Elizabeth Webster and the Court of Uncommon Pleas

by William Lashner

  I looked up at the judge, peering at me now with red eyes that were losing patience with every second. What answer could possibly win my father’s freedom? I didn’t yet know, but something the witness said echoed in my brain. And it reminded me of one of the stories my grandfather had told me. The beginnings of an equation began to form. Without any other choice, I would start there.

  “Do you know a woman named Isabel Cutbush?” I asked the witness.

  As soon as I mentioned the name something happened to the fussy little accountant on the stand. He began to stretch his neck, as if the loose suit he was wearing had tightened, and his wrists bulged out of the jacket cuffs.

  “Isabel?” he said. “Cutbush?” His voice, at first just a high twitter, was now accompanied by another voice in a lower key.

  “That’s right,” I said “Isabel Cutbush. She didn’t pass over to the other side the usual way, did she? She didn’t get hit by a car or die of some horrible disease. You tricked her and then brought her over.”

  “Something like that might have happened,” said the witness. “But, as you may not know, being so young and inexperienced, it is allowed to bring someone over in the proper circumstances for short periods of time. In this case it was all done legally.”

  “You brought her over because you loved her and then you made a deal with her.”

  “Yes, we had a contract binding on all sides,” he said. “An agreement was made and the laws were respected.”

  “Was my father on the other side representing Isabel?”

  “Your father was interfering with a lawful agreement.”

  “But your agreement was deceitful.”

  “That is a lie,” he shouted.

  His voice went from double to triple tones, not unlike the voice of the great metal Pilgrim who had attacked me in the courtyard. His suit shrank even more until it burst into shreds. The little accountant was now a giant on the witness stand, with only scraps of fabric covering his broad chest and thick legs. His feet became so huge they split his leather shoes into scraps.

  “You’re changing,” I said as his hands melted into huge claws and his feet formed into pointed hooves. His mustache burned away with a twist of flame and smoke.

  “You’ve angered me with your rudeness,” he said. Red scabs started rising from above his ears. “It’s not as if I didn’t warn you. It doesn’t pay to anger me, girl.”

  “Like my father angered you?”

  “Let him be a lesson.”

  A single red wing spread out behind him, stretched and fluttered. The rising scabs behind his ears grew and hardened into great spiraling horns. The demon now sat in front of us without his costume. I backed away and tried to stop my shaking.

  “I have many forms,” he said. “When I am angry my base form is called forth. You have questioned my integrity, but the agreement was fair. And the proof is in this very courtroom. Barnabas Bothemly still prowls this foul world.”

  At this Barnabas stood and shouted out, “You misled us, demon.”

  “You wanted to be misled,” said Redwing. “You wanted to trade her life for yours, and so you did.”

  “You are lying still,” shouted Barnabas.

  “Quiet in the courtroom,” barked the judge with a bang of his gavel. “I’ll not have any more interruptions.”

  “The deal was made,” said the demon. Its eyes were blazing and puffs of black smoke rose from the flames. “The price for Isabel staying with me was to bring Barnabas back to life. And there he is. The proof of my honesty is the presence of that coward sitting in the back row next to your mother. Your sweet, loving mother. Oh, I know her, too. Be careful what you say from here on in, child, for anything can happen to those we love.”

  “My lord,” said Josiah Goodheart, a weariness injected into his rasp. “We’re not here to discuss matters of contract law, of which Miss Webster is sadly ignorant. Can we get to the matter at hand before another millennium slips through our fingers?”

  “Mr. Goodheart is right,” said the judge. “Miss Webster, we’re not here to argue about an agreement.”

  “But Your Honor, I believe—”

  “Your belief is not important here. My ruling is. We will not argue about that agreement, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Do you have anything else?”

  Did I? No, I didn’t, or at least I was sure just then that I didn’t. But as I shrank from Judge Jeffries’s awful stare, I began to realize that his red-eyed glare provided me a glimpse of the final answer I might want from Redwing. And was I wrong to think my friends and family, over this whole bizarre adventure, had given me the equation to get me there—this plus that, divided by that, added to that? It was simple algebra, and if there was one thing I could always ace it was algebra.

  “Well, Miss Webster?” said the judge. “Are we finished here?”

  “Not yet, sir. I have just a few more questions.”

  “Be quick about it,” he said.

  “So, Mr. Redwing—can I call you Mr. Redwing?”

  “Call me what you will,” said the demon with the smile of a cat who had just eaten a boatful of mice.

  “Mr. Redwing, you have accused my father of interfering with your agreement with Isabel.”

  “That is what I said, yes.”

  “How was he, like, interfering?”

  “He was meddling,” said the demon. “Talking to Isabel, my darling bride-to-be Isabel, searching my palace uninvited, asking questions of my other brides.”

  “Other brides? How many brides do you have?”

  “Innumerable,” said the demon.

  “Yikes alive,” I said. “I guess that puts the ‘F’ in ‘Fallen.’”

  There was a spurt of laughter in the courtroom, even the ram joining in, and as the laughter rose Redwing’s horns glowed with an intense heat.

  “Did my father ask your brides embarrassing questions?” I said.

  “He was meddling, like I told you.” It took me a moment to remember when I had heard that word just recently before. As it came to me, I couldn’t help but smile. It was like another side of the family had joined the party.

  “Was my father, like, meddling on his own, or was he told he could meddle by a court on the other side?”

  “There might be some trivial thing.”

  “A legal case?”

  “A farce,” said the demon. “Something started to spread his lies.”

  “And so when he was searching your palaces, was he doing that because the court told him he could investigate things by, what is the term, Judge—taking discovery?”

  “That it is,” said Judge Jefferies.

  “Well?” I said.

  “The court had no right,” said Redwing.

  “And when my father was talking to Isabel and a few of your other brides,” I said, “was he doing it because the court told him he could take depositions?”

  “What part of ‘meddling’ don’t you understand?”

  “But it seems like the court was meddling as much as my father. So why was it my father who ended up in your dungeon and not the judge?”

  “Your father’s manners were poorer—as poor, frankly, as your own.”

  I looked up at my father, still peering out through the iron bars, muted by the iron muzzle, looking as innocent and helpless as a dove in its cage. I stared long enough so that the judge couldn’t help but follow my gaze.

  “You locked my father up because of poor manners?”

  “He was being insolent,” said the demon. “To me. In my domain.”

  I snapped my attention back to the demon. It was all right there in front of me.

  “Oh my, he was being insolent,” I said, using all my sarcastic middle school powers. “The big, strong, fallen angel got upset because the mean little lawyer was being insolent.”

  “That’s what I said,” growled the demon. As it spoke its horns glowed hotter and the flames blazing from its eyes rose to lick its brow. It f
ocused its gaze on me as if there were only me and it in the courtroom, having a private argument, which it would not allow itself to lose.

  “And impertinent, I suppose, the mean little lawyer.”

  “That he was,” it said.

  “Not to mention impudent.”

  “Now that you mention it, yes,” it said in a voice so deep and angry my throat almost closed with fear.

  It stood from the witness chair, stepped a great hoofed step forward, and leaned on the table in front of me. The pincers of its claws dug into the wood. Its long narrow tail writhed behind it like a burning electric wire. We were so close now I could smell the sulfur on its breath.

  “And I can see,” it said, “to your imminent peril, that the serpent’s apple has not fallen far from the tree.”

  “Thank you,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You should take it as a warning, little girl,” said the demon.

  “So, like, just to be clear, Mr. Redwing. You have locked my father in your dungeon because he was being impudent, impertinent, and insolent.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “So really, you only locked him up because he was acting like a lawyer.”

  “If you mean because he was acting like a meddling dog, then yes.”

  I turned again to look up at my father. “But I suppose one of the things my father has taught me—both my fathers, actually—is that lawyers are, at heart, meddling dogs. We see a wrong and we bound forward in an eager attempt to right it. We chase after fairness like a dog chases after a tennis ball. We see an injustice and we can’t help but interfere, no matter the price to ourselves, or to our families, or even to our little girls. We are meddling dogs in service of the law, even if it takes us through the very gates of your domain.”

  “What does a whippet like you know of the law in my domain?”

  I turned back to stare at the demon. It had just given me the final divisor of the equation to get exactly the answer I wanted. All I needed to pull it off was a touch of Charlie Frayden–type servility.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I know nothing of the law in your domain. So teach me, Mr. Redwing, sir, please.”

  “You could use some teaching, that is evident.”

  “Explain it to a girl as dim and silly as me. I’ve been hearing about legal cornerstones until I’m about to puke. Patent law, or habeas corpus, or the common law, or whatever, it’s like a blur. So tell us all, what constitutes the cornerstone of the law in your domain?”

  “It is quite simple,” growled the demon. “In my domain, I am the law.”

  “There are no other cornerstones?”

  “None.”

  “No legal books? No statutes?”

  “Trifling things in the face of my power.”

  “And so you have no need for lawyers?”

  “They are a plague upon the land.”

  “Or courtrooms?”

  “Think of all the dungeons we could build in those useless spaces.”

  “Or judges, even?” I said, fighting not to look up at Judge Jeffries as I said it.

  “Foolish, self-important windbags not fit to hold my cloak.”

  “What are they fit for? Your dungeons?”

  “If they forget their places, yes.”

  “And Isabel will be another of your brides, no matter what they say is right or lawful.”

  “I say what is lawful. I say what is right. And I say she will be mine, forever and for always,” said the demon Redwing, who then proceeded to give another of those mouse-eating smiles. “I suppose you could say I am a fool for love.”

  “Or maybe just a fool,” I said.

  And that was when the demon Redwing, horns bursting into flame, caught my throat in its claw and began to squeeze.

  “I’ve heard enough,” said the judge, banging his gavel twice so that two sounds like twin gunshots ricocheted around the courtroom. As the demon turned his head to look at the judge, the fire spouting from his horns subsided and the squeeze on my throat eased. “The witness will return to the stand without counsel’s neck in its claw.”

  Redwing released its hold on me and bowed to the judge. “As you wish,” it intoned darkly before retreating to the chair.

  Judge Jefferies shook his head at me while I rubbed my neck, as if remarking on my utter foolishness at baiting a demon—a live, stinking demon with horns of fire—before saying, “Mr. Goodheart, make your argument.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” said Josiah Goodheart as he put his right thumb into his armpit and dropped his left hand on a fat legal volume open upon the table before him. Just the sound of his raspy, jazzy voice filled me with despair. He knew the law better than I did, he knew the judge better than I did, he was ready to once again stick a skewer through me and roast me with onions and chunks of zucchini. “The standard of proof in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, as this court has already noted, is extraordinarily high. And it is indisputable—indisputable, I say—that the junior counsel representing petitioner has failed to provide even the most rudimentary—”

  The judge banged his gavel once, stopping the speech.

  “I’ve heard enough,” said the judge. “Sit down, Mr. Goodheart, and you too, Miss Webster. I’ve made my decision. This is not a difficult case. It is assumed, until proven otherwise, that a detention on the far side is in accordance with the law. The burden of proof of a violation, as Mr. Goodheart has noted, is extraordinarily high.”

  The judge cocked his head and stared down at me as if staring down at a cockroach. I slumped in my chair and looked at my father in his cage. His eyes behind his glasses seemed so tired and lost. My grandfather, sitting beside me now, put his hand over mine. I smiled weakly at him, all the time wanting to cry.

  “Under questioning by petitioner’s counsel, however,” continued the judge, “the witness has made it clear that it pays no deference to any law other than its own. It has no respect for statutes or learned treatises which have been the cornerstone of the law for centuries. It has no respect for lawyers or courtrooms, and it has no respect for self-important windbags on the judicial bench. It is fitting, therefore, that this self-important windbag has no respect for its detention of petitioner.”

  The judge banged his gavel so loudly my heart leaped into my throat.

  “The relief sought in Mr. Webster’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus is hereby granted, and the petitioner shall be released forthwith.”

  There was a moment where I wasn’t sure what had happened, where the commotion in the court and the creak of the chain lowering the courtroom cage seemed to meld with the assumption of disaster that follows me like a rain cloud. But then a loud whoosh erupted and Redwing burst into flame, an immense bonfire that licked the ceiling dome. The flying babies painted there flitted away from the blaze, twittering loudly in fear. When the fire abruptly died, the fallen angel Abezethibou had disappeared from the courtroom.

  A great bout of cheering and hurrahs came from the spectators, the babies on the ceiling and the ram’s head on the wall joining in. Along with the celebration came the sound of the cage’s door swinging open, letting me know that my father was to be freed.

  I jumped to my feet. My grandfather pounded me on the back. I turned around and saw my mother beaming at me with pride—imagine that—and Barnabas nodding with the slightest of smiles, the first time I ever saw such a thing on his long, mournful face. By the time I turned to look at the cage, my father, free now of his iron muzzle, was walking into his freedom.

  “My sweet Lizzie Face,” said my father, hugging me. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “For dragging you into this, but I knew you could do it.”

  “It was mostly Beatrice,” I said.

  “No, it was mostly you. When Beatrice came to me about saving Vance Johansson, I sent her your way because I knew you were the one to help her. And she seemed so miserable without her h
ead.”

  “Can you blame her?” I said.

  “I knew if you helped her, you could help me. You would have made our great ancestor so proud, but not as proud as you have made me. Now let’s get out of here before the old windbag changes his mind.”

  I was rushing out of the old gray building and into the locked courtyard with the tails of my robe flowing behind me, still full of the elation of victory, when Redwing came for me one more time.

  He was sheathed again in the great bronze figure of the black-hatted Pilgrim from the City Hall tower. The metal animate slithered again through the gap over the locked gate and came at us with its noisy wrench of metal—scritch clank, scritch clank—and it was pointing its metal scroll not just at me but at my mother and my father and my grandfather and Barnabas.

  “You were warned, girl,” it said in its three mismatched voices, the same voices we had heard on the witness stand after Redwing assumed its pure form. “All you Websters were warned not to get in my way. It’s time to wipe out the entire repugnant clan. And how lucky for me I have you all right here.”

  Barnabas ran out in front of us, raising his hands. “Begone, monster,” he shouted. “You’ve been beaten in a match of wit and law, accept it.”

  The Pilgrim swatted Barnabas aside as if he were nothing more than an annoying housefly. My father dashed forward to act as a shield for the rest of us, but the monster picked him up in his fist as if my father were a squirming mouse.

  “I fear neither you nor your runtish father, Webster,” snarled the demon at my father. “But know this, the one who will bear the brunt of the Webster treachery will be the vile trickster Elizabeth Webster. Who is laughing now, little girl?”

  My grandfather placed his arm around me and pulled me close even as the most surprising figure stepped forward with utter confidence to stand before the metal monster.