The 10th Kingdom

by Kathryn Wesley

“Burn him,” the crowd shouted. “Burn the wolf!”

  Part Three

  Enter the Dragon

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Virginia paused just outside the cell. She had never seen Wolf look so depressed. He sat with his hands hanging between his knees, his head down. He still clasped Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway in his right hand, but it was clear that he couldn’t keep his mind on the book.

  Virginia didn’t know how he could concentrate on anything, what with all the shouting and pounding outside. She would have thought the sound of the chanting villagers would have been fainter in here. Instead it seemed like a constant drip of water: Bum the Wolf! Bum the Wolf!

  She didn’t know how to tell him what was going to happen next.

  The turnkey let her into the cell. Wolf looked up, and when he saw her, hope filled his eyes. He stood.

  “Virginia. There’s been the most terrible mistake.”

  “Look, Wolf,” Virginia started, but he talked over her.

  “How’s my case progressing?”

  She walked to the cell window and peered out. He came up beside her. The chanting villagers had mounted a wooden pole in the ground. Now they were dragging enough wood around it to create a bonfire.

  She looked over at Wolf. “We’re going home.”

  If she had thought he looked depressed before, she realized he looked worse now. “Huff-puff, you can’t.”

  “We don’t belong in this world,” Virginia said. “This isn’t anything to do with us. Whatever mess you’ve got yourself into, it’s ..

  His entire body shook, and he turned away from her. She put a hand to her mouth. She hadn’t wanted to hurt Wolf, but she knew there was no choice. She didn’t belong here, and Wolf would have gotten into trouble like this before. In fact, he had; that was why he was in the Snow White Memorial Prison.

  “Oh, don’t start to cry, please,” she said softly, helplessly.

  He didn’t respond. He kept shaking, and he refused to look at her.

  There was nothing more she could do. She took a deep breath and told him the truth. “I’m sorry, but nothing you can say will change my mind.”

  The mirror held him. Central Park in all its glory, if you wanted to call it that. If Tony squinted, he could see a Mounds Bar wrapper crumpled up next to the path.

  “Look, Prince,” Tony said. “That’s home.”

  “It’s not home for me, Anthony,” Prince Wendell said. “And you can’t think of going home while you remain my manservant.”

  Tony kept his attention focused on the mirror. Next to the wrapper was a Nathan’s napkin. His mouth watered for an authentic hot dog. “For the very last time,” Tony said, “I am not your manservant. I don’t know why I changed you back from gold. I was just getting used to a bit of peace and quiet.”

  “Peace and quiet?” Prince said. “It wasn’t peace and quiet for me, it was like being buried alive. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move, but guess what? I could hear everything, every inane, stupid comment you made.”

  Tony froze. He hadn’t realized that. “Everything?”

  “Yes,” Prince said. “And make no mistake, you really are the most boring man I have ever come across.”

  The barn door opened, and Virginia stepped inside. She seemed subdued. Tony didn’t like that, but he knew that she had grown fond of Wolf. Saying good-bye must have been hard.

  “Well, did you break the bad news to him?” Tony asked.

  “Yes,” she said. Then closed her eyes. “Well, sort of.”

  “Sort of what?”

  “Sort of agreed to represent him,” Virginia said.

  “Virginia!” Just when he was tasting a hot dog. Just when Central Park was in his reach, his daughter decided to defend a felon.

  “I don’t think he killed anybody.” She sounded defensive.

  “That’s what you want to think,” Tony said. “There’s a dead girl out there, and it could have been you. He’s a wolf. That’s what wolves do.”

  “That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said,” Prince said.

  “We’ve got the mirror,” Virginia said. “We can go home any time.”

  “So let’s go now,” Tony said. He had to make this clear to her. “Now, this minute, before we’re turned into giant pigs or trodden on by goblins or whatever the next thing in this madhouse is.”

  Virginia crossed her arms. “I’m not leaving without trying to help him.”

  Tony swore and shut off the mirror. Central Park vanished, along with his dreams of home. Virginia had never acted like her mother before. And, to be fair, she wasn’t now. But she reminded him of her mother all the same.

  At least, he was reacting the way he used to react to her. He grabbed the mirror and looked over his shoulder. They were alone in the bam. Then he lifted the mirror and put it in the back of an old wagon Prince Wendell had discovered earlier. With both hands, he began covering it with straw.

  But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep quiet.

  “You never used to be this obstinate,” Tony said. “That’s something he’s taught you.”

  “Yes.” Virginia seemed almost serene. Her gaze met his. “Someone had to, didn’t they?”

  The courtroom doubled as the village council chamber. Virginia learned that when she learned as much as she could of what was expected of her as Wolf’s legal council. She was waiting outside the closed courtroom door, holding her argument in one hand, and her wig in the other.

  She adjusted her black cloak, then put the lambswool wig on her head. She had seen such wigs in British movies where the characters went to court, but she had never imagined she would be wearing one.

  It took a moment for her father to notice. “What are you wearing?” Tony asked.

  “I didn’t have any choice,” she said. “You have to.” She sounded more defensive than she wanted to. This was the first time she remembered defying her father, and she was not comfortable with it.

  “You don’t know the first thing about the law here,” Tony said. “Or anywhere, come to that. I should have represented him.”

  “Who got you off those parking tickets?” Virginia asked. “Who took the Polaroid showing the broken parking meter?”

  “This is a murder case,” Tony said.

  “Justice is universal,” Virginia said.

  At that moment, two guards brought Wolf to her in shackles. He didn’t seem as depressed as he had the day before—the fact that she had stayed to defend him had buoyed him up— but he still looked terrible. She knew he hadn’t slept at all.

  “It’s no good, my creamy counsel,” Wolf said. “We’ve lost already. The local jury are certain to be biased against me.

  “That’s what I don’t want to hear. Negative thinking.” Virginia waggled a finger beneath his nose. Then she pushed the door to the courtroom open. From inside she could hear the Peeps starting to chant Bum the wolf! “Any jury can be swayed, all you need is a b—”

  She didn’t finish the sentence. She was going to say, all you needed was a bunch of sheep, but that was exactly what she faced. Twelve sheep, sitting in the jury box.

  The courtroom smelled like wet wool.

  Virginia led Wolf through the tiny, packed courtroom to the defense table. The place was full of Peeps, and they all looked alike. It gave Virginia the creeps. She couldn’t imagine how Wolf felt.

  The clerk of the court called out, “All rise for the honorable

  Judge.”

  Everyone stood. A Peep behind Virginia whispered loudly, “Burn the wolf.”

  The Judge entered, took stock of the crowd, and then sat down. Everyone else sat as well.

  The Judge gaveled the session into order. Then he leaned forward and said, “It gives me no great pleasure to sentence this wolf to death for the terrible crime he committed.” Virginia was shocked. She jumped to her feet. “Objection, Your Honor. We haven’t heard any evidence yet.”

  “Oh, all right then,” the Judge said. “But move it
along, nice and brisk, please.”

  That surprised her. This whole thing surprised her. She had expected this to be a bit more like Perry Mason. Only the problem here was that she was supposed to be Perry, which meant that she had to find a way to get Wolf free.

  Virginia walked to the jury box and tried not to sneeze as the smell of wet wool grew stronger.

  ‘ ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, ewes and rams, before you leave this courtroom today, I will not only have proved my client’s innocence beyond any reasonable doubt, but also unmasked the real killer.”

  Virginia was beginning to get into this. She turned to the Judge with a flourish, and then realized he hadn’t been paying any attention at all. He was talking with an usher.

  “Just a pot of lemon tea,” the Judge was saying, “and a slice of Rosie Peep’s ginger cake, thank you.”

  Virginia waited until he was done before going on. “Look at this poor man before you. Is he a wolf? No! He’s a stranger. And stranger equals wolf and wolf equals killer—is that what we’re saying?”

  “Very well put.” The Judge smiled at her. “Now to sentencing.”

  “Your Honor,” Virginia said. “I’m only just beginning. I’d like to call my first witness.”

  “Sorry,” the Judge said, “I thought you were finished.”

  Virginia was acting out parts she’d seen on television. Tony knew this because he’d watched the same shows with her. She was currently interrogating Wilfred Peep, trying to prove that he couldn’t have identified Wolf in the dark.

  Only her trick wasn’t working. She wanted him to read from a card to prove his eyesight was bad, and the other Peeps were mouthing the information to him.

  The Judge was convinced of Wolf’s guilt—and Tony wasn’t so sure he was wrong—and he was commiserating with the Peeps instead of listening to the evidence. And who would trust a sheep jury when faced with a wolf?

  This was rigged, and no matter how hard Virginia tried, she wasn’t going to succeed. Tony saw that from the moment he and Prince Wendell had taken their seats several rows back.

  Now he was feeling a little guilty that he had told Virginia to give up. She was the only one who was trying to help Wolf. If they had left Wolf here to his fate, he’d be burning by now.

  Tony shuddered and turned to Wendell. “We’ve got to help him out,” Tony whispered.

  Prince Wendell shook his shaggy head. “He’s a wolf. What do you expect? He’s only done exactly what I said he’d do all along.”

  “Virginia believes in him,” Tony said. “And, well, I want to believe in him.”

  Tony started to stand. Prince Wendell gave him a withering look that was somehow more effective coming from that dog face.

  “Nothing you can say,” Wendell said imperiously, “will make me help him.”

  “Then I’ll do it,” Tony whispered, and slid out of the row. After a moment, Prince Wendell followed him. As Tony walked up the aisle, he heard his daughter call Betty Peep to the stand.

  The Judge swore in Betty Peep, and then Virginia asked, “What is your profession?”

  “Shepherdess,” Betty Peep said.

  “Shepherdess or temptress?” Virginia asked.

  “I’m a good girl!” Betty Peep was saying as Tony went out the door. “That Wolf came up to us girls, and he kept trying to touch us and show us his tail.”

  The door banged shut as Wolf shouted, “That’s a lie! They provoked me.”

  “And it didn’t take much, I’ll wager,” Prince Wendell said in the silence of the hallway.

  “Shhh,” Tony said. He led Wendell outside and down the street until they reached the edge of the Peep farm. He walked until he found the murder site. It wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be. Sally Peep’s outline had been marked in paint, complete with her crook.

  They were nothing here if not thorough.

  Tony stood over the spot and looked at Prince Wendell. Wendell seemed a little confused.

  “What can you smell?” Tony asked Prince.

  “Your body odor,” Prince said.

  Tony crossed his arms. He was going to help Wolf, and he was going to use Prince Wendell to do it.

  “You haven’t even tried,” Tony said, imitating Wendell’s imperious tone. “Go on, see what you can smell.”

  “Why don’t you get down on all fours and see what you can smell?” Prince said. “It’s mainly feet and excrement at ground level—had that ever occurred to you?”

  Tony glared at him. Wendell sighed and then, reluctantly, bent his head down and sniffed.

  “Can you pick up a scent?” Tony asked.

  “There’s hundreds of scents,” Prince said.

  He walked around the painted spot, sniffing loudly.

  “Yes, but only a great hunting Prince like yourself could distinguish that special scent.”

  “Correct!” Prince Wendell raised his head, his tail wagging. He had smelled something. He took off as fast as his four legs could carry him.

  Tony ran after him, too elated to ask Prince Wendell to slow down.

  It looked so easy when Perry Mason did it. Virginia tried to run a hand through her hair, but succeeded only in knocking off her wig. She caught it with one hand and put it back on. Somehow, she had made matters worse for Wolf.

  Then she had called him to the stand. He had seemed eager enough. She had a good list of questions. She just hadn’t expected the Judge to ask a few of his own.

  The Judge held up a book so that both Wolf and the audience could see it. “Do you know what this is?”

  “I have never seen it before in my whole life,” Wolf said.

  “It is the infamous Wolf Four Seasons Recipe Book, and I draw your attention to the ingredients for Shepherd’s Pie on page thirty-seven. Carrots, potatoes, pepper, coriander—and one pert shepherdess, if in season.”

  Peeps rose to their feet and started screaming. The handful of non-Peeps in the audience talked loudly to themselves. Wolf cringed.

  “That book is inadmissible evidence, Your Honor,” Virginia said.

  The Judge ignored her. “How would you describe Sally Peep?”

  “Objection!” Virginia said.

  “Sally?” Wolf said. “Very cute, succulent. Nice girl, a very tasty little birdie and no mistake.”

  “Nice enough to eat?”

  “Oh, yes.” Wolf blinked, then looked panicked. “No, I didn’t mean that.”

  “She was asking for it, is that what you’re saying?” the Judge asked.

  “No, she was begging for it. She was gagging for it. No, no I just meant they’re very provocative, some of the girls. They know that a wolf—well, it’s like thrusting a steak in front of a starving man.”

  “Is it indeed,” the Judge said dryly.

  Virginia hadn’t expected Wolf to be such a bad witness. She had no idea how she’d get him out of this.

  “No, I didn’t mean that either,” Wolf said. “I’m twisting everything I’m saying.”

  Finally she decided on an oldie but a goodie. ‘ ‘He’s suffering from post-menstrual tension, Your Honor.”

  The Judge continued to ignore her. He leaned closer to Wolf. “The night before the murder there was a henhouse homicide resulting in the death of ten chickens. Anything to do with that?”

  “No, sir,” Wolf said.

  “You didn’t kill the chickens?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You didn’t go near the henhouse?”

  “Absolutely not, sir,” Wolf said.

  “Then how do you explain this?” The Judge held up a ripped bit of blue cloth that looked like part of Wolf’s shirt. Virginia closed her eyes for a brief moment, and wished herself somewhere else. Then she opened her eyes to watch more of Wolf’s destruction.

  “This is a piece of shirt recovered from inside the Peeps’ chicken coup,” the Judge said.

  Wolf studied the shirt. “Oh, the chickens.”

  In that moment, Virginia knew that Wolf had been on the Peeps’ f
arm. She had been wrong. He had been there all along.

  Wolf said, “Let me think. Yes, yes, I might have eaten all the chickens.”

  He had just signed his own death warrant. Virginia was too shocked to speak.

  But the Judge wasn’t. “And then you killed Sally Peep.”

  “A couple of drumsticks doesn’t make me a killer,” Wolf said. “I had chicken for dinner, I admit it. But I didn’t touch any girl. I swear.”

  “Then why did you lie?” the Judge asked.

  “Because if I said yes to the chickens, you’d think I wolfed down the girl as well.”

  “That’s exactly what we think,” the Judge said.

  Peeps rose to their feet shouting, “Bum the wolf! Kill the wolf!” They were shaking their fists. Spittle was coming out of their mouths. Virginia had never been in the middle of a mob scene before.

  “I didn’t do it,” Wolf shouted back at the crowd. “I didn’t do it.”

  That was it. She had to do something. Virginia leapt to her feet and tried to bluster her way through the crowd. She believed him. She believed he killed the chickens and didn’t kill Sally Peep.

  But somehow she had to prove it.

  “Of course he didn’t do it!” Virginia shouted. The courtroom got quiet, except for an occasional Bum-the-Wolf outburst. “But if he didn’t kill Sally Peep, then who did? I hear myself asking. Because the time has come for me to point the finger at the real killer. Last night there was another man going around dressed as a wolf. Oh, yes. The man in the wolf mask, and the real killer.”

  The entire courtroom gasped.

  Emboldened, Virginia shook her fist. “And that murdering piece of filth is the one who should be on that stand now.”

  “The honor of playing the Wolf in the annual fair has always gone to an unimpeachable member of our society,” the Judge said.

  “I don’t care,” Virginia said. “Bring the sleezebag in, let me cross-examine him and I guarantee we’ll have our murderer.”

  “And when that honor was bestowed on me last week,” the Judge continued, “I was only too pleased to accept.”

  The silence was so intense that Virginia could hear her own breathing. She flushed. “I’m most dreadfully sorry, Your Honor.”