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ply. “Keelin was always drawing, but she had no interest in being an artist, though naturally it was what her father suggested. She drew only to catch the structures, to see on paper the finished work. She had no interest in drawing for its own sake. She would design her own buildings, not simply record other people’s, no matter how marvelous they were. She was a creator, not a copier.”
A bitter smile touched his mouth. “But of course no school of architecture was going to accept a female pupil for any serious study. But she wouldn’t be thwarted. She found an architectural student who was attracted to her and borrowed his books and papers, asked him about the lectures he attended.” A wry expression passed fleetingly across his face, an unreadable mixture of irony, tenderness and pain. “Eventually she took a job as an assistant to a professor, clearing up for him, copying notes for him, all the time absorbing everything he taught the men. She did this for years, and eventually realized that even though she could have passed the examinations she would still never be taken seriously as an architect, never given work as long as she was a woman. She had beautiful hair, soft, shining brown and gold. She cut it off….” In the gallery a woman gasped and closed her eyes, her hands clenched, her imagination of the cost of it clear in her face.
One of the jurors shook his head slowly and blinked away tears. Perhaps his own wife or daughter had hair he loved.
“She passed herself off as a boy,” Wolff said, his voice catching for the first time. “Just to attend a particular lecture of a visiting professor and be treated as a student, not a servant, to be able to ask questions and be addressed directly in answer.” He blinked several times, and his voice dropped a tone. “It worked. People thought she was very young, but they did not question that she was a man. She came home and cried all night. Then she made her decision, and from then on she called herself Killian, and to everyone except me, she was a man.”
There was a murmur around the room. Several people shifted position with a creak of whalebone, a squeak of leather, a rustle of fabric. No one spoke unless it was in a whisper so soft it was inaudible above the movement.
“It has happened to others in the past,” Wolff continued. “Women have had to pose as men in order to use the talents God gave them because our prejudice would not permit them to be themselves. There are two routes open to those who will not be stifled. They can do as many Renaissance painters and composers of music did, have their work put forward, but under their brother’s or their father’s names … or else do as army surgeon Barry did here in England, and dress as a man. How she contrived that and carried it off in everyday life, I don’t know. But she did. Some may have known her secret, but the authorities never learned until after her death. And she was one of the best surgeons, a pioneer in technique. Keelin spoke of her often”—he could not mask the trembling of his voice any longer—“with admiration for her courage and her brilliance, and rage that she should have had to mask her sex all her adult life, deny half of herself in order to realize the other half. If sometimes she hated us for doing this to her, I think we have deserved it.”
McKeever stared at him, his mouth tightened very slightly, and he inclined his head in a fraction of a nod.
Rathbone felt brushed with guilt himself. He was part of the establishment. He remembered sharply another case of a woman who wanted to study medicine, and certainly had proved on the Crimean battlefields that she had the skills and the nerve, but had been prevented because of her sex. That too had ended in tragedy.
The jurors were uncomfortable. One elderly man blew through his mustache loudly, a curiously confused sound of anger and disgust, but his face betrayed his sense of confusion. He did not know what he thought, except that it was acutely unpleasant, and he resented it. He was there to pass judgment on others, not to be judged.
Another sat frowning heavily, seemingly troubled by his thoughts, his face filled with deep, unsettling pity.
Two more faced each other for moral support and nodded several times.
A fifth shook his head, biting his lips.
“Thank you, Mr. Wolff,” McKeever said quietly. “I think you have explained the matter as far as it is possible for us. I am obliged to you. It cannot have been either easy or pleasant for you, but I believe you have done us a service, and perhaps you have dealt Keelin Melville some measure of justice, albeit too late. I have no further questions. You may step down.”
* * *
As he was leaving the court, outside in the hallway, Rathbone heard footsteps hurrying behind him, and when he turned he was caught up by Barton Lambert.
“Sir Oliver!” Lambert was out of breath, and he looked profoundly agitated. He caught hold of Rathbone’s arm.
“Yes, Mr. Lambert,” Rathbone said coldly. He did not dislike the man—in fact, he had considered him basically both honest and tolerant—but he was burning with an inner anger and confusion, and a great degree of guilt. He did not want to have to be civil to anyone, least of all someone who was part of the tragedy and might, all too understandably, be seeking some relief from his own burden. Rathbone had none to offer.
“When did—when did you know?” Lambert said earnestly, his face creased, his eyes intent. “I could never be—I …” He stopped. He was too patently telling the truth to be doubted.
“The same moment you did, Mr. Lambert,” Rathbone replied. “Perhaps I should have guessed, rather than assume the relationship with Wolff was an immoral or illegal one. Perhaps you should have. We didn’t, and it is too late now to undo our destruction of her life or recall the talent we have cut off forever.”
They were both of them oblivious to others in the hallway.
“If she’d told me the truth!” Lambert protested, his hands sawing in the air. “If she’d just trusted us!”
“We would what?” Rathbone asked, raising his eyebrows.
“I … well, for God’s sake, I wouldn’t have sued her!”
Rathbone laughed with a startlingly bitter sound. “Of course you wouldn’t! You would have appeared ridiculous. You would have been ridiculous. But if she had come to you as a woman with those new, extraordinary designs for buildings, all light and curves, would you have put up the money to build them?”
“I … I …” Lambert stopped, staring at Rathbone, his cheeks white. He was too innately honest a man to lie, even to himself, now the truth was plain. “No … I doubt it … no, no, I suppose not. I thought hard as it was. He was … she was … so revolutionary. But by God, Rathbone, they were beautiful!” he said with a sudden, fierce passion, his eyes brilliant, his face translucent, alight with will and conviction.
“They still are,” Rathbone said quietly. “The art is the same. It remains within the creator if it stands or falls.”
“By God, you’re right!” Lambert exploded savagely. “Heaven help us all … what a bigoted, shortsighted, narrow, self-seeking lot we are!” He stood in the corridor with his shoulders hunched, his jaw tight, his fists clenched in front of him.
“Sometimes,” Rathbone agreed. “But at least if we can see it, there is hope for us.”
“There’s no bloody hope for Melville! We’ve finished that!” Lambert spat back at him.
“I know.” Rathbone did not argue his own guilt. It was academic. Lambert’s greater guilt did not absolve anyone else. “Now, if you will excuse me, Mr. Lambert, I have people I desire to inform, and regrettably, other cases.” He left Lambert standing staring after him and hurried towards the doors, pushing past people, ignoring them. There was no purpose to be served anymore, but he wanted to tell Monk personally rather than leave him to read it in the newspapers.
