A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians--A Novel

by H. G. Parry

  “That almost sounded a little sarcastic.”

  “Did it? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to be, not even almost a little. I thoroughly approve of his aims, if that’s what you mean to ask. He approached you to help him?”

  “And his friends,” Wilberforce said. “They’re all ardent moral reformers—mostly Quakers and evangelicals. I’ve corresponded with some of them about these magic reforms, and about easing conditions in prisons. It must have been one of them who gave my name to Clarkson. In any case, he left the essay of which you spoke at my house, and asked to call on me, which of course I arranged as soon as possible.”

  “What did Clarkson say to you?”

  “Well, rather a lot, actually,” Wilberforce admitted, with a slight smile. “I don’t think I could have stopped him had I wanted to.” He thought about the tall, impressively built Commoner who had sat next to him in his drawing room that day. The teacup Wilberforce had given him had sat abandoned on the table as he dived repeatedly into his enormous travel bag, and his dark, heavily lidded eyes burned brighter and brighter as he warmed to his subject.

  “He showed me some of his research, for a beginning. I’d read about it somewhat myself, of course, but Clarkson has been all over the country gathering information. How much do you know about the practice?”

  “I know that natives of Africa are captured and sold to work in the sugar plantations out in the colonies,” Pitt said. “I know they are subjected to a peculiar combination of alchemy and strong mesmerism designed to control their every action. I know it’s a filthy trade and a disgrace to our nation.”

  “It’s worse than that. It’s an abomination.” He paused, trying to collect his thoughts and rein in his feelings. “The Africans are packed into our ships by the hundreds. On the first day, they’re force-fed an alchemical mixture. They call it spellbinding. In its grip, it becomes almost impossible for them to move or speak except to obey the commands of their new masters.”

  “Essentially,” Pitt said, “the intention is to reduce them to property.”

  “Exactly,” Wilberforce said. “Those who hold out too long are thrown overboard on the third day. Many more die on the journey from illness or injury, or sometimes they just die. If they survive, they’re sold to the plantations, to spend the rest of their lives laboring in horrifying conditions. Its wickedness seems to me so enormous, so dreadful…” He trailed off, finding himself for once lost for words. “Clarkson came to me because we had just passed the ban on alchemy-service: that was a far milder version of spellbinding, of course, but the principle was not dissimilar. Clarkson wanted to know if I would be willing to follow that with a motion to ban the practice of spellbinding the human beings taken as slaves. It’s tantamount to torture.”

  “And of course, most of those plantations belong to Aristocrats,” Pitt said. “More of them are dependent on slavery for their livelihoods than would care to admit it. Hence your original question.”

  “That entire trade is built on the back of dark magic,” Wilberforce said. “Far worse than anything unregistered magicians could ever do—far worse than the occasional stray curse or rogue summoning that may put even an Aristocrat behind bars. It involves the bewitchment of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. If the Knights Templar wanted to fight against evil in the world, and evil magic in particular, this is where it is.”

  “Or rather, if you want to fight against evil in the world,” Pitt corrected. “And, of course, you do. So what did you say to Clarkson and his friends?”

  “I told them that I had no objection to bringing forward the measure in Parliament, when I was better prepared for it, and if no person more proper could be found,” Wilberforce said. “And I’ve been helping them collect evidence for the preparation of such a measure, when time permits. But…”

  “You clearly don’t doubt the practice should be abolished,” Pitt said when the silence had lingered a little too long. “So why are you hesitating?”

  “Answer me this first. Do you think it would be possible to pass a bill to abolish spellbinding?”

  “I think it would be extremely difficult,” Pitt said, which was as close as he ever came to saying something couldn’t be done.

  “Why?”

  “For one thing, spellbinding works to suppress magic. Without it, it would be more difficult for slavers to control any of their captives, but it would be impossible to control those who were powerful magicians. Testing and braceleting every slave would be impractical and expensive, especially when the Knights Templar have so small a presence in the colonies; besides, magic can be performed through bracelets if the wearer is determined. Africa practices magic freely; one of the major reasons we and other countries have been able to colonize there regardless is because our alchemy in particular is more advanced and we can employ amulets and spellbinding. Without spellbinding, many of those taken or born into slavery would rise up and take themselves back.”

  “Exactly.” It was the same conclusion he’d come to. “And they’d be right to do so—which is the most important point. They have a right to their own magic; they have a right to their own freedom.”

  “So therefore,” Pitt concluded, “there’s little point in abolishing spellbinding. You really need to abolish slavery outright.”

  “That, after all, is what Clarkson and his people are working toward. And I think, really, it’s what he’s hoping that I’ll agree to fight for.”

  Pitt nodded slowly. “And?”

  “And that’s… well, it’s such an undertaking.” It was what he meant, but he meant more than what Pitt’s practical mind would understand him to mean. “Far more so than the steps toward freedom of magic we’ve taken for Commoners here. It will take years, probably, rather than months, if we can ever do it at all. And the forces aligned against us are enormous and powerful. As you say, there are a good many powerful Aristocrats dependent on slavery—and an even greater mass of Commoner merchants, traders, plantation owners…”

  “Opposition has never stopped you before.”

  “No,” Wilberforce agreed. “And I really think we could do it. I certainly think we should do it. But—”

  “Then do it,” Pitt said immediately.

  “Do you really think it will be so easy?”

  “Of course not. Slavery is a huge source of revenue—not only for slave traders and plantation owners, but for anyone who deals with them. Abolishing it would go a great deal against what some see as the public interest. And the idea of the end of slavery itself—that is going to terrify people for more than one reason. As you said, many of those currently spellbound are powerful magicians, from a society that doesn’t regulate its magic. Their freedom poses a threat to everything our economic and social power is built upon. But their captivity, and everything it entails, is disgusting. People know that—or they can be made to. And then they simply need to be persuaded to vote according to their morals rather than their interests, or at least convinced that their interests are not so threatened as they fear.”

  Wilberforce nodded slowly. “And do you think I could do that?”

  “Honestly,” Pitt said, the careful neutrality fading from his voice, “I think you were born to do that. It’s clearly uniquely suited to your character and talents.”

  Wilberforce nodded again. He felt as though he were standing on the brink of a vast drop, wondering what was waiting to receive him at the base of it. Pitt, unexpectedly, had put that feeling into words. He was born to do it. This, perhaps even more than anything else he had achieved so far, was what all those weeks of anguish and self-reflection had been pushing him toward. It made the whole thing seem so much larger and more awe-inspiring than it already was, and that scared him.

  “Which is why,” Pitt added, with a touch of embarrassment, “I gave your name to Clarkson when he wrote to me six months ago asking me to recommend someone who might be sympathetic to his cause.”

  Wilberforce stared at him. “You gave him my name?”


  “I mentioned it. I knew you already had an interest in the matter of magical legislation—ow!”

  Wilberforce had pulled out a handful of grass from around the base of the tree and thrown it hard enough to impact his friend’s shoulder. There might have been a dirt clod still attached.

  “Is this how it’s going to be from now on?” Wilberforce demanded with mostly feigned indignation. “I do something only to find my career has once again been masterminded by the shadowy machinations of my prime minister?”

  “While I’d love to claim Machiavellian cunning, I honestly just forgot to mention it to you. I had no idea he’d actually call on your house.”

  “You forgot to mention it to me?”

  Pitt shrugged defensively. “It was while I was being brilliant with finances; I was busy, then I was tired. Stop throwing grass at your prime minister.”

  “Not until you apologize.”

  “For what? Helping you toward what may well be the great objective of your life? The way I read it, you should thank me.”

  “I’ll thank you,” Wilberforce said, ripping out another handful and throwing it in the same way, “when you apologize.”

  Pitt dodged the missile, but a few wisps of grass and leaves settled in his hair. “Well, then,” he said, scooping up his own handful. His aim was somewhat better and got Wilberforce on the side of the head. “I apologize.”

  “Apology accepted,” Wilberforce said. He rubbed the back of his neck, where some of the damp grass had escaped down his shirt collar, and made a face. “And thank you.”

  “Thank-you accepted.”

  “So I have your support in this matter?”

  “Unconditionally,” Pitt said immediately, and with more seriousness. “I’ll do whatever I can.”

  “I don’t like to take advantage of your position. But in this case—”

  “Don’t worry about that. Please let me know, with complete frankness, if I can do anything for you, and I’ll tell you with equal frankness if it’s too much. And in this case, as you say… I read that essay as well. Do you want to acquaint me with the particulars?”

  “I thought we were going to help dig the pond. You were very insistent about it.”

  “We can do both. Particularly as it means you really do have to help, since I’ll be able to keep a close watch on you while we talk.”

  “And I thought I needed to campaign for the rights of slaves abroad.” His sense of trepidation was fading now. If God had indeed sent him a task, at least he had sent him plenty of help as well. “That sounds like an excellent plan.”

  As the cool weather began to set in that year, Louis XVI declared his desire to tighten the restrictions on Commoner magic. He was acting on the advice of the Temple Church leadership, who warned him of growing unrest in the streets. They proposed that any magic connected to revolutionary action be treated as dark magic, subject to execution by breaking on the wheel. They proposed, more dangerously, that this law would apply not only to illegal Commoner magicians, but to Aristocrats as well.

  They had reckoned without the parlements. Even those who cared very little about the rights of Commoner magicians were horrified at the threat to their own. The parlements were regional courts; they had no power to make or change laws, but they had the power to obstruct the king. The Parlement of Paris took the opportunity to point out that in fact, with winter approaching, the lifting of certain restrictions would save lives: last winter, Commoner fire-mages had frozen to death when their own magic could have saved them and their families. They called for something akin to the self-defense clause in English law, to be enforced not by the Templars, but by common men: a clause that would allow Commoners to use their magic if it was clearly for their own good and that of their families. Until it was granted, they refused to agree to any further restrictions, even on the darkest of black magic.

  In Arras, late at night, Charlotte Robespierre paused on the landing in front of her brother’s door.

  “Are you still awake?” Her surprise would have been more convincing had it not been the third time she had asked. “It’s three in the morning.”

  At the desk by the window, the candle had burned low. Brount, their little dog, lay under the desk amid stray rejected papers, thumping his tail peacefully. Robespierre sat writing, hunched over the pen as it scratched the page. There was no frenzy about his movements: he radiated perfect calm. It was only that his calm seemed, even to him, to have a touch of mania about it. Three in the morning often does.

  “I’m not tired,” he said, without looking up.

  “You can’t still be working on your trial. You always have that prepared in advance.”

  “Of course I do.” The hard wooden seat was stiffening his back; he wriggled his shoulders once, spasmodically, to loosen it. Now his attention had been drawn back to the physical world, he wished he could put his pen down and stretch, but he didn’t want to give Charlotte the impression he was open to conversation. “This is a pamphlet. I need to persuade the people here to fight for the new magic laws. The courtroom isn’t the place for that, but I don’t have a voice anywhere else. I’m not an Aristocrat. I need to write it down.”

  Charlotte yawned. “So an abstract principle of magic is keeping you from your bed.”

  “It isn’t just about abstract principles. It isn’t even about magic. The kind of clause the Parlement of Paris wants will save lives.”

  “So write that and go to bed.”

  “I am writing that. That is precisely what I’m writing.”

  “I’ll bet you aren’t,” Charlotte said astutely. “You’ve probably put in all sorts of flourishes and rhetoric and gone on forever. Nobody wants to read it, you know.”

  He bit back his retort and forced himself to swallow it down. She was right. He thought, rightly or wrongly, that what he had written was very fine. Certainly he thought it was true. But there was no stolen mesmerism in pen and ink, as he had in the courtroom, and without it his words were just words: well-reasoned, articulate, and no different from anybody else’s. Nobody would publish them; he could do so at his own expense, of course, and would, but nobody would care.

  Realizing no argument was forthcoming, Charlotte patted him on the shoulder with more sympathy. “Don’t take it so much to heart,” she said. “You’re a bundle of nerves lately. It isn’t good for you. Anyway, you have a magic trial in the morning, don’t you? Someone accused of something—?”

  “Unregistered weather magic,” Robespierre said. “Yes. I think we can have him acquitted.”

  “There you go, then. That’s something.”

  “It isn’t enough,” Robespierre said in the garden of his sleep.

  “No,” his benefactor said. There might almost have been a trace of satisfaction in his voice. “It isn’t enough. Not yet.”

  In Paris, William Eden, ambassador for Great Britain, broached the subject of slavery at the negotiating tables. He was a shrewd, experienced Aristocrat whose career had encompassed everything from lord of trade to spymaster in the American War. His estate in England bordered Pitt’s, and they were friends as well as colleagues; he was also very fond of Wilberforce. In this case, however, he felt he had been rather put upon by the two of them. He was only meant to be negotiating a new trade arrangement.

  “I’ve had a letter from England that, as soon as Parliament opens again, there will be a move to abolish the slave trade,” he told the men seated around the table. “It’s very likely to pass; Mr. Wilberforce has been known to get similar bills through before. The prime minister supports it entirely and feels that, as one of the greatest obstacles to any restrictions on the slave trade is the argument that France will merely profit by England’s restraint, it would be very much appreciated if France would agree to prohibit the practice simultaneously with England. Your king has the power to do it with the stroke of a pen.”

  (Something moved among the men at the French side of the table. It stirred across their thoughts like a breeze across the surf
ace of a pond.)

  “It would only be a prohibition against the slave trade, you understand,” Eden said. “Not the practice of spellbinding, and certainly not slavery itself.”

  “Not yet,” one of the Frenchmen said. “But I cannot think that such restrictions are intended to end there. We have abolitionists and social reformers in our country as well, you know. They’re a troublesome species.”

  “Well, this might even help placate them,” Eden suggested. “As well as those who object to the magic laws your king wants to bring in. They believe in the rights of the common man, after all. This concession might be seen as very hopeful.”

  “A little too hopeful, perhaps, sir,” the man replied dryly. “I notice you were careful to mention that this wouldn’t impact spellbinding or slavery. But those are the touchstones of the revolution around here, you know: free magic, and liberty.”

  (It listened.)

  Eden laughed uneasily. “Revolution. An overstatement, surely?”

  “It’s always an overstatement,” the man said. “Until the rioting starts.”

  Arras

  October 1788

  Maximilien Robespierre arrived home far later than usual. He was uncharacteristically flushed, and his green eyes were alight.

  “It’s happened,” he said to Charlotte before she had even finished opening the door for him. Brount flung himself ecstatically at Robespierre in a flurry of black-and-white fur; Robespierre ducked to ruffle his ears affectionately. “It isn’t a rumor. A royal proclamation came from Versailles only this afternoon. A meeting of the Estates General has been called.”

  “I know. A letter from Augustin came about the same time.” Their younger brother had taken up Robespierre’s old scholarship at the College Louis-le-Grand, learning to follow him into law. “From Paris. He says the streets are in chaos.”

  “So they should be. This is the beginning of something. I know it is.”