For a good hour before the arrival of the Deemster, Castle Rushen had
been full of activity. In the Court-house itself, warm with sunshine
from the lantern light, Robbie Stephen, the chief Coroner of the
island, who looked like a shaggy old sheep-dog, had been selecting
candidates for the Jury-box.
Seventy-two of them had been summoned, six from each of twelve
parishes, and now he was reducing the number to thirty-two, twelve
for the Jury and twenty more to meet the contingency of arbitrary
challenging.
Everybody claimed exemption, but the Coroner listened to none.
Standing back to the empty bench, swelling with importance and with
his seventy-two men huddled together like sheep at one side of the
chamber, he called them out at his discretion and with a wave of the
hand passed them over to the other side to wait for the trial.
"Now, then, Willie Kinnish, thou'rt a good man; over with thee."
"No, no, Mr. Stephen, you must excuse me to-day, Sir." "Tut, tut!
You Maughold men haven't served on a jury these seven years." "But I
have fifty head of sheep going to Ramsey mart this morning, and
what's to pay my half year's rent if I'm not there to sell them?"
"Chut, man! Lave that to herself. She's thy better half, isn't she?"
Meantime, in the chill corridors underground the jailer and his
turnkey were rattling their keys, opening the doors of the cells and
shouting to the prisoners to make ready for the Court.
"Patrick Kelly! Charles Quiggin! Nancy Kegeen! John Corlett!
Cæsar Crow! Robert Quine! Elizabeth Corteen!"
Hearing her name called, Bessie, having no fear, got up from her
plank bed, and when Mrs. Mylrea, the woman warder, with her short,
loud, difficult breathing, brought back her cloak and fur hat, she
put them on leisurely.
"Quick, girl!" said the warder. "You don't want to keep the Dempster
waiting, do you?"
Bessie laughed, but made no answer. At the next moment she was in
the darkness of the corridor, walking at the end of a short
procession of other prisoners, and at the next she was drawn up, with
her prison companions, into the blinding sunlight of a little paved
quadrangle which was surrounded by high walls and had the sound of
the sea coming down into it from the free world outside.
By this time the Court-house upstairs was in a state of yet greater
activity. The thirty-two possible jurymen, having reconciled
themselves to being "trapped," were standing under the jury-box,
talking of the weather which was bringing the crops on rapidly and
would increase the price of early potatoes. Inspectors of police
were bustling about; Joshua Scarff was laying a green portfolio with
paper, pens and ink, on the bench in front of the Deemster's scarlet
armchair, and a number of advocates were coming in laughing by a door
which communicated with their room off the ramparts.
The last of the advocates to enter was Alick Gell. He took a seat
immediately in front of the empty dock, looking pale and worn and
scarcely able to hold the papers which he carried in his nervous
hands. A little later the Attorney-General, who was to prosecute for
the Crown, came in with a grave face, followed by old Hudgeon, his
junior, with a sour one. And shortly before eleven (the hour
appointed for the beginning of the trial) a lady was brought by an
Inspector from the door to the Judge's room and seated beside Gell in
front of the dock. It was Fenella.
Then the outer doors to the court-yard were thrown open and the
public admitted. They rushed and tore their way into the
Court-house, men and women together, talking and laughing loudly.
The big clock in the Castle tower was heard to strike, and the
Inspector, standing near the dais, cried in a loud voice,
"Silence in Court!"
The babel of voice subsided and everybody rose who had been seated.
Then the Court came in and took their seats on the bench of
judgment--the Governor in his soldier's uniform, and Stowell and the
Clerk of the Rolls in their Judges' wigs and gowns.
It was remarked that the new Deemster looked ill and almost old. A
wave of sympathy went out to him from the first. It was whispered
among the spectators that he had come straight from a sick-bed, and
that the Governor insisted on his presence, saying he must have him
"dead or alive."
"Coroner, fence the Court," said the Governor, and then old Stephen,
who had already taken his place in the Coroner's box, raising the
pitch of his voice, recited the ancient formula:
"_I do hereby fence this Court in the name of our Sovereign Lord the
King. I charge that no person shall quarrel, bawl or molest the
audience, that all persons shall answer to their names when called.
I charge this audience to witness that this Court is fenced; I charge
this audience to witness that this Court is fenced; I charge this
whole audience to witness that this Court is fenced._"
Everybody knew that it was for the Deemster to speak next, but for a
sensible moment he did not do so. Then he said, almost beneath his
breath,
"Let the prisoners be brought in."
In the continued silence there came the sound of bustle outside, with
the patter of feet on the pavement below, and then a shuffling of
steps on the stairs. The prisoners were coming up, but the police
had difficulty in clearing a passage for them. The voice of the
jailer, Tommy Vondy, was heard to cry, "Make way!" There was a
period of waiting. At one moment the people in court caught the
sound from the staircase of a scarcely believable thing--the laugh of
a woman? Who could she be?
At length the prisoners were brought in, pushed through the throng
that stood thick at the back, and hurried into the dock, which was
like a long pew behind the circular seats of the advocates and
directly in front of the bench.
There were seven of them, a sorry company, two women and five men,
with nothing in common save the pallid, almost pasty complexions
which had come of the dank air they had been living in.
There was another moment of silence. It was time for the Deemster to
take the pleas, but again he did not speak immediately. He had the
look of a man who was struggling against physical weakness. The
blood rushed to his pale face and as quickly disappeared. "He's not
fit for it to-day," people whispered.
But at the next moment, in a low voice, and with the appearance of
one who was making an effort to command his strength, the Deemster
was reading the indictments.
He took the prisoners in the order in which they stood before him,
beginning with the one on the extreme left. He was a very young man,
almost a boy, with a face that might have been that of his mother
when she was a girl. His name was Quiggin; he had been a bank clerk
and was charged with embezzlement. He pleaded Guilty and looked down
as if he expected the earth to open under his feet.
The next was a gross, fat, middle-aged woman with red cheeks and many
heavy gold rings on her stubby fingers. Her name was Kegeen, and she
was charged with robbing drunken sailors in a house she had kept in
an alley off the south quay. In a torrent of words she denied
everything and accused the police of black-mailing her.
The last was Bessie Collister and the Deemster paused perceptibly
when he came to her.
She had carried herself straight when she entered the Court and was
now sitting with her head thrown back. But, seeing that of all the
prisoners she was the one on whom the eyes of the spectators were
fastened, she had reached up her hands to a veil which was wrapped
about her fur hat and drawn it down over her face. Observing this at
the last moment, and thinking it the cause of the Deemster's silence,
the jailer said in an audible whisper,
"Put up your fall, Bessie."
She did so, disclosing her thin white face and large eyes. And then
in a voice so low that it would have been scarcely audible but for
the strained silence in the court-house, the Deemster said,
"Elizabeth Corteen, stand up."
Bessie rose without embarrassment and fixed her eyes on the Deemster.
And then he charged her.
"It is charged against you that on or about the fifth day of
April--in the parish of Ballaugh, in the Isle of Man, feloniously,
wilfully and of your malice aforethought, you did kill and murder a
certain male child, contrary to the form of the Statute in such case
made and provided, and against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the
King, his Crown and dignity. How say you, are you guilty or not
guilty?"
Without hesitation or halting, looking straight into the eyes of the
Judge and speaking in a voice so clear that it resounded through the
silent Court-house, Bessie answered,
"Not Guilty."
Her tone and bearing had gone against her. "The huzzy!" whispered
one of the female spectators. "She might have more shame for her
position, anyway. And did you see the way the forward piece looked
up at the Deemster?"