Accidents of Providence (15 page)

When the Honorable Marchamont Blakemore stepped out from his chambers, Bartwain emitted a congested snort. The judge failed to inspire confidence. He bobbled in with wig askew, clutching two bouquets of forget-me-nots. A small boy processed ahead of him, strewing the aisle with fresh-cut rosemary and parsley. Both the herbs and the flowers constituted a tradition among Old Bailey judges. The bouquets would be placed on Blakemore’s desk so he could bury his nose whenever he desired relief from the fetid air, which was poisoned not only by the hundreds of unwashed bodies cramming into one structure but also by the gagging smell creeping in the windows from nearby Newgate Prison. The herbs, which old Blakemore crushed beneath his slippers as he shuffled to his seat, served in theory to protect His Honor from the plague or whatever diseases of mind and body the people of London happened to be spreading.

Bartwain chewed the end of his pipe. Last month had not been a good one in terms of his personal health. He needed to elevate his foot, but the crowded balcony made this position impossible. He would have to endure it. He reminded himself that most trials of this nature moved quickly, lasting no more than a day.

The clerk called the house to order. The defendant entered through the east door, causing the audience to swivel as one. Her hair hung loose. Manacles clamped her wrists and irons clad her ankles; her irons scraped the floor. Her face displayed no readable emotion. A gibbering roar from the spectators began rising toward the rafters of the courthouse, and Judge Blakemore commanded the crowd to be quiet. From where Bartwain sat, all that was visible of the judge as he admonished the audience was his massive wig, which was powdered so heavily that every time he shook his head or pointed a finger, a gasp of talcum escaped into the gray light, where it lingered in air thick enough to lean up against, like a good friend or the voice of conscience.

The bailiff spoke. “Rachel Lockyer, of Warwick Lane, London, daughter of Jonathan Lockyer, hold up your right hand.”

When Rachel held up her right hand, her left hand went up with it. She stood under a reflective mirror that beamed light onto her countenance—the mirror of truth, some called it. Bartwain leaned forward to get a clearer view and felt the riser creaking with his weight.

The bailiff read: “‘Rachel Lockyer, daughter of Jonathan Lockyer, you stand indicted for that you, on the first of November, 1649, being great with child, by the providence of God did bring it forth alive, and which child, by the laws of this realm, was a bastard; and that not having the fear of God before your eyes, on the babe feloniously, willfully, and with malice aforethought did make an assault upon it, ending its life, and then carrying the babe to the Smithfield market and burying it in the ground near the slaughterhouse to conceal it, abandoned it to the elements. The infant being discovered the next day, it was examined and evidence of murder found. You are therefore indicted after order of investigation by Thomas Bartwain, called to this courthouse by the Council of State, in this Commonwealth of England without a king or lords, may it please God, this first day of the winter sessions for the first week of December in this year of our Lord 1649.’”

Did I really write all that? Bartwain thought.

“How say you, Rachel Lockyer, are you guilty of this felony and murder whereof you stand indicted, or not guilty?”

Thirty seconds passed. The judge emitted a restless cloud of powder.

“She had better say something,” someone called; the voice sounded suspiciously like John Lilburne’s.

Judge Blakemore parted the two bouquets on his desk and peered out between them. With a withering glare he repeated the clerk’s question.

Rachel remained silent. Blakemore rose to his feet. “Your refusal to plead will send you to the press room. There you will be laid on a board and your chest weighted with stones until you smother or speak. These are the rules of the court. Are you guilty or innocent of that deed of which you have been accused? Speak!”

Still she said nothing. Bartwain noticed Elizabeth Lilburne motioning to the defendant from the witness box.

“What would you have me do?” the judge demanded. “Do you prefer to die today? Ridiculous woman!”

“Answer the question,” Elizabeth hissed. The court clerks began snickering.

Lowering her hands, Rachel turned and said something to Elizabeth, Bartwain could not hear what. For reply, Elizabeth stood, left the witness box, strode up to Rachel, and said, plain as day, “Don’t you dare do that.” The crowd tittered, and then the crowd cackled; as the two women argued on, the crowd grew bored. No one could hear what they were saying to each other. Bartwain was totally absorbed. He forgot his swollen toes. Both women fascinated him.

When Rachel resumed her place under the defendant’s mirror, Elizabeth, wearing a dissatisfied look, returned to the witness box. “Your Honor,” Rachel said. Her delivery was stronger than Bartwain had anticipated—her voice penetrated the courthouse. He leaned forward again, the riser groaning. “Your Honor,” Rachel said again, “I am prepared to plead—”

She stopped short as the scaffolding on which Bartwain and one hundred other people were seated collapsed. Everything fell. Within five seconds the risers had splintered and the entire structure tumbled, four packed rows crashing, one on top of the next, and dozens of bodies crushed beneath. A collective gasp rose from the center of the courthouse, and those who had been spared rushed over to aid those who had fallen. Women crawled out from the pile on their hands and knees, foreheads bleeding; the bailiff and his men rushed in and started tugging at arms and legs, and when that did not work, they tugged at the boards—if they could not pull the people out from the risers, they would pull the risers off the people. They freed the children first where they could—during the winter the poor brought their young inside the courthouse to keep them dry and warm. Somewhere in the bottom of the pile a man was shouting, wailing, for the Holy Spirit to come.

The judge clapped his wigged head, regarded his fallen house, rose, and fled the courtroom.

Such incidents were not unheard-of. A similar catastrophe, more minor in scope, had taken place at Guildhall before the start of John’s trial, when too many spectators tried to cram into too few seats. The ensuing delay had given John more time to prepare his opening speech. This time the disaster was worse. But it was no one’s fault, or at least that was Bartwain’s thought as he’d felt himself falling, tumbling, from his bird-of-prey perch, plummeting nearly fifteen feet.

As he fell, he told himself he was fortunate. Sitting as high as he was, he would be among the last to land. Those who had gone ahead of him could provide a buffer, a cushion. He continued to tell himself he was fortunate even as his spine smacked into one of the benches and he felt a crunch in the bones of his left wrist, even as he looked down and saw his arm pinned beneath a man’s leg. Bartwain recalled his anxiety several days earlier about the rain turning to sleet by morning. Now this concern struck him as whimsical, almost endearing. He wondered if he would walk again. If he could not, he would invest in one of those moving chairs that operated like a wheelbarrow. His secretary, White, could push him around in it. He smelled smoke. He hoped he had not dropped his pipe onto something combustible. The bailiff was bellowing for soldiers. Beside Bartwain lay an unconscious elderly woman, her skirts snagged on a riser; he could see her buckled shoes and her bare ankles, oddly twisted. Everyone had forgotten about Rachel Lockyer. For a moment Bartwain forgot about her also. He stayed still, waiting for someone to help him; he wanted someone to reassure him he had not broken anything essential. He could hear the bailiff bellowing that the trial would have to be postponed. They would reconvene in a few days’ time, he shouted; right now they needed doctors. “Leave the courthouse unless you are injured or can tend those who are,” the bailiff ordered. “And someone send for the coroner.”

Then Bartwain did think about Rachel and how it must feel to be told to wait another week to learn if one would live or die. He could no longer move his arm. He thought of Elizabeth Lilburne, and he pitied her; he remembered her two sons were gone. He lifted his head. High up, on one of the rafters, perched a barred owl, a holdover from the summer months that the maids had failed to sweep out with their dusters. Bartwain watched it with everything he had; he concentrated on that owl. It began to fly and screech. It flapped up the crowd and down the aisles; it howled around the scaffolding. It was alone, and overrun; it sounded off on what was coming. The others did not notice; the others were too lathered up. But Bartwain heard it. How could he not? The owl battered the walls.

“God send you a good deliverance,” the clerk in his treble voice was saying.

As the officers of the court pushed the uninjured outside and away from the courthouse, the Reverend William Kiffin, his breath smelling of cabbage, made his way over to Rachel’s employer, Mary. She was standing apart, squinting through sheets of rain, the spiraled outlines of St. Sepulchre in the distance. Water snaked down the courthouse eaves and lit her up from behind, like colored glass that runs.

“You are going to be the principal witness,” Kiffin said, not troubling with a greeting.

“What?” Mary recoiled from the preacher’s rank breath.

“You heard what the bailiff said. ‘Abandoned it to the elements.’” He clutched her arm. “No one else observed this crime as closely as you did. You must be exceedingly prepared with what you say when the prosecutor calls you to the stand. The jury will need every detail. Leave nothing to chance.”

“I will say what I saw,” Mary replied, puzzled. She dreaded having to return to the courthouse. She had hoped to get the matter over and done with.

“Of course you will. Just be scrupulous in your reporting.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are, after all, a stranger.” He delivered these words with a paternal smile. “You are not English. The jury will have to be persuaded to trust you.”

“I will do my best, Mr. Kiffin.” She stepped away from him, into the rain.

“
Reverend
Kiffin,” he corrected, but she was gone.

His admonition remained unnecessary. Mary was not about to say anything less than the truth. What she saw was what she saw; what she knew was what she knew. At first she had tried to tell herself the child might belong to one of those homeless women who slunk around the Smithfield slaughterhouse looking for maggoty meat. But on her way out of the woods that morning she had stumbled across one of those women and motioned her to come see; the poor creature had darted away as soon as she beheld the bundle. Even a toothless Digger, it seemed, did not want what Mary was carrying. A real mother, in contrast, would be unable to keep away from it. Therein lay the proof. At least, that was what Mary thought when she carried her burden back to the glove shop and returned it to the arms of Rachel, who held it.

The look on her assistant’s face that day reminded Mary of the time when Rachel’s three-legged dog had gone missing. Mary never liked that dog. No one liked that dog except Rachel. It was a speckled runt with a curious habit of whimpering when it was glad and barking ecstatically whenever it suffered an insult. Rachel used to feed it scraps in the alley behind the glove shop and bring it yeast dough from the common oven, something that should have been left for others. That dog ate finer food than Mary did. Then it had disappeared, and Rachel became convinced the dog skinner had taken it. She informed Mary she was going after it. “Going after what?” Mary said. She always forgot that animal as soon as it left her field of vision.

“The dog. It would not just up and leave for no reason.” As she spoke, Rachel thrust out her chin in a manner Mary initially interpreted as her having taken offense but later recognized as an attempt to ward off tears. Rachel swept the floors faster than usual and then declared she was going out.

Mary, bewildered, said: “You just lost your poor brother, and now you are going to spend your days grieving a three-legged runt?”

For reply Rachel tromped out. Of course Mary had to follow; she had to find out what happened. Neither woman could afford to take a coach, so they marched single file, twenty yards between them, two miles north to the dog skinner’s house, which was an old barn bearing the look of perpetual disappointment. The dog skinner resided there with his younger brother, who had lost his sight double-lighting a cannon in the battle of Marston Moor. Rachel knocked on the front door while Mary watched. When no one responded, Rachel walked around to the back and called for help. The dog skinner was not there, but the blind brother heard her.

From her vantage point at the edge of the property, Mary looked on as the brother escorted Rachel to the dog pens. There sat six starving mongrels crammed inside a wire cage in sludge so thick it buttered the small dogs’ stomachs. The blind man said, “That one?” and reached through the wire and touched one of the animals, and sure enough, landed straight on it. It was the three-legged spotter, and Rachel, incredulous, asked how he knew that, and he said it was not hard to pick out a creature that had so much missing.

Rachel paid the brother for his help. She paid him three times what a four-legged dog would be worth. When he had counted her coins, the man smiled, his teeth sinking into their gums like the dogs’ paws sank into the sediment. Then Rachel walked the mongrel all the way back to Warwick Lane, stopping twice to carry it. When Mary asked her at supper later why she’d done it, why she’d rescued it, as the dog cried happily, its ratted tail thumping against the twice-swept floors, Rachel looked down at it and said she supposed things didn’t feel right without its company. And then she went right on eating her stew, as if everyone naturally loves whatever God places on our doorsteps without our permission.

In the war, Mary’s husband had killed three boys, none more than twelve years old. Each of them had straggled, nameless and barefoot, onto the battlefield to join a cause for which their fathers had suffered. For his actions in battle, Johannes du Gard was told to be more careful of whom he shot, but privately he was commended for giving back to God what the army of saints sought. And Mary wondered if it was worse to destroy the thing you do not love or the thing you do.