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Chapter Thirty-Six

Fisherrow November 1724

I t’s late on Friday afternoon and the market is starting to die down. I am waiting on the harbour-front for Mr Munroe, who has asked me to join him on a walk around Musselburgh golf links. The golf links are not a part of town that I’m familiar with. Fishing folk have little time for pastimes or pursuits and, if we do, we prefer the indoors to the outdoors. ‘The golf links!’ Joan had said, when I had told her I’d be late home. ‘That’s where the ladies and gents go for romantic walks.’ Joan knows all about the golf links too, as she’s been busy with her own affairs of the heart. Her lad’s not a mill owner’s son as such, but has a highly regarded clerking role and hopes of being a manager.

I can think of no reason other than a romantic one for a gent like Mr Munroe to want to walk out with a lass on a Friday afternoon, and my heart dances a bit at that, for we have got closer, day by day, in his office; and rather than talk of books, we have talked of our lives. His has not been as wild as mine, but he has a decent profession and sees it as his calling to watch over our little harbour and make sure it runs as well as it can.

Yesterday we had a glass of port after work, sitting by the fire, and he said he hoped I did not mind, but he had something of his late mother’s and could he give it to me?

‘Would you be offended?’ he asked. ‘My mother liked this, and I have kept most of her bits and pieces, but frankly it is just lying in a purse now and I think it would look most beautiful on you.

I sat and waited for him to fetch it, wondering nervously what on earth he might think to give me of his late mother’s. I sipped my port and then watched it swirl in the crystal glass, and then I relaxed a bit and enjoyed the feeling of being with a man who wants nothing more than my company and to make me feel happy.

Mr Munroe came back downstairs carrying a small velvet purse, and opened it and showed me what was inside. It was a necklace, a gold necklace with red gems strung on it that gleamed like little berries.

‘I think it suits your colouring,’ he said, blushing almost the same colour as the gems, poor man. ‘But do not feel you must take it, or that you must wear it.’

I let him put the necklace on me. It was cold and his hands were warm and deft, and I could smell the port on his breath and had a sudden thought of him touching me most intimately, and I blushed too.

‘A good friend of mine, a lady called Dorothy, once told me she thought my rope-bruise would fade to look like a necklace – a mourning necklace,’ I told him. ‘She’s a lovely lady, Dorothy; gents adore her.’

My eyes prickled at that: at what Dorothy had said, and that I miss her a bit and think I would like to send her a message to come and visit me one day and see if she and Cornelius are married yet, which I am sure they will be before the year is out.

Mr Munroe hesitated before he brushed my rope-mark with his finger. The patch of skin, which still aches from time to time and no doubt always will, tingled at his touch. I had not been touched there for a long time and I did not mind Mr Munroe doing it at all.

‘This is not a traditional mourning necklace,’ he said, ‘for they are usually made of dark jewels. But I suppose I thought of you when I saw it. Well, you could wear this for any reason. As a mourning necklace or as a trinket, or just to have something of mine, if you like.’

And then there was a moment when I thought he might kiss me, but he did not. Instead he asked me if I might walk out with him tomorrow after work, to the golf links.

When I got home with that necklace on, Joan gawped and gawped.

‘Look at this, Ma,’ she cried. ‘Maggie’s got some fine jewels about her neck.’

‘Oh, Maggie,’ breathed Ma, ‘those look like real gems.’

‘Not paste, like Spencer’s ring,’ agreed Joan. ‘Those are the real deal. Was that Mr Munroe? Are you to marry him? Can you marry, Maggie – what with you being married before and now legally dead? Do you still need your glass ring? I could have it now. Mr Munroe will buy you a gold one.’

She has never let up about that bloody glass ring.

‘You can have the glass ring when I am dead, Joan, but not before. I have no idea of Mr Munroe’s intentions, for all he said was that he should like me to wear his poor deceased ma’s necklace, and I think it covers my rope-mark quite well and I might wear it as a mourning necklace for Susanna.’

‘And why should you cover your mark?’ asked Ma in a low voice. ‘It is part of you, and speaks of your past and all that you have survived.’

‘I feel I am branded,’ I said. ‘And my mark is my punishment for the mistakes I have made. It makes me feel ashamed, Ma.’

‘Do not wear the necklace to hide your shame. Of all the reasons to wear it, do not let that be the one. Wear it to honour Mr Munroe’s request, and to let him remember his ma, and to let you remember Susanna, and to give this piece of jewellery a new lease of life. But mostly wear it because it suits you, my girl, because it makes you sparkle.’

I said I would.

‘It does make you sparkle, Maggie,’ said Joan. ‘She looks bonnie, doesn’t she, Ma?’ My sister had never said that before.

‘She looks bonnie, but best of all, she looks content,’ agreed Ma.

So now as I wait for Mr Munroe, as he ties up his loose odds and ends in the office for the weekend, I touch my mourning necklace and consider that if he should ask me to marry him, my answer would be yes; and as I am legally dead, I need not worry about whoever I was married to before.

By and by, a young lad aged about twelve or so, with seemingly nothing much better to do on a Friday afternoon, bobs along and regards me with curiosity as he picks up pebbles and throws them at the harbour wall.

The pebbles bounce and land here and there. There is no point to his game, only to keep himself entertained for a few minutes while his ma and da finish up their business at the market, or empty their drinks at the Mussel Inn, or whatever they might be doing.

I try to ignore him and continue to look at the harbour. But he edges closer and closer until he is finally a few feet away from me, staring firmly at my throat.

‘That’s a sparkly necklace,’ he says. ‘But what’s that mark on your neck?’ He comes even closer now, the pebbles abandoned. ‘Oi, Missus, are you Half-Hanged Maggie?’ he asks. ‘Only that mark, Missus, it looks like a rope-burn. What happened then, on the gallows? Is it like they say and you woke up in your own coffin at the Sheep Heid Inn, and walked into your own funeral wake and your own family nearly died of fright?’

I turn to him, sighing. ‘I am she,’ I reply. ‘And my story is not for the likes of little lads like you.’

‘A little lad!’ He scoffs at that and pulls himself up to his full height, which is not much. ‘Tell me,’ he begs, and I roll my eyes, for I have heard this question a hundred times or more. ‘Tell me what happens to you, in the afterlife.’

I sigh and shake my head. ‘You will not like the answer,’ I say.

His eyes widen at that.

‘But you must tell me anyway – here, have a shiny pebble.’ He rummages in his pocket and brings out a fine-looking little stone. ‘I don’t have pennies, Missus, but this here shiny stone would look grand in a collection, if you collect such things.’

‘I do not collect stones, for I am not a child,’ I reply gravely, but I am developing a soft spot for the fellow and I suddenly have a terrible hankering for Susanna.

‘Oh, you should,’ he says, sounding dejected. ‘They are free on the beach and look good, all lined up in rows. I have rows of whites, greys, reds and blacks.’

‘Well, carry on making your colourful collection, and I will not take your nice pebble from you.’

‘But you will tell me, won’t you?’ he pleads.

I will.

‘The answer is that all the things that you do in your life come back to you, when you reach your final moments. And you think of all sorts of strange things – of the conversations you never had time to have and of the mistakes you made, but mostly of the people you love. Above all things is love.’

‘Oh,’ he says, sounding disappointed. ‘I had thought there might be Pearly Gates or somesuch, or even the Devil come to see if he can drag you down to hell, with the serpents and the fire and all that.’

‘Well, mibbie that happens too,’ I suggest. ‘But I was only half-hanged, so I never got there.’

We are interrupted then by Mr Munroe, whose appearance makes the boy scarper away with his pebbles.

‘Mistress Dickson,’ he says, ‘you look pretty as a picture in that necklace.’ He offers me his arm and I take it, and off we walk, just two ordinary folks taking a stroll.

With my other hand, I touch the gems about my neck, and the rope-mark too. For the first time in a long time, my skin feels dazzling and luminous and glorious.

And for the first time in a long time, I know exactly who I am, and I am at peace with it.

I am Maggie Dickson. I am walking up to Musselburgh golf links before it gets dark. I am two-and-twenty years of age and I am the first Dickson girl in many generations to leave the fishing trade. I didn’t want that harsh sort of life. One day I will be Mistress Munroe, the harbourmaster’s wife. One day I will be a mother again. One day my raw grief for Susanna will fade a little, like my neck bruise. But that is all to come.