The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [160]
So was I, Grey thought, and took more brandy. Am I now again? But not even the most exigent curiosity would make him ask.
35
Justice
THE COURT-MARTIAL OF MAJOR GERALD SIVERLY (DECEASED) was well attended. Everyone from the Duke of Cumberland (who had tried to appoint himself to the board of judges, but been prevented by Hal) to the lowest Fleet Street hack crowded into the Guildhall, this being the largest venue available.
Lord John Grey, pale and limping but steady of eye and voice, testified before the board, this consisting of five officers drawn from various regiments—none of them Siverly’s—and the Judge Advocate, that he had received the papers now presented to the board from Captain Charles Carruthers in Canada, where Carruthers had served under Major Siverly and been witness to the actions described herein, and that he, Grey, had heard such further testimony from Carruthers in person as inclined him to believe the documentary evidence as it stood.
Courts-martial had no set procedure, no dock, no Bible, no barristers, no rules of evidence. Anyone who wished to do so might testify or ask questions, and a number of people did so—including the Duke of Cumberland, who thrust his bulk forward before Grey could sit down and came straight up to him, glowering directly into his face from a distance of six inches.
“Is it not true, my lord,” Cumberland asked, with heavy sarcasm, “that Major Siverly saved your life at the siege of Quebec?”
“It is, Your Grace.”
“And have you no shame at thus betraying your debt to a brother-in-arms?”
“No, I haven’t,” Grey replied calmly, though his heart was thumping erratically. “Major Siverly’s behavior on the field of battle was honorable and valorous—but he would have done the same for any soldier, as would I. For me to withhold evidence of his corruption and his peculations off that field would be a betrayal of the entire army in which I have the honor to serve and a betrayal of all those comrades with whom I have fought through the years.”
“Hear him! Hear him!” shouted a voice from the back of the hall, which he rather thought was Harry Quarry’s. A general rumbling of approval filled the hall, and Cumberland receded, still glaring.
The testimony went on all day, with various officers of Siverly’s regiment coming to offer their own witness, some speaking well of the dead man’s character, but others—many others—recounting incidents that supported Carruthers’s account. Regimental loyalty counted for a great deal, Grey thought—but regimental honor counted for more, and the thought pleased him.
For Grey, the day gradually blurred into a confusion of faces, voices, uniforms, hard chairs, shouts echoing from the huge beams of the ceiling, the occasional shoving match broken up by the sergeant-at-arms … and, at the end of it, he found himself in the street outside, momentarily apart from the tumultuous crowd that had spilled out of the Guildhall.
Hal, who had been the most senior officer on the court, was across the street, talking intently to the Judge Advocate, who was nodding. It was late afternoon, and the chimneys of London were all belching forth as the fires were built up for evening. Grey took a grateful lungful of the smoky air, fresh by comparison with the close atmosphere inside the Guildhall, which was composed in equal parts of sweat, trampled food, tobacco, and the smell of rage—and fear. He’d been aware of that, the tiny thrilling of the nerves among the crowd, the faces that quietly vanished as the testimony mounted.
Hal had been careful to avoid any mention of the Irish Brigades, the Wild Hunt, or the plan to seize the king; there were too many plotters as yet unaccounted for, and no need to alarm the public a priori. He had brought up Edward Twelvetrees, though, and his role as Siverly’s confidant and co-conspirator—and Grey shivered suddenly, recalling the look on Reginald Twelvetrees’s face, the old colonel sitting like a stone near the front of the room, burning eyes fixed on Hal without blinking