Crucible by S. G. MacLean

rose with everyone else when the principal got up to leave soon afterwards. As he passed behind me he touched me lightly on the shoulder. ‘You may go now, Alexander.’
    That morning I had told Dr Dun of my fears for my friend John Innes in the King’s College, and of what Williamhad heard concerning Rachel Middleton. He had agreed that I should talk privately with the doctor’s wife, and had also urged me to try again with John. So, for a third day, I left my scholars in the hands of John Strachan, and went out into the town.
    The young physician and his wife lived in her brother’s old house at the top of Back Wynd, on the corner where Upperkirkgate meets the Schoolhill. Behind it lay the churchyard. There was no reply to my rap on the front door, so I went down the pend at the side and in through the builders’ yard there to the backland of the Middletons’ house. The gate was bolted from the inside and as I knocked I caught sight of a small movement behind the half-opened shutter of a window above me. I knocked again, never taking my eye from the window, and after what seemed to me a long time, I heard footsteps and the opening of the back door of the house. The bolt was drawn back and the gate opened to me.
    I had never before spoken to her, nor indeed seen her at close quarters, but I saw she was as different from her husband as flame to water. Where he was slim, pale, angular, she was curved where a woman should be curved, her movement was flowing warmth, her eyes hazel and her hair a chestnut that sparkled almost auburn in the sun. Hints of lemon and thyme drifted to me on the air.
    I had thought what I would say to her, the questions I would ask – I had discussed them with the principal even – but as I sat down opposite her at the bench by her backdoor, those scents took me back to a fleeting moment earlier in the day, when I thought a figure pulled back into the shadows of the college gateway as I’d passed, and instead I heard myself asking, ‘You have been looking for me, Mistress, have you not?’
    She poured something from a pitcher into glass beakers and offered one to me.
    ‘A mint cordial,’ she said. ‘It is cooling.’ She took a sip and put her glass down slowly. ‘I have been looking for you, yes.’ She looked directly at me. ‘I need your help because I do not know where else to turn, or even what I should ask for, but I know that I need help.’
    ‘Take your time.’
    ‘You were Robert’s friend.’
    ‘Yes.’ I waited while she searched for the right words.
    ‘He told me that, that you were his friend. That you were a good man.’
    ‘I am no better than any other, but I was his friend, and would be so to those he cared for.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘I know he visited you here, at night.’
    She seemed a little startled that I had come so quickly to that point, but she recovered herself.
    ‘Who told you that he came here?’
    ‘I know that a report has been made to the session that Robert came here, and others too.’
    ‘I knew there would be, eventually. And the nature of this report?’ Her face was defiant but I could see a tear in her eye.
    ‘Do you really need me to …?’
    ‘Yes, I do.’
    ‘It questions your virtue.’ There was no gentle way of saying it. ‘I think you should prepare yourself for an accusation of harlotry in connection with Robert’s visits.’
    She took a deep breath, almost relieved, it seemed, to have heard the worst. ‘They will not prove it.’
    ‘That is not my concern. You must understand I do not come here to judge, still less to speak for the session. My only end in this is to find justice for Robert, but I think it is true that he came here, is it not?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘it is true.’
    ‘When did it begin? When did he start to visit here?’
    ‘Six months ago perhaps, but as to the beginning, it was longer ago than that.’ She looked up brightly. ‘You did not know my brother?’
    I shook my