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Chapter Twenty-One

M y case was heard by a judge called Sheriff McAllister and half of Edinburgh town, for the courtroom was filled with all manner of life by the time I was marched up to the dock. They spilled from the balcony and the back benches: some in robes, some in rags, some with parchments and quills, and some in their cups, for the stink of liquor and pipe smoke made me feel high as a bird.

I was put on a stool and told to stand when Sheriff McAllister entered and only to sit down when he did. Downstairs, before the trial, a young clerk with spindly hands had brought me my creel and told me to put on my best gown, then stood and watched and cracked his fingers as I stripped and put it on, unembarrassed to stare.

We had to wait half an hour for Sheriff McAllister, and I spent it watching the time tick past nine of the clock on a brass lantern clock that hung on a wood-panelled wall, and searching the assembled mass for my family.

I could hear what was being said about me loud and clear, for no one seemed to care if they spoke too loudly in my presence.

‘She has the broad shoulders of a fishwife, look – she would have crushed that baby to death quite easily!’

‘No wonder the husband joined the Navy; look how she scowls, imagine the temper on her!’

‘The hangman’s work will be cut out for him, for she will kick like a mule on the rope, mark my words!’

And then the chuckles and the guffaws, and the passing of hip flasks and the sniff of snuff-taking, and the crunch of comfits and the scraping of quills as the hand of the clock dragged itself forward, inch by inch.

I could not see Ma or Da or anyone else amongst the spectators. My dress itched and stank of damp. My young advocate, Mr Suttie, kept himself deep in conversation with the man next to him, but would constantly wipe his hands on his breeches, which made me think he was nervous. Finally Sheriff McAllister appeared.

‘Bring in the witnesses,’ he said, and at that a man opened a door and out poured everyone I knew. The Baxters, Cook, Ma, Da, Joan and even the fisherman who had found the baby. Ma wore a black gown I had never seen before, so it must have been new, and a pair of black gloves. She looked more sombre than I had ever seen her, as though in mourning for me already. Da looked bedraggled, as though he had just got off the boat. Joan trembled. Ma looked about the room, searching for me, and when she found me her face collapsed like wet sand. She buckled and Da had to grip her arm and make her stand up properly, and a murmur swept around the room that sounded like ‘Shame, shame’.

That was when I really understood how awful it all was.

They put Da on the stand first. He looked sober and scared. A man called Lord Leith led the prosecution, which is to say that he probed around, looking to make me out to be a baby-killer, and occasionally Mr Suttie would stand up and object.

‘We are trying to establish a picture of Mistress Dickson’s life and background,’ announced Lord Leith. ‘What sort of a daughter would you say she was?’

‘She was a good girl, she was brought up to be decent and law-abiding and God-fearing,’ said Da, his voice weak and gravelly compared to the strident tones of the other men. ‘Until she met a man called Patrick Spencer and it all went downhill from there.’

Lord Leith liked that. I could tell by the way the colour bloomed in his cheeks.

‘Downhill, eh? Would you say your daughter was easily led, sir? Weak-minded? Frail?’

Mr Suttie rose to object, but the sheriff nodded at Da to answer.

‘I know your instinct will be to protect your daughter. But remember you are under oath, Mr Dickson,’ he warned.

Da looked scared. ‘Perhaps not weak-minded, no. Perhaps too strong-minded, I’d say,’ he mumbled.

Lord Leith liked that even more.

They did not call Ma, for it was decided, after a huddle with the sheriff that, as head of the household, Da’s views were enough to establish my background and character.

‘Frankly,’ Mr Suttie told me when he returned from the huddle, ‘I am not sure your mother would help your case. Mothers have a tendency to cave under questioning, and a mother’s testimony tends not to be taken as seriously.’

I looked over at Ma but she wasn’t looking in my direction. She was surveying the courtroom, her eyes darting in fear. Mibbie Mr Suttie was right.

There’s not much to say about the evidence the Baxters gave, for it was all factual. Neither had guessed my state of pregnancy, nor had I given any inclination or even asked for extra meat or milk, or shown an unusual appetite for sweet or strange foods.

‘Some might say,’ pondered Lord Leith to Mrs Baxter, ‘that you cannot be a very observant landlady if you did not notice the gestation of an infant under your own roof.’

‘I had no clue,’ protested Mrs Baxter. ‘Mistress Dickson acted perfectly normally. This has all come as a terrible shock to me. To have a dead infant brought into own kitchen. The inn has become notorious and we have lost our usual patrons, and instead we have folk calling at all times of the day and night asking to see her room, asking for a viewing, as though we are a house of fascinations.’

I heard a ripple through the crowd, then of ‘Oh! We must go to Kelso and view it too!’

Joan looked at me constantly and every time I caught her eye, she flinched and looked away.

When the Baxters and the fisherman had taken their turns describing the events, Lord Leith called my sister to the stand. She rose, a small, bewildered slip of a girl, yet somehow still pretty, and the men on the balcony edged forward.

‘Your instinct will be to protect your sister,’ Lord Leith said. Joan looked wide-eyed at that. ‘But you are here to tell the truth of what happened on the day she went into labour and the baby died. First, so that the court is clear – very clear, my dear – did Mistress Dickson know she was with child?’

‘Yes, she did,’ replied Joan, her voice barely a squeak. ‘But she was hiding it from the Baxters.’

‘Speak up, girl, for we can barely hear your voice. I am sure you have a nice loud voice, for you are a fishergirl, are you not? Now pretend you are at the market selling your fish and use that loud voice,’ Lord Leith told her. ‘Now, hiding it from the Baxters is what you have just said. Hiding the baby from the Baxters. In other words, concealing it.’

Well, that went down well, and everyone in the room settled down with fresh snuff and confits for the rest. Joan cleared her throat and begged for water and sipped it, holding the cup between two shaking hands. Then she put the cup down and delivered the rest of her testimony, louder this time, gripping the edge of the table in front of her as though she might vomit with fear.

The labour had started shortly after midnight, Joan said. She had guessed at my condition and tried to get me to come home with her, but I had refused, desperate to get to London.

‘And what was it about London that so enticed your sister?’ pondered Lord Leith. ‘For she had few skills for city life. She could gut and sell fish, but clearly she thought she deserved better rewards.’

‘She had always yearned for London,’ said Joan. ‘She had an ambition to go there.’

‘And this ambition of hers. Would you say it was all-consuming?’

Joan nodded, looking petrified.

‘To the point where she would sacrifice anything? Even her own child?’

The room was silent for a heartbeat or two.

‘I cannot say, sir,’ stammered Joan. ‘I do not think she would have wished ill on the little mite. It was a darling little thing.’ Her eyes welled with tears and she bent her head down, almost folding herself over the table.

‘Straighten up, we are almost done. A precious little mite, I can imagine.’ Lord Leith addressed the crowd. ‘I myself am a father of three living children, and of one child who went to be with the angels. There is nothing that shows God in his mercy any clearer than the face of a newborn babe.’ His eyes welled with tears too. Everyone’s did.

Not mine, though. I was incandescent at the man. I willed Joan to see him for the bully he was and to stand up to him, instead of letting him talk down to her like this.

‘And did Mistress Dickson bond with the baby, when it was born? Was she enraptured with it, as mothers usually are?

‘I think she was shocked,’ said Joan. ‘We both were.’

The crowd were hooked on her every word.

‘Are you sure – beyond all doubt – that the baby succumbed to its own weakness? Was there ever a point when you turned your back on your sister and she might have smothered the baby? Held her hand over its mouth?’

‘I am sure that did not happen,’ said Joan.

Of course it did not happen, I willed her to say.

‘You did not turn your back on your sister, with this secret child, for one minute?’ demanded Mr Leith.

‘Well, of course I had to turn my back and tidy up the room and all of that,’ said Joan. ‘She was in the bed.’

‘Ah, but is it possible that your sister could have taken the chance, in that moment, to do a quick but terrible deed? For one swift action would change the course of her fate, and make sure she could get to London and freely live the life she had yearned for, instead of being forced to care for a child.’

Joan! Tell this court I would never kill a child!

‘I cannot remember,’ Joan stuttered, in floods of tears now, which ran down her face, bloating it.

She stared at me, as though searching for forgiveness, but I had none.

For she had the chance, didn’t she? To stand up for me and say that I would never have done such a thing as to murder my own newborn babe. But Joan did not. And whether it was the fear of that petrifying courtroom or the ceaseless interrogation of that devil Lord Leith, my sister did not stand up for me when I most needed her.

When all the drama and the weeping had finally ceased, and my family were back in their chairs, Ma and Da with their arms around my sobbing sister, Lord Leith turned to the sheriff. He pointed at me with a ringed finger, but did not look in my direction.

‘Mistress Dickson is clearly a woman of secretive motives, with no hint of maternal love about her. There is nothing I can say to you other than that the facts of this case speak for themselves. She did wilfully conceal an unwanted pregnancy. Even her own sister only found out by her own guesswork. And it is perfectly clear to me that when that babe was born, Mistress Dickson took her chance to snuff out its life in order that she could fulfil her selfish ambitions.’

He went to his table and picked up a piece of parchment and read from it.

‘Under the Act Anent Murthering of Children 1690, if any woman shall conceal her being with child and shall not call for assistance during birth, then if the child is found dead the mother shall be found guilty of the murder of her own child, regardless of whether there is any direct evidence of murder. In such cases as this, when the infant has died, the concealment of the pregnancy is a crime, Sheriff McAllister, and there is no defence.’

The sheriff looked emotionless, and then my counsel, Mr Suttie, stood up and addressed him.

‘Mistress Dickson rejects all of these accusations. Her own sister has admitted she was there at the birth. When her sister guessed at the pregnancy Mistress Dickson did not deny it. How could it be described as a concealed pregnancy if she had assistance?’

‘Come to the witness stand, Mistress Dickson,’ the sheriff said gravely.

I cannot say how the courtroom reacted when I stood up and took the stand, for the world shrank at that moment, until all that was left of it was the high-pitched singing of my blood racing through my head. I wondered, briefly, if I might collapse or forget entirely who I was.

Mr Suttie’s young-mannish voice pulled me back.

‘Tell us,’ he said, ‘how you felt when you saw your babe?’

My words fell like husks into the room. ‘I fell in love with her,’ I replied.

‘And had you kept your pregnancy a secret? Or were you just caught by surprise perhaps, and had not gathered your thoughts enough to tell everyone?’ I could tell Mr Suttie was offering me a way out – an excuse.

‘Caught by surprise, sir,’ I told him. ‘For I had been off-colour for some months, but did not think for a minute I might be with child, for I had only been married a brief while before my husband was press-ganged.’

The sheriff rapped his hammer on the bench and interrupted us. ‘Mistress Dickson, did you not even think for a minute you might be with child? Your belly was swelling and you must have felt movement? Were your gowns not getting tight?’

‘Mibbie they were,’ I admitted, remembering how I had sat and unpicked the seams, letting them out. ‘But I thought it was the fine meals I was getting, and it was not until quite near the end that I guessed.’

Sheriff McAllister exhaled.

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘how might you explain the fact that when your creel was searched by the constables, this item was amongst your possessions – a singular item that suggests, without any doubt, that you did indeed know that you were expecting a child and had known about it for some time?’

And with that, he lifted something up to show the courtroom what he was talking about.

The little white baby bonnet.

There was another huddle with the sheriff and the law men.

I watched the bonnet lying on the sheriff’s bench and wondered if I might just reach across and take it back, and I think mibbie I did try, my legs rising up, but two men pulled me back to my chair.

Then I noticed the way the clock had moved, when it all felt like a flash, but somehow it was already twelve of the clock, but I realized time did not really matter now.

Then the sheriff stood up and gave a long speech, but I do remember the most of it, for how could I not?

‘Mistress Margaret Dickson of Fisherrow, lately Kelso. I do not believe that you deliberately tried to murder your child, for the bonnet tells us that you planned for its survival. But it also tells us that you did know you were pregnant.

‘You confessed your condition to your sister, once she had guessed, but you had not told your wider community – a community who would have offered you and the baby the necessary support. Whether the baby might have lived with the intervention of a physician or midwife is a matter of uncertainty, but the possibility remains. The fact is that you did not give the infant the best chance of survival and, when it sadly succumbed, you tried to hide the entire matter.

‘So, on the indictment of the murder of an infant, by concealment of pregnancy, I have no choice but to find you guilty, and that, like murder, is a capital crime for which the punishment is hanging.’