Chapter 23
Chapter
My heart leapt to my throat as the Inquisitors entered the office, but I squared my shoulders and looked at them serenely.
“—as I was saying, as you can see, no one is trying to harbor anyone,” Buckland said. He was clearly attempting to escort them into the room, but the lead Inquisitor brushed past him aggressively. Buckland huffed in affront, and Edgar’s face was red with fury.
I gave a tiny nod when they both caught my eye. I could handle this. I hoped.
The Inquisitor’s leader wore white and silver, but the other four wore black cloaks. All five had shaven pates, and silver reliqs in the shape of a cross hung on their foreheads. The one in white and silver swept forward, his cloak swirling at his feet dramatically.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t catch the flutter in my voice.
“Are you Miss Mary Elizabeth Anning, of Lyme Regis?” asked the one in white. He had heavy black brows and a square jaw. He might have been handsome but for the deep scowl-lines etched between those brows.
“I am.”
He thrust out a piece of parchment and said, “Then by order of the archbishop of Canterbury, you are hereby summoned to appear before the high council.”
“On what charges?”
“That most serious of all charges, I am afraid,” he said solemnly. “Sorcery.”
I could feel the sweat pooling under my arms and coating my upper lip.
“And I suppose this is about the pterodactyl? Very well. Should I hold out my hands to be tied? Put them behind my back? I’ve never been arrested for sorcery.”
One of the Inquisitors cracked a smile but hid it quickly. The lead Inquisitor’s scowl only deepened.
“It will be all right, Ma—Miss Anning.” Henry reached for me, but black-cloaked arms yanked me back. Henry’s fist clenched, and a muscle twitched in his jaw.
“Yes,” said Buckland sharply. He raised his voice. “The truth will always prevail.”
Apparently the only thing needed to bring Henry Stanton and William Buckland to the same side was my own arrest. Who would have ever guessed?
They bound my wrists behind me, though not ungently.
“And under which specific ecclesiastical statute is she to be charged?” Edgar looked more intrigued than I would have cared for—this was my life, after all, and not an interesting theomagical case study—but at least he added, “So that we might best prepare Miss Anning’s defense.”
The Inquisitor sneered. “I do not answer to you, Lord Merlton. We Inquisitors answer to no one but God. Now Miss Anning must do the same.”
My room at Lambeth Palace was actually very comfortable.
In some ways, it was even nicer than my flat back in Lyme Regis.
There were no bedbugs, for one, and servants came regularly to tend the fire.
I had a bed with a thick quilt, and there was an old Bible in the bedside table, so at least I had reading material.
The only tiny complaint I might have registered about the accommodations was the thick layer of dust on the mantle and windowsill.
It seemed I was the first person to stay in the heresy suite—as I’d taken to calling it—for a very long time.
The last person executed for heresy died forty years ago. A farmer, he was convicted of using sorcery to save his harvest after a blight. All the neighboring fields died, but his survived.
I remember thinking, when Parson Anders taught that story, that the farmer would never have been caught out if he hadn’t been selfish about it. He really should have used his sorcery to save all the crops, and probably no one would ever have figured him out.
Sometime during the night—because despite everything, I was exhausted—I’d woken in a cold sweat, convinced that maybe I had accidentally used forbidden sorcery to wake Ajax.
I sat up in bed, clutching the covers and trying to steady my breathing. The candles had died, and the fire was embers. Long, black fingers with sharp, pointed nails stroked the stone wall across from the bed.
A scream gathered in my throat, and I pulled my knees to my chest, eyes darting to the barred window, to the bare tree in the courtyard, as the nightmare cleared.
The blackened fingers were only the shadow of a tree branch swaying in the wind.
I couldn’t get back to sleep after that.
I flopped to my side and opened the Bible.
They’d taken my reliq, so I had no light, but if I tilted it just so, I could catch the moonlight enough to read.
I started in Matthew before circling back to Genesis, and was halfway through Leviticus when the sunrise began to turn the gray wall a rosy pink.
In fact, I’d just gotten to one of the few verses about magic, Leviticus 20:27: “A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.”
If I remembered my history correctly—Edgar loaned me a book on the subject a few Christmases ago—it was Constantine the Great who convened the First Council of Nicaea, where a group of wise bishops determined that actually, these verses surely referred to sorcery, vampyrism, or necromancy, and not reliq-magic at all, which was spreading rapidly through the Empire.
Hard not to wonder whether Constantine, having seen the political and economic value of magic, hadn’t applied some light pressure to the bishops. But I suppose God works toward His purpose in mysterious ways.
Not that it was a settled question, even after the Council’s declaration. Christianity spread rapidly after magic use was sanctioned, but the history of Christendom is stained red over the technicalities.
Even now there are dissenters and separatists, like the Calumnates, who still believe magic is sinful, or the Fishers, who think magic corrupts the soul, or even the Catholics, who hold that a reliq must be regularly consecrated at communion, and that use of an unconsecrated reliq is a violation of God’s law.
And a great many people still think witchery is sin, even three hundred years after Queen Anne Boleyn’s reign and the Church’s reversed stance.
But they read that other famous verse—I flipped to it in the Bible—Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, Exodus 22:18—and disregard scholarship, or context, or even translation.
My heart squeezed as I thought of all the witches who’d died screaming on account of that verse over the years. On account of one interpretation. I thought of Lucy, whose own father had believed as much. If she’d been born a hundred years ago, he probably would have stoned her himself.
And I thought, too, of Henry’s theory: that I was a witch. A fossil witch, he’d said. A shiver ran down my spine.
I closed the Bible and set it on the quilt, wrapping my arms around my knees and staring out the window.
It was all interpretation. Not unlike geomagical scholarship, in truth.
We had only these few verses, scattered like bones in the cliffs, and all anyone could do was try to make sense of what they found through some combination of context, knowledge, and experience.
And the interpretation could always shift with new discoveries, or new theories, or even with popularity—with who was in favor and who was not.
It was not a comforting thought. Someone, or maybe several someones, would decide my case, and they would use these verses, and my life depended on the interpretation.
Because if they determined that my actions in reviving Ajax were done by sorcery? Or necromantic magics? If so—well, I would not spend another night in my comfortable cell, because I would certainly be executed before sunset.
And Ajax, too. My heart lurched as I pictured his adorably ugly face, his body clutched in black-robed arms. He wouldn’t understand. He would only know I wasn’t there.
I could picture the fear in those golden eyes, and hear the thin, confused squawks. Where was he now? Was he safe?
My fingers trembled as I opened the Bible again, this time to Psalm 121. My father’s favorite psalm.
The Lord is thy keeper, I read, and prayed. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand—er, wing. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
I didn’t know if Ajax technically possessed a soul, but I didn’t think God would mind.
“Amen,” I said aloud.
Tears pricked at my eyes. Suddenly I was a child again, with thick thumbs and grubby knees, and my father’s voice was soft in my ear, and his hand on my shoulder, strong and sure. I read the verse again and again, my eyes blurring over the page, until sunrise came to claim me.
It was almost noon when the thick-browed, white-robed Inquisitor collected me from the heresy suite.
There was no runner in the hallway, so our steps echoed on the ancient stone. The walls were windowless and bare except for a few reliq-lamps in mounted iron torches, spaced apart so that we passed through long stretches of darkness before the next.
White-robe stopped before a set of double doors, and knocked once, sharply.
“Enter,” a voice commanded, and I obeyed, blinking and blinded in the sudden light.
The ceiling was vaulted and beamed, and bright color spilled from the stained-glass windows, flooding the black-and-white tiled floor.
A long table stood in the center of the room, empty chairs along either long side.
And at the head of the table sat the archbishop of Canterbury, tapping his fingertips on the tabletop. At least I guessed it was him based on the full regalia, robes, and triangle headpiece. He had hawklike eyes and high, regal cheekbones.
Between the doors and the table was a small, plain wooden bench.
“Walk,” snapped white-robe. I stumbled forward and onto the bench.
The archbishop put on a pair of spectacles and bent down to read aloud.
“Mistress Mary Elizabeth Anning, daughter of Richard and Molly, of Lyme Regis, Dorset. Twenty-nine years old.” His voice wasn’t cruel, or cold; it sounded like he was reading aloud from a mildly amusing book. It gave me some flicker of hope.
“You are accused of using sorcery to conduct necromancy.”
I swallowed. “I am not guilty, Your…Excellency? Holiness?”
He squinted at me over his spectacles. “I did not yet ask your plea. You may call me Father.”
I flushed. “My apologies, Father.”
“I have heard the evidence against you, and for you, and now I would like to hear from you directly.” He cleared his throat. “And how would you plead, to the charges against you?” He gave me a look that clearly meant, Now you may say it.
“Not guilty.”
The archbishop took off the spectacles and folded them neatly. “Very well—”
A screech sliced through the thick silence. I knew that screech. I would know it anywhere. He’s alive. Thank God.
“Where is he?”
I looked around foolishly, as if a pterodactyl could be hiding in plain sight. He had to be somewhere nearby. Maybe in the next room?
“Please, is Ajax all right? He is innocent, I swear it. Even if you have to execute me, maybe you could just let him go?”
I thought I saw sympathy flash across the archbishop’s face. I could have sworn it.
But then he bellowed, “Silence,” and held up a hand. “Bishop Price, please summon the others.”
White-robe nodded curtly and disappeared, the doors shutting behind him.
The archbishop slumped a little and rubbed at his brow.
“What has Buckland gotten us into now,” he muttered. “I swear the man brings me nothing but trouble.” Then he said, gruffly, “Come here, child.”
He gestured impatiently when I hesitated. The archbishop held out his hands as if I should take them, and cautiously I did. His palms were dry and warm. He was younger than I’d guessed, closer to fifty than seventy.
“You only need tell the truth, Miss Anning. The good Lord shall see to the rest.”
He patted my hands and then shooed me away to my bench. I hurried back, reeling, and the doors opened again, only a moment after I adjusted my skirts.
Buckland himself was second through the door after Bishop Price.
“I told you,” Buckland was grumbling, “she already cleared an inquisition, before we ever left Lyme Regis.”
But the white-robed bishop said haughtily, “Not one of ours.”
My heartbeat stuttered with fear, and I tried to soothe it. I had passed Buckland’s inquisition. I would pass this one, too. I clasped my hands and tried to steady my breathing.
Henry, Edgar, and President Davies followed after Buckland. Henry’s set chin and stony expression radiated a confident surety that did help my nerves. Edgar was attempting the same, but his twisting hands gave away his own anxiety. Davies merely looked annoyed.
I felt a bit like a maiden on trial in some old tragedy, whose knights had ridden to her aid. I tried not to think of how many of those tales ended with the maid and knights dead.
For the other side—my accusers—were two unfamiliar priests in black robes, led to the table by Bishop Price in his white robe. Each carried a golden plate of sorts, cradled on a black velvet pillow.
Price leaned over to say something to the archbishop, and I twisted my sweaty palms together, knuckles white.
“Miss Anning,” the archbishop’s voice boomed through the atrium, “has pled not guilty to the charges laid before her, of sorcery and necromancy. I have heard from both her accuser, and her”—he arched an eyebrow—“many defenders.
“I have examined the creature in question,” he said, “and Misters Buckland, Stanton, and Davies have testified that it is consistent with the examples of prehistoric pterodactyl skeletons from Germany.”
Bishop Price still looked too smug. This wasn’t over yet.
“So, Miss Anning”—the archbishop tented his fingers; even from all the way down the long table, I could see his eyes narrow—“let us begin.”