Hark again, ye mice of the wainscot! Rejoice, for the mistress hath returned, and not in chains.
I had kept my watch the whole day long upon the sill, never straying save once to attend to a matter of the sandbox, which is no business of thine. When at last the iron carriage rolled up the lane in the gloaming, I leapt down so swiftly that I knocked a cup from the table. I regret nothing.
She entered wearied, with her shoulders low and her satchel dragging. I wound about her ankles and sang the long song of welcome, and she scooped me up and pressed her face to my fur.
"Oh, Perkins," she said. "What a day."
I told her, in the manner of cats, that I knew it, and that the bowl was empty. She understood the second part.
When I was fed, and she had taken her seat upon the cushioned bench, she began to speak, and I perceived she meant to tell me everything. A familiar is the best of confessors, for we keep every secret and judge only the quality of the tuna.
She began with the matter of the other summoned folk.
"You would not believe it, Perkins. Half the room tried to get out of it."
By my whiskers! It seems that when the warlock's summons went forth, a great company of witches and warlocks answered it, and nearly every one of them had prepared a spell to escape the duty.
"They used every excuse in the book," my mistress said, rubbing her eyes. "And the judge saw right through them."
At this I sat bolt upright, for it confirmed all I had suspected.
The great warlock upon his high seat, she told me, merely looked upon each pleader, asked a question or two in his low and weighty voice, and the spells fell apart like wet parchment.
"He's been doing this for decades," she said. "He's heard every excuse there is."
Truly, this is a sorcerer of surpassing power. In my first life, a man who feigned sickness to avoid the manor court was not so gently handled. The steward would send a man to his door, and if the fellow were found hale and hearty, he was fined a sum that made his purse weep, and sometimes his goods were seized to cover it. Yet this warlock needed no fine, no bailiff at the door. His eye alone dispelled every enchantment. I flattened my ears in respect.
When my mistress had spoken of the divided twelve, and I had pressed my paw upon her hand, she grew still and glanced about the chamber, as though the very walls kept ears. Then she lowered her voice.
“The judge gave us instructions before we left,” she said. “We’re not allowed to discuss the case with anyone. Not family, not friends, not on the internet. It’s called a gag order, more or less. We can’t say a word until it’s all over.”
A gag order! By my whiskers, the warlock hath bound her tongue with a binding spell, and a cruel one, for what is a witch without her gossip? In my day, a gag was an honest piece of iron and leather, clapped upon the mouths of scolds and slanderers, and paraded about the village for the amusement of all. This warlock needeth no iron. He hath only to speak the words, and a woman’s lips are sealed across the whole city, even within her own hearth.
“Technically,” she added, with a little smile, “the rule is about talking to people. The judge has no power over a cat!”
The warlock’s spell had gripped every witch and warlock in that great stone hall. But it had not touched me. I sat upon her lap, full-fed and unbound, and the great sorcerer’s enchantment slid off my black fur like rain off a slate roof.
A magical protection! thought I, and puffed out my chest. Some old charm of my first life must have followed me through the grave. Perhaps it was the gift of the Kentish miller’s wife, who once tied a bit of rowan to my collar. Or perhaps the Egyptians were right, and the cat is a creature of such power that no warlock’s decree may lay hold of him.
I resolved then and there to guard this secret as I guard the granary. For if the warlock knew a cat could hear the whole of the case and remain unbound, he might summon me next, and I have no wish to sit upon a bench in a plastic-cupped hall for days uncounted.
“So you won’t tell anyone, will you?” she said, scratching beneath my chin.
I narrowed my eyes to green slits and purred, which in the language of cats signifieth I am a vault, and also I would like more tuna.
The matter before the warlock's court, she said, concerned a man accused of dealing in drugs, which I have learned is the modern word for potions, powders, and philters of ill repute. This man, the accusers say, peddled his wares through the town, and by those wares others were brought to grievous harm, to sickness, to ruin, and some, I gathered, to the grave.
Now, in my day, we had our own tellers of such tales. The poisoner and the vendor of corrupted physic were hated and feared, and King Henry himself, in the year 1531, decreed that a poisoner be boiled alive, which I mention only that thou mayest see how lightly the modern court treads by comparison. The crowds were ever eager for such a spectacle, and few asked whether the accused had truly done the deed.
"The lawyers spent the whole afternoon," my mistress said. "The prosecutor has pictures, and some witnesses, and the defense says the evidence is thin."
"And here's the thing, Perkins," she went on, stroking my back. "When we went into the little room to talk it over, they all said we hadn't heard enough, and determined he's not guilty."
I blinked slowly at her, which is the cat's way of bidding one continue.
"But I don't see it," she said, her jaw set. "A drug dealer is a drug dealer. They're all guilty. Every one of them. I don't see why we need to go on about it."
So I did what a wise familiar does when he cannot speak. I climbed into her lap, placed one paw upon her hand, and looked at her with my great green eyes for a long while.
She laughed, though weakly. "Don't look at me like that. I know what you're thinking."
She sat a while in silence. Then she sighed and said, more softly, "I stand firm with my choice, even if it means a hung jury."
Hung?
My fur rose along my spine. In my first life, I knew that word well. A man was hung at the crossroads, and the whole village came to watch, and a goodwife sold pies.
So the warlock’s court, for all its plastic cups and polite benches, still keepeth the old ways! And my mistress, my own gentle witch, would stand firm in a room where a man was to be hung!
“Perkins, what’s wrong?” she asked, for I had begun to pace upon her knees.
What was wrong? Everything! I yowled my protest to the rafters. I would not have her party to such a deed, however wicked the drug dealer. Whatever his crimes, I had seen the gallows, and no creature of conscience wisheth to see another dance upon the rope.
She stared at me. Then, to my great affront, she began to laugh.
A jury that hangeth, and not a man. A mere disagreement, and no rope in sight. Clearly, this was another trick of the warlock’s tongue, a word borrowed from the gallows to frighten honest cats.