Mack suffered a moment of anger with Peg for betraying him; but she was just a child, she could not be blamed. “So that was how they found out.”
“What happened to you?”
He told her the story of the riot.
When he had done she said: “By Christ, McAsh, you’re an unlucky man to know.”
It was true, he thought. Everyone he met got into some kind of trouble. “Charlie Smith is dead,” he said.
“You must talk to Peg,” she said. “She thinks you must hate her.”
“I hate myself for getting her into this.”
Cora shrugged. “You didn’t tell her to thieve. Come on.”
She banged on the door and a warder opened it. She gave him a coin, jerked a thumb at Mack and said: “He’s with me.” The warder nodded and let them out.
She led him along a corridor to another door and they entered a room very like the one they had left. Peg was sitting on the floor in a corner. When she saw Mack she stood up, looking scared. “I’m sorry,” she said. “They made me do it, I’m sorry!”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I let you down,” she whispered.
“Don’t be silly.” He took her in his arms, and her tiny frame shook as she sobbed and sobbed.
Caspar Gordonson arrived with a banquet: fish soup in a big tureen, a joint of beef, new bread, several jugs of ale, and a custard. He paid the jailer for a private room with table and chairs. Mack, Cora and Peg were brought from their ward and they all sat down to eat.
Mack was hungry, but he found he had little appetite. He was too worried. He wanted to know what Gordonson thought of his chances at the trial. He forced himself to be patient and drank some beer.
When they had finished eating, Gordonson’s servant cleared away and brought pipes and tobacco. Gordonson took a pipe, and so did Peg, who was addicted to this adult vice.
Gordonson began by talking about Peg and Cora’s case. “I’ve spoken with the Jamisson family lawyer about the pick-pocketing charge,” he began. “Sir George will stand by his promise to ask for mercy for Peg.”
“That surprises me,” said Mack. “It’s not like the Jamissons to keep their word.”
“Ah, well, they want something,” Gordonson said. “You see, it will be embarrassing for them if Jay tells the court he picked Cora up thinking she was a prostitute. So they want to pretend she just met him in the street and got him talking while Peg picked his pocket.”
Peg said scornfully: “And we’re supposed to go along with this fairy tale, and protect Jay’s reputation.”
“If you want Sir George to plead for your life, yes.”
Cora said: “We have no choice. Of course we’ll do it.”
“Good.” Gordonson turned to Mack. “I wish your case was so easy.”
Mack protested: “But I didn’t riot!”
“You didn’t go away after the Riot Act was read.”
“For God’s sake—I tried to get everyone to go, but Lennox’s ruffians attacked.”
“Let’s look at this step by step.”
Mack took a deep breath and suppressed his exasperation. “All right.”
“The prosecutor will say simply that the Riot Act was read, and you did not go away, so you are guilty and should be hanged.”
“Yes, but everyone knows there’s more to it than that!”
“There: that’s your defense. You simply say that the prosecutor has told half the story. Can you bring witnesses to say that you pleaded with everyone to disperse?”
“I’m sure I can. Dermot Riley can get any number of coal heavers to testify. But we should ask the Jamissons why the coal was being delivered to that yard, of all places, and at that time of night!”
“Well—”
Mack banged the table impatiently. “The whole riot was prearranged, we have to say that.”
“It would be hard to prove.”
Mack was infuriated by Gordonson’s dismissive attitude. “The riot was caused by a conspiracy—surely you’re not going to leave that out? If the facts don’t come out in court, where will they?”
Peg said: “Will you be at the trial, Mr. Gordonson?”
“Yes—but the judge may not let me speak.”
“For God’s sake, why not?” Mack said indignantly.
“The theory is that if you’re innocent you don’t need legal expertise to prove it. But sometimes judges make exceptions.”
“I hope we get a friendly judge,” Mack said anxiously.
“The judge ought to help the accused. It’s his duty to make sure the defense case is clear to the jury. But don’t rely on it. Place your faith in the plain truth. It’s the only thing that can save you from the hangman.”
24
ON THE DAY OF THE TRIAL THE PRISONERS WERE awakened at five o’clock in the morning.
Dermot Riley arrived a few minutes later with a suit for Mack to borrow: it was the outfit Dermot had got married in, and Mack was touched. He also brought a razor and a sliver of soap. Half an hour later Mack looked respectable and felt ready to face the judge.
With Cora and Peg and fifteen or twenty others he was tied up and marched out of the prison, along Newgate Street, down a side street called Old Bailey and up an alley to the Sessions House.
Caspar Gordonson met him there and explained who was who. The yard in front of the building was already full of people: prosecutors, witnesses, jurors, lawyers, friends and relatives, idle spectators, and probably whores and thieves looking for business. The prisoners were led across the yard and through a gate to the bail dock. It was already half full of defendants, presumably from other prisons: the Fleet Prison, the Bridewell and Ludgate Prison. From there Mack could see the imposing Sessions House. Stone steps led up to its ground floor, which was open on one side except for a row of columns. Inside was the judges’ bench on a high platform. On either side were railed-off spaces for jurors, and balconies for court officers and privileged spectators.
It reminded Mack of a theater—but he was the villain of the piece.
He watched with grim fascination as the court began its long day of trials. The first defendant was a woman accused of stealing fifteen yards of linsey-woolsey—cheap cloth made of a mixture of linen and wool—from a shop. The shopkeeper was the prosecutor, and he valued the cloth at fifteen shillings. The witness, an employee, swore that the woman picked up the bolt of cloth and went to the door then, realizing she was observed, dropped the material and ran away. The woman claimed she had only been looking at the cloth and had never intended to make off with it.
The jurors went into a huddle. They came from the social class known as “the middling sort”: they were small traders, well-to-do craftsmen and shopkeepers. They hated disorder and theft but they mistrusted the government and jealously defended liberty—their own, at least.
They found her guilty but valued the cloth at four Shillings, a lot less than it was worth. Gordonson explained that she could be hanged for stealing goods worth more than five shillings from a shop. The verdict was intended to prevent the judge from sentencing the woman to death.
She was not sentenced immediately, however: the sentences would all be read out at the end of the day.
The whole thing had taken no more than a quarter of an hour. The following cases were dealt with equally rapidly, few taking more than half an hour. Cora and Peg were tried together at about midafternoon. Mack knew that the course of the trial was preordained, but still he crossed his fingers and hoped it would go according to plan.
Jay Jamisson testified that Cora had engaged him in conversation in the street while Peg picked his pockets. He called Sidney Lennox as the witness who had seen what was happening and warned him. Neither Cora nor Peg challenged this version of events.