Daughter of the River

by Daughter of the River (retail) (epub)

  ‘Dr Barratt.’ Jack leaned across and hissed the name. ‘From Paignton. I suppose he were the one called in to look at Ned’s body.’

  Soon afterwards the jury filed into their seats. Maddy watched as they were sworn in, and her stomach tightened into a knot. Twelve men who held Davie’s future in their power. Twelve men – and the judge.

  Oh, let him be a kindly soul, she prayed. So much depends on him. Let him be lenient.

  Her first proper view of Mr Justice Stroud came as a surprise. Her fleeting glimpse of him as he passed in the carriage had given no hint of his small stature. He was tiny and so swamped by his wig and heavy robes that she felt an hysterical urge to giggle. Her neighbour did not greet the judge’s appearance with amusement, however.

  ‘Oh gawd,’ she murmured. ‘Not old Stroud. Some poor soul be in for a rough time.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ demanded Maddy.

  ‘Cause he be the meanest judge on the circuit. A proper old devil, he be. Bain’t you heard of “String em up Stroud”?’

  Bleakly Maddy shook her head. Her prayers had not been answered.

  There was a stirring round the courtroom as Davie was brought in. Maddy’s fond eye immediately took in the fact that he was wearing a clean shirt, that he had been at pains to comb his unruly hair into some sort of order – and that he looked terribly young, far less than his fifteen years.

  ‘Why, he’m naught but a babe,’ said her neighbour sympathetically. ‘And a fine-looking boy too, poor lamb.’

  Maddy bit her lips hard. This was no time for tears. She had to stay clear-headed, willing Davie to have courage, and the sharp-faced judge to be compassionate.

  The proceedings began.

  ‘David Shillabeer, you are charged with that on the 15th of November in the year of our Lord 1869 you did unlawfully murder one Edward Knapman, stockman, in the parish of Stoke Gabriel, in the county of Devonshire. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Not guilty, sir… my lord.’

  Maddy did not like the way the judge’s head snapped round at Davie’s slip of the tongue.

  Dr Barratt was the first to give evidence. He spoke clearly, with assurance, having obviously performed this sort of duty before.

  ‘…I was called to examine one Edward Knapman, stockman… I pronounced him dead… cause of death a blow to the temple… the stone found near the body and covered with blood could certainly have been the instrument of death… would have needed some impulsion… being shot from a slingshot or catapult could certainly have given the required force, in my opinion.’

  The doctor answered the questions put to him by Mr Linton, the prosecuting counsel. Then it was the turn of Mr Attwill, Davie’s defending counsel.

  ‘Could there not have been some other cause which would account for Mr Knapman’s sudden fall from his horse? Did you look for other possibilities in your autopsy, or did you merely see the wound and assume it to be the cause of death?’

  ‘I did a thorough autopsy, sir,’ retorted the doctor testily. ‘In my written report, if you care to read it, you will see that I pronounced Mr Knapman’s heart, liver, lungs and other organs to be in excellent condition.’

  Mr Attwill tried another tack. ‘In your opinion this stone exhibited here was the cause of death?’

  ‘Yes, it matches the wound exactly. In addition it is heavily stained with blood.’

  ‘Must this stone have been flung in a catapult or something similar? Could the deceased not have fallen onto it, causing the injury?’

  ‘It is possible,’ said the doctor, adding sardonically, ‘but that leaves the problem of why a fit, sober man should suddenly fall from a quiet horse to hit his head on a convenient stone.’

  Mr Attwill was not doing well. He seemed a pleasant man but young and inexperienced, unlike Mr Linton who was sharp and missed nothing. The prosecuting counsel made sure that Constable Vallance gave firm evidence that there were no cuts on the horse’s knees to indicate that the animal might have slipped. From Cal Whitcomb he determined that the horse was well-schooled, that Ned was a competent rider who had ridden the creature many times. Any hope of Ned’s death being accidental withered before his enquiries.

  Maddy listened to the cut and thrust of the questioning with dismay, particularly the verbal skills of Mr Linton. She had never realised that words could be twisted in such a way. She did not like the line of the prosecuting counsel’s interrogation, especially when Cal Whitcomb was in the witness box. Much seemed to be made of the longstanding feud, the former incidents between the two families, and the fact that Cal had already brought a prosecution against Davie and his brothers. The way Mr Linton spoke of these incidents, and contrived to make Cal describe them, they grew in seriousness out of all proportion to the truth. When he finally stepped down, Cal’s face was grave. He looked towards Davie and shook his head regretfully, as if sorry for the things he had been obliged to say.

  The squire and the man who worked for Farmer Churchward fared no better. From the way Mr Linton manipulated their evidence it seemed as though Davie was well known in the village as a vicious thug with a malicious temper. Constable Vallance was a far more experienced witness. Maddy sensed that he was doing everything he could do to help Davie, as far as his duty would allow, but even he was not proof against Mr Linton’s skilled questioning.

  ‘A boyish prank with a catapult? But wasn’t the stone used extremely large for a mere prank?’ persisted the prosecuting counsel. ‘Constable, in your experience, both as upholder of the law and one-time small boy, would you have used such a vicious stone if all you wanted was to knock off a hat? Would not a rounded pebble have been more suitable? More easily directed?’

  Constable Vallance was forced to agree with the point.

  ‘Tell me, Constable, how long was it between Mr Whitcomb taking his horse to the smithy and Mr Knapman collecting it?’ Constable Vallance consulted his notebook. ‘About an hour, according to both the blacksmith and his apprentice, sir.’

  ‘About an hour!’ Mr Linton’s nasal voice rang out. ‘As I recall, the weather on the fifteenth of November was exceptionally inclement. To wait for more than an hour behind a hedge in the freezing cold simply to knock off a man’s hat, that is dedication to a joke indeed – or would it seem, perhaps the action of someone with a more serious object in view?’ There was an excited murmur throughout the courtroom as Mr Linton smiled with self-satisfaction at having driven his point home. Maddy shivered. It was growing late, but the prosecuting counsel had not finished.

  ‘Constable Vallance, when you went to apprehend the accused, how did he behave?’

  ‘He made no attempt to evade me, although he was nervous.’

  ‘Did he admit that he had flung the stone with his catapult?’

  ‘I did not question him as to that immediately, sir. Later, when he was questioned by the Justice of the Peace, he freely admitted shooting the catapult.’

  ‘Did he not say anything at all when you apprehended him?’

  Constable Vallance hesitated. ‘You understand, sir, that the accused was under the impression that he had hit Mr Calland Whitcomb.’

  ‘So I understand from your earlier evidence,’ persisted Mr Linton, ‘but did he say nothing when you first apprehended him?’

  Maddy could not understand why the constable looked uneasy. Whatever Davie had said was unimportant, surely?

  ‘He said, sir…’ The constable made a great show of looking in his notebook. ‘He said, “Ned Knapman? Not Farmer Whitcomb? It were the wrong man…”’

  A sigh went through the onlookers and Maddy realised why Constable Vallance had been ill at ease. He had seen how damning those few words would seem to hostile ears.

  When the court proceedings ended for the day, Maddy and her family returned to their lodgings. She found she could neither eat nor sleep. She had come to Exeter dreading the length of sentence her brother might get for manslaughter. Now a much greater fear had hold of her.

  In the
dock next day, Davie’s gaze ranged nervously round the public gallery. Maddy knew he was looking for her, but although she risked the displeasure of the court officials and waved, he was looking away by then and did not see her.

  How alone he must feel, poor boy, she thought. I hope he realises we’re here and doesn’t think we’ve left him to face this ordeal alone.

  Maddy wished fervently that prisoners could be allowed to give evidence on their own behalf. If only Davie could speak up for himself and explain… Then she reconsidered: after having seen the way the prosecuting counsel had twisted the other witnesses in knots she knew her young brother would not have stood a chance. Mr Linton would have had Davie condemning himself out of his own mouth.

  The judge’s summing up was a masterpiece of harshness and bias. Maddy listened in horror as he stressed the damning details – the long years of animosity, the size of the stone, the determination needed to wait so long for the victim to pass, Davie’s reputation along with his brothers as troublemakers. Worst of all, he stressed Davie’s own fatal words, suggesting they were an admission of guilt. Nothing was said of the boy’s youthfulness, of his immaturity, nor of his fondness for pranks. The jury were gone a very short time. After such a summing-up, there was only one verdict they could give.

  ‘Guilty, my lud.’

  With deliberation the black cap was placed upon Mr Justice Stroud’s wig. ‘David Shillabeer,’ he boomed, an oddly large voice out of such a small frame, ‘you have heard the jury’s verdict. You have been found guilty of the wilful murder of Edward Knapman. Therefore you will be taken from here to a place of execution and hanged by the neck until you are dead.’ There was a hush in the court and then it was broken by a woman’s voice crying out, ‘No! Oh no! Dear God, no!’

  With shocked surprise Maddy realised that it was she who was screaming.

  Chapter Ten

  The stark lines and plain façade of Exeter Gaol struck Maddy as even more awesome than her brief view of the cathedral – or maybe her reaction was caused by association; there was hope in the cathedral, she found no hope in the prison. Steadfastly she averted her eyes from the tower at the rear. That was where the scaffold was housed and the executions took place, an informative bystander had told her as they had waited at the main gate.

  Finally they were ushered into Davie’s cell.

  ‘Special privilege, you lot being allowed in at once,’ the warder informed them. ‘Condemned prisoners be permitted these treats.’ He sounded quite proud of the concession, as though Davie were a favoured child or a prize pupil.

  The reality, however, dominated the thoughts of all the Shillabeers, a reality that was stressed by the grim little cell with its meagre table, stool and hammock – not even a proper bed. As soon as they entered, Jack and the brothers asked a plethora of questions such as: ‘How be you, boy?’ and ‘They treating you proper?’ and ‘How be the food, then?’ before their imaginations failed them and they were reduced to commenting upon the marvel of the gas lighting and how it worked. Their seeming callousness was not because they did not care, but because they were out of their depth. It was left to Maddy to say the things they wanted to say yet for which they could not find the words.

  ‘We were there all the time,’ she said. ‘I waved but I never seemed able to catch your eye.’

  ‘I saw you,’ Davie said. ‘At first I didn’t and I felt proper down, but then I remembered you promised to be here and—’ His face, white and pinched, suddenly crumpled as he lost his fight to appear brave. ‘Maddy, I be so scared of dying.’

  She was with him in an instant, comforting him as she had done when he was a small child.

  ‘You’re not to lose heart,’ she said firmly. ‘Things are far from hopeless. I expect Mr Attwill’s already spoken to you about an appeal. It sounds very promising. Everyone in court was shocked at the verdict and said how harsh and unjust it was. Even the usher who took us to see Mr Attwill after the trial, he said it was one of the worst verdicts he’s ever heard, and that anyone could see it was a clear case of manslaughter. People are talking about your case in the street, we’ve heard them. Folk we don’t know, who we’ve never met before.’

  ‘That should help then, shouldn’t it?’ Davie looked a shade more cheerful.

  ‘It’s bound to. Your case isn’t lost yet, not by a long chalk.’ Maddy was determined to be optimistic. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t asked what’s in the basket,’ she went on. ‘There’s a clean shirt for a start – you let me have the couple you’ve got and I’ll wash them. But it’ll be the food you’re interested in. There’s some toffee that Annie made for you, a few apples, and a lump of Mrs Cutmore’s best cheese, and I made you a jam tart and a batch of nubbies with currants in them, just the way you like them.’ Maddy emptied the basket, finishing with the fragrant yellow saffron buns.

  ‘I brought you some peppermint rock,’ said Lew. ‘You’m going to need un after eating that lot.’

  One by one the others added their offerings, all edible, to the pile. Davie was young enough to regard the feast with delight, and old enough to realise that it did nothing to alleviate his situation. For a brief moment his face lit up at the prospect of the sweetmeats, but soon resumed its pinched look.

  ‘Is there anything else I can bring you when we come tomorrow?’ Maddy asked.

  ‘You’re coming again tomorrow?’ He said it with an eagerness that wrenched at Maddy’s heart.

  ‘Of course we are, you daft lump,’ she said. ‘Do you need anything?’

  ‘Some soap. Something that smells good. Anything to shift the stink of this place.’

  Remembering her past battles to get her young brother to wash, Maddy found this request almost too moving to bear. A tense silence settled on the cell, until Lew took up the conversation.

  ‘I can’t say I be impressed with this yer gas lighting,’ he said. ‘Tidn’t no wonder you’m looking a bit wisht, Davie boy. Tis making my head spin already.’

  ‘That’s because you’m too close to un, being such a longshanks,’ retorted Bart.

  The conversation returned to the merits and defects of this modern marvel. Neither Maddy nor Davie joined in, but it filled in the awkward silence until the warder came, with much clanking of keys, to tell them it was time to leave.

  On her way back to their lodgings, Maddy bought Davie a bar of lavender-scented soap.

  ‘How much did un cost?’ asked Bart, after he had given it an appreciate sniff.

  ‘Sixpence.’

  ‘Sixpence? Gawd, I wonder you didn’t buy a gross at that price!’

  ‘It’s best quality soap. The lady in the shop said she uses it herself. Do you begrudge Davie a few pennyworth of something decent?’ Maddy was incensed.

  ‘No, I don’t begrudge un, maid,’ said Bart, quite gently for him. ‘’Tis just that Mr Attwill said the appeal should be heard in ten days. Well, by my calculating, there idn’t no way the five of us can stay in Exeter more’n another three days at the most.’

  Maddy was dismayed. For once she had completely forgotten the family budget. Their lack of money came as a shock.

  ‘You aren’t suggesting we should go home, are you?’ she protested. ‘Abandoning poor Davie?’

  ‘I idn’t suggesting naught,’ said Bart with uncharacteristic patience. ‘I be simply stating how things be. There idn’t much money left, and that be the truth.’

  ‘We’ll have to do something,’ stated Maddy. ‘We can move to cheaper lodgings. Cut down on food…’

  ‘Finding cheaper lodgings be easier said than done with the assizes still on. And even if us lives on bread and scrape, us can’t stay no longer than three more days.’

  ‘Very well, then we’ll just have to find temporary work. One thing is certain, we aren’t leaving Davie, not now, supposing we have to sleep in the streets.’

  ‘It might come to that,’ muttered Bart.

  His forebodings proved to be uncomfortably accurate. Cheaper lodgings were simply not available
, not if they had any pretensions to respectability. As for temporary work, that too turned out to be impossible to find.

  ‘It idn’t just the gentry as comes into the city for the assizes,’ explained Mrs Polsoe, their landlady. ‘Folks come in from the country at this time for the casual work, portering and such. By now most jobs’ll be took. Mind you, as we’re full I could do with someone myself until the assizes be over. Someone to help in the kitchen and generally make herself useful. The hours be from six until eleven of an evening. I’ll give you free lodgings and a proper supper each night, and you’ll stand a chance of earning some tips.’ She looked meaningfully at Maddy.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ said Maddy promptly, although she was sceptical about the tips. From what she had seen, the clientele of the shabby little inn did not seem the sort to have money to throw about. Nevertheless, she was grateful for the offer. It meant she, at least, could stay on.

  It turned out that she was the only one in the family to find employment.

  ‘Not even no unloading down to the quay nor digging ditches nor nothing,’ complained Jack bitterly.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said Bart with an air of finality. ‘Thanks to Maddy’s job us’ve managed to stay on and be with Davie for an extra couple of days. Us can’t stay no longer, though. Not all of us.’

  ‘But we’ll soon have the result of the appeal,’ pleaded Maddy. ‘And it means so much to Davie, us going to see him every day.’

  ‘I idn’t denying it,’ replied Bart. ‘And you, Maddy, can certainly stay until the appeal and… and after that if need be.’

  Maddy flinched at the implication of his words. She had not let herself even consider the possibility of the appeal failing.

  ‘Maddy idn’t staying by herself,’ said Lew, protective as ever. ‘How about if us gives what money’s left to Father, so’s he can bide here while us goes home? Us can be working and earning a bit while they two cheer up poor old Davie.’