Chapter Seven #2
‘The defence have called this case “a tragedy”, but do not be distracted by the prickings of pity, unless they be for little Missy Cartwright. A child even as young as seven years is well aware that if he throws a missile, and that missile strikes true, he will doubtless cause an injury. Let me remind you that whether or not Christopher Meriwether intended to kill the girl is not relevant. The evidence, to my mind, indicates that he did indeed kill her, and, if you are in agreement, you must find him guilty.’
The courtroom emptied; the spectators filed out in search of refreshment. And there was nothing whatsoever Toby could do about it. Theo was not there. She had not come.
The jury deliberated for less than an hour. Fifty minutes, to be precise.
Kit was brought back in, shuffling, hunched.
When he looked up again, Toby found his gaze unbearable.
There was fear in his little brother’s eyes, of course, but there was also trust. Kit trusted him to do something.
To fix it somehow, and take him home. Be very brave, and do as you are asked, and leave the rest to me.
There was such a roaring in Toby’s head that he didn’t hear the verdict as it was read out.
He didn’t hear his parents’ cries, or the tumult that broke out along the galleries.
He saw only Paxton-Nevis, reaching for the black square and draping it solemnly, absurdly, over his wig, as he sentenced Kit to death.
Then he wasn’t paralysed any more.
‘This is rubbish!’ He surged to his feet. ‘It’s rubbish! You’re murdering him! You’re murderers, all of you!’ He pointed wildly at the jury.
‘Young man,’ Paxton-Nevis barked. ‘Remove yourself, or I shall hold you in contempt!’
‘He’s innocent, damn you!’ Toby shouted. ‘This is all wrong – you must let him go! God damn you all to hell!’
On and on he went, hardly aware of it, until the bailiffs were sent up to eject him. Kit was pulled the other way, through the doorway down to the cells. He didn’t struggle; he behaved himself, and did as he was asked. Just as Toby had instructed him to.
‘Kit! No! You must listen to me! You must let him go!’
Toby kicked and fought, but he was no match for his captors.
When he came to his senses, he was sitting on the kerb outside the courthouse with his head between his knees.
He looked up and saw his mother weeping, and his father talking earnestly to Cornwallis, his face slack with disbelief.
Toby felt hollow. If he’d reacted at once, on seeing Kit up on the castle wall – if he’d run straight to him, instead of freezing like a rabbit, he might have reached him before the stone was cast. He might have prevented it all.
And now, this. And no way to undo any of it.
They had to bribe the governor of Dorchester Prison to be allowed in to see Kit.
It was money at first, for as long as they could find it; then the governor took the apple cake Mona had baked for Kit instead.
He was a mean, grasping man, but after a while he always let them in, and accepted whatever they offered: half a dozen eggs, biscuits, jars of piccalilli.
Kit always wanted to know what they’d given him; David turned it into a game, and made him guess.
The prison was bleak, hardly a place for games.
Narrow corridors of small, frigid cells, in which the inmates spent twenty-three hours of each day and weren’t permitted to speak.
It stank overwhelmingly of bodily fluids.
The gallows were at the connecting hub of several corridors, with every hanging either visible or audible to most of the men.
Now and then a babbling voice echoed along the halls and stairwells, until it was cut off short.
Once, while Toby was there, an unholy chorus of howls and banging and whistles broke out for no discernible reason, after which three men were dragged into the courtyard and flogged.
Kit’s cell was at the end of a row, and his only neighbour was a Devonshire man named Oxcott.
Soft-spoken, with grizzled hair and a ruined, bulbous nose, Oxcott was awaiting transportation to Tasmania for the theft of a wheel of cheese.
After dark, when the warders patrolled less often, he taught Kit silly songs, like ‘If You Want To Know The Time, Ask A Policeman’ and ‘Where Did You Get That Hat?’
‘Bey shouldn’t be ’ere, should ’ee?’ Oxcott said, when Toby thanked him. ‘Don’t matter what ’ee done. Geddon?’
‘I completely agree,’ Toby managed to say.
David took in a packet of Player’s Navy Cut for Oxcott, every time they went.
Whenever they visited, their mission was to distract Kit; to make it as normal as possible that he should be staying there for a time, and to give no reminders of what was coming.
They took him paper and pencils for drawing, which they had to take away again when they left.
They took a deck of cards, and played snap.
They asked around Hallewell for old postcards and greetings cards to show him.
When there was nothing else, they told him stories.
What was new with the hens and vegetables – their bumper crop of autumn raspberries.
Toby entered into the spirit of the game wholeheartedly.
It was a relief to pretend nothing bad was coming, and if it was supposedly for Kit’s benefit, he knew it was for theirs, too.
At home, Toby found it physically difficult to swallow.
None of them had much appetite anyway, and pushed the food around their plates until it went cold.
The time between their visits to Kit was tense and aimless, numbed by dread.
David still taught, Toby still studied; Mona still cooked and cleaned and cared, all by rote.
The date of Kit’s execution was set for the fourth of November. A Monday.
Sometimes, Toby went to Dorchester by himself, when his parents couldn’t get away or they were trying to eke out the rail fares.
Alone, he found it far harder to keep the fantasy going.
He didn’t have his mother’s strength, or his father’s self-possession.
It was impossible to forget that it was all because of him. Him and Theo and Missy.
‘What was it for dinner last night?’ he asked Kit, one week before.
Seven days. One hundred and sixty-four hours, given that it was one o’clock by his watch, and Kit would hang at nine in the morning.
Toby’s mind searched constantly for an escape, a reprieve, a reason to hope; just as it had conjured Theo to the courthouse.
But there was still nothing he could do. He was still helpless.
‘Stew,’ Kit said.
‘Turnips again?’
‘Carrots and swede.’
‘Ah, well. It’s good to ring the changes,’ Toby said.
‘I hate swede, though.’
‘Me too, Kit.’
They were sitting side by side on the floor of the cell.
Knees bent, backs to the wall, with the cold stone pressing through their clothes.
Kit’s head had been shaved, which made his ears stand out even more.
He’d been stripped of his normal clothes, and wore the shapeless suit all prisoners did, printed with black arrows to make him visible should he manage to escape.
Toby didn’t like to think how many men had worn that rough uniform before Kit; or what had become of them.
‘What happened to the special coin Theo gave you?’ he asked. ‘Have you still got it?’
‘I don’t know.’ Kit twitched a little. ‘No. But I had it before.’ He turned anxious eyes on his brother. ‘Will Theo be cross with me?’
‘Will she be cross with you?’ Toby had to stop, settle himself. ‘No, Kit. She won’t.’
‘I didn’t mean to lose it.’
Toby put his arm around his brother, and Kit huddled into him, hiding his face, though he was too big for that, really. He’d done it as a child, when he was sorry for something.
‘You mustn’t worry about it at all,’ Toby said. ‘I’m sure it’ll turn up. And if not, then it really doesn’t matter.’
Kit said nothing. Toby felt the ground shifting; the fear rising; the sickness in his stomach. From next door came the faintest sound of Oxcott singing what sounded like an old sea shanty: Shave his belly with a rusty razor, early in the morning!
‘“Hooray and up she rises”,’ Toby sang softly, until Kit joined in – he couldn’t help it, it had always been one of his favourites.
‘“Hooray and up she rises, early in the morning!”’
They sang it over and over, louder, until a warder rattled his baton across the rivets of the door to silence them.
‘Is there anything you’d like, Kit?’
‘I want to go home.’
‘I know.’ Toby swallowed. ‘Is there anything else, though? Something from home that I can bring to you? Or . . . something to eat?’
Kit thought for a moment. ‘Will Theo come to see me?’
‘Theo? I don’t know, Kit. I don’t think—’
‘But she’s my friend. She’s always nice to me.’
‘I know. But . . . Lately, since . . .’
‘But will you ask her?’ Kit insisted. ‘She’s my friend.’
‘I’ll ask her.’
It was true. Theo had always been nice to Kit. Right up until the moment she’d turned her back on him.
When he got back to Hallewell, Toby tried to make himself walk up to the big house and knock again.
He knew he’d be turned away, but some bloody-minded part of him wanted to try it anyway.
Mrs Hallewell is very keen for nothing to disturb her daughter.
Well, he wanted to disturb the wretched Hallewells, tucked away safely in their sprawling mansion while Kit shivered in a cell so small he could touch the walls on either side with his outstretched hands.
Theo ought to be disturbed. She ought not ride out the storm she’d created in safe harbour, while the Meriwethers foundered.
He hovered by the garden gate for a good long while. Staring along the path at the imposing door, and up at the windows; searching out the shape of her behind the glass. Waiting for her to see him, and come out. Then it started to rain, and he turned for home.