The Trial of Barnaby Crewe – Part 1: The Verdict

ROYAL TRIBUNAL OF VALDORIA The Crown against Barnaby Crewe

Lady Justiciar Ottilie Brandt, Authorised Court Officer of the Crown, has decided in the matter of the accused Barnaby Crewe, tax inspector of the Lower Quarter, as follows.

In the name of the Crown of Valdoria, the accused is found

GUILTY

of the offences of

INSOLENCE TO THE THRONE

QUESTIONING THE AUTHORITY OF THE CROWN'S DECREES

Original statement of the accused:

For several months I have corrected the Queen's clerks in public, sneered at the royal seal when it was stamped on my papers, and told my friends in the tavern that the Tribunal is a pantomime and that its Justiciar would not dare to enforce a real penalty. I now realise how foolish this was, since I am a registered volunteer of the Crown's Court of Correction. I humbly apply to your Excellency to decide what penalty I deserve.

Mitigating circumstances: the accused wrote this statement freely and without being asked.

Aggravating circumstances: the accused has been a volunteer of the Court since the spring of last year. He knew the rules. He broke them regardless.

SENTENCE

• A fine of nine hundred crowns, payable to the Royal Treasury, in the Realm's play money, to be counted out before the Court.
• Forty ceremonial strokes of the cane, counted aloud by the accused, delivered over one session by the Court Executrix, within the limits agreed in the Articles of Consent.
• One night in the Lower Cell beneath the Tribunal, in restraints of leather and soft rope, with bread, broth and water, and a bell within reach.

Further provisions of the verdict:

• The FINE is counted out at the opening of the execution.
• The CORRECTION is carried out by the Court Executrix in the presence of the Justiciar, who may reduce or end it at any moment.
• The ARTICLES OF CONSENT attached to this verdict are binding on the Court. The accused may end the sentence at any time by speaking the word ADJOURN. The sentence then ends, the restraints are released, and no one will ask why.

Signed, Lady Justiciar Ottilie Brandt.

Barnaby read it standing, in the cold waiting hall of the Tribunal, with his heart going like a drum. He had written the confession himself, at their kitchen table, a week earlier. He had not expected to hear it read back in her voice.

He was forty-one, a real-life tax inspector with a talent for pedantry. Ottilie was forty-six, a county court judge, composed and exact, who had agreed after a year of talking to build him this: a verdict, a court, a sentence, a ceremony. They had written the Articles of Consent together on three sheets of cream paper. His limits, hers, the words that stopped it. The cane was a thin rattan, used within a count he had chosen himself. The cell door had a latch that opened from the inside. She had shown it to him twice.

"Barnaby Crewe," said Lady Justiciar Ottilie, from the bench, in her court voice.

"Yes, Your Excellency."

"You have heard the verdict. Do you accept the jurisdiction of this Tribunal?"

"I do."

"Do you accept the Articles of Consent?"

"I do."

"Do you remember the word?"

"Adjourn."

"Are you content?"

"Content, Your Excellency."

"Then the sentence will be carried out at dusk." She closed the file. "You will wait in the Lower Cell until you are sent for."

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Sentence.