The Devil's Recruit (24 page)

‘What is your business here tonight, Mr Seaton?’

I considered telling them I was here to see Isabella, but was not certain that that would be enough to gain me admittance. ‘I have come at the request of Lady Rothiemay.’

The one who had spoken to me nodded, but the other
did not move his weapon. ‘Have you her note with you?’

‘Her Ladyship does not like to commit anything to writing.’ I answered. ‘In the present circumstances.’

The man still looked unsure, but his companion had seen me come and go from the house on several occasions now, and persuaded him to let me past. The young girl who answered the door at their command was unfamiliar to me, and, as soon became evident, the house.

‘I am sorry, Sir – there are so many stairs here, and I only began my duties today. The rest are at the … are busy,’ she said confusedly.

‘If you could just tell me where Mistress Irvine is at the minute, I will find my way there myself.’

She looked greatly relieved. ‘They are all in the Long Gallery.’

I smiled at her. ‘Do you mean the Great Hall?’

‘No, Sir,’ she shook her head, quite clear. ‘The Long Gallery, on the floor above the Great Hall, up this stair.’ She indicated the narrow turnpike, and turned away, vindicated, when I set my foot on them. I had never been up to the Long Gallery before, for all the times I had been in this house. In fact, I was not certain that I had ever heard it mentioned, although at the back of my mind there was something Jamesone had said about painting work he had been unable to do for Lumsden. I had not paid him any great attention at the time. I wondered what purpose Lumsden might have in a Long Gallery, usually the preserve of the castles and strongholds of the powerful of the land,
not of burgesses, however wealthy and influential they might be. I could not imagine a busy merchant such as he was, with all his additional duties on the council and as a baillie of the burgh, would have the leisure to play at bowls or shuttlecock or indulge in the other pleasures for which these places were intended.

The sound of the housemaid’s footsteps returning to the kitchens had long receded, and I was conscious of nothing but silence emanating from the rooms I passed. I was still not convinced that the girl had the thing to rights, and so when I came to the landing between Lumsden’s wife’s parlour and the Great Hall, I knocked upon the doors of both. Getting no reply at either door, I tried them both in turn, but found only deserted rooms lit by ochre light from low-burning fires in the hearths.

Apart from the young girl who had let me in, I had not seen another living soul since I had entered this usually busy house. As I emerged once more from Mistress Lumsden’s parlour onto the west stairway, I thought I could hear some very faint sound emanating from above me. Something in it made me slow my pace, take greater care to make no sound by my own steps, and I went quietly up the remaining stairs towards the Long Gallery like an intruder in fear of discovery. The whole household must have been in the gallery, but there was no sound of clinking glasses or clattering of knives and forks, and instead of companionable chatter or even polite conversation I could hear only one, low voice, and from the one or two words
I caught I could tell the man spoke in Latin. It felt too as if the fog from outside were seeping through walls and under doors, clambering the stairs with me, finding my throat. I wanted to cough at the sickly sweet perfume of it, but a deep foreboding now told me I should not draw attention to myself, and I fought down the urge.

I could see the door now. The murmuring stopped for a moment, to be followed by a scraping noise of chairs being pushed back and a shuffling of feet. Although much of the house that I had travelled through was in darkness, bright light flooded underneath the doorway ahead of me. A heedless determination came over me, and without knocking, I pushed open the door.

Everything in front of me stopped as if I had broken in to some enchantment, some scene from another world. After the murky darkness of the street and the dim light that had attended me through the house itself, I found myself suddenly dazzled by light and colour. The place was ablaze with candles, in sconces on the walls, on window ledges, and in candelabra hanging from bosses in the ceiling, and what that candlelight illuminated took my breath away. The gallery was a field of images. Everything from the ceiling boards to the plaster of the walls told a story, against a sea of sapphire blue, of the life of Christ and of the baillie and of every other person in that room. All around and above me was painted, in panels framed in gold, scenes from the Annunciation to the Ascension; the tale of our Saviour’s suffering, even the sickening sight of the Crucifixion
itself was depicted there in gaudy colour for any who might lift their eyes. Seldom, even in Ireland, had I seen such flagrant, shameless idolatry. Years, decades ago, throughout Scotland, such images had been painted over, torn down, destroyed, burned, and yet here, in the house of one of the foremost men of Aberdeen, their brightness blazed. My mind hardly paused to consider that this room, at the top of a merchant’s house, had somehow been missed, forgotten, hidden even from the iconoclasts who had first heralded the coming of the Reformation of religion to our town over seventy years ago, for the images assailing me were fresh and bright, not in the least worn or faded, in the style, if not the handiwork of Jamesone and his peers. Amongst the images, clearly displayed, were the arms of Baillie Lumsden himself.

Towards the back, the north end of the room, stood the servants of the house, all of them, I suspected, save the new, unknowing maid who had shown me in. In front of them, seated on wooden benches, were some burgesses of the town – a handful of craftsmen, merchants, magistrates, who must spend half their lives in keeping each others’ secrets and who now looked aghast that I too now knew their greatest secret. In front of them, seated upon two rows of high-backed, finely carved oak chairs, were Baillie Lumsden, his wife, Lady Rothiemay, and the woman I had come in search of, Isabella Irvine. The women were all veiled: Lumsden’s wife modestly, Lady Rothiemay magnificently in golden lace, but it was Isabella who, amidst all
the colour, the grandeur and the beauty, drew the eye. The lace mantilla that draped her hair and hung from her shoulders was edged with silver thread so fine that it might have been a spider’s web bedecked with dew drops. The light from the candles glanced off the silver candlesticks and the jewels at the neck of her elder companion to reflect in her own brilliant eyes. The pallor of her face was greater even than it had been in Jamesone’s garden the previous day, and as she turned her startled eyes on me, I did not think I had ever seen a woman look so beautiful.

This was not the time though, for the contemplation of the art of man, nor that of God. Beside Isabella, exquisitely attired in black velvet, was William Ormiston, the shimmering light dancing from his buttons and buckles to the hilt of his sword. He also turned to look at me, and instead of surprise, I saw the makings of a smile on his face. To Lady Rothiemay’s left knelt another man, also richly attired, his form too, I thought, familiar to me. But it could not be, for only five days ago Baillie Lumsden had told me that his young cousin and namesake, my old college friend Matthew, was in France, in the Scots Guard of the French king. He did not wear the uniform of the
Garde Eccosaise
, and yet I knew, as soon as he started to clear his throat, and turned to look at me, that I was not mistaken; it was indeed my old friend Matthew, whom I had not seen in more than six years.

I had no time to process even this revelation, for it was not he, but the two figures at the front who took my eye.
Kneeling at a wooden altar, before a richly robed priest who held the host above his head – for this was a Popish Mass, I had known it from the moment I had stepped through the door – was Archie Hay. He, and the priest, were the only ones in the room who had not turned at my disturbance, though both must have been aware of it. I saw, rather than heard, the priest murmur the words ‘Corpus Christi’, and I watched in horrified disbelief as the blood companion of my boyhood crossed himself and took into his mouth the blasphemous host of the Church of Rome from the hands of the man I had known as Guillaume Charpentier.

The enchantment was broken, and before the priest had finished giving his blessing Ormiston and Matthew Lumsden were on their feet. Archie had at last turned and begun to call my name, but I could not watch any more of it, could not listen, would not hear him. I pushed through the door and out to the corridor, black now after the startling light of Lumsden’s secret chapel, and stumbled my way back down the many stairs of his house and out to the street, ignoring the shouts at my back.

I ran and ran until I thought my lungs would burst, the guards on the door having at last come to their senses and begun to follow me, in the van of at least half-a-dozen men who had spilled from the doors of Baillie Lumsden’s house. Shapes looming towards me out of the fog might have been innocent townsmen or spirits risen from the kirkyard for all I cared; anything that came in my path was barged out of the way regardless of age, sex, or dignity. By the time I had turned into our pend off Flourmill Lane, only one runner still pursued me, and I knew without turning to
look whose was that peculiar, uneven gait. Archie called my name again and again, careless it seemed whether the fog hid him or no, but whatever he might have to say to me, I no longer wished to hear. I carried on to my own door and was through it and had it locked before he could catch up with me.

I stood against the door, my chest heaving and my throat burning. The group I broke in upon looked no less stunned than those I had come upon only ten minutes before: Sarah, in her chair by the fire, Davy asleep in her lap, Zander at the table showing Deirdre how to scratch the letters of her name on his tablet. A small, warm place, little room amongst the pots, pans, ladles, the vegetables that hung from the ceiling, the shelves and cupboards on the walls, for painted images or rich hangings. Such few pieces of Delft or pewter, such cushions or drapes that were of some quality had been hard won and were well cared for by the woman, the unadorned woman, at the centre of this home. Honest, defiant, more than the poverty of her surroundings, and better than I ever deserved.

At the sight of me she stood up and laid Davy gently down in his bed, telling Zander to go upstairs now, and take his sister with him. His thought of protest was banished with a look.

Now home, I found I could not move from the door.

She came over to me, put her arms around me like a mother with her child, and I buried my head in her chest. ‘Alexander!’ she said, dismayed. ‘My darling. What is it?’

I could hardly lift my head to look at her, to speak.

‘All is false,’ I said eventually. ‘Everything. And it always has been.’ I looked at her. ‘You, you are the only thing that has never been false.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘you do not. Thank God, you do not.’

Her eyes betrayed her complete lack of comprehension, but she asked nothing else as she led me over to my chair and bent to take off my boots.

‘You do not need to do that,’ I said.

‘Hush, don’t speak. You are as white as a ghost. Take a minute here to calm yourself. I will fetch you some brandy.’

Once I had swallowed the drink and she had warned the children to stay upstairs, she knelt before me and took my hands. ‘Now tell me what’s wrong.’

‘Archie,’ I said.

‘Archie?’ She drew back, alarmed. ‘What has happened to him?’

‘Nothing. Nothing has
happened
to him. He has turned Papist.’

‘Papist? When? Did he tell you this?’

‘No, he did not tell me: I saw. I saw the lie of his life, the latest lie, and I do not know how many others he has told me.’

Just then came a gentle knock on the door.

Sarah started to rise, but I caught her arm. ‘Don’t answer it.’

She ignored me and went to the window. ‘It’s him, with another man I cannot see properly.’

‘Don’t let them in,’ I said.

‘Alexander, for all that has happened, he is your friend.’

‘I don’t know who he is.’

She stared at me a moment and then began to lift the latch on the door.

‘Sarah! I forbid you …’ I started to rise from my chair but it was too late. The door was open and she was stepping back to give access to Archie. Behind him in the doorway, stood Matthew Lumsden. Archie said nothing; it was Matthew who spoke.

‘Can I come in, Alexander?’

I looked at that other friend of my abandoned youth, the one who had never pretended to be other than what he was, though it got him into trouble time and time again.

‘You are always welcome in my house, Matthew. You know that.’

‘And I?’ said Archie, watching me.

I looked at him for a long time. ‘I do not know who I welcome into my house when I open the door to Sergeant Nimmo,’ I replied.

‘Will you at least let me tell you?’ he asked.

‘I have no interest in hearing further lies.’

‘There will be none.’

Sarah had quietly shut the door behind them. ‘Listen to what he has to say, Alexander. There can be nothing lost from that now.’ She came over and kissed me on the forehead
before making for the stairs. As she put her foot on the bottom step, Archie caught her hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

She looked at him directly, honestly. ‘I did it for him, not for you.’

When she was gone, Archie sat in her chair opposite me, and Matthew drew up a stool from the table.

I could not help but smile at him. ‘I thought you were in France, serving the Marquis in the French king’s
Garde
,’ I said.

‘Oh, I was intended for that service, and indeed, had fully made up my mind to take it up, but on my journey towards Paris I found much conviviality amongst our fellow Scots at their college in Douai, and fell in with other very genial fellows who were on their way to the Scots College in Madrid.’

‘You fell in amongst the Jesuits,’ I said.