The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

As the miles went on, my thoughts meandered so far from where they had started, I scarcely knew what the questions were. How would Sarah Forbes and her child fare in Aberdeen? What had I brought into the lives of William Cargill and his wife and their unborn child? Would the children be natural companions, or would they grow up to dislike and envy one another? Does a man choose his friends, or are they chosen by God? What would my life have been without Archibald Hay? What would he who had such a big life, who had known the world and died in it, think of me now, and the smallness of my life that had taken me nowhere? Where was his sister now? Had she told all to Straloch’s niece, who hated me so? Was Straloch to be trusted? Had Patrick Davidson truly been a spy? And so, without resolution or clarity, insight or enlightenment, I went on. By the time I came to the fork in the road where my choice was to make for Fordyce by one route or Sandend by the other, I could almost have believed that the brethren were still there, gathered at Fordyce, waiting for me to come and present myself before them, to meet my last trial, once again, for the ministry.

The damp air around me took on a chill as I left the Cullen road and turned off to my right, towards the sea once more, and the cliffs from which Findlater glowered over to the mountains of the north. By the time I crested the hill at Brankanenthum and began the descent towards Findlater on its neck of rock, the haar had begun to creep in from the sea. It crawled ashore and up the rock, enfolding all it passed in a blanket of impenetrable grey fog. Halfway up the cliff-side, forty or fifty feet or more, the castle grew straight up, a stately palace from the rock. Gradually, the haar took it too, till all that remained was a ghostly shadow of what once my eyes had seen. I grew uneasy. It might be hours, or days even, until this fog lifted, and I must not stay long from Banff. For all that I misliked and feared the superstition and the excess of the lykewake, I was determined that Charles should not be exposed to the risks there alone. I must win back to Banff before tomorrow night, come what may.

As Findlater evanesced before my eyes, I wondered what an invading army, were it to land today, would make of its first footfall on Scotland, a grey pall of wretchedness laid over this land for which they risked their lives. And what defence should they find here, should they arrive today, to claim Scotland for their popish realm? A failed minister on his way to consult a witch. I uttered a prayer that should the day come when the Spaniard set the prow of his boat on Darkwater beach, God would send down all the haar of the oceans in his path.

I had no memory of my last visit here, save for when Jaffray had come to take me home. I had been here only once before that, many, many years ago. It had been a holiday, when my mother and Jaffray’s wife, one startling summer’s day, had taken me with them early in the morning from my bed, and brought me to this wonderful, secret place, to play and swim for hours. I had little memory of them or how they had passed the time that day, so taken up had I been with my own childish pleasures. What was certain was that the paths I had run down, the dunes I had tumbled on at the age of six or seven on a warm summer’s day, were blasted and wind-blown and so altered in this mist I was in hazard of broken limbs with almost every step. More, if I fell here, from this precipice ninety feet above the strand, I might never be found, or if found, I might never survive to tell the tale. Jaffray’s pleas of the morning and of last night came to me through the mist, but it was too late now to heed them.

A few stumbling steps forward and I came to a halt. I could not see my foot in front of me; every step might bring me closer to death on the rocks. The heavy mist obscured the sounds of the sea, the birds of the air, everything but the noise of my heart thumping in my breast. All around me was an eerie, grey silence. Yet through it, through the impenetrable haar, I knew I was being watched. Further movement was not possible: I froze where I was, and it came. An arm caught me, a wizened, bony hand, coming, it seemed, from the ground and clamping itself around my wrist. ‘Do not move, Alexander Seaton. If you value your life, do not move a muscle.’

I waited, scared almost to breathe. It was a voice I knew, but from where I could not tell. Another hand appeared from below, bearing an amber torch, glowing through the mist, and then hair, grizzled, grey, unkempt. Slowly the head rose towards me and I saw myself looking into the yellowed eyes of the wise woman of Darkwater. She might have been any age from forty to seventy. Her teeth were nearly all gone, and there was no humour and, I thought, little humanity in her face. Her eyes searched mine for a moment, and she seemed satisfied. ‘Step backwards three paces, and then turn to your left.’