The Forest (95 page)

‘I call the accused, Miss Albion,’ the prosecuting lawyer announced.

He was a small, plump man. The tabs of his starched lawyer’s collar moved back and forth against his thick, fleshy neck when he spoke. ‘Would you please tell the court, Miss Albion, what took place on the afternoon in question.’

‘Certainly.’ She spoke gravely and clearly. ‘I proceeded round the shop exactly as the court has heard.’

‘Your bag was open?’

‘I was not aware of it, but I have no reason to doubt that it was.’

‘You came to the table on which the lace was displayed? And do you deny that you took a piece of lace, dropped it in your bag, and went towards the door?’

‘I don’t deny it.’

‘You do not deny it?’

‘No.’

‘You stole the lace?’

‘Evidently.’

‘The same piece of lace that was found in your bag outside the shop, as described by the manager and a witness?’

‘Precisely.’

The lawyer looked a little puzzled. He glanced at the judge, shrugged. ‘My Lord, members of the jury, there you have it from the mouth of the accused. She stole the lace. The prosecution rests its case.’ He returned to his place, murmured something to his clerk about the foolishness of women trying to defend themselves without lawyers and awaited the defence, as the judge indicated to Fanny that she might proceed.

The court was absolutely silent as Fanny stood before them. ‘I have only one witness to call, My Lord,’ she declared. ‘That is Mr Gilpin.’

Mr Gilpin took the witness stand with great dignity; he confirmed he was the vicar of Boldre, the holder of various degrees, the author of certain well-respected works and that he had known Fanny and her family all her life. Asked to describe her position in life, he explained that she was the heiress to the Albion estate and a considerable fortune. Had she ever been short of money to spend, she asked him, and he replied that she had not.

Requested to describe her character, he did so very fairly, explaining the nature of her somewhat quiet life and her devotion to her father and her aunt. How was it, she asked him, that she had chanced to go to Bath? He himself, he told the court, had arranged with the Grockletons that they should take her there for a change of air. In his judgement she had spent too long living in seclusion with the two old people in Albion House.

‘How would you describe my state of mind at that time?’

‘Melancholy, listless, abstracted.’

‘When you heard that I had been accused of theft, were you surprised?’

‘Astonished. I did not believe it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, knowing you as I do, the idea that you should steal anything is inconceivable.’

‘I have no further questions.’

The prosecution bounced up now and rolled towards the vicar. ‘Tell me, Sir, when the defendant says that she stole a piece of lace, do you believe her?’

‘Most certainly. I have never known her tell an untruth in her life.’

‘So she did it. I have no further questions.’

The judge looked at Fanny. It was up to her now.

‘I may address the court on my own behalf, My Lord?’

‘You may.’

She bowed her head and turned towards the jury.

The twelve members of the jury watched her carefully. They were tradesmen, mostly, with a couple of local farmers, a clerk and two craftsmen. Their natural sympathies were with the shopkeeper. They felt sorry for the young lady, but couldn’t see how she could be innocent.

‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ Fanny began, ‘it may have surprised you that I did not seek to contradict a word of the evidence given against me.’ They did not say anything but it was plain that it had. ‘I did not even try to suggest that the assistant in the shop had made a mistake.’ She paused for only a moment. ‘Why should I do so? These are good and honest people. They have told you what they saw. Why should anyone disbelieve them?
I
believe them.’

She gazed at the jury, now, and they at her. They were not sure where this was leading, but they were listening carefully.

‘Gentlemen of the jury, I would ask you now to consider my situation. You have heard from Mr Gilpin, a clergyman of the highest repute, as to my character. I have never stolen anything in my life. You have also heard as to my fortune. Even if I were inclined to a life of crime, which God knows I am not, is there any reason
why
I should not have paid for a piece of lace? My fortune is large. It makes no sense.’ Again she paused to let this sink in.

‘I now ask you to remember the testimony as to what occurred when I was confronted outside the shop. It seems that I said nothing. Not a word. Why should that be?’ She looked from face to face. ‘Gentlemen, it was because I was so astonished. Honest people told me I had taken a piece of lace. The evidence was before my eyes. I could not deny it. I did not suppose them to be lying. They were not. I had taken the lace. I say I took it now. Yet I was so astonished that I did not know what to answer. And I tell you very truly, I scarcely have known how to answer for my actions ever since. For I must ask you to believe:
I did not know that I had done so
. Gentlemen, I make no denial, I simply tell you, I was unaware that I had dropped that piece of lace into my bag. I was never more astonished in my life.’ She looked at the judge, then back to the jury.

‘How can this be? I do not know. It is true, as Mr Gilpin said, that I was at that time in some distress. I remember, that afternoon, that my mind had been much upon my dear father, who had been unwell. I had been considering whether to return from Bath to be with him, because I had a strong intimation that he might be close to his end – an intimation, alas, which proved to be correct. It was with a mind full of such thoughts that I wandered, somewhat abstracted, around that shop. I do not even remember looking at the lace, but I suppose that, with my mind entirely elsewhere, as I passed by the table, I must have placed it in my bag. Perhaps, in my abstraction I imagined I was somewhere else, at home perhaps. For gentlemen.’ Her voice now rose. ‘How, under what influence, for what possible motive should I steal a piece of lace for which I had no need? Why should I, heiress to a great estate, devoted to my family and to preserving their good name, suddenly risk all for a crime I had no possible reason to commit?’

She took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Gentlemen, I have been offered the best lawyers to represent me, and I considered using them. They would, I have no doubt, have tried to throw doubt upon the motives, the veracity, the reliability of the good people who are my accusers. During the time before this trial I have been kept in the common gaol. I have lost my good name, my father, my aunt, even my family house. God has seen fit to take everything from me.’ She spoke with such feeling, now, that just for a moment she was unable to go on. ‘But this terrible passage of time has convinced me of one thing. I must come before you and speak nothing but the most simple truth. I throw myself entirely upon your wisdom and your mercy.’ She turned. ‘My Lord, I have nothing more to say.’

It did not take the jury long. Even the shopkeeper was ready to believe her. How did the jury find her?

‘Not guilty, My Lord.’

She was free. As she left the courtroom with her dear friends, however, Fanny felt no elation. Just outside the door, standing with a beadle, she saw the poor girl who was to be transported and paused a moment. ‘I’m sorry about what they did to you.’

‘I’m alive,’ the girl replied with a shrug. ‘Can’t be worse for me there than here.’

‘But your family …’

‘Glad to see the back of them. They never did nothing for me.’

‘I might have been joining you,’ Fanny said quietly.

‘You? A lady? Don’t make me laugh. They’d have let you off anyway.’

‘Don’t be impertinent,’ said Mr Gilpin, not unkindly.

But even so, Fanny still looked back to give the girl a pitying glance.

The marriage of Miss Fanny Albion and Mr Wyndham Martell took place later that spring. There had been some uncertainty about where the celebrations should be held, but the matter was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction when Mr Gilpin offered his vicarage, where Fanny had in any case been staying. Mr Totton, as her nearest relative, gave her away, Edward was best man and Louisa the senior bridesmaid. If the Tottons had sensed a faint coolness towards them on behalf of the bride and bridegroom, there was no sign of it upon the day, when everyone congratulated Louisa on how pretty she looked and gave it as their opinion that it could not be long before she, too, found a husband.

Three days before the wedding Fanny received one unexpected guest. He came to the door of the vicarage, bearing a gift and, although a little nervous, Fanny felt she could hardly refuse to receive him, which she did in the drawing room.

Mr Isaac Seagull was looking very spruce that day, in a smart blue coat, silk stockings and a perfectly starched cravat. With a slight bow and a curious smile, he handed her the present, which was a very fine silver salver. Fanny took it and thanked him, but could not help blushing a little, for she had not seen fit to invite him to the wedding.

Guessing her thoughts, the landlord of the Angel with his cynical, chinless face gave her a smile. ‘I shouldn’t have come to the wedding if you’d asked me,’ he said very easily.

‘Oh.’

She looked out of the window at the lawn, which was still somewhat untidy after the spring rains. ‘Mr Martell knows about our relationship.’

‘Maybe. But no need to speak of it, all the same. Nothing wrong with secrets,’ remarked the man who lived by them.

‘Mr Martell is not here at present. I’m sure he would be glad to shake your hand.’

‘Well,’ said the lander with a humour that Fanny missed, ‘I dare say I shall have the pleasure of shaking his hand one of these days.’

Then he left. And it was half an hour later that Mr Gilpin, with a wry smile, found a bottle of the very best brandy outside his back door.

‘They were all there, Mr Grockleton, did you see? The Morants and the Burrards and I don’t know who else out of Dorset.’ After her own wedding day – she had enough sense to say that – Mrs Grockleton declared it had been quite the happiest day she could remember. And nothing, nothing could compare with the moment when Fanny and Wyndham Martell, standing with her, had called to Sir Harry Burrard, who had come over smiling, and Fanny had said with such simple warmth: ‘Mrs Grockleton, I’m sure you know Sir Harry Burrard. Mrs Grockleton,’ she smiled, ‘is is our true friend.’ Which, although she scarcely knew it herself, was all that Mrs Grockleton had been waiting for someone to say all her life.

For everyone else, however, the most notable event of the day came when Mr Martell made his speech.

‘I know that many of you may be wondering,’ he declared, ‘if it is my intention to take the last Albion out of the Forest. I can assure you it is not. For while our interests must, of course, take us to Dorset and Kent, and London too, it is our intention to build a new house here, to replace Albion House.’ It was not to be on the old house’s wooded site, however, but upon a large open area just south of Oakley where he intended to lay out a park with views towards the sea. Plans for a fine classical mansion were already being drawn up. ‘And to make it clear that in our new order we have not forgotten the old,’ he cheerfully declared, ‘we have decided to call it Albion Park.’

1804

Everything was ready at Buckler’s Hard, that warm evening in July.

The last three days had been especially exciting. Over two hundred extra men had arrived from the naval dockyards at Portsmouth to help with the launching. Riggers, they were called. They were camped all around the shipyard.

The launching tomorrow would be one of the most impressive that the shipyard had ever undertaken. Two or three thousand people were coming to watch. The gentry would be there, and all sorts of great folk from London. For tomorrow they were going to launch
Swiftsure
.

It was only the third time in the yard’s history that they had built a great seventy-four-gun ship. Even
Agamemnon
had been only a sixty-four. At seventeen hundred and twenty-four tons, the ship towered over the dock. The Adamses were to be paid over thirty-five thousand pounds for building her.

Business had been brisk at Buckler’s Hard. At the age of ninety-one, old Henry Adams was still seen about the yard, but his two sons ran everything nowadays. In the last three years they had built three merchant coasters and a ketch; three sixteen-gun brigs, two thirty-six-gun frigates of which the second,
Euryalus
, had been built alongside
Swiftsure
, and the mighty seventy-four-gun herself. Another three brigs, twelve guns each, were already in production. Indeed, the yard was so loaded with work that the Adamses were often behind schedule and their profits were not all they should have been. But the completion of mighty
Swiftsure
was still a cause for celebration.

Puckle certainly meant to celebrate. He had been working on
Swiftsure
ever since the keel was laid.

They had been long years, the years of exile before that. He’d been busy enough. Isaac Seagull had dropped a discreet hint to old Mr Adams; Mr Adams had spoken to a friend at the shipbuilding yards at Deptford, on the Thames outside London. And a month or so after he had slipped away out to sea, Puckle the smuggler had been patriotically employed building ships for His Majesty’s Navy again.

The Navy had needed ships, as never before. Ever since his arrival in London, England had been at war, or close to it, with France. Out of the Revolution there had now emerged a formidable military man, Napoleon Bonaparte, a second Julius Caesar, who had made himself master of France and who, quite likely, meant to be master of the world as well. His revolutionary armies were sweeping all before them. In England, only the unbending minister, William Pitt, and the great oak ships of the British Navy stood, implacably, in his path.

They had been hard years. The war, bad harvests, French blockades had all hit Britain’s economy. The price of bread had risen sharply. There had been sporadic riots. Puckle, working hard in Deptford, had been well enough provided for; but although he could go upstream to the busy port of London, or wander up on to the high ridges and bosky woods of Kent, he missed the soft, peaty soil, the gravelly tracks, the oaks and heather of the Forest. He had longed to return. He had waited six years.