The Custodian of Marvels (23 page)

The Kingdom couldn’t have flourished outside the Gas-Lit Empire. But Royalists still resented being within it. The Patent Office’s decision to plant the towering court building in the heart of London might have been a stroke of brilliance. But it would surely turn to folly if proof of their lawbreaking was ever uncovered.

I joined a small queue, shuffling forwards under the portico. Within a minute, I was through the doors and into a high, marble hallway. A rope partition guided the line towards a reception desk, beyond which lay corridors and staircases. I knew from my previous visit that these led to court rooms and offices. A different Greek letter had been carved into the stone above each entranceway.

An austerely suited man, surely an agent, marched past the line and into the lobby. I wondered if there might be others, less conspicuous, milling with the crowds.

“Next,” called a tall clerk behind the desk.

Jolted from my private thoughts, I stepped forwards.

“Your name?”

“Elizabeth Underwood.”

He wrote my alias in his ledger.

“Your business?”

“Student.”

He peered at me over his glasses. “Which case will you be observing?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s my first time. An interesting case, please.”

“Interesting?” The word seemed distasteful to him. “I have no table showing how
interesting
each case might be to you!”

“Then which cases have other students gone to observe?”

He sniffed as if affronted, but ran a finger down the ledger nonetheless. “There’s a maritime case being heard.”

“Then that will be the one for me,” I said.

“Very well. Do you have on your person any firearms, blades, impact weapons, projectiles, pointed weapons, black powder or corrosive chemicals?”

“No.”

“And do you agree to submit, whilst in this building, to all instructions given by officers of this courthouse, under the powers and penalties of the International Patent Office, even in such cases as these instructions conflict with the laws of the Kingdom or any other nation?”

“I do.”

“Then by the power of the International Patent Office, I grant you entry. Staircase Gamma. All the way along the corridor. Doorway at the end.” Then he leaned forward over the desk and dropped his voice. “The court’s in session so bow to the judge when you go in and don’t sit till he bows back.”

On my previous visit I had been struck by the extraordinary size of the building. It contained numerous courtrooms and conducted business relating to many parts of the world, yet it seemed sparsely populated. I followed the directions I’d been given, passing only one person on the staircase and none in the long corridor. Where the entrance hall had echoed, here each footstep was muffled by a carpet soft as moss.

The doors to the courtroom were closed. Stealing myself, I turned the handle and stepped through.

I found myself standing in a tiered observers’ gallery, above and to the back of the main courtroom. Three judges occupied throne-like chairs on a dais at the focus of the room. The face of the central judge was so deeply wrinkled that he seemed more corpse than man. The other two, men of middle age, were arranged symmetrically, one to each side of him and slightly lower. To the right, a seated witness was being questioned by a barrister. Other men of law sat facing them, stacks of papers piled on desks before them. The gallery contained a scatter of observers. Students and reporters for the most part, though I guessed a family group sitting at the front had personal business with the case.

I might have had to try many different courts, but for once, luck was running with me. I saw Julia immediately, sitting apart from the other students. She was bent over her desk and writing at speed. I sidled along the row until I was next to her then bowed towards the judges. The one on the left nodded his head in my direction and I sat.

Only then did Julia turn to look at me. Her gasp of shocked recognition was thankfully masked by a loud interjection from the judge on the right, who had taken exception to something in the proceedings. But one of the seated barristers had heard and turned to glance at us.

Julia took possession of my hand and squeezed it. I watched as her bewilderment melted into happiness and found myself smiling in response. In a world of constantly shifting suspicions, Julia had always been as fixed as the pole star. Her friendship had no layers of hidden motivation. But that did not make it shallow.

She flipped over a new sheet on her legal pad and let go of my hand to write:
I have been worried about you!!! Where have you been? Why are you here?

I prised the pen from her grip:
To see you, of course. And I’m so proud to see you here.

She read my words then turned her head away from me, pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbing it to her face. When she turned back to me, her eyes were still glistening.

I got a letter from you
, I wrote.

Only one? But I sent so many!

How are your studies?

There is too much to learn. I’ll never pass the exams.

Others do. You shall also.

Not all others bother to try!!!
She jabbed the pen at the point of each exclamation mark with such force that I thought the nib might snap.

There was a whooshing sound in the courtroom below us. The barrister who had looked at us before, now got up from his chair and stepped to the side of the room, where several brass pipes ran from floor to ceiling. He pulled a wall-mounted lever and a section of one of the pipes hinged open with a pop, revealing a canister within. This he opened, unscrewing the lid and extracting a sheet of rolled paper. Then he replaced the canister and closed the pipe again.

I watched him carry the paper to the senior judge, unrolling it on the way. Stepping back to his desk, he stared at us again, an expression of suspicion on his face. I was puzzling on these events when it came to me that I had seen the man before.

Luck was indeed on my side.

I took the pen from Julia and wrote:
How is your lawyer friend?
For I now understood why she had chosen to observe this case in particular, rather than staying across the way with her classmates.

Her blush confirmed it. And from the barrister’s concerned expression, I took it that the interest went both ways.

Feeling a pang of loneliness, I wrote:
I’m happy for you
.

She took back the pen.
He wants to marry me.

And you him?

Yes. But I don’t want to end my studies.

I don’t understand.

University is not for married women.

Is this a rule?

Not exactly. But it is understood that every woman student who marries will then leave. The university would not let me stay.

I thought about the woman I’d seen in the Royal Courts of Justice. She’d been made up as if to go to a debutantes’ ball. I hadn’t understood when she said that Julia was different. Those vehement exclamation marks that my friend had jabbed into the paper now made perfect sense.

We had many times discussed the liberality of the Kingdom in permitting women to study the law. Compared to our lives in the Republic, we thought it a Promised Land of sexual equality. But we had misread the signs. The purpose of a woman in the Kingdom signing up to study the law was not to, it seemed, become a barrister. It was to find a barrister for a husband. In permitting a woman to study, the university was merely lining up a potential wife for one of its graduates. I cast my eye across the judges’ bench and then along the line of seated lawyers. All were men.

I wrote:
What do the other women students think of this?

She took the pen.
They all hate me.

I think not!

They certainly do! Without trying, I have a proposal from a handsome and successful lawyer. The thing they want most.

Then let them try harder!
I jabbed the pen at the exclamation mark as hard as she had done.

She wrote:
They think it unfair.

Nothing could be fairer. He wants you because of the content of your heart.

She turned away from me again and dabbed at her face with the handkerchief before taking the pen and writing.
I did not try to win him. Not like they try. And now he has proposed, but I do not want to lose all that I have studied towards. What shall I do, Elizabeth?

Do you love him?

You know I do!

Then marry him.

But the university will throw me out.

Let them try! You’ll have a husband who can take them to law.

I had not been paying attention to the court, so was surprised to hear the people around us getting to their feet. We stood, a second behind them. The elderly judge was already shuffling out of a doorway behind the line of thrones. As soon as the door was closed behind him, everyone else in the room started talking. The barristers shook hands with each other. Papers were being squared off and tied in bundles.

Julia and I sat, allowing others to pass along the row and out. Presently we were alone in the gallery. Below us, the barristers were leaving in twos and threes. But Julia’s intended, the man who’d kept watch on us, gathered his documents and climbed the stairs. Such a smile he gave to Julia as warmed my heart, but towards me he cast a look of icy politeness.

“We’ve met before,” he said, not offering his hand.

Julia stood and moved close enough to him to whisper. He nodded at whatever it was she said. Then she was by my side again.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said. “It puts Miss Swain in danger. She can’t be associating with…”

Julia took my hand. “Don’t say that! She’s your ally, though you don’t know it.”

He’d doubtless seen that steely gleam in Julia’s eyes before. And must have known what it meant because, instead of pressing his case, he sighed and nodded. “Then perhaps we should be properly introduced.”

Julia beamed. “Elizabeth, I’d like you to meet Richard da Silva, QC, my particular friend. And Richard, I’d like you to meet Elizabeth… Underwood, my teacher and mentor.”

“Julia’s spoken much about you.” He glanced over his shoulder at the empty courtroom before adding, “And I’ve read of your… exploits. In the newspapers.”

“Did you win your case today?” I asked.

“I did.”

“Then maybe I’ll be able to read of your exploits also. In the newspapers.”

“
Touché
. But my activities aren’t so spectacular. The Duke of Northampton has the Kingdom in uproar – what with the fortune he’s offering for the capture of a certain fugitive. They say men-at-arms from seven different dukedoms have been tearing up the rookeries of London. If it wasn’t beyond reason, I’d say the old duke was calling in all his debts and favours to find you.”

“Madness needs no reason,” I said.

“Yet it may have a cause.”

“You think I bring trouble?”

“I know it!”

I held his gaze. Neither of us blinked.

Then Julia’s exasperation broke. “Will you two please be nice to each other? Elizabeth – this man has brought me a kind of happiness I’d never known. And Richard – without this woman’s help and encouragement, I’d not have come to London. Without her we’d never even have met!”

He rubbed his hand over his face, as one suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue. “Forgive me. I’m indeed in your debt, Elizabeth. And I’m sorry to you, my dear Julia. But if you see caution in me, it’s for a reason. Last week I was taken in for questioning by two agents of the Patent Office. They were looking for your friend.”

Julia’s mouth opened and closed twice before she managed to speak. “Why question you?”

“They… that is… they know me from my work here.”

“But you never told me!”

I squeezed her hand. “You’d never betray me,” I said. “They know that. Asking others to keep watch – it’s the kind of thing they do.”

Julia fixed him with a look sharp enough to skewer a wild boar. “Is this true, Richard? You were spying on me?”

“Heavens, no! I’d not do that! The only reason I didn’t speak of it was to keep you from alarm.” He turned to me, his expression imploring.

“If he was a spy, he wouldn’t be telling you all this,” I reasoned.

Julia’s expression twisted from suspicion to concern. “What do they want with Elizabeth?”

“They didn’t say. Except that there was a band of circus folk who she’d once known, and I should also be on my guard for them. The ringleader is a dwarf from the freak show. He’s the most dangerous of all, despite his stature.”

Fabulo’s name hovered just behind my tongue. I kept my mouth closed.

Richard seemed to read my hesitation. “The less you tell me, the better,” he said.

“Where’s your boat moored?” Julia asked.

But Richard shook his head. “Don’t say.”

“But we need to help her!”

“What can we do? The duke’s claim on her is unassailable. And the agents – unless they make a case of law against Elizabeth, there’s no action we could take.”

“We could hide her!”

“With the Patent Office searching? And half the aristocrats in the Kingdom?”

“I don’t care.”

“I can’t let you not care.”

“You don’t have the power to stop me!”

Their romance might have ended in that courtroom, with Richard da Silva, QC, finding himself on the wrong side of Julia’s sense of loyalty and justice. Although, remembering their first meeting, I guessed it was this very nature that had first attracted him to her. It was resolve, not curlers and kohl, that the women of the law school needed to apply if they were to follow her example.

“Stop!” I said.

They both looked at me.

“I’m the most wanted woman in the Kingdom. Even if I’d let you take the risk, hiding with you would be the worst thing I could do. Your homes are the very places they’ll have set a watch. I’d be risking my own life as well as yours.”