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Chapter Twenty-Six

D r McTavish’s arm coils around mine and he drags me through wynds and stairways until we reach a building at the top of the hill. He does not let go of my arm, even as he opens the front door and drives me up two flights of spiral steps. All the while he is muttering, ‘I will not harm you, if you come quietly’ and although we must look a suspect pair and we attract many looks, no one intervenes, which says it all about this town.

Finally he shoves me into his rooms and stands wiping the sweat from his hands and brow, with his backside firmly against the door.

‘If I come to any harm, there are folk who will come looking for me,’ I tell him. My voice is shaking.

‘I own you, Mistress Dickson,’ he warns. ‘And I am better connected in this town than you are. I could have anyone jailed or hanged, if I wish it.’

We regard each other for a moment or so. A longcase clock ticks lightly in the corner. We are too high up to hear any street-babble. Dr McTavish wears a brown wool coat with a matching waistcoat and luminous pearl buttons. There must be good money in hanging. He puts his hand out and touches my rope-mark. I am so used to people touching it that I do not even flinch or try to stop him. I even lift up my chin, the way I have become accustomed to doing, so that he might see it all the better. He has a gentle touch. Some do not.

‘It is a fine-looking mark,’ he says, pleased.

He has such a distaste for human life, this man, that he ought not to call himself a doctor.

‘I am indebted to you for sparing me,’ I tell him. It’s better to play to his pride than to challenge it. ‘I do plan to spend the rest of my days repenting and doing good deeds, sir.’

He nods. ‘Come,’ he replies, ‘sit down and have a drink with me. I only have Madeira, although I hear you’ve taken to gin these days.’

He busies himself pouring us drinks in crystal goblets. I have never drunk from a crystal goblet before, although I have seen them for sale in wine-merchants’ windows. He sits on a low couch and beckons me to come and sit next to him. I do so, taking care that our legs do not touch.

‘It is gin, isn’t it?’ he goes on. ‘You’ve taken refuge at a gin palace. Ho!’ He shakes his head and sips. The ruby liquid leaves a little stain about his silvery moustache. ‘I could not count the number of gin-soaks I’ve hanged. It drives them to crime. Poisons the mind. And you are selling yourself, I hear? Letting the waifs and strays touch you, and talk to you about the afterlife? What a great enterprise, what a great caper, Mistress Dickson. I am in admiration.’

He makes me furious, but I have to keep it to myself. Not just his arrogance, but the fact that I know he is right. I do not like what I am becoming.

‘It’s difficult to make a living otherwise, when you’re scarred like this,’ I tell him.

‘I dare say,’ he agrees, with no emotion. ‘But you were spared, and you argued your legal case with the sheriffs successfully, just as I suspected you would be able to do. Now, I have news for you. My Mrs Rose is doing well for herself. So well, in fact, that she has taken rooms a ten-minute walk south-west of here, near Greyfriars. I have the address, for I have followed her, but she doesn’t know this, and I think she needs a delicate touch. I can’t simply turn up unannounced or approach her in the street.’

‘And that is where I come in,’ I said warily.

‘You most beautifully do.’ He coughed and wiped his mouth with a pristine kerchief. ‘I desire her, Mistress Dickson, like I have wanted nothing else in my life. I crave her artful ways of the bed.’ He leaps to his feet. ‘Come, he insists, ‘I have even prepared her a chamber.’

I follow him towards a small room off the parlour, my fear making me feel quite sick. The Turkish carpet beneath my feet is thick and soft. Enough to muffle a girl’s cries. The door swings open. The room beyond is appointed as one might decorate a room for a princess. The four-poster bed is of walnut, with carvings. A heavy-looking bedspread is folded across it, tightly and expertly. There are gold tassels everywhere too: dangling from the curtains and the bed canopy. A dressing gown hangs from a coat-stand, decorated with snarling brown snakes with red tongues, and I nearly jump out of my skin when I see that.

‘That, I bought from a trader who’d had it shipped from the Orient,’ Dr McTavish states, with pride. ‘Do you like it?’

‘I do not,’ I say. I cannot take my eyes off the snake-gown, for it is exactly as I see the snake in my dreams, swirling and coiling. I put my hand on the door to steady myself.

‘Well, it is not for you anyway,’ he replies. ‘It’s for Mrs Rose. She will be my special guest. She will soon realize that she will want for nothing.’

I drag my eyes from the snake-gown and look around me again. This room would be a chamber of delights, were it not for two things. First, he has had the window secured, which means there is no natural light at all, only the light from the lamps. By ‘secured’, I mean boarded, and the boards look to be nailed into the wall. And over them are iron bars that remind me so much of the Tolbooth Jail that I can’t look at them for too long. Second, he has fastened to the wall, by the bed, a pair of iron chains.

‘Do you mean to keep Mrs Rose your prisoner?’ I gasp.

‘Only if I have to,’ he says. ‘I hope she will stay willingly, but she might not. I hope she will be enticed and will find the idea of being my plaything quite entertaining. But if she does not, that is our problem, not yours. So don’t worry about that side of things. Instead tell me: is this not the most luxurious room in the whole of Edinburgh town? There is a drawer for her rouges and another for sweetmeats – she has a tooth for candied fruits – and somewhere she can keep her laudanum to hand. She can have all the laudanum she needs here – tell her that. And I have purchased a set of dominoes too, best bone and ivory.’

I have been more terrified in my life, but not often.

‘You do not mean to let her escape, do you?’ I say. ‘You will keep her here until you tire of her and then she will likely end up overdosed on laudanum.’

He pretends not to hear me, and leaps from the room back into the parlour and paces the Turkish carpet. I follow him, desperate to be out of that chamber.

‘Now I shall give you Mrs Rose’s address, and clear directions, so there’s no danger of you getting lost. But do not go to her lodgings. There is a coffee house she frequents after dark. It is where she plies her trade. Go there and simply bump into her. And this is what you are to tell her.’

He pauses here, his eyes roaming the ceiling, the window, the floor.

‘Tell her you forgive her the theft. Tell her that you are delivered. From death. And that in the afterlife you had a vision, and that you are to forgive all those who have sinned against you, like in the Lord’s Prayer. Tell her that you have a fine place where you are living now – from your earnings – and invite her to take tea with you. Two old pals from Kelso, finding their way in the big town. Then you are to bring her to this apartment. Not the gin shop. Tell her that is where you work, if she asks, for she might have heard tales of you and we do not want to scare her off. But do not take her to the gin shop. Instead, bring her here. And when she is safely in this parlour, taking her tea, you will excuse yourself and leave.’

‘And you will be here, I suppose?’

‘I will await you leaving. Then I will announce myself to her. When you leave, make sure the door is closed and lock it behind you. I will give you a key so that you can get in, so use that. I will put some powders by the tea leaves and you can put some in her cup. It will make her sleepy.’

There is no question of, If I don’t? Or, What happens if Mrs Rose doesn’t come? Dr McTavish had decided it all.

‘And after this,’ I venture, ‘are we settled, you and I?’

He looks me straight in the eye. ‘After this, we are settled. My reputation as a hangman is caught up with the sensational story of your revival but I expect that to ease in time. There are plenty more condemned criminals for me to hang good and proper. And it will all be worth it for my Mrs Rose. So once you have helped me capture her, put the front-door key under the mat and walk away, and think no more of me or her.’