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Chapter Twenty-Eight

Fisherrow October 1724

I t is not quite supper time when I arrive home, and the cottage looks smaller than I remember, with no sign of life and no smoke billowing from the chimney. I don’t know what greeting I will be met with.

I am suddenly aware that my hair is escaping from my bonnet in wind-pulled knots, and my dress is a merry shade of pink that has never been seen in Fisherrow. I don’t know whether to walk straight in or announce my arrival. In the end I tap on the door with a gentle knock, bracing myself.

It is Joan who answers and, when she sees me, it takes her a moment or two, but instead of all the things she could do – like shriek or frown or shout for Ma, or say my dress looks trollopy – she puts her hand to her throat and shakes her head.

‘I did not think you would ever come back,’ she says.

‘I did not want to, for a while,’ I tell her.

We stand and look at each other for a bit. Then she puts her hand to her throat again. ‘The mark looks better,’ she tells me.

It is her way of trying to be nice.

She walks inside and I follow her in. The cottage smells the same, but mustier than I remember. But the familiarity of it: the scrap of Turkish carpet. Little Paws waking and stretching and stalking over to me, her tail in the air.

‘Da is at the Mussel Inn, and Ma is having a nap,’ Joan whispers, nodding at the bed-curtain. ‘She has not been well these past weeks.’

I stroke Little Paws and let her rub against my legs. I know that if Ma is unwell, it’s my fault. But I say nothing as Joan pours me a mug of lukewarm tea.

‘We heard stories you were selling yourself. Letting folk touch you. Ma thinks you might be whoring,’ she goes on. She looks me up and down, taking in the dress, but seems to swallow back any comment about it.

‘Not whoring,’ I tell her. ‘But something like it, I suppose.’

‘Your coming back here will be a scandal,’ she begins. ‘Da has only just got back in favour with his gang at the Mussel Inn, and this will upset everyone again.’

‘It has not been a scandal so far. I have been welcomed by the Fishmarket Close sellers and I will be accepted back by everyone else, I believe. This is my home after all, and I have the right to live peacefully here. They might have called me all manner of things in Edinburgh, but I did nothing wicked. I lost my baby, Joan – you were there.’

At this, her eyes fill with tears. Mine too.

‘I am sorry that I was not stronger in the courtroom,’ she says.

‘Joan, I am furious that you did not try harder to defend me in that courtroom,’ I reply, my voice rising.

‘I know it. But that Lord Leith was a bully,’ she says. ‘I have nightmares about him.’

‘You’ve been a terrible sister,’ I go on. ‘More an enemy than a friend. And some of the things you’ve done have devastated me.’

‘I am weak,’ she admits. ‘You were always the strong one.’

‘That nonsense has to stop now,’ I tell her. ‘You are a grown woman and need to take responsibility for yourself.’

‘Oh, Maggie,’ she weeps, ‘I think of the babe all the time. She was a perfect babe and I should have done more to help, but I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do. I should have fetched the Baxters. I should have watched over you both.’

‘Yes, you should,’ I answer. ‘You are reckless, Joan. One day you will come to some harm yourself, if you don’t stop.’

She nods and looks awful, and I suppose she has suffered too. But we are both here now, and we are sisters, and I have troubles enough without falling out with her again.

‘The babe was perfect,’ I say. ‘The most beautiful babe I have ever seen in my life.’

‘What did you call her?’ asks Joan.

‘She did not have a name. I couldn’t think of one, for all the terrible things that happened next.’

‘But you must have thought of one by now?’

I have. It has taken a while, but now I am more certain of myself I feel I can name my own daughter. ‘Her name is Susanna.’

‘Oh, baby Susanna – our babe,’ says Joan. It is bitter and sweet to hear the name spoken. ‘And where is she buried, so we might visit?’

‘She has no grave that I know of. The anatomists have her.’

‘Our Susanna cannot rest like that,’ cries Joan.

The commotion wakes Ma, who rises from the bed and opens the curtain, rubbing her eyes and reaching for her kerchief. When she sees me, she has to put her hand on the wall to steady herself. Her kerchief drops to the floor. Ma’s hair is greyer and wirier, and her face is thinner and her body saggier, as though it has had some of its life drained out of it. Even the knuckles of her hands have aged and knobbled.

I did this to her. I could cry out for the shame of it, for as I sat and sipped gin and promised strangers that they would reunite with loved ones, and all things were forgiven beyond the grave, I knew nothing of the sort. I was not delivered. I am not God. My own mother withered as I sold stories and, if I had not come home now, forced to flee, I might have stayed in Edinburgh for years and she might have withered away to nothing.

‘Ma,’ I say, almost choking on her name.

‘What a relief to see you,’ she replies. ‘We didn’t know what to do, and when we heard you’d been released from jail, we knew you needed to be left to make up your own mind about whether to come home.’

‘I needed time to think,’ I tell her.

‘Mibbie Joan can put a fresh pot of tea on,’ says Ma and she sits down at the table.

Joan busies herself – Joan busies herself! – and Ma regards me with a pucker to her lip.

‘Are you back to stay?’

‘I am back for the time being,’ I answer, for truthfully I am here to hide from Dr McTavish, all the while knowing that a half-hanged woman cannot hide for long.

Ma sits, chin in one hand and the other hand running idly up and down the wood grain of the table. Her hands look bonier and more scarred than ever. I take a deep breath.

‘I have let you down badly. I have shamed you,’ I tell her.

Ma’s gaze doesn’t lift from the table, but there’s a flicker in her jaw. ‘I have not been a good enough mother to you, Maggie Dickson,’ she says. ‘You ran and ran, didn’t you? Ran until you were dragged back.’

‘No one dragged me back today,’ I reply. ‘Motherhood is hard, Ma. All the world looking upon us, waiting for us to put a foot wrong. I did not want it – the babe was an accident. I was feared of childbirth, and of the hard work of being a mother. But it seems there is another side to it altogether, and that is the way we are judged.’

‘You can judge me all you like,’ she tells me. ‘You are my daughter, after all.’

‘I do not judge you,’ I answer.

Ma makes to say something, but her voice sticks in her throat and what comes out is something else entirely. A sob, a heave and she puts her face in her hands. My heart rises in my chest and I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing. Eventually she wipes her face and clears her throat.

‘I have mourned you so many times, I am frightened to take you back into my heart again,’ she whispers.

Oh, Ma!

‘When you ran away, I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. And when the letter came – the letter you had written to us from Kelso – I ran down to the Mussel Inn myself to have someone read it out to me, for I thought it would say you had died. But you were still alive, and then the only thing I could think to do was ask Joan to fetch you. It should have been your father, but he is in no fit state to do anything responsible, for he drinks and loses his temper. So there was a time when both my girls were miles away from me, and all I could do was hope and pray.’

I open my mouth to say something, but Ma has an urgency to her, a compulsion, and I think that I must let it take its course. Even though I hate what I am hearing, for it fills me with shame.

‘And when those constables came’ – here even more shame erupts, in a rush – ‘all I could think was that if you had been here, and if I had been looking after you, none of it would have happened. For we would all have taken care of the babe, regardless of whatever had become of Patrick Spencer. And the fact that you felt you could not come home, well, that was the worst thing about it.’

‘It was not for hatred of you that I didn’t want to come home,’ I reply. ‘It was because I had my own wishes for how I wanted to live my life.’ I do not say anything about what happened between Joan and Spencer. I think that is better left unsaid.

‘But we have failed you,’ she goes on. ‘For this has not been much of a home to you, has it?’

‘Mibbie not,’ I admit.

‘And when they said you were to hang , Maggie, that was my biggest failure of all.’

‘I thought you were relieved to see me hanged,’ I say. ‘When I watched you all, for a minute or two after the hanging, and when I came alive again at the Sheep Heid Inn.’

‘I was relieved your suffering was at an end,’ confesses Ma. ‘I was relieved to be bringing you home to rest. But I knew that the end of your life would bring the end of my life. And I was relieved at that too. For I did not want to live much, after that. And everyone was decent enough – we were not shunned or told to leave Fisherrow, or anything like that – so I knew your sister and your da would be fine. But if they could have hanged me on the gallows beside you, I would gladly have let them.’

My poor broken ma. She sinks back into her chair – her rickety chair in her smoky parlour – her only home comforts stolen crockery and meat bought with the profits of smuggled tea. She wipes her face with her hands again, her red-knuckled hands scarred with cuts from fish hooks and gutting knives.

‘I came home to make things right again,’ I tell her. It’s not quite the truth, but I do earnestly mean it now.

‘How did you survive that hanging, Maggie?’ she asks. ‘All of the others that were hanged that day died. Only you survived. Do you think we were given a second chance – our family?’

‘I cannot tell you how I survived,’ I say to Ma, for that is the truth. I cannot tell her I bribed a hangman, for I do not want to burden her with that knowledge. ‘All I can say is that I sit here today with you, and we are a family once again.’

Joan comes back with the tea, and with something else.

‘Look, Maggie, some sage from the garden – we can make a poultice for your neck.’

It is likely a bit late for poultices now, but I let her do it: chop the leaves and mix them with hot water, and put it all in a muslin cloth. I tell them I’ve put no poultice on my neck, nor did anyone in Edinburgh offer, and Ma tuts and asks does no one in Edinburgh know how to do anything right, but drink gin and haggle over the price of fish?

And then we three talk. Ma tells me that Joan has her eye on a mill man, and Joan blushes and says let’s change the subject. Then we talk about our lost Susanna, like I had never imagined we would. Joan tells Ma about Susanna’s delicate skin and little face, and Ma talks about her own lost babes, and for the first time I feel I can talk openly about my babe. And even though the poor soul still floats somewhere in Edinburgh, in a physician’s jar, I feel as though she is part of my family.

All this lasts until Da comes home.

I first know he is here by the way Ma’s face falls at his footsteps outside the door, which are so faint I cannot hear them myself, but her ears are trained to listen out for them. Joan stiffens.

Da walks into the parlour and drops his bag. It thuds onto the mat. He is smaller than I remember, and rougher-looking too. He needs a haircut and his smock is filthy.

‘I thought you were living in Edinburgh now,’ he says.

‘I have come home for a while,’ I tell him.

‘Well, there is no room for you,’ he replies. ‘We cannot have us all sharing a bed, now you are married.’

‘Indeed we cannot,’ I say, standing up and walking towards my father. I take my purse with me and open it in front of him. I pull out a handful of coins and hand them to him. ‘Take these and get yourself back to the Mussel Inn,’ I tell him. ‘You can stay there for a few days whilst we women sort things out here. We have much to catch up on, and you won’t want to hear our silly gossip, I am sure.’

Da lets me press the coins into his hand. He looks at the three of us – three women who are not necessarily the three finest women in the world, nor the strongest, and certainly not the fanciest. But we are in unison, and we do not want him spoiling our evening.

‘I shall on my way then,’ he replies and picks up his bag. ‘But you cannot wear that pink gown about the place. It is too bright for around here.’

‘I shall wear what I like,’ I say. ‘It is my gown, bought with my money that I earned from my own hard work.’

Da does not like that at all. He blinks and swallows and looks at Ma, but she just folds her arms. When he retreats, he doesn’t look like a terror or even much of a bully, for I have seen worse. He looks like an angry man with nowhere to put his frustration and sorrow, except on those around him. Well, we are having no more of that. If our neighbours on Fisherrow have not shunned the Dicksons after a hanging, they will not shun us for barring our da from the door.

Afterwards, when Da’s footsteps have long disappeared, Ma closes her eyes and smiles, and her face looks a little lighter. Joan does the rushes and says how about a tipple of rum? And we all nod, and Ma hums as Joan fetches the bottle.

We are not desperately bonny, we Dicksons, not really. In a good light Joan is pretty, and a sight prettier than me. Pretty enough to lure the son of one of the mill owners at Eskmills. But we do not light up a room. Even in pink dresses, we do not gleam like the Mrs Roses of this world, nor pose like the ladies of Edinburgh in their carriages. We wear no jewels, aside from my glass ring and the odd paste brooch, and we are comfortable elbow-deep in fish guts.

But there is a stoicism in fishwifery.

We are bold and brave and built for battle.

We do not stay up late really, the three of us. We have tea and there is a bit of ham in the pantry, and we slice that up and talk more of all that has happened. Joan and I do not look at each other when Ma mentions Spencer’s name.

I do not tell either of them that he is living in Edinburgh and that I saw him on Hanging Day, and that he runs a perfume shop now.

I do not tell either of them that I was planning to walk into that perfume shop, for I do not want to hear their questions about it. I don’t know myself what I would say to Spencer, or how that conversation might go.

We go to bed around ten of the clock, as tomorrow we must gather bait.

Ma snores almost as soon as her head hits the pillow and, by the rattling depth of her snores, she is in a deep and well-deserved sleep.

Joan folds into herself and I know that she lies awake a long while, as I do too.

Finally, I sleep.

I dream of snakes, and Mrs Rose and Dr McTavish. Today has been a good day, in the end.

But as my dream-snake uncoils itself in the grass and stretches its scales and flicks its tongue and feels a hunger, an insatiable hunger, that can only be satisfied with a kill, I feel Dr McTavish sit in his plush apartment, aching for his beloved Mrs Rose and growing angrier and angrier that I have not brought her to him.

Dr McTavish will come for me.