The Willows in Winter (28 page)

“Clerk, help the prisoner to the chair,” said
the most severe-looking of them all, who sat in the centre, and was the High
Judge.

Toad’s gaolers had fallen away, to be replaced
by a bent and aged man who
gesticulated
Toad forward
with impatience, but not towards some dock or lectern where Toad might have
found some physical support, and some cover behind which to hide his shaking
form. Instead, his footfalls, chains and manacles all echoing out his obvious
guilt, Toad was pushed towards something more fearsome by far than any dock,
even the infamous dock of Court No 1, Old Bailey.

It was a chair, huge and hard — so huge indeed
that the Clerk produced from somewhere a small wooden
step,
that
Toad might clamber up and be seated in a seat far too big for him.
A seat so immense that his back was not quite supported, nor his knees quite
far enough forward to go comfortably over its front edge, and so high that his
legs and feet dangled down but could not reach the floor. The chair had immense
wooden arms upon which, securely fastened with great hammered bolts,
were
metal restraints which had the general demeanour and
character of thumb-screws. The Clerk raised Toad’s unresisting arms to these
and fastened him so that he could not, had the thought come to him and he been
tempted to turn it into action, make a run for it.

“Is the prisoner comfortable?” asked the High
Judge.

“As much as he’s likely to be,” said the Clerk.

“Are you?” asked the High Judge.

“Yes,” said Toad hoarsely, faintly hoping that
if he was polite and agreeable his punishment might be a little swifter, and a
little less harsh.

“We know each other, do we not?” said the
Judge. Toad squinted through the dusty beams of light and saw that they did
indeed: this was the Judge who had been at His Lordship’s House when Toad was
there; the same
Judge
who had once, as a mere Chairman
of Magistrates, sentenced him so severely for a trifling offence. Toad’s head
swam with despair as he saw he could expect no mercy here.

“Do we not?” pressed the Judge.

“We do,” whispered Toad forlornly.

“You are then Mr Toad, of Toad Hall?” the Judge
said with resignation.

“Yes,” bleated Toad, for it was no use lying.

“The infamous Toad of Toad Hall?”

“I suppose so,” said Toad.

“Not a good beginning,” said a different Judge,
“not good at all. He only supposes so!”

“I am then,” said Toad very, very politely “
Hmmmm
,” said the Judge and, with the others, fell into a
silence which deepened by the second and quite robbed Toad of any hope.

But then he dared have a thought.

“Sirs, Your Honours, Your High Lordships,” he
cried, “is there a lawyer who might represent me?”

There were seven sharp intakes of breath, and
seven more sighs of disappointment, and a sevenfold pursing of lips.

But worse was to follow: finally, one by one,
they smiled, ghastly smiles as it seemed to Toad, like fiends offering poisoned
crumpets and butter to a teatime guest, and one of them said, “Toad of Toad
Hall, why should you need a lawyer when you have us?”

This was followed by another long silence,
which itself was followed by a dry interrogative noise: “Eh?”

“Am I to answer?” faltered Toad.

“You are, and much may depend on your answering
correctly! Why should you —”I don’t need a lawyer, or counsel, or help at all!”
cried Toad. “I am happy, very happy, with you all.”

“Let that be noted!” said a sharp voice. “The
prisoner thereby expunges, exterminates, obliterates, and dismisses by his own
admission all his rights, privileges, prerogatives, powers and perquisites to
be represented here by another or himself and agrees forthwith to be
interrogated, assessed, tried, considered, examined and judged without
recourse, help, respite or care by us in the sole, exclusive, inalienable,
immediate and eternal duty vested in us by their Lordships, the Bishops, all
five of the Police Commissioners themselves answerable, though that is now too
late and beyond possibility, to the Monarch himself and all his heirs and issue
for ever more.
Eh, Mr Toad?”

“Yes,” said Toad who understood nothing but
that all hope was now gone forever.

“The prisoner agrees!”

At this, and rather to Toad’s surprise, the
seven Judges rose to their feet to shake hands and congratulate each other
before resuming their seats once more and their general sombre demeanour.

“Bring forth the List of Charges, Clerk!”

The list, which was so lengthy that it had been
bound between leather covers and had various markers in it for ease of
reference, was brought past Toad from somewhere behind him, and placed upon
the table.

One of the seven Judges — Toad could never be
quite sure which was to speak, or which had spoken — opened the book and pored
over it before reading, “Toad of Toad Hall, whereas it is known that you did on
the eighteenth day of—”

The horrid words charged towards Toad like so
many wild horses and overwhelmed him, and trampled him where he sat, so that
his head was dizzy and he saw stars before his eyes. On and on they went till,
like grey light at the end of a long, dark night, he heard this: “Therefore,
Toad of Toad Hall, you are here charged as miscreant, felon, and common
criminal with —”

The horses came galloping back again and
charged him down once more, so that, breathless and beaten, Toad could only
whisper his reply, when finally asked, “How do you plead?”

“Guilty, My Lords.”

“To all one hundred and sixteen charges
— ?
” began another of the Judges.

Toad gulped.

“— including the attempted abduction of the
said sweep’s wife, and her five children,” continued a third Judge, “and the
damage, extensive and absolute, to property internal and external of His
Lordship the —”

“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Toad, unable to sustain
the awfulness of sitting in so terrible a place.

“Not to mention, though we must and should, the
theft in the second and third degrees, and attempted manslaughter in the fourth
degree —”

“It was all me,” said the abject Toad, “all me.

“It is a pity,” said yet another Judge, “that
you have shown no remorse or shame for what you have done, for we have some
power to mitigate. Some small token of regret, and pity for your victims, or a
sign that you could learn from your mistakes —”

“I do feel shame,” cried Toad, “I do feel
regret, and not only for those victims you have mentioned, but for others too. O,
I do!”

“Others?” whispered the High Judge in the
centre. “Did you mention others? Are they not all listed?”

“O no,” said Toad, weeping real tears of
contrition (and hoping that the sight of them might ameliorate a little the
sentence that was soon surely to be passed), “for I also let down Mole, and I
may have been the cause of Rat’s death.”

This unexpected confession produced a sudden
silence, but of rather a different temper than those that had gone before. It
was a silence of puzzlement, even of dismay.

“Mole?
Rat?
Who
may they be, pray?”

“Friends of mine,” wailed Toad. “O, I did not
mean to leave Mole to die,” wailed Toad, “or to have Rat fall out of the flying
machine, but you see there was something so magnificent about it all that I
got carried away for a moment and so without knowing what I was doing, and
quite without any premeditation or forethought, I —”

His confession came tumbling forth and went on
a very long time, yet they heard him out and when he had finally finished they
sat once more, staring at him in silence.

“Clerk, bring forth the evidence that we may
re-examine it for inaccuracy, and a tendency towards undue leniency,” said one
of the Judges, “or find some support for these claims the prisoner has now
made.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried all the others, falling
into jovial and cheerful chatter among
themselves
while they waited for the evidence to be brought. The evidence —all twenty-one
quarto volumes of it, close printed, and each leather-bound like the List of
Charges — eventually arrived, pushed in by the Clerk’s Assistant and neatly
stacked upon a silver trolley, as if it was roast beef all cooked and ready to
be carved up in the private restaurant of the Royal Courts of Justice.

The re-examination of this material took some
considerable time, during which Toad wilted yet further, the only relief being
that the shaft of light that had been upon him at the beginning shifted
somewhat to his right side.

“No mention of the Water Rat here,” said the
High Judge with a terrible sigh, “nor any of the Mole either, it would seem.
Nor of the flying machine you make claim to have flown.”

The High Judge looked up at Toad and frowning
the deepest and most thorough frown yet said, “This is grave, Mr Toad, grave
indeed. To the one hundred and sixteen charges already brought and officially
listed must forthwith be added eighteen more of false claim, of impersonation,
of subjugation of mechanical property, namely a flying machine, of—”

There was something about this mention of the
flying machine — his flying machine, his beautiful bright red and glorious
flying machine — that stirred in Toad’s
breast
some
last faint spark of rebellion.
For if he had understood
aright, they were daring to suggest —”But —” he began in protest.

“But?” thundered the Judge.

Toad blinked and struggled to raise himself a
shade from the semi-supine posture into which his chains and restraints,
combined with fatigue physical and emotional, had forced him.

“I wanted to say —”

“He wants to say something voluntary and gratuitous!”
cried the Judges in concert.

Toad looked at them and continued, quietly it
is true, yet with a growing resolve and spirit which would not now be stopped.

“— to say,” he continued, “that it was
my
flying
machine, and I
did
fly it, and I’m sorry if it careered about the Town
somewhat and disturbed people, but —“

But Toad could say no more, for he had no more
strength, no more hope. Two great tears coursed down his cheeks. They could
take his liberty, his life even, but they could not, should not, take away his
memories of that great and glorious flight, a memory that was all he had to
sustain him in the hard times to come — whether through the long years of
incarceration, if that were to be his fate, or in those final moments when they
took him down that cold passageway that led to his last moment in the sun, and
the hangman’s noose.

But then, when he had done, there came into the
dusty and disbelieving silence that followed his final faltering claim (or
denial as no doubt they saw it) a new sound: the Clerk coughed.

“Ahem!” he went.

Then “Ahem!” again.

But if this was meant to draw the attention of
the Judges to some point of procedure they had overlooked, it failed, for with
a suddenness that took even the now passive and resigned Toad by surprise, and
caused him to start up, the High Judge declaimed the following: “The prisoner
having been examined, considered and found utterly wanting on all counts and
probably several more, the verdict will now be given, and the sentence served
and the consequential punishment (for we may reasonably pre-empt matters by assuming
on the strength of the evidence and the prisoner’s paltry submissions that
guilty it will be) brought forward to the earliest opportunity, unless there be
any here who —”