The Unseeing

by Anna Mazzola

  “James drew me even closer then, so that I could feel his breath on my face. It would be all the same, he whispered. Because if I spoke out, he would say I was there. He’d say I’d done it myself. I still had some spirit at that point. I told him that no one would ever believe that I—a nurse, a mother—could kill someone, and another woman at that. His hands went round my throat then and pressed.

  “‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘if you don’t keep your mouth shut, I’ll make you regret it for the rest of your life.’ And then he shifted his eyes toward George.

  “‘You wouldn’t hurt him,’ I said, though I could barely breathe.

  “‘I’m telling you, you have to keep your silence,’ he said, ‘or it will be over. For all of us.’”

  Sarah looked at Edmund. “What could I do then but what he asked?”

  Edmund had been making notes while Sarah was speaking, but was now still. He looked her straight in the eye.

  “So he threatened you into keeping quiet? You had no other choice?”

  Sarah thought of George’s terrified face.

  “I had no choice. I had to do it. If I’d betrayed him, it would have been the end of me and of George.”

  Edmund nodded and returned to his notes. It was done.

  • • •

  After a few moments, Sarah said, “What I’ve just told you, is it enough?”

  Edmund looked up. “What do you mean ‘enough’? It’s everything, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I mean: is it enough to save me?”

  “I cannot promise you anything, Sarah, but I will certainly be recommending that you receive a full pardon.”

  She put her hands to her throat. “I would be released?”

  “Yes, assuming the Home Secretary agrees with my recommendation. It’s possible, of course, that he will reject it in its entirety but I think that very unlikely. It’s also possible, I suppose, that he will come up with some alternative—a stretch of imprisonment, for example.”

  “Here? In Newgate?” Sarah could not stay in this place.

  “I am setting out the worst possible eventuality. I think it likely that Lord Russell will accept my recommendation. He’s a sensible man. He will see, as I do, that you had no choice but to act as you did.”

  “It’s important, Mr. Fleetwood, that James doesn’t come to know that I’ve spoken out against him.”

  “Sarah,” Edmund said, “he’s in one of the condemned cells, under close watch. He can’t harm you here.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand what influence he has. What friends he has. Someone could get to George. And if James were to be reprieved…”

  “He won’t be reprieved, Sarah, no matter what he says or does. The mere fact of him cutting up the body was enough to warrant the death sentence, and he cannot deny that now.”

  “But still, if he were to find out…” She shuddered.

  Edmund put his hand over hers, his palm warm on her marble-cold fingers. “I’ll ensure that the information is communicated in absolute confidence to the Home Secretary. No harm will come to you or George. I promise.”

  • • •

  Edmund walked briskly back to his chambers. He should never have doubted himself. He would always have persuaded her to talk. Now he had the material to prepare the report: Sarah had to go along with Greenacre or she herself would have ended up on the cutting table, her son too. He did not doubt that the man was capable of it. It was satisfying to think that this information would not just save Sarah, but crush any last chance Greenacre might have of a reprieve. He was guilty not only of murder but of threats to kill a mother and child.

  Once back at Inner Temple Lane, Edmund rushed up the stairs to his study and began preparing his writing implements. He rang for Flora to bring him some refreshments: a few biscuits and a little wine. After eating, he brushed the crumbs from the foolscap paper and dipped his pen into the inkpot, pausing briefly before commencing his assault on the paper. Now that he had the truth, he had no time to lose. He must finalize Sarah’s affidavit and draft the report to the Home Secretary.

  Three hours and two drafts later, he flexed his hand and leaned back in his leather chair. He had distilled Sarah’s story into five pages, which explained why an educated and intelligent woman such as Sarah could never have voluntarily aided and abetted a murderer, and why Greenacre’s manipulation and threats had meant that she had no choice but to keep silent. There was something pleasing in speaking out on behalf of a woman who had been subjugated and silenced by a powerful and cruel man. He had not stood up for his mother, but he could do his best for Sarah. Reading back through the affidavit, he had a vague sense that something was missing but he could not place it. He picked up his pen and wrote out the statement of truth at the bottom of the document. It was a work of art.

  Outside, it had turned into a ghastly evening. Rain hurled itself at the windows and a furious gale blew, rattling the casements and contorting the branches of the trees. After a hasty dinner of boiled beef and greens, Edmund returned to his study to complete his report to the Home Secretary, taking a glass of mulled sherry with him. The more he wrote, the more certain Edmund became that the report would be approved. There was no real evidence to support the idea that Sarah had assisted in the crime. There was, in reality, very little evidence at all. She ought never to have been convicted. The police had suppressed information that might have helped the defense, skewed the evidence in order to justify the arrest, and then conveniently lost the jewelry, knowing that she could prove it was her own. The jury had been inherently prejudiced against Sarah by the inaccurate and sensational reports in the press, and they had not been presented with a true and full account of Sarah’s story, partly because of her own fear of Greenacre and partly because of negligent legal representation. He hesitated to criticize Mr. Price in his report—it was always unattractive for lawyers to disparage one another—but he had seen the man’s performance with his own eyes. Price had failed his client appallingly.

  “My own careful analysis of the evidence,” he wrote, “shows that although—for the reasons outlined below—Sarah Gale did not speak out against the crime, she did not actively help Greenacre conceal the murder, as was claimed at trial.”

  When considered properly, each piece of evidence that was used against her falls away. First, the jewelry that the prosecution claimed she had stolen from the deceased was in fact her own property, as has been confirmed by her sister. In any event, the prosecution evidence on the point should have been discounted at trial as the exhibits had been lost.

  Secondly, the fact that Miss Gale borrowed water to clean the house on the 26th of December proves nothing, as Mrs. Andrews of number eleven Carpenter’s Buildings has confirmed that Miss Gale regularly borrowed water with which to clean. Thirdly, James Greenacre has admitted that it was he who took the scraps of child’s clothing (that were later found with the body) from the kitchen without Miss Gale’s knowledge.

  As regards her failure to report the crime or to subsequently give evidence against Mr. Greenacre, it is clear that Miss Gale acted, or rather failed to act, out of necessity. Mr. Greenacre, a man with a confirmed history of violence, including against Miss Gale herself, had threatened the lives of both her and her young son. In those circumstances, I submit that the failure to report the death did not amount to concealing a murder.

  It irked Edmund that the criminal law in this area was ambiguous. Despite having spent hours researching the matter in the Inner Temple Library the previous week, he could find no case or authority that expressly stated that necessity or coercion were in fact a defense to aiding and abetting a murder. But then, this was no longer a court case.

  Edmund ended his report by respectfully recommending a free pardon or, at the very least, that Sarah’s sentence be reduced to a short term of imprisonment.

  He laid the last sheet to dry. The ink glistene
d in the lamplight. For a minute or so, he watched the rain beat against the dark glass and finished the rest of his wine. He reread the report, paused for a moment, and then signed his name.

  • PART TWO •

  CAPUT

  23

  “A thousand gazing eyes are there,

  And a thousand anxious breasts:

  And many a knee, in pretense of prayer,

  On the threshold rests.

  But it is not to worship the mighty God,

  To pour out a contrite heart,

  To bow to the throne, to kiss the rod,

  For the sins in the soul that smart.

  ’Tis to look on the man of shame and crime,

  From the law of his God who hath swerved,

  To see as he stands on the verge of time,

  If his spirit be yet unnerved.”

  —“Lines written in the Chapel of Newgate, previous to the Condemned Sermon, on James Goodacre,” The Stage: Both Before and Behind the Curtain, Alfred Bunn, 1840

  It was Sunday. The day of the condemned sermon.

  After supper, two of the younger turnkeys hurried Sarah over the moss-green cobbles of the yard into a whitewashed room and then into the chapel itself. She had been into the chapel twice before. It was plain and ill-lit with grimy windows and galleries for the male and female prisoners lined with shabbily painted benches.

  As Sarah entered, she saw that not only were almost all of the benches already taken with other prisoners, but the galleries were packed to bursting with men and women in regular dress—vibrant blues, purples, and pinks, parasols, hats, and cravats. These were paying members of the public who had come to gawp. There must have been five hundred people in there, maybe more, chattering excitedly. As she walked past, the turnkeys keeping a firm hold of each arm, people turned toward her, watching and whispering.

  “His accomplice!” she heard from a woman in the gallery above, and there was a collective gasp and a rustling as people stood up to look. So that was why they had brought her here.

  The pulpit and reading desk had been hung with heavy black velvet, and tall candles had been placed at either end. The King’s arms, a splash of red, blue, and gilt, was spread across on the wall above. The sheriffs, in their gold chains, sat to the right of the pulpit, the Governor to the left, his face skeletal in the candle’s glow. Above him, the Commandments on the wall had worn away and were barely legible.

  Sarah realized that James Greenacre was already there, in the condemned box: a huge pen, painted black. He sat on a chair in the center, facing the front of the chapel so that Sarah could not see his face, though he was clearly visible to those in the galleries above. He leaned forward slightly, his hands on his knees, as if praying. They said that even the atheist would pray when faced with imminent death.

  Sarah was seated on a bench to the right of the chapel between the turnkeys. Perhaps they thought she would try to run to him, for they sat so close that she could feel their hipbones through their skirts. She willed James to turn round and look at her but he remained facing forward, motionless.

  The chapel quietened as the Ordinary entered. He wore a long black cassock with a white cravat at his throat, giving him the appearance of a pompous puffin. He looked about him, wordlessly ordering the crowd to be silent. When everyone was suitably hushed, he began.

  “O thou great and glorious Lord God! Thou high and holy one who inhabitest eternity and despises not the meanest of thy works, we humbly beseech thee to look down in compassion on us, thy poor vile and sinful creatures who now present our prayers and supplications unto thee.”

  Although the chapel was packed full with bodies, his voice carried and resounded from the stone walls, uncomfortably loud.

  “O Lord, have mercy upon us. Blot out our transgressions, and remember our sins and iniquities no more.”

  Sarah looked up at the statue of the Virgin Mary in the chancel to her right. The paint had peeled from her face and she stared blindly back. The Ordinary finished the prayer and moved on to his sermon.

  “There are few more affecting things in this world than to visit a man sentenced to death on the last night of his sentence.” His voice had dropped and the crowd leaned forward to catch his words.

  “Occasionally, men remain hardened to the last, clinging to their wretched disbelief in God, but this is rare. Most often, as with our subject here, although he has eschewed the Christian ways his whole life, once he knows he is standing on the very brink of eternity, then he clamors for forgiveness!”

  The Ordinary raised his voice as he said these last words and there were mutterings from the gallery. So James had found religion. Maybe in his last days he had grown desperate, his confidence trampled by the advance of death. Or, more likely it was a ruse to procure a last-minute reprieve. Sarah wished she could see his face so as to catch at what he might be thinking.

  Raising his arms, the Ordinary continued: “Ladies and gentlemen, stretch your imagination to the utmost, and try to picture what must be the state of mind of such a man the night previous to his execution. He knows that in a few hours he will meet his Maker. He knows it is too late to atone for his actions. He knows, as David did, that the wicked shall be turned into hell!”

  He expounded upon the qualities of hell: lakes of fire and brimstone, wailing and gnashing of teeth. His words were like blows, all raining down on James, who sat only a few yards in front of him, his head bowed. Sarah wondered what the Ordinary had said to James when they were on their own. If he viewed her, as an accomplice to the crime, as past saving, then he must think James would burn in the fires of the hell he described. But looking at the Ordinary now on his podium, waving his arms about for the crowds, she suspected he did not believe any of it. Angels and devils, death and misery, shame and sorrow: it was all an act.

  Sarah had stopped listening. She was a young girl again, in starched petticoats and ribboned bonnet, walking hand in hand with her sister past carved pillars toward the front of a church, gazing up at the fan-vaulted ceiling, at gilded paintings of stern figures. Their nurse held her baby brother, a squirming mass of white lace, while a minister recited the rite of baptism:

  “Dost thou, in the name of this Child, renounce the devil and all his works?”

  “I renounce them all,” came the voices of the group assembled around the font.

  It was the talk of the devil that had scared Rosina. She had run, out of the church and into the street, and Sarah had been too busy watching the minister to realize until it was too late. She remembered being rushed from the church in a flurry of skirts and angry whispers: “You were supposed to look after her, Sarah!” It took them several hours to find Rosina. She had been hiding in the graveyard and had fallen asleep beneath an oak tree.

  “What’s wrong with you, child?” their mother had demanded, shaking her. “Why do you have to spoil everything?”

  But it was their mother who had spoiled everything, Sarah thought. It was she who had made them what they were.

  Sarah’s eyes were on the Virgin Mary again when she realized the Ordinary was talking about her.

  “Some may feel that such a woman is beyond understanding, beyond redemption, hardly human at all. We must place her as far away as possible from all other women, from all of us.”

  Nods from the gallery. A few of the prisoners on the bench in front had turned to look at her. She stared down at her hands.

  “Hear the words of your Redeemer: the day is coming in which all who are in their graves shall hear the voice of their Judge and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”

  The warder to Sarah’s right scratched at her neck. A young prisoner at the front of the chapel had begun to weep.

  “He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower. He fleeth also as a shadow…”
>
  Sarah heard James repeating back the words. His voice was surprisingly clear and even. How foolish of her, to have thought he would be afraid.

  24

  At an early hour last night the Old Bailey, and the space around the angles of Newgate, were thronged with a clamorous multitude, including almost as many women as men, and among the latter persons apparently of every grade in society though, as in all such cases, the great mass was of the lowest order.

  —MORNING POST, 2 MAY 1837

  The banging began at four o’clock on Monday morning and grew louder over the next hour. They were building the scaffold.

  As she waited for her cell door to be unlocked, Sarah heard two of the warders talking in the corridor.

  “There must be ten thousand people out there.”

  “More, I reckon. It’s the best attended execution this year.”

  “Groves says they’re charging three guineas for a station at the windows opposite.”

  “Three guineas! Let’s hope Greenacre puts on a good show for ’em!”

  Even from within her cell, Sarah could hear the crowd, humming like a dangerous machine. James must be able to hear them too. What was going through his mind in his final hours? Was he sorry? For any of it? Did he picture her face, or did he think only of Hannah Brown’s, the right side a mess of blood and bone?

  At seven o’clock, as she scrubbed her stone floor, Sarah heard the buzz of the crowd mount to a roar. Then came another, and another. The people were cheering; they must have wheeled out the scaffold. By half-past seven, the noise from outside vibrated the glass in the windows of the breakfast room and the drumming resounded in her ears. Some of the prisoners climbed on top of chairs and pressed themselves up against the high windows, passing down information to those standing below. The sheriffs were there, they said, in their heavy gold chains and red robes, and the Ordinary too. And people in the crowd were shouting at the men in front to take off their hats so that they could see. Now Calcraft, the executioner, was here. Wasn’t he a rum-looking blackguard! Was he half-sprung? Would he botch the job again? Would he have to hang on to the man’s legs to break his neck? Would he misjudge the drop and take his head off? So the women went on, inexorably, breathlessly.