“Georgiana Danforth, if it please the court!” interrupted Georgiana, her own control snapping. ‘‘And if you are bound to make an example of me, I beg that before you do it you search your mind and decide whether it is because you think I am guilty of any crime or whether it is because I publicly slapped your son’s face and called him a pudgy dwarf when he pulled up my skirts on the dance floor at a ball you gave two years ago!”
In the sudden stir that went over the courtroom, the governor’s face went from red to white and back again. He glared at the vivid young beauty who stood so defiantly before him, her hands now on her hips and her head thrown back.
Sue gave a heartbroken gasp and pressed her hands to her mouth. Anna, she realized in terror, had sealed her own fate. Nothing could save her now.
“There being no more witnesses—and no need of character witnesses, as the prisoner’s character is well known to all of us—I will now pass sentence on the prisoner,” said the governor heavily. He looked about him as if daring anybody to find it amusing that this slip of a girl had dared to defy him. “You will be taken from here, Anna Smith, to a place of execution and there hanged by the neck until dead.”
Georgiana felt the blood leave her face. Her waking nightmare of the night before was coming true, word for word.
“But there ain’t no gallows been built yet,” bawled a voice from the back of the courtroom.
“It will not take a very strong gallows to hang a person as slight as the prisoner,” observed the governor, rapping for order. “I order the prisoner to be taken forth and she may sit in the sun and wait while the gallows be built. Seeing the bar and crosspiece erected before her eyes may cause this presumptuous prisoner to repent the evil ways that have brought her to this court and she may yet make public confession of her crimes. Court is dismissed!”
It was no great work to build the gallows. There still existed the remains of the last one that had been taken down, for this was a “hanging governor,” who believed a length of hemp was the best lesson the law could teach.
Georgiana sat in the sun, getting slightly sunburned in her shimmering low-cut blue silk gown, although Sue tried to shade her with a borrowed parasol. Disregarding Sue’s low sobbing and Mattie's snuffling howls, she watched in fascination as the gallows went up board by board. There was the rude wooden ladder by which she would mount it—carried in from a nearby barn; there was the rude platform on which she would stand; there above her the sturdy wooded arch from which she would dangle on a length of hemp, looking her last on life....
At last it was ready, a jerry-built wooden structure but strong enough to support the hangman and those who would assist him in sending Georgiana to the next world.
Sue gave her a last tearful hug and, then, just as she had last night imagined it, she was being urged up the scaffold. She mounted it, slowly, dragging her feet, for she had no desire to leave this life; she could see the sky burning blue and serene above her, feel the heat of the uncaring sun. When she reached the top the wind ruffled her burnished gold hair and she could look out to a lovely vista of turquoise sea. Her anxious gaze combed the ships in the harbor. There was a new one there—but it did not have a Dutch look about it, nor was it any ship she knew.
Help was not coming by sea, obviously.
Down below her in the staring crowd of upturned faces she could see Sue with her handkerchief pressed to her mouth and beside her Lance, looking thoroughly miserable. Help was not coming from that direction either.
Georgiana steadied herself and tried to exhibit a calm she did not feel. She would not make a spectacle of herself on the scaffold, she would not. She would manage somehow to die with pride—and dignity!
Her hands were tied behind her and she moved her shoulders restively. That slight motion rippled the sky blue silk over her round, delicately molded breasts and brought their contours more sharply into view. From the crowd came a catcall.
Georgiana stiffened, feeling she was being made fun of. She, a woman brought low, standing even now upon the scaffold—who could possibly desire her at this moment? She flashed a look of hot anger at the crowd and her turquoise eyes were still snapping when she was asked if she had anything to say before they hanged her.
“Yes,” she said coldly. “And I could say it better if my hands were free.”
“You may speak without gestures,” was the calm retort.
“But my hair is blowing into my mouth!” cried Georgiana. “It will muffle what I have to say.”
“Cut her bonds,” came the same dry voice. “But guard her well; she is not to be allowed to escape.”
Before her the governor, who had been brought here on a litter and now lay there with his gouty leg outstretched, frowning up at her, motioned to a little black boy to fan him. Georgiana could see every leaf and frond of that palm-leaf fan in elaborate detail. Now that her life was ending, her senses seemed to have sharpened. She seemed to see everything in a clear white light—from the frowning governor and weeping Sue and dejected Lance to the bandy-legged little man who was stumbling up toward them on a path that led from the harbor.
She felt her arms come free as her wrists were unbound, and flexed them with a sigh, massaging them with her hands.
“Well," came that calm voice. “Speak, woman.”
But Georgiana’s attention was focused on that bandy-legged little man running up to join the crowd—and now fighting to make his way through it.
“I, Georgiana Danforth, whom you knew as Anna Smith,” Georgiana began, “having been brought to trial in Bermuda for the crime of taking two candlesticks which were mine already for they had been promised to me by Samantha Jamison before she died—” She broke off, staring. Now she knew where she had seen that little man before. He was Christopher Marks, Tobias Jamison’s London agent, and he had been to the island but once, years ago, and on that occasion he had been so ill that he had not left his ship, but Tobias had taken her with him to the ship, she had met him! “Mr. Marks!” she screamed.
The bandy-legged little man, for all that the velvet seat of his trousers was worn smooth from too much sitting and working on account books, for all that he had been seasick for most of the voyage and could feel his lunch rising in his throat even now from all this exertion in the Bermuda heat, had a loud authoritative voice.
“Of what crime does this woman stand accused?” he bellowed in a voice that cut through Georgiana’s like a knife through butter.
It was the governor who answered, half rising from his litter. “Of the theft of a pair of candlesticks from Tobias Jamison’s estate.” A numbing shaft of pain went through his leg. “The girl has said enough,” he gasped. “Get on with the hanging.”
“Wait!” screeched the little man, fairly jumping up and down on his velvet-trousered bandy legs. “She cannot have stolen what is rightfully hers! I have brought with me the will of Tobias Jamison, for I have recently heard that he was dead, and in it he leaves everything he died possessed of to one Anna Smith, who stands here before you on the scaffold!”
All was confusion and shouting as Bernice leaped up from her carriage, choking on the apple she had been unconcernedly taking large bites of as she waited to see Georgiana hanged. The governor shouted “Hold!” in an apoplectic voice and the hangman, who had been about to send Georgiana to oblivion, caught her falling form instead.
Bernice, in rage and bright fear that had struck her like a hammer blow—for here was the real Christopher Marks to disprove her fraud—swallowed whole and unchewed the large bite of apple she had taken and tried to shout a denouncement of the little man. The apple stuck in her throat. She gasped, finding her air supply cut off, and began clawing at her throat, but no one noticed her plight for all eyes, even those of her startled daughters, were riveted on the governor, who was having a shouting match with the bandy-legged agent from London. She staggered forward with an abortive gesture and fell out of her carriage, landing sprawled across the back of a man standing below. He turned with a cu
rse and seeing that he had upended a lady, set the struggling woman on her feet, muttering—but even his gaze hardly raked her, for he too was intent on the seeming brawl between the governor and the stranger, for now the stranger had brought out a document and was thrusting it under the governor’s nose.
Bernice, choking, gasping, clawing at her throat and at the arm of the nearest person, found herself pushed back against the horse that pulled her carriage. As she reeled against his flank, he shifted his weight and neighed and stepped back. His hoof pinioned her skirt and as Bernice, sure she was dying, fought to get it free, the horse, frightened by the noise and the unseemly pulling at his hoof, reared up and knocked her to the ground.
Now at last she was noticed. A horse had knocked a woman down. That was understandable, something the nearest person could and should do something about.
A tradesman from the town bent to help her up. Above them and to the left the governor, who had been scanning the document that had been thrust upon him, was roaring, “But even if this document is genuine, it says here that the plantation of Mirabelle and all its chattels are to remain with Tobias’s wife, should he acquire one, for the duration of her life—and candlesticks are chattels! The girl admits she stole them!”
“I am shocked you could doubt the authenticity of this document!” roared the little man from London, his seasickness forgotten. “For it bears not only Tobias Jamison’s signature, clearly and plain to see, but also the signatures of two witnesses who saw him sign it!”
“It matters not!” The governor, half mad with pain and anxious only to get this whole miserable matter over with, shoved back the document at the giver. “There is a more recent will! And it left all property, real and personal, of whatsoever nature, to the surviving widow—over here.” He turned to indicate the place where Bernice had been sitting in her carriage and frowned at not finding her there.
Bernice meanwhile was writhing against the arms of the man who was trying urgently to lift her up from the ground. She was fighting for air and it was a losing battle. Her face was contorted and her eyes were wide and staring.
“She’s hurt, can’t you see?” cried the man who had just lost his grip on Bernice as she twitched convulsively away from him. “Somebody help me!”
But his voice was lost in the roar of the London agent. “I cannot believe there is another will. I am his London agent, I would know about it! What is the date of this alleged new will?”
In agony from his painful leg, the governor had scarcely looked at the date on the document; he had assumed the will Bernice had probated was a later will. Now his wife nudged him. He turned to give her a molten look and she leaned over and muttered something in his ear. “The new will is dated some three years ago and was drawn up in Jamaica,” he told Marks with an arrogant gesture. “And Tobias Jamison has not set foot in England these five years past—of that we are all certain.’
“Then this will is the more recent!” Christopher Marks waved the document triumphantly. “For it is dated less than two years ago. It was made out in Jamaica, where I met Tobias by chance, for I was but passing through on some other business. He had me draw up this will and have it witnessed, for he was thinking of marrying some woman in Jamaica and wanted his affairs in order in case anything should happen to him—as indeed it did. And you can plainly see my signature affixed—Christopher Marks.”
The governor sat silent for a moment. Then, “Can you prove you are Christopher Marks?” he asked in an altered voice. “For if you can, then the man who brought this other will to probate was an imposter, and I don’t doubt the legatee will be found to be involved in fraud and worse.”
Bernice, being held up now and with a loud whirring in her head, heard this. She lifted an arm in mute appeal but everyone was worried about her knock on the head and nobody at all realized she was choking to death. It came to her dizzily that she was undone, that now there would be an investigation, that the fraudulent “Christopher Marks” would be searched for, seized, the signatures of the two wills compared against other documents Tobias Jamison was known to have signed—the forgery would be all too evident.
And—if only she had not taken these measures, if only she had been willing to wait until the real will could be found—she would have ended up sole proprietress of Mirabelle and all of its chattels for the rest of her life! She would have had full possession, and complete domination over Anna Smith—she could have done what she liked with the girl, marrried her off, gotten rid of her.
Bafflement, anger, regret, confusion, guilt and horror at what might come all warred within Bernice’s brain as she fought to swallow the chunk of apple that was more firmly than ever stuck in her throat. She saw them all through a red film now, her lungs were bursting, and the roaring in her head had become an incessant thunder crashing its warning through her brain. She was slipping away, away....
Her head drooped and she collapsed, twitching, a dead weight, into the arms of the man who, now thoroughly alarmed, was calling out for smelling salts to help revive her. Bernice never sniffed the smelling salts. She would never take breath again.
“Bring the girl down from the scaffold,” said the governor in a shaken voice. He groaned as he moved a little. “It would seem—we may have misjudged her.”
But at the top of the scaffold Georgiana was not witness to any of this. She had fainted dead away.
Mirabelle Plantation, Bermuda
Winter 1674
Chapter 40
All Bermuda was talking about Anna Smith. Her name was on everyone’s lips. Indeed they talked about little else. Snatched from the scaffold, she’d been! The same people who had been so ready to despise her now eulogized her. From outcast, Georgiana had now become a folk heroine. In time to come songs would be written about her and sung throughout the islands—but that time was not yet.
For now, fresh from her near miss with death on the scaffold, she was being driven over to Mirabelle with Sue and Lance and Christopher Marks in a carriage and another carriage was following, bringing the rest of the Waites.
“I’m surprised you’re so eager to take over, Anna,” said Sue frankly. “I’d have thought you’d have wanted to rest the night at least before tackling Mirabelle.”
“Perhaps Mistress Anna wishes to tally up her possessions?” suggested Christopher Marks smoothly.
“It isn't really for my sake, Sue—it’s for the servants,” explained Georgiana. “I want to get rid of that terrible overseer and give everybody hope. And I want to stop the destruction of our cedar grove instantly! It isn’t”—she gave her friend a level look—“that I want to crow over Bernice’s daughters on the very day of their mother’s death. But I do intend”—her brows formed a straight line—“to see that they take away from Mirabelle none of my jewelry and none of my clothes. They were too eager to bring me down,” she added dryly.
Sue gave her an understanding look. Naturally Anna wanted to safeguard Mirabelle’s valuables. She had been pushed out of her home by Bernice and her daughters and she had every right to take back what was hers. She said as much but Anna wasn’t listening. Instead she was listening with joy to the birdsongs, and appreciating anew the glitter of the sea as it broke against the ancient gnarled rocks, the big cedars festooned with sea grapes and vines that edged the road and formed a graceful arch above them, the scented air of freedom. To Georgiana, as the carriage whirled through the front gates of Mirabelle and started up the long drive toward the white cross-shaped house with its flaring “welcoming arms” front steps, the world had never looked more beautiful. She had been snatched from death—she was going to live!
All the servants rushed forward when they saw Georgiana. They had been prevented by Bernice from attending the trial and some of them were crying, for they had thought her already dead. Some of them called her name over and over, prayerfully, as if they could not believe she was really here. “They told us you was sure to be hanged today,” said Big Belize, rolling his eyes.
“The report of my hanging was greatly exaggerated,” said Georgiana lightly, for she had regained her aplomb since being snatched from the gallows. “ ’Tis Bernice who’s dead and I’ll be coming back here and running things. The place is mine now.” The servants who had crowded around stared at her, not comprehending.
“Bernice is not coming back,” repeated Georgiana. “Her daughters will be leaving too—as soon as we’ve packed their things. In that way”—her voice hardened a little—“I’ll be very sure that nothing of mine goes with them.”
Sue regarded her friend with new respect. This was not the carefree Anna she had known, but a new and harder version who called herself Georgiana Danforth. Life had tempered her friend and like fine Toledo steel she had been bent—but not broken.
“You’re turning them out to starve?” wondered Mattie, coming up just in time to hear that.
“No, not to starve. They’ve money of their own. Bernice was married before, remember. She still has—had,” she corrected herself, “a house in Jamaica that will be theirs now. Her daughters can go back there or”—she shrugged—“to hell if they prefer.” She could not forget the sight of their avid faces riveted greedily on her at the trial, or their later smirks as she had viewed them from the scaffold.
Both Bernice’s daughters showed up a little later, driving up in a carriage. They had left their mother’s body at the church and, having been apprised of how things now stood, had come home to pack. Prue, the older of the two, who had inherited her mother’s features and demeanor, was astonished to find their luggage already packed and standing in the driveway, and even more taken aback when Georgiana came out to confront her.
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