The Fanatic Read online

  ‘It was his impulse that moved in us. It could not be denied. It could not be temptation because we were moved by him.’

  ‘It was sin.’

  ‘It wasna sin. It couldna be sin. It was God.’

  Mitchel thought of what it was like. Sin. How it had felt with the gardener’s wife. That had been sin – he thanked God now for showing him what sin was. How it would feel each time. How beautiful it would be if it were not sin. He was listening to his own body. That was the flesh in conflict with the soul. The body said, why would God implant these feelings, if they were not to be acted upon?

  ‘I was of God and God was of me,’ said Weir. ‘He gave me power over all things.’

  Mitchel struggled to overpower his body’s arguments. ‘It was sin,’ he said again.

  ‘When you are of God you are beyond sin. There is nothing but the urges he puts in ye. All your urges are prayers and praises to him.’

  ‘No,’ said Mitchel.

  ‘All of them,’ Weir insisted. ‘There’s nae line to draw. We are damned or we are saved. What difference does our feeble conscience make to that?’

  He turned suddenly and seemed surprised to see Mitchel there. He seized him by the shoulders. The foul breath poured onto Mitchel’s face.

  ‘We are all instruments in God’s hands. Ye canna deny it.’

  Mitchel pushed him away. He stood and took a few steps in the gloom. It was as if there was something rotting in a corner of the room, growing and shifting as it decayed.

  ‘Your desires were unnatural!’ He heard the horror in his own voice. ‘How could ye think thae things were frae God? How could ye?’

  ‘Then from where?’ said Weir. A terrible groan rose from his throat. ‘Ye needna answer. I ken. I felt the change.’

  Mitchel was silent, appalled. There was nothing he could think of to say.

  ‘It was forty years coming. I didna ken it at first. I thought it was still him. God. But God had tricked me forty years. He betrayed me. I had a feeling of him in the dark and it wasna him. Not him at all. It was a woman.’

  ‘Jean was your sister,’ said Mitchel.

  Weir cackled. The sound turned Mitchel’s stomach.

  ‘No that auld hag, I’d nae use for her. She was a done creature. Ha! She still thinks she’s going to Heaven. This, no, this was bonnie. A beautiful woman in the night. She used to come to me alone. The lips like a thread of scarlet. The breasts like young roes.’

  ‘Dinna speak thae words,’ said Mitchel. ‘These are God’s holy words.’

  ‘It was God that came, d’ye not see? I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem. Every night. And I felt her beside me. Every part of her.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ said Mitchel. He was choking on something. He wanted to leave. He wanted to call out for Vanse to let him out of the cell.

  ‘Every night I felt down her body. Her arms, her breasts, her belly. I put my hand in by the hole of the door. Then her legs. Then, one night, she guided my hands with hers. She took my hands and put them to her feet.’

  He drank more water. Mitchel did not call out.

  ‘They were hairy. Coarse, short, thick hair. Covered wi it. I shrunk away, but I couldna. She had a grip of me. And then I felt the change. She was laughing. I kent who it was, who it had been all along. He stood up before me laughing. Huge, like a giant. I saw that I was destroyed.’

  Mitchel could take no more. He went to the door and started banging on it. Weir’s breath was filling the whole room with a cloud of poison. He began to shout as the old man’s voice rose.

  ‘He is with me always,’ Weir said. ‘I am his, not God’s. I was always his. I was always chosen, but not for grace. I never had grace. I am damned.’

  The door was unlocked. It was Vanse. Mitchel had paid him to be on hand. ‘Let me oot,’ he said. ‘I canna breathe.’

  Vanse nodded. ‘He fouls himsel,’ he said. Mitchel lurched outside and Vanse closed the door. Behind it they could still hear Weir ranting.

  Mitchel sucked in great gasps of air. He thought he had seen something, a dark figure, looming up behind Weir.

  ‘On yer wey oot,’ said Vanse calmly, ‘ye hae tae see Jean.’

  I canna.’

  ‘Jist a prayer,’ said Vanse. ‘Ye can spare that for her surely.’

  Mitchel held a coin out for Vanse. Weir’s laugh still cackled in his head.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I canna.’

  Vanse plucked the coin and took him by the arm. ‘She is sweet compared wi him, Maister.’

  There was something about his voice. Maybe he intended to betray him, not let him go. Mitchel realised he was entirely at his mercy.

  They went down a passage barely wide enough for the two of them. Doors, each one with a nightmare behind it. There was a small room at one end of the passage. Vanse pushed him forward into it.

  Jean Weir was sitting on a bench. The door was not locked because her foot was chained to a ring set in the floor. She looked up placidly.

  ‘Sandy.’

  Mitchel looked behind him. He shrugged at Vanse, pleaded again. ‘I hae nae prayers left,’ he said. ‘Let me awa. I beg ye.’

  Lauder waited for Mitchel to go on. But he seemed drained by the memories. A minute passed.

  ‘He thocht he could dae nae wrang,’ said Lauder at last.

  ‘Aye, that was the worst thing, there was nae hypocrisy in it. His haill life he thocht he could dae nae wrang, then it was borne in upon him that he could dae naethin but wrang.’

  Lauder shuddered. ‘And aw ye can see in front o ye is eternal punishment.’

  ‘He niver lost his faith in that sense. He niver stopped believin in the life tae come.’

  ‘It’d been better for him if he had,’ said Lauder.

  ‘It wouldna hae saved him. He’d hae burnt in ony case. At least he walked through this world wi a kennin o the next.’

  ‘Did ye gang tae the Gallowlee?’

  ‘Aye. It’s a solemn thing, tae see a man sent on his wey, whether it’s tae Heaven or tae Hell.’

  ‘I heard he wasna deid when they burnt him.’

  Mitchel shook his head. ‘Mebbe no. It was the hangman’s job tae thrapple him but he couldna get the breath oot o him. It was strange – he was that seik and feeble they’d tae harl him on a sledge aw the wey frae the Tolbooth, yet when they had him bound tae the stake there seemed a byordnar strenth tae his struggles. Ye’d think the life was thrawn oot o him and then he’d lift his heid and this roarin noise would come oot. The hangman cam back wi the tow tae try again and Weir’s heid would start tae batter itsel aff the stake. They couldna get the tow on him. They said tae him tae speir for the Lord’s mercy but he wouldna. He was shoutin, I hae lived as a beast, let me die as a beast! Sae the hangman gied up and they pit the lunt tae the fire.’

  ‘And his staff?’

  ‘That was flung in tae, yince the flames had gotten haud. The people wouldna let them pit it in afore for fear he would use it tae escape.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Lauder. ‘I heard that. I heard folk say they thocht it was alive.’

  ‘Mebbe it was.’

  Lauder did not rise to the challenge in Mitchel’s voice. There was another story he’d heard, that Weir and Satan his master had concocted a plan to foil the executioners. A mysterious man that had visited him in prison had been bewitched and substituted for the Major, who had taken on the other man’s appearance. While the innocent double was being throttled and incinerated. Weir was stepping past on his way to Leith to catch a boat for Holland. It was a ludicrous idea, probably put about by the bishops, who thought all Scotsmen residing in Holland were no better than devils, but folk would believe anything if they wanted to. Lauder was thinking of this as he asked his next question.

  ‘Vanse let ye oot, when ye’d finished in the Tolbooth?’

  ‘Aye. He was jist a lad. I think, eftir aw, that he didna ken me.’

  ‘Where did ye gang?’

  ‘That’s for me tae mind and you
tae guess. I said I’d tell ye aboot Weir, no aboot folk that helped and bieldit me. But I didna stey lang in Edinburgh, I’ll say that. It wasna safe. Ma face was ower weill-kent.’

  ‘Ye were safe wi some. Jean didna betray ye.’

  ‘She hardly saw me. Ye ken the licht in there.’

  ‘She kent ye werena Sandy, though. When I visited her. I tellt ye that.’

  ‘She was a witch and a hure. And dementit tae. I wouldna credit muckle o whit she had tae say.’

  ‘Aye, mebbe,’ said Lauder. ‘Ye’re mebbe richt.’

  He was suddenly tired. He wondered what time it was. Even though the thought made him queasy, he was looking forward to being summoned for the boat back to Scotland.

  He looked up at the narrow slit of the window, trying to judge the hour from the dirty light that pushed feebly in there. A smear of something colourful caught his eye. It seemed so out of place that he stood up to see what it was. He picked it off the stone ledge with his finger: cherry blossom, blown from one of the wizened trees further up the rock. Away from the outside light, against his flesh, it lost its pinkness and didn’t look remarkable at all. He sniffed at it, but it had no scent. All he could smell was Mitchel’s body, the dankness of the cell, and the salt of the sea all around them.

  Edinburgh, April 1997

  Tuesday. Carlin woke with a sore head and what felt like the start of a cold in his throat. He’d had a restless night, his dreams invaded by images of endless rows of heads and limbs on spikes. A kirkyard heaved like porridge and gave up its dead. Armies of skeletons emerged from broken tombs. Others were driving cartloads of naked people into furnaces. There were gallows and wheels and instruments of torture. A skeleton was dragging someone head first down into a cave.

  He recognised some of these pictures. In the library at his school – he must have been about twelve – there had been these books of paintings, a series called something like The Great Artists. In one of them he’d found Pieter Brueghel’s ‘Triumph of Death’. It was reproduced as a whole and also in four details. The vision was grotesque, horrible. He studied it minutely. Kept going back to it. It was only years later that he finally worked out its fascination: the total absence of hope; the total lack of either God or reason. It was this that had haunted him through the night.

  It was supposed to be springtime; he’d just come through a winter in which an appalling flu virus had raced around the city, cowping half the population; now it seemed, as the weather changed, he was finally coming down with it. He didn’t feel like going out, but he had to. He needed to go back to the library and read more of the Lauder manuscript. And he needed to speak to MacDonald. Something wasn’t making sense.

  He was sweltering. He sat on the bed for five minutes, cooling down. Then he began to feel very cold indeed. He got dressed, put on his boots, found a scarf, and went downstairs into the street.

  About halfway along it a wave of nausea came over him. He had to lean against a fence or else he’d have been on the ground.

  There was a roaring in his head, a clanking engine-like din that got louder and louder. He gripped onto the fence. The roar faded, leaving only the clanking, which became like someone chapping a coin on a table to herald an after-dinner speech. His back ached. Painfully he got himself back upright. The chapping sound continued. He turned around to look for its source. An old man was angrily rapping at a window with his knuckles, gesticulating at the fence he was still clinging to.

  Carlin launched himself off the fence, hoping he would have enough momentum to get to the chemist’s and then home again.

  At the end of the street there was a telephone box. He propped himself up inside it.

  ‘Could I speak tae Mr MacDonald, please?’

  ‘I’m not sure which … Which department is that?’

  ‘Scottish. Or mebbe Edinburgh. I’m no certain.’

  ‘Is it a general enquiry then? Can I help at all?’

  ‘It’s him I need. A specific thing.’

  ‘Hold on a minute. I’ll see if I can track him down. Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘Ma name’s Carlin. But he’ll mebbe no mind me. Tell him it’s aboot the Lauder manuscript.’

  ‘The Lauder manuscript. Hold on then.’

  Carlin watched the units ticking down. He pushed another fifty pence into the box.

  Some time passed but he couldn’t tell how much. The digits seemed not to move, then they would change rapidly, then freeze again. Carlin blinked, trying to clear his vision. He heard a voice in his lug.

  ‘MacDonald here.’

  ‘Mr MacDonald. It’s the guy ye were helpin last week. Aboot Major Weir?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve no been able tae manage in the day. Tae finish readin that Lauder thing, the Secret Book. Ken whit I’m talkin aboot? It was being kept aside for me.’

  ‘If you’ve been consulting an item and haven’t finished with it, it’ll be held on reserve till you get in. You needn’t have bothered to phone.’

  ‘Aye, but it’s mair than that. I’ve been thinkin … aboot somebody visitin Weir in prison.’

  ‘Yes.’ MacDonald’s voice sounded flat and unhelpful.

  ‘Ye said ye didna think James Mitchel could hae been in tae see him. Ye didna think he could hae been in Edinburgh then at all. That was when ye gied me the Lauder thing and said Lauder had visited him. But it’s in there aboot Mitchel. In the Secret Book. That’s where it explains how he went tae see him.’

  There was a silence. Carlin’s head was pounding in time with the digits which were now changing regularly on the display. Someone was howking in his spine with a serrated knife.

  ‘Hello?’ Carlin said. ‘Are ye there?’

  ‘Mr Carlin, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I did say that that manuscript was quite suspect. I only retrieved it for you from the stacks because of the connection with Major Weir. It’s of ephemeral interest only. I thought I made that clear.’

  ‘But ye don’t doubt that Lauder saw him. And Lauder says Mitchel saw him tae. How can ye accept one an no the other?’

  ‘Because Lauder says so elsewhere. In an authentic, genuine document. This Secret Book, as I explained, is of very dubious origin. It could be by Lauder but we can’t prove it. It doesn’t contain nearly as much legal terminology or passages in Latin as one would expect, compared with his other writings. It’s interesting, but it’s probably not by him.’

  ‘Then why did ye waste ma time wi it?’

  ‘I’ve not wasted your time. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You told me you wanted a way in. You said you weren’t close enough. Isn’t that what you said?’

  ‘Aye but …’ He dug in his pocket for more change, found only coppers. The display read 10. ‘But if it’s no real?’

  ‘What’s real, Mr Carlin? We say history’s real. It really happened. But we can’t prove it. We can’t touch it. All we have is hearsay and handed down stories and a lot of paper that somebody else tells us is the genuine article.’

  The display was down to 6. The roaring was back in Carlin’s lugs. He had to shout to hear himself.

  ‘Whit, ye mean like some huge conspiracy? But then everybody’s involved, we’re aw hooked intae it. And whit’s it for then? Who’s organised it?’

  ‘Not a conspiracy. Just a set of circumstances we find ourselves in. Each one of us. Nothing about those circumstances is certain – not the present, not the future, certainly not the past. That’s gone, if it ever existed. We just have to live as if it did.’

  ‘But if we don’t believe that stuff, whit can we believe? Ye’ve got a haill library doon there that disna mean a thing then. It’s junk, useless. That’s no whit ye think, is it? That’s the very opposite o whit ye were sayin the other day.’

  He thought he heard MacDonald laugh, a short, cynical laugh. That couldn’t be right surely. Then his voice came again.

  ‘I don’t know what to think. I just do my job.’

  A messa
ge was flashing: INSERT MONEY.

  ‘I’ll be in again,’ Carlin shouted. ‘Tae dae some mair research.’

  ‘Everything’s a search,’ he thought he heard MacDonald say, and the line went dead.

  ‘He’s got a point, but.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, like, prove tae me ye had a childhood. Prove ye existed as a wee boy. Yer mither’s deid, yer faither’s deid. So ye’ve got an auntie or two that’ll back ye up. Photographs. A name and address. Disna prove a fuckin thing.’

  ‘Memories.’

  ‘Aye, that’s aw ye’ve got. And they can play tricks on ye. Like, where did ye go this mornin?’

  ‘Oot. I felt seik though. I cam hame again.’

  The mirror waited.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I nearly fainted. An auld guy got angry at me through his windae. I could – I don’t need tae but I could – go and chap his door and ask him if he’d iver seen me before.’

  ‘Oh aye, d’ye think he’d open the door tae ye? Probably think ye were comin roon tae gie him a hammerin. Probably thought ye were a junkie. Where else did ye go?’

  ‘Tae the chemist’s. For painkillers. And I can prove that. There’s them on the table.’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘Here. I crashed oot. And I phoned that guy in the library. Had a weird conversation wi him. He’s keepin a book on reserve for me.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘Aye. He said so.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Aye. Whit the fuck is this?’

  ‘You were never oot this room aw day. Ye bought the drugs yesterday, cause ye felt somethin comin on. I’ve been watchin ye. Ye’ve been lyin in yer kip aw day like a lazy cunt. Totally incommunicado. Wiped oot. Deif and blin tae the world.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘I’m tellin ye. Fuckin buzzer was gaun twice. Ye niver even stirred. So don’t gie me this phonin the library shite. Ye’ve been dreamin. Hallucinatin. Ye’re ill, man.’

  ‘That’s pathetic. I was oot. Is that the best ye can dae?’

  ‘Fuckin library. Probably disna even fuckin exist.’

  ‘Coorse the library exists. Where d’ye think I was last week? Ye niver raised aw this existence shite then.’