Golden Hill (28 page)

‘You have to free Achilles,’ he whispered. ‘I need you to make sure of it.’

‘I don’t know if—’

‘On your honour. Swear.’

‘On my—?’

‘Swear. Swear. You owe me a debt. And him. Swear.’

‘Alright.’

‘On your honour.’

‘On my honour.’

A slight grey nod.

‘You will find your pocket-book in my sea-chest. With your secret safe inside it. Good heavens, Richard. Aren’t you full of surprises.’ The ghost of a smile. ‘I think I am—’

‘Yes?’

‘—taking New-York too seriously …’

Then Achilles, abandoning at last the fruitless labour, pushed Smith aside to take his place. Their conversation, Smith neither could nor wanted to overhear. There was not time for much of it. Lennox was saying the
Nunc Dimittis
. Achilles’ face was indescribable.

The sentry gripped Smith so warmly and surely round the shoulders that he took it for a comfort, until the beadle arrived across the corrupted snow to arrest him for murder.

‘You’re fortunate,’ said William Smith the lawyer.

Smith opened his mouth to laugh at this, but nothing came from it but a kind of hoarse bark of air. They were talking in the cells beneath City Hall, Smith having been assigned this time to the criminal prison below, not the civil prison above. Between the fit of shivering in which he had been led off the Common, and the hours spent waiting in the dark, icy little hole below Wall Street, he seemed to be catching cold.

‘No; fortunate; ’tis true,’ said the lawyer, correctly interpreting his incredulity. ‘In many manners, I’d say; but at least in this, that tomorrow’s last day of Michaelmas Term. Court won’t sit again till January. But the judge’ll make room on the docket for ye tomorrow. So you’ve but the one night in here, before the trial.’

‘Before I hang, you mean,’ croaked Smith.

‘Half the town wants you swinging, true; half doesn’t. Half that doesn’t, sent me; you should like your odds the better.’

‘Why?’

‘Causes improve, with good counsel. – Or did ye mean, why’d they send me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Chaste stars, boy, isn’t it clear by now? Perhaps your wits have froze. Here,’ said the lawyer, ‘have a swig on this.’ He drew from his inner pocket a flask which, as he passed it, became the brightest thing in the dim blue glow from the snow-choked grating out onto the cobbles of Wall Street, up at the extreme top of the dungeon’s wall. The silver captured the little light in a frigid gleaming clot. The liquid inside, however, burned as it went down, cutting
steaming tributaries through the dull ice of Mr Smith’s misery, and exposing rawer territories beneath, of guilt, and fear, and despair.

‘Better?’ asked the lawyer, looking at him head tip-tilted, with a kind of satisfaction. ‘Now: there are two causes here. What hurts one, speeds t’other. You have put horns on the Governor, near as dammit; you have pinked out his Secretary, who was also his spy-master. He loses, so we win. You have chose your side.’

‘I did not mean to.’

‘No? No matter, to us. As the judge said: if the boy won’t serve one way, he will serve another. ’Tis worth our while to point the moral, that opposition prospers. ’Tis worth the court’s ten minutes.’

‘Ten minutes?’

‘At eleven o’clock tomorrow. Between a larceny and a libel.’

‘Ten
minutes
?’

‘Oh. You’ve not seen many felony trials, I’m bound. That is the usual length, or a bit over.’

‘It does not seem much, to decide a man’s life,’ Smith said. ‘Or to give justice on another’s death.’

The lawyer shrugged.

‘Well, time’s limited; docket’s full. Ten minutes in the eye of justice is more’n many a poor soul’d have, that lives in tyranny. Besides, jury’s been sitting a fortnight; fretful now; jaded. Best not to bore ’em with any long proceeding, hey? But I believe this may tickle their palate.’

Smith did not seem receptive to this species of good cheer. He sat snuffling into his steepled fingers.

‘Come now,’ said the lawyer. ‘You do not
want
to hang, do you?’

‘No,’ said Smith.

‘Then, less doleful, if you please. Enough melancholy; to business.’

‘Should I not be melancholy? I have killed my best friend in the city. – My only friend.’

The lawyer’s eyebrows beetled up, and he bestowed on Smith a very curious glance.

‘Surprising,’ he said. ‘Surprising; interesting. Won’t do, though. Don’t repeat it. Oakeshott’s death is admitted, you see; cannot be denied.’

‘I should think not,’ said Smith. In his mind the red circle spread again – had not ceased to spread.

‘Yes; but, the consequence is, penitence won’t serve. Might sway a sentence; won’t fend one off. You require to justify the death; not mitigate it.’

‘Duelling is illegal anyway, isn’t it? Am I not condemned already, for that?’

‘Ah, but who challenged, eh? In the nature of a challenge
by
authority, d’ye see? Therefore, to spare authority’s blushes, fact of the duel to be set aside. And there’s the opportunity, there it lies: fight’s conceded as an affray, and the jury may find you blameless in’t, if they like our story of its cause.’

‘Can we not tell the truth, that he died by accident?’

‘Accident? How, by accident? You were fighting with swords, boy; violent intent by definition, on both sides.’

‘But Septimus was not trying to kill me, only to chastise me.’

The lawyer paused, and made a kind of chewing motion with his closed mouth. Again, the curious glance.

‘How do you know this?’ he asked.

‘He told me so.’

‘When? Before the fight?’

‘No, during it.’

‘Did anyone overhear it?’

‘No … No.’

‘Well, thank heaven: or you’d be dished, neat and sweet. To stick him after he said he meant no harm? Culpable homicide. Worse: dislikeable homicide. The law admits truth, sir, in one style only: witnessed. What was not witnessed did not happen. That is the greatness of the law. That is its guarantee, sir: against the whimsy of the tyrant, against mere regulation. The common law finds truth in cases. Is a breathing thing, sir. Is a free creature, sir. Forms law from men’s lives; doesn’t crush men’s lives, under forms of law. Takes authority, from the freedoms of England, not from the dictates of power. – And there, you see, for you, luck sews shut the jaws of disaster. Wasn’t witnessed? Didn’t happen. But “accident”? No; don’t want talk of that. Law’s a tussle, d’you see, to decide on a story; to settle an explanation. Was you to say, with all the goodwill of the court,’ – here the lawyer winked – ‘that, what, you made an unlucky cut at Oakeshott—’

‘My foot slipped.’

‘Did it, so? – But no-one can swear as much. – That all that blood was mere mishap: well: there’d be disbelief, boy. There’d be disappointment. A jury wants a tale proportioned to the occasion. Not a mess of accident.’

‘Life is a mess of accident, I find.’

The lawyer smiled at him, and clucked his tongue.

‘No, no, not in the law, it ain’t. Not in the
end
, I mean. When a man is dead, sense must be made of it; and it might as well be sense as serves the living, for it won’t serve the dead, nohow.’

‘So I must tell some cock-and-bull story? Concoct some convenient lie?’ – Smith saying this with a bitter emphasis.

‘A lie, never,’ protested the lawyer, seeming truly shocked. ‘And if you did, ’twouldn’t serve you. For all the witnesses must say their piece, and who knows what they’ll say? Can’t predict it, can’t control ’em: can give a little turn to it, maybe, on cross, but that’s the limit.
Your
power’s only, to tell the story the jury likes best: will want to pick
out
from the mess of stories, and believe, and turn into the verdict. What then? You know what then. You’re an actor, ’tis no puzzle to you. The court’s your stage, tomorrow; to be believed, there, requires you to be believable. You need to tell a likely story; a probable story; a satisfying story. Even if we wander a little, to make it so.’

‘You want our second fight,’ said Smith with a dull helpfulness, like his theatrical advice to Septimus, only issued from the remote bottom of a well, ‘to please the audience as the first did. Only with real blood.’

‘Yes! You have it. That’s the mark to aim for; precisely. Now, why do young men fight? From anger, of course; there’s a motive likelihood don’t strain at. Hot blood. Impulse. Reckless impulse, even. Carried off by it. Same impulse you bedded Terpie by. Fire in the loins! Not creditable? But credible. Explains itself, don’t it. Just look at her. Most have. Teats like a prize heifer. So: Smith
furioso
, eh? Then to colour up fury—’

‘Wait,’ said Smith, putting up a chilled hand to arrest these points the lawyer was making, with accelerating taps of forefinger on palm. He wanted to say, that to boast in this wise of his offence, to blazon it in the jury’s eyes that he’d sinned the sin they all wanted to, was surely to compound it. He wanted to object, that there might still be fragments of worth adhering to his name, which it would be better not wantonly to blast and blacken, especially in the estimation of one person. But to observe the professional
enthusiasm in the face of William Smith was to be reminded that to receive confidences is the office of a friend. And the only connection of that nature he had had in the city; – well. The red circle spoiled the snow once more. His eyes were sore. The viscous matter stuffing his nose oozed into the back of his mouth like an oyster that will not be swallowed. He took refuge in quibbling.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I thought I was a meek and patient pilgrim?’

‘What?’

‘The character you fixed on for me, in your St Nicholas-verse, which you pulled from the sack. My character for virtue.’ There was a kind of self-gnawing pleasure in saying this; in having got a good mouthful of his own arm, and biting well in.

‘Oh: no. That line is quite exploded. Not of further use.’

‘But is there not a contradiction? Can you bruit out one idea of me, one week, and a different one the next? And be believed?’

‘Easily,’ said the lawyer, with a slight testiness, for he had reached his peroration, and he was as fond as any man of gaining an effect he’d planned, for all that he laid out his words in as grudging a row as if each cost him a ha’penny. ‘Easily, because in law you may shift your ground without prejudice. You may say in succession: I was not there. If I was there, I did not strike him. If I did strike him, it was not fatal. If it was fatal, it was done without malice. You see? And in any case, we’ll keep, as it were, a little moral nugget from St Nick’s Night. For all we need, to colour your fury to perfection, is to make it righteous. And lo and behold, what comes in now very happy, but Oakeshott’s own character?’

‘Scrupulous. Generous. Kind.’

‘A tool of power. A notorious spy. A—’

‘No,’ said Smith.

‘You don’t know what I’m going to say.’

‘Yes I do. And I’ll not insult him.’

‘Insult him?’ cried the lawyer, grinning. ‘You cannot
insult
him, boy. He’s dead. You skewered him, remember. ’Tis too late to hurt his feelings.’

‘I can refrain from pissing on his corpse.’

There was a silence.

‘
Very
cold in here, boy,’ said the lawyer, ‘and I’ve no mind to linger, much, for there’s a warm room waiting upstairs for me, with a brazier burning. You’ve a night in here, whatever; and then you’ve a short walk home, or a long drop. There’s your choice. There’s the only choice to work your mind upon. You may take the help you’re offered, or refuse it; but you shan’t pick how you’re helped, for you ain’t paying the piper. You may live, or you may die. An’ you choose to live, you’ll help us paint Oakeshott in whatever insect shade is convenable. You’ll say, yes, the creature offered to put his hands on you; yes, he said he’d let you live, on the Terpie matter, if you gratified
his
nasty appetites; yes, you was driven to a righteous disgust by the foulness of the bargain. And struck back. And in a lucky stroke, slew him bravely, as he deserved.
Sic semper tyrannis
. And sodomites too.’

‘No.’

Another silence.

‘Don’t ye have a preference for breathing? Things to do? Matters to attend to, for which you crossed the ocean? Plans; a thousand pounds to spend?’

Prodded out with a stick by the lawyer from the hole where wretchedness had consigned every consideration but guilt, there came to Smith the thought of his responsibilities. The errand he needed to be alive to fulfil. The promise he had made Septimus:
which he needed to be alive to fulfil. These were, were they not, other real
oughts
to set in the balance, against the
ought
of guilt? Quickly, greedily, the preference for breathing which by nature he of course possessed, seized on these; urged them on him; tried to scuttle inside them like that species of soft crab which must borrow harder shells for its house—

‘Ah! Aha!’ burst out Smith, triumphantly. ‘I cannot, can I? Even if I told this sick tale to perfection, what would they think it was but a ploy to save my neck? There is no-one to testify to it, but me. No way it can be witnessed, for it never happened. It is a useless stratagem, as well as a monstrous one. There!’

‘Well, as it happens, a witness has come forward,’ said the lawyer.

‘What?’ said Smith,

The lawyer called for the gaoler, and very shortly, a horribly familiar apparition was standing at the door of the cell, transmitting even through the gelid air a reek of piss and dirt.

‘No,’ moaned Smith.

‘Oh dear,’ said the apparition, grinning. ‘Don’t you want the Capting’s help?’

In those days, it was not yet common for a prisoner in a criminal trial to be represented by counsel. The common wisdom was, that any innocent man should be able to quit themselves shortly of a false accusation, by their own efforts. Yet after the conversation in the dungeon, William Smith did not feel it quite safe to let this prisoner direct his own defence, cross-examine on his own account,
et cetera
; so when, at eleven o’clock on the morning of the 19th December, the clerk of the Court of Judicature announced Rex v Smith as the next case, the lawyer was beside Smith as he came sneezing and streaming to the bar. He had been permitted
to warm himself for half an hour in the gaoler’s room on the ground floor, and given a basin of snow to scrub his face with, and a clean shirt had been brought from the Black Horse for him; but little fever-squalls of shivering ran over his skin, plucked and pinched at it, and his nose was red, and he made frequent trumpeting use of a handkerchief, and altogether was a predominantly crumpled and pitiable sight.