Jasper Fforde - The Well of Lost Plots

'Off with her head!' yelled the Queen.

The King put on his spectacles and looked anxiously round, to find out who had been talking. The Queen nudged him and nodded in my direction.

'You there!' he said. 'You will have your say soon enough, Miss, Miss …'

'Next,' put in the White Rabbit after consulting his parchment.

'Really?' replied the King with some confusion. 'Does that mean we're done?'

'No, Your Majesty,' replied the White Rabbit patiently, 'her name is Next. Thursday Next.'

'I suppose you think that's funny?'

'No indeed, Your Majesty,' I replied. 'It was the name I was born with.'

The jurymen all frantically started to write 'It was the name I was born with' on their slates.

'You're an Outlander, aren't you?' said the Queen, who had been staring at me for some time.

'Yes, Your Majesty.'

'Then answer me this: when there are two people and one of them has left, who is left? The person who is left or the person who has left? I mean, they can't both be left, can they?'

'Herald, read the accusation!' said the King.

At this, the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and then unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as follows:

'Miss Thursday Next is hereby accused of a fiction infraction Class II against the Jurisfiction penal code FAL/0605937 and pursuant to the BookWorld general law regarding continuity of plot lines, as ratified to the Council of Genres, 1584.'

'Consider your verdict,' said the King to the jury.

'Objection!' cried the Gryphon. 'There's a great deal to come before that!'

'Overruled!' shouted the King, adding: 'Or do I mean "sustained"? I always get the two mixed up — it's a bit like "feed a cold and starve a fever" or "starve a cold and feed a fever". I never know which is right. At any rate, you may call the first witness.'

The White Rabbit blew three more blasts on the trumpet, and called out:

'First witness!'

The first witness was Mrs Fairfax, the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall, Rochester's home. She blinked and looked around the court slowly, smiling at Hopkins and glaring at me. She was assisted into the witness box by an usher who was in reality a large guinea pig.

'Do you promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?' asked the White Rabbit.

'I do.'

'Write that down,' the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly all wrote "write that down" on their slates.

'Mrs Fairfax,' began Hopkins, rising to his feet, 'I want you to tell me in your own words the events surrounding Miss Next's intrusion into Jane Eyre , starting at the beginning and not stopping until you get to the end …'

'And then what?' asked the King.

'Then she may stop,' said Hopkins with a trace of annoyance.

'Ah,' said the King in the voice of someone who thinks they understand a great deal but are sadly mistaken, 'proceed.'

For the next two hours we listened not only to Mrs Fairfax but also Grace Poole, Blanche Ingram and St John Rivers, all giving evidence to explain the old ending and how by calling 'Jane, Jane, Jane!' at Jane's bedroom I had changed the narrative completely. The jury tried to keep up with the proceedings, and they wrote as and when directed by the King until there was no more room on their slates, whereupon they tried to write on the benches in front of them, and failing that, on each other.

After every witness the smallest dormouse in the jury was excused for a trip to the bathroom, which gave the Gryphon time to explain to the King — who probably wouldn't have been able to touch his head with his eyes shut — the procedure of the law. When the dormouse returned the witness was given to the Gryphon for cross-examination, and every time he called: 'No further questions.' The afternoon wore on and it became hotter in the courtroom. The Queen grew more and more bored, and seemed to demand the verdict on a more and more frequent basis, once even asking during a witness's testimony.

And throughout this tedious performance, as the characters from Jane Eyre came and repeated the truth in front of me, a seemingly endless parade of guinea pigs interrupted the proceedings. Each one was immediately set upon and placed head first into a large canvas bag, then ejected from the court. Each time this happened there followed a quite inordinate amount of confusion, cries and noise. As the din grew to fever pitch the Queen would scream, 'Off with his head! Off with his head!' as though she were somehow in direct competition with the tumult. By the time the latest guinea pig had been thrown from the court, Grace Poole had vanished in a cloud of alcoholic vapours, and no one knew where she was.

'Never mind!' said the King, with an air of great relief. 'Call the next witness.' He added in an undertone to the Queen: 'Really, my dear, you must cross-examine the next witness. It quite makes my forehead ache!'

I watched the White Rabbit as he fumbled over the list and read out at the top of his shrill little voice the name: 'Thursday Next!'

'Excuse me,' said the Gryphon, stirring himself from the lethargy he had shown throughout the trial, 'but Miss Next will not be giving evidence against herself in this court of law.'

'Is that allowed?' asked the King. The jury all looked at one another and shrugged.

'It proves she's guilty!' screamed the Queen. 'Off with her head! Off with—'

'It proves nothing of the sort,' interrupted the Gryphon. The Queen went scarlet and would probably have exploded had not the King laid his hand on her arm.

'Come, come, my dear,' he said softly, 'you must stay calm. All these orders of execution are probably not good for your hearts.' He chuckled. 'Hearts,' he said again. 'I say, I've made a joke, that's rather good, don't you think?'

The jury all laughed dutifully and the brighter ones explained to the more stupid ones what the joke was, and the stupid ones explained to the even stupider ones what a joke actually is.

Excuse me,' said the dormouse again, 'may I go to the bathroom?'

'Again?' bellowed the King. 'You must have a bladder the size of a peanut.'

'A grain of rice, so please Your Majesty,' said the dormouse, knees knocking together.

'Very well,' said the King, 'but make it quick. Now, can we reach a verdict?'

' Now who wants a verdict?' asked the Queen triumphantly.

'There's more evidence to come yet, please Your Majesty,' said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry. 'We have to hear from the defence yet.'

'The defence?' asked the King wearily. 'Haven't we just heard from them?'

'No, Your Majesty,' replied the White Rabbit. 'That was the prosecution.'

'The two always confuse me,' replied the King, staring at his feet, 'a bit like that "overruled" and "sustained" malarkey — which was which again?'

'The prosecution rests,' said Hopkins, who could see that this trial might last for months if he didn't get a move on, 'and I think,' he added, 'we have conclusively proved that Miss Next not only hanged the ending of Jane Eyre but was also premeditated in her actions. This is not a court of opinion, it is a court of law, and there is only one verdict which this court can reach — guilty.'

'I told you she was guilty,' muttered the King, getting up to leave.

'Please Your Majesty,' said the White Rabbit, 'that was just the prosecution summing-up. You must listen to the defence now.

'Ah!' said the King, sitting down again.

The Gryphon stood up and walked to the jury box. They all recoiled in fear as he scratched his chin with a large paw. The dormouse put up his hand again to be excused and was allowed to leave. When he had returned the Gryphon began.

'The question here is not whether Miss Next took a few textual and narrative liberties with the end of Jane Eyre , as my learne friend the prosecution has made so abundantly clear. We admit that she did.'