by Adam Roberts
‘Well,’ said Bonnard. ‘My opinion is that one of you has committed an act of rape upon Siuzan Delage.’
‘No!’ I yelled. ‘Never! None of us!’
‘Nonsense! Obscene nonsense’, blustered Mark Pol, talking simultaneously with me.
Only Gymnaste was silent.
The word itself, so ugly, polluted the air. It polluted my thoughts. That it could be coupled with the name of the woman with whom I was in love was monstrous. It jangled echoes in my thoughts. No!
‘Has Siuzan laid a legal complaint against us?’ Mark Pol demanded.
‘Against one of us? In which case, which of us? Why are we other two being kept in confinement?’ He swivelled his torso just enough to make it plain that he was looking at me.
Astonishment gripped me, but enough of my wits remained for me to understand his implication. Treherne was informing the police that I must be the guilty party. It was difficult enough absorbing the revelation that Siuzan had been assaulted in this hideous way. To hear myself accused of the assault was too appalling.
‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Wait - Mark Pol—’
‘It is my legal obligation to inform you, chevaler,’ Mark Pol went on, ‘that my companion Jon Cavala was decapitated for precisely this crime. Rape I mean, and nothing else. Clearly he must be the suspect, until DNA can confirm his guilt absolutely. But my other companion and myself, there is surely no need for us to remain here.’
‘Traitor!’ I snapped. ‘I had nothing to do with - There’s not a scrap of truth in what he says about—’ ‘Has,’ said Gymnaste in a loud voice, ‘Siuzan laid a legal complaint of rape?’
I spoke over the first half of this question, and Gymnaste had to repeat it. But I stopped talking once it had been asked. My thoughts were in turmoil.
‘She has not,’ said Bonnard.
‘In that case,’ said Mark Pol eagerly, ‘no crime is inferred, and we must be released at once.’
‘Wait,’ said Gymnaste.
‘Indeed,’ said Bonnard, smiling and fingering his chiller as if it were a bauble or a toy. ‘There indeed has been a crime. It is simply that we, as police, are not certain which crime it is.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Mark Pol.
‘It is simple enough. A medical examination reveals that Siuzan Delage has been the recipient of penetrative sexual attention, and that this illegal act has happened within the last two days. The examination suggests, furthermore, that this penetration was neither solicited nor enjoyed by Siuzan Delage. There are, without being too graphic, certain bodily symptoms that are highly suggestive of this circumstance.’
I felt a sickness in my belly. A shudder shook through me at these words.
‘But she has not made a legal complaint about . . .?’ Mark Pol asked.
Bonnard, in possession of vocal chords, a mouth, the subtleties of the human power of speech, brought this reedy metallic sentence to a halt by interjecting, loudly, ‘Do you think us fools?’
We all sat up straight on our seats.
‘Do you think,’ Bonnard continued, ‘that we, the police, have been unable to patch together a picture of the last few days? We know what you and this woman have been doing. We have contacted our people in Doué, and also our people in Lacon. We have consulted the legal records on each of the three of you. Sieur Treherne? Of course we know about the reason for Jon Cavala’s decapitation. How could we not? The police in Doué and the police in Cainon are allies, after all. This much we know: Siuzan Delage entirely misfits the profile of a criminal. She is a devout and genuine person. All testimony confirms this. The worst that might be said of her is that her piety leads her into a rather over-innocent idealism, the sort that encourages a beautiful and talented woman to waste her time helping beheaded criminals - even going so far as trekking with them through the desert, without chaperone or protection.’
‘And yet,’ said Gymnaste, speaking in a low voice, ‘you have taken her into legal confinement.’
‘Indeed. And so I must talk to you three . . . individuals. That she has had sexual intercourse cannot be denied. If she has been raped, then no fault, legal or moral, attaches to her, and our duty as police becomes simply to apprehend and punish her rapist. The punishment being, as you three all know, and as one of you has greater cause than most to know, decapitation. Saving only that a man may be beheaded only once, and the rapist who is already headless must be executed.’
None of us replied to this.
After a while Bonnard continued:
‘Which is the man? This is what I must ask you. You might think that the easier path would be to ask the victim. This we have done.’
He paused again, and looked at each of us in turn.
‘She refuses to tell us the name of her attacker, although I am certain she knows it.’
He paused again.
‘It is the sentence,’ he said, eventually. ‘This, I think, explains the reticence of Siuzan Delage. For she knows that to identify her rapist and lay charges will lead to that person’s death. Such a thing, though it seems to me justice, and greatly to be desired, perhaps does not seem so to her. Maybe she believes that such a thing should not be allowed to happen.’
We remained silent.
‘She feels she must protect her attacker. It is misguided, but I suppose it’s what she believes. So the question I have for you three is simple. I ask one of you, whichever one is guilty, to confess to the crime now. Your confession will mean your death, I am afraid. But such is justice. And at least your words will save Siuzan Delage from shame and beheading. You, Jon Cavala.’ He pointed at me. ‘Have you repeated your former offence, and forced yourself sexually on a woman?’
‘I have not!’ I replied indignantly. ‘And if you have consulted the records on my case, as you say you have, then you must know that I have never forced myself on any woman. I pleaded guilty to the charge of rape, in that former time, so as to protect my lover, whom otherwise would have faced the rage of the law for indulging her physical love with me.’
‘A common defence,’ said Bonnard, without heat. ‘Though much less often true, I find, than it is asserted. But I am not, at present, interested in your previous crime. I am interested in this crime. Did you have sexual relations with this woman, this Siuzan Delage?’
‘No,’ I said.
He turned his head. ‘You, Sieur Mark Pol, did you—?’
‘Certainly I did not,’ said Mark Pol hotly. ‘Most certainly, no.’
‘And you, Sieur Peri? Did you commit this act with Siuzan Delage?’
‘No,’ said Gymnaste.
‘I appear to have exhausted the list of suspects. She has been in your company, and yours alone, for the last three days; and it is certain that the act occurred during that length of time. Accordingly, one of you is lying.’
‘It will be a simple matter,’ said Gymnaste, ‘for you to discover from DNA which of us is the guilty one.’
‘Indeed. And yet, not so. For Siuzan Delage refuses to lay a criminal charge against her attacker. As I say, I believe she does know which of you assaulted her - although perhaps she does not, for it can be difficult to distinguish one headless from another. But in that case, if she were unsure which of you had assailed her, she could most certainly lay a general criminal charge. Doing so, she would be treated as a victim and we would investigate the crime. This would, as you say Sieur Peri, be a simple matter, the extraction of DNA from the materials left inside Siuzan Delage to match it with one of you three. But she refuses to lay a criminal charge. She refuses, in fact, to cooperate. Under these circumstances it is not possible for us to obtain the necessary DNA - forcibly to do so would, indeed, constitute sexual assault under the law, and render us liable to prosecution!’ He chuckled at this. ‘Us - the police ourselves!’
‘You extracted DNA from us,’ Mark Pol pointed out indignantly, ‘without our consent!’
‘Ah, but you were being investigated for a specific crime. The law permits us to extract your DNA in the
course of this investigation.’
‘Siuzan Delage is being held in confinement on suspicion of a crime . . .’ I said.
‘But not the crime of rape,’ said Bonnard. ‘Accordingly we are not permitted to extract such DNA as may be found within her inner uterine cavities. We may, of course, extract her DNA, and so confirm that she is indeed Siuzan Delage. But how would this advance the case?’
‘She has permitted herself to be examined,’ said Gymnaste, ‘to the extent that you were able to determine that sexual congress had taken place.’
‘She had been . . . wounded in that portion of her body,’ said Bonnard. ‘This wound happened, presumably, as a result of the assault.’
I was shuddering. A nightmarish sense of the appalling intimacy of this crime, a consciousness of how beautiful and innocent was the woman who had suffered it, was tormenting me. I also felt a hard anger growing in me, a desire to find the man who had perpetrated such a foul act and punish him - to kill him.
‘She applied to the chemist for medicines to aid her. The chemist, learning of the part of the body concerned, declined to examine Siuzan Delage himself. Quite properly he called a doctor. She (the doctor I mean) examined Siuzan Delage in the chemist’s diagnosis room, and naturally informed the police, as the law required her to do. At this stage, I might add,’ and Bonnard leant forward as he spoke ‘she was weeping copiously, was Chère Siuzan. Weeping! A woman in considerable emotional and mental distress. But by the time I arrived, to commence my investigation, she had, perhaps, thought through the fullest consequences of her situation. When the doctor asked to take a DNA sample from her she refused permission.’
Bonnard paused, and smiled. The effect was sinisterly predatory.
‘Now, perhaps,’ he said, ‘you may understand the dilemma we, as lawmen, face. For the law cannot comprehend that a woman, once raped, would wish to protect her attacker. As far as the law is concerned, a woman proven to have had sexual intercourse becomes guilty of that crime, unless she complains of forced congress. Now, the punishment for illicit sexual congress is—’
I could not bear it. ‘You would not behead an innocent woman!’ My voice was distorted by the emotional pressure that forced it through its synthesiser. ‘A woman you know to be innocent of!’
‘Jon Cavala,’ he said. ‘Be quiet now. You think it is the business of the police to make exceptions from the law? It is not. Illegal sexual activity has happened here. Either this activity is rape, or it is illicit-consensual.’
‘Surely,’ said Mark Pol, ‘Siuzan may declare that she has been raped, and yet refuse to name her attacker?’
Bonnard placed his hands palm uppermost, a manual shrug. ‘This would be one course of action. The law does not require her to know the identity of her attacker, after all.’
‘Well then!’ said Mark Pol. ‘She should do that. Declare that she has been raped but she knows not by whom.’
‘She does not do this,’ said Bonnard. ‘Nevertheless.’
‘I do not understand,’ said Mark Pol. ‘Does she wish to be beheaded?’
‘Not that,’ said Gymnaste, ‘but she knows that we three are the only suspects. If she complains of rape, then she must surrender such DNA as is inside her. She knows that to lay a criminal charge is to kill one of us. Evidently she would rather face beheading than condemn, by her words, one of us three to death.’
My thought processes were slipping and scratching. I could not focus them. ‘The law cannot condemn an innocent . . . it is monstrous - you, Chevaler Bonnard, you would not permit an innocent—’
‘It is not a matter for me,’ Bonnard said. ‘My duty is to explain the circumstances to you. Siuzan Delage, out of what is, to my mind, a misguided sense of duty, refuses to speak the words that will execute one of you three. But she need not say those words. If one of you - the guilty one, of course - if you confess to the crime, then she will keep her head.’
He looked, in turn, at each of us.
‘I have asked you once, and I shall ask you again. I will not ask you a third time. This second time, however, you are all apprised of the weight that attaches to your reply.’
‘I certainly,’ blustered Mark Pol, ‘I certainly did not force myself upon this poor woman. I reiterate my innocence of this crime. I insist upon it. I am not guilty.’
Bonnard looked at him. ‘Very well. Sieur Peri?’
Gymnaste was silent for a long time. There was a peculiar shiver to his flesh, as if he were cold. The material of his shirt was darkening in patches, at his underarm, where sweat was soaking in. Eventually he spoke, and the voice synthesiser gave his tone a level calmness not consonant with these physical symptoms of his inner distress. He said, ‘I cannot lie.’
‘I certainly do not wish you to lie,’ said Bonnard smoothly.
‘It is my curse,’ said Gymnaste.
‘Indeed ?’
‘It has cost me my head, and now I fear it will cost sweet Siuzan Delage hers as well. But I cannot lie. I simply - cannot. To lie would - break me, would collapse the person I am. I did not have sexual relations with this woman, with Siuzan Delage.’ He was pressing his hands together, knotting the fingers, drawing his forearms apart with his fingers still snagged together, stretching and contorting himself. ‘I wish,’ he said, ‘I wish I could claim this crime and so save her head! I wish it more than anything - but I cannot lie!’
‘You are not, then, guilty?’
‘No!’
‘Very well,’ said Bonnard, and he turned to me. ‘Jon Cavala, I ask you the same question. You have answered it once already, and answered it in the negative. Now how do you plead?’
My mind was sprawling and spindling like a drunk. ‘But,’ I said. ‘This is - this is monstrous! You know the woman to be innocent!’
‘Did you force yourself upon this woman? Did you injure her, physically and emotionally?’
‘I,’ I said. ‘This is - you ask me because of my previous conviction.’
‘I ask all three of you. The other two have answered.’
‘Just as Gymnaste cannot lie,’ I said, ‘so I cannot - hate - a woman. The man who would do this thing to any woman, let alone to a woman as pure as Siuzan Delage . . . that man must hate womankind. But I do not hate womankind. I cannot hate womankind. I know my shame, and I bear it. I must, for the sake of the woman who—’ I stopped. The pressure of that moment, of the shock and trauma, had unbalanced me. Of course it was merest idiocy to say these things to a serving policeman. Of course, and despite my conviction and punishment, to indicate that the woman regarded in law as my victim was in fact a willing accomplice in our sexual transgression - this could serve no positive aim, and might bring the anger of the law upon her. I had sworn to myself never to reveal the truth of my so-called crime. I had resolved to accept on my own, naked shoulders the sole guilt for our love affair. But here I was blurting the truth.
I stopped myself.
I considered the lie. And yet I found I could not utter it. It would create a world in which I had harmed Siuzan Delage, and this I could not do. You, reading this account, may say that this created world would be merely a world of words, but it would also have been the world of law, of general perception and public attitude; a world as real as the world of matter.
And then again, I thought to myself: this policeman knows Siuzan to be innocent. He could not - he would never - allow her to be beheaded. Naturally he was telling us that he would allow this to come to pass, but this was obviously by way of a strategy for the extraction of a confession. He could never force the issue so cruelly.
‘I am innocent,’ I said.
Bonnard sat back and blew a sigh of frustration through his teeth. ‘So,’ he said, regarding us, disdainfully, each in turn again. ‘As the Bibliqu’rân says, Skin for skin, everything that a man hath he will give for his life.’
‘I resent that remark,’ said Mark Pol. ‘If sexual assault happened, then one of these other two is guilty, and I refuse to be accused of—’
‘Be quiet,’ retorted Mark Pol. ‘You fool! What do you think you are doing? Be quiet. I am innocent, I tell you. Before you throw such accusations at me, consider your own history. I have no predilection for sexual crime, whereas you have already faced the judgement of the law for rape. If you could rape once, then why not again?’
My thoughts finally fell into a whirlpool of rage and fury, and I launched myself at him. My leg muscles, still weary from the long walk of the previous days, tensed and projected me up. My arm muscles were still strong from the old days when I had exercised them assiduously.