Blood Ties by Jane A. Adams

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    History rightly remembers these events as the Bloody Assizes .
    Catherine must have been aware of what was going on and must have been in despair. Did Elmer obey her order when he entered the courtroom and stood with others in the public gallery, or did he obey something far more acute and ephemeral? From later material, the content of which leads us to speculate upon a marriage between this high-born daughter and her father’s manservant, we have to conclude that it was the latter that drove him to such a desperate measure. I hope they loved one another; the romantic that lurks in the heart of every historian must hold sway here and wish that happiness in some measure compensated for such desperate grief .
    One thing we do know for certain is that Elmer had bad news to take back to Catherine. Her father had been sentenced to a traitor’s death. To be flogged and then hung, drawn and quartered. Judge Jeffries had handed down twelve such judgements in that morning alone, and though five of those were then commuted to transportation to the colonies in the West Indies, and one man managed to pay for his freedom, Henry Kirkwood died a scant five days later. It is my hope that Elmer had taken Catherine north again by then and that she did not witness this final terrible scene, but her letters seem to hint that she was there, at least at the beginning .
    She writes, ‘I saw him on the cart, dressed only in a torn shirt of stayned linen. The hangman playced the halter about his neck and it was all I culd do not to cry out for mercy. His freyndes had failed him. I wrote letters and begged Lord Castleton and the Layde Claire if they culd but buy him and have him sent instead to work the plantations. Many such gifts having been made to those loyal to the king, their lives were perhaps sayved, and I begged them to buy my father’s bond that he might at least have a chance of life even if so far away I could not hope to see his face in my lifetime. But they did not reply. Elmer warned me that they wuld not, but even so theyre ill response all but drove me to despair. We left before we saw the rest, I half faint with heat and feare and sorrow, and Elmer carried me hence.’
    To the modern mind the idea of prisoners being sold off in lieu of execution is a strange one, but many had their lives gifted to loyal members of James’s court. A man could be worth up to twelve pounds sterling if sold as slave labour in the colonies, though I have doubts that had Catherine really known what would have been in store for her father she would have wished so hard for it. Many died en route, crammed into ships like so much cargo. Those that survived the journey had to look forward to a life of hard labour, little food and regular beatings. The African slave trade has a well documented history; less so is the trade in prisoners from England and so-called indentured labourers: men and women without rights even over their own bodies, a practice that continued long after the official abolition of slavery and, indeed, did not end until well into the twentieth century .
    Although The Lamb was to reopen that night, Naomi and Alec decided to eat, instead, at the pub they had discovered in Bridgewater, a decision largely made on the strength of Sergeant Dean agreeing to meet them that evening when he came off duty and Alec’s feeling that they shouldn’t really do that at The Lamb. Alec surmised that the promise of dinner probably swung the decision for Sergeant Dean. That, and inevitable curiosity.
    Sergeant Andrew Dean was a short man, tending towards the rotund at first glance, but on closer inspection, Alec realized he was round in the barrel-chested way that some power lifters are round, not in a way that denoted lack of muscular development.
    Massive hands enclosed Alec’s as he shook them; Andrew Dean was a man who made use of what Alec thought of as a politician’s handshake. One hand grasped, while the other