And Crispin Ormerod was in Bristol, in his house in Queen Square, with two attorneys and a barrister from London, swearing that the letter of instructions found in the captain's bag was a forgery, that he had never set foot aboard the Constant, and that if anyone in the firm had fitted her out for the coast it was the principal owner, whose hand was on every paper.
"Mr. Madoc thinks the handwriting will tell against him," Lady Ormerod said. "My attorney thinks it may not. He says a clever man with good counsel can make a jury doubt anything, and Crispin is clever, and he has my late husband's money to pay for counsel. Half of it, at least." She smiled a little. "My attorney also thinks the Crown is unlikely to prosecute an owner who laid the information against her own ship. He was very particular about the word *unlikely*. I asked him whether it meant *will not*, and he said it did not."
"And the rest?"
"The rest." She looked out at the brig. "I am not received in Bristol at present. Lady Pelham cut me in the Assembly Rooms in Exeter last week, in front of thirty people, which I found I minded less than I expected. The firm will lose the Constant and very likely the underwriters' good opinion, and my nephew will contest everything, and it will all take years." She paused. "And I sent my husband's old journals to the African Institution in London. All of them. They have written back to ask whether they may print extracts. I said yes."
Jory looked at her.
"With your name on them?"
"With his name on them. Which is mine." She drew the cloak closer. "Clyst is still standing, before you ask. I have not given it back. I do not yet know to whom one gives such a thing back, or how, or whether it can be done at all. I only know I have stopped pretending it does not need doing."
They stood a while without speaking. A gull came down on a bollard and went away again.
"Mr. Trevisa has written to me," she said at last. "About April. You will be the Crown's chief witness to the conversation in the yard and to what you saw from the attic. But the Crown's counsel is not certain the court will let you be sworn. There was a case at the Old Bailey thirty years ago, a deaf woman examined by signs through a friend who knew them, and Mr. Trevisa has found it and copied it out for them in his own hand. But there are judges who say a man who cannot hear the oath cannot take it." She met his eyes. "They may not let you speak at all. They may stand you up in front of that whole court and call you an idiot to your face, the way Mr. Trevisa nearly did."
"Then they will have to say it where I can see them," said Jory.
Something moved in her face that might have been a laugh, if it had been a less cold day and a less hard year.