The Fanatic (33 page)

Sommervile, Lauder estimated, was in his thirties, a sturdy man with the quick, assessing eye of a silversmith. He appeared to be terrified. But when Lockhart took him through
the events of four years before, he spoke out clearly and slowly even though his knees were knocking together. His grace the Archbishop
had
promised Mitchel his life if he admitted everything. He, Nicol Sommervile, had taken this word to Mitchel, who had agreed, and Sommervile had conveyed this back to the Archbishop.

‘I will ask ye to be precise, Nicol,’ said Lockhart. ‘Ye returned to his grace the Archbishop, and ye conveyed that Maister Mitchel would confess all?’

‘Aye, sir. But only if he had a solemn promise in the King’s name that his life would be spared.’

‘And what was the Archbishop’s answer?’

‘He swore, as he should answer before God, that he would grant him his life.’

There was a commotion in the gallery. Sharp was standing, pointing at Sommervile with a shaking finger. ‘That is a damned lie! My lords, ye hae heard my testimony. How can ye tolerate this – this treasonable –’

Primrose half-rose from the bench. ‘Ye have had your say, sir. Be seated!’

Sharp ignored him. ‘Nicol Sommervile, ye’re a traitorous rebel like your brother, and ye should hang like him!’

‘Be seated, sir!’ Primrose shouted. There was a clamour of shouts throughout the court: ‘
Shame, shame!
’ Sommervile turned and appealed to the bench. ‘My lords, I swear on my salvation that awthin I tellt ye is the truth!’

For a minute the proceedings looked like dissolving into a riot. The old bread and fruit that had been evident on the first day of the trial began to be flung about again. Boots stamped on the wooden floor, women shrilled abuse at Sharp, men spat at him. It was with difficulty that the officers restored order.

Mitchel sat in impassive isolation throughout. His face slightly tilted, his eyes half-closed, the trace of a smile on his lips, he seemed to be in a trance.

The bench conferred. Primrose dismissed Sommervile, and gestured to Lockhart to continue. After a word with Eleis, Lockhart picked up a document from the table. It was, he said, a copy of the Act of Council in which the details of this whole sorry tale were given. It corroborated everything that
Nicol Sommervile had just said and confuted everything stated by the noble witnesses. With the bench’s permission, Lockhart would like to read this document out.

Sir George Mackenzie had been sitting as if clamped to his chair for the last twenty minutes. He had not cross-examined the witnesses, for fear of making things worse than they already were. He had sat tight when Sharp had had his outburst, a hand over his mouth. But now he sprang back to life.

‘My lords, this cannot be allowed. This paper that my learned friend has in his hand, what is it? He says it is a copy of an Act of the Council. Why has he not produced the Act itself? If there is such an Act, and he wished it to be used in evidence, he should have used a diligence and cited the clerks of council to produce the register. He did not do this. He cannot now introduce it. It is against all procedure.’

‘I would like to hear what is in this paper,’ Primrose said silkily. ‘Then we can see if we should proceed further with the register.’ To Lockhart he added, ‘You may go on, sir.’

Lockhart’s reading took fully five minutes. It was so detailed, so precise in its statement of facts and naming of names, that there could be no doubt that it was an authentic copy. The crowd heard it and knew they were hearing the truth. But Mackenzie was no longer concerned with truth and falsehood. All that mattered now was what was admissible and what was not. When Lockhart had finished, the King’s Advocate returned to the argument.

‘My lords, this pretended paper proves nothing. It is the panel’s arguments written down and given the name
an Act of Council.
Not even that – a
copy
of an Art of Council. It is worthless. I say again, my lords, the panel’s counsel should have cited the clerks of council to produce the register. Instead he has read out something the panel might have written himself.’

‘My lords,’ Lockhart answered, ‘we have no objection to the register of council being produced. In fart we crave it. Let the register be produced. Then the court will see everything that we have alleged and attested, written down in the Arts of Council and furthermore, my lords, signed by the noble witnesses who have just deponed they know nothing about it.’

‘No, my lords,’ Mackenzie said, ‘that is a sleight of hand ye must not allow. The panel’s counsel is seeking a new production after all the witnesses have been examined. And even if such a pretended Act exists, my lords, it is unwarrantable, it cannot be made use of, because we have already heard the depositions of the Chancellor, and the Thesaurer Depute, and the Secretary of State, and the Archbishop of St Andrews, that no assurance or promise of life was given. My lords, it is against all custom and process to admit this paper or to send for the register.’

‘It is only up the stair, my lords,’ said Lockhart. ‘It would take but a minute to fetch it and see what is the truth.’

‘No, my lords!’ There was a note of desperation in Mackenzie’s voice now. Lauder knew that everything hung on this one issue: if Primrose and the other judges decided to send for the register, the King’s counsellors would be exposed as liars. And it was Primrose, of course, who had set this whole thing up.

‘It would certainly clarify matters,’ said Primrose reflectively. I think –’

There was a sound from the gallery like a bull breaking through a fence. A voice bellowed into the court, drowning out whatever it was Primrose thought.

‘
Enough! That is enough!
’

Silence followed, punctuated only by the patter of a few spots of saliva onto the floor and, from somewhere in the crowd, a hushed blasphemy. The thunder that had been building in the Duke of Lauderdale had finally broken.

For a moment he stood there, vast and swaying, as if he had surprised even himself and did not know what to say next. But then it was apparent that he was only pausing to gather breath before he roared again.

‘I did not come here – these other noble persons did not come here – we were not brought hither to be accused of perjury. We came as witnesses, to give evidence, and that is what we have done. Now there’s an end to it. And
you’
– glaring at Primrose and the other judges – ‘
you
, my lords, are not to call for the register of council. I forbid it. The Council’s Acts are the King’s secrets, and may not be looked into, not by this court or anyone but his counsellors. I trust I make myself clear.’

Lauderdale’s tongue slapped once more round his lips and then retreated. He sat down heavily, still with his eye on the bench, and dared them to challenge him. Even Primrose, who had been so quick to shout down Sharp, seemed cowed by the Secretary’s intervention.

John Lauder heard a voice muttering, ‘
This isna law, this is a mockery of the law.
’ And then he realised that he was talking to himself. Elsewhere he could see other advocates whispering urgently, or sitting dumbstruck. The judges were in a huddle. Even those people unsure of what was going on could see that Primrose was in a passion, arguing that the register should be sent for. He seemed to have only one doubtful ally. Murray of Glendoick was adamantly opposed – if he wished to be confirmed as the next keeper of the register, he had better heed the instructions of his patron.

Lauder thought, is this what we are come down to? To a clutch of judges torn between pishing their breeks in the cause of justice, or keeping them dry in the cause of self-advancement? Is this the state of the law that I love?

In the end, there was no contest. The judges all had more to fear and more to gain from Lauderdale and Sharp than from the Justice General.

Primrose brought the court to order. The downturn of his mouth told all. He spoke like a man who has just swallowed a glass of sour milk.

‘We find that the copy of the pretended Act of Council was never urged or made use of till this afternoon, after the swearing of the assize, and that it cannot be admitted as evidence in this state of the process by the law of the kingdom and practice of this court; also we find that the validity of the narrative of the copy is cancelled by the depositions of the noble witnesses. The court is adjourned. The assize will inclose, and return their verdict tomorrow at two o’clock in the afternoon.’

Uproar broke out. Primrose, without waiting for the mace-bearer, and followed by the other judges, fled the court.

‘Ye canna imagine whit like this was,’ Carlin said. ‘The drama o it. These were the biggest names in Scottish life. It was like
calling Michael Forsyth, Malcolm Rifkind, Lord James Douglas-Hamilton and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland tae gie evidence against some mad lone nationalist who’s sent a couple o letter-bombs through the post. And seein them aw lie in their teeth.’

‘The verdict was a foregone conclusion, presumably,’ said Jackie.

‘Aye.’

Carlin had been getting more animated throughout his description of the trial. Now it seemed he could contain himself no longer, but stood up and paced across the room two or three times. Jackie wondered if he was going to start flinging things about again. There was a pent-up frustration, an anger that seemed to have ignited from deep within him, in his movements. His feet caught a couple of paperbacks and sent them spinning across the floor, but he didn’t notice them. Then suddenly he stopped in front of Jackie and spoke again.

‘The jury finds him guilty on aw counts. Mitchel stands up, a wee bit sklent cause o his leg, and hears Adam Auld, the dempster o the coort, read oot that he’s tae be hanged in the Grassmarket in eight days’ time. Mitchel disna speak. He smiles. The weemun are greetin and shoutin, folk are pushin each ither aroon and batterin the furniture. The coort room is cleared. Mitchel’s taen back tae his cell.’

‘You’re not really trying to tell me you did this, because of a trial three hundred years ago?’ Jackie made a sweeping gesture across the strewn books and cowped television.

‘I was ill,’ said Carlin. ‘I was in and oot o bed, fallin aboot, crashin intae things. I thought I went oot a couple o times but noo I’m no sure. God kens where I went. I don’t really mind whit I was dreamin and whit I was daein. I guess I jist knocked things ower.’

‘With a vengeance,’ said Jackie. ‘It looks like a tornado passed through.’

‘Aye, well.’ He hesitated. ‘I was ayewis a vivid dreamer. I used tae sleepwalk when I was a wean.’

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘But I grew out of it.’

‘That can take time,’ he said. ‘Tae grow oot o things.’

She watched him turn to the fire, pick up the candlestick.
He raised it to shoulder level and looked at himself, then set it back on the shelf in its correct position. ‘Jist kiddin,’ she heard him say. Then he adjusted the mirror till it was straight, stood back, and returned to sit on the bed.

‘Mirrors, eh,’ he said. ‘Canna live wi them, canna live athoot them.’

They sat and thought about that for a while. The room had grown dark. Jackie didn’t really want to move. She was thinking about Andrew Carlin from an earlier time, when they had been students together. She felt guilty. Then she decided not to do that any more. That was all there was to it.

‘Somethin weird happened the day,’ said Carlin.

‘Uhuh? You mean weirder than this?’

‘I went tae speak tae somebody. In the public library. Somebody that had been helpin me oot wi researchin aw the stuff I was jist tellin ye aboot. And it turns oot I was mistaken. They said he didna work there.’

‘Staff cutbacks,’ said Jackie. ‘Public service isn’t what it used to be. Maybe that’ll change after today.’

‘Na, it wasna like he’d been made redundant. They denied he existed. Said there was nae such person. And that the book he’d gien me tae read didna exist either. Only I wasna mistaken. I spoke wi him. I read the book. They were baith there. But I canna prove it. I ken I’m tellin the truth but I’ve nae evidence except whit’s in ma heid. And I’ve been thinkin aboot that and wonderin whit it means.’

‘It means you have to watch yourself,’ she said. ‘Cause if you’re not careful you get wiped out, de-registered, disappeared.’ Then she realised he wasn’t joking. And that maybe she wasn’t either.

‘Well, it looks like I’m niver gaun tae finish that book,’ he said. ‘A shame, that. I kinna wantit it tae tie up aw the loose ends.’

‘That’s what books are supposed to do,’ she said. ‘But life’s not like that.’

‘Aye, right,’ he said. He sounded disappointed.

‘I better get going,’ she said. ‘It’s getting late.’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I better get oot and vote.’

They stood up together. ‘I’m not supposed to ask this,’ she said. ‘Secret ballot and all that. But how are you going to vote?’

‘Wi ma feet,’ he said. She watched as he found the plastic bag that contained Major Weir’s cloak and wig, and the rat on a string. Going out to the front door he lifted the black staff from the corner where it was leaning. She’d not noticed it there before.

‘Going to work then?’ she said.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Ye could say that.’

They went down the stairs together and out onto the street. When they got to Bruntsfield Place she slowed down. They were approaching a bus-stop.

‘Think I’ll wait here,’ she said. ‘It’s too far to walk all the way home. I’m pretty tired.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Well, thanks for comin by. I’m awright, as ye can see. Better, onywey.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Me too. Thanks for telling me all that stuff. It was uh … interesting. I’d kind of forgotten that about history.’

He nodded. She felt ridiculous. She couldn’t bear to see him walk away from her.

‘Maybe see you for a drink some time?’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘See you around.’

He crossed the road and disappeared into the darkness of the Links. She was left considering the flat tone of his last three words, which conveyed no wish, no hesitation, no anticipation, only a statement of fact, or of probability.

It wasn’t until she was sitting on the bus that it occurred to her that, for a man who lived in Bruntsfield, he had been heading in entirely the wrong direction if he intended to get to the polling place before it closed.