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Chapter Thirty-Three

I t is eleven of the morning, and the wiggers and shoemakers are already doing a roaring trade. I stand in the street and let the crowds wash around me as I look through the emporium window.

The last time I saw Spencer was at the gallows when he was standing under a tree, the type of which I cannot recall, as I was too occupied with my own peril. Why would he come, when he could have spent that morning doing anything else? He risked being seen by Ma, Da and Joan.

I still wear his ring, silly fool that I am. It reminds me of glowing rush-light and whispered words, and discovering that my own body could experience blissful things. It reminds me of the intimacy of nakedness. It’s only glass, but it does twinkle in a world that has often been dark.

The perfume shop is as I once imagined ours might be in London. Glassy and musky. It is furnished with cabinets of a dark, expensive-looking polished wood, almost the colour of cherries, the like of which I saw in Dr McTavish’s apartment. On the shelves are all sorts of stoppered bottles. Spencer is doing well for himself.

He is alone. I take a deep breath and walk inside. I shut the door behind me and wait for him to notice me. The scent is intoxicating and brings me straight back to our cottage, his smuggled packages, our first kiss. I almost walk straight back out again, but I mustn’t. He is intent on arranging things on the counter and he looks just as he always did, except that now he wears a velvet waistcoat in a deep burgundy to match the wood of his shop. I am much changed, and he is not. I wonder, uneasily, if he has a woman upstairs, lying abed, taking her Women’s Tonic . If he does, I imagine her to be viciously pretty with an accent like cut-glass. A soft delicate throat, unscarred, with a hint of expensive musk about it.

Finally he looks up and clears his throat, expecting a well-heeled gent or the neatly turned-out maid of someone from a top-storey apartment. When he sees me, he gulps and then quickly recovers himself.

‘I wondered how long it would take you to find me,’ he comments.

I say nothing for now, just slide open a cabinet door, pick up a bottle of something and take off the stopper, then put it to my nose. I hope he does not notice that my hands shake.

‘I can only apologize for disappearing the way I did,’ he adds.

Well, that makes me cross.

‘Apparently that was not your fault,’ I tell him, my blood rising. ‘They said you were dragged off by a press gang.’

‘That was part of what happened,’ he replied. ‘I was taken onto a boat, but I was able to bribe one of the Navy men. Another boat came into the port, from Gothenburg, and I was expecting a consignment on it, so the Navy man took that in lieu of me. I would never have made a decent Navy officer anyway.’

Oh, he never even made it out to sea! And I had spent all those days and nights pining and aching, and wondering if he might be whipped or drowned. But I don’t pine and ache now, I just twirl the glass ring on my finger. It is light and cheap and thin.

‘So why did you not come home?’ I can hear the fury in my raised voice rattling off the cabinet-glass.

He shifts from one foot to the other and fiddles with his waistcoat pocket.

‘I think I had got myself in a bit deep,’ he replies. ‘What with one thing and another. Marrying you so soon.’

‘You certainly had got yourself in a bit deep. You were fugging my sister,’ I retort.

Spencer sits on his stool and rubs his face. He looks embarrassed.

‘Joan was a bit of a seductress,’ he tells me.

‘Joan is an idiot, who knew nothing of the world,’ I say. ‘She was as green as I was. You were older and wiser than both of us.’

‘You thought I’d help you escape your fishing life for a life in London,’ he replies. ‘That was your real ambition. But you didn’t need me to help you, in the end. You managed that all on your own. In fact you are a great escape artiste – you’ve escaped the noose! And doing all right now, are you not? I’ve seen you talking to folks and being passed coins. I’ve read stories about you in the Courant and heard gossip in the taverns. They say you saw God. They say you have the power to give folks a second chance.’

I could almost laugh at his nonsense. He has said nothing of our lost child. No how have you survived? Or how is your ma? Or how have you all coped?

‘I suppose our marriage contract has come to an end,’ he adds. ‘What with you having legally been dead and all?’

I ignore that. ‘Your Women’s Tonic certainly does not work,’ I tell him. ‘So mibbie, if I were you, I would not give that to your conquests so confidently.’

‘I am sorry about the babe,’ he says. ‘I know you did not want one, so perhaps its passing was for the best.’

I pick up a bottle of scent and consider smashing it on the floor.

‘Nothing that has happened these past weeks have been for the best,’ I reply. ‘The babe was held and adored during her short little life, and she knew nothing but love.’ I do not tell him her name. I do not give him Susanna. She is mine.

Now he sees how upset I am. ‘What can I do, Maggie – what can I do to make things up to you a bit?’ he says. ‘What do you want?’

‘I have no idea about our marriage contract,’ I tell him. ‘But mibbie I should go to the sheriffs and ask their opinion. We might be still wed, in God’s eyes. Or you might be a widower. But they would enjoy nothing more than to ponder over that question as they make their way through a bottle of wine at the White Hart Inn. It would give them something to do. And perhaps that would make its way into the Courant as well. The illustrator does a good likeness of folks, and I could get him to do a nice sketch of this perfume shop too.’

Spencer’s mouth falls open.

‘You would be famous all about town,’ I add slyly.

‘There is no need for that,’ he says. ‘We shall proceed as you wish. We can settle our marriage in a way that is satisfactory to us both.’

‘This is how we shall proceed,’ I tell him. ‘We will consider our marriage ended with my hanging. For there is a death-certificate after all. And you are a widower, and I – well, I am not sure exactly what I am, but as far as I am aware, my dear husband is lost at sea, presumed dead. But I should like a settlement from you. Enough so that I might go back to Musselburgh and live again in that cottage we had, or one like it, and so that Ma and Joan might join me if they wish, for it is no life for them living with my da and keeping smuggled tea beneath the bed, and waiting for a knock on the door from the Excise men.’

‘That sounds like an awful lot of money, Maggie,’ he begins. ‘And there was a decent stash in the safe, wasn’t there? I presume you found that and put it to good use? Surely you don’t need anything more from me?’

‘That stash is long gone. Stolen from me. And anyway you can manage to spare more,’ I assure him. ‘You are a man of means, as I can see from this shop; and you are a man of cunning ways, as I have learned from knowing you a bit. Second, I should like an extra sum of money from you in order that I can bury our poor babe in a kirkyard, so that she may finally rest in peace.’

‘The babe is not buried?’ At this he looks horrified.

‘I believe her to be kept by the anatomists,’ I say. ‘And that is no way to spend eternity. We must both do better by her.’

Patrick Spencer is not a good man. I know nothing of where he came from in life, for I made the mistake of marrying a man I barely knew. I can only guess at his fate, which will be well heeled and lonely, I believe. But in the moment of our final conversation he does his best by me, which is to give me the settlement I ask him for.

He disappears upstairs for a while, and I hear the creaking of floorboards overhead and the murmuring of two voices.

Oh, I do feel the pierce of cut-glass in one of them.

But it is only a momentary twinge of pain at knowing that Spencer trots from woman to woman as easily as a ship calling at ports. I brush the dust off my skirts with my hands and think ahead, to seeing Ma and Joan again and mibbie, hopefully, Mr Munroe the harbourmaster, if I might still have my job.

And Mr Munroe might take me out for that lunch.

Spencer thuds downstairs and puts a purse on the countertop.

‘This is enough for the burial and six months’ rent,’ he tells me. ‘It’s all I have, and after that you would need to come back.’

‘But you might not be here,’ I say. ‘So I shall take some bottles of your perfume, and that will see me for the year.’

‘But my perfume is worth a lot of money,’ he replies.

‘And so is my silence,’ I warn.

He sighs. ‘You are a witch. A wench. You are not the mild fishergirl I married.’ Then he nods at my glass ring. ‘That’s not worth much money.’ He grins. ‘In fact you’ll not believe how I got it. It belonged to a girl in Gothenburg. Lovely girl, she was. Eighteen or so. She was dying of the pox. It gave a mottle to her skin and a hacking cough. Two or three summers ago now. A pox went around the whole port. All the physicians could do was sell bottles of medicine to take the pain away. There were no cures.’

I look down at my hand, seeing the ring differently now. Lovely girl.

‘I paid her enough for the ring to get her a decent bottle of medicine, but I think that ring could have got her two bottles. Maybe three, if she’d had a mind to barter for them. But, Maggie, she was in no state to barter. She was likely a gonner. You could tell by how fast she deteriorated. She wanted hardly anything for the ring. There was no point giving her more than she asked for, was there?’

I wonder whether she died or mibbie even survived, and whether she looks at her hand from time to time and misses the glass ring. I wonder whether a sweetheart gave it to her too, and what became of him.

I should never have taken Patrick Spencer into my heart.

I am quiet as he takes a dozen bottles of perfume from the shelves. ‘I hope this is the end of it,’ he grumbles, ‘and you are not planning to come back to blackmail me for more.’

‘None of this is blackmail,’ I say. ‘The devastation you caused can never be compensated for. But I shall go and fetch our babe now and leave you alone.’

‘Should I come with you,’ he offers, ‘down to the anatomists? Might you need a man to speak on your behalf, to the learned gents?’

I laugh then; it bursts out of me, half-mirth and half of it a release of tension. Spencer’s face is pale, with a sheen of sweat at his upper lip, and I know he is craving a rum already, to take the edge off his terrible morning, even though it’s not yet noon.

‘I am more than capable,’ I respond. ‘In fact I think I would do a better job of it than you would. A better job than you, or my da, or any of the men who are supposed to have looked after me. And instead of looking after me, you have behaved dreadfully. Now, Spencer, might you parcel this lot up for me, and the purse too, so that I can carry it with me when I go down to the anatomists’ hall?’

He does as he is told and ties a looping bow at the top of the parcel. It is a heavy load, truth be told, but I am of broad-shouldered fishwife stock, so I lift it with confidence.

‘That’ll be that then,’ he says. He is furious under his nonchalance, though. I can tell by the way his upper lip sweats.

‘That will be that,’ I reply firmly and I take the parcel out of the door, into the clamour of the High Street, and head to the south side of the city.