Persuasion in the Pantry [Maid for More #1]

Chapter 46: Part 1- Wedding Bells

July 11th 1840

Verushka's chamber was in a state of chaos. Had it been a country, she would have declared a state of anarchy. Dismissed dresses hung limply from chairs, scattered shoes littered the floor like land mines and a single forlorn stocking lay draped over a lampshade with all the ceremony of a national flag signalling distress.

Who could have guessed the commotion a wedding would cause? Thoughts of her imminent marriage should have consumed her but an unsolved enigma was proving just as unshakable and Verushka couldn't help but take once more look at all the evidence she had saved from the last two days. She pushed aside the gossamer veil that trailed across the table, and flicked a strand of pearls to the floor. The day's newspapers already printed with ink as fresh as Oxford's sentence lay beneath the surface of her wedding finery and she perused the headlines once more.

Oxford's collaborator, Courvoisier was hanged five days prior for the murder of Lord William Russell; and with Madame Tussaud managing to sneak an Italian artist into Newgate Prison to make a plaster cast of Oxford's head, he seemed a surety to follow his compatriot to the gallows. But each day had given Sydney Taylor and the rest of Oxford's defence team an opportunity to mount a compelling case. Oxford's mother, Hannah, spoke to anyone who would listen about the hereditary insanity of her son so that his portrayal in the papers had gone from that of desperate bravado to a pathetic, weak pot boy. Shockingly, she had managed to engender some level of compassion for him and in two weeks his lawyers had produced one hundred and ten witnesses ready to stand trial to attest to his innocence by way of insanity.

Verushka threw down the biased rag and reached beneath the layers of wedding debris to pull out the latest Secret Service report attached to the Court proceedings. The day before the trial started Verushka's life had narrowed to a single room. She sat from dawn until dusk in the Duchess of Bexley's sitting room feigning wedding preparations. They couldn't be in court, but puppets strings could still reach all the way to Mayfair. The Duchess had set up a volley of her most trusted messengers to pass along information to be gleaned with the prison at a rapid rate. If Oxford had any visitors, they knew about it. If he sneezed on the stand, they knew.

At one in the afternoon before the trial was due to start they received word that all the doctors for the defence had visited Oxford in his cell. She didn't know why they had bothered when every one of them had already made up their mind. Any hint of the abnormal was used to defend him, from the shape of his skull by Dr John Connelly to the stride of his gait by Dr Chowne. Conversely, any time he displayed a measure of normal behaviour it was diagnosed as a marker of insanity because surely no man in such a predicament would be capable of conversing as a sane man would. But, Verushka knew better. Oxford was playing them all for fools. After her meeting with him she knew that he was far more calculating than the man who would appear at trial. The decoding of his letters and arrest of Agent Smith, simply plugged holes in a dam ready to flood London. Nothing about Young England could have been used in Court without revealing that Her Majesty's Secret Service was aware there was a larger game afoot. No, Verushka sighed, reluctant to have agreed with the Duchess of Bexley. It was better that they believed Oxford had succeeded in covering up their agenda.

One doctor was resoundingly absent during the mockery of these examinations, Charles Aston Key - surgeon for the prosecution. When Verushka had questioned the wisdom of this, the Duchess of Bexley had merely smiled at her and said, "You will see," before sipping her freshly brewed tea.

On the morning of the following day Verushka did see.

Of the twenty-eight witnesses called to the stand, twenty six were there solely to attest to Oxford's madness. The defence dredged up obscure family members, landlords, employers and teachers until the hearing spilled into a second day. Still, the prosecution was suspiciously silent on the subject of Oxford's sanity.