Defend and Betray

Instead of going home, which perhaps he ought to have done, Rathbone took a hansom and went out to Primrose Hill to take supper with his father. He found Henry Rathbone standing hi the garden looking at the young moon pale in the sky above the orchard trees, and half listening to the birdsong as the late starlings swirled across the sky and here and there a thrush or a chaffinch gave a warning cry.

For several moments they both stood in silence, letting the peace of the evening smooth out the smallest of the frets and wrinkles of the day. The bigger things, the pains and disappointments, took a firmer shape, less angry. Temper drained away.

“Well?” Henry Rathbone said eventually, half turning to look at Oliver.

“I suppose as well as could be expected,” Oliver replied. “Lovat-Smith thinks I have lost my grip in taking the case at all. He may be right. In the cold light of the courtroom it seems a pretty wild attempt. Sometimes I even wonder if I believe in it myself. The public image of General Thaddeus Carlyon is impeccable, and the private one almost as good.” He remembered vividly his father's anger and dismay, his imagination of pain, when he had told him of the abuse. He did not look at him now.

“Who testified today?” Henry asked quietly.

“The Furnivals. Lord, I loathe Louisa Furnival!” he said with sudden vehemence. “She is the total antithesis of everything I find attractive in a woman. Devious, manipulative, cocksure of herself, humorless, materialistic and completely unemotional. But I ca

“How is Hester Latterly?”

“What?”

“How is Hester?” Henry repeated.

“What made you ask that?” Oliver screwed up his face.

“The opposite of everything you find attractive in a woman,” Henry replied with a quiet smile.

Oliver blushed, a thing he did not do often. “I didn't see her,” he said, feeling ridiculously evasive although it was the absolute truth.

Henry said nothing further, and perversely Oliver felt worse than if he had pursued the matter and allowed him to argue.

Beyond the orchard wall another cloud of starlings rose chattering into the pale sky and circled around, dark specks against the last flush of the sun. The honeysuckle was coming into bloom and the perfume of it was so strong the breeze carried it across the lawn to where they were standing. Oliver felt a rush of emotion, a sweetness, a longing to hold the beauty and keep it, which was impossible and always would be, a loneliness because he ached to share it, and pity, confusion and piercing hope all at once. He remained silent because silence was the only space large enough to hold it without crushing or bruising the heart of it.

The following morning he went to see Alexandra before court began. He did not know what he could say to her, but to leave her alone would be inexcusable. She was in the police cell, and as soon as she heard his step she swung around, her eyes wide, her face drained of all color. He could feel the fear in her touching him like a palpable thing.

“They hate me,” she said simply, her voice betraying the tears so close to the surface. “They have already made up their minds. They aren't even listening. I heard one woman call out 'Hang her!' “ She struggled to keep her control and almost failed. She blinked hard. “If women feel like that, what hope is there forme with the jury, who are all men?”

“More hope,” he said very gently, and was amazed at the certainty in his own voice. Without thinking he took her hands in his, at first quite unresisting, like those of someone too ill to respond. “More hope,” he said again with even greater assurance. “The woman you heard was frightened because you threaten her own status if you are allowed to go free and Society accepts you. Her only value in her own eyes is the certainty of her unquestionable purity. She has nothing else marketable, no talent, no beauty, no wealth or social position, but she has her impeccable virtue. Therefore virtue must keep its unassailable value. She does not understand virtue as a positive thing-generosity, patience, courage, kindness-only as the freedom from taint. That is so much easier to cope with.”

She smiled bleakly. “You make it sound so very reasonable, and I don't feel it is at all. I feel it as hate.” Her voice quivered.

“Of course it is hate, because it is fear, which is one of the ugliest of emotions. But later, when they have the truth, it will swing 'round like the wind, and blow just as hard from the other direction.”

“Do you think so?” There was no belief in her and no lightness in her eyes.

“Yes,” he said with more certainty than he was sure of. “Then it will be compassion and outrage-and fear lest such a thing happen to those they love, their own children. We are capable of great ugliness and stupidity,” he said gently. “But you will find many of the same people just as capable of courage and pity as well. We must tell them the truth so they can have the chance.”

She shivered and half turned away.

“We are singing in the dark, Mr. Rathbone. They aren't going to believe you, for the very reasons you talk about. Thaddeus was a hero, the sort of hero they need to believe in, because there are hundreds like him in the army, and they are what keep us safe and build our Empire.” She hunched a little farther into herself. “They protect us from the real armies outside, and from the armies of doubt inside. If you destroy the British soldier in his red coat, the men who stood against all Europe and defeated Napoleon, saved England from the French, acquired Africa, India, Canada, quarter of the world, what have you left? No one is going to do that for one woman who is a criminal anyway.”

“All you are saying is that the odds are heavy against us.” He deliberately made his voice harder, suppressing the emotion he felt. “That same redcoat would not have turned away from battle because he was not sure of wi

“Like the charge of the Light Brigade?” she said with sudden sarcasm. “Do you know how many of them died? And for nothing at all!”

“Yes, one man in six of the entire Brigade-God knows how many were injured,” he replied flatly, aware of a dull heat in his cheeks. “I was thinking more of the 'thin red line'-which if you recall stood a single man deep, and repulsed the enemy and held its ground till the charge broke and failed.”

There was a smile on her wide mouth, and tears in her eyes, and no belief.

“Is that what you intend?”

“Certainly.”

He could see she was still frightened, he could almost taste it in the air, but she had lost the will to fight him anymore. She turned away; it was surrender, and dismissal. She needed her time alone to prepare for the fear and the embarrassment, and the helplessness of the day.

The first witness was Charles Hargrave, called by Lovat-Smith to confirm the events of the di

“Mr. Furnival came back into the room and said that the general had had an accident, is that correct?” Lovat-Smith asked.

Hargrave looked very serious, his face reflecting both his professional gravity and personal distress. The jury listened to him with a respect they reserved for the more distinguished members of certain professions: medicine, the Church, and lawyers who dealt with the bequests of the dead.