True spring sweetened the air as Jeremiah and Douglas made their way to the Portsmouth courthouse. Jeremiah pointed up at the inscription over the entrance, the one that had baffled him when he arrived in the city.
'What does that mean?' he asked Douglas.
'Fiat iustitia et ruant caeli?' The lawyer seemed surprised for a moment at his ignorance, then laughed. 'Well no reason to blame you for knowing even less Latin than Caleb Gillen, is there? It means, 'Let there be justice though the heavens fall.'
Jeremiah admired the sentiment without much expecting to find it practiced. If there were justice, he would not be a slave, but he had a fatalistic certainty he soon was going to be one again. Douglas's optimism did little to lighten his gloom.
Douglas was always an optimist. Why not, Jeremiah thought bitterly. He was free.
A sim with a broom scurried out of the way to let Jeremiah pass.
His spirits lifted a little. Even as a slave, he had known there was more to him than to any of the subhumans. His shoulders straightened.
He needed that small encouragement, for he felt how hostile the atmosphere was as soon as he fol owed Douglas into the courtroom.
Hayes had made sure the case was tried in the newspapers constantly during the month since it began. Prosperous-looking white men filled most of the seats: slave owners themselves, Jeremiah guessed from the way they glared at him. Free blacks had only a few chairs; more stood behind the last row of seats.
Hayes, Charles and Caleb Gillen, and Harry Stowe were already in their places in front of the judges' tribunal. Jeremiah tried to read the elder Gillen's face. The man who had owned him for so long sent him a civil nod. He thought about pretending he did not recognize him, decided it would do no good, and nodded back. Hayes, who missed very little, noticed. He smiled a cold smile. Jeremiah grimaced.
'Rise for the honorable judges,' the bailiff intoned as the three-man panel filed in from their chambers. In the black robes and powdered wigs, the judges al seemed to Jeremiah to be cut from the same bolt of cloth.
To Douglas, who had argued cases in front of them for years, they were individuals. As the judges and the rest of the people in the courtroom sat, he whispered to Jeremiah, 'Hardesty there on the left has an open mind; I'm glad to see him, especially with Scott as the other junior judge. As for Kemble in the middle, only he knows what he'll do on any given day. He has a habit of changing his mind from case to case.
That's not good in a judge, but it can't be helped.'
A second look was plenty to warn Jeremiah to beware of Judge Scott. The man had a long, narrow, unsmiling face, a nose sharp and thin as a sword blade, and eyes like black ice. Even when young, he would not have changed his mind often, and he had not been young for many years.
Hardesty's features were nondescript but rather thoughtful. High Judge Kemble looked like a fox. He had a sly mouth, a sharp nose, and wide blue eyes too innocent to be altogether convincing. Jeremiah would have bet he was rich.
'What case, bailiff?' he asked in a mel ifluous tenor.
The bailiff shuffled papers, though both he and the judges knew perfectly well what case it was. He read, 'An action brought by Charles Gil en, a citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia, to regain the services of his absconded black slave Jeremiah, the said Jeremiah stating himself to be a freeman and so not liable to provide said services.'
Kemble nodded, Hardesty scribbled something, Scott looked bored.
The High Judge glanced toward Hayes. 'The plaintiff may present his opening remarks.'
The lawyer rose, bowed to Kemble and to each of the junior judges in turn. 'May it please the honorable judges, we propose to prove that the nigger seated at the defendant's bench is and has been the slave of our client Charles Gillen, that he did willfully run away from the estate of Charles Gillen, and that he has received no manumission or other liberation to entitle him in law to so depart.'
'What evidence will you produce to demonstrate this claim, sir?'
Kemble intoned.
'I have beside me here the owner of, '
'I protest the word, your excel encies,' Douglas broke in. 'For al that he borrows books from me, Mr. Hayes is surely too learned to assume what he wishes to prove.'
'The claimed owner,' Hayes amended before the judges could comment. 'The claimed owner of this claimed slave' (Douglas winced at the sarcasm)
'and his son and his overseer, al of whom can identify the individual in question. I shal also produce a bill of sale demonstrating the chattel status of that individual.' He sat down, looking as smug as a scrawny man can.
Judge Kemble glanced toward Douglas. 'And how does the defendant plan to refute the evidence that counsel for the plaintiff shal put forward?'
The lawyer waited for Jeremiah's hesitant nod before he spoke.
The magnitude of what they were about to undertake still terrified the black, though they had hashed it out togethsr and agreed it was the best chance to squeeze justice from the court. As Douglas had said, 'If you hit something, hit it hard.'
For all his brave front, Douglas must have felt a trifle daunted tbo.
His voice was uncharacteristically nervous as he replied, 'May it please the honorable judges, we do not seek to refute the plaintiff's evidence. Indeed, we stipulate it as part of the record.'
All three judges had to work together to quiet the courtroom.
Cries of 'Sellout!' from the few black spectatars rose above the buzz of the rest of the audience. The judges
