‘Apologies, your honour,’ said the blue, taking a seat and forcing me down on to the bench beside him. ‘A late case, I’m afraid. Portsmouth is closed.’
‘I am aware of that,’ said Mr Henderson, making a face as if he’d just taken a bite out of an infected ferret and swallowed it whole. ‘It appears that the courts there are more interested in the collection of accolades and baubles than in the proper dispensation of justice, I fear. Not like here in Spithead.’
‘No, indeed,’ said the blue, nodding his head in agreement so hard that I thought it might fall off entirely and his decapitation could afford me an opportunity for escape. Security at the doors, I noticed with a deal of pleasure, was not what it might have been.
‘Now, to return to the case in hand,’ said Mr Henderson, turning away from us and looking towards the man who was standing in front of him and who appeared very low, very low indeed; his cap was held between his hands and a look of total dismay was collected about his horse-like features. ‘You, Mr Wilberforce, are a discredit to the community and I find that it would serve us all for the better if you were removed from it for a period of time.’ He made sure that every word was loaded with disgust and superiority, the scut.
‘Your honour, if it pleases you,’ said the fellow in question, piping up and attempting to straighten himself, but perhaps his back was giving him the tractions because he appeared unable to present himself in a vertical manner. ‘I was not of my true mind when the incident occurred and that’s the truth of it. My dear sainted mama, her as was taken from me only a few short weeks before my error of judgement, appeared to me in a vision and told me that—’
‘Enough of this nonsense!’ roared Mr Henderson, banging his mallet on the bench before him. ‘I swear by almighty God that if I hear another word about your dear sainted mama I shall sentence you to join her forthwith. Don’t think I won’t do it either!’
‘For shame!’ called one woman and the magistrate stared out at the collective, one eye closed, the other opened so wide that I felt sure that a clap on the back would result in the eyeball popping from its socket and rolling along the floor like a marble.
‘Who said that?’ he roared and even the blue beside me gave a start at the sound of it. ‘Who said it? I asked,’ he repeated, even louder this time but answer came there none and he simply shook his head and looked at all of us with the appearance of a man who had recently been bled by leeches and enjoyed the experience. ‘Bailiff,’ said he to a terrified-looking blue standing guard beside him. ‘Another word from any of these people’ – and here he uttered the word like they were the lowest of the low, which they may well have been, but all the same it’s a damned discourtesy – ‘another word from any of them and they are all to be charged individually with contempt. Is that understood?’
‘It is,’ said the bailiff, nodding quickly. ‘It surely is.’
‘And as for you,’ continued the magistrate, looking at the poor unfortunate godforsaken shadow of a man wilting in the dock before him: ‘three months in the gaol for you – and may you learn a lesson there that you won’t forget in a hurry.’
To his credit, the man found his dignity then and nodded as if the sentence was one he was wholly in approval with, and he was taken down immediately, where he was almost squeezed to death by a woman I guessed to be his wife, before the bailiff peeled her off him. I watched her from a distance and wouldn’t have minded the squeezing myself, for she was bonny as could be, even with the tears streaking her face, and despite the seriousness of what lay ahead for me she still gave me the motions.
‘Now, Bailiff,’ said the magistrate, gathering his robes together and making to stand up. ‘Is that it for today?’
‘It was due to be,’ came the reply, a nervous one, as if the bailiff was worried that he’d be sent off to the gaol himself if he detained his superior any longer, ‘but for the lad that just came in, that is.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the magistrate, recalling me now. He sat down again and looked in my direction. ‘Come up here, boy,’ he said quietly, looking as if he was pleased that he hadn’t finished doling out the misery yet. ‘Into the dock with you where you belong.’
I stood up and stepped away from the blue and another took me to the dock by pinching his fingers round the bone in my arm and placed me where old Henderson, the scut, could see me better. I looked at him too and thought that his mole had grown since our last interview.
‘I know you, don’t I?’ said he quietly, but before I could answer, the blue – my blue, that is – was on his feet and coughing for attention and blast me if every face in the room didn’t turn to look at him. I swear the man missed his calling and he should have tried out for the theatre, the nance.
‘May it please the court . . .’ he began, using the posh voice again that was fooling nobody. ‘May it please the court that on this very morning I apprehended the miserable creature you see standing before you in the act of feloniously and illegally taking a timepiece which was not any of his business or belongings and whose ownership was in the deed of another.’
‘Stealing it, you mean?’ asked the magistrate, cutting through the cornfield with a scythe.
‘As you say, Your Honour,’ said the blue, a little downcast by the summary.
‘Well?’ Mr Henderson asked then, leaning forward and glaring at me. ‘What say you, lad? Did you do it? Are you guilty of the abominable crime?’
‘It’s all a terrible misunderstanding,’ I said, appealing to him. ‘I had too much sugar for my breakfast, that’s the fault of it.’
‘Sugar?’ asked the magistrate, confused now. ‘Bailiff, did the boy say he was the victim of a surfeit of sugar?’
‘I believe he did, Your Honour,’ said the bailiff.
‘Well, it’s an honest answer if nothing else,’ said he then, scratching his hair so that a drizzle of powder fell from his follicles to his robe, speckling them with snow. ‘Sugar has no business in a boy. It gives them ideas.’
‘My feelings exactly, Your Wisdomness,’ said I. ‘I mean to avoid it in the future and suck on a lolly of honey when the mood takes me.’
‘A lolly of honey?’ he cried, looking at me as if I had suggested taking a whip to the Prince of Wales to relieve the boredom of the hour. ‘My boy, that’s even worse. Porridge is what you need. Porridge will be the makings of you. Porridge has been the makings of many a boy turned to the wrong.’
Porridge indeed! I would have quite gladly enjoyed a bowl of porridge for my breakfast every morning if he had given me the tuppence I would have needed for it. Porridge! Magistrates like him are in ignorance of the world of people like me, if you want to know the truth. And yet they sit in judgement on us. However, no politics—
‘Then porridge I will eat from now on,’ I promised, bowing my head a little. ‘For breakfast, lunch and supper, if I can scuttle the pennies.’
He leaned forward again and repeated an earlier question that I hoped he might have forgotten. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ said he.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, holding back my shoulders from a shrug, for the magistrates do hate it when you do that. They say it implies inferior breeding. ‘Do you?’