Page 27 of The Frozen River

Enraged now, he brings his gavel down with a hard whack. “This is an obscene disruption!”

“No. It is an obscene miscarriage of justice.”

Whack!

“Rebecca is not here to defend herself against these charges.”

Whack!

“This foolish little ninny came in on the last half of a sentence and thinks she heard a confession? No. She’s nothing more than an eavesdropper.”

Whack!

“You should not be presiding over this matter,” I tell North. “You are one of the men accused of raping Rebecca Foster.”

Whack! Whack!

Henry Sewell sits beside the judge, pen held in midair, mouth open in astonishment.

“And you”—I turn and point my finger directly in Sally’s face—“you should be ashamed of yourself. You gossiping little liar. Do you have any idea the harm you’ve just done?”

Whack! Whack! Whack!

I feel Ephraim’s hand on the small of my back. There is a tug, urging me to leave. But no. I am too angry, too full of spitting fury to acknowledge him.

“Mistress Ballard!” North’s voice is filled with thunder now, and it is the only thing that breaks through the roar in my mind. “You are in contempt of court. Mr. Ballard, remove your wife from my presence immediately.”

The air outside the tavern is clean and cold, without the slightest tinge of woodsmoke. I can almost taste the frost on my tongue, the bite of winter settling into my lungs.

“What were you thinking?” Ephraim hisses in my ear as he pulls me down the steps and toward the stables.

I don’t bother keeping my voice down. “I couldn’t let her stand there and lie about Rebecca.”

“Hush,” Ephraim warns as a crowd of people spill out of the tavern. Their heads are bent low, whispering. Several of them look toward us, then away.

“And that helped? What you just did?”

“I spoke the truth.”

“And got kicked out of court. Everything else you accomplished today could well be dismissed.”

“He wouldn’t dare.”

Ephraim leads me through the stable door and toward the stalls where Sterling and Brutus wait for us. He pulls a shilling from his pocket and hands it to young Matthew Pollard, the stable boy. Like Moses, he looks like their father, though at the moment he is only dark and lanky. The big and brooding will take some years yet.

“You just gave him the advantage, Martha. North could do anything now.”

I am not a woman given easily to tears. They’re useless things that serve only to make your voice waver and your cheeks wet. But they accost me now, and I push them away with the back of my hand.

“I couldn’t stand there and do nothing! I couldn’t. I won’t.”

When Matthew Pollard leads the horses away to saddle them, Ephraim sighs. He drops his forehead to mine. “You are too involved in this.”

“I never asked to be.”

“And I would never ask you to turn away from a friend. But that was reckless, Martha. That was dangerous. You called North a rapist in his own courtroom.”

“I said nothing that isn’t already on the record, that isn’t being whispered about in this town.”