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Chapter Seventeen

Kelso July 1724, one night, in the dead of the night

A nother snake.

This one writhed.

It could not lie still.

It coiled and uncoiled.

It squeezed my guts. I fought it; pushed it away.

I felt wetness. I had only just got to sleep and yet I was being pulled awake. The pain was intense. I must be dying. It squeezed again and the cramp gripped me from belly to thigh. I woke up, on the verge of vomiting, but the purge was more than simply vomit. I retched. I cramped. I opened my mouth to scream.

‘Oh God, the baby is coming!’

It was not me who spoke, for I could not speak. My mouth was full of pain.

Joan came at me like an apparition, candle and white nightie, floating in the yellow light.

‘Maggie, there’s blood.’

I do not remember much of what happened, only that it was quick – quicker than I had imagined it would be – and the snake vanished and everything was real and vivid.

My own belly, the candlestick at the bedside, the damp sheets. I know it was the dead of the night, because the night-candle was fresh and had barely burned. I came in and out of the world and I had a terrible urge to push, but when I did, I felt myself being torn in two, yet my body pushed anyway. All by itself. I know I kept telling Joan to fetch someone: Mrs Baxter, Mr Baxter, Cook, anyone ; but she was transfixed in shock and did not leave the room.

Joan, my sister, did not leave the room.

She stood and stared as I delivered the baby. It came out in a pop of pale skin and folded limbs. None of them kicking.

It came out purplish and too small.

‘It is sickly,’ I said. ‘It has come too soon.’

‘It’s a girl. She looks too fragile,’ whimpered Joan. ‘She does not look right.’

‘Fetch a physician,’ I wept. I tried to stand up, but my legs trembled. Blood bloomed across the bed. ‘There’s a Dr McTavish in a cottage down the street. He will help.’

‘Put the baby to your breast,’ said Joan. ‘Swaddle her. She will be all right if you nurse her.’

I told Joan to find my little knife, the one I had bought at the Mussel Inn the day I left, and she cut the cord. I pressed the baby to my breast, and she whimpered and finally started to suckle. It was a piercing feeling of pain and relief, and all at once I wanted to pull the baby away from me, yet sit and stare at her in awe. She lay against me as Joan fetched a linen and wrapped it around me and the baby. It was the only useful thing she had done in that awful hour. Then she fetched a shawl and wrapped it around her own shoulders and sat and shivered.

Then, for many, many minutes, we sat together in shocked silence.

The baby was too early. I knew it from the weight of her and from the weakness of the suckle. She weighed less than a pair of thick stockings. The candle fizzed and melted down the hours of darkness, the hours of safety when secrets like newborn babies could be kept. She was too early but she was a wonder. Her face was like Spencer’s face, his little miniature. I couldn’t stop staring at her. She had his ears, tiny seashells, and I had an urge to go home and lie in bed with Ma. She smelled of blood and bodies; oh, she even smelled of the spice of Spencer’s locked cabinet. A wave of exhaustion came over me, but I had to fight it with every ounce of my strength.

‘What are we to do?’ I whispered. ‘Joan, what are we to do? Can you go and fetch Mrs Baxter – wake her up and tell her what has happened?’

‘We will go home on a morning coach,’ replied Joan. ‘As you said, we would be shamed if we stayed here, both of us. Those parish officers you talk of will decide what must be done with you. The decision will be taken from you. By the time we could even do something sensible, like fetch Da to come and vouch for you, you’d have been incarcerated. Me as well, most likely.’

‘You will have to tell the Baxters what’s happened,’ I said, ignoring her. ‘Get Mrs Baxter on her own and make sure she has had her morning coffee. She is a hag until she’s had her morning coffee.’

Joan put her hands to her ears. ‘Stop havering, Maggie. These people are not our people. We are not Kelso folks. We are Fisherrow girls, and we need to go back to safety. You will not be looked after here; you are useless now. You are an embarrassment. You and that baby are an expense the parish won’t want to take on. Ma will have one look at that bairn and take you back in an instant. Both of you.’

I lay back and let it all wash over me. Joan’s desperation was really about her own fear. I drifted in and out of sleep. I dreamed of workhouses. Of the story Cook had told, about the previous maid, the one who left the River Inn, in disgrace. ‘She was sent to the House of Correction ... and now the babe is under the care of the parish, for she will never be able to take care of it. Wet-nursed at Muir Farm and apprenticed there when it turns fourteen.’

And that is when I decided it. This babe, this tiny girl, would never be ripped from me or wet-nursed, or apprenticed to a ruddy-faced Kelso farmer to churn butter and feed pigs and weed and mow and sew. I would not let anyone tear us apart. She was mine and I would care for her. She needed me.

There was barely room for me and the babe on the thin bed, but I clasped her in the crook of my arm and drifted, in and out of sleep.

By and by, the light came up. I heard Joan again and her voice had new panic in it. ‘Maggie,’ she urged. ‘The baby does not look right.’

I looked down. She lay still. Too still. There was a greyness to her lips.

‘She is gone,’ whispered Joan.

‘She can’t be gone,’ I said. I held her up and took her to my breast again, willing her to turn and suckle. I put my finger to her lips, but they did not move. ‘Joan, fetch someone,’ I panicked.

‘We cannot fetch anyone now,’ she replied.

I rubbed the babe’s lips. Rubbed her cheeks. Pressed on her chest to try to bring her back to life. But she flopped.

Then there was nothing I could do but bury my face in the swaddled, lifeless body.

‘Rest her soul, rest her soul,’ Joan kept saying.

‘She was too weak,’ I sobbed.

Then Joan was on full alert. ‘Time to bolt,’ she urged through her tears. ‘We can’t stay here now.’

‘Fetch Mrs Baxter,’ I pleaded again.

‘And then what? Physicians and constables and investigations, and all sorts, that’s what,’ said Joan. ‘You will have to explain what has happened and why you kept it all a secret.’

‘But I’ve done nothing wrong,’ I replied. ‘I loved her the minute I saw her.’

‘Oh, but you have done everything wrong,’ Joan cried, a terrible strain in her voice. ‘For you have brought the worst kind of trouble into the home of strangers.’

The morning light warmed the bed. Soon I ought to be up and about. But my womb bled, and my breasts leaked, and my baby was dead.

‘Tell them I am sick, and cover for me today,’ I told Joan. ‘You will have to do my chores. And tell Mrs Baxter not to bring anything up to the room. If she tries, then you must take it from her and bring it yourself.

‘If you are caught with this dead babe, we will be in terrible trouble,’ whimpered Joan.

‘I will give the babe my own burial,’ I told her. ‘I will give her my own private farewell. It is no one’s concern but mine. I will take her to the river, and she will wash into the sea, where her father sails.’

Joan did not stop me. She must have thought me mad, feverish, seized by fear, but she did not stop me. She dressed and put on my apron and went downstairs.

As soon as the door clicked behind her, I got up and locked it.

I went back to the bed and lifted my baby up. She was colder and heavier than I had remembered, as if her little, light soul had left and in its place was my awful, awful grief. I swaddled her again and placed her gently into my creel and covered her with a linen, soft and gentle, as if I were tucking her into a cradle for a nap. I was about to put the bonnet on her when I stopped. I could not be parted from it. It was the only thing I would have left to remember her by.

It was mid-morning now. I could tell by the arrival of the grocer’s cart. In a few minutes everyone would be in the kitchen and the pantry, putting the delivery away.

I dressed, padding my bleed and my breasts with rags. I picked up the creel and unlocked the door. The landing was silent. I crept downstairs and slipped out of the front door, straight onto the street.

The lane down to the river was deserted, except for the song and bustle of morning birds. I stumbled, for my boots were not laced right and I bled into my rags and my eyes bleared with tears. All the while I talked to the babe, as if she were alive, telling her where we were going and what we were doing and how everything would be all right: No need to fear the workhouse now. No life of toil for you, my precious soul. The creel scuffed against my side as though it were a child walking with me, hand-in-hand, not really minding its way and tripping over its feet. I will always feel like this now, as though I am walking and talking to a child who is nothing but empty air.

The lane ended. The riverbank opened up before me, damp and cold.

I laid my babe on the riverbank and kneeled down, kissed her head and then I pushed her into the rushing river.