The poet turned and left, without further word, and all for a moment was silence, save the sound of Maeve O’Neill’s glass shattering on the stone floor.
ONE
The Taste of Tomorrow
Aberdeen, Scotland, 23 September 1628
I had waited for this moment without knowing what it was that I waited for. The college was quiet, so quiet that the sounds of the life of the town and the sea beyond permeated its passageways and lecture halls unopposed by scholarly debate or student chatter. The shutters on Dr Dun’s window, so often closed at this time of year against the early autumn blasts of the North Sea gales, were open today to let in the last, surprising, golden glows of the late summer sunshine. The rays lent an unaccustomed warmth to the old grey stones of the Principal’s room, less austere now than it had been in the days of the Greyfriars who had walked these cloisters before us, in the time of superstition. The Principal’s words were as welcome to my ears as was the gentle sunlight to my eyes.
‘It is in you, Alexander, that we have decided to place this trust. It is greatly at short notice, I know, but you will understand Turner’s letter only came into the hands of the council yesterday, and response, not only by letter but in the form of the appointed agent of the town and college – yourself – must be aboard the Aurora by the turn of the tide on Thursday. We met in the kirk last night to discuss it, and our choice was not long in the making.’ He named a dozen names, all that mattered for learning and the word of God in our society. There had been a time when knowing that I had been the subject of such a conference would have engendered apprehension in me, for there could only have been one result of such a council then – censure, condemnation, exile. But that had been a long time ago, and in another place, and these two years past I had lived quietly and worked hard at my post in the college. My students in the third class, where I taught arithmetic, geometry, ethics and physics, liked me, I knew. I passed myself well enough with my fellow regents, and from Dr Dun, from the beginning, I had known nothing but kindness. My friends were few, and I did not seek to add to their number. William Cargill and his wife, friends both since my own college days, George Jamesone the painter, Dr Forbes, my former teacher and my spiritual father, and Sarah, since the day I had first met her, there had been Sarah. I seldom travelled, and rarely returned to Banff, the town of my birth, where I had friends also who were truly dear to me, and all the family I had in the world. Yet I did not like to return to the stage of failures past, so I did not go there a tenth of the times I was asked. I had had no fear, then, on being summoned to the Principal’s presence. Neither had I had any inkling of the news, the great prospect that awaited me there.
‘You are well versed in the German tongue, are you not?’ enquired the Principal.
I asserted that I was. My old friend Dr Jaffray, in Banff, had insisted on teaching me the language. He had spent happy years of study on the continent in his youth, and having no one else to converse with in that tongue, he had decided he would converse with me. Despite the ravages of the war which now raged over so many of the lands he held dear, he never lost sight of the hope that one day I would follow where he had first walked. And now, at last, his hope was to be fulfilled, but not, perhaps, in a way he might have foreseen. I was to sail on Thursday for the Baltic, and Danzig. From there I was to travel to Breslau and then Rostock.
‘Our brethren in the Baltic lands, in northern Germany, in Poland and in Lithuania, suffer greatly under the depredations of Rome and the Habsburgs: the King of Sweden struggles almost alone in their cause. Our brethren thirst for the Word and for their own ministers. Turner has written here, as the town of his birth, asking that we might accept two Polish students to study divinity for the next three years, that they might be sound and strengthened in their doctrine, and when they return to their homeland to fulfil their calling and spread God’s word there, that they should be replaced by two more. He has mortified to that cause the sum of ten thousand pounds Scots.’ Dr Dun paused for a moment to allow me to contemplate the incredible vastness of this sum.
‘Praise be to God for such a man and for such a gift,’ I said.
‘Indeed,’ said the Principal.
‘You wish me to escort the two students to Scotland?’ I asked, for the Principal had still not made clear what was to be my role in this enterprise.
He shook his head. ‘No, Alexander, some returning merchant or travelling townsman of good report could have performed that task. I wish you to travel to Poland to meet with Turner, and with his assistance, to seek out and find the two most worthy young men you can to fill these two places. I wish you to travel to the universities, to question the young men you find there on their learning, their soundness in doctrine, their strength of heart in adversity, their love for the Lord. When you find the two young men you know in your heart to be fit and right for this ministry, then you are to bring them back here with you. The council and the college will give you four months for the fulfilling of this task. Will you take up this trust, Alexander?’
The sounds from outside the open window were shut out by the contending voices in my head, all my own. Here at last, after false trails and false dawns, was the chance I had never believed I would be given. Here was the moment where Dr Jaffray’s hopes for me could be fulfilled. I would at last travel beyond the narrow bounds of our northern society, and all in the work of God and for my fellow man. Here was a chance fully to justify the kindnesses and the faith in me of Dr John Forbes, my mentor, and of Dr Dun himself, who had plucked me from my self-imposed obscurity in Banff for something better. Here was the moment, and I was as an idiot, in a stupor.
Dr Dun smiled kindly at me. ‘Do not tell me you mislike the commission, Alexander, for I can think of no other better suited to it. The loss of your own calling to the ministry – and I know you suffer from it yet – will make you a better judge than any other of those who would aspire to it. Will you go, boy?’
At the age of twenty-eight, it was a long time since I had been called boy, and never before by Dr Dun. The warmth unlocked my seized tongue. ‘Aye, Sir, I will go.’
There was much to be done and less than two days to do it in. By midday on Thursday, I would be aboard a merchant ship and bound for the Baltic. Many had gone before me, to increase and pursue their learning, to better master their trade, to escape present drudgery in the hope of a new and better life. I was not to be embarking upon the journey of a new life, but I felt that what the next few months would bring would change the life I had to come. There were letters to write, bills to pay, and farewells to make. It would be another week before the students began to arrive back in the town after their long vacation, and Dr Dun already had the matter of my temporary replacement in hand. I almost flew to my own chamber on leaving the Principal’s study, taking the granite steps two at a time and nearly knocking over the old college porter as I did so.