by H. S. Cross
—No, sir.
—Don’t take tones with me, young man, unless you prefer a docket.
Gray stared at the gravel.
—Sir, Trevor assayed, about that business in the barn.
But the Flea had no intention of discussing the matter with them, and he quickly rang the curtain on Trevor’s performance (though not before Trevor had voiced concern about Pearce lingering in barns with Third Formers). The boys of his House had been thoroughly dealt with, Burton declared, which was more than could be said for Trevor and his sullen companion. How, for instance, did the cries for help—
As much as Trevor longed to examine this most absorbing affair, he did still have his Latin prep to review. At any rate, he’d already told Mr. Grieves everything he knew, and—lo!—there was his Housemaster now. Perhaps Mr. Grieves could answer any questions that troubled the Flea.
Mr. Grieves nibbled a ginger nut:
—What might I be able to do?
Trevor flashed a smile. Gray turned to leave.
—Answer one or two questions, Burton growled, about this wretched barn.
They melted into the crowd, which was filtering back to the classrooms block.
—Do you think, Gray said, that you could tone it down just a cosine or two?
—Audentes fortuna iuvat, Brains. We’ve got Grievous buttered to the crust. Now for the giddy toast.
Whatever Trevor meant by that, it appeared to require nonstop banter during Trig, which in normal circumstances would have been a welcome diversion from Mr. Palford’s nonsense re: angles, adjacencies, waves, and the like. Today, though, the chatter recalled the rumble of tumbrils, the ring of sharpened blades. What about the pallor that had come over their Housemaster when confronted by the Flea? Was it, as Trevor insisted, evidence of a Stalky victory? Or was it the return again of the arctic man, dour and impenetrable?
* * *
—It didn’t seem important! John said. They’d been stopped, dealt with, done.
The memory of ginger nut ashes in his mouth, John stood before Jamie’s desk like a boy on the carpet.
—You should have told me, Jamie said. I thought we were past this.
* * *
At the end of lunch, during which Trevor massaged his reputation near to lion tamer, the Headmaster announced that Mr. Grieves wished to see his House directly following grace. Gray had hoped to use the twenty-minute interval to start his lines; instead, he crowded into the houseroom, where everyone was muttering in consternation, even prefects.
Grieves swept in and silenced them. There had been too much idle chat, he declared, concerning Farmer McKay’s property. He appealed to their sense of decency to stop rumors flying. Leslie nudged Trevor, who stood pillar-straight.
—Second, Grieves continued, until an inspection can be conducted and the site secured from injury, the entire House is gated. Prefects included.
Sharp intake of breath, murmurs, then protests.
—This is a precaution, Grieves snapped, not a punishment.
—But, sir!
—How long, sir?
—Are the other Houses gated as well?
—I’ll see the JCR in my study after Games, Grieves declared.
And he left, in a swish of soutane and a hush of disbelief.
Gray felt ill all through English. Lockett-Egan tried to entice them with A Tale of Two Cities, but despite Gray’s having read it before, he couldn’t enjoy the Eagle’s performance. When they got to the third chapter, his heart started beating in his gums. Buried how long? Almost eighteen years. You had abandoned all hope of being dug out? Long ago. Unlike Dr. Manette, his father could never be recalled to life, whereas the thing now imprisoned in the barn—Buried how long?
—What’s up your nose? Trevor demanded after the lesson.
—This beastly gating.
Trevor sighed, as if it were folly to expect better of their rulers.
—If they search the Keep, they’ll find our stash, Gray said.
—No, they won’t. They’ll find a heap of books and cheroots in a tin. Stalky’s a loss, but there’s nothing for it.
—They’ll find the box.
Trevor implored him to speak sense.
—There’s a box with my name on it.
—There isn’t.
—There is. I hid it there when you were in the Tower with appendicitis.
Trevor, flabbergasted:
—That was two years ago.
Gray bit the inside of his lip. Trevor put his hands in his pockets:
—That was phenomenally stupid, and now you’re in a phenomenal mess.
—Inside is a record of all our campaigns since we found the Keep.
Trevor’s eyes widened, and Gray felt heady at the lie, the most bald he’d ever told his friend.
At French, Monsieur Henri announced a discussion of their grand tour de Paris en printemps. Gray volunteered to go first, and after praising les musées, les parques, les cafés, les salles de danse, and les bibliothèques all visited with his mère, tante, and jeunes cousines, he was permitted to take his seat and discreetly write lines.
Buried how long? Almost eighteen years. I hope you care to live. He wouldn’t get anywhere by panicking. The thing with panics was to see them for what they were, a kind of vice. He didn’t think Dr. Sebastian understood vice this way. With him it was all self-will and conduct degrading to character, but didn’t vice lead to ruin? If so, then panic was as bad as any.
At tea, Dr. Sebastian commanded the other three Houses—Henri’s, the Flea’s, and the Eagle’s—to attend their Housemasters after the meal. The announcement deflated all but Grieves’s House, who deduced that the others would soon be joining them in their unjustly gated condition. Grieves’s absence from the masters’ table, though unusual, worried no one but Gray, but the Lenten fare of cat’s head and grass was so revolting that no one questioned his lack of appetite. After tea, they repaired to their own houseroom, where talk continued of the other Houses, of the barn, of what Trevor and Gray had seen there (multiplying each hour), of what Trevor reckoned they’d find when it was searched:
—Pious Pearce’s penny dreadfuls and his cheap, foreign smokes.
This suggestion, as patently ludicrous as Pearce’s supposed designs on the Third, built new steam in the gossip machine, which had chugged almost to a halt after laboring all day.
—Why else do you imagine he was out there? Leslie cried. Why do you think the fags got six?
—Ar-agh Patsy, mind the baby!
—Ar-agh Patsy, mind the child!
The Remove took up the rest of the song, their anthem of Stalkiness.
—Therefore the tale has stayed untold until today! a voice cried triumphantly.
Halton.
—I beg your damn pardon? Trevor said.
—I wanted to ask …
Heads turned to cheeky Halton. He dried up.
—What? Trevor scoffed. Can’t you see we’ve got more important biznai than sodding around with a beast like you?
Therefore the tale has stayed untold. Gray knew the line, had just read it, as recently as this week. Halton was near, but stepped nearer.
—Could we go somewhere else? he said.
The last line of the chapter called “Stalky.”
—Listen, you little sod, Trevor said quietly, boxing Halton against the fireplace.
Won’t you tell us? Not by a heap, said Stalky Corcoran. Therefore the tale has stayed untold—
—If you think you’re going to blackmail us, you’re bloody well mistaken, and if you dog us again, you’ll be very sorry.
Halton looked … Would he blub? Or fly at Trevor? Trevor turned and spoke so the room could hear:
—How is Pious today? Still the arm of the law? Has it weakened, would you say, since yesterday?
It wasn’t funny, but everyone laughed. Halton elbowed past, catching Gray in the ribs, hissing a curse in a foreign tongue.
In the washroom afterwards, Trevor swaggered before th
e urinal.
—When are you going to stop gloating? Gray demanded.
—Why should I?
—Because it’s sickening.
Someone was being seized, dragged down the room, held upside down over a toilet bowl.
—I’ll tell you what’s sickening, Trevor retorted, it’s you in a twist. You’re a genius at messes, but you can’t take—
—I don’t see the point in showing off to Grieves so you can humiliate him in front of Burton ten minutes later.
—You wouldn’t.
Swinton bellowed from the door about Prep.
—So now he’s going to search the barn—
—And find nothing. Drop it! I told you—
Toilet diver released, the captors rumbled past Swinton.
—Grieves wasn’t at tea, Gray said. Why do you think that was?
—Wasn’t hungry? Had an assignation?
—He’s at the barn!
Trevor buttoned his flies:
—To search it himself before the actual search?
—It’s possible.
—You’re becoming boring about this, Brains. Either shut up and let me deal with Grievous or go and deal with him yourself. But spare us the embarrassing chat.
Trevor sucked water from the tap and then wiped his mouth on Gray’s sleeve:
—And you can stop feeling sorry for beastly Halton.
—I don’t.
—You do. It’s wet. He thinks he knows something about our Keep. You should thank me for nipping it in the bud.
9
The corridor outside their form room buzzed. The other Houses had indeed been gated, and their oppressed citizens proposed every sort of rash action until the Flea hurtled into their midst, extinguishing sound with presence alone. As they found their seats, he let it be known that his patience was short, exceeding short. If the Flea’s peace was disturbed with even so much as a cleared throat, he would fall upon the offender with teeth and umbrella.
—And what do you call this? he demanded when Gray presented his lines.
—Lines. From last night.
The Flea raised his brow.
—Sir.
—This is unspeakable. Do it again.
The Flea used a ruler to push the foolscap across the desk, stinking meat returned to its owner.
—But … I did them.
—I am well aware, Riding, that you believe cleverness excuses everything, but allow me to suggest other qualities you’d do well to cultivate—humility, prudence, civility even. High marks do not repair poor penmanship, slipshod impositions, petulance, arrogance, or any of your numerous faults.
Gray bit his tongue and returned to his seat.
—If you intend to sulk, the Flea called, you can add another fifty.
The first thing he had to do was to stop whatever was happening to his legs, and then he had to stop what was happening to his hands because the perfect revenge had just occurred to him, one so Stalky that it would kill Trevor not to have thought of it himself. He would redo the lines, and the extra fifty, using the bit from Martial the Flea detested, the passage the man had spent a whole lesson vilifying last week. He would have to write slowly, so that what was happening to his hands wouldn’t happen to the letters on the page. Making things smaller would help. So would taking time to decorate the capital letters. Each line he began with a flourish and ended with a swash, each word etched with hatred. This man wanted him to suffer? He would make the Flea suffer. He copied the stanza the man hated most and then copied it again three times. The Flea wanted tears to push against his eyeballs, but it was mirth he suppressed! Soon, too soon, the document drew to its close. He blotted the paper, jotted the pages together, and carried them on palms like a salver to the Flea’s desk.
—Sir.
He put his heels together with a faint click. Glancing over his spectacles, the Flea swept Gray’s pages into the wastepaper basket, dismissed him, and then returned to his marking.
He’d done what the Flea wanted him to do. He’d written the lines twice, for an audience of no one. Mirth and hope fell before him as the papers settled in the bin. He returned to his seat.
This was what happened when guards were let down. This was what happened when things were left to molder.
He’d been intending to read his father’s birthday letters again, intending for months, perhaps more than a year. This term he certainly intended to face the box, if only to take the letter marked for his fourteenth birthday. But it had rained, and they’d been gated, and then it had rained again and they hadn’t been able to go to the Keep. Yesterday should have brought an end to his dithering. He meant to slip the fourteenth-birthday envelope into his pocket and read it later when he’d worked up the nerve. He would have done, too, if not for beastly Halton. He couldn’t remember the exact words of the earlier letters, but he knew his father had included advice. Surely, if he’d memorized the advice, he wouldn’t have erred as he had just now, getting carried away with cheeky lines when he ought to have guarded against the Flea’s wrath, his boot.
Valarious, too, had run into a humiliating difficulty upon arrival at Thorn Keep, where his half brother, the Elf Rider, was being held captive by Morvella the Virulent. Valarious’s companion, Master Shadow, had warned him against direct assault upon the Keep, so Valarious had led them not to the front gates but to the rear entrance. Master Shadow deplored the plan, and indeed the dungeon guards spotted them the instant they broke cover. The two had only escaped the ensuing melee with the rapid fall of night. Back in the forest, Valarious tended to his companion, binding his wounds, reviving him with an elixir. It had been wrong, he concluded, to bring Master Shadow on his fatal errand. The Elf Rider was his own half brother. He was, in short, Valarious’s responsibility—
—How do you spell responsibility? he whispered to Trevor.
—Riding!
The Remove stirred.
—Talking, again? the Flea demanded.
—I wasn’t talking.
—The second night in a row.
—I wasn’t!
—Don’t answer me, boy. Stand up.
—Shut up, Trevor breathed, just shut up.
He stood. The Flea lowered his glasses.
—What was it, Riding, that I said at the beginning of Prep?
Gray stared at the desktop.
—I asked a question, boy.
—Don’t know, sir.
—Leslie!
—Sir?
—Refresh Riding’s memory.
Leslie stood reluctantly:
—You said, sir, that if anyone cleared his throat you would fall upon him with your teeth and umbrella.
—Thank you, Leslie. Fifty lines for impudence.
Leslie sat back down.
—Do me the decency of looking at me when I’m speaking to you, Riding.
If looks could kill, this man would be dead.
—How dare you crib in my Prep room?
—I wasn’t cribbing!
—You were asking Mainwaring for an answer. Don’t lie to me, boy.
—I only asked how to spell responsibility!
—Why do you need to spell responsibility to do mathematics?
It was happening again, the thing with his legs and hands.
—Bring your book here.
He reached for Trig, any Trig, but the Flea swooped down from the dais and sureyed the papers littering his desktop.
—We have been busy! A hundred lines and now these? Your powers astound us.
The Flea opened Gray’s first exercise book (Latin) and then set it down. The second (Trig), he scanned with relish.
—Ah, yes! The responsibilities of the algebra. Indecipherable to these poor eyes.
Expounding his utter ignorance of the Modern Side, the Flea begged Leslie to enlighten him as to the evening’s prep. Leslie read out the assignment. The Flea leafed through Gray’s pages and, arriving at the back, professed himself mystified. Gray’s prep, it seemed, had vanished.
> —Nay, the Flea continued, we spoke too soon! Here is yet another volume.
It was a performance, a drama starring the Flea, its purpose to humiliate. If the Flea read Valarious, he could claim the passage was satire.
—Surely this tome bears responsibility for numbers eight through eighteen, if not thirty-six through … Leslie?
—Forty, sir.
Unless they liked it, in which case the Flea’s tactic would backfire, exquisitely.
—Thank you, Leslie. Now, before you repose yourself to complete those lines, and I believe ten will do after all—
—Thank you, sir.
—Will you satisfy us with the spelling of responsibility?
Leslie gave it.
—We are indebted. Sit.
Reading glasses back on his nose, the Flea opened Valarious, first page, second, riffling through to the end.
The Flea couldn’t hurt him. Not truly. He could give more lines, he could jaw and jaw, but he couldn’t touch him. He wasn’t his Housemaster, and any docket he wrote would land Gray on Grieves’s carpet, invited to explain how he had irked Grieves’s sworn enemy.
—I see we must apologize, Riding. It is plain that you were not in thought or in deed cribbing.
The Flea composed the face he carted out for elegiacs:
—Valarious knelt before Master Shadow. The thief’s ashen countenence alar-umed him. Master Shadow, confided the knight, I cannot permit you to continue with me. The thief grasped Valarious’s ste-a-ly arm.
The form twittered. The thespian king played to the gallery with phonetic literalism.
—But nay, my le-ige. I will not abandon you to the dung-on. You will have need of me, my lock picking. But the band of henchmen have already wo-onded you. My brother is my respon-sa-bility.
Bows, curtain, finis. The Remove would have leapt in ovation, if they’d dared.
—Young Riding hath spoke true! He is in need of the spelling of responsibility, not to mention one or two other words.
Chuckles, hear-hear.
—But once he acquires them, certain it is that Tennyson shall beckon him to the Laureate and shuffle aside to make room in the Abbey.
