Rake's Reform. Marie-Louise Hall

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Chapter One

      The courtroom was small, crowded, but utterly silent as the judge, resplendent in his crimson, put on his black cap and began to intone the words of the death sentence. Above in the gallery, a young woman sat as still and as rigid as the ashen-faced boy who stood in the dock, his hands clenched upon the wooden rail.

      Miss Jane Hilton stared disbelievingly at the judge, her hazel eyes ablaze with anger beneath the wide brim of her black straw hat. This was nothing short of barbarism. This could not be happening! Not in England! Not in the supposedly civilised, well-mannered England of King William IV in this year of 1830. And she was not going to let it happen.

      She was on her feet before she had stopped to think.

      “How can you?” Her question rang out in the hushed room. “What crime has this child committed? Any farmer or labourer in this room could tell you that a rick of poorly cured hay may heat to the point where it catches fire without any assistance.”

      There was a murmur of agreement from the more poorly dressed onlookers as every head in the lower part of the courtroom turned and looked upwards, including that of her guardian, Mr Filmore, who regarded her first with astonishment and then with tightlipped fury as he gestured to her furiously to sit down and be silent. The judge’s hooded eyelids lifted as he, too, stared at her with bloodshot blue eyes.

      “Silence in the court, madam, or I shall have you removed from the building,” he roared.

      “I shall not be silent!” Janey retorted. “I know Jem Avery is not guilty of arson. On the morning and at the same time as he is supposed to have set the rick alight, I passed him upon the road some five miles from the Pettridges Home Farm yard.”

      “Indeed?” The judge’s bushy white brows lifted. “I trust you acquainted the defence counsel with this—” he paused “—alleged meeting.”

      “Of course I did, but—” Janey began.

      “M’lud?” The defence counsel stepped forward and said something in an undertone to the judge. American, unstable and prone to female fancies were the only words which Janey caught, but it was enough, combined with the smug smile of her guardian, to tell her why she had not been called as a witness.

      “It seems your evidence was deemed unreliable,” the judge said, lifting his head again to look down his long nose at Janey. “So I must ask you a second time to be silent.”

      “I will not!” Janey repeated furiously. “I have seen better justice administered by a lynch mob in St Louis than I have here today.”

      “Then perhaps you had better go back there,” the judge sneered, earning sycophantic smiles from both defence and prosecution counsels, who were already surreptitiously shuffling their papers together. “Gentlemen,” he said laconically to two of the ushers who stood at the back of the gallery, “remove that woman from the courtroom.”