The Verdict of Storms

"The gavel fell like thunder, yet it was my mother’s cry that broke me."

The storm that had threatened all morning at last broke over Portsmouth with a violence that shook the very walls of the courthouse. Rain came down in torrents, a ceaseless deluge that hurled itself against the tall windows in furious sheets. Each droplet struck the glass like a blow, sharp and unrelenting, until the sound became a deafening roar—a thousand drummers hammering their fists upon the panes. The grey light outside was swallowed whole, the day reduced to a dim, flickering gloom where the storm reigned supreme.

Inside, the air thickened with oppressive closeness, heavy with the mingled breath of too many bodies pressed into too small a space. Not a single soul had departed during the jury’s deliberation. Even those with no stake beyond idle curiosity remained rooted to their benches, faces pale and eager, eyes glinting with that peculiar hunger that only another’s downfall can inspire. They watched and waited, sharp and tireless as gulls circling a fishing boat, greedy for the scraps of justice—or spectacle—that were about to be thrown.

I sat rigid in the dock, my back braced against the hard wood that bit cruelly into my shoulders. The discomfort might have been nothing on another day, but in that hour it became unbearable, an added torment in a place where every nerve already quivered. I counted the minutes not by the thunder’s roll nor the restless shuffle of feet, but by the steady rhythm of water falling from a crack in the ceiling.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Each drop struck the floor with a hollow plink, somehow louder, more distinct than the raging storm outside. A small puddle had begun to gather, its surface shivering with each impact, catching the glow of the oil lamps until it gleamed like a pool of molten bronze. The rhythm was inexorable—a slow, infernal ticking, as though some unseen clock measured out the last seconds of my life.

The gallery would not be silent. Whispers moved through the air in restless currents, rising and falling like the tide gnawing at a harbour wall. I tried to shut them out, to fix my mind on the dripping water, but their voices slipped through the cracks of my resolve, insidious and cruel.

“Surely guilty,” came one hushed judgement.

“Clear as day,” muttered another.

“What else could they decide?”

Each phrase drove into me like the point of a dagger, sharp, deliberate, unrelenting. My hands clenched into fists beneath the dock’s wooden rail, the nails biting into my palms. I pressed my focus back upon the rhythm of the falling water, clinging to it as though to a rope in a storm.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Counting down. Always counting down.

Culpepper stood near at hand, his broad frame solid as a bulwark, a quiet reassurance amidst the storm’s unleashing and the court’s suffocating stillness. His shadow stretched long across the floorboards, its edges wavering as the stormlight flickered—now dim, now flaring bright with each flash beyond the windows. He shifted his weight from time to time, the leather of his boots creaking faintly in the hush, a sound that betrayed the tension otherwise absent from his impassive face. I found myself wondering how many others he had stood beside in this very position—how many poor wretches had looked to him as their last steady presence before judgement fell. How many had he seen condemned, how many sent to exile, and how many, if any, had walked free?

In the gallery, Mother sat immovable, as still as marble, her hands clenched tightly around her handkerchief as if it alone kept her anchored to the earth. She had not stirred since the jury withdrew, her eyes fixed unwaveringly on the empty box before her, as though by sheer force of will she might summon a miracle to fill it with mercy. Father sat close beside her, his weathered hand laid over hers, the veins standing taut beneath his roughened skin. His jaw was set, his lips pressed so tightly together that the muscles in his cheek twitched with the strain. The sight of them struck me harder than any word spoken in court. A knot twisted in my chest, sharp with guilt, thick with love, heavy with helplessness, until every breath felt caught against the weight of it.

Then movement flickered at the back of the courtroom, snaring my attention like flame catches the eye in darkness. There, half-swallowed in shadow, lounged Jack Hawley. His copper-red hair caught the dim light like a coal still smouldering in the gloom—a beacon of betrayal. He leaned against the wall with insolent ease, one boot crossed over the other, his posture casual, his face marked by faint amusement, as though the proceedings that bound my life were no more to him than a dull spectacle.

Our eyes met. For a heartbeat, the world contracted to that single, silent exchange. Then—brazen as sin itself—he inclined his head in a slight nod, as though we were mere acquaintances passing on the High Street. A mocking gesture, calculated to sting. Fury surged through me, hot and sudden, filling my veins like fire, but I tore my gaze away, refusing to grant him the satisfaction of an answer. My hands closed tighter around the rail of the dock until the polished wood bit deep into my palms, a pain I clung to as armour against the greater wound of his betrayal.

Outside, the storm redoubled its assault. Rain hammered the windows with a force that seemed almost vengeful, each blow a drumbeat of nature’s wrath. Then lightning split the sky, its fierce glare flooding the chamber in a searing flash. For an instant, every detail was laid bare in stark relief: the carved panelling gleaming wetly, as though newly polished; the painted visages of judges long dead glaring down with cold severity from their gilded frames; and, most cruel of all, the anxious faces of the gallery, each crease of worry, each flicker of avid curiosity exposed as if by divine scrutiny.

Thunder followed at once, so close it seemed to erupt from the very earth beneath our feet. The deafening roar shook the tall windows in their frames and sent a tremor through the floorboards, as though the courthouse itself might not withstand the storm’s fury.

It was no longer outside. The tempest had forced its way in, filling the chamber with its rage, pressing close around us, its violence echoing the turmoil that raged within my own breast.

“All rise!”

The bailiff’s cry cut through the rumble of the storm like the crack of a whip, sharp and commanding. It wrenched me from the depths of my spiralling thoughts, leaving them half-formed and scattered like startled birds. At once the gallery stirred into life, erupting into a confused tumult of movement—benches scraped, boots thudded upon the floorboards, skirts rustled in hurried adjustment. The air filled with the creak and groan of timbers as the mass of bodies strained upward in obedience.

I rose more slowly, my limbs stiff, my knees trembling from long hours of stillness. The wood of the dock rail bit into my hands as I gripped it for balance. For the briefest instant, Culpepper’s hand touched my shoulder—firm, steady, grounding me in a way words never could—before he stepped back into his watchful stance, his presence once again a silent sentinel at my side.

Judge Blackwood swept into the chamber, his entrance as commanding as a tempest breaking shore. His black robes billowed with the movement, heavy folds of fabric that seemed to drink in the dim light until he appeared less a man than a figure hewn from shadow itself. He carried the authority of the storm upon him, its weight woven into every stride.

Behind him, the jury filed in, twelve men whose steps fell in unison, the sound muffled by the boards yet reverberating within me all the same. Their wigs, powdered and stiff, lent their faces an unnatural gravity. I darted my gaze from one to the next, hungry for the slightest betrayal of thought, the faintest twitch of sympathy or condemnation. But their expressions were masked, set in lines of solemnity as though chiselled from stone. No clue, no mercy, no hope could be read in them.

“Be seated,” Blackwood commanded, his voice resonant and immovable, filling the chamber like the roll of thunder outside.

The gallery obeyed at once, the shuffle of bodies resettling echoing about the room, a muted crashing wave that seemed to answer the storm’s distant roar. The air was heavy again, expectant, the silence that followed thick enough to choke on.

I remained standing in the dock, as protocol demanded, though every muscle trembled with strain. My legs quivered beneath me, my breath shallow, my chest tight. I forced myself to hold steady, my hands gripping the rail until the grain bit deep into my palms. My heart hammered against my ribs with such violence I was certain the sound must carry across the chamber, a drumbeat of dread for all to hear.

And then, as though in cruel mockery of the moment, the storm outside seemed to falter. The pounding rain softened for the briefest instant, the windows ceasing their endless rattle. The silence that followed pressed hard upon us, uncanny and absolute, as though even nature itself held its breath, waiting with all the rest to hear the verdict that would decide my fate.

“Mr Foreman,” Blackwood intoned, his steely gaze fastening upon the jury box, “has the jury reached a verdict?”

The foreman rose with a deliberateness that seemed to stretch each second into an eternity. The scrape of his chair against the floor rang out like the groan of a ship’s timbers in a storm, jarring against the taut silence. I knew him at once—a merchant of the High Street, a man whose reputation was built on fair dealing but also on unbending principles. His presence had haunted me from the moment I saw him seated in that box: a faint hope that his fairness might weigh in my favour, yet a gnawing fear that his strictness would not bend where I most needed mercy.

“We have, My Lord,” he said, his voice even, steady, without tremor or flourish.

“And is it unanimous?”

“It is, My Lord.”

A fresh rumble of thunder rolled through the heavens, the sound swelling deep and sonorous until it filled the courthouse like a funeral bell tolling its dreadful summons. The vibration of it seemed to quiver in the very boards beneath my feet, echoing through my bones.

I forced myself to breathe, long and slow, yet each inhalation burned, as though I were dragging molten lead into my chest. Behind me, faint but piercing, came the sound of my mother’s gasp. It was so fragile, so brittle, it seemed it might splinter the silence into shards.

“Prisoner at the bar,” Blackwood said, his gaze turning to me, cold, immovable, a slab of stone carved into human form. “Stand forward.”

My legs carried me forward though my will faltered, as though I were a marionette moved by unseen strings. Two steps brought me to the edge of the dock. My hands reached instinctively for the rail, gripping it so tightly the wood cut into my palms, grounding me, holding me upright when I felt certain I might otherwise collapse.

“What say you, Mr Foreman?” Blackwood asked, his voice carrying with it the inevitability of fate. “Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty of the theft of Mr Blackwell’s timepiece?”

The foreman’s reply cut through the charged stillness like a blade slicing through cloth.

“Guilty, My Lord.”

The word struck with the force of a hammer blow, reverberating through my chest until I felt hollowed out by the echo. I had expected it—indeed, I had carried it like a lead weight within me from the moment Constable Greaves seized me in the market—but expectation did nothing to blunt its sting. Spoken aloud, given voice before judge, jury, and townsfolk, it became real in a way I had not been prepared to endure.

A rushing filled my ears, as though some great tide had broken loose within me. Whether it was the storm outside battering the windows or the blood pounding in my skull, I could not tell. The world blurred into soundless motion, faces swimming before my eyes, lips moving without meaning.

Through that muffled roar, one sound cut through: my mother’s stifled sob. Fragile, breaking, it pierced me more surely than the foreman’s pronouncement. I dared not look at her. To meet her gaze—tear-brimmed, wounded, pleading—would have shattered the brittle composure I still clung to. Instead, I fixed my eyes upon a dark patch above Judge Blackwood’s head, where rain seeped steadily through a crack in the beams. The spreading stain crept outward like an ominous shadow, a mark of decay no less damning than the one now branded upon me.

“William Jeffries.” Blackwood’s voice cut through the haze, iron-shod and implacable, hauling me back to the dreadful present. “You have been found guilty of a serious crime—one that strikes at the very heart of trust and commerce in our society. Have you anything to say before I pass sentence?”

I swallowed, the taste of bile rising sharp and acrid on my tongue. My lips parted before I had even weighed the folly of speaking. “I am innocent, My Lord,” I said, startled by the steadiness of my own voice, as though some deeper part of me had taken command. “Though I don’t expect you to believe me.”

The gallery stirred at once, a restless susurration of disbelief and curiosity rippling through the chamber like wind across dry reeds. I caught the hiss of whispers, the sharp intake of breath, the faint scoff of a sceptic—all crashing together into a tide of noise I could not hold back.

Blackwood’s expression hardened. The creases deepened about his eyes, his mouth settling into a narrow line. His gaze fixed upon me with icy precision, narrowing until I felt myself pinned, laid bare beneath it. “You maintain your innocence even now,” he asked, “in the face of clear evidence and the jury’s verdict?”

“I do, My Lord,” I answered, the words slipping free more easily now that my fate was already sealed. “I was used as a tool by another, though I know that changes nothing in the eyes of the law.”

“Indeed it does not,” Blackwood replied, his tone colder than the rain-laden air pressing through the cracks in the chamber. He shifted in his high-backed chair, the rustle of his heavy robes rasping like dry leaves in a winter wind. “The evidence against you is compelling, and your continued denial only confirms the correctness of the jury’s verdict. The law is clear in such cases.”

He paused, his hand moving across the parchment with a measured scratch that echoed unnaturally loud in the charged silence. Each stroke of the quill seemed to carve itself into my nerves, marking time like the tolling of a bell. When at last he laid it aside and lifted his gaze, his face was set in lines of granite, unmoved by pity, untouched by sentiment.

“William Jeffries,” he pronounced, his voice heavy with the authority of the law, “you have been found guilty of theft, a crime that carries severe penalties under English law. Given your youth and previous good character, I am inclined to show some mercy. Therefore, I sentence you to seven years’ transportation to His Majesty’s colony of New South Wales.”

The words fell into the chamber like stones cast into a black lake, their weight sending ripples through every heart present. Seven years. The number tolled in my head with the relentlessness of a church bell. Seven years in a land so distant it might as well have been another world; seven years among convicts, murderers, and men hardened beyond compassion; seven years torn from the streets of Portsmouth, from my family, from everything that tethered me to life as I had known it.

“No!”

Mother’s cry cut the air like a blade, sharp, anguished, impossible to contain. The sound rang out above the murmurs of the gallery, startling in its rawness. “Please, My Lord, mercy!” she begged, her voice trembling with a grief that seemed to hollow the room itself.

I stood rigid in the dock, my hands locked around the wooden rail until the ache shot up through my arms. Seven years. I repeated it silently, as though repetition might somehow dull its edge. Seven years—I would be twenty-nine before I returned, if I returned at all. I had heard whispers of the voyage: the heaving ships packed with the condemned, the pestilence that spread in the foul air below decks, the brutal lash of the gaolers. How many lived to set foot on that foreign shore? And of those, how many endured their sentence, and came back whole?

“Furthermore,” Blackwood continued, his voice cleaving through my spiralling thoughts with the finality of a gavel blow, “you will remain in Portsmouth Gaol until such time as transport can be arranged. May God have mercy on your soul.”

The words settled upon me like a burial shroud, heavy and suffocating. God’s mercy was all that remained to me now, and it felt very far away.

The gavel struck with terrible finality, its sharp report reverberating through the chamber like the crack of thunder splitting the sky. The sound seemed to linger, rattling through the beams above, through the very marrow of my bones. And then the room erupted—benches scraping, skirts rustling, voices rising in hurried whispers. Already the words of my fate were flying from mouth to mouth, carried like sparks on the wind, eager to spread through Portsmouth’s streets before I had even left the dock.

I remained unmoving. My hands clung to the rail before me as though prising them loose would make the judgement more real, as though by gripping hard enough I might hold back time itself. The storm outside raged on, rain lashing the windows in furious sheets, lightning clawing at the heavens. Within me, the tempest was fiercer still, tearing apart the fragile scaffolding of my world, leaving only wreckage behind.

A weight fell on my shoulder—Culpepper’s hand, steady, anchoring, not unkind. “Come along, lad,” he murmured, his voice pitched low, meant for me alone. “Best not to linger.”

I turned to follow, though my body moved with a strange detachment, mechanical, as though the will had gone out of me and I were no more than a figure being guided along its course. Each step was leaden, every motion pressed down by the invisible chains of my sentence. I was already bound, already claimed by the years that stretched before me.

But before I could move further, a sudden cry cut through the clamour.

“William!”

My mother’s voice, raw with anguish, pierced the heavy air. I turned sharply, heart lurching, to see her break free from Father’s grip. Her face was streaked with tears, her bonnet askew, her body straining forward with a desperate energy that made her seem both fragile and fierce. She pushed through the throng of onlookers, scattering them as she went. Some stepped aside reluctantly, their expressions shaded with pity or embarrassment, as though her unbridled grief were an affront to the court’s decorum, an intrusion upon their ordered sensibilities.

“My boy, my poor boy!” she cried, her voice carrying above the thunder, above the muttering crowd, rising with a force that silenced all else.

Two officers moved swiftly to intercept her, their hands raised to bar her path. But then Blackwood lifted his hand, a simple, commanding gesture that stilled them at once. “A moment,” he said, his tone firm but not unkind, a glimmer of unexpected leniency breaking through his granite manner. Perhaps even he could not deny a mother this one last mercy.

She reached me at the dock, her trembling hands thrusting through the rails to clasp mine. Her fingers were cold, icy with shock, but they clung with a desperate strength that dug her nails into my skin, as though she might anchor me to her by sheer force of will.

“I’ll write,” I whispered, my voice thick, my throat tight with the tears I fought to keep back. “Every chance I get. And I’ll come home, Mother. I swear it.”

“Seven years,” she breathed, her words scarcely audible over the relentless hammering of the rain upon the windows. Her lips trembled as she spoke it again, her body shuddering against the weight of it. “Seven years… oh, my boy…”

Father appeared behind her then, his presence quiet but unyielding, a steady pillar amidst the storm of grief. His face was pale, the lines etched deep by labour and care, and yet his posture held firm, bearing the same rigid dignity he had always carried, whether on the quayside or at our humble table. His roughened hand came to rest upon Mother’s trembling shoulder, steadying her as sobs wracked her frame.

“Keep your head high, son,” he said, his voice raw, unsteady, each word sounding as though it were dragged up from the depths of him. “Remember who you are.”

A fresh rumble of thunder rolled through the building, the windows shuddering in their frames as though the storm itself pressed to be heard within. Its growl seemed to answer my father’s words, sealing them with nature’s grim assent.

Culpepper shifted beside me, his great frame casting its shadow across the dock. He cleared his throat softly, the sound gentle for a man of his size, and when he spoke his tone carried a surprising tenderness. “Time to go, lad,” he murmured. I had never before heard such softness from him, and it struck me with an odd pang, a reminder that even gaolers could show mercy.

I tightened my grip upon Mother’s cold hands, clinging to them as though they were the last tether binding me to the world I was about to lose. “I’ll make it right,” I whispered, the promise rough and unsteady, catching hard in my throat. “Somehow, I’ll make it right.”

Her eyes lifted to mine, red-rimmed and brimming, searching my face with desperate intensity, as though she sought to memorise every line and contour, to carry my likeness with her against the long years ahead. Slowly—too slowly—my grip faltered, my fingers slipping from hers. Her hands fell to her sides, empty, trembling, as though some vital piece of her had been wrenched away.

Culpepper’s hand pressed gently against my arm, guiding me forward. He turned me toward the door that led down into the bowels of the courthouse, to the cells below. My steps felt heavy, yet they carried me on, pulled by duty more than will.

I dared a glance back as I crossed the threshold. Hawley was gone. The shadow of his copper hair, that smirk of betrayal—I saw neither. Vanished, as though he had never stood there at all. No doubt he was already halfway to some tavern, an ale in his hand, the laughter of his companions ringing out as he celebrated his escape while I bore the weight of his crime.

Near the front, Mr Blackwell stood with Ashford, their heads bent together in close conversation, their expressions softened into satisfied smiles. Their victory was plain, their self-assurance untroubled by the storm raging beyond or the ruin it had wrought within these walls.

Judge Blackwood, unmoved by the drama that had torn lives apart before his bench, had already returned to his papers. He shuffled them with clinical detachment, the rustle of parchment cold and indifferent, as though what had just passed was no more to him than another case, another name marked and filed away.

The door to the courtroom closed behind me with a heavy, resounding thud, final as a coffin lid. In that instant, the clamour of voices, the scrape of benches, the storm-muted roar of Portsmouth beyond—all of it was cut away. I stood in a silence so sudden it seemed to press against my ears. Only the dim flicker of a wall-mounted lamp remained to guide me, its weak flame casting long, wavering shadows across the worn stone walls. My own footsteps echoed against the flagstones, hollow and uneven, the sound of a man being swallowed by the depths.

Ahead lay only darkness, stretching forward into places unseen. And beyond that—years. Seven years. The number rang in my head with merciless insistence. The sheer scale of it threatened to crush me where I stood. I tried to imagine the journey, the endless sea, the foreign sky, the barren, brutal soil—but the mind recoiled, unable to frame such exile.

And yet, even as fear threatened to engulf me, something steadier took hold. A vow rose within me, unbidden but unshakable, settling deep as the very stones that hemmed me in. I would survive. Whatever it took, however cruel the years, however heavy the trials that awaited, I would endure. I would return.

Seven years was not forever. It felt like it now—God, how it felt like it—but it was not. I would write whenever the chance came, send home what little I could scrape together, prove myself not the wastrel they had branded me but the son my father believed in, the boy my mother still prayed for.

And perhaps, somewhere in that long stretch of time, I would find a way to tear away the mask from Hawley’s face, to bring his treachery into the light. Not for my own sake—it was too late for that—but for others. For those who might otherwise fall into his snares, as I had.

The vow burned in me with a clarity stronger than despair. I would survive. I would endure. And one day, I would make it right.