Oliver Rathbone had spent some of the most exciting and challenging hours of his adult life in a courtroom. It was where he excelled, where his victories and his defeats occurred. It was the arena for his skills, the battlefield where he fought for his own beliefs and other men’s lives.
Today it was utterly different, still as familiar as his own sitting room but as alien as a foreign country where the people had the faces of those you knew, but the hearts of strangers.
Brancaster had spoken to him briefly. It was too late to discuss tactics. It had been simply a word of encouragement. “Don’t lose heart. Nothing’s won or lost yet.” Then a quick smile and he was gone.
Rathbone had never seen the courtroom from the dock before. He was high up, almost as if in a minstrels’ gallery, except of course he had jailers on either side of him, and he was manacled. He was acutely aware of these things now as he looked down at the judge’s high seat, where he himself used to sit, and at his peers, the jurors, on their almost church-like benches-two rows of them!
The witness box was small, as a pulpit might be, and was reached by climbing a curving stair. He could see it all very clearly. It still looked different from before. But then it was different. Everything was. For the first time in his life he would have nothing to say, nothing to do until he was called by Brancaster. The trial was about his life, and he could do nothing but watch.
He could see Brancaster standing below him, his white lawyer’s wig hiding his black hair, his gown over his well-cut suit. They had planned and discussed every possible move, but all that was over now. Rathbone was helpless. He could not object, he could not ask any questions or contradict any lies. He had no way of contacting Brancaster until the luncheon adjournment, and perhaps not even then. He couldn’t lean forward and tell him the points he should make, alert him to errors or opportunities. His freedom or imprisonment, his vindication or ruin, hung in the balance, and he could not intervene, let alone take part. It was like something out of his worst nightmare.
Then he saw the prosecution on the other side. It was Herbert Wystan.
Rathbone had known him for years, appeared against him a number of times, and won more often than he had lost. Wystan would no doubt remember that now. It would not make any difference. He was a man who loved and respected the law. He would not care who won or lost. This, of course, was an excellent reason for prosecuting this case with passion. In his eyes, Rathbone had betrayed the very sanctity of the law he was sworn to uphold. For Wystan that would be a crime tantamount to treason.
Had Rathbone done that? He had certainly not intended to. Or at least, he had not intended to betray justice-it was just that justice and the law were not always the same thing. But he knew they were for Wystan. And they ought to have been for him.
Wystan’s hair was sandy gray, but now only his beard was visible, his wig hiding the rest of it. He had a long face, very rarely lit by humor.
The judge began with the formalities. For Rathbone, unable to move or to speak, every moment seemed surreal. Had it been like this for the people he had prosecuted? For those he had defended-people who were less familiar with court procedure than he was-had it all seemed like something happening on the other side of a window, almost in another world?
Had they trusted him to defend them? Or did they watch him as he now watched Brancaster, knowing that he was clever, even brilliant, but still only human. Did they sit here trying to keep themselves from being sick? Breathing in and out deeply, swallowing on nothing, throats too tight?
What did Brancaster think as he stood there, looking so elegant and clever? Was it a personal battle for him, a chance to win the unwinnable? Rathbone had always looked as suave and as confident as Brancaster did now; he knew that. But internally his stomach would churn, his mind racing as he balanced one tactic against another, wondering who to call, what to ask, whom to trust.
He breathed in and out again, counting up to four, and then repeating the exercise. His heart steadied.
He should have let Taft get away with it. He had been childish. It was impossible for every case to go the way he thought it should, to be just. His title had been “judge,” but his job had been only to see that the law was adhered to.
And that was perhaps the worst thing of all in this whole trial: the judge sitting in the high, carved seat, presiding over the entire proceedings, was Ingram York. How smug he looked, how infinitely satisfied. Was the irony of the situation going through his mind as he listened to the openings of the case? Did he think back to that evening at his own dinner table when he was congratulating Rathbone on the success of his first big fraud trial?
That seemed like years ago, but it was only months. How different the world had been then. In his arrogance Rathbone had thought it would get only better and better. The crumbling of his marriage had seemed his only loss then, the only thing in which he had seriously failed. And he had been coming to terms even with that and understanding that it was not his fault. He had cared deeply for her, or for the person he had believed her to be. And he had learned the bitter lesson, that anyone can love what they imagine another to be; real love accepts a person for what he or she truly is …
The formalities were droning on without him, voices echoing, figures moving like puppets.
He did not want to look for familiar faces. He dreaded seeing them, colleagues, men he had fought against across the courtroom. Would they pity him now? Or rejoice in his fall? This was almost beyond bearing, yet he could not sit here with his eyes closed. Everyone would know why.
He recognized an old adversary called Foster. For an instant their eyes met. He could imagine exactly what Foster would say, as clearly as if he could hear his voice. “ ’Come a bit of a cropper, haven’t you?”
He couldn’t see Monk, or Hester. Perhaps they were going to testify.
Was Margaret here now, rejoicing that he was now where her father had once been? Did she really equate them-Rathbone who had made a wild decision, perhaps a moral misjudgment, certainly a legal one-with Ballinger, who had traded in the bodies of children, blackmail, and finally murder?
In the greater sense he realized he did not care if she were here or not, or what she thought. Her opinion was a pinprick, not a fatal wound.
York was looking satisfied. His wig and robes became him well. But then they became most men. The very act of putting them on made one feel taller, more important, set apart from the ordinary run of men. He knew that for himself. What a delusion! One was just as mortal, just as subject to the vicissitudes of the flesh: headache, indigestion, the indignities of bodily functions that would not be controlled, sweating hands, a rasping voice. And one was also capable of all the emotional needs that resulted in errors of the mind: humanity, the longing for love and for forgiveness, for laughter, mercy, and the warmth of touch to steady, to encourage. One could never be truly impartial and still be human.
Did York love Beata? He could still recall her face as exactly as if he had seen her only hours ago. He did not know if she was here. He hoped not. He did not want her to see his humiliation. Anyway, she would hardly come to all the trials over which her husband presided! That would be absurd.
Just in case she was here, Rathbone had to pull his wits and his emotions together and try to show the dignity and the courage he would wish her to see in him.
Hester would be here. They had fought too many battles side by side for her ever to abandon him. She was a woman who might well hate what you had done, but she would go with you to the foot of the gallows, if need be. How badly had he let her down with this arrogance of judgment?
Then he looked at the faces in the courtroom again and saw his father, and his courage bled away as if an artery had been cut. This was the one person he should never have let down, never disappointed. The pain of it left his stomach churning. He would have accepted any failure, any punishment, if only his father had not had to suffer too. This was worse than any other time he had let him down, worse even than when he had failed his exams one time, when, upset about some triviality or other, he had not studied hard enough. Henry had been so angry then, more than Oliver had ever seen him before. This quiet gray was worse. Oliver had been planning to take Henry for a holiday to Europe next year, to see Italy. He had always wanted that. Now it might be too late … if he was found guilty …
The preliminaries were all finished. The trial was about to begin. Wystan rose to his feet. He was a solid man, not very large, but he looked imposing now as he stood out on the floor alone.
“Gentlemen,” he said somberly, looking at the jury. “This may not seem to you a very serious case, compared with some that you might have been called to hear, such as thefts of great sums of money, assault, or
