by H. G. Parry
“There’s still hope the king might recover,” Wilberforce said, from where he sat curled up on the couch with the newspaper. He was allowed out of bed now, though barely, and he had been following the situation in London with concern. “Pitt just needs to keep Fox at bay long enough to give him the opportunity.”
“It’s already been six weeks,” Thornton said. “He has the doctors on committees now, arguing about whether or not the king is getting better. That could go on indefinitely, but Fox won’t let it. Neither will the Knights Templar. They prefer George to his son, but they want a magician on the throne. And to be fair to them, if one of those shadows escapes the king’s control—or if the king, in his madness, unleashes them—”
“There’s one thing I’ll bet good money that the Knights Templar haven’t told the government,” Miss More said. “The king isn’t the only strong magician to have lost control of his magic this winter.”
“Really?” Wilberforce looked up. “Who else?”
“Nobody of any name, and none so dramatic. Just minor hiccups, almost all shadowmancers. The Commoners have mostly been arrested, poor souls, and the Aristocrats are being treated at their estates. One or two are at Bedlam, which is how I heard about it. A few of us went out there to report on conditions—which are disgraceful.”
“Excuse me,” Thornton said, half-amused. “I believe he’s supposed to be resting.”
“No, really, I’m quite all right,” Wilberforce said. His knife wound throbbed sickeningly, but he sat forward. “Tell me about Bedlam.”
Wilberforce wrote to Pitt about the incidents Miss More had spoken of, careful to highlight that they had occurred around the same time as the undead had come to Westminster. He received no reply, but he was used to that. He knew the letter had been read.
The king was no better after Christmas. The doctors sent daily reports: by carrier at first, and then, as the urgency increased, the Downing Street daemon-stone took its place on Pitt’s desk for the first time. Daemon-stones on one level were simply very powerful shadows that had been summoned forth and, rather than allowed to take shape, had been bound to a black stone from which they could never escape. Once bound, they could communicate with each other across any distance of land and a short distance of water, which allowed messages to pass between those who used them in the blink of an eye. They were highly useful, and highly sought. Yet they were rare, not just because summoning and binding such powerful shadows was near impossible, but because most shadowmancers strong enough to do so refused. Higher shadows didn’t exist to be enslaved, they said. It was a friendship, a communion, a sharing of trust. It was a terrible thing to bind one. They would serve you because they had to, but they would never forgive you. Fortunately, Pitt wasn’t superstitious about shadows, and he didn’t share Wilberforce’s dread of them—even after the visit from the undead. The magic in his blood chilled him every time he picked one up, but he was running on youth and nervous energy, and this was easy to disregard.
The reports themselves were harder to dismiss. Harder still were the visits to the king in person.
Pitt had known the king for a very long time: his father had served as his prime minister before him. George was both stubborn and frustratingly manipulative; like most monarchs, he was an obstacle to the workings of government more often than he was an aid, particularly when it came to anything at all revolutionary. But he was also a kind man, and a clever one in his own way. He would have been devastated to know of the danger and fear his shadows had wrought—perhaps he did know it, and that was why he looked gripped by such horror. George had grown ragged and filthy over the months of his confinement; his wrists were open sores, and his face was gaunt. In some respects, the madness—or, rather, the illness—of a powerful mage-king was exactly the same as that of an ordinary person.
Harriot was writing a letter to their mother when Pitt came home from Kew Palace one night before Christmas. She took one look at his face and winced. “Is it that terrible?”
“Exactly that terrible, I would say, rounding up or down to the nearest decimal point.” Usually the hour’s drive was enough for the cold from the king’s shadows to wear off. Either the shadows were growing thicker or prolonged use of the daemon-stone and lack of sleep were taking a toll, because he was still shivering, and his head had been aching all day. He really needed to write a letter of his own before the House sat tonight, but instead he gave in to temptation and sank down onto the couch by the fire. The warmth from the flames danced on his skin without quite touching the chill in his blood, but it was a little better than nothing. “I need to present the Prince of Wales with the constitution tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll be able to convince the House of the king’s good health for much longer. He doesn’t even recognize me anymore.”
Harriot abandoned her letter and dropped down on the sofa next to him. “Is it like being with Father?” she asked. “When he was ill?”
“A little.” It couldn’t have been admitted to anyone outside the family—not even Wilberforce or Eliot. The times when their father’s mesmeric strain had turned on him, and his brilliant mind had been momentarily submerged, were deeply private. But Harriot understood. “More than I’d like. But there’s something else. I feel, with the king, that he’s trying to tell me something important.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” He thought of the letter Wilberforce had sent him. “I’m not certain he knows, consciously. And I don’t know how to help him.”
“He might be able to tell you under mesmeric influence.”
“It’s possible. But I’d need a mesmer powerful enough to extract the information from the tangle of his thoughts without snapping them—and they’d need to be someone who could be trusted with that information once they had it. There are a few powerful mesmers in the country, but none who fit both criteria.”
“It’s a pity Father is no longer with us,” Harriot said. “Or Hester—she could have given you all the mesmerism you wanted.”
Pitt smiled at that. Their sister had inherited a strong dose of the family mesmerism without any of the complicating blood magic. Her eldest daughter, little Hester Stanhope, had inherited it from her—fortunately, the Earl of Stanhope was an Aristocrat, so there would be no restrictions on her magic.
“You could do it yourself, you know,” Harriot said.
His smile faded. “No, I couldn’t.”
“Why not? If it’s important—”
“A lot of things are important. If I use mesmerism for one, I’ll use it for all of them.”
“As do many legal Aristocrats, within limits that I’m sure you wouldn’t violate. Nobody would know.”
“That isn’t the point.”
She sighed. “As far as I can tell, blood magic without blood is only magic. It makes no difference what you call it. I’ve never understood why you need to be so afraid of yourself. Father was one stroke of magic away from being a vampire, and he used mesmerism without a qualm.”
Pitt would have willingly died rather than admit that their father—their dazzling, eccentric, loving father, whom he had reverenced more than anyone else on earth—was rather too careless about his magic. But it was what he sometimes thought.
“The strain wasn’t quite so strong with him,” he said instead. “He was still legal. It was a risk he chose to take.”
“I suppose you think him marrying and having children was a risk too. And yet we wouldn’t be here without it.”
He was startled into looking up. “Why do you say that?”
“Hester used to think it was why you never seemed interested in being married when the rest of us did. I hoped not. But it just struck me, in light of what we were saying when all this started. You do need more in your life.”
“You sound like Wilberforce, except that he’s usually talking about God. He isn’t married either, by the way.”
“Oh, that’s different. He will, without any doubt, when he gets around to it. We’re not sure
you will.”
He wasn’t sure he would either. It wasn’t only his magic, although that was part of it. He just never felt the need. His life was whole; there simply weren’t any gaps in his day or his self where he could imagine anyone else fitting in. Certainly there weren’t at the moment.
“If it was what you were thinking,” Harriot said, “I wanted to let you know you were wrong. Our family magic shouldn’t make the least bit of difference.”
“And yet you’ve never told Eliot what I am.”
He didn’t say it with reproof, but she fell silent.
“That isn’t fair,” she said at last. “You asked me not to tell him.”
“Would you have told him if I hadn’t?” He didn’t torture her by waiting for a response. “Of course not. Hester never told her husband either. I don’t know if John has told his wife, but I doubt it. Because you want children with them, and there’s every possibility that they won’t agree when our family magic manifested so recently. Don’t think this is a reproach: I agree completely. But please don’t tell me that the kind of magic makes no difference.”
“Very well.” Her voice was uncharacteristically quiet. “I won’t. But don’t tell me what I wouldn’t tell Edward and why. If I don’t share your secret, it’s to protect you. There may be other reasons—I truly don’t know—but that will always be the most important. And I’m not in the least bit afraid of what our blood will do to my children and Eliot’s. I’m sure they’ll be perfect.”
“I know—all of that. I’m sorry. In any case, this doesn’t help the king, and I can’t delay the debates any longer.”
“You’ll just have to win them.”
“Not really possible, in the long run. Fox is completely correct: if the king’s magic is awry, he’s far too dangerous to have on the throne. I can only draw things out and give him a chance to recover.”
“Only that?”
He smiled a little, despite the pounding in his temples. “Well,” he acknowledged, “not quite only that.”
The constitution the government presented was insulting. The Prince of Wales barely read it before throwing it to the ground and taking up his pen in disgust. The storm cloud swarming over his rooms at Hampton Court could be seen a mile away.
“You really are pushing things too far,” Fox told Pitt bluntly on the way into the House of Commoners. “At this rate the prince is going to forgo having you thrown out of government in favor of having you executed.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Pitt said. “We could have a regency tomorrow if His Royal Highness would agree to the terms.”
“By the terms you propose,” Fox returned, “it would be no regency at all. You’ve curtailed the prince’s rights to nothing. I’m fairly sure Charles I had more power in the dungeon before they cut off his head. And you know that very well.”
“I see your point,” Pitt said. “We’ll be happy to negotiate further, of course.”
It was now February. The king had been out of his magic for four months.
And then, as quickly as it had began, it was over. The very day before the constitution was due to be signed, the king woke up and asked quite reasonably for his breakfast. The odd wisp of shadow darted about the curtains, but the air was otherwise clear. By the following morning, it was as though nothing had ever happened. George III was sane again. His magic was completely under control.
Wilberforce arrived back in town with the first rush of spring. The House of Commoners was thronged with MPs trying to convey their pleasure over the king’s return—with a few exceptions. Fox was gracious in defeat, but he was also honest.
Pitt was perfectly composed in the House that evening; afterward, at Downing Street, he was the precise buoyant mix of high spirits and exhaustion that Wilberforce remembered from when he first took power. It made him smile.
“So the king really is sane?” he asked.
“I saw him again this morning,” Pitt said, “and there was no trace of stray magic. His bloodlines have settled too, which the Templars have no means of knowing. He’s entirely recovered. I hope the same can be said of you, by the way?”
“Not as much as I’d like.” Wilberforce never saw the point in being less than candid when people asked him how he was. They must, after all, really want to know. “I’m rather relying on divine grace and laudanum to keep me upright. But I’m very glad to be back. Do we know what caused the king’s magic to turn like that?”
“The Templars don’t, though they won’t admit it in so many words. From your letter, I assume you agree with me that it must have something to do with the dark magic on the Continent.”
“I do,” he said. “I’m not surprised the shadowmancers in Bedlam reacted to the creation of an undead; it was a significant act of shadowmancy as well as necromancy. But moreover, I think the king was reacting to the undead as an attack upon England. The royal family’s magic is connected to England, whatever scholars think. In ways we can’t explain, perhaps, but it is. Whatever happened that night, it was more than just a solitary act of dark magic—which would be alarming in itself.”
“I think that’s very plausible,” Pitt said. “Tomorrow I’ll be very curious about it. Tonight, in all honesty, I’m only curious about what a full night’s sleep feels like. I’ve entirely forgotten.”
“Is that you telling me to leave?”
“Absolutely. Get out. Before you do, though, how is the abolition bill? Is there anything I can do for it?”
“Not if you want a full night’s sleep. The last batch of evidence Clarkson brought is nightmarish. Thank you for pushing through the motion to regulate conditions on ships, by the way. I know it was more difficult than we expected.”
“I truly was surprised about that,” Pitt said, more seriously. It was one of the few movements that had been made toward abolition since the king’s illness. That, and Wilberforce’s own removal from the House, had between them all but stopped the campaign in its tracks. “I was surprised, too, that France refused to ban the trade after all. I know we were prepared for opposition, and I still believe you can do it, but I’m afraid it’s going to be a battle.”
“We’d better take the battle to them, then. The king’s back on the throne, and I’m back in the House. It’s been long enough.”
He said it as confidently as he could. Inwardly, though, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy, about more than abolition. The king’s madness had been an unexpected shadow. It had lifted now, but it had left its marks, and he couldn’t help but feel that those marks would still be there when the shadow fell again.
London
May 1789
After his enforced absence, Wilberforce had forgotten how bustling the House of Commoners was before a major debate. The benches were filling rapidly as he crossed the floor, his cousin Henry Thornton at his side guiding him protectively through the crush of people. The House knew, of course, that he intended to introduce the long-delayed bill to abolish the slave trade today. Many stopped to promise their support; Charles Fox, having recovered from the disappointment of the king’s return, jumped down from his seat particularly to shake his hand.
“Welcome back, Nightingale,” he said. “I hope you’ll leave room for me to speak tonight. I have a few choice words for those butchers in that vile trade.”
“I’ll try,” Wilberforce said, smiling. “But please remember that you and Pitt are on the same side tonight, won’t you? I don’t want you to oppose each other out of habit.”
“I won’t if he won’t,” Fox said. He clapped Wilberforce on the shoulder with all the force of his stout frame, which hurt a lot more than he probably intended. “Don’t worry. With both of us, the other side have no hope at all.”
“Thank you,” Wilberforce said. He meant it too. He just hoped it would be enough.
Outside the House, word was beginning to spread about the ill treatment of the slaves, and there had been a swell of popular support. Olaudah Equiano’s narrative of his life as a slave, publ
ished earlier that year, had set the country ablaze with indignation. Clarkson traveled up and down the country giving talks and demonstrations and left outrage against the trade in his wake. And yet the slave merchants still dominated the House itself, and—as Pitt had discovered for them—they seemed opposed to the most basic acts of human decency. Fleets of slave ships still traversed the Atlantic every day, crammed with their human cargo. Wilberforce had dreamed of them as he lay at Thornton’s house, feverish and racked with pain. It had hurt far worse than any knife.
“Clarkson’s up in the gallery, I see,” Thornton remarked. Wilberforce tried to follow his gaze but couldn’t make him out.
“He’s been here every time anything related to the slave trade has been brought up, he told me,” he said. “So has Sharp.”
“They’ll see something worth seeing today, hopefully.”
“They will,” Wilberforce said. He believed it, but he also wouldn’t let himself think any different. They had to.
Wilberforce had been speaking in the House of Commoners since he was twenty-one, and he had long since ceased to feel any more nerves than he suffered speaking to friends in his own house. He knew the men there. He knew his own abilities, which he had confidence would not simply desert him when he had something to say. And until his recent enforced absence, he knew, he was faintly notorious for having something to say. Half the time, he would cheerfully jump to his feet with not even his scribbled notes to guide him, and to his surprise what he said could often sway individual votes. He never thought overmuch about making the walls sing: he simply listened; then he spoke, as he did in conversation. They were, after all was said and done, in conversation.
This time, though, as he got to his feet, his heart raced. The eyes of the men watching with, variously, encouragement, hostility, and curiosity seemed to pick apart everything he could say before it was ever said. And yet it wasn’t their eyes that worried him. It was the imagined eyes of thousands of men, women, and children across the world, unable to watch him because their freedom and their magic and their voices had been relentlessly denied. The thought of those weighed on him far more greatly than either hostility or hope, and overwhelmed him with his own inadequacy in the face of the task God had set him.