The Patience of Virtue, by Dave D’Alessio

The Scottish Royal Lion Rampart

The stench hung over the glen like soiled swaddling on a wee bairn. I didn’t need Burd Mary to tell me, “Ach, old FitzWilliam’s been singeing sheep agin, Constable,” but tell me just that she did.

“In there is he, the daft auld fool?” I asked, nodding my head toward the old peat hut FitzWilliam called a home. Steam was pouring out his chimney, so I hoped he was. She said as much and I went to have a look.

Sure and enough, he was in there, a magnifying glass in one hand and steam torch in the other, doing his best to burn the wool coat off a bleating ewe. “Hold still, ye bugger,” he was grunting. “If ye dinna i twon’t be my fault if yer burnt.”

Sheep singeing had been outlawed in ’06, and FitzWilliam knew it as well as I did. “Ah, Jamey, nabbed in the act ye are,” I told him, shielding my eyes from the limelight of the torch.

Malice was clearly aforethought. He had his rig set up again, a system of mirrors and pulleys meant to get a single ray of sunlight into the dark of the hut anytime during the day. He didn’t even try to drop his tools. “‘Tis a bluidy Sassenach law, Stewart,” he said, twisting the knife in my heart a bit. Clan Stewart and Clan FitzWilliam had stood side-by-side since Culloden.

“Aye,” I told him. “But I hae told you a dozen times or more not tae do it, and I hae sworn to the law, Sassenach or nae.” He came along peaceably, which I attribute to the drink, or in truth the lack thereof. We blew the relief valve on the Newcomen engine powering his torch, then two days in the local lockup for Jamey.

So it was off to Glasgow for Jamey FitzWilliam for his hearing. On Wednesday the pair of us boarded the broad BOAC airship, her silver skin almost invisible against our grey Scottish skies and her twin propellors silently driven by Lord Sterling’s heat engines.

This month the magistrate in Glasgow was another Sassenach, a minor lordling putting in his term of service in the occupied lands before taking up the commission he’d bought in the Unhorsed Dragoons armored division. He sat at the bench at the front of the courtroom, a powdered white wig on his head and a scowl on his face.

Over his left shoulder the statue of Blind Justice held her scales in one hand and her sword in the other. It was there to remind us that after 300 years the Scots were still getting the sword and not the scales, and would so long as the British ruled.

“James FitzWilliam,” the magistrate intoned, “You are here on a charge of…” He shuffled the papers in front of him, found the one he wanted and read, “Sheep singeing…Sheep singeing?” he asked, looking right at me.

“Banned since ’06, yer honor,” I told him. “Was the doing of Lady Barrett-Wimpole. She dinna like the wee lambkins being treated rough, you see.”

The magistrate saw. He probably knew Lady Barrett-Wimpole. He put the paper down and turned his displeasure on FitzWilliam. “How say you, defendant?” he asked.

“Oh, aye, I done it,” FitzWilliam said.

His scowl deepening, the magistrate turned to his Engineers. “Has the defendant any prior convictions?”

The Engineers stood in front of the brass exoskeleton of the Babbage engine they took their name from. “Date of birth?” one of the Babbage monkeys asked.

“1864—” FitzWilliam said, and I interrupted to say, “—1863, your honors.” The Babbage engine had been explained to me: they’d be seeking old Jamey’s file with what was called a tree search: Born in a certain year, each criminal would be male or female, then greater or less than 5’ 6”, then greater or less than 10 stone, and so on, branch after branch, until they found the leaf that was James FitzWilliam. But they had to have the right tree to start with.

The Babbage monkeys cranked the engine, asking the FitzWilliam questions at each of its branchings, and him answering more or less truthfully so long as I was standing right there. The engine’s irregular chittering clashed with the ticking of the giant clock at the front of the courtroom and the impatient drumming of His Honor’s fingers on the bench. I could have told them the answer, but it had been willed that His Majesty’s Courts would use the infernal machines and so used they would be.

The engine clattered to a halt. Three beads slid from one side of the output abacus to the other. “He has three prior convictions,” the Engineer told the judge, as though the Lord was unable to count three beads without the help of an Engineer.

“Three prior convictions,” the magistrate intoned through his nose in the plummiest of accents. “What do you have to say for yourself, James FitzWilliam?”

“‘Tis the fish,” said old Jamey. “They fly me doon herenow and then, and I can hae guid a piece o’ haddock and some chips as we dinna hae up north.”

The judge was not stunned speechless, so much the worse for old Jamey. “Thirty days in gaol, on Soylent Green and water,” he ordered. “No fish, no chips. And you,” he said, pointing at me. “If you bring this man before me again, I’ll have your badge and truncheon. We’ll have no more of this nonsense about sheep singeing!” It was clear he did know Lady Barrett-Wimpole. He rapped his gavel and that was that.

Outside the Hall, as we climbed into the cab to get to the flight back, I told him, “Ye auld fool. Now we’re both in it up to our necks, and no two ways about it! What possessed ye to tell such a cock and bull story?”

The old FitzWilliam reached over to pat me on the shoulder. “‘Tis all for the best, me boyo,” he said. “The Sassenach hae handed us a thousand and one daft laws, agin sheep singeing and candle waxing and cow tipping and bugger all, and hae made us take them with his armored carriages and pneumatic cannon. It took us only four trips doon here to rid oursel’s o’ one o’ them laws. Another four thousand trips, Stewart, and we Scots’ll be free men agin.”