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head, listening to the sounds of the sleeping town. The moon cast its pale blue light through our unshuttered window, illuminating the bare wooden floorboards and the open hatch down to the kitchen below, from where I could hear the even sounds of our children’s breathing in their box bed. I imagined Robert Sim’s silent room, the bed in his lodgings not slept in. The image of his body sprawled on the cobbles of the library close came to my mind and I sought to chase it away. I took myself back over my last two hours in the library, with the list written in Robert’s own hand, and the chest of Gerald Duncan’s books.
    Robert had been meticulous, and he had already assigned to each book a shelf-mark, lettered for the benefactor and numbered according to subject matter and date of publication. The most recent of the works had taken little of my time – a printed and bound set of graduation theses from the University of Franeker for the year 1622. 1622: I had been immersed in my divinity studies and in the throes of my first experience of love. I wondered how the young graduands of Franeker had fared in those years since their laureation, which paths in life they had taken. The first few paragraphs of their dedication contained the usual fulsome panegyric to the college’s benefactors before descending to reminiscences of friendships formed.
    I remembered my own inaugural disputation, prior to my promotion and graduation as Master of Arts in philosophy. My own parents had not been there, my mother dead and my father not at ease in such gatherings, but my friend Archie’s parents had been there, Lord and Lady Hay, come down from Delgatie with their Katharine. My Katharine. And Jaffray had been there, Dr Jaffray, almost a father to me, come down from Banff to join in the festivities for the boys he had always loved so well. I had made my defence and been greatly lauded as had my fellows, and we had had our laureation and feasted in to the night. A golden day. It was as well we had not known what was to come.
    And what had happened to these boys, with their great hopes, passing out of Franeker into the world? It was not good to dwell on such thoughts; I passed quickly over their dedications to the meat of the matter: the theses proposed by their professor and defended by the graduands themselves.
    There was little in the set of propositions that was greatly contentious, or would have given too much difficulty to a competent and diligent student. Nothing that would have been of too great concern to the civic or religious authorities of our town. I could see nothing in any of them that could be construed as a danger to our society or to anyone in it. Certainly nothing that might have caused Robert Sim’s unexpressed concerns of yesterday or have precipitated his death.
    I moved on.
    The most interesting to me amongst the books in Duncan’s gift, perhaps because of my growing curiosity about the lands across the North Sea, was a finely bound 1616 edition of The History of the Frisians , by Ubbo Emmius, late Principal of the University of Franeker. Aside from my sojourn in Ireland, I had never journeyed beyond these shores, and the histories of the places and peoples across the seas held an increasing fascination for me. I resolved to come back and read Emmius’ work when this business was done with. Of less interest to me was his Opus Chronologicum , published in Groningen in 1619. The warm personal dedication inside, written to Duncan in Emmius’ own hand, reminded me that the Scottish doctor had practised for many years in that region, and the two had evidently been friends.
    There were more histories – of the Franks, the Romans, the Germans, of Poland and of Spain; re-tellings of battles at sea between Christians and Turks, the siege of Rhodes and the capture of Famagusta. There was even an account of the activities of the Jesuits in Japan. Duncan had travelled in his mind to places and amongst people I had not even