The Prior informed the community of Robert Sambourne’s disclosure the next morning and the upshot was astonishment at Dunstan’s eccentric interference and unqualified support for Anselm; at last they rallied around a single flag: pity for the fool who should have known better. They passed him in the cloister, strangely polite. Benedict and Jerome offered to take his turn washing the refectory floor. No one had any idea how Anselm might extricate himself from his predicament: he would return to court knowing his client was guilty but obliged to discredit his victim. Only Sylvester had words for the moment, disclosed on Monday morning:
‘Be prepared.’
For what? Anselm thought, walking slowly along Holborn. The unexpected? That had already happened; and Anselm hadn’t been prepared. There was nothing he could do to resolve the situation. If Littlemore was convicted, that left Justin Brandwell free; if Littlemore was acquitted, the two of them would remain at large, all the wiser, far more careful, incapable of truly recognising the scale of harm they’d caused and might well cause again. The two of them plagued by a perverse, self-affirming guilt that would never lead to change. A narcissistic guilt, very close to pleasure, that fed on continual offending. Anselm could have wept. And not just for Harry. That phrase ‘the Silent Ones’ had captured his indignation and sense of purpose. It had brought within reach the silent suffering he’d known about but had never encountered. And it had all been a mirage, an alluring distraction to draw Anselm away from the awful truth. It had brought him on side to help the very people who thrived on silence.
‘Canna have a minute of yer time, Father?’
Anselm stopped and turned. Standing in a closed shop doorway was a wiry, hunched figure, head shaven, hollow-cheeked, the forehead scarred above brown, childlike eyes. It was Fraser.
‘You need to know something, okay?’
Another unwanted revelation? thought Anselm. He waited, already wearied.
‘I think you should know that there’s something passin’ between the granddaddy, Martin, and his son … Justin. I dunna know wha’ it is … but I’m sure it’s important, al’right? And I dinna like tellin’ ye, but I’ve got to think of the wee fella.’
Anselm, of course, was hardly surprised; he didn’t need to be told, but he waited some more.
‘I followed Martin to a café where he met Justin.’
Anselm nodded.
‘And Justin was all upset – cryin’ and that, and I’m a startin’ to think maybes he’s not the man I thought he was, you get ma meanin’?’
Anselm did; he nodded sympathetically. Fraser’s hero and saviour was turning out to be the kind of man that had put people like Fraser on the street in the first place. His soft brown eyes were misting with a refusal to think that far, but he couldn’t stop his mouth:
‘I think summat might have happened to the wee fella on that holiday … I heard what you were sayin’ in court and I caught your drift, okay … and I just thought ye should know that the granddaddy seems to know already. I followed him to a café …’
What could Anselm say? He went for phrases he’d often used at the Bar to calm those distraught relatives who couldn’t face an emerging truth about one of their kin:
‘A great deal can still happen. Everything can change its appearance. The trial is never over until the jury comes back with a verdict. Until then, try not to come to any conclusions.’
With those words, he left Fraser wringing a flat cap as if it were a dish-cloth. Anselm was almost distraught himself: a broken man’s reconstructed world was about to be dismantled again, and this time there wouldn’t be much chance of building something new afterwards.
Anselm turned into Old Bailey. He could see the court ahead and the group of steadfast protesters. He could see the banner held in silence by two people who’d used scripture to speak for them: ‘What you hear in the dark, you must speak in the light.’ But Anselm had heard nothing. He’d been in the dark and now he was approaching the light. What else could he do, except to cross-examine Harry Brandwell?