Werewolf fairytales

EpilogueII

*Narrator*

It is fair to say that the courtroom of the Justice of the Peace for Somerset County is infamous. Certainly among smugglers, solicitors, and ne’er-do-wells. beta Fenrir Garou, Justice of the Peace, has a way of talking to a man who’s been hauled in for beating his wife that can make a hardened criminal turn ash-white.

“He’s a maverick,” Mr. Calvin Florand says to his young associate, Mr. Edwin Howell. Howell has just entered the Inns of Court, and Calvin always makes a point of taking a new associate down to Shropshire for a few days. They spend their days observing the court, and their nights pulling apart flagrant violations of law resulting from the doling out of justice. Calvin reckons that Howell learns more about justice… and the limits of the law in three days of watching Justice Garou’s court than in a whole year of sitting in a classroom.

Just now Howell is watching beta Fenrir with round eyes. His Honor never looks precisely justice-like… how could he, given that tattoo? … but he looks particularly dangerous today. He isn’t clean-shaven, and his wig, rather than giving him the air of an English gentleman, makes him look like a lion at a costume ball.

“Does he always look like this?” Howell asks in a low voice.

They watch for a moment as beta Fenrir leans over the bench and gives the defendant a hard stare. The clerk has just read aloud a criminal complaint against one Charlie Follykin, who is charged with buying three and a half ‘tubs of spirits’ for thirteen shillings a tub in France and transporting them across the Channel, with intent to resell them in England for four pounds each.

“How do you plea?” demands the clerk.

“A pox o’ your throats!” Charlie spits.

The prisoner looks like a man who expresses his appetites with abandon. He has a large stomach, a large mustache, and a glossy sheen to his eye that suggests unswerving determination overindulgence in spirits.

As the silence wears on, beta Fenrir leans over and says, “Did you drink half a tub before or after selling it?”

“Never drink what I could sell,” Charlie assures him. Apparently, even Charlie understands that insulting this justice is not a good idea.

“Then you meant to sell it. He enters a plea of guilty,” beta Fenrir directs. The clerk scribbles on the court docket.

“I’m curious, Charlie,” the justice says, fixing the prisoner with a gimlet eye. “Exactly how do you get to France?”

“Get to France?” Charlie says, letting fly with a tremendous belch. “I never do. I won’t. I’ve been drinking all night, and I’m not fitted for it.”

“You must answer His Honor’s questions,” admonishes the clerk.

Charlie looks blearily up at the bench. “I’ll not go to France, even if you beat my head out with billets.”

The clerk is clearly distressed at this lack of reverence, but the judge merely looks amused. Finally, when it seems that Charlie is getting the better of the court, beta Fenrir stands up. He walks down from his seat, carefully turning back the wide velvet sleeves of his robes.

The clerk fades backward, leaving Charlie mumbling to himself and looking at the floor.

“You!” says the Justice, when he is standing before the prisoner.

Charlie jumps. There is something about that voice which clearly wakes him out of his trance. “Huh?”

“Do you want me to knock you into next Monday?”

“No,” Charlie says hastily.

“Tell me why in the blazes you are in this court on a trumped-up charge.”

Charlie peeks at the Justice, then looks back at the floor. “I am supposed to guard the tubs,” he mutters. “Eight shillings a night.”

Beta Fenrir walks around and climbs up onto his chair. “Right,” he says briskly. “The prisoner changes his plea. Not guilty, here by reason of collusion. Who turned you in, Charlie?”

Silence. The clerk darts forward and pokes the prisoner in the back.

Charlie just looks confused.

Beta Fenrir leans over, and a flash of real annoyance crosses his face. “Follykin, this is the eleventh time I’ve had you before the bench in the last four years.”

“Not that many,” Charlie says, looking rather appalled.

“My wife gave birth to a baby yesterday. Do you think that I want to be here, breathing the foul air coming from your mouth?”

Charlie shakes his head.

“Babies cry all night,” the Justice says reflectively. “I know what happens here, Follykin. Your friends talk you into taking the fall for the smuggling because you fall down on the job of guarding the tubs, drink the brandy, and then let the assizes find you.”

“Only had a sip or two,” Charlie protests.

“You don’t mind because you like the jail, don’t you? I hear the jailer’s wife has a rare hand with a pasty.”

“She does,” Charlie agrees.

“Right.” The Justice slams his hammer onto his table. “The prisoner is condemned to four days hard labor, not for importing spirits, which he doesn’t do, but for the crass stupidity of wasting my time so he can get his hands on some Cornish pasties. The four days hard labor will be carried out in the children’s foundling home, where I would expressly note that after being given a thorough cleaning, the prisoner should be put to rocking babies. All day. And most of the night. He can bed down in a storage closet.”

Charlie looks up at the judge, a tragic look crossing his face. “Don’t do that to me, Your Honor,” he begs.

The clerk prods him with a stick. “Move along, Follykin. You know His Honor doesn’t ever change his mind.”

“Why should you have a better night than I will?” the judge demands. He takes off his robes, tosses them into the hands of a waiting clerk, and leaves the courtroom without further ado.

“That’s bollocks,” the young lawyer whispers. “There isn’t any procedure. He threatens the prisoner. He sentences him to hard labor even though he is innocent, or at least partly innocent. And that kind of hard labor… I’ve never heard of it. A storage closet isn’t jail!”

“Right,” Calvin says. “Now I happen to know that the jailer’s wife provides the very inn we’re staying at with pasties, so let’s retire, shall we, and discuss the finer points of the actual use of English law in our courtrooms.”

Outside, Fenrir climbs rather stiffly into his carriage. These days his leg gives him a twinge only when he is dead tired.

He is dead tired.

Fred came into the world screaming as loudly as he could, and he hasn’t stopped yet.

When Fenrir reaches his house, Fred’s wailing has upsets his sister Sophie, who is crying as well, and what with one thing and another, Alastair and Colin are up, too. The only child peacefully sleeping, in fact, is Marguerite. Fenrir appears at the nursery door only to find that his poor wife has the desperate look of a she-wolf in need of rescue.

Fenrir takes Fred and pops him into the cradle; wonder of wonders, he falls asleep. Nanny takes charge of Sophie, Lyddie takes Alastair to the kitchens for a glass of milk, and Fenrir picks up his poor wife, tired as she is, and carries her all the way down the hill to the river, sitting on one of the chairs placed there.

They sit there for at least an hour, just staring at the water and ignoring the faint sounds of mayhem that continue to issue from the house. The moon turns the water into a shimmering silver plate.

Fenrir thinks there is probably nothing more lovely than to have his wife’s round bottom in his lap and to rest his chin on her hair and feel her breathing against his chest.

After a time, Colin comes trotting down the hill with a bundle in his arms, trailing a bit of pink blanket.

Margaret rises and takes Fred… crying again… then settles down in a different chair to feed the child, who appears to have the appetite of a future giant.

Colin leans against his father’s shoulder in a companionable sort of way. “I like the way you brought Fred down here,” Fenrir says, winding his arm around his eldest son’s shoulder. “Good man.”

“Had to be done,” says the young pirate.

“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”

Fred burps, and Colin wrinkles his nose. “Do you think he’ll sleep any better tomorrow night? He doesn’t seem to sleep at all.”

“Probably not,” Fenrir says. He looks over at his wife’s bright hair. He can just see the curve of her cheeks as she murmurs to their new son.

“Do you suppose you could stop having babies now?” Colin asks with a sigh. “There are five of us, you know. It seems like an awful many.”

Fenrir’s heart swells with the pure joy of the moment. All those years on board ship, he grapples with adventure and death and mayhem. He thinks he is proving himself, but he doesn’t really understand what it is to be a man until he returns home.

“Five seems like a good number to me,” he says, hauling Colin’s lanky body over the side of his chair and into his lap.

“I’m too old to sit in your lap,” Colin protests, his skinny legs flailing a moment. But then he settles against Fenrir’s shoulder, and two seconds later he is asleep.

Fenrir reaches out and takes his wife’s hand. “I love you,” he says quietly.

Margaret smiles at him. She is more beautiful than she was when they married, more beautiful than she was when he returns from the sea. She will only get more lovely every year… and he will only love her more.

“Damn,” he says quietly. “I don’t even know what to do with the way I feel for you, Margaret.”

She smiles again, her eyes luminous in the moonlight. “Just love me, Fenrir.”

He raises her hand to his lips. “There’s no question of that, my darling.”

She narrows her eyes. “Don’t you dare . . .”

“My darling Daisy,” he says smugly.