THE MOURNERS MOVED IN DARK KNOTS towards the kirkyard where the mortal remains of Jemima Lindsay were to be laid to rest at noon. The elderly came first. Loath to place the unnecessary strain of rushing on tired hearts and creaking limbs, they had reckoned to be twenty minutes early, or a half-hour, and then had forgotten ever making that calculation and added half an hour again. There were five uncles and aunts, four old bodies, who might be neighbours, then a weeping wife with her sister, who once might have been Jemima’s nurse. A procession of bulky elderly women came next, oxtered up the steep path by younger men who looked to be their sons. Most were sombre – a nasty business, this, a fine young lass dead of childbed fever, her bairnie gone with her to the grave – but the old wives were undaunted; they raised their heads and peered with frank curiosity at the motley crew on patrol outside the walls.
The call for guards to protect the newly dead from graverobbers had roused some of the rougher inhabitants of the town out of their indolence, attracted by the news that they could be paid to sit up all night drinking whisky, when previously they had been doing so for free. There was of course the additional hope of being in on the killing of a few of the so-called ‘resurrection men’, and to that end this gang was armed with an assortment of weapons actual, improvised, and uniformly disreputable. One had a sword, so ancient William Wallace would have looked on it askance, another held a spear of sorts, made from a railing with a sharpened end, and a third a wooden club bristling with rusty nails. The bearer of the club followed the first mourners into the graveyard, but a sharp word from an old wife caused him to blush and hide the club as best he could behind his legs.
The grave was dug ready, a raw and gaping wound in the spring green grass, the turfs laid neatly to one side. None among the early birds wished to contemplate that sight any longer than was necessary, and so they took advantage of the fine day to stroll among the tombs and monuments, reading inscriptions or paying respects. A guard followed one group half-heartedly for a few moments for the look of the thing, then lost interest and sat on an elevated slab where he proceeded to pick his teeth with his dagger.
They had all reassembled in time to meet the piteous procession as it arrived. No expense had been spared for Jemima; the steep fee for burial in a kirkyard had been paid, an undertaker engaged, and the coffin was draped in the best velvet mort-cloth the parish could supply. The young widower seemed borne along by the press of mourners, as though he would fall to the ground if they did not hold him up. He had thought to be a father, the poor lad, the head of a family. Instead, he would return home tonight to an empty cradle and a cold bed. As they made their slow way up the path, Jemima’s tiny, birdlike mother kept up a keening lament that was a knife in the breast of every woman present who had brought a daughter safe to adulthood. There but for the grace of God go I.
There were few rites, of course, the Kirk did not permit it, and so soon enough the coffin was lowered into the grave to the sobbing of the mother and the mute staring of the man. They were ushered from the place then, and onwards to the feast where the minister would finally show his face and take a fat fee, no doubt, for blessing the meat. The old women who had arrived in procession had now formed a threesome, arms linked, seeming to step a little lighter now that the sad business was over. They spoke in that odd way that old women did, half the words on the in-breath, as though the thing they would say was too much to be spoken aloud. Buried in the coffin with her then, the babe, the poor wee soul . . .
At last they were gone, and the gravedigger and his lad could set to and finish the second part of their job, filling the grave and then, when the soil was returned, laying the turf above all. They worked methodically, pausing once to eat and drink from a sack they had to hand. When all was done they packed their tools in the sack, the gravedigger shouldered it, and they made their way out of the gate. The lad stared in fascination at the guards and reached out a finger to test the blade of a sword, but the gravedigger cuffed his ear and pushed him on. The chief guard laughed and got to his feet, stretching and scratching before beginning the task of chaining the gates. He entrusted the key to a sentry, posted three more men to watch the walls, and strolled off to take his own rest until nightfall.
By Jemima’s grave, an industrious blackbird investigated the crumbs of earth left behind from the digging, but, finding nothing, flew off to seek better foraging elsewhere. Then the dead were left in peace under the warmth of the sun.
The chief of the guard returned, rested and well fed, to resume his command at dusk. Day sentries were relieved and rougher replacements took up their posts, two to a wall now for the hours of darkness. The chief unlocked the gates and checked the graveyard himself. Finding nothing amiss, he also took the opportunity of relieving himself behind the stone of a long-departed tradesman. Then he locked the gates again and sat on a stool to clean and load his pistol.
Darkness fell.
Inside the graveyard, the door of a grand mausoleum swung open silently and three men crept out with spades, picks, crowbars, and a bundle of wood wrapped in black cloth. A dark lantern blinked for a second, no more, on faces daubed with shoe-black. An observant sentry might have thought them familiar, for these were the well-dressed young men who had helped their ‘mothers’ struggle up the path that morning. No mean struggle had it been, either, if one considered that a woman could conceal a significant weight of ordnance within the volume of her skirts when secured tightly enough to her body.
The men worked quickly, silently, with the barest flashes of the lantern to orientate themselves and then no light but the moon. One began to lash wood together to form a ladder of sorts, working by touch, pausing every now and then to creep to the wall and listen. The other two began to dig at the head end of Jemima’s grave. They worked as efficiently as the gravedigger and his lad had done, and in little more than an hour they had dug down behind the coffin so that the end was exposed. Then the picks were handed down and they waited, alert.
Suddenly, outside the gates, an almighty commotion started up, as though an entire cart of cooking pots had overturned in the street. Taking their cue, the graverobbers raised their picks and their crowbars and prised off the head end of the coffin. Outside, a woman’s voice called in panic and feet pounded as the guards ran to her assistance, or more likely to claim their share of any loot on offer. The lantern opened, for a flash, illuminating the ungodly sight of the shrouded remains of Jemima Lindsay being dragged from her coffin by the head. Her shoulders came through easy enough but then she seemed to stick, half in and half out, and one of the diggers had a struggle to free her. He heaved her this way and that and, at last, he managed it, throwing her upwards before beginning his own clamber out of the grave. Above ground, his mate rolled the body in black cloth to hide the white of the shroud. The other digger rummaged with an arm into the coffin, removed it, then used his pick as a hook to fish out the body of Jemima’s baby son. This shrouded scrap was unceremoniously thrown to a man above ground and buttoned into his jacket, and then all was a rush, the second digger was hauled out, the kit packed up, the sacks and the body hauled over to the wall where the ladder was waiting. The watchman climbed up first, checked the street and leaped down. Jemima came over next, slung across the shoulder of one of the diggers and handed down. Then the sacks came, and the second digger. He dangled back and hauled up the ladder with his pick.
‘Stop right there.’
It was one of the guards, left behind to watch this side of the wall while his fellows investigated the disturbance on the road. He was a large, hulking man with a scar down one side of his face. He raised an ancient pistol and aimed it at the first digger, who carried Jemima. Then he held out a hand in a ‘give’ gesture.
‘Everything in order round there, Robbie?’ another guard shouted.
The digger handed over a bag of coin and Robbie weighed it in his hand.
‘Aye,’ he shouted back, ‘except for a stray dog looking for a fuck.’ He tucked the coin purse into his jacket and lowered the pistol.
The digger grinned and swung his burden onto a tinsmith’s cart that was passing slowly by, laden with pots and pans and pails. The others handed up their sacks and the dead baby, then they melted away into the shadows as the Travellers picked up their pace through the streets of the Old Town.
By the time Jemima’s widower woke to the horror of the day, his late wife and son had been purchased by an assistant in the anatomy school of John Barclay. The clerk had paid the eye-watering sum of twenty-five pounds, a greater fortune than many in this city would handle in their lifetimes. His Master considered it money well spent. A woman who had recently given birth and her infant were not a combination easily obtained, and of considerable scientific interest. Why did some women develop childbed fever, why did the afterbirth shred or refuse to come away?
There was an answer to be had, Barclay had a mind to discover it, and there were plenty who would pay to watch him at his work.