The Fanatic Read online

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said Eleis impatiently. ‘And if the tortoise would only pit oot its heid, he would cut it aff. Rhetoric, man, pure rhetoric. Lauderdale innocent? – of coorse he isna. But St Andrews is the chief pot-stirrer, I assure ye.’

  ‘I grant that the Archbishop detests the rebels – they remind him that he signed the Covenant himsel when he was plain Maister Sharp,’ Lauder said. ‘But sae did Lauderdale afore he was a duke. I dinna see that they’re sae different.’

  ‘Sharp disna unnerstaun the subtleties o keepin power – he simply feels if he’s tae be primate o aw Scotland then aw Scotland must be thirlt tae prelacy and made tae honour and obey the bishops if they canna love them. Then he’s surprised that madmen prefer tae shoot at them.

  ‘Lauderdale, on the tither haun, has aye been a politician. He would shoot the odd bishop himsel if it would strenthen his grup on the country. I mind when the Act cam in for renouncin the Covenant, Lauderdale’s enemies believed he wouldna be able tae stomach such a change o hert and would be forced oot. That was the wishin o bairns. They baith swure, him and Sharp, but it was Sharp that prevaricated, and Lauderdale that did it laughin, sayin he would sign a cartful o such oaths afore he would lose his place. Onywey, the point is this: if ye drive folk ontae the moors tae pray, ye mak them intae rebels as surely as the pricker’s needle maks witches oot o auld hags.’

  ‘Speakin o madmen and shootin at bishops,’ said Lauder, ‘I hae a mind tae visit the Bass. I was speirin ma guidfaither aboot it earlier. James Mitchel is the man I want tae see.’

  Eleis raised his eyebrows. ‘Caw cannie, man,’ he said.

  ‘Aye,’ said Lauder. ‘That’s whit Sir Andrew said, mair or less. But Mitchel’s politics isna ma interest. It’s somethin else. Whit we were talkin aboot a minute ago.’

  ‘Witchcraft?’ said Eleis. ‘Mitchel’s clean o that at least. Folk o his persuasion are ten times harder on it than Sharp or ony Privy Cooncil commission, ye ken that. Hauf o them think Sharp himsel has Satan tae supper and hures and gambles the nichts awa wi him.’

  ‘Aye, aye, and he can transport himsel atween St Andrews and Edinburgh through the air,’ said Lauder.

  ‘Weill, whit is yer interest in Mitchel, then?’

  ‘John,’ said Lauder, ‘suppose I said tae ye that there was a controversy ragin in ma ain heid, that disna let me rest? Would ye say I was seik?’

  ‘I’d say ye should tell me mair,’ said Eleis with a smile.

  ‘Look at us,’ said Lauder. ‘We share common views anent the law, and religion, and the state o the nation. We baith believe that the times will improve if oor ain ideas prosper – we are the progressive people o this age. But we canna aye say this, we must steik oor gabs tae be wise, and dae oor day’s darg and no challenge the kirk, or the state, or some o the prejudices and enthusiasms powerfu men hae. Ye ken this is true – we canna change the wey folk think, but we can search oot a better wey o thinkin for the future.’

  ‘Frae the man that’s mairrit on Lord Abbotshall’s dochter,’ Eleis said, laughing, ‘that must come frae the hert.’

  ‘Bluid’s thicker than law, in the case ye mention,’ said Lauder wryly. ‘He’s a byordinar man. I canna deny I’m muckle obliged tae him, and that gars me bite ma tongue, but it wasna himsel I meant in particular.’ He paused, trying to articulate what he felt. His cousin waited patiently.

  ‘Dae ye mind when I was in France eftir I finished at the College? Twa years I was there, studyin the law, but the truth is, I learnt mair by bein in a foreign place than iver I learnt frae the lectures, whether in Poitiers or in Edinburgh. And it was life I learnt, no law. I gaed there as John Lauder, and I cam back as John Lauder, but it wasna the same fellow that wan hame.’

  ‘Aye it was,’ said Eleis. ‘Ye were jist twa years aulder, and ye kent mair. Onywey, law is life. That’s aw it is. And I was there in France afore ye, mind. Ye couldna live at Daillé’s and come awa kennin less than ye kent when ye arrived.’

  Both of them, when they had graduated, had gone abroad to continue their studies. They might have gone to the Low Countries or Germany, but instead they had been sent to France. Lauder had arrived in Poitiers with a letter of introduction from Eleis to a Monsieur Daille, with whom he was to lodge. Daillé was a sad wee man, with a libertine for a wife. She was never home before him, and if he went away on business she’d hardly be home at all. She had a bairn of four or five that was supposedly a parting gift from another Scot, Will Douglas, who had been there at the same time as Eleis. Lauder had only to mention Douglas’s name and Daillé would fall into a gloomy despondency, shaking his head and saying that, much though he liked the Scots, Mr Douglas was one that he could not think on with kindness. And yet he never admitted that the bairn was not his own.

  Lauder laughed. ‘Puir Monsieur Daillé, I had hauf forgot him. But ye keep divertin me, John. It’s frae that time in France that I saw Scotland afresh. Ye gang awa and see yer ain land frae a distance, and ye see it better. Syne ye win hame and ye see the haill world in that new licht. But it’s changin fast, cousin, changin even as we look at it. That’s whit interests me. Mitchel, you, me, we’re teeterin on the brink o time. I feel there are things that can be seen noo that mebbe in ten or twenty years folk winna be able tae see at aw. Oor minds are closin tae things because they’re openin tae ither things, and I want tae see in baith directions.’

  Eleis shook his head. ‘I’m lost,’ he said. ‘Ye’re speakin in riddles.’

  Lauder said, ‘A riddle is a means o disguisin a thing, syne when ye ken the answer ye see it in a different wey. That’s jist whit I mean. There was a madman we heard tell o at Marseilles, that believed himsel tae be made o glass, and when folk cam ower close he would cry oot for fear they would break him. Sae his freens took a sand-glass and smashed it ower his heid when he was haein yin o his fits. He cried mair hideously than iver, that his heid was broken aw tae pieces. Syne when they had calmed him they showed him the sand-glass. The glass is broke, they tellt him, but ye arena broke. Ye canna be made o glass. And sae he had tae confess that that was the case.’

  ‘Ye may break aw the glass ye like on Mitchel,’ said Eleis, ‘but ye’ll no persuade him his leg wasna crushed in the boots. As for confessions …’

  ‘He confessed tae shootin at Sharp,’ said Lauder, ‘when he was promised his life in exchange for the confession. Then he denied the confession in coort, because he didna believe they would keep the promise. But there’s nae riddle there, that’s a simple case o self-preservation. It’s whit lies ahint that’s harder tae fathom.’ He seized the pitcher that stood on the table between them in both hands. ‘You and I, we ken Scotland will go on wi or withoot Mitchel, wi or withoot Sharp. We’re set tae inherit land frae oor faithers, we’ll see oor faimlies settled on their estates and we’ll prosper and grow auld because we dinna think the world’s comin tae an end. But aw that is naethin tae a man like Mitchel. It’s a delusion. This life and this world is naethin tae the glory he will inherit for keepin his covenant wi God and for bein yin o the elect. Noo, John, is he made o glass or are we?’

  ‘Ask Mitchel if ye see him,’ said Eleis, ‘– if he’ll see you.’ He looked serious. ‘That’s a dangerous question o faith, cousin. I ken ma ain answer. But you, you be careful who hears ye ask it.’

  ‘I need tae see the things that are becomin invisible,’ Lauder said. ‘And Mitchel’s the man I need tae show them tae me.’

  ‘Why him?’

  Lauder smiled. ‘I need tae ask him aboot an auld acquaintance,’ he said.

  There was the world and there was a world that moved through it, beneath it: Lauder thought, walking home to the Lawnmarket, this is what we believe, now, at this moment. A day would come when human beings might forget the other world: or they might be taught to avert their eyes from it; to shield themselves from it. Then gradually people would unlearn fear, and believe only in the world they could touch and see, and they would assure themselves that this world was all they needed to know. But wou
ld they be right?

  Lauder felt his intellect being torn asunder. One part of him yearned for a reality in which the only world was the one you woke to, the food you ate and the wine you drank, the objects you handled and the people you embraced. How much simpler life would be. Such a world would be a world of laws, not articles of faith; of reason rather than passions. Surely that was to be welcomed.

  But another part of him feared what would be born of such an arrogant assertion of the knowledge of men. Just because you lost sight of ghosts did not mean they had gone. That was the argument of a John Prestoun, he realised, but there was more to it than that. Already he could see those who were most worldly in Scotland abusing power and despising law. They were happy to let the eyes of others go on seeing the visions and horrors of the other world. It served them well to have the populace believe what they themselves no longer believed. Witches were good fuel to keep the fires of ignorance burning. But this was not the rule of reason, it was the rule of subtlety and calculation. If these men were not deterred by the Covenant, a piece of law which bound the kingdom of Scotland and all that happened in it to the kingdom of God, why would they have any respect for mere human law?

  And what if they, the worldly, had calculated too fast, too far? What if fanatics like Mitchel were right, and the Covenant could not be destroyed even if the paper it was printed on was? What if the Devil was still there, lurking in the shadows? Who then would be the wise and who the foolish? Who would be sane, and who made of glass?

  Edinburgh, April 1997/October 1987

  Carlin made his way north, across town. The traffic on Princes Street was quieter these days, since they’d banned cars and lorries from travelling east along it. But the pavement on the north side of the street was still as busy as ever: a massive battlement of shop-fronts, below which an army of shoppers and tourists were being constantly drilled by pipers stationed on every other corner. Some beggars and a larger number of Big Issue sellers had also taken up positions, and were tolerated or ignored like good Indians hanging around Fort Laramie.

  Beyond Princes Street, in the New Town’s Georgian grid, the atmosphere changed again. The brutal electronic beeping and printing of cash-registers and credit-card machines became more muted. The shops on George Street were more sedate, less desperate, more contemptuous of the public. If money talked on Princes Street, on George Street it gave a comfortable purr.

  It was Friday. Carlin had been in the library again, reading another chunk of Lauder’s Secret Book. He couldn’t make up his mind about whether it was genuine, and MacDonald had not been around to offer his views. Carlin had had a look at some of Lauder’s other writings, trying to pick out similarities and differences of style, spelling, attitude. The Secret Book contained plenty on Major Weir that seemed more considered, less certain, than the brief mention given in his Journals. That would suggest that they were not written by the same man. But then again, you’d expect a different emphasis, perhaps an opposite view, in something labelled ‘secret’.

  It was afternoon by the time he put the document back on reserve and walked down the Mound. He was heading for a refuge; an island of the Old Town which had somehow drifted north and settled itself off Charlotte Square. It was a pub, entered through a tiny front shop that was usually crammed with regulars, with a larger, drab room through the back which occasionally got half full in the evenings. Carlin would go there for a pint or two in the daytime, to sit alone in the back room and read, or just sit alone. He liked the fact that the barman never seemed to take offence at his lack of conversation, and that he always served a good pint. Although it was well out of his way these days, he also kept going back out of a weird sense of loyalty. The pub had done him a favour once.

  There’d been a time when it had been much more than just a quiet place for him to sit in his own company. It had been a haven when he couldn’t stay in the flat alone. He felt safe in the back room. He didn’t have to do anything there, except decide whether to order another pint. By the end of the evening, he’d walk home up Lothian Road with a bellyful of beer, tired and drunk, and the worst thing he’d do to himself was fall into bed without drinking any water. He’d sleep off the bevvy and in the morning, or the afternoon, things wouldn’t look quite so bad for a while. When they started to close in again he’d head back down the road.

  There was a nagging question that he couldn’t shift: what’s the point? Such a small, loaded, insignificant, enormous question. He knew it was a cliché which people used to justify laziness, fear of change, inactiveness, suicide even. But it could also be a rhetorical put-down of all these. What’s the point of wasting life, doing nothing with it, exiting it? The question ran round his mind, trapped like a metal ball in a pocket maze.

  He’d worked in a bookshop for a couple of years. Every day he came down to the town centre and put in his shift. It was a time when bookshops were being revolutionised. In the seventies, when Carlin was first a student, Edinburgh’s bookshops had closed on Saturday afternoons. Even when they stopped doing that they retained a slow, old-fashioned atmosphere. Then, in the eighties, the Waterstone’s chain arrived from London and everything changed. Soon the bookshops were all opening on Sundays, and till ten at night through the week. Carlin didn’t mind working the late shift: it wasn’t so busy, and as for the anti-social hours, well, it was a long time since he’d been bothered by anything anti-social. After work, or during his dinner hour, he’d sometimes nip round to the pub for a calming drink alone.

  After a while he began to take his job personally. He liked experimenting with the stock he was buying for the Science Fiction and Horror sections he was put in charge of. He knew nothing about either but he was good at watching what moved fastest. He felt like he was playing with coloured bricks, building them up, rearranging them, stacking them in the best way to attract customers. It became a contest between him and the people that came into the shop, to see if he could outguess them as to what they wanted, make them buy things they probably didn’t want at all.

  The shop manager was impressed. He was also surprised, because Carlin hadn’t exactly fitted the typical staff profile. He was non-communicative and morose with the other booksellers, and he looked all wrong – tall and ill-looking and unkempt, whereas the manager preferred his staff to be neat, healthy, smiley and female – but he was good at controlling his stock. The manager knew he was never going to promote Carlin. On the other hand, he could confidently leave him to get on with the job.

  Which Carlin did. But somebody else began to interfere. At first Carlin didn’t pay this person much attention. He would come in and wander through the shop three or four times a week, browsing, and eventually end up at the SciFi and Horror shelves. There were a few chairs scattered through the shop, and the guy would pull one over and sit down to dip into a selection of books in more detail. Carlin didn’t have a problem with this. The guy looked down at heel and as though his days were long and empty; if he wanted to use the shop as a library that was fine. He never saw him buy anything but that was fine too. Sometimes Carlin would catch his eye as he went past, and the guy would look at him sadly with the expectation of one about to be moved on, as if Carlin was some kind of literary polis. Sometimes he’d ask the time, a feeble defensive mechanism. Carlin felt something for him: ‘the guy’. He saw himself there, in another life.

  But then he began to notice other things about him. He always carried a small rucksack. He seemed to have a constant cold which he kept sniffing back up into his head. His vulnerable look, when Carlin saw it from a distance, and not directed at himself, became shifty and knowing. And now Carlin saw gaps on his shelves whenever the guy had been in. They were disguised sometimes – books were left facing out instead of spine-on, or laid flat on their backs – but there were definitely gaps.

  The bastard was nicking the books.

  Fuck it. They weren’t Carlin’s books. He quite admired the dexterity of it, and was surprised by his own naivety. People were always nicking book
s. Probably he should do something, tell the manager, tell the store detective when he saw her next. But Carlin hated the store detective, who was hired part-time from a security firm. She was vicious. She loved catching the obvious shoplifters. She caught a hippy once who had hidden a book about summer work abroad in his combat jacket: he couldn’t afford it, but he needed it to find out about going to France for the grape-picking. He needed it to get himself a job, in other words. The hippy was a bear of a man, with a beard that half-covered his big placid face. He could have burst out of the place no bother, but he sat like a lamb in the store-room where they took shoplifters. Carlin was in there too – if the detective made an arrest she had to have a member of staff with her all the time as a witness – and at one point thought the hippy was going to start greeting. He got him a pencil and paper and told him to write down as much information about grape-picking as he could before the polis arrived. The man thanked him. When the polis came he thanked them too. The only person he didn’t thank was the store detective.

  If he told the manager, Carlin reasoned, he’d just tell the detective. So he’d leave it. It didn’t matter. And yet Carlin found he couldn’t ignore the situation. The job had got to him that much.

  ‘I’ve got this dilemma. Should I shop a shoplifter?’

  ‘How’s that a dilemma? D’ye think folk should be allowed to break the law or no?’

  ‘It’s mair complicated than that. Folk arena perfect. Neither’s the law. It’s mair a question aboot masel.’

  ‘How d’ye mean?’

  ‘Ma sympathies lie wi the guy. I dinna ken him, or onythin aboot him. He disna cause ony bother in the shop, he jist nicks a few books wheniver he comes in. He looks like he’s on somethin. Could be a junkie, needs tae pey for his habit, ken?’