by Sonia Velton
“How did he look and behave? What did he say?”
“Ah, right,” said Barnstaple, looking relieved. “He were angry, sir.”
“Direct your answers to the judge, please, Mr. Barnstaple.”
“Sorry.” Barnstaple shifted slightly in the dock, angling himself toward the judge. The clerk popped up and scurried to the mirror, adjusting the angle so that the light gave Barnstaple’s face a perfect sheen. The woman next to me whispered something to her friend, who giggled into her gloved hand.
What was the purpose of this show of naivety? Was he trying to portray himself as too simple to be capable of deceit? The sounding board amplified his voice and the reflected light illuminated his features, but the court had nothing that would reveal the guile flowing through his body.
“Angry, you said?” prompted Thorel.
“And worse,” said Barnstaple. “He threw his bag down on the table and told me that Mr. Thorel had turned him out. I asked him why, and at first he wouldn’t tell me, but I guessed why. There’d been a girl, a maid up at ten Spital Square, who had been around Buttermilk Alley a lot. It was obvious there was something going on between her and Lambert. After a while, it became plain she was with child. That was what the argument was about. Once Lambert had calmed himself and I’d given him a pot of ale, he told me that the master had finally noticed he’d been spending more time at Spital Square with the maid than working on his master piece. Thorel told him he felt betrayed, as well he might. Mr. Thorel had shown such confidence in Lambert that for him to bring shame on his household … well, it’s not right, is it?”
The world was spinning, a topsy-turvy place with no reality. The noise from the gallery was a distracting buzz that clogged my ears and muddled my thoughts. Was that what I would be asked to say? That Bisby Lambert was the father of my child? I stared at Barnstaple, trying to get him to look in my direction as if I could challenge his terrible deceit with my glare. But why would he look at me? I was the inconvenient truth, sitting in the midst of this warped version of reality he was creating. Then Bisby lifted his eyes to mine, filling the gap Barnstaple had left, and I was forced to look upon his confusion, his despair, for as long as I could bear to hold his gaze.
“And then,” continued an almost jubilant Barnstaple, “the maid herself turned up at Buttermilk Alley, not long after Lambert. She’d been sent on her way as well!”
There was a clank of irons as Bisby stumbled to his feet. He rose so quickly that he misjudged the limit of his chains and they pulled taut, reining in his protest. “That’s not true, my lord!” His voice was broken, coming from somewhere deep within his chest, forced out, as if each breath cost him dear. Then the coughing started again, and he sat down heavily and yanked at the manacles in hopeless frustration.
“But you admitted that we had argued in your evidence,” said Mr. Thorel, when the coughing had stopped.
“Yes, but you did not suggest it was about that!”
Thorel shrugged. “Then what was it about?”
Silence. Bisby did not say that the argument was about the patterns Thorel had found. That it was about the time he had spent in the garret with the master’s wife doing goodness knew what. But if those were the reasons, then this—the judges and the jury, the watchful lion and the unicorn, the undercurrent of desperation and the echoing cough—was all my doing.
Bisby rested his forearms on his knees and sagged. Lies have a weight that ends up being borne by someone.
The judge looked over at Thorel. “May I remind you that this defendant is not giving evidence. You should not address him, Mr. Thorel, and nor should he address the court. Continue, Mr. Barnstaple.”
“Lambert was saying Mr. Thorel wouldn’t get away with sending him off like that. He said he had as much right to the silk he was weaving as Thorel did. But it wasn’t just about his master piece, there was much more than that. Thorel had been told to pay a subscription to the combination and he hadn’t. Lambert said that the men wouldn’t tolerate the masters lording it over them and behaving as they pleased. Then he said something that stuck in my mind.”
Barnstaple chose to pause there, his face angled against the light in a perfect profile, like the King’s face on the guinea in my pocket.
“Well, what did he say?” Thorel was impatient and unconcerned with the way the light glanced off Barnstaple’s cheekbones.
“He said, Thorel’s time has come.”
Slumped in his chair under the dock, Bisby slowly shook his head.
“What did you take that to mean?”
“I couldn’t say, my lord, save that it struck the fear of God into me.”
The judge nodded. “Go on.”
“Ives, Lambert’s nephew, had come back with him. He was at Buttermilk Alley a lot, ever since Lambert’s sister died, God rest her. Most often Lambert ignored him, but then he took the poor boy by the arm as if he’d caught him with his hand in a purse. He knelt down in front of the boy and told him to fetch all the weavers in Spitalfields he could find and be quick about it. Once word got around there was no stopping them, such was the tide of feeling against the master weavers. That was the beginning of it, my lord. The start of everything that happened that night.”
The court broke into chatter and comment. The judge, sensing he had lost order, glanced hopefully at the clock. There was a rustle of paper as the woman next to me unwrapped a pie. When she broke it open the smell of mutton made the baby squirm in my arms. She watched the woman eat with bright, interested eyes.
“Are you hungry, little mite?” whispered the woman.
It would not be long before she was weaned.
Esther
Afternoon drew the sun down in the sky so that light flooded through the courtroom windows straight into my eyes. I shielded them with my hand, watching the clerk scatter fresh herbs over the jury’s table and put a new nosegay out for the judge. I wondered how we could have been unaware for so long of the resentment building against us. I felt exposed, sitting beneath the journeymen weavers in the gallery, as if they stared down at me with the same malevolence that had ripped through my house that night.
The gallery was even more packed with people than before. If the plight of their fellow journeymen had been enough to bring the weavers out in droves, it was the prospect of a salacious story that kept them there all afternoon.
The door leading from Newgate opened again and Barnstaple walked through it. Bisby must have been behind him, but for a moment Barnstaple eclipsed him. It was the same with his evidence. Barnstaple was a showman, a charismatic charlatan. He had manipulated the weavers to riot, used their hunger and their want to make them violent. Now he was playing on the court’s desire for moral condemnation to secure the outcome he needed. I had no doubt that Barnstaple was the father of Sara’s child. In a strange way, watching Barnstaple in court had only made me more convinced of that. As repugnant as I found him, I could see how that charm might have drawn Sara to him, in another setting entirely.
The two prisoners took their seats. They were two sides of the same coin, those men. A coin that was spinning in the air and could land only one way, heads or tails. Their fates were intertwined, yet opposite. You could almost see that from looking at them. Barnstaple seemed to be gaining strength at Bisby’s expense, sitting taller and prouder even as Bisby shrank and withered in the seat next to him. I wanted to scream at the jury, demand that they see these men for who they really were, but I could only sit mute below the dock, gagged by a laborious system that I was fast losing faith in.
Barnstaple seemed keen to take the stand again, as if he knew he held the interest of the court in his hand. He had fidgeted through the judge returning to his seat and the daily rituals of the court, like a child having to sit still at the dinner table. When he was allowed to speak again, he was even more eager than before.
“They started coming from all over the pari
sh,” he continued. “Weavers I hadn’t met before were at our door with cutlasses and the like. And Lambert ushered them in. Then he got out a flintlock—only the Lord knows where from—and put it on the table. That was when I got worried. I told him to put it away as no good could come of it, but he shoved me to the side and carried on loading the barrel. That was when the maid arrived, the one with the baby. She’d come to find Lambert. Poor wretch had nowhere else to go after she had been turned out of Spital Square.” Barnstaple shook his head in a show of ruefulness. “But Lambert didn’t want to know. He was more interested in having his revenge on Mr. Thorel than facing up to his responsibilities. He sent the poor girl stumbling back to Mrs. Thorel. Once she’d gone, he rallied the men and took them over to Spital Square. It wasn’t hard. Thorel had done himself no favors with the journeymen by refusing to pay the subscription. But for Lambert it was personal. He wanted to get back at Thorel for denying him the chance to be a master. And there’s nothing more personal between a master and his journeyman than the silk.”
“You mean my silk?”
I had almost forgotten that Elias was there, such was the power of Barnstaple’s speech.
“Yes, sir, your silk. I saw him do it. While the other weavers were busy in the parlor doing nothing more than petty looting, Lambert strode up the stairs. I followed him, desperate to stop him, knowing what he was about. But I was too late. By the time I got into the attic, the silk lay on the floor, cut from the loom and sliced through to the roller. Lambert just stood there, smirking at me, clutching his cutlass at his side.”
Someone in the gallery booed and something else—I think it was a piece of bread—sailed down from above me and landed next to the jury’s table. One of the jurymen, sitting ramrod straight in his chair, taut with his own self-importance, turned in his seat and glared up at the gallery.
The judge leaned forward. “So you did not actually see him cut the silk, Mr. Barnstaple?”
Barnstaple flustered. “But I did, my lord, with my own eyes.”
“But you said that the silk was already cut at Mr. Lambert’s feet when you entered the garret. So therefore you did not see it. Which is it, Mr. Barnstaple? It cannot be both.”
If Barnstaple had been fairer of complexion than he was, I think we would have seen him color then. But, as it was, he merely cleared his throat and nodded at the judge. “Beg pardon, my lord. What I meant was, if he did not cut it himself then I cannot see who did as there was not a soul there but us two.”
“Except for Ives, Lambert’s nephew,” said the judge with a frown. “Unless you say he was not there.”
Barnstaple grew agitated. “He was there, my lord, but he was following up right behind me. So there, yet not there, if you see what I mean.”
The judge raised his eyebrows. “Thank you, Mr. Barnstaple. Unless Mr. Thorel has any more questions, that concludes your evidence.” He glanced toward Elias, who gave a small shake of his head.
“Does the prosecution have any witnesses to call tomorrow?” asked the judge.
“Just one,” said Elias. “The lady’s maid, Miss Sara Kemp.”
39
Sara
I turned the guinea in my hand. What would it buy, this quarter-ounce of gold? A gown as fine as the ones Madam wore? A year’s worth of mutton dinners from the cookshop? Lodgings of my own with my baby? But I would not have my baby, and what use were gowns and fancy things to me, a whore and a servant? I pushed open the door of the master’s withdrawing room.
“Beg pardon, sir,” I said dipping a curtsy in front of his desk. “But you left this in my room.”
I dropped the guinea onto his desk, where it landed flatly on his papers.
He looked up at me, confused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, that this is yours, sir.”
Thorel scowled. “You are making a mistake, Kemp.” There was an edge to his voice, the first bubbles in a pot about to boil over.
“Sorry, sir, but no mistake.” I turned to leave.
“What if I let you keep your child?”
His words stopped me, anchoring me to the spot. I stayed motionless, staring at the door.
“I will let you live in Buttermilk Alley,” he said to my back. “With Barnstaple, if you really want that feckless good-for-nothing. If you don’t, I will make sure he pays the Bastardy Bond before they let him out of prison. That is what I will give you if you do as I ask.”
I did not turn back toward him. I just walked toward the door, my steps slow as if I were now weighed down by much more than a quarter-ounce of gold.
* * *
Nameless.
My own daughter did not even have a name. I had not felt able to give her an identity. I was the vessel. Nursemaid, not mother. But Thorel’s words had changed that. It was as if he had thrown open the shutters, so I could look out on a life I never thought I’d have.
Anna.
I hardly dared speak the word aloud so instead I breathed it into her hair as I held her close. “That is what I would call you, my sweet.”
* * *
I felt Madam’s eyes on me as I moved around the room. I smoothed her clothes and folded them into her wooden chest. I took out a fresh petticoat for her to wear the next day and laid it across her chaise. When I tried to fold her pannier, a bent cane sprang free of the linen and jabbed into my hand. Her scrutiny had made me clumsy.
“Madam, can I help you with something?” I said, rubbing at the scratch on my hand.
“You did not tell me that you would be giving evidence at court.” Her gaze was level and unblinking.
I took a deep breath. “I did not know until yesterday.”
“But why, Sara? What can you tell the court when you were laboring with a child while all this happened?”
“The master has some questions for me. That is all I know.”
“You will at least be able to clear up that nonsense about the father of your child.” She stated it simply. One of the absolute certainties of her world.
I went back to the pannier, trying to push the cane rod back into the tunnel of material. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Madam purse her lips. “Won’t you, Sara?” Her voice was severe, compelling.
I could imagine what the master’s questions would be. I had turned them over in my mind again and again, lining them up, like stepping stones, and following each one to see where they might lead. To damnation if they are not the truth, was what my mother would have said. But I could keep my daughter for the price of my soul. What mother would not think that that was a fair exchange?
But would she ever know, my sweet child, that I let a man hang to keep her with me? Would she grow up thinking that there was already blood on her tiny hands? I set down the pannier on the bed.
“Madam?”
“Yes?” She was eager, as if I was going to tell her how I would set that journeyman of hers free. But why was his liberty of more value than my own? Were we not both a kind of prisoner? Elias Thorel had offered me a life with my daughter in return for sending Bisby Lambert to the gallows. It was up to Madam to match his offer. Give me back my baby in return for setting her lover free.
“Mrs. Arnaud …” I faltered. I had thought I knew what I wanted to say, but even the sound of her name made my throat tighten.
Madam’s face hardened, and she turned back to her ointments. She knew what I wanted to ask. “She has arranged everything with the Foundling Hospital,” she said, wiping the powder off her face. “Mrs. Arnaud will be coming next week. If she does not take her in soon, she may lose her admission.”
“Next week? But she is still so small! And she feeds every few hours. She must stay at least another month.”
“Sara, she can be weaned now.”
My heart started racing. I focused on the tick-tock of the clock on the wall, trying to calm myself with its relentless rhythm. Whe
n I could speak again, I said, “Madam, I should like to ask you something.”
“What is it, Sara?” She sounded tired rather than unkind. There were shadows under her eyes where she had wiped away the powder.
“I want you to help me keep my baby.”
“Oh, Sara.” She put her hands on her dressing table and caught her powder puff under her hand. Dust clouded onto the polished wood. She tutted and wiped at it with her sleeve. I knew her annoyance was not with the powder. She rose and dusted it from her hands in an exaggerated fashion. It was almost biblical, Pilate washing his hands in front of the crowds.
“There is nothing I can do. Mrs. Arnaud has been more than kind already. We cannot tell her now that the child is not going!”
So, it would not do to offend Mrs. Arnaud, but my forgiveness—for stealing my own child—was as disposable as the broken cane of her pannier. I picked it up and began to force the rod into the stitched fold of linen. She came over to me and rested her hand on my shoulder. “Think of the child, Sara,” she said softly into my ear.
And then it snapped, that little rod. Splintered into two under the pressure of being pushed into a place it could not go.
Esther
The final day in court. If Elias had had his way, even the woman who delivered our warm rolls in the morning would have been there to see his triumph. Finet sat with Moll in the gallery, but Sara sat in the row in front of the jury’s table.
Was Bisby’s fate now in the hands of a maid? As I looked at her, I thought how little I really knew her. Do you know a person just because of the intimacies you share? In their different ways, my husband and my lady’s maid had seen me at my most exposed, shared the workings of my mind and body, yet they were as good as strangers to me in that room. I should have been able to trust them both, but I could predict neither.
Last night, in my room, I had expected Sara to share my horror at the lies Barnstaple was telling. I had expected her reassurance to be swift and emphatic. She would set matters straight. She would bar the path that Barnstaple was trying to lead us down. But instead her eyes had slipped away from mine and she had busied herself with the petty work of a maid, this woman who only months before had been something else entirely. She was not the person she seemed to be. I did not know who she was.