by Liz Trenow
Henri could not believe it was all over so quickly. As the guards turned to take Guy down, he began to panic. “Stop,” he shouted. “He’s innocent. He was never there. Surely someone can tell this?”
The judge looked up and fixed him with a stern gaze. “Sir,” he said. “If you interrupt again, I shall have you arrested for disrupting the course of justice.”
Then he turned back to the courtroom, and called, “Next.”
• • •
Henri observed the rest of the proceedings in a daze. The accused appeared either one at a time or in groups, to hear the charges and provide evidence for their innocence. It was clear the judge perceived D’Oyle and Valline to be the ringleaders, and that D’Oyle was the one carrying the gun. Guy was heavily implicated, with one or two others claiming that he had not only been there that night but had in fact been another of the ringleaders. The crowd that had been so excitable earlier now fell quiet, listening to every word spoken by the accusing, the accused, and the witnesses both for and against.
Late in the afternoon, the judge announced that he would be taking a short break to consider the case before sentencing. Henri stayed put, not daring to risk losing his space in the public gallery. An hour ticked slowly by on the courtroom clock and when, at last, a clerk shouted, “All rise,” Henri found his legs so weak that he struggled to stand.
The judge entered and slowly climbed to his seat on the raised dais. He read out a list of four names and called for these prisoners to be brought up from the cells; Guy was not among them. These individuals were pronounced to be “not guilty on all counts,” and allowed to leave the court, accompanied by whoops and cheers from the crowd. Seven further prisoners were told they had been found guilty on some counts—most were sentenced to transportation.
The only prisoners who had not yet reappeared were Valline, D’Oyle, and Guy. “Those poor sods are going to cop it,” Henri’s neighbor mumbled. “Mark my words. They always leave the worst till last.” Anxiety churned in Henri’s belly so violently that he feared he might be sick.
A ripple of anticipation stirred through the court as the three men emerged and took their place in the dock. Valline and D’Oyle stood strong with impassive faces, appearing almost stoical about their fate, but Guy, pale and insubstantial as a wraith, sobbed freely and loudly. Henri felt his heart might break, seeing his friend so utterly terrified that he had lost all dignity.
The judge peered over his glasses toward the dock, cleared his throat, and began to speak.
“John Doyle, John Valline, and Guy Lemaitre,” he said in a slow, portentous voice. “I find you guilty of all charges, including going armed with intent to murder.”
The crowd erupted, and Henri found himself on his feet, shouting along with them. Days, even weeks, of pent-up anger and frustration, and the feeling of such helplessness in the face of an implacable and retributive system, seemed to explode.
“You bastards!” he shouted. “For shame!” When he could bear to turn his eyes back toward the dock, he saw that Guy had fainted clear away, his head lolling, his limp body being held upright by the guards. One of them began to slap him in the face, attempting to return him to consciousness so that he could hear his fate.
A heavy hush fell over the room as the judge reached into his desk, pulled out a piece of black cloth, and placed it on top of his wig. Henri fell to his knees with head in hands, painful sobs wracking his chest. “Please God, save him,” he whispered, over and over.
“The disruption, damage to property, and threat to persons has gone on too long,” the judge was saying. “Ordinary working men and women must be allowed to continue their trades without fear of attack and extortion by lawless men, who cloak their violence under the mantle of natural justice.
“I hereby sentence the three of you—John Valline, John D’Oyle, and Guy Lemaitre—to be hanged by the neck until you are dead.” A horrified groan reverberated through the court. “And so that it shall be a proper example to others in the vicinity who may consider it their right to resort to violence, the sentence will be executed in Bethnal Green, outside the public house, which has been such a center of foment among the lawless.”
• • •
Henri could recall hardly any of what happened next. He was trampled to the floor as the crowd surged for the exit door of the public gallery, heard the shouts and curses of the guards as they attempted to control the crowd and the weeping of women in the corridors as he stumbled toward the doors with the acrid taste of nausea in his mouth.
He tried to reach fresh air but failed. There was a hand on his back, a handkerchief offered to wipe his mouth. “Come, we will go to pray for their souls,” a kindly voice said—a voice he recognized from the French church.
“Don’t waste your breath praying,” he shouted, pulling away from the comforting hand, straightening his back and glaring wildly around the hallway of the courtroom. “How will that save his life?”
More than anything, he wanted to see his friend, to tell him that it would be all right, that he’d get the sentence overturned. He ran along the street to the prison, but the huge wooden doors were closed and hammering on them elicited no response.
“For the love of Christ, open up,” he shouted. “Let me see him.”
At last, a small window in the door eased ajar and a voice growled through the bars, “We’re closed. I’ll arrest you if you don’t leave off.”
“I wish to see Guy Lemaitre.”
“Bugger off, cabbage head.”
“Let me in, I said!”
“I will, in a minute. And then you’ll stay in.” The window slammed.
By now several hundred men and women had gathered outside the courtroom, shouting, “Free the Dolphin three, free the Dolphin three.” He joined the crowd and began to chant along with them, until he and they were one, melded into a more powerful whole by the strength of so many voices shouting in a single rhythm. For a few glorious moments, it gave him hope: as if, by this force alone, they could change the course of fate.
It could not last. Before long a dozen Guards appeared at the gate and fired their pistols into the air before reloading and lowering them toward the crowd. Barely knowing what he was doing, Henri moved forward, his eyes fixed on the black pinpoint hole of the nearest gun, and began to shout, “Kill me then, vas-y. Kill me. I am innocent too, like my friend.”
The Guards fired again, into the crowd this time. The noise and shock was so great that Henri dropped to the ground, certain that he must have been hit. But he could feel no pain. The chanting stopped abruptly and, after a second’s horrified silence, everyone around him scattered. He heard the visceral howl of someone in agony and found himself being pulled to his feet by a group of journeymen he knew slightly, faces from the Dolphin pub, and dragged along Newgate Street, past Saint Paul’s, along Bishopsgate, toward Spitalfields. The mood of the streets was feverish, restive, with groups of angry young men brandishing torches and batons or gathering on street corners in hastily whispered conversations.
“Do not worry,” his new companions told him. “We’re going to spring all three of them. We’ll cause such a riot the Guards won’t be able to hold them.”
He found himself in several different alehouses, all of them in an uproar about the sentences, and he downed every pint that was placed in front of him, desperate to blunt the vision of Guy’s fearful face. There was much bragging and shouts of “Up the Defiance,” and he began slowly to understand that most of the men around him were the self-styled “Cutters,” friends of Valline and D’Oyle. A few also claimed to know Guy who, they promised, would not be allowed to die.
An uneasy voice in the back of his head told him that it was unwise to associate with these men, that he should return to M. Lavalle and tell him what was happening, but whenever he tried to leave he was pushed back into his seat and given another jug of ale. They were heading toward B
ethnal Green when he began to feel light-headed and horribly unwell.
He recognized the pub sign just ahead: it was the Dolphin, where Guy had brought him to sign the petition for the Book of Prices. Spying an alleyway, he excused himself, saying he would join them shortly. Turning the corner, he glimpsed in the gloom a man apparently coupling with a whore. But he could not wait.
“Filthy sod,” the man said.
“Cul pourri,” Henri growled. “Vas-tu la boucler?” Shut your mouth, fat idiot.
“What’s the frog bastard saying?”
The voice was somehow familiar, but Henri was too focused on his own need to concern himself further.
“You don’t want to know,” the woman said, resuming her attentions on the man’s lower regions. But he was not to be distracted, detaching himself and lurching drunkenly toward Henri with his manhood flapping and his fists raised.
“Stand up and fight, French worm.”
As Henri tried to stand, his stomach rebelled and he could hold it no longer. The man retreated to safety, cursing even more viciously.
Henri was straightening himself up and wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve when they heard the unmistakable sound of hobnailed boots ringing on the cobbles. A volley of gunshots close by left his ears ringing. He cowered to the ground with his head in his hands, uncaring of his own filth, holding his breath and praying that he was not discovered. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man and woman scuttling away down the alley.
From inside the pub there were desperate shouts—“The Runners, the Runners!”—followed by the heavy tramp of boots on a stairway, the violent splintering of a wooden door, and more gunfire. For several minutes it seemed the Cutters were trying to fight back, but they were clearly outnumbered. As suddenly as it had started, the firing stopped and the shouts evaporated like smoke.
Looking upward, Henri could see, silhouetted against the sky, men leaping from windows across the gap between the buildings. Gathering his senses, he realized that he had just a few precious moments to escape before the Bow Street Runners came out of the pub. But, as he turned, his heart tumbled into his boots. At the end of the alley, just a few yards away, was a Guard staring directly at him, pointing his pistol.
“Come out with your hands up, or I’ll shoot you dead,” he said.
19
Every member of the fair sex ought to know how to sew, knit and mend, and cook, and superintend a household. In every situation of life, high or low, this sort of knowledge is of great advantage.
—The Lady’s Book of Manners
As the coach rattled its way out of the city, cobbled streets gave way to the graded gravel of the highway. Now, out of the window, Anna could see woods and fields, instead of houses.
She had been in London barely six months, but it seemed as though a lifetime had passed since she had traveled this road in the opposite direction. She swallowed back the tears that threatened as she recalled her first fateful hours in the city: how she had fainted in the heat and been rescued by a stranger apparently speaking in tongues, a stranger she now knew to be Henri.
All that was over now, of course. His letter had made it perfectly clear. The pain of rejection still stabbed like a knife deep in her heart, from which she would never recover. There were times when she felt that her tears would never stop, that she would never again find happiness. She’d pored over his previous notes again and again, obsessively, until the paper had worn into fragments. His face, and most particularly his dark eyes smiling at her in that confidential way of his, appeared in dreams from which she would awake, sobbing, knowing that she would never see them again.
She could not dare to venture out into the streets for fear that she might see him, reopening the agonizing wounds once more. She could not even bear to approach the showroom downstairs at Spital Square because the smell of silk reminded her so painfully of the man with whom, she now had to acknowledge, she had fallen deeply in love.
Of course, she realized how unrealistic it had been to imagine that they might ever become friends, let alone lovers. The social divides in the city were simply too rigid and clearly defined, and she was not strong enough to challenge them. The notion that she’d entertained of becoming a silk designer seemed equally distant and fanciful, the whim of a naive girl.
And how close she had come to accepting Charles, whom she did not love. She could see now that only the unexpected conjunction of circumstances—unfortunate for her uncle and aunt, but fortunate for her—had reprieved her from a life of unhappiness.
She was now desperate to leave London, to put behind her everything that reminded her of what might have been. When she’d announced that she was going home for Christmas, her aunt had appeared almost grateful. Only Lizzie showed genuine sorrow. “Whatever shall I do without you?” she wept. “Everyone is so gloomy all the time, except for you. My life will be a misery if you leave. Promise me you will come back in the New Year.”
She’d written to her father to say she was returning to Suffolk just for a few weeks, but in her heart she knew she would stay, probably for good. She would let fortune take its course; she would probably remain unmarried, living a peaceful and impecunious life in the country. Yes, she might be bored, but surely she would find something to entertain her brain? Perhaps she could do some tutoring, of drawing or reading, and bring in a few extra shillings to support her father and Jane.
She gave a deep sigh and turned her eyes to the passing fields. Arriving in the city for the first time, she had felt like a stranger, but it was curious how the countryside now appeared equally surprising to her eye. Of course it was in the grip of winter, the trees leafless and stark against a gray sky and rainwater lying in silver stripes along the furrows of brown fields.
The faces around her were uniformly pale and featureless, their exchanges exclusively in the English tongue. On the streets of Spitalfields, she had become accustomed to hearing so many languages: most commonly English or French, of course, but also Spanish, Gaelic, Dutch, and German, and many others she could not recognize. Here, she could understand every word and the conversations were so mundane that overhearing them became irritating and wearying.
After lunch the passengers wrapped themselves up against the cold and settled into slumber for the four-hour leg to Chelmsford. Anna allowed her eyes to close. Over the past few days, events had moved so fast that she’d barely had time to take stock, to consider her own feelings.
• • •
At Chelmsford she knew just what to do, requesting a simple meal of bread, cheese, and pickle to be served in her chamber and ordering an additional candle. Somehow the lumpy bed seemed more bearable this time. Just one more night and tomorrow I shall be resting deep in my own feather mattress at the vicarage, she thought to herself, with the sound of the waves in my ears.
It was well after sundown when they reached the town square at Halesworth, but by the light of the fading sky she could see her father and sister waiting in the smithy’s horse cart, bundled up against the cold, ready to transport her the final few miles to the village. Never had a sight been so welcome. Moments later, they were in each other’s arms, laughing and crying in their joy with Bumbles running in circles around them, barking with excitement.
“Dearest girl, how we have missed your sunny smile. Let me look at you,” Theodore said at last. “What a smart cloak, my dear. And that beautiful warm muff. My sister has treated you well. But your journey must have been wearying. Let us get you home at once. We have stew in the pot.”
“And it’s nearly Christmas,” Jane said, holding tight to Anna’s arm. “We’ve got presents!”
“Remember we must not tell until it is time to open them,” her father said, mock sternly.
Jane snuggled up to Anna on the hard seat of the wooden cart, inside their shared blanket. The dog settled on top of their feet like a hot water bottle and Theodore squeezed in beside
them. Despite a light rain wetting their faces, Anna realized that, for the first time on her long journey, she actually felt warm.
This is what I’ve missed, she thought to herself, the comfort of human contact. Apart from Lizzie’s occasional embraces and the press of Miss Charlotte’s professional fingers during fittings, she had barely touched another human being for the whole six months. There had been the briefest of contacts with Charlie, of course, but also—her heart lurched at the memory—the moment when Henri held her after she fainted on the street and the time when he took her hand to help her down the ladder from the weaving loft. But no prolonged embraces, no proper, comforting cuddles. She pressed herself closer to her sister and father as the cart jolted its way along the muddy, rutted track home, and found herself grinning with happiness.
Despite her exhaustion and a bellyful of mutton stew, she did not sleep well. They had insisted she use the chamber normally reserved for visiting curates and the like: “You are our special guest now, my dear,” her father had said. “You must have your privacy.” She did not want to be a guest, special or otherwise. She wanted everything to be as it had always been. But of course I cannot turn back the clock, she thought to herself. They have grown used to living without me, just as I have grown used to the city. With the simple passing of time everything changes, and everyone is changed.
She tossed and turned on the soft mattress, missing the lumpy horsehair of her London garret. At some time before dawn, she crept along the corridor into the room where, for nearly all of her childhood, she had shared a double bed with her sister, the feathers plumped up into a bolster between them.
As she climbed beneath the covers, Jane stirred, turned over, and moved across, pressing her body against Anna’s, just as she had as a very small child. Then she resumed her usual snoring, as soothing and familiar as a lullaby. Anna slept, undisturbed, well into the morning.