by Anna Mazzola
When she emerged into the afternoon light, she saw him standing on the quarterdeck talking to the captain, solemn in his tall hat and black coat. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes shone a vivid blue in the sunlight. Edmund stared at her but did not smile.
“I need to speak with Miss Gale alone,” he said to the captain. “It has been authorized by the Home Secretary.”
The captain was holding and reading over a letter, which he then passed back to Edmund. “Very well. You may meet in my cabin.” He gestured for Edmund and Sarah to follow him.
By the time they reached the cabin, Sarah could hear the blood pounding in her ears like the roar of the sea. Why was he here?
The captain showed them into the room, looked briefly and shrewdly from her to Edmund, and then left, shutting the door behind him. Sarah stood facing Edmund, trying to interpret his expression, but it was inscrutable: a closed book.
“Is something wrong?” she said eventually.
Edmund inclined his head to one side. “Is anything right?”
She swallowed, trying to push down the panic that was rising within her.
“Is anything you’ve told me these past three months true?” he said, “Or has it all been lies—every word?” He spoke quietly, but his voice was cold and hard with anger.
“I told you as much as I could.”
“You told me a pack of lies! And even now, standing here, you lie to my very face.” He practically spat the words.
Sarah stumbled back against the wall.
“Do you know what this case has done to me?” Edmund said. His tone was even, but she could hear the violence coursing beneath. “Do you have any idea what it’s cost me to stand up for you when the rest of London was baying for your blood?”
Sarah stared at him, unable to think of anything she could say at that moment that might help.
“Christ.” He ran his hands over his face. “I’ve gambled everything in order to save you. And the whole time—the whole time—you were feeding me a lie.”
“Edmund, I beg of you. Please understand that—”
“That what? Let me guess: that you had no choice? That you were so afraid of the demon Greenacre that you had to lie and cheat your way through our interviews? Tell me, at what point did you realize who I was? When we first met? Or did you know even before that? Had you discussed with my father how you planned to dupe me?”
“No, of course not. I hadn’t heard from Arthur for months. I suspected from the beginning that you were his son, but I couldn’t ask, not at that stage: you represented the one chance I had of escaping the death sentence. And then…well, and then it was too late. Believe me, I wanted to tell you. My conscience has been almost more than I could bear—”
Edmund laughed. “Spare me the theatrics, Miss Gale. Or is that Miss Wiston, the leading lady? I don’t want to hear about your tortured conscience or your terrible past. I want to hear the truth about what happened that night. I want to know what your role in it was. And before you attempt to construct another story, let me tell you that I have an eyewitness who saw you arrive at Greenacre’s house on the night Hannah Brown was murdered.”
Sarah’s stomach dropped. “What?”
“Yes. Someone who saw you enter the house shortly before ten o’clock, which would have been around the time Hannah Brown died. Explain that.” He folded his arms.
Sarah shook her head. “It wasn’t me.”
“Is that the best you can do? It wasn’t you? How, then, do you explain why the witness says he saw you?”
For several seconds, Sarah was silent, the possibilities and repercussions revolving in her mind.
“He saw someone else,” she said eventually.
“Is that right?”
“Yes, Edmund, it is.”
“I don’t think so, Sarah. I think he saw you. I think you went to the house and, at the very least, helped Greenacre dismember and dispose of the body. Or perhaps it was you who killed her. Heaven knows, you had a motive.”
Sarah put her hand to her throat. “You don’t believe that. You know I couldn’t have done that.”
“Do I? Oh, a week or so ago I might have thought so, but now I don’t know. I have no idea who you really are. While you, it turns out, know me all too well: indeed, you’ve been wheedling bits of information out of me since the beginning, the better to manipulate me.”
“That’s not true. You wanted to tell me about yourself. You wanted someone to talk to.”
Edmund shook his head, his eyes curiously dark. “Enough. You must tell me the truth.”
Sarah felt almost numb with fear. If she remained silent now, it would be the end. She would hang. But maybe she would anyway. “I can’t explain it,” she said quietly, “but I was not at the house.”
“You will have to explain it to a jury.”
“Please, Edmund.” She pressed her hands together. “I cannot go through that again.”
“You may not have to. The Home Secretary may not even give you that chance. He may simply reinstate the death penalty.”
She felt her heart contract. “You don’t need to tell him.”
“You cannot really expect me to keep quiet about what I now know?”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know what the evidence tells me.”
“The evidence tells you nothing. Your witness is mistaken.”
“This witness has no reason to lie. He saw you approach the house and enter it.” His tone was that of the barrister in the courtroom.
“Edmund.” She tried to steady her mind, to find the right words. “You yourself once told me that a person may think he has seen something he cannot possibly have seen.”
“In some circumstances, yes, but how on earth do you explain how someone may see and identify a person he knows if it is not in fact that person?”
As he reached the end of his sentence, Edmund’s expression changed. She saw with a terrible rush of emotion that he had answered the question for himself. For a few seconds they simply stared at one another.
“Your sister.”
“No.”
“Yes,” he said wonderingly. “It was your sister he saw, wasn’t it?”
Sarah felt her eyes fill with tears and fought them back. “No.”
Edmund still stared at her, unblinking. “That’s why you failed to defend yourself at the trial. It wasn’t Greenacre you were protecting at all. It was Rosina.”
“No.” She shook her head.
“It was her the boy saw. In the darkness, he thought Rosina was you.”
“Please, Edmund,” Sarah said. “That’s not who he saw.”
“She killed Hannah?” His tone was incredulous now. “Why?”
“You’ve misinterpreted this.” Sarah’s voice was hoarse.
“Oh, I don’t think I have. I think I’m finally seeing what really happened. I think that’s why you’re trembling.”
He was right: she was shaking uncontrollably. She clutched her arms over her chest to try to still herself.
Edmund kept his eyes on Sarah. “Rosina killed Hannah Brown and then left the house. Greenacre returned and found Hannah dead. He knew that everyone would believe it was him who had murdered her…maybe he even believed that he himself had caused the injury that killed her, so he disposed of the body. He was telling the truth all along when he said that he’d come home to find her dead.”
“James confessed,” Sarah said. “You told me that he admitted to having killed her.”
Edmund shook his head. “Greenacre ‘confessed’ at the very last minute because he thought it was the only means by which he might secure a reprieve. That doesn’t mean what he said was true.”
Sarah did not—could not—reply.
“Is that why you went back to him? To make sure he’d gotten rid of the evidence that mi
ght have incriminated Rosina?”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” Sarah said, trying to slow her breathing. “It wasn’t Rosina that your witness saw. This boy, whoever he is, merely imagined that he saw someone who looked like me.”
“Sarah, stop; think about this. I will have to tell the Home Secretary that there is a witness who believes he saw you that night. It’s my professional duty to do so and also to tell him that I believe that the witness is mistaken and that it was your sister who was at the house the night Hannah Brown died.”
“You don’t have to tell him anything,” she whispered. “How will it help to tell him anything? Hannah Brown is already dead. James is already dead.”
“Why did she kill her?” Edmund asked, seeming not to hear her. “Greenacre suggested she was mad: was he right?”
“The boy is mistaken. He doesn’t know what he saw. No one will believe the word of a child, in any event. You don’t need to tell the Home Secretary. Please, Edmund.” She could hear the tremor in her own voice.
“I can’t go along with that, Sarah. Dear God, I can’t pretend I don’t know.”
“Yes, you can.”
“What, and leave a dangerous woman on the streets?”
“She’s not dangerous,” Sarah said quietly.
“No? Then why did she kill Hannah Brown?”
“She didn’t.”
Edmund breathed out in frustration. “I know what you’re doing, Sarah, and I know why you’re doing it, but you’re making a mistake. The truth will out eventually, and the longer you fight against it the less likely the Home Secretary or a jury are to show mercy to you and Rosina.”
Sarah gave a half smile. “Mercy? I don’t expect mercy. I don’t expect kindness. I was stupid enough to expect it before, but I don’t expect it now.”
“And yet you expect me to stay silent? Do you have any notion of what would happen to me were it to be discovered that I’d concealed all of this? I can’t do it.”
“You can: for George.”
Edmund looked at her quizzically. My goodness, she thought, did he still not see it?
“If Rosina and I are both imprisoned or hanged, he will be all alone.”
Edmund was silent.
“Your own mother was taken from you,” Sarah said. “You know how that feels. Would you wish it upon another child?”
“Don’t turn this on me.” He was angry again now. “Don’t make this about me. I have my own obligations.”
“To whom?” Sarah asked. “Lord Russell? Do you really think he cares about justice? He cares only for his own reputation. The case is already closed so far as he’s concerned. You don’t need to reopen it.” She could hear the desperation in her own voice.
“Maybe he doesn’t care about justice, Sarah, but I do. That’s why I came into this in the first place.”
“And what is justice, Edmund? Is justice killing one woman for the death of another? Is it punishing one woman for trying to protect another? Because that’s what will happen.”
“Justice is about fair dealing, not about concealing the truth simply because it’s inconvenient. Whether or not your sister meant to harm Hannah Brown, the fact is that she’s dead and the man who was convicted of her murder—”
“Is also dead.”
“And might not be had you admitted what truly happened.”
“But you yourself told me that his having mutilated the body was enough of itself to warrant the death sentence.”
“Probably, yes, but that wasn’t for you to decide. It was for a court, considering all of the relevant information.”
“A court that would have sentenced Rosina, James, and me to death for the same crime. I ask again: is that justice? Is that fairness?”
“And I tell you again, it was not for you to decide. And it’s not for me to decide now. My duty is merely to report what I now know to the Home Secretary.”
“Edmund, I beg of you, please don’t do this. If not for George, then for me. Surely you must feel some sympathy, some fellow feeling—”
“You know perfectly well how I feel about you. You’ve made very sure of that.”
“That’s not fair. I never—”
“Oh, please. At least have the goodness to be honest now and to admit it was just part of the act.”
“Edmund, it was never an act. What you’ve understood about how I feel toward you…that’s true.” And she realized as she said it, that it was.
He shook his head. “You were acting out a charade, just as you played the role of victim.”
“The role in which you cast me! You wanted me to be the innocent victim who you could rescue, just as Miss Pike wanted me to be the abused woman, just as the public wanted me to be a crazed murderess.”
“And what are you really?”
She blinked. What was she? “I’m just…I’m just the same as anyone else. I look after those I love.”
Edmund met her eye. “And you expect me to do the same by covering up for you.” He put on his hat. “But I won’t. I can’t.”
He turned from her and walked through the doorway, a gust of cold air rushing through it as he left.
43
“I have no way, and therefore want no eyes;
I stumbled when I saw. Full oft ’tis seen,
Our means secure us and our mere defects
Prove our commodities.”
—King Lear, Act 4, Scene 1, William Shakespeare
Edmund took a passenger steam packet from Woolwich back to London, past the docks, past bowed dwellings, collapsing in on each other, past church steeples, warehouses, arches and bridges, laborers carrying casks, and women carrying children. The closer the steamer came to the heart of London, the greater the river traffic, and by the time Edmund caught sight of the grand arches of Waterloo Bridge, the Thames was a riot of little rowboats, skiffs, and skerries.
At the bridge, Edmund alighted and climbed the steps to the terrace beneath Somerset House. His mind still swirled like the river with its competing thoughts: was Sarah right? Had he himself cast her in the role of the downtrodden woman? Only it turned out that, ill-used though she might have been, she was no innocent. The only real victim was Hannah Brown—beaten and rejected by Greenacre, then killed by his lover’s sister.
Although he was tired and already covered in dust from the dry road, he made straight for Rosina’s house on Hart Street. When no one answered his knock, he entered the grocer’s below, approached the counter, and spoke to the shopkeeper—a short, rotund man with a round, red, shining countenance like one of his own apples.
“You might try St. Paul’s church by Covent Garden,” the man said as he poured some sugar into a twist of paper. “She often takes her little charges to the garden there.”
Edmund walked down Garrick Street, past the tall, grand houses of Bedford Street and entered the church garden via the west entrance. It was a pretty place with young birch trees, a horse chestnut tree, and neat flowerbeds. Within a few seconds, Edmund caught sight of Rosina in a pink dress and straw bonnet, seated on a bench some distance from him. He watched her talking to the two girls seated either side of her and thought for a moment that it was simply impossible that someone so apparently open, so full of life, could have killed another woman. For some time, he stood watching her as she got up and strolled about twirling her parasol. Eventually, when he was a few feet away from her, perhaps sensing that she was watched, Rosina looked up and saw Edmund.
“Oh!” she said in surprise. Within a second, however, her look of puzzlement had faded and her expression grown fixed and afraid. She understood why he was there.
Edmund held her gaze, but said nothing. He heard Rosina urge the little girls to go and play on the lawn “so that I may talk to the gentleman.” When they had run off, she approached and stood before him, her face closed.
“The mai
n thing I don’t understand,” Edmund said, “was how you could have allowed your sister to go through all of this—the arrest, the trial, the sentencing, the imprisonment—and not say a thing. Would you have stayed silent forever?”
Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head.
“So you admit it?”
“I admit nothing.”
“Well, that’s unfortunate.”
“How so?” She spoke softly, but there was a tremor to her voice.
“Because I have a witness who believes that he saw your sister arrive at Greenacre’s house shortly before Hannah Brown died. On the basis of that evidence, it is very likely that Sarah will be tried and convicted of murder. Or the Home Secretary might simply reinstate the original death sentence.”
The blood rushed to Rosina’s face. “You don’t believe her capable of murder.” She spoke almost in a whisper. Close up, Edmund could see that the irises of her eyes were paler than Sarah’s, the color of dark honey flecked with gold.
“No, I don’t, as it happens,” he said. “But it won’t be me who makes the decision. It will be Lord Russell, who is already hardened against her, or twelve men who will have been told that she lied at the original trial and is lying again when she denies murder. Will you keep your silence even then?”
Rosina closed her eyes. Her eyelids were a pale, mauvish color, like a fading bruise.
“And if I were to tell you now,” she said, “that it was me who went to the house, that it was me who killed Hannah Brown, but not intending to do so, what would happen then?”
“Well,” Edmund said, “it depends on exactly what happened.”
Rosina said nothing. The blood had now drained from her face, leaving it white as ash.
“If,” Edmund said, “if one could convince a jury that the killer had not intended to cause serious injury, then it would be manslaughter, not murder. That might mean a sentence of transportation or imprisonment rather than the death sentence.”
“And for the person who had not spoken out?”