IN THE WEEKS FOLLOWING BROGGAN’S LEAVING, Helen found herself unwell, worse even than in the time after James MacDougal’s beating of her, or the fever that came from her damaged ear. This trouble was different somehow, it feared her more, for she had fits and turns when she couldn’t draw her breath at all, it was as though a great hand had hold of her and was squeezing and pressing, and all the while her heart raced and pained her, and her belly and her legs seemed turned to water. It happened even when she was sleeping, wrenching her from her sleep, sweating and gasping, convinced that she had died and was in Hell. After a time or two of that, she became frightened even to sleep, so awful was that awakening.
Without Helen’s knowledge, it seemed William had agreed they would take over Broggan’s house and its business, renting out rooms to cover the rent, for which they seemed now pledged. They were sleeping in the Broggans’ rooms, now, and their own room was rented out to an old soldier and his wife, John and Ann Gray, who had been with them a couple of weeks. They seemed a nice enough pair, happy to be home in the city of their birth after many years abroad, and often out of doors as they renewed their acquaintance in the city. They had a daughter, a nice wee creature, and Helen gave her a bonnet trimmed with lace.
Helen had plenty of time to make this article, for William seemed never at home, and when he was, he was in his cups or dosed with laudanum so he slept like the dead and didn’t even waken when Helen started up and thought she was like to die. She tried the laudanum herself, and whisky, and that stopped the awful wakening, but it left her listless and exhausted in the day, her head pounding and her heart leaping at the slightest noise, as though it would jump clean out of her chest.
She dragged herself to the apothecary’s shop, the same man who had saved her when her ear went bad. He put his ear to her back and told her there was nothing wrong with her heart, so far as he could tell, what he thought was that her nerves were to blame, they were the most likely culprits in disorders of this nature. He gave her wee pokes of herbs to steep in water, saying she should drink the infusion hot and be sure to take good, deep breaths to stave off the fear when she felt it approaching. He asked if anything troubled her, and she said no, but it wasn’t true, she was troubled every which way she turned. William had made up his rift with Hare and was out with him at all hours of the day and night, returning drunk or morose or – once – bruised black and blue, refusing to say what had befallen him.
Even the city seemed in a sort of panic: a woman called Wilson was scouring the streets and closes for her son, a halfwit creature named Jamie who had disappeared, although it was whispered in the taverns that he had been recognised on the surgeons’ table. Cousin Ann MacDougal’s father was doing likewise, trudging through the New Town and down into Leith every weekend in search of his daughter, coming home to Broggan’s house sore of foot and heart to report his lack of progress to Helen – it seemed Cousin Ann had vanished into thin air. John MacDougal asked, one night, if Helen thought she had got herself into trouble and run off, and she couldn’t answer him, she was afraid that something worse had befallen her, but she was too feared to let herself think what that might be.
Helen went back to the apothecary and asked if he had anything to slow her heart. He said he did, a tincture of foxglove could do that, but it was a powerful preparation and he didn’t like to give it to her for fear it would do her more damage than good. Helen begged, but he wouldn’t yield, and in the end she thought it was for the best; perhaps if he had given her a bottle of the stuff, she would have drunk it all, just to have some peace.
One night, William asked her, quite out of nowhere, if she would like to go with him to Ireland.
Helen stared at him.
‘Ireland?’ she said. ‘What would we do there?’
‘We could make our fortunes very well,’ said William. He had a sort of nervous energy about him, and he wasn’t quite looking her in the eye. ‘Would you come with me, Nelly? I’d not like to go without you.’
‘I don’t know,’ Nelly said. It was an honest answer and, as she said it, she realised that she rarely gave an honest answer to him, never had, she had always chosen her words carefully to make sure she wouldn’t lose him. ‘I might want to go home to my father and my lasses,’ she said. ‘And anyway, you have a wife in Ireland. How could we live together there?’
She saw his proud crest was fallen then, but somehow she didn’t care. He didn’t speak of Ireland any more that night, or in the days following.
The next week was the week of All Saints’ Day. William came home on the Friday morning in fine fettle, with an old woman in tow, a poor soul who looked like she needed a good feed. He made a great fuss about how they had met in a shop and got to talking, and hadn’t they discovered she was only a cousin of William’s mother’s – what did Helen think to that?
Helen thought she could see the woman far enough, but she knew she couldn’t say so. Ann Gray, the soldier’s wife, had been in with her when they arrived, and Helen saw her raise her nose in the air at the sight of William, merry already though it was not yet mid-morning. William’s high good humour seemed to thaw her frostiness, though, and she agreed to put the child down and come back to join them for the breakfast William had brought. The old woman would take not a bite before noon, as it was Friday, but William and Ann Gray ate well enough and Ann had taken a large dram when William opened his arms to her and appealed to her to quit the house for a night or two with her man and her lass and stay elsewhere so that his mother’s poor cousin could rest her head in the house of a relation. Helen expected her to refuse but to her surprise Ann Gray agreed, only she said she didn’t know where to go, none of their connection had room enough for them to board.
‘I have just the place,’ William said, and he was on his feet helping the woman to pack her things and conveying her out the door on the way to Tanner’s Close and the Hares, the wee lassie in her cradle carried in his arms.
Helen was left alone with the old woman, and tried her best to make conversation with her, but she couldn’t make any sense of what she said, couldn’t make out at all that she was from the same place as William’s mother. Perhaps she was wandered, the poor soul, she certainly looked half-starved. After she had broken her fast, she sat nodding at the table, and Helen offered to take her to the Grays’ bedchamber so she could take her rest. The woman agreed gratefully, and before Helen had closed the door of the chamber behind her, she heard her snores. Returning to their own rooms, she cleared away the breakfast things and sat down wearily to her sewing while she still had the light.
She must have nodded off, for the next she knew it was evening, and there were voices raised in merriment in the close outside. She shook herself awake and had just lit a lamp when William burst in, followed by Hare and Margaret, apparently in the highest of spirits. They carried great armfuls of bottles, a pie, bread, a dish of oysters and more, and these were set out on the table with great ceremony. William went off to wake the old woman, and Helen sat with Margaret and Hare, awkward still in their company, for all they seemed happy enough to see her and Margaret even asked to see wee Annie’s sewing of the cat, which William had told her about, and admired it.
William returned with the old woman and they all tucked into the dinner and the drink. Hare asked William to give them a song and he readily obliged, with the ‘Minstrel boy’. Margaret requested another, and he sang that, and then the old woman offered that she had been a fine singer in her youth, and although she had less of a voice now, in her old age, she would like to give them a song. She sang in the Irish language, and in a way Helen hadn’t heard before, with all sorts of fine flourishes and ornaments. She was right that her voice was not the strongest, and Margaret whispered to Hare throughout her singing, but Helen listened rapt, feeling tears fill her eyes at the beauty and dignity of it.
William asked Helen to sing after that, and she did, feeling her own voice rusty from long years of no use but wanting to repay the woman for her efforts. She sang ‘Auld Robin Gray’, the ballad she had sung long years ago, in that far-off harvest field where William had called her his blackbird, and even Margaret Hare shut up for once and listened.
After that there was more singing and merriment, and William suggested they go down next door to the neighbours’ where there was a squeezebox and they could have some dancing. Helen was tired, and said she would rather sleep, and so off they went while she went to her bed and drew the curtains about her – that was one good thing about sleeping here in Broggan’s rooms instead of their own, where the beds were low and had no curtains. She slept like the dead, and wakened only once or twice when they came back in to fetch bottles and tumblers and then, by the sound of it, took the gathering to the old woman’s room.
Helen slept on without any of her panicked waking, and in the morning she was roused only by a chap at the door. She opened it to see Broggan’s son Will, and their neighbours Mrs Law and Mrs Connoway.
‘Morning, Nelly!’ Will said cheerily, as well he might, it seemed he was still a fair way in his cups for all it was a new day. He told her he had joined the company last night at Mrs Law’s, and he had slept there. William had told them all there would be a fine breakfast waiting for them here this morning at Will’s father’s house, in thanks for their hospitality of the evening before.
‘Come away in,’ Helen said, in some confusion, for there was no sign of William and she had no real idea what food there might be to give them. Still, she sat them down and set water to boil with a mind to make coffee. In a moment or two there came another chap at the door and she opened it to discover James and Ann Gray and their daughter, come for the breakfast at the invitation of Margaret Hare.
‘She said there was food aplenty here,’ the Gray woman said.
‘And sure there is!’ boomed William’s voice behind her, and to Helen’s relief he followed the Grays through the door with an armful of bread and a basket that looked to contain butter and eggs, smoked haddock, a pie and a flask of coffee. She took the last off him and set about pouring mugs of it for her guests, to which young Broggan added liberal drams of whisky. Ann Gray asked for milk for the wee lass.
Helen soon had a pan of porridge on to hotter, and eggs fried and bread sliced, and the company seemed well enough pleased, half-cut as some of them still were from the night before; they’d be the better off with something in their stomachs. By this time Margaret and William Hare had arrived too, and they were hard-pressed to find seats for them all.
‘Where’s your old cousin, Burke?’ Gray asked.
William said she was gone, she’d taken too much to drink and become impudent and they’d thrown her out.
‘Isn’t that right, Nelly?’ he asked.
‘How would I know?’ Helen replied. ‘I was dead to the world myself.’
‘Not like you to miss a hoolie like thon,’ Mrs Connoway said to Helen. ‘Are you keeping alright, lass?’
Helen said she was, only she’d been a touch under the weather the last few days, but a good rest had seen her right. The haddocks were poached now, in their milk, and she began to serve them out, on great slices of bread since there weren’t any more plates.
Ann Gray was finished before the others, being by far the most sober, and she said she would get the child dressed for the day. She stood up and made for her own room. Margaret said something sharply to William, and he rushed out after her. In a moment they were back, Ann Gray grumbling at William that she’d only been after some tatties she had in a sack under the bed, and her wee one’s stockings, and William chiding her that she would kill them all, raking about in the bedstraw with a lit pipe in her mouth. She seemed put out by that, but William went back and fetched the stockings and the tatties and after that she appeared somewhat mollified.
At last the breakfast was over and the neighbours began to ready themselves to leave, back to their beds most likely, Helen thought. Will Broggan said he would stay there, and William asked him to keep an eye on the back room. Ann Gray looked askance at that, but her wee lass began to cry and she set about quieting the child.
William and William Hare said they had some business they had to see to, and both of them put on their coats and left. Margaret said they could set her as far as Tanner’s Close, and she went with them. Helen was left with the Grays and Will Broggan, and she saw no harm in leaving them to their own devices while she cleared the night pots and the last of the mess from the meal. When at last she was done, she almost collided with James Gray in the doorway, carrying his bairnie.
‘Beg your pardon,’ she began, but Gray cut her off.
‘What is that you have in our room?’ he demanded. He had a look in his eye that feared Helen.
‘I dinna ken,’ she said. ‘What is it? What have you found?’
‘Ye ken fine well,’ Gray said. ‘That poor auld woman’s body, naked as the day she was born and bloodied about the mouth and the lugs. Jesus wept, woman, she’s been murdered!’
Helen felt the blood drain from her face, her breath cut short. What had William done? What had those Hares made him do?
‘I . . . I . . . ’ she stuttered, her numb lips struggling to form the words. But then a calmness came over her and she found she could speak again quite clearly. ‘Please, James,’ she said, ‘I beg you, whatever you’ve seen, just let William attend to it. He’s a good man, is William, and he’ll see you right. Here, I have money, it’ll pay for a bed somewhere else till William can come and speak with you, I’m sure he can explain—’
James Gray almost spat at her. ‘Money? You’re offering me money?’
Helen shook her head. ‘Just for your bed,’ she said. ‘The auld wife, she must have . . . She had a skinful of drink, and she was a poor soul, half-starved, it must have done for her, William wouldna . . . ’ She trailed off, unable to follow the thought to its conclusion.
Ann Gray appeared then, struggling out the door to the close with all their gear bundled up under her arms.
‘What has she to say?’ she demanded of her husband. There were tearstains on her dirty cheeks.
‘She’s offered me money,’ James said. ‘Till the man comes to see me.’
‘There’s no enough money in the world,’ Ann Gray said.
Helen felt laughter bubble up through her, and she thought she might have gone clean mad.
‘Ten pounds,’ she said. ‘You could be worth ten pounds a week.’ Aye, she thought bitterly to herself, she could see now how things were, where William’s money had come from.
‘God forbid I should be worth money for dead folk,’ Ann Gray said, with a twist to her mouth, and now Helen did laugh, out loud.
‘I couldna help it, I didna ken,’ she said.
‘You can help it,’ Ann Gray shouted, ‘or you wouldna stay in that house.’ She began to sob noisily, her husband patting her back awkwardly with the hand that wasn’t holding the child.
‘You’re right,’ said Helen, and she watched them rush out of the close. At its mouth, though, they met Margaret Hare, come back, Helen saw now, to check on them. One glance at their faces, and Helen standing behind them, and it seemed Margaret had the measure of things.
‘What’s all this noise about?’ she demanded. ‘Get you back into the house and sort out whatever dispute you have with each other in there, like decent folk.’
‘I can’t,’ said Ann Gray. ‘I can’t go anywhere with her.’
‘Never mind her then,’ said Margaret, with a poisonous glance at Helen. ‘Come with me and tell me what’s to do. I have no doubt I can help.’
They left with Margaret then, and Helen could see nothing else for it but to go back into the house. She didn’t go near the back room; instead she began to pack her belongings in bundles, ready to flee. She had no idea where to go. Redding wouldn’t be far enough, if the Grays went to the constables, everyone knew that was her home place and they’d find her there straight away. Perhaps they could go to Ireland, after all, or over the seas to the New World. Helen had no notion of the New World, she couldn’t imagine what might be there and she was greatly afraid it was a place of wild beasts and violent men. The thought of a journey of days or weeks terrified her, an ocean between herself and wee Annie and Maisie. She thought she might rather die.
When she was done with her packing, still William hadn’t come back, and there was no sign of Margaret Hare. The day wore on, and she sat in the room as it grew dark. Around five, she heard voices in the corridor outside, and a great noise of dragging and swearing, and then there was quiet. She sat and waited. For William, for the constables, for Margaret – she had no idea.
For the first time, Helen understood she was completely alone.