The Battling Bluestocking (29 page)

Jessica cast him a sharp glance. “A point of law, sir?”

He grinned. “Aye, over the business of whether Albert is real property or not. Wychbold and I discovered after a deal of research that the debate is scarcely a new one. It actually goes back centuries, and though I have no notion what Basingstoke means to do with the information we discovered, I do know that there was at least one case within the past century when a chief justice at the King’s Bench ruled that a slave became free by being baptized on English soil or even, in certain instances, merely by setting foot upon it. Unfortunately, that ruling was overturned a few years later by two other justices in a joint decision, whereby they declared that property was property and must be treated as such under the law. It’s been a devilish seesaw ever since, with individual cases appearing in the courts every fifteen years or so, and that state of affairs will likely continue until slavery is abolished once and for all in this country.”

“So we cannot be certain that Sir Reginald’s arguments will prevail,” she said quietly. “What then?”

“Then she will have to stand her trial at once,” he replied grimly. “But you may safely put your faith in Basingstoke, my dear. He has already accomplished much by arranging for the justices to decide first whether the law has in fact been broken. Furthermore, until a jury is called, Lady Susan’s name will not come into the matter and she will not even have to sit in the dock. So tomorrow you will dress with your customary elegance, and you will sit with your aunt in that courtroom as you would sit in Lady Jersey’s drawing room. If you take my advice, you will go veiled, and then not so much as the blink of an eye will reveal to any of the common folk who make it a practice to attend such proceedings that you are the least bit frightened.”

His tone was bracing, but Jessica found it difficult to respond with any confidence. Instead, her attention focused for some seconds upon the warmth of the hand still touching hers. Then she looked up at him, her eyes searching his for the reassurance she needed. “I shall be frightened,” she admitted in a small voice. “I don’t know if I will have the strength to comport myself as you advise me to.”

“Would you disappoint Lady Susan?” he asked sternly, removing his hand from hers and bringing it to rest upon the polished arm of his chair.

Jessica swallowed hard. The sternness had reached his eyes, and she felt very much as though he had told her she would be disappointing him instead of Lady Susan if she did not behave properly in the courtroom. She could feel sudden tears at the back of her eyes and an aching in her throat. More than anything, right then, she wanted to fling herself into his arms and sob out her frustrations upon his shoulder. But his attitude did not invite such a liberty. “I shall try not to disappoint anyone,” she said at last, stiffly.

Sir Brian’s lips folded together tightly, but there was no lingering trace of that sternness in his voice when next he spoke. Instead, it was very gentle. “You will do what is necessary,” he repeated. “I know you will. You do not have it in you to do otherwise, and it will help if you remember that Basingstoke is never out of the match until the final count is done.”

The phrasing made her smile. “I collect that that last bit is boxing cant,” she said. “I hope it means he will win his case.”

“It means that no one knows what will happen,” Sir Brian said.

“Will you be there?” she asked almost shyly, dreading the possibility that he might say no.

“Of course I shall be there. I had thought your aunt would have told you that I mean to convey the two of you to King’s Bench in my carriage. Andrew will also accompany us. You will not be left to face any of this business alone, Jessica,” he said gruffly.

The tears nearly flowed freely then. She held them back only by a magnificent effort. Still, there was a sense of relief beyond what she might have expected to feel. Somehow if he were going to be there with her, she was certain everything would come right. She gazed at him, wondering what there was about the man that instilled such confidence in her. Only minutes before, she had been in flat despair. Then, when he had made it clear that he expected her to carry on, she had been determined to make the effort to do so. And now, only because he had said he would be there with her, she was confident that she had little to worry about. Was this what love was all about? Being able to place such complete trust in another person? Certainly she had long since come to realize that this man was necessary to her comfort. But would his friendship be sufficient? For surely that seemed to be all he was offering her.

Even at this critical moment Sir Brian was not behaving in the least like a man in love. Oh, to be sure, there had been that anxious look in his eye when he had entered the drawing room, and that one little moment when she had thought he meant to catch her up into his arms. But he had not done so. And if his manner was not precisely offhand, it was still the manner of a friend, not that of a lover. Moreover, a man in love would not go dashing about London on the arm of every beautiful damsel he chanced to meet. Never the same one twice. The man was clearly a libertine.

The last thought made her smile, and when she looked up again it was to surprise a quizzical look on his face. Something in her own expression must have made him wonder what she was thinking, and knowing he was perfectly capable of asking her to describe the thoughts that had just been skipping through her head, Jessica rose quickly to her feet and held out her hand to him. She would be as casual as he was himself if it killed her.

“I must thank you for taking the trouble to come here to reassure me, sir. I see that I have been exaggerating my fears, and I shall take care not to do so in the future.”

Rather more leisurely, Sir Brian also got to his feet, then stood looking down at her from his superior height. When he took her hand in his, there was something in his attitude that caused Jessica to regard him closely, but his expression gave nothing away. If there seemed to be a warm glow at the back of his eyes, surely that was only her imagination. And if his breathing seemed more noticeable than usual, what could she make of that, especially when her own breathing was scarcely calm and controlled? When he spoke, his voice was low and carried a note she had not hitherto discerned in it.

“I will hold you to that promise, my dear, once all this business is done,” he said.

“T
HROUGHOUT HISTORY, THE COURTS
of this land, with very few exceptions, have ordered the return of escaped slaves to their masters,” declaimed Sir Aubrey Totten, the thin, reed-voiced barrister for the plaintiff. As he moved energetically back and forth before the three justices of the Court of King’s Bench, Sir Aubrey’s black robes swirled around his feet and his periwig displayed a lamentable tendency to slip from one side to the other.

He had been speaking forcefully for some time, pointing out to the bewigged gentlemen at the high bench that there was no law in England prohibiting ownership of slaves, that, moreover, there were numerous records indicating that, like houses and land, Negro slaves had often been offered and accepted in payment of debts, which fact, he said, gesturing dramatically, proved beyond question that they were accepted in the eyes of the law as ordinary real estate.

“I cannot imagine,” he declared at last in summation, “what the consequences may be if masters are now to lose their property merely by bringing their slaves to England, though that is, in effect, what my worthy colleague speaking for the defense would advocate as a matter of course. I do know, however, that such consequences would be far-reaching and disastrous. Therefore, it is quite clear, my lords, that that which is a possession in Virginia or in Paris
must
be recognized as a possession in London.”

Sir Aubrey sat down with a final swirl of his robes, and Jessica, seated in the front row of the crowded courtroom between Lady Susan and Sir Brian, glanced up somewhat fearfully through her veil at the latter. It seemed to her as though everything Sir Aubrey had said was logical and unanswerable. But Sir Brian smiled down at her reassuringly. Then, with a nod of his head, he drew her attention to the fact that Sir Reginal Basingstoke was ponderously rising to his feet to address the bench.

Jessica had met Sir Reginald briefly upon their arrival at the court, but she had found it difficult to repress the emotions stirred by the very fact of being in such a place for such a purpose long enough to pay proper heed to him. Now that she had been sitting in the courtroom for some time with her attention focused upon Sir Aubrey, she was less aware of both her own agitation and the spectators seated behind her, and able at last to give her full attention to Lady’s Susan’s barrister.

Sir Reginald was a good deal larger in every way than his adversary, but he moved with a stately grace and carried himself with enormous dignity, much like a famous actor taking command of center stage. Before he spoke, he took a full minute to direct his unblinking gaze from one side of the courtroom to the other, then let it come to rest briefly upon the two soberly clad, discreetly veiled ladies sitting between Sir Brian and Andrew Liskeard, before turning to address the justices. It seemed to Jessica by then that everyone, the three behind the bench as well as every spectator, was awaiting his words with bated breath. Not a sound could be heard except for an occasional noise drifting in from the street outside.

“My lords,” said Sir Reginald in a deep, compelling voice, “the point we wish to make here today is a simple one. A possession is a thing. A
child
, black or white, is not. And if he is not a thing, why, then, my lords, as a helpless child, he is entitled to the protection of the crown and must be treated as the king’s own subject. Furthermore, by the laws of this country, the theft of a king’s subject is more properly called abduction and requires the use of force. No one suggests that force was employed in the case which the plaintiff would bring before this court. Therefore, no law has been broken.” He glanced at Sir Aubrey, who was looking mildly sardonic. Sir Reginald smiled. “Of course, my esteemed and learned colleague would prefer that we ignore the laws of this country. He finds it necessary to draw instead upon those of other, certainly less civilized countries, in order to argue his client’s position. But what has England come to, my lord,” Sir Reginald went on, shaking his head sadly, “when we are told that what is law in the colonies or even, God forbid, in
France
, must also be accepted as law in England? The laws of America, France, or, for that matter, Russia or Turkey, have no authority here.

“Suppose,” he suggested musingly, “that a Turkish pasha came here with half a score of Circassian women slaves for his amusement. Suppose these white women were to say to the pasha, ‘Sir, we will no longer be the subjects of your lust.’ I believe, my lords, that such a man would make a miserable figure before this court on a charge of rape.” He paused for effect, and but for a quickly stifled gasp or two, there was still not a sound to be heard in the courtroom. Jessica scarcely dared to stir for fear of missing a single word, and watched, fascinated, as Sir Reginald hooked his thumbs into the folds of his robe where they draped over his massive chest. “I shall describe to you,” he said then, conversationally, “what actually did occur in this country in such a case.

“A man called Cartwright, who brought a slave from Russia, wanted to flog the fellow. When he was prevented from doing so, he carried the matter to the courts, where it was resolved that England possessed air too pure for slaves to breathe, that therefore a man setting foot upon English soil was by the very nature of that fact a free man. That event, my lords, took place during the eleventh year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.” He paused again, this time directing a basilisk glare at the three men behind the bench. After a long moment during which Jessica realized her fingernails were digging into the palms of her hands, he went on. “I hope, my lords,” he said softly, his voice more compelling than ever, “that the English air does not blow less pure now than it did then.”

Sir Reginald took his seat, and Jessica glanced at Sir Brian in time to see a little smile playing about his lips. Glancing next at her aunt, she discovered that Lady Susan was leaning forward slightly, her eyes fairly sparkling in appreciation of the barrister’s argument.

Thinking the matter now over and done, except for the justices’ decision, Jessica was startled when Sir Aubrey leapt to his feet again. But although the arguments continued for some time, with each side matching precedent for precedent, they seemed now, even to her untrained-ear, to be little more than sound and fury. Sir Brian’s smile once Sir Reginald had concluded his primary argument, added to the fact that the large barrister was now responding calmly to Sir Aubrey’s more agitated pleadings, was enough to instill Jessica with a greater sense of confidence than she had felt since her aunt had been carted off to Bow Street.

Still, once the justices retired to consider their decision, she felt her earlier tension returning a thousandfold. And half an hour later, after little more than desultory conversation with her companions, when the justices filed back into the courtroom, Jessica found that she was holding her breath again. She felt Lady Susan stiffen, and noted, too, that Andrew, seated at her ladyship’s left hand, was staring straight ahead, jaws clenched. Only Sir Brian seemed perfectly calm.

Once the black-robed figures were seated, it was Mr. Justice Abbott who spoke, his voice grave. “The question is,” he began, “whether the plaintiff in the case pending before this court has returned a sufficient cause for the prosecution of the defendant. The cause returned is that the defendant committed an act of theft by refusing to return a slave to his mistress.” Mr. Abbott glanced briefly at his two expressionless colleagues. “We three are agreed that so high an act of dominion as that of one human being over another must derive its force from the law of the country, and if to be justified here must be justified by the law of England. The state of slavery is of such a nature that it cannot be supported by mere reason, moral or political, but only by positive law.”