Elizabeth Webster and the Court of Uncommon Pleas

by William Lashner

  “My son,” said my grandfather. “Eli Webster.”

  “And who do you claim is detaining him illegally?”

  “The fallen angel Abezethibou,” said my grandfather. “More popularly known as Redwing.”

  There was a murmur in the court at the name and a familiar lawyer in his white wig rose from the line of lawyers sitting on the front bench of the courtroom.

  “As attorney for the fallen angel in question,” said Josiah Goodheart, “I object, I say I must object, to this foul accusation.” He turned around for a moment to take in the spectators with his arrogant smile. “Typical slander from a Webster. But as you know, my lord, no motion can be heard without appropriate counsel, and as you yourself have barred the very elder Mr. Webster from appearing before this court, the petition must be dismissed.”

  “Mr. Goodheart has a valid point,” said the judge.

  “We have counsel,” said my grandfather, “admitted to this court just a short time ago. Elizabeth Webster.”

  “The sprite?” shouted the judge. “The girl who made a mash of things last time she appeared here? You are reaching low, Ebenezer.”

  “I am reaching higher than you know, you prideful rascal. Elizabeth Webster, duly admitted through her blood as a member of the bar before this great court, will represent my son, who happens to be her father.”

  “Elizabeth Webster,” shouted the judge. “Are you here, in the courtroom?”

  With shaking legs I stood.

  The judge’s red eyes scanned the courtroom until he saw me and then his lips twitched as if a piece of rotting meat were stuck between his teeth. “Are you ready to handle this matter?”

  “I suppose,” I said more softly than I intended.

  “Speak up, girl,” he barked. “I’ll have no mealymouthed barristers here.”

  I stood up straight and shouted, “Yes, sir.”

  The judged winced and swiveled a finger in his ear.

  “And this time have you a robe?” said the judge. “I’ll not have an attorney stand before me without the proper cloak.”

  I held up the robe that my mother had given me.

  “Well, put it on, girl. Put it on.”

  And so I did, slipping my arms into the sleeves and letting my mother zipper the front closed. The robe felt both light and heavy at the same time, like a suit of armor made of smoke.

  “I hereby declare,” said the judge, “that the matter of Webster v. Abezethibou, an emergency petition for a writ of habeas corpus, shall be dealt with forthwith. Miss Webster, come forward and be heard. We have much to do this evening, but I expect it won’t take long for Mr. Goodheart to best you once again.”

  Before I stepped into the aisle, my mother squeezed my hand. “Be great,” she said. I wanted to roll my eyes but I was too frightened to pull it off. Instead I smiled meekly.

  In the aisle, I stood frozen for a moment. Barnabas, also standing, gently put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me forward. Together we walked to the front of the courtroom. My grandfather gave me the bundle of scrolls. Barnabas took one and handed it to the tall green clerk, who passed it to the judge, who in turn gave it a quick look.

  “Fine, fine, the paperwork seems to be in order,” said the judge. “Now counsel will announce themselves for the record.”

  “Josiah Goodheart for the defendant, the great fallen angel Abezethibou, protector of his granted domain and the unfortunate souls of those sinners within it.”

  “And you, young lady,” said the judge.

  Barnabas whispered in my ear and I said out loud what he told me to say. “Elizabeth Webster, representing Eli Webster.”

  “And for what relief are you asking, Miss Webster?” said the judge.

  Barnabas whispered again. “We ask that Eli Webster,” I said, “who is being illegally detained on the other side, be brought to this court and the validity of his detention under law be proven by the defendant or he be freed.”

  “There is no evidence, no evidence at all, that the younger Mr. Webster is being detained on the other side,” boomed Josiah Goodheart. “For all we know, he could be on a jaunt to the Caribbean. This court has ruled eons ago that due to the great breadth of the other world, in order to bring a habeas action the exact location of the petitioner must be declared. Otherwise the search for the moving party could tie up the court and its minions for years, nay for centuries.”

  “What Mr. Goodheart says is quite true, Miss Webster. If we are to bring your father into this court for your motion, we must know his exact location. What say you? Where be your father now? Tell us or be forever silent.”

  Josiah Goodheart stared at me with a gleam of victory in his smile. I turned to look at my grandfather, who urged me on with a little rise of his cane.

  This time Barnabas didn’t whisper in my ear, this time I was on my own. But in the moment when Beatrice Long, at her second funeral, had passed through me, along with her sense of gratitude she had also left a location imprinted in the recesses of my brain. Save me, save him, Beatrice had said three times, and true to her word she had given me the chance to save Vance, and then to save Henry from his haunting, and now to save my father.

  “Petitioner is being held in the domain of Abezethibou, Your Honor,” I said. “Level Eight, Island of Lost Souls, Village of Flatterers and Sorcerers, House of Faltenbrunner, Basement number four.”

  “A fabrication,” shouted Josiah Goodheart. “A bluff to waste this court’s time.”

  “We shall see, Mr. Goodheart, we shall see. The proof, as they say, will be in the Yorkshire pudding. Bailiff, search the location detailed by Miss Webster and bring back her father if he be there.”

  “Lower the prison coop,” bellowed the ram.

  As soon as these words were spoken, squeaks and creaks filled the courtroom and the cage, suspended by a single thick chain, was slowly lowered until it disappeared through the hole in the floor.

  And then silence, nothing but silence. The judge peered at me with those hard red eyes.

  “What if he’s not there?” I said softly to Barnabas.

  “We must trust in Beatrice,” said Barnabas. “You protected her friend and gave her the gift of peace. She would never betray that.”

  “But she might have been mistaken,” I said. “Or Redwing might have moved him.”

  “We can only wait with patient and hopeful hearts, Mistress Elizabeth. That is our fate in this world, to wait.”

  “Silence,” said the judge with a bang of his gavel.

  And having no choice, we waited in silence. But we didn’t have to wait for long.

  A great shaft of light flashed out of the hole and then slowly, squeak by creak, the chain was raised and the cage along with it.

  At first the cage seemed as empty coming up as it did going down, but then as it was finally raised out of the floor we saw a figure slumped forlornly, its arms resting on its knees and its head resting on its arms. As the cage continued to rise, the slumped figure lifted its head, and there were gasps in the courtroom, from my grandfather and Barnabas, from my mother, and from me, too.

  Inside the cage sat my father, looking through his round glasses with haunted eyes. The bottom half of his face was covered by an iron muzzle held in place by leather straps across his forehead and below his ears. When the cage came to a halt, my father weakly rose to his feet, stooped so as not to hit his head on the cage’s low ceiling, and peered out from behind the iron bars.

  When he saw me, his eyes behind the glasses crinkled with what might have been a smile, and he gave a hesitant, awkward little wave that broke my heart.

  Have you ever thought that your life had been leading up to one single moment? Maybe when you performed a solo for your a cappella group, or you lofted a foul shot with the game on the line, or you finally leaned in to kiss the person you’d been crushing on for the last two years. That’s what I felt just then, when my dad gave me that pathetic little wave—like my whole life had been leading me to this one moment, wh
en my father stood in a cage with half his face bound by iron and it was up to me to save him.

  And who was I kidding to think that I could get it done?

  Barnabas leaned forward and whispered in my ear. I turned and looked at him, no doubt with horror on my face, but he simply nodded.

  I looked at my father in his cage and then at the judge, who was staring at me with his red eyes, as if waiting for me to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

  “Your Honor,” I said, with the most confident voice I could manage, which was actually as squeaky as my clarinet, “petitioner calls to the stand the fallen angel Abezethibou, better known as Redwing.”

  Josiah Goodheart spread his arms wide and bellowed his objection as shouts and murmurs rose from the crowd behind us.

  “Why, this is raw insolence,” shouted Goodheart in his shocked, shocked tone. “This is foul impertinence. This is high impudence. How dare opposing counsel burden such an eminence as Abezethibou with her mewing little pleadings? I say, I say nay, nay to this unqualified usurpation of—”

  The judge banged his gavel and quieted the crowd and banged it twice more to quiet Josiah Goodheart and then looked at me out of those hard red eyes. “Elizabeth Webster,” said the judge, “you have been charged with raw insolence, and foul impertinence, and high impudence. How do you plead?”

  “I’d sort of like to deny it,” I said, my voice breaking with the uncertainty of a question. “To be truthful, Judge, I’m not even sure what those words mean. But I’ll admit to being accused of all three in the last few days, so, yeah, I guess that’s me, all right.”

  Judge Jeffries stared at me for a long moment and then growled out, “Excellent.”

  “Sir?”

  “There isn’t a lawyer worth his salt without all three. Ebenezer, you might have found one here, though we will soon see for sure. Mr. Goodheart?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Your objection is denied. The prisoner was found in the domain of your client, which means the petitioner can call the demon to explain why the prisoner should still be held in a Level Eight dungeon within that domain.”

  “I take exception,” said Goodheart.

  “And I take exception to your ascot. But we have wasted enough time on this. Either the demon Abezethibou appears in this courtroom within a minute’s time, or I will order the petitioner released, forthwith. Bailiff, call the witness.”

  The great ram lifted his chin and called out in his loud, neighing voice, “The fallen angel Abezethibou is hereby called to the witness stand.”

  The ram’s words resonated with an echo, as if the order was being announced not just in the courtroom but simultaneously in all the corners of a far-off land. Even before the echo quieted, two spectators dashed out of the courtroom.

  The seconds audibly ticked—one, two—as if some great clock was keeping time—seven, eight. Or was that just the beating of my heart—eleven, twelve. With each second tocked, my father was getting closer to freedom. The judge’s fingers tapped impatiently on the desk, the ram chewed, Josiah Goodheart’s smile grew tighter as the seconds continued to fly by—twenty, twenty-five.

  “Call him again,” said the judge.

  The ram lifted his chin and repeated his order with that same echo. We waited with a growing sense of excitement as it looked as if our strategy was going to work—forty-five, fifty, fifty-five. The judge raised his gavel, ready to order my father’s freedom at the count of sixty, when the rear door of the courtroom flew open.

  A little man in a brown suit that hung loosely from his narrow shoulders rushed through the door. He had round glasses, a bushy gray mustache, and a brown briefcase. He hurried through the courtroom like a busy man with much to do, much to do, and not much time to do it. He passed right by us and hopped onto the witness chair as quick as all that.

  “What are you doing there?” said the judge.

  “I received a summons,” said the little man in a high tweety voice, as if his appearance in that chair was as obvious as the ram on the wall. “And now here I am. What could be simpler?”

  “We summoned the fallen angel Abezethibou.”

  “So you did,” said the little man. His mustache twitched. “How can I help?”

  “Mr. Goodheart?” said the judge. “What say ye?”

  Josiah Goodheart simply shrugged. “What I say, my lord, what I say is that the witness has been called, the witness chair has been filled, and it is time for the petitioner’s young counsel to proceed.” He turned to me and gestured with exaggerated politeness. “Your witness.”

  “Bailiff,” said the judge. “Administer the oath.”

  As the clerk brought out the golden skull and the ram gave his instructions, I looked at Barnabas, who nodded at me calmly, as if this was exactly as expected. The witness swore to tell the truth on the skull of the beheaded king. Barnabas then whispered in my ear and I repeated his words.

  “Please state your name for the record,” I said.

  “My lord, I must object most strenuously,” said Josiah Goodheart.

  “To the question, Mr. Goodheart?” said the judge. “It seems innocent enough to me.”

  “To the travesty of a trained bird representing the petitioner,” said my opponent. “Counsel is merely repeating the words of Mr. Barnabas Bothemly, who as we all know is not eligible to practice before this court. I wasn’t aware that parrots were now being admitted to the bar.”

  The ram on the wall bleated out his laughter and the rest of the courtroom followed, before the judge banged everyone quiet.

  “To allow this is to turn this court into a mockery of itself,” said Josiah Goodheart, “and to turn this proceeding into a shammy sham. It can’t be allowed.”

  “Yes, I believe you have a point, Mr. Goodheart,” said the judge. “Mr. Bothemly, back to the benches with you. You’ll sit down and stay quiet. Miss Webster, you will form your own questions, do you understand?”

  “But I’ve never done it before,” I said.

  “Splendid. Then this shouldn’t take long.”

  Barnabas patted my shoulder before he retreated to sit by my mother.

  I looked up at my father in his cage, who stared at me with a frightening calm. Where did that come from? Why was my father so sure of me when I was full of doubt? The only thing I was sure of was that I wasn’t ready for this, not at all. What wouldn’t I give to be back in the benches, sitting next to my mother, nothing expected of me? What wouldn’t I give to be back in the lunchroom of good old Willing Middle School West, with no question more pressing than where to sit?

  “Proceed,” barked the judge.

  “Uh…” I said. “Um, well…” I said.

  And then I remembered what Barnabas had last whispered to me.

  “P-please state your name for the record?” I said, my voice rising nervously at the end of the sentence.

  “I am,” said the little man with a quick rhythm to his words, “whoever it was you called.”

  “We called the fallen angel Abezethibou.”

  “And here I am,” he said. “As you must surely know, I have many names and many forms.”

  “Uh, okay,” I said. I looked down at the scrolls on the table before me, shuffled them a bit, opened one. Amid a storm of Latin I saw my father’s name. “And are you the one responsible for keeping my father, Eli Webster, on the other side?”

  “I would say that he’s the responsible one,” said the witness. “He broke the law. The law was enforced. Consequently, as you can see, your father has been lawfully detained. Is that sufficient, Judge? May I be excused? I have oh so many souls to care for and so little time. A demon’s work is never done.”

  “The testimony is as clear as rain, Your Honor,” said Josiah Goodheart. “The witness testified that the detention is lawful. Can we now end this frivolous charade?”

  “Miss Webster,” said the judge, “anything else?”

  “What did he do?” I asked the witness. “What did my father do?”

&
nbsp; “He violated the law,” said the witness. “I already said.”

  “What law?”

  “The law. Didn’t you hear? The law, miss. I could find out the specific violation if you wanted, but it might take a moment, and I wouldn’t want to waste the court’s precious time.”

  “I think maybe,” I said, “if that’s all right, sort of knowing the specific law that you say my father broke might help.”

  “My lord, must we?” said Goodheart.

  “Miss Webster has asked the question, so I think we must,” said the judge. “Go on.”

  The little man opened his briefcase, rifled through what was inside, peered closely at something without pulling it out, and then closed the briefcase with a bright snap.

  “He interfered with an agreement,” said the witness.

  “Is that a crime?”

  “Oh yes,” said the man. “Under the common law, yes. Men have been hanged for less. And he, as you can see, has not. Mercy has been exercised. May I now be excused?”

  “What agreement did he interfere with?” I said.

  “An affair of the heart that was none of his business. And if I may say so, Miss Webster, your father was detained not only pursuant to the law but for his own protection. As Mr. Bothemly could tell you, sometimes those who interfere in affairs of the heart come to the most unfortunate ends. You can think of me as Mr. Webster’s benevolent guardian.”

  “And we thank you for your service,” said Josiah Goodheart. “Are we done here, Judge?”

  “It appears that we are,” said the judge. “Anything else, Miss Webster?”

  I didn’t know what to do, where to go. Without Barnabas whispering in my ear I was lost. What kind of lawyer was I, anyway? My blood had gotten me admitted to argue before the Court of Uncommon Pleas, yes, but as my grandfather had pointed out, it wasn’t enough to make me a lawyer. I was still just me.

  As all my tactics and strategies rattled on the floor about me, I remembered what my father had told my mother about being a trial lawyer. You don’t start with the questions and move forward, he had said. Instead you start with the answers and work backward. It had sounded like cheating to me, as if I had been given the solution to a math problem and was merely required to build the right equation to get that result. But the thought calmed me. Maybe this could be as easy as math. All I needed was to know what I wanted the fallen angel to say and work backward.