A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

  Beside him, Thornton breathed a long, satisfied sigh. “Well. That’s something with which to be satisfied, at long last.”

  It wasn’t a certain thing: the bill would have to pass the House of Aristocrats first, and that might be a far more difficult audience. But Wilberforce still felt elated—exhausted, suddenly, but as if something inside him had been set free.

  “Well done, Wilberforce.” Fox stopped to congratulate him on the way out. He rubbed his wrist, where his own bracelet stood out against his dark purple cuffs. “I’ll look forward to seeing this thing taken off at the first opportunity.”

  “So will I,” Wilberforce said. “It doesn’t match your waistcoat at all.”

  Fox laughed, and left as Pitt broke off from Canning and Dundas and came toward them. Pitt and Fox still didn’t speak outside the debates, although there was a good deal of mutual respect remaining between them.

  “Congratulations,” Pitt said—to Wilberforce, but taking in Thornton as well.

  “And to you,” Wilberforce reminded him. “I believe you played some part in the victory as well. I thought you intended to steer clear of this one.”

  He winced. “I did intend it. But my patience isn’t quite what it was. I know you could have said what I did, but—”

  “It really did sound better coming from you,” Wilberforce assured him. “I wouldn’t have delivered all those statistics quite so passionately. Thank you.”

  He meant his thanks for more than the statistics, of course. For Pitt to speak up in support, even against his own uncertainties and his desire to stay neutral, was a gift to him as much as it was a moral stand. After so long in conflict, he had been very grateful for it.

  “It was my absolute pleasure,” Pitt said, and Wilberforce knew he had understood. “Now I need to apologize to Addington.”

  “He’s your childhood friend, is he not?” Thornton asked. “Surely he’ll understand your position.”

  “Speaking from experience,” Wilberforce said, with a wry look at Pitt, “it isn’t always that simple.”

  “Not quite,” Pitt conceded. “And we haven’t been on terribly friendly terms of late. The treaty with France is already threatening to collapse, and he’s been under considerable criticism. I’ve made it more difficult for him.”

  “It couldn’t be helped,” Wilberforce said.

  Pitt shook his head. “Well, tomorrow I’m retreating to Walmer, so Addington can set his mind at rest. I’m going to be a gentleman of leisure and let all this take its course without me. Stop smirking knowingly.”

  “I didn’t react at all the first few times you said it. At the fifth, there may have been a twitch. I’ve now graduated to the smirk.”

  “At the seventh,” Thornton added, “he’s going to snigger knowingly. We build from there to the knowing laugh.”

  “The thanks I’m owed for coming all the way back to town in the rain for the good of this country, I assume. I do in fact like being a gentleman of leisure.”

  “I know you do,” Wilberforce said. “You’re even good at it, in short bursts. But when it comes to any sort of long-term sustainability of leisure, you are, you must admit, spectacularly unsuccessful.”

  “Though, to be fair, Wilber,” Thornton said, “so are you.”

  “Yes, but I work very hard to be so,” Wilberforce said. “My lack of leisure is a result of sustained and calculated effort.”

  “And all the more spectacular for it,” Pitt said generously.

  Thornton excused himself then, to talk to someone he’d sighted nearby, and Wilberforce looked quickly at Pitt.

  “I visited Larrington this morning,” he said. “Can we talk?”

  “Of course we can. Half an hour? Addington shouldn’t take longer than that.”

  “Good. White’s, over supper?”

  “More than good,” Pitt said. “I haven’t dined there in far too long.”

  The club had changed, as it turned out: Wilberforce hadn’t dined there in a long while either, but supper at either of their homes would have been enveloped in a cloud of too many guests and family members to enable them to discuss Larrington at all. Here, between them, they had enough social and political status to wrangle one of the much-coveted private dining rooms at the back of the building. It was needed. The main club rooms, always a riot of drinking, gaming, and mischief, were beginning to reach heights of fashionable extravagance that rather horrified Wilberforce. Hester’s friend Beau Brummell, the famous dandy, was holding court by the window named for him, and the room rang with the raucous laughter of his followers.

  “Were we ever that young?” Wilberforce asked as the door closed behind them.

  “I think we were younger,” Pitt said. He seemed more amused than appalled. “And certainly we were as loud.”

  They fell quickly to discussion as they waited for their food. Outside the well-lit room, the very early morning looked cold and black.

  “They’ve moved Larrington to his country house at Wimbledon,” Wilberforce said. “He could say very little to me—he still hasn’t recovered his senses, and perhaps he never will. But I spoke to his housekeeper, a Mrs. Bletchley. She told me, in confidence, that he speaks about a voice. A voice in his head that he wasn’t supposed to hear. She’s terrified, poor woman. She wanted me to tell her if it was demons.”

  “And what did you tell her?”

  “I told her I have no more knowledge of demons than she does, sadly, but I thought not.”

  Pitt smiled, very slightly. “But you do have your suspicions of what it might be.”

  Wilberforce shook his head. “We may be reading too much into nothing. The man had an apoplectic fit: he’s not particularly young or particularly strong, and he was under emotional stress. The walls’ response may be nothing at all.”

  “It’s possible,” Pitt agreed neutrally. He coughed, and took a drink from his glass.

  “Or it may have been some kind of magical assault upon him, something the physicians couldn’t detect. It would be shocking, but it has happened before when emotions run out of control in the House.”

  “Also possible. Is that what you think it was?”

  “I think that it was our enemy,” Wilberforce said, without needing to consider his words. He had already thought over the scene a thousand times. He knew what he had seen flicker in Larrington’s eyes. “I think he was exercising his influence to help Larrington to oppose the bill. I think he pushed through too hard, perhaps because Larrington resisted, and the walls screamed in response to an alien voice. And I think Larrington’s mind snapped under the strain.”

  “So do I,” Pitt said. “The question is how, and how far it stretches. He shouldn’t have any hold over anyone outside his territory—and certainly not in what is, by vampire law, still my territory. Somehow he has, or at least he had, at that moment.”

  “Clarkson met the vampire in France and let it in then,” Wilberforce suggested. “Perhaps Larrington did the same.”

  “Larrington has never been to France. I had that same thought, and investigated it. He’s never left England.”

  “How very dull of him.”

  “Indeed,” said Pitt, who had left England exactly once in his life. “I’m searching my library for ways a vampire can exert influence in another territory, but it isn’t easy information to come by.”

  “There’s another question,” Wilberforce pointed out. “Why was it being exercised at that moment? I can understand the enemy using his influence to spy; I could understand him using it to influence war policy, if that was indeed what he was doing. But the debate was about abolition. For that matter, it was the abolition bill that was delayed, all those years ago, when Robespierre’s first undead stabbed me in the dark. It always seems to be about abolition. And that makes no sense. The enemy is interested in conquest. Why should the comparative freedom of slaves mean anything to him?”

  The waiter arrived with supper then, and they paused as the door opened with a burst of sound from the c
lub room and their food was laid out before them. Wilberforce heard singing from the gambling tables—raucous still, but with genuine laughter behind it. It reminded him suddenly of the night he, Pitt, and Eliot had spent here after losing a long debate in the House of Commoners, having too much fun to remember past the first quarter hour that they had lost anything at all. Pitt was right: they probably had been as loud.

  Wilberforce broke the silence first after they were once more alone. “This does mean one thing. You need no longer fear coming back to power. However the enemy is gaining influence, it clearly isn’t your mind betraying secrets if that influence extends to Larrington. And I think Forester would stay clear of you now, if you did come back as head of government. Certainly if the enemy’s influence has somehow reached into the House of Commoners, he’ll have to concede you’re needed.”

  “It isn’t quite as simple as that,” Pitt pointed out. From the promptness of his reply, he had thought of it as well. “For one thing, we still don’t know my mind isn’t vulnerable to the enemy. For another, I resigned. I can’t simply walk up to Addington and ask him to give me the country back, even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. Not unless…”

  “Not unless what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He sighed. “Not unless I had more confidence I could make the changes I thought best, without having them constantly shut down by the king. Not unless I was needed—and I don’t seem to be.”

  “You said the peace treaty looked set to fail,” Wilberforce returned. “Addington’s stance on abolition is disastrous. And his proposed national budget just about killed you.”

  Pitt made a face. “God, yes. If he doesn’t amend that, I really will have to do something. But on the whole, he’s doing a competent job. He doesn’t need me to interfere. In fact, he made it quite clear tonight he would rather I didn’t.”

  Wilberforce didn’t say anything more on the subject. He wasn’t even certain what he wanted to happen. For Pitt’s own sake, it was probably for the best that he stay out of power. For his own, he couldn’t help but think wistfully of the early days of their careers, before the war but after Pitt had taken office, when everything Wilberforce had wanted to accomplish had been with the support of the head of the British government.

  He also couldn’t help but notice that “not unless” was very different from “not at all.”

  “I’m not surprised Addington doesn’t want your help quite as much as he once did,” he said instead. “I suspect he’s finding power far more enticing in a time of peace. With that in mind, your proximity will begin to look like rather more of a threat.”

  “If so, he needn’t worry. I really do intend to go out to Walmer Castle tomorrow. I think, whatever Addington claims, the country will be back at war very soon. I hope I’m wrong. But if I’m not, then we need to be prepared for French invasion. And if I’m no longer prime minister, I am still Warden of the Cinque Ports.”

  Wilberforce blinked. “You do realize that’s an honorary title, don’t you?” he said, only half joking. “The kind that allows a generous pension for people the king wants to reward, and a complimentary castle? There wasn’t supposed to be an actual threat of invasion, and if there was, you weren’t supposed to take the job seriously.”

  “Yes. Interesting how things work out, is it not?”

  “I thought the point of going to Walmer was to be a gentleman of leisure,” Wilberforce said. “Are you truly intending to be an army officer instead?”

  “If the occasion calls for it,” Pitt said. “It may not. The treaty might hold. But it certainly wouldn’t hurt to learn about such things. When I was a prime minister at war, I never really had the time to understand battles and tactics and defenses to the degree I would have preferred, and it always frustrated me.”

  “Does Forester think you’re strong enough for that?” Wilberforce asked cautiously.

  “Oh, Forester,” Pitt said dismissively and cheerfully. “He doesn’t think I’m strong enough for this. He’s still trying to stabilize the elixir. That’s his job, of course, and he’s very skilled at it. But he needs to learn that I have a job to do too.”

  “Is that what you’re going to tell him?”

  “Good God no. I’ll tell him the gentleman-of-leisure version until the last possible moment. I have more than enough enemies already.”

  “Do you ever wonder what that would actually be like?” Wilberforce said, somewhat wistfully. “Being a gentleman of leisure? I do. It must be very pleasant. Not like those gentlemen out there doing goodness knows what by the window, of course, but buying a place in the Lake District, and spending the early mornings on the lake, and coming home to a house full of children and friends and books.”

  “Well, I’ve no children, and I’ve never been to the Lake District,” Pitt reminded him, without apparent bitterness. Lady Eleanor Eden had recently become the second wife of the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Wilberforce had heard. People still talked about the rumors that she had once been about to marry Pitt, but he himself never even alluded to them. “But yes, I can imagine it, or something like it. I think, if there were no world outside it to worry about, it would be very pleasant indeed. But I think we’d both of us be too aware of all this. And sooner or later, it would come to call on us again.”

  “All this” could have meant anything, but Wilberforce understood perfectly. He saw, in the words, all the rush of the House of Commoners and the clash of far-off war—and, beneath them, the shadowy presence of supernatural forces at work.

  “I couldn’t forget that there were people suffering in slave ships or being persecuted for their bloodlines,” Wilberforce conceded. “But still. One day.”

  “For you, maybe,” Pitt agreed. “You certainly deserve it.”

  “And you don’t, I suppose.” Wilberforce sighed but couldn’t hold back a smile. “Just try not to get yourself killed if the French invade.”

  They fell silent for a moment.

  “The French troops have all but taken Saint-Domingue now,” Wilberforce said. “They say that Toussaint Louverture has surrendered and retired to his country estate. Most of his lieutenants have agreed to fight for the French governors, even Dessalines. Bonaparte has said that Saint-Domingue is under French governance again.”

  “In that, at least, Bonaparte is a fool,” Pitt said. “I should know; I was exactly the same fool a few years ago. Louverture will never surrender that island.”

  “I know,” Wilberforce said. “My friend James Stephen thinks he’s waiting the French out until the autumn fevers weaken the French troops. But if Bonaparte believes he’s won, then he may recall the army of the dead. And if he does, we may soon be at war again.”

  “To make a prediction about that, I’d need to know why he sent them out there in the first place. We never have reached the bottom of how the West Indies fits into the enemy’s plans.”

  It was always about abolition, Wilberforce had said. But it went further and deeper than that. It was always about enslavement. Whatever the enemy was planning, it always centered around the trade in human souls.

  “Do you think Saint-Domingue was indeed the reason he allowed the peace treaty?” Wilberforce asked. “The enemy.”

  “If I knew that,” Pitt said, “things would be a good deal less dangerous.”

  Saint-Domingue

  Summer 1802

  On a hot June afternoon, Fina’s eyes snapped open as her soul came back. She scrambled to her feet, stumbling, and ran toward the house. Her limbs were still numb as her body settled, but her heart hammered.

  Toussaint was outside the house, saddling one of the horses tied to the front porch. He turned at the sound of her approach. “Fina. I was going to find you.”

  “You mustn’t go.” The words had been ricocheting in her head; they came in a burst, like gunfire. She drew a breath and tried to calm them down. “Whoever sent for you, whatever they said, it’s a lie. A trap.”

  She waited, but he said nothin
g. He adjusted the strap on the saddle, and his expression could not be read, even by her.

  Fina had been at the Ennery plantation with Toussaint and his family all summer. Saint-Domingue had fallen entirely under the control of the French expedition. The army of the dead had been too strong to stand against; Leclerc, acting on Napoléon’s orders, had worked hard to flatter the revolutionary generals and turn them against each other. Of the three strongest, Christophe had agreed to support the French first. Toussaint, to the surprise of many, agreed to do the same. Dessalines, furious with them both, had at last followed them into surrender. He had not done it by halves either. The French had appointed him Inspector for Agriculture, and he had thrown himself into it with the grim, ironic precision of an actor handed a hated role and determined to play it well. Insurrections all across the island were being subdued by his strange, painful magic. Leclerc and his officers held full authority.

  This was, at least, what Leclerc wrote to Napoléon, and perhaps even what he believed. The reality was somewhat different. James Stephen, miles across the sea in Britain, was entirely right. It was a waiting game. The only question was whether their wait would be rewarded.

  In some ways, those months had been the quietest Fina could remember. Saint-Domingue was not quiet, of course. The colony was a seething pot of racial tensions and rebellion and hate, prone to boiling over into outbursts of swift violence and harsh retribution. It was devastating, to have come so far and be forced to stop; to watch the ground they had gained fall away every day and not know if they could reclaim it; to go to bed every night knowing that more had died that day in terrible pain. And when she closed her eyes, she saw the stranger meeting with Napoléon Bonaparte in a Corsican childhood, or walking through Jamaica in the dark. It had been ten years now since she had left her plantation promising to return. She knew in her heart that Jacob and Clemency, to whom she had given her promise, were both dead.