Free The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by S.G. MacLean Page B

might have gone. A gate in the castle wall was banging. At first I thought nothing of it, thinking it was only the wind. But then I noticed a little rag of plaiding snagged on a splinter in the wood. I went through the gate and still I could not see her, and I resolved to spend some time searching the grounds.
    ‘I must have been there half an hour or more, searching behind every wall, under every tree. Eventually I knew it was fruitless to search any further – if she had been in the castle grounds, she was not there now. There was no way I was going to venture down the path from the Rose Craig again – how either of us had made it up there in that wind and rain I do not know. I was heading for the gate in the wall that leads to the Water Path when it swung open and there stepping through it towards me was Marion. She was soaked to the very skin, and her hair blown all about her, and I could get no sense from her at all. She called out his name when she first realised there was someone on the path, and when I could make her understand that it was not Patrick Davidson but I myself who stood there, she all but collapsed. All she could say was, ‘I cannot find him, he will not be found.’ I think I must have half-carried her down the Water Path to High Shore. Thank God we were not seen – well, by any other than the Dawson sisters, that is. Imanaged eventually to get Marion back to her father’s house. Her mother takes a sleeping draught at night, and as we made little commotion I do not think her father was disturbed by us.’
    ‘At what hour did you reach the apothecary’s?’
    He considered a moment. ‘It was something after ten, I think. Not long after.’
    My heart sank within me. They had missed him by a few minutes, if that. Five minutes or less earlier down the Water Path and they would have met Patrick Davidson himself, and they would not have abandoned him to the gutter and his fate as I did. I thought I could guess the rest. ‘And you went back out searching for him early this morning, when you found he had not returned?’
    He shook his head. ‘No, I went back out last night. Marion was in such a state it was the only thing that would stop her going out herself.’
    He related to me then how he had walked the burgh boundaries, avoiding the entry ports on a plea by Marion. She had been almost as concerned that no one should know Charles Thom was searching for Patrick Davidson as she had been that Davidson should be found. He had been down every street, every vennel, every wynd in his search for the apothecary’s apprentice. He had searched relentlessly through the night until, feverish and exhausted, stumbling homewards in the early hours of the next morning, he had heard that Patrick Davidson was lying dead in my schoolroom. And all the while I had slumbered.
    A question had been forming in my mind. ‘Charles, why do you think Marion was so fearful that anyone should know you were looking for Patrick Davidson?’
    He reflected a moment. ‘I think she believed that whatever danger attended Patrick Davidson would also threaten whoever might know he was in danger. She had a foreknowledge that he was in danger last night, and very likely from whom and why, though she would not tell me. I truly believe that her foreknowledge of what happened last night puts her in danger of her life, Alexander. If anyone should learn of it, I am determined that they shall not make the connection to her through me.’
    I could see the sense in what he said, and that there was little point in trying to dissuade him from his resolve. ‘What have you told the baillie, then?’
    He gave a low laugh. ‘Nothing that he believes. I have told him that I returned to my bed at the apothecary’s, but having consumed so much ale in the inn was forced to get up again and go out into the air two hours or so later, as I was in fear of vomiting. I said I walked down to the Greenbanks and towards the sandbar at the river mouth to let the