The Fanatic Read online

  He lives like a spectre in the capital under the name of James Small, moving from one lodging to another, sometimes staying out of sight in one of the safe houses of the godly party’s sympathisers. He steeps himself in Scripture. The voice of Elijah in the cave of Horeb is dirling in his head: I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away. And he reads of Jehu who was called by the prophet Elisha, and who came out of Ramoth-gilead to destroy Jezebel and all the house of Ahab, and how when the watchman on the tower of Jezreel saw the furious dust of Jehu’s chariot approaching, they sent a messenger to him from the king saying, Is it peace? And Jehu answered, What hast thou to do with peace?

  Then James Mitchel thinks of the false prophets, that come in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. And chief among these is the apostate and reprobate James Sharp.

  These are the days of God’s anger, the days of the nation’s darkness, the perilous times of which Paul wrote to Timothy, when men shall be traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but laden with diverse lusts. A pamphlet Naphtali has lately been circulating, so precise and threatening that the government has hunted and harried it, ordered it burnt and threatened any found in possession of it with a fine of ten thousand pounds. ‘A damned book come hither from beyond the sea,’ says the government; ‘it hath all the traitors’ speeches on the scaffold, and speaks with a tongue set on fire in Hell.’ ‘Take notice,’ says Naphtali, ‘of the many Sufferings and Sufferers hereafter mentioned, whose Heads and Hands standing betwixt Heaven and Earth, doth not only cry for Vengeance, but night and day bear open Witness against this Adulterous Generation.’ Andrew Honyman, bishop of Orkney, like Sharp another Covenanter turned prelate, pens a reply, A Survey of the Insolent and Infamous Libel, Entitled Naphtali. ‘Scotland, Ah Scotland!’ says Naphtali, ‘hath changed her glory for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, and be horribly afraid. If God doth not heal his People we shall become such a proverb amongst the Nations, that the generation to come of our Children, and the stranger that cometh from a far Land, when they see the plagues of this Land, shall wonder and ask, Wherefore hath the Lord done this unto this Land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger?’

  This is the word storm that crashes and roars through Mitchel’s head in the spring months of 1668. He feels himself besieged by words, by threats, entreaties, instructions, warnings, challenges. He is looking for something he can do, something that will put these things in some semblance of order. He steels himself to act, to perform.

  He goes down into the street one day, to the shop of Alexander Logan, dagmaker, in Leith Wynd, outwith the Netherbow Port. He knows that Logan turns a blind eye to some of his best customers, for by law he must not sell arms to anyone who has not subscribed to keep the peace, not firearms, sword, dirk, whinger or any such weapon. Mitchel has walked past the door many times, sometimes pausing, sometimes hardly daring to look, sometimes with his coat empty, sometimes carrying the money saved from his cousin John. On this day, like a shy man entering a whorehouse, he darts inside, and puts the money on the counter. ‘Whit can ye gie me for this?’ he asks.

  Logan sells him a pair of long pistols, each with a bore like a musket, and shows him how to prime and load them. Mitchel carries them away in a box to his lonely room, and there he practises presenting them at the hearts of imagined men. Or one man, imagined over and over. A little paper has come into his hand, one of the squibs that fly from secret presses into the street, and he marvels at its ingenious wit and tries to memorise it:

  Mercenarie, medling madcap,

  Absurd, abjured, angry ape,

  Sancts’ SHARP scourge, Scotland’s Satanik spot,

  Trafecting, treacherous turncot,

  Envy’s exemplar eminent,

  Rebell, relent, return, repent.

  Infamous juglar, insolent

  Ambitious and arrogant

  Mischief’s midwyfe, monstrous madman,

  Erroneous, Erastian

  Saucie, selfish Simoniak.

  Servile Soulseller stigmatick,

  Hell’s hound, hideous hierarchist,

  Abominable archatheist,

  Railling ruffian, runagat,

  Perfidious, perjur’d Prelat.

  He pins the paper to the wall; turns, pulls the pistols from his coat, aims, turns again, aims. And he scours his Bible for a certainty of God’s approval for what he intends to do.

  When doubt enters his mind, he beats it back with the words of Naphtali: ‘What shall be given to thee, O Sharp! Or what shall be done to Thee, O false Tongue? Sharp arrows of the Mighty and Coals of Juniper.’ He thinks of Major Weir: ‘The Lord will find you work, James.’ And he thinks of John Knox, a century before, calling on the people and every member of the people to revenge the injury done against God’s glory by his enemies, ‘according to the vocation of every man and according to the possibility and occasion which God doth minister … Who dare be so impudent as to deny that this be most reasonable and just?’

  On a Saturday early in July, about four in the afternoon, James Mitchel loads his pistols – three balls apiece – and arms himself with the best text of all, the verse from Deuteronomy that he carries in his heart: And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee. He leaves his room and enters onto the street, and makes his way to the top of Blackfriars Wynd. He hovers there, standing back from the folk that pass up and down the causey, watching the coach that sits outside the bishop’s lodgings a few yards away. His palms are sweating and he dichts them on his coat, feeling beneath it the bulges of his ready weapons. He is about to take the life of another man and send him to perdition. God strengthen my arm and my resolve. Into himself he mutters the words of Deuteronomy, the words of Moses, the Word of God: Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him; but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.

  A servant emerges from the doorway, opens the coach door and stands to one side. His master follows and steps into the coach. Now is Mitchel’s time, now he is in history. He draws the first pistol from within his coat, advances on the coach. There is a group of folk by it, poor bairns and beggars seeking alms, so his approach goes unnoticed. Nobody stands between him and the object of God’s wrath.

  But then, history betrays him. As he reaches the open door and levels the gun, he realises that another man has followed Sharp out of the house – a man in clerical dress – and is about to mount the step of the coach. Mitchel glances to see if he is mistaken, if this second man is in fact the Archbishop. It is not. He looks back and sees Sharp frozen in shock, staring right into his eyes. He aims again just as the arm of the second man, putting his hand up to steady himself, moves into his vision. Mitchel fires the pistol. In that moment he knows that he has hit, but missed Sharp.

  The second man’s hand and arm seem momentarily to separate; there is a spattering sound on the coach’s upholstery. Blood and smoke everywhere. Mitchel understands that he does not have time to draw the other gun. He can feel men advancing on him. He ducks away and strides rapidly across the wynd.

  His hand is grasping the butt of the second pistol. He pulls it out, trying to work out if he can return to kill Sharp with his remaining shot. But he knows it is too late. Everything that was clear in his vision a few moments before is now clouded. Noise and commotion are rippling out from the stationary coach. At the
head of Niddrie’s Wynd a well-dressed, broad-faced man blocks his way. Mitchel presents the pistol at him. The man backs off and lets him by. Mitchel hides his weapons again, forces himself not to run, not to attract attention. He reaches the Cowgate, turns up Stevenlaw’s Close, checks behind him to see if he is followed, and chaps at a door. It is opened at once, he slips inside, is ushered up some stairs. The house of William Fergusson, a sympathiser.

  Fergusson says, ‘Man, there’s powder marks on yer face and bluid on yer sleeve. Hae ye been huntin?’

  ‘Aye, but the beast’s no deid. Can ye fetch me new claes?’

  Ten minutes later, re-wigged and new-washed, the pistols hidden by Fergusson, he is out on the streets again, in pursuit of himself, but keeping away from the soldiery. The citizens’ chase is half-hearted at best. When the cry went up, ‘A man is killt,’ it was followed by another, ‘It’s only a bishop,’ and loud laughter.

  Mitchel walks as if in a dream. Could God have misguided his aim? If so, for what purpose? This was his purpose. A new verse from Jeremiah bombards him now: Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood. What is his purpose now? To avoid discovery, surely. God is testing him. Will there be another opportunity?

  Sir Andrew Ramsay turns out the Guard. The bishops’ servants were so stunned by the brazenness of the assault that the man who fired got clean away from them. Someone says he made for the West Port, where an accomplice waited for him with a horse ready saddled – they rode for Corstorphine. Lord Provost Ramsay sends men in pursuit, but orders the whole town searched in case they are still lurking there. He writes a feverish letter to Lauderdale – this kind of outrage is the last thing Edinburgh needs – bad for trade, bad for law and order, bad for Ramsay: My lord, the fellow is none that belongs to this place, nor can this place be looked on with any worse eye because of this.

  A reward is posted. The Archbishop is shaken by the foul, bloody and cowardly attempt on his life. In a rare outburst of spiritual passion he is heard praying, ‘My times are wholly in thy hands, O my God of my life!’ But he is unharmed. His companion in the coach was Honyman, the bishop of Orkney. He is grievously hurt, the bones in his wrist all shattered.

  Mitchel goes to ground. By whispered word he hears of, and from a window-chink in a shuttered room he sees, the chase spreading through the town. Soldiers are everywhere, searching any house where Whigs stay or where a Whig terrorist might be harboured. More than once he has to move. People are arrested and interrogated, and all who favour Presbyterianism are cast under a cloud of suspicion. There is even a rumour that the bishops themselves planned the attack: for the sake of a wounded hand all Lauderdale’s plans to relax some of the prohibitions against non-indulged ministers are shelved.

  Women as well as men are bullied, threatened with banishment to the plantations, and incarcerated because they will not speak. Mistress Janet Crawford, Mistress Margaret Kello and Mistress Anna Duncan – worthy, kenspeckle women of a Whig persuasion, known to have hosted conventicles in the past – are all brought before the Privy Council, a sign that Sharp will not rest until he has the name of the man who tried to kill him. The Chancellor, the Earl of Rothes follows in his wake, angry but also half-amused – he dislikes Sharp and is only outraged that a man should dare to shoot at a Privy Councillor. Mitchel hears how Mistress Duncan is put in fear of her life by these great men of state. When she will not admit to any knowledge of the assassination attempt, nor to any communication with ‘rebels’, they bring the public executioner into her, carrying the torture apparatus of the boots: ‘Ye hae until five o the clock tae mind whit ye hae forgotten.’ In the end, Lord Rothes saves her legs with a jest: ‘My lords, this isna guid politics. Forby, it isna proper for a gentlewoman tae wear boots.’ She is sent instead to the Tolbooth and not released for more than five months.

  And for more than five years Mitchel evades capture. Somebody, somewhere, has talked, and the name of James Mitchel, the Pentland rebel, is attached to the crime. Where does he go in these years? To Holland, some say. Others say, to Ireland, England, France. God has laid him by and does not call upon him. But still he is thirled to James Sharp by that frozen moment in the coach. Neither can forget it. Each believes that they will meet again, and that one will be the executioner of the other. Through all the affairs of kirk and state, the Archbishop nurses a cold place in his heart for the fanatic who would have killed him. In all his secret wanderings, Mitchel still dreams of levelling the pistol one more time at Sharp.

  Then, one day early in 1674, Mitchel’s gaunt figure is seen at the funeral of the old minister of Pencaitland, Robert Douglas. Word reaches Sharp that his enemy is back in Edinburgh. Spies are given a close description of him. Before long, one of them comes to the Archbishop with news that such a man now keeps a stall with his wife, in Blackfriars Wynd no less, selling brandy and tobacco. Sharp, not without trepidation, and flanked by servants, finds some pretext to pass by this stall. He lingers, tries a sidelong keek at the tall man’s face, turns away abruptly when he thinks he is about to catch his eye. Five and a half years have gone by. He thought the image of those seconds in the coach was fixed forever. Is this him? He cannot be sure. He risks another glance, and this time, by coincidence, the stallkeeper raises his head at the same time. Sharp, heart pounding, makes himself stare, holding the narrowing stare of the other man, until he is as certain as he ever will be. Yes! He minds the sickening pause before the explosion of the pistol. Yes, this is the man.

  He calls on his brother, Sir William Sharp, who organises a party of armed men and descends on Blackfriars Wynd before the fanatic can make his escape. But Mitchel, strangely, has not shifted. It’s as if he believes himself immune from all but the Archbishop. He is seized on 7 February, removed to the Tolbooth, and at last, so long after the event, is brought before a committee of the Council for examination.

  ‘Time itself,’ says Naphtali, ‘a great searcher and discoverer of secrets.’ Down all these years a secret world has turned. And now, James Mitchel, is the moment when you step into the glaring light.

  Carlin was shivering. His tee-shirt and jumper were soaked through, the sweat like a layer of ice on his skin. He could hear his mother’s voice: ‘Ye’ll catch yer death.’ He happed the Major’s cloak tight around him, gripped the staff in his wet hand. He didn’t recognise where he was. Some unlit close, not where he had been. What, had he been sleepwalking?

  It would not have been the first time. When he was twelve or thirteen, his father had been dying quietly in his parents’ bedroom. His mother, to give him peace, slept on a couch downstairs. Carlin minded waking up standing in total darkness in a room that might have been his own or any room in the house. The first time he stood still and called for help. His mother had turned on the light and he was only a couple of feet from his bed. She didn’t seem to understand his confusion. She told him he had to be quiet and not disturb his father. He was a big laddie now. After that he didn’t call for her. He’d wake on the landing, in the kitchen, on the stairs, and wait for what seemed an eternity until his eyes began to make out dim objects around him. Then he’d move gingerly, hands out in front until he found the wall, and feel his way back to his room. He’d get into bed and lie there wondering what was happening to him.

  He felt like calling out now, but nobody would come. He took a single step and nearly lost his balance. He was on a slope. He began to walk down it, waving his stick like a blind man. He had to believe that if he kept going forward he would eventually get to a place he recognised.

  Edinburgh, February 1670

  ‘Jean, Jean!’ Someone was calling her. A woman’s voice. Not him, then. He’d gone out, she was alone in the house, and the door was bolted. She had learnt to be canny about voices, though. A man could have a woman’s voice, a woman could be not just a woman. Like herself. She was not just a woman. She was all kinds of wonders.

  ‘Jean, Jean!’ There it was again. Like the start o
f a bairn’s rhyme. Jean, Jean, fairy queen! But that could not be right either. There was only one fairy queen and it wasn’t herself.

  Herself? Maybe it was her own voice? It wouldn’t be the first time. He’d catch her talking to herself once in a while, and he didn’t like it. It was all right if she just haivered, but sometimes she’d slip in other things among the haivers, and a terrible anger would break on his face. Terrible, and yet feart too. She noticed that, and stored it away.

  ‘Jean, Jean!’ There was work to be done. She’d ignore the insistent calling. If she’d a mirror she could stand in front of it and when the voice came see if her lips moved. Then she’d know whether to be feart. But he didn’t allow mirrors. Sinful vanities. Keek in a glass and all ye see is clay, he said. Keek in yer soul and ye’ll mebbe see grace.

  She moved around the room, a cloth in one hand, a stick in the other. Not his stick, with the nasty thrawn face. That was away out with him. Her stick was a dry old branch, peeling bark, fit only for the fire. She wiped surfaces with the cloth as she went, the table, a shelf, the arm of his chair. They were thick with stour. Bessie the servant had left and was never coming back. She couldn’t blame her. She should have gone with her herself.

  The house was in a state right enough, falling apart, and there was next to no food in it. She wasn’t hungry any more. She couldn’t eat for the thought of him coming back.