A World Apart (12 page)

Sitting in the dark, Eliza tried to remember her companion's face. She could recall only the mop of straw-coloured hair, the bitterness that showed in the jut of her jaw, her habit of running her fingers past her ears.

‘Tell me your troubles, dearie.' Susannah's voice gave away an unexpected softness.

‘What began it, I don't know,' Eliza said, recalling the evening visit from the frightened Rufus. The poor ignorant man, in looking out for his little family, had innocently given some enemy a weapon against Eliza. Many times, she had tried to see a connection between Louisa's open hatred of her and the recent events. Of course, Rufus's act of tapping a stick on the wall of her cottage to rouse her had been the very signal to create the illusion of conspiracy. Had Louisa arranged for her to be watched?

‘The people in our village are kindly folk,' Eliza continued. She would think more about the notion of Louisa's spying later. ‘They work hard. Would never cross Sir John. But the troubles in the county, at Tolpuddle, they seemed to strike deep.' Susannah's words had
inspired her. She felt again the injustice visited on the men who had spoken out. Something inside her burned to be heard. Listening to Susannah had unleashed it.

‘Living on seven shillings a week, and a family to feed; that would be cruel. It was like…taking food away from a caged rabbit.' She could let loose her hate of the injustice now sweeping the land. ‘And the men who spoke out against it; brave men not caring for themselves, only for the poor in their village — transported. I'd have spoken out too. The people in our village need me to speak out for them. I've had schooling, you see. I've read of wrongs done, and brave deeds, and courage.' The tears that had been welling in her chest now dried up. ‘I'll not sit by and see the weak bullied by the strong.'

Eliza wondered at her own words. Many a time she had seen old Harriet, the ogre from the dairy, sneak up behind a milkmaid struggling with a yoke, and kick one of the heavy pails of milk as the woman tried to balance her load. Then if the milkmaid spilt a drop of milk, Harriet would shriek at her and punish her with the backbreaking task of filling the animals' drinking troughs with buckets of water hauled from the well. Eliza had boiled inwardly at the injustice of it, but never taken Harriet to task. She knew well enough what such forwardness would cost. Now she saw this persecution, any persecution, with a new clarity. To accept it was to nourish it.

‘Well said, Eliza my dear.' Susannah had read her thoughts. ‘What woman wants a life of drudgery? Or to be married to a poor man, be his slave and bear his children till you drops into the grave?' Eliza had seen the lives of her aunts, uncles, neighbours, her childhood friends, woven into the drab cloth that was the rural England of the day. Each life was a thread of homespun wool, held tightly in the fabric of society by the other threads woven round it. A girl child might work as a housemaid or a milkmaid, or live in her parents' house tending her younger siblings. Marriage to a village lad, perhaps illuminated by a brief flash of romance, prefaced a life of child-bearing, drudgery, bare subsistence that stunted body, mind and soul.

The memory of her childhood pact with Harry flashed before Eliza again. She curled her fingers into the palm of her hand as she had a thousand times before, and remembered the prick of the needle, the stickiness of the blood that had supposedly bonded her hand, her life, to his. Over the years since Harry had left for Oxford, she had schooled herself to channel her passion away from the self-pity which would have eaten away her soul if she let it. Now her childish dreams of marriage had blown away like autumn leaves in a gale. How pathetically naïve had each of them been when he'd taken her hand and pricked it to draw blood. For days afterwards, she'd pictured herself in a beautiful dress, riding beside her husband in a gleaming carriage, perhaps as they travelled to some royal event in faraway London.

Harry had never replied to the letter she wrote him; a letter in which she'd aimed to convey her love without having it read like the pages of a tacky romantic novel. Very likely, Harry was now become the latest hero of the
ton
, filling his days, and more likely nights, wallowing in the excesses foisted on him by society maidens who lusted for his body. Even years before, Eliza had fancied his body as perfect. Now, if Susannah were right, Eliza would be left to carve herself a life in that desert land beyond the seas, Botany Bay. What would the life of a convict maid be like? Would she be forever bound to reap and sow and bind and mow, as the old song had it? It was beyond the bounds of reason that there would be a man in that Godforsaken place who would love her for herself — her scholarly knowledge, her love of learning?

Once more, as she had done so many times before, Eliza shifted her focus to the present. In every generation there must be one human spirit forged of such steel that it could stand against lifelong abrasion by the stultifying social order. A man or woman endowed with such a gift might well be consigned to the outskirts of society. In olden times, such women had been burned as witches. Eliza had been born with the wit to act out a special role in her community. Now she must go where her destiny led.

‘Thank you, Susannah. I was in sore need of kindness,' she murmured in the dark.

The courthouse was a melancholy building, built of grey sandstone which had weathered to give it a forlorn, neglected look. It was as if the stones had become steeped in the misery which had flowed round them over the years. It stood alone in the middle of a treeless field, seemingly ostracised by other buildings, and even the trees which clustered round other nearby buildings.

‘You are accused of inciting a rebellion, and causing bodily harm to one John De Havilland, Viscount. How plead you?' The judge seemed to look beyond Eliza as she stood in the dock. His gaze floated out of the window to the fields and the trees. His wig hung down like blinkers on a horse. His voice, like his coldly focused eyes, seemed to address no one in the courtroom. Eliza turned to him from the dock.

‘Sir. I didn't do those things — none of them. I've had schooling. I learned to read and cipher, and folks who can't read come to me to ask about things. Things to do with numbers. Because how else can they understand them, as didn't have schooling themselves?' Although the judge's first reaction was to silence the accused because a young woman would likely not have the wit to plead, her earnest face distracted him. Then, as she spoke, her sincerity glowed from her eyes. His friend De Havilland's advice had been correct. She was indeed very pretty. He decided to let her continue for the moment.

‘And sir, in our village, there's folks who's sore troubled by the doings at Tolpuddle.'

‘Enough! The accused will make her plea.'

‘Sir, I didn't do those things — inciting a rebellion and such — '

‘For the last time, how does the accused plead?'

‘Sir, I didn't do — '

‘Enough. I will assume the accused pleads not guilty.' The judge appeared to be struggling to control his temper. His neck had gone red with the effort. He looked down at a bewigged man who sat below the bench. ‘Mr Prosecutor?'

‘Thank you, sir.' The man rose, ruffling papers on the table. Eliza looked down at him from the dock. She saw that he was extremely short. If she had been put beside him, she would have stood half a head taller. He glared at her, then threw out his chest, and seemed to stand on tiptoe. He cleared his throat.

‘If it please your Lordship, the prosecution will show that the accused is clearly guilty as charged. Indeed, Milud, the charges will be seen as putting the most lenient possible complexion on the chain of unhappy and indeed seditious behaviours perpetrated by the accused. Your Honour, the prosecution is of the opinion that but for the mercy of the English system of justice, the accused should be facing a much more serious charge, the penalty for which is death by — '

‘The Prosecutor will proceed with the evidence,' the judge interjected. ‘The bench does not require a treatise on the glories of British justice, Mr Prosecutor.'

‘Yes, Milud. If the court please, I will call the first witness.'

Eliza turned as she heard a commotion behind the door at the back of the courtroom. The door opened. For a moment, she saw a group of people clustered round the door, looking into the courtroom. One of them was a man in a tall hat. For a moment, she struggled to
remember who he was. Then she recognised him as the viscount's lawyer; the strange man who had once sat at the back of the schoolroom at the Great House and watched her at her lessons. What was his name? Ah, yes — Mr Obadiah Shaw. A second later she saw Louisa, looking up into the lawyer's cadaverous face and whispering to him.

As the door closed, Louisa aimed a gloating look at Eliza. After another moment of scuffling and scraping behind the closed door, it reopened to admit a scrawny little man, dressed in peasant's clothes and aged perhaps thirty, with the facial expression of a cornered rat. Accompanied by an usher, he scurried his way to the dock, received instruction on the taking of the oath, and placed his hand on the Bible.

‘I, Amos Blunt, rat catcher to the viscount, do solemnly swear by Almighty God to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.' He had been well coached, Eliza noted.

‘Now, sir.' The prosecutor addressed the rat catcher. Amos Blunt beamed at this unaccustomed respect from someone who mingled with the gentry. ‘Do you know the accused?'

‘Yes, sir. That be Eliza Downing. Daughter to Silas Downing. Afore he died, he were a hopeless — '

‘Thank you, sir. Please just answer the questions.' The prosecutor cleared his throat. ‘Now, sir. Did you see the accused acting suspiciously on the night of the thirteenth of — '

‘You are leading the witness, Mr Prosecutor,' the judge snapped. ‘Withdraw.' The prosecutor flinched.

‘Yes, sir. I withdraw.' He cleared his throat once more. Positioning his gaze midway between the judge and Blunt, began again.

‘Did you see the accused on the night of the thirteenth of May?' the prosecutor asked Blunt.

‘Yes, sir.' Blunt had learned to remember his place before this array of gentry.

‘And what o'clock would that have been, in your estimation?'

‘Oh, sir, it would have been a couple of hours afore midnight. I were walking home from the inn, and I thought to myself, this little wench is up to no — '

‘The witness will confine himself to answering the question,' the judge interjected with a shade more venom than had flavoured his previous directive. The prosecutor flashed a smile of apology at the judge and continued.

‘Sir, please tell the court in your own words what you saw that night.' Blunt sat and allowed his face to relax into a thin smile.

‘Well, sir. It were the tapping as caught my attention.'

‘Tapping?'

‘Yes, Sir. I hears a tapping on the wall of, er, the accused's cottage. And I decides to take a look-see. But it were a chilly night, so I thought I might freeze if I couldn't find a ways to keep warm. So I — '

‘Will the witness please come to the point?'

‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Well, when I stops to watch, I sees that wicked little — '

The prosecutor aimed a theatrical warning glance at Amos. He stopped talking, nodded in the prosecutor's direction.

‘Sir, I saw…the accused talking to one of the villagers. And I heard her saying things like, “The viscount is setting for to cheat honest men, and the village folk should rise up against him, and it is wrong that the rich — ”'

‘I said no such thing,' Eliza exploded. ‘I said that Sir John was a kindly — '

‘Silence!' the judge bellowed, aiming a piercing stare at Eliza. He nodded at Amos to continue.

‘And she said the gentry were wicked men and — '

‘Sir. I said no such thing. I — '

‘The accused will be silent until she cross-examines!' the judge shouted. The veins on his neck turned purple. He gained control of himself. ‘This court has the power to pass sentence summarily if the accused continues in contempt. The accused must remain silent or she may receive a heavy sentence forthwith, without benefit of reply.' He glared at Eliza. ‘Do you understand?'

‘Yes, sir.'

He turned to Amos. ‘Please continue.'

Over the next few minutes, Eliza heard the scar-faced little man fabricate a tale of intrigue, threatened violence and planned destruction that would have been comic if it had not been metaphorically fastening leg-irons round her ankles as it unfolded. She bit her tongue and remained silent. Whenever Amos's inspiration seemed to dry up, the prosecutor spurred him on with another loaded question. Surely the judge would not believe the ramblings of the furtive little creature. Eliza grew more and more certain he must be in Louisa's pay. Eventually, the prosecutor finished questioning him. He sat down and shot a leer at Eliza. Then the judge turned to her.

‘The accused has heard the evidence in chief. Does she wish to cross-examine?'

‘Sir,' Eliza began. ‘There is no truth in what the witness says, so I can hardly cross-examine him. I simply tried to explain to poor Rufus about the men of Tolpuddle.'

‘Tolpuddle? What of it, maid?' Given the damning case against her, the consideration to which he was bound, and her foolishness in declining to cross-examine, the judge would indulge Eliza for a moment. Besides, it would give him a few more moments to enjoy her prettiness before he must face the next tedious case.

‘Sir, four honest men were transported to Botany Bay because they refused to work for seven shillings a week. And the people don't think that be fair, sir.'

‘What do you think, maid?'

‘I think that unless these men be slaves, sir, and the master their owner, they have the right to trade their labour for wages, or not. They be nothing more than slaves if it be otherwise, sir. And slavery is not the way of the King and the folk of England, sir.' The judge turned from his contemplation of the fields beyond the window and looked down at her. She fancied he tried to hide a smile.