Elizabeth Webster and the Court of Uncommon Pleas

by William Lashner

  And that’s when it all went to…well, where do you think?

  As soon as I sat down, Josiah Goodheart stood and with his jazzy, raspy voice called the ghost of Beatrice Long to the stand. She glided over the table and sat demurely in the witness chair, her ghostly hands flattening the ghostly creases in her ghostly poodle skirt. She smiled sweetly at Judge Jeffries, whose red eyes fluttered as he smiled back.

  I turned and caught Henry waving coyly at her.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered to him.

  “Just being friendly.”

  “Stop flirting. You just ejected her from your house.”

  “But that doesn’t mean we still can’t be friends.”

  Beatrice swore silently on the king’s golden head. Then Josiah Goodheart stuck his thumbs into his armpits so that his fingers pointed up, wiggling, and asked the ghost a series of questions. Her name. Her age. Date of death. Last known address. The questions were all clear, and the ghost mouthed her answers as if she was talking quite plainly to the court.

  But there was a slight problem.

  “Your Honor,” I said. “I can’t hear a thing.”

  “You’ll be missing the meat of it, then, I suppose,” he said.

  “How can I represent Henry if I can’t hear what she’s saying?”

  “Not well,” he said. “Not well at all. Did you bring an interpreter for a Class Three animated spirit?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Well then, what could you expect?”

  I looked at Barnabas, who shrugged. I turned around and saw my grandfather in the back of the courtroom nodding his head, as if this was exactly as it should be.

  “Now, you heard the testimony here today, Miss Long, so let me ask outright,” said Josiah Goodheart. “Are you haunting the Harrison house?”

  An answer I couldn’t hear.

  “And why on earth would you be doing such a thing?”

  She spoke for a long moment and I caught not a word.

  “I see, yes. That is only to be expected. Now, when did you and your family live in Mr. Harrison’s house?

  “Not so very long ago in the scheme of things, not so long ago at all. And you know that he has tried to eject you. What, pray tell, is your defense?

  “Mercy. How did such a thing happen?

  “I speak for all in this courtroom when I say that what happened to you is a tragedy, an absolute tragedy. And now you are only asking to be made whole again, isn’t that correct?

  “What could be more reasonable on this good green earth? And if it doesn’t happen, how long do you intend to stay at the Harrison house, waking Mr. Harrison in the middle of the night and visiting like you do?

  “That long?

  “Indeed. Now let me ask you this, you poor unfortunate thing. Is there anything that would prompt you to stop your haunting?

  “Simply that?

  “You are being quite reasonable, I must say. Who among us would expect anything less? I have no more questions of this witness, Your Lordship,” said Josiah Goodheart, with a gallant sweep of his hand.

  “Any questions, Miss Webster?” said the judge.

  “How can I ask a question if I can’t hear any of her answers?”

  “Loudly, I would suppose. Do you have any questions for the witness, yes or no?”

  “Just one,” I said. “Beatrice, who told you to mention my name to Henry?”

  She looked at me, the ghost of Beatrice Long, and mouthed something that, against all odds, I thought I understood and that scared me witless. Or maybe I should say more witless than I was.

  “Any more questions?” said the judge.

  “Uh, no,” I said.

  “The defense rests,” said Josiah Goodheart.

  “Excellent,” said the judge. “So we have completed our proceeding. Let me take a moment to carefully consider the evidence and the law of the case.” The judge closed his eyes for the shortest moment possible—a blink, if that. “I’ve considered long enough.”

  I gave Henry a smile with far more confidence than I felt. I guess I was learning all the lawyerly skills pretty quickly. Next thing you’d know I’d be padding my bill.

  “It is merely common sense, and common courtesy,” said the judge, “that a deceased has the right to be buried with its full complement of flesh and bone. Now, the testimony is clear, and not contradicted, that Beatrice Long was buried without her head. Miss Long claims she is haunting the house where she lived at the time of her death until she is once again made whole, which is her inalienable right under the Uncommon Law. Who among us would not exercise that very same right? My duty here is clear. In the matter of Harrison v. Long, an Action in Ejectment, I find in favor of the defendant, Beatrice Long, until her head is found and a proper burial can be completed.”

  The judge’s words cut through me like a squeaking clarinet. We had lost, I had lost. My first case was a disaster, another failure in front of a live audience.

  A murmur went through the courtroom. The flying babies on the ceiling twittered gaily. I turned to look at Henry, who was gazing at his ghost. Did he look pleased? What a mess.

  As Henry gazed, the ghost of Beatrice Long rose from her spot beside Josiah Goodheart. She zipped here and there, spun around the ceiling with a celebratory groan, and landed in front of Henry. She smiled at him, wrapped her ghostly arms around his neck, and locked her ghostly lips on to his. But this time, in the middle of the kiss, Beatrice exploded into sparks. Henry wobbled backward and fell into his chair.

  “I suppose, yes, that settles that,” said Judge Jeffries. “Case dismissed. And, Miss Webster?”

  I pulled myself out of my misery and looked up.

  “Next time you appear before me, come in a proper robe and be far better prepared in matters of fact and law, or don’t come at all. Though, I suppose, what more could this court expect from a Webster?”

  The ram’s head snorted and stuck out its black-stained tongue at me. The judge slammed his gavel. “Next case.”

  “Where’s my father?” I asked Barnabas. We had passed by Ivanov, standing tall once more on his ladder, and started on our way down the long flights of stairs in the City Hall tower. “And what did that grinning Goodheart mean when he said my father was detained?”

  “One can’t be sure,” said Barnabas.

  “We can be sure it isn’t good,” said my grandfather, banging at the steps with his cane as he creaked after us. “Not good at all.”

  As we climbed down, Natalie and Henry Harrison followed. Henry, still dazed by the ghostly kiss, moved slowly, as if through water. Natalie held Henry by the arm and carefully led him step-by-step. You’d think this would have been one of the greatest moments in Natalie’s life, helping a helpless Henry Harrison down the stairs, but when I looked up at her, she had the expression of an exasperated nanny.

  “I was quite surprised that Barrister Goodheart was involved in a simple Action in Ejectment in the first place,” said Barnabas, snapping my attention back to his conversation with my grandfather. “Normally the primary counsel for Redwing wouldn’t intervene in such a minor case.”

  “Who is Redwing?” I said.

  “One of the muck-a-mucks on the other side,” said my grandfather. “A difficult character, a scurrilous character. This is not good, Barnabas. We must get on this right away.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This might involve your Isabel.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “The case of Beatrice Long could be a bigger fish than first we thought,” said my grandfather. “We have much to do, Elizabeth.”

  “We do?”

  “Oh yes.”

  But even as he said it, I was thinking maybe not.

  After we reached the bottom of the stairway, we marched this way and that through the stone corridors in the belly of the old building until we finally reached the City Hall courtyard. It was barely lit and empty at this time of night, each of the four entrances blocked by a great iron gate that had bee
n swung closed and locked.

  “I’m sorry, Henry,” I said as we huddled in the middle of the courtyard. “I’m sorry I screwed up the trial. I’m sorry I screwed up everything. It would have been better for you if I had never seen the ghost at all.”

  Henry looked back with dazed eyes and nodded as if I were simply blowing bubbles in a pool.

  “I thought you were amazing in there, Lizzie,” said Natalie. “And that courtroom was a gas. Did you see the judge’s eyes? Yikes alive! And didn’t it smell like licorice?”

  “Yes, it did,” I said. “Why is that?”

  “Because he chews it incessantly,” said my grandfather.

  “Who, the judge?”

  “The ram,” he said.

  “How cool was he? How cool was everything! And look at you now, Lizzie. Elizabeth Webster, attorney-at-law.”

  “Attorney-at-failure,” I said. “Attorney-at-losing.”

  “Nonsense,” said my grandfather with a knock of his cane on the courtyard stones.

  “Even the little flying babies were laughing at me,” I said.

  “They were, yes, those fledgling fools,” said my grandfather, “but what do they know? I thought you were excellent, actually, for your first time. What say you, Barnabas?”

  “You did fine, Mistress Elizabeth, considering.”

  “Considering that I lost? Considering that Josiah Goodheart skewered me like a shish kebab?”

  “Of course you lost,” said my grandfather. “There was no way you could win. You had neither the facts nor the law on your side. Even your great ancestor Daniel Webster would have had a hard time winning this case in front of that red-eyed scalawag. You’ll get them next time.”

  “There’s not going to be a next time,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I only did this to see if I could help Henry. I didn’t, I couldn’t. In fact, I’ve only made things worse. I failed at lawyering like I pretty much fail at everything. Have you ever heard me play the clarinet?”

  “I’m sure it is delightful.”

  “Not even to a mouse. I’m not much of a Webster.”

  “You are very much a Webster,” said my grandfather. “And we Websters get up when we’re knocked down and rap our canes on the door of opportunity.”

  “No cane,” I said. “No door. Just done.” I gazed around at the gated-in courtyard. It looked just then like a prison. “I’m ready to go home.”

  “Don’t think it’s the blood that makes you a lawyer,” said my grandfather. “Yes, it gave you your credentials—the deal with old Scratch took care of that—but the lawyer part must be earned. You still have much to learn, but you learned some of it today. It is not only whether you win or lose, Elizabeth, but what you gain from the contest.”

  “I notice people only say things like that when they lose,” I said.

  “Your grandfather might be right, Webster,” said Henry, his voice slow as syrup. “All along I felt that Beatrice needed my help in some way, and now I know that she does.”

  “She’s just going to keep haunting you and haunting you,” I said. “Forever.”

  “Unless we find her head,” said Henry.

  “Exactly,” said my grandfather. “That is what we learned today, that was our crucial gain. To stop the haunting, all Henry need do is find the head of Beatrice Long. Quite simple, actually. Pick it up, drop it into her grave, and give her the peace of mind she so richly deserves.”

  “How is Henry going to find her head?” I said.

  “Well, it starts, like everything else in this life,” said my grandfather, “with the trying. Are you young people ready to try?”

  “I am,” said Henry. “I don’t really have a choice.”

  “I’m in, too,” said Natalie. “Absolutely. Once you start these things, you have to finish them or there’s no point.”

  “But how can we possibly find a head from so many years ago?” I asked. “I’m sure the police searched and searched and found nothing.”

  “Sometimes old crimes give up their secrets more easily than fresh ones,” said my grandfather. “And you have an advantage the police didn’t have.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We have Beatrice,” said Henry. “She’ll guide us, I know she will.”

  “You’ll help us, won’t you, Lizzie?” said Natalie.

  As I looked at Henry and Natalie, who were staring at me with hope on their faces, I felt my posture slump. I had never realized how tiring it was to play at being something I wasn’t. My father was in trouble. Henry was in trouble. They both needed the help of a real attorney. Whatever I was, that wasn’t me.

  “I can’t, I’m sorry,” I said. “And even if I agreed to help, it wouldn’t matter. I told my mother the truth of where I was going tonight. Once I get home I won’t be allowed to leave the house again until I’m thirty. Which is good, because all I can do is mess things up for everybody. You saw what I did in there.”

  “You were terrific,” said Natalie.

  “I lost,” I said. “You’ll be better off without me.”

  I shook my head and turned away from their disappointed faces, and that was when I saw it, the thing climbing like a spider through the circular gap between the locked iron gate and the top of the stone arch at the west entrance. A great, dark, monstrous thing.

  And it was calling my name.

  It was giant and inhuman and four times my size. It dropped onto the courtyard with a clang, before rising to its full height and walking toward us with the noisy wrench of metal. Scritch, clank.

  “Elizabeth Webster,” it shouted. Scritch, clank. “Elizabeth Webster.” The voice was a harmony of horror, three mismatched voices calling out my name all at once. “Elizabeth Webster.”

  The short pants, the stiff metal jacket with lines of buttons, and the tall round hat clued me in to what this thing was. The bronze sculpture of the Pilgrim high on the City Hall tower had come alive—to find me.

  “Elizabeth Webster.” Scritch, clank.

  Its footsteps rang with the sound of bronze striking stone. At first it walked, then it trotted, and then it ran at me, brandishing a metal scroll, readying to smack me like a baseball into the next life.

  “Elizabeth Webster. Elizabeth Webster.” Scritch, clank. “Elizabeth Webster.”

  I was too shocked to move. I stood stock-still in horror. I was already anticipating the crack of metal against my skull, when someone jumped between me and the giant black statue.

  “Begone, foul creature,” shouted Barnabas, waving his pale hands at the beast. “Begone.”

  The great bronze Pilgrim slid to a stop, sparks rising from its bronze buckled shoes as they scraped the stone of the courtyard. The scroll was still raised, ready to deal a deadly blow, but it would fall now upon Barnabas and not me.

  “No, Barnabas,” I shouted.

  My grandfather grabbed my arm. “Leave him be, Elizabeth. Barnabas can more than take care of himself with a dastardly animate like that.”

  “If you seek to harm young Elizabeth you’ll need to destroy me first,” shouted Barnabas. “And as you well know, that won’t be so easy to do.”

  The great bronze Pilgrim reached down and grabbed Barnabas by the shoulder of his frock coat, lifting him into the air until their faces were close. The Pilgrim snarled, showing bronze teeth big as tombstones, and then turned his head to face me.

  “Step into that courtroom again, Elizabeth Webster,” it said, “and you will see me a second time. It will take more than Barnabas Bothemly to stop me then.”

  The Pilgrim tossed Barnabas at me like he was a piece of trash. Barnabas slid sprawling and facedown just to my right. The Pilgrim sneered once more, then turned around and scratch-clanked back toward the locked west entrance before climbing over the iron gate and out of the courtyard.

  It took me a long moment to chase my racing heart and catch my breath before I joined the huddle around Barnabas. He lay there motionless, still facedown, splat, on the stone floor of the courtyard. He had sacrifi
ced himself for me. And what was I willing to sacrifice to help Henry, to find my father, to do anything good in this world? My eyes welled with tears. I put a hand on Barnabas’s shoulder and felt a quiver of muscle through his coat.

  “Barnabas?” I said.

  “He’ll be fine,” said my grandfather. “It will take more than that monstrosity to put a dent in our Barnabas.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “No, Mistress Elizabeth,” said Barnabas. With a groan he turned over and then rose into a sitting position on the courtyard paving. “Your grandfather is correct.” He moved one arm and then the next. The joints in his shoulders clicked but otherwise he seemed unhurt, and his face was miraculously free of any scrape or bruise. “Regretfully, I remain alive and well.”

  “What was that creature?” said Henry.

  “An animate,” said my grandfather. “A dead thing brought to life by an unearthly power. But more interesting than what it is, is why it was sent. Fear.”

  “You got that right,” I said. “I’m still shaking. I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”

  “You have it mixed around, Mistress Elizabeth,” said Barnabas. “It is not the fear in you that is most relevant here. It is the fear of you. Someone or something fears you mightily, or an animate would not have been sent with your name on its lips.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a Webster,” said my grandfather. “And you now have a license to practice before the Court of Uncommon Pleas, which gives you power. Have no doubt that this case has become something far bigger than the mere ejectment of a ghost. Old Scratch himself would never send such a creature, not against a Webster. So it is some other fallen angel out to do its dirty work in our dimension. Fates hang in the balance, and they all seem to depend on you, Elizabeth.”

  “What did Beatrice say when you asked who told her to mention your name to Henry?” said Natalie.

  “I think she said a lawyer told her, and then she called me Lizzie Face. That’s what my father calls me.”

  “Ah yes,” said my grandfather. “Things are becoming ever clearer.”