Chapter 7
“You shall tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God,” the clerk droned.
“I’ll tell what happened,” Arthur growled, his voice rough as iron shavings. He didn't kiss the book; he merely thumped his calloused thumb against the leather with deliberate disrespect.
Julian stepped out from behind the defense enclosure, holding a single sheet of parchment in his right hand. His fingers shook so badly that the paper made a dry, rustling sound in the dead silence of the hall.
“Captain Thorne,” Julian said, taking a cautious step toward the box, keeping three paces of clear air between them as if terrified of the soldier’s reach. “Let us return to the seventeenth of October, three years past. The night before the regiment moved on Blackwater Marsh.”
Arthur’s eyes narrowed into slits. “What about it?”
“You were in command of the forward reconnaissance detail,” Julian said, reading from the paper, his voice wavering. “The record shows that at eight o’clock in the evening, you received orders from the divisional quartermaster—myself—to escort a courier dispatch north-west toward the garrison post at Bramley. Is that correct?”
Arthur stared at him. The silence stretched until a woman in the third tier of the gallery cleared her throat.
“No,” Arthur said flatly.
Julian froze. His mouth remained half-open, a statue of petrified horror. “I... I beg your pardon, Captain?”
“I said no,” Arthur repeated, his voice rising, harsh and abrasive. “It wasn't eight o’clock. It was midnight.”
A murmur broke out along the jury benches. Sir Gerald Finch tilted his head, his quill poised in mid-air, a slow, wolfish grin spreading across his face.
Julian took a frantic half-step forward, his voice cracking. “Captain, you are mistaken. The travel log clearly states eight o’clock! You arrived at Bramley by dawn—a ride of thirty miles through mountainous terrain. If you departed at midnight, you could not possibly have reached the post house before midday on the eighteenth!”
“Then I didn't reach it by dawn, did I?” Arthur barked, leaning over the rail, his golden-brown eyes blazing with wild, reckless ferocity. “You wrote down eight o’clock in your pretty little ledger because it made the math work! But I sat in the saddle in the freezing rain outside your tent until the midnight bell rang, waiting for the pouch! You were inside with the candles burning, scratching out names and burning papers in the brazier!”
“That is a lie!” Julian cried out, his voice leaping into a desperate, strangled shriek that drew gasps from the gallery. “My Lord, strike that from the record! The witness is confused—he is deliberately misrepresenting the sequence of dispatches!”
“I am not misrepresenting a damn thing!” Arthur roared back, slamming his iron-cuffed wrists against the witness box rail with a thunderous *crack* that made the court clerk jump out of his seat. “You told me the pouch contained orders for the auxiliary battalion! You told me if I rode hard enough, reinforcements would march south to cover our flank at Blackwater! I rode two horses to death through the mud, Julian! And when I got to Bramley, what was in the pouch? Blank sheets! Blank sheets and two bags of lead shot!”
The gallery erupted. Men stood on benches, craning their necks; barristers in the well of the court began whispering frantically to their clerks.
“Order! Order in this court!” Chief Magistrate Vance battered his gavel against the wooden sounding block, his crimson sleeves flapping wildly. “Captain Thorne, you will answer the questions put to you by counsel and cease these scandalous accusations!”
“Why should I?” Arthur shouted, his face purple with fury, his chest heaving under his sweat-stained linen shirt. He pointed a trembling, scarred finger directly at Julian’s face. “Why should I swing for his treachery? He spent three weeks in the London taverns telling me Lord Sterling would fix it! He told me Sterling had bought the clerks at the War Office! He promised me if I just nodded and signed his forged parchment, we’d both walk out of here with full pensions!”
“Captain Thorne, be silent!” Julian wailed, clutching his head with both hands, the sheet of parchment fluttering uselessly to the floor. Tears of sheer, unadulterated panic spilled over Julian’s eyelashes, tracking through the pale dust on his cheeks. He looked completely shattered, a scholar watching his entire life collapse into a heap of ashes before a public mob. “You don't know what you are saying! You are condemning us both!”
In the northern box, Lord Sterling had risen halfway out of his seat. His ivory face had drained of its lazy amusement, his jaw rigid, the silver wolf’s head of his cane pressed so hard against the mahogany rail that the wood groaned. Sterling’s pale eyes were fixed on Julian, burning with an icy, lethal fury.
*The mongrels have broken their chains,* Julian thought, reading the aristocrat’s face with razor-sharp precision even as he let another sob tear out of his own throat. *He thinks we’ve ruined his tidy play. He thinks Arthur has lost his mind.*
Sir Gerald Finch was on his feet in an instant, cutting across the well of the court like a black-winged raven swooping down upon a dying rabbit.
“My Lord Chief Magistrate!” Finch’s voice boomed over the pandemonium, commanding the room with effortless legal authority. “The truth will out! Even from the mouth of a disgraced mercenary! The Crown requests permission to cross-examine the witness on this extraordinary admission!”
“Permission granted!” Vance shouted, wiping sweat from his forehead with a crumpled silk rag. “Proceed, Sir Gerald! And God help the defense if this whole trial is founded upon a manufactured conspiracy!”
Julian stumbled backward, collapsing into his chair at the defense table. He buried his face in his trembling hands, his shoulders hitching in violent, helpless sobs. Through the gaps between his ink-stained fingers, he watched Finch glide toward Arthur’s box.
“Captain Thorne,” Finch purred, his tone dripping with false sympathy. “You speak of lead shot and blank sheets. You speak of Lord Sterling’s involvement. But the court must deal with facts, not the delirious ramblings of an exhausted soldier. You claim Mr. Vance burned papers on the night of the seventeenth?”
“I saw the smoke coming through the tent flap,” Arthur snarled, his voice dropping into a dangerous, sullen rasp. “I saw him carrying the heavy iron box—the quartermaster’s register. The one with the King’s wax on the lock.”
“The division’s official account book,” Finch noted, turning to face the magistrates with theatrical solemnity. “The very book that vanished alongside the forty thousand sovereigns meant for the northern regiments. The book that would prove whether Blackwater Marsh was an operational tragedy... or a deliberate, profitable slaughter.”
Finch spun back toward Arthur, pointing a sharp, dramatic finger. “And where is that book now, Captain?”
Arthur didn't look at Finch. He turned his head slowly, deliberately, his burning gaze locking directly onto Julian’s huddled form at the defense table.
“Ask him,” Arthur spat, his lip curling in vicious hatred. “He brought it into this building this morning. He carries it in his black leather satchel beneath that very bench. He told me it was our insurance. He said if Sterling betrayed us, he’d use the altered ledger to prove the money was stolen by French scouts before we ever reached the marsh!”
