He glances up at the clock.

‘Perhaps, Mr Pettigrew, this is a convenient moment.’

Chapter Forty-One

Of all the time-keepers in that courtroom, it’s the judge’s stomach that will most often have its way. Either that or his bladder.

Lunch.

While the judge goes for his marrow soup, or whatever they’re serving up in the judges’ dining room today, the turnkeys allow you and Tomkin, the lawyer instructing you on my behalf, a few moments with me. You both stand facing me. It’s a dark, nasty little corridor, no gleaming wood, no green velvet. Just cold grey walls, grimy flagstones underfoot, and the smell of prisoners. Feet and fear. The thought sinks into me that this is where I may belong for the rest of my life, if Jessop succeeds in shortening it. The kind of place deemed fit for creatures like me. Prisoners. Murderers.

The pair of you puzzle at me, like schoolboys working on the same sum. My head echoes with your words from our first meeting: Give me something to help you with.

You tap your papers against your chin. Shake your head. ‘Let’s start with the foetus ‒’

‘Why? It’s nothing but a distraction. You said it yourself.’

‘What I say to them and what I say to you are two different matters.’

Tomkin coughs into his hand. ‘He holds your brief, Miss Langton, you must take him into your confidence.’

‘Jessop’s painting a picture of you,’ you interject. ‘It’s an old trick. Getting the jurors to look at something the judge is going to tell them to forget. It’s prejudicial nonsense, and shouldn’t have been allowed. No point leaping about with objections. Makes the jurors think you can’t confront the facts, and they never give a toss for lawyerly tricks. But if you don’t explain it, they’ll think the worst, that you’re a –’

Baby-killer. The word claws at me. A pulse of panic.

‘I’ve defended only one other black, Miss Langton. One. In that case, the judge decided the prisoner didn’t have the intellect required to understand the nature of the oath. Though he spoke three languages! Do you see? That . . . thing would never have been allowed, in any other case, but in this one ‒’

You stop, as if something has just occurred to you. ‘Have you been baptized?’

‘How would that help?’

‘You can tell them you’re a Christian, at least . . .’

My hands crimp into fists. ‘I know they’ll all think I’m brutish enough to have killed my mistress. But I did not.’

‘What about the possibility that you did?’

My heart rocks like a ship.

‘We could argue it that way, you know. You’ve been enslaved all your life, you were brought here, given away. It would have been inhuman not to fight back in those circumstances. Might not get you acquitted. But I could argue for transportation.’

‘No.’

I think back to how she looked, when I found her, guarding that small silent clotted thing.