Crucible (26 page)

It was after eight by the time I left the college, but I was not ready to go directly home. Instead, I let my steps take me down to William’s house, where I found him by the empty hearth in his study, deep in conversation with Jaffray. The doctor looked weary, and something in William’s face told me he was glad to see me.

‘Alexander, we had not looked for you tonight.’

‘I wanted to speak with the doctor here before I went home, to ask after John Innes; the principal told me little, other than that he was in a very bad state.’

‘Take my seat here then,’ said William, ‘and I’ll get you a glass.’ My friend nodded in the direction of a thick brieve lying on the table. ‘I have to look that over before tomorrow. I will be in the parlour. Call upon me before you leave.’

‘Tell me what you found,’ I said, as he left and I took his seat opposite Jaffray and filled both our glasses.

Jaffray took a long drink before he spoke. ‘I have seen many men, too many, near to the end of their wits and beyond it, but few in as bad a state as John Innes. He would not let us in at first, though Dr Dun pleaded and then ordered him too. Andrew Carmichael came, and tried to persuade him, but to no avail. Eventually Carmichael went for another regent and between them they broke the door down. And then the stench, Alexander, the stench – as bad as I have known in the meanest hovel. There had not been a breath of air in the place for days. I do not know when he last ate – Carmichael says the trays he has left at the door the last two days had gone untouched. There was rotting and mouldering food on the floor of the place, flies, maggots. The only water was in a jug of brown stuff, warm and brimming with insects. I think he had taken some ale. The skin was hanging from his bones, and the clothes we took from him were only fit for burning.’

‘He let you undress him?’

‘He would hardly let us look at him to start with, never mind come anywhere near him. He was shrieking about black magic and agents of the Devil, calling on his angels not to abandon him.’

‘The Devil’s angels?’

Jaffray shook his head and swallowed down more of the wine. ‘No, his own. He had become convinced, we gathered at last, that his every movement was guided by angels, but that they would only talk with him while he was alone. When we got some light in the place we saw scattered everywhere books and tracts on the Cabbala. Symbols, words he thought his angel words were scrawled in ink on the walls, in the dirt on the floor. He thought they would protect him.’

‘From what?’

‘From whatever – and he was very clear it was a “what” and not a “who”– had killed Robert Sim. Robert had not followed the Cabbala, had not trusted in the angels you see. They had spoken of it, it would seem, on the morning before Robert’s death …’

‘In the library,’ I said. ‘John had been in consulting a work on Vitruvius. I had thought his interest was in architecture.’

‘His interest was in everything, and that was the trouble.’ He looked up at me. ‘Your friend John has not had an … eventful life, has he, Alexander?’

‘Eventful? No,’ I said, ‘I would not call it eventful.’

‘He arrived in the King’s College, Dr Dun tells me, at the same time as you yourself did.’

‘Yes, and William too. But I do not follow you.’

‘Unlike the rest of you, he has never left it. Now, I know as well as you do yourself, that your fortunes have not always been what they are now, that you have known disgrace and failure. You have lived; you have loved. John has never experienced loss because he has never had love; he has never known failure because he never aimed at success. He has known nothing of the world not bounded by the sea and the two rivers that encompass these two towns of Aberdeen. This fraternity, this study – call it Rosicrucian, call it Hermetic, call it dabbling in the secrets of the masons – call it what you will, it opened doors of wonder and possibility to him. And so he lighted like a sparrow on one topic before flying to the next, trying to encompass it all and in the process understanding very little. The others took seriously their study for that study’s sake, but John believed every word of promise, of the fantasy of the
Fama
. And then he kept rambling about a book.’

‘A book?’

‘He was very anxious about it. We could get very little sense out of him. All he would say at first was, “She hasn’t brought the book; she said she would bring the book and she hasn’t brought the book.”’

‘Rachel Middleton?’

The doctor nodded. ‘Eventually we got out of him that
Rachel Middleton had been to see him on the day after Robert’s body had been discovered and he had asked her for it. There had been some book Robert had promised to show him, and Rachel had promised she would find it and bring it to him. It was only after we had got Strachan and Carmichael to carry him – for he was not fit to walk – to the Mediciner’s manse …’

‘Dr Dun has taken him into his own house?’

‘Yes, he did not think it wise to leave him in the college where he might upset the scholars and be a danger to himself.’

‘I see. Go on.’

‘It was only after we had settled him in the Mediciner’s manse and sent the two others to clear out his lodgings that we could get more sense about this book out of him.’

‘What was it?’ I asked.

‘Something that Richard Middleton knew of, that Robert had promised to obtain, that would show John Innes the errors of the
Fama
and its followers, and point him in a better way.’

‘I remember now – Patrick Urquhart mentioned it to me when we were at Crathes. He didn’t know the name. Did John tell you what it was called?’

‘That I cannot tell you. I doubt the poor soul knows himself. But he is settled now, and will be looked after by Dr Dun and his daughter. She was preparing a decoction of camomile when I left, to calm him. I think in the greater scheme of things, the title of the book is of little importance.’

‘I think you are wrong, Doctor.’

He put down his glass and summoned up a warning look I knew well. ‘Alexander, if you are even thinking, even
thinking
of questioning John Innes further on this book, still less trying to find it, I utterly forbid it. Utterly. The boy must be helped to forget this whole episode. If you seek to pursue this matter of foolish books about secret societies, I will personally see to it that Dr Dun allows you no access to John Innes at all.’

‘Peace, Doctor, peace,’ I said, laughing. ‘I am not as callous as you evidently think me. John Innes will hear not one more word of this book from my lips. But I fear I must find it out, for I believe it is the book Rachel Middleton went to Melville’s bookshop looking for, on the day she saw Bernard Cummins there. If this book is in some way the connection between the two murders, it may help me track down the killer.’

The doctor frowned. ‘It is a very slight connection, Alexander.’

‘But you will admit it is one?’

‘I admit nothing.’ He had roused himself from his earlier weariness. ‘Go to Melville if you must. The man never forgets a book or who bought it. And I will come with you – that way you are less likely to land yourself in trouble.’

*

All was in darkness. Four hours of the night before daylight would start to send its specks of grey and blue so that a movement sensed a moment before in the dark would become an object, a man seen.

He turned the key, locking the door of the lodge behind him. He had wondered, all these days, why they had never thought to ask about that key. So taken up with other matters, they had simply forgotten it. Thank God. His search of the lodge had revealed nothing – he had looked in to every hiding place, every nook they knew about and those they did not, but what he sought was not there. She must have it in the house. Sim must have brought it there. She could not have looked at it yet, of that he was certain, but how long could he trust, believe, that she would not open the volume, turn the pages and find the name that would lose him all he had, and lead him to the hangman’s rope?

At the other end of the path, the kitchen door was locked, of course. He slipped the chisel from his pocket and wedged its edge between door and jamb. A few moments’ careful work, and he had the thing open, the final splinter startling a rat from the midden and out under the pend gate.

There was no noise, no movement in the kitchen, save his own breathing. He went to a drawer in the kitchen table and found a knife. He lit a candle he found from the embers in the hearth and looked around the room. There was nothing in here that might not be found in any kitchen, nothing save a doctor’s bag, and he had seen enough of those. A door near the bottom of the stairs was partially ajar, and he pushed it a little further open. A figure lay in the bed, breathing steadily. He took a step in and lifted the candle a little. It was Richard Middleton, beside him an empty glass. He
ran his finger around the inside and tasted: some sort of sleeping draught. Good.

He crept back out of the room and set his foot on the stair. The step gave a light creak under his foot. He stopped and listened: nothing. Another step, and then a third, making noise he knew could not be put down to the light wind rustling the branches of trees in the garden. Upstairs there was the sound of someone stirring, and her voice, tremulous at first and then crying out, louder, ‘Richard? Richard, is that you?’

In a second he had his hood up and was bounding up the stairs, three at a time. Casting aside the candle, he crashed through the door at the top and threw himself at the figure just sitting up in the bed. The woman went down with a scream beneath him, and he flung her over on her face, pushing his knee into her back as he bound her wrists behind her with one of her own stockings. Next, as she struggled and squealed beneath him, he pulled the cover from her pillow and shoved it over her head, tying it at her neck. He felt her pass out beneath him, whether from fright or lack of air he did not care. All the while he said not a word. He found the candle again and struck flint to light it. Aside from the bed in the middle of the floor and the prostrate form of the woman in it, the room was practically bare. His eyes swept over what there was to see. On the table by the window a hairbrush, a bottle of rose-water, a looking glass. Not as much as a jewel-box. But he had no time or interest for jewels in any case. He threw open the doors of the wall-press. Bare, save for one simple grey linen dress hanging there. A shawl lay over the back of a chair, a pair of shoes beneath it.

But then he saw the chest. At the other side of the bed, away
from the window. A large oak chest, almost too big to fit through the door, he would have thought. But he had no need of taking it through the door, for what he sought would fit in his pocket. The key was in the lock. She could not know its contents, or she would have taken greater care. He turned the key and opened the lid. Dresses, linens, undergarments, a jewel-box. He flung them aside, sending a locket and rings from the jewel-box skidding across the floor. And there, at the bottom, at last, were the books. A man would have packed them at the top. A man with nothing to hide. He rifled through them – a book of receipts for the preparation of stock, the making of custards, the pickling of fruit and the drying of peas and beans. He tossed it aside in disgust. Something smaller – a woman’s book filled with scrawls on the uses of herbs and the preparation of simples and poultices. That too was discarded in frustration. His hand came to rest on the last thing in the chest, a small, octavo volume. He lifted it carefully, opened the ties on the cover, and there, before he saw the title, his eyes fell upon the name of Robert Sim, and a dedication written in the librarian’s own hand, a commonplace book for his love. His eyes flicked over the notes, the favoured excerpts, the copied verses. It was not here, what he sought, and yet he read on, to the last page.

It is said these words were found amongst the pages of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Bible at his death. My name will not be known, as his is known, I will not be mourned, as he was mourned, but I take comfort in these words, however small and mean my life has been, that my Redeemer shall not treat me differently from him
.

And below, the librarian had copied,

Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.

What he searched for was not here, amongst these lover’s notes. He had tried to take the place of time, to ‘shut up his story’ in another man’s dark and silent grave, but he knew now that that was not his to do: God was raising that other’s shade from its grave, its dust, and it would be silent no more. He picked up the candle and went down the stairs, without bothering to close the door behind him.

TWENTY-ONE
A Visit to the Booksellers

The next morning, after lecturing them for an hour, I set my class to composition in Greek. ‘A eulogy to our founder and Maecenas, the earl Marischal, father of our current patron.’ The class groaned as I would have expected them too. ‘An exemption from dining-hall duties for a day for him whose composition I judge the best.’

This was met with more enthusiasm. ‘But who shall fill their place?’ from one of the perennial strugglers.

‘He whose composition I judge to be the worst,’ I said, before leaving them and going to seek out the principal.

Dr Dun would generally have given me leave to go out in to the town for half an hour without question, but I knew that he was determined I should not re-embark on my researches, and was not surprised that he questioned me closely as to my intentions in town, and how long I expected to be out of the college.