by H. G. Parry
Babette slipped into her chair and glanced at the door. “There are a lot of people out there on the streets this morning,” she observed. She helped herself to toast. “What’s happening out there?”
Robespierre’s amusement died abruptly; he saw the same happen in Éléonore’s eyes. “Something you shouldn’t see,” he said, and got up to close the door that led to the courtyard.
London
February 1793
Shortly before Saint-Domingue, Pitt had stood up in Parliament after almost a decade of careful management of the Treasury and—Wilberforce suspected not without understandable pride—had been able to declare that Britain was enjoying almost unprecedented prosperity. Taxes had been cut, national debt paid off, and Pitt had announced that it was feasible that within fifteen years Britain would be entirely free of debt. He had added that of course it was impossible to predict what crises might arise in fifteen years, but that unquestionably there was never a time in the history of the country when they might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace than at the present moment.
Wilberforce had reminded Pitt of this statement not long ago, and teasingly asked him for an explanation.
“The explanation, Wilberforce,” Pitt had said, “is that I was talking complete nonsense, and somebody should probably have clubbed me over the head with my own budget as soon as I sat down again. In future, that duty falls to you.”
He said it with a smile, but it was tight enough that Wilberforce suspected he had been rather tactless.
On the Continent, things were growing darker. The stories from France were alarming: news of riots, and massacres of innocent prisoners by jeering mobs, and the violent overthrow of the monarchy. Against popular predictions, France had not settled after its latest transformation, but had transformed overnight into an engine of conquest, tearing across Europe, assimilating new territories. Pitt and the government had at last sent the French Republic of Magicians a warning that if they didn’t confine themselves to their own region, they would be posing a serious threat, and Britain would have to respond accordingly.
All in all, Britain seemed to be heading deeper and more inexorably into war with every passing day, and Wilberforce was deeply troubled by it. This was because the prospect of war was troubling, of course. But he was also troubled that Pitt was not troubled, at least not visibly. Of course, Pitt was not often visibly troubled. It was something that had always frustrated Wilberforce in his efforts to judge what his friend had to be feeling at moments of political crisis; even when talking seriously about matters of importance, he rarely seemed anything less than reassuringly calm and perfectly logical. Wilberforce could agonize for hours over the morality of different courses of action; Pitt seemed to take the most momentous of decisions entirely in his stride. It was not surprising that he treated the prospect of open conflict with Europe with the same equanimity. But he couldn’t help but wonder if something had shifted in Pitt’s calculations since the night they had learned of the vampire on French soil; if, perhaps, the conflict had ceased to be a national matter and become, in some peculiar way, a matter of honor. What was perhaps most troubling of all was that Pitt might not have even realized this.
“It’s not that I think the administration is to blame for the state we’ve come to,” Wilberforce explained rather miserably to Thornton as they took their seats in the House of Commoners. “I know how much they want to avoid war. I just don’t think the government have acted quite as I would have acted, at all points.”
“I heard you pacing upstairs last night,” Thornton said. He and Wilberforce were still sharing the massive house at Clapham; by now, as Thornton had hoped, it was the center of a rapidly growing community of evangelical reformers. “I thought about coming to see if I could help, but I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“I’m a little concerned as to how to phrase my objections to the war in a way that doesn’t seem to criticize Pitt,” Wilberforce said. “I was up for a good deal of the night trying to work it out. Then I was just up. I dozed off in my chair about six and woke up with a very sore neck and my head stuck to one side three hours later. I’m not sure it’s entirely straight yet.”
Thornton looked him briefly up and down. “As usual, head on straight and heart in the right place,” he assured him with a smile. The Speaker was calling the House to order at the front of the room. “Which is, also as usual, right out on your sleeve. Pitt won’t be hurt. He doesn’t want a war either: he simply thinks that after all one might be inevitable. Your principles are the same; you merely disagree as to practice. And it isn’t as though you haven’t made your position clear from the beginning.”
This was true, of course. It was also true that Pitt had made it clear, long ago in a different time, that if Wilberforce were to speak against him, it wouldn’t touch the friendship between the two of them. He was an independent MP, with his own conscience to follow. But it had never happened before.
Pitt stood first to outline, in regretful but firm terms, the necessity of opposing France’s advance on Europe. “Britain has pushed, to its utmost extent, the system of temperance and moderation,” he said, “but has been continually slighted and abused. France has trampled underfoot all laws, human and divine. She has at last avowed the most insatiable ambition, and greatest contempt for all nations, which all independent states have hitherto professed most religiously to observe; and unless she is stopped in her career, all Europe must soon learn their ideas of justice, law of nations, models of government, and principles of magic, from the mouth of the French cannon.”
Wilberforce listened and felt cold. He sat there still as Fox argued passionately in the defense of the Republic, then as Dundas stood to refute the opposition. He waited, heart pounding, for his opportunity to speak.
When it came, however, he was startled to be interrupted in the act of rising to his feet by Eliot’s voice whispering his name. Wilberforce, from sheer habit, checked his motion.
“Just a moment!” Thornton called out to the Speaker.
Eliot slid into the seat behind them, his face flushed and awkward. “Sorry, Wilber,” he whispered back. “But I’ve just come from Pitt. He asks you not speak against the war at the moment. The situation’s too delicate—for opposition to come from you rather than Fox’s people might do irreparable mischief.”
“What sort of mischief?” Wilberforce asked, with a guilty glance at the waiting House. Mischief to the war effort, after all, was exactly what he aimed to cause.
Eliot shrugged helplessly. “He’s asking you to trust him. He swears you’ll have another chance to address the issue before anything happens.”
Wilberforce hesitated, torn between his genuine desire not to make things difficult for his friend and his annoyance at Pitt for using that desire to silence him. Then he glanced over to the government benches and without warning caught the prime minister’s gaze. Pitt shook his head very slightly, his eyes holding a plea but also an unspoken trust that the plea would be answered. Neither plea nor trust could be resisted. With resignation, Wilberforce held his gaze just long enough to give him a hard look, then looked to the Speaker.
“Never mind,” he said. “Forgive me.” He sat down again.
A member of the opposition spoke instead—not Fox for once, but a pale young MP from one of the southern constituencies. Like Fox, though, his objection was largely regarding the purity of the French ideals of justice and liberty, and the lack of a threat they posed to Britain if properly appealed to.
“I’m aware of their ideals,” Pitt replied, getting to his feet immediately, “and I had nothing but sympathy for them at the dawn of their revolution.”
Whatever he would have argued swiftly became a moot point: at that very moment, the daemon-stone that sat by the Speaker’s chair began to hum.
Wilberforce turned to it in surprise, along with almost everyone in the room. There had always been a daemon-stone in the House of Commoners, so that a message could be sent from Parliament
to the king in times of direst need. But it was a tradition rather than a true necessity. Wilberforce could never remember it being used during a sitting. And certainly it had never in living memory been used to receive a message.
“Who answers a daemon-stone in the House?” Thornton whispered to Wilberforce.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Wilberforce responded, bewildered. “There must be a protocol, but I’ve never heard it mentioned. Pitt probably knows. I doubt the Speaker does.”
The same idea had clearly occurred to Pitt. “Mr. Speaker,” he said, “would you like to accept and read that message, or would you prefer the responsibility to fall to me? It’s bewitched to respond to one or the other.”
“Proceed, by all means,” the Speaker said, sounding a little flustered.
Fortunately, despite the disuse into which the House daemon-stone had fallen, the desk near it was still well stocked with paper and ink. Pitt took up the quill in his right hand, hovered it over the paper at the ready, and took up the humming stone in his left. Because he was looking for it, Wilberforce saw the brief shiver as he did so—Pitt had told him once that he felt touching a daemon-stone as a handful of snow down the back of his neck—but nobody else would have thought anything amiss. Their eyes were fixed on the paper as the stone hummed its message and Pitt’s hand filled the page with his small, neat script.
It was a relatively short message. Without warning, the daemon-stone fell silent again, and Pitt came just as suddenly out of the necessary trance. He was still blinking to clear his head as he read the paper.
“What does it say?” someone demanded; it might have even been someone from the visitors’ gallery. “Is it from His Majesty?”
“It’s from Paris,” Pitt said slowly. “The French Republic of Magicians have executed their king.”
The next day, they were at war with France. Pitt stood up in the House of Commoners and read out the message from the king—as always, clearly, calmly, and with unimpeachable dignity. France had declared war on England only hours ago, presumably with the knowledge that England would declare war on France if they did not get in first. The French Republic of Magicians was, in their own words, fighting for the principles of freedom of magic for all classes, races, and creeds.
“Freedom of magic? Does that mean they’ve broken the Concord?” someone called, completely in breach of House protocol.
Pitt nodded. “Yes. It means exactly that. From now on, the French army have given their Commoner soldiers permission to use magic on the battlefield. We have not, of course, extended that permission to ours. This is not a war between magicians. But France has broken the Concord, and we are at war with them.”
The news was greeted with a rustle of whispers. It was as though a stiff breeze moved through the House, shaking but not dislodging. Most, deep down, had expected nothing less.
Wilberforce remained quiet. Apart from the chill that had settled over his heart at the thought of war, he couldn’t shake the memory that Pitt had sworn he would have a chance to voice his objections before such a war was upon them. It wasn’t Pitt’s fault that it had happened otherwise. He couldn’t have known. But it was the first time a word had ever passed between them and been broken.
PART THREE
TERROR
London/Paris/Saint-Domingue
Spring 1793
Pitt did not, at first, know anything about war. His father’s tactical brilliance had led Britain to glory during the Seven Years’ War with France, but that had been over before Pitt was four; his own childhood training had been in oration and government, and his young mind, though it had grasped eagerly at everything it was offered, had memorized accounts of classical battles for their rhetorical flourishes rather than their lessons on strategy. His elder brother had been a soldier before Pitt had appointed him first lord of the admiralty; his younger brother had died in the service of the navy before Pitt had become prime minister. Pitt himself had never seen a battlefield. He didn’t see this as necessarily a problem: for better or worse, he was used to the idea that he could learn anything he turned his attention to, with enough study and effort. Other people were used to this idea too, or they were just content to let responsibility fall to him. Either way, they didn’t question it.
He was thirty-three, and he had led the country for almost a decade. Now the country was in the midst of war, and it was his job to lead it through that as well. He had never wanted to do any such thing; the thought, if he were more honest with himself than he cared to be, was a cold lump in his chest that he had to repeatedly swallow back down. But it was his job. More than that, it was his duty.
Austria and Prussia had been at war with France already; Spain, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Holy Roman Empire joined swiftly afterward. It took very little negotiation for them to agree to join with Britain in a loose alliance against the French Republic of Magicians. It took more persuading for Austria in particular to agree not to break the Concord in the process; fortunately, they needed the finances from Britain more than they needed magic. Their main priority was to force France to return to a monarchy—a priority that many of Pitt’s ministers, as well as King George, shared. Pitt was less convinced.
“The French monarchy were too oppressive for too long a time,” he said. “I think we can work with France if they choose to stay a republic, under a different government. What we can’t work with is the breaking of the Concord. Whatever else happens, we need to push France back into its own borders and force them to swear to the Concord once more. As far as I’m concerned, they can have unpoliced magic within their own country if they want. They can even break with the Knights Templar again if they want—God knows I want to often enough. They absolutely cannot bring magical warfare back to Europe.”
“We might find it difficult to stop them without breaking the Concord ourselves,” Dundas said cautiously. His Scottish accent had a knack for making unpleasant truths as unpleasant as possible. Since his appointment as secretary of state for war, this trait had grown more pronounced. “The French are actively enlisting magicians now. Our own men will be at a disadvantage without magic of their own.”
It was very similar to what Harriot had said, in the same office, when the question had still seemed hypothetical. Eliot had been there too then; he was still in the government, but his health had suffered since Harriot’s death, and Pitt hardly saw him since he had moved out to Clapham. A lot had changed since that day.
William Grenville, foreign secretary, raised his milder voice. Since the start of the war, he had been in constant communication with their spymaster in Switzerland, and he and Pitt were working to smuggle at least one of the valuable daemon-stones into Paris itself. It meant that his opinion of French affairs held serious weight; perhaps as a result, he held a more lenient view of the Republic of Magicians than most. “I don’t believe the French have found much advantage yet from Commoner magic on the battlefield. They need to invent new strategies entirely to make use of any skills their soldiers have, and they’ve rushed into war too hastily to do that. Fire-mages and mesmers are no match for cannon and gunfire in the heat of battle.”
“Which is why we need to push into France as quickly as possible, before they refine their strategies,” Pitt said before anyone could disagree. “Fortunately, our allies are already making that move—they only need our support.”
“I think we can do better than that,” Grenville said. “France is not a united country at the moment. There are many regions right now with groups loyal to the monarchy. If we can support them, they’ll rise up. At worst, the Republic will be forced to expend resources dealing with them. At best, they’ll be able to help us enter into France on the coast.”
“The navy are ready to offer support,” Pitt’s brother, the Earl of Chatham, said, to Pitt’s relief. He loved his elder brother and had faith in his competency, but his appointment had been made in peacetime, when the role had mattered less. Chatham was going to come under far heavier scrutiny t
hese days, and there were already rumors that he wasn’t particularly suited to the role. “It’s in the best shape it’s been for decades. But if we’re going into battle with magic, we do need to look at protecting our ships from stray spells as much as we can.”
“Which means amulets and alchemists,” Dundas sighed. “Which means more expense.”
“Expense is my worry,” Pitt said. “Give me an estimate of what you need, and I’ll work it out somehow.”
That, at least, he could do in his sleep. It was comforting the way that some things never changed, and numbers were one of them.
“Are protective amulets allowed on a battlefield, under the terms of the Concord?” Grenville mused. “There was dispute, in the Seven Years’ War, if they came under the heading of—”
“I don’t care,” Pitt said frankly. He was determined to take as objective a view as possible to magical warfare—to warfare of any kind. But James had died in the service of the navy; it was difficult for him to be objective about that. The line had to be drawn somewhere.
“You started this, in a way,” Dundas said.
Pitt took a moment to realize he was being spoken to. “What did I start?”
“Commoner magic as self-defense. Commoner magic in defense of others. Your bill, eight years ago—I warned you, at the time. It won’t take long before the soldiers demand to know why they can use magic to defend themselves on the streets and not in the heat of battle.”
“They have every right to demand to know.” He kept his voice light but let a note of warning creep in nevertheless. “I have no problem whatsoever with telling them exactly what I told you.”
“You might not be too popular with them.”