ELSIE SAID SHE WOULD COME to the hanging with Susan, she wanted to see the man die for herself. They arranged for the cart to come for them early, for they knew the roads would be busy, everyone in the city and the towns around would be making their way to the Lawnmarket, or as close as they could get. Elsie had heard that places at windows overlooking the gallows were selling for as much as twenty shillings apiece.
It was a dark morning, and damp, but they were well-wrapped in cloaks and mufflers and flannel petticoats. It had rained in the night, but until then there had been hard frosts, so the road to Leith was not too bad and they made good time, the coachman as excited as anyone else for news of the execution and keeping up a steady chatter with Elsie as he drove. He told them it was his day off in the week and he planned to go to the University in hope of seeing the dissection – folk were saying the professors would have to let the public in or there would be a riot. Elsie cast a glance at Susan then, in the lamplight, but Susan shook her head to show she wasn’t troubled now by discussion of such things.
When they reached the slow upward climb of Leith Walk, it seemed the whole town was there, making their way up, most on foot and some in such vehicles as they could muster. The coachman navigated the throng with some skill, and at last they reached the eastern flank of the New Town. They turned into the wide streets there, but when they reached the foot of the Mound, they could go no further in the trap. They arranged a time to meet the driver – towards evening, for they had business after the hanging – and he set them down with a lantern to light their way. Susan thought he was disappointed not to see the hanging for himself, and she told him he could leave the trap at Robert’s house in Newington, if he chose, but she understood he might not want to go near Dr Knox’s house, or he might not be able to get there and then back to the Lawnmarket on time. He said he would give it a good try, and drove off at the best speed he could manage through the crowds towards the North Bridge.
As they walked up the Mound and past the great spires of the Assembly, chatter buzzed on all sides. They fell in step with a woman who said she was in service in the house of a court officer and his wife, and another servant had overheard them say the condemned man had been taken from the Calton Jail to a lock-up nearer to the gallows in the dead of night, in case the mob arrived to dispense their own justice before the hanging could take place. He had been very exercised about having no good jacket to wear, she said, and they had got him a suit to calm him. Someone else said it was a right cheek, to worry about his own appearance before his Maker, when he had thought little enough about the poor souls he had killed and seen desecrated. There was a great wave of agreement at that, and some spat on the ground. A man said it was only a shame the others had escaped his fate, Hare who had been guiltiest of all, it seemed, and the women who must be coorse bitches. Then someone else said the doctors should pay, too, especially the butcher Knox, and Susan felt her face flush red, for all she knew she bore no guilt for Robert’s doings, in fact quite the opposite.
It wasn’t yet seven in the morning and still full dark, and Susan felt panic bloom red through her as they reached the top of the Mound and the crowd grew tighter and tighter. She called out to Elsie not to leave her, and Elsie took her hand and held to it hard as they made their slow way forward, alternately moving with and between the press of bodies.
‘We should turn back,’ Susan called, ‘we’ll never see a thing,’ but Elsie said to look, she could see the scaffold now. It was true, there were lights burning on the platform and Susan swallowed her fear and followed Elsie’s lead. At last they had gone as far as they could and were by the entrance to Buchanan’s Close – they could breathe again, and they could see the gibbet clearly enough.
‘There must be ten thousand folk here,’ said Elsie, and a man standing near them said nay, it was double that, at least. For all the press of bodies, it was a curiously quiet crowd; the horror of the killings and the solemnity of the occasion seemed to have hushed them, and they stood there waiting patiently as the winter sun raised its wan face.
‘I wonder what the man is doing now,’ Elsie said. ‘I would hate to spend a night so, myself.’
‘I should think he is with a priest, or a minister,’ said Susan. ‘At least, I hope it’s so.’
They waited a while longer, glad now of the bodies near them, for it was cold and damp still, the pale sun doing little to warm the day. A psalm started up somewhere in the crowd, and they sang along, joining the great mass of voices. Susan found herself wondering whether it would be worse to die as Burke was about to, after days and weeks of dread of it, or as his victims had, going about their business merrily enough until they crossed his path. Would it be better to have time to prepare, all the services of the clergy, or to find your breath stopped in an instant, without time for regret or dread of the hereafter?
She was distracted from her musings by a sort of ripple through the crowd, not a sound, precisely, but almost a shiver of sorts. Then a great shout could be heard from further down the Lawnmarket. This continued for some minutes, rising in volume as those closer by joined in, and then the hanging party ascended the platform, the bailies first, then Burke all in black between two priests in robes, and the others coming after. They were small figures at this distance, of course, almost like marionettes in a puppet showman’s theatre. Susan saw Burke look around, while shouts rang out here and there in the crowd: ‘Burke him,’ and ‘Choke him, Hangie,’ and similar. A man behind Susan bawled out, ‘No mercy!’
Then Burke went down on his knees with one of the priests, and it was clear the other clergymen were praying as well, though Susan could hear none of the words at this distance. This did not please the crowd, who had lost their view of Burke, and there was much bawling and shouting to the clergymen and lawyers to get out of the way. The bailies held up their hands to appeal for peace while the rites were completed, and during that time the crowd began to shout for Hare to be brought forth too, and Robert, taking up a chant of ‘Hang Knox, hang Knox, hang Knox.’ The solemnity that had prevailed before seemed quite gone and Susan hoped the business would proceed before the crowd lost its patience entirely and violence broke out. But then Burke was on his feet, putting something in his pocket, and he stepped onto the gallows. The hangman placed the rope around his neck and adjusted it as one of the clergymen spoke more with Burke, perhaps giving him his last rites, or perhaps it was instructions on how to comport himself at the end. The crowd continued to shout that the hangman should give Burke no rope, that Hare should be hanged by his side, and more imprecations of a coarser style. The hangman put a white cotton cap on Burke’s head and pulled it over his face. There was a pause then, the crowd quietened, the man’s hand came up and he dropped. His body twitched on the rope, and the crowd yelled out.
‘Is he dead?’ Elsie asked. ‘Or is it like when a chicken twitches with its head already off?’
Susan had thought it was almost as a dreamer might twitch in sleep, but now she saw he lived, still, his legs were kicking and some men below the gallows were pulling on him to end the thing. They twisted him round so the rope seemed to shorten and his body raised up, and now it seemed he was truly dead – when the rope released he hung there quite lifeless. The crowd surged forward then, as if they would claim the body, and Elsie pulled Susan back into the mouth of the close. It seemed the crowd was held back, though, and when Elsie and Susan looked, still the body hung there on the rope.
‘Shall we go, Mistress?’ Elsie asked.
‘Aye, Elsie,’ said Susan. ‘Let’s make for the West Bow.’
It was slow going, for the crowd filled half the West Bow and those that had not seen the hanging itself were determinedly pressing uphill in hope of seeing the body before it was cut down and conveyed away. Slowly Elsie and Susan wove through the throng, only able to breathe easy again when they were at the bottom of the Bow and almost in the Grassmarket. Then they made their way along the Cowgate towards Holyrood, making for the Salisbury Crags and the great hill of Arthur’s Seat beyond.
There were others walking the same way, and at the bottom of St Mary’s Wynd they met a larger crowd moving in the same direction, having watched the hanging from further down the Lawnmarket. More came down St John’s Street and again the going was slow, but Susan said to Elsie it didn’t matter, they were in no hurry, the coachman wasn’t expecting to meet them until late in the afternoon. As they passed Horse Wynd, they saw two women supporting another, who seemed collapsed, and Elsie said they should help if they could. She was already untying the bag she had strapped to herself and taking out a stone bottle of ale.
The women thanked them for the offer of assistance, but they said their friend wasn’t ill, only distressed at the awful business. Her mother was one of the victims, they said, the old woman called Abigail Simpson, and this daughter had been sorely grieved, never knowing what had befallen her mother until the brute Burke’s confessions were published. She had simply left her house one day on business and never returned. The daughter had tramped the miles asking after her, for near a year, but nothing could be found out. They stood for a moment with their heads bowed, and then Elsie said to the weeping woman – her name was Bess – that they should go to the old Well of the Cross and say a prayer for her mother’s soul. The woman seemed to like the thought of that, though her tears still flowed, and they made their way there, led by Elsie who knew her way around, as she had grown up nearby, after all. It wasn’t easy to find, Elsie poking here and there in the tall grasses, but at last she crowed in triumph, and there was the well, bubbling up from some rocks. Elsie asked Susan to say the prayer, and Susan did her best, although she was no great speaker, asking God to look after the soul of the poor lady Abigail and her daughter Bess in all her sorrow. And then she surprised herself, saying she knew what it was to lose a loved one and never know where their body lay, or to live with the knowledge their body had been desecrated, and she asked God for peace for herself as well as Bess.
The women looked at her curiously then, even Bess whose weeping ceased, but none of them asked her any more; perhaps they had enough to do minding their own sorrows to take on some wealthier woman’s as well. Susan was grateful for that, and they all drank from the spring and Elsie brought out the food that she and Susan had brought, and they shared it amongst them and were almost merry, talking of other days they had spent here on the hill, a high day or holiday here or there, when they were children, or in Elsie’s case rabbiting with the boys. Then Bess said she and her friends should be going, they had a long walk back to Joppa where they lived, though the way would be easier with food in their wames, and they were glad to have met with kindness on such a day.
‘If the world was run by women, there would be more kindness and less strife,’ said Elsie, and they all found that thought pleasing, although Susan wasn’t sure: weren’t two of the killers women too, and Mrs Scott who had been her jailer all these years, and Robert’s sisters who had put her away so they might have her place? But she said nothing, just bid Bess and her friends farewell, and then she and Elsie stood up and hitched up their skirts and petticoats and made their way up the hill. They climbed up past the ruined chapel to St Anthony, then dipped down past a rise that Elsie said was called the Whinny Hill, and upwards again towards the summit of the volcano.
It was hard going, Susan wasn’t used to exercise after so long, so she had to stop again and again to catch her breath, but at last they reached the top and stood looking out to the city at a little distance and the sea beyond, so small it all seemed from here. When they had caught their breath they looked around and Susan found a place that would suit her purposes, a little cleft in the rocks. She reached beneath her kilted skirts and untied the bag she wore below; an old-fashioned idea it was to wear a pocket in such a way, but useful in a crowd. She took out the little coffins and stacked them in three rows, two tiers of eight for the poor murdered souls, and the last alone on top for the man whose death – if the sinner Burke was to be believed – was God’s will but who was nonetheless deprived a proper burial. Then she searched around for something to cover them, and found some pieces of slate, and laid them over all, adjusting them a time or two till she was satisfied that it looked as though no one had ever been in the place before.
Elsie asked if they should say something, but Susan said no, the prayer they had said earlier would suffice. Then they drank some of the water they had refilled the bottle with at the spring, and began to walk down. Elsie said they should take a different route, along the crags; it was a bonnie walk although the miners had made such a mess with their blasting. It was beautiful, and easier than the ascent, although Susan had a moment of crisis, halfway across, when she wondered if she should step from the cliff out onto the air and allow herself to fall, one glorious moment in the sun and wind, unweighted by the things Robert had done to her and to others, and then nothing. But she shook herself. She couldn’t do that to the children, and she stepped back from the brink.
Elsie didn’t notice, or if she did she didn’t let on, she just chattered away in her usual fashion and walked on. At one point she said something about Joanie that made Susan wonder – there was less in her tone of the way a woman might speak of a friend, and more of the way a lass might speak of her young man. It confused her, for a moment, but then she saw that might indeed be the way of it, and she realised it would suit her very well. She could go on, if Elsie and Joanie didn’t leave her to marry, and as long as Robert kept his word and they had what money they needed and the coachman to fetch and carry, she could do as she was doing now and put one foot in front of the other, on and on each hour, until the hours became days and the days, became years, and the whole, God willing, became a life.