by H. S. Cross
—Which is more than they’ll do for your teeth and umbrella.
Stillness, like a grave. Except in graves things did move, worms, maggots, creatures reveling in their feast. Water tables rose, lifting coffins, and then drained, letting them down again. Grass grew up, roots down. The grave teemed with more labor than shipyards.
The Flea abandoned Gray’s book, and now his shoes were clicking in the aisle, past the silent, captivated body, to the wall at the back, where he released a panel and exposed a cupboard.
Some things once done could not be called back. Most could be stepped away from and denied, as one denied breaking wind, but some changed everything. Even God, all-powerful in the garden, saw that nothing could be the same after the man and the woman had done what they did.
The Flea was coming back, carrying the thing outlawed in the classroom. It was a threat, an object in the stage show, meant to frighten him into submission. Not that he’d meant to say the words that had been said, but now they couldn’t be pulled back or joked off, not here before an audience of—
—Put out your hand.
When he did, the man took hold of his wrist. He’d never touched him before, not even an elbow, but now warm hands, almost meaty, examined his fingers, stained with ink. He gestured for the other hand, no ink there, and turned it palm-up, exposed in the middle of the room.
He wouldn’t, not really, not here, to him, like this. Players, drama meant to— Gust, crack, hand recoiled, something hot, electric—
Hand on wrist, lifting, straightening, guiding his right hand to brace his elbow. Digits curling back into that cup of feeling—
—Don’t.
The Flea’s voice for his ears only, the way they talked when they wanted you to stick it (if they were decent; he wasn’t, but if he were), bidding courage and a vile kind of trust.
—Don’t move.
Thunderbolts, two, before breath, thought, blood—
—That will do.
Fire. A glance bid him take hand away. Another glace prompting …
—Thank you, sir.
A nod (if they were decent, most weren’t, but—).
—I’ll see you in my study after Prayers, young Riding.
One thing—fire—at a time. Turning, stepping, sitting. Leafing one-handed to a page like Trevor’s. Beneath the desk, hand pressed between his knees. It couldn’t be as bad as it felt, scorched, blistered. Couldn’t bear to look.
Minutes gone and still inferno. Were they maiming the Elf Rider at the Keep? If they branded his hand or cut it off, it would all be very well for a scene of wicked torture, but the Elf Rider was going to have to live with it the rest of his life (and his author for the rest of the story) (or stories!). If he were reduced to one hand, bow and arrow would be out. Heavy swords, out. Fisticuffs out. How could he even ride? No. Whatever the torturers inflicted on his body, it couldn’t be permanent. Even the elixir in Valarious’s pouch couldn’t un-maim a person.
Trevor nudged his exercise book over, sines, cosines, a soothing, senseless abstraction. He unscrewed his pen and began to copy.
They were supposed to give a docket. In the days before Dr. Sebastian, they could do anything to you and did (though Wilberforce never told of maiming), but then came Dr. Sebastian and his dockets so nothing would be done in heat, nothing would be personal, at least not that personal. But then Burton—and for what? Burton had probably misheard, probably thought he’d said … he hadn’t said much of anything, a joke. All right, maybe umbrellas, but Burton surely misheard even that, he’d been mumbling after all, because he’d given him lines, and then given them again, and then read— So what if he wasn’t a perfect speller? Who said it was even a fair copy? He came top in Latin. He did his prep. Still lines, lines again, then—
It should have happened to the writing hand, the one that caused so much trouble. If only it had happened years ago, before that hand had written what it wrote about Wilberforce and what he did. Years ago it had seemed like a purgative cure, expelling the parasite, drawing it out to be sealed away beneath the floor of the box, the secret compartment beneath his father’s letters. But once threads of ink touched threads of cotton rag, things expelled became visible. Writing them down was the worst thing he’d ever done. The stupidest, blindest—
He needed to institute a new regime, and he needed wherewithal to do the things he’d left undone. Once he could recover the box, remove his father’s letters, and burn the rest, then the New Regime would begin: no more writing. The bards of yore never wrote, they couldn’t, it was all done by heart, and if someone took exception to a song, the bard could leave town.
A scrap of paper the size of a coin slipped under his elbow: letters majuscule and minuscule, a cypher known long from use. The cypher deemed him brainless. He was to speak no more, at any provocation. Under pain of kicking, he was to refrain from drawing the Flea. (I’ll see you in my study—one thing at a time.) Box room number four, there they two would meet again. When he’d finished reading the code, Trevor drew across it until the majuscule and minuscule vanished in a storm of scribble.
They surrounded him on the way to Prayers, wanting to see and to spread the thing like Spanish influenza. The trenches killed more than they could count, his father said, maimed others, addled the rest, and then came a fire racing through the bodies of the living. It happened in days, sometimes hours, an avenger more mighty than all the Kaiser’s guns.
Savior, breathe an evening blessing,
Ere repose our spirits seal;
Sin and want we come confessing,
Thou canst save and thou canst heal.
Never had he sung a more putrid load of tosh.
Though destruction walk around us,
Though the arrows past us fly,
Angel guards from thee surround us,
We are safe if thou art nigh.
Grieves wasn’t nigh, in his seat or anywhere, which at least brought the dismal relief that Grieves wouldn’t hear of his shame. His prayers had never been answered, not the ones that mattered. Only fools pined for sentimental blessings. He had to put armor on, not take it off. Battle now in a foreign House with a potent foe, one gone too far, and not far enough.
* * *
Had he known what he was doing back then? It was all embarrassingly obvious to him now, but Moss had no memory of deliberate thought that first year. He and Pearce were natural enemies even without Morgan. Pearce was brittle, pretentious, odd. No one liked him. You had to be blatantly offensive for people not to like you. It wasn’t that hard to get along.
Moss’s ginger hair was the first thing people noticed in Shanghai, but in England it was less freakish. Along with it he had the skin, pale and easily bruised. Marks always looked vivid on him. Pearce had the faint lines on his back he wouldn’t talk about, the only thing that bought him respect until people learned he could fight, and would at the slightest provocation. Being punished always made Pearce angry. He wasn’t a coward, but the experience always incensed him. Moss could have told him it was only the cane; it wasn’t worth blowing one’s top. But Pearce invariably took against any opinion Moss held. If Moss had told him not to throw himself off Tower Bridge, Pearce would have leapt instantly to his death.
The angling for Morgan’s attention must have been obvious when Moss would provoke Pearce, especially when he did it in the changing room, everyone coming in and out of the showers, Morgan Wilberforce as undressed as any. Moss would make a rogue streak, pretending to be chased, so transparent he couldn’t believe he’d been able to do it with a straight face. There was the time he’d taken Pearce’s jacket and run with it—himself undressed, Pearce in vest and pants—into the showers where Morgan stood covered in soap. He’d dropped the jacket into a puddle, and Pearce had charged in murderous fury. Only Morgan would separate them, Morgan’s hands wet on his arm, his hair, picking him up and carting him away under an arm. He fought against Morgan just to do it, soap in his eyes from Morgan’s body, as Morgan hauled him into the
drying room.
Electric confrontation, no words, Morgan’s intoxicating determination and strength, down payment for official punishment later, the fear and excitement, the knee, what he could feel and had wanted to feel beneath him. Then Morgan would set him on his feet: Had enough? Moss would nod, smarting from Morgan’s smacks, beginning to throb wherever Pearce had got him. Morgan would take him out, hand on the back of his neck, give him a towel if Pearce had drawn blood, then he’d go to Pearce, snap his fingers, and Pearce would sit like a puppy. He’d speak to Pearce, privily, and when they’d done, Morgan would finish his shower to deliberate silence from the rest of the room.
Later, of course, the inevitable JCR summons, the look, the moves, the wait. Then the slam and the bite and the ache and knowing Morgan was on the other side of the cane, giving it on purpose; knowing all Morgan’s attention was on him; knowing that later at bedtime when everyone wanted to see, even Morgan would look; knowing that his marks would be better than anything Pearce could show. Moss always would have the more vivid, lurid, red-and-purple marks, and they’d last longer, deeper yellow and green.
They said it passed, the tendency to mark, if you got it enough. Lydon said he used to mark like that. Not, Lydon said, that they’d ever get half of what had been dealt in his day. Take the Prank War—but Morgan would tell Lydon to gas off, and he’d tell Moss he’d only himself to blame and he hoped it hurt as bad as it looked. And when he said that, Moss knew he was still thinking of him and remembering what had passed, and Moss would remember the feeling of being picked up, hauled over the knee, disciplined by Morgan’s hand, and later his arm.
Carter and Swinton remembered Morgan, too; he’d been their Captain of Games for one year. They respected him, but warily, like a stepfather. Moss never understood their reserve, but he attributed it to whatever had happened the year before he came. Those boys had secrets he’d never touch, and they possessed a part of Morgan he’d never know, no matter what transpired between them in the years that followed.
For a boy making his first visit to the JCR, Halton stuck six like someone familiar with what he was getting. Now in the dorm he was marked, but not as bad as Malcolm minor. Moss knew that Halton, too, had come from the colonies, but Nairobi rather than Shanghai. He was smaller than the others, target for their spite, but when faced with more than any of the Third had taken, Halton had only blanched. He’d trembled as they all did, but he’d held still better than Malcolm minor, who’d flinched twice and had to be held in place.
Halton wasn’t wild, he wasn’t a comedian, he didn’t start fights in the showers. A colonial upbringing was the start and end of anything between them.
* * *
—Kept you long enough.
Gray groped for the box-room light. Trevor was perched atop the highest trunk:
—Well?
—Well, what? The Flea thinks his arse is ice cream and everyone wants a lick.
—Don’t be that way, Trevor said severely. I’m on your side.
It was one thing to be dressed down by the Flea, but another to be reproached by a friend, and justly. Trevor jumped to the ground:
—What did he say? What did you say?
—The usual, and nothing.
Trevor looked at him, wary and wolfish.
—Oh, you know, intelligence, idleness, insolence, provocateur. I didn’t say anything, not even when he tried it on about the barn. I only said what you said, exactly.
—What?
—That we told Grieves what we knew, and it wasn’t fair to be carpeted right and left when we’d only gone to—
—Did I or did I not say not to draw him?
—I’d like to see you in his study, being played with like—
Trevor thumped him.
—Ow! He dropped it. He didn’t care about the barn. He just wanted to sing through his repertoire.
—You, my dear Brains, are hopeless.
Trevor straddled a trunk and extended his hands:
—Let’s see.
—It’s nothing.
The wolfish look. He gave his hand. Trevor whistled:
—Flea’s got an infernal good eye. Never know there was more than one except for the purple bit.
He snatched his fist out of sight, not that he’d looked.
—He’s a puffed-up, underhanded, white-arsed … arse.
—Oh, Hipponax! Trevor laughed. What’d you expect after that cheek?
—A docket! What he did was entirely, absolutely—
—Inside the box.
Gray boggled at him.
—Come on. Emergencies of order?
Gray demanded he explain himself. Trevor spouted nonsense about exceptions to the docket rule, one being so-called emergencies of order. Everyone knew it. In everyone’s fag test.
—Except, Trevor said realizing, you didn’t have a fag test.
—So?
Trevor rolled his eyes:
—So you can thank the Great Wilberforce for leaving you in the dark. The point is you need to keep your eye on the ball.
—My eye is on the—
—Provoking him, letting him needle you, then rinding off that way? Have you learned nothing?
Hand into fist, heat faded, though surely something was broken?
—It was crude, Trevor said, amateur and unnecessary. It certainly wasn’t Stalky, and for all that, moron, you got off easy.
Gray shut up and let Trevor lecture, how to act in the dorm, how to avoid attention as they launched the campaign to rescue his box; yes, there was a plan; yes, for tonight; Trevor wouldn’t hear a syllable of protest; while Gray had been getting himself caned for no purpose, Stalky had studied the field; a single raid would begin and end before the enemy rolled out of bed. In the morning, Gray could thank him, but tonight he was to follow orders: what to do with his clothes, where to hide them, what to listen for, when to wake and how.
Under the covers, other words clamored in his head, words that made his skin hot, that he’d never have heard if Grieves had been there. If Grieves had been there, Prep would have gone as usual. Burton would never have summoned him to the study, as if he were his, as if there were something between them. He fought to stay awake as the Tower bell tolled later, always later, and the words played as if by wireless: You deserve, young Riding, rather more than that. You know it, I know it. We understand one another, I think.
10
—Wake up, England.
Hand on his mouth, voice in his ear, he opened his eyes. Trevor, in moonlight. Barefoot, they slipped from the dorm.
There was a drainpipe out the window of box room number four, all arranged for a penny dreadful lark: moon rising almost full, drainpipe dry, wind dead as the school. They were down in moments, catlike onto the grass, playing fields, poacher’s tunnel. He’d never come through at night, but Wilberforce used to, Saturdays, smelling of—
—Steady on, Trevor said.
He shined the torch where Gray bent retching and stood beside him until it stopped.
—Brains, Trevor said, you mustn’t worry.
Gray spat, blew his nose.
—This is the Stalkiest night of our lives. We’re going to get what we’ve come for, in, out, safe for good.
Trevor said nothing of the pillows filling their beds, of climbing back up the drain, of the thousand and one ways it all could go wrong.
—We need to burn the box when we get it, Gray said.
—We will burn it. We can burn the whole barn!
—Right.
—We could, Trevor said. It’d flame in a second.
Old timber, ground wet, fire nowhere to go but up.
—We’d be doing McKay a favor, Trevor continued. That place is one good wind from falling down. Can you see it?
Trevor began to laugh:
—Head rousts a pack of prefects, Pious in the lead, off they tramp, torches blazing, and find …
The image of Pearce’s despair was too much. It was some time before they regained their breath t
o proceed through the woods.
A screech owl swooped past, but nothing could dispel the luck that now ringed them. At last things would come right, slate wiped clean. When he was small, Gray had thought of life as an always rising staircase. You got older, he thought, and each month and year you knew more, did more, had more to enjoy. Perhaps they should light the barn on fire. But first he had to get the letters. He could put them in his pockets and then hurl the box on the fire. Would the nameplate melt, or would it survive, a witness against him? He’d have to pry it off while Trevor prepared the blaze.
—How fast can you make the fire? he asked.
They’d passed the crest and begun down the slope where pheasants nested.
—We can’t burn down the barn, Trevor scoffed.
—But you said …
—What’ll we do for a Keep?
—The Keep is finished! Gray cried. They’ll be watching it, and every sodding cad will want to go there now.
—They’ll forget it by next term.
Trevor kicked at the underbrush. A burst of pheasant.
—And one day, Trevor continued, you’ll write a book about it and we’ll be famous. They’ll give tours.
The wall was ahead, the barn just beyond, already polluted, his inheritance from Hermes, gone.
—I thought this was the Stalkiest night of our lives, Gray said.
—Yes!
—So what’ll it be: nick a few things from a barn, or raze the place in brilliant inferno?
—It would be brilliant, Trevor said, wouldn’t it?
—And then they’d crucify the fags for tarting around in a firetrap.
Trevor laughed:
—You’re learning, Brains. You might not be hopeless after all.
They peered over the wall to the barn below.
—Why is the door open? Gray asked.
—You were supposed to close it after they came out.
—I did close it.
—Not properly.
—I put the latch down, Gray insisted.
They crouched, scouts at post, the night silent and still.
—Stay here, Trevor said.
