A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians--A Novel

by H. G. Parry

  “Is it always like this?” Wilberforce asked as he struggled not to breathe too deeply.

  “Once a week they throw some water on the floor to keep it from being too bad,” Templar Holt said. “That was this morning, actually. Be careful you don’t slip in the dark. Oh, and do watch the doors. They’re charmed to give a pretty nasty jolt if you touch them without a key, and you don’t have one.”

  The inner walls of the corridor were dimly lit by torches burning in brackets, as well as by the lantern Holt carried. Wilberforce could make out the cell doors on the other wall, albeit hazily; more important, though, he could hear the calls and jeers coming from within the cells as the lantern threw shadows on the bars.

  They wouldn’t all be Commoners, Wilberforce knew. The Tower of London was generally reserved for magical criminals, like the far more notorious Bastille in France. There were magical crimes that could be perpetrated by Aristocrats: dark magic, illegal summonings, death curses. Those were what he had primarily been imagining when he had turned his thoughts to the Templars, remembering the night in France. He hadn’t realized, then, how common conviction for unregistered magic was; as all children were tested at birth, it should have been nearly impossible to commit. In fact, as he had found out in the weeks since Pitt’s visit, unregistered magic was the second-most-common reason for Templar arrests, after illegal magic from braceleted Commoners. Either something was very wrong with the tests or, as Pitt had suggested, late manifestations were far more common than anyone admitted. The prisoners he was passing weren’t all Commoners, but most of them were.

  “This is the one you were asking after,” Holt said as he stopped at one door. “Low-level telekinetic, failure to report. You say Pitt knew him?”

  “I’m not sure he ever met him, as such,” Wilberforce conceded. “Their paths crossed, a long time ago. May I go in?”

  “He’s not dangerous,” Holt said. “But stay near the door. I’ll unlock it.”

  The cell, when Wilberforce entered, was gray with light that came from a slat near the ceiling, from which a faint draft could be felt. Apart from this draft, the space was airless, and the musty smells hung like a fog in the air. John Terrell was a large man, Wilberforce thought, but he seemed withered by the space around him. His hair and beard were unkempt, and his shirt was filthy and threadbare: prisoners, Wilberforce knew, were provided with nothing that they did not pay for themselves, and plainly Mr. Terrell could not afford very much. There was a lump of bedding in one corner, as well as an empty plate and mug, but nothing else.

  “Mr. Terrell?” Wilberforce said. “I came to see you. I’m a friend of… well, one of your advocates. From your trial.”

  He wondered if Mr. Terrell knew that the junior advocate for his defense had since become prime minister of Great Britain. The man stared at him uncomprehendingly, squinting through his matted fringe of hair.

  “You were an unregistered magician,” Wilberforce went on after a pause. “My friend told me about you: how you were sentenced on failure to report alone. It was quite a landmark case. I wanted to talk to you about… what that was like. Not the case, I mean, but—before you were caught. I want to understand. Would you mind talking to me?”

  John Terrell kept looking at him. “Do you know about my wife?” he asked finally. His voice sounded husky with disuse. “Amelia. Is she safe?”

  “I don’t know,” Wilberforce was compelled to admit. “I should have found out, I’m sorry…”

  He should have too. He cursed himself for being so thoughtless as Mr. Terrell turned away from him to face the wall. Of course he should have asked about Mrs. Amelia Terrell. His only excuse was that he’d had no idea that Mr. Terrell wouldn’t know.

  Ten years, Pitt had managed to get the sentence down to. Ten, from thirty-five, on an unprecedented technicality. John Terrell had been in prison for six years—four more to go. Wilberforce had thought this practically no punishment at all. The terrible thing was, compared to what others were receiving, it was.

  “I’ll find out,” Wilberforce promised, but it wouldn’t do any good. It was very unlikely that the Templars would let him visit John Terrell again.

  The following day, Wilberforce returned to the House of Commoners. By chance, he arrived just as Pitt was getting out of his carriage; when Wilberforce hurried to catch up to him, his friend was too preoccupied to notice him until he called his name twice.

  “You were right,” Wilberforce announced without further preamble.

  “Probably,” Pitt said. “About what was I right this time?”

  Wilberforce made a face at him but didn’t let himself be distracted from his mood. A cold wind was blowing. The politicians bustling past them toward the House of Commoners seemed chased in like leaves. “Those people in the Tower of London don’t deserve to be there—at least, too many of them don’t.”

  “I don’t think I ever exactly said that,” Pitt reminded him. He had made the transition to full seriousness now. “I said, or implied, that I didn’t think you would be comfortable as the one locking them up without question.”

  “Because it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that Aristocrats should use their abilities without consequences while Commoners are put in places like that for lifting a box with their minds—or live in hiding, too afraid to use the abilities in their blood or even to admit to them.”

  “It isn’t fair,” Pitt conceded. “But you’ll never stop an Aristocrat using their magic, and they don’t want Commoners using theirs. It’s been that way for a very long time.”

  “Here and in Europe. In Africa and parts of the Middle East, they have no restrictions on magic at all.”

  “They have a great many things in Africa and the Middle East that we don’t have here. We’re probably the poorer for it much of the time. I’m not sure untrammeled magic is one of those times.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because magic is dangerous. Believe me, I know.” He couldn’t say more in public, but Wilberforce took his meaning. “It’s unpredictable, it’s difficult to police, and it’s nearly impossible to regulate in a family that hasn’t been monitoring its bloodlines since the dawn of time. Not that the last has much meaning anymore, I’ll admit: half of the noble families in England were created Aristocracy only in the last century, and wealthy Commoners have been recording their family bloodlines for generations. The distinction between Aristocrat and Commoner is entirely arbitrary in terms of magic by now, if it was ever anything else. But that’s the theory behind the current laws.”

  “You can’t possibly be content with that, any more than I am.”

  “Of course I’m not. I have reservations about the idea of unrestricted magic. But of course I agree that Commoner magicians are sent to the Tower far too readily, for far too long: that’s why we broadened the concept of self-defense. I agree that there must be a better way of managing things. What I outlined was simply the way things are.”

  “And since when have you not been ready to challenge the way things are?”

  “I am ready,” Pitt said. “I’m only wondering if you’re talking to me about this as someone about to embark on a political crusade or on a religious retreat.”

  Wilberforce laughed reluctantly. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “It’s not usually considered a desirable tactic for the head of the British government, no.”

  “Then, for your information, I suppose I am back in politics,” Wilberforce informed him. “But not the way I was before. I still want to follow God, if I can. But I suppose—I’m looking for something important to do, and change. I do think you’re right, that I couldn’t do that from within the church, even as a Templar—perhaps especially as a Templar. I think I want to see if I can do so from here.”

  Pitt smiled a little. “Which brings us back to the start of the conversation.”

  “Which was?”

  “I was in fact right.”

  “Oh, do shut up.” He turned to go in, then turned back as a thoug
ht struck him. “Are all prisons as bad as the Tower of London?”

  “The Tower has a certain reputation,” Pitt said cautiously. “But from the little I know—and that is probably far too little—all prisons are fairly squalid, yes. I think Newgate is supposed to be even worse. Why?”

  “I was just thinking,” Wilberforce said, “that we should really do something about that too, shouldn’t we?”

  England

  1787

  For Wilberforce, the next few months were like awakening from a fevered delirium. The world seemed glittering, new, and wonderful, and at the same time, to suddenly make sense. Every blade of grass was a revelation.

  He had thrown away so much of his life. He was determined to make it up.

  The next summer recess, he devoted nine or ten hours a day to reading everything he had neglected to read during his dissipated university career, and then some: the Bible, obviously, but also Locke, Pope, Rousseau, Dr. Johnson, Voltaire, Cowper, Shakespeare. He studied magical theory, political thought, religious doctrine, poetry, and history. He filled his brain with words by day and felt their essence seep into his soul overnight.

  “It’s all very well for you,” he told Pitt when the latter came to complain that half his books were in Wilberforce’s house and he never answered letters anymore. “I have to catch up, and I’m so far behind. I spent my university days going to parties. You did all this reading when you were still a boy.”

  “I certainly did not. I’ve never read Cowper in my life.”

  “You should. He’s wonderful. And I never did answer letters—that’s something else I should improve about myself. I’m almost as bad as you in that regard.”

  “As bad as that?” Pitt said dryly. “Are you even eating at the moment?”

  “Of course. I had dinner with you only last week. Just not very much. What do you recommend I read next?”

  Pitt sighed and cast a critical eye over the stacks of books. “Milton, Paley, and Thucydides,” he said. “But I won’t answer for the consequences.”

  There were consequences, of course. His eyesight, already weak, clouded even further; his already thin frame whittled down to nothing. His mother, though she refrained from the horror that had accompanied his twelve-year-old conversion, was uneasy. Some of his friends were the same. Nor was the period of intense mental anguish over: every day, he would begin brimming over with hope and end berating himself for the expectations he had failed to live up to. But it didn’t last long enough to hurt him. His family and friends relaxed once they had talked to him and not noticed any marginal difference in his manner. It was a period of transformation and rebirth; he emerged, in the cooling autumn rather than the spring, and unfurled his wings.

  In November, with Pitt’s support, he proposed a bill that would ban the commonly abused practice of Aristocrats using mesmerism and alchemy to limit their servants’ freedom. The process, called alchemy-service, required the servants to drink a mixture each morning that would render them more susceptible to strong mesmerism, and thus more pliable during hours of work. It led, Wilberforce convincingly argued, to abuse of vulnerable housemaids, countless acts of exploitation, and degradation for all involved. The ban passed the House of Commoners easily and then, with more difficulty, the Aristocrats.

  In the New Year, he set his sights even higher. During the dark days of January, he wrote down the myriad of problems that were poisoning Britain from the inside out: not only magical oppression, but debauchery, child prostitution, squalid prisons and workhouses, exploitation of the poor, drinking, drug trafficking, pornography. Not all of these could be dealt with immediately; most, unfortunately, would be possible to curb among the Commoners but not the Aristocrats, who were the worst offenders. And yet he determined he would try. What he intended was nothing less than a complete moral reformation of society.

  This, he supposed, could justly be considered his life’s work; at any rate, it was very likely to take an entire lifetime. And yet he still didn’t feel quite satisfied. Something told him that there was, if not something more important, then something missing. If he was to be in politics, then he felt certain he was to be so for a reason—something less abstract, and more pressing. Perhaps even something more dangerous. Something that compared to the vanquishing of a shadow on a French street one summer night.

  In the spring, he found it.

  Parliament had run until two that morning, later than had been planned, and Pitt’s cousin Grenville had elected to return to his London accommodations rather than join them at Holwood House. Wilberforce and Pitt, however, still firing on adrenaline and verbal swordplay and their own cleverness, had mutually decided they wouldn’t have gone to bed until sunrise anyway, so they might as well spend as little time in the city as possible and stop for a very belated dinner on the way. By the time the carriage wheeled through the gardens of the modest country house, the stars were fading, and Wilberforce was yawning so frequently he was having difficulty keeping up the thread of the conversation.

  “I think I may be too old for this,” he said gravely as he climbed out of the carriage and into the crisp predawn air.

  “Don’t say that,” Pitt complained. He still looked remarkably alert, although Wilberforce knew from experience that his friend would sleep later and more soundly than himself once he actually got to bed. “You’re but twenty-seven; I reach twenty-eight in a week or so. I’m not ready to be consigned to regular hours and potential senility quite yet.”

  “You’re a schoolboy. I read it in the papers. I am merely an aging backbencher.”

  “I suppose racing you up the stairs is quite out of the question, then?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Wilberforce had lost that race; his shorter legs were at a disadvantage, and his bedroom door was farther down the corridor anyway. Now, some hours later and after a good sleep, he put on a burst of speed as his friend came up behind him, and with a leap forward felt the sunlight give way to shade and his hand make solid contact with the bark of the oak.

  “Victory!” he gasped, coming to a halt against the tree. “I claim the Wilberforce oak!”

  “You started running before me,” the prime minister complained, putting his own hand on the tree to check his momentum. “If you hadn’t, it would have been my victory.”

  “I know,” Wilberforce said cheerfully. “That’s why I did it.”

  “I thought you were intent on following the path of God.”

  “God probably wants you to have to make good on your promise to me. Wilberforce oak?”

  “Wilberforce oak,” Pitt conceded, “but I reserve the right to a rematch.”

  “It’s your garden,” Wilberforce said. He collapsed in the damp grass, his lungs straining for air and his legs beginning to tremble. For a moment, he felt as though he were back at his own home, three or four years ago, when his friend had been only chancellor of the exchequer and politics had seemed to go hand in hand with boating all day in the sun and talking all night. There had been times, during his darkest nights of doubt and self-recrimination, when he had thought he might never feel so happy again. In fact, his joys and friendships felt stronger now. Like the tree they were under, their roots ran deeper, and the branches reached higher. “It’s a fine garden. You should be very proud of it.”

  “It’s a much-needed break from financial reform,” Pitt said, throwing himself down next to Wilberforce. His cheeks were flushed with the cool spring air, and his reddish-brown hair was escaping from its queue as he fought for breath.

  “It’s a fine much-needed break from financial reform. You should be very proud of it.”

  “Thank you. What about the financial reform?”

  “Excellent. But with fewer begonias.”

  “I knew I’d left something out.”

  Wilberforce struggled to form a reply but was forced to use his remaining air for laughing instead.

  It was early afternoon. Around them, the gardens were enveloped in a beautiful spring d
ay, and the wind in the branches and the drone of a solitary bumblebee seemed to fill all the world.

  “Pitt?” he asked after they had sat in silence for a while.

  “Mm?”

  “When we first turned our attention to magical reform, you said that we would never prevent Aristocrats from using their Inheritances.”

  “I remember.”

  “Did you mean that? Do you really think that Aristocratic magic cannot be curtailed?”

  “I said you’d never prevent Aristocrats from using their Inheritances altogether,” Pitt corrected, turning to face Wilberforce. “That’s not quite the same as curtailing it. Obviously, they can and are prevented from using dark magic all the time. We’ve made a few moves in that direction already.”

  “And who decides what constitutes dark magic?”

  Pitt sighed. “This is leading to something particular, isn’t it?”

  “How did you guess?”

  He smiled a little. “I recognize the symptoms. So what is it?”

  “I was approached recently by a Mr. Thomas Clarkson,” Wilberforce admitted. “An unbraceleted Commoner, from Cambridge, about our age. He’s a passionate campaigner against—”

  “Slavery,” Pitt finished. He looked characteristically thoughtful. “I know of him, actually. He wrote an essay against the practice when he was at university, and found his own argument so convincing he devoted his life to abolition.”