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Chapter Three

I walk into the courthouse, a McIvor on each side, but the brothers are not so sure of themselves now and no longer grip me, intimidated by the pomp. I do not turn back to catch a last glimpse of my family because I don’t want them to see the terror in my eyes. That was a bold show I put on, out there – bolder than I feel.

A man in a black robe and cap with a florid nose bursting with whiskers sits at a desk, surrounded by larger-than-life oil paintings of men with swords and kilts and feathered hats. The window behind him is stained glass, and the high ceiling above our heads is held aloft by so many dark wooden beams it reminds me of an upturned fishing boat. The man glances up, and I can tell he is about to dismiss me when he sees my neck and his jaw drops.

‘Sir, this is the condemned criminal Maggie Dickson,’ announces the McIvor on my left. ‘Hanged this morning, but returned to life at lunchtime. We witnessed her revival and brought her straight to you. One minute she was in her coffin, the next minute she was up and walking.’

‘If this is a trick, I will have you all hanged,’ says the court man, rising to his feet. But I can tell he knows it is not, for the welt on my throat throbs mercilessly and he can’t take his eyes off it.

‘No trick, no con, just God’s will,’ says the McIvor on my right.

‘Was she revived by a physician? Or either of you?’ asks the court man, narrowing his eyes with suspicion. ‘For that would be a crime in itself.’

The men tremble and shake their heads vigorously. ‘We are as shocked as you are now,’ one says. ‘She walked into the Sheep Heid Inn as though she had been woken from a slumber. I almost dropped dead myself with the shock of it.’

The other McIvor murmurs in agreement. ‘Is there a reward,’ he asks, ‘for bringing her back?’

The court man is still gawping at my rope-burn. Eventually he speaks. ‘The sheriffs are at their victuals in the White Hart Inn, where they have been since this morning, it being a Hanging Day,’ he says. Then he clears his throat and gathers himself back to full gravity. ‘When the sheriffs are at their victuals, particularly on a Hanging Day, they do not like to be disturbed. In fact it is their expressed desire to be left alone to ponder the weight of the law.’

The McIvors shuffle a bit and I think they are going to start begging for a reward, but never mind them. Now is my time to start being courageous and sharp. I put my hand to my throat and lower my eyes.

‘Kind sir, if you will assist me, I should be most grateful,’ I say, for I know how court men talk, and it is a steady game of good manners and pretended humbleness, but always with the courage of your convictions. ‘I can tell that seeing me here, before your very eyes, is a shock to you. But trust me, sir, waking up in my own coffin came as an even bigger shock to me and I am forced to throw myself at your mercy. I was indeed hanged this morning, in accordance with the law, and I make no complaint about that. But as you can see, I remain alive and what happens next is a matter not for you or I, but for the sheriffs.’

He stares at me with no emotion, so I continue. ‘I think it is imperative a physician is brought to check my health, for I have not eaten since my last meal yesterday, which I could barely manage, sir, but I make no complaint about that either, only to ask that the physician comes quite swiftly and perhaps I am offered a cup of clean water and mibbie a rum to revive me – whisky if you have no rum. Oh, and a bit of meat too. And to ask that the sheriffs are summoned from their victuals at the White Hart Inn, sooner rather than later, to make comment on this predicament I have been left in.’

The man is frowning now, but listening, quite intently. I take another deep breath and talk through the burning hoarseness in my throat. ‘You see, aside from my own discomfort at not knowing what is what, my poor family outside do not know what to do with themselves: mourn or celebrate. And I am afeared that if they carry on standing out there, it is only a matter of time before they are noticed, and the balladeers and newspaper men get to hear about my revival and come rushing to this courthouse with their quills, asking my family all sorts of questions. And that would not reflect well on anyone.’

For a lass with a near-broken neck, it is quite the speech, but I want a swift decision from the sheriffs. And for good reason: they will have been eating their veal collops and mussels, and drinking their wine, since the hour before my drop, as they are renowned to do on a Hanging Day. The White Hart Inn is near the gallows and the first-floor private room affords a fine view, with no danger of mixing with the unwashed. And as it’s now near three of the clock and the sheriffs opened their first bottle at eight, they will be drunk.

And that means I might just have the upper hand in arguing my case with them.

The court man looks horrified at the balladeers getting wind of it all and nods vigorously and stands up, then tells me to come with him. He walks me across the hall and puts me into a side-room and locks the door behind him. On the other side of the door I hear his footsteps click across the hall and then the murmurings of voices and the creaking of the great doors, and then nothing more than a long, still silence.

I am alone again, briefly. The side-room is a small cubby with a writing desk and a chair, which I sit down on. This might be one of the rooms the law men use. Mibbie they sit here and sign things like death-papers, and pay bills for hangmen and floggers and jailers. I know what lies beneath my feet too. Another set of rooms where the condemned live out their last days. They will be empty now, cleared out this morning, awaiting the next lot. I think of the woman who lay on the mat next to mine. I think the anatomists will have her now.

Time passes. I am brought a plate of cold but decent bacon and cabbage and a large cup of ale. By the time I have finished it, I do feel a lot better and, dare I say it, human again.

The window in the side-room is not stained glass, but is small and grimy with cobwebs and soot. It peers onto a narrow close that no one seems to frequent, so I have no idea of what is happening outside. They might take me back to the gallows again. And then what? The bacon and cabbage that seemed so welcome a few moments ago now churn in my belly and I have to breathe slowly to keep them there.

A sharp rap at the door tells me the sheriffs have been persuaded from their victuals. I am summoned to the courtroom. It is the same man as before. This time he makes no comment, but leads the way. We turn through a series of corridors and, when we get to the courtroom, I realize it is the same courtroom too, the one they tried me in. Then it was crammed with all manner of folk come to see the spectacle. Now it is eerily quiet.

The sheriffs have pulled on their robes and wigs and stand unsteadily, three of them, behind their bench, with faces so dismayed I think it a shame the balladeers are not here to record the scene.

Eventually one of them speaks. The one who was my sheriff, a man called McAllister.

‘She looks fairly unscathed, apart from that rope-mark. Her colour is good. I dare say she doesn’t even need a physician,’ he says.

His colleagues murmur and stare.

‘Sirs,’ I reply, ‘I have come to you willingly and most humbly. I was revived naturally, or by some Act of God, in my coffin some hours ago, but I didn’t abscond.’

Sheriff McAllister raises his eyebrows.

‘I could have taken off and gone into hiding, but I did not. Instead I have come to you in honesty. For what kind of a life would that have been – to be forever hiding?’

‘With that gash on your throat, you would not have been able to hide for long,’ notes another of the sheriffs.

I press on. ‘I have come to beg you to consider my case. To tell you that I have served my sentence, for I was hanged this very morning, as you will have watched. And I am here to beg you to judge that now I am free to go.’

Once I was terrified of men in robes and would quake at the sight. But that was before I saw with my own eyes that they are simply men who like to argue and debate and can be persuaded of the most unlikely things. They have a habit, see, of arguing with each other on every point. If one says black , another will say white ; and if one says wrong , another will say right . It’s a habit they learn at their law schools and it can be most irritating. But now I hope it will serve me well.

‘You were sentenced to death,’ says Sheriff McAllister. ‘’Twas me who made the pronouncement. And you stand before us alive and well. Too well.’

‘I was sentenced to be hanged,’ I reply. ‘And hanged I was. Look, here is my very own death-certificate.’

I offer the scroll. They do not reach out for it. Instead another sheriff takes the bait.

‘Hanged she was,’ he says slowly.

‘And yet she stands before me, begging for her life,’ says Sheriff McAllister, ‘telling me she could have run away instead, and expecting me to have mercy.’

‘But her ramblings are irrelevant,’ says his pal. ‘What matters is that the sentence was carried out. We might have to retire to the library and see what the books say on this topic.’

Now the third sheriff chimes in. ‘This kind of thing has happened before. The hangmen need to get their act together. This whole affair is an embarrassment.’

‘Where is your legal representative?’ asks Sheriff McAllister. ‘The solicitor who spoke in your defence. You should not speak for yourself. You should have your man of the law speaking on your behalf on a matter as grave as this – the one who pleaded your case in court.’

On this point, they all nod and agree.

‘We shall send for him if we need him,’ I say. ‘But I hope we do not, for I only ask you to consider that my sentence has been served. Did you not all sit in the White Hart Inn and watch me hang?’

‘I think,’ offers the third sheriff, ‘that this is a matter for us to debate in private.’

This is as much as I could have hoped for. A reconsideration.

‘And in the meantime, what will become of me?’ I ask. ‘Might I go back to my home in Fisherrow? I will be safe there and looked after too. My family is waiting outside on my news.’

‘You will remain here in Edinburgh,’ says Sheriff McAllister. ‘For the likelihood is that you will be hanged again before the week is out.’

They all nod then and call for me to be taken from their courtroom, and I imagine they will head straight back to the White Hart Inn to debate the matter in earnest, supplemented with even more victuals to calm their agitated nerves.

I am led back to the Tolbooth Jail by two bullish constables, and I start to dread what awaits beyond the gates. The prison is only a short walk from the court, back across Parliament Square, but it is a walk from the civilized world to a dangerous one, for the Tolbooth has its own codes and rules. Ma, Da, Joan and the McIvors are standing by the cart and, when they see me come out, Ma, Da and Joan rush over.

‘Wait,’ says Ma, ‘don’t just hurl her back in there. What did they say, Maggie?’

The constables stop, but I know they won’t give us long.

‘They’re still deciding what to do. I don’t know how long that will take.’

Da shakes his head. ‘I need to get back out on the boat,’ he says. ‘Or there’ll be no fish for us to sell.’

Ma looks fit to collapse at it all and I feel a stab of guilt.

Joan looks away from me and fiddles with her bonnet ribbons. The constables start walking me towards the jail door.

‘We’ll try to visit,’ offers Ma. But she says it weakly.

And that is how we say our goodbyes, with the same embarrassment and shame as we felt when we had our last visit before I was hanged.

If I have been a terrible disappointment to my family, they have been a disappointment to me. If I feel guilt at what I have put us all through, then surely they must feel guilt too?

But I can’t think of that now. It is too much. I have to steel myself for prison life again.

The constables bundle me back inside and push me up narrow stairs and through low-ceilinged passageways, then finally they hand me over to the turnkey in charge of the women’s cell.

‘You will recognize this woman,’ one of the constables says. ‘Survived the hanging this morning. Keep a close eye on her.’

It is the turnkey that I don’t like. The one who offers tipples of gin and smuggled pies in exchange for things I don’t want to give. The passageway is dim, but there is no mistaking the shock on his face.

‘This is the work of the Devil,’ he says. ‘To have escaped death. This woman must be a witch.’

The constable tuts. ‘Then she is in good company in this cell,’ he says. ‘For it is full of wickedness and wantonness and she shall rot in here a while.’

‘I shall want extra coin for guarding her,’ the turnkey says. ‘For who knows what pact she made with the Devil.’

‘You can take that up with the sheriffs,’ the constable says. ‘For they are deciding what to about the debacle, but it is more likely trickery than witchery – you know that as well as I do.’

With some hesitation, as if I might bite, the turnkey puts his finger to my chin and tilts my head up. They all suck in their breath, gazing at my neck in the lamplight. I want to shake him off, grab his finger and stick it in his eye, but I daren’t flinch. I am outnumbered.

‘I shall keep an eye on her,’ he says. ‘But if there’s any sign of devilment from her, I am out.’

That turnkey kept his eye on me before. Only days ago he watched me in this cell as a cat watches a mouse, and he has seen more of my body than any other man, except Spencer. He watched me lift my skirts to piss and thought lewd things.

But his gaze is different now. The lust has gone. I am macabre. A spectre come to life. Mibbie I consort with demons.

Oh, if only they knew the truth, and how wracked with guilt I am and that I pray desperately for my poor babe’s soul.

He opens the gate to the women’s cell. Faces stare from the gloom, five women and girls in various states of torn petticoat-flounce and filth. Most of them I recognize from before. The sleekit little pickpocket is still here, waiting for a public whipping. She scratches at her flea bites and looks terrified to say anything. The whoreish one – Molly, the turnkey’s favourite – is here. She crosses herself and edges as far away from me as she can get.

They mutter amongst themselves and, at first, they avoid talking to me. I catch them trying to see my neck and glancing at my ill-fitting gown. They have all heard the conversation that just occurred: Maggie Dickson survived this morning’s hanging. Words pass easily through cell gates; they slip between the bars. Words and whispers and bribes, and slices of pie and bottles of gin, and slender hands that can unbutton a turnkey’s breeches and earn a favour quick as you like. Initially the women let me sit quiet and gather my thoughts. I know the questions will come, though. I am marked, now. I have been on the other side. Some of these women might be destined for their own hangings, once their cases are tried. They will want me to tell them how I survived – whether it was witchery or trickery. The others will be like Joan and will want me to tell them if I saw God, and who was waiting for me.

I don’t know. I only know that I am changed inside and out.

I was someone else, once. A lover. A dreamer. But as the cell darkens into a night I thought I would never see, and the other women fold in on themselves, back to their own troubles, and eventually nod off and twitch and grunt and snore and weep in their dreams, I thank my lucky stars. For the shawl, the thin blanket, the gristle they toss me for supper, and even the rustle of rats. Every time I move my head, my neck hurts. I would have asked for a looking glass, to see the rope-burn. One of these women will have a pocket mirror stashed. Rouge too, and I have even smelled contraband scent in the Tolbooth. These are the novelties that help prisoners remember they are human, when they are treated as less. But asking for anything will draw attention and, besides, I don’t want an audience when I do survey the damage to my flesh.

The glass ring twirls easy on my finger, that’s how gaunt I am. Once I was a little sturdier. A sight dafter. A fishergirl who dreamed of running away from the sea.

When I sleep, finally, lightly and achingly on the prison mat, I dream of snakes again. Snakes and serpents and ropes.

When the serpent came to Eve, she gave in to temptation.

’Tis easy done.

In my dream, I find myself searching for my babe again and wake up with a start. Then it comes to me: I will never sleep soundly again and, worse, will never rest easy in my grave – unless I can be at peace with what happened.

And that means I must think back. Remember how it all started and where it all went wrong.