The murmur of sound started again, movement, whispered words.
Then a moment later there was silence. The farther door opened and Ashley Harvester, Q.C., held it while his client, the widowed Princess Gisela, came into the court. One could sense the electric excitement, the indrawn breath of anticipation.
Rathbone’s first thought was that she was smaller than he had expected. There was no reason for it, but he had imagined the woman who had been the center of the two greatest royal scandals in her nation’s history to be more imposing. She was so thin as to look fragile, as if rough handling would break her. She was dressed in unrelieved black, from the exquisite hat with the widow’s veil and the perfectly cut jacket bodice, emphasizing her delicate shoulders and waist, to the huge taffeta skirt which made her body seem almost doll-like above it, as if she would snap off in the middle were anyone to be ungentle with her.
There was a sigh of outgoing breath around the crowd. Spontaneously, a man called out “Bravo!” and a woman sobbed “God bless you!”
Slowly, with black-gloved hands, Gisela lifted her veil, then turned hesitantly and gave them a wan smile.
Rathbone stared at her with overwhelming curiosity. She was not beautiful, she never had been, and grief had ravaged her face until there was no color in it at all. Her hair was all but invisible under the hat, but the little one could see was dark. Her forehead was high, her brows level and well marked, her eyes large. She stared straight ahead of her with intelligence and dignity, but there was a tightness in her, especially about
the mouth. Considering her total bereavement, and this fearful accusation on top of it, the fact that she had any composure at all was to her credit. If she were tense while facing a woman who was so passionately her enemy, who could be surprised or critical?
After that one gesture to the gallery, she took her seat at the plaintiff’s table without looking left or right, and markedly avoided letting her eyes stray anywhere near Rathbone or Zorah.
The crowd was so fascinated they barely noticed Ashley Harvester as he followed and took his place. He had sat down before Rathbone looked at him. And yet it was Harvester who was his adversary, Harvester’s skill he would have to try to counter. Rathbone had not faced him in court before, but he knew his reputation. He was a man of intense convictions, prepared to fight any battle for a principle in which he believed and ready to take on any foe. He sat now with his long, lean face set in an expression of concentration which made him look extremely severe. His nose was straight, his eyes deep-socketed and pale, his lips thin. Whether he had the slightest shred of humor Rathbone had yet to learn.
The judge was an elderly man with a curious appearance. The flesh covering his bones seemed so slight one was unusually aware of the skull beneath, and yet it was the least frightening of countenances. At first glance one might have thought him weak, perhaps a man holding office more by privilege of birth than any skill or intelligence of his own. In a gentle voice, he called for order and he obtained it instantly—not so much by authority as from the fact that no one in that packed room wished to miss a word of what was said by the protagonists in this extraordinary case.
Rathbone looked across at the jury. As he had said to his father, they were, by definition, men of property—it was a qualification for selection. They were dressed in their best dark suits, stiff white collars, sober waistcoats, high-buttoned coats.
After all, there was royalty present, even if of a dubious and disowned nature. And there was certainly a great deal of noble blood and ancient lineage, either here in the court or to be called. They looked as solemn as became the occasion, expressions grave, hair and whiskers combed. Every one of them faced forward, barely blinking.
In the gallery, reporters for the press sat with their pencils poised, blank pages in front of them. No one moved.
The hearing commenced.
Ashley Harvester rose to his feet.
“My lord, gentlemen of the jury.” His voice was precise, with a faint accent from somewhere in the Midlands. He had done his best to school it out, but it lingered in certain vowels. “On the face of it, this case is not a dramatic or distressing one. No one has received a grievous injury to his or her person.” He spoke quietly and without gestures. “There is no bloodstained corpse, no mangled survivor of assault to obtain your pity. There is not even anyone robbed of life’s savings or of prosperity. There is no business failed, no home in smoldering ruins.” He gave a very slight shrug of his lean shoulders, as if the matter held some kind of irony. “All we are dealing with is a matter of words.” He stopped, his back to Rathbone.
There was silence in the room.
In the gallery, a woman caught her breath and started to cough.
A juror blinked several times.
Harvester smiled mirthlessly. “But then the Lord’s Prayer is only words, is it not? The Coronation Oath is words … and the marriage ceremony.” He was talking to the jury. “Do you regard these things as light matters?” He did not wait for any kind of reply. He saw all he needed in their faces. “A man’s honor may rest in the words he speaks, or a woman’s. All we are going to use in this court today, and in the days that follow, are words. My learned friend”—he lifted his head a little towards Rathbone—“and I shall do battle here, and we shall
have no weapons but words and the memory of those words. We shall not raise our fists to each other.”
Someone gave a nervous giggle and instantly choked it off.
“We shall not carry swords or pistols,” he continued. “And yet on the outcome of such struggles as these have hung the lives of men, their fame, their honor and their fortunes.”
He turned slowly so he was half facing the jury, half the gallery.
“It is not lightly that the New Testament of Our Lord states that ’In the beginning was the Word—and the Word was with God—and the Word was God.’ Nor is it by chance that to take the name of God in vain is the unutterable sin of blasphemy.” His voice altered suddenly until it was grating with anger, cutting across the silence of the room. “To take any man’s or woman’s name in vain, to bear false witness, to spread lies, is a crime that cries out for justice and for reparation!”
It was the opening Rathbone would have used had he been conducting Gisela’s case himself. He applauded it grimly in his mind.
“To steal another’s good name is worse than to steal his house, or his money, or his clothes,” Harvester went on. “To say of another what has been said of my client is beyond understanding, and for many, beyond forgiveness. When you have heard the evidence, you will feel as outraged as I do—of that, I have no doubt whatever.”
He swung back to the judge.
“My lord, I call my first witness, Lord Wellborough.”
There was a murmur in the gallery, and several scores of people craned their necks to watch as Lord Wellborough came through the doors from the outer chamber where he had been waiting. He was not immediately an imposing figure because he was of fractionally less than average height and his hair and eyes were pale. But he carried himself well, and his clothes spoke of money and assurance.
He mounted the steps to the witness stand and took the oath.
He kept his eyes on Harvester, not looking at the judge—nor at Zorah, sitting beside Rathbone. He seemed grave but not in the least anxious.
“Lord Wellborough,” Harvester began as he walked out into the small space of open floor in front of the witness stand and up its several steps, almost like a pulpit. He was obliged to look upward. “Are you acquainted with both the plaintiff and the defendant in this case?”
“Yes sir, I am.”
“Were they both guests in your home in Berkshire at the time of the tragic accident and subsequent death of Prince Friedrich, the plaintiff’s late husband?”
“They were.”
“Have you seen the plaintiff since she left your home shortly after that event?”
“No sir. Prince Friedrich’s funeral was held in Wellborough. There was a memorial service in Venice, where the Prince and Princess spent most of their time, so I believe, but I was unable to travel.”
“Have you seen the defendant since that time?” Harvester’s voice was mild, as if the questions were of no more than social interest.
“Yes sir, I have, on several occasions,” Wellborough replied, his voice sharpening with sudden anger.
In the gallery, several people sat a little more uprightly.
“Can you tell me what happened at the first of these occasions, Lord Wellborough?” Harvester prompted. “Please do describe it with a modicum of detail, sufficient so that the gentlemen of the jury, who were naturally not present, may perceive the situation, but not so much as to distract them from what is germane to the case.”
“Most certainly.” Wellborough turned to face the jury.
The judge’s face so far wore an expression of unemotional interest.
“It was a dinner party given by Lady Easton,” Wellborough
told the jurors. “There were about two dozen of us at the table. It had been a very agreeable occasion and we were in good spirits until someone, I forget who, reminded us of the death of Prince Friedrich some six months earlier. Immediately we all became a trifle somber. It was an event which had saddened us all. I and several others spoke of our sorrow, and some of us also spoke of our grief for the widowed Princess. They expressed concern for her, both her devastating loss, knowing how deeply and utterly they had cared for each other, and also for her welfare, now that she was completely alone in the world.”
Several of the jurors nodded. One pursed his lips.
There was a murmur of commiseration from the gallery.
Harvester glanced at Gisela, who sat motionless. She had removed her gloves, and her hands lay on the table in front of her, bare but for the gold wedding ring on her right hand and the black mourning ring on the left. Her hands were small and strong, rather square.
“Proceed,” Harvester said softly.
“The Countess Zorah Rostova was also present among the dinner guests,” Wellborough said, his voice thick with distaste, and there flickered across his eyes and mouth something which could have been anxiety.
Rathbone thought of Monk’s last trip to Wellborough, and wondered precisely how he had elicited Wellborough’s cooperation, almost fruitless though it had proved.
Harvester waited.
The room was silent except for the slight whispers of breathing. A woman’s whalebone corset creaked.
“Countess Rostova said that she had no doubt that Princess Gisela would be well provided for and that the grief would be assuaged in time,” Wellborough continued. His mouth tightened. “I thought it a tasteless remark, and I believe that someone else passed a comment to that effect. To which she replied
that considering Gisela had murdered Friedrich, the remark was really very mild.”
He was prevented from going any further by the gasps and murmurs from the body of the court.
The judge did not intervene but allowed the reaction to run its course.
Rathbone found his muscles clenching. It was going to be every bit as hard as he had feared. He looked sideways at Zorah’s powerful profile, her long nose, eyes too widely spaced, subtle, sensitive mouth. She was insane, she must be. It was the only answer. Was insanity a plea in cases of slander? Of course not. It was a civil case, not a criminal one.
He did not mean to look at Harvester, least of all to catch his eye, but he found himself doing it. He saw what he thought was a flash of rueful humor, but perhaps it was only pity and knowledge of his own unassailable case.
“And what was the reaction around the table to this statement. Lord Wellborough?” Harvester asked when the noise had subsided sufficiently.
“Horror, of course,” Wellborough answered with anxiety. “There were those who chose to assume she must mean it in some kind of bizarre humor, and they laughed. I daresay they were so embarrassed they had no idea what else to do.”
“Did the Countess Rostova explain herself?” Harvester raised his eyebrows. “Did she offer a mitigation as to why she had said such an outrageous thing?”
“No, she did not.”
“Not even to Lady Easton, her hostess?”
“No. Poor Lady Easton was mortified. She hardly knew what to say or do to cover the situation. Everyone was acutely uncomfortable.”
“I should imagine so,” Harvester agreed. “You are quite sure the Countess did not apologize?”
“Far from it,” Wellborough said angrily, his hands gripping
the edge of the railing of the box as he leaned forward on it. “She said it again.”
“In your hearing, Lord Wellborough?”
“Of course in my hearing!” Wellborough said. “I know better than to repeat something in court which I do not know for myself.”
Harvester’s composure was unruffled. “Are you referring to that same dinner party or to some other occasion?”
“Both …” Wellborough straightened up. “She made the statement again that evening when Sir Gerald Bretherton remonstrated with her, protesting that she surely could not mean such a thing. She assured him that she did—”
“And what was the reaction to her charge?” Harvester interrupted. “Did anyone argue with her, or did they dismiss it as bad behavior, possibly the act of someone overwrought or who had indulged too much?”
“They tried to do that,” Wellborough agreed. “Then she made the same charge again about a week later, at a theater party. The play was a drama. I cannot remember the title, but she said again that the Princess Gisela had murdered Prince Friedrich. It was an appalling scene. People tried to pretend they had not heard, or that it had been somehow a wretched joke, but it was perfectly apparent that she meant precisely what she said.”
“Are you aware, Lord Wellborough, of whether anyone gave the charge the slightest credence?” Harvester spoke softly, but his words fell with great deliberation and clarity, and he glanced towards the jury and then back again at the witness stand. “Please be most careful how you answer.”
“I shall be.” Wellborough did not take his eyes off Harvester’s face. “I heard several people say it was the most malicious nonsense they had ever heard, and of course there could be no question of there being an atom of truth to it.”