Defend and Betray (38 page)

“There's no time,” Hester said desperately. “It would take months. And there might be nothing anyway.”

“If he did that in the army, there will be something to find.” Callandra's voice had no uncertainty in it, no quaver of doubt. “You stay at the trial. I'll search for some slip he's made, some drummer boy or cadet who's been hurt enough for it to show.”

“Do you think . . . ?” Hester felt a quick leap of hope, foolish, quite unreasonable.

“Calm down, order your mind,” Callandra commanded. “Tell me again everything that we know about the whole affair!”

Hester obeyed.

* * * * *

When the court was adjourned Oliver Rathbone was on his way out when Lovat-Smith caught up with him, his dark face sharp with curiosity. There was no avoiding him, and Rathbone was only half certain he wanted to. He had a need to speak with him, as one is sometimes compelled to probe a wound to see just how deep or how painful it is.

“What in the devil's name made you take this one?” Lovat-Smith demanded, his eyes meeting Rathbone's, brilliant with intelligence. There was a light in the back of them which might have been a wry kind of pity, or any of a dozen other things, all equally uncomfortable.”What are you playing at? You don't even seem to be trying. There are no miracles in this, you know. She did it!”

Somehow the goad lifted Rathbone's spirits; it gave him something to fight against. He looked back at Lovat-Smith, a man he respected, and if he were to know him better, might even like. They had much in common.

“I know she did,” he said with a dry, close little smile. “Have I worried you, Wilberforce?”

Lovat-Smith smiled with answering tightness, his eyes bright. “Concerned me, Oliver, concerned me. I should not like to see you lose your touch. Your skill hitherto has been one of the ornaments of our profession. It would be . . . disconcerting”—he chose the word deliberately—”to have you crumble to pieces. What certitude then would there be for any of us?”

“How kind of you,” Rathbone murmured sarcastically. “But easy victories pall after a while. If one always wins, perhaps one is attempting only what is well within one's capabilities—and there lies a kind of death, don't you think? That which does not grow may well be showing the first signs of atrophy.”

They were passed by two lawyers, heads close together. They both turned to look at Rathbone, curiosity in their faces, before they resumed their conversation.

“All probably true,” Lovat-Smith conceded, his eyes never leaving Rathbone's, a smile curling his mouth. “But though it is fine philosophy, it has nothing to do with the Carlyon case. Are you going to try for diminished responsibility? You “ve left it rather late—the judge will not take kindly to your not having said so at the beginning. You should have pleaded guilty but insane. I would have been prepared to consider meeting you somewhere on that.”

“Do you think she's insane?” Rathbone enquired with raised eyebrows, disbelief in his voice.

Lovat-Smith pulled a face. “She didn't seem so. But in view of your masterly proof that no one thought mere was an affair between Mrs. Furnival and the general, not even Mrs. Carlyon herself, by all accounts, what else is there? Isn't that what you are leading to: her assumption was groundless, and mad?”

Rathbone's smile broadened into a grin. “Come along, Wilberforce. You know better than that! You'll hear my defense when the rest of the court does.”

Lovat-Smith shook his head, a furrow between his black eyebrows.

Rathbone gave him a tiny mock salute with more bravado than he felt, and took his leave. Lovat-Smith stood on the spot on the great courtroom steps, deep in thought, seemingly unaware of the coming and going around him, the crush of people, the chatter of voices.

* * * * *

Instead of going home, which perhaps he ought to have done, Rathbone took a hansom and went out to Primrose Hill to take supper with his father. He found Henry Rathbone standing hi the garden looking at the young moon pale in the sky above the orchard trees, and half listening to the birdsong as the late starlings swirled across the sky and here and there a thrush or a chaffinch gave a warning cry.

For several moments they both stood in silence, letting the peace of the evening smooth out the smallest of the frets and wrinkles of the day. The bigger things, the pains and disappointments, took a firmer shape, less angry. Temper drained away.

“Well?” Henry Rathbone said eventually, half turning to look at Oliver.

“I suppose as well as could be expected,” Oliver replied. “Lovat-Smith thinks I have lost my grip in taking the case at all. He may be right. In the cold light of the courtroom it seems a pretty wild attempt. Sometimes I even wonder if I believe in it myself. The public image of General Thaddeus Carlyon is impeccable, and the private one almost as good.” He remembered vividly his father's anger and dismay, his imagination of pain, when he had told him of the abuse. He did not look at him now.

“Who testified today?” Henry asked quietly.

“The Furnivals. Lord, I loathe Louisa Furnival!” he said with sudden vehemence. “She is the total antithesis of everything I find attractive in a woman. Devious, manipulative, cocksure of herself, humorless, materialistic and completely unemotional. But I cannot fault her in the witness box.” His face tightened. “And how I wanted to. I would take the greatest possible pleasure in tearing her to shreds!”

“How is Hester Latterly?”

“What?”

“How is Hester?” Henry repeated.

“What made you ask that?” Oliver screwed up his face.

“The opposite of everything you find attractive in a woman,” Henry replied with a quiet smile.

Oliver blushed, a thing he did not do often. “I didn't see her,” he said, feeling ridiculously evasive although it was the absolute truth.

Henry said nothing further, and perversely Oliver felt worse than if he had pursued the matter and allowed him to argue.

Beyond the orchard wall another cloud of starlings rose chattering into the pale sky and circled around, dark specks against the last flush of the sun. The honeysuckle was coming into bloom and the perfume of it was so strong the breeze carried it across the lawn to where they were standing. Oliver felt a rush of emotion, a sweetness, a longing to hold the beauty and keep it, which was impossible and always would be, a loneliness because he ached to share it, and pity, confusion and piercing hope all at once. He remained silent because silence was the only space large enough to hold it without crushing or bruising the heart of it.

* * * * *

The following morning he went to see Alexandra before court began. He did not know what he could say to her, but to leave her alone would be inexcusable. She was in the police cell, and as soon as she heard his step she swung around, her eyes wide, her face drained of all color. He could feel the fear in her touching him like a palpable thing.

“They hate me,” she said simply, her voice betraying the tears so close to the surface. “They have already made up their minds. They aren't even listening. I heard one woman call out 'Hang her!' “ She struggled to keep her control and almost failed. She blinked hard. “If women feel like that, what hope is there forme with the jury, who are all men?”

“More hope,” he said very gently, and was amazed at the certainty in his own voice. Without thinking he took her hands in his, at first quite unresisting, like those of someone too ill to respond. “More hope,” he said again with even greater assurance. “The woman you heard was frightened because you threaten her own status if you are allowed to go free and Society accepts you. Her only value in her own eyes is the certainty of her unquestionable purity. She has nothing else marketable, no talent, no beauty, no wealth or social position, but she has her impeccable virtue. Therefore virtue must keep its unassailable value. She does not understand virtue as a positive thing—generosity, patience, courage, kindness—only as the freedom from taint. That is so much easier to cope with.”

She smiled bleakly. “You make it sound so very reasonable, and I don't feel it is at all. I feel it as hate.” Her voice quivered.

“Of course it is hate, because it is fear, which is one of the ugliest of emotions. But later, when they have the truth, it will swing 'round like the wind, and blow just as hard from the other direction.”

“Do you think so?” There was no belief in her and no lightness in her eyes.

“Yes,” he said with more certainty than he was sure of. “Then it will be compassion and outrage—and fear lest such a thing happen to those they love, their own children. We are capable of great ugliness and stupidity,” he said gently. “But you will find many of the same people just as capable of courage and pity as well. We must tell them the truth so they can have the chance.”

She shivered and half turned away.

“We are singing in the dark, Mr. Rathbone. They aren't going to believe you, for the very reasons you talk about. Thaddeus was a hero, the sort of hero they need to believe in, because there are hundreds like him in the army, and they are what keep us safe and build our Empire.” She hunched a little farther into herself. “They protect us from the real armies outside, and from the armies of doubt inside. If you destroy the British soldier in his red coat, the men who stood against all Europe and defeated Napoleon, saved England from the French, acquired Africa, India, Canada, quarter of the world, what have you left? No one is going to do that for one woman who is a criminal anyway.”

“All you are saying is that the odds are heavy against us.” He deliberately made his voice harder, suppressing the emotion he felt. “That same redcoat would not have turned away from battle because he was not sure of winning. You haven't read his history if you can entertain that thought for a second. His finest victories have been when outnumbered and against the odds.”

“Like the charge of the Light Brigade?” she said with sudden sarcasm. “Do you know how many of them died? And for nothing at all!”

“Yes, one man in six of the entire Brigade—God knows how many were injured,” he replied flatly, aware of a dull heat in his cheeks. “I was thinking more of the 'thin red line'—which if you recall stood a single man deep, and repulsed the enemy and held its ground till the charge broke and failed.”

There was a smile on her wide mouth, and tears in her eyes, and no belief.

“Is that what you intend?”

“Certainly.”

He could see she was still frightened, he could almost taste it in the air, but she had lost the will to fight him anymore. She turned away; it was surrender, and dismissal. She needed her time alone to prepare for the fear and the embarrassment, and the helplessness of the day.

* * * * *

The first witness was Charles Hargrave, called by Lovat-Smith to confirm the events of the dinner party already given, but primarily to retell his finding of the body of the general, with its terrible wound.

“Mr. Furnival came back into the room and said that the general had had an accident, is that correct?” Lovat-Smith asked.

Hargrave looked very serious, his face reflecting both his professional gravity and personal distress. The jury listened to him with a respect they reserved for the more distinguished members of certain professions: medicine, the Church, and lawyers who dealt with the bequests of the dead.

“Quite correct,” Hargrave replied with a flicker of a smile across his rakish, rather elegant sandy face. “I presume he phrased it that way because he did not want to alarm people or cause more distress than necessary.”

“Why do you say that, Doctor?”

“Because as soon as I went into the hallway myself and saw the body it was perfectly apparent that he was dead. Even a person with no medical training at all must have been aware of it.”

“Could you describe his injuries—in full, please, Dr. Hargrave?”

The jury all shifted fractionally in their seats, attention and unhappiness vying in their expressions.

A shadow crossed Hargrave's face, but he was too practiced to need any explanation as to the necessity for such a thing.

“Of course,” he agreed. “At the time I found him he was lying on his back with his left arm flung out, more or less level with one shoulder, but bent at the elbow. The right arm was only a short distance from his side, the hand twelve or fourteen inches from his hip. His legs were bent, the right folded awkwardly under him, and I judged it to be broken below the knee, his left leg severely twisted. These guesses later turned out to be correct.” An expression crossed his face it was impossible to name, but it did not seem to be complacency. His eyes remained always on Lovat-Smith, never once straying upwards towards Alexandra in the dock opposite him.

“The injuries?” Lovat-Smith prompted.

“At the time all that was visible was bruising to the bead, bleeding from the scalp at the left temple where he had struck the ground. There was a certain amount of blood, but not a great deal.”

People in the gallery were craning their necks to stare up at Alexandra. There was a hiss of indrawn breath and a muttering.

“Let me understand you, Doctor.” Lovat-Smith held up his hand, strong, short-fingered and slender. “There was only one injury to the head that you could see?”

“That is correct.”

“As a medical man, what do you deduce from that?”

Hargrave lifted his wide shoulders very slightly. “That he fell straight over the banister and struck his head only once.”

Lovat-Smith touched his left temple. “Here?”

“Yes, within an inch or so.”

“And yet he was lying on his back, did you not say?”

“I did,” Hargrave said very quietly.

“Dr. Hargrave, Mr. Furnival has told us that the halberd was protruding from his chest.” Lovat-Smith paced across the floor and swung around, staring up at Hargrave on the witness box, his face creased in concentration. “How could a man fall from a balcony onto a weapon held upright in the hands of a suit of armour, piercing his chest, and land in such a way as to bruise himself on the front of his temple?”

The judge glanced at Rathbone.

Rathbone pursed his lips. He had no objections. He did not contest that Alexandra had murdered the general. This was all necessary, but beside the point of the real issue.