The noise in the court increased like the roar of a rising tide. A wave of pity and anger engulfed the room.

The ushers closed in on Aiden Campbell, perhaps to restrain him, perhaps even to protect him.

Rathbone felt dizzy. Dimly he saw Hester, and just beyond her shoulder, Monk, his face as shocked as hers.

He looked up at Miriam. Not for an instant now did he need to wonder if this was the truth; it was written in her eyes, her mouth, every angle of her body.

He turned back to Harry Stourbridge.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "No one here can presume to know what it must have cost you to say this. I don’t know if Mr. Tobias has any questions to ask you, but I have none."

Tobias stood up, began to speak, and then stopped. He glanced at the jury, then back to the judge. "I think, my lord, that in the interests of truth, some further detail is required. Terrible as this story is, there are ..." He made a gesture of helplessness and left the rest unsaid.

Rathbone was still on his feet.

"I think now, my lord, that Mrs. Gardiner has nothing left to protect. If I call her to the stand, she may be prepared to tell us the little we do not know."

"By all means," the judge agreed. "If she is willing—and if she is able." He turned to Stourbridge. "Thank you, sir, for your honesty. We need ask nothing further of you."

Like a man walking through water, Harry Stourbridge went down the steps and stood for a moment in the middle of the floor. He looked up at the dock, where Miriam had risen to her feet. There was a gentleness in his face which held the room in silence, a compassion and a gratitude that even in her anguish she could not have failed to recognize.

He waited while she came down, the jailer standing aside as if he understood his duty was over.

Miriam stopped in front of Harry Stourbridge. Haltingly, he reached out and touched her arm, so lightly she could barely have felt it. He smiled at her. She put her hand over his for an instant, then continued on her way to the steps of the witness stand, climbed up and turned to face Rathbone and the court.

"Mrs. Gardiner," Rathbone said quietly, "I understand now why you preferred to face the rope for a crime you did not commit rather than have Lucius Stourbridge learn the truth of his birth. But that is not now possible. Nor can Aiden Campbell any longer hide from his acts—or blame you for any part of them. I do not require you to relive a past which must be painful beyond our imagining, but justice necessitates that you tell the jury what you know of the deaths of James Treadwell and Verona Stourbridge."

Miriam nodded very slightly, with just the barest acknowledgment, then in a quiet, drained voice she began.