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Rathbone knew how very close to the truth that charge was.
“Thank you, my lord,” he said graciously, and turned back to Vida. “Mrs. Hopgood, have you suffered a shortage of workers lately?”
“Yeah. Lots o’ sickness,” she replied. She knew what he wished. She was an intelligent woman, and articulate in her own fashion. “Or more like injury. Took me a fair bit o’ argy-bargy, but I got it aht of ’em wot ’ad ’appened.” She looked questioningly at Rathbone, and then seeing his expression, continued with feeling. “They do a bit o’ dolly mop stuff on the side … beggin’ yer pardon, sir, I mean takes the odd gent ’ere an’ there ter add a bit extra … w’en their children is ’ungry, or the like.”
“We understand,” Rathbone assured her, then explained for the jury. “You mean they practice a little amateur prostitution when times are particularly hard.”
“In’t that wot I said? Yeah. Can’t blame ’em, poor cows. ’Oo’s gonna watch their children starvin’ and not do summink abaht it? In’t ’uman.” She drew breath. “Like I said, some of ’em was doin’ a bit on the side, like. Well, first orff they got cheated outa pay. Got no pimps ter look arter ’em, yer see.” Her handsome face darkened with anger. “Then it got worse. These geezers don’t on’y cheat, they started roughin’ ’em up, knockin’ ’em around, like. First it were just a bit, then it got worse.” Her expression twisted till the anger and pain in it were stark to see. “Some of ’em got beat pretty bad, bones broke, teef an’ noses broke—kicked, some of ’em were. Some of ’em was on’y bits o’ children theirselves. So I got a bit o’ money tergether an’ ’ired meself someone ter find out ’oo wos doin’ it.” She stopped abruptly, staring at Rathbone. “D’yer want me ter say ’oo I got, an’ wot ’e found?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Hopgood,” Rathbone replied. “You have laid an excellent foundation for us to discern from these poor women themselves what occurred. Just one more thing …”
“Yeah?”
“How many women do you know of who were beaten in this way?”
“In Seven Dials? Abaht twen’y-odd, as I knows of. They went on ter St. Giles—”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hopgood,” Rathbone interrupted. “Please tell us only your own experience.”
Goode rose again. “All we have heard so far is hearsay, my lord. Mrs. Hopgood has not been a victim herself, and she has not mentioned Mr. Rhys Duff. I have been extraordinarily patient, as was your lordship. All this is tragic, and abhorrent, but completely irrelevant.”
“It is not irrelevant, my lord,” Rathbone argued. “The prosecution’s case is that Rhys Duff went to the area of St. Giles to use prostitutes there, and that his father followed him, chastised him for his behavior, and in the resulting quarrel, Rhys killed his father and was severely injured himself. Therefore what happened to these women is fundamental to the case.”
“I have not claimed that these unfortunate women were raped, my lord,” Goode contradicted. “But if they were, then that only adds to the brutality of the accused’s conduct and the validity of the motive. No wonder his father charged him with grievous sin and would have chastened him severely, possibly even threatened to turn him over to the law.”
Rathbone swung around to face Goode. “You have proved only that Rhys used a prostitute in the area of St. Giles. You have not proved violence of any sort against any women—in St. Giles or in Seven Dials.”
“Gentlemen!” the judge said sharply. “Sir Oliver, if you are determined to prove this issue, then you had better be absolutely certain you are aiding your client’s cause and not further condemning him, but if you are satisfied, then prove your point. Proceed with dispatch.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Rathbone dismissed Vida Hopgood, and one by one called half a dozen of the women of St. Giles whom Monk had found. He began with the earliest, and least severely injured. The court sat in uncomfortable near silence and listened to their pathetic tales of poverty, illness, desperation, journeys out onto the streets to pick up a few pence by selling their bodies, and the cheating, then the violence which had followed.
Rathbone loathed doing it. The women were gray-faced, almost inarticulate with fear and, in some cases, also shame. They despised themselves for what they did, but need drove them. They hated standing in this handsome courtroom facing exquisitely gowned and wigged lawyers, the judge in his scarlet robes, and having to tell of their need, their humiliation and their pain.
Rathbone glanced at the jurors’ faces and read a sense of different emotions in them. He watched how much their imaginations conceived of the lives that were being described. How many of them, if any, had used such women themselves? What did they feel now? Shame, anger, pity or revulsion? More than half of them looked up to the dock at Rhys, whose face was twisted with emotion, but it was impossible to say what aroused his anger, or the revulsion which was so plain in his features.
Rathbone looked also at Sylvestra Duff and saw her lips puckered with horror as a world opened up in front of her beyond anything she had imagined, women whose lives were so utterly unlike her own they could have belonged to a different species. And yet they lived only a few miles away, in the same city. And her son had used them, could even, for all she knew, have begotten a child upon them.
Beside her, Fidelis Kynaston looked pale but less shocked. There was in her already a knowledge of pain, of the darker side of the world and those who lived in it. This was only a restatement of things she already knew.
On Sylvestra’s other side, Eglantyne Wade was motionless as wave after wave of misery passed over her, things she had never imagined were rehearsed before her in sickening detail.
The following day the stories became more violent. The witnesses still carried the marks of beatings on their blackened and swollen faces, their broken teeth.
Ebenezer Goode hesitated before questioning each one. None of them had recognized their assailants. Every brutal act only added to his case. Why should he challenge any of it? To demonstrate that the women were prostitutes anyway was unnecessary. There was not a man or woman in the room who did not know it and feel their own emotions regarding their trade and its place in society, or in their own personal lives. It was a subject of emotion rather than reason anyway. Words were only a froth on the surface of the deep tide of feeling.
A particular wave of revulsion and anger swelled when the thirteen-year-old Lily Drover testified, still nursin
g her dislocated shoulder. Haltingly she told Rathbone how both she and her sister had been beaten and kicked. She repeated the grunted words of abuse she had heard, and how she had tried to crawl away and hide in the dark.
Fidelis Kynaston looked so ashen Rathbone thought she suffered more in hearing it than Sylvestra, beside her.
The judge leaned forward, his own face tight with distress.
“Have you not established all you need, Sir Oliver? Surely no more can be necessary. This is a horrifying matter of escalating violence and brutality. What more do you require to show us? Make your point!”
“I have one more victim of rape, my lord. This one was in St. Giles.”
“Very well. I realize you need to establish that your assailants have moved into the relevant area. But make it brief.”
