HELEN’S LEGS FELT LIKE LEAD as they walked up the West Port to Tanner’s Close, and she was none too cheered to see William Hare ahead of them by the close mouth, bending over a man who seemed passed out on the ground. They could smell this creature from twenty yards away, he seemed to have spilled a tankard of some strong liquor over himself, and pissed his breeks into the bargain.
As Hare straightened up, he spotted them and beckoned them over. ‘Burke!’ he shouted. ‘Come and help me get this man into the stable. He’s taken a dreadful skinful and we can’t leave him here on the ground. Here, Nelly, hold my coat for me, he stinks.’ Hare stripped off this article, a hideous garment of garish green in dandy style, and handed it to Nelly.
‘I can’t help you just now,’ said William gruffly. ‘I have my own gear to carry. We’re only just home from the harvest.’
Hare looked askance. ‘And what if he’s robbed?’ he demanded. ‘Or worse?’
For a second it seemed that some unspoken message passed between the two men, and then, with ill-grace, William asked Helen if she would manage both their bundles and Hare’s coat. Then he took the man by the feet, and Hare lifted him under the arms, and they lugged him down into the close, William grumbling all the while at the dead weight of him.
‘There, now,’ Hare said, jovial again, when they’d deposited the man on the floor of the stable where he snored wheezily. ‘That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?’ He rinsed his hands in a pail of water at the door and took his coat back from Helen. ‘Welcome home, Nelly,’ he said. ‘The place has been mighty quiet without you both. Margaret’s made up the room for you with some of our things; she thought you might like to wait to unpack your own gear till the morning.’
‘Thank you,’ Helen said, although it stuck in her craw to be indebted to the Hares. There was something in the air between William and William Hare, poisoning their return even further.
‘Go up to the room, Nelly,’ William said. ‘I’d like a word with Hare.’
Helen took both the bundles and made her way up to the room. Margaret had made up the room, it was true, if what you meant by that was pushing the dust further into the corners and strewing a couple of blankets over a rough straw bolster on the bed. Helen missed the clean order of her father’s house already. She sank down on the blankets, wondering whether the last person to sleep on the bolster had fleas. The next moment, the sound of raised voices in the close drew her to the window.
William was shouting at Hare, words Helen couldn’t catch at this distance, but it was clear he was furious. Hare had his hands up, as if to placate William, but as Helen watched, William lowered his head and launched himself at Hare, punching him in the stomach so that he doubled over, and then locking an arm round his neck so that he was in a crouch, as William rained down blows on his head.
Helen ran down the corridor and clattered down the stairs to the door. By the time she got out into the close, Hare had got loose from William’s grasp. Margaret had got there ahead of Helen, and she threw herself between William and Hare, shielding Hare with her body as she held an arm out to keep William at a distance. A small crowd had gathered, drawn by the excitement, but Margaret paid them no heed.
‘What Devil’s got into you, William?’ she demanded.
William was panting from his exertions and there was a rip in the shoulder of his jacket. ‘When we left, you two were in hock to your eyeballs,’ he said. ‘And now here he is with a new jacket and new boots and there’s a new gown on you too, woman.’
‘And what of it?’ Margaret demanded.
‘Margaret—’ Hare began, but Margaret’s dander was up and she put up her other hand to shush him, so that both men seemed held back by some force emitting from her palms. Hare shut his trap again and settled for pulling off the great flounce of his stock and wiping the blood from his lip with it. He tried his nose gingerly as he did so, finding it broken.
‘Our business is no concern of yours, William Burke,’ Margaret said, ‘and I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of it.’
William gave a scornful laugh. ‘No business of mine, you say? We had an agreement, and now I find you’ve cheated me out of my share.’
‘Your share?’ Margaret demanded. ‘Your share? Who do you think you are, man? This is our place, and you have no right to any share of money we make in it when you’re gone. I’ve had four babbies here while you were off sunning yourselves in the countryside, and what of it? Did you think you deserved some of the coin for wiping their arses? That’s a neat trick, all the way from Falkirk.’
‘Babbies!’ William repeated. ‘Do I look a fool, Margaret?’
‘You surely do,’ she said, and she stuck out her chin, evidently determined that the conversation was over. After a moment or two, when she saw that the fight had gone out of William, she hustled Hare inside with a glare for both Helen and William in parting. The door closed behind her with a bang.
The crowd began to disperse, disappointed in their hopes of a knife fight, or at least a broken crown.
Helen went over to William, who had sat himself on a wall.
‘What’s this all about?’ she asked. ‘What do you mean, he cheated you, William?’
William took a deep breath. ‘He owed me money,’ he said. ‘We had an . . . investment. And now I see they’ve spent my share. Him and Margaret, she always takes a cut. I won’t stay here, Nelly, not one night longer. I can’t be under the same roof as a low dog like him and a bitch like her.’
Helen’s heart leapt. Whatever had happened, she wouldn’t care a jot, if only it meant they could finally leave Tanner’s Close.
‘Where will we go?’ she asked.
‘My cousin’s man Broggan’s,’ William said. ‘I was half of a mind to say we should flit there anyway, when we came back. Let’s get over there now and we can send for the rest of our gear to come after.’
‘If they haven’t sold it,’ Helen said, and William laughed.
‘You’re a grand lass, Nelly, so you are,’ he said, and he put an arm around her. She could feel the tension in him, and smell the copper tang of blood.
‘I was frighted, William,’ she said quietly, ‘when I saw you angry like that.’
William sighed. ‘I was frighted too, Nelly,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to think of the harm that pair might do us. Come on, then. Let’s get ourselves down to Broggan’s.’
John Broggan lived only a close or two away, and even with their bundles the walk took just a few minutes. William banged on the door and opened it, shouting in that it was himself, and a minute or two later Broggan appeared, a great bear of a man he was, with a long grey beard that reached halfway down his chest. When William said they had need of a place to stay, for a few nights at least, he professed himself delighted, for didn’t he have a room lying empty, with its own private access?
‘The old soak who rented it off me up and died last week,’ he said. ‘He died happy though, I’d say, there were two dozen empty bottles in the room at least.’
He took them along straight away to look at the room. It was shabby, although once it might have been fine enough, when rich and poor lived cheek by jowl in the lands of the Old Town. There was a good large window, and a fireplace that might serve as a stove, two low beds and various chairs and stools. There was a press in the wall where they might keep their crocks if it turned out Margaret had not indeed sold them. What Helen liked best of all, though, was that it was secluded, the door being at the end of a hallway where none had cause to pass, it leading to nowhere but this very room. No longer would Helen have to lie in bed and listen to feet passing, her stomach in knots at the thought the steps might stop outside her own door and she would hear Margaret’s knock.
With a quick glance of confirmation to Helen, William said they would take it and he and Broggan began to negotiate the rent. Soon they were settled on a sum that pleased them both, and Broggan was more delighted still when William offered him three months’ money there and then, upfront. Broggan offered to go out and fetch a meal for them, since they had no pots or crocks, and a bottle to toast the deal. William said thank you, that would be very kind and Helen had need of food, but he himself would eat later, he had to go out on an urgent matter of business.
Fear flamed in Helen’s breast then, for she thought he might mean he would go back to Tanner’s Close, but William assured her he had no intention of ever setting foot in the place again. His business was in the town, with a man who had had the selling of some items he had made and owed him the coin. He kissed Helen and told her to rest, saying he would ask Broggan to send his lad tomorrow to fetch their gear from Tanner’s Close, and if anything was missing, he vowed that William Hare and Margaret would pay for it in full.
Helen was worn out, by then, after the travel and the theatrics at Tanner’s Close, and she was thankful to eat the stew John Broggan brought and sink into bed. William returned shortly after dark, ate a cold meal and slipped into bed beside her.
‘Did you settle your business?’ she asked drowsily.
‘I did,’ William said, ‘and more than that, I put my own mind to rest on that business of Margaret and William. They did cheat me, Nelly. The man who had our . . . investment confirmed it. He’s a vicious man, Hare, I see that now. Did I ever tell you he killed his own horse?’
‘Old Dob?’ Helen asked. ‘Why did he do that?’
‘It refused to obey him,’ William said. ‘It just plain refused to pull a cart with some . . . thing he was transporting. It just plain stopped in the meal-market and would go no further. Hare was wild. He lashed it and swore at it, but it was a dour beast – do you remember, Nelly? – and it stood there and took all he threw at it, the poor creature. In the end he had to get a barrowman to take his goods the rest of the way. After that, he took the horse to the tanner’s and asked if he could shoot it himself. I didn’t like that, Nelly, I don’t see it’s necessary to do harm to an animal in such a way. Then he had a row with the tanner, for the horse’s hide was all damaged and the tanner wouldn’t pay much for it. You couldn’t see the sores, Nelly, for he had packed them with cotton and laid the hide of another beast on top.’
‘Poor Dob,’ Helen said. ‘I don’t like to think of that. He was a nice enough beast.’
But William seemed to have lost interest in Dob. ‘It fears me, a bit,’ he said. ‘What if he should wish to do us harm, Nelly? Hare?’
‘Why should he, now?’ Helen said, wishing he would hush and let her sleep. ‘And if you’re thinking of the things you did long syne, well . . . did he not do those things with you? If you should be taken up, so should he be.’
‘Do you really think so?’ William asked.
‘Yes,’ Helen said. ‘But you stay away from him, William. You may be foolish, oftentimes, and greedy, maybe, but you’re not a vicious man.’
‘I’m gladdened to hear you say that, Nelly,’ William said.
‘He’ll get his comeuppance one day,’ Nelly said, feeling her eyes close. ‘It’s like my father says: the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.’
That didn’t seem to soothe William, though, but Helen was done for and as he stewed, she slipped into sleep.
The next day seemed to dawn brighter, in the new place, and in the middle of the morning Broggan’s lad set off for Tanner’s Close with a handcart and returned with William and Helen’s stock, William’s tools, and their other gear. Helen unpacked it all and filled the press with plates and pots, stacked her bags and sacks of stock on one side of the room and laid William’s tools out neatly on a stool. Their linen was folded in an old kist her father had given her on her marriage, and she was pleased to see her sewing tools and her stock of candles still in the shuttle drawer where she had left them. There was a tea chest she didn’t recognise, and when she managed to prise it open with one of William’s tools, she found it was full of women’s clothing – good pieces, not fancy in the main but made from decent cloth, and the occasional fine shawl or bonnet. At first, she thought Margaret had sent these in error, but then she thought perhaps the woman meant Helen to sell it all as they had arranged. Well, she thought, she’d see if she was minded to. Some of it she might keep for herself, since Hare had cheated William. With that thought, she pulled out a bonnie shawl and wrapped it round herself, thinking she would attract a fine trade, dressed in such a manner.
As it happened, though, Nelly didn’t get her day’s trading in. As she left Broggan’s place with her basket, who should she meet in the close but Cousin Ann MacDougal, James’s cousin that was, who had been at the harvest with William.
‘Helen!’ Cousin Ann shouted, ‘I’ve found you! I’ve had a devil of a time. I went to the place William said, in Tanner’s Close, but the woman Margaret said you’d flitted and they had no idea where.’
‘Did she now?’ Helen said. ‘Well, she kent fine, cousin, but she’s a hard-faced bitch and she’ll say whatever comes up her back for the devilment of it. But I don’t want to think of her any longer. What brings you to Edinburgh?’
It turned out that William had said to Cousin Ann that she might bed down with them a night or two if she fancied seeing whether Edinburgh might be to her liking.
‘I thought I might look for work in a fine house,’ she told Helen. ‘I’m a hard worker.’
‘Why here, though?’ Helen asked.
Ann sighed. ‘I’ve no hankering for marriage,’ she said. ‘And there’s nothing for me at home unless I marry. You ken how it is, Helen.’
‘Aye,’ Helen said, remembering her first marriage. ‘And I don’t blame you for it, cousin. You’re welcome here as long as you please.’
With that settled between them, Ann and Helen made up the second bed in the room and left Ann’s bundle on it. Then they took themselves out to a tavern for a plate of oysters and a loaf of bread and a chance to share their news. Cousin Ann had seen Peter Gaff and Helen’s brothers and sisters and her lassies, and she pulled out a wee package from her pocket, a piece of needlework wee Annie had done for her mother, with her own name and Maisie’s, the date and a cat that was meant to be Jezebel. The cat looked nothing much like Jezebel at all, and the stitching was rough, but it brought a tear to Helen’s eye just the same. Then Cousin Ann shared all the gossip of the harvest, and in that way they passed most of the day. By the evening, they were well in their cups and Helen was telling her about James MacDougal’s vicious nature and his ready fists, when William came into the tavern, exclaiming in pleasure to meet Cousin Ann again. Helen thought he had no memory of inviting her to stay with them, he had probably done so in drink, but he readily agreed they should do all they could to help her find a situation, and it was a fine thing to have family nearby.
Helen made a sort of holiday of it, with Cousin Ann over the next few days, traipsing here and there across the city, up to the Castle and down past the great wall built after Flodden to the Palace at Holyrood with the ruins of the Abbey behind. They climbed the great mound of Arthur’s Seat and walked round the path at the foot of the crags below it, careful to avoid the places where men were blasting the stone apart, to make setts to send to London and other foreign places.
They had brought with them an afternoon meal of bread and cheese, and they sat in the lee of a cairn of stones near the ruins of the old Abbey to eat. A beggar-mannie passed by and Ann cried to him to come and share their meal, and he agreed with alacrity, paying for it after with a great tale of deception and murder. Did they know what the stones here were set up here to mark, he asked. They said no, and he said the townsfolk of Edinburgh had raised them a hundred years before, in memory of a lass called Margaret Hall, the daughter of a burgess of the town. Poor Margaret had been married when she was just sixteen, to a landowning man called Nicol Muschet, from a place called Boghall, out on the road to Stirling.
This Muschet was a black-hearted rogue and he had tired of his young wife right promptly, planning to desert her and take himself off to France to live a life of debauchery there. It rankled with him, though, that he would have to maintain her and so the villain set about trying to trick Margaret into betraying him, in order that he might procure a divorce and save himself a few merks. He and his associates drugged her and tricked her, kidnapped her and imprisoned her, but still the lass held firm to her marriage vows. After that he decided he must kill her, and the poor lass endured more than a body could believe, poisoned with great drafts of a vicious dose for the French disease – this Muschet was a medical man, you see, the beggarman said – so she was tormented with retching and sickness until she seemed like to die. Not once, not twice, but three and more times they attacked her with this poison, but the poor lass clung to life, and in time recovered. After that, Muschet and his confederates planned to push her from her horse into a river, or hit her over the head with a hammer as she walked home of a night, but there were always too many folk about and never a chance. In the end, Muschet asked the lass to walk with him to Duddingston Kirk, and as they passed this place he took out a knife and attacked her, cutting her throat and stabbing her most grievously in all the soft places of her body. She must have been a rare lass, for even then she fought him, and so they found his sleeve under her body, torn off by her struggles, and embroidered with his initials. Muschet tried to flee but one of his conspirators betrayed him, and he swung by the neck in the Grassmarket, while the folk of Edinburgh set up this cairn to remember Margaret.
‘What of the others who helped him?’ Cousin Ann asked. ‘Did they swing as well?’
‘Two of them turned King’s Evidence,’ the beggar-mannie said, ‘against the third. He was sentenced to be transported.’
‘So the others never paid for it?’ Helen asked, indignant. ‘That’s no fair!’
‘I’m no sure the law is much concerned with fairness,’ the beggar-man said, with some seeming bitterness, but then he smiled. ‘My advice to you is to stay well clear of it, lassies.’
Cousin Ann laughed at the idea she would ever be taken up, and they parted with the beggar-man, giving him the last of their meal to take away.
Her cousin had enjoyed the story, it seemed, and prattled on about it as they walked home, but Helen found it unsettling, the thought of the awful things men did, and the dreadful price Muschet had paid, and the faithlessness of those who shared his evil. It put her in mind of Margaret Hare, and she began to see that William might have something to fear from the Hares, after all, perhaps her own belief that harming him would harm them had been foolish.
The holiday was at an end, and Cousin Ann turned in earnest to searching out a situation. William helped her decipher the notices posted for help in the great houses of the New Town, and Ann trailed down the Mound to enquire, returning low of spirit and resentful.
‘They say I need references,’ she told Helen and William. ‘I’ve told them I’m newly come frae the country, but they say it doesnae matter, if I’ve no letters to recommend me, they’ll no take me on.’
‘Can we not give you a reference?’ William asked. ‘You’ve lived in his house, and we’ve seen you’re a trustworthy lass. I can vouch that you’re a hard worker, I’ve seen you at harvest.’
‘You dinna own the house, though,’ said Cousin Ann, and William had to agree that was true.
‘Broggan then,’ he said. ‘He’ll be happy to do it. He can say you’ve been a serving lass here, working for him.’
‘It’s a lie, though,’ said Helen.
‘And so what if it is?’ said William. ‘It’s no fair, saying Cousin Ann can’t have work because she’s never had work before. Sure, I’d never worked in a fine house before I went to work for the preacher in Ireland. Where would I be now if he’d refused to take me? How can a lad or a lass get a start if it’s forbidden them?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Ann doubtfully.
‘They’d never find out, either,’ said William. ‘The folk over there have no business over here.’
Despite Helen’s misgivings, it seemed it was settled between them. The next day, she shouldered her baskets and took herself out a-trading, and Cousin Ann stayed behind with William to talk to Broggan. William would be needed to write the reference, for Broggan could neither read nor write, and Ann was little better with her letters.
When Helen returned that night, all her cousin’s gear was gone. She was surprised the plan had worked so fast, but then she had no knowledge of these things, perhaps that was the way of fine houses. There was no sign of William, and when she knocked on Broggan’s door, only Broggan’s wife Molly was home. Helen asked after Cousin Ann and Molly said she hadn’t seen her since the morning when she had been sitting with William and Broggan, but a fine trunk had arrived in the late afternoon, it had been left out in the hall by Helen and William’s door, and later a man had come in and helped William carry it out again. Could that have been the way they sent for her cousin’s things, to take them to her new place? Helen had no idea, but she supposed it might have been.
After that, William and Broggan had been deep in conversation for a while, Molly said, and they had shared a few drams. William had given Broggan some money, for agreeing to the letter, it must have been. Broggan said he fancied taking a trip to Glasgow to visit some cousin of his there and had gone to arrange for a barrow boy to take their things to the coach in the morning. Molly was glad to see Helen, she said, she wanted to ask her to keep an eye on the place while they were gone.
Helen helped Molly bundle up a few things, gifting her a shawl from her basket to keep her warm on the journey, for the weather was turning chilly. Then she returned to her room to wait for William. When he came home he seemed exhausted, and was loath to speak, saying he felt unwell. Helen asked where Cousin Ann had gone and he said she had found a position, but he didn’t know where, it was one of the houses she had gone to before and been turned away. Then he turned his face to the wall and Helen could get nothing else out of him; he was asleep, or at least pretending.
Helen sat in a chair by the fire and stared into the flames. She had trusted Cousin Ann, thought her a friend, and Ann had given her no reason to doubt that she felt the same way about Helen. How then, could she believe Ann would leave without telling her where she had gone? It troubled her that Broggan was leaving, too, she had felt safe from the Hares as long as she was under his roof, and now there was no one but William to protect her. What was the money William had given Broggan, and why? The more she thought about it, the more Helen felt the gnawing pains of worry in the base of her stomach. She uncorked the whisky bottle, poured a large tumblerful and, determinedly, drank.