Crucible (36 page)
Authors: S. G. MacLean
Tags: #Fiction, #Crime, #Mystery & Detective, #Historical
‘The boys who signed up with you from the colleges of Edinburgh and St Andrews were not free to do so – they were matriculated students in those places. The parents of the students of Marischal College have placed them in our care. You can have no legitimate business here.’ I plucked the quill pen out of Hugh Gunn’s hand and scored a line through the contract in front of him.
‘Get back to the college, Hugh, take Seorais Mackay with you – I doubt if he is fit to find his way anywhere by himself tonight. You will present yourselves to the principal in the morning, and if there is any repeat of this incident you’ll scarcely have time to pack your bag before he sends you back up to Strathnaver, with nothing more than a flea in your ear and a report of your disgrace to take back to Seorais’s father.’
The boy stood to face me, sullen, his eyes level with my own. ‘Seorais’s father will have me in the wars soon enough anyway, cleaning his son’s boots and paying off his whores. I’ll sign with the lieutenant here and make my own way. You don’t need Latin to wield a pike or raise a musket.’ He bent to put his name to the spoilt paper, but to my surprise, Ormiston stayed his hand.
‘And yet, from the classical authors there is much to be learned about the commanding of armies and the leading of men. Perhaps you should wait a year or two after all – the wars will still be there, I can assure you.’
The boy stared at him a moment in almost furious disbelief, then uttered an oath in Gaelic as he pushed past me. I was tempted to return the compliment. He strode across the room in impotent fury to take his friend roughly by the arm that was not occupied by the serving girl whom Seorais had accosted again as she was setting bowls of a rancid-looking stew down before the two Frenchmen. ‘Come on, before you take a dose of the pox.’
‘Ach, Uisdean.’
Being appealed to by his Gaelic name had no effect on the more sober of the two Highlanders, and, taller and more strongly built, he had the other back up on his feet with another determined haul. ‘Never mind “Uisdean”. Get up that road, and if you vomit this time I’ll leave you where you lie.’
As he was pulled out of the door, Seorais Mackay turned to throw one more jibe at Peter Williamson. ‘You see, Mister Williamson, the Gunns know their place. There is much you could learn from your scholars.’ Another threat from Hugh and he was hauled beyond the doorway and in to the night.
Peter, now white with rage, said, ‘If I find Seorais Mackay in a place like this again, I will sign him up for the Swede myself. There is little wrong with him that a bullet from a Spaniard’s musket would not put right.’
The soldiers at Ormiston’s back moved slightly towards us. This was not the place for that kind of talk. I put a hand on my young colleague’s arm.
‘That’s us finished for tonight, Peter. Get away to your own bed now and get some rest. And for the goodness’ sake, dry yourself off. Here,’ I reached in my pouch and handed him a few pennies. ‘Give that to the porter and he’ll bring you something for your fire – I cannot spend another day listening to those squelching boots.’
Peter took a moment to regain his control, and managed a ‘thank you’ below his breath. He nodded towards the recruiting officer and his men. ‘Will you be alright?’
I looked at Ormiston as I spoke. ‘I doubt I have anything to fear from a law-abiding subject of the king,’ I said.
‘Nothing at all,’ said the lieutenant. ‘I can assure you.’
Peter was unconvinced. ‘Well, mind you don’t sign yourself up – I’m not taking that class of yours as well.’
After he had gone, Ormiston signalled to the two men who lurked about the table, clearly not officers, and they took themselves to the serving hatch where Jessie had a jug of ale and tankards waiting for them. They recommenced their trawl of the inn.
‘So this is your method? You get the men so drunk they don’t know what they’re putting their mark to until it’s too late?’
He motioned for me to sit down. ‘A drunk is of no use to me. I need men of discipline, not a soak who will dance after the last man to set a jug of beer in front of him.’
I laughed. ‘Then I have to tell you, your intelligence has failed you tonight. This is the lowest drinking hole in Aberdeen. You will not find men here whose greatest wish is to defend their distressed brethren overseas against the Papist Habsburgs. There are no men here who dream of dying for the Queen of Bohemia.’ I declined the glass of wine he had pushed towards me. He shrugged and pushed it to the side.
‘I have those men a-plenty. Younger sons of younger sons, bred as gentlemen, bred to adventure, but scarcely a penny or a scrap of land to their name. They serve foreign kings for their standing and their dignity, and to make their name and their fortune. Their faith, their loyalty to the house of Stuart, have been bred into them since their first breath. Those men, and I am one of them, Mr Seaton, are the finest officers in all of Sweden’s armies.’
‘You will not find them in places like this.’
‘No, but I have come here for something else.’ He pointed to a bench to the left of us, where one of his men was in earnest, and it would seem, sympathetic conversation with a gloomy looking cooper. ‘I need foot-soldiers as well as officers. You see that cooper there? He has been twice before the kirk session over a promise to marry his master’s daughter. The girl is no great enticement, it would seem, and her father and the kirk running out of humour with his delaying. But the session will allow him out of his promise, if he will sign with me, to fight the Papists.’
‘I see.’ I knew what he said to be true.
‘And you see that one there?’
‘The man who scratches at his arm?’
‘Scabs, left by manacles. He has been out of the tolbooth three days – a minor offence, but he has lost his employment and the roof over his head. What should he do? Throw himself, able-bodied as he is, upon the charity of the good burgesses of this town? You know how that would end. They will both be aboard my ship before morning.’ He refilled his own glass. ‘I offer a life to those who would run from what they have, or who have nothing at all.’
‘Hugh Gunn is only seventeen years old; his life is hardly behind him.’
‘That is the student we both so offended?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are right, I had not expected to find one like him in here. He is in the other category, a younger son of a younger son, beholden to the good graces of his chieftain. That is why I wanted him rather than his drink-sodden, whore-mongering friend. He will make a fine soldier, a good officer one day.’
I suspected he would be proved right, if the boy could learn to master his temper better. ‘And yet you let him go.’
He sat back and smiled and I realised this was what
he had been waiting for. ‘I did it as a favour to you, Alexander.’
‘You don’t even know me.’
He watched me a long moment. ‘Do not be so certain about what I know. I think there is more to you than your young hot-headed friend there knows, more than the kirk session you would soon sit before as minister knows.’ Some movement at the top of the stair seemed to catch his eye. I looked up but could see nothing in the gloom there. The lieutenant shifted slightly in his seat.
‘My past is old news in this burgh, lieutenant. You will find there is little capital to be made of it that was not long ago made.’
‘Oh, I very much doubt that, Mr Seaton, but it is late already, and I daresay you and I will meet again, and so further our acquaintance. For the meantime, I hope you will rest easy on the matter of Hugh Gunn – I will not be enticing him aboard my ship.’
If he expected my thanks, he was disappointed. I gave him no answer at all, and was glad to get out of the place whose foul air was filling up my throat. The Frenchmen, I noticed, had already abandoned their bowls of inedible stew, and left the place before me.
The inn was on the edges of town, beyond Blackfriars’ where it met the Woolmanhill. It was a fitting nighttime haunt for vagrants, criminals, those who did not want to be seen or found. My own shortest route home would take me past the back of the fleshers’ yard, and I knew that the gutters there would be overflowing after the torrents of recent days. I had no wish to bring the smell of the charnel house with me to where my family slept, so I elected to take a longer route, one that would bring me past the near end of the loch and up by the old public garden that backed on to George Jamesone’s house.
George had fulminated often against the dilapidation of the walls that allowed all sorts of the burgh’s displaced humanity to live out their debauches there in the night, within hearing and sometimes sight of the back windows of his own fine house. The garden where once plays profane and godly, music and dancing, trysts of love and childhood games had had their moments, was now abandoned to tangles of thorns, feral creatures, and those who could find their pleasures in no lawful place. It was not somewhere where any God-fearing person would wish to find themselves alone under cover of darkness. A happy Eden once, turned by the fears and prohibition of our Calvinist kirk into a den of ungovernable vice and iniquity.
I had just passed the rusted gate that led from the overgrown gardens out on to the long vennel to Schoolhill when the sounds of a disturbance came to my ears. They were evidently coming from somewhere in the gardens – muffled shouts and cries and the sound of blows being exchanged. My first thought was of Hugh Gunn and Seorais MacKay – the place was a favoured short-cut for scholars making their way back to the college in the hope of not being seen. I doubted that Peter Williamson, even in his haste to get to the warmth of his bed, would have taken the chance of cutting through here alone. Nevertheless, unsheathing my knife, I doubled back and entered the garden.
I could have wished for a light, for the moon was clouded over and I had to trust to my senses and my memory. Rather than go right out in to the middle of the gardens, I judged it safer to keep to the walls surrounding it until I came upon the old middle path that led to what had once been a stage. Formerly used by mummers and actors in the mystery plays, the amphitheatre was now the favoured haunt of the sturdy beggars and masterless men who roamed this place by night. I strained to listen for any noise that would give me better direction, but the sounds of the scuffle were becoming less frequent, and after two, long, low cries, they ceased completely. All that was to be heard now was the scurrying and rustling of the night-time creatures that made their home here. I should have turned for home then, but I was already regretting allowing Hugh to take Seorais back to the college alone – the boy in the state he had been in would be handful enough for two men, let alone one. And so I pressed on. The further in to the garden I went, the deeper the darkness became, to the point that I knew to continue would be folly. I began to turn, thinking somehow to retrace my steps, when my foot struck the unseen root of a tree and I found myself tilting headlong towards the earth. I put out a hand to stop myself and felt my flesh tear on the thorns of an old rose. Before I could wrestle my way out of it, a figure had launched itself at me from above and pressed me to the ground. I attempted to raise my head as surprisingly strong hands bound my wrists behind my back. My head was instantly thrust back towards the ground and I tasted dirt, then blood, from my own lower lip. My assailant told me in no uncertain terms that another such attempt would cost me an ear. For all the shock and discomfort of the moment, my overriding sensation was of incomprehension, for the voice was one I knew very well.
Table of Contents
Eleven Brothers of the Rosy Cross
Fourteen The Clothworkers’ Page
Seventeen The Talk of the Town
Nineteen Scotsmen, Rats and Lice
Twenty-One A Visit to the Booksellers
Twenty-Two The Labyrinth of the World
Twenty-Five Return to the Library
