Page 20

Chapter Twenty

Edinburgh August 1724

T he fishwives told tales of Edinburgh and said it was crammed tighter with folk than pebbles on a beach. They spoke of Fishmarket Close, which you could smell before you got to it and hear the cries of ‘Fresh fish’ soar to the skies like gulls. They spoke of buildings ten storeys tall. They said it was a town in layers, where the rich lived on the top floors and the poor in the cellars, and all manner in between. But regardless of whether you were a chimney sweep or a scholar, everyone rubbed shoulders with everyone else on account of how narrow the streets and stairs were.

There were societies for this and societies for that. Servants of some of the high ladies would buy the cheapest fish to be distributed to the poor, and servants of other high folk would order buckets of oysters for balls. There were gin shops and medicine shops and fortune-tellers and whores. Cock-fights and fiddle players who’d pass caps for coins. Amongst it all scurried scores of caddies: men and boys in blue aprons, who ran errands and carted water and cried the news and sold pamphlets. The fishwives and the salt-sellers were similar kin, all coming into town each morning on rickety carts from the edges of the Forth, and they were looked down upon by those who lived in the closes and sold linens and wines and jewels.

My Edinburgh had none of this florid life and colour. My Edinburgh was a cell high up in the tolbooth, bleak and dark, and filled with wretched women like me and those I had met in the House of Correction.

The oldest was so old she died in her sleep two days after I arrived and was found slumped at dawn. The youngest was a pickpocket, aged no older than twelve when she was flung in beside us, although she did not know the year of her birth and we all sat with her and helped her guess her age by the size of her and the whiteness of her teeth, and the fact that she had not bled yet and was very attached to a cloth doll. She was set for a public whipping and said, with bravado, that she was more than ready for it.

On my third day a young man came to visit me and said he had been appointed by the court. He sat in the chair on the other side of the barred gate that fenced us in. Men in wigs and capes would come and go from this chair, speaking in sombre tones to the women whose names they called out. He looked no older than me, with a patch of hair at his lip that might one day become a moustache. He spoke in whispers, as though he was embarrassed to be there. His name was Mr Suttie and he was my advocate.

‘I have no money for an advocate, sir,’ I warned him.

He waved his hands vaguely. ‘The court pays the advocate’s fee in cases like this,’ he said.

I watched his hands come to a rest on his knees. ‘Cases like what?’

According to the surgeons who had plucked my baby’s lungs from her chest, she had breathed before she had died. They had set the lungs in a basin of water apparently, and they had floated. Like sponges.

‘That is correct,’ I replied. ‘She took some breaths and suckled but then she fell asleep and died.’

‘The fact is that if the lungs had no air in them, it would have been ascertained that the child was stillborn,’ he said. ‘But she was not.’

‘I never said she was,’ I told him.

He waved his hands again. ‘The court is simply establishing the facts,’ he went on. ‘The baby was a weakling, but with no apparent disease, and the court is concerned with the matter of your deliberate concealment of the pregnancy and the fact that you attempted to dispose of the child. Those two irrefutable facts mean a jury could be directed by a judge to find you guilty of infanticide.’

The words he used were official-sounding and complicated, but I knew from the way he whispered them exactly what he meant.

‘I did not murder my baby,’ I told him.

‘I am afraid the facts suggest otherwise,’ he said. ‘And concealment is a grave offence. Was the child illegitimate?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘My husband was taken by a press gang.’

He raised his eyebrows at that.

‘Concealment usually involves an illegitimate child,’ he explained. ‘So we might argue on that point.’

‘I didn’t conceal the pregnancy, I just hadn’t got round to telling people yet,’ I said. ‘My sister Joan guessed.’

‘She will be called as a witness,’ he told me. ‘But even then, it would have been expected that you would at least have spoken to those you were living with – your landlady, for example – and told her of your situation and begun preparations for the birth and motherhood. Or returned home to your family and told them. Instead you attempted to hide all evidence that you were with child. And the fact of the matter is that you did attempt to dispose of the child in the River Tweed.’

‘But I didn’t know that was so wrong,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want the parish officials involved, for they might have put me away.’

‘But what has happened, Mistress Dickson, is far worse,’ Mr Suttie said, ‘for it is a capital crime, with the death-penalty if you are found guilty. You might face the hangman.’ And with that, he lowered his eyes to his hands.

There are only eight Hanging Days a year in Edinburgh, to ensure enough of a spectacle – enough anticipation. I learned this after Mr Suttie had gone, listening to the women talk about who was up in court next.

I sat and listened to them chitter and chatter about this, as my blood and milk finally tapered off and I felt myself drying up; my last connection with my daughter withering to nothing. Somewhere not too far away, over the spires and tenements, her little body was stored with the anatomists, and I retched when I thought of that. But I had barely eaten, so it was an empty retch, and I had become so used to grieving silently that none of the women noticed.

I thought of the hangman’s noose in a detached way, as though it lay at the end of a corridor and that corridor was a long and arduous one, filled with so many obstacles – such as standing up in a courtroom and seeing Ma and Da again, and listening to Joan on the witness stand – that I could not even worry yet about the destination. Denial, I suppose. And mibbie I even welcomed the notion, for I was in the depths of some despair that I had never even known. Not even after what had happened between Joan and Spencer.

The grief for my child was a world of despair. I had spent my pregnancy fearing her birth. But when I had held her in my arms, I had fallen in love with her.

There were no condemned prisoners in the women’s room; these unfortunate souls, once sentence was pronounced, were taken to another part of the jail and put in a holding cell called the Iron Room, in a passage that went between the prison and St Giles’s Kirk, where they were taken to pray on Sundays. Every time these folks shuffled from their death-cell to the kirk or the gibbet, they did so as one pitiful group, surrounded by guards with pikes, so the chatter went. There were always far more condemned men than women. And whilst the women were generally coiners or thieves or the occasional murderess, many of the men were hanged for crimes against the Government or the Crown.

Most of the women in my cell were not headed for the gallows, though. Most, once their case was called, expected to be whipped or fined or transported or simply dismissed. I suppose that’s why their talk often turned to the gruesome aspect of our jail, which appeared to me to be more of a factory of death and misery than anything else, where oat pottage was slopped out from a cauldron onto battered tin plates twice a day, and those who had the funds supplemented the gruel with baskets of bread and meat sent from home, and we all fought over the tepid water in the washpail every day.

The turnkeys were a variety of men whose names I never learned, but they patrolled the gate day and night. One or two did more keenly, studying us. Sometimes a woman would detach herself from the huddle and stand at the gate, and she and a turnkey would engage in some form of close activity through the bars. This happened with a few of the women with a few of the men, but most often with one woman, Molly, and one particular turnkey who did a shift in the afternoons.

For this, he would put out the lantern-light in the corridor, so their lewdness happened in darkness. Later Molly would be seen with a flask of liquor, but I had also seen these women with bottles of laudanum or pocket mirrors or combs or cheap scents, all bought with a fumble.

‘He can get you anything,’ Molly said to me one afternoon after she had done her trick at the gate with the turnkey and the lantern had been re-lit.

She offered me a sip of her flask and I took it, and it was rum, and it tasted like being in bed with Spencer.

She sat down beside me on the stone bench. ‘That turnkey there, he likes you,’ she went on. ‘He told me he’s been watching you and he likes your ankles. He sees them when you lift your skirts at the piss pail.’ I gasped and she laughed, a juicy laugh that sounded like pipe smoke and bawdy jokes. I clutched my shawl. She lowered her voice. ‘He says you’re in for baby murder, but I’ve not told the girls that. They’d kill you with their bare hands if they knew.’

‘I did no such thing,’ I told her.

Her eyes were huge and gleaming. She had taken something more than rum, that was for sure.

‘You’d best tell the turnkey that,’ she said. ‘And sweeten the message with something nice.’ She grabbed my arm, a grip that was shockingly firm. ‘You’d best do it before he starts gabbling to all the girls, my dear. He’s told me to tell you that directly. Now if you will excuse me, I do not like to sit with baby murderers.’

She stood up and went to her mat. As she lay back, her stockinged legs akimbo, so that all the world might view her skinny white thighs if they wished, I rose shakily and made my way to the gate.

The turnkey was there, sitting on the chair. He stood up.

‘In need of anything in particular?’ he asked, coming close. He was bald and short and had the hollowed look of a man who had mibbie spent a spell in a cell himself.

‘I am not a baby murderer,’ I said, keeping my voice as quiet as I could.

‘Tell that to the judge,’ he replied. ‘But in the meantime, what’s your tipple? What are you missing, from the outside? A spot of whisky? A nice bit of beef steak? Rosewater? There must be something?’

‘I don’t want anything,’ I said.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ he continued, ‘give me a flash of what you keep up those skirts of yours and I’ll make sure no one hears what you’re charged with.’

I wondered, as I lifted the front of my skirts and watched him stare at me down there, what kind of man would want to see such a thing, for I had only recently given birth. I wondered if this was how Mrs Rose felt to have that horrible Dr McTavish look at her nakedness and take advantage of her. And if there is a place that women might go to in their minds when they are forced to submit to a man, to shut him out. I tried to find it, through my breaths and the flicker of my closed eyes, but I did not.

I would need that place, if I was to stay here.

And if they hanged me, I would need to find it on the gallows.

He dismissed me after a few long moments and I could tell by the look on his face he had enjoyed my discomfort. I went back and sat on the bench feeling violated, even though he had not touched me. I did not want anything he could procure. I wanted desperately to hear from Ma, though, but nothing arrived for me. No message, no basket of fish, no visitors.

In any case I did not have long to wait and wonder at the silence. I was not called back to show my naked parts to the turnkey again. For after a few short days Mr Suttie returned and told me that my sister had been located and my case would be heard in court without delay.