Daphne asked whether Mr. Longshank would receive the same penalty as Sir Thomas.
“No,” replied the judge, “I don’t think so. Unless there is evidence that he colluded with Sir Thomas, the fact that the plot was for his behalf cannot be proven. That sort of conspiracy is not usually committed to writing. I do not doubt that Mr. Longshank is a despicable character. In fact, I am sure that he is, but that consideration is irrelevant. If being of despicable character were a bar to being a Member of Parliament, half the seats might have to be vacated.
“The latest gossip in London convinces me that Mr. Longshank would have been an entirely unsuitable member, but that would not be enough to link him to this particular conspiracy or any particular crime. Certainly, the stories being told in London about him indicate that he is a very shady character, but that also would not by itself send him to prison, let alone the noose.”
Mr. Justice Avery then recounted some pieces of the gossip that was circulating in London society. It was the tale of how a titled lady and her crony, a vicar posing as a lawyer, had bluffed a bawd and her co-conspirators including a baron not only out of some sort of obligation to pay them a considerable sum, but the lady had also extracted a sizable sum from them by threatening to open a superior brothel in direct competition to theirs. The lever they had used was failures in legal documents that Mr. Longshank had prepared. His incompetence was the only reason that the bawd had been cheated out of her money, or so she proclaimed widely. It was only later that the shady whoremasters realized that they had been totally out-maneuvered and that the threat, which was being used to make them agree to forfeit their claims and pay the lady, must have been spurious. The most amazing part of the story was that it was the lady’s husband who had inadvertently landed himself in the problem that the lady solved. He was away at the time and it was doubtful that he even realized the nature of the problem. His absence was the reason why the lady undertook to hoodwink the madam. Mr. Avery speculated that if the husband had not been away, the whoremaster would never have been tricked.
Daphne was horrified to learn that her dealings with Mrs. Marsdon and Mrs. O’Brien had become well known. She strongly suspected that Mr. Avery was well aware of the name of the lady and probably of her ‘lawyer’ and was warning them that their adventure was not unknown. Daphne hurriedly changed the subject since she thought her father, who seemed to be fascinated by the judge’s tale, was unaware of the problem she had had, and, so, he was unaware that she who solved it. Daphne would rather he continue not to know about the business rather have him admire her adroitness.
“What will happen to Sir Thomas Dimster, now, Mr. Avery?” she asked. “Will he hang?”
“That is most unlikely. I expect some sort of settlement will be worked out before his case comes to trial. It will probably cost him a pretty penny in fines. Even if he did come to trial and he was sentenced to hang, he still would not likely be executed. Some sort of pardon would be arranged, I imagine. Again it will be expensive. In either case, he will likely lose any influence he has. His pawns will know that they themselves came too close to hanging to risk helping him again. For, if the government choses to be harsh, they can hang Sir Thomas and his lackeys.”
“Mr. Avery, I still don’t understand why Dipton is a separate constituency with so few eligible voters,” Daphne remarked, hoping that that topic would further divert interest from the goings on in London.
“These borough ridings are very confusing and go a long way back,” the judge replied. “From a very early date after the Norman Conquest, the House of Commons had shire constituencies and borough constituencies. The main purpose of the House of Commons was to approve taxes the King wanted to levy, frequently to pay for wars. Though the country was mainly rural, and landowners played a dominant role in the affairs of state, much of the tax money had to come from the towns rather than from the shires in general and they had quite different interests from their country cousins. So each major town was allowed to send one or more members to Parliament to represent the principal men of the town.
“That is still the case, though over time Parliament became much more important than the King and his council of barons. Some towns shrank and others expanded, even ones which had not been recognized as boroughs. The ones that shrank remained constituencies returning the same number of members no matter what their size had become.
“However, new borough constituencies might be created, though in recent years they have not been. Some of the medieval kings created extra borough constituencies where the election of members would be controlled by one of their henchmen and so, thereby, the king could get less opposition from the House of Commons. To make sure that their followers actually could control these new boroughs, their charters often had very restrictive limitations on who could vote. Dipton Borough is one of those ridings, I suspect. It was a small place even when King Henry VI made it a borough and it has, of course, shrunk since then.
“Now, why do so few people get to vote in Dipton, for we saw that there are large numbers of men who would probably be allowed to vote if Dipton were not a borough with very restrictive rules? In the original boroughs, the requirements to be an elector were decided for each borough individually, I think, and so there was a hodge-podge of regulations. In some cases, almost anyone who has a house where he and his family live can vote. In others, the right to vote is much more limited. In extreme cases, being an elector is restricted to the owners – not the residents – of residences in certain specific locations. If the residence disappeared, the vote did too, but otherwise its owner has continued to be eligible to vote ever since, even if a different one has replaced the original dwelling or if it is vacant.
“I haven’t had time to delve into what the basis for voting here in Dipton may be, but it seems that the vote is limited to houses on specific plots of land and the vote is in the hands of the owner, not of the resident. Over time, I imagine that many of the original houses having a vote have been torn down and not replaced. Many of the remaining ones are owned by only a few people. That is why there are so few names on the list. Like a lot of these borough ridings, the elections here have not been contested regularly. I imagine that would have been the case again if Sir Thomas hadn’t thought he could get away by holding the election on a false basis.
“I’d always wondered about why there are such differences between different places,” Mr. Moorhouse broke in. “I grew up in Birmingham where my father owned a factory. He could vote only for the member from the county and most of the other people couldn’t even do that, even though it was a very large town. It seemed strange when I came here to learn that one man, Mr. Gramley, essentially had been able to choose who the two members of Parliament would be. That did change when I arrived since I discovered that I had also bought enough votes that in principle the election could be contested meaningfully, but, in fact, Mr. Gramley could determine the outcome so elections were not held. Except for Mr. Jackson, the apothecary, I would have been the only one casting an opposing vote.”
“It is a very strange system,” agreed Mr. Avery, “and I doubt that it will change soon. Too many powerful men benefit from the present arrangements. Now, it has been a very long day for me and I must return to London tomorrow. So, if you will excuse me, my lady. I think I will get to bed.”
That ended the dinner. However, as Daphne was leaving, Mr. Moorhouse said to her, “Sometime, my dear, you must tell me the full story of what you and Lord David did in London. No, no, the look on your face as the judge told the tale indicated that it was you and Lord David who had pulled off the feat. I’d have guessed anyway. How many ladies have a tame vicar to help their husbands out of scrapes when they are away? I think Captain Giles should be very proud of you.”
As her coach took her back to Dipton Hall, Daphne reflected once more on how much she missed Giles. She had told him all about how she and Lord David had hoodwinked Mrs. Marsdon and Mrs. O’Brien in her letters to him, of course. But she wasn’
t at all sure that he would get them before he returned. She didn’t want him to find out from idle teasing from Sir David or some other of his acquaintances in London. Maybe he would come to Dipton directly from his ship while his reports were sent to the Admiralty. She knew that that was the standard practice, but then Giles was not on an ordinary mission and so might have to report in person. How she wished that he were here!
Daphne did wonder how in the world she would explain the complicated rules that had led to the contretemps over the election, especially since she wasn’t at all sure that she understood the subject at all. Giles was a young, intelligent and inquisitive young man. He would probably know all about the complicated matters of shires and boroughs and electors. If he didn’t, how could she hope to explain them? She didn’t want to appear ignorant to him, even if her ignorance would not, she was sure, bother him at all.
Chapter XXI
The weather turned colder following the fiasco of the frigate competition. Thicker hoarfrost formed every night and the decks and rigging became highly treacherous in the early morning. Sand was spread on the decks to prevent falls, but moving about the ship remained hazardous. Safety lines were rigged, but performing any duties on deck still slowed to a crawl. On one occasion, a rain shower turned to mushy snow before it ended, leaving the decks a hazardous obstacle course for anyone who had to leave the safety of the lifelines rigged to make movement easier. The need to depart from Russia before Glaucus might be iced in was becoming urgent.
Admiral Stroganoff had invited Giles to dine on the flagship on the day following the competition. While Glaucus’s captain had been expecting another raucous evening with a headache to follow in the morning, he found instead that there was only one other guest. The marine minister, Count Smirnoff, had come from St. Petersburg not only to confer with the Admiral about when the Baltic Fleet would be laid up for the winter, but also to talk with the British captain. Giles received warm thanks from both men for his rescue efforts when crisis overwhelmed the race between the frigates. Furthermore, the Admiral apologized for the fact that one Russian frigate had not gone to the aid of the others, but had kept on racing as if the crisis were no concern of hers.
The serious business of the evening was then taken up. The Count had come to reiterate that the Tsar and his Council accepted gladly all the proposals, which Giles had carried in his head from London. The new part of what he had come to talk about was that the Tsar had thought it best to make the understanding a formal, though secret, treaty and not just an oral agreement. Count Smirnoff had brought with him the necessary document. Giles was to bring it to London so that the British Government could ratify the agreement formally. The Tsar expected that a copy signed by the King would be sent to St. Petersburg in the spring, it being far safer to send it by sea than by land through countries alive with agents and sympathizers of the French.
Giles was delighted that his diplomatic efforts had succeeded, even though they only involved reciting messages from his government. He would place the new document with the sensitive ship’s materials. They would be sunk if there were any danger of Glaucus being taken by the enemy. Having concluded their business, the three turned to enjoying their dinner.
The men sat long after the cloth had been drawn, yarning away, with Giles finding out far more about Russia and its customs than he would ever have suspected. Their talk covered not only military or nautical matters, but also politics and farming as well as the huge differences between the two countries. Giles, used to the fierce independence of much of the English aristocracy from the crown, was astonished to learn just how subservient their counterparts in Russia were to the Tsar. Furthermore, Russian nobles were expected to perform serious service as administrators in the government, not just because that was their inclination, but also as a requirement of holding their status. The notion that the Tsar could banish noblemen at any time to the far reaches of the Tsar’s empire was quite alien to Giles’s understanding of his own position in England. When the three naval figures decided at last to call it a night, Giles realized that his own horizons had been broadened immeasurably while he had no doubt that he had made two friends for life as a result of the long evening spent together. When he awoke next morning, Giles also realized how very thankful he was that they had been conversing over port, out of respect for the British custom, rather than taking glass after glass of vodka that the Russians drank more in gulps than in sips.
Giles had more very satisfying evenings and made various forays to Saint Petersburg for social occasions. His clear appeal to many flirtatious young women made him proud to have abstained from the offered pleasures without regret just by comparing them to Daphne. However, Giles was becoming more and more annoyed that he heard nothing from Sir Walcott about when the special envoy would complete his work. Finally, he had had enough. He would go to Saint Petersburg and give the baronet an ultimatum. If Sir Walcott did not return to Glaucus in the next two days, prepared to leave, Giles would sail without him. Hopefully, the prospect of spending the winter in snow-bound St. Petersburg, far from the delights of the Prince of Wales’s circle in London, would make Sir Walcott realize that he must rejoin his ship. Accordingly, Giles set off in Glaucus’s cutter for the capital in the thin light of a Russian dawn, which promised that winter would soon arrive.
Stewart, who was in charge of the cutter, drew Giles’s attention to a boat coming down stream towards them. In that boat’s sternsheets huddled Lord Malthampton, appearing to be totally miserable about being on the water in the raw conditions that characterized the day. Giles directed Mr. Stewart to bring the cutter alongside the other boat and lower the sail so that they could find out why the British ambassador might be coming to Kronstadt.
“Well met, Captain Giles,” Lord Malthampton announced when the boats came up with each other. “I was on my way to summon you to St. Petersburg.”
“May I ask why, my lord?”
“It’s that…that…that fool Lainey,” sputtered the ambassador.
“What has he done now?”
“He has got himself declared persona non grata by the Tsar. Silly idiot! He has been given twenty-four hours to leave St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, he refuses to budge from Prince Gruzinsky’s palace. I need you to bring some seamen to force him to leave on your frigate. Otherwise, the Tsar may well order his Cossacks to bundle the scoundrel into a coach and dump him at the Polish border.”
Giles thought a moment. He could return to Glaucus to collect a file of marines to ensure that Sir Walcott returned to the ship, but that would take time and he wasn’t sure that it would be wise to have red-coated marines marching through a foreign capital. The men in his cutter, though not dressed in fancy uniforms, would be quite capable of ensuring that the baronet would accompany them, whether he liked it or not.
“My Lord, can you transfer to my boat so that we can go to the city to collect Sir Walcott? You can tell me the ins and outs of the matter on the way.”
Lord Malthampton was assisted in clambering into Glaucus’s cutter. He sat in the sternsheets huddled in his great coat supplemented by a boat cloak. He clearly did not enjoy boating in frigid weather.
“Now tell me, my lord, what has Sir Walcott done to produce this drastic reaction from the Tsar?”
“I imagine that you know that he moved out of the Embassy to Prince Gruzinsky’s palace. The Prince is well known for his lax morals and peculiar tastes, tastes that appear to be shared by Sir Walcott, I am sorry to say. Such behavior is strictly illegal here, but is tolerated among the nobility if they are discreet about it. Prince Gruzinsky has not been. He and the Princess had a soiree to which people of the same ilk were invited. There is no question that unnatural acts took place, and not at all discreetly. A cousin of the Tsar was in attendance, though he is only fifteen years old. Not mature at all. According to reports, this youngster engaged in some very revolting practices, including allowing himself to be…ugh…to be…well… to be buggered, by all accounts very willingly,
by Sir Walcott. It was all too public and rumors are spreading like wild fire about the despicable goings-on at that soiree. The government simply cannot ignore it, especially as the Tsar himself was disgusted and furious at the perpetrators. He had to act, especially as he wanted it to be believed that his young relative was too young to know what he was doing, though the reports made it quite clear that he was an eager participant.
“Prince Gruzinsky has been banished to Siberia permanently. He is lucky to have escaped with his neck. Several other participants, including the Princess, have been banished to their estates. Sir Walcott has been declared persona non grata and is required to leave St Petersburg within twenty-four hours.
“This is not good for either of your missions. The Tsar is so angry with Sir Walcott that he may well decide to cancel all the agreements between our two countries. That is, cancel them in reality rather than as a subterfuge to fool the French and the Prussians. He is furious that we sent that …that… that faggot. Sir Walcott was supposed to be such an arrogant braggart that rumors would be spread that his behavior had soured relations between our countries, but this may make the play-acting all too real.”
When the party, whose purpose now was to extract Sir Walcott from the capital, reached St. Petersburg, they took down the sails and unstepped* the mast so that the cutter could be rowed through the canals. Lord Malthampton directed them to the landing in front of the Palace Gruzinsky. A line of soldiers now guarded it. They, somewhat reluctantly, let the British through after Lord Malthampton firmly explained their mission. Carstairs pounded loudly on the ornate front door. A footman dressed in a rather gaudy livery opened it. Giles pushed by him and in a loud voice demanded that Sir Walcott Lainey be summoned immediately. Many minutes passed before the baronet appeared, wearing a silk dressing gown and looking as if he were recovering from a night of carousing. The Princess also appeared, in rather rumpled deshabille.
A War by Diplomacy Page 25