Brian chain-lit another smoke, but the nicotine didn’t help. Judge Naught. Floating whorehouse. Consorting. These word-scraps skidded about loosely. Blind as a bat. That stuck.
Cud was suddenly in Brian’s space. “Any chance I could talk to you?” He’d had a haircut, lost weight, looked younger. He led Brian to the lee wall of the courthouse. “This is my girlfriend Felicity, from Garibaldi.”
The fungal growth, a chubby little head poking from the poncho. “I’m going to see him through this with my dying breath, Mr. Pomeroy.”
Brian wiped his nose. “I’ve got a cold. Don’t get close.”
“You able to function, counsellor?”
“I was up all night working.”
“Working on what?”
“Be nice,” Felicity said. “Mr. Beauchamp says you’re awfully good, Mr. Pomeroy. You’re the only hope we have.” She pulled a ring from her finger, pressed it in his trembling hand. “Here is truth. Here is innocence. I give you the power of this ring.”
Brian looked around for Hobbits. He took his glasses off, squinted, felt the ring’s power. A fire opal, glinting orange and red, a spark of yellow, a blinking caution light, warning of betrayal. He rubbed the ring, made a wish. Forgive me, Caroline.
“Felicity wanted to wear it for a while, I said okay.”
Brian pocketed it. “Blind as a bat,” he said and led them into the law courts.
Rain slicked down the vast transparent ceiling above the great hall. People everywhere, cops, lawyers, curiosity-seekers, prospective jurors, the building was jammed, he felt suffocated. “Free Cud” buttons. A sheriff’s deputy was seizing a sign from a bearded revolutionary. “Anarchist Poets for Justice.” Later, Dr. Epstein will tell him this was yet another delusion.
As he stared at the posted docket, the lines blurred, went double. He made out Regina v. Brown, court 67. Sixth level, the big assize court, it was somewhere up there, behind the cascading, vine-draped tiers. He hurried Cud and Felicity to the escalator. He’ll settle them in, then change into his gown.
Abigail Hitchins and the lead cop, Hank Chekoff, were conniving on the gallery overlooking the great hall. Alone by the wall, lanky Shawn Hamilton, Silent Shawn, Florenza’s lawyer. She wasn’t supposed to take the stand today, was she? Who was?
Astrid Leich…He braked, and Cud almost bumped into him. Cud shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be in view, she might be anywhere. The courtroom, witnesses aren’t allowed in there. He’d stash Cud on a back row. This intense thinking exhausted him. He needed another snifter just to stay awake.
Abigail and Chekoff broke off their scheming as he led his client and consort past them. He asked, “Where’s Astrid Leich?”
“Witness room,” said Chekoff with his porcine grin. “Snorting to go.”
Brian glared at him. “Fank you.”
Court 67 was packed, stifling. People had to squish over so he could seat his charges. Chief Justice Kroop wasn’t here yet, some other judge passing sentence, a motor manslaughter, a drunk who blew a point one six. What did Cudworth blow? Did Florenza take a Breathalyzer? Was that in the particulars?
Abigail was waiting for him outside the door. “Where’d you go the other night?”
What night? He remembered a restaurant. “I was acting on orders.”
“You were plastered then, and you look like you’re plastered now. Are you ready for this?”
He wiped his nose and went off to see what Chekoff was up to. Just as he suspected, sidling toward the witness room. It’s the guy with the poncho, Miss Leich, he’s cut his hair since you saw him in the lineup.
While Chekoff exchanged jibes with the deputy sheriff in charge of the witnesses, Brian peeked in. The room smelled of expensive cologne. Men in fine suits and women in fine dresses, standing, chatting. He’d stumbled upon some kind of cocktail party. No, a secret society of the rich and powerful. There was Leich, fumbling with her glasses, getting another fix on him.
The deputy had him by the arm, tugging. “Sorry, sir, we don’t want no one disrupting the witnesses.”
Brian hurried down to the barristers’ changing room, but stalled when he couldn’t remember the combination for the Pomeroy Macarthur locker. Flustered, knowing Kroop has jailed lawyers for being late, he borrowed a gown from a neighbouring locker, fought his way into a too-tight wing collar shirt, tied on a dickey.
Then he headed for the can and an empty cubicle. While lining up his rows he spilled powder onto the gown, a little snowfall on black fabric. He tooted, wiped his nose, licked what he could off the gown, flushed the toilet. At the sink mirror, he saw he still had his sunglasses on. He removed them, saw a pair of hot, bloodshot eyes. He replaced the glasses. Saw a patch of white powder on his inner pant leg. Attacked it with a paper towel. Heard a sheriff calling, “Mr. Pomeroy, court 67.”
He kept brushing at his gown as he hurried there. He couldn’t get rid of the white smear, he shouldn’t have licked it. He entered court, saw them all looking at him. He stumbled to a halt. They knew, the packed gallery, the press, the glowering chief justice, they all knew that Brian was guilty. “The Crown is ready to proceed,” said Abigail Hitchins.
“Don’t just stand there like a signpost.” Coal-black eyes gleaming from folds of face flab. “Get up here and let’s go to work.”
Brian felt the earth giving way, like a cave-in. He steadied himself against a bench until everything went still, deathly silent, a grey zone. He was in the middle of a crowded room in a black gown, holding a briefcase, that’s all he knew. What did all these people expect from him?
He swivelled. He bolted from court, scrambled through a swarm of press, fled down the cascading stairways, outside, down the street, the rain lashing his face, his gown flapping. He ran and ran…
15
Mid-February, the unrelenting wet season. After three weeks of rain, Arthur could no longer delay bringing in his wood, so he toiled in the muck with mall and splitters, making several trips to the woodshed in his trusty, mud-spattered Fargo. (Welcome, home, old friend!)
From time to time he fed a fire with bark and broken branches and took his breaks there, warming himself, smoking his pipe, trying to pretend he wasn’t aware it was day one of Cud’s trial. He was in denial, he supposed, Regina v. Brown denial. He’d cut off all contact with him, with his case, even with Brian Pomeroy-who’d been on holiday anyway, charging his batteries for court.
The profligate poet, on seeing Pomeroy in fighting trim, will finally stop hounding Arthur, who’ll be shunned no longer at the general store. They were handing out “Free Cud” buttons there yesterday amid brave talk of going en masse to court on the morning ferry. Arthur doubted if any showed up for the six-twenty sailing.
He was having trouble leaving this warming fire, though he should finish up, get back to check on the roast he’d put in the oven. Margaret planned one of her rare visits this evening, to bone up for the all-candidates meeting tomorrow. With the election twelve days off, she’d been barnstorming by float plane, an environmentally unsound mode of transport. Her Conservative opponent had denounced this as eco-hypocrisy. Chipper O’Malley sees her as an emerging threat; he was down to thirty-five points on the last poll.
Yes, the tireless Margaret Blake had risen like Venus from the sea, was now tied with a New Democrat at twenty-seven, while the Liberals, their last corrupt government not forgotten, were fighting it out with the independents. Arthur has been learning about politics, attending Margaret’s strategy sessions. The idea is to edge ahead of the New Democratic Party, collapse its left-wing vote, stampede its supporters into lining up behind her as the better hope of upsetting the candidate of the Right. All in the great tradition of Nicolo Machiavelli.