He waved his hands vaguely. ‘The court pays the advocate’s fee in cases like this,’ he said.

I watched his hands come to a rest on his knees. ‘Cases like what?’

According to the surgeons who had plucked my baby’s lungs from her chest, she had breathed before she had died. They had set the lungs in a basin of water apparently, and they had floated. Like sponges.

‘That is correct,’ I replied. ‘She took some breaths and suckled but then she fell asleep and died.’

‘The fact is that if the lungs had no air in them, it would have been ascertained that the child was stillborn,’ he said. ‘But she was not.’

‘I never said she was,’ I told him.

He waved his hands again. ‘The court is simply establishing the facts,’ he went on. ‘The baby was a weakling, but with no apparent disease, and the court is concerned with the matter of your deliberate concealment of the pregnancy and the fact that you attempted to dispose of the child. Those two irrefutable facts mean a jury could be directed by a judge to find you guilty of infanticide.’

The words he used were official-sounding and complicated, but I knew from the way he whispered them exactly what he meant.

‘I did not murder my baby,’ I told him.

‘I am afraid the facts suggest otherwise,’ he said. ‘And concealment is a grave offence. Was the child illegitimate?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘My husband was taken by a press gang.’

He raised his eyebrows at that.

‘Concealment usually involves an illegitimate child,’ he explained. ‘So we might argue on that point.’

‘I didn’t conceal the pregnancy, I just hadn’t got round to telling people yet,’ I said. ‘My sister Joan guessed.’

‘She will be called as a witness,’ he told me. ‘But even then, it would have been expected that you would at least have spoken to those you were living with – your landlady, for example – and told her of your situation and begun preparations for the birth and motherhood. Or returned home to your family and told them. Instead you attempted to hide all evidence that you were with child. And the fact of the matter is that you did attempt to dispose of the child in the River Tweed.’

‘But I didn’t know that was so wrong,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want the parish officials involved, for they might have put me away.’

‘But what has happened, Mistress Dickson, is far worse,’ Mr Suttie said, ‘for it is a capital crime, with the death-penalty if you are found guilty. You might face the hangman.’ And with that, he lowered his eyes to his hands.

There are only eight Hanging Days a year in Edinburgh, to ensure enough of a spectacle – enough anticipation. I learned this after Mr Suttie had gone, listening to the women talk about who was up in court next.