Bartimaeus: The Golem’s Eye (13 page)

Kitty stared at the callused tabletop. “But that means letting him—Mr. Tallow—off, scot-free,” she said quietly. “I can’t—it wouldn’t be right.”

Mrs. Hyrnek stood suddenly, her chair screeching against the tiles on the floor. “It is not a question of ‘right,’girl,” she said. “It is a question of common sense. And anyway”—she seized a bowl of chopped cabbage in one hand and advanced to the stove—“it is not entirely certain Mr. Tallow is going to get off quite as freely as you think.” With a jerk of the wrists, she tipped the cabbage hissing and bubbling into a vat of boiling water. By the side of the stove Jakob’s grandmama nodded and grinned through the steam like a goblin, stirring, stirring, stirring the soup with her knotted, bony hands.

13

T
hree weeks passed, in which, through a combination of stubbornness and pride, Kitty resisted all efforts to dissuade her from the path she had chosen. The harder her parents tried to threaten or cajole her, the more entrenched she became: she was determined to attend the Courts on the scheduled day to see that justice was done.

Her resolve was strengthened by word of Jakob’s condition: he remained in the hospital, conscious, lucid, but unable to see. His family hoped that his sight would return in time. The thought of the alternative made Kitty tremble with grief and rage.

If her parents had had the power, they would have declined the summons when it arrived. But Kitty was the plaintiff: her signature was needed to halt the case, and this she would not give. The process of Law continued, and on the appropriate morning, Kitty arrived at the Great Gate of the Courts at 8:30 sharp, dressed in her smartest jacket and best suede trousers. Her parents were not with her; they had refused to come.

All about her was a motley throng, jostling and elbowing her as they waited for the doors to open. At the lowest end of the spectrum, a few guttersnipes barged back and forth, selling hot pastries and pies from large wooden trays. Kitty kept tight hold of her shoulder bag whenever they passed near. She noticed several tradesmen too, ordinary people like her, decked out in their best suits, all pale-faced and sickly with nerves. By far the largest group consisted of worried-looking magicians, resplendent in their Piccadilly suits and formal capes and gowns. Kitty scanned their faces, looking for Mr. Tallow, but he was nowhere to be seen. Burly Night Police kept watch on the fringes of the crowd.

The doors opened, a whistle blew; the crowd streamed in.

Each visitor was funneled past an official in a uniform of red and gold. Kitty gave her name; the man scanned a piece of paper.

“Courtroom twenty-seven,” he said. “Stairs on the left, hard right at the top. Fourth door along. Hurry along there.”

He pushed her forward and she was past him, under a high stone arch and out into the cool marble halls of the Judicial Courts. Stone busts of great men and women gazed down dispassionately from niches in the walls; silent people hurried to and fro. The air hummed with seriousness and hush and a distinct smell of carbolic soap. Kitty climbed the stairs and made her way along a busy corridor until she arrived at the door of Courtroom 27. Outside it was a wooden bench. A sign above instructed all claimants to sit and wait to be called.

Kitty sat and waited.

For the next fifteen minutes, a small, pensive group of people gathered one by one outside the courtroom. They stood or sat in silence, absorbed in their own thoughts. Most were magicians: they immersed themselves in sheaves of legalistic documents, written on paper headed with complex stars and signs. They did their best to avoid one another’s eyes.

The door to Courtroom 27 opened. A young man wearing a smart green cap and an eager expression poked his head around it.

“Kathleen Jones!” he said. “Is she here? She’s next up.”

“That’s me.” Kitty’s heart was pounding; her wrists tingled with fear.

“Right. Julius Tallow. Is he here? We need him, too.”

Silence in the corridor. Mr. Tallow had not arrived.

The young man made a face. “Well, we can’t hang around. If he isn’t here, he isn’t. Miss Jones, if you would be so kind …”

He ushered Kitty ahead of him through the door and closed it softly behind them.

“That’s your seat over there, Miss Jones. The court’s ready to begin.”

The courtroom was of intimate size, square, and filled with a stained, melancholy light that filtered in through two giant arched windows of colored glass. The pictures in the windows both depicted heroic knight-magicians. One, encased in armor, was in the process of running a sword through the belly of a great demonic beast, all claws and knobbly teeth. The other, wearing a helmet and what looked like a long white shift, was exorcising a hideous goblin, which was falling through a square black hole that had opened in the ground. The other walls in the room were lined with dark wooden panels. The ceiling was wood, too, carved to resemble the stone vaults of a church. The room was fearsomely old-fashioned. As was perhaps the intention, Kitty felt awed and terribly out of place.

Against one wall ran a high platform, upon which was a huge wooden throne resting behind a long table. At one end of the table was a small desk, where three black-suited clerks sat, busily tapping at computers and leafing through piles of paper. Kitty passed in front of this platform, following the direction of the young man’s outstretched arm, toward a solitary high-backed chair silhouetted in front of the windows. Here, she sat. Another similar chair faced her from the opposite wall.

Across from the platform, a couple of public benches were separated from the court by a brass railing. To Kitty’s surprise, a few spectators were already gathering there.

The young man consulted his watch, took a deep breath, then yelled so loudly that Kitty jumped where she sat. “All rise!” he roared. “All rise for Ms. Fitzwilliam, Magician Fourth Level and Judge of this Court! All rise!”

A grinding of chairs, a scuffling of shoes. Kitty, clerks, and spectators got to their feet. As they did so, a door opened in the paneling behind the throne and a woman entered, black-robed and hooded. She sat herself on the throne and threw back her hood, revealing herself to be young, with brown bobbed hair and too much lipstick.

“Thangyoo, ladies and gennlemen, thangyoo! All sit, please!” The young man saluted toward the throne and marched off to sit in a discreet corner.

The judge presented a small cold smile to the assembled court. “Good morning, everyone. We start, I believe, with the case of Julius Tallow, Magician Third Level, and Kathleen Jones, a commoner from Balham. Miss Jones has chosen to attend, I see; where is Mr. Tallow?”

The young man leaped to his feet like a jack-in-the-box. “He’s not here, ma’am!” He saluted smartly and sat down.

“I can see that. Where is he?”

The young man leaped to his feet. “Haven’t the foggiest idea, ma’am!”

“Well, too bad. Clerks, put Mr. Tallow down for contempt of court, pending. We shall begin …” The judge put on a pair of spectacles and studied her papers for a few moments. Kitty sat straight-backed, rigid with nerves.

The judge removed her spectacles and looked across at her. “Kathleen Jones?”

Kitty leaped up. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Sit down, sit down. We like to keep it as informal as we can. Now, being young—how old
are
you, Miss Jones?”

“Thirteen, ma’am.”

“I see. Being young, and of common stock as you undoubtedly are—I see here your father is a
sales assistant
and your mother a
cleaner”
—she spoke these words with slight distaste—“you might very well be overawed by these august surroundings.” The judge gestured at the court. “But I must tell you not to fear. This is a house of justice, where even the less equal among us are welcome, provided they speak truthfully. Do you understand?”

Kitty had a frog in her throat; she found it hard to answer clearly. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Very well. Then we shall hear your side of the case. Please proceed.”

For the next few minutes, in a rather raspy voice, Kitty outlined her side of events. She began awkwardly, but warmed to her theme, going into as much detail as she could. The court listened in silence, including the judge, who stared at her impassively over her spectacles. The clerks tapped away at their keyboards.

She concluded with an impassioned description of Jakob’s condition under the spell of the Black Tumbler. As she finished, a heavy silence filled the courtroom. Someone somewhere coughed. During the speech, it had begun to rain outside. Drops tapped gently at the windows; the light in the room was watery and smudged.

The judge sat back in her chair. “Clerks of the Court, do you have all that down?”

One of the three men in black raised his head. “We do, ma’am.”

“Very well.” The judge frowned, as if dissatisfied. “In the absence of Mr. Tallow, I must reluctantly accept this version of events. The verdict of the court—”

A sudden ferocious knocking sounded on the courtroom door. Kitty’s heart, which had leaped sky-high at the judge’s words, descended to her boots in a heap of foreboding. The young man in the green cap sprang across to open the door; as he did so, he was almost bowled off his feet by the muscular entrance of Julius Tallow. Dressed in a gray suit with thin pink pinstripes and with his chin thrust forward, he strode across to the vacant chair and sat decisively upon it.

Kitty gazed at him with loathing. He returned the look with a veiled smirk and turned to face the judge.

“Mr. Tallow, I assume,” she said.

“Indeed, ma’am.” His eyes were downcast. “I humbly—”

“You’re
late,
Mr. Tallow.”

“Yes ma’am. I humbly extend my apologies to the Court. I was kept busy at the Ministry of Internal Affairs this morning, ma’am. Emergency situation—small matter of three bull-headed foliots loose in Wapping. Possible terrorist action. I had to help brief the Night Police on the best methods for dealing with ’em, ma’am.” He adopted an expansive posture, winked at the crowd. “A pile of fruit, lathered with honey—that’s what does the trick. The sweetness draws them near, you see, then—”

The judge banged her gavel down upon the bench. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Tallow, that is quite beside the point! Punctuality is vital for the smooth running of justice. I find you guilty of contempt of court and hereby fine you five hundred pounds.”

He hung his head, the picture of bulky contrition. “Yes, ma’am.”

“However …”The judge’s voice lightened somewhat. “You have arrived just in time to state your side of the matter. We have heard Miss Jones’s version already. You know the charges. How do you respond?”

“Not guilty, ma’am!” He was suddenly bolt upright again, swelling with aggressive confidence. The pinstripes on his chest expanded like plucked harp strings. “I’m sorry to say, ma’am, that I have to recount an incident of almost incredible savagery, in which two thugs—including, I am sorry to say, that prim young madam sitting yonder—waylaid my car with intent to rob and injure. It was only pure chance that, with the power I am fortunate enough to wield, I was able to fend them off and make good my escape.”

He continued to develop his lie for almost twenty minutes, providing harrowing accounts of the chilling threats made by his two assailants. Frequently he digressed into little anecdotes that reminded the court of his important role in government. Kitty sat white-faced with fury throughout, clenching her fingernails into her palms. Once or twice she noticed the judge shake her head at some unpleasant detail; two of the clerks were heard to gasp in outrage when Mr. Tallow described the cricket ball hitting his windscreen, and the spectators in the gallery oohed and aahed with increasing regularity. She could tell which way the case was going.

At last, when with sickening self-effacement Mr. Tallow described how he had ordered the Black Tumbler to be fired only at the ringleader—Jakob—through his desire to keep casualties to a minimum, Kitty could no longer restrain herself.

“That’s another lie!” she cried. “It came straight at me, too!”

The judge rapped the bench with her gavel. “Order in the Court!”

“But it’s so obviously untrue!” Kitty said. “We were standing together. The monkey-thing fired at us both, as Tallow ordered. I was knocked out by it. The ambulance took me to hospital.”

“Silence, Miss Jones!”

Kitty subsided. “I’m … sorry, ma’am.”

“Mr. Tallow, if you would be so good as to continue?”

The magician wound it up soon afterward, leaving the spectators whispering excitedly among themselves. Ms. Fitzwilliam brooded a while on her throne, occasionally bending down to exchange whispered asides with the Clerks of the Court. Finally, she tapped the table. The room fell silent.

“This is a difficult and distressing case,” the judge began, “and we are hampered in it by the lack of witnesses. We have only one person’s word against the other.
Yes,
Miss Jones, what is it?”

Kitty had put up her hand politely “There is another witness, ma’am. Jakob.”

“If so, why isn’t he here?”

“He’s not well, ma’am.”

“His family could have made a submission on his behalf. They have chosen not to do so. Perhaps they feel their case is weak?”

“No, ma’am,” Kitty said. “They’re scared.”

“Scared?” The judge’s eyebrows arched. “Ridiculous! Of what?”

Kitty hesitated, but there was no help for it now. “Reprisals, ma’am. If they speak out against a magician in court.”

At this, the room erupted with a barrage of noise from the spectators’ benches. The three clerks ceased typing in amazement. The young man in the green cap was gawping in his corner. Ms. Fitzwilliam’s eyes narrowed. She had to bang the table repeatedly to quiet things down.

“Miss Jones,”
she said, “if you dare utter such nonsense I shall have you up on a charge myself! Do not speak out of turn again.” Kitty saw Julius Tallow grinning openly. She fought to hold back the tears.