Page 53 of Highland Jewel
In the alleyway, the cart and the horse were gone. Maisie saw the three women disappear around the corner ahead and ran to catch up to them. Suddenly, she felt her head jerk backward as someone grabbed her by the hair.
“Yer not going nowhere.”
The memory of the day they’d taken Fiona on the street in Canongate flooded through her. She wouldn’t be a victim again. She’d fight them to death. Her heart raced as she fisted her hands and twisted around to kick and punch and do anything humanly possible to fight off her attacker.
She caught him in the knee, but he forced her head back and grabbed the front of her dress, shaking her. She swung a fist at him, but he only laughed and shook her again. She was staring into a face she’d seen before. It was the bruiser who’d tried to arrest her on the street. The man that Niall had frightened off. He didn’t look frightened now. He looked positively delighted.
She tried to deliver a kick to his groin, but he deflected it before letting go of her hair and slapping her sharply across the face. She was momentarily stunned by the blow.
“I thought that was you,” he sneered. “Mrs. Campbell… or whatever yer name is.”
“Let me go,” she managed to gasp.
“Not this time.” He swung her around and started dragging her back down the alleyway. “Yer going to have a wee talk with some gents up at the castle.”
She dug in her feet and scratched at his hands and tried to fight him, but she could inflict no pain on this monster.
Suddenly, he stopped short, standing up straight with a surprised look on his face. He released Maisie, and she fell to the ground. Scrambling backward, she saw him try to reach over his shoulder for something.
If ever she doubted that angels exist, her belief in them was confirmed in that moment. Behind him, Morrigan yanked a bloody kitchen knife from his back and thrust it in once more.
Maisie jumped to her feet, and as the body sank to the ground between them, she watched the light fade from the man’s eyes.
“I killed him.”
Maisie looked up the alley. No one else was coming.
“I’ve killed a man,” Morrigan repeated. “I’m a murderer.”
“Indeed.” Maisie reached out and took her hand. “And I like you more for it.”
With one last look at the house, the two of them ran after Isabella and the housekeeper.
CHAPTER19
For the next few weeks, Maisie and Morrigan didn’t speak of what happened in that alley on Infirmary Street, to each other or to anyone else.
Their housekeeper took them to her son’s, a cramped, airless place consisting of two rooms and a kitchen in Cooper’s Close. They were grateful beyond measure to be there. The three settled into one of the rooms and waited for the turmoil in the streets to subside.
From what they were hearing, things were getting worse. In the wake of the strikes, a group had marched from Glasgow to the Carron Ironworks in Falkirk. Hussars had intercepted them and, after a skirmish, arrested two dozen of the men. Troops had taken up positions in both Edinburgh and Glasgow, and more street fighting had ensued. Then, in Greenock, while prisoners were being moved, the militia had opened fire on a crowd of protestors, killing eight people, including a child.
In the midst of this, their courageous housekeeper returned from the Infirmary Street house with Isabella’smedical instruments and what clothing she could carry. But the news she came back with was disheartening.
Their house and possessions were being confiscated by the authorities. Far worse, the injured people they were ministering to on the day of the attack had either died or were dragged off to the horrors of Bridewell Prison. And that wasn’t the end of it. The government had declared Isabella to be an enemy of the Crown for treason. They’d placed a bounty of a thousand pounds sterling upon her head. A fortune for anyone willing to inform on her.
That was another moment in Maisie’s life that her respect for her sister soared. Isabella didn’t react at all to what could certainly be a death sentence. Instead, she mourned for Archibald and for the lives that had been lost and for those people who’d been dragged off to prison cells. She worried about Maisie and Morrigan, but not once did she complain that she was being unjustly accused. Not once did she mention that she’d never been part of her husband’s political activities.
But since receiving the news, they all feared that any knock at the door or voice on the street meant imminent doom. And that was one of the reasons why Maisie and Morrigan stayed silent about what had happened in the alleyway the day of their escape. Isabella had enough on her mind. She didn’t need more to worry about.
The first chance that the two of them had to talk alone was one afternoon near the end of April, weeks after the event. The housekeeper and Isabella were preparing dinner in the next room. Maisie and Morrigan were using the opportunity to wash up in the tiny room the three of them were living in.
It was a relief to see Morrigan recovering from her grief at losing her father. During the first days she didn’t eat, hardly slept, and only mostly stared into space, butshe was gradually coming out of it. She was the one who brought up their shared secret.
“They must be blaming Isabella for the man I killed as well. That has to be one of the charges against her.”
“You killed him to save me. He wasn’t with the dragoons who poured into the house. And anyone on the street could have stabbed him.”
Still, Maisie understood how she felt. Maisie was familiar with guilt. She rubbed her temples to sooth a nagging headache and thought of Fiona and her arrest outside the Brewers’ Guild Hall, less than a block from where they were now hiding. Even though she knew in her heart that what they were doing at the time was right, she felt responsible. If they hadn’t been quite so outspoken, if they hadn’t established the Female Reform Society, if they’d listened to Niall and recognized they were vulnerable, if she hadn’t gone to Fiona’s house that Wednesday afternoon, Fiona would still be with her daughters.
