Elizabeth Webster and the Court of Uncommon Pleas

by William Lashner

  “Natalie, are you, like, okay?”

  “Better than ever, Lizzie. Look at me.”

  I did—look at her, I mean. Her eyes were bright and she was almost glowing. What was that all about? And then I realized.

  Beatrice, Beatrice.

  Beatrice Long had showed me this bizarre family history I had no idea about. Then there was Henry, finally looking out for someone other than himself. And now here was Natalie, caring about the case more than her next pair of shoes. A single ghost can really shake things up.

  “I decided,” said Natalie, “that if you weren’t going to help Henry, and he wasn’t going to help himself, I was going to have to do something. Selfless of me, no?”

  “Yes,” I said, and meaning it.

  “So anyway, I went to the office just to find out what I should do. And let me tell you, it was just as weird as before. Even weirder.”

  “Spill.”

  “Well, that owly secretary made me wait for Barney.”

  “Barnabas.”

  “Whatever. And while I was waiting I ended up sitting next to the guy with the hump. Remember him? And get this, he started talking to me.”

  “The man?”

  “The hump.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “No, it actually called me sister. ‘How’s it going, sister?’ it said through the shirt, and then it told a joke. ‘What’s the best way to hide a hump?’ it said. The man had to apologize. He told me the bump on his back starts telling bad jokes when it gets inflamed from too much smoke. And I could smell tobacco on his breath.”

  “The man’s?”

  “The hump’s.”

  “Stop it.”

  “It’s true. I couldn’t make this up.”

  “Did you get an answer?”

  “Camelflage. Yeah, I know. Not bad for a hump. But when I got a chance to speak with Barney, he told me the trial is tomorrow at eight o’clock, sharp.”

  “That late?”

  “Apparently. In City Hall. Barney said we can all meet up in the courtyard at seven forty-five.”

  “Not me.”

  “C’mon, Lizzie. Henry has to be there and he won’t go without you.”

  “I told you I’m grounded.”

  “And you can’t get out of it? I bet you didn’t even try.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Listen,” she said before lowering her voice. “You said you were waiting for your father. Barney told me something else that might interest you.”

  “I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

  “He said your father sometimes goes to the other side.”

  “The other side of what?”

  “I don’t know, that’s just what he said. But your father supposedly goes there to save people who are trapped. It’s very dangerous, and only the bravest lawyers do it because once they’re on the other side there’s no telling what could happen. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t been around.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said. “That makes no sense.” But even as I said it I feared it wasn’t so crazy, and it made all kinds of sense. Because the story of people being trapped on the other side might explain all kinds of mysteries, including the mystery of the origin on my graph.

  “You’ll have to ask your grandfather for the details,” said Natalie. “He’ll know what’s going on better than I do. But they do expect your father at the trial. If you want to see him, you’ll have to go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. If you wanted to, you could make it happen. Don’t we have to see this through, Lizzie? For Henry’s sake, at least. He’s in love with a ghost. How’s that going to work out well?”

  And as was usually the case, my dear friend Natalie had a point.

  A whipping wind pushed us across the City Hall courtyard, as if it were being blown at us by the black-hatted Pilgrim himself. I had begun to really hate that guy. But we held our ground, Natalie and Henry and I, as we waited for my father to appear and lead us to the courtroom.

  Natalie was yammering on, full of excitement. Henry, carrying a bundle wrapped in brown paper, was silent and nervous. And as for me, well, the courtyard, right in the middle of City Hall, used to be where criminals were brought in buses with caged windows to be tried in the city’s courts. I felt like one of them, having slipped like a thief out of our house and down the block, where Natalie and Henry had waited to walk with me to the train. But at least I hadn’t left without bringing an envelope into my little brother’s room.

  Peter was lying on his bed, legs crossed, reading a comic book.

  “I need you to give this to Mom when she gets back from her meeting,” I said.

  He took the envelope from me and looked it over, back and front. “Why can’t you give it to her yourself?”

  “Because I have to go out.”

  “But you can’t go out. You’re grounded.” He said the last word as if were written in big, glowing letters. “That’s what ‘grounded’ means.”

  “Just give it to her, all right?”

  He put down the comic book and sat up on his knees. “If you have to go out, why don’t you just put some pillows in your bed and pretend you’re sleeping so she won’t know you’re gone. That’s what I do.”

  I looked at him.

  “Or what I would do,” he said, “if ever I got grounded and had someplace to go. I’ll help you do it. You have to fluff them up just right. And we can use a football for your head. At least then you’d have a chance of surviving the night. Otherwise—”

  “Peter,” I said. “Please.”

  He shook his head at me like I was the biggest dope. “I’ll give her the envelope.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You might want to get out of there before she reads the note inside.”

  He spread his arms wide and made an exploding sound.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Dear Mom,

  I have promised to help Henry with a serious ghosting issue. It wouldn’t be right to abandon him in his time of need. You, more than anyone, can understand that, I’m sure. Dad will be there, too, and I very much need to see him and talk to him. There is a lot I have to ask him about his past and my future. I hope you understand why I need to do this.

  I love you.

  Elizabeth

  There it was, the flat truth of where I was going and why. I wasn’t going to lie to my mother anymore. I figured at least one of us should be honest with the other.

  “Where is he?” said Henry, looking around the deserted City Hall courtyard.

  “He’s only my father,” I said. “How should I know?”

  “Am I dressed okay?” Natalie was wearing platforms and a faux-fur getup. “This whole court thing has thrown me for a loop. I don’t want to stand out, but I want to make an impression.”

  “Oh, you’ll make an impression,” I said.

  “Do you think we could find the courtroom ourselves?” said Henry.

  “And then what?” I said. “What can we do without a lawyer? I should have known that my father wouldn’t show. He never shows when he’s supposed to.”

  “None of this is good,” said Henry. “What do we do?”

  “What I’ve been doing for years,” I said. “We wait.”

  We didn’t have to wait long, though it wasn’t my father who came hurrying through the southern gate for us. Barnabas rushed into the courtyard, dressed in a formal black coat with many buttons and a white cloth tied about his throat. A wild bundle of bound scrolls was stuffed beneath his arm.

  “Where’s my father?” I said to him.

  “We don’t know. We’ve been waiting for him at the office. Harrison v. Long is on the docket, so he absolutely knows he must show up.”

  “What’s a docket?” Henry asked.

  “A listing of cases to be heard in court, Master Henry. Every lawyer knows if his case is on the docket. Maybe your father is in the courtroom already, Mistress Elizabeth. One can only hope. Come, come, we mustn�
��t keep the judge waiting.”

  Barnabas hurried past us. We looked at each other uncertainly before following.

  We trailed him into the east arch of the courtyard and down a stone stairway that ended in a hallway fenced off for construction. Barnabas gripped the edge of the metal fence and pulled it back, leaving a gap wide enough for us all to slip through. On the other side of the fence, he headed for a door that opened to his push and led us into a basement maze of rough-cut stone.

  Left, right, left. We were seemingly going around in circles, or squares. I tried to keep track of our path in case I needed to take it back again without him, but it was impossible to remember the tangle of turns. All I could do was follow the split tail of Barnabas’s long black frock coat, as Natalie and Henry followed me.

  Finally, we reached a locked doorway. From his coat pocket, Barnabas pulled out a long metal key with what looked like a human tooth stuck to the end. He slipped the key into the door’s old lock and spun it twice. With a frightening creak the door slid open.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” he said as he held the door for us.

  “What are we going to do if my father’s not there?”

  “Let’s not think of such things,” said Barnabas. “Your father is usually quite reliable.”

  “Are we talking about the same man?”

  “Come now, Mistress Elizabeth. Sometimes the court makes you wait for hours and sometimes it is quite prompt, especially when you least want it to be.”

  On the other side of the door was the start of a narrow, circular stairway, lit by torches sticking out of the walls. I looked up and the flames seemed to rise forever. City Hall is only five stories tall, except for the tower, so that must have been where we were. As soon as Barnabas closed the door again, he charged up the stairway. After a moment’s hesitation the three of us started climbing.

  Up and up, around and around, up and around, the only sounds the taps of our shoes, the rush of our breaths, the tom-tom beats of our hearts. Gusts of wind from outside slipped through unseen openings, darting and diving around us as we climbed. It smelled of damp and age and of something sweet, too.

  “This is like being on a stair climber,” I said.

  “Think what it’s doing to your thighs,” said Natalie.

  It seemed like we were going up forever, climbing higher than the tower itself. Finally we reached a landing just big enough for the four of us to stand together.

  In front of us now was a great wooden door with iron hinges and a brass knocker shaped like a gavel. Barnabas slammed the gavel onto the door, once, twice, and then quickly a third time. The thwacks rang in the circular stairwell.

  A horizontal plank at the top of the door swung open and the large bulbous face of a man appeared in the gap. Unless the man was standing on a ladder, he was very very tall.

  “Barnabas,” croaked the man.

  “Ivanov,” said Barnabas.

  “Case?”

  “Harrison v. Long,” said Barnabas.

  “Counsel?”

  “Eli Webster.”

  The man leaned forward so his massive forehead pushed through the gap. He looked over our little group and shook his head. “And where is Mr. Webster, may I ask?” he said.

  “On the way,” said Barnabas.

  “He best hurry,” said the man. “Your case is high on the list, and it doesn’t pay to be late, not for Judge Jeffries. They don’t call him the rehanging judge for nothing.”

  “Of which Mr. Webster is very well aware,” said Barnabas.

  The man’s head disappeared, the plank was replaced, and a moment later the door opened wide. Barnabas rushed forward and the three of us followed. As we passed through the doorway I looked to the side. There stood the doorkeeper, in a navy-blue uniform with brass buttons, his massive head sitting on a body no bigger than a guitar. Beside him was a stepladder.

  “Always good to see you, Barnabas.”

  “You too, Ivanov,” said Barnabas.

  “Now hurry on, the rest of you,” the doorkeeper said. “And welcome to the Court of Uncommon Pleas.”

  It smelled like licorice. And that was the least odd thing about the Court of Uncommon Pleas.

  Barnabas led us into a circular room that spanned the width of the tower. Wooden benches, like pews in a church, were crowded with people sitting as silently as stones. Barnabas deposited us onto one of the rear benches and then rushed forward to talk to a woman at the front of the courtroom. The woman was basketball-player tall, with hunched shoulders and green skin. Iron bolts stuck out of either side of her neck.

  As Barnabas talked, and the green woman scrawled into a large leather-bound book, I took in the scene around me.

  The room was quite serious-looking and trimmed in gold. White columns held up a ceiling dome with little flying babies painted across the heavens. I looked closer. The little painted babies were alive, floating around that dome with their wings flapping, twittering to each other in voices loud enough to be heard.

  On the first bench, a line of white-powdered wigs rested on a line of stiff heads. The wig wearers all wore black robes. In front of the wigs was a high, ornate desk for the judge. Two tables sat before the judge’s desk, right next to a section of the courtroom surrounded by a wooden railing that held twelve seats—a box for a jury, I assumed. To the left, hanging from a chain, was a birdcage of sorts, big enough for an ostrich. And on the wall behind the judge’s desk was a five-pointed star, just like the star Barnabas had chalked on the floor of Henry’s bedroom. At the center of the star was the mounted head of a ram, with great curled horns. The ram’s jaw moved as if it was chewing on a tough piece of vine, and its eyes shifted back and forth as if it was keeping track of the goings-on in the strange courtroom.

  “Can you believe this place?” said Natalie a little too loudly. “And what’s that smell? Like black Twizzlers. I don’t know why we had to climb so high, since it’s more like a courtroom from the bottom of—”

  Before she could say anything more, a man in front turned around and shushed her. Generally, you couldn’t shush Natalie quiet, that was one of her charms—go ahead and try—but the man had only one eye in the middle of his forehead, and that seemed to do the trick.

  As soon as he turned around again, we saw Barnabas hurrying back to us.

  “Is my father here?” I whispered to him when he sat down next to me.

  “Not yet.”

  “Is he usually late to court?”

  “It has been known to happen.”

  Before he could say more, the ram on the wall lifted his chin and bellowed a trumpet blast that ricocheted around the courtroom. Then he called out in a loud, neighing voice, “All rise.”

  Everybody in the courtroom stood quickly, as if afraid to be caught not standing by the ram’s glossy eyes. The room went silent, even the babies on the ceiling stopped their twittering.

  “Oyez, oyez, oyez,” the ram called out. “The Court of Uncommon Pleas, sitting now in the land of Penn’s Dominion, is hereby called to order, with the Right Honorable George Jeffries, First Baron Jeffries of Wem, presiding. All persons having business before this court are ordered to draw near and give their attention or give their necks. May the Lord Demon save this honorable court.”

  A burst of smoke appeared behind the judge’s desk, and a man emerged from within the cloud, coughing and waving away the smoke. He wore a red robe with a black stripe down the middle, his scraggly white hair hung past his shoulders, and his eyes were blood-red marbles. He stared out at us, his nose twitching in disgust.

  “Be seated,” he said, between waves and coughs.

  Just that quickly, we all sat.

  The judge aimed his red eyes at those of us in the back benches. “Be brief in your pleadings or a price will be paid,” said the judge, his voice old and thick, like he was still choking on the smoke. “We have a long night and I hear the call for bloody retribution. Any emergency motions? First call, last call, come forward and be heard or be forev
er silent. As there are apparently no emergency motions, the court clerk shall call our initial case.”

  “Samael v. Corcoran,” shouted the tall green woman in a garbled voice.

  A bright light flashed in the hanging cage and a man appeared, his eyes red-rimmed with terror. He was too tall for the cage. He had to bend at the waist to stand, and he grasped the bars with a frantic desperation. Two of the men wearing wigs and robes in the front row stood and took places at the tables in front of the judge. Just that quickly a trial broke out in the courtroom.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered to Barnabas.

  “Our Mr. Corcoran was caught using the wrong incantation.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he used a book he didn’t understand, to waken a spirit he didn’t want to waken, and now he is dealing with the consequences.”

  “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “Nothing good. Judge Jeffries has little tolerance for error.”

  “He seems British.”

  “He is, or was, however you choose to consider the long dead.”

  “Then why is he in America?”

  “Well, it is an odd story. The church he was haunting in London was moved, stone by stone, to someplace in Missouri as a tribute to Winston Churchill. Unfortunately, the ghost of the hanging judge was brought along with the stones.”

  The Cyclops turned around again and looked at Barnabas, who put a finger to his lips and nodded. We sat and watched the rest of the trial in silence as poor Mr. Corcoran was roasted by the court, literally, with fire and everything. Natalie was wide-eyed, enjoying the show—she’d have been eating popcorn if it were on sale. Henry grew increasingly nervous. For my part, I kept glancing at the entrance—waiting, as usual, for my father. How many times had I hoped to see him only to be disappointed? You’d think I would have learned by now.

  The judge banged his gavel and the cage holding Mr. Corcoran, with all kinds of squeaks and creaks, began to drop slowly, moving lower and lower until it slipped through a hole in the floor and disappeared. A moment later the cage rose again, with all the same squeaks and creaks, only now it was empty.