by C F Dunn
“‘Records from the Courts of Inquisition held locally recount the use of torture including: ripping out of teeth, hair or nail, beating, choking, bone-breaking, and cutting…’
“Bone-breaking, choking, and cutting… and the list continues with some graphic descriptions and examples. So, I repeat, you read and study acts of violence, carried out by individuals on other human beings, is that not the case?”
I glared at him, but could not get around this one. “Yes.”
“Yes – you do, and indeed only recently you read such a work, did you not?”
I frowned. “No.”
“Oh, really? Then let me remind you. Do you recognize this book?” The black cover with its red lettering shouted at me from where he waved it for everyone to see: it was a copy of Staahl’s book Maggie gave me at Christmas. I paled. “I see that you do. Can you remind the court of its title?”
My lips were numb, my mouth refused to move. Maggie must have told Staahl’s counsel about it, and if she had told him that, what else had she been prepared to say?
“Let me help you, Ms D’Eresby. The title of the book is: The Devil’s Whore: The Role of Women in Medieval & Early Modern Literature, by Professor Kort Staahl. Do you recognize it?”
“Yes – yes, but…”
“And what is the main theme of the work?”
“I… I haven’t read all of it.”
“Let me remind you again. It is a book whose main theme postulates the theory that women are the willing sexual playthings of men. Were you aware of this?”
I bit my lip.
“Yes or no, Ms D’Eresby.”
“Yes.”
“And were you in receipt of a copy of this book recently?”
“Yes.”
“And can you explain how it is that it cites in specific and graphic detail the cutting of a woman and the drawing of blood from the wound as part of a sadomasochistic act in precisely the same way as you described your alleged attack?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“Are you saying that you were not aware of this?”
I hadn’t read enough of the blasted thing, had I? “I was not.”
“Will members of the jury please look at the page marked with the blue tag and then at the page marked with the red tag and then at the date on the front page along with the dedication, marked in yellow. Court clerks, if you will assist the jurors. Ms D’Eresby, if you would care to look at this copy…”
He strode over to me where I sat as rigid as timber. He held out the book and I fumbled taking it from his hand. Turning to the page marked with a thin blue tab, I saw that a section had been underlined and highlighted. I recognized a direct quote from one of my own works with a reference number. I opened the page near the back marked with the red tab and saw the reference number next to my name and the piece of research from which the quote had been taken; it had been published in an obscure periodical years ago, but I remembered it well. Staahl had totally misrepresented what I had written, placing it within a context entirely suited to his own needs. I had no doubt how it would appear to anyone reading it here, outside the strict boundaries of historical reference in which I had confined it.
Hands shaking, I turned to the front page. My hand shot over my mouth and I bit the side of it as I read the dedication:
Dedicated to E. D’Eresby, without whose inspiration this book would never have been written.
And the day and month.
“I don’t understand…” I shook my head in disbelief, crushed by the weight of evidence so circumstantial that I would never have relied on it in my research. That wasn’t the point; it was how it would look to the casual observer, how it could be made to look – manipulated, manoeuvred – until the abuser became the abused and the world turned upside down.
My voice rasped out thin and drawn and harsh. “This has nothing to do with me. This is a… corruption of my work.”
“By your own admission, Ms D’Eresby, you had a copy of this book.”
“Yes, I did, but…”
“Who gave it to you?”
“I… don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He made me sound like a liar. I was a liar.
“It could have been anyone.”
“No, Ms D’Eresby, not anyone. Professor Staahl says that he had only one copy of his book and that he sent it to you.”
“No!” I looked wildly around. Elena had her head turned away.
“Yes, Ms D’Eresby, only – one – copy.”
“Someone else must have sent it,” I said desperately.
“No, there were no other copies at that time. The book had not yet been distributed. You were in receipt of the only copy available in the world. These…” he indicated the books now being collected by the court clerks from the jurors, “… were advance copies obtained from the publishers for the purpose of this trial.”
“That’s impossible,” I whispered.
“Where is the book now, Ms D’Eresby?”
I closed my eyes, hearing condemnation in my own words. “I burned it.”
“How convenient,” he dripped sarcasm. “Now, please tell the jury why you were in the atrium on the night of October 31st.”
“There was a telephone call…”
“Which has not been traced. You were there to meet Kort Staahl for a specific, lewd purpose and, had you not been interrupted by Dr Lynes, your assignation might never have been discovered.”
“He attacked me!”
“We have already seen your penchant for the macabre. Dr Lynes came upon a scene – perhaps by accident, perhaps not – he would naturally think bizarre and, in believing he was coming to your aid, only served to cause additional damage to a consensual act. The knife slipped, Ms D’Eresby. Caught in a compromising position, you decided to turn the tables to defend your own reputation using Dr Lynes as a witness. Thinking he was helping you, Dr Lynes forcibly restrained Kort Staahl and might have injured him had it not been for you calling to him to stop, and the arrival shortly afterwards of other members of college staff. And at – no – point did my client attempt to fight back.” He beat out each word with the flat of his open hand on the blank, black face of the book.
“NO!”
“Why did you tell Dr Lynes to stop hurting the man you claim had been – only seconds before – trying to kill you? Surely that is inconsistent, Ms D’Eresby?”
“I didn’t – he wasn’t. I… I was losing consciousness, I was…”
“So you said, Ms D’Eresby, but the facts speak for themselves.”
He cut short my stumbling explanation, leaving me high and dry like a stranded fish futilely flapping on the beach of his accusation. I could feel myself slipping beyond reason, his words blinding me. I wiped the perspiration from my forehead but found it to be dry and burning instead, and inside my chest, my fraught heart laboured heavily.
Duffy sprang to her feet, giving me a welcome reprieve. “Your Honour, I must protest at my client being subjected to this barrage of questioning.”
The judge coughed gently, looked at me, and then squinted at her watch. “It’s getting late. Court will adjourn for the day. Counsel for the prosecution can resume questions tomorrow.”
Horatio threw a livid look at Duffy, who returned it.
I gathered my coat and bag and looked up as Elena and Matias joined me.
“You did well, Emma,” Matias said quietly, as he helped Elena into her coat. “I don’t think I could have been so cool on the witness stand in the circumstances. Would you like to come back with us?”
I barely listened. Elena weaved her arm through mine. “And when we get back, I will fix you some of that soup you like so much, yes?”
I hugged her arm and smiled thinly. “That’d be great, thanks.”
We sidled past small clusters of people still talking in the aisles and resisting the attempts of the judicial marshal and court sergeant to move them on so they could lock up the room and go home for the night. One or t
wo people looked at me curiously as we passed, and a figure blocked our exit. I did a double-take. “Dad!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
He wrapped me in a big embrace, his clothes smelling of home – of his potting shed and hyacinths, homemade marmalade, and old stone walls.
My first instinct was to cling to the father who had comforted and protected me when I was very little, and before I knew my own mind and he wanted to change it. But my next was to protect him from the full horror of the trial.
“Dad, why have you come? How did you kno…”
“Dr Lynes phoned me…”
“Shh,” I hushed, throwing a look at Hart. “Wait until we get outside.”
It was still light outside the courthouse and a small crowd lingered on the steps. As soon as they spotted us, they turned as one towards me.
The journalist I had seen earlier detached himself from the crowd and made a beeline for us. “Professor!” He shoved between my father and me. “Any comments? Why did you meet Kort Staahl that night?”
I started to respond, but my father stepped in front of him, shielding me from view. “Dr D’Eresby has no comments at the moment.” He took my arm and walked us down the steps and along the pavement. The journalist started to follow, but a flurry of noise at the top of the steps captured his attention and he spun around and bounded back up them two at a time. I looked back and caught a glimpse of the prosecution team before we rounded the corner of the street and were out of sight.
We travelled back to college without speaking. When safely within the confines of my apartment, Dad took off his coat and folded it precisely, lining side out, the yellow silk gleaming in the last light of the sun.
“Dr Lynes thought we should know. I would have been here this morning, but we had fog at Heathrow and it delayed the flight for a couple of hours.” He placed the coat over the back of a chair. “He shouldn’t have been the one to tell us about the trial, Emma. This is not something you should go through alone.”
“I’m not alone, I’ll be fine.” I pulled off my gloves and he helped me with my coat, running his eyes appreciatively over the fabric. “Matthew bought it for me,” I said, taking it from him.
“He’s looking after you,” he stated.
I appreciated the effort he made to prevent it from sounding like an accusation. We still had so many years of resentment to make up and it was early days yet.
“I didn’t think it fair on you and Mum, not with Nanna so unwell. Besides, I didn’t want you hearing all the details.” I switched on the desk lamp. “Sit down, Dad; I’ll make a cup of tea.”
“Emma, you know I didn’t come to interfere.” He stood all stuffy and formal in his customary tweed jacket and heavy winter twill trousers and brown lace-up shoes. “Matthew told me what happened in quite some detail back in November. You don’t have to protect me. I saw and heard things that were much worse when in the Army.”
“Did you?” I drew my hand wearily over my eyes. “I didn’t realize. But it’s not the same when it’s family, is it? And Staahl’s team is putting a rather unpleasant twist on things.”
My father regarded me from under his shrubby brow. “I gathered that.”
“And I think it’s going to get much worse.”
“I expect it will.” He changed tack. “I take it from what you said earlier that you are playing down your relationship with Matthew?” I nodded. “You don’t want his – or your – evidence compromised?”
I nodded again. “Dad…” I hesitated. “You might hear me say things that you know are not… accurate. Please, please don’t think that it makes what the prosecution says any more true. I have my reasons.”
He mustered an interrogative eyebrow. “I’m sure you do,” he said, but thankfully didn’t ask me to explain.
CHAPTER
18
The Trial – Day Two
Elena had been right about a change in the weather. Overnight, cloud had drifted in, obscuring the cold, blue sky, and bringing with it a warming wind. The snow still clinging to the branches of the cedar tree became increasingly translucent as, drop by drop, it began to melt.
Ready early, I phoned Matias before Hart arrived to collect me. “I don’t want Elena sitting through the trial,” I told him. “Please, Matias, I really appreciated you being there yesterday, but I saw Elena and she’s finding it really difficult to cope.”
He coughed, his voice still gruff with sleep. “Yes, she is – it reminds her of when she was attacked as a girl. You know how stubborn she is; I’ll need a good reason for her not to go.”
I had anticipated that. “I meant to meet with my students today; could she do that for me instead? We haven’t that long before the conference and I could do with some help getting them prepared. Would that work?”
“It might,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ll give it a go. If it does and we don’t see you there – good luck today.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I think I’m going to need it.”
In the quiet moments as I waited for my father, I sought enough stillness within me to ask for the courage to do what was right in the day to come, and for forgiveness for failing the day before. I then checked my mobile for messages. There were two: one from Beth, wishing me luck, which meant that Dad had told her about the trial; the other from Matthew.
I opened it, read it and reread it to make sure. It was the last verse of a poem by George Herbert:
Onely a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season’d timber never gives:
But though the whole world turn to coal.
Then chiefly lives.
I understood his message; he wanted me to follow my conscience before all else, before him, and that my soul was more important than all other worldly considerations.
I rapped the mobile against my chin, thinking of a reply. It wasn’t great, but it would have to do:
Who is so safe as we? Where none can do
Treason to us, except one of us two.
It might be a bastardized version, but it was the best I could come up with at such short notice. I kissed the screen and pressed send, watching the little arrow pulse as the message transferred. Just in time; I heard noisy footsteps on the wooden floor outside my door and opened it before my father could raise his hand to knock.
The courtroom positively teemed as more people than yesterday tried to squeeze onto the benches. Harry also now sat behind me, and he had been joined by Pat. A place between them remained empty. She gave me an encouraging smile as she sat down, her coral jacket a splash of vibrant colour in the grey light of the morning. My father sat to the right, a stranger separating them. I hadn’t introduced him to Matthew’s family and I didn’t indicate that I knew them except for the brief smile of gratitude I returned to Pat. The judicial marshal was trying to organize a small group of people who were arguing about seating arrangements. Several of them had notebooks in hand. Reporters. Outside in the hall, Matthew probably waited to be called as a witness later in the day, and as much as I longed to see him, I dreaded the thought of him up there on the witness stand in the eye of the world. The burgeoning audience made me nervous.
“Why are there so many people here today, Duffy?”
A clerk plomped into the chair beside Duffy, thrusting a newspaper in front of her.
Looking up from the paper, Duffy folded it and put it away.
“This is a little town, hun. Not much happens around here and people are interested. It gives them something to talk about.”
I scanned the crowd. A number of people held newspapers in their hands, some being read, others rolled or folded as if they had been finished with, but not yet discarded.
“Is it in the press?”
Duffy busied herself arranging her files on the table. “Sure, honey.”
“May I see?” I held out my hand. Reluctantly, she handed me her paper.
“College Don in Sex Fetish Trial”
I caught sight of my name in the piece that followe
d and hastily closed the newspaper. “It could be worse,” I said, handing it back to Duffy.
“It probably will be – just so you’re prepared,” she warned.
A light movement of air brought change behind me, but I still started when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Henry smiled apologetically as I turned around. He lent close and took my hand and pressed something small and round and hard into it. “Matthew said this will mean something to you,” he said quietly, and closed my hand around the object, keeping it hidden. “God bless, Emma.”
“Thanks, Henry.” I opened my hand slightly. There in my palm lay the russet nutmeg, worn smooth and glossy through all the long years that Matthew had kept it with him as a symbol of hope. I brought it to my lips, then clenched it tightly, its presence as staunch and unswerving as its owner.
Staahl’s team sauntered in at the last minute and the drum of my heart stepped up a beat. They took their time to settle, taking centre stage from the moment they set foot through the door.
“All rise.”
The courtroom hushed and rose as the small figure of the judge made her way to the bench and sat down, adjusting her glasses with one hand and her robes with the other. She had had her hair done since yesterday, and the grey curls that bloomed around her face, making her look like an aged Shirley Temple, were now neater and tighter and tamed.
She reminded us that witnesses were still under oath, and then the first witness of the day was called. I took a deep breath, held the nutmeg tightly in my fist, and walked as calmly as I could to the stand.
“I trust you had a pleasant evening, Ms D’Eresby,” Horatio oozed, “and are feeling quite refreshed?”
I might still be under oath, but did he really want the truth? Sometimes history was best fudged.
“Thank you for your concern,” I answered ambiguously. He looked a little nonplussed, but nonetheless continued to seamlessly recap his argument for the benefit of the jury. Many of their faces were now familiar: the tall man with the long, thin face and lantern jaw – like a Hapsburg – who must have had a hearing problem he hadn’t declared because he leaned forward with his left ear to catch what counsel was saying. The woman with the blonde wig and big earrings, who tried to look forty but must have been at least fifteen years older. The younger woman sitting at the end nearest to the witness bench, who smiled all the time, but only with her mouth; the rest of her face never followed. And the little mouse-like man with small black eyes that darted to and fro restlessly. I tried to work out what they were all thinking, but their expressions changed depending on who presented the evidence, and I found myself relying more and more on guesswork and instinct.