Crucible (25 page)

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I have no fear of Matthew Jack.’

The man looked at me a moment as if I had said I had no fear of the Devil, then shrugged his shoulders and told
me to shout for help if I needed it, before turning back down the stairs and taking with him his lamp.

I pushed open the door carefully, and took a moment before stepping into the place to let my eyes adjust to what light there was. I had never been this far up the tolbooth before. The smell as I had come up the stairs had been bad enough – it had worsened with every step that took me from the doors at the bottom and the occasional draught of less putrid air it allowed in from outside – but what assailed my senses now was rank beyond belief. The straw piled on the floor was thicker than any I had seen in other cells, caverns, dungeons in this place or elsewhere – so deep my foot sank to ankle level when I first stepped upon it and when I lifted it again, such filth clung to my boot that I would not have expected had I stood in a drain in the tanners’ yard. I realised that the extra depth of the straw here was not for the comfort of the prisoner, but because the guards never cared to spend long enough in this cell to lift it. The worst of the smell came from a pot in the corner that had been overturned to send its noxious contents seeping into the sludge on the floor. I could barely hear the screeching of the gulls in the marketplace below for the buzzing of flies. And in the middle of it all, looking more as if he belonged there than any other human creature could have done, was Matthew Jack.

I swallowed, trying not to gag on the air as I readied myself to speak. But Jack was accustomed to his own
surrounds and needed no such preparation. He greeted me with a guttural laugh.

‘Alexander Seaton. Patrick Dun’s lackey. What pleasure it must give you to see me here.’

‘To see a man reduce himself to a level worse than the beasts? You have brought yourself here, and it gives me no pleasure to see that, for I know what has been suffered by good men and women, boys too, that brought you to this pass. I would see you walk free on the streets and spare them the harm you have done them.’

‘Harm? You speak of harm? I have been cleansing them, cleansing them of their looseness, their backsliding and depravity. You look on me and see me in filth, but I am clean, Seaton, clean. It is this town,
your
college, that crawl with dirt, that suppurate with the sores of sloth and immorality. You stand there in your regent’s gown, as if that will protect you from the infection, the noxious spores that pass through the air from one to another of the citizens of this cesspit. Look at your fine collar the whore your wife thinks so white – the smudges and smears of the Devil’s fingers have wrung it out for her. Feel the cut of the good black stuff of your jacket. It crawls with the beasts of the midden you walk through every day. The worms are in your skin, they penetrate your skull and feed on the rot of your mind. Do you feel them writhing there, Seaton? Do you long to gouge them out?’

It was only with the greatest effort that I could keep my fingers from going to my head to relieve the intense itch that had started to creep under my hair.

‘You are sick, Jack,’ I said.

‘Then take care you do not become infected.’ He turned his head from me and began to pick at a sore on his arm. After a moment, he looked up. ‘Still here, Seaton? What do you want?’ Then a slow smile spread across his face. ‘I know what you want. You want to know what I know.’

I pushed the door to behind me, and took a step further into the cell, provoking creatures in the matted straw to scuttle to an even darker corner. ‘Yes, Matthew, you are right. I want to know what you know about Nicholas Black.’

He raised his eyebrows in surprise – genuine or otherwise, I could not tell. ‘Nicholas Black? Now why should I know anything about Nicholas Black?’

‘Because you know about everyone, every Scot who went to Europe from the time you left Edinburgh to the time you appeared here. Fifteen years later. No one has been safe from your insinuations, your sly hints as to knowledge of their past. Everyone knows that there is not a university town in reformed Europe that has not seen you in its lecture halls, had you in its kirk.’

‘You misrepresent me, Seaton.’

‘Do not belittle yourself, Jack. No one that has returned here from the continent has escaped the poison of your innuendo.’

‘Oh, I do not belittle myself – you have misunderstood me,
Mr
Seaton. You talk of fifteen years. A minor detail, but inaccurate. After I graduated from the town’s college
in Edinburgh and set sail for Danzig, I was away from Scotland thirteen years. True though, those thirteen years I took note of everything, everything, there was to be known of my fellow countrymen abroad. Not simply those that were there when I was, but those who had gone before me and left something of their story behind them. And there were so many.’ He laughed to himself and then caught me with his direct look. ‘You know what the Poles say, don’t you, Seaton? About finding Scotsmen, rats and lice the world over? Well, every louse-ridden inn I stopped at, every barn I slept in that had rodents scuttling in its rafters, had a story for me of some fellow Scot who had been there before me. For years, Seaton. Years.’ Such was the venom in his voice now that he almost spat the last words. ‘Our sainted principal, Dr Dun – I could tell you of him at Heidelberg.’

I sought to forestall his malice. ‘Dr Dun only stayed a very little while at Heidelberg.’

He leered through the dim light. ‘Have you ever wondered
why
, Seaton? And your dear, dear friend Dr Jaffray – so tragic that he could never father a child on his wife, when there is more than one bastard in France with the look of a Banff physician in his eye.’

‘You lie.’ My mouth was dry and the words would hardly come from my throat.

‘Do I? Ask him. You are so well acquainted with the sons of whores yourself, it should give you much to talk about.’

I thought I might kill him. Had he not been bound, hand and foot to the iron gad that ran the length of the room,
I might have killed him. Instead I walked to the one small aperture in the wall, blocked by two iron bars, that allowed a breath of air, a glimpse of light into the place. I gripped one of the bars, my fingers so hard and fast around it that my nails cut in to my own palms.

‘Tell me about Nicholas Black,’ I said through gritted teeth.

He affected an airy disappointment. ‘Oh? You do not wish to hear of the associations of our venerable advocate, William Cargill, so respectable now? Or of the pastimes of Andrew Carmichael at Breslau, Frankfurt and elsewhere, before he took ship for Aberdeen, to practise his continental manners on your wife …’

Before I knew I had moved, my hands were round his throat. ‘Tell me about Nicholas Black,’ I said again, ‘or I swear before God I will strangle you with my own two hands and save the hangman a job. What do you know of Nicholas Black?’

He managed to make some sound escape his throat that suggested he would co-operate, and I loosened my grip enough to let him speak. It was a moment before he could. ‘All right, all right, I will tell you.’

I let go his neck and went to stand in front of him. ‘Well?’

He put a manacled hand to his throat and rubbed where my fingers had left their imprint. He swallowed and it gave me some pleasure to see that it gave him pain.

‘It was only once, at Rotterdam. I had gone there to hear the minister preach on—’

‘I am not interested in the sermon. Tell me about Nicholas Black.’

Jack gave one more meaningful rub to his neck. ‘All right. Let me think then. It was eight, no, nine years ago. I had left Leiden and was making my way down through the Low Countries to Paris. While I was in Rotterdam I went by the Scots factor’s office, to send some letters back to Edinburgh and to see to a transfer of funds. The factor’s office was thronged with Scots booking passages home, or arriving and waving around their letters of commendation, seeking to find others who might be travelling their way. Nicholas Black was there. I caught his name as one who had given up his place on a ship bound for Leith, and was ready to sell his passage to another. A young physician returning from Montpellier paid him well for his place.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Black?’

‘Of course.’

‘Like one who did not need the money. The young physician was clad in threadbare robes and patched breeches, while Black was finely dressed: he should have given up his place for free.’

I almost spat in exasperation. ‘Not his clothes, man – his hair, his eyes, his stature.’

‘Ah.’ Jack paused so infuriatingly that I thought I might set my hands to his throat again. He caught the look in my eye and thought better of his play-acting. ‘He was of middling height. Small, perhaps, but of stocky frame. Fair
hair, cut short, and a close-trimmed beard. As to his eyes, I cannot tell you. We were not so close as I would have noticed.’

‘His age?’

‘He would be yours now, though better worn.’

I whirled the description through my mind, but it could have been anyone or no one. ‘Have you ever seen this man in Aberdeen?’

‘Never.’

‘And the physician who bought his place?’

‘Never. And before you ask it, I do not know his name.’

‘Where did Black go after he gave up his passage?’

‘I heard him laugh and say it was to Franeker. A suitable place, no doubt, for a rich man’s son. Known for the licentiousness of its students. There were riots among them a year later. No doubt he was amongst them.’

I saw now that Jack was reverting to his favoured pastime of malicious speculation, and that I would get little else of use from him. But there was one more thing I wished to know.

‘And you, where did you go then?’

He raised his chin, a hint of triumph glinting in his eye. ‘Surely your good friend Dr Middleton has told you that.’

‘To Paris,’ I said.

‘Indeed. Middleton and his associates had no time for the acquaintance of one such as I. But I returned their gracious friendship, in kind.’

‘You accused them of witchcraft.’

He affected a hurt expression. ‘Indeed, I did not. But imagine my surprise a few months after my arrival to hear rumours of a secret brotherhood come to the city, travelling in disguise. A Rosicrucian fraternity. Now, the good citizens of Paris did not like the sound of agents of the dark arts moving around their city in disguise. They began to fear very greatly what evils the sorcery of such agents might procure. I felt it only my duty to inform them that in their midst, a practising physician, and one following the alchemical practices of the order, was one who had openly professed himself a Rosicrucian in Heidelberg several years before. That the citizens of Paris did not like this, and that your friend Dr Middleton decided to flee rather than persuade them to his case, is none of my affair.’

It dawned on me then that Jack knew nothing. He spoke only in malice and built great edifices of vitriol and innuendo from the few scraps of information he could scramble together. And he had been doing this for years. I had been wasting my time, and I told him so. This time, a look of real hatred replaced the habitual sneer. ‘I know nothing? I know things people would not have me know. You think alchemy is the only unnatural practice Richard Middleton indulges in?’

His laughter followed me as I went to the door and shouted for the guard. Even after the door had been bolted behind me, I could still hear him. ‘You will be sorry, Seaton. You and your college and this whole accursed town – you will be sorry you did not listen.’

Once down the stairs and out at last of the tolbooth, I leant against the wall and took lungsfull of air. Never had the air of the Castlegate, with its mixed odours of seaweed, fish, spices and cheeses, vegetables warming in the afternoon sun, and the constant throng of people, tasted so clean and sweet. I pushed my way through to the apothecary’s shop and bought a packet of lavender which I crushed in my hands and rubbed all over my skin and clothes. And then I went home, to try to wash away the traces of the dirt, the infection that was Matthew Jack.

TWENTY
The Devil’s Angel

Dr Dun was not in his usual place in the dining-hall for supper, and I did not see him return to the college until I was leading my scholars into the common school for evening prayers. His shoes were dusty and his face flushed, and I guessed he was not long returned from his visit with Jaffray to John Innes at the King’s College. I tried to move quietly towards him as the youngest bursar read from the first book of Kings, telling of the building of Solomon’s temple, and Hiram’s casting of its pillars. Where, where in the Word did it speak of secret knowledge in these pillars? Nowhere – a distraction, an invention of man. I had begun to wonder if that was what all this talk of the masons’ lodge was – a distraction, a stone that instead of revealing the truth, was placed to obscure it.

‘Well, Alexander,’ said the principal as I reached him by the door, ‘this afternoon has passed without incident, I hear. Perhaps our college life is returning to what it should be.’

‘It can hardly do that, while Robert’s killer might still walk amongst us.’

‘No,’ he conceded, ‘but as you yourself have said, over-much dwelling on the events of the last week is not good.’

‘You have seen John Innes?’

He pursed his lips. ‘I have, and it is not a sight such as I hope to see again within the walls of either the King’s College or this one.’

‘He is no better?’

‘I do not know how bad his condition was when last you left him, but it can hardly have been worse than what Jaffray and I found today. It should have been dealt with before now, long before now.’

His tone left no doubt that he held me complicit in the state John Innes had been allowed to fall into, and I could argue nothing in my defence: all my interest in John had been in what he could tell me regarding Robert Sim. Had I gone to him in any other circumstances and found him as I had done, I would not have left off until I had seen him get the help he evidently needed. I struggled for a response that would not come. The porter brought some message and it was too late, the principal was gone.