Belle Cora: A Novel (84 page)

However, today, having spent five decades hiding my past and denying my reviled name, I cannot read his words without having to dab my eyes with a handkerchief. When you read them, remember that Baker’s speeches were all extemporaneous and he never even made a single note beforehand.

“I will now proceed to grapple with the great bugbear of the case. The
complaint, on their side, is that Belle Cora has tampered with the witnesses. The prosecuting attorney has chosen to declare that the line of defense was concocted in a place which he has been pleased to designate as a haunt of sensuality. In plain English, Belle Cora is helping her friend as much as she can. It may appear strange to him, but I am inclined to admit the plain, naked fact; and in the Lord’s name, who else should help him? Who else is there whose duty it is to help him? If it were not for her, he would not have a friend on earth. This howling, raging public opinion would banish every friend, even every man who once lived near him. The associates of his life have fled in the day of trouble. It is a woman of base profession, of more than easy virtue, of malign fame, of a degraded caste—it is one poor, weak, feeble, and, if you like it, wicked woman—to her alone he owes his ability to employ counsel to present his defense.

“What we want to know is, what have they against that? What we want to know is, why don’t they admire it? What we want to know is, why don’t they admit the supremacy of the divine spark in the merest human bosom? The history of this case is, I suppose, that this man and this woman have formed a mutual attachment, not sanctioned, if you like, by the usages of society—thrown out of the pale of society—if you like, not sanctioned by the rites of the church. It is but a trust in each other, a devotion to the last, amid all the dangers of the dungeon and all the terrors of the scaffold. They were bound together by a tie which angels might not blush to approve. A man who can attach to him a woman, however base in heart and corrupt in life, is not all bad. A woman who can maintain her trust, who can waste her money like water to stand by her friend, amid the darkest clouds that can gather, that woman cannot be all evil; and if, in vice, and degradation, and pollution, and infamy, she rises so far above it all as to vindicate her original nature, I must confess that I honor this trait of fidelity.

“This woman is bad; she has forgotten her chastity—fallen by early temptation from her high estate; and among the matronage of the land her name shall never be heard. She has but one tie, she acknowledges but one obligation, and that she performs in the gloom of the cell and the dread of death; nor public opinion, nor the passions of the multitude, nor the taunts of angry counsel, nor the vengeance of the judge, can sway
her for a moment from her course. If any of you have it in your heart to condemn, and say, ‘Stand back! I am holier than thou,’ remember Magdalene, name written in the Book of Life.”

Well, in fact, all over the world, wretched women cling to the ankles of the brutes who kick them and sell their flesh; I realize it better than you do. God knows it is no recommendation of a man to say that his whore is loyal. Still, in a faithless world, the spectacle of loyalty moves us. So it was a touching speech, and I wish I had been present when it was delivered. I have imagined it often, and, having heard Baker speak since, I feel as if I remember it: his sonorous vowels; his high collar, wild hair, stagey gestures, one hand gripping his coat, the other flung out toward the accused or his persecutors, or pointing at heaven, or clawing the air as if gripping the jury’s collective heart.

“They were bound together by a tie which angels might not blush to approve.” Newspaper editors took special note of that sentence; soon even people who could not read knew it. Many were shocked, and more were derisive, including, I should think, most whores: whores look with disfavor on free love. But we have our sentimental moods, too, so some probably adored it.

For two days the jury deliberated. Each of those days, all day long, I sat in Frankie Garcia’s café, usually with Lewis and Jocelyn, waiting for a messenger to bring me the news. A few men, strangers to me, stayed for the entertainment of seeing my face when I heard the verdict. At last a man from McDougall’s office came. I stood up, my fist before my mouth. Lewis put his arm around me. “Hung jury,” said the messenger, and I relaxed in Lewis’s grip and sat down again.

The results of the final ballot were four for murder, six for manslaughter, and two for acquittal. One of those for acquittal was Albert Patterson.

LX

CHARLEY WAS NOT FREED
. He was denied bail, and returned to the county jail to await a second trial. Baker warned me that it might take months. He said the delay would work to our advantage. In time, public hysteria would abate; we would have a less partial jury. There was simply not enough evidence to convict Charley. He would be released.

“Not if this man has any say over it,” said McDougall mildly from across the room—we were in his office—and he held a copy of the
San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin
, in which the editor, James King of William, had written, on the subject of the deadlock, “Rejoice ye gamblers and harlots!” and “Hung be the heavens with black!” and that only bribery and corruption had saved Charley’s neck, and he could well understand why so many good people were calling for a revival of the Vigilance Committee.

I began telling them the story of James King of William’s love for the courtesan Pauline, and the anatomical misfortune that made his love so tragic, though I knew they had heard it before. I told them—I had told them often—how envious this feeble excuse for a man was of Charley, who was his superior in every way.

And little McDougall, in his plain laconic way, and big double-chinned Baker, in his florid, high-flown way, explained, as they had often done before, that it was nothing personal. It was all politics. King’s masters were Know-Nothings. They wanted to do in 1856 what they had done in 1851, and we must keep cool heads and not give them an excuse.

That year, San Francisco was James King of William’s city. He set the tone of the place. He created its mood. The
Bulletin
had the widest circulation of any newspaper in the city. King packed each thrilling issue with libelous editorials and partly true articles harmful to the reputations of sundry rogues, fine men, and men no worse than average.

I had seen him on the street once, during the trial. “King! Wait!” I called out, and crossed Montgomery Street. He started, not wanting to dishonor himself by running. I stood there haranguing him about the case, in the helpless, obsessive way of people embroiled in legal battles. As I spoke, the sun came out, bringing shadows and color: King’s eyes
became pink, and within his pale skin I saw blue and red blood vessels and a feverish flush; on the hand gripping the lion-faced brass handle of his cane, the nails were cracked and flattened. “Diathesis.” I suddenly remembered the word. “You’re consumptive. Well along. And this wet climate is killing you. You ought to take your family and go—somewhere dry—you’ll last longer.” Whereupon he turned with a swirl of his short black cape and walked off. In that evening’s
Bulletin
, King wrote that Belle Cora, the murderer’s paramour, had told him he must leave town or lose his life.

It was certainly true many people wanted to kill James King of William. Lewis, for one, had often announced his eagerness to dispatch him. But it was just talk. He knew it was impossible. It would be wonderful if, tomorrow, King coughed his life out, or was found hanging in his office near a suicide note. But if any of his enemies killed him, the vengeance would fall on us all.

MONTHS DRAGGED BY. I VISITED CHARLEY
in his cell every day. Once a week, twice as often as before, I saw Jeptha. We met as furtively as ever, far out of town. When we were done slaking our bodies’ thirst for each other, I complained to my lover Jeptha about the hard luck of my other lover, Charley; and Jeptha agreed that it was unfair and promised me that it would come out all right in the end.

Sometimes we talked about Agnes. Did she read the
Alta California
and the
San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin
? Now that the trial had put Belle Cora in the newspapers, and so many strangers were speaking of Charles Cora and Belle Cora, did she speak of me, did
they
speak of me? Or was her mind too disordered for that?

“We talk of it,” he said the first time I asked him. “She takes your part.”

“I can imagine,” I said, remembering her looks of pity from on high in the Clay Street Unitarian Church.

“No,” he said. “You don’t understand. She means it. She’s different that way. She hates herself for what she’s done to you. She’d do anything to make it up to you.”

You don’t know her
, I wanted to say. But by now, surely, he knew her. The truth was, I didn’t want to believe it. I did not want her to change,
and demand forgiveness, and force me to say, in front of Jeptha, that I would never forgive her.

ONE MORNING IN THE MIDDLE OF MAY
, a boy from Baker’s office came to my house. Gasping like a messenger in a play, he told us, “Casey has shot James King of William. He’s in the jail. There’s a mob outside it.”

The boy didn’t have to say “James Casey.” We all knew. Casey had started a newspaper of his own, hostile to the Know-Nothings. A day earlier, an anonymous letter in Casey’s paper had attacked King through his brother Thomas. The charge made in that letter didn’t amount to much; it wouldn’t have meant anything to an ordinary man. But this was James King of William, whose whole being was as sensitive as a blister. On the front page of last night’s
Daily Evening Bulletin
, James King had fired back with every piece of dirt he had on Casey. We had all been apprehensive. Casey was as touchy as King, and much more violent.

“Adelia,” I said, “Fetch Lewis. We’re going to the jail.”

Within two blocks of the jail, the crowd was too dense for the carriage to get through. Lewis and I got out and pushed forward on foot. Draymen and their carts stood immobilized, islands in the human sea. Everyone was talking so loudly that we could not hear the words of a man two yards away. People craned their necks out of windows, stood on roofs, and clung to lampposts. At one point, a wave of movement traveled through the bodies massed in the street, pushing us to the sidewalk, as men with rifles held before their faces trotted in two columns toward the jail. “What’s going on?” we kept asking, and were told, among other things, that toughs were assembling all over the city, determined to spring the murderers, Casey and Cora, and behind it all was the notorious madam Belle Cora. We were told that the riflemen we had just seen were here to prevent the two assassins from being freed.

With Lewis’s help, I reached the steps of the jail, and by begging and pleading and insisting and reminding them that I was only a woman—have pity, had they no hearts?—at last I was let in to see Charley.

The jailers I had come to know so well were outnumbered three to one by people who had been hastily deputized, including members of the militia, who would join the vigilantes just a few days later. Two of the most hostile of them brought me to Charley’s cell, along with a sheriff’s
deputy who had the key. One of them suggested I take off my clothes to prove that I had no weapons. The other told him to shut up, but, to prove that he was not on my side, either, immediately added that if I moved any closer than two feet away from Charley, he would shoot us both. The key turned in the big padlock, the heavy door swung open, a man walked in before me, another after me, Charley rose to his feet, and we embraced.

“I told you not to touch him!” growled the man who had made that foolish threat.

“Oh, Papa, Papa,” I said, nuzzling his face with mine. “You know what happened.”

“They keep coming up to the door to tell me.”

The sheriff’s deputy searched Charley to make sure I had not passed him a gun, and then we sat on the bed and talked over what we knew so far about the shooting of King. While they were bringing in Casey, the guards, for their amusement, had let him stop in front of Charley’s cell for a few minutes. Casey had said that it had been a fair fight and he had given King plenty of time to draw his weapon. Charley had replied, “You’ve put the noose around both our necks.”