The Devil's Recruit (30 page)

I thought to lie there until Archie came in, but it was many months since I had been on such a long ride and the generous dispensations from Lord Hay’s cellar had rendered me sleepy when I should have been awake all night. I must have slept, I could not tell for how long, but I woke, cold, with the fire burned down low and a crick in my neck. Archie had still not come in. I was loath to raise myself from the bed despite the chill air, but persuaded myself eventually to get up and put more coals on the fire, then get myself, fully dressed, beneath the covers.

This time, I could not sleep. I tried to picture Sarah, at home with our children in that small house. ‘What should have been mine,’ Katharine had said, but I could never have asked Katharine Hay to live the life Sarah had lived. And yet here, now, I felt I was in my own place, somewhere more home to me than even that manse that waited for us on the Gallowgate. It was as if the ten years had never been, as if Archie had never been away, as if all were yet possible. And she was only a few feet away from me, through walls, up stairs I had walked before. My prayer now was not to God but to myself, the one word uttered in desperation, in warning: ‘No.’

It was useless, and so I got up and went to sit by the fire, in my hand a volume of Tacitus that might have been a laundry list for all the sense I could make of it with a mind that was engaged elsewhere.

At last I heard footsteps on the stairs and coming towards the door, but I knew they were not Archie’s, limp or no, for he could never walk so light. I stood up, my back to
the fire, and waited. But God showed me His answer, for it was not Katharine.

Isabella Irvine almost stepped back in to the darkness when she saw me.

‘Archie is not here,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry he has missed your rendezvous.’

‘There is no rendezvous.’

‘Oh? Poor Archie; changed days for him that he cannot tempt a woman who gives her attentions as easily to a Scottish lieutenant as she does to a Jesuit priest.’

Another woman might have been offended, disconcerted by such a greeting, but it seemed nothing I said truly touched Isabella Irvine. ‘That is cheap, Mr Seaton, and I am not. I understand that you and I will never be friends, but you should know that I have never spoken a word of you that is not true, and all my dislike of you is because of what you did to Katharine.’

I put the book down on the floor and rubbed my hand over my eyes. ‘I know that, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way, although you know there’s cause for what I said. Will you sit? Archie will surely be here before long, and I should go down to the kitchens.’

She came over to take the other seat by the fire, and I saw for the first time how truly tired she was. Her eyes were reddened through lack of sleep, the candlelight capturing the dark circles beneath them.

‘Please don’t go,’ she said. ‘You are as well here as not. Better, perhaps. He might listen to you.’

‘Archie?’

‘Yes.’

I laughed. ‘Archie listens to no one.’

‘Then he is lost and so is William.’

‘Ormiston?’

She nodded.

‘Why did you and he pretend not to know each other?’

She took a moment to work out the words. ‘Because I knew Lady Rothiemay did not like him, and also I feared that too close an association with me, and therefore her, might cast doubts on his faith and his loyalty.’

‘Doubts which would have been proved justified.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said.

‘How long have you known him?’ I asked.

She smiled. ‘A month, less maybe. I met him in Edinburgh while he was recruiting there. I was staying with my cousin on my way back from visiting Katharine in the borders, and I met him at a dinner in the home of my cousin’s friend.’

‘And the good lieutenant dazzled you with his fine manners, I suppose?’

She looked at me directly, the old look that did not mind what it said to me. ‘There’s nothing wrong with good manners, Mr Seaton, and it’s a pity more men did not have them.’

I could not help but smile at my adversary. ‘And yet Lady Rothiemay is not so particular?’

‘I am fonder of her than I was of my own mother, but
her Ladyship has not always been the best judge of persons, or causes.’

‘You stand by her though.’

‘I would not see her alone.’

I was learning that there was much more to this woman than I had ever allowed there could be. Perhaps I should have realised it before now. ‘Why does Lady Katharine not like the lieutenant?’

‘She did not trust him from the start. She knew he dissembled about something.’

‘And she was right,’ I said. ‘You know, don’t you, that he and Archie plan to take that ship full of recruits and hand them over to fight for Spain?’

She looked down at her hands. ‘I did not believe it, until tonight. Even when Christiane came to me. I thought she must have misunderstood – I tried to explain to her that being of the Catholic faith was not the same thing as being a supporter of Spain or the Empire in this war, that many of our religion had died in the cause of Elizabeth Stuart, of the Palatinate … but I could see she was not convinced, and I thought Guillaume would be able to explain it to her better.’ Tears were splashing now on to the hands she was wringing in her lap. ‘You must believe me, I had no idea she had the thing aright and it was I who was wrong. I had no idea that they were indeed planning to take these recruits to fight in the Habsburg cause. If I had known the truth, I would never have told Guillaume, I would never have given his note for her to …’ The colour drained from her face. ‘Oh, God.’

I leant towards her. ‘Who, Isabella? Who did you give the note to?’

Her lips scarcely moved. The words were only just audible. ‘Matthew,’ she said, bleakly. ‘I gave it to Matthew Lumsden.’

The shock went through my whole body. Matthew whom I had permitted every indulgence for the sake of my memories. And in his stead I had accused Archie. Archie had told me, had shown me, how the war had changed him; I had never once stopped to consider that it might also have changed Matthew. Matthew, who had never been near the
Garde Eccosaise
, but who these last two weeks had hidden in his uncle’s house and, overheard by poor Christiane Rolland, had intrigued with Ormiston in a treason that if known would have cost them both their necks – and the discovery of which had cost Christiane Rolland hers.

I remembered our last embrace and knew Matthew had played me for a fool. ‘He has gone with the priest, hasn’t he?’

Isabella nodded.

Gone with my blessing and my twelve hours’ grace, to be absolved by Guillaume Charpentier who without Matthew would be lost in our country. I thought of the times we had shared, Matthew and I, over the years, all the allowances I had made for the love of him, and I felt the wreckage of my memories tumble through my fingers.

I looked at the woman opposite me. ‘And you support their cause? How can you stomach it?’

‘No, no,’ she said desperately, ‘you are wrong.’

I could not believe what she was saying. ‘Dear God, Isabella, you truly think me a fool: I saw you at the Mass in Baillie Lumsden’s chapel. I
know
you for a Papist.’

‘I am faithful to the Church of Rome, but I could never countenance murder in its name. And Christiane … But as for wars and causes, I do not care for them one way or another. There is enough death, here, daily, over nothings and wrongs that will never be righted. But if Archie and William are found out to be conspiring against the king, they will hang.’

‘And you have come here to ask me to let them slip away, with those boys on board, to their unwilling deaths?’

She smiled at me. ‘I have known of you for more years than you have of me, Mr Seaton. Katharine forced me to listen to tales of your many virtues long before she ever even took your eye. I know that nothing I could say could persuade you to bend from your purpose. It was Archie I came to plead with.’

‘Would your lieutenant not listen to you? Is he so enamoured of the Habsburg cause?’

‘You make light of it, and of him – for his clothing, his manner – but he has suffered much in these wars. As much as Archie.’

‘How can you say that? There is but one thin scar on Ormiston’s face.’

‘And you think all scars can be seen? That all scars are of the body?’ Her eyes travelled to my forehead, and then
my neck. ‘Are those the only wounds you carry? I think there are others. I watched you tonight, in the dining hall, when you saw Katharine. Do not try to tell me you do not still love her.’

‘I – that has nothing to do with Lieutenant Ormiston.’

‘Does it not? Perhaps you should not condemn what you do not know. William lost a brother at Stralsund seven years ago. They had travelled to the wars together, fought together, he says they should have died together. He carries his loss every day, his scarred heart.’

‘I know of his loss, and believe me, I’m sorry for it.’

She shook her head. ‘You only think you know. You think he was killed in battle, don’t you?’

‘I …’ I shrugged. ‘Wasn’t he?’

Her voice was low. ‘He was hanged by his own comrades, on the orders of his commander.’

‘What?’

‘He and two Danish soldiers. Hanged, at Stralsund, in punishment and expiation of their crimes.’

I thought of Jean St Clair, Johnny Sinclair, his final challenge to Ormiston: ‘Will I tell you of your brother?’

‘Was he a deserter?’

She shook her head. ‘He had had the boldness, after four days of sleeping in the street of the town they were daily risking their lives to defend, to go with some other young soldiers to the home of the burgermeister and demand that they be given suitable billets. For this “mutiny”, the Danish military governor, whose blame the lack of proper quartering
was, had them court-martialled. They were found guilty, and Governor Holck decided that three of the men should be hanged as an example to their comrades. They were forced to draw lots, pieces of paper out of a hat. All but three of the papers had a blanket drawn out on them. A grim joke: those with the blankets on their paper would sleep sound and warm that night.’

‘And the others?’ I asked, my mouth dry.

‘Gallows.’ Her eyes became hard. ‘Lots, Alexander, to see whether they should live or die. William had to watch as his brother pulled out his ticket. He had to watch as his brother, whom he loved, was hanged in the square of that foreign town. All for asking for a roof over his head from the people who had called them there in the first place.’

I felt sickened. ‘But could the Scottish commanders do nothing?’

She looked into what remained of the fire. ‘The Danish officer had superiority. Had Lord MacKay been there, he would not have allowed it, but he arrived from Scotland too late. Duncan Ormiston was eighteen years old, and William has never got over it.’

‘He told you all this?’

‘Not him, Archie. He was trying to warn me, I think, that I should not set my hopes on William ever settling and coming home until this war is over, for it is a thing very personal to him, and his wounds will not heal until he has avenged his brother’s death.’

I could see a sadness in her that, for all the antagonism
between us, I would not have had her subject to. ‘And yet the lieutenant has courted you, and his feelings for you are real – I have seen it myself. On the night of his ship-board dinner, his disappointment at your absence was very genuine.’

‘I know it,’ she said. ‘And I think I might, in time, pull him back from this course of life that is bent only on vengeance and destruction. I think I might persuade him to make his future with me. But that future will never be if he is hanged on the Heading Hill of Aberdeen for treason.’

‘No, I see that.’ Her honesty had brought me to a decision. ‘If they let the recruits go, I will tell no one what I know, Isabella.’

She got up. ‘Thank you. And I will keep your secrets also, Mr Seaton.’

After she had gone, I sat a while in the chair and thought about what she had told me. Ormiston’s shooting of Jean St Clair at the mention of his brother’s name made some sense to me now, but I did not think that would be enough to give him peace. The clock on the mantelpiece sounded three o’clock, and I could not think that Archie and his father could still be up talking in the Great Hall. I wanted to talk to him before taking a few more hours sleep, and so I left his room and went to look for him.

All was silent in the castle, and only a few candles remained lit, to lend their dim light to stairways and corridors. I made my way quietly back to the Great Hall, but the guards were gone from the doors, and on pushing them
open I found the place empty and in darkness, save for the last red glow of the coals in the hearth. I was about to go out again when I heard a slight stirring from beneath the south window. I moved closer, and saw that a figure slept there on a couch. It was Katharine, wrapped in a rug. Her breathing was soft and regular, and I knew that if I made my way quietly from the hall and back to Archie’s room, she would never know I had been there.

That is what I should have done. Perhaps, in the light of day, with a clear head after a good night’s sleep, it is what I would have done. But it wanted four hours or more until the break of day, and I had slept but very little. In sleep, she looked almost like a child again. She was the girl I had known all my life, the girl I had fallen in love with, without any hope of release, at the age of seventeen. I walked to the doors of the Great Hall and closed them. A basket of coals had been set by the fire and I carefully placed a few on the glowing embers, raking them gently to stir them back to life. I went over to Katharine’s couch and knelt down by it. I lifted my hand to touch her cheek, stopped myself, withdrew it. I cursed my weakness, told myself to get up, to walk away, but then she moved a little in her sleep and the rug began to slip from her shoulders. I bent again to shift it, and felt the warmth of her breath on my cheek. She was so close, and in that moment, my everything.

‘Katharine,’ I said. ‘Katharine, wake up.’

She moved a little again, opened her eyes, squinting, confused, in the candlelight. ‘Alexander?’

‘Katharine. Listen to me.’