Of all the time-keepers in that courtroom, it’s the judge’s stomach that will most often have its way. Either that or his bladder.
Lunch.
While the judge goes for his marrow soup, or whatever they’re serving up in the judges’ dining room today, the turnkeys allow you and Tomkin, the lawyer instructing you on my behalf, a few moments with me. You both stand facing me. It’s a dark, nasty little corridor, no gleaming wood, no green velvet. Just cold grey walls, grimy flagstones underfoot, and the smell of prisoners. Feet and fear. The thought sinks into me that this is where I may belong for the rest of my life, if Jessop succeeds in shortening it. The kind of place deemed fit for creatures like me. Prisoners. Murderers.
The pair of you puzzle at me, like schoolboys working on the same sum. My head echoes with your words from our first meeting: Give me something to help you with.
You tap your papers against your chin. Shake your head. ‘Let’s start with the foetus ‒’
‘Why? It’s nothing but a distraction. You said it yourself.’
‘What I say to them and what I say to you are two different matters.’
Tomkin coughs into his hand. ‘He holds your brief, Miss Langton, you must take him into your confidence.’
‘Jessop’s painting a picture of you,’ you interject. ‘It’s an old trick. Getting the jurors to look at something the judge is going to tell them to forget. It’s prejudicial nonsense, and shouldn’t have been allowed. No point leaping about with objections. Makes the jurors think you can’t confront the facts, and they never give a toss for lawyerly tricks. But if you don’t explain it, they’ll think the worst, that you’re a –’
Baby-killer. The word claws at me. A pulse of panic.
‘I’ve defended only one other black, Miss Langton. One. In that case, the judge decided the prisoner didn’t have the intellect required to understand the nature of the oath. Though he spoke three languages! Do you see? That . . . thing would never have been allowed, in any other case, but in this one ‒’
You stop, as if something has just occurred to you. ‘Have you been baptized?’
‘How would that help?’
‘You can tell them you’re a Christian, at least . . .’
My hands crimp into fists. ‘I know they’ll all think I’m brutish enough to have killed my mistress. But I did not.’
‘What about the possibility that you did?’
My heart rocks like a ship.
‘We could argue it that way, you know. You’ve been enslaved all your life, you were brought here, given away. It would have been inhuman not to fight back in those circumstances. Might not get you acquitted. But I could argue for transportation.’
‘No.’
I think back to how she looked, when I found her, guarding that small silent clotted thing.
I promised, I know. Forgive me.
I draw in a breath, and face the two of you. ‘It was not her husband’s baby. She . . . and Mr Cambridge –’
You look at each other in surprise.
‘She didn’t want anyone to know. I kept it because she wanted to bury it when she was well.’
‘She was unwell?’
‘That’s the reason I went back. She wrote to me and asked me to.’ I tell you about coming back, how frightened she’d been.
‘Frightened? Of what?’
Of her husband, of what he might do, of her own narrowing choices. I tell you about finding her that day, inconsolable. I say that she’d seemed, even before her loss, to have sunk into a well of grief. Tomkin looks surprised, as if wondering how such a thing could ever be considered a loss. I tell you what Benham had proposed. But then I trail off, knowing I’ll be wiser to leave certain doors shut.
I tell you how I loved her. How I tried to help her. I don’t tell you about my harsh words. I don’t tell you that the thing she was frightened of might have been me. When I finish, I’m shaking. I try to hide it by flexing my hands in front of me.
‘I loved her,’ I say again, because it seems the most important thing to say.
You look at me steadily. ‘You loved her. That doesn’t change my advice. Even had it been mutual, it is more likely to harm than help your case.’ You glance down the hallway, lower your voice. ‘What happened afterwards?’
‘Afterwards?’
‘After you found her, as you’ve described?’
I pause. Caution. Careful. Do not say too much.
‘She went to her soirée. Mr Benham required it.’
‘And then?’
My mind races. It’s my own self I’m trying to outrun. When I reach inside, there’s nothing. That trick, somewhere between remembering and forgetting – and the only refuge I have left.
Give me something I can save your neck with.
I can’t remember.
From the end of the hallway, a clang of metal. The turnkeys. No time left. You turn to Tomkin. ‘What do you think?’
‘That we can’t do much with any of that.’
‘No. But –’ You stop. ‘Something struck me when I was cross-examining the housekeeper. How would it have been done? To kill one, then the other, and to be in such a deep sleep immediately afterwards? She took an excess of laudanum. Might there be something in that? What if we find a medical man who can make a defence out of it?’
Tomkin looks at me. ‘I know a doctor in Cheapside. Used him last week on something else. He might have knowledge of such matters. But where do you go with this?’
‘If we can get a doctor willing to swear to it, couldn’t we argue that she couldn’t have had the capacity to form an intention, not in that state? Therefore, the indictment, at least for murder, must fail?’
‘Lack of malice? Well. This is a first, I think, Mr Pettigrew. Unprecedented, so far as I know –’
‘No.’ You both flicker at me in surprise. ‘It makes me look guilty,’ I say.
Tomkin shakes his head. ‘Miss Langton. It is a defence.’
In the end, having no other, I had no choice.