Poor Cissy.
I recalled Mr Farquharson was a tall man, but was surprised nonetheless by the breadth of his shoulders and a girth solid with the consciousness of power rather than over-easy living. From the dock he loomed over the court. He was unmoving and watchful, the cut of his coat perfection and fresh-brushed as though his valet stood just without the door (perhaps he does), his waistcoat a medley of greys and an embroidered intertwining of leaves whose every detail spoke of wealth and the hours spent by his tailor’s apprentices on his behalf.
Poor Cissy.
When last I had seen this man, he had been in supreme command of himself, his polished mansion, and of the great crowd of folk who came to fawn and pay him court. What stirred now in his brain? Was there shame, or apprehension at the slide of all his expectation?
I had wondered in like fashion this morning to Sobriety. ‘There are folk who cannot see fault in their own actions,’ she had said. ‘They lay blame anywhere but at home for what befalls them.’
Mr Farquharson now surveyed the humming room with an air of cold anger.
Safe behind my veil, I regarded him and how he stood tall still, and surveyed all, as if, despite everything, he were the powerful one and entitled, absolutely, to that power. He had met Mr Hadley once, he told me that day in Mr Hadley’s drawing room. It must have been a meeting of like to like, their handclasp joining two souls of similar intent, who likewise cleaved to control as their machine for living life. They stood eye to eye and saw this in each other.
The murmuring began again to rise in pitch as individuals around the court discussed the wealthy gentleman caught out in bigamy. Two heads in front of me leaned bonnets into each other, nodding and agitating, although I could not hear what was said. Mr Farquharson’s marriages were clearly the cause of a vast interest. I supposed that such a crowd was not usual in the courtroom, particularly at a committal.
‘Silence!’ came of a sudden from the court officer, who this time struck his stick with a force upon the floor that caused both Sobriety and me to jump. There was a gasp behind us, something rattled to the boards, and the crowd grew quiet. At last, the gas could be heard once again to hiss.
‘Be upstanding for His Honour!’ The voice was overloud now in the newly quiet chamber, and its owner glared at the gallery as all struggled to their feet and filled the ancient space with creaking, shuffling and the clearing of throats. The magistrate entered and clambered to his seat. I recognized the Lord Mayor, for I had shared a table with him on more than one occasion of formal dining at the house of some acquaintance of Mr Hadley’s. I wondered if he would also preside as judge at the trial proper. It was not unheard of, I understood. His Worship had, that evening, bent close over his soup in much the same way that he now bent over his counter, or desk, and the gavel that lay before him. Oddly, I recalled the few white hairs that sprang in haphazard style from his freckled, balding head. The wig, I surmised, must scratch.
The crowd subsided, creaking and shuffling once more, back into its seats.
The first to speak as witness was Inspector Broadford, which he did in a manner to assure those present of his authority, even though he was not tall. He stood erect, but was neither stiff nor self-
conscious, so that an idea of that authority settled about his person. I sensed the slight turn of Sobriety’s veiled head, and a tilt of Sobriety’s shoulders, with the attention she was giving him. He gave his answers in a firm voice so that there could be no doubt about it, and Mr Farquharson’s lawyer seemed to me, indeed, uninterested in placing any doubt there.
I became aware—as this lawyer paused and bent to touch a paper on top of the pile at his desk, so that he could read something there—of sensations in contradiction to each other. Once again I felt both visitor to and a partaker in proceedings. I was a stranger and yet so deeply involved, while nothing was familiar. I have never been in such a place, it occurred to me, regarding the spread of my skirt pressed up against my noisome neighbour, who twitched once more and suddenly shifted his leg. Yet it is as if the inspector were a friend whom one wants to do well.
My other neighbour, Sobriety, sat very still. Though she, too, was veiled, I knew that Sobriety’s gaze was direct upon Mr Broadford, and Mr Broadford, somehow alert to Sobriety’s concentration, looked up for a moment at the small woman hidden behind dark gauze.
Look there. He is a determined man.
Mr Broadford’s time as witness did not last long, for he was only paving the way for Cissy, the true link between London’s Mr Farquharson and Manchester’s Mr Forster. The murmuring began again as the inspector stood down and then Cissy entered by the witness door—ashen, clumsy as she crossed the floor, looking about herself as she came. She nearly halted in so doing, bewildered for the moment as to where to go next until the prosecutor touched her elbow and directed her to the witness stand.
She cannot see us here.
I thought to lift my veil, just for now, so that the girl could see that she was not alone, and Sobriety did the same. Cissy, upon climbing to the stand where she stood very nearly engulfed by it, looked about and saw us, replied to our smiles with a small one of her own, breathing out—it was evident—in some relief.
The officer’s stick thudded and everyone jumped once more. It was then that Cissy raised her eyes and beheld Mr Farquharson immediately ahead of and above her, for he was such a large man, and the eyes in his impassive face directed so pointedly at her. What had been left of colour in her face now faded utterly, and she stared at him as if she had no will to do otherwise.
I recalled that Cissy was often hard to find when Mr Hadley was at home, perhaps for fear of him, too.
‘Miss Cissy Smithson?’ said the prosecutor.
Cissy did not appear to hear. She stared at the man in the dock as if he might strike her, like a snake, should she look away.
‘Miss Smithson?’
She turned her head and gazed at the prosecutor, with dark eyes in their bloodless background, pale and fragile as bleached muslin, in what I knew to be a desperate concentration to block out Mr
Farquharson’s concerted glare. The little maid barely blinked.
Chapter Thirty
Your name is Cissy Smithson?’ the prosecutor asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What, what? The child is whispering! Speak up, girl!’ The magistrate, leaning forward and held his hand to his ear.
‘Yes, sir! My name is Cissy Smithson!’ Cissy nearly shouted at the start of her response, then faltered and faded and bowed her head, now turning red as a new brick. Some folk in the gallery tittered, and the officer bellowed: ‘Silence!’
But the prosecutor put into his voice a fatherly purr and a brief chuckle, such that all would recognize a kindly patriarch in him. Several members of the gallery smirked and nodded, raised their eyebrows at each other. I glanced around. Such theatre. Everything is theatre.
‘Thank you, Cissy. No, there is no cause for nervousness. We are here only to find the truth.’
Cissy nodded, and kept her eyes on the prosecutor as he bade her tell her story, of how she recognized Mr Farquharson as Mr Forster the grocer (who had served her mother for many years in his Manchester shop), when he had called upon her mistress after the rescue of the baby.
Several heads began to turn in search of any other person from Cissy’s household, and we twitched our veils back over our faces. Each of us felt the turn of her neighbour’s head. Beside me the portly man breathed so that a waft of old smoked fish and of even older rot stirred the gauze of my veil. Some others also guessed that these two women were the rescuers of the Farquharson child, nudged each other and pointed, but turned their heads back to the court after only a few moments, with a stirring of musty clothes and a creak of old timber.
Cissy calmed after a little while of sympathetic questioning, but then it was the turn of Mr Farquharson’s lawyer. He ha
d been making notes all the time that she was speaking, and came up to the witness stand with his papers clutched in his hand. He stood gazing at the papers for some moments before he looked up at Cissy and smiled a long, vulpine smile. He had colourless eyes beneath black brows, and whiskers rich in greys and whites, and he clearly knew well how arresting was the overall effect. He pushed back the folds of his black gown with his unoccupied hand and, with a smile once more at the maid in the witness stand, made to consult the silver watch that hung on a chain from his waistcoat. There was a cough from the gallery that ceased, and the unending hiss from the lights. Cissy’s fingers gripped the edge of the stand.
‘Miss Cissy Smithson,’ the lawyer said after what seemed to have been a very long time. He paused so that the sibilant phrase itself seemed loaded with insult, perhaps to imply the absolute unreliability of the name’s bearer.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘My learned colleague would have us believe that you are a devastating witness against Mr Farquharson’s good name. Yet is it not so that it was not you, in fact, who first told the fantastic tale that Mr Farquharson, respectable merchant of the City of London, is Mr Forster, grocer of Manchester?’
Cissy looked at him a moment, her eyebrows pulling together.
Earnest child, she is worried that his meaning eludes her.
‘But, sir. It was me, sir.’
‘I put it to you that it was not you, but a Mrs Staynes, housekeeper, who first told the tale, purportedly on your behalf.’
‘But I first told it to Mrs Staynes, sir, and Miss Mullins, sir, and then it was Miss Mullins told the mistress, and wrote it to the inspector for me, and then he came and said I must tell him—’
Poor Cissy. A truthful girl, so anxious to be believed. Of a sudden, I was wrung with fondness for my littlest maid.
‘Hah!’ the prosecutor said. He stepped back to gaze around the court, until lunging—it seemed to me—once more toward where Cissy sat. ‘I put it to you that you meant to spread this tale, but to make it seem true what was needed was intercession. Yes, Miss Smithson?’
‘Sir,’ Cissy voice was husky and she wiped quickly at her eyes. Her voice rose until it was a plaint. ‘What was needed, sir? I cannot understand your question, sir. I cannot answer it.’
The magistrate leaned over toward the girl. His chin very nearly touched the edge of his table.
‘Intercession, my girl. It means that someone spoke for you.’
‘Oh. Thank you, sir. Your Honour.’ Cissy looked back to the lawyer, and opened her mouth, yet no sound came from it and it was evident that she had forgotten the rest of the question. The lawyer raised his voice, and Cissy shrank back into her seat.
‘I put it to you, Cissy, that someone had to speak for you because you knew it to be a tale—’
Cissy’s mouth fell open. Poor child! I was swept over with the desire to rise to my feet and call out ‘Desist!’ even though I knew I could not. Indeed, the notion of actually doing so then made my cheeks hot.
‘No, sir, no!’ Cissy’s voice had found a loudness to go with her most obvious indignation. ‘I asked Mrs Staynes and Miss Sobriety to speak for me because…because…’ Her voice lowered now to a whisper.
The magistrate made a sound like ‘tcha!’ and leaned toward Cissy once again.
‘Child, you must speak up.’
We both also leaned forward, a little.
‘Yes, sir. Your Honour. I asked them to speak for me because I was most frightened to speak in front of the gentleman, sir, because I am a frightened girl, sir, and most shy…’
The gallery and all in the courtroom had been silent, holding its breath with this interchange, but now all sat back from the edge of their seats where they had crept. There was a burst of laughter, for there could never have been a clearer picture, surely, of an honest girl made tongue-tied by having to speak to strangers. Cissy added to this impression by gaping about the courtroom. The skin on her forehead crumpled and her face was now patched in white and raw pink.
The lawyer, speaking over the titter and rumble from the gallery, did make claims that no proofs could be believed of any alias of Mr Farquharson’s, because Cissy must have made it up, but the continuing murmuring and stirring plainly showed that his attempt was in vain.
The gavel sounded several times, the Lord Mayor calling out ‘Silence!’ with no result until the court officer stepped forth with his stick and his bellow. Even then, he had to shout his order several times. The crowd, it seemed, was exercising itself after having held its breath, and surged back and forth, side to side, tilting heads and raising laughter. Sobriety and I were jostled from one side and the other.
At last, the crowd chose to obey the officers of the court, and there were no more than a few whispers and a little giggling when the Lord Mayor permitted Cissy to step down from the witness stand. She nearly ran to the witness door in her haste, her cheeks suffused and hot, glancing up to where we two veiled women bent our heads in acknowledgment of her and discreetly twitched our handkerchiefs in encouragement.
Sobriety touched my gloved hand. I turned my head in surprise. With the slightest of gestures, so as not to be noticed by another soul in the crowded court, Sobriety pointed with her own gloved finger to where, standing straight and raised above the sea of people in his prisoner’s dock, Mr Farquharson had his eyes directed at one spot.
His face was sunk into a look that spoke—with an intellectual force concentrated and palpable, and aimed with deliberation—to one person in this room. It spoke, in glacial waves, of hate, perhaps; of power, certainly; of blame, it seemed… I thought of blame, for the person whom Mr Farquharson held with his gaze was the girl who had stolen his child.
Certainly, I thought, my mouth dry, contempt is there, and…what? He stared at the girl, who gazed back with a look upon her starved face of such loss, such yearning, that tears like pinpricks started in my own eyes. These two, the man well-dressed and stout with wealth, and the girl who hungered for everything in this life, held each other’s attention across the room in this way as if there were no others about, as if the crowd and the lawyers, the officers and Sobriety and I were simply shadows, or less, all merely the fading elements of imagination.
Here was this girl, at last, who had herself been a shadow so often in my thoughts these last few days and weeks.
Sobriety’s hand sought mine, and I thought for a confused moment that Sobriety meant thereby to emphasise our existence in the warmth and strength of our hands’ grip, but then it was clear that Sobriety trembled. I looked from the profile next to me, where it puffed slight breath against the gauze of the veil, and thence to the face in the dock, hatred carved into its pale folds, and was afraid. I recognized this man’s species of tyranny; I had met something like it in Mr Hadley. I had met the destruction that was the expression of mastery such as his, that crushed and used others simply so that he may stand the taller. I felt all of this, moreover, on Sobriety’s behalf, as if in concert with her.
It seemed a long time that the two, the man and the starveling girl, held each other’s gaze. Indeed, the magistrate had begun to speak during those stretched moments, committing Mr Farquharson to trial, but I barely heard him and the two who gazed at each other also seemed unaware that he had uttered anything at all.
Then the ragged, hungry girl of a sudden broke the hold of Mr Farquharson’s glare, with a grimace that made a torture of her face, and she was away, pushing past knees and the shoves of complaining people, away through the door to beyond the courtroom, with a flick of the dirty red skirt before she was gone.
But she was not alone, for another person detached himself from anonymity, from the bench just behind where the girl had sat. The man pushed and pressed himself past the knees and the whispered exclamations until he reached steps, to clatter down them, through the door and beyond, with just a glance at Mr Farquharson as he went. It was a th
in man who left, slight but with the strength of twisted wire, his face intent, tight and gaunt, his mouth a down-turned line.
At first I hesitated, but then was certain. There was about this man, the set of his shoulders, perhaps, that was familiar. He had stood, of this I was sure, in the shadows watching the guests enter Mr Farquharson’s house, the night of the party.
She has had time to vanish, surely. She has had time to get away? We gripped each other’s hand for some minutes more.
And how did Mr Farquharson come to know her?
The house was dark and silent but for those squeakings and scrapings for which there is never any answer—winds in the eaves, perhaps, or a general easing of boards. I lay with my eyes wide. The events of the past day paraded before me, and would not settle in my mind.
It was in the wee hours that I arose and scrabbled with matches and candle, wrapped my shawl about my nightdress and took myself down protesting stairs to my morning room. Now that that machine had found its place in George’s study, and that room was apparently become the sewing room, I felt my morning room was more settled. It had gathered itself to itself, and it was more my own. I wondered a moment if, on Mr Hadley’s passing, I should resolve to take his chamber for my work, or if I would come home, as it were, to this familiar place.
I had brought my journal down to read, earlier, and I searched about now for the elderly pen and a very little ink I knew still stood on the mantel. In the murky and uncertain light, I sat at my tiny coffee table, unscrewed the ink pot with great care, and into it dipped my pen.
Every day is a performance! I am astounded over and over at those who place themselves on Society’s stage. They use us all—we who speak all unrehearsed and honestly and do not comprehend that these people, these actors, have about them a script. They have their lines ready prepared. Everywhere are the prevailing themes of hope and fear, where ordinary folk seek love and comfort and wish only to see their way ahead and to comprehend it. And into this these demon kings stride, masters of all, for only they know that the play has been written and all of us but minor parts.
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