The Hearing

The summons arrived on the fifth of November, brought by a footman in violet livery, escorted by two gray brothers who stood in the hall with their hands folded in their sleeves and watched the servants as a cat watches a mousehole.

The Council of the Meridian Society will sit in extraordinary session on the evening of the seventh instant, to inquire into the conduct of one of its Fellows. The Viscount Wynmore is required to attend.

It was signed Draymoor. It had been sealed with violet wax.

"A hearing," said Pike, turning it over. "A hearing. Do you know what that is? It's a trial with a better class of chair."

"I know."

"They'll ask you to account for yourself. They'll ask you to account for her. They'll lay it out in front of a dozen old men and a Duke, and by the time you leave, you'll be a pariah."

"I know, Hollis."

"Then why are you smiling?"

Garrick looked up from the paper. He had not known that he was.

It was a strange smile. It sat on his face like something borrowed. He had not slept for six days, and eaten little, and shaved badly, and the glass in the hall had shown him a haggard, hollow-eyed stranger with a week's growth on his jaw and the look of a man at the end of a rope. But there was a hard bright clarity in him that he had not felt since the night he sailed from Corvane. It was the clarity of a man who has stopped being afraid of the thing he fears, because it has happened.

"Because," he said, "for the first time in eight months, someone is going to tell me what they want."

…

The Orrery Room was cold.

He had been in it twice before: once when the Duke had summoned him to Hartwell Square, in the summer, and once at the masquerade. Both times it had been full of light and music and the whisper of silk. Tonight the great circular chamber lay under a pall of November dusk, lit only by a ring of candelabra, and the mechanical planets turned on their arms in the half-dark like slow dead birds.

Twelve men sat in a semicircle at the far end.

They wore the black gowns of the Society. He knew them all. There was old Sir Josiah Lyle, who had taught him astronomy; Dr. Aldous Marsh, the Quaker physician; the Bishop of Salisbury, who collected fossils; two Fellows of the Royal Society who had once congratulated him on a paper on the tides. They did not look at him. They sat with their faces composed and their hands in their laps, and the candlelight made hollows of their eyes.

In the center, on a raised chair of black walnut, sat the Duke of Draymoor.

He was dressed in white. He always was. Beside his chair stood a smaller one, of plain deal, and in it, with his hands folded and his head bowed as if in prayer, sat Osmund Crale.

"Lord Wynmore," said the Duke. "Pray be seated."

There was no chair. He stood.

"Very well." The pale blue eyes rested on him with an air of weary patience. "We are here to inquire into certain matters touching the reputation of this Society, and of one of its senior Fellows. I will be brief. I do not believe in theater. Magister Crale has brought a number of allegations, and they are grave."

"I am ready to answer them."

"I should hope so." A small cool smile. "Magister?"

Crale rose.

He did not speak at length. He had no need. He laid the facts out in his dry mild voice, one by one, like a clerk reading an inventory. That the Viscount Wynmore had, in the spring of that year, sailed to an uncharted island in the southern Atlantic, in an unlicensed and unmarked vessel, with a crew of armed men. That he had returned, in June, with a foreign woman of dubious origin, whom he had introduced into his household under a false name. That the woman had been found to practice arts forbidden by the canons of the Church and the laws of the realm. That in the course of an exhibition before forty-seven Fellows of this very Society she had demonstrated those arts, publicly, unmistakably, in a manner which had caused several gentlemen to require the assistance of a physician.

"And that," said Crale, "the Viscount has since harbored her in his house, has resisted the arrest of the Church with a drawn sword, and, if I am correctly informed, has cohabited with her."

A murmur.

"These are not matters of opinion," said Crale mildly. "They are facts, and the witnesses are in this room."

"Fellow Wynmore?" said the Duke. "Have you anything to say?"

Garrick took a breath.

He had prepared. He had stood in front of the mirror in the hall and rehearsed a defense for an hour: a clear dispassionate rehearsal of the natural philosophy, the skeptic's case, the instrument-readings and statistical regularities. He had meant to be cold. He had meant to be impeccable.

He looked at the twelve old faces.

And he found that he could not do it.

"Everything the Magister has said is true," he said.

The murmur stopped.

"I sailed to the island. I took the stone. I brought a woman home, and I gave her a false name, and I lay with her, and I would do all of it again." His voice was quite steady. "I will not deny any of it. I will tell you only one thing, gentlemen, and then you may do with me what you like. I did not take it for the Society. I did not take it for science. I did not take it for any purpose of my own. I took it for my sister. She is seventeen. She is dying of the lung-sickness, and you have all of you known her since she was a child, and you know that I have gone to every physician in London. I took it because I could think of nothing else. If that is a crime, I am guilty."

There was silence.

Old Sir Josiah Lyle looked down at his hands. Marsh, the Quaker, had gone very pale. The Bishop of Salisbury stared at the floor.

"A touching speech," said the Duke.

His voice was pleasant and cool. He leaned back in the black chair, and drew off a white glove, and examined his fingers.

"But I think, Wynmore, that you misunderstand the nature of this inquiry. It is not a question of whether you are sincere. We have all known you to be sincere; it is, I fear, your chief fault." He smiled. "It is a question of liability."

"Liability."

"Let us be plain. The expedition to Corvane was conducted under a letter of commission, issued by me, on behalf of the Society, in the month of January. I have a copy here." He took a folded sheet from the arm of the chair and laid it across his knee. "It authorizes Lord Wynmore to proceed to the southern Atlantic, to make observations, and to acquire by honest means such specimens as he might encounter. It does not authorize him to seize the property of a foreign people. It does not authorize him to engage in acts of piracy. And it certainly does not authorize him to bring a heathen sorceress into the realm."

Garrick stared.

"You knew," he said. "You sent me. You said you needed the stone. You said—"

"I said nothing of the kind." The Duke's face did not change. "My letter is in the record. The Society's conscience is clear. Whatever was done on that island was done by Viscount Wynmore, in his own ship, on his own authority, and he alone will answer for it." He folded the paper. "To the Crown, if the Crown is interested. To the Admiralty, if there is a complaint. There are those who might call it piracy. There are those who might call it a breach of the King's peace. There are some, in the present climate, who would not shrink from the word treason."

The room was very quiet.

Treason.

He had known it was coming. He had known it, as he'd known the sea was wet. But it was a different thing to hear it said aloud in that soft agreeable voice, under the painted ceiling, to the ticking of the planets.

"The Council will adjourn," said the Duke, "for ten minutes. Lord Wynmore, I should like a word."

…

The little room behind the dais was lined with books. A fire burned in the grate. A table was set for two. On it stood a decanter of Madeira and a pair of glasses and a plate of cold partridge, all very elegant, all very quiet, as if the Duke of Draymoor were expecting an old friend and not a man he had just sentenced to the gallows.

"Sit," said the Duke. "You are white as a sheet."

Garrick stayed standing.

"As you like." Alaric poured. He did it with great delicacy, without spilling a drop. He had put his glove back on; the white kid creaked softly as he held the stem. "You were very good. I confess I had not expected you to be so candid. I rather thought you would fight. It would have been more entertaining."

"You gave me the commission."

"I did."

"You wrote it yourself."

"I did. And I wrote the counter-clause, for your sister's sake, and I meant every word." He turned, with the glass in his hand, and smiled. It was a kind smile. "My dear Wynmore. You must not take it so hard. This is politics. It is the oldest game there is. The Society is bound by certain obligations, and the Consistory is, for the moment, a power in the land. I had to be seen to yield."

"Yield what?"

"Why, you." The pale eyes were amused. "It is quite simple. They want a head. A heretic, and the man who sheltered her. I could not give them mine." He sipped. "I can, however, hold them off. For a price."

"Name it."

"The treasure."

Garrick said nothing.

"Oh, not the stone. I have the stone. It sulks, poor thing; it has been sullen ever since your friend Miss Merrow was taken away, and my engineers can make nothing of it. It wants her. It wants the child." The Duke set down his glass. "But I know about the island, Wynmore. I have read your logs. You drew a chart. You wrote down the soundings, the landfalls, the bearings by the stars. You described a forest, an entire forest, of trees such as the world has never seen, that bleed red when cut and sing to the wind, and a people who live to a hundred and twenty and have never known a plague." He leaned forward. His whole face had lit. It was like seeing a lamp turned up behind alabaster. "Do you know what that is?"

"A place."

"A treasury. A mine. A living apothecary's shop, with the Aurelith in the center like a sun. The Admiralty would give a thousand ships for it. The Crown would give a province. I have already begun to correspond." He drew a breath. "Give me the chart. Give me the logs. Give me the woman's child when it is born, so that the stone may be properly awakened, and I will see that Crale's writ is quietly forgotten. You shall have your sister, your house, your name. Your Miss Merrow shall go free. I will even have her sent to the country."

"And Odette?"

"What of her?"

"She is dying."

"Yes."

"You promised." The voice came out thin and hoarse. "In your own hand. The said specimen shall be employed in the first instance for the preservation of the life of the Lady Odette Wynmore."

The Duke looked at him.

For a moment he did not answer. A log shifted in the grate, and a gout of sparks went up the chimney. The firelight played over his face, over the smooth composed planes, the high brow, the long white hands. Then he began, very slowly, to smile.

"My dear boy," said Alaric. "You cannot have thought I meant it."

…

It was not that the words were cruel. They were spoken lightly, almost fondly, in the gentle tone of a man who cannot bear to see a child disappointed. It was the ease of them. It was the way they fell, like a coin on a counter.

"You thought," said the Duke, "that I would take a stone of such a power, a power that could move fleets, and cure plagues, and perhaps, if it were rightly understood, make a nation immortal, and spend it on a single pair of consumptive lungs?" He shook his head. "My dear Wynmore. I am not a monster. I am merely a man of vision. One cannot run a world on sentiment."

"Odette..."

"Is a charming girl. I am sincerely fond of her. If she lives, I shall be delighted." He took up his glass. "But I did not promise she would, you will observe. I promised only that the stone would be employed. It was a most careful clause. I drafted it myself. I flatter myself that it is a model of its kind."

Garrick's hand went to the back of the chair.

He felt as though the floor had tilted. He saw it all at once, in a single cold flash, like lightning over water. The letter, written in his own hand. The warm smile in the Orrery Room. The delay. A day to consider. The engineers and the instruments and the preliminary experiments, all through the summer, all through the autumn, and not once, in all those months, had the Duke's physicians been to Hartwell Square. Not once had a doctor been sent for. Not once had anyone asked for a sample of Odette's blood, or a measurement of her breath, or the date of her last cough.

He never meant to.

He never meant to save her.

The thought came with a strange, dispassionate silence. It was not an explosion. It was a settling, as a house settles when a beam gives way. He stood quite still and felt eighteen months of hope go quietly out of him, like water out of a cracked jar.

"I do hope," said the Duke, "that you will not take this unkindly."

"No."

"I knew you would be sensible."

"Quite sensible."

"You will bring me the chart on Friday?"

Garrick looked at him.

He looked at the smooth, handsome, courteous face, and the cold blue eyes, and the white gloves resting lightly on the stem of the glass. He looked at the fire, and the books, and the table laid for two. He saw all of it, as clearly as he had ever seen anything.

"I shall think on it," he said.

"Do."

"Good night, Your Grace."

"Good night, Wynmore." The Duke inclined his head. "Do give my compliments to your sister."

…

He walked out of the Hall without his hat.

The brothers followed at ten paces. He did not look round. He went down the violet-carpeted steps and across the courtyard and out through the iron gate into the square, where the fog had come down again, thick and yellow, and the lamps made soft blurred halos in the gloom. A cold rain was falling. It ran down his neck.

He walked as far as the corner of the street, and stopped.

And began to laugh.

It was not a pleasant sound. It rose in him slowly, from somewhere deep and low, and broke out of his throat in a series of harsh helpless barks, until he had to put his hand on the railings to keep himself upright. It echoed along the empty street. A watchman at the corner looked round. A woman with a basket crossed to the other pavement, and hurried on.

My dear boy.

You cannot have thought I meant it.

He laughed until the tears came. He laughed until his ribs hurt and he was gasping. He laughed at the Society and the Duke and the Madeira and the white gloves; at the vellum, the seal, the first-instance, the eighteen months of lying awake over a letter he had thought a lifeline; at the stone that he had carried in a lead box across an ocean and wept over like a baby; at the girl on the dais with the smoke in her lungs; at himself.

He had broken an island for it.

He had stolen the beating heart of a people. He had stood over a sleeping woman and begged her forgiveness and gone anyway. He had told himself it was for Odette, that it was worth it, that a single life is weight enough to tip the scales against a whole world. And the world had turned out to be a stage set, and the scales a conjuror's trick, and the man behind the curtain had never once intended to pay.

The laughter ran down.

He stood with both hands on the cold iron, panting, with his hair plastered to his face and the rain running into his collar. The brothers had halted at a polite distance. Beyond them, the Hall was a dim pale shape in the fog, with a single light in an upper window.

I have been a fool, he thought.

And now I am a free man.

It was a curious sensation. It was almost like lightness. For the first time in a year and a half there was no rope on him, no hope, no debt, no stone in his chest. There was only a clean, cold, empty space where the Duke's promise had been, and in it, very quietly, a thing was taking shape.

It was not a plan. Not yet. It was a direction.

Pike was right, he thought. There are two moves.

He thought of a whitewashed cell and a girl with her hands over her belly, and a stone in a glass dome that sulked because it wanted her. He thought of a child with a ribbon in her hair, who had once said to him, on the dock at Bristol, with a brave bright terrible smile, Don't let them make you into a thing that you aren't.

He straightened. He wiped his face.

Obey, he thought, or overturn the table.

He turned toward Hartwell Square, and the gray men followed him, and in the wet dark of the November night the Viscount Wynmore walked home with his head up, whistling a tune that was not a hymn.