Bitter Eden (23 page)

He looked up, angry eyes blazing at Albert. "What are you doing with her?"

Albert smiled catlike. He moved a step Nearer. Tm not with her. She claims you were. Let's hear it, Peter. What were you doing tonight? Make it good. I'd hate to see all her efforts go for naught. She's willing to risk perjury for you."

Peter's arms tightened around Callie. With a hard, cold-eyed smile, he said, "Didn't you hear her, Albert, I was busy being a fool and losing track of Callie. She might never have f ound me again."

"But where were you?"

"I already told you, Albert! We'd gone for a ride and I got lost from him in a crowd of your men," Callie said quickly. Peter grinned and repeated what she had said.

Albert looked from one of them to the other, undecided, tempted. A half-smile crossed his face; his tongue licked his partially open lips.

Callie clung tighter to Peter's coat, the material bunched in her fists. "Albert . . ." she whispered, "please ... let us go home."

He looked at Peter again, his eyes hard and filled with dislike. Then he glanced about angrily until he spotted one of his men. Roughly he pulled Peter out of the line of prisoners. "Don't you know better than to arrest one of our own men!" he shouted angrily at the deputy. His eyes still cold, he said to Peter, "Take her home before someone else hears her cockeyed tale."

"Albert—she wouldn't lie. Just look at her," Peter said, his lips twitching in amusement, his eyes sparkling as though what he and Albert played was after all a game.

"I have," Albert said curtly and walked away from them.

"Peter, please hurry. Don't stay here any longer. I'm afraid." Callie pulled at his hand, urging him from the square and back to the row of cottages where she had tethered Gent.

"Wait a minute, you little devil's spawn! What do you think you are doing out on a night like this, alone? What do I have to do to keep you safe? Tie you to your bed nights?" Peter's voice was low as he turned her toward him.

"You needed . . ."

He laughed out loud and swung her up into his arms, whirling her around and around until she was dizzy. "Do you know what you did? What you risked? Is my life worth trading your own for?"

"Albert said I will have to testify that you were with me. What shall I xlo if they don't believe me, Peter? What will happen to us?"

"Not a thing," he whispered into her ear. "Because Albert is never going to have you testify to anything. I'd kill him with my bare hands before I'd let him harm you. There are too few like you on this earth, Callie. Even idiots like me know something special when we see it."

She was not very steady when he released her, but she was speechless, and remained so most of the way home.

"Would Albert have let you go if I hadn't come?" she asked as they neared the farm.

"I doubt it. Albert is a duty-bound man, and he's been wanting to catch me out for a long time." Peter laughed mirthlessly. "Even if he'd wanted to release me, which he didn't, Albert never does anything improper if he can help it. If it isn't in the book, Albert won't do it. Poor Albert; he was probably as relieved as I was to see you. What a tale! A midnight ride in the middle of the Swing riot arrests . . . with you."

She wriggled on the saddle behind him. "Well, it wasn't so easy trying to think up a reason that I should be there, you know. It was the best I could do."

"It worked. That makes it good enough; and anyway it will give us all a good story to laugh about/'

"You're not going to tell everyone!"

"Of course. Why not? They'd enjoy a laugh over it."

"But Peter! I'm not supposed to be out. They think I am asleep. Aunt Meg will be terribly angry. I only came because Frank said it would kill Uncle James if he found out you were gone."

"You didn't come for me?"

She blushed and remained silent.

"I think you came for me," he said.

"Please—I don't want you to tell them."

"You're a heroine, Callie. It's not every day a man s life is saved by a pretty girl. You can't make me keep that a secret, can you? You alone made an effort to help me. You think my family shouldn't be told that? I suppose they'd see me hang before they'd risk a hair off their own heads. No, Callie darling, I'm going to tell them."

Frank had been no more honest with Callie than she had been with him. The difference between the two was Frank's lethargic patience. About an hour after Peter had left, Frank went to the stables. He found not one, but two of the riding horses missing. He raced to Callie's room. In his agitation, he awakened the entire household.

They gathered one by one, coming sleepy-eyed from their rooms into the hallway. The confusion and

hushed talk, as plans were made for Stephen and Frank to take the carriage, wakened James.

"What is going on out there?" he called from his room.

"It's nothing, Pa," Frank answered and shushed everyone, but not enough. James was too alert.

"It's twelve thirty. What's happened? Meg! Meg!" He struggled from his bed, clinging to the furniture. He stumbled and bumped the table. His face contorted as he grabbed for the chair and fell.

Frank and the others stood in shocked stillness, then ran to his bedroom.

James had suffered a second attack.

The carriage was put to use to fetch the doctor.

Meg again took up her vigil by his side. She sat in the darkness and wondered if she were to lose both her husband and her son tonight. And where was Cal-lie? What had happened to the child?

Anna went down to the kitchen and made hot chocolate. No one except Rosalind and Natalie had been able to go back to sleep. They all sat waiting to hear what had taken place, hoping for the best and dreading the worst.

It was to a quiet, saddened house that Callie and Peter returned. Peter's high spirits were out of tempo with the tense drawn faces that greeted him. Their anxiety turned quickly to anger. Callie fled to her room as Peter lashed back at his brothers with anger of his own. Only when he was told of James did he quiet. Then he took the stairs two at a time. Meg, nodding sleepily, roused as he came into the room.

"Peter? It's you . . . you're safe . . • and Callie?" She began to cry softly.

Peter remained with her that night, watching over James more carefully than she, if that was possible. As always, after he had stepped out of the bounds of

good sense, he was mortified and repentant. Primarily he was frightened. It was as though someone had caught him from behind when all his concentration was in front of him. By an appalling lack of prudence he had endangered the lives of three people: himself, Callie, and James. Two of them he loved dearly.

James recovered slowly and unsatisfactorily. His mind no 'longer responded with the quick clarity of old. But his first fear was allayed when he was told immediately that his son was safe and unharmed. James was the one person in the family who approved Callie's rash action, so Meg's scolding was mild. Instead Anna kindly and mildly reminded her of the dangers she had faced. Nice girls were not known to go riding out in the middle of the night for any reason whatever.

The arrested men did not have such good fortune on their side. By December it was bitingly cold again, and the rioting in Kent was a thing of the past. Hundreds of prisoners awaited trial. Most of them were poor and illiterate. In spite of a touted and prized system of justice, there would be no justice for them.

No man was able to testify in his own defense without implicating himself or his friends in the riots. There was no counsel for the defense. It was a desperate situation for them, and for the magistrates who had to see the matter cleared up. Bribes were offered to any person who could be persuaded to testify against his fellow rioters. The offers were tempting, for over the heads of the rioters loomed the Act of 1827, which prescribed penalties. Destruction of threshing machines could mean being transported for seven years. One of the most common offenses was the firing of ricks. For that the penalty was death.

Peter began to realize how closely he had courted real trouble. The causes of the riots—the poverty, joblessness, hunger, injustice—were all disregarded in the ^ensuing trials. Evidence given about background was ruled out. Most of the laborers' problems were attributed to drink. Through drinking a man would suffer distress. Wages and conditions had nothing to do with it. In the end all extenuating circumstances became irrelevant. The prejudices and preconceptions of the judges and lawyers were the ultimate evidence.

The single factor favorable to the laborers was the reluctance of the juries to convict them. That quickly became an embarrassment. So Special Commissions convicted the prisoners. The Special Commission at Winchester convicted one hundred prisoners. Six were sentenced to hang; the others were to be transported for life. A second Commission sat at Salisbury. Two men were sentenced to death. One hundred and fifty were transported for life. Some of those convicted were young; one'was seven years old.

The Special Commissions and the trials moved throughout the countryside to Dorchester, Reading, Aylesbury, and Abingdon. Fortunately, as they went their inclination toward leniency increased. Winchester and Salisbury had served to produce the desired effect. Everyone knew how far into tragedy the Swing riots had plunged them.

The riots reached every home of every hamlet. Daily, families of the men involved stood at the prison gates begging for leniency. There was sympathy for these destitute people, but no help. People talked in the comfort of their homes of a situation that was "heartbreaking." The men were convicted heartbreak-ingly.

By the end of the trials four hundred and fifty-seven men had been transported for some designated

period of time. The length of the term mattered little, for, having served his term, a man then had to pay his way back to England. Few of those transported would ever see their families again.

It was agreed generally that wages should now be raised. People were still anxious. Perhaps the riots would start up again. It had been frightening to see the quiet countryside become a raging mass of determined, hungry mobs. With the transported rioters on their way to Van Diemen s Land or Australia, wages went up, and remained high as long as people remained anxious and worried. But as soon as memories dimmed and things became normal, the wages returned to seven shillings a week.

The Bereans said little about the trials. There were still too many raw feelings about the night Peter had been arrested, and no one wanted any more division in the family than already existed.

Peter was both relieved and ashamed at his narrow escape. Somewhere inside himself he continued to think that it would have turned out differently if the educated, landed people had dared to stand beside those illiterate masses who could neither defend themselves nor avoid being sacrificed to the fear of the times.

It had been a long time since Peter had turned to his father. But since James had had his second attack, Peter had felt a closeness for him and a need to be near him.

"I might as well be dead," James complained. "What good am I now? I cant eat proper food, nor even get out of bed." He roughly shoved aside his glass of chalybeate water. "Ill not swallow any more of that. What I need is a glass of Stephens best cider. Put me right back on my feet again." He looked at Peter. "What is

it you have on your mind? Certainly hope it isn't my chalybeate water. Damned abominable stuff/' Peter did not respond to James's effort at humor. He watched Peter's thoughtful progress to a chair. He wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. He could not speak as well as he once could. "I've got more sores on my behind than if I'd been riding for a month," James said, again trying to make Peter laugh and not notice that he sometimes drooled. One side of his face was worse than the other, he thought. He angled his head so Peter could not see so much of his left side. "What is it, Peter? What's on your mind? Or must I pry it out of you a word at a time?"

"They've transported nearly five hundred men. Nine hanged. Do you remember the Cooks, Pa?"

James was relieved to learn that Peter's serious mood had nothing to do with his illness or the look of his deformed left side. "Yes . . . son a little older than Stephen . . . don't they?"

"Henry. He knocked off the hat of one of the Boring family, I don't know who, but it doesn't matter. It was in the midst of one of the free-for-alls. They hanged him, Pa. He was nineteen years old and had done nothing."

James shook his head. "Snow will never lie upon his innocent grave."

"How do we live with things like that?"

"We don't. We die with them, and we die of them. They are man's disease."

"My disease," Peter said morosely.

"I suppose you're thinking you should have stood by their side. I can understand the feeling."

Peter laughed harshly. "Can you also understand that I feel glad it was them who were hanged and imprisoned and transported and not me?"

"Well now, which is it? Are you bothered that you

weren't hanged, or that you wanted a better fate for yourself?"

Peter rose, gesturing helplessly. "Both."

James stared at him, his mind suddenly blank. "You're leaving?"

TE shouldn't bother you with this kind of talk. I guess I wanted to see if you would despise me as I do myself. Confirmation of sorts. It's a bad day when you discover you are a. coward."

"You're not a coward, Peter."

"Aren't I?"

"No. You haven't found what you believe in. You thought you knew, but it wasn't so. Perhaps your sympathies were with the laborers, but did you ever really understand what your part was? Or was it just a lark? A good cause and a good reason to be out riding and playing the hero? Knowledge is but a small part of reality, Peter. It requires understanding and wisdom as well. We all know that what was being done to the laborers was wrong, but how to change it—that required more than just the mere recognition of a wrong."

"I think I prefer cowardice to what you describe."

"It is youth."

"I am no youth. You can't call my failings the result of youth."