Slaves of Obsession

“To defend Merrit Alberton,” he answered. “She swears she did not murder her father, and I think I believe her.”

Hester leaned forward urgently. “Either way, she is only sixteen, and completely under Breeland’s influence. She believes passionately in his cause and thinks he is a hero, all the noble and brave ideals that any young woman would have.”

Rathbone’s dark eyes widened. “The Union of the American states? Why, for heaven’s sake? Whatever difference could that possibly make to an English girl?”

“No, not the Union, the fight against slavery!” Her own fierce urgency for it, her utter loathing of all the evils of dominion, cruelty and denial were burning in her face. If Merrit Alberton had felt even part of what she did, it would be painfully easy to believe she would have followed to the ends of the earth a man whose crusade was freedom, and thought little of the cost.

Rathbone sighed. Monk knew in a moment of intense understanding exactly what he thought, and was proved correct when he spoke.

“That may well earn her some sympathy with a British jury, who have no more love for slavery than a Unionist, but it will not excuse anything in the eyes of the law. Is she married to this Breeland?”

“No.”

He sighed very slightly. “Well, I suppose that is something. And she is sixteen?”

“Yes. But she won’t testify against him anyway.”

“I assumed as much. And if she would, that would not help us greatly. Loyalty is a very attractive quality; disloyalty is not, even if it is well justified. I swear, Monk, I sometimes think you spend your time trying to find ever more complicated cases for me, until you have one which will confound me completely. You have excelled yourself this time. I barely know where to begin.” But the expression on his face showed that already his mind was racing.

Monk felt the first tiny lift of his spirits. If Rathbone saw it as a personal challenge, he would take it up. Nothing would ever allow him to retreat in front of Hester. The flash of humor, mockery and self-knowledge was there in his eyes, as if he knew Monk’s thoughts as well as he knew his own, and accepted them. If there was a moment of pain, of loneliness, it was hidden instantly.

He began to question them both on every detail he could think of: questions about Casbolt, Judith Alberton, Philo Trace, and the whole of their journey to America and all they had done there. Particularly he was interested in Monk’s journey down the Thames with Lanyon.

He looked distressed, and for a moment seriously out of composure, when Monk told of finding Alberton’s body in the yard, and of almost treading on the watch.

Monk said little of the Battle of Bull Run. The horror of it was not something for which he had words. The few he found were difficult and stilted, the emotion too deep to be shared in this noisy, friendly, peaceful inn. And he was not ready to look at it again himself. It was too closely bound with his love for Hester, and with a strange, sharp sense of his own inability ever to be worthy of that beauty he had seen in her. And anyway, that was the last thing he could share with Rathbone. It would be the ultimate cruelty.

He moved on swiftly to the account of finding Breeland, and how he and Trace had guarded him all the way to Richmond, and then Charleston, and home again.

“I see,” Rathbone said when Monk had finished, with only a few words from Hester. “Then you may tell Mrs. Alberton that I shall call upon her, and she may direct me to her solicitor for instructions. I have a very considerable battle ahead.”

Monk hesitated on the edge of thanking him, then did not. Rathbone had not taken it for him … for Hester perhaps … for the challenge possibly, for justice, but never for Monk, unless it were to prove himself equal to the challenge.

“Good!” he said instead. “Very good!”

7

RATHBONE RETURNED to the courtroom rather hurriedly. His junior was perfectly capable of conducting the present case. It was a routine one: purely a matter of presenting the evidence, most of which was incontestable. It was as well, because all through the afternoon it was not the subject of Regina versus Wollcroft which occupied his mind, but how he would handle the case of Regina versus Breeland and Alberton which he had been rash enough to accept.

He was not only uncomfortable with the case itself but with his own reason for agreeing to take it. He had read something of it in the newspapers, although it did not especially interest him because it seemed so clear-cut, but like most of the editorial writers, he was deeply sorry for Judith Alberton. Compassion was a noble emotion, but it was not a good basis upon which to go to law. Juries might be swayed by sentiment; judges were not. And public opinion was very harshly against Merrit Alberton. It seemed she had conspired with a foreigner to murder her own father. It was an affront to all decencies, to family loyalty, to obedience, to property and to patriotism. If every daughter were free to disobey her father in such a violent and appalling manner, then all society was threatened.

Rathbone found that those assumptions irritated him, and that his respect for the establishment, while deep in the roots of his life—on the surface at least—was becoming a trifle frayed. He despised prejudice, tradition set in rigid minds and no more than habit.

He had also accepted the case in part because he liked the challenge. There was an excitement in stretching himself to the full, and a danger. What if he were not equal to it? What if he failed to secure justice and an innocent man or woman was hanged because he had not been clever enough, brave enough, or imaginative, articulate, persuasive?

Or a guilty man were to be freed? Perhaps to kill again, at the best to profit from his crime and show to others that the law was not capable of protecting his victims?

But even without these he knew he would have accepted it because Hester was involved. She had not said so,