“Is there any news of William Henry?”
“No, Richard, not a peep.”
“Then all this does not matter.”
“Of course it does!” said Cousin James-of-the-clergy strongly. “We have engaged counsel for you-not a Bristol man, alas. These county assize courts do not welcome foreigners. Cousin Henry-the-lawyer instructed us to seek out a proper Gloucester assizes man. There are two judges, one a Baron of the superior court of the Royal Exchequer-that is Sir James Eyre-and the other a Baron of the superior court of Common Law-that is Sir George Nares.”
“Have you seen Ceely Trevillian?”
“No,” said Cousin James-the-druggist, “but I am told he is lodging at the best inn in town. This is a big event for Gloucester-conducted with great ceremony, I hear, at least on the morrow, when everybody parades through the town to the city hall, which is also the court house. The two judges stay in special lodgings nearby, but most of their serjeants, barristers and clerks put up at inns. Tomorrow the Grand Jury sits, but it is merely custom. Ye’ll all go to trial, so your attorney says.”
“Who is he?”
“Mr. James Hyde, of Chancery Lane, London. He is a barrister who travels the Oxford circuit with Barons Eyre and Nares.”
“When is he coming to see me?”
“He will not do that, Richard. His duties are in the court. Do not forget that he cannot present your side of the story. He listens to the witnesses and tries to find a chink in their testimony for cross-examination. As he does not know who the witnesses are nor what they will say, it is useless his seeing you. We have briefed him very adequately. He is very down-to-earth and able.”
“What is his fee for so much work?”
“Twenty guineas.”
“And ye’ve paid him already?”
“Aye.”
It is a travesty, thought Richard, producing a warm smile and squeezing the arm to either side of him. “You are so very good to me. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.”
“You are family, Richard,” said Cousin James-of-the-clergy, sounding surprised.
“I have brought you a new suit and a new pair of shoes,” the apothecary James announced. “And a wig. Ye cannot go into court crop-skulled. The women-your mother, Ann and Elizabeth-have sent ye a whole box of underdrawers, shirts, stockings and rags.”
To which Richard made no reply; his family had prepared for the worst, not the best. For if the day after tomorrow were to see him set free, why did he need a whole box of new clothes?
The sounds of Gloucester celebrating the beginning of its assizes came clearly to Richard’s ears the next day as he lumped his blocks-the blare of trumpets and horns, the roll of drums, cheers and oohs of admiration, music from a band of drums and fifes, the sonorous singsong of voices orating in fluent Latin. The mood of Gloucester was festive.
The mood within the prison was dour. No one, Richard realized when he looked at his sixteen fellow accused (the tally had risen again), truly expected any verdict other than “guilty.” Two others could afford counsel: Bill Whiting and Isaac Rogers. Mr. James Hyde was their man too, which led Richard to assume that Mr. Hyde was the only candidate.
“Do none of us hope to get off?” Richard asked Lizzie.
Veteran of three trials in these same assizes, Lizzie looked blank. “We do not get off, Richard,” she said simply. “How can we? The evidence is given by the prosecutor and witnesses, and the jury believes what it hears. Almost all of us are guilty, though I have known several who were the victims of lies. It is no excuse to be drunk, and if we had friends in high places, we would not be in Gloucester Gaol.”
“Is anyone ever acquitted?”
“Perhaps one, if the assizes are big enough.” She sat on his knee and smoothed his hair much as she would have a child’s. “Do not get your hopes up, Richard my love. Being in the dock is all the damnation the jury needs. Just wear your wig, please.”
When Richard shuffled off at dawn on the 23rd of March, hands in manacles and everything chained to his waist, he wore his new suit, a very plain affair of black coat, black waistcoat and black breeches, with his new black shoes on his feet and clean padding on his wrists and ankles. But he was not wearing the wig; the feel of the thing was too horrible. Seven others went with him: Willy Insell, Betty Mason, Bess Parker, Jimmy Price, Joey Long, Bill Whiting and Sam Day, a seventeen-year-old from Dursley charged with stealing two pounds of yarn from a weaver.
They were ushered into the city hall through a back door and hustled down some stairs to the cellars without gaining a glimpse of the arena in which combat was verbal but death possible just the same.
“How long does it take?” Bess Parker whispered to Richard, eyes big with apprehension; she had lost her child of the gaol fever two days after he was born, and it was a grief to her.
“Not long, is my guess. The court will not sit for more than six hours in a day, if that, yet there are eight of us waiting to be tried. It must happen like a butcher turning out sausages.”
“Oh, I am so frightened!” cried Betty Mason, whose girl-child had been born dead. A grief to her.
Jimmy Price was taken away first, but had not returned when Bess Parker’s turn came; only after Betty Mason had gone did those remaining in the cell realize that once a prisoner’s hearing had concluded, the prisoner apparently went straight back to the gaol.
Sam Day was marched off, leaving Richard and Willy in the cell with Joey Long and Bill Whiting. Several hours went by.
“Dinner time for their lordships,” said the irrepressible Whiting. He licked his lips. “Roast goose, roast beef, roast mutton, flummeries and flans and flawns, pastries and puddens and pies-it looks well for us, Richard! Their lordships’ bellies will be full and their wits fuddled with claret and port.”
“I think that bodes ill,” said Richard, in no mood for jollity. “Their gout will play up, so will their guts.”
“What a Job’s comforter ye are!”
He and Willy were last of all, taken upstairs at half past three by the timepiece on the wall of the court room. The well from the bowels of the hall opened directly into the dock, where he and Willy stood (it had no seats) blinking at the brightness. A javelin man kept them company, his regalia medieval and his pose lethargic. Though the room was not enormous, it did have audience galleries on high; those on its floor all apparently had a role to play in the drama. The two justices sat on a tall dais clad in all the majesty of fur-trimmed crimson robes and full- bottomed wigs. Other court officials sat around and below them, while yet others moved about-which one was his counsel, Mr. James Hyde? Richard had no idea. The jury of twelve men stood in what looked a little like a sheepfold, easing their sore feet by surreptitiously stepping. Richard was aware of their plight, which figured large in every Free Man’s resentment of jury duty from the Tweed to the Channel: no sitting down on the job and no compensation for the loss of a day’s wages. Which encouraged the jury to get its business over and done with as quickly as the judge could say “Gallows!”
Mr. John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian was sitting in the company of a formidable-looking man clothed in the garb of a participant in the drama-robe, tie-back wig, buckles, badges. A different Ceely than any Richard had so far seen; this Ceely was soberly clad in the finest black cloth from head to foot, wore a conservative wig, black kid gloves and the mien of an amiable idiot. Of the mincing laughingstock or the brisk excise defrauder, no sign whatsoever. The Ceely who sat in Gloucester’s city hall was the quintessential dupe. Upon Richard’s entry into the dock he had emitted a shrill little squeak of terror and shrunk against his companion, after which he looked anywhere but in the direction of the dock. At law, Ceely himself was the prosecutor, but his counsel did the work, addressing the jury to tell it of the heinous crime the two felons in the dock had committed; Richard put his manacled hands on the railing, set his feet firmly on the ancient board floor, and listened as the prosecutor extolled the virtues-and idiocies-of this poor harmless person, Mr. Trevillian. There would be, he understood, no miracles in Gloucester today.
Ceely told his story amid sobs, gulps and long pauses to find words, rolling his eyes in his head, sometimes covering his face with his ungloved hands, agitated, trembling, twitching. At the end of it, the jury, impressed by his mental impoverishment and his material prosperity, clearly deemed him the victim of a lewd woman and her irate
