The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [386]
The White Rabbit blew three more blasts on the trumpet and called out, “First witness!”
The first witness was Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall, Rochester’s home. She blinked and looked around the court slowly, smiling at Hopkins and glaring at me. She was assisted into the witness box by an usher who was actually a large guinea pig.
“Do you promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” asked the White Rabbit.
“I do.”
“Write that down,” the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly all wrote “write that down” on their slates.
“Mrs. Fairfax,” began Hopkins, rising to his feet, “I want you to tell me in your own words the events surrounding Miss Next’s intrusion into Jane Eyre, starting at the beginning and not stopping until you get to the end.”
“And then what?” asked the King.
“Then she may stop,” said Hopkins with a trace of annoyance.
“Ah,” said the King in the voice of someone who thinks he understands a great deal but is sadly mistaken, “proceed.”
For the next two hours we listened to not only Mrs. Fairfax but Grace Poole, Blanche Ingram and St. John Rivers all giving evidence to explain the old ending and how by calling “Jane Jane Jane!” at Jane’s bedroom I had changed the narrative completely. The jury tried to keep up with the proceedings, and they wrote as and when directed by the King until there was no more room on their slates and they tried to write on the benches in front of them, and failing that, on each other.
After every witness, the smallest dormouse in the jury was excused for a trip to the bathroom, which gave the Gryphon time to explain to the King—who probably wouldn’t have been able to touch his head with his eyes shut—the procedure of the law. When the dormouse returned, the witness was given to the Gryphon for cross-examination, and every time he called, “No further questions.” The afternoon wore on and it became hotter in the courtroom. The Queen grew more and more bored and seemed to demand the verdict on a more and more frequent basis, once even asking during a witness’s testimony.
And all during this tedious performance, as the characters from Jane Eyre came and repeated the truth in front of me, a seemingly endless parade of guinea pigs interrupted the proceedings. Each one was immediately set upon and placed headfirst into a large canvas bag, then ejected from the court. Each time this happened, there followed a quite inordinate amount of confusion, cries and noise. As the din grew to a fever pitch, the Queen would scream “Off with his head! Off with his head!” as though she were somehow in direct competition with the tumult. By the time another guinea pig had been thrown from the court, Grace Poole had vanished in a cloud of alcoholic vapors, and no one knew where she was.
“Never mind!” said the King with an air of great relief. “Call the next witness.” He added in an undertone to the Queen, “Really, my dear, you must cross-examine the next witness. It quite makes my forehead ache!”
I watched the White Rabbit as he fumbled over the list and read out at the top of his shrill little voice, “Thursday Next!”
“Excuse me,” said the Gryphon, stirring himself from the lethargy he had shown throughout the trial, “but Miss Next will not be giving evidence against herself in this court of law.”
“Is that allowed?” asked the King. The jury all looked at one another and shrugged.
“It proves she’s guilty!” screamed the Queen. “Off with her head! Off with—”
“It proves nothing of the sort,” interrupted the Gryphon. The Queen went scarlet and would probably have exploded had not the King laid his hand on her arm.
“Come come, my dear,” he said softly, “you must stay calm. All these orders of execution are probably not good for your hearts.”
He chuckled. “Hearts,” he said again. “I say, I’ve made a joke that’s rather good, don’t you think?”
The jury all laughed dutifully and the brighter ones explained to the more stupid ones what the joke was, and the stupid ones explained to the even stupider ones what a joke actually is.
“Excuse me,” said the dormouse