Blackberry and Wild Rose

by Sonia Velton

  “The journeymen seemed more interested in looting trinkets than anything else, so I left them downstairs and tried to find Mrs. Thorel. I looked in the kitchens and all the rooms, until I found one upstairs that was locked. I banged on the door and rattled the handle, but no one would open it. I knew the women were in there because I could hear the maid screaming inside. I don’t blame them for not opening the door—they must have been scared for their lives. Just then Barnstaple came up the stairs with Ives behind him. They walked right past me and carried on up to the garret. I knew what Barnstaple was going to do.”

  “How did you know?” asked the judge.

  Bisby took a deep breath. There was plainly more to this than that single night. There was a history, something deeper and more complex informing who did what to whom. “Barnstaple,” he said carefully, trying the name on, seeing if he could find a fit between what he knew of the man and what went on that night, “always resented me. We were apprentices together, but when I moved on to figured silk, he stayed with the plain weaves and the velvets. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it, he’s skilled enough. Laziness, perhaps. Either way, when Mr. Thorel invited me to weave my master piece, Barnstaple was angry. I truly believe that when he went up into that garret, he was looking for my master piece.”

  “You are suggesting he cut it out of spite?”

  “No, my lord. Barnstaple didn’t cut the silk.”

  “Of course, he didn’t.” Elias stepped in front of the judge. His case had been veering off course, Bisby steering it in an unexpected direction. “You cut it, didn’t you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You are the one who is full of spite. You cut the silk because I turned you out of my house. You cut it because I would not allow you back to finish it. You cut it because if you could not have the silk as your master piece then you would not allow anyone to have it!”

  “No, that is not true.”

  “And once the silk was cut from the loom, you sliced through every layer of it on the roller, so that weeks of work was destroyed completely.”

  “Why would I destroy my own work?” said Bisby, his voice deliberate.

  The whole court was silent now, listening to this exchange. Even the near constant chattering from the gallery had stopped.

  Elias’ voice was quiet: no need to shout in the pristine air of the courtroom. “Because you realized that you would never be a master. You couldn’t bear the thought that without me you would stay a journeyman for the rest of your life. So you destroyed my silk, the single thing that defined your place in the world and mine.”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Then who did?”

  It was a strikingly simple question and it seemed to bounce round the walls of the court while Bisby stood there, silent.

  “Well?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Mr. Lambert,” said the judge. “Surely I do not need to impress upon you the gravity of this offense. I ask you, with due thought to the seriousness of your situation, who cut the silk?”

  “I cannot say, my lord.”

  “Then that concludes your evidence.” The judge’s voice was curt, annoyed. I glared at Bisby in frustration as if I could stare the words out of him, but he was already picking his way back down the wooden steps. Barnstaple rose too, and the clerk took them back to the doorway at the far side of the court, and the passage that would lead them into Newgate jail.

  37

  Sara

  He peered at his daughter, while she blinked up at him over the edge of her swaddling. Her eyes had darkened from inky blue to deep brown. She sought out his own dark eyes and locked him in mutual contemplation.

  “Aye, she’s bonny, all right,” said Barnstaple, sitting back in his chair as if that brief glance was a sufficient experience of parenting.

  “She’s the spit of you,” I said.

  I was glad they had had a chance to meet, even under such strange circumstances. I’ll own I had been surprised when Elias Thorel himself had told me Barnstaple wanted to see me and given me twopence for the stagecoach to Newgate. I looked around the room. A small bed, washstand, the table Barnstaple was sitting at, and little else. Still, it was a world away from the rest of the jail.

  “Why did you ask to see me?”

  “Why?” He blew into his black hair so that it lifted from his forehead. “Does a man need a reason to meet his own daughter?”

  “You have not wanted to meet her before.”

  “By God, woman, how could I?” He held up both hands and glanced around him, as if those four walls were the answer to everything.

  “But before,” I said, keeping my voice level, “when she was coming, and I had no one to turn to, you wouldn’t help me.” I spoke as simply as I could, but each word twisted inside me.

  He seemed to recoil from the truth of what he had done. “Why must we look back, Sara? Is it not better to look to the future? Our future.”

  “That is strange talk from a man who faces the gallows.”

  He smiled. “That will not happen. Do you know why?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because you will help set me free.”

  “How can I do that?”

  “You’ll see,” he said, with a strange look. Then, “Tomorrow at court I will give my evidence. All you need to do is to listen carefully to what I say. If I walk free, we can be together, start a new life in another parish.”

  There was nothing convincing about this rosy portrayal of a life we’d never have.

  “Thorel himself gave me your message,” I said. “Seems odd, that.”

  “Does it?” Barnstaple kept his expression blank. “Perhaps he’s beginning to see my worth. Maybe now he knows it was me all along, not that milksop Lambert, who can be trusted.”

  The guard opened the door. He walked over to Barnstaple’s table and banged down a metal tray with food on it. Bread and some kind of stew. The smell made my stomach turn, but the baby twisted in my arms to look.

  Barnstaple hunched over his meal and broke off a chunk of bread, jabbing it into the gravy. The guard stood by the door, holding it ajar, looking at me pointedly.

  Barnstaple nodded toward it. “You best be off,” he said, through his mouthful.

  “But you haven’t explained yourself.”

  He shrugged. “It’s them that make the rules, miss,” he said, grinning at the turnkey. Then he went back to his dinner, the scrape of his spoon on the metal plate echoing in his bare-walled cell.

  * * *

  He did not knock. Why should he? He was master of the whole household. When he came into my little attic room he looked around him as if he were almost surprised that such a place existed in his own house. I got up quickly from my bed, casting aside the tiny cotton shift I had been sewing for the baby. Elias Thorel held up a hand as if he bade me to remain seated.

  He stepped toward the cradle and ran his hand over the polished oak, more interested in the craftsmanship of the woodwork than the infant asleep inside.

  “Such a shame,” he said, almost whimsically, “that I do not have my own child to fill this.”

  It was an intimate thought to express to me. I had never really considered how the master felt to be childless. Yet if he were so concerned, why did he not spend more time with Madam and less with Moll?

  “You are blessed,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Whatever the circum­stances, a child is always a blessing.”

  The smile I attempted soon evaporated from my face, for when he turned back toward me, his face was grim.

  “But you cannot care for this child. Better to send it to the Foundling Hospital. You can make a new life for yourself.” He reached inside his waistcoat pocket and pulled something out. When he opened his palm, I saw that a guinea lay on it. “Take it,” he said, extending his hand toward me.

 
And I did. I took that coin and felt the solid weight of it. I rubbed my fingers over the faint outline of George III and admired the dull gleam of the gold in the candlelight.

  “It’s yours,” said Thorel. “You will need it for your new life.”

  “What do you want from me, sir?”

  Thorel’s laugh was empty and mirthless. “My goodness,” he said, “you are cynical. No, no, all I want from you is your cooperation. That is a fair exchange, is it not?”

  “My cooperation with what, sir?”

  “In court, of course. Barnstaple will give his evidence and it will be the correct version of events. If you are asked, you may confirm that. It is all very simple.”

  I had wondered why I had not been packed off to the lying-in hospital, but all Madam had said was that the master wanted to keep me here. The guinea began to feel heavy in my palm. I tightened my grip on it and the edge dug into my skin. “And if Barnstaple doesn’t tell the truth?”

  “The truth? All of a sudden you are concerned with the truth? You have come into my house and thought nothing of telling stories. Is there a word of what you have told your mistress that is true?”

  When he got no answer, he pressed on: “Tell me, did you have any idea of the truth when you took your tales about me and Moll to your mistress?”

  Despite the low, even pitch of his voice he was still terrifying. I heard my own heartbeat pounding in my head. “I told her what I believed to be true, no more, no less.”

  “Yes, and the damage is done now. Just make sure that tomorrow you say what you need to say and Barnstaple’s evidence is believed.”

  “But that would mean Lambert goes to the gallows.”

  Thorel said nothing, just looked at me levelly.

  “You want me to scrag him?” I whispered the words, as if they might taint the air my daughter breathed.

  Thorel made a face as if he had found gristle in his pie. “Scrag,” he said, “is an unpleasant word. The outcome is not your concern. Just think of what you could do with that.”

  He looked down at my hand to where the guinea burned against my palm.

  Esther

  Surely he spoke the truth.

  I had gone over every detail of that night until the memory was raw. I had seen him grab the pistol from the boy. I had heard someone rattling the door of my bedroom as Sara cried out in pain. The thought that it was him was almost unbearable. If I had just opened the door, he would never have seen Barnstaple and Ives go up to the garret. If I had let him in, I could have stopped all this happening.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  Elias had been watching my face in the mirror as I sat at my dressing table, getting ready for bed. I had almost forgotten he was there.

  “Nothing,” I replied, tying the end of my hair with a ribbon. “I’m just tired.”

  He walked up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “You look as if you’ve got indigestion,” he said curtly. “Try not to grimace like that in court tomorrow. People will be watching you.”

  Was he joking? It was always so hard to tell with Elias.

  “It’s been a long day, husband,” I said, rising from my stool and turning to him. “I thought I would retire early.”

  “Indeed, wife, I had thought the same.” Elias was standing so close to me that I could smell the sandalwood on his clothes. His face was flushed, and it was not with drink—I knew him better than that. Success was flooding his veins. He thought he was winning.

  “Did you see him today?” he asked, almost whispering. He put his hand on my forehead and smoothed the hair from my brow. “He had nothing to say for himself. He couldn’t even answer the simplest of questions—who cut the silk?”

  “Is there not honor in silence, husband?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It is not that he cannot say who cut the silk, it is that he will not. Even in the face of death he will not condemn another. That is valiant indeed, to my mind.”

  The edge of Elias’ mouth lifted. “Well, let’s see how valiant he looks when they string him up.”

  “Why are you doing this? What purpose could there be to seeing either of those men hang?”

  “I know which one is going to hang. The one who lied to me. The one who accepted my help and my charity, then made a fool of me with my own wife.”

  “Then the wrong was mine, husband, not his.”

  “Do not try to protect him. That only makes it worse. This is between men. I cannot allow another man to come into my household and treat me with the contempt he has.”

  I saw him then as a man of his own people. Like the community of his birth, he offered support to those who followed the unwritten moral code. But to those who transgressed, there was no forgiveness, only vengeance. He had seen it himself when he had refused to take a Huguenot bride, and now he intended to inflict that righteous wrath on someone else.

  He trailed his hand over my hair, taking hold of my plait and drawing it toward him across my shoulder. He thumbed its ridges, one by one, lower and lower. At the end, he took the black ribbon between his fingers and tugged until it loosened and fell to the floor.

  I closed my hand over Elias’. “I really am tired,” I breathed.

  “But I am not,” he said. His eyes were bright pools of triumph. He began to undo the plait, working his way back up, unraveling all that I had done.

  It had been a long time since my husband had lain with me. His rage at Bisby had driven him away, and now his satisfaction at destroying him had brought him back, more urgent and forceful than before, as if chicanery were an aphrodisiac. He twisted his fingers into my hair and pulled me toward him. I stayed rooted to the spot, resisting the impulse to turn away. I took no pleasure from the feel of my husband’s mouth warm and determined against my own. I felt like an animal being branded.

  38

  Sara

  Carrying his chains more lightly than Bisby had worn his, Barnstaple stepped up to the dock. He had been given a clean shirt and breeches, his wayward hair tamed by a ribbon tied neatly at the nape of his neck. The voice that the sounding board projected to the court was a confident drawl.

  I sat at the very front of the gallery, looking down on the court below, following his every word. What would I have to say to the court with the same conviction that Barnstaple was projecting now? I had not been in the garret that night: I had been lying in Madam’s bed barely aware of my own breath. What could they expect of me that it would be wrong to say?

  There had been nothing untoward so far. John Barnstaple had taken the court through the preliminaries with perfect candor.

  Then, “What do you know of the combinations, Mr. Barnstaple?” asked Thorel.

  “I know they exist. Bisby Lambert is part of one. The Conquering and Bold Defiance, I think they call themselves. They like to give themselves grand names, or name themselves after ships, like the Rebellion Sloop.” The gallery tittered. Barnstaple twisted round and looked up, grinning, turning his face to the sun.

  “But you were not part of one?” asked the judge.

  “The men looked to me for leadership, my lord. To be sure, there was no one else who could give them any direction. There were often journeymen at Buttermilk Alley. I spoke to them, drank with them, but what does sharing a pot of ale with a man really mean?”

  What could I say to that? There was no truth or otherwise to it. Trying to find the point in his words was like picking up egg yolks.

  Thorel moved round to face Barnstaple.

  “That day then, the twenty-first of February, where were you?”

  Barnstaple preened, sensing his moment. “I was up in my garret in Buttermilk Alley, weaving a plain velvet for you, sir. It was getting late, so I was just finishing, thinking about my supper and whether to go to the chophouse or eat the bread and cheese I had in the pantry.”
/>   Thorel looked impatient. “Just what’s relevant to the issues, Mr. Barnstaple.”

  “Well, I decided on the bread and cheese and went downstairs. That very minute Lambert flew through the door and came into the front room where I was cutting myself a slice of bread. He was fair spitting with rage. That’s the only way I can describe him. Saying things I would not want any lady in this court to hear.”

  He paused for a moment until the judge raised his eyebrows. “I’m afraid you will have to repeat those words to the court. What did Mr. Lambert say?”

  Barnstaple feigned reluctance. He chewed his lip and cast his eyes about the courtroom as if searching for another solution rather than say what he had to say. Then his eyes met mine. For a moment I felt as if he and I were the only two people in the courtroom. Everyone else fell away. Even though he was far below me, his pitch eyes seemed to hold me so that I had the sensation of being a fish hooked on a line, captured and about to be dragged, gasping, out of the water.

  He turned back to the judge. “Of course, my lord,” he said, with a slight bow. “It is just that it is a sensitive matter.”

  I pulled my daughter to me, that same sensation flipping in my stomach.

  “He had had an argument with the master, Mr. Thorel. There had been an … indiscretion in the household.”

  “Speak plainly, Mr. Barnstaple,” said the judge, sounding impatient. He had half an eye on the defendant and half an eye on the clock mounted on the wall, which crept steadily toward midday.

  “I shall, then,” continued Barnstaple, slightly petulant.

  “So,” said Thorel, keen to draw Barnstaple back to the point, “we have heard from the other prisoner that he and I had a disagreement that led me to tell him to leave. He has agreed that much. How would you describe Lambert’s demeanor when he came back to Buttermilk Alley?”

  “Beg pardon, sir?” said Barnstaple, blinking at Thorel.