The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

‘I think I will go to my bed now,’ he said. ‘It has been a long and strange day.’

‘Take care you do not scald your feet,’ the doctor told him. ‘Ishbel will have put a warming pan in your bed. If not two, indeed, for now that you are here I should not be surprised to learn that mine is in there as well. I will be left to shift as I may without one, and no doubt freeze to death. Ah, the ingratitude of the young.’ The doctor was happy: all was once again as it should be in his life.

Charles looked a little bashful. Taking up his book of Craig’s poetry, he bade us goodnight and made his way towards the kitchen, where Ishbel would not yet have finished her night’s work.

We returned now to the table, and the examination of James Cargill’s notebook. The script was small and neat, the Latin perfect, but the drawings themselves were of an exquisite nature, beyond perfect. I looked at them in wonder for a few moments, as my older companion silently read. A bright yet distant look was in his eyes. I had seen this look on him before. He was transported to another time, another place. Alpine meadows and the valleys of the Pyrenees. A group of young men, running, climbing with all the sureness of foot of mountain goats, and stopping, every so often, to hang on the words of their teacher, as he told them of every property, pointed out every small and fine detail, of some tiny plant or flower. ‘They were good times for you, James,’ I said.

‘Aye,’ he replied, ‘they were. But it is to the present that we must turn our eyes and our minds. You say you think you have come upon the flower?’

‘I cannot be sure, but it is the name that you told me.’ I took the book from him and then leafed through its pages until I found what I was looking for. I turned the book back towards him. ‘There,’ I said. ‘Is that it?’

He nodded slowly, his eyes keen. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘it is.’ He traced a finger beneath the outline of the flower, and began to read out the words. ‘“Petals the grey-blue of the northern sky after it has snowed. Calyx of deep purple sepals below, small, pale green bract. Stigma and anthers yellow, the colour of straw in September. The whole forming a large goblet on a slender white stem. Basal leaves, long, dark, glossy green straps, emerging after blooms. One corm will produce 6–8 blooms on 3–5 leaves. Unlike its benign relatives, flowers not in the autumn, but the spring.” Aye, that is it, that is it; it is quite different from the other colchicum, you know,’ he said, growing excited. He read on, using terms and talking of properties I did not understand, until his voice, slow and deliberate, with great emphasis, intoned, ‘“corm has the look of a small, elongated and blackened onion. Utterly and almost instantly lethal if ingested.”’ There was more, about where the plant was to be found, the difficulties of cultivation, the lack of any known beneficial medicinal use. Then words not in Latin, but in Cargill’s own native tongue and ours. ‘The Salome of all flowers: beautiful, and deadly.’ Jaffray gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘Little wonder he never married. Every beautiful woman must have called to mind for him some botanical instrument of death. But this is it, Alexander, this is the flower we seek. Through the vomit, the chicory scent could still be got in their hair.’

‘And you have never seen it here?’

‘Never. There are perhaps some like it in appearance, in the blue at least, but the purple calyx and stigma, these I have never seen here. Have you?’ He asked the question absent-mindedly, little thinking that there could be any other than one answer. When I did not reply, he looked up from studying the book. ‘Have you seen it, Alexander?’

I hesitated. ‘I … I do not know. I do not think so. That is – I think I may have done.’ There was something, something flitting before my eyes, in my mind. A glimpse, little more, of blue, with purple, falling, falling. I searched harder. I shut my eyes against the warm golden light of the room, for it was another type of light I sought – darker, colder, more still. I tried to clear my mind of the almost inaudible breathing of the fire, the heavier intrusion of my companion, the knowledge of the life and movement in the room and the power of the sea in the darkness outside, but I could not. The image, the memory of the image was gone, and now all I had was a construction of my own making. I opened my eyes, shaking my head in a slow frustration. ‘I am sorry, James,’ I said. ‘It is gone. Whatever I thought I remembered, it is gone.’

The look of hopefulness faded from his face to be replaced by one of disappointment. ‘Do you think it was in Banff itself, or out in the country somewhere, maybe? Was it wild, or in a garden? Do you think it might even have been in Aberdeen?’ This last suggestion lit some small flicker of possibility in my memory. Had it been in Aberdeen? Somewhere in Aberdeen? There was something that seemed to make it possible, but no. I could reach no further than that into the recesses of my mind, and then the flickering light went out.