The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

I pulled the lamp closer to me and opened the book at the title page: The Poems of William Dunbar. Dunbar. An unexpected warmth spread through me, a memory of childhood evenings by the fire, listening to my father, the day’s toils over, telling stories of his youth, of his journeying with the laird of Delgatie. Those were the nights he would sing the old ballads or say the poems. Those had been the magical nights, when my mother too had been young again and had remembered why she had loved him. For me, it was not the great adventures overseas, nor the ballads of romance, but those poems in our own Scots tongue, written by a court clerk dead a hundred years, that had allowed me to glimpse for a brief hour the humanity of my own father. I had not looked at or listened to one of Dunbar’s poems since the day they told me he was dead. I feared almost to open the book further, for what memory I would find there. I laid the volume down and settled back on the furs and skins beneath me, hoping for sleep. None came. The silence of the sea outside was more terrifying than all the fury of its rages. The crone was oblivious to it. Some powders she had been grinding she now put in a glass jar and was adding distilled water, drop by drop. She would sniff at it every so often, then mutter to herself before adding some other powder.

I had learnt what I had come to learn from her, and had no wish to tarry longer in this place, but her advice was good: there could be no sense in attempting to reach Banff before morning. There was much I could have done in these futile hours, in any other place but this. I had no idea what hour of the day or night it was. I gave over trying to sleep and opened the volume once more, this time having the courage to turn the pages further.

The crone had finished her work and had gone about some necessary business in a place she had shown to me deep into the back of the cave, and I was still reading, lost in another time, my father’s voice resonant in my ear. Even after she had put out the lamp and laid herself out to sleep on her trestle bed, the words echoed in my mind through the darkness from fifteen, twenty years ago. The ballads, the lusty drinking songs, the comic ditties on court life, all had come to life again in my head, and had brought warmth to me. But now, in the darkness of this cavern, with the haar seeping through the silent black, my father’s sonorous voice at last spoke the words that had ended all those evenings, and sent me to my sleep in fear: timor mortis conturbat me. The fear of death disquiets me. It was the only certainty I had now to hold on to: the certainty of death. And the knowledge of death was everywhere in this place where three times now I had been accorded life. I prayed for sleep, for peace, and, many hours into the night, it came.

I was awakened by a blast of fresh air on my face. My eyes sought in vain the familiar objects of my own chamber in the schoolhouse until I remembered where I was. The crone had gone outside. I followed the passage of light to the cave entrance and pushed back the partition myself. Sunlight pierced my eyes. The haar had lifted. A clear, fine spring day spread out the beauty of the firth before me. With little conversation, the old woman busied herself about making some breakfast, and while I ate she worked once more at her potions. As I finished my porridge and rose to gather my few things she turned. ‘Wait. It is not quite ready.’ Without further explanation, she went back to her work, and spent some minutes checking on jars and bottles, finally selecting two small vessels into which she poured different liquids from the concoctions she had been making the previous night. She handed me the bottles. ‘This,’ she said, indicating the one containing a murky, yellowish treacle, ‘you are to give to Baillie Buchan. It is the remedy he seeks.’ I opened my mouth to say something but she silenced me. ‘You know all you need to. Give it to him.’ The other bottle contained a clear, almost blue tonic. ‘This you will take for yourself. One spoonful at night. You will sleep more easy, and the dreams will not bother you.’

‘Did I speak my dreams last night? Did I call out?’ Sometimes lately, I had woken in the night at the sound of my own cry.