The Revolution and the Fox

by Tim Susman

  “There’s ghosts here,” Fergens said unexpectedly over his shoulder.

  “What?”

  “There’s ghosts. You know all the history here? How King Henry VIII housed his wife Anne here the night before their wedding and then later had her imprisoned and executed here? How King Henry—another one, before, the fourth, I think—was murdered right in the chapel here?”

  “Whose ghost did you see?”

  Fergens lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper. “A young boy, about ten. Well, I saw a shadow, but it was about that height. And a door closed when I was the only person in the room. Swear to you. Other blokes seen him too. Sometimes two boys.”

  “Two boys?”

  “There was two princes who disappeared, a long time ago.” They came to a locked door. Fergens withdrew a key and unlocked it. Behind lay a staircase which the Warder began to climb. “Some of my mates claim they seen old headless Anne, but I never seen her. Hear things, though. Wailings.”

  Kip did not think the Warder would be very impressed with his story of the actual ghost he had met in the American White Tower, so he kept it to himself as they mounted two flights of stairs, instead making the appropriate noises of interest and horror at the stories Fergens delighted in telling him.

  “Here we are,” the Warder said as they arrived at a landing that let onto a small room with three doors, all of them thick-looking oak with viewing slits two thirds of the way up. “You’ll want the middle one there.” He pulled the keys from his pocket again and stepped forward to open the middle door, then pulled it open for Kip.

  Beyond was a tiny room, barely large enough to stand in. Another door stood at the other end. “Here.” Fergens held out a key to Kip. “You can unlock that door when this one’s shut. When you’re done, come out and knock, then lock that one so I can see you. I got to see you with my eyes.” He pointed to his eyes as though Kip might have thought he meant some other eyes, perhaps on his elbow. “If he attacks you, yell, and maybe I’ll get in there in time.”

  “I’m not worried,” Kip said.

  “Aye, suppose you can defend yourself well enough even without sorcery.” Fergens eyed Kip’s teeth and then stepped back and closed the door. His face appeared at the viewing slit as the lock clunked shut. “In you go, then.”

  Kip fitted the key he’d been given into the lock in front of him and turned it. With some resistance, the lock gave way and the door creaked open outward.

  He stepped through, going from the bare cold stone of the tower into a different world, a carpeted room filled with the warmth of a fire, almost as abruptly as if he had translocated there. A glass-paned window looked out over the grounds and the city of London, and paintings of landscapes hung neatly on the walls. Two upholstered chairs, worn but comfortable-looking, sat on either side of a small table. A curtain hung across the doorway that led further into the apartments.

  “Hello?” Kip called.

  “One moment,” came the call from the other room. A creaking sound followed and then heavy footsteps, and then the curtain was pushed aside and Master Albright strode into the room.

  He looked heavier than when Kip had seen him last, the black hair and beard streaked with grey now. He carried a bowl in one hand and a bottle in the other. “I do apologize. They didn’t tell me when to expect you.”

  “I didn’t know myself when I would be here.” Kip hesitated as Albright put down the bowl, which contained an assortment of nuts, and then the bottle on the little table between the two chairs.

  “It doesn’t make much difference to me these days. I’m glad of any relief from watching the boats,” he gestured back toward the other room, “or the ravens,” and he gestured to the window in this one. “I will say I was quite surprised when they told me you’d be visiting. I’d no idea you even knew I was here. Please, have a seat.”

  “My tail is quite wet.” Kip held it awkwardly but could not prevent it from dripping on the floor.

  Albright laughed. “I’ll move the chair closer to the fire when you leave. It will have ample time to dry before anyone else comes to sit in it, believe me.”

  Kip held his tail around his hip and sat in the nearer chair as Albright fetched two glasses from the small cabinet below the brighter of the two landscapes. “I didn’t know you were here until almost a year ago. It took that long to get the Crown to admit that you were alive. And then another six months to agree to allow a visit. And nearly as long to schedule one.”

  The other chair groaned as Albright sank his weight into it. “If you’d come later in the day, you might have gotten some of Bridget’s lamb from The Darby. Though I suppose you can go there whenever you like.”

  “You must be very valuable to the Crown,” Kip said.

  “I have my uses. When you have heard the things that I have, been part of the meetings I have, the government is loath to let that information pass from the world. Especially when the deeds I’ve done are in their name. Mostly.”

  “I’d prefer not to be reminded of the things you’ve done.”

  “Fair point.” Albright poured wine into each of the glasses. “Will you join me?”

  “I think I should not.” Kip eyed the glasses.

  “Very prudent. Exactly right. It’s no wonder you’ve survived to this age.” He lifted one of the glasses in a toast and then sipped from it. For a moment he looked hopeful, and then he set down the glass with a sigh. “And you haven’t missed anything special. I regret to inform you that this claret is quite sharp. It has not aged enough, in my opinion.”

  “How tragic.”

  “It is my lot.” Albright took a handful of nuts and leaned back. “Now, before we get to your question, I hope you will answer one of mine.” When Kip inclined his head, Albright went on. “How did you know I was alive to pester the Crown about my location?”

  Kip allowed a slight smile to touch his muzzle. “I tried to find you in the demon plane and couldn’t.”

  The hand that had been bringing nuts to Albright’s mouth froze, and slowly sank back into his ample lap. “Well. There it is, then.”

  Kip nodded. “Azmelqart, the name I could only find in the text as a powerful Phoenecian sorcerer—he was Windsor’s demon. That was the secret you were trying to protect.”

  “Yes.” Albright stared straight ahead.

  “My question is, how did you come to know it?”

  Now the bushy beard and unruly hair turned toward Kip. “Because I was the appointed one. King’s College has had one sorcerer ever since the summoning of demons was discovered who knows the secret, knows where the names come from. We trace that tradition back to Master Capitum who compiled the first lists of demons.”

  “So are you still the person, or does King’s have another now?”

  Albright ate the remaining nuts from his hand, chewed slowly, and then laced his hands together across his stomach. “I have passed on that responsibility. It seemed fitting, as I am no longer a member of the College nor even able to cast a simple spell.”

  There was no real way to feel sorry for this murderer living in a luxurious apartment complaining about the quality of the French wine he was brought, and Kip was not even tempted to try. “So we’ve known what demons are all this time.”

  “Of course we have. What, do you think someone wrote down a list of names and a sorcerer just found it, created a summoning spell, and never asked where these creatures came from?” Albright snorted. “Capitum left behind an instructive and nearly indecipherable text that each Keeper of Demons re-copies and updates before passing it on to the next one. It is not yours to read, but I can tell you that at least Master Capitum understood the power that lies in people, guessed that that power might attach to the soul after death, and found the spells to harness it. And of course, stopped people from writing down their sorcerer names where anyone might come across them.”

  The power that lies in people…Kip’s ears came up. “Did you tell Victor about that as well?”

  Now Albrigh
t’s eyes widened, and for the first time he looked slightly surprised. “We had many discussions along those lines, but I never revealed the secret of demons to him. Do you know what’s happened to him? The people I talk to know only that he disappeared around the time your people had that unfortunate trouble. My compliments on your performance in the face of that, by the way. Long overdue, but then…” He waved a hand around his gilded cage.

  “Victor caused that.” Kip saw no need to dress up the truth. “He cast a Great Feat and it killed him. But he also became the instrument of its reversal.”

  Another look of surprise and then Albright broke into laughter. “Ah ha ha! My dear boy—my dear colleague, I should say, for you have proven yourself many times over—that is delicious. Delightful! I am doubly, triply glad for your visit now. I suppose that unpleasant rat Calatian he dragged around with him everywhere has perished as well.”

  “Most likely,” Kip said evenly. Farley had not been seen since that night, and his fate remained a mystery. But it was true that last year there had come to his ears a rumor of a pirate from Haiti who was able to fling cannonballs with magic, whom, it was said, had been stabbed in the back by his captain and thrown overboard. It was also true that over the last year, people on the Isle of Dogs and at King’s College had told Kip that the marmots around Greenwich had grown bold and aggressive, and the phrase “nasty as a marmot” had begun to make its way into common usage. Kip and his friends occasionally wondered which of these had signaled the end of Farley’s life, and always decided that they didn’t care.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I liked Victor a great deal. But he was driven by a sense of injustice that was entirely of his own devising. Brilliant fellow, and if he’d had a touch more restraint, he might still be alive and hailed as the most innovative sorcerer since—well, perhaps Capitum himself, or old Calatus before him. Between us, he talked about you much more than he ought. I think your heroics quite put him out.”

  “Yes, I also got that impression,” Kip said.

  “Speaking of, you haven’t tried to raise old Calatus, have you? Might be able to—his sorcerer name is recorded. Ask him why he created you, you know?”

  Kip nodded. “I thought about it a lot. We have discussed it, but…first of all, demons don’t hold on to memories very well. I was lucky with Victor; I caught him early on so he remembered the spells he’d cast, and they were very important to him. Who knows what Calatus might remember four hundred years on?”

  “True, true.” Albright ran fingers through his beard. “And second?”

  Kip tilted his head. “Would you want to talk to God and find out why you were made?”

  “I know why we were made. They wrote a whole book about it.”

  “I’ve read it. It tells you how you were made. Not why. The closest it comes is that God says He made you—us—to rule over all the animals.”

  Albright looked pointedly at Kip. “A job we have done increasingly poorly in recent years.”

  “That all depends on whether you consider Calatians human or not. The Church says we are.”

  “Yes, yes, true enough.” Albright sank back into his chair.

  “Our pastor also used to say that God made us to worship him and to know His plan.”

  “I have not consulted the Bible in many years, so you will have the advantage of me there. However, I seem to recall a conversation with a bishop in which he said that God made us to love Him, but we are under no obligation to. I remember because I thought it quite sad that our all-powerful Father could do anything except make us love Him.” He gazed out the window. “Of course, that is not the point. The point is that we ourselves must come to a place where we love Him in our lives.”

  Kip flicked his ears back. “And if you could ask Him whether that is truly why He made you, would you?”

  Albright returned his gaze to the fox. “If it comes down to it…yes, I would like to talk to God, but I confess I am quite willing to put off that conversation.”

  “My point is,” Kip said, “that it doesn’t matter why we were created. What matters is what we do with the life that’s given us. You say ‘talk to God,’ but when you die, you’re going to the Æther and you’ll lose your memories, as will I. So we won’t get a reckoning at the end of this. Or maybe we will. Maybe demons can die somehow, and at the end of that we’ll meet God. But maybe not.”

  “But surely.” Albright became a little more animated. “You owe your life to your Creator. If you were created for a purpose, should you not attempt to follow that purpose to the best of your ability? If He laid down rules for your life…”

  “Thou shalt not kill?” Kip asked archly.

  “Ha.” Albright wagged a finger at him. “I never said I was very good at following rules. But in that case I was placing my country before my God. Both of them, in a sense, created me, so to whom do I owe allegiance?”

  “To yourself,” Kip said. “To yourself and the people around you, to do the best you can to improve everyone’s lot, to make the best of what you’ve been given.”

  “Doing good for yourself by necessity means taking good from someone else. There is not an infinite reservoir of good in the world.”

  “Our school is surviving—in fact, we have a small surplus this year—by doing good for the community. We give our time and talents to people who need it, and those who can afford to help us survive and teach more students. We have a new class of twenty students this year,” he added proudly.

  “And by giving your good to the community, out of necessity, I presume, you are taking away the good from the work you might be doing for your country. Exploration, research, discovery, an American Empire, all pushed to the side in the name of taking poor old Mrs. Gallivant down the road to the market.”

  Kip snorted. “Our country’s government has not seen fit to spare the funds to pay us until this year, and we took only some of the money offered. We would like to be seen as a partner to the government as well as to our citizens. Sorcerers in the British Empire have always been beholden to the Crown, but it is not so around the world. We are merely trying something that others have already invented, changing it here and there to fit our peculiar needs.”

  “Peculiar indeed.” Albright took another handful of nuts and washed them down with wine. “I presume that the British government is already well aware of this experiment and the dangerous precedent it may set around the world?”

  “Dangerous?” Kip perked his ears. “They are aware, yes, but how is it dangerous?”

  “Look at France. Two bloody years and they are no closer to settling the people.”

  “They’ve formed a provisional government. Emily—sent someone to speak to them a month ago.”

  Albright waved a hand dismissively. “A provisional government. All they learned from you lot was how to topple the throne. They have no leaders of the caliber of your Mr. Adams, or even your Master Colonel Jackson. Of course, those leaders were shaped by the British Empire.”

  “France will be stable soon.” Kip had had this assurance from Emily and didn’t know whether he believed it, but he believed it more than Albright’s British exceptionalism.

  “I do hope so. And I hope that your American experiment survives as well, and that someday down the road, you find your way back to loving His Majesty.” Kip made as if to speak, but Albright went on quickly. “Penfold, I never wished to end your life. I do wish you had joined me so that I could feel as proud of what you’ve accomplished as I am impressed by the means with which you accomplished it.”

  “Thank you,” Kip said, and searched for a compliment that would be truthful. “Coming from such an accomplished sorcerer as yourself, that is high praise.”

  Albright smiled and finished his glass of wine, then reached for the other. “You’re sure you won’t have anything to drink?”

  “I really must be leaving,” Kip said, rising from his chair.

  “Ah, so soon?” Albright made no attempt to rise, but picked up the second glass
and sipped from it.

  “Regrettably so. I have many obligations, as I’m certain you understand.”

  The sorcerer nodded. “It has been a pleasure speaking with you, especially about philosophy and sorcery. Should you wish to return again, I would welcome the company. Speaking on nothing but foreign affairs is engaging but ultimately rather repetitive.”

  Kip made a short, perfunctory bow. “Should I have the time, I will investigate the possibility.”

  Albright let out a sigh and stared down at his wine glass, and did not say another word as Kip left and locked the door behind him.

  He had meetings at King’s College that afternoon, first a debriefing with the Headmaster about what he’d talked to Albright about. Kip related most of the conversation truthfully and told Headmaster Cross that there were certain topics related to the position of Keeper of Demons that he could not divulge, which the sorcerer did not like but did not challenge. Kip left room in the conversation for Cross to say, “Perhaps you should talk to our Keeper of Demons,” but he did not.

  Meetings concluded, he took a late lunch at The Darby, where he complimented Bridget on her lamb chops, and then walked out behind the building and translocated back home.

  The sun seemed to retreat from overhead to just over the eastern horizon as The Darby vanished and Kip’s home replaced it. Noises from inside told him the household was awake, so he walked inside.

  Alice sat in the back yard watching Kira stack wooden blocks on top of each other. The eighteen-month-old fox cub sang, “Ba ba ba,” as they stacked, and then when they tumbled down, she laughed and clapped her paws together.

  When Kip opened the back door, both foxes looked up. Alice smiled and stood gracefully as Kira tottered to her feet. “Da!” she called, and ran toward him with her arms out.