The Battling Bluestocking (20 page)

Lady Susan shook her head, declaring the whole thing a mystery, but adding comfortably that no doubt Sir Brian knew his own business best. “We shall miss him,” she said, glancing at her niece.

Jessica returned what she hoped was a noncommittal smile, but her heart seemed to sink with a thud loud enough for the others to hear. To say merely that she would miss Sir Brian, she realized, was entirely to understate the case.

J
ESSICA HAD LITTLE TIME
to worry about Sir Brian’s abrupt departure, for not only were the legal representations rapidly coming to an end in Mr. Hatchard’s case before the King’s Bench, meaning that the justices would soon be ready to render judgment, but Jeremy, the climbing boy, had managed to capture the entire household’s attention by means of certain unexplainable behavior.

First, several of the maids observed laughingly that “Master” Jeremy was quite a one, causing Jessica to discover that that boy had taken to having servants at his beck and call as though he had been born to the privilege. His manner of speech rapidly improved, as well, which to Jessica’s mind implied that the child was either a splendid mimic or had been accustomed to hearing proper speech throughout his earliest years.

As a result of such details, Jeremy had been in the house for scarcely a week before Jessica confronted Lady Susan over the breakfast table, insisting that something must be done.

“Well, I have made inquiries about a possible school for him, you know,” Lady Susan replied vaguely, scanning the
Morning Post
for information regarding Mr. Hatchard’s trial.

“Aunt, pray put aside that paper and attend to me. It is not a school which that boy needs, but a proper home. His own home.”

“Yes, but I don’t think we should keep him here, dear.” Lady Susan obediently folded her newspaper and set it down upon the table beside her empty plate, grimacing slightly as she regarded her niece’s determined expression. “Remember, love, you will be going back to your parents before long, and I really don’t think I should enjoy raising a boy, you know.”

“No, of course not.”

“Though, perhaps, it is my duty to do so, now that I’ve rescued him,” her ladyship mused.

“No, Aunt, it is not your duty.” Jessica smiled, amusement lighting her eyes. “Jeremy belongs with his own family. His real family.”

“Well, that would be the very thing, of course, only we don’t know who they are, and Jeremy seems unable to tell us. Besides, my dear, anyone who would sell his own child…I mean, really, Jessica, could you find it in your heart to return that child to such parents?”

“Not if they had truly sold him, Aunt Susan. But what if he was stolen?”

“Stolen! From his family, you mean?”

“Indeed I do. Only consider, ma’am, all the objects he finds familiar about this house. First the snow crystal, then Sir Brian’s ring and my evening gown. Then, only yesterday, the fresh strawberries General Potterby sent you from his succession houses in Sussex. Jeremy said he hadn’t had strawberries in all the time he’s lived with Crick, but that when he was little he used to have them for breakfast all the time.”

“But lots of people eat strawberries, Jessica.”

“Not poor people, ma’am. Not unless they live in the country and have access to someone’s succession house. Strawberries rarely grow well in this country, you know, unless they have special care. That fact alone puts them generally beyond the reach of the lower orders. And, certainly, he would not have had them ‘all the time.’”

“No, I daresay he wouldn’t. But he doesn’t remember anything to the purpose, Jessica. We can scarcely go about searching for a house which contains a snow crystal, a woman in a pink gown, and a man who wears a signet ring.”

“No, of course not. But we can place an advertisement in the papers, Aunt. ‘Boy found’—that sort of thing—giving his name, age, and general description. Something might come of it, and I couldn’t bear not to make some push to reunite him with his family.”

“It might work, I suppose,” Lady Susan said slowly, nodding to the maidservant who offered to refill her teacup. “Many persons outside of London read the
Morning Post
and the
Times
, at least.”

“Well, I mean to insert an advertisement in every paper I can call to mind,” Jessica declared. “We must do all we can.

“Very well,” agreed her ladyship. “At least I shan’t have to discover a school for him straightaway if you intend to trace his family. I had been feeling as though I must, and today, at least, I mean to attend the session at King’s Bench. Do come with me, dearest. You’ve nothing else to do that can possibly be of greater importance, for I very much fear Mr. Hatchard is going to be convicted, and if he is, he will need all our support.”

“It certainly seems unfair to me,” Jessica told her, “that poor Mr. Hatchard must suffer merely for printing what someone else wrote.”

“For printing the truth,” stated Lady Susan grimly.

“But if it was the truth, then why has there been no evidence to support that dreadful story of the flogging?”

To that question Lady Susan could return no acceptable answer, for no one had yet been able to discover a single fact in support of the accusation that the governor of Antigua’s aide had flogged any female slave. And, as Jessica soon discovered when she accompanied her aunt to the Court of King’s Bench, that lack of support had come to be the chief factor in the case.

After a full hour spent in discomfort in the stuffy courtroom, seated upon a hard pew between her aunt and a gentleman with a noticeable fondness for garlic, Jessica was at last privileged to hear Mr. Justice Abbott, one of the three bewigged black-robed justices at the bench, sum up the case for the jury.

“There is no doubt,” Mr. Abbott declaimed in tones more suited to a box at Hyde Park Corner than to the closeness of the courtroom, “that by the law of this country, and of all other civilized countries, a printer or bookseller is answerable criminally, as well as civilly, for the contents of the books he publishes—no less answerable than the authors of them. The fact that the author in this case cannot be determined need have no bearing upon the jury’s decision.” He went on to explain that the only point of law the jury needed to decide was whether the printed matter itself was of a criminal nature or not. He also gave it as his opinion that the account of the flogging in the Africa Institute’s
Tenth Annual Report
, as printed, was enough to bring not just the one but any of Sir James Leith’s aides under suspicion and disgrace, and was therefore a libel. “I am also of the opinion,” he added, “that this article accuses Antigua’s judiciary of acting improperly by refusing to prosecute. If the members of the jury agree that such an accusation was published with the intention of bringing the criminal justice of the island of Antigua into disrepute by suggesting that criminal justice there is not duly administered on the behalf of slaves, then that statement is likewise libelous.”

The jury immediately found the defendant guilty upon both counts, and the judgment was pronounced by Mr. Justice Bayley. Jessica was glad to hear that gentleman say he did not agree that there was the same degree of criminality in a bookseller, who sold material for others under circumstances which implied no want of caution on his part, as there was in an author of such material who distorted facts with the intent of swaying public opinion.

“You did not receive that report from suspicious characters, Mr. Hatchard,” said the justice quietly, speaking directly to the scholarly-looking man in the dock. “You received it from persons upon whom you thought you might with propriety and confidence rely.” Nevertheless, the law was clear. Mr. Hatchard was fined one hundred pounds. He promptly paid the fine and was discharged.

Jessica was grateful to have the trial over and done. Unfortunately, she realized as she watched her aunt bearing down upon Mr. Hatchard, Lady Susan did not seem the least bit relieved. She was angry.

“I think it is a disgrace that in this day and age an English gentleman cannot find justice in an English court,” she declared to the weary-looking Hatchard.

“Dear Lady Susan,” the tall, thin man said, smiling slightly, “I cannot tell you what it has meant to me to see your lovely face here throughout this dreadful business, but I cannot allow you to defame the English legal system. By law, every person who publishes a libel is answerable for that libel, and with no one coming forth to prove the truth of what was printed, there could be no other outcome. Indeed, the justices were merciful. They might well have sentenced me to prison.”

“Well, you are generous, sir, but their verdict certainly does our cause no good. If the people of England believe we of the Institute are capable of manufacturing information in order to prove a necessity for condemning the institution of slavery, it will set the cause back fifty years.”

“Aunt Susan, surely people will realize that proof could not be put forward without revealing the informant’s name. The necessity to protect his safety has been well publicized by the Institute.”

“Yes, that’s all very well and good,” said her ladyship, glaring at no one in particular, “but if they disbelieve the tale, they will as likely disbelieve anything we print about the source of our information. I cannot imagine, however, that men such as Mr. Wilberforce and the Duke of Grosvenor would have any part in manufacturing the sort of malicious tale this would be if it were not true. At the very least, I am absolutely certain they believe that the informant acted in good faith and not from any other motive which has been attributed to him.”

“I think the problem,” Mr. Hatchard said thoughtfully, “lies in the great distances involved. It is most difficult for the average Englishman to comprehend the horrors of slavery and to understand how easily all the evidence in this case might have been swept under the carpet, simply because everyone involved at the Antigua end is a slave owner himself. No one there wants England interfering in the backbone of their economy, and for the most part the average man and woman here at home haven’t the slightest notion where Antigua is, let alone what goes on there. If these atrocities were occurring right here under their noses, the reaction would no doubt be quite different.”

“It seems very difficult,” Lady Susan said with a sigh, “to understand how a country that outlawed the slave
trade
nearly a decade ago still does not comprehend what an outrage the institution of slavery truly is. Even right here in England, where you say people would care if it were right under their noses, chimney sweeps and their ilk treat their poor apprentices like slaves, and a woman like Lady Prodmore can trot about puffing off the fact that she does indeed own another human being.”

“Well, if she does indeed own one, she can’t have purchased him here, at any rate,” observed a gentleman standing near enough to overhear the conversation.

“My dear sir, what has that got to do with anything? We say she cannot have bought him here, and we sound very smug when we say it, but fashion or no fashion, she can and
does
own him here, and to my mind that is a much worse thing.”

The unknown gentleman looked a trifle offended by her ladyship’s suggestion that he had sounded smug, and Jessica thought it was high time to intervene.

“Aunt Susan, I am persuaded that Mr. Hatchard would like to see the last of this courtroom as soon as may be. And we are engaged to call at Melbourne House this afternoon and to attend the theater with Cyril and Georgie before a late supper at the Clarendon, so we really should be seeing whether your carriage is awaiting us outside.”

Lady Susan, glancing at the little watch pinned to her lapel, exclaimed at the time and agreed that they must indeed be on their way. And within fifteen minutes Jessica actually managed to steer her toward the street.

Jessica found the visit to Melbourne House boring, despite her fondness for Emily Cowper, who greeted her affectionately and treated Lady Susan with all the respect due a wealthy woman who had been about the town even longer than she had herself. The play that evening, too, was a trifle insipid, Jessica thought, finding it difficult to concentrate upon the actors’ antics. Lady Gordon glanced at her speculatively a time or two during the second interval, and once they had gathered around a white-draped, silver-decked table at the Clarendon, where one always could be assured of the best dinner in town, her ladyship waited only until her husband had captured their aunt’s attention before taxing Jessica about her lack of animation.

“Are you ailing?” she asked flatly.

Jessica regarded her sister with fondness. “No, indeed, just suffering from a slight case of ennui, I daresay.” Then, knowing that Lady Gordon often enjoyed flashes of insight, and desiring therefore to change the topic as quickly as possible, she asked if her ladyship had learned anything further about her own condition.

“Indeed, I have. I sent for Sir Richard Croft, the Princess Charlotte’s doctor, you know, and he confirmed my suspicions.” Georgeanne spoke in an undertone, with an oblique glance to reassure herself that her husband was still holding forth and had not overheard her. Then she added, “I’ve said nothing yet to Cyril, Jess, nor do I intend to until there’s no hiding the matter from him any longer. And I charge you straitly to say nothing either. I do not mind if you tell Aunt Susan, so long as she, too, will promise to say nothing to him.”

“But, Georgie, it is his right to know,” Jessica protested, her boredom forgotten entirely for the moment.

“Pooh, he has nothing to say to the matter. But Sir Richard said I was to avoid anxiety and to pamper myself. I am persuaded he says the same to all his patients, but only imagine what Cyril will be like if he hears that sort of thing. I shall be wrapped in cotton wool, Jess. He would drive me to distraction in a week.”

Jessica chuckled. “I cannot deny it,” she said. “The mind boggles when one tries to imagine Cyril in the role of protective husband. He would no doubt lecture you as to how you ought to go on. I can hear him puffing off about the future heir to the Gordon properties. Thank God, Porth wasn’t anything like that while Madeleine was increasing. Or afterward, for that matter. A little ill-at-ease with the new arrival until he’d held him for a while, but a sensible man all round, to my way of thinking. Cyril will be entirely different.”