The Twisted Root Page 0,138

so terrible?"

Campbell sighed, and hesitated several moments before replying.

Rathbone waited.

There was barely a movement in the courtroom.

"Mr. Campbell..." the judge prompted.

Campbell bit his lips. "Yes, my lord. It pains me deeply to say this, but Miriam Speake was a loose woman. Even at the age of twelve she was without moral conscience."

There was a gasp from Harry Stourbridge. Lucius half rose in his seat, but his legs seemed to collapse under him.

"I'm sorry," Campbell said again. "She was very pretty - very comely for one so young ... and I find it repugnant to have to say so, but very experienced - "

Again he was interrupted by an outcry from the gallery.

Several jurors were shaking their heads. A couple of them glanced towards the dock with grim disappointment. Rathbone knew absolutely that they believed every word. He himself looked up at Miriam and saw her bend her ashen face and cover it with her hands as if she could not endure what she was hearing.

In calling Aiden Campbell, Rathbone had removed what ghost of a defense she had had. He felt as if he had impaled himself on his own sword. Everyone in the room was watching him, waiting for him to go on. Hester must be furious at this result, and pity him for his incompetence. The pity was worse.

Tobias was shaking his head in sympathy for a fellow counsel drowning in a storm of his own making.

Campbell was waiting. Rathbone must say something more. Nothing he could imagine would make it worse. At least he had nothing to lose now and therefore also nothing to fear.

"This is your opinion, Mr. Campbell? And you believe that Mrs. Gardiner, now a very respectable widow in her thirties, was so terrified that you would express this unfortunate view of her childhood and ruin the prospective happiness of your nephew?"

"Hardly unreasonable," Tobias interrupted. "What man would not tell his sister whom he loved that her only son was engaged to marry a maid no better than a whore?"

"But he didn't!" Rathbone exclaimed. "He told no one! In fact, you first heard him apologize to his brother-in-law this moment for saying it now." He swung around. "Why was that, Mr. Campbell? If she was such a woman as you describe - should I say, such a child - why did you not warn your family rather than allow her to marry into it? If what you say is true..."

"It is true," Campbell said gravely. "The state she was in that Mrs. Anderson described fits, regrettably, with what I know of her." His hands gripped the rail of the witness box in front of him. He seemed to hold it as if to steady himself from shaking. He had difficulty rinding his voice. "She seduced one of my servants, a previously decent man, who fell into temptation too strong for him to resist. I considered dismissing him, but his work was excellent, and he was bitterly ashamed of his lapse from virtue. It would have ruined him at the start of his life." He stopped for a moment.

Rathbone waited.

"I did not know at the time," Campbell went on with obvious difficulty. "But she was with child. She had it aborted."

There was an outcry in the courtroom. A woman shrieked. There was a commotion as someone apparently collapsed.

The judge banged his gavel, but it made little impression.

Miriam made as if to rise to her feet, but the jailers on either side of her pulled her back.

Rathbone looked at the jury. To a man their faces were marked deeply with shock and utter and savage contempt.

The judge banged his gavel again. "I will have order!" he said angrily. "Otherwise the ushers will clear the court!"

Tobias looked across at Rathbone and shook his head.

When the noise subsided, and before Rathbone could speak, Campbell continued. "That must be the reason that she was bleeding when Mrs. Anderson found her wandering around on the Heath." He shook his head as if to deny what he was about to say, somehow reduce the harshness of it. "At first I didn't want to put her out either. She was so young. I thought - one mistake - and it had been a rough abortion - she was still..." He shrugged. Then he raised his head and looked at Rathbone. "But she kept on, always tempting the men, flirting with them, setting one against the other. She enjoyed the power she had over them. I had no choice but to