A Murder at Rosamund's Gate (24 page)

“And these are supposed to be William’s peers,” John whispered in disgust to Lucy. “The king of England could be such a peer.”

Lucy nodded, twisting her hands in her lap. Will turned around then, looking both fearful and a little defiant. Lucy felt her heart leap when she saw him. His face was pale and brooding, yet he seemed to brighten when he saw her, giving her a little cheer. He raised a hand in greeting. She managed a tremulous smile, even as her stomach churned as if she had drunk too much ale.

The judge was already seated at his bench, shuffling through the papers, waiting for his clerk to finish sharpening his pen. Lucy squinted, trying to imagine him without his long white sheep’s wool wig. An image of him leaning back, relaxing over a goblet of Rhenish wine, came to mind.

“Oh, I know him!” Lucy whispered to John. “He’s come to the house; he’s a friend of the master’s!”

“The master probably had a hand in that, I suppose,” John said in equally low tones. “Will is likely to get a fair trial.”

Lucy felt a little better already. From what she knew of the judge, he was a quiet man, but he always spoke courteously to her when he came to the house and had always been friendly and kind. Now he nodded to his clerk, who called the first case.

The first two cases were dispatched quickly, a maid who had stolen her ailing mistress’s best bonnet and her purse containing five shillings, and a youngish man who had stolen a pail and a brush from the local stabler. Both were consigned to spend two hours in the stocks outside the courthouse. Lucy had little sympathy for the maid, given that she’d taken advantage of her mistress in such a low way. Her flouncing about made Lucy wonder why she did not look more distraught at her punishment. Sitting in the stocks for three minutes would surely be unbearable.

“I wonder what else she stole,” John muttered at her side. “She’s hiding something, to be sure, that one is.”

That’s it.
Lucy nodded, fascinated.
The maid thinks she’s put something over on the court, to take her punishment so easily
. Yet as she was being led away by the bellman, the judge stopped her. “I suggest, miss, that you take a more honorable foray into your livelihood. Although I have no proof at this time, ’twould not be hard to send around the bellman, say, every day, to check with your mistress to see if anything else has gone missing. Do you understand?”

The girl nodded, more sullen now. Lucy smiled. She was glad that the young chit had not tricked the magistrate. He seemed a good man.

The other theft was quite strange. Why take a bowl and brush? she wondered. The magistrate asked the same question, not bellowing but speaking quietly to the boy, as if they were not sitting among a roomful of strangers. Lucy had to strain to hear the boy’s words.

“For my horse,” the boy whispered.

The magistrate looked puzzled. “You own a horse?” he asked. The boy seemed barely able to own his own shirt and shoes, let alone pay for the upkeep of a horse.

The boy grinned, a long, lazy grin. “Yes, of course. He’s right here now. He follows me everywhere I go.”

The crowd burst out laughing, and the boy, puzzled, grinned wider. Clearly, the poor boy’s wits were addled. He, too, was sent off with a warning and would have to sit in the nasty stocks.

Next, four women were called, and they rose at once. “Sibil Heaman, Margery Rively, Mary Jessey, and Susan Williams,” the magistrate intoned, “you stand accused of taking an unlawful conventicle at the house of Sibil Heaman of Limehouse parish, under color of exercising religion other than the king’s own. This is in defiance of the Conventicle Act of 1664. How do you plead?”

“Innocent before the Lord,” the women cried as one, their gray-woolen-clad arms flapping.

“Quakers, are you?” He sighed. “Guilty as charged. Six shillings each or another night in Newgate.”

“We obey no authority but the Lord! He shall smite the evil and bring solace to the righteous—”

“Yes, yes,” the judge said, wiping his brow. “Our recorder has faithfully described your trials and tribulations for your next chapbook. Constable, if you will?”

Next to be tried were two more pickpockets, one nervous and scared, the other grinning impudently. The judge regarded them sternly. Looking closely, Lucy recognized the younger one. Sid! He was the one she had tricked so long ago at the market.

“Sid Petry and Geoff Hicks, you have been accused of pickpocketing on at least five separate recent occasions. How do you plead?”

Sid quailed. “Guilty, Your Highness.”

There was a tittering in the crowd, as the older boy shoved him. “I meant, not guilty, most noble sire.”

The room laughed again; for a moment, the judge’s lips twitched. “Indeed, ‘sir’ is fine. I shall enter a plea of not guilty on your behalf. What about you, young man?” He directed his gaze at Geoff, who kept his cheeky smirk.

“I can think of no reason I am here,” Geoff stated blandly. “Those witnesses are all liars, and them jurors will just agree with them. They’re all liars, too.”

A group of men and women began to scream at him. The judge raised his hand.

“Guilty or not guilty?” the judge demanded.

Geoff shrugged. “There ain’t no justice for me here.”

“In that case, if you do not wish to plead or to be tried by this court, then the court will adjudge a verdict of
peine forte et dure
.”

The judge beckoned the constable, who stepped forward. Like him, many of the jurors looked impassive, but several looked openly stricken. Others whispered to their neighbors. “What does that mean? What shall happen?”

Geoff looked around, sensing something amiss. “What? What does that pen, pen…”

“
Peine forte et dure.
It means, my insolent boy, that you shall be taken back to prison and live out the final days of your life in that dirty vile place. You shall be stripped to the waist and hoisted above the ground, so that your arms can be tied to two corners of the dungeon, and your legs in the same fashion. You shall then have iron placed on your body, adding to your weight. For three days, you shall thus hang, with just a bit of barley to eat, and maybe just a spot of water, and then no food or water at all, hanging until you are dead. That, or an hour in the stocks.”

The crowd murmured again, enjoying its own shock. Lucy balled her fists in her lap. “Oh, he wouldn’t! He couldn’t! Why can’t the stupid boy just admit it?” she muttered to herself.

Sid began to sob. “Geoff, Geoff … that would hurt so much!” he cried. This plaintive wail made a few laugh and others look nervous.

The judge slowly lifted the gavel in the air, looking meaningfully at the boy. He finally seemed to catch on. “Guilty, then, I guess! The stocks ain’t so bad, compared to all that!”

“Just so,” the judge agreed. “One hour in the stocks. Constable?”

Geoff and Sid were led away to take their turn in the stocks outside. Lucy was glad that was all. He shouldn’t be pickpocketing, but no one deserved that
peine
punishment. Well, except the vile cur who killed Bessie, of course. That thought brought her back to the matter at hand.

Sure enough, William’s name was called next. Thankfully, the judge ordered a short meal break, reminding the jurors that dinner was available in chambers. William was given a piece of bread and a drink of water from the pail in the corner. He grimaced, yet took a sip from the ladle anyway.

While a few people went off to use the necessity, or down a quick pint at the pub around the corner, most left someone holding their spot on the bench. Everyone had come to see Will’s trial. A murder trial was far too sensational to be missed, especially when the accused was so young and handsome.

Since John was there to guard her seat, Lucy pushed her way to the front, where Will sat, dejected. She pressed a bit of gingerbread into his hand. “Eat. Please, dear.”

Neither Will nor Adam acknowledged her presence. She had apparently interrupted Adam’s final instructions. “So remember, Will, I cannot ask questions of the witnesses myself—God in heaven, how I wish I could!—but do not let a witness retire until we have finished. When I nod, all right?”

Will just stared ahead, inclining his head slightly to show that he heard.

Adam continued. “It’s important! ’Tis very difficult to call a witness again. The judge will not like it, so we must be careful to get all the evidence necessary on the record. We must lay a careful foundation. Do you understand me?” He shook Will’s shoulder. “Will?”

Will nodded, but Lucy doubted he really understood very much at all. He was on trial for his life and had entered a mad daze. A bell rang somewhere, sending the spectators eagerly back to their seats. The show was about to start. Lucy kissed Will’s cheek, rough with the day’s stubble despite that morning’s required wash and a shave.

Her kiss seemed to revive him, help him focus. “Mother?” he asked. “Did she—?”

Helplessly, Lucy could only shake her head. She had received a note just that morning, written by one of her mother’s neighbors, saying that their mother would not be attending Will’s trial. She was simply too overwrought by the notion that her son could stand trial for murder.
Dear Will, Trust in the will of God. His Light shall prevail. Your Loving Mother, Theresa Campion.
That was all the note said. Furious, Lucy had ripped the letter to shreds.

“Be strong, brother,” she whispered. She didn’t know if he heard, but at least his face seemed less pale.

*   *   *

The next hour was one of the worst in Lucy’s life. The little bit of joviality and humor that had appeared in the first half of the assizes had dissipated. The murder of a young woman, even if she was just a servant, was a serious and grim matter indeed. Even the jurors who had looked so bored before sat up, listening intently, when the case was called.

Lucy craned her head all around. The orange seller, Maggie Potts, was nowhere to be seen, which, truth be told, didn’t surprise her all that much. Evidently, when she had not heard from Lucy, she had decided not to present herself to the court.

A pang of guilt and regret nagged at Lucy. Should she have bought her testimony? Principles don’t mean all that much when one’s brother stands facing Old Jack’s noose.

*   *   *

Constable Duncan stood up to serve as prosecutor, since he was the king’s man called when Bessie’s body was first found. Pulling out a piece of paper, he read slowly. “On March 31 in the Year of our Lord 1665, Elizabeth Ann Campbell, known as Bessie to her friends, late servant at the good Magistrate Hargrave’s household, him of the King’s Bench, was done found murdered—”

Here a wail broke out. For the first time, Lucy saw Bessie’s mother and sister huddled at the bench. They had not been there earlier. Who had cried out, Lucy did not know.

“—found murdered,” Duncan continued impassively, “stabbed five times in the abdomen and chest.”

Quickly presenting the case, Duncan explained how William and Bessie had become biblically familiar, “as was fine and proper since they were courting.” However, after Bessie had been with another man and found herself with child—surprisingly, Del Gado was not named—William discarded her. Because she would not cease seeking him out, he had sent her a letter, asking her to meet him in the field, where he “did plan to seduce and murder her, so as to silence her and the babe once and for all, in manner most foul.”

As he spoke, Lucy watched the judge and jury consult the penny chapbooks describing Bessie’s death and nod as the details of the story were confirmed. The jurors occasionally glanced at William, judging him, gauging his reaction, deciding the merit and value of his life. Her brother stared stonily before him.

The judge then called the physician to the stand, explaining, “Though not common practice, the learned members of the court, my fellow judges, have recently decreed that the physician who tended to a deceased, particularly one so obviously the victim of foul mischief, should be called to give true and honest testimony about what he found.”

The physician, Larimer, took the stand and made quick work of describing the state of Bessie’s body: that she had been stabbed by a man, until she was indeed dead, with some wounds to her hands as if she had tried to stop the blows. “The first strike seems to have been to her abdomen, forceful, but not the death blow. If I were to guess, he started coolly with some precision, then grew in anger or passion. He must have been stirred by bloodlust. Some men’s blood does boil that way.” Upon a more complete examination, he then found her with child. “A vile beast, that man was,” he finished, staring at Will.

The crowd murmured in agreement. Lucy saw several jurors nod their heads as well. This was not good.

Will sat motionless. Adam nudged him, gently at first, and then harder when he failed to move. “Oh, right.” William gulped. “Do you know, for sure, that it had to have been a man who inflicted those wounds upon”—here he stumbled over Bessie’s name—“the girl?”

The physician stroked his beard. “To my mind, ’twas too violent an act to have been wrought by a mere girl. To betray her own sex in such a way! However, I have seen enough criminal travesties in my time to say that such a thing, though thoroughly unnatural and unbefitting the gentler sex, could have transpired. Yes, it might well have been a woman. Although I think that unlikely.”

The jury nodded again. Other witnesses were called, including several tavern customers who detailed how William had been angry that day, and how they had seen the couple arguing early that afternoon. They saw him shake her until “her head did near shake off.” Even more damning were the witnesses who had been at the pub later in the day. They all claimed that Will said he was out for Bessie’s blood.

Throughout all the testimony, a great angry red flush colored Will’s face and neck. Adam appeared to be taking notes. Once or twice, Lucy saw Adam press Will’s arm, warning him to be careful with the words he spoke, so as not to incriminate himself before the judge and jury. Dutifully, with each witness, William posed the questions that Adam whispered to him, showing holes in each person’s testimony.