Chapter 8
“Another cup of tea, yes, if it isn’t a bother.
” Matthew folded his hands in his lap as Charlus took the teacup away to refill it.
He’d been in the office on the ground floor of the Courts for half an hour now, and it had been an intriguing conversation.
Charlus came from an excellent family, but he had an easy-going way about him.
Deliberately social might be the way to put it.
He’d immediately suggested they go onto first names, so fluidly that Matthew hadn’t figured out how to say no.
That, rather than his last, was at least a bit of a help.
Though it also fit like some of the shirts in his closet, the ones that had been packed up unworn for five years or more.
But Matthew was here, determined to try something new, or at least a new pattern. Shirking it wouldn’t help anything.
Matthew was in this office because Charlus had invited him.
A chance to catch up, though so far, he hadn’t pressed on any particularly delicate points.
Charlus was just enough older than Matthew— close to a decade— that his current station didn’t feel so much like ambition as him having grown into something particular.
He’d served in the Army, details unspecified, but as soon as he’d been demobbed, he’d been appointed Heir.
The current Lord of Trellech’s Justice, Griffin Pelson, was getting into his early sixties.
Trellech’s demesne was different than any other in that way, but the custom was to name an Heir some few years before one would likely be needed.
It didn’t always work that way. Matthew had heard enough of the gossip about the time before Pelson had been named Heir himself, back in the twenties.
At any rate, it made Charlus a particularly good source right now for Matthew’s ongoing re-integration into Albion.
They’d spent the half-hour so far talking about some of the administrative changes in Trellech while Matthew had been away, mostly for the better.
The offer of a second cup of tea made it clear that he had more to discuss, but also that he was being generous with his time.
Mind, the Courts were about to go into recess for the spring equinox.
There was probably less immediate preparation he needed to do right now.
Charlus had just turned back to bring the two cups of tea back to his desk, when there was a quiet rap on the door. “Oh, pardon, let me just see what this is.” Charlus apologised more quietly to Matthew, then pitched his voice to carry. “Yes?”
The door came open, and a woman appeared in the doorway.
She was maybe a few years younger than Matthew, and had the sort of posture that made him fairly sure she’d been in the ATS during the war.
He had never been sure if they’d had a particular way of being in the world trained into them.
It wasn’t precisely perky, but chipper no matter the occasion might describe it.
Now, she was made up, her hair in pinned up curls, having visibly attempted to look well.
“Oh, pardon, I thought you were done with Master Lawson?” There was a tiny hesitation on his title, as if she’d been deliberating whether to use the military one.
He’d like to leave that far behind, thank you.
Certainly, it wasn’t relevant to his current work.
And it wasn’t as if being a Captain was noteworthy.
It mostly meant he’d not ended up dead or invalided out before they could promote him.
“What was it, Miss Frost?” Charlus was polite, but also deliberate. “Lawson, Gilda Frost, junior on the administration side.” That meant that she hadn’t qualified as a solicitor or barrister in her own right. The senior administrative positions required it.
“Well, of course, we’ve had ever so many questions.
It’s not as though people who were working on the trials in Germany are thick on the ground.
Not that many from Britain, and fewer from Albion.
And of course, Master Lawson, we here in the Courts, we absolutely understand the work you were doing, and I suppose most people don’t.
” She blinked at him, the sort of slow blink that Matthew knew meant she was considering how to flirt.
Charlus was both too well-bred and too well-trained from handling matters in the courts to let his expression shift.
Grand for him, but it wasn’t much help to Matthew at the moment.
After a second, he said, “Entirely up to you, of course, but if you’re up for a minute or two speaking about it before we get back to other things. ”
It was inevitable. And strategically, maybe a few minutes now might save him a conversation at a worse time.
It was absolutely pure chance, though. What decided him was that turning the woman away would be outright rude, and politeness usually left more options later.
Even if he wished Charlus would give him a more useful hint.
“A minute or two, I wanted to ask about that matter you’d mentioned, the new approaches to prioritisation? ”
“Ah, just so,” Charlus leaned back a little. “Go ahead, Miss Frost.”
She beamed. “Well, Master Lawson, we’re ever so interested in the details of it. How the practical aspects were handled. There must have been a lot of people with— do you read German, then?”
There had not been enough people. There had been people crammed into every corner of an increasingly decrepit building that had not actually been bombed directly, but certainly occasionally had bits falling off or down.
Certainly not enough whose German was solid, it turned out.
Meaning that the people who knew more were in high demand, but with an intensity that became rapidly unbearable.
Matthew considered what he could say. Carefully, precisely, he said, “My spoken German is better now, but when I started, I could read it well enough to do some of the initial processing of documents. Figuring out what it said, how to direct it for which part of the trial consideration. Proper translators worked on the versions used by the various prosecutors, though of course the defence were all German-speaking. There were rather clever translation machines in use, letting everyone in the court hear simultaneous translations with headphones, though it made for rather a crush.”
Her mouth opened. “Oh, my. You must have felt quite necessary to the whole thing, then. I suppose there was rather a lot of documentation to work through?”
Matthew forced himself to stay pleasant.
“Quite a bit, yes.” He couldn’t blink; he’d see the towering stacks of paper.
That wasn’t precisely the problem. It was the way he knew what the stacks contained.
Misery, torture, death, wanton destruction, often laid out in detail.
Names, ages, photographs, the sort of tiny biographical notes that swam behind his eyelids when he couldn’t sleep.
Remembering people was supposed to be important, but doing it that way had turned into a particular hell.
“The larger legal questions are perhaps more relevant here. Coming up with the foundations for international law on charges never previously established and all that. That wasn’t my remit, of course, I’m not trained to the law the way Magister Edwards is.
” Charlus got his full title here, mind, or at least the shorter version.
Charlus nodded slightly. “I don’t want to keep you all afternoon, Lawson. And I wanted to chat about the changes in prioritisation. Thank you, Miss Frost. Perhaps you could check back in forty-five minutes? And stop in and see if Griffin needs anything while you’re up?”
She at least took the dismissal calmly, though there was a chirpy, “I do hope we see more of you in the Courts, Master Lawson. I’m sure you’re welcome to come by any time.” But then, thankfully, the door closed, and she disappeared.
Matthew took a deep breath, focusing his attention on the teacup in front of him.
He didn’t dare try drinking it yet. He might drop it— and it was a pleasant piece of china, a swash of turquoise and black around the rim, a rather Art déco sort of style.
And he didn’t want to make himself ill. His stomach was roiling.
“Pardon. Some here get rather excited at the thought of the topic.” Charlus paused, measuring out his words. “And people have been rather curious. You needn’t put up with answering anything, if you’d rather not.”
That got Matthew to look up sharply. “Oh?”
“Now, if you ever feel you’d be willing to do a presentation of some sort, I’d be glad to arrange it.
And keep some boundaries on it. You’re right that the underlying legal matters, the methods of establishing justice in an international setting, what justice even looks like are important.
I’ve read many of the working papers around that, the ones that were shared.
” But he hesitated again. “And also I’ve a better idea than Miss Frost what kinds of documentation you must have been dealing with.
The inheritance courts— that’s where I trained— get some rather horrendous examples of human behaviour, too.
Not remotely on that scale, but sometimes quite individual awfulness and cruelty.
I know enough to be clear that doing that kind of work for years must have taken a toll.
Especially without much relief in any of the ways normally recommended. ”
“Indifferent food, uncomfortable housing, little chance to see anyone not working there for years at a time. I pitied the people who were married, honestly. There were some decent parties, if you didn’t mind a lot of drinking and the same rounds of party games and company.
” That sort of party had never been to his taste.
He’d always been wary of letting something slip when there’d been drinking and looser tongues. If not Matthew himself, someone else.
It had certainly put him off trying to find any sort of more personal intimacy for the duration, even if there’d been enough privacy.
There hadn’t been that, though. Everyone had rooms crammed together, shared baths, and knew who was about by the creaks of the doors and the floorboards.
Even friendship, on a personal level, had seemed impossible. Just professional civility.
“Mmm,” Charlus considered. “We’ve talked a little about that kind of wear here.
What might help, especially with complex cases or those with challenges.
If you’re willing to consult about that, in a few months, we’d be interested.
A fee, of course, and we’d work around your office schedule. ” He left it at that.
Matthew nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s something that happens not just with the Courts but the Guard and the Penelopes and such, isn’t it?
” He had been thinking about that because Warren had been unusually quiet at their meeting on Tuesday.
Still entirely cordial, but rather more introspective, he’d not engaged with the debate as he normally did.
Not that Matthew would bring up that particular example right now.
“It is. Different modes of dealing with it, though. I’ve seen a couple of papers arguing that the Guard oath is somewhat protective.
And the fact that they might be dealing with a difficult critical moment, but usually not the ongoing drain of something awful for days or weeks at a time.
Even during the Blitz, they’d be doing different things each day, except for the handful who focus on inheritance matters or other substantial cases.
The Penelopes, I don’t know as much about how they handle it.
It’s not as if they write that sort of thing up.
I’ll see if someone might be willing to have a chat.
They spend longer focused on a given case.
” Then he took a breath. “Back to easier topics, perhaps. You’d mentioned you’ve come up with a system to help those things that are more urgent be tracked more quickly, yes?
I’m interested in the charmwork, in particular. ”
It was a more comfortable topic. Matthew had been experimenting with a series of charms that would glow softly in different shades depending on some key information attached to the file.
It was an imperfect system. The key information had to be enchanted in a particular way, and then that informational sheet clipped to the actual documents.
It was easy for something to get misplaced or put under a stack where the glow wasn’t visible.
But it seemed to have some promise. And he took a perhaps juvenile pleasure in murmuring the trigger word and seeing his desk light up like a rainbow.
They chatted about the mechanics of it for perhaps twenty minutes, long enough for Matthew to finish the cup of tea.
Charlus walked him out to the front steps when they were done, and Matthew was fairly sure it was at least partially to prevent anyone grabbing him for a conversation.
He made his farewells, took a breath, and went off to lurk at Urania’s Apples.
He didn’t much want to talk to anyone, but he wanted to be somewhere he could hear other people being ordinary.
Whatever ordinary was these days. He certainly didn’t want to go home to a too-silent flat.