The Fanatic Read online

  ‘You would think so,’ said MacDonald. ‘It’s not often you get the chance to view the incarnation of pure evil. But maybe that was the trouble. He was too dangerous. His former Covenanting comrades couldn’t put enough distance between him and them, once his crimes were made known. And the nature of the crimes – he was dangerous in a much deeper sense than just political. His sister was accused of witchcraft but claimed that the real sorcerer was him, not her. People took that very seriously in 1670 – they believed in the immortality of the soul, that life on earth was just a prelude, an overture to eternity. Major Weir was up to his oxters in stuff that would send you straight to Hell.

  ‘The only folk that wanted to visit him in prison were his enemies – Royalists going to gloat at the fallen Presbyterian, or Presbyterian ministers going to look on the face of Satan. And then, he was convicted on a Saturday and executed on the Monday. He was probably in the Tolbooth for less than a week before the trial, while they prepared the evidence against him, so there wasn’t a lot of time for sympathetic visitors.’

  ‘How do you ken aw this?’ Carlin said. ‘Is this a pet subject of yours or somethin?’

  ‘Your interest revived mine,’ said MacDonald. ‘I had the opportunity to turn over a few pages this morning. As I said before, when you’ve been here as long as I have, everything becomes familiar. The Weirs have a certain morbid appeal, but you have to see them in the context of the times. Religious terrorism, political repression, economic uncertainty … it’s not surprising some individuals went off the rails, is it?’

  ‘I was thinkin aboot this guy Mitchel,’ said Carlin. ‘The man that tried to shoot the archbishop. Him and Weir used tae ken each ither. Where was he when Weir was in trouble?’

  ‘In Holland probably,’ said MacDonald. ‘Although now that you mention it we don’t really know where he was in 1670. Wandering about trying not to get arrested, doubtless. No, I don’t see how he could have got near Weir. But I have somebody here for you who did.’

  He handed Carlin the folder. ‘Sir John Lauder,’ he said. The folder was about an inch thick between stiff cardboard covers. It had a label on the front bearing a catalogue number, and down the spine another label which read ANE SECRET BOOK. It felt ponderous and dense.

  ‘He became Lord Fountainhall, a judge in the Court of Session,’ MacDonald explained. ‘When he wrote this – if he wrote it – he was just plain Maister John Lauder, an advocate. I told you yesterday that I thought there was more on Major Weir somewhere. I knew it was in an unusual source but I couldn’t remember where until I was up in the Edinburgh Room this morning and I overheard someone checking their council ward. They gave their address as Fountainhall Road and it suddenly clicked.’

  Carlin flipped open the front cover. There was a typescript, a blue carbon copy on foolscap sheets:

  Ane Secret Book of John Lauder

  later Lord Fountainhall

  being his account of sundry matters of public interest

  many not revealed in his Historical Observes and Historical Notices

  transcribed and preserved by D. Crosbie and presented to

  Edinburgh Public Library 1912

  ‘Lauder kept records about everything,’ said MacDonald. ‘He kept journals and notes about both his private affairs and public life from the time he was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates – just a few weeks before Mitchel tried to kill Archbishop Sharp – right through to the Union and beyond. He didn’t approve of the Union. A lot of what he wrote was published in the nineteenth century by historical societies like the Bannatyne Club. He’s regarded as an important source for the whole period.

  ‘Now he mentions in one of the published journals that he did visit Weir in prison on the day he died, but he doesn’t say much about him – except that he was a monster of depravity and deserved all he got. Standard sort of response which wouldn’t really help you much, but the document you have in your hands, that’s another story. You see, many of Lauder’s manuscripts were lost. There’s a story that most of what was preserved was discovered in a tobacconist’s by a lawyer named Crosbie in the later eighteenth century. You’ll note the name D. Crosbie appears on the title-page of that document. One is tempted to presume it was a descendant. The earlier Crosbie is supposed to have been half the model for Sir Walter Scott’s lawyer Mr Pleydell in Guy Mannering by the way – I’m sorry, this is hardly relevant, is it?’

  Carlin shook his head. ‘No, but it’s awright,’ he said. ‘Tell me aboot this thing I’m haudin.’

  ‘To be honest,’ said MacDonald, ‘I’m a wee bit embarrassed by it. I mean, it has no historical credentials, there is no proof of its authenticity at all. There’s a note at the front which says it was typed from a handwritten copy, made by this D. Crosbie person’s grandfather, of an original manuscript. The original was crumbling to dust and the copy was virtually illegible, so it’s claimed. But we have no idea who D. Crosbie was – no address, no autobiographical details – nothing. The library has no record of where the document came from, or why it was accepted. There’s no corresponding copy in the National Library, or anywhere else that I know of, although there must have been a top copy. Nor is there any guarantee that John Lauder even wrote it, although the internal evidence is reasonably strong: the characteristically erratic spellings, the references to individuals Lauder knew and so on. On the other hand, it’s not altogether in his style. Not as lawyerish as you’d expect. I don’t think professional historians have ever taken it seriously – most of them probably don’t know it exists. Possibly it’s a great missing chunk of our history, but – and this is why I suggest you should be cautious and regard it with the utmost suspicion – it’s more likely to be an elaborate fake.

  ‘However, there’s no obvious reason why anyone would perpetrate such a hoax, unless the library paid money for the thing, but that would be unlikely and certainly then I’d expect much better documentation. The title-page text would suggest it was a donation. So why go to all the bother of inventing all this? If, by some chance, it is by Lauder – and I don’t see how we’ll ever know that now – it certainly fills a gap. Among the manuscripts of his that went missing were twenty years’ worth of his Historical Observes, which would have included all of the 1670s.’

  MacDonald looked flustered, as if his statement had taken a lot out of him. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he finished. ‘Have a look at it, by all means, but … well, I’d be interested to know what you think.’

  There were little beads of sweat on his brow, under the latticework of thin red hair. He took off his glasses and wiped his head with a large faded blue handkerchief. ‘I must go now,’ he said. ‘Must get on. That really belongs upstairs, but as you’re consulting books from this department too, it’ll be all right to look at it here.’

  He turned away and seemed almost to dart back behind the counter, which was unoccupied. Still mopping his head, he pushed through a door beyond which Carlin could see stacks of leatherbound books. He watched MacDonald’s round-shouldered figure until it turned left and disappeared among the shelves. He found a vacant desk and sat down at it with the typescript. He opened it, read the note by D. Crosbie that MacDonald had mentioned, and turned to the next page.

  10th day of Januar 1678 – I am just now returned from the tryal of James Mitchel at the Criminall Court. He was pannelled for attempting the life of the Archbischop of St Androis. This tryal is the sum and end of many bad things, that I have sein and heard thir last ten years, whilk I maun putt doune tho I fear to doe it. Unsemely and stinking are the wayes emploied to sicker this man’s doom, but soe is al thats gane befoir. I am sweert to write anent this afair in my other journal. This is ane new and secret book.

  It is ane yeir since Mitchel was putt to the Bass, and but nine month since I socht leave to see him there from my father in law Lord Abbotshall …

  Edinburgh, April 1677

  Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Abbotshall, till lately Lord Provost of Edinburgh, considered leaving his l
ong, luxurious wig on the stand where he had placed it earlier, while looking over his accounts. It was a very fine wig, thick and lavishly curled, but it made his head hot and got in the way when he was trying to read. Still, he did not really like to be seen without it; he was approaching sixty, and the wig gave his large face a dignity it otherwise lacked. Without his expensive clothes and headpiece he might have been taken for a publican or a shopkeeper. Not that Sir Andrew had anything against publicans and shopkeepers; on the contrary, he was their prince. Or, at least, he once had been.

  He was expecting his son-in-law and although John Lauder was family, Sir Andrew still liked to impress his formidable personality upon the younger man. He stood up, took the wig and, in front of a mirror, carefully lowered it onto his head. He laid the ends of it over his ample shoulders and briefly admired himself, large, sedate and solemn in the glass. That was his style in these times of wild ranters and gaunt rebels. Some might think him fat and graceless, but he saw himself as a dancing-master; nobody could jouk and birl like Sir Andrew Ramsay when it came to politics. He was the great survivor. ‘Andra, ye’re a richt continuum,’ a friend had recently told him. And there was no better evidence of his political brilliance than the fact that, over three decades of war, religious upheaval and governments of utterly different complexions, he had become progressively and irresistibly more and more rich.

  He cleared his throat with a grumble of self-approval, and sat back down to his books, his dreams of political intrigue, and his decanter of brandy. He was a merchant, the godfather of the city’s trade, and a laird with extensive properties in Fife and Haddingtonshire. He had served as provost under two regimes, first during the Commonwealth and then after the Restoration, when it suited the new government to install someone with a proven record, rather than trust to the vagaries of council elections. Once he had consolidated a power base on the council, elections were reintroduced and proceeded without alarm. Sir Andrew managed to remain Lord Provost year after year as if, like some portly extension of the royal prerogative, he had been restored to a throne of his own.

  Being a man with his own interests at heart he was as amenable to receiving bribes as he was adept at making them. He’d had a knighthood from King Charles, which discreetly obscured the one he’d received from the usurper Oliver Cromwell. Other honours accrued like interest. He was a Member of Parliament, Privy Counsellor and Commissioner of Exchequer. In 1671 he had achieved a further triumph: he was made a judge, an appointment for which he had no merit and only one qualification. His patron Lauderdale, the Secretary of State for Scotland, had raised him to the bench as Lord Abbotshall, although they both despised the law’s proclaimed adherence to that kittle principle, justice. That was the qualification.

  It was not a bad record of worldly achievement but there was no doubt about it: what Sir Andrew called management and his enemies called corruption was an exhausting business, and he was no longer young. For years he’d stayed one step ahead of the pack, cajoling here, wheedling there, showing a palm of gold one minute and a fist of iron the next. Sometimes he could be charm itself in the council chambers; other times he would blow in like a gale, driving all opposition before him. Once he’d even had to organise a riot in the street outside the council windows to emphasise his opinion. After twelve successful elections to the provostship, Sir Andrew had had just about enough of Edinburgh.

  And then, too, there had been the strained relationship with the Duke of Lauderdale, who’d been breathing down his neck on account of complaints about the competence, even the legality, of some of his decisions in the Court of Session. Finally, three years ago, Lauderdale had suggested that it was time to pull his finger from the fat pie of provostry, that his short stay on the bench must also come to an end, and that he should spend more time with his family at Kirkcaldy. The provost demurred. Lauderdale insisted, and Sir Andrew reluctantly resigned.

  But as his glory days were fading, he liked nothing better than to recount them, to anybody who would listen. His son-in-law, John Lauder, who owed him much in terms of placement and preferment, usually had no option but to lend an ear. It was a source of satisfaction to Sir Andrew to have a lawyer on the receiving end of his reminiscences: as a judge he had been deaved with lawyers’ arguments long enough in court, and their contempt for his ignorance was only matched by his hatred of their souple-tongued smugness.

  Not that John was by any means the worst. That prize would have to go to his cousins the John Eleises, father and son. The father was in his sixties now, and not so active, but the son was even more offensive, a subversive do-gooder who seemed to show no fear of his betters in arguing against them in favour of outed ministers, rebels and witches. It was Eleis who, with his mentor Sir George Lockhart, had been a ringleader of the advocates in 1674, when forty-nine of them had been debarred from practising because they dared to insist that they could appeal to parliament against decisions made by the Lords of Session, in spite of a royal edict forbidding it. Sir Andrew, though he had by then resigned from the bench, had been outraged by the presumption of these meddling pleaders.

  He could not abide the younger Eleis, who had even dragged John Lauder into the advocates’ dispute. John had foolishly stood on a principle as one of the forty-nine, and had been banished out of town to Haddington for more than a year until a compromise was reached: without sufficient advocates, the procedures of the courts ground almost to a halt, and the forty-nine were grudgingly readmitted.

  It was a great misfortune that John Lauder was infatuated with Eleis’s devotion to the principles and process of law: it had got him into trouble and would do so again. Nevertheless, Sir Andrew was fond of his daughter’s husband. He and Janet had been married nine years and provided him with five grandchildren to date. Lauder was only thirty, an open-minded, modest man who could yet be moulded.

  The Lauders stayed in the Lawnmarket, a stone’s throw from the courts. Sir Andrew’s residence in town was also at the upper end of the hill, but it was not the power-house it had once been. He still made huge amounts of money from various bits of business, and his accounts showed that the Toun itself owed him nearly two thousand pounds in rents and other debts, but he was no longer the driving-force of municipal commerce and enterprise, and folk no longer queued for an audience with him. More and more, he was taking Lauderdale’s advice and spending time at Abbotshall, across the Firth and away from the scenes of his past triumphs. A visit from his son-in-law, then, was not unwelcome, although it was fairly unusual. Their relationship was easy enough but there would always lie between them the shoogling-bog of their differences regarding the law. It was something they stepped around as a rule, to avoid an embarrassing slip on either side; especially on Sir Andrew’s, since he had been so very bad at law and John was very good.

  Today however it was John who was on the uncertain ground. He had come with a set of questions anent the Bass Rock and the black dogs that lay in it. He had been down in East Lothian often, sometimes visiting the Ramsay policies at Wauchton, and of course all the while he was in exile at Haddington the coast had been just a short ride away. He had seen the Bass stark in the great grey sea, but had not ventured across to it. The tide or the winds had always conspired against him. Now he was wondering about a trip to view the prison: ‘Would my lord Lauderdale object tae my gaein ower, dae ye think? I wouldna want tae gie offence by speirin if it was only tae be refusit.’

  ‘Whit for are ye wantin tae gang tae the Bass, John?’ said Sir Andrew. ‘The place is a midden o zealots. Ye’re no seekin business frae ony o them, are ye?’

  ‘Their business wi the coorts is by wi, I think,’ said Lauder. ‘But I would like tae see the place. It’s a curiosity.’

  ‘It certainly is. But ye micht no be wise tae disembark there, John. There’s a touch o the rebel aboot ye, as I mind. Yince they had ye in the Bass, they micht no want tae let ye back hame again.’

  It was a kind of joke, but he neither laughed nor smiled as he made it. He noted t
hat his son-in-law was at least sensible enough to show some humility in response.

  ‘I hae learned a lesson frae the advocates’ affair, my lord. I canna pretend that we dinna differ on that maitter, but I am mair inclined tae compromise these days. I’d hae thocht that would be enough tae distinguish me frae the recusants and guarantee my return tae North Berwick.’

  It was an even drier joke than Sir Andrew’s. The older man grumphed.

  ‘Weill, ye’re probably richt. But it’s a grievous dull place, John. There’s naethin there but solans and sneevillers.’ He reached for the decanter of brandy, refilled his own glass and poured one for Lauder.

  ‘I’m tellt the birds are in such numbers that they’re a marvel o nature, my lord. I would like tae see that, tae step amang them.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And mebbe, if I was there, I would tak anither keek at this fellow Mitchel, that’s been the cause o such grief tae the Privy Cooncil. He’s the only yin that still has a chairge hingin ower his heid, I think. Aw the rest has been convictit.’

  ‘Mitchel,’ said Sir Andrew, his brow lowering. ‘A vile and dangerous fanatic if iver there was yin.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Lauder. ‘That’s whit I would like tae see – the worst kind o fanatic. There was hardly onybody got tae see him aw the years he lay in the Tolbooth, as ye ken. But I would like tae see him noo, him and Prophet Peden and the ithers. They hae a kind of philosophic interest tae me.’

  ‘Ye philosophise ower much for yer ain guid, John. Ye may gang tae study Mitchel, but be assured he will study you harder. He will mark yer face in his een and yer words in his lugs and if ye dinna come up tae his impossible mark – which ye’ll no, no bein a Gallowa Whig or an Ayrshire rebel – and he should iver win free o that place – which he’ll no, if guid coonsels prevail, unless it’s tae mak a journey tae the end o a short tow – he’ll seek ye oot wi his pistols jist as sune as he’s fired a better shot at his grace the Archbishop. Stay awa frae him, and ye’ll no run that danger. Ye can dae nae guid there, and he can dae ye hairm.’