest.
Charles spoke quietly, looking directly at no one. ‘Do you think there will be an invasion?’
Jaffray came to himself a little. ‘I do not know. I think it very likely though, and likely too that Walter Watt’s nephew was up to his neck in the plotting of it. What did Straloch say to it, Alexander?’
‘That the work was well done, extremely well done, and would have done very well for a foreign army landing at our shores. But he denied knowledge of any commission to Patrick Davidson or anyone else for such work, and denied any knowledge of any plots of the sort.’
‘Then he is surely cut off from his master,’ said Charles, ‘for since when did the Marquis of Huntly not plot?’
‘Indeed,’ said Jaffray. ‘But Straloch is a good, honest man. Did you not find him so, Alexander?’
It was a more difficult question than I had bargained for, or at least an honest answer was more difficult to find. ‘I think … I do not know, James. I think Huntly has some business afoot. My old friend, Matthew Lumsden, whom I met with in Old Aberdeen, is in Huntly’s retinue. He was to ride that day on business for the marquis, and Matthew is not a man you would use for diplomacy. Straloch himself rode early yesterday for Aberdeen and then Edinburgh on Huntly’s affairs, yet I heard horsemen leave the place in the night, and I would hazard they were bound for Strathbogie. What need could there have been for night-riding, what sudden urgency but information I had brought myself?’
‘Then we must be vigilant,’ said the doctor. ‘Now though, did you get Cargill’s notebooks? For that is the matter we must attend to here. Charles …’ But Charles Thom had fallen asleep in the chair to the right of the doctor’s fire, his stomach full and his heart something less heavy. Jaffray watched him sleep for a few moments, then quietly got up and signalled me to follow him over to the table, which Ishbel had long since cleared. I laid the book out and the doctor began to examine it, turning each leaf over carefully, and marvelling in a low voice at the quality of the drawings and the insight of the annotations. We had not yet reached the page I was sure the colchicum was sketched upon when there came a loud knocking at the doctor’s back door. Charles Thom was startled out of his sleep, and the doctor got to his feet. In a moment Ishbel was at the parlour door; Edward Arbuthnott, the apothecary, close behind her.
‘I am sorry, doctor,’ she said, ‘I–’
‘I am not here for the doctor, but the music master,’ he said, brushing past her with little ceremony. Charles, still not fully wakened, shambled to his feet. I took a step towards him, but Arbuthnott was in front of him before me. ‘Charles Thom, for all that you owe my family, who took you in and gave you food and lodging, and for the love you bore my girl, you will sing for her, you and your scholars, at her lykewake, will you not?’