Now you have an
The swamp goes on forever, you go on forever. Your bones mutter curses. The rain turns to spit. Rain spits on Eldric. The edges of the world draw close, and closer. The world is gray and small.
I do not see the bloodhounds until they begin to bay. We are the ferrets, Eldric and I. The constable is almost here. Now I may rest.
I sink to the ground. I settle Eldric’s head in my lap. I bend over; I shelter his face from the rain. I do not think of the future, but I remember the past. I remember Stepmother’s vomit, streaked with bile and blood.
Stepmother called for water. She was so thirsty, she tasted metal, she said. She must have water, she said. I turned away.
“Briony!”
“Eldric!”
The figures come nearer. Father’s mouth makes a black hole in his face.
It took Stepmother fifteen hours to die.
31
The Trial
It’s the last day of my trial. The spectators have arrived early; the benches are almost full. Why, I don’t know. There will be no surprises. I’ve been a model defendant. I’ve confessed to everything. Everyone knows what the judgment is to be.
Rose, Father, and Eldric sit in the front row. I don’t want to look at them, but my eyes are out of control. There they go, glancing over Eldric’s tie; over one tweedy sleeve; over a bulge of gauze, swelling from the cuff like a Christmas pudding.
I will make my eyes obey. I look away, up at the windows. It is snowing. This trial has been a long one. We are drawing near Advent, season of surprise weddings. I do not, however, believe I shall attend any of them.
“All rise!” My bird hands jump at the bailiff’s voice. A cold tide of faces surges below.
I grow dizzy when I stand. Dr. Rannigan says I ought to be in sickbed. He says I’m not well. He says I ought to be in a warm bed, not in a damp bunk, not in a cold cell. Judge Trumpington gave permission for me to stay at the Parsonage. He said he could count on the reverend to bring me to my engagements at the courthouse.
But I wouldn’t stay at the Parsonage.
It’s one thing if a person learns you’re a witch. It’s quite another if he learns you’re a murderer. I almost forget I’m a witch now that I know I’m a murderer—murderess, actually. Murderess sounds so much worse.
Judge Trumpington clears his throat. He is about to begin. I have grown horribly accustomed to the rhythms of his speech. The Brownie sits on the hem of my skirt. I like that. He holds me to the ground. I wish he could stay in my cell with me, but there are too many bars, too much metal.
“As usual, in a case that involves an Old One, we have dispensed with the traditional formalities.” He looks at me. “I think I speak for all of us when I say we have been most impressed with the defendant’s candor.”
When I told Dr. Rannigan I wouldn’t stay in the Parsonage, I told him I knew I was going to hang. And if one’s going to hang, what’s the point of recovering?
“Aye,” says the Chime Child in her rough-and-ready way. “She be wondrous candorful. I never seen a defendant as confessed to such a quantity o’ wickedness.”
I’d never seen Dr. Rannigan so angry. He shouted at me. He shouted that he knew exactly what I was doing. That I was clinging to every bit of strength I had in order to get through the trial. But that I’d really given up. That once the trial was over, I’d let myself die. Which was precisely my point. I’d rather die from illness than be hanged. But other than that, what’s the difference? I’ll turn to dust. The church bells will take an inventory of Briony Larkin: one chime for each year of life, eighteen chimes in all.
“I knows I been getting old,” says the Chime Child. “I maked a grievous misjudgment on poor Nelly Daws. I doesn’t got the stomach for judgments no more. But there don’t be no one else, an’ the judge, he be desirous for my recommendation.”
The spectators stir. It’s been a long trial, but at last, we’re getting to the end, which is bound to be satisfactorily gruesome.
“All you as be here today,” says the Chime Child, “you heared the candorous confessions o’ yon Briony Larkin. You heared most o’ the story an’ I heared it all. Briony telled me the bits what be particular an’ private to her. I knows the whole story, but I doesn’t got no answers. I got only questions.”
“Go ahead,” says the judge.
“This question, it be tricky-like to answer.” The Chime Child looks at me. “Supposing it be you, Briony Larkin, you what be judge an’ Chime Child today. How does you pronounce on your own self, innocent or guilty?”
I feel the press of spectators’ eyes as they wait for my answer.
“You should hang me.”
Why such mutter and stir? I’d been wondrous candorful, so what did they expect?
“What be your reasons, Miss Briony?”
“I told you about Stepmother and the arsenic. Isn’t that reason enough?”
“But she be an Old One,” says the Chime Child. “There be times us allows the killing o’ them Old Ones.”
“Not unless there’s a trial first,” says Judge Trumpington. “The system is flawed, we know that, but we can’t proceed without a trial. We can’t take the law into our own hands, Mrs. Gurnsey.”
Mrs. Gurnsey. It’s queer to remember the Chime Child has a real name. A real name and a real life. That she’s married and has children, that her husband is a fisherman, that she plants poppies in her garden.
“Us be at a trial right now,” says the Chime Child.
“Let me make sure I understand you correctly, Mrs. Gurnsey,” says Judge Trumpington. “You suggest putting the stepmother on trial?”
“Aye,” says the Chime Child.
There follows a long discussion about courtroom rules and how the judicial system doesn’t allow you to try a person if she’s not present to defend herself. But finally the Chime Child puts an end to it. “It don’t matter nohow. The stepmother, she be dead. But Miss Briony here, she be alive. She be the one us doesn’t want to kill if there don’t be no reason.”
Everyone’s sorry to have hanged poor Nelly Daws, but don’t let that prolong my trial. Please don’t. There’ll be no lastminute exculpatory evidence, I promise. Just let me lie down.
“Did you never suspect your stepmother was one of the Old Ones?” says Judge Trumpington.
“Never,” I say. “She was always very kind to us.”
Something has happened. Judge Trumpington and the Chime Child look away from me, into the mass of spectators. Someone has risen. I see him only from the corner of my eye, but I know it is Eldric.
He doesn’t offer up his name, or beg pardon, or say a word about pleasing the court. He is already stepping forward as he says, “I believe I can help.” Judge Trumpington nods and says, “Please.”
Soon I shall be obliged to look at his face and I can’t bear it.
I look away. The spectators’ faces are splats of snow. My head is filled with white.
I don’t understand Eldric’s idea. He wants to make me a story. I will say the words, he will write them.
I say nothing. Judge Trumpington says nothing. The Chime Child approves.
Eldric lowers his voice. He speaks for me, alone. “When you wrote me into an understanding of Leanne, you’d a notion there was something about her we had yet to learn, had you not? I’ve the same sort of notion about the late Mrs. Larkin. Perhaps I can do the same for you.”
There’s nothing to understand. She was an Old One. I procured arsenic from Cecil, I poisoned her.
Eldric stands at the defendant’s box. He lays a sheet of paper on the ledge. Rose has given it to him. I recognize it as twin to one she gave me in the library. She wanted me to make it into a story. I associate it with the smells of sawdust and paint and polish. The smells of hope and life.
