King Diocletian
Magistrate
I will, I promise, get back to poor Juliette and Liberty soonish. But for now...
To be honest, we hadn’t been that worried when the coup happened. We weren’t even sure it had been a coup and we made sure never to describe it as such in any official embassy document: no point antagonising the new regime. We weren’t entirely clear who the new government was – a cousin of the outgoing president, given the tacit support of a couple of ageing generals and senior religious figures. We’d seen this before, not just in the Republic, but across the region. And, of course, they invoked their god to justify the takeover, promising a more stringent interpretation of the religious regulations. But they always did that.
The first we realised that this might be a little different was when we received an official communiqué from the Ministry of Justice demanding we present Sarah Fleming for trial. Sarah Fleming was a teacher who’d been charged about six months ago with what they termed “seditious blasphemy” for a couple of blog posts she’d written.
It was nothing especially inflammatory, but she had been mildly critical of some of the restrictions placed upon women in the Republic. They hadn’t even arrested her: they’d just got in touch with us at the Embassy and we’d had to take her to be interviewed by the religious police. For hours we’d sat in a stuffy room while a couple of bearded men asked her questions that seemed broadly pointless. It was all very boring, or it would have been if Sarah weren’t so attractive.
She was 27 when she was charged, a slender girl with shoulder-length brown hair. She was probably above average height, but there was a fragility about her, and she had the loveliest deep brown eyes and an infectious giggle. Not that she giggled then. She seemed worried but calm, her obvious intelligence seeming to persuade them that there was nothing to pursue. She’d already deleted the blog and she agreed not to stray onto controversial matters again. She came into the embassy a couple of times after that for reasons of mundane bureaucracy, and we started to invite her to the occasional function. There’s precious little female company in the Republic – you really can’t count Margaret, the office manager, who may technically be female but is a lump of unyielding and highly efficient Scottish granite – and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who liked having her around. Not that any of us got anywhere. Although why would she have looked at me, a dry man in his early forties trapped in a desperately dull marriage to an almost faultless woman?
It seemed that everything had blown over, although the charge hadn’t formally been dropped. And then barely a fortnight after the new regime had taken over, the case had been reactivated. I called her, delighting in her clear, educated voice. I explained the situation and arranged for her to come in. We still didn’t realise how serious it was. I think we all believed it would pass over as it had before.
But the closer it got to the trial, the more it became apparent that they weren’t going to drop it. We had to report to the court at 10am on a Wednesday morning. We tried to get more information, tried to find out what format the trial would take, tried to discover who the judge would be, what witnesses would be produced, what we could do to defend her, but everything was frustratingly vague. Even Margaret struggled for details.
Sarah arrived at the embassy at eight that morning, dressed demurely in a long navy skirt and white blouse. She showed clear signs of strain, her face tired and drawn. We tried to reassure her, but the truth was we had no idea what was going on.
To be honest, we hadn’t been that worried when the coup happened. We weren’t even sure it had been a coup and we made sure never to describe it as such in any official embassy document: no point antagonising the new regime. We weren’t entirely clear who the new government was – a cousin of the outgoing president, given the tacit support of a couple of ageing generals and senior religious figures. We’d seen this before, not just in the Republic, but across the region. And, of course, they invoked their god to justify the takeover, promising a more stringent interpretation of the religious regulations. But they always did that.
The first we realised that this might be a little different was when we received an official communiqué from the Ministry of Justice demanding we present Sarah Fleming for trial. Sarah Fleming was a teacher who’d been charged about six months ago with what they termed “seditious blasphemy” for a couple of blog posts she’d written.
It was nothing especially inflammatory, but she had been mildly critical of some of the restrictions placed upon women in the Republic. They hadn’t even arrested her: they’d just got in touch with us at the Embassy and we’d had to take her to be interviewed by the religious police. For hours we’d sat in a stuffy room while a couple of bearded men asked her questions that seemed broadly pointless. It was all very boring, or it would have been if Sarah weren’t so attractive.
She was 27 when she was charged, a slender girl with shoulder-length brown hair. She was probably above average height, but there was a fragility about her, and she had the loveliest deep brown eyes and an infectious giggle. Not that she giggled then. She seemed worried but calm, her obvious intelligence seeming to persuade them that there was nothing to pursue. She’d already deleted the blog and she agreed not to stray onto controversial matters again. She came into the embassy a couple of times after that for reasons of mundane bureaucracy, and we started to invite her to the occasional function. There’s precious little female company in the Republic – you really can’t count Margaret, the office manager, who may technically be female but is a lump of unyielding and highly efficient Scottish granite – and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who liked having her around. Not that any of us got anywhere. Although why would she have looked at me, a dry man in his early forties trapped in a desperately dull marriage to an almost faultless woman?
It seemed that everything had blown over, although the charge hadn’t formally been dropped. And then barely a fortnight after the new regime had taken over, the case had been reactivated. I called her, delighting in her clear, educated voice. I explained the situation and arranged for her to come in. We still didn’t realise how serious it was. I think we all believed it would pass over as it had before.
But the closer it got to the trial, the more it became apparent that they weren’t going to drop it. We had to report to the court at 10am on a Wednesday morning. We tried to get more information, tried to find out what format the trial would take, tried to discover who the judge would be, what witnesses would be produced, what we could do to defend her, but everything was frustratingly vague. Even Margaret struggled for details.
Sarah arrived at the embassy at eight that morning, dressed demurely in a long navy skirt and white blouse. She showed clear signs of strain, her face tired and drawn. We tried to reassure her, but the truth was we had no idea what was going on.
