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Chapter Thirteen

Kelso April 1724

F inally the day came when I had to admit to myself that I was with child.

It was a dawning suspicion that had crept up on me, week by week. Think of the snake, the serpent – how he comes upon Eve – and that is how my pregnancy came upon me. Hidden at first, in plain sight. For I’d eaten heartily, now that I had a glut of treats I had never eaten before, like roasted turkey of a Sunday or date-pie, although I did not seem to savour the taste of these things so much as the food at home. Mibbie it’s not salted enough, I’d thought.

And the night I dictated my letters to the scribe I had felt nauseous, but it passed. At some stage into my first weeks at Kelso my belly swelled and my apron strings had to be tied looser, which was to be expected, I suppose, what with all the wholesome food. But on some days I would have a queer spell and feel out of sorts, and I could not face anything but cold water. It was a mild, off-colour feeling that was neither one thing nor another. It was not like the stories the fishwives told of their pregnancies: wild and roaring, and full of vomit pails; the reek of morning fish guts fit to make their ears ring. It did not feel like I thought a pregnancy ought and, truth be told, pregnancy was the furthest thing from my mind. I had assumed that Spencer’s Women’s Tonic had worked. That my taking of the powders had been the end of such matters and that, once taken, the draught did its job. It had certainly tasted potent enough.

But eventually, after a couple of weeks of feeling off-sorts, one morning I could not shift my bones. Mrs Baxter thought I was sickening for something.

‘You are off-colour,’ she said, appearing at the door when I had not come down that morning.

‘Mibbie I have caught an ague,’ I said.

She disappeared and came back up again, bringing me warm wine infused with sage and leaving it at the door, along with a small bell. ‘I don’t like sickness, I shall not come too close, but ring this bell if you need anything.’

I did not ring the bell. In fact I slept without fever or chills, but the dreams were vivid and unlike anything I had dreamed before.

I dreamed of a snake. I think that was my first snake dream, certainly the first I can remember, and this particular snake was colourless, but firm and slippery like a trout. Iridescent beneath the water.

When I woke up, I tried to drink the wine, but it tasted of vinegar and I realized that the taste of foods had changed too much for it to be just Cook’s methods. It was only when I lay back and wondered if my aches were to do with my monthly visitor that I puzzled and frowned, then realized I had mibbie skipped my last monthly visitor. Even the one before that had been scant. In fact I had not bled properly and heavily since mibbie December, before Spencer and I were married. And that was four full months ago.

I staggered out of bed and tried to see myself properly in the looking glass. I had to stand on a chair to do so, but I managed. And there I was in full glory. Gone was the girl I had always been, with broad shoulders, but a thin waist. I was thicker in the belly.

I was back in bed, sitting bolt upright and panicking, when Mrs Baxter came back with an egg and some bread and butter. She stood in the doorway.

‘Mibbie if you’re still poorly tomorrow we can ask Dr McTavish to see you,’ she said.

‘Oh, there is no need. I am feeling better,’ I declared. ‘I think a good bit of rest was all I was in want of.’

‘I am relieved to hear that, Mistress Dickson,’ she said. ‘I hate to see anyone abed, let alone a healthy girl like you. It reminds me of when I lost my babies. Four beautiful babies they were – all gone to be with the angels.’

I felt dreadfully sorry for her then and wondered if they had all died at once or one after the other, and if it had been a fever that swept the town or they had not survived the birth, like my own ma’s other bairns. But I didn’t ask. Will mine slip away too, wither in the womb? Would that not be for the best, for what could I offer a child? I had no real home, no husband and no family around me. Instead, I said I should be back at my kitchen duties in the morning.

‘Eat up your egg then, before it gets cold. You’ll need your strength,’ Mrs Baxter went on, bustling into the room and putting the tray by the bed. She paused then, appraising me in a funny way. Mibbie it was the shock on my face that I was trying to hide. But she said nothing, just bustled out again and went back to her pastry-rolling.

I spent the rest of the day panicking and racking my mind for a plan. I knew a pregnancy lasted nine months or so, if it was to come to term. That meant I would be having a babe in the autumn. And if I did not come to term, I would be having something else, for pregnancies failed and bairns died all the time. The ones who survived were the little miracles. Except that I did not feel this was a miracle at all.

It was a disaster.

As far as I could see, I had three options. The first was to go home. I could not afford to continue the lease on our cottage for too long, so that meant I’d have to go back to Ma and Da. Or rent something cheaper, like a bed in a shared room, perhaps with another family or with a married couple, like many folk did. I could work until the babe was born, then try to get some more work afterwards. But I couldn’t bear the thought of going home. It felt like being dragged back by a current. I did not want the pity of the fishwives, making sympathetic noises when they saw my growing belly and asking if I had heard anything from Spencer yet. I did not want everyone to see me as a failure. The lass who tried to make a better life for herself, but failed.

The second option was to come clean and throw myself at the mercy of the Baxters. But the thought of that was just as bad. Mrs Baxter would put me out on my arse or, worse, the parish officers would hear of it and I would be sent to the House of Correction. I’d told Mrs Baxter I was unmarried! I couldn’t tell her I had lied. She would not even believe me. And I would be confined with nursing. I would be no use to her, and an embarrassment. She would send me back to Fisherrow for my honest, hard-working kin to look after me.

That left me with only one real option. Carry on as I had been.

I could travel to London before the baby was born and find lodgings and settle in. I was counting my wages every week. I simply did not have enough money now, but if I saved for a couple more months or so, I could do it. But I needed to make my journey before everyone guessed, or risk my decisions being made for me. If I played it right, I would arrive in London in good time, with the story that I was a recent widow. I could find a woman to help me with the birth, and from then I would work from home, as the fishwives did, taking in whatever work I could get. Sewing, fishing lines – it did not matter. Mrs Baxter’s eagerness at hiring me had made me see myself in a new light. I would not struggle.

Oh, but the shock of it. I had never wanted a baby. Had not factored it into any of my plans. I was not maternal. Mibbie one day. Not yet.

It was expected of me that I would bring forth children, as my mother had done, and her mother before her. But I had seen what it did to them, the way it changed their bodies and their minds. The mourning of the ones that didn’t survive. The drudge of caring for the ones that lived. Babies changed their mothers. Ma swore she lost a tooth for each one of her pregnancies, as they sucked the very essence from her. Babies scared me. The birth of them. The death of them. I did not hate them or even dislike them.

I just knew I did not want one. Not here, in Kelso – and, if I was being honest with myself, then certainly not in London when I was trying to get myself established.

There was talk, in Fisherrow, of a neighbour who had grown weary of baby-carrying and, at the first sign of her tenth pregnancy, had tried another option. I was a girl when I overheard this story. We were cleaning and gutting in a huddle on the harbour, and my hands were near numb from the cold. As I dipped my hands into the basin of catch, the low gasp in my ma’s voice caught my attention as the story unravelled. I can’t remember the details; didn’t really understand them. But one woman said, ‘She tried to bring it down before the quickening’; and another said, ‘She visited a house in Edinburgh’; and the first said, ‘She nearly bled to death – they used an iron skewer’ and there were more gasps and shudders. My gutting knife nearly slipped out of my fingers. The icy water burned my skin. Another woman said, ‘Did she not douche after the conjugals?’; and yet another said, ‘Shh, the youngsters will hear.’

I did not know what a douche was, although I have figured it out now, and mibbie someone should have told me to douche after my conjugals with Spencer if I did not want a babe, but no one did.

I knew what an iron skewer was, as we kept two by the kitchen fire and we put chickens on them to roast. I knew they pierced flesh.

Fear came to me that morning on the harbour, as I slid my knife into the bellies of fish after fish and spilled their guts onto the slab. If you try to stop a babe once it has started, you might bleed to death. You are better off abandoning it and leaving it at the mercy of the parish. Mibbie that would be the best thing. But I needed the anonymity of London to do that, for if I did it in Kelso, folk might guess it was mine.

Fear came to me again that day in the River Inn when I looked at myself in the mirror and saw the bulge of my stomach.

Fear, slithering and sliding relentlessly. It swam up the Tweed like a water snake. I dared not try to stop the baby coming. It would be too dangerous. I must let nature take its course. I must get to London. Then, once it was born, I would decide what to do. I would know what to do for the best.

The next morning I rose early and drank half a cup of water. I dabbed Mrs Rose’s leftover rouge onto my cheeks for a spot of brightness. I tied my apron loosely and went downstairs to the kitchen. Cook was stirring a batch of porridge over the fire and she handed me the ladle, so that she could get on with the bread rolls.

‘It’s a relief to see you,’ she said. ‘But you look like you’ve barely slept. Pull your cap down over your hair – it’s everywhere this morning.’

I tucked my hair into my cap. I would get through the next few weeks. Then I would be on my way south.