Salem's Witches (Neitherlands Book 1), page 25
Said prosecutor was Antoine LeFlay, and he seemed truly excited to be about to begin his speech. He smiled gleefully, then opened his mouth, breathed in, and—
“Excuse me, but the charges levied against me haven’t been read,” said Annabella, getting her kicks from being petty and annoying. It was one of the few things she could do in her position. “You did read the charges for all the previous trials, but not mine. May I hear whatever it is I’m being accused of?”
“She knows damn well what she did!” LeFlay’s words caused a murmur among the audience, made up of pretty much every single quackologist in town. It seemed nobody wanted to miss such an important, historic trial. “Why should we waste our time when—”
“Now, now, Antoine,” said High Jurer Stella, who had led the whole set of trials. She seemed annoyed, although not more than usual. That woman always looked as if she hated the world, and the only moment Annabella had ever seen her happy was when she sentenced someone. Now that was enough to put a smile on her face. “Criminals have rights, and if this horrible girl has forgotten the many crimes she’s committed, she has the right to hear about them. Should I begin the reading, your Highness?”
Peter Howard, who had left his office in what seemed to be the first time in years to lead the trial, assented. He hadn’t said a single word, and he seemed sick, either because he had eaten something that disagreed with him or simply because the whole situation was sickening and more than enough to make any decent person vomit everything they’d eaten since last year. He also wouldn’t stop looking around nervously, as if he expected somebody to jump out and attack him.
Annabella, an ardent defender of morals and justice, chose to believe it was the whole thing making him sick. She also chose to see herself as an ardent defender of morals and justice, a paragon of virtue whose reasons were always pure and right, and whose methods were impeccable.
As for Antoine LeFlay, he glared at Annabella, barely hiding his desire to choke her to death then and there. Perhaps the only thing keeping him from doing so was that Annabella, being the main event of the night, had been put on a balcony while he stood on the stage. In order to choke her he would have to run from the stage, all the way up to the third floor, and onto the balcony where she was chained, which would have been rather irregular.
“The Church of Quackology charges Annabella Bostwick with the following list of crimes, misdemeanors, felonies and sins,” said High Jurer Stella. “Attempting to dismantle the Church of Quackology; gross attack against members of the organization; deserting the church and failing to uphold the promise made when she first joined; refusal to pay back every dime the church spent on her during her stay with us; being a vile, spiteful being; conspiring to kill members of the church; killing members of the church with explosive spells; destroying a church building using said spell; working as a prostitute without prior authorization of church authorities; killing animals for fun; being a boring person with no future whatsoever; being a poor example for quackologists everywhere; attempting to get people to defect from the church of Quackology by feeding them lies and fabrications; faking her own death to escape a previous sentence; causing a racket as she faked her own death; failing to pay attention to the quackologists picketing her funeral; refusing to come back to the church after faking her own death; having stolen food from the kitchens at least one time, three years ago, while the cook was indisposed; having a love affair with a gnome called Trinliku, who gave us a written confession but has since disappeared; and last, but not least, trying to get people to hail Xianuu, Lord of Darkness and All That Is Evil and enemy of the church, all of this in a crusade to destroy our good organization.”
“This is ridiculous!” said Annabella. “At least half of these charges are complete fabrications, and the other half are half-truths!”
“Now, now, I expected such a longstanding quackologist would know better than to speak out of turn,” said LeFlay. “You, as the criminal being tried, don’t have any right to speak until your allotted time for defense comes up.”
Annabella opened her mouth to let Antoine know what he could agree to do, but nothing came out. She looked at the stage to find LeFlay reading something from a tiny piece of parchment. The bloody idiot had bought a silencing spell to use on her. Now she had to listen to any and all ridiculous statements by LeFlay with no ability to respond.
If there was such a thing as hell on earth, that would be it.
“Also, I believe a request for adding a count of being found in contempt of the court is called for,” added LeFlay, his smile widening.
High Jurer Stella looked at the absurdly long paper containing all the ridiculous charges raised against Annabella. “Motion accepted,” she said. “Now, please, may the prosecutor start his delivery, along with all proofs of these crimes?”
Antoine smiled and started his exposition on exactly why Annabella was the worst person to have ever set foot in the Neitherlands. And from her balcony, Annabella leaned back and hoped she could at least get some sleep while that terrible man insisted on lying about her. At least up there she was more comfortable than tied to a table…or whatever it was Antoine had planned for her once the trial was over.
Three hours.
The nasty, foul-smelling, poorly packaged bundle of everything that was wrong with the world called Antoine LeFlay took three hours to explain, in excessive detail and with no lack of fabrications, the many crimes of Annabella Bostwick. Throughout the whole monologue the jury and the thousands of people witnessing the trial played bobbleheads, with no one questioning any of his words.
Not that they would have been able to, had they wanted to. Not unless they didn’t mind being carried to the stage immediately after and tried for treason.
“Now, as per the customary proceedings,” said High Jurer Stella, looking clearly annoyed at what Annabella could only guess was an excess of evidence and a lack of sentencing in the trial, “the criminal shall be given five minutes to defend her point of views, her actions, and to offer any evidence of her own innocence.”
Annabella took a breath, and hoped she’d be able to say everything in her mind in such a short amount of time. “My dear quackologists,” she said, even when some of them were the kind of people not even a mother could love. “I’m sorry if anything I have ever done has hurt you directly. I truly am. I am not the force of evil I have been painted to be, nor is it my goal in life to kill anyone. Instead I am fighting, just as many of you seem to be, for a better world. I believe evil must be recognized and understood wherever it is, and it must be excised immediately. I have reasons to believe said evil has entered your church. Yes, your church, the one that once gave me shelter and to which I am thankful, has been overwhelmed by indescribable evil. Evil is smart and cunning, and it always finds ways to do what it wants and twist people’s minds. In this case, it has managed to enter even when our dear Peter Howard has done everything in his power to keep it from the church.”
She looked at Peter Howard, and felt betrayed he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the table in front of him, or at the floor past the table. Either way, not at her.
She drew a breath. Annabella didn’t know how long the silence in the room would last. “Now, I must ask something of every single one of you. I don’t know what will become of me, although I do have a guess what my future holds. What I want is for everyone in here to open their eyes. To allow yourselves to see and listen to everything around you, to allow yourselves to think of everything that happens in the church. But, more than anything, do allow yourselves to doubt. Doubt is an important part of belief, and the way the Church of Quackology has been trying to suppress it should only serve as a hint that something foul is afoot.” Annabella went for the closing statement, hoping she wouldn’t be cut short by time…or by censoring. “I wasn’t given a fair trial. But that’s no surprise, considering fair trials haven’t been a thing in this church for years. During my time here I saw this church, this organization, degenerate from what could have been an exemplary place of worship to a temple of hatred and violence. All of the good ideas that might have once existed have been replaced by hunger for power. There is little to like or love about this church today, and I hope you people understand that. But beyond anything, I want you to understand that the main source of evil in your church, the main source of the pain and stress you have experienced…it has a name. And as my final statement to this, I will—”
“Time’s up!” said LeFlay, putting the spell back on her before she could rebel and speak out of turn again.
Annabella glared at the man, let down but not at all surprised by his actions: After all, would he really be powerful enough to withstand being called out in front of everyone in such a fashion? Annabella hadn’t seen many rebellions in her life, but she was sure people would likely have talked had she called him out. A minute or two still remained of her time, but of course when Antoine LeFlay said five minutes what he really meant was as long as I feel like.
“Now the jury will deliberate on the proof that has been offered and the defense, or lack of it,” said LeFlay, taking control of the situation possibly to keep High Jurer Stella from defending due process, not that she would ever perform such a heinous act of treason. Without complaining that LeFlay was overstepping his bounds as prosecutor, the members of the jury got up and left the room.
The jury members entered the delivery room, took their seats, and remained silent for a second or two. The general ambiance wasn’t strange: For some reason, while there was not a single morally sound person in the room, there was always an uncomfortable silence where they seemed to internally debate as to who should start with the usual shenanigans.
Luckily, they were all spared from being the one to start the process of condemning a mostly innocent woman to a horrible death when Antoine LeFlay, who was just a prosecutor and therefore had nothing to do in the delivery room, entered the room.
An obvious look of relief appeared on the faces of some of the members of the jury. Antoine LeFlay took that to mean that, somehow, the words of the horrible bitch had touched them.
Which could only mean the High Jury would need to be purged soon. No organization Antoine led could afford the luxury of having judges with the slightest sliver of a mind of their own. Such things were breeding grounds for disaster.
“So, what’s the vote here?” he said, tapping his foot and trying to stare at all of them at the same time.
An instant of silence followed. Only an instant, just enough for him to turn his stare into a meaner, more menacing one.
“Guilty!” the members of the High Jury said almost in unison.
“Good to know that’s clear,” said LeFlay. “Now let’s go back. No point in delaying this any longer.”
The members of the jury got up and left the room, and Antoine LeFlay followed them closely, ignoring that the jury members had just been a part of the shortest delivery session to ever be recorded in the whole of the Neitherlands.
There are many things one could say about totalitarian rulers with a penchant for sadism. That their legal systems don’t produce amazingly quick results, however, isn’t one of them.
At least not as long as the process is against someone opposed to said rulers.
Peter Howard felt the telltale pain in his heart that came whenever he was about to do something reprehensible.
It could have also signaled an incoming stroke, but sadly he was not so lucky.
As he waited to enter the trial room/auditorium again he wondered just how he had put himself in such a situation. How had he lost control of his church so completely, to the point where he was about to help the vicious sentencing of perhaps the one person he had truly given love to in all of his life, all the while he had a crow-thing chasing after him?
The answer, clear as day, was Antoine LeFlay. The vicious little snake had infiltrated every part of the church, put his pawns in every position imaginable, and had managed to isolate him from his own business, making Howard a figurehead while Antoine ran the place as his own. He wouldn’t be impressed if he had been the one to send the crows to boot.
He was also standing in front of him, his grin bigger than usual.
“Howard, I’m glad to see you back and at the helm of this trial. I must say this is the single most important appearance you have made in years,” he said.
“Why thank you, Antoine. Although I don’t feel all that good right now, perhaps I should—”
“Nonsense, it would look really bad if you were to leave the trial during such an important part. I must insist that you stay and allow all your followers to see you. After all, they cherish each time they do, for they never know when could be the last time.”
The last time. Damned if LeFlay wasn’t good at hiding threats in his speech. The son of a whore had made it into an art and turned his life into a masterpiece. “I guess I should stay, after all I’m the one supposed to do the sentencing. In fact, maybe we should push this back a bit, am I not supposed to write a document explaining—”
“We have the document!” LeFlay produced a huge stack of papers out of nowhere and gave it to him. It was ridiculously long and had Howard’s signature at the end. Funny, he didn’t remember having signed such a thing.
Or having written it. All hundred-plus-pages of it. The ones that were supposedly written in the ten-minute period between the jury’s verdict and the resumption of the trial. Because of course.
“There’s also this one,” said LeFlay, handing him yet another page, also signed by somebody called Peter Howard who happened to use the same signature as a certain leader who was apparently suffering from amnesia. “Which is your address to the people here. After all, one must be given along with the sentencing…which by the way should be decided by the people.”
“The…people?”
“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our laws. Isn’t it customary in big cases to ask the community what stake— Sorry, what sentence they want? Everyone expects that you, as their leader, will do just that.”
Peter Howard sighed. He thought of looking at the speech, but decided against it. It was better to figure out what it said while he read it, since he didn’t have a choice in the matter. If only he had known LeFlay would be there, staring at him while he read the speech, ready to act in case he veered from the script. Probably with an anvil hanging over his head.
When gazing at the crowd, Peter Howard couldn’t help but feel proud that he had brought together so many people from all walks of life. It was his way of thinking and his morals that had charmed everyone into joining, and it was he who had inspired them all.
It also was Antoine LeFlay who had, little by little, stolen them from him. But then again what could he do? He had been thinking of retiring. He had to retire at some point, after all, and he was old and tired and rich and…
Perhaps money was a part of it, but it didn’t matter, he had to leave one day and he’d rather leave a united church than one divided by a schism.
Then again, there was one person in the crowd who didn’t look at him adoringly. Annabella was staring at him, but with contempt.
Howard shrugged. He thought of calling off the trial, using his powers to—
A loud, not-at-all disguised cough from Antoine LeFlay took him out of his thoughts. Said cough was followed by a nasty stare, and Howard immediately knew what would follow said stare.
He looked up, expecting to find an anvil over his head, but found none. Nonetheless, he was sure LeFlay had something planned, and he didn’t feel like finding out what it was through personal experience.
“After a long, arduous process of deliberation,” said Howard, “our jury has finally reached a verdict. High Jurer Stella, may you let us know what the court has decided on this sacred day?”
High Jurer Stella got up, her trademark grin adorning her face. “The High Court of the Church of Quackology has today heard and seen the proof presented for all the charges laid against Annabella Bostwick. After much deliberation, we have chosen to declare her…” Silence swamped the room for a second, then the sound of a snare drum replaced it. “Guilty of all charges, in addition to extra charges of thievery, attempted murder of an old woman, and being a gormster without proper disclosure.”
The crowd erupted in cheers. Howard wondered for a moment who had taught them that. He could recall it being a common occurrence, but he couldn’t fathom just why people would clap at somebody else being found guilty. It sickened him.
Just as he thought he’d seen the most sickening thing ever, a random person, perhaps out of boredom, grabbed their amulet and threw it up toward the box where Anabella sat.
It struck her squarely on the forehead, and apparently others noticed, for shortly after, many more amulets were up in the air, all of them thrown at a defenseless, tied-up woman about to be condemned.
The world had ways of always showing you things could be even worse than you thought. He thought of stopping them, but then…it stopped on its own, after several amulets failed in their task of hitting Annabella, instead flying past the box to fall back on top of the crowd, hitting the heads of other quackologists.
Howard coughed, hoping to get the attention of the not-so-smart crowd. Since nobody seemed to pay him attention, he started reading anyway. They’d soon enough notice they were being rude and stop.
“Dear quackologists: I have gone through this whole trial, seen every single proof and heard every single phrase here uttered. It has been a momentous occasion, for as you all know I’ve spent a long time away from such duties, doing my best to grow stronger so we can face Xianuu. And before a sentence is set, I would like to call the church back to understand peace.”
