The Fanatic (32 page)

‘Nane like his, sir.’

‘That’ll be why ye mind it so well?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘And did the panel say nothing else about this violent act that he boasted of to ye?’

‘No, sir.’

‘How can ye be sure that this conversation occurred two days before Maister Mitchel was examined by the Council?’

Vanse shrugged. ‘Weill, twa days, or a day afore. Nae mair than that.’

‘Oh. So ye’re not absolutely certain of the day?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Might it have been a day, or two days
after
he was examined by the Council?’

Vanse frowned. ‘I dinna mind.’

Lockhart looked puzzled. ‘A thing that is bothering me, ye see, is that, Maister Mitchel being of a particular persuasion, a particular party, what some folk call a fanatical persuasion, ye’d expect him to justify the deed in some way. Refer to a text in the Bible, or the duty of a covenanted Christian people or some such. But ye dinna mind him justifying his actions at all?’

‘No, sir.’

‘He told ye exactly what he did on that day when the Archbishop was fired upon, his exact movements, every particular of this criminal act, and yet he did not choose to explain why he had committed it?’

‘No, sir.’

‘It seems a strange omission from such a man,’ Lockhart said. ‘Such a man would not regard the act
as
a crime, so ye’d think he’d be at pains to explain himself. But, as I said, your memory is excellent. It must have been an oversight on his part.’

Lockhart seemed finished, but turned as he was walking back to his seat, and added, ‘Except of course that ye canna mind whether this confession made to ye by Maister Mitchel was made before or after he was examined by the Council. I’m done, my lords.’

Lockhart sat down, having raised at least a doubt as to the accuracy of Vanse’s story. But John Lauder observed that Mackenzie did not seem unduly concerned. When the next
witness, Vanse’s son John, was called, it became clear why.

‘John, ye are reckoned a good man, a kindly man,’ Mackenzie said. ‘Ye take a care over the unhappy persons that ye are responsible for. Did ye have friendly dealings with the panel, Maister Mitchel, when he was kept in the Tolbooth four year syne?’

‘Aye, my lord. We’d hae a conversation noo and again.’

‘And did ye discuss with him this matter of the shooting at the Archbishop?’

‘Aye, my lord.’

‘And did he acknowledge the deed to ye?’

‘Aye, my lord.’

‘And did he ever justify this deed?’

John Vanse looked over to the panel, but Mitchel studiously avoided his eye. Lauder watched them avidly. He thought of what Mitchel had told him on the Bass. Had Vanse ever connected the prisoner of 1674 with the man who had come to visit Major Weir four years before that, claiming to be his son? If he had, or if he did now, would that make him more or less likely to hurt Mitchel? Or would it make no difference at all?

‘Did he ever justify this deed to ye?’ Mackenzie repeated.

Vanse was staring at Mitchel, as if a clock or some such mechanism were clicking and whirring in his brain. Then he spoke.

‘I mind yince, we spak aboot evil, whit evil was, whether it was frae man or frae Satan. I’d kent aw kinds o men that had come through the Tolbooth, and it wasna clear tae me wi some o them where their badness cam frae. I mind I asked him how he could kill a man in cauld bluid. I mean, a man that hadna done him ill. I asked him how ony man could be pairty tae sae wickit an act.’

‘And what was his reply?’

Vanse hesitated, looked again at Mitchel.

‘He said it wasna in cauld bluid. He said the bluid o the saints was reekin at the cross o Edinburgh.’

The crowd stirred. And that, thought John Lauder, is Mackenzie’s retort to Lockhart. There was Mitchel’s motive, and the language Vanse said he had used was like red meat to a hungry jury. The officers and gentlemen on that jury seized it:
let a man like Mitchel away, they would be thinking, and they would be next on his list of targets. But elsewhere in the court, except where the gentry sat, there was grumbling and hissing. The popular element applauded Mitchel’s rhetoric. They saw the effect it had on their social superiors. They saw a glimmer of fear. But Lauder knew that, in the jurors’ eyes, it had hurt Mitchel badly.

Mackenzie pressed on. He worked on the horror of the deed, playing it up for the benefit of the jurors. He called three surgeons one after another, to describe the damage inflicted on the Bishop of Orkney. Dr Irvin testified that he saw a ball fall from the bishop’s sleeve, so that he knew the wound had been caused by a shot: the bones were fractured, and the arm was permanently weakened, but they managed to cure him so that at least he could raise his hand towards his head. The Bishop had told him that he had been hit as he laid his hand on the door of the coach. Dr Jossie explained that the wound had been between the wrist and the elbow, and that several small bones had been smashed by the shot. Dr Borthwick agreed with Dr Jossie in every respect.

The Crown’s case rested. It was now Lockhart’s turn. He called as a witness John, the Earl of Rothes, Lord High Chancellor of Scotland.

‘My lords,’ Lockhart said, addressing the bench, ‘I would not want ye to think there is any insolence intended in the calling of this or other witnesses. But we must discover the truth of the matter of this confession. Was it made freely and without an assurance of life, or was it no? Only these noble and honourable lords know the answer, and it is for this reason that we have called them.’

Rothes, enormous and red of face, glared at Lockhart as if he would like to eat him.

Primrose nodded affably and his robed arm made a sweeping gesture around the court. ‘This is the nub of the matter,’ he said. ‘I cannot think for what other reason all the world is in attendance. It is fair to say, I believe, that many think there has been a promise of life given to the panel. Many have heard that there was even an Act of Council made about it. So, we must establish whether or not this is the case. Proceed, sir.’

John Lauder saw the glint in Primrose’s narrow eyes. The Justice General disliked Rothes, he loathed Sharp, and he blamed Lauderdale, or at least his wife, for his removal from the office of Lord Register. He would happily see them perjure themselves. By making his remarks, he had effectively dared them to do so. But if they did, if they flatly denied that Mitchel had been promised his life, it would be Mitchel’s word against theirs. How could that save him?

Primrose had been Lord Register in 1674, Lauder thought. He had been responsible not only for deeds of property, but also for all the important documents of state. He must have seen all the records of the Privy Council. He must know whether or not a document promising Mitchel’s life existed. But no such document had been entered as a production in the trial. Had it been destroyed? Lauder remembered his cousin’s words about a secret weapon:
It was pit intae oor hauns last nicht.
And he understood that they had something in writing, and that it had come from Primrose.

Lockhart showed Rothes the confession. Rothes acknowledged that he recognised it, and his own and Mitchel’s signatures upon it. He had heard Mitchel make the confession, and he had seen him sign it.

‘Did your lordship not take Maister Mitchel aside, and offer him his life, in return for this confession?’

‘I did not.’

‘Did ye not promise to secure his life, upon your own life, honour and reputation?’

I did not.’

‘But surely Maister Mitchel sought such an assurance from ye, before he would subscribe his name?’

‘He did not.’

‘And your lordship does not remember any warrant or Act of the Council to that effect?’

‘No.’

‘So if it were possible to produce such a warrant or Act, how would ye explain its existence?’

‘I couldna explain it. I dinna comprehend whit ye’re driving at.’

‘Ye would say that such a paper does not exist?’

‘Aye. But –’

‘Aye, my lord?’

‘But – but if there be ony such paper – weill, all I mean to say is, if there be ony such expression of a promise, I can only think that it must have been inserted by mistake.’

Rothes was now puce. Lockhart had backed him into a corner and at the last minute Rothes had perceived that there might be a trap, and that he had better, however clumsily, leave himself a way out. Lockhart seemed very pleased. He declined to question him further, and Rothes, barely able to contain his rage, stormed from the witness stand.

Charles Maitland of Haltoun was next. As a witness he had not been allowed in the court when Rothes was giving evidence, but his nature alone made him more circumspect than the blustery Chancellor. He had been present when Maister Mitchel made that confession, he said. He had heard him make it verbally and then had seen him sign it. When Lockhart pressed him as to whether the panel had been promised his life in return, Haltoun answered very carefully:
he
had not heard Mitchel seek, nor had he heard any other person give him, such an assurance.

‘My lord,’ said Lockhart, ‘that is not what I asked. Was Maister Mitchel promised his life if he confessed?’

Haltoun stared icily at the advocate. ‘
I
,’ he repeated, ‘did not
hear
any person give him such an assurance.’

Lockhart let him go. The courtroom stirred again. Now came the big guns. The Duke of Lauderdale was summoned to the stand.

He was a great, ugly beast of a man, with a full set of chins and a look of dissipated exhaustion on his face. He had been riding the horse of political power for seventeen years, and it showed. When he spoke, his tongue, which was too big for his mouth, slapped around, half-in and half-out of it, like a lump of liver, spraying the air with slavers. Nevertheless, his heavy, richly decorated clothes, massive dark wig, fat ringed fingers and imperious sneer, all gave the impression of a man of immense authority, whose involvement in such a trifling affair was altogether beneath him.

He had not been present, he explained, when the confession was first made, but only when Mitchel was brought before the
Council subsequently, when he had acknowledged it to be his own and had renewed it.

‘And this was done on the promise of his life?’ Lockhart asked.

‘I never heard that given.’

‘But as the King’s commissioner, my lord, ye must have discussed this business in council before. Ye must have agreed to offer him his life, else why would he have confessed?’

Lauderdale shook his head. ‘It’s not for me to say why the man confessed. But I never promised him anything, nor did I grant that anybody else could.’

‘Of this ye are quite positive?’

Lauderdale’s voice boomed. ‘I could not have given such a promise. I did not have the King’s authority to do so.’

A murmuring through the court indicated that nobody believed him. The gentry sat stone-faced. Lockhart seemed to toy with the idea of pressing him further, but then let him go, and, like the previous witnesses, the Duke made his way, with a brewing storm in his face, to a seat in the gallery.

‘I call his grace the Archbishop of St Andrews,’ Lockhart said.

Mitchel went rigid. The soldiers on either side of him studied him, as if they thought, even now, he might produce some hidden weapon and charge across the room. James Sharp crossed the floor in his black robes, and let his gaze drift as if he were watching the progress of a moth which at last alighted, with a flutter, on the head of the fanatic.

It was the fourth time they had come face to face. Ten years before, they had stared at each other across the barrel of a gun. Six years later, Sharp had recognised him selling tobacco from his booth on the street. Then Mitchel had been brought before the Council and Sharp had seen him acknowledge his confession. Now, in the High Court, Sharp was determined that this would be their last meeting, that Mitchel would go to the gallows and he could finally be rid of him.

At first Lockhart could make no headway with Sharp. He repeated what the other noble witnesses had already said: that Mitchel had made his confession freely, and that at no time had a promise of life been given. He, the Archbishop,
had never personally given any such assurance, nor authorised anybody else to do so.

‘But is it not true, your grace,’ Lockhart said, ‘that when Maister Mitchel was apprehended, ye offered that ye would use your best offices to save him, if he would only confess to the deed?’

‘He didna like the offer,’ Sharp said. ‘He, or his wife, I canna recall which, declined it.’

‘But then, your grace, ye treated with his wife’s brother, Nicol Sommervile, a craftsman of this town, did ye not?’

‘Aye, and with the same result.’ Sharp stared with utter contempt at Mitchel. ‘When he was first taken, it’s true I promised that if he made a full confession, out of court, and tellt us who else was involved, and if he truly repented of the deed, then I would do what I could for him in the way of mercy. But if he didna, I would leave him to justice. And look where we are, sir. These people are beyond treating with.’

‘Nicol Sommervile is also a witness, your grace. He may say different.’

Sharp said angrily, ‘He may say what he likes. I pledged Nicol Sommervile nothing but my belief that the prisoner should make a full confession. It is a false and malicious calumny if he or anybody pretends that I either promised that man his life, or gave anybody else warrant to promise it.’

Lockhart smiled. ‘Your grace, I thank ye for your candour. Ye could not have made your position clearer. Now I would like, my lords, to hear Nicol Sommervile on this matter.’

John Lauder almost laughed out loud with nerves. Lockhart had no fear of these men; it was as if he intended to bring the whole edifice of government down about their lugs. Cousin John, though, who had pleaded only on the first day of the case, was now busily conferring with Lockhart while Sharp left the stand. Eleis did not look like a man about to win a famous victory. In fact, he looked slightly confused – a thing Lauder had never seen before – as if Lockhart had got ahead of him, and he did not know exactly which road he was taking.