Weird Tales, Volume 350

by Norman Spinrad

  Every few decades a foreign power would mistake the Jackelians' quiet taste for the rule of law for the absence of ambition. Would mistake a content and isolationist bent for a weak and decadent society. Would come to the conclusion that a nation of shopkeepers might better be put to serving what they had built, made and grown to warriors and bullies. Many enemies had made the assumption that prefers not to fight equates to can’t fight and won’t fight. All had been punished severely for it. Slow to rouse, once they were, their foes discovered Jackals was no nation full of bumbling storekeepers, greedy mill owners and stupid farm boys. They found a pit of lions, a people with a hard, unruly thuggish streak and no tolerance for bullies — either foreign or raised on Jackals. own acres. Of course, being the only nation on Earth to possess a supply of celgas had never harmed the kingdom's standing. Jackals. unique aerial navy was truly the envy of the world, a floating wall of death standing ready to guarantee her ancient freedoms.

  ‘Better a knave in Jackals than a prince in Quatershift’ went the popular drinking song, and right now, caught up in the wild jingoistic crowd, Molly's heart followed the sentiment. Then she remembered the Beadle waiting for her back at the poorhouse with his stinging cane and her heart briefly sank. Her spirit quickly returned; she found her resolve stiffened as she remembered one of Damson Darnay's history lessons. Each of them was a gem to be treasured in her now miserable life, but one in particular she recalled with fond clarity, even now, years after the death of the woman who had been like a mother to her.

  The lesson had taken the form of a centuries-old letter — a horrified report to the then King of Quatérshift from his ambassador in Jackals, generations before Jackals' civil war, when most of the continent still suffered under the heel of absolutist regimes. The monarch of the old throne of Jackals had been attending a play at the theatre when the mob took against the performance, booing the actors off the stage, then, noticing the King in the royal box, stoning him too.

  The stunned Quatérshiftian had described to his own monarch the unbelievable sight of the King's militia fighting a rearguard action down the street as the rioting mob chased the portly Jackelian ruler away from the burning theatre. How alien to that bewildered ambassador, from a land where compliant serfs would be beaten to death for failing to address a noble with respect. But how true to the Jackelian character.

  Molly had taken that lesson to heart. She might be an orphan, brought up by an uncaring state, but she would brook no bullying, and she was equal in the eyes of the law to any poorhouse official or Middlesteel laundry owner. Now, if only the Beadle could see things that way.

  The head of the Sun Gate workhouse had an office increasingly at odds with the rest of the poorhouse's shabby buildings, from his shining teak writing desk, through to the rich carpets and the obligatory oil painting of the current First Guardian, Hoggstone, hung behind it all. After Molly realized the Beadle did not seem inclined immediately to start screaming a tirade of abuse at her, the second thing she noticed was the calm presence of the elegant lady seated on his chaise longue. Smart. Quality. Too richly dressed for any inspector of schools. Molly eyed the Beadle suspiciously.

  ‘Now, Molly,’ began the Beadle, his lazy con-man's eyes blinking. ‘Sit down here and I will introduce you to our guest.’

  Molly prepared her best barrack-room lawyer's face. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Molly, this is Damson Emma Fairborn, one of Sun Gate's most prominent employers.’

  The lady smiled at Molly, pushing back at the curl of her blonde bob, streaked by age with a spray of platinum silver now. ‘Hello, Molly. And do you have a last name?’

  ‘Templar,’ said the Beadle, ‘for the — .

  The lady crooked a finger in what might have been displeasure and amazingly the Beadle fell silent. ‘Molly, I am sure you can speak for yourself …

  ‘For the Lump Street temple, where the Aldermen found me abandoned, wrapped in a silk swaddle,’

  Molly said.

  ‘Silk?’ smiled Damson Fairborn. ‘Your mother must have been a lady of some standing to have thrown good silk away. A dalliance with the downstairs staff, or perhaps an affair?’

  Molly grimaced.

  ‘But of course, I am sure you have dwelt on the identity of your parents at some length. There is not much else to occupy the mind in a place like this, after all.’

  A sudden shocking thought gripped Molly, but the lady shook her head. ‘No, Molly. I am not she; although I suppose I am of an age where you could be my daughter.’

  The Beadle harrumphed. ‘I should warn you, Molly has something of a temper, damson. Or should I say temperament.’

  ‘To match her wild red hair, perhaps?’ smiled the lady. ‘And who would not, stuck in this damp place? Denied fine clothes, good wine, the company of gallants and a polite hand of whist? I am quite sure I would not find my temperament improved one whit if our positions were reversed.’

  The Beadle glared at Molly, then looked at the lady. ‘I don't — .

  ‘I believe I have heard enough from you, Beadle,’ said Emma Fairborn. ‘Now then, Molly. Would you do me the favour of bringing me that book over there?’

  Molly saw the leather-bound volume she was pointing to on one of the higher of the Beadle's bookshelves. She shrugged, walked over to the shelf and slid the book out. She blew the dust off the top. Pristine. Some work of philosophy kept for impressing visitors with the weight of the Beadle's intellect. Then she walked over to where the lady was sitting and passed the work across.

  Damson Fairborn gently held Molly's hand for a second before turning it over and examining it like a gypsy palm reader. ‘Thank you, Molly. I am so glad that your tenure in the employ of that Snell woman was brief. Your hands are far too nice to be ruined by bleach.’ She placed the book down beside her. ‘And you have a good sense of balance for someone with your height. A shade over five and a half feet I would say.’

  Molly nodded.

  ‘My dear, you have no idea how many pretty girls I meet who clump around like shire horses at a country fair, or waddle like a duck with the bad fortune to have been dressed in a lead corset. I think I can work with you. Tell me, Molly, have you enjoyed your time here at the house?’

  ‘I have found it … somewhat wearisome, damson,’ Molly replied.

  She seemed amused. ‘Indeed, have you? You have quite an erudite turn of phrase for someone raised between these walls.’

  ‘The last director here was a Circlist, Damson Fairborn,’ said the Beadle. ‘She had the children in classes well past the statutory age, flouting the Relief of the Poor Act.’

  ‘A mind is the hardest thing to improve and the easiest thing to waste,’ said the lady. ‘And you, Molly. You have received no salary for these labours, I presume?’

  ‘No, damson,’ Molly answered. ‘It all goes to the Sun Gate Board of the Poor.’

  Damson Fairborn nodded in understanding. ‘Yes, I am sure I would be amazed at how expensive the ward's Victualling Board can buy in the cheapest kitchen slops. Still —’ she looked directly at the Beadle ‘ — I am sure the suppliers have their overheads.’

  The Beadle positively squirmed behind his writing desk.

  ‘Well, my dear.’ Damson Fairborn adjusted the short silkprint wrap draped around her jacket's shoulders. ‘You will do. I think I can pay you a handsome stipend once the poor board's monthly fees have been accounted for.’

  Molly was shocked. If there was an employer who was paying the poorhouse's dole and adding on an extra salary for the boarders, it was a first for the Sun Gate workhouse. The whole rotten idea of the poorhouse was as a source of cheap labour for the ward.

  ‘She's an orphan, mind,’ reminded the Beadle. ‘She reaches her maturity in a year and then she's a voter. I can only transfer her ward papers to you for twelve months.’

  The lady smiled. ‘I think after a year with me our young lady's tastes will be expensive enough that she won't wish to return to working for your Handsome Lane concerns.’r />
  Molly followed her new employer out onto the street, leaving the dank Sun Gate workhouse to the Beadle and his minions. The lady had a private cab waiting for her, the horses and carriage as jet-black as the livery of the squat, bulletheaded retainer standing beside them.

  ‘Damson Fairborn,’ Molly coughed politely as the manservant swung open the cab door.

  ‘Yes, my dear.’

  Molly indicated the high prison-like walls of the poorhouse behind them. ‘This isn't the usual recruiting ground for a domestic.’

  Her new employer looked surprised. ‘Why, Molly, I don't intend you for an undermaid or a scullery girl. I thought you might have recognized my name.’

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Lady Fairborn, Molly. As in my establishment: Fairborn and Jarndyce.’

  Molly's blood turned cold.

  ‘Of course,’ the lady winked at her heavily muscled retainer, ‘Lord Jarndyce is sadly no longer with us. Isn't that so, Alfred?’

  ‘A right shame, milady,’ replied the retainer. ‘Choked on a piece of lobster shell during supper, it was said.’

  ‘Yes, Alfred. That was really rather careless of him. One of the very few occurrences of good living proving harmful to one's constitution, I should imagine.’

  Molly's eyes were still wide with shock. ‘But Fairborn and Jarndyce is — .

  ‘A bawdyhouse, my dear. And I, not to place too delicate a sensibility on it, am widely known as the Queen of the Whores.’

  The retainer stepped behind Molly, cutting off her escape route down the street.

  ‘And you, Molly. I think you shall do very nicely indeed as one of my girls.’

  Back in the Beadle's office the Observer faded into the reality of the poorhouse. She was allowed only one intervention, and it had been one of her best. Small. As it had to be. Hardly an intercession at all.

  Originally the Beadle had been intending to rent Molly's ward papers to the large abattoir over on Cringly Corner; but that reality path would have seen Molly returned, dismissed for insubordination, and back in the poorhouse within six weeks. Which would not have been at all beneficial for the Observer and her designs.

  It had been so easy to nudge the Beadle's brain a degree to the side, letting the new plan form in his imagination. Harder to push Emma Fairborn's steel trap of a mind, but still well within the Observer's intervention tolerances. The Beadle was sitting behind his desk now, working out how much graft was due in by the end of the week.

  The Observer made sure everything was tidy and accounted for in the man's treacle-thick chemical soup of a mind. Something, a sixth sense perhaps, made the Beadle scratch the nape of his neck and stare directly at where the Observer was standing. She increased the strength of her infiltration of his optic nerve, erasing even her background presence, comforting the small monkey brain back into a state of ease.

  Silver and gold, think about the money. The Beadle shuffled his papers into a neat stack and locked them away in his drawer. It was going to be a good take again this week.

  The Observer sighed and faded back out of reality. Sadly, the Beadle was not going to live long enough to purchase that twelfth cottage by the coast to add to his burgeoning property empire. She could have saved him. But then there were some interventions the Observer was glad she was not required to make.

  (READ THE REST OF “THE COURT OF THE AIR,” IN BOOKSTORES NOW! London-based author Stephen Hunt currently serves on the management, technical, and editorial boards for

  SFcrowsnest.com, which is currently Google-ranked as the Internet’s second most popular science-fiction Web site. The Court of the Air — acclaimed as a SCI FI Essential Book — is his second novel.

  It is available in bookstores in June.)

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