A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians--A Novel Read online

  Given this, Pitt managed to be patient in turn, even though his thoughts were racing. “Yes, I know. And of course he cannot avoid punishment for that. But had he been registered, the incident itself would not have been illegal. His bracelet would have detected the use of magic, the Knights Templar would have been summoned, he may even have appeared before the courts, but he would have been cleared. If we can argue that, the judge might agree to drop the charge of unregistered magic. In that case, the only thing he’s left with is failure to report an Inheritance. That’s practically a misdemeanor.”

  “It’s ten years in the Tower of London,” his colleague reminded him, but he was paying attention now. “Hardly a misdemeanor. Besides, to my knowledge there has never been a case of failure to report an Inheritance without a charge of illegal magic. How could there be? An Inheritance couldn’t be detected if it weren’t used.”

  “It happened in Norwich last year,” Pitt said. He’d gone to check during the brief recess earlier that afternoon, spurred by a faint memory of reading it in the papers. “Not under these circumstances, I admit: the man’s relatives informed the Templars, and the Templars confirmed the Inheritance without any documented incident of his abilities being used. But it gives us some precedent. And ten years in the Tower is a good deal better than the thirty-five he’ll receive with the illegal-magic charge added.”

  His colleague was wavering. “It’s very clever, Mr. Pitt. You’ve forgotten one thing, though. The prosecution can still argue that the self-defense law doesn’t apply, since he was defending his wife and not himself.”

  “That’s true,” Pitt conceded. It was their usual stumbling block. “But it’s still a chance, which is more than he has now. If the prosecution are distracted enough by us pressing for failure to report only, it might just slip by them. They may well try to argue, as you just did, that you cannot have failure to report without an illegal-magic charge, and let the question of self-defense rest altogether. Which, by the way, is an interesting precedent to set for future cases, isn’t it?”

  His colleague hesitated a moment longer, then smiled reluctantly. “Oh, very well. We’ll try it, at least. I’ll speak to the judge at the club tonight about changing the plea.”

  Pitt kept a smile of triumph off his own face, but he suspected some of it came through in his voice. “Thank you.”

  “It won’t make the Knights Templar very happy, mind you,” the other advocate warned. “Unregistered magic has been climbing every generation—they want to come down hard on it these days.”

  “With all due respect to the Knights Templar,” Pitt returned, “surely that’s for the law and the government to decide.”

  Said law and government—or at least the House of Commoners, which Pitt considered the same thing, though intellectually he knew better—were assembling at five o’clock that evening. As fortune would have it, the debates had not quite begun as Pitt fought his way through the crowds. The public gallery was scarcely fifteen feet above the floor of the House of Commoners, and its pillars thrust down among the benches right into the midst of the debaters. Below, he could see Edmund Burke arriving, and the prime minister, Lord North, with an entourage about him. Charles Fox was already seated and talking on the opposition benches; his bright yellow waistcoat was stretched across his round frame, and his bushy eyebrows were animated as he turned to a new arrival. Already the visitors’ platform was a rowdy crush of people.

  Pitt had been five when he had first been brought from the safe haven of their family home to watch his father speak. Their mother had been at home with little James, but his tutor had brought him along with his older brother and sisters. The five Pitt children were only a year or two apart in age, all educated at home and constantly in the company of their parents or each other. John, eight years old and destined for the army, leaned over the railings to wave at their father; Hester stood with her usual self-possession at his side. Harriot chatted to their tutor excitedly with half a protective eye on her younger brother. Even then, William Pitt had been tall, thin, and awkward for his age, quietly confident in adult company but shy in crowds. Coming after a frosty evening outside, the sudden enveloping warmth of bodies had overwhelmed him, as had the equal warmth of the shouts and protests while the debates raged below. He had felt that he was pitching on a storm-tossed raft above crashing waves, only the waves were people and ideas, and the storm around him was the same. It had taken his breath away.

  “Do you hear the walls singing?” his tutor had said, bending down beside him. Pitt had listened attentively and thought he could. It was a faint pulse and hum, felt more than heard. His elder siblings paid it no attention: they had seen it all before. “The panels are made of laburnum laced with silver. They respond to the speeches. Particular combinations of language and ideas make them vibrate and chime. The great orators, like your father, can play them like a symphony.”

  “But Father’s not allowed to use magic,” Pitt had pointed out. It was before his father had been titled. “We’re Commoner blood.”

  “Words have a magic of their own, William,” his tutor had said. “Especially in here. It has nothing to do with blood.”

  Pitt had been working in the law courts for a year or so now, and on the whole he enjoyed it. His brain reveled in its mix of order and invention, and he enjoyed the company of his colleagues, most of whom were lively and quick-witted and so appreciated those qualities in him. He liked the occasional opportunity, as with his case right now, to make a difference. There was no doubt in his mind, however, that it was employment only to support himself until he was old enough to take a seat in the House of Commoners. He needed the work, and he was grateful to have it. But he needed politics like he needed the air he breathed, perhaps because it had always been part of the air in his home growing up, perhaps because it was indeed in his blood.

  This, he had been told, was where change happened. Not in the courts, one Mr. Terrell at a time, but here, where words had power to make a building sing and alter the course of the country.

  “Good evening,” came a voice. The politely insistent tone implied that it wasn’t the first time it had been said.

  It took Pitt a few moments to locate the speaker. The voice that had addressed him had been pleasantly resonant, even melodious, yet its owner was tiny: almost a foot shorter than Pitt, and his slight figure was half-swallowed by the crowds. He was a young man, perhaps Pitt’s own age. His features were not striking or remarkable, leaving only a vague impression of strong eyebrows, a delicate cleft chin, and a nose that turned up at the end. There was an air of lively curiosity and intelligence about his face and eyes, however, that drew Pitt’s attention toward him out of the press of people.

  Unfortunately, if he had ever seen either features or owner before, they had made no impression, and he couldn’t now put a name to them. That wasn’t uncommon for him, but it was very embarrassing.

  “We’ve met once or twice at Cambridge,” the man said, without a hint of reproach. Apparently, he had recognized the problem. “You would have no cause to remember. You were always doing something studious, and I was and am being constantly persuaded to do anything but; I’m also nobody of real consequence. As a result, I know that you’re Mr. William Pitt, younger son of the famous Earl of Chatham, and you have no idea what peculiarly impertinent person is forcing himself upon your notice. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  The introduction, and the impish smile that accompanied it, was so without any trace of unease that Pitt felt his usual self-consciousness abate.

  “I’ll forgive you,” he countered, “if you remedy my ignorance immediately.”

  “I’m William Wilberforce,” the man said. His cheeks were flushed, either from the cold outside or the hot, rambunctious atmosphere of the platform, and his eyes were twinkling. “My father was a Commoner merchant from Hull, and I’m supposedly reading at Cambridge, although I fear I spend more time outside its walls than in lately. As I said, I’m being actively encouraged
to do as little work as possible. If you desire proof, ask me what brought me into London.”

  “What brought you into London?”

  “I’m glad you asked. I was told I might as well spend some time here and enjoy myself, since my inheritance—monetary, I mean, not magical—means I have no real need to pass the exams. My own tutor told me this. But in fairness, I’ve found London extremely diverting. I only came into the House last week because a group of us were walking between a dinner engagement and a ball and wanted to escape the snow, if I’m honest, but as you see, I’ve come back alone today when there’s been but a light frost. I’ve shocked you.”

  “No, of course not,” Pitt said, more stiffly than he intended. He had been brought up to regard a visit to the House of Commoners as a reward for being exceptionally well behaved, and therefore to hate the thought of idle spectators. He hadn’t meant to hold that against his new acquaintance, though, and he certainly hadn’t meant to make it obvious he was doing so.

  “That is a very polite lie,” Wilberforce said adamantly. “I was watching you, and your nose wrinkled a little in distaste. It was the look given to me by a gambling friend of mine when I mentioned that I quite like playing cards, and the look given to me by my religious aunt when I was very small and said I liked the parts of the Bible that had animals in them, so I know it well. Just tell me I’m committing heresy.”

  It was Pitt’s turn to smile. “Very well,” he said, matching Wilberforce’s gravity. “Coming into the House of Commoners to escape the snow is heresy. Akin to using hundred-year-old wine to clean your toothbrush.”

  “Thank you so much for explaining.” His tone became a little less playful. “In fact, I’m taking it more seriously than I made it sound. I don’t, you see, happen to agree with my tutor that I have no need of anything except my inheritance. I want to have a career of some kind very soon, and I really did find the debate last week fascinating.”

  “Which one did you hear?”

  “It was about the American War,” Wilberforce said at once. This could have described any number of debates from last week, but from the way his face ignited, Pitt suspected he knew the one he meant. “Edmund Burke called for the government to make peace.”

  “Again.” Pitt felt his own excitement ignite at the memory. “I heard it too.”

  “He was brilliant, wasn’t he?”

  “He was. At the end he was transcendent.”

  “The part that went—I can’t quite remember the phrase, but it was something about how the struggle for liberty always manifests as a struggle for the right to magic—”

  “‘Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of magic.’” Pitt smiled at Wilberforce’s look, slightly embarrassed. “I tend to remember speeches. Did you agree with him?”

  “Wholeheartedly, as far as making peace with America is concerned. I know your father did too. What he said about magic and liberty just made me think about the reverse, in this country.”

  That was unexpected, and interesting. “How so?”

  “Well—it struck me that if struggles for liberty usually take the form of struggles for the right to practice magic, then the liberty of a given nation ought to be reflected in how freely magic is practiced in that nation. And our magical laws really are terribly out of date, aren’t they? There’s almost no leeway for Commoners to use their magic at all, even when it would be foolish for them not to do so.”

  “Dear God, yes.” The courtroom was fresh in his mind. “There’s but one legal exception allowing for magic in the case of self-defense. The accused has to be under direct attack, with clear and present risk to his life. There are a thousand other reasons why a Commoner might reasonably use magic: to push a child out of danger, to warm a freezing house in winter, to heal a dying man. The law needs to account for them.”

  “Do you not agree, then, that legislation of that kind can be abused?”

  “All legislation can be abused; that’s what courts are designed to prevent. We need to reexamine exactly why magic is illegal to Commoners and make sure the laws reflect that and nothing else. We also need to—”

  The renewed commotion in the gallery told Pitt that the debate was beginning down in the House. For once he felt a flare of disappointment—not because he wouldn’t have the opportunity to finish, but because he wouldn’t hear the reply. He hadn’t had such a promising start to a conversation in a while, and certainly not with somebody he hardly knew.

  “Better give them a turn, I suppose,” Wilberforce said, with such convincing magnanimity it made Pitt smile. “Tell me what you were thinking later, though?”

  “If you’re still here at the end of the debates,” Pitt promised. He had work to do for the trial tomorrow, but that could wait. “Most won’t stay.”

  “Oh, believe me,” Wilberforce said, “you will find it nearly impossible to lose me.”

  The following day, John Terrell was sentenced to ten years in the Tower of London for failure to report an Inheritance, after a hard-fought trial that lasted well into the evening. The charge of unregistered magic was dropped without sentence. The courtroom was plunged into uproar as the sentence was passed, and Pitt, sitting in his place by the senior advocate, couldn’t help but feel a quiet glow of triumph. It was an unprecedented victory: an admission that even an unregistered magician could use his or her abilities in an act of self-defense without prosecution for the act itself. It also, though most wouldn’t have noticed, stretched the definition of “self-defense” by more than a little.

  It wasn’t, he was painfully aware, quite so much of a triumph for Mr. Terrell. The man stood as if dazed, the pallor of his face already that of a prisoner, and looked with anguished eyes at the tearful woman who was surely his wife. He would be parted from her for but ten years, Pitt reminded himself. However difficult that would be, it was still an astonishing improvement on thirty-five.

  He told Wilberforce about it as they dined at White’s that night: the two of them had met once again in the House of Commoners and once again found their conversation had spilled outside the debates. This had involved Wilberforce rearranging what seemed to Pitt a dizzying entangle of social engagements, but he assured Pitt that he was notoriously unreliable, and his friends would expect nothing less.

  “It’s just a piece of legal trickery, really,” Pitt said. “But with any luck the issue will be raised in Parliament the next time somebody tries to implement fairer penalties for unregistered magic.”

  “Good,” Wilberforce declared. “And if nobody has done so by the time you’re old enough to run for Parliament, you can bring it up yourself.”

  “Or you can,” Pitt returned.

  “If I ever decide to run for office. I still don’t know if I will.”

  “Oh, I’m fairly convinced you will. After all, you were there at the House again tonight, when there were only intermittent showers.”

  Wilberforce smiled, though something passed across his face. Not quite a cloud, but a shadow of a cloud. “The last time I tried to do something I thought was important, it was not received very well by my family. I was twelve, and I decided I wanted to retire from the world, join the church, and become a Methodist.”

  “Really?” Pitt glanced at his companion’s very un-Methodist-like demeanor with what could charitably be called surprise, but confined himself to saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a Methodist.”

  “My aunt and uncle are Methodists. I went to live with them for a time, after my father died. But don’t worry, you still haven’t met one. My mother and grandfather were horrified. They pulled me from that house at once and banished me to boarding school for a course of strict hedonism. I think no parents ever labored more to impress their chi
ld with sentiments of piety than they did to give me a taste of the world’s diversion.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Oh yes. I’d make a terrible Methodist now. I like society too much. But I don’t think I ever quite recovered from the idea that there was something greater.”

  “Well,” Pitt said, “perhaps you need to know the world in order to find it.”

  “Perhaps.” His smile this time had its customary warmth. “It’s a good beginning, at least.”

  “It is,” Pitt agreed. Neither of them was quite sure what it was that was supposed to be beginning, but it didn’t matter. They were twenty. Everything was beginning.

  England/France

  Summer 1783

  Afterward, they were never sure who had decided they should spend the summer recess in France. It had seemed to happen naturally, as the days lengthened and the talks in the House of Commoners grew steadily more heated.

  The world had shifted since Wilberforce and Pitt had met in the visitors’ gallery. It had been three years since Wilberforce had crossed the floor of the House of Commoners as member for Hull, thrilling with nerves and a vague, unfocused sense of purpose. His nerves had lasted as long as it took him to realize that the language of the House of Commoners was not so different from the language of any social gathering: a matter of listening with great interest to what was being said, forming his own sentiments in response, and putting them to words. His sense of purpose had lasted longer, though the causes it latched onto remained erratic. He spoke up for odd bills that aimed to improve the lives of Commoner magicians, as he’d planned; he also lent his voice to tax reforms and education and reconciliation with America after the War of Independence. If he still occasionally felt a wistful sense of something further out of reach, he didn’t let it trouble him. He was a popular and energetic MP, he was at the center of a high-spirited social circle of lively young politicians, and he was very happy.