The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [251]
‘Peter Albion.’ It was her mother who said the words and Betty looked at her in surprise. Dame Alice smiled. ‘I did not want to speak of him with the others present.’ She looked at Betty thoughtfully. ‘Do you still want to marry him?’
She had never actually confessed that she did, but there was no time for such prevarications now. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied honestly.
Her mother nodded slowly. Tryphena, her narrow face looking up suddenly, seemed about to say something but Alice cut in ahead. ‘I think better of him than I did,’ she said firmly. ‘This trial has been very good for him.’
‘But it was a mockery. An outrage. It wasn’t justice at all,’ Tryphena interjected.
‘That’s why it was so good for him,’ said Alice evenly. ‘I thought him rather arrogant. Now he has seen that even the law may be bent to necessity. He is humbler.’
‘There is’ – Betty hesitated, glanced at her mother and her sister and gave a small shrug – ‘something else.’
‘Tell me.’
So Betty explained about the moment during the trial when Jeffreys had so flagrantly misled the jury, and how Peter had told her the judge had lied. ‘It wasn’t the law. And I whispered that he should say something.’
‘You wanted him to stand up and contradict the judge?’
‘Well …’ It was hard to say quite, but she knew that she had thought about it afterwards and somehow his conduct had seemed … unsatisfactory.
‘The other judges said nothing. The lawyers said nothing. You said nothing,’ her mother reminded her wryly.
‘I know. I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be silly, child. What you mean is that the man who wants to marry you proved to be less than perfect. He decided not to be heroic.’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘Do not fall into the trap of looking for a perfect husband. Women of your age often do. You’ll never find him. Consider also, my child, if a husband were perfect, you’d have to be perfect too.’
‘But …’
‘You saw a moment of cowardice?’
‘Yes. I suppose so.’
‘Which I call discretion.’
‘I know. But …’ Betty was not sure how to explain it, the silence that had fallen upon Peter at that moment in the court. It was not so much what he had done as the insight she had suddenly gained, just then, for the first time, of his inner nature. There was a wariness there, a calculation, a readiness, behind all his talk, to make deep compromises. ‘It was something’, she said uncertainly, ‘in his nature …’
‘Thank God.’ Alice sighed. ‘Perhaps he will survive.’
‘But my father did not compromise. He did what was right.’
‘Against my wishes. To further his own ambition. And your father was on the winning side. That makes men bold. Until, of course, he lost and had to run away.’
‘Yet what of right and wrong, Mother? Are they not important?’
‘Oh, yes, child. Of course they are. It’s not in doubt. But there is something else equally important. As I get older, I wonder if it is not more so.’
‘Which is?’
‘God’s gift to Solomon, Betty. Wisdom.’
‘Ah. I see.’
‘Don’t marry Peter unless you both have a little wisdom.’ Her mother smiled at her very sweetly. ‘You’ll be surprised how easy it is to be good if you are wise.’
‘You must be very wise, Mother.’
Alice laughed quietly. ‘How fortunate, when I’m to lose my head this afternoon.’
None of them said anything after that for a little while, each sitting silently with her thoughts.
Finally, it was neither Betty nor her mother, but Tryphena who spoke. ‘They say’, she said thoughtfully, ‘that after a head is severed, life does not instantly depart; but the head remains conscious for a moment or two. It may blink or even try to speak.’
This was greeted with silence.
‘Thank you, dear,’ Alice said softly, after a pause. ‘You are a great comfort to me.’
A further short silence ensued before Alice slowly got up. ‘I am ready to end my life now, my dear children, for I have nothing more to say. Let me embrace