Page 14

Chapter Fourteen

Kelso May 1724

M rs Baxter decided I needed much more fresh air and exercise after my spell in my sickbed and took to sending me out on errands and walks. I was thankful of the break and the time alone, so that I could think.

I would walk the length of Kelso, past the blooming gardens and apple orchards and the rush of the rivers. I walked and I planned. I ventured as far as the outskirts of the town and came upon a secretive-looking place with high walls all around. I knew at once it must be the House of Correction, for there were locked gates.

I did not go back there again. It gave me the shudders to think of who might be kept behind those gates. How easy it was to slip from the civilized world to the dark corners of a prison. All it takes is one bad move.

On weekday mornings I was amongst the first at market, with a list in my head of all the items the grocery boy had forgotten, and whatever fresh fish we needed. On Sundays I had to go with the Baxters to kirk. We had to look respectable. The parish officials were always there, in their black capes and with their silver-topped canes, and would glower at us as if they were looking for a reason to throw us out. Mrs Baxter held her head high and listened intently to the sermon and would nudge me to do the same if she could tell my mind was wandering by my stifled yawns. I would not go so far as to say that she was overly kind, rather that she saw me as her charge.

She gave me money for cloth, to sew into a work smock more suitable than my own clothes. I was grateful for that, for I felt I would burst out of my own gown soon enough. I bought a thick bolt in a charcoal grey that reminded me of the dull cloth they make at Eskmills. Dull enough to hide behind. I stuffed my fantasies of the London life behind the sack-like smock: the fashionable stocks of goods piled high in the haberdasher’s, the goldsmiths, the fortune-tellers and theatrical plays. How would I ever manage any of that with a babe wailing at my breast? I could hardly leave it alone and go out on the town. I would not be able to afford nice things if I was paying for its keep.

Kelso’s Friday market was the busiest, just like home. It had the same feel of wildness about it, of coming to the end of the working week. The flesher’s stall would be a flurry of blood amidst the petrified shrieks of animals, as the wealthier families would often bring him a fattened pig to butcher. At the other end of the market, hides and fleeces were strung out on lines. A fiddler played for thrown pennies, dogs barked incessantly, and pedlars sold everything from buttons to bottles of cough cure. The place was thick with dung, and the muck would cling to your boots so that, even after the market, you stank of it.

That morning I was out with a list of three things in my head. A nice fresh trout, of course, the biggest one I could get, although Cook bulked out the trout pies with so much milk and flour that the patrons were lucky to get a piece of real fish in a slice at all. A length of fine black lace for Mrs Baxter’s best cape, for she had seen her neighbour with a lace trim on hers and decided she could not be upstaged at kirk. I was not to tell Mr Baxter of this, for he would likely not notice, and I was to sew it for her myself, if that was all right. And, finally, a packet of tea. The Baxters loved their tea and there was a small emporium off the market square that stocked it, alongside other luxuries like snuff, rum and chocolate. The tea that the grocer sold was cheap and was bulked out, like Cook’s trout pie, I thought, with sawdust or dried dung or somesuch, but the Baxters were not tea experts and swallowed it down, oblivious.

The tea-seller knew me by name and always greeted me well, as I had been a couple of times now and inspected his tea leaves with more scrutiny than most of his customers.

‘Mistress Dickson, I was expecting you,’ he called. ‘Come for the Baxters’ usual. I tell you what: I have a nice new blend here that Mr Baxter might like. Shall I put some in a bag for him to try? You too? Here, put your grocery basket down on the counter – you look worn out.’

I nodded as he busied himself with measuring out the leaves. My sicky feeling came back and my head pounded. The smoky smells of the tea leaves were overpowering. Worst of all, I felt a fluttering inside me. Like a moth batting at a window. It was the baby stirring.

‘Is everything all right, Mistress Dickson?’ The tea-seller looked worried.

‘I just need a chair for a moment or two,’ I replied, sounding weak.

He put me in his chair and brought me a draught of something in a cup and handed it to me, watching me carefully.

‘Now you drink this, Mistress Dickson, and it will perk you up a bit. You look a bit off-colour, if you don’t mind me saying so. Is anything the matter?’

‘Not at all,’ I lied. ‘I think I’ve been working a bit too hard, that’s all.’

He frowned. He did not look like he believed me, but he didn’t ask any more questions. I sipped the draught he had given me. He went back to his shelves and let me sit for a while. Slowly my sense of normality returned. The sicky feeling subsided and my heart calmed down.

‘I’m all right now,’ I told him. ‘I’d best take my tea and get back to the inn.’

‘Well, if you’re sure,’ he said, surveying me a little. He was a small man, with three or four days of grey bristle spreading from his cheeks down his neck, but otherwise was neatly turned out in a dark tunic and breeches. I imagined, if I got close enough, his bristle would smell of tea leaves – of the box Da kept under our bed.

I stood up. ‘I’m sure I am well again,’ I replied, and he bade me goodbye.

Had he guessed I was in the family way? He was a purveyor of many exotic goods, and I wondered if he sold women’s tonics or drinks to help with the morning sickness and knew exactly what a woman looked like when she was pregnant.

I could not have anyone guessing. I took a deep breath and stood on the doorstep, looking onto the market. The sky was low with cloud, and a spring rain was just hanging off, which gave everything an air of urgency. Folks were piled with parcels or carrying sacks over their shoulders. A boy who’d been peeing earnestly a few minutes earlier was now playing with a stick at the side of the road, wielding it like a sword.

I picked my way back as quickly as I could between heaps of dung and damp straw and dirt. I arrived at the inn as spots of rain started to dot around me. I went in through the kitchen door, past the stables, which were quiet now, and handed out the goods.

‘You took a while,’ noted Mrs Baxter with a pinch of disapproval in her frown, examining the length of lace.

‘There’s a new tea blend to try,’ I told her, and she cheered up at that.

‘Nothing like a pot of tea to calm the nerves,’ she answered, taking the packets from me and sniffing them.

But I disagreed. Tea had never calmed my nerves.

That night, after a long shift dealing with the excesses of the Friday market – the drunk and overfed patrons, who got rowdier the later it got – I was desperate to reach the peace and quiet of my room.

I stood at my window, looking out at the dark street. I put my hand to my belly as if to stop the baby from fluttering again, for I did not want to feel it. It wasn’t simply the presence of the babe. It was the absence of Spencer – what might have been.

If only it wasn’t this bare room in a town I hardly knew; if it wasn’t even London. If only it was our little place in Musselburgh High Street, his shirts drying by the fire. Mibbie Spencer would be smoking his pipe and looking at me, unable to help himself fall in love with me even more, now that I was with his child. Well, we didn’t plan it, but we shall make the best of it, Maggie, what do you say? Then, when the babe was here and she was swaddled in a soft blanket in her crib, he’d look down on her and declare, She is your image, my love, she will set London alight. She is brighter than the moon and stars.

But it was none of those things. It was this. There was no moon or stars to see; the cloud had stayed low. The only light came from the windows of other houses, faint and yellowy, and from the line of glass lanterns that glowed sporadically up and down the road. I shivered. The darkness bellowed at me, Pull yourself together, girl. You’re in this alone. And you must decide what to do for the best.