When Richard shuffled off at dawn on the 23rd of March, hands in manacles and everything chained to his waist, he wore his new suit, a very plain affair of black coat, black waistcoat and black breeches, with his new black shoes on his feet and clean padding on his wrists and ankles. But he was not wearing the wig; the feel of the thing was too horrible. Seven others went with him: Willy Insell, Betty Mason, Bess Parker, Jimmy Price, Joey Long, Bill Whiting and Sam Day, a seventeen-year-old from Dursley charged with stealing two pounds of yarn from a weaver.
They were ushered into the city hall through a back door and hustled down some stairs to the cellars without gaining a glimpse of the arena in which combat was verbal but death possible just the same.
“How long does it take?” Bess Parker whispered to Richard, eyes big with apprehension; she had lost her child of the gaol fever two days after he was born, and it was a grief to her.
“Not long, is my guess. The court will not sit for more than six hours in a day, if that, yet there are eight of us waiting to be tried. It must happen like a butcher turning out sausages.”
“Oh, I am so frightened!” cried Betty Mason, whose girl-child had been born dead. A grief to her.
Jimmy Price was taken away first, but had not returned when Bess Parker’s turn came; only after Betty Mason had gone did those remaining in the cell realize that once a prisoner’s hearing had concluded, the prisoner apparently went straight back to the gaol.
Sam Day was marched off, leaving Richard and Willy in the cell with Joey Long and Bill Whiting. Several hours went by.
“Dinner time for their lordships,” said the irrepressible Whiting. He licked his lips. “Roast goose, roast beef, roast mutton, flummeries and flans and flawns, pastries and puddens and pies—it looks well for us, Richard! Their lordships’ bellies will be full and their wits fuddled with claret and port.”
“I think that bodes ill,” said Richard, in no mood for jollity. “Their gout will play up, so will their guts.”
“What a Job’s comforter ye are!”
He and Willy were last of all, taken upstairs at half past three by the timepiece on the wall of the court room. The well from the bowels of the hall opened directly into the dock, where he and Willy stood (it had no seats) blinking at the brightness. A javelin man kept them company, his regalia medieval and his pose lethargic. Though the room was not enormous, it did have audience galleries on high; those on its floor all apparently had a role to play in the drama. The two justices sat on a tall dais clad in all the majesty of fur-trimmed crimson robes and full-bottomed wigs. Other court officials sat around and below them, while yet others moved about—which one was his counsel, Mr. James Hyde? Richard had no idea. The jury of twelve men stood in what looked a little like a sheepfold, easing their sore feet by surreptitiously stepping. Richard was aware of their plight, which figured large in every Free Man’s resentment of jury duty from the Tweed to the Channel: no sitting down on the job and no compensation for the loss of a day’s wages. Which encouraged the jury to get its business over and done with as quickly as the judge could say “Gallows!”
Mr. John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian was sitting in the company of a formidable-looking man clothed in the garb of a participant in the drama—robe, tie-back wig, buckles, badges. A different Ceely than any Richard had so far seen; this Ceely was soberly clad in the finest black cloth from head to foot, wore a conservative wig, black kid gloves and the mien of an amiable idiot. Of the mincing laughingstock or the brisk excise defrauder, no sign whatsoever. The Ceely who sat in Gloucester’s city hall was the quintessential dupe. Upon Richard’s entry into the dock he had emitted a shrill little squeak of terror and shrunk against his companion, after which he looked anywhere but in the direction of the dock. At law, Ceely himself was the prosecutor, but his counsel did the work, addressing the jury to tell it of the heinous crime the two felons in the dock had committed; Richard put his manacled hands on the railing, set his feet firmly on the ancient board floor, and listened as the prosecutor extolled the virtues—and idiocies—of this poor harmless person, Mr. Trevillian. There would be, he understood, no miracles in Gloucester today.
Ceely told his story amid sobs, gulps and long pauses to find words, rolling his eyes in his head, sometimes covering his face with his ungloved hands, agitated, trembling, twitching. At the end of it, the jury, impressed by his mental impoverishment and his material prosperity, clearly deemed him the victim of a lewd woman and her irate husband. Which in itself did not necessarily indicate that a deliberate felony had occurred, nor that the note of hand for £500, though extricated by force, was true extortion.
The job of establishing that fell to two witnesses, Joice the hairdresser’s wife, who listened through her wall, and Mr. Dangerfield in the other house, who saw through his wall. Mrs. Joice’s hearing was superlative, and Mr. Dangerfield was able to see a 360° world through a quarter-inch crack. One heard phrases like “Damned bitch! Where is your candle?” and “I will blow your brains out, you damned rascal!”, while the other saw Morgan and Insell threatening Ceely with a hammer and forcing him to write at a desk.
Mr. James Hyde, acting for Richard, turned out to be a tall, thin man who looked much like a raven. He cross-examined well, it seemed with the object of establishing that the three houses near Jacob’s Well contained a nest of gossips who had actually heard and seen extremely little and constructed their stories upon what Ceely had said to them in the lane afterward—followed by the Dangerfields’ sheltering him in their house with Mrs. Joice in attendance.
On one point Ceely could make little headway: the witnesses both testified that Richard had shouted through the door that Mr. Trevillian could have his watch back after Richard had obtained satisfaction. That sounded very much like a wronged husband, even to the jury.
It is ridiculous! thought Richard as the testimony went on and that trip to the Black Horse to fetch liquid refreshments was shifted to the following day. If Willy and I could speak for ourselves, we could establish easily that at the time we were both in the Lamb Inn courtyard. There is only one coach to Bath and it goes at noon and I was supposed to be in Bath, even Ceely says that. Yet they all say I was in Clifton!
During Mrs. Joice’s testimony it came out that she had overheard Richard and Annemarie plotting Annemarie’s assignation with Ceely in their hall—as if, thought Richard, anyone with criminal intent would choose to have such a conversation right next to a thin partition! But the very mention of the word “plot” caused both judge and jury to stiffen.
Mrs. Mary Meredith testified that she had seen the two men in the dock and a woman near Jacob’s Well as she was returning home about eight o’clock in the evening, and recounted hearing talk between them about a watch and Ceely’s having to go to law to get it back. Amazing! At eight o’clock at the end of September no one could have seen facial features farther away than a yard, as Mr. Hyde reminded Mrs. Meredith, much to her confusion.
A faint ray of hope began to suffuse Richard’s gloom; no matter how hard the prosecution tried, the jury still had not made up its mind whether what had happened was deliberate or the result of anger at being cuckolded.
Cousin James-the-druggist and Cousin James-of-the-clergy were called as character witnesses on Richard’s behalf; though the prosecutor made much of their close relationship to the accused, there could be no doubt that two such pillars of probity made a profound impression on the jury. The trouble was that this case, thanks to a defending counsel, was dragging out toward an hour in length, and the jurymen were dying to get off their feet. No one wanted a long case at the end of the day, including the judges.
Mr. James Hyde called Robert Jones as a character witness.
Richard jumped. Robert Jones testifying on his behalf? The smarmer who sucked up to William Thorne and had told Thorne of Willy’s visit to the Excise?
“Do you know the accused, Mr. Jones?” Mr. Hyde asked.
“Oh, aye, both of them.”
“Are they d
ecent, law-abiding men, Mr. Jones?”
“Oh, aye, very.”
“Have they, to your knowledge, ever run foul of the Law?”
“Oh, nay, never.”
“Are ye privy to any information—apart from the general gossip which seems rife there—about the events at Jacob’s Well on the thirtieth of September last?”
“Oh, aye, that I am, sir.”
“To what effect?”
“Eh?”
“What do you know, Mr. Jones?”
“Well, to start with, Mrs. Joice ain’t no missus. She is just a whore who moved in with Mr. Joice.”
“Mrs. Joice is not on trial, Mr. Jones. Confine yourself to the events.”
“I talked to her and to Mr. Dangerfield. Mr. Dangerfield took me to the place upstairs in his house where he saw through, but he said he could not hear nothing, and what he saw was mighty little. Mrs. Joice said she did not hear nor see a thing.”
The prosecuting attorney was frowning; Mr. Trevillian, the real prosecutor, sat looking as if this were all far too much for his sadly limited understanding.
The prosecutor’s attorney elected to cross-examine.
“When did this conversation with Mrs. Joice and Mr. Dangerfield occur, Mr. Jones? Please be explicit.”
“Eh?”
“Absolutely clear.”
“Oh, aye. Happened the next day when I went to see Willy—Mr. Insell the accused, that is—at Jacob’s Well. Heard the story from him and asked the neighbors what they had seen and heard. Mrs. Joice—who ain’t a missus!—said she did not hear or see nothing. Mr. Dangerfield showed me the place he saw from, but when I looked, I could not see nothing.”
Mrs. Joice was recalled, and explained that naturally she had denied seeing or hearing anything next door—she was not the sort of woman to encourage snoopers!
Mr. Dangerfield was recalled, and repeated that he had never said he could hear, only see.
“Call Mr. James Hyde!” said the prosecuting attorney loudly. Richard’s counsel jumped, looked startled. “Not you, my learned colleague. Mr. James Hyde, servant to Mr. Trevillian’s mother.”
This James Hyde was a small, sandy man in his fifties with the unobtrusive and faintly obsequious air of a senior house servant. He stated that Mr. Dangerfield had come to see him on the first of October and informed him that a Robert Jones had told him that for the sum of five guineas, he could prove that Morgan had plotted with his wife to rob Mr. Trevillian.
The jury stirred and muttered, Sir James Eyre the judge sat up straighter.
“A plot, Mr. Hyde?”
“Yes, sir, a plot.”
“Did it involve Mr. Insell too?”
“Mr. Dangerfield did not say it did. Morgan and Mrs. Morgan.”
Recalled, Mr. Dangerfield admitted that he had gone to Mrs. Maurice Trevillian’s house to see his friend Mr. James Hyde and told Hyde of Robert Jones’s offer.
On re-examination, Mr. Robert Jones said that all of this was true. He knew Mr. Dangerfield was friendly with the Trevillian household, and he was a bit short of money, so. . . .
“What of this plot between Morgan and his wife to rob Mr. Trevillian? Did it exist?” asked the prosecuting attorney.
“Oh, aye,” said Robert Jones cheerfully. “But Willy were not in on it, on my oath.”
“Ye’re on your oath, Mr. Jones.”
“Oh, aye, so I am!”
“How did ye know of this plot?”
“Mrs. Morgan told me.”
More stirs from the jury and judge.
“When?”
“At—oh, a bit after noon on the day it happened, when I came to see Willy the first time. Did not see him, ran into Mrs. Morgan instead. She said she were expecting Mr. Trevillian, but that he would have to come back later, after Morgan had gone to Bath. She were real pleased, said when Mr. Trevillian did come, Morgan would pounce on him for having a bit of slap-and-tickle with her—you know, the sort of thing husbands do when they find out they are wearing horns. She said her husband thought they would get five hundred pounds out of the silly clunch, he were so simple.”
Sir James Eyre looked in the direction of the dock. “Morgan, what have you to say about this plot with your wife?”
“There was no plot, your lordship. I am innocent,” Richard said strongly. “There was no plot.”
His lordship pulled the corners of his mouth down. “Where is Mrs. Morgan?” he demanded of, it seemed, anyone in the court room. “She ought to be in the dock with her husband, so much is clear.” He shot a fierce look at Richard. “Where is your wife, Morgan?”
“I do not know, your lordship. I have never seen her from that day to this,” Richard answered steadily.
The prosecuting attorney made much of the plot and little of the absence of the co-conspirator, Mrs. Morgan. And when Sir James Eyre directed the jury, he too made much of the plot.
The twelve good men and true looked at each other in enormous relief. In less than a minute they could go home. It had been a very long, hard day; Gloucester’s Free Men were nowhere near enough to staff separate juries for each accused. There was no deliberation. Richard Morgan was found not guilty of stealing a watch, but guilty of grand larceny in the matter of extortion. William Insell was found not guilty on all counts.
Sir James Eyre turned his gaze to the dock, wherein Willy had sunk to his knees, weeping, and the shorn Richard Morgan—what a villain!—stood staring at something a great deal farther off than Gloucester’s city hall.
“Richard Morgan, I hereby sentence ye to seven years’ transportation to Africa. William Insell, ye may go free.” He banged his gavel to wake Sir George Nares up. “The court will come together again at ten of the clock tomorrow morning. God save the King.”
“God save the King,” everybody echoed dutifully.
The javelin man prodded the prisoners; Richard turned to descend into the dock well without bothering to look in Mr. John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian’s direction. Ceely had passed from his life as all things passed. The Ceelys did not matter.
And by the time he had plodded halfway back to Gloucester Gaol Richard found himself truly happy; he had just realized that very shortly he would be rid of Weeping Willy.
The sun was nudging the western horizon when Richard and Willy—still weeping, presumably from joy—passed through the castle gate under escort by two gaolers. Here Richard was detained, Willy sent onward. Is this the beginning of the difference between a man awaiting trial and a convicted felon? His gaoler indicated the head gaoler’s house; Richard moved off as passively as he did everything under an official eye. After three months he knew all the gaolers, good, bad and indifferent, though he avoided striking up any sort of acquaintance with them and never called any by his name.
He was ushered into a comfortable-looking room furnished as a place for social congress. It contained three people: Mr. James Hyde the attorney and the Cousins James. Both the Cousins James were in tears and Mr. Hyde looked mournful. In fact, thought Richard as the door was closed behind him with his escort on its far side, they look worse than I feel. This has come as no surprise, I knew it would happen thus in my bones. Justice is blind, but not in the romantic sense they taught us at Colston’s. It is blind to individuals and human motives; its dispensers believe the obvious and are incapable of subtleties. All of that witness testimony from the Jacob’s Well people had its roots in gossip; Ceely merely entered the gossip chain and contributed the right mite. Robert Jones he paid—well, he paid all of them, but save for Jones he was able to disguise his payments as thoughtful gifts to folk who know him and his family and its servants. Oh, they understood! But on oath they could deny had anybody asked. Jones he bought outright. Or else Annemarie fed Jones the story of the plot. In which case she belonged to Ceely body and soul, was involved in the conspiracy from its beginning. If that is so, then she lay in wait for me and all of it was a fabulous lie. I have been convicted on the testimony of a witness who did not appear: Annemarie Latour. And
the judge, having asked me where she was, did not follow through.
His silence after he entered the room enabled the Cousins James to mop their eyes and compose themselves. Mr. James Hyde took the time to examine Richard Morgan at closer quarters than the court room had allowed. A striking fellow, big and tall—a pity he had not worn a wig, it would have transformed him. The case had hinged upon whether the accused was a decent man insulted beyond bearing at finding his wife in bed with another man, or whether the accused had, so to speak, cashed in on the opportunity his wife’s infidelity had offered. Of course he knew from the Cousins James that the woman was not his client’s wife, but had not made capital of it because, were she known as a mere whore, the case would have been blacker. It was the unveiling of a plot had done for Richard Morgan; judges were notoriously prejudiced against accused felons who committed their crimes with cold-blooded forethought. And juries found as the judge instructed them to find.
Cousin James-the-druggist broke the long silence, handkerchief tucked away. “We have bought this room and all the time we want with you,” he said. “Richard, I am so sorry! It was a complete fabrication—every one of those people, however menial, was a part of Ceely’s circle.”
“What I want to know,” said Richard, sitting down, “is why Mr. Benjamin Fisher of the Excise did not appear for me as a character witness? Had he, things might have gone very differently.”
The Reverend James’s mouth compressed to a thin line. “He was too busy, he said, to make a journey of eighty miles. The truth is that he is busy concluding a deal with Thomas Cave, and cares not about the fate of his chief witness.”
“However,” said Mr. Hyde, who looked far less imposing out of his attorney’s gear, “ye may be sure, Mr. Morgan, that when I write your letter of appeal to Lord Sydney, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs, I will have a letter from Mr. Fisher attached. But not Benjamin. His brother John, the Commander.”