Gates of Paradise (30 page)

‘Thank you, Mr Hosier,' the counsellor said. ‘You've been extremely helpful.'

‘A good man,' Betsy said when they'd all been interviewed. ‘If anyone can get him off he will. Now I'd best be gettin' back to the house or Miss Pearce'll have somethin' to say.'

Miss Pearce
did
have something to say and called Betsy to her presence so that she could say it as soon as the girl was back in her kitchen.

‘What's all this nonsense I hear about you giving evidence at Mr Blake's trial?' she said. She sat ramrod straight behind her heavy stays and her powdered nose was pinched with displeasure.

‘Tha's quite true, ma'am,' Betsy said. ‘I been asked to give evidence, bein' I was there at the time, an' I've said I will.'

‘Total folly!' her employer said. ‘You'll regret it, you mark my words. No possible good will come of it. There's a deal more to this business than meets the eye. The man is an agitator. That much is plain or the military would not be pursuing him.'

Betsy couldn't let such an insult pass, even if Miss Pearce
was
her employer and could hire or fire her as she pleased. ‘He's a good honest man, Miss Pearce,' she said. ‘An' I'm proud to be givin' evidence for him.'

Miss Pearce snorted. ‘Then you've got less sense than I gave you credit for. Why do you imagine the military are spending money and time to bring him to court, you foolish child? Because he's been up to no good, spying or some such or sending messages to the enemy, and they know it. There's no smoke without fire, as you will discover and you would be well advised to keep out of it. Did you get the herring?'

Her poor opinion of William Blake was shared by the formidable Lady Hesketh. At the end of November, when Counsellor Rose had gathered all the information he needed and returned to his chambers in London, she wrote fiercely to ‘
her dear friend Mr Hayley
' to warn him that his championship of Mr Blake could be misplaced.

‘
I have never taken up the subject you mention'd to me concerning Mr Blake
,' she wrote, ‘
and this, because I had at the time great reason to fear that your kind unsuspecting
Friendship
was drawing
you into a
Scrape,
for one
who did not merit
that you should incur blame on his account. If I may give credit to some reports which reached me at the time, Mr B was more
Seriously
to blame than you were at all aware of. But I will only add on this subject that
if he was
I sincerely hope that you are no stranger to it
.'

For once, her heavy emphasis only increased Mr Hayley's determination to do exactly the reverse of what she wanted. He would, he told Mrs Beke, do everything in his power to see his dear friend William Blake acquitted.

That was the general feeling in the village too, as the long empty winter crouched towards January. ‘We'll see him right,' they said in The Fox, as they huddled round the fires on those dark evenings. ‘We got the measure of that Scolfield feller.' They even teased Reuben Jones about it. ‘You should come with us Reuben,' they said, ‘an' give your evidence alongside of us. You was there. You seen what happened.'

But Reuben wasn't going to be budged from his neutrality by anyone. ‘Oi was in the tap room,' he said, ‘on account of Oi'd got moi arm in a sling. Oi never heard hoide nor hair of any thin'.'

‘Makes you deaf, does it,' they asked him, ‘havin' yer arm in a sling? Blocks yer ears?'

‘There's toimes to hear an' toimes not to hear,' he told them. ‘As you'll foind out. 'Tis no good argyfyin' with me. Oi knows what's what.'

* * *

And then with the suddenness of a sea storm, everything changed. Towards the end of December, Mr Hayley and the other witnesses received notification of the date of the trial. It was to be on Tuesday January 10
^th
1804, in the Guildhall in Chichester, which was where they expected it to be. What they didn't expect, and were alarmed to discover, was that it would be presided over by the Duke of Richmond. Mr Hayley was most upset.

‘He has a poor opinion of me and I of him,' he said to Mrs Beke, ‘and always has done, as I'm sure you know. 'Tis a black day to see him in this particular seat of judgement, an unconscionable black day. I fear he will have a poor view of Mr Blake in consequence of our friendship.'

The reaction of the villagers was immediate and fearful too, for the duke was the biggest landlord in the area and owned the farmland they worked on, which was bad enough, and the tied cottages they lived in, which was worse. Even Mr Grinder, who besides being landlord of The Fox and the cottage, also owned a hotel in the fishing village of Bognor a few miles along the coast and was well on his way to being a man of consequence, could see what a quandary they were all in. You simply didn't argue with men as powerful as the duke. Nobody ever had or ever would. It would be asking for trouble.

‘If we says somethin' he don't like, he'll have us out the minute we so much as opens our mouths,' Mrs Haynes said to her daughter, ‘an' we can't say
what he wants us to say if we don't know what it is. No, no, we can't do it, Betsy. 'Tis too much of a risk.'

‘You can't let Mr Blake stand up in that court without a soul to speak up for him,' Betsy urged. ‘'Twould be downright wickedness.'

‘Better downright wickedness than downright folly,' her mother said. ‘We needs a roof over our heads. I 'aven't forgot that family in Bersted. They had them out that cottage so quick you wouldn't believe. An' she with a babe-in-arms. An' I knows that wasn't the Duke a' Richmond but landlords are all the same. Let Mr Hayley do it. He can afford to. He's a rich man.'

‘Mr Hayley wasn't there,' her daughter argued. ‘He never saw what went on. We're the ones what did an' we're the ones what has to speak out.'

But she was wasting her breath. ‘What are we to do?' she asked Johnnie as he was escorting her back from The Fox the next morning. ‘I never see such cowardice in all my life. Even Ma says she won't do it, an' I never thought to see her let anyone down. Ever. Not once she'd given her word. Poor Mr Blake. We can't let him stand up in that awful court an' no one there to say a word for him.'

‘Except us,' he pointed out.

‘We wouldn't be enough,' she said seriously. ‘Not if 'tis trial by jury. If no one else is prepared to speak they'll wonder why not and come to the wrong conclusion. 'Tis all or none. Can't you persuade 'em?'

‘I
have
tried.'

‘Well you must try again,' she said, taking the jug from him as they'd reached the George and Dragon. ‘We must both try. They can't desert him now.'

During the next few days they went out of their way to talk to all the witnesses one after the other – and got nowhere. ‘They're afraid,' Johnnie said. ‘Tha's what, an' all the talk in the world won't change 'em. They all say the same. Upset the duke an' we shall be out on our ears. If I've heard about the family in Bersted once, I've heard it a dozen times.'

‘Maybe 'twould be better if we asked 'em to meet up together,' Betsy decided. ‘There's safety in numbers if we could get 'em to see it. We could use the hall next to The Fox. Mr Grinder would let us.' Which was true enough for the single storey room alongside the inn was often used for village meetings.

Getting all their witnesses to gather there was a great deal more difficult than getting permission to use the room. ‘There's no point,' they were told. ‘Let it lie.' ‘I 'aven't got time.' ‘It's no good you keepin' all on.' But they kept all on and in the end they persuaded their neighbours ‘at least to come an' listen' and their neighbours came.

It was a miserably cold night and they were glad that Mr Grinder had provided them with a fire and plenty to drink. They sat in a semicircle round the blaze on stools and benches carried in from the inn and told one another at length how foolish it would
be to make a stand – Mr and Mrs Grinder, Mrs Haynes, Mr Cosens, Mr Hosier, William Smith and old Mrs Taylor, holding her hand to her ear so as not to miss what was being said.

Johnnie and Betsy sat in the middle of the circle. They were the youngest people there but over the last few days they seemed to have become the leaders of the group for want of any others, and although their elders didn't defer to them they listened when either of them had something to say. That evening it was Johnnie who did most of the talking, partly because Betsy said she was too cross to trust herself to speak but mostly because his mind was working so clearly, as if anxiety about this trial had sharpened his wits.

‘Mr Cosens is quite right,' he said, when there was a pause in the long explanations of the need to avoid action. ‘'Tis neck or nothin'. Either we all gives evidence or none of us does.'

‘Then none of us does,' Mr Cosens said. ‘Sit tight an' say nothing, that's my advice. There's safety in silence.'

‘Tha's true, too,' Johnnie said. ‘But then again, if we says nothin' that means the trooper will win. He's got a mortal loud voice an' the regiment behind him an' he means to have his revenge. He never made no secret of it.'

‘He's got the duke on his side too, don't forget,' Mr Hosier said. ‘Mr Hayley was sure of it. Soon as he saw the letter he said the duke took a poor view of him an' a poor view of Mr Blake an' 'twas a bad
day when he was chose to sit in the seat a' judgement. I'm for silence too in the light a' that opinion. There's no sense courtin' disaster.'

‘What we got to consider,' Johnnie told them, thinking hard, ‘is what will happen if we do keep quiet. An' I tell you, that what will happen is that Mr Blake will be sent to prison. If we keeps our mouths shut an' says nothin' we might just as well lock the prison door on him. Which to my way a' looking at it, would be a cowardly act. Fact, the more I think of it, the more cowardly it looks, an' foolish besides, if you considers it. The truth of it is, if we keeps our mouths shut we'll be letting that Scolfield bully us, an' I'm damned if I wants to be bullied by a drunken soldier. Why should we do his work for him? What's he ever done for us, besides get drunk an' spew in the hedges? Is that the sort a' man you wants to see get his own way? No, you don't an' no more do I, an' that's the truth of it. Whereas Mr Blake's a different kettle a' fish altogether. We knows Mr Blake. We've known him for years. He's been a good neighbour an' a fine upstandin' hardworkin' man, what never put a foot out a' line in all the years he was here, which you got to admit. Well, now we got to make a choice between 'em, whether we likes it or not. Stay silent an' give Private Scolfield what he wants and be known for a pack a' cowards, or speak up an' show our mettle, an' keep our neighbour out a' prison.'

They were rallying. He could see from the expressions on their faces that they were shifting
their opinions. ‘But what if we stands up for him an' the duke don't take no notice an' he gets sent to prison just the same?' Mrs Taylor wanted to know.

‘He won't be,' Betsy said, finding her voice at last. ‘On account of 'tis trial by jury, twelve good men an' true, an' if the jury says you're innocent, tha's what you are an' the judge can't sentence you.'

Mrs Taylor was surprised and impressed. ‘Is that a fact?'

‘So,' Johnnie urged, ‘if we all stand together an' we all says the same thing, we can prove the troopers wrong no matter how loud they shout. It'll be their word against ours and there's two of them and nine of us. Yes, the duke can pick us off one by one, or any of our other landlords can, come to that, like they done in Bersted, there's no arguin' with that, but not all of us and not all at once. There's nine of us here and nine's a fair number. Enough to be safe in.'

The nine faces looked round at one another, sensing the power of their number. And watching them, Johnnie knew that they were going to agree, despite what it might cost them, and he was full of admiration for them.

Christmas was quiet that year, for Mr Hayley only had half a dozen guests and was miserable at the thought of what might happen to his dear friend Blake and distressed to have heard how ill poor Catherine was.

‘Sick with worry,' he explained to his guests.
‘Brought to death's door by it. Oh, what a weary world this is.'

‘Come riding,' they suggested. ‘'Twill cheer you.'

So they went riding every day and he told them he was obliged to them for their care of him and admitted that he felt happier on horseback than anywhere else on earth, ‘even in these dark days' and when they parted from him at the end of their stay, he smiled and joked and told them he had been much improved by their kindly company. It was no surprise to anyone in the house that he decided to go for a good long invigorating ride on the day before the trial.

‘All is prepared,' he said to Mrs Beke. ‘The witnesses are to travel in Mr Cosen's wagon and I shall ride. Johnnie Boniface will accompany me on Bruno and then Mr Blake can have him when the trial is over. Miss Poole has agreed to have supper ready for us when all is done and we shall ride across to Lavant together. All will be well, I am sure of it.'

His horse was in a sprightly mood that Mrs Beke found rather alarming, especially as her master had that dratted umbrella slung over his arm. ‘Would you not be better to wear your new hat,' she suggested. ‘It is stronger than the old one and would offer you more protection – should it come on to rain.'

He allowed himself to be persuaded, not because the hat was stronger but because it was more becoming. As he rode out of the gates, he lifted it
from his head and waved it jauntily.

Half an hour later he was back, slumped over the saddle, white in the face and with blood streaming from his forehead. ‘Johnnie must ride into Chichester for Doctor Guy, I fear,' he said. ‘I am not well.'