The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

The voice came to me as from a distant place. It entered my dreams and called me from them. For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit, which without cause they have digged for my soul. Clear and pure, the voice came closer. It was joined by other voices, many voices, solemn, low, in unison, following the words exactly. The voices were marching on me, chanting. I stumbled from my bed, covered still in the warm damp of my clothes. But in mine adversity they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together: yea, the abjects gathered themselves together against me, and I knew it not: they did tear me and ceased not. Closer still came the voices. My eyes not properly opened, I felt my way from my chamber and out onto the top of the stairs. Four steps down, not yet fully out of my slumber, I pressed my face to the small window set deep in the outer turnpike wall. The crowd, for it was indeed a crowd, snaked from its tail, just clearing the kirkyard gate, by way of Low Shore and the western end of the kirk, round to its head at High Shore, where it would soon pass beneath, far beneath, my window. Behind the bier, she downcast and he defiant, walked the apothecary and his wife, and at the very head, as I had known he must be, was Charles Thom. His voice, always a gift from God, stood forth alone, reaching to the Heavens: Lord, how long wilt thou look on? Rescue my soul from their destructions, my darling from the lions. Alone, high above them and in a quiet voice, I took up the psalm, word for word, note for note, and joined with all those other voices in the commencement of the lykewake of Marion Arbuthnott.

I had to find another stand of clothes – I could not go out in my nightshirt, yet I could scarcely remain like this. The warmth of my body from the bed had dissipated and the cold of the clothes cloyed at my every inch of skin. My other vestments, beaten in a tub just yesterday by the maid, hung yet before the kitchen fire, sending steam still to the ceilings and rolling back down the wall. I returned to my room and brought the key down from the mantelshelf where it had lain for nine months, disturbed only by the cleaning hand of Mistress Youngson or her maid. I crouched by the bed and dragged out the kist. The lock was stiff, but gave way at the third twist of the key in my hand. I opened the lid quietly, fearful, foolishly, that I should be discovered in the act. And yet in but half an hour I would stand before many who knew me in that which I now hesitated to move from its tomb. I lifted the papers first – why should I have kept my sermon? And there beneath, pristine, made from love and worn but once, were the night-black drapes of a man of God, the cloak and suit of fine English cloth, with the velvet collar, made up for me by Banff’s finest tailor at the behest of all my kind friends here: Gilbert Grant and his wife, Jaffray, Charles, who had not two ha’pennies to rub together, and the parents of some of my scholars, who often had none. I had stood in my fine new clothing before the brethren at the Presbytery of Fordyce on that June night, and heard the laird of Delgatie pronounce my doom. Had I paid for them myself, the garments would have been long since consigned to the fire, but as I had not they had remained there, locked away in the kist beneath my bed, a hidden symbol of my fall. And tonight, in this town lost to its terror of a darkness it did not understand, gathering in a pagan farewell to a murdered girl and her unborn child, I would wear them again. It was almost fitting. I removed my sickly damp rags and began to dress.

The town bell had just tolled seven when I passed under the archway at the side of the apothecary’s shop. The rhythmic chanting of the psalms and the tentacled aroma of roasting meats guided my steps. It was a mild evening, and the sun had not yet sunk beyond the mountains of the west. The sea was peaceful. Charles’s voice seemed to guide the waves as they came surely to the shore, the people in unison taking up the line behind him, their voices rumbling away like the pebbles as the waves rolled them back to the sea. Many of the mourners had spilled out into the courtyard – although the women remained yet in the house. Unseen, as I thought, on my arrival, I scanned the faces of the people gathered there, some shifting slowly from one stance to another, some talking in low voices to their neighbours. I marvelled, but was in truth little surprised, at the hypocrisy of my townsmen – how many of them had gathered together not three hundred yards from here, but two nights ago, and watched the body burn of the girl they now mourned? As I began to pass amongst them, I noticed how few of any note were absent from this gathering. The guilds were there, those who were not locked away awaiting justice, their deans wearing the regalia of their office in honour of their fellow guildsman, the apothecary. Baxters, candlemakers, coopers, fleshers, shoemakers, dyers, weavers, hammermen. How resplendent, how strong had I seen my own father on many a night such as this. How my mother had hated the public appropriation of such private grief. She had not understood.