The Devil's Recruit (31 page)

She sat up now, pulling the rug round her for warmth.

‘What’s wrong, Alexander?’

‘I need you to listen to me. I need you to know that I love you. That every day since that day on the road to Sandend I have regretted walking away from you. I love you and I have never stopped loving you.’

‘Nor I you,’ she said. She tilted her face towards me and I bent and kissed her lips, gently, softly, before drawing back in some sort of shock at myself.

‘And does this end it?’ she said.

My breathing came hard and my hands were shaking. ‘I cannot, Katharine. Do not ask me to end it again.’ I bent my face to hers again, and this time I did not draw away.

‘Wake up, Alexander. For God’s sake, wake up.’

It was Isabella Irvine who was shaking me by the shoulders and shouting urgently in my face. I turned slightly but there was no sign of Katharine on the couch behind me. Isabella was thrusting my boots and clothing towards me.

‘Katharine?’

‘Katharine is not here. She is gone. They are all gone.’

I sat up, mindless of my bare chest and shoulders.

‘What? What are you talking about? Who is gone?’

‘Lady Rothiemay, Katharine and Archie.’

I shook my head, as if some sense would be let loose in it. ‘Her Ladyship has gone to Rothiemay – she does not want you to share in her troubles, Isabella. You are to go to your aunt’s at Straloch.’

‘But …’

‘She knew you would be full of “buts”. Allow her this autonomy at least, and do some good to yourself. But Katharine?’ I looked behind me uselessly again, looked around the large, cold room. ‘She will be in her chamber,
surely. She will have gone to her son.’

‘No,’ said Isabella, beseeching, frustrated. ‘She’s taken him with her. She has gone with Archie.’

‘But where to?’

‘Oh God, Alexander. How much of a fool
are
you? She rides home to her husband’s tower house, and Archie to Aberdeen. He’s going for the ship. They’re leaving.’

‘With the recruits?’

‘Yes, with the recruits. Why do you think he has taken a two-hour start on you? They told me at the stables – they were gone by five this morning.’

I could not believe it. She must have left very soon after I had fallen asleep. I pulled off the rug and Isabella hastily turned away as I began to throw on my clothes. ‘I may still catch them. The child will surely slow them down, and it may take him some time to get out to the ship from the quayside.’

I noticed that Isabella was weeping, the first time I had ever seen her do so. She must have realised now that Ormiston was lost to her. I reached out a hand and gently lifted her chin. ‘I may be in time. I may stop them before they do anything that cannot be undone.’

A husky voice came from the doorway. ‘You will not stop them.’ It was old Lord Hay, ashen-faced, broken, all the light of last night gone from him. ‘Archie told me he would take precautions – a surety for your silence. I am sorry, Alexander. I am truly sorry.’

*

Lord Hay’s own old horse was too aged now for the ride that I had to undertake, but he gave me the next best mount in the stables. ‘I love my son, but it were better that he had never come here. The boy I bade farewell to fourteen years ago would never have countenanced what Archie plans to do today. Make haste, Alexander – I would not have him bereave other fathers for a lie.’

The stable master had the horse ready for me in minutes, and I rode from Delgatie without once looking back. I rode like the Devil. My oldest friend had played me for a fool and I did not know what he had told me in the last week had been truth and what a lie. I knew there was one truth in all that he had spoken, the one he had told me at the first that I had refused, utterly, to believe: the Archie Hay I had known and loved all my life had died twelve years ago on the field of Stadtlohn, and the one who walked in his place was hardly worthy to bear his name. Of Katharine, I could not bear to think.

The morning was grey and windy, but clear of fog, thank God, and the ground firm underfoot. By Fyvie they were telling me that Katharine Hay and her son had ridden past twenty minutes after a lone horseman who had driven his mount on as if his life depended on it. By Oldmeldrum the gap was nearer an hour, and I came upon her myself outside Newmachar. I reined in my horse, only for a moment.

‘You knew.’

It was clear that she had not expected me to follow so soon. ‘I did not seek you out, Alexander.’

‘He put you up to it.’

‘No.’ She looked anxiously at her son and back to me, lowering her voice. ‘It was you who came to me.’

‘But he told you what he planned and you did not warn me.’

Her face paled then became defiant. ‘They will send him back, once they have got clear. Why would I have told you? What difference would it make?’

I dug my spurs into Lord Hay’s horse, calling over my shoulder to her as I did so. ‘All the difference. All the difference in the world, Katharine.’

‘But why?’ she cried after me. ‘The boy is not yours. Everyone knows he is not yours.’

I did not look at her, did not turn to see her face or hear what other words she might have to say. At that moment, I knew I never wanted to set eyes on Katharine Hay again.

I must have covered the miles to Old Aberdeen more quickly than I had ever done before, but it seemed to me that the road would go on for ever, and that I would never come within sight of the Cathedral of St Machar, rising high above the old town. At last though, when it seemed that the poor beast under me could have little left in him, the twin spires of the church came within my view, and I was crossing the Brig o’ Balgownie.

The watchmen on the Bishop’s gate told me that yes, a horseman calling himself Sergeant Nimmo, from the recruiting ship moored off Torry, had come by nearly two hours ago, riding hard. At each port on my way down to
the new town I was told the same thing, and my heart sank further with every telling of it.

Once through the Calsey Port into the New Town, I headed down the Gallowgate, but instead of continuing on to the harbour, I urged my beast towards my own house. There was little traffic on Upperkirkgate, at this time on a winter’s day, and I was soon dismounting in Flourmill Lane. I ran to the door of my house, and although I found it locked, I banged hard for a moment all the same, cursing myself for losing time I did not have. The sky was darkening and the shutters above me rattled in the rising wind. I left the exhausted horse where it stood and ran on foot to William’s house. I met my friend on the path on the way back to his chambers after taking his dinner at home.

‘Alexander … you were not expected back yet. Had you any luck finding Seoras?’

‘Seoras?’ I had forgotten the pretext for my absence from the town and had no idea what he was talking about. I did not slacken my pace but ran past him. ‘Where is Sarah? Is she here?’

‘Yes, of course, but …’

I could not stop to hear him and barged through the door of the kitchen, with William now in my wake.

Sarah was there, with William’s wife Elizabeth. They looked up from their work, surprised by my sudden entrance. ‘Alexander …’

‘Where are the children?’

‘Deirdre is in the henhouse, looking for eggs. Davy is
sleeping.’ Sarah indicated my youngest child curled up in a corner with William’s dog. ‘Alexander, what is it?’

‘And what about the boys?’ I said to Elizabeth.

‘James is back at the school – they finished their dinner an hour ago …’ Her voice trailed off and she glanced, a little frightened, at Sarah.

My heart went cold. ‘Sarah, where is Zander? Is he at the school?’

Her face paled and she shook her head slowly. ‘No. No he is not.’

I gripped her by the shoulders, so hard it must have hurt her. ‘Where is he?’

‘Arch …’ She glanced at Elizabeth and back to me. ‘Sergeant Nimmo. He sent word just when they came home for their dinner, for Zander to meet him and go out and see the ship. I thought there could be no harm.’ Her eyes were filling with panic now. ‘Alexander, what is it? Alexander, tell me. Where has he taken him? Where has Archie taken him?’

I ran out of the house with William close behind me. The kitchen door banged shut behind us – the wind was working itself up to a gale. William was shouting at me, but I had not the time to turn round, until I felt his hand heavy on my shoulder, bringing me to a halt.

‘I have no time …’

‘What is going on, Alexander? Why would Sarah let Zander on to the recruiting ship, and what did she mean about Archie?’

‘He is back, William.’

‘Archie? He cannot be. Alex—’

‘He is back. He is Sergeant Nimmo, and he has my son.’

I tore myself from William’s grip and began to run once more. There was no time now to go to the Castlegate and summon up the magistrates. Every moment would be a moment lost. I ran down Ragg’s Lane to the Broadgate, pushing cursing and bemused townsfolk out of my way. Two of Lord Reay’s men, engaged in buying supplies of some sort at the market on the Castlegate, gave off what they were doing and joined, fleet-footed, in the chase.

It cannot have taken much more than five minutes to get from William’s backland to Shiprow and the top of Shore Brae, from where I could get a good view of the harbour and the troop ship anchored further out in the river mouth beyond. Relief flooded through me at the sight of it there. The waves were choppy enough off Torry already and the sky was turning from a deep grey to almost black. A storm was coming from the north, as if all Lord Reay’s grief and rage had taken hold of the skies and were hurling the worst that they had against the town of Aberdeen. I knew that no ship’s captain, supposing a dozen lieutenants should hold their pistols to his head, would take his vessel out into the open sea in such weather.

William came up behind me and saw too what I did. He put an arm on my shoulder and leant on me to get his breath back. ‘Thank God. He’ll be safe on the ship till the
storm passes, and by then we’ll have boats on both sides ready to go out and stop them getting out to sea. Get you down to the harbour master, and I’ll go and warn the sheriff. I’ll have messengers sent round by the Brig O’ Dee to Torry that they might prepare themselves. All will be well with the boy, Alexander. And then,’ he said, before he turned towards the tolbooth and the Castlegate where town’s officers and messengers would be found, ‘you will tell me all you have not told me these last few days, and I will decide if I will ever speak to you again.’

‘It has been a madness,’ I said, never taking my eyes from the ship, ‘but it is one that will never be repeated.’

William nodded to me, and I could see the hurt and the uncertainty still in his face, but he asked no more and set off at pace for the Castlegate.

And so I watched the ship where the man I had thought my closest friend had taken my nine-year-old son. For whatever Katharine Hay might say or believe, Zander was my son, and he was more to me than all the Hays and all I had once felt for them ever could be. The knowledge of what I had risked for the sake of an old fantasy, a vision of myself long gone, made me sick now to the stomach, and I bent over, retching. I put out a hand to support myself against a wall and was still standing like that when Sarah and Elizabeth appeared behind me.

Sarah’s face was flooded with tears, and Elizabeth’s a mixture of anger and confusion.

‘What in God’s name is going on, Alexander? Where is
Zander, and who is this Sergeant Nimmo you have let have him?’

I opened my mouth to begin answering her, but a huge crash from the quayside took my attention – a stack of pallets had been blown over and had clattered into barrels of salt herring awaiting loading onto a ship bound for the north of Spain. As I looked on in horror, I saw that the ship would never see Biscay, for a terrific gust of wind had sent it veering sideways, and its mainmast had caught the top of that of a ketch berthed alongside it. A splintering sound was followed by a dreadful creak as one mast tipped over into the water and the other came smashing down on the quayside, narrowly missing the dockworkers who had been struggling to salvage more cargo waiting there.

The sea was angry now, even in the river mouth, and the recruiting ship rocked dangerously on the waves. Sarah was gripping my arm. ‘He will be terrified, Alexander.’

‘I know.’ I could hardly speak, hardly breathe. The storm had rampaged furiously from the open sea down into the Dee and was hurling everything in it around with undisguised contempt. Smaller vessels crashed in to the quayside and splintered there like flimsy crates. Before our very eyes, a ship’s mate who had jumped from his vessel, a three-masted barque loaded with timber from Norway, was swept into the sea by a wave twenty feet high.

Sarah was howling in the wind, shouting at me. ‘Do something, Alexander, for the love of God, bring him back!’

All round us, people were running, up from the shore
or down to it – to rescue their goods, find husbands, sons, seek shelter from the violence of the storm as it flung slates from roofs and rolled stacked timbers like marbles down the brae. Elizabeth had gone running to get William – to what end I suspect even she did not know. The wind had lashed Sarah’s hair across her face. I pulled it back so I could look into her eyes, so that she could see into mine. ‘I will. I promise you. I will get him back. I will make it up to you – all of it.’ She looked at me, uncomprehending, then her gaze went across my shoulder and a scream of horror issued from her throat. I whipped round in time to see Ormiston’s ship break its moorings, the anchor cable snap against the irresistible current and the ship begin to toss on the sea like the discarded toy of a wilful child.

The wind had careered around and was taking the boat from the south-east now, driving it away from its Torry mooring towards the inch in the river mouth. It would go aground, surely. But a desperate effort, some madman’s gamble, had raised a sail in a doomed attempt to harness the wind. The gust that followed almost lifted the five-hundred-ton vessel from the waves. It rocked violently from side to side, but by some miracle of God or man was carried past the inch and towards our shore. I realised now that Sarah had left me, and was running down the brae, shouting Zander’s name. William, with some other men too, appeared at my shoulder. ‘It’s going to smash against the bulwark. They will all be drowned. We’re going to get the ferry boats out.’ It was insanity, and we both knew it, but
there was no other chance. I was already running down the brae, after my wife. I had looked in her eyes and seen, if I could ever have doubted it, that there was nothing she would not do to save her son.