Chapter 33
Chapter
Together, Lucy and Elizabeth were surprisingly forceful. It was a testament to their combined power of persuasion that the pair eventually convinced me, and then Buckland, that we really ought to attend Edgar’s speech.
Listening to a series of pompous speeches sounded like a rather boring way to spend an afternoon to me. But it was clear this meant a great deal to Lucy. Besides, there wouldn’t be many other chances in life to visit Westminster, let alone as the personal guest of a member of Parliament.
I insisted on going to Palmanaeus for my daily welfare check on Ajax, but Lucy hardly let me stroke his beak before hurrying me back to the coach.
We passed through a packed crowd on our journey, the shouting protestors holding signs scrawled with Libertas Magicae and We Demand Reform and chanting, “Raise the rate.”
“So many,” Buckland murmured, and I had to agree—I was frankly shocked at the sheer mass of humanity. There had to be hundreds, maybe even thousands, gathered outside. Lucy sat up straighter, her face shining.
A few minutes later, we passed through the gates and were then escorted up a back staircase to take seats in the tiered guest gallery, looking down on the floor of the House of Lords.
Lucy took a seat at the very front row, leaning forward over the railing. Elizabeth claimed the only open space to Lucy’s right, so Buckland and I settled in behind them.
Lucy tapped her fingers on the wooden armrest and bounced her knees. I leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be fine.”
She nodded but continued to fidget. “Edgar is…” Lucy began, in answer to Elizabeth’s questioning look. She exhaled. “My brother is very clever. Sometimes that gets in the way of communicating with the rest of us.”
“Edgar’s not the best public speaker,” I translated.
Buckland coughed, covering a laugh, and Elizabeth looked horrified that I would speak so frankly of a viscount.
“He’s well prepared, though,” Lucy said quickly. “He’s been reading all the greats—Burke, Pitt. Wilberforce.”
“Can’t study your way to personality,” Buckland murmured, too softly for Lucy to hear.
The gallery was quickly crowded, and the energy on the floor below was tense, visible in the quick, over-shoulder glances and stiff spines.
There were a scattered handful of other women in the gallery, but not many.
I fidgeted nervously, affected more than I’d imagined by the anticipation heavy in the air.
It felt like the moments in the archbishop’s chambers, before they’d begun to argue my fate.
Like a moment out of time, where the scales could still tip either way.
“Hello, Miss Anning.”
Henry.
“You’re back,” I said, and cringed at the breathiness in my tone.
“Just returned to London this morning.” Henry arched a brow. “I’ll admit I am surprised to see you here.”
“Stanton, please. They’re about to begin,” Buckland interrupted, as a narrow-faced, stern-looking man began marching forward. The crowd of gentlemen parted around him.
Henry took the open seat beside me.
“Lucy insisted,” I whispered. I folded my hands in my lap. I certainly wasn’t eager to do so, but I knew I had to tell him about the specimens dying. “Henry, have you been to the London house yet? I’m so sorry, the specimens—”
“I know. I saw.” Henry set a hand on mine and squeezed once. “Don’t trouble yourself about it. These things were bound to happen.”
I doubt I managed to keep the relief from my face. He wasn’t angry.
Buckland cleared his throat, but Henry ignored him. “That’s the prime minister,” he continued.
Another man, harried-looking and thin, rushed toward the great gold podium—something very like an altar—at the front.
“And the lord chancellor. He’ll preside over the debate,” Henry added.
The lord chancellor had a nasal voice, and there was a long bit of formal-sounding and procedural business to which I paid little attention until Viscount Merlton, Edgar Murray finally came forward, inclining his head at the attending peers.
The sunlight through the upper windows fell on Edgar, but it made him look pale rather than golden.
He squared his shoulders and raised his chin, as both Henry and Buckland had when they presented me to the Geomagical Society.
But something—maybe the tightness around his mouth, or the squint of his eyes—belied his confident stance.
“I rise today in answer to Her Majesty’s most gracious urging, at the opening of this present session,” he began, his words too quick, butting up against one another, “that this body might carefully consider the cry of her people.”
He paused and cleared his throat a few times. My heart went out to my old friend.
“Come on, Ed,” Henry whispered. “You can do this.”
When Edgar began again, it was slower. Better. “With all humility,” he continued, “I feel convinced that the speedy and satisfactory settlement of this question becomes daily of more pressing importance to the security of the state, and to the contentment and welfare of the people.”
He put emphasis on the right words and looked appropriately solemn, but something was forced about his delivery, almost as if it were an imitation.
“It is therefore not only for the sake of the measure itself, which calls for a reasonable increase in the established rate of exchange in government-sponsored Reliquary Trading Houses, proposed at a twelve percent increase, but also with regard to the recent state of the country, that we endeavor to effect speedy and satisfactory settlement of the question.”
Edgar clasped his hands behind his back, and I realized it was an imitation of Henry. Perhaps that’s why the performance felt wooden to me, even as the men behind us murmured praise for Edgar’s intellect—though they deemed his position too radical.
Edgar went on, and from our vantage in the gallery, I could see every sidelong glance and stiffened shoulder, and these outweighed the nodding heads two to one.
Even before Edgar finished speaking, I knew the proposal would fail.
After he inclined his head and returned to his seat, other peers rose, one after the other, to argue against the measure from every conceivable angle:
The economy was too fragile for an increase.
The economy was strong, precisely because of the low rates.
Did this body really want to encourage sloth by reducing the incentive for the poor to seek gainful employment?
To sell a reliq was no better than prostitution. The government should never have condoned it in the first place.
“He sounds like a papist,” Buckland grumbled, as the man was shouted off the stage.
The measure should be tabled for another year, to give the House time to commission a formal study on economic impacts.
There was no need. An analysis by the Reliquemical Guild estimated that reliqs on the market would drop by twenty-seven percent. (This figure cracked through the floor like a whip.)
Lord Merlton had designs for prime minister; wasn’t that obvious? He was trying to curry favor with radicals.
A national rate increase would not account for cost-of-living differences.
Rates shouldn’t be determined nationally anyway; they ought to be set at the borough-level, with local approval.
Any rate increase would only embolden the protestors.
Sales of reliqs might increase instead, flooding the market and throwing the economy into chaos.
Did they really think the radicals would stop with an increase? No; they wanted to destroy the whole system. The whole economy, for that matter, probably out of spite.
If the pay-rate to reliq sellers was raised, then the purchase price would also increase.
Those simple folk who purchased reliqs—to light their homes and grow their crops and feed their families—would have a lower quality of life.
Why should their families be punished for the poor choices of others?
The military depended on reliqs; British national security would be threatened.
The lord chancellor nodded sharply in approval at this last speech, and that felt rather like a death knell. I looked to see how Edgar was handling it. I guessed he was aiming for stoicism, but I could read eager hope on his face.
“Poor Edgar,” I whispered. Then, seeing Lucy’s slumped posture, “And poor Lucy.” She, at least, knew that the game was lost.
But Henry wasn’t listening to me. I followed his sharp gaze to see a hunched, uniformed figure dart in through a side door.
The uniformed man whispered in the ear of another seated along the back wall, and that man rose and spoke with someone else, who then spoke with another.
At first, few of the members down on the floor seemed to notice, but here in the upper balcony we had a perfect view of the message, running like a ripple through the room.
“Something’s wrong,” Henry said, pulling me by the arm. “Get up.”
I yelped at the force of his grip. “Ouch, Henry!”
“Get up.”
“To arms. To arms!” called a deep voice from somewhere below.
I gasped as everything broke into panic. The redcoats stationed on the floor below suddenly raised their rifles, in almost synchronous motion, and closed ranks, ushering the lords through a door behind the golden podium.
Up in the gallery, we were all on our feet as well, several people shouting at once.
“Please stay calm!”
“We’re under attack!”
“Get to cover!”
“The damned rioters have broken in!”
A soldier, rifle held out, rushed down the balcony steps to the balustrade and commanded us to evacuate immediately.
Bang.
The building rattled. Windows shook. Voices cried out. The viewers’ gallery broke into a chaos of shouts and clambering bodies as everyone rushed up the steps for the exit.
I swayed, catching my balance by grasping Henry’s shoulder. He gripped my elbow, and I grabbed Lucy with my free hand. Buckland and Elizabeth fell in, and we joined the bottleneck of panicked visitors trying to squeeze through the singular, narrow doorway.
Another bang sounded, rattling my teeth. I turned to look down at the floor. Most of the lords below had been ushered through the secure doors, but there were still a handful remaining. One of these left-behinders was old, stooped, and white-haired.
I remembered his speech. He’d said that a rate increase would only make the protestors bolder.
What’s next, he’d blustered, demands for universal suffrage? Secret ballots? Seats in Parliament? If we give them a stitch, they’ll unravel the gown. A younger man supported him, but they were limping along slowly when the double doors on the wall opposite burst open.
Our group had been seated closest to the front, so we were last to the doorway. We were nearly there when I glanced back, down to the floor. Had the old man escaped?
I paused on the top step.
He hadn’t. The pair still hobbled, a trio of soldiers around them as escort. But the men’s faces—one old, one young—were pinched white with terror. Hurry, I willed the pair silently, hurry, hurry.
“Mary! Come on!” Lucy tugged at my arm.
But down below us, in a swirl of gray smoke, stood two men in tall boots and loose trousers, one in suspenders and the other in an oversized coat.
Their gazes were hard, but for the briefest second, shock and bewilderment flickered over their faces, as if they had not expected to get in, and didn’t quite know what to do now that they had succeeded.
The man in suspenders said something I couldn’t hear and then raised his gun at the old man.
Henry tried to shove me through the doorway, but I shook him off.
“Wait, Henry, we have to—no, look out!”
At first I didn’t realize I was the one who had shouted the warning, even as my cry echoed through the hall.
It only dawned on me after the gunshot rang out, as something slammed into my shoulder.
“Oh.” I frowned at the blood blooming over my heart. “I think I’ve been shot,” I said, just before I lost consciousness.