The Reckoning (74 page)

‘
That she had a right to be alone if she wanted to.’

‘
Why do you think he said that?’

Polly's eyes strayed for the first time towards Harvey. 'He
is a kind man. He hates to see anyone bullied, or forced to do
things they don't want to do.'

‘Thank you, Miss Haworth.’

A little later, Sir Samuel rose to his feet again. 'Miss Haworth, you say that Lord Harvey hates to see anyone
bullied. Why is that? Was he, perhaps, himself the victim of
bullying?'

‘Oh – yes – I believe so. His father and his brother –'

‘
Yes, Miss Haworth? What did his father and his brother
make him do?’

Polly had seen too late where these faltering footsteps led
her. 'Nothing. I don't know.'

‘
Were you perhaps going to remind us that his father and brother forced him to marry against his will; to marry a suit
able wife instead of the woman he loved – you, Miss
Haworth?’

Sir Rigby and Lord Eldon objected to this very improper
question almost simultaneously; but Miss Haworth would not
have been able to answer in any case, for she was plainly close
to collapse. The trial was adjourned for the second day.

*

Some of the third day's witnesses were very damaging. There
was the waiter from the Crown Inn who testified that Lord
Harvey had insisted on their being left alone to serve them
selves, and the chambermaid who told how Polly Haworth
had been taken ill very suddenly and then lost consciousness
‘as though she'd been poll-axed'. There was the tap-room
attendant who had seen Harvey Sale hurrying out of the inn
immediately afterwards 'looking as grim as Old Harry'. There
was the apothecary from Wendover who testified, apologeti
cally, that he had sold Lord Harvey Sale a powerful sleeping-
draught 'some time in early August'.

And then there was a witness Rosamund hadn't expected,
whose testimony came as an unpleasant shock. It was the
ostler from a job-stables in Aylesbury, who swore that a man
who looked just like the prisoner had hurried in to hire a
riding-horse some time that afternoon, given his name as Mr Freeman – the name traditionally used by gentlemen wishing
to be incognito – and since he was unknown at the stables,
left a valuable gold fob-watch as surety against the return of
the horse.

Sir Rigby rose each time to take the sting out of the evid
ence. The waiter was brought to admit that ladies and
gentlemen dining in private parlours very often did want to
be left alone together. The chambermaid acknowledged that
Miss Haworth's breath was vinous, and that she might simply
have taken too much to drink. The tap-room attendant's
evidence was passed over as being of no possible importance.
The apothecary, less apologetically, agreed that Lord Harvey
was a gentleman of nervous, highly-strung disposition, and
that he had made up sleeping-draughts for him on many
other occasions, though not as strong as the last one.

The ostler, unfortunately, was a stubborn old man, and
continued to assert that Mr Freeman and the prisoner were as
like as two peas, and that if they weren't one and the same
they must be twins. 0' course it was the day of the Fair
the stranger came in – he couldn't mistake that, now could
he? As to the time, he couldn't exactly swear to it, but it was
in the afternoon. He'd been left alone in the stables because
all the younger men had gone off to the Fair, and left him to
do all the work, which was just like them. The horse? Well,
when it came back, it was sweating, like as if it had been
ridden hard. No, not foundered, he wouldn't go so far as to
say that, but tired-like. The stranger had paid him in silver,
claimed his watch and gone away. He hadn't said nothing in a special way, not that he could remember. No, he'd never seen
Lord Harvey before, but he'd heard of him all right – master
of Stainton Manor, but wasn't hardly never there.

So the case for the Crown was brought to a close, and the
House rose at the end of the third day.

At home that evening Marcus visited Rosamund in her
bedroom.

‘
It's looking bad, isn't it?' she asked him in a small voice.
‘That ostler –?'

‘
He's just a foolish, doddery old man looking for notoriety,'
Marcus said comfortingly. 'I thought Sir Rigby brought that
out famously.'

‘
All the same, Fielding didn't manage to make him change
his mind, did he?'

‘
Don't worry, he'll demolish the whole shaky edifice
tomorrow, you'll see. After all, what is the evidence? It
doesn't amount to a handful of peas.' He looked at her
searchingly. 'Darling, you aren't beginning to believe it, are
you?'

‘
Of course not,' Rosamund said, unaware that she was
frowning. 'But what
was
Harvey doing all that time, while
Polly was asleep?'

‘
Looking round the fair, of course,' Marcus said, and
decided to try shock tactics. ‘Do you really imagine he hired a
horse, rode back to Stainton, ran upstairs to the nursery,
opened the window and pushed your sister out, and then rode
back to Aylesbury as though nothing had happened?’

Rosamund paled as the images paraded before her imagi
nation. 'Don't,' she whispered. 'Don't. It's too horrible.'

‘
Yes, exactly — it's too horrible. He would never have done
such a thing, and you know it. What's more, the lords know
it. They won't convict him on that sort of evidence.'

‘
Of course not. You're right,' said Rosamund, and then,
surprising herself as much as Marcus, she burst into tears.

Marcus gathered her into his arms and held her, glad that
she was crying at last; believing, as people do, that crying was somehow a good sign, and would make things better.

 
Sir Rigby Fielding ended his closing speech in storming style.

‘
My lords, I do not say that the case for the Crown is not good enough — I say that it is no case at all. What does the
evidence amount to? An old man claims that a stranger hired
a horse from him. He believes the stranger was Lord Harvey
Sale. This, his lordship denies absolutely. Which of them will
you believe, my lords? The gentleman or the ostler?’

There was a ripple of laughter from the gallery. Sir Rigby
paid it no heed, looking around the assembled peers with slow confidence.

‘
And will you, on this flimsiest of notions — the hiring of a
horse by an unknown stranger — believe that the most
honourable lord who stands before you now, bearing for all to
see the outward signs of his tragic bereavement, did in such a
cowardly and horrible way murder his grieving wife? No! I do not believe it is possible for any of you to stretch his credulity
thus far.

‘
I said at the beginning that this case should never have been brought, and I am still of the same mind. But since it
has been laid before you in all its inadequacy, and you have
been obliged to consider it, there remains only for each of you
in turn to stand, and lay his hand over his heart, and cry in a
ringing tone, "Not guilty, upon mine honour!".’

The gallery burst into spontaneous applause which it took
the Sergeant-at-Arms some time to quell. The Lord High
Steward then summed up briefly, seeming to be tired of the
whole thing — he was suffering from a particularly tiresome
cold in the head — and the noble lords filed out as they had
come in, two by two, to make their deliberations.

Marcus glanced up at Rosamund as he passed beneath her,
and nodded slightly, and she smiled at him more buoyantly
than on the previous days. It was easier to be confident today,
since she was relieved of the presence of Lady Barbara, who
had stayed at home pleading the headache.

Lady Tonbridge, who was occupying the seat next to Rosa
mund, leaned over and said, 'There, my dear, it's all over.
Wasn't Sir Rigby splendid? Penrith will be free again within
the hour, I warrant you.'

‘
Yes, ma'am, I'm sure of it,' Rosamund replied with auto
matic politeness. And yet, was she? She felt as though she
would never be sure of anything again. Reality had been
shewn to be so fragile, so easily mistaken, so easily disguised;
and when you lifted the lid of anyone's life, did not the box
contain as many troubles as Pandora's, all hidden from you before? For the five years of Minnie's marriage, Rosamund
had had no idea of what had been going on between Polly and
Harvey, and nor, it seemed, had anyone else. How was it
possible, then, to be certain of anything in this case? She
could not feel certain that the lords would acquit Harvey; and if they did not, he would hang, and what, then, would become
of the rest of them?
The time seemed very long, and very full of doubtful and unhappy thoughts, before the lords returned to their places,
and the Lord High Steward assumed his hat to address them.

‘
My lords, the question before your lordships is this: is the
prisoner guilty of the felony whereof he stands accused, or not
guilty? How say your lordships?’

The first lord stood up, turned to face the Lord High
Steward, placed his right hand on his breast, and into the
palpitating silence spoke the words: 'Not guilty, upon mine
honour!’

A long sigh rustled round the gallery, a collective exhala
tion of relief. The first lord sat, the second rose, and so it went
on, as one by one, in their appointed order, the lords stood to give their individual judgement, made upon their honour and
not upon their oath: not guilty, not guilty, not guilty ...

*

The Hussars made an avenue through the surging tides of the
crowd between the door of the King's Robing Room and the
Chelmsford carriage, where Rosamund sat with the window
up, waiting for her husband and her brother-in-law. Along
this avenue at last Marcus came hurrying arm in arm with
the Most Honourable the Marquess of Penrith, a free man at
last, looking pale from his long confinement, and bewildered,
but managing to smile a little to either side in response to the cheers of the crowd. Amongst the people, at least, Rosamund
thought, it was a popular acquittal. They liked him because
he was handsome.

The two men climbed into the carriage, the step was put up
and the door closed firmly, and with four Hussars in front to
clear a way and four behind to keep it open, the carriage
moved off towards Pall Mall.