— Don't listen to what the briefs or Inspectors say, he stressed, watch instead the way they move about the forecourt. The Law is the very engine of Dave's cab. Here the secular and sacred aspects of the Knowledge gear one into the other, each functionary is a part of that engine, his robe patterned so as to resemble cog, wheel and alternator. In their revolutions from inspection pit to bench is to be seen the drive shaft of the Knowledge, which extends from the Forecourts of Justice into the city, the burbs and even the sticks beyond.
The Tower was not a place that either Antonë or Carl could have survived in for long. Its population had swelled mightily in the years since Symun was held there, and the continual skirmishing on the far borders of Ing added Taffies and Scots to the burgeoning numbers of cockney crims. No matter whether they were captives or offenders, most of these dads were given only the most cursory of legal examinations before being snipped, chained and sent off in gangs to be chavs on lawyerly estates in the sticks.
On their arrival in the Tower, Antonë had expected provision to have been made for them by the Lawyer of Blunt — however, there was none. Instead their London finery was stripped from their backs in front of the laughing warders. The following morning they had to attend forecourt in the dirty T-shirts and cut-off jeans offered to them by the lowliest of their fellows. On returning late in the third tariff, they were close to despair, having failed even to wrest a pannikin of oatie from the mêlée, when a new protector made himself known. He was foxy-faced and ginger-haired; his teeth were blackened and snaggled. Terri the potman from the Öl Glöb extended his squamous hand to them.
Carl didn't know which was more shocking: that this bloke, whom he'd seen in the forecourt gallery that first tariff, was now within the Tower, or that the other inmates, who had been harassing them, fell back as Terri came forward, bowing low to him, and near pressing their faces into the dust of the yard. Seeing the state they were in, Terri went first to one of the little stalls where the wealthier prisoners snacked and bought them some takeaway. As they snaffled this down, both Antonë and Carl fired questions at the potman: How did he get here? Who was he? Why was he prepared to help them? He refused to answer, only laid a scaly finger against his sharp nose and said, Awl in gud tym. Awl in gúd tym.
The trial lasted a full blob, and each first tariff when the dipped headlight was still in the screen and the dashboard twinkled in the east out by the Emtwenny5, Carl, having no pot to piss in, would clamber up to the battlements, where the prisoners made void of their natural waste products. There was London spread out before him: the peaked roofs of its majestic Shelters, the lofty masts of the ferries moored in its docks and basins; the smoking chimneys and stilled wheelvanes; the flying rats swooping about the long knife edges of the mock terraces. Carl had eyes for none of this. Rather, he was transfixed by the cages hanging above Traitors' Gate; in them were dads convicted of treason — some had once been noble Lawyers, now they were torpid skeletons, their yellow skin stretched drum-tight over their ribs, and scraps of cloth their only robes.
Carl lifted his face up to the screen and called over, for despite every evidence of suffering he could not abandon the belief that Dave was above it all, wise and benevolent. He still hoped that when his own torment was ended, and he found himself witless from the wheeling, branded and his tongue snipped, he would rise up there, over the cloudy wipers, another Lost Boy gone for all eternity to be with his true dad.
On the fifth day, at the second tariff when the Chief Examiner was back from his sixth recess, he came to consider the admissibility of the Lawyer of Blunt's petition. Until then arguments and counter-arguments had been concerned entirely with whether it might even be presented to the forecourt. Carl's brief, advancing across the inspection pit, addressed the Chief Examiner in formal Arpee:
— Reervú', my client has been maintained in an ignorance entire of his own dad's fate. I put it to the forecourt that he cannot be held to account for any crimes he may have committed in pursuit of this Knowledge.
There followed two full tariffs of whispering, the briefs, Inspectors and Examiners all hanging precipitately, in clusters, from the top bench. Eventually the Chief Examiner rose and boomed: — Enough! Shut it! I cannot be expected to weigh these arguments in such circumstances. I shall adjourn to my chambers, you, you, you and you follow me!
They were gone yet another tariff, and when they filed back in Antonë guessed the answer even before the Chief Examiner regained his lofty perch:
— No lad may be denied knowledge of his dad, he barked, and nor shall you be, Carl Dévúsh. However, your crimes are of such an extent and so singular, your flying so high and fast, that no mitigation can be allowed for them. Petition denied!
A great acclamation went up from the galleries, where the diehard spectators were mostly those who desired to see the full weight of the Law descend upon the malefactors. Above this, Carl heard the Lawyer of Blunt clearly exclaim: O my Dave! Now all is lost! He spoke too soon — there was, for him, far more to be lost. Inspector after Inspector now hitched up his robes to climb up from the pit to the bench and make his depositions. Statements had been taken from witnesses to every stage of Antonë and Carl's journeying — toffs in the Lawyer's own circle were turncoats, Missus Edjez had been broken by torture, the gaffer of the Trophy Room had had his say — and it transpired that no run out to the sticks had been too long for the Inspectors to undertake. The Plateists of Bril had been examined, and seeseeteevee men had been to Chil and even Ham itself, for the words of Mister Greaves and the Driver were read out in open forecourt.
The evidence of flying was overwhelming, not merely against the accused but also the Lawyer of Blunt. If he had been hoping to escape the censure of the Public Carriage Office by reason of his status or connections, then he was rudely mistaken. To the accompaniment of loud didduloodoos double doors were opened into the inspection pit and a cab was lugged in. Carl gasped, for through its barred windows he could see a sharp, commanding profile, a pendant earring, a clawed hand and a bloody gash where an eye should be. It was the Exile — the Luvvie Joolee Blunt herself. Seeing his wife so arraigned, the Lawyer made haste to quit the gallery. Sturdy chaps seized him and the few remaining members of his circle. The Chief Examiner's voice boomed out over the forecourt:
— No daddy or mummy may defy the Changeover! He gestured at the cab: The evidence of this contemptible wretch has been extracted under torture. All over London — he rose and his mirror flashed — the members of your chellish conspiracy are at this very moment being arrested! Take these flyers to the Tower!
Once the Blunts and their followers had been removed the Chief Examiner turned his attention on Carl and Antonë. He pushed his mirror away from his face and confronted them with his sweaty and distorted sneer. Judgement was nigh:
— Az 2 U 2 — the harsh Mokni consonants cut like knives through the thickening atmosphere of the forecourt — U lì, U cheet, U R trayters, U R fliars. U raze up ve toyist an drag dahn ve dävyn! He drew a scrap of black cloth from a fold of his robe and slapped it on to his bald wig. He parted his robe so that the sign of the Wheel was clearly visible on the sweaty breast of his T-shirt. He drew himself up to his full height and pronounced terrifying anathema on them:
— U wil B taykun bakk 2 ve Towa an brökun on ve Weel. Yaw tungs wil B cú aht. U wil B brandid an ung aht 2 dye inna box! Tayk em dahn! Ware2, guv? he bellowed.
— 2 Nú Lundun, the forecourt responded in a subdued fashion.
When the sweatbox door was yanked open, booze reek surged into its boiling confines. It was only the middle of the second tariff, but the warders at the Tower were already mullered. They left Böm chained in the sweatbox, then lashed and kicked Carl along narrow brick corridors and up spiral stone staircases, until they reached a cell high up in the white keep. There they taunted him while swigging their jack. Yaw juss annuva lyttul mummy, cried the ringleader, a burly bloke with thick, black stubble, an thass wy Eyem gonna fukk U up ve garri. He grabbed Carl's mop of hair and banged his head against the wall.