wife?”
“There was no plot, your lordship. I am innocent,” Richard said strongly. “There was no plot.”
His lordship pulled the corners of his mouth down. “Where is Mrs. Morgan?” he demanded of, it seemed, anyone in the court room. “She ought to be in the dock with her husband, so much is clear.” He shot a fierce look at Richard. “Where is your wife, Morgan?”
“I do not know, your lordship. I have never seen her from that day to this,” Richard answered steadily.
The prosecuting attorney made much of the plot and little of the absence of the co-conspirator, Mrs. Morgan. And when Sir James Eyre directed the jury, he too made much of the plot.
The twelve good men and true looked at each other in enormous relief. In less than a minute they could go home. It had been a very long, hard day; Gloucester’s Free Men were nowhere near enough to staff separate juries for each accused. There was no deliberation. Richard Morgan was found not guilty of stealing a watch, but guilty of grand larceny in the matter of extortion. William Insell was found not guilty on all counts.
Sir James Eyre turned his gaze to the dock, wherein Willy had sunk to his knees, weeping, and the shorn Richard Morgan-what a villain!-stood staring at something a great deal farther off than Gloucester’s city hall.
“Richard Morgan, I hereby sentence ye to seven years’ transportation to Africa. William Insell, ye may go free.” He banged his gavel to wake Sir George Nares up. “The court will come together again at ten of the clock tomorrow morning. God save the King.”
“God save the King,” everybody echoed dutifully.
The javelin man prodded the prisoners; Richard turned to descend into the dock well without bothering to look in Mr. John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian’s direction. Ceely had passed from his life as all things passed. The Ceelys did not matter.
And by the time he had plodded halfway back to Gloucester Gaol Richard found himself truly happy; he had just realized that very shortly he would be rid of Weeping Willy.
The sun was nudging the western horizon when Richard and Willy-still weeping, presumably from joy-passed through the castle gate under escort by two gaolers. Here Richard was detained, Willy sent onward. Is this the beginning of the difference between a man awaiting trial and a convicted felon? His gaoler indicated the head gaoler’s house; Richard moved off as passively as he did everything under an official eye. After three months he knew all the gaolers, good, bad and indifferent, though he avoided striking up any sort of acquaintance with them and never called any by his name.
He was ushered into a comfortable-looking room furnished as a place for social congress. It contained three people: Mr. James Hyde the attorney and the Cousins James. Both the Cousins James were in tears and Mr. Hyde looked mournful. In fact, thought Richard as the door was closed behind him with his escort on its far side, they look worse than I feel. This has come as no surprise, I knew it would happen thus in my bones. Justice is blind, but not in the romantic sense they taught us at Colston’s. It is blind to individuals and human motives; its dispensers believe the obvious and are incapable of subtleties. All of that witness testimony from the Jacob’s Well people had its roots in gossip; Ceely merely entered the gossip chain and contributed the right mite. Robert Jones he paid-well, he paid all of them, but save for Jones he was able to disguise his payments as thoughtful gifts to folk who know him and his family and its servants. Oh, they understood! But on oath they could deny had anybody asked. Jones he bought outright. Or else Annemarie fed Jones the story of the plot. In which case she belonged to Ceely body and soul, was involved in the conspiracy from its beginning. If that is so, then she lay in wait for me and all of it was a fabulous lie. I have been convicted on the testimony of a witness who did not appear: Annemarie Latour. And the judge, having asked me where she was, did not follow through.
His silence after he entered the room enabled the Cousins James to mop their eyes and compose themselves. Mr. James Hyde took the time to examine Richard Morgan at closer quarters than the court room had allowed. A striking fellow, big and tall-a pity he had not worn a wig, it would have transformed him. The case had hinged upon whether the accused was a decent man insulted beyond bearing at finding his wife in bed with another man, or whether the accused had, so to speak, cashed in on the opportunity his wife’s infidelity had offered. Of course he knew from the Cousins James that the woman was not his client’s wife, but had not made capital of it because, were she known as a mere whore, the case would have been blacker. It was the unveiling of a plot had done for Richard Morgan; judges were notoriously prejudiced against accused felons who committed their crimes with cold- blooded forethought. And juries found as the judge instructed them to find.
Cousin James-the-druggist broke the long silence, handkerchief tucked away. “We have bought this room and all the time we want with you,” he said. “Richard, I am so sorry! It was a complete fabrication-every one of those people, however menial, was a part of Ceely’s circle.”
“What I want to know,” said Richard, sitting down, “is why Mr. Benjamin Fisher of the Excise did not appear for me as a character witness? Had he, things might have gone very differently.”
The Reverend James’s mouth compressed to a thin line. “He was too busy, he said, to make a journey of eighty miles. The truth is that he is busy concluding a deal with Thomas Cave, and cares not about the fate of his chief witness.”
“However,” said Mr. Hyde, who looked far less imposing out of his attorney’s gear, “ye may be sure, Mr. Morgan, that when I write your letter of appeal to Lord Sydney, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs, I will have a letter from Mr. Fisher attached. But not Benjamin. His brother John, the Commander.”
“Can I not appeal in a court?” Richard asked.
“No. Your appeal takes the form of a letter begging the King’s mercy. I will draft it as soon as I return to London.”
“Have some port, Richard,” said Cousin James-the-druggist.
“I have had naught to eat today, so I dare not.”
The door opened and a woman brought in a tray bearing bread, butter, grilled sausages, parsnips, cabbage and a tankard. She put it down without any expression on her face, bobbed a curtsey to the gentlemen, and departed.
“Eat, Richard. The head gaoler told me that supper has been served already in the gaol, so I asked for food.”
“Thank you, Cousin James, truly thank you,” said Richard with feeling, and dug in. But the first piece of sausage on his knife’s point was subjected to a long sniff before being gingerly tasted; satisfied, Richard chewed with gusto and carved off another slice. “Sausages,” he said, his mouth full, “are usually made from rotten meat when they are served to felons.”
His meal finished, Richard did sip at the glass of port, then grimaced. “It is so long since I have had sweet things that I seem to have lost my appetite for them. We get no butter with our bread, let alone jam.”
“Oh, Richard!” chorused the Cousins James.
“Do not feel sorry for me. My life is not over because I must spend the next seven years of it under some form or other of imprisonment,” said Richard, rising to his feet. “I am six-and-thirty and I will be six months short of four-and-forty when my sentence is done. The men of our family are long-lived, and I intend to keep my health and my strength. Those five hundred pounds from the Excise Office are mine no matter what happens, and I will write to the lackadaisical Mr. Benjamin Fisher directing that he pay them to you, Cousin James-the-druggist. Take what I have cost ye out of them, and use the rest to keep me supplied with dripstones, rags, clothes and shoes. With some to the Reverend James for books, including those he has already given me. I am not idle here, and my labor means that I am fed. But on Sundays I read. A blessing.”
“Remember, Richard, that we love you dearly,” said Cousin James-the-druggist, hugging and kissing him.
“And we pray for you,” said Cousin James-of-the-clergy.
Willy Insell was the only prisoner acquitted at the assizes held in Gloucester during that March of 1785. Six were sentenced to be hanged: Maisie Harding for receiving stolen goods, Betty Mason for stealing fifteen guineas, Sam Day for stealing two pounds of weaving yarn, Bill Whiting for stealing a sheep, Isaac Rogers for highway robbery, and Joey Long for stealing a silver watch. The rest, some ten in all, were sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Africa, wherein His Britannic Majesty possessed no formal colony. Richard was well aware that had the Cousins James not testified as to his character, he too would have gotten the rope; though Bristol was far away, two of its leading citizens could not be quite ignored.
More importantly, how were they all going to fit into this tiny place? Within a week the answer was manifest:
