The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

At last I found my way through the throng. I slipped onto a bench and had a platter of food – crackling pork, baked apple with cloves, a dark and peppery gravy and warm bread – pressed into my hand. It was Gilbert Grant who stood above me.

‘Alexander, you look as if you might faint. Eat, my boy, eat. My wife tells me you have had nothing since you returned home to us this day. She bids you eat.’ I accepted the plate and nodded my gratitude towards Mistress Youngson, who had taken over the duties of hostess from the grieving mother. A cup of warm, spiced wine was also handed to me, and as I ate and drank I began to recover myself somewhat. Gilbert Grant seemed content to eat in silence, looking up at me every now and then to make sure I did not flag. I was glad of it, for I was in no mood for conversation, even with this most gentle and genial of men. A reckoning was building in this place tonight that the music and the food and the drink and the dancing flames could not mask, and I was resolved to see it when it came. All around me I could sense a watching and a waiting.

Charles and his boys, the older and better players, embarked upon a courante, and some of the wealthier merchants, along with the landed folk, took up their wives and daughters and set forth to dance, mindful of their status and their dignity. I looked over to the baillie, who kept his place near the music master and the dais. His face was set as a stone; for the baillie, one dance, be it ever so graceful, was as much fuel for the Devil’s fire as the wildest debauch. For myself, I had not seen dancing since that last Christmas at Delgatie, and I was drawn to watch as men and women moved with care in set steps towards each other, turned away, went back and took each other’s hands again to move on in stately, mannered procession. All was propriety, all was order. The faces were as masks, but the eyes, the eyes always gave something away.

The dance came to an end, and before I had stepped back properly into the crowd, another had begun. Unwitting and unwilling, I found myself in a line of four men. Four women faced us, and before me was the pale and wasted form of Geleis Guild. I looked up to where the provost stood: he watched me, motionless. Was this a test? Was I to know that I was not to lay a hand upon this fragile, delicate ornament of his office and his place? I knew that well enough. The music began and I stepped forward and took the slender hand, for there was nothing to step back to. Geleis Guild looked straight ahead into nothing, as if she did not see me, and the dance progressed. No word, no acknowledgement of who I was, escaped her. I had not set eyes on her since that morning when we had brought the lifeless body of Patrick Davidson to her house. The double grief for her friend had almost washed all life from her. I wondered what decoction Jaffray had given her, for she looked as one who is already halfway to the next world. But then, as the dance neared its end, and we passed across one another for the last time, her mouth brushed my hair. The words took whatever strength was left to her. ‘Do not fail them,’ she breathed, and then her hand fell from mine and she had been folded back once again into the crowd. The provost no longer watched me – I could not see him – but the eyes of many others, of Dr Jaffray, of Thomas Stewart, of Baillie Buchan, all were on me now. I would have given much then to pass quietly as a stranger from the company. I stepped back towards the edges of the crowd and waited for it to envelop me.