Part 2 (1/2)
”I pray you do, and in God's name be brief, man For if I as, Iassizes”
”I was there, my lord, in my quality as a physician, to dress Lord Gildoy's wounds”
”What's this? Do you tell us that you are a physician?”
”A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin”
”Good God!” cried Lord Jeffreys, his voice suddenly swelling, his eyes upon the jury ”What an iue is this! You heard the witness say that he had known hio, and that he was then an officer in the French service You heard the prisoner admit that the witness had spoken the truth?”
”Why, so he had Yet what I a you is also true, so it is For some years I was a soldier; but before that I was a physician, and I have been one again since January last, established in Bridgewater, as I can bring a hundred witnesses to prove”
”There's not the need to waste our time with that I will convict you out of your own rascally mouth I will ask you only this: How came you, who represent yourself as a physician peacefully following your calling in the town of Bridgewater, to be with the army of the Duke of Monmouth?”
”I was never with that army No witness has sworn to that, and I dare swear that no witness will I never was attracted to the late rebellion I regarded the adventure as a wicked ue became more marked than ever) ”what should I, as born and bred a papist, be doing in the army of the Protestant Chaloo Jack Presbyter I tell you, man, I can smell a Presbyterian forty miles”
”Then I'll take leave to marvel that with so keen a nose your lordshi+p can't shter in the galleries, instantly quelled by the fierce glare of the Judge and the voice of the crier
Lord Jeffreys leaned farther forward upon his desk He raised that delicate white hand, still clutching its handkerchief, and sprouting froion out of account for the moment, friend,” said he ”But er he beat the tiion aThou hast a precious i in the world equal to it in value Consider that the great God of Heaven and Earth, before Whose tribunal thou and we and all persons are to stand at the last day, will take vengeance on thee for every falsehood, and justly strike thee into eternal flames, make thee drop into the bottomless pit of fire and brimstone, if thou offer to deviate the least fro but the truth For I tell thee God is not e you to answer truthfully How caaped at him a moment in consternation The e Then he collected hi to succour Lord Gildoy, and I conceived it to be the duty i to answer that sue, terrible now of aspect - his face white, his twisted lips red as the blood for which they thirsted - glared upon him in evil hed He resuentle plaintiveness ”Lord! How you waste our time But I'll have patience with you Who summoned you?”
”Master Pitt there, as he will testify”
”Oh! Master Pitt will testify - he that is himself a traitor self-confessed Is that your witness?”
”There is also Master Baynes here, who can answer to it”
”Good Master Baynes will have to answer for hireatly exercised to save his own neck from a halter Come, co others fro upon the crupper of Master Pitt's horse”
His lordshi+p smiled ”It will not be necessary For, mark me, I do not intend to waste more time on you Answer me only this: When Master Pitt, as you pretend, came to summon you, did you know that he had been, as you have heard hi?”
”I did, My lord”
”You did! Ha!” His lordshi+p looked at the cringing jury and uttered a short, stabbing laugh ”Yet in spite of that you ith him?”
”To succour a wounded man, as was my sacred duty”
”Thy sacred duty, sayest thou?” Fury blazed out of hieneration of vipers do we live in! Thy sacred duty, rogue, is to thy King and to God But let it pass Did he tell you whom it was that you were desired to succour?”
”Lord Gildoy - yes”
”And you knew that Lord Gildoy had been wounded in the battle, and on what side he fought?”
”I knew”
”And yet, being, as you would have us believe, a true and loyal subject of our Lord the King, you went to succour him?”
Peter Blood lost patience for a moment ”My business, my lord, ith his wounds, not with his politics”
A alleries and even from the jury approved hie into a deeper fury
”Jesus God! Was there ever such an i, white-faced, to the jury ”I hope, gentlee of this traitor rogue, and withal you cannot but observe the spirit of this sort of people, what a villainous and devilish one it is Out of his ownhim a dozen times Yet is there more Answer me this, sir: When you cozened Captain Hobart with your lies concerning the station of this other traitor Pitt, as your business then?”
”To save hied without trial, as was threatened”
”What concern was it of yours whether or how the wretch was hanged?”
”Justice is the concern of every loyal subject, for an injustice co's co's majesty”
It was a shrewd, sharp thrust aimed at the jury, and it reveals, I think, the alertness of the man's mind, his self-possession ever steadiest in moments of dire peril With any other jury it must have made the impression that he hoped to make It may even have made its impression upon these poor pusillanie was there to efface it
He gasped aloud, then flung himself violently forward
”Lord of Heaven!” he stor, impudent rascal? But I have done with you I see thee, villain, I see thee already with a halter round thy neck”
Having spoken so, gloatingly, evilly, he sank back again, and composed hiain froentleafter a moment's pause, his voice was soft, alh that hushed court
”If I know my own heart it is not in ht in his eternal perdition It is out of compassion for you that I have used all these words - because I would have you have soard for your immortal soul, and not ensure its da in falsehood and prevarication But I see that all the pains in the world, and all compassion and charity are lost upon you, and therefore I will say no ain to the jury that countenance of wistful beauty ”Gentlees, and not you, that if any person be in actual rebellion against the King, and another person - who really and actually was not in rebellion - does knowingly receive, harbour, comfort, or succour him, such a person is as much a traitor as he who indeed bore arms We are bound by our oaths and consciences to declare to you what is law; and you are bound by your oaths and your consciences to deliver and to declare to us by your verdict the truth of the facts”
Upon that he proceeded to his suuilty of treason, the first for having harboured a traitor, the second for having succoured that traitor by dressing his wounds He interlarded his address by sycophantic allusions to his natural lord and lawful sovereign, the King, whom God had set over them, and with vituperations of Nonconformity and of Monmouth, of whom - in his oords - he dared boldly affiritimate birth had a better title to the crown ”Jesus God! That ever we should have such a generation of vipers a us,” he burst out in rhetorical frenzy And then he sank back as if exhausted by the violence he had used A ain; then he moved uneasily; once , almost incoherent words he dismissed the jury to consider the verdict
Peter Blood had listened to the intemperate, the blasphemous, and almost obscene invective of that tirade with a detachment that afterwards, in retrospect, surprised hi place in hi and coercing the jury into bloodshed, that he alot that his own life was at stake
The absence of that dazed jury was a brief one The verdict found the three prisoners guilty Peter Blood looked round the scarlet-hung court For an instant that foam of white faces seeain, and a voice was asking him what he had to say for himself, why sentence of death should not be passed upon hihed, and his laugh jarred uncannily upon the deathly stillness of the court It was all so grotesque, such a mockery of justice ad in scarlet, as himself a mockery - the venal instruhter shocked the austerity of that sah, sirrah, with the rope about your neck, upon the very threshold of that eternity you are so suddenly to enter into?”
And then Blood took his revenge