Changelings at Court

by Ken Altabef

  After lunch Eric followed the Strand westward to Whitehall and down to Parliament. He stood before Westminster Hall for a good ten minutes, taking in all the carriages and well-dressed people that passed in front of the building. It was an impressive structure—five stories high, with an imposing limestone façade. The lofty balustrades and classical columns did evince a feeling of national pride in his heart at last. As dire as his circumstances at home might be, there was always a bigger picture. Affairs of state rolled ever onward and could easily crush a man beneath their wheels, even a titled landholder from the northern range. He was determined not to let that happen.

  While he was thus distracted, a rolling sedan chair nearly knocked him over. The chair’s pilot, a burly Irishman who shoulder-thumped Eric out of the way, smelled even worse than the sewage in the street. He passed in a cloud of mildewed leather, whiskey, and day-old sweat. He apologized to his passenger, but left Eric bruised and chagrinned without so much as a word. Welcome to London, Eric thought. Leave your outmoded notions of country manners at the door.

  He mounted the stairs to Westminster Hall. Inside, the high ceiling dwarfed the swarm of people milling about within its vast grand lobby. Here the machineries of jurisprudence creaked and groaned for all to see. The courts sat in open view, dispensing justice on matters great and small. Eric passed through throngs of Londoners, from those dressed in filthy rags to fine ladies in wide hoop skirts and men with tall perfumed wigs and elegant greatcoats. Lawyers’ Row consisted of a long line of booths standing along either side of the tiled passage, like faithful sergeants in a line. In each of these booths, a lawyer sat dispensing sage advice to customers in exchange for a few shillings plunked down into their coin box.

  Warburton’s booth was already engaged and Eric sat on one of the side benches to wait his turn among the other petitioners. A scuffle broke out in one of the adjacent courts. The case, which Eric could not avoid overhearing, involved the death of a chimney sweep. The child had become lodged against an iron pipe carrying hot water in the chimney of an east end brewhouse. To his credit the child’s master, Edwin Burroughs, went up after her to effect rescue, even going so far as to smash the brickwork with a sledgehammer. The principal outrage stemmed from the hideous nature of the child’s death by the scalding hot pipe and the fact that she was a girl, taken into service from the foundling hospital. Burroughs argued that sweeps were not likely to survive to adolescence in any case, the lot of illegitimate boys and girls being much the same in the end, and wouldn’t the magistrate prefer that she learn a trade rather than become a prostitute?

  The discussion went on with loudmouthed witnesses hurling invective, allegations of judicial misconduct, and much smashing of a gavel and threats of heavy-handed justice from the bench. Eric doubted anyone had cared as much for the poor unfortunate sweep while she had still been drawing breath.

  At this point the little wooden door to Warburton’s stall creaked open and a small man came out and pushed past Eric. He looked none too happy with the advice he had received, though that fault could not necessarily be laid at the lawyer’s feet.

  Eric entered the stall. Garrick Warburton sat on a rickety folding chair, dressed in a black judicial robe. He was a large man, with a battered gray wig several years out of fashion. His doughy face held a marked blush around the cheeks and nose, and was circumscribed by long sideburns and a chin strap of short gray hair. There was very little joy among the wrinkles of his face but he did smile as he recognized Eric.

  “Ahh, my Lord Grayson. I was half convinced you might not show up today.”

  “And miss out on your good news? Not likely.”

  Eric shook Warburton’s big, sweaty hand.

  “Ahh,” said the lawyer, “I did not promise good news. I may have something for you. That’s what I said—I may have something.”

  “I can’t bear another disappointment, Garrick.” Eric unfolded a ten pound note and held it out to the barrister. Warburton took it while looking artfully away, even though they were completely alone in the booth.

  The lawyer perked up immediately. “You won’t have to. At least, I hope not. What I mean to say is that the whole thing is almost fully arranged. And this…” He waved a sausage finger at Eric. “This is the one we’ve been waiting for.”

  “Is it the King?”

  “Ahh, no, no. Not the King, alas, but…the next best thing. I’ve arranged for you to discuss the matter tomorrow with none other than Sir William Pitt. Pitt is the man you need to see; no one gets the ear of the King on policy matters without going through him. And besides, no one can sway Parliament better than Pitt and consent of Parliament is far more important than imperial decree these days.”

  “Pitt! Very well. Glad to hear it. Now I’m beginning to feel as if we may be getting somewhere at last. What do you think? Is he sympathetic to the cause?”

  “I… don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him about anything, only his secretary. And that’s as far as I go. You know…” A nervous little smile crossed Warburton’s chubby face. “I… I do this at significant risk of my own reputation.” He rubbed two of his fingers together as if expecting more money, but Eric couldn’t tell if the gesture had been intentional or just an unconscious habit with him. In any case, Eric had nothing more for him.

  “If not for your father...” Warburton continued, “He was a good man. Always fair. And very popular. A man can never be great that is not popular, you know, especially in our King’s England.”

  “Really, I’m surprised you have time for all this circumspection and philosophy, Garrick. There must be other paying customers waiting. Now tell me, just what are you getting at?”

  Warburton cleared his throat. “This crusade that you’ve been on. Are you absolutely sure? Now that you’re to face Mister Pitt, I mean. There has already been significant damage… As I’ve said, I don’t know at all how the Secretary is going to take your appeal. I mean, what would your father think? Have you thought about that? At all?”

  Eric had, in fact, thought long and hard about it. His father Henry Grayson had lived in mortal fear of faeries all his life and tried to ignore their very existence right up until the day they killed him, along with Eric’s mother and brother and half of Graystown by sending down a horrible plague upon them all. Of course the plague was in retaliation for the actions of Eric’s Grandfather Griffin Grayson, who had run down and slaughtered every faery his hunting dogs could sniff out, all in retaliation for the death of his illegitimate daughter. And that death was in retribution for a perceived insult to the faeries and on and on and on. The grievances festered and multiplied, the death toll growing ever higher and higher.

  Eric was certain that neither his father nor his grandfather would approve his current course; his father would be hiding beneath the bed. His grandfather would be sharpening his sabre.

  “Everything is rooted in the past,” he said, offering a trite bit of philosophy of his own. “In the dirt and unyielding stone beneath our feet. This a country farmer like me knows very well. But the future—that is something to strive for. Open sky. Sunlight. Something new. Something better. It can be done.”

  “Possibly,” admitted Warburton, “but the road to salvation so often resembles the road to perdition it may become hard to tell which way we’ve turned round. The Grayson name is not what it used to be. There are so many gossips in London these days, so many tattles and loose tongues. Talk of Grayson Hall—”

  “Why waste your time with these rumors?”

  “I listen. Of course I listen…”

  “And what do you believe?”

  “I am a man of the law. A man of facts and figures and such. But there are elements of this matter that can not well withstand public scrutiny. There are men at your estate. Men that have been changed—”

  “Wounded in the event and scarred, that is all.”

  “That excuse might pass muster so far as it goes but there is a man living in Graystown, out in the open for all to see,
so to speak. That man has green skin and pointed ears or whatever. His troubles are laid most definitely at your feet.”

  “That’s my problem. Does the crown concern itself with every barrel maker in every rural town?”

  “Fair enough, but then there are the, ahh, uncomfortable rumors about Lady Theodora… Some insist that she is a faery herself. I’m certain I don’t believe it, but people talk and talk. A faery so close to the royal court. Now that is something the King would take most seriously.”

  “And what would be the King’s feeling about that?”

  “I don’t know. But Pitt would be concerned. So let me ask you. Is there any truth to this scandal?”

  “What? That my wife is some sort of a faery?”

  Warburton flushed with a hint of embarrassment which was, Eric presumed, quite a stretch for the lawyer. But he would not let this go. “I risk my own reputation…”

  Though it pained Eric to do so, he smiled pleasantly. “My wife’s blood runs as blue as my own. Rest assured, not a drop of fairy purple in her veins. It’s just talk. You know how people talk.”

  “Well, you are championing their cause.”

  “Yes I am. Just do your part. Get me the meeting with Pitt.”

  “It’s already arranged. First thing in the morning. Eight o’clock. Payne’s Garden.”

  “Fine. I’ll engage rooms tonight for my steward and myself. Suggestions?”

  “Tottenham Road. There’s a widow I know there. She keeps a very nice house.”

  Warburton handed him a card.

  “Thank you, Garrick. For everything.”

  “Good luck.”

  Eric emerged into the vast open lobby of Westminster Hall. The contentious court case outside the booth had concluded, the crowd already shuffling on to some new drama. Eric addressed a man in workman’s clothes, someone who had voiced his opinion loudly during the case. “What happened? What about Burroughs?”

  The man sneered. “Fined ten pounds, six. Bargain enough, I’d say, to keep his neck out of the hangman’s noose.”

  “A bargain,” agreed Eric. Money solved all problems. Not talk. Not reason. Maybe he had taken the wrong tack with this all along. Perhaps he put too much stock in right and wrong, and lost causes. Maybe he could’ve bribed some members of Parliament at the onset, when the Grayson family had still been flush with cash. Now that he had fallen on such hard times, he could hardly muster an amount such as would interest any high official. As he’d said to Theodora, last chance. Everything in life is a chance, he thought. The biggest risk is not taking any risk at all.

  He forced his way among a throng of people loitering and talking loudly at the base of a wide stairway. He went up two flights and crossed a long, finely-paneled hallway lined with mahogany balustrades. At the gallery he was stopped by a man in uniform. “Sorry. Gallery is full.”

  Eric stood tall. “Lord Eric Grayson, Durham Bay.”

  The guard squinted one eye at him. For a moment Eric took umbrage. Surely the Grayson name was not so badly tainted as to deserve that sort of a look. Then he realized he hadn’t dressed properly for the occasion. He wore a plain riding cloak and jacket, an outfit chosen so as not to attract attention on the road. His head was bare of wig or hat, his shoulder-length black hair tied in back by a thin knot of rough leather.

  “I’ll only be a moment,” Eric assured him, offering a silver five-shilling coin.

  “As you wish.”

  The balcony was lined with people of all sorts. Eric didn’t know what issue was being discussed before the assembly and didn’t care. He squeezed in between a countess and her fashionably-dressed paramour. The close air held the unmistakable odors of an elite gentleman’s club—a mix of pipe smoke, well-worn leather, dusty velvet and men’s cologne.

  A grand chandelier hung in the center of the room, its candles unlit. Instead, daylight streamed in through three tall panel windows set high at the far end of the gallery, splashing warm and bright against the gothic arches and fine tracery of the great hall. Every panel of fruitwood and every bit of molding was ornately carved wherever it wasn’t hung with an elegant tapestry or a framed portrait of some great orator of the past. Beneath the chandelier, three men stood at podiums addressing an assembly full of wigged heads, four rows deep. The man speaking was none other than William Pitt himself.

  The Secretary of State was a tall man among his peers, or perhaps his height was merely an illusion of his impressive ensemble. He was dressed almost entirely in crushed red velvet, a superb overcoat with back panels that stretched nearly all the way to the floor, insanely broad cuffs from which peeked the impeccably white ruffles of his shirtsleeves. A pair of matching breeches ended just above the knee at white stockings adorning the impressive calves of a longstanding horseman.

  He had a thin, shrewd face. A long patrician nose was the centerpiece of as stately a countenance as Eric had ever seen. He was a man of fifty, but looked older due to an expansive gray wig, parted in the middle and trailing carefully dressed curls to each shoulder. Pitt spoke stridently and effectively.

  “…the crown has amassed clear evidence—clear evidence I say—that foreign interests are engaged in this scheme to flood the market with second-rate textile goods. And who is behind the plot? The Prussians, of course, abetted by shady operators in our own East Indian holdings. Worse yet, I understand some of our own—members of the House of Lords itself—have been complicit in these illegal transactions.”

  He paused to rake his eyes across the faces in the gallery at the far end of the room. He had eyes sharp as any faery’s, Eric thought. Even at such a distance, he seemed to measure them each carefully before continuing, “I am not accusing anyone in this room, but I urge you to take my words under careful advisement.”

  His gaze locked with several men in turn. If he had not known the exact identity of the conspirators before, Eric had no doubt he had just ascertained the necessary information.

  “When trade is at stake, we must defend ourselves or perish. Unless these illegal practices are ended immediately, I recommend this body pass import tariffs as severe as necessary to protect British companies in competition.”

  “My Lord,” said a man in the first row opposite, “You would risk a trade war with Prussia?”

  “Our principal ally against the French?” objected someone else.

  Pitt measured them both with a careful eye and said, “All panic talk aside, there will be no trade war.”

  “And how do you know this?” said the first man. A broad murmur rippled across the room until it built into a chorus of: “How so? How so?”

  “There will be no trade war,” said Pitt, quieting them with the outstretched palms of his well-manicured hands.

  “How so?”

  “Because the Prussians can not afford one.”

  His head moved only slightly, his eyes scanned the room. But there was no rejoinder, only a stunned silence.

  Eric turned away. Pitt impressed him as a firm hand, rock solid in his principles, without a tremor of doubt. He was a hard man, to be sure, but a man of reason and therefore a man who could be reasoned with. Let’s hope. He must have confidence that Pitt would see reason.

  Let’s hope. He would make his case first thing in the morning.

  First thing in the morning. Things were looking up.

  Chapter 4

  “This is the best festival ever!”

  Theodora smiled down at her friend. “Gryfflet dear, you say the exact same thing every year.”

  Though well over a century old, Gryfflet almost always chose to appear as a young girl, a child of nine or ten with a chubby face and large soulful eyes, a cute button nose and high, wildly pointed ears. Her skin had a grassy tint so subtle and luminous it was more yellow than green and perfectly complemented her fine blond hair. She wore only a halter top of soft brown bark and pale moss, sprouting a ruffle of baby’s breath as a decorative trim at the waist.

  “Oh, but this year is different,” insisted
the little sprite. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “Yes,” Theodora agreed. There was some truth to her friend’s sentiment, a palpable feeling that seemed to run throughout the hollow.

  “I feel it too,” added James. As he turned his head to take it all in, his eyes glittered with faery light.

  All around them, the Festival of Lights was in full swing. Streamers of colored air rippled above their heads in crimson and yellow and green. Scores of faeries floated around the cavern amid tinkling bells and silver rose petals, their delicate wings and unfettered hair fluttering behind. Their skin came in various colors, some green, some white, or gray or black. Their apparel ranged from diaphanous gowns of faery silk to perfectly tailored jackets of colorful moss as fine as close-cropped velvet. Those who cared to wear actual clothes sought magnificence and pageantry, abandoning the muted greens they commonly wore topside as camouflage in exchange for a much grander palette. On this festival day the variety and intensity of colors assaulted the eye—the orange and yellow of a sun-baked heath, the blue of an ice-cold lake, the crimson of fresh-drawn blood. Other faeries ran naked but for twinkling lights and leafy wreaths carefully positioned so as not to conceal the most interesting bits. Some showed no sex organs despite their nudity, while others boasted prodigiously exaggerated assets and ably demonstrated their use. This contradiction between nudity and excessive ornamentation was no contradiction at all, for chaos and unfettered self-expression reigned in this earth-hidden realm.

  The entire scene ran riot with music and dancing. The songs and merriment echoed up and down, amplified by the weird acoustics of the vast cavern. Secreted away beneath the inland hills of Durham, the faery settlement at Barrow Downes was significantly larger than it had any right to be. Fifty years ago, when Moon Dancer was at the height of her powers, she had bent the laws of physics just a little and twisted space in order to accommodate the entire faery stronghold out of sight beneath the hills and meadows frequented by mankind.