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Chapter Thirty-Two

T he next day is a bright one, with rain scattered about the closes. A warm wind brings the drop of leaves and the rise of the last of the wasps. It is a day for making fruit pies and chutneys. In Fisherrow, as they string fresh bait on lines, my second disappearance will be the talk of the harbour.

I walk to Fishmarket Close and when the fishwives see me there are questions and some relief, and I explain that I had to make an unexpected return to Edinburgh, but they should reassure Ma and Joan and Mr Munroe that I will be back soon, once all my business is complete. They give me a pair of haddock to take away with me and I take them to Aunt Jenever’s. ‘Fresh fish calls for a fry-up,’ the fishwives call.

Aunt Jenever’s shop is dark and quiet when I get there, but last night it shone like gold. I put the fish in the pantry and take a seat by the window. By and by, Cornelius drops in. Good Cornelius – Aunt Jenever’s boy who will do anything to keep the peace around here. Anything that needs doing.

‘There’s a nice bit of fish out the back for supper,’ I tell him. ‘I hope you’re sticking around that long.’

‘Not got much else to do,’ he says. ‘It’s been very quiet around here of late.’

Then there’s a bit of a swish and swirl of skirts, and a tippy-tap of pointy boots on the stairs, and we both fall silent, for down comes Mrs Rose, my pal Dorothy, looking radiant despite our late night out. She yawns and asks if there is any coffee.

‘It is a habit I have got into,’ she says, continuing to yawn. ‘A nice little cup of coffee when I wake up, although I usually wake much later than this. It is noisy in the mornings at this end of town. Greyfriars is more genteel, I dare say. And might there be somewhere I can get a tot of laudanum?’

I raise my eyebrows and Cornelius and I exchange glances. Cornelius has the shadow of a late night about his eyes.

‘Shall you be heading back to Greyfriars after your cup of coffee then?’ I ask Dorothy.

‘Perhaps, or I might stay here a while,’ she answers. ‘I feel quite safe here, you see.’

Cornelius stands up and goes to the kitchen to brew some coffee. Dorothy plays with the rings on her fingers and at last has the decency to look embarrassed at herself.

‘You did me a great favour last night,’ she says. ‘Dr McTavish had been a pest to me, begging me to do business with him again, but there was no way I’d consider it. I knew in my bones what he’d done to his wife. I would have left Edinburgh altogether, but the trade is so good here and the laudanum easy to get. I was worried he would do me a mischief one of these days, but I had no idea about the depths of his plot. Planning to keep me a prisoner – chained up.’ Her face is pinched.

‘He is no longer a threat to anyone,’ I tell her.

Cornelius comes back with three china cups filled with steaming coffee.

‘I feel a proper gent drinking this,’ he says. He hands a cup to Dorothy. He can hardly keep his eyes off her. ‘We will talk of what happened last night once more – and once more only,’ he goes on, ‘to get our stories straight, as it were. After that we shall talk of that scoundrel Dr McTavish no more. Some things are best buried.’

We talked then and got our stories straight, but here is mine: the real one.

I am not a woman of parchments or books or written words, but as I come to look back on these events – on this time of my life – I wish I was, for I do think the story of Half-Hanged Maggie, the woman who survived her own execution, is only half my story. I admit I feel quite melancholy that my other memories will die with me, on the day of my natural death. For though not quite as macabre or dramatic as the story of my hanging, these events are quite a tale too.

It begins with Dorothy that night, on the walk from Greyfriars, a ten-minute walk at most downhill to the Grassmarket, then uphill to the High Street. Late at night, it is a walk past inns and taverns and shuttered apothecaries, and beggars and vagrants under blankets who might be asleep or dead – you don’t care to check. As we passed the Grassmarket, the gallows spot, I knew without question that I was not going to lead Dorothy to her doom. For had I not been led to my own doom at this very place?

On Hanging Day they had carted us from the Tolbooth Jail down to the Grassmarket Gallows, which is only a short ride, but felt like eternity and a blink of an eye, all in one.

The streets were lined many-deep, for our hanging had been advertised, you see, all over town, as is the custom. The crowd went with us, as we ricocheted over the potholes, our hands bound so that we could not use them to steady ourselves and we had to plant our feet anywhere they could rest.

I even laughed quite hysterically, once or twice, at the nonsense of it all, trying to avoid being battered by stones and vegetables and potholes as I was about to meet a hangman. The others wept and prayed and closed their eyes. The chaos made the carthorses nervous and they lifted their tails and shat, all the way down the street, and I thought of how the dung would lie there and be trodden in, long after I was coffined.

I didn’t know whether I would live or die. Dr McTavish might do anything on those gallows. What if I survived the hanging, only to wake up to find the anatomists cutting into me?

But I had been spared. And I do not believe in a life for a life, or anything like that. I just know that Dr McTavish is a man who thinks he is God. I have not met God. But I know he is not in Dr McTavish. There is more of God in me than there is in Dr McTavish.

As we passed the gallows last night I turned to Dorothy. We stopped then and there, under the trees, under the stars.

‘This is where they hanged me,’ I told her.

‘I should like to see a day when no one is hanged for concealing a pregnancy,’ she replied. ‘For it doesn’t seem right to me to put a mother to death when she is grieving for her lost child. It does not seem right to me that women are blamed for things they cannot help, and are told what to do with their own bodies.’

She began to weep. She had had a bellyful of wine.

‘Men use my body, then shun me,’ she said. ‘I can have a man naked in my chamber all night, but should he see me around Greyfriars the next morning, he will not meet my eye. Imagine if we ruled the world, you and I. There would be no need for women to sell their bodies, for folk could be given an allowance, say, if they fell on hard times. And men like Dr McTavish would not be allowed to get away with wickedness like poisoning their wives.’

I knew then that Dorothy had so much wisdom and worldly experience that she must not be snuffed out. That would be a terrible sin. More so than anything else I had ever done.

Then I told her. I told her who my hangman was, and her eyes widened and I thought she would gasp herself into a fit.

‘That awful, awful man,’ she said. ‘That murderer . All those times I went to his cottage in Kelso. He sat and played dominoes without a care in the world. And oh, I shared a bed with him. I have been intimate with a hangman, Maggie.’

‘You were not to know,’ I soothed.

‘I am utterly relieved I ran away from him. For he is revolting and one day he would murder me too,’ she added.

Then she looked at me and realized.

‘You bribed Dr McTavish. But not with sex. You bribed him with me .’

‘I had no choice,’ I told her. ‘I was gambling on my life. I threatened to tell everyone that he killed his wife, and he said that if he spared mine, I was to help him get you back. But I didn’t realize quite what a monster he is. He means to take you and keep you prisoner.’ I couldn’t stop myself now. ‘He sent me up to Greyfriars to find you. He wants me to deliver you to him. If we don’t go to his apartment, he will find us both. We are in danger, Dorothy.’

‘We must run away this instant,’ she hissed, gripping my arm. ‘Both of us now – what do you say? We can get a night-coach to London. I know where they depart from. It’s not even far from here. We have good clothes on and we have the money in my purse, and we can take lodgings near Covent Garden. What say you?’

‘I am not running away from anyone, ever again,’ I insisted. I grasped her arm back. ‘And neither are you. Come, we will go to Aunt Jenever’s Gin Shop for a nightcap and we will talk this over. Dr McTavish is not expecting us ’til after midnight anyway.’

I knew Aunt Jenever would help. Even more so, I believed Cornelius or some of the lads he knew would help. For if there is one thing men like Cornelius loathe, it is a hangman.

Cornelius made us stay at Aunt Jenever’s, so the truth is that I do not know what happened up at Dr McTavish’s apartment last night, only that a couple of lads got together – one of their own dear pals had been hanged a year or so past, just a small-time thief – and they felt that whatever might happen to Dr McTavish would be well deserved.

‘I don’t think I am a lover of coffee,’ Cornelius declares now.

Dorothy takes delicate sips of hers, but I have no thirst for mine.

‘If we are ever asked – if the constables should come knocking and asking questions about whether we saw anything unusual last night – the answer is that we all had a nightcap of gin in this very room and then went to sleep,’ says Cornelius. ‘Are we clear on that?’

We nod solemnly.

‘Is he quite dead?’ whispers Dorothy. There is a tremble on her lip.

Cornelius places his hand on hers and she looks up at him. I think she is startled by his gentleness.

‘Hanged from his own rafters, by a length of good hemp rope,’ mutters Cornelius.

I blink away the image. I do not want to think of it. I decide to leave them to their coffee and go upstairs. Aunt Jenever is getting herself ready to face the world. Her room is a chaos of robes and bloomers.

‘I shall open a window,’ I declare, picking over the detritus on the floor and pulling wide the shutters.

‘I think I am getting too old for all the dramatics of this town,’ says Aunt Jenever. She wears nothing but her nightgown and is putting fresh plaits in her silvery hair.

‘Here, let me,’ I tell her and lead her to the chair, where she sits quite meekly as I pick up the brush. I need to do something simple and human, like fix hair.

‘Is Cornelius all right?’ she asks. ‘For whatever passed last night, he is my best doorman and I do not want him out of the game.’

‘No one was harmed, except for the man who was causing trouble,’ I tell her. ‘And he will cause no further trouble.’

‘This is a harsh town,’ Aunt Jenever muses as I pin her two plaits over her head. ‘I dare say you are not staying here long.’

She is right. I need the Forth and calm, and my family.

‘I have one or two more things I must do, then I will be back home,’ I tell her. ‘But I have been touched by your generosity. You have saved me somehow, when I had nothing. Less than nothing. You picked me up and gave me somewhere to live and a chance.’

Aunt Jenever shrugs, for she is not a woman who likes too many compliments. Her plaits are tight now and pinned to her head. But her hair is so thin I can see her pink scalp through it, and I wonder at her fragility, despite her coarse voice and ways; and at the fragility of us all.

Then I powder my teeth and wash my face and hands with a bit of lavender soap and head out. If I catch him, Patrick Spencer will be opening up his perfume shop about now, and I want to have a nice scent about me.