Chapter 57
57
Whatsoever is done in charity, however small and of no reputation it be, bringeth forth good fruit.
Thomas à Kempis
“Arrested?” Father spoke first. “There must be some mistake.”
Juliet thought she might be sick. Nausea was followed by a jolt of disbelief so strong it made her lightheaded. The tolbooth with its daunting steeple at Glasgow Cross flashed to mind. Its harrowing Gallowgate had held countless executions over the centuries, many of them unjust. Though she’d made a few visits, she’d never imagined having someone she knew or loved imprisoned there. The very sight of it wrenched her heart.
Euan entered the room, crossed to a chair, and gripped the upholstered back. “It seems Cochrane brought the charge. He claims a servant he employs saw Leith push Havilah from the bridge that night.”
“How convenient given it’s his servant,” Zipporah said icily.
“I must go to him at once.” Juliet started for the foyer, but Euan stopped her.
“Once in the tolbooth, none can see him but clergy—though Niall is still there trying to challenge that.”
Loveday came round the table to take Juliet by the arm. “Please sit down lest you faint. We must try to make sense of the matter together, all of us.”
But Juliet was hardly listening. She sat stupefied, knowing little of British law. Leith arrested . And why did the charge come so long after Havilah’s death? She looked at her father as if pleading with him to do something.
Euan’s frown deepened. “Cochrane says his servant—a coachman—was too frightened to report it till now but upon Leith’s second marriage decided to declare it.”
A commotion in the foyer halted the conversation, and then Lyrica swept in, her face pale as linen. Niall was on her heels, his own features florid and irate. At Euan’s urging, they all passed into the smallest drawing room, where a coal fire burned and threw light about the shuttered chamber.
“We must act quickly,” Niall told them. “Under the Murder Act here in Britain, trials are held swiftly by Crown Courts. I’ve already sent to Edinburgh for the best defense counsel available.”
“Might this false charge have to do with Cochrane coveting being Lord Provost of Glasgow, which the other tobacco merchants mean for Leith?” Lyrica asked, obviously well versed on city matters. “Even if he’s not found guilty of murder, it certainly ruins his reputation.”
“Ruins?” Niall shook his head in disgust. “Only by those who believe Cochrane’s lies—or his coercion of his coachman to testify against Leith.”
“I’m very sorry he can’t claim benefit of peerage since he has no title.” Lyrica took a seat by Juliet on a sofa, reaching for her hand. “Murder is a capital crime that has all kinds of implications.”
“None of which I feel at liberty discussing just yet,” Euan replied. “I don’t want to frighten nor raise false hopes. Suffice it to say, Scots law is oft brutal, but we have more on our hands than this false charge. There’s been new news regarding the colonies. We must quickly take action now that America is in open revolt or run the risk of ruining the Buchanan firm in future.”
Lying awake in Leith’s bedchamber without him gave rise to all sorts of speculations and frets. What sort of lodging did he have in gaol? Was there adequate food? Warmth? Though it was April, the Scottish weather still chilled Juliet to the bone. She tried not to think of the blooming redbud and dogwood of home and how the sun shone upon the James River like molten gold, warming everything it touched.
Leith had yet, in her eyes, to fully recover from his Virginia illness. Such harsh conditions could return him to that frightening state of before, the fever and coughing and far worse. He might even be denied a doctor.
Turning over, she laid her head upon his pillow, his beloved masculine scent a part of the smooth linen casing. Was he lying awake thinking of her? Stunned by this turn of events? After she had shared his bed as his wife in more than name, his absence cut deep, the recent memories they’d made deeper still.
Woven into her scattered, weary thoughts was a psalm. They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause ... But I give myself unto prayer.
She must give herself to prayer. And she would go to the tolbooth to determine if she could gain entry herself or persuade Leith’s gaolers to take him a letter.
The tolbooth was unlike anything Leith had imagined from the outside. A peculiar odor hung about it, of stale sweat and urine and boiled neeps and tatties and worse. His gaolers were respectful of him simply because they feared him and his position, knowing he might be exonerated and turn on them in time.
“Mr. Buchanan, sir.” The head warden walked him back to a cell at the very end of the hall, past the deranged and thieves and suspected witches and other destitute men and women, who shook the bars as if to rattle him as he passed. “Your wife has been here thrice now.”
What? Leith nearly stopped walking. He missed Juliet with a physical ache. She was his every waking thought.
“Before ye yerself came to be here, sir. Mrs. Buchanan visited the women inmates and even arranged for regular deliveries to be made to provision the poorest. A few other well-placed ladies are now following her example.”
Throat knotted, Leith said nothing, unwilling to admit he’d not known, though his reaction surely told the warden plenty as they walked through the labyrinth of suffering all around him. He’d never given much thought to the misery within these walls, nor a second glance at those whose ears had been nailed to the Tron outside. His hard-heartedness assured him these vermin-ridden prisoners had simply gotten what they deserved. Juliet had come here and seen things he could not.
His thoughts swung to the warm coal hearths of Virginia Street and the climbing boy she’d taken to the kitchen and fed. Arthur? Had she continued to help him too? The lad had left Leith’s mind the moment he’d departed the kitchen.
Surrounded by society’s outcasts within four walls, Leith wondered why he’d never truly seen them before. He’d only seen through them.
His gaoler unlocked his cell. It was no different from any other inmate’s. Cold. Spare. Reeking. It chased all benevolence from his thoughts.