Inquisitions, as S-K labeled them, were proceeding apace. John imagined the Third subjected to the rack and felt a wistful sort of satisfaction. He had been deputized to keep order in the refectory. Housemasters were evidently too oppressed by the robes of their office to bother themselves with niceties such as how a hundred-odd boys were to be kept sedated in the same room for over two hours (thus far!) without breaks for air or water. Other masters drifted in and out, but none had a sense of what ought to be happening. S-K had mandated that absolute silence be maintained, but he had plainly not considered how this might be accomplished by the one man at the Academy whose beliefs precluded corporal punishment. John did his best: He sent the first five offenders directly to their Housemasters; their rapid and much subdued return calmed the waters. Next, he sent for supplies, dictated a passage from the newspaper, and commanded them to copy it twelve times. Finally, he instructed them to put their heads down on the tabletops while he read to them from the only semi-suitable volume in his satchel that day, Thucydides’s account of the plague. He permitted them to visit the lavatory one at a time, exchanging the baton (written permission from him) wordlessly. By eleven o’clock, he wondered how much longer he could carry on with it all.
A pleasing vision crossed his mind, of corralling them into their changing rooms and then leading them on a vigorous cross-country run. In lieu of any better idea, and in half-desperate attempt to remind S-K of his existence, he dashed off a note to the Headmaster: Dire straits here. Run? He sent the missive with a bookish boy from the Remove and then concentrated on ignoring the low-grade murmuring that had grown since he’d left off, parched, with Thucydides.
Before very long, S-K materialized under the arches: harried, old, ex-majestic.
—Silence, he boomed.
The murmur died down, though not with the alacrity S-K typically commanded. Still, John thought, you had to give the man credit for gumption. S-K drew himself up with Victorian posture, swept into the chamber (such as he could with the tired gait that favored his left hip), and placed his hand on John’s tabletop, as much to steady himself as to convey dominion. When the eyes of the room had fixed upon him, S-K removed from his inner pocket a piece of paper, expensive cotton rag, folded lengthwise. Perching his spectacles on the bridge of his nose, the Headmaster scanned the page.
—The following boys, he intoned, will attend my study.
He read out eight names (alphabetically, mixed Houses, all from the Third Form). A frisson rippled through the room. They did not dare whisper, but John could see them itching.
—The rest, S-K continued after a pause, will proceed to the changing rooms in silence, and I mean silence, and prepare themselves for a double dix with Mr. Grieves.
John could feel if not hear their astonishment and vague alarm. A dix was Academy code for the circuit of ten farms that served their steeplechases. A double dix was a training exercise reserved for the Upper School no more than twice a term. The Third would be hard-pressed by a single dix, never mind a double. After a night without sleep, John himself would be pressed to complete it.
Still, he reasoned, anything would be better than this imprisonment. Perhaps when they returned, showered, and changed, lunch would even be served?
S-K nodded his dismissal. John braced himself. They rose.
—Oh, yes, said S-K glancing back at his sheaf as if detecting a footnote, the following will attend Mr. Burton-Lee in his study.
He read out eight more Third Formers, again assorted, alphabetical.
—Mr. Hazlehurst has also requested the company of …
Another Third Form list, catholic in its character.
—Ah, and it appears that Mr. Clement would like the following to join him and Mr. Lockett-Egan in his study, immediately and without detour.
More names.
—And as we’re about it, the rest of this list may cut along to Mr. Eton-Knowles for good measure.
That disposed of the Third. John relaxed slightly. He would only have to flog the Fourth; the Remove would be glad of the exercise, and if they weren’t, they could suffer, as he himself would be suffering.
S-K made a final survey of his list, index finger ticking off names. Then, with a sovereign nod, he departed.
* * *
Morgan squinted against the light. His mouth tasted foul. There was a rumble in the courtyard. He went to the window, which admitted an impossible scene: masses of boys jogging across the quad at the heels of Mr. Grieves. Like a mob of soldiers, they trooped unspeaking, cold in singlets, as the mist lowered into rain.
—What’s the racket?
Morgan turned, and the curtain around one bed glided aside, revealing Alex. Not burned.
He wasn’t ready, but he conjured the coolness of Spaulding:
—Cross-country. Fourth, Remove, and Grieves.
Alex looked askance, as if Morgan had reported pornography. The occupant of the other bed moaned for them to shut up. Alex scurried to the door, checked for Matron, and scurried back to Morgan’s bedside. A red-and-blue bruise swelled beneath the hair on his forehead.
—When did you turn up? Alex demanded. And what the hell happened to your chin?
Morgan touched his face reflexively and felt the tiny stitches. At close range he could see Alex’s eye was swollen, too.
—Mind your tongue, Morgan said.
—I’d rather mind yours.
Morgan struggled for a riposte as Alex made himself comfortable on the bed, crossing his legs as if they were preparing for a game of Spite and Malice, minus the cards. This was not the interrogation Morgan had in mind. A wisp of fear rose inside him. He made to cross his arms, but his left didn’t go that far.
—They say you missed the explosion at Prep, he began.
—They say right.
—They say someone got burnt.
Alex shrugged:
—Just Carter, little sod.
—I can hear you, came a voice across the ward.
Alex darted to the other bed and whisked back the curtain. A boy lay there, his hands mummified in white bandages.
—If you don’t keep your mouth and your bloody ears shut, Alex began.
He leaned forward and murmured something. Morgan recognized the boy vaguely as a fag in their own House. Alex delivered a punch before closing the curtains on the boy.
—You are such a piece of work, Morgan said.
Alex shrugged again:
—Someone’s got to keep an eye on things.
Morgan appraised him—You need taking down a peg. You’ve got too big for—then the boy’s wrist was in his hand, and he was hauling Alex back onto the bed:
—That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.
It was easy to haul him about. It would be easy to hurt him. Even with one arm.
—You are going to tell me everything, you little perisher. Explosion, locks, fire, all of it.
—Or what?
Or you’ll have a very sore Accounting when it arrives.
—Or I’ll make your life fifteen kinds of hell.
—Yes, please.
Not how things were supposed to go at all. Morgan dropped Alex’s arm.
—I know you were behind it all. What I mean to know is how you drugged Matron and Fardles.
He had never cheeked Silk the way Alex was cheeking him, audacious, defiant.
—A neat trick, Morgan said, the way you dealt with the two of them.
A smile broke across Alex’s face, and for the first time all morning Morgan felt a waft of hope. He was clearly too undaunting to force confessions from anyone, but now he saw that no force would be necessary. Alex was dying to confess and had in fact been exerting superhuman effort to keep from blurting it out from the start. Morgan felt idiotic not to have understood right away. Every prankster from Hermes to Laurie to Alex hungered desperately for acclaim. Alex had been confined in the Tower since the Bang, denied even a moment of applause. He was quite literally bursting.
—You’ve no idea, he said.
—Chemist, are we?
Alex leaned forward, his lips at Morgan’s ear.
—There was a book in REN’s room. It had things in it about drafts.
—Oh, yes?
—Nothing harmful, Alex said. Just something to help you sleep deeper.
—But how did you get Matron to take it?
Alex required no further prompting.
—I found one you can’t taste. Then I got myself to the Tower and mixed it up, using things she already had in the dispensary! Slosh, teapot, good night, Matron.
Heat in his throat.
—You counterfeited your way into the Tower?
Alex grinned:
—I had help.
Morgan drew up his knees. Alex had gone to the Tower for the knock on his head, allegedly acquired at Games, but actually received in rapid confrontation with a desktop. Which meant that their encounter in the form room had not been accidental, or if it had been accidental, the outcome had not. He couldn’t think of anything suitable to call Alex.
—So, Morgan said at last, you drugged them.
Alex beamed:
—It all worked out better than I hoped.
—But what about the explosion?
He could hardly bring himself to believe that Alex would engineer an explosion in the lab, burning yon Third Former so appallingly, simply as a cover for … what? Morgan felt mentally feeble in the face of it all.
—What’s the idea anyhow?
—You wouldn’t understand, Alex declared.
—Then make me.
Matron’s voice cut across the ward:
—Alexander Pearl!
Alex froze.
—Yes, Matron?
Matron did not dignify the moment by asking obvious questions, such as what Alex imagined he was doing out of his own bed, much less sitting on Morgan’s. Instead, she marched dramatically towards them, whisked the curtains fully open, and stood arms akimbo. Morgan quailed. Alex smiled wanly:
—Sorry, Matron. I was worried when I woke up and saw Wilberforce. His arm …
Alex allowed his voice to trail off in feigned concern. Morgan expected her to seize one or both of them by the ear, but she continued to glare in silence.
—I’m sorry for getting out of bed, Alex said. I didn’t want to wake Carter.
Here Alex lowered his voice and indicated the bandaged fag.
—Please don’t be angry, Matron. It’s only …
Dramatic pause, artful swallow.
—everything’s been so odd, and when I saw Wilberforce …
His voice trailed off again, and astoundingly tears pooled in his eyes. Matron pursed her lips, though not as severely as usual.
—Nevertheless, she said, this isn’t where you belong, is it?
—No, Matron, said Alex, hanging his head.
He got up from Morgan’s bed and came to stand beside Matron, prepared to submit to any punishment she might prescribe. He didn’t go so far as to wipe his eyes, but he blinked as if to stop himself from succumbing to tears. Matron led Alex back to his bed, ushering him into it with a swat, but nothing more. She switched on his reading lamp and removed a thermometer from her apron. Alex opened his mouth and cleared his throat.
—Sorry, Matron, but please may I have some water when you’ve done? My throat’s feeling all sandpapery again.
Matron felt his glands, placed the thermometer in his mouth, and told him to keep it under his tongue. Alex nodded in feeble compliance as Matron clomped over to Morgan, produced a second thermometer for his mouth, and then clomped away with Alex’s glass. As soon as she passed through the door, Alex removed the thermometer from his mouth and held it to the bulb of the reading lamp. A tap turned on. A tap turned off. Alex, smooth and unruffled, put the thermometer back in his mouth. Matron returned with the water, found the thermometer’s report of concern, and tucked Alex back into bed with the maternal brand of scolding she reserved for the unwell.
Morgan’s thermometer did not impress her, and neither did his claims of lingering queasiness. She sentenced him to tea, dry toast, and magnesia, which she promised to deliver shortly. Morgan suddenly felt as queasy as he had just claimed. If Matron had been the kind of person to say harrumph, she would have said it. Instead, she pulled back the curtains around the mittened Third Former and, finding him asleep, departed the ward.
Not high tides, but something more sinister caged him, squeezing until there was not enough air. He had been spectacularly naïve. Had his pristine idea included a strategy to escape the Tower once he’d concluded his investigation? Had he thought through what he would do with the information he acquired? Had he made adequate preparations for what he might encounter in close quarters with Alex?
He had prepared for a more or less routine confession, but Alex’s actual testimony struck him as grotesque. Not only had the boy turned his hand to criminal narcotics, but he had ensnared Morgan as unwitting accomplice in his scheme. Evidently, Morgan had gone overboard with Alex because Alex had meant for him to go overboard. He could hardly bear to think of the encounter, but hadn’t Alex cheeked him brazenly, in front of seven fags? Just now, Alex had sat on Morgan’s bed with the bruise on his head, wearing it proudly, like a brand, except there was no ownership between them, unless Alex was somehow gaining purchase—
He needed not to get confused. Alex had a habit of confusing him, but Morgan could tell lies from the truth, and the truth was Morgan had never encountered such a liar, so accomplished, so natural. Silk had lied reflexively to masters, but they knew perfectly well he was lying and simply couldn’t be bothered to contradict him. Alex’s performance with Matron had been so artless that Morgan almost believed it himself. If Alex could manage Matron so effortlessly—the Academy’s most fearsome foe besides S-K, and even that was debatable—then what else had he done, or could he do?
Morgan had known Alex as Nathan’s brother for three years; Alex had always possessed an attention-seeking strain, rebellious but manageable with the correct authority. Neither of Alex’s parents possessed such authority, but Alex had always looked up to Morgan. And just now he had taken immense pleasure regaling Morgan with his exploits as criminal apothecary. Never had a boy more sorely needed sorting out.
Morgan wasn’t a prefect. He had no study of his own, no private place beyond the curtain of his bed to deal with Alex. The only place he could possibly imagine was—out of the question. And even if the Hermes Balcony were not out of the question, the fact remained that he had not set foot in it for three years, since the wish slips and The Fall, which was confined to history and parenthesis and something he intended never to revisit, which was why the Hermes Balcony was out of the question. He had not even mounted the stairs since that day; he could hardly haul Alex up there in the present age. In the present age, he could only sit with Alex on a bed in the Tower, behind a curtain, close enough to smell his breath and see the pimple coming on his chin.
The squeaky wheels of Matron’s trolley announced her arrival bearing something revolting she would force Morgan to ingest. But first she set to examining his arm and shoulder, testing range of motion, asking where it still felt tender, instructing him to press against her hands with what force he could. Seventeen years old, and he couldn’t overpower her. She made him remove the nightgown and examined the places where there had been bruises and swelling, declaring him much improved. She handed him a glass of milky sludge. He gagged at the sight of it.
But then, like a perfectly timed wire from Hermes himself, came a knock and a voice calling out for Matron. Annoyed, she retreated to the corridor. Her conversation with the messenger was plain to hear. The Headmaster demanded the presence of Pearl minor and Carter in his study. Matron informed the page that they would not be leaving the Tower today, for S-K or anyone. The messenger was evidently under orders not to return without the requested parties; he stood his ground with the confidence of S-K’s authority, and dread of his wrath should the mission fail. Finally, it was agreed that Matron would accompany the messenger back to the Headmaster’s study, where presumably she would set the man straight as only she could. Her shoes clicked down the steps, leaving Morgan naked behind the curtains. He set the glass on the bedside table and took a strip of toast from the trolley.
But Alex was up in a shot, diving onto Morgan’s bed.
—What do you care why we did it?
Morgan, flustered, set down the toast and wrestled his body back into the nightgown. Any doubt that Alex was behind the scandals vanished. The Fags’ Rebellion, Laurie had called it. If Alex unveiled his entire rationale, would it turn out to be Morgan’s fault, at the root?
—I don’t care why you do anything, Morgan said, but I’m amused you’re too scared to tell me.
Something flashed across Alex’s face—shame? anger?—that made Morgan feel cornered, alone with Alex where no one could see. It was always the three of them against the boy, or at least Morgan and Laurie. Even in the form room, Alex had been surrounded by friends. Morgan may have imagined dealing with him alone as Silk had once dealt with him, but it had never actually happened. Now that Alex had dived onto his bed, Morgan began to suspect that matters would never transpire as they had with Silk. That first Accounting, after Silk had cleared the ledger with the cane, after he’d made Morgan stand on the chair, made him strip, made him undergo that nerve-racking examination, that time Morgan had been too sore, too confused, too dizzyingly curious to exert any agency over the scene. But Alex would never quail before him, even when they sat with ten inches of blanket between them, Alex wearing the bruise Morgan had put on his head.
—If you must know, Alex said, I didn’t touch a single lock last night.
—But you planned it. You supervised the whole thing.
Alex gave the abashed grin of one embarrassed by a compliment.
—It looks to have been a simple affair, Morgan said coolly.
—Like hell! It took weeks. You can’t imagine what’s involved getting platoons from every House to enlist for a thing like that. And not only enlist, but join the Covenant.
—Covenant?
—It was the only way. Otherwise someone would’ve spilt.
—You think S-K isn’t getting anywhere downstairs?
—Of course he isn’t, Alex said. Why d’you think he wants to see me and Carter?
—Because he has got somewhere, I’d have thought.
—In that case, he wouldn’t have asked for Carter. Little weed had nothing to do with it.
Alex looked at Morgan with a defiance that made him stiff, challenging him as he had in the form room but without audience now. Would Alex drive him past reason, as he had driven Silk outside the Hermes Balcony? Show me what’s in there. Refusing not once, not twice, such necessity, such folly. A change had come across Silk, revealing something Morgan had sensed before but never seen. Silk had not spoken, not in words. Arm twisted, face against panel, pressed as if for the technique, but then fumbling at buttons, furious, contaminating in a breath the other thing, the thing pursued in private, in concert, now here in wrath at the top of a public—Morgan had summoned this creature, compelled this alteration. When he twisted and broke free, it was only right that he fell, back, down, out.
A chasm opened now in the Tower, tempting him to hurdle reason and plunge into it. Only inches away, behind the fabric of a nightgown, Alex was naked.
Morgan pulled up the covers and leaned back with as much weariness as he could feign:
—Why go to so much trouble for a rag? What’s the point?
—The point, Alex said, was to show them that we aren’t going to take it lying down.
There were so very many things to take lying down.
—Take what?
—All of it! What fags have been taking since time immemorial.
If Alex had taken what Morgan had taken, would he have wished what Morgan wished in the Hermes Balcony that day, finding the wish slips and wishing three things?
—The serfs didn’t take it, le peuple didn’t take it, the Americans didn’t take it, and we’re not taking it. It’s the Guy Fawkes of the Cad!
Alex actually raised a fist in triumph at the final, rehearsed declaration. He appeared to have paid attention to one minute in a thousand of Mr. Grieves’s history lessons and combined what he had heard with the melodrama of his father’s latest novel.
—Are you telling me that you and the entire Third planned for weeks to sneak through the Cad and pour soss into a lot of locks so everyone would know you don’t plan on fagging anymore?
Alex looked angry and insulted:
—Not the entire Third, I told you. Everyone joined the Covenant, but only the cadre did it. And it wasn’t soss. It was specially prepared, quick-setting wax.
—Presumably what was being brewed up in the lab when it exploded?
—We’d finished already, but some duffer failed to turn the gas off properly.
—You could have burned down the whole school!
Alex shrugged, seeming to think it a minor snag.
—You didn’t mention the best part, Alex said. La justice.
—Where’s the justice in bunging up locks?
—Keep up! Alex exhorted. The point wasn’t the locks.
Morgan couldn’t keep up at all.
—We bunged the locks so no one could douse the bonfire.
—In the quad?
—Every rod in the school consumed in flame!
Morgan felt cold as the logic of the campaign became obvious.
—That’s what you call justice?
—We were planning to burn a few canes all along, but then the JCR went and whacked the entire Third yesterday—
—With reason—
—So we cindered them all. Gunpowder, treason, and plot!
The fist again. Morgan flushed.
—Gunpowder?
—You didn’t think I gave up all of it, did you?
The chasm yawned, no place to stand.
—For a sure, quick fire, Alex said, you want gunpowder.
—But … there was no bang.
Alex grinned:
—Flour-water paste plus gunpowder, smear on canes, dry, fuse, instant inferno.
Morgan reeled.
—Don’t you see?
The only thing he saw was a face that had never been shaved and a lip he’d quite enjoy splitting.
—What now? Morgan retorted. Presumably they’ll pour hot water into all the locks and unbung them.
—Of course they could, Alex scoffed, but they’ll stick from now on.
—That isn’t funny. What if people get locked in places?
—If REN weren’t such an idiot, he’d realize what we’d used and tell ’em what solvent to try. It wouldn’t hurt the doors at all. As it is …
Alex chuckled in satisfaction.
—they’re making a dog’s breakfast of the whole thing, just like S-K is making a dog’s breakfast of his giddy investigation.
Anarchy walked amongst them and had done for some time.
—What exactly are you hoping for? Morgan asked. And why bung the form rooms?
—Someone got enthusiastic.
—For God’s sake!
Don’t take the Lord’s—quite an account you’ve rung up—concentrate.
—Let’s see if I’m keeping up, Morgan said acidly. Doors get opened one way or another, S-K finds no culprits, yet somehow everyone knows the Third were behind it and so accept that the Revolution has begun, you’re all let off fagging, the whack is abolished, everyone can do as he likes, and the Cad becomes some sort of daft modern girls’ school where people run about naked, painting murals and dancing with scarves.
Alex fumed:
—I’d have thought that you, of all people, would understand.
—I don’t understand? Morgan balked. Which part have I got wrong?
Alex looked him sharp in the eye:
—I wouldn’t have expected the Heir of Hermes to take a line like that.
No one was supposed to know the Heir of Hermes, and if one did, one was never to speak of it. Alex kept looking at Morgan as if he had the means and the wherewithal to destroy everything that mattered. Morgan sensed he had fallen into a professional trap.
—How did you manage? he asked, rearranging his pillows. All those people traipsing through the school, stealing canes, pouring quick-setting wax, and the rest of it. You’d sent Matron and Fardles off to Neverland, but how is it no one else saw a single one of you out of bed?
—Interesting that, Alex replied. No one noticed anyone out of bed last night?
He was supposed to be interrogating Alex, not the other way round! Morgan always believed he’d escaped Silk in the end, but had he actually escaped him, now as he faced Alex, longing more than anything to tear the nightgown off him and show him—
—Did you drug the whole school?
—Drug? Alex protested. It’s possible there was more than the usual bromide in the cocoa, but beyond that, I’m not deranged.
He needed to keep his mind on the chat at hand. He needed to isolate the past from the present, and in fact the previous night from the disordered stream of recent time. Alex’s plan hadn’t affected him because he hadn’t gone for cocoa last night, because … because he’d been too agitated by Nathan and Laurie and their supreme unpleasantness. If they hadn’t been so unpleasant, he would have gone for cocoa, in which case he wouldn’t have woken in the night and done the preposterous things he’d done.
—I don’t know where you get your scruples, Alex said. You do what you like, when you like. What’s it to you if we break a few rules as conscience demands?
—What gets under my skin, Morgan said, are these tedious insinuations.
Alex again met his gaze.
—If you’ve something to say, Morgan continued, why not come out and say it?
—Cave! came the alarm across the room.
Alex thrust aside the curtain.
—Matron’s coming, Carter hissed. And S-K!
Alex leaned in so Carter couldn’t hear.
—You’re a hypocrite, he whispered fiercely. You’ve got everything—XV, study, everyone likes you. You stalk who you want to stalk. You shag off through the poacher’s tunnel, day or night. But you don’t look, you don’t see, you don’t hear, and you don’t understand.
With that, Alex slipped back to his own bed and pulled the covers over his head. Morgan’s heart pounded.
Footsteps.
S-K appeared in the doorway, be-gowned and winded. He patted his face with a handkerchief. Matron was at his elbow, and seeing the curtains around Morgan’s bed open, she shut them up again. S-K murmured something, and they moved to the corridor. Presently, she returned and rustled Alex along to her sitting room.
Morgan didn’t see, didn’t hear, didn’t understand? What had he failed to grasp? He wasn’t the kind of person who turned from the truth. His eyes and ears were wide-open!
After The Fall, when Emily and Captain Cahill had taken him home, drugged beyond sanity, he had waited in a stupor for his father to return. He had always imagined his father as a knight, in rough armor perhaps, but valiant. Despite involuntary memory of the plunge down stairs, despite fear, self-reproach, and the fog of medicine, he had clung to the certainty that his father would put things right. His father would come to his room, subject him to the burning light of judgment, and wrestle from him the truth of everything that had transpired at school. Even though life at home had changed unrecognizably, he knew that with enough time and will, his father could untangle him from what bound him: what he had done, suffered, courted, and allowed. When his father at last came to see him—arm, head, chest wrapped in bandages—the man seemed to have shrunk in size. He joked mirthlessly about the perils of rugby football, and when he asked if Morgan wanted to tell him anything, Morgan had said no. His father accepted his answer. His last hope for rescue, mauled.
S-K limited his interrogation of Alex to four minutes. Matron returned for Carter, as he evidently could manage nothing, not even a dressing gown, with bound hands. S-K kept Carter longer than Alex, but soon Matron ushered Carter back to bed and bade Morgan prepare for the Headmaster.
Numb, almost carefree, Morgan eased his arm into a dressing gown, crammed feet into too-small slippers, and followed her, observing his fate like a wisp above the sea, passionless, empty, on air.
* * *
He was certainly getting old. He was already thirty, perhaps halfway through his life span. John’s lungs and legs protested the double dix, protested mightily as he remembered them protesting his last steeplechase at Marlborough, the one he’d run after a highly inadvisable night imbibing with others in his year. They’d all been impaired, so he hadn’t fared as badly in the finishes as he might, but John remembered regretting his excess. Now, in the Yorkshire March of his maturity, he could blame his ill condition on nothing besides age and insomnia. It seemed unfair to be punished for things over which he had no control. His windpipe and calves opposed every incline, his knees every downward slope. Most of the boys perked up after the doldrums of the three-mile mark, and John had deputized four members of the Remove to sweep up stragglers. He suppressed the urge to retch upon reaching the gates, though others did not. He waited there, skin steaming, until the last of the small fry had staggered inside. Shivering, he repaired to Burton-Lee’s changing room.
It was not his choice to patronize Burton’s House, but S-K had long ago assigned him that changing room, an atavistic reminder of his early efforts to make John assistant master there. Burton-Lee’s House was physically the largest, and its changer well-appointed, which was to say the tiles adhered to the stalls of the shower, the showerheads pointed where aimed, pegs and benches withstood the weights allotted them, and most of the lightbulbs worked. It was, by the standards of the Academy, a palace of luxury.
John got under the showers. Most of Burton-Lee’s had dressed and were claiming that a meal of some description could be found in the refectory. John allowed himself a moment’s respite beneath the hot cascade, its needles melting the stiffness in his neck. He decided he would have a proper bath that evening no matter what it took. His landlady provided one Saturday evenings, but she had in the past taken pity on him and, for a price, drawn the tin tub outside of schedule.
Dolefully, he turned off the tap, buffed dry, and dressed. The changing room had emptied, leaving John alone amidst pensive drips. He rinsed his running togs in the sink and took them into the drying room, which was cold and ripe. His stomach writhed in a way he knew indicated hunger but which felt like cramp. He hoped the rumors of lunch were true. How could they not be? If S-K was going to send boys out running, he couldn’t withhold food or he’d have a mutiny on his hands, from masters first of all. John chided himself for having taken the Headmaster seriously even for a moment. S-K hadn’t carried out a full-fledged threat in years, although he had a nice line in the partially executed. That, combined with a thespian’s power to entrance, had kept the hyenas at bay. Thus far.
John leaned against the thick door of the drying room as if it were an old friend he could sigh against and confess his weariness. It budged beneath his weight, admitting the murmur of voices without.
On instinct, he froze. The voices were locked in heated but hushed conversation just around the partition.
—Certainly not tonight, one voice insisted.
—But it’s perfect, the second voice replied. No one will dare get up to anything now.
—We never should have gone before.
The first voice was baritone, familiar yet unrecognizable. It dawned on John how difficult it was to identify a voice without its face. Would he know any voice disembodied, even those most intimate to him?
—Don’t say that, the second voice pleaded. You—
—Leave off, One snapped.
A bump, as someone knocking against a bench.
—You care too much what people think, Two said. This place is a wreck, full of the most—
—Will you stop talking, please?
—You’re the only person who’s ever made things worthwhile.
John recognized the second voice now, and the recognition brought a sensation like cold mud oozing down his back. It was Rees, the butt of every joke in the Fifth and possibly beyond. Rees had certainly put up with a lot during his time at the Academy, but he’d likely brought much of it on himself with his graceless personality.
—Look, the first voice said savagely, I’ll think about it, but if you ever speak to me in public again—and I mean this—I will knock your front teeth in.
Rees sounded unfazed by the threat:
—If you don’t want to be spoken to in public, then turn up where you’ve promised to turn up.
Another clatter, louder this time, as of a bench tipping over with someone on top of it. A grunt, and then one set of footsteps stomped away and out the door. John hesitated, realizing that he couldn’t reveal himself now. He ought to have announced himself at the first moment, unmasked the two interlocutors, and demanded an explanation of their rendezvous. Since he’d failed to do this, he was prisoner to the drying room until the other footsteps departed.
He waited, shoulder trembling with the strain of holding the door, not daring to move lest it creak and give him away. At last, after an aggrieved sigh, came the sound of a bench being righted and a second set of footsteps trudging out of the changing room.
John slipped from the drying room and retrieved his jacket, shoes, and cuff links. When he’d finished dressing, he actually scuttled across the changer and peered into the corridor before emerging with performed nonchalance into Burton-Lee’s House. He was annoyed to find himself unsteady, whether from the furtiveness imposed upon him or from the unexpected conversation, he couldn’t say.
Evidently, Rees was carrying on with someone in the House. That someone possessed a fully changed voice and, despite Rees’s peculiar air of command, struck John as Rees’s social superior. Of course, most of the Academy were Rees’s social superiors, but John had the distinct impression that Rees’s interlocutor was older, someone in the Sixth. Not a prefect, as none of Burton-Lee’s JCR (and John knew and disliked them well enough) would have permitted Rees to speak to him that way. Reviewing the roster of Burton-Lee’s Upper School, John could not think of a single boy who fit the bill. Who would carry on with Rees?
To be perfectly fair, Rees wasn’t bad looking if you ignored his personality—but who could do that? He was fit enough to aspire to success at Games but maladroit enough never to attain it. If he was lucky, he’d rise to the Second XV by his last year. If only he didn’t care so much, something could be made of him, John thought. In the history classroom, a certain literalness and mental rigidity hampered his progress. He could memorize facts, but the point seemed always to elude him. Again, a lighter touch would have served Rees well, but as it was, the boy expended too much energy wrestling with the injustice, as he saw it, of exerting himself without reward. Since he couldn’t grasp nuance, Rees found John’s lessons difficult and irritating. He resented the irrationality of history, and John found his resentment tiresome.
John knew that Rees was the sort of boy he ought to try to win over, but really, if he took a hard look at his rosters, there were any number of boys more in need of winning over and more deserving of John’s efforts, deserving because they … well, John couldn’t with Quaker mind say why one boy ought to be more deserving than another, but he felt that some were. Morgan Wilberforce, for instance, could be colossally lazy, willfully resistant to a gift for perception, flippant, and disobedient, yet John found him worthwhile, more worthwhile perhaps than any other boy at the Academy. He could not say why. He did not think it was merely Wilberforce’s good looks and talent at Games.
He reached the refectory and was cheered to find a meal in progress. The boys looked glum, however, and the meal proved to be only broth, bread, and water. Not even butter. He was famished, and surely the Fourth and Remove were as well after a double dix. He approached the servants to inquire about second helpings. Apparently the supply of broth was ample, but the Headmaster had decreed only once slice of bread per boy. When John inquired into the Headmaster’s whereabouts, the kitchen staff declared such matters beyond their purview and frankly an unwelcome distraction to the onerous task that faced them of feeding two hundred boys after having spent an entire morning undoing the damage of vandals.
Eventually, John deduced that the Headmaster could likely be found in his study. He jogged across to the Headmaster’s house, where S-K’s housekeeper informed John that her master was not at home. When pressed, she admitted that he’d last been seen accompanying Matron to the Tower.
John, stifling the urge to slap someone, jogged across the cloisters, across the quad, and up the spiral stairs of the Tower. His legs dragged and his head spun as if he’d drunk too much rather than failed to eat enough. Matron was not at her desk, and the ward was empty save for two Third Formers asleep in their beds. John eyed the closed door of Matron’s sitting room, and before catching his breath or losing his nerve, he knocked.
Matron cracked the door and looked at him askance.
—Is the Headmaster with you? he asked.
She assured him icily that the Headmaster was, and furthermore that he was not to be disturbed. John felt as indifferent to peril as Hercules. Perhaps it was the light-headedness, or his overboiled frustration at the day, or merely an urgent feeling of responsibility for the boys, but he swept past Matron into the room.
—Sorry to interrupt, he announced. It’s the matter of lunch.
S-K drew himself up in horror at John’s impertinence. And sitting on a straight-backed chair was Morgan Wilberforce, who leapt to his feet at John’s arrival.
* * *
Mr. Grieves showed not the slightest sign of intimidation before Matron or the Headmaster. With a bow of the head, he unfurled his demand: that the Fourth and Remove, having returned from a most grueling double dix, be given more to eat than one slice of bread and broth, unless Matron wanted masses of collapsed boys on her hands.
This elicited a flurry of conversation in which Matron visibly restrained herself from rebuking the Headmaster. Instead, she demanded that Morgan and Mr. Grieves leave the room and wait in the passageway. Never was Morgan more eager to obey her. They decamped, and the door closed behind them.
So commanding a moment ago, Mr. Grieves now seemed lost for words. Morgan adjusted his dressing gown. Mr. Grieves took in his appearance and squinted at his chin.
—Did my bicycle do that to you? he asked anxiously.
—Oh, no, sir. This was later.
Morgan hesitated, surprised at the urge to tell Mr. Grieves the truth.
—Did you have difficulty getting back?
—Oh, Morgan stammered, yes, I mean, no, that is …
What could he admit without mentioning Spaulding?
—That eye’s coming up nicely.
Mr. Grieves tilted Morgan’s head to examine his injuries.
—It’s nothing, sir.
—A colorful nothing. Did anyone see you return this morning?
—No, sir.
—And did you see any of this business in progress?
—No, sir, Morgan answered confidently.
—Then why the interrogation?
Morgan’s face prickled as it had in Mr. Grieves’s rooms, his wretched heart displaying itself for any fool to read.
—S-K’s talking to everyone, sir.
—A routine interview?
The remark dripped sarcasm.
—Not exactly, sir.
The voices behind Matron’s door had died down. Mr. Grieves’s mistrust stung, but then his expression changed:
—Can I give a hand at all?
Morgan was seized with the physical urge to fall upon his knees, to lay his arms and his head across Mr. Grieves’s lap as he used to with his mother when the world threatened, and to feel Mr. Grieves’s hands on his head showing him he would never abandon him.
Matron emerged and ordered Morgan back to bed. She told Mr. Grieves that the Headmaster would accompany him to the refectory and revise his instructions regarding the boys who had run with him that morning. Why in heaven’s name had Mr. Grieves gone along with such a scheme in the first place? If he imagined for an instant that she would approve, then he was as bad as—
—Now, Wilberforce!
Morgan retreated to the ward, listening to Matron’s clatter advertising to anyone within half a mile her overflowing displeasure at everything St. Stephen’s Academy had that day begot.
* * *
—You are an inordinately awkward young man, S-K complained as they strode across the quad.
—Please, sir, John said, I’m on your side, but I’m scrambling just at the moment to understand what that means.
—I don’t need your criticism, thank you very much.
John had the sensation of handling a prickly Sixth Former. S-K was unhappy with him, but was it merely because John had disrupted his interview with Wilberforce? Or had the Headmaster discovered something compromising about John himself?
—Sir, have there been any confessions?
—None, S-K replied curtly.
It was important not to leap to conclusions. He ought not to imagine S-K’s tone was anything to do with him.
—Any hints who was behind it?
Even if it could be.
—Or why?
—Nothing concrete, S-K replied. It’s something to do with the Third, but they’ve put up a stone wall the likes of which I’ve never seen.
Apparently it wasn’t anything to do with Wilberforce, then, or with his highly unorthodox sojourn in John’s rooms. In the light of day, John couldn’t imagine what he’d been thinking to take Wilberforce in and entertain him for hours. It had been ruinously unwise.
—Sir, what do you have in mind for this afternoon?
S-K stopped abruptly under the arcade and began to cough. John made a futile gesture of assistance as the Headmaster hacked into a handkerchief, eyes watering, looking even more frail than before. The man was not yet seventy-five, John knew, but he looked older. His hair was thinning to the point that he couldn’t hide it, dark pockets hung beneath his eyes, the heel of his left shoe was worn down, likely a result of his bad hip. John knew S-K had been battling influenza all term. From the sound of his cough, John wondered if it had turned into something worse.
—Sir, are you sure I can’t—
S-K waved him away and regained control of his breath. The form rooms had been opened, he informed John. They would resume lessons after lunch. Later, the Headmaster would make an address.
—I’ll need you this evening, of course, S-K said.
John was not scheduled to supervise Prep, but he wasn’t surprised to be drafted.
—Certainly, sir.
There went any chance for a bath. They were approaching the refectory, but something else was making John’s nerves frantic. S-K appeared to have no complaints against John, thankfully, but if his expression in Matron’s sitting room was any guide, Wilberforce had earned the Headmaster’s gravest suspicions. Whatever the legality of their encounter in the night, John felt somehow that Wilberforce had become his project.
—Sir, John said, are you saying you don’t believe the Upper School were involved?
—That is correct.
—Then why…?
John hesitated. If Wilberforce had landed in hot water, would it help his cause or aggravate it to speak directly?
—It’s obvious you are working yourself up to a monstrous bit of impertinence, young man, so you may as well out with it.
—I was only wondering why you seemed to be questioning Wilberforce so closely just now.
There. He’d said the boy’s name.
—That boy! S-K exclaimed. I said I do not suspect the Upper School as a whole, but Wilberforce is a boy I maintain in the highest suspicion.
—Wilberforce, sir?
John’s nerves went frantic again, but this time with a realization of his own naïveté. Wilberforce had run away on the same night as the Academy’s most elaborate episode of vandalism; was he criminally gullible to have believed Wilberforce’s denials?
—That boy, S-K continued, is a double-dealer, a liar, and an apostate.
John was entirely failing to follow.
—Apostate, sir?
—Morgan Wilberforce spits upon everything we hold sacred, S-K declared. We not including you, of course, though perhaps he would include you if given half a chance.
And as suddenly as the ideas had come to him in the night, John perceived the ghost within the conversation. He was a historian, so he ought to have noticed it sooner. The Head wasn’t speaking of the present crisis; he was waging war in the past.
—Is this the confirmation business, sir? Wasn’t that years ago?
They had reached the refectory. S-K drew himself up for oratory:
—I do not intend to banter with you, young man, upon matters you will never comprehend. Let it be known, however, that malevolent elements will never hide from me in my own school. I may not possess concrete evidence, but I am aware who moves for ill and who for good—and who for neither at all. Even at my advanced age, I can separate sheep from goats, and you may have every confidence that I shall do just that. Thy rod and thy staff comfort me!
Having worked himself up as in the pulpit, the Headmaster now made majestic entrance to the refectory. He strode directly to the nearest kitchen servant and held conference. He then gestured to a prefect to call the room to order. This accomplished, S-K addressed the school:
—Primus will commence at two o’clock, he said. After Quintus, tea will be served. You will then proceed to Prep. I have instructed your masters to ensure that you remain fully occupied in that interval.
He had instructed them in nothing of the sort, but John supposed the announcement was itself a form of memorandum.
—There will be no afternoon break. There will be no after-tea break. You will report to prayers at nine o’clock, directly from Prep. Any boy who trespasses today will be beaten. There are to be no warnings, no leniency whatsoever. Have I made myself clear?
A subdued Yes, sir from the room.
—In that case, luncheon is over. Proceed directly to lessons.
John looked to the Headmaster, wondering how to remind him of the runners.
—Stand for grace.
They stood. S-K pronounced it. As they moved to dismiss, he held up a hand:
—The Fourth Form and the Remove will stay as they are.
The guilty parties (or so they appeared) froze while the rest of the school exited sharply, but when S-K announced extra rations for the runners, their mood lifted as if they’d won any number of raffles. Several even thanked the Headmaster spontaneously. John wasn’t sure whether to be impressed with S-K’s legerdemain or unnerved by his volatility. It occurred to him that Burton and the Eagle might have sought other posts not from ambition, but to escape a mad captain’s vessel. Burton in particular would never leave S-K’s side, John realized, unless he considered the Headmaster beyond help and hope. That John had got away with the Wilberforce business on the night of the worst prank in the school’s history did not inspire confidence in S-K’s powers, and if the Academy were to labor under more days as unhinged as this one, John might actually have to consider other employment, not that anyone would entertain a pacifist such as him—but one thing at a time. For now, the Headmaster had, with only a few extra slices of bread and cheese, won this awkward segment of the school to his side. Give us this day …
And as it happened, the Fourth were due in John’s history class for their first lesson of the day. They would repair there together, then, once they had finished eating, buoyed by nutrition, favor, and reprieve. Perhaps there would be a way to let them discover that John had petitioned for the extra rations. If they could realize this, it would go a way towards improving his relationship with this tiresome and lackluster group. It could go a way, perhaps, towards weakening their allegiance to the Third. Perhaps there would even be a way for John to suggest such a thing through historical parallel. If he could think of one, he could substitute it for the planned discussion of the Saracens and use the lesson covertly to assist the Headmaster’s agenda. And if he could shift public opinion sufficiently from the tearaways, the vandals, and the anarchists, then he might be able to shore up S-K’s government and persuade the Eagle and Burton—
He was becoming overexcited. Over the past twelve hours, not only had he provided clandestine midnight assistance to Morgan Wilberforce, diagnosed the Headmaster’s ire towards same as classic distraction, rescued seventy-odd boys from starvation—not to mention discovering unseemly relations between two boys in Burton-Lee’s House!—but presently he would command the attention of Fourth Formers, who could, if approached correctly, sway the balance of rebellion in the school. S-K had no notion, not an inkling, that an opportunity had presented itself. He was oblivious to the nymph of possibility undressing before him. But John saw things as they really were, and he could see his hour had come!
* * *
—Matron, please, I’m not messing about, I promise, Morgan said. I feel fine now. It was only the smell of the what-do-you-call-it.
He tapped his chin.
—And the excitement of it all. Please, Matron?
He searched for another way to explain to her his urgent need to depart the Tower.
You don’t look, you don’t see, you don’t hear, and you don’t understand. What was he failing to see? That Alex had chosen him to smash his head into a desk, to haul him about, to admire his feats, to sit with him behind a curtain? When Morgan had discovered the Hermes Balcony, when he was Alex’s age, he had found the wish slips and made a wish to be free of Silk. He’d always thought the wish answered, but was Alex asking him to…?
—Now you listen to me, young man.
Morgan understood one thing clearly: he needed to be anywhere but the Tower, anywhere Alex wasn’t.
—Get dressed.
A weight lifted as he realized Matron was discharging him. Even now she was opening a drawer for a piece of fresh fabric and tying it into a sling to replace the elaborate bandages. This would suffice, she told him, but he was on no account to contemplate football, fives, or any other sport besides light jogging for the remainder of term.
Morgan left elated with gratitude. He had learned something about the Fags’ Rebellion without succumbing to the chasm; he had been reassured of Mr. Grieves’s allegiance; he had escaped magnesia. He was free! And as he inhaled the clammy air, he realized he was hungry. He headed to the refectory, but even as his tongue began to water, thoughts of the meal summoned thoughts of the Headmaster, which summoned thoughts of their interview, harrowing in the extreme. That interview didn’t bear recollection, and he certainly wasn’t going to recount it to Nathan or Laurie, but he couldn’t deny the sinister atmosphere that had accompanied a relatively unthreatening salvo:
—I’m bound to ask, Wilberforce, what you know of this dastardly business, but I feel sure you will tell me nothing.
Morgan had been relieved that he wasn’t being forced to fabricate, but the Headmaster had quickly turned to a vague and unsettling line of interrogation touching upon Morgan’s view of the Academy (more precisely, just what he imagined St. Stephen’s was for), his self-opinion (just who he thought he was), his ambitions (just what he proposed to do with himself, now and in future), and his wherewithal (just how he imagined he could accomplish anything at all given the feeble moral and intellectual foundation he had built for himself in defiance of every effort from the Academy and indeed from S-K himself). Eventually Morgan had cottoned on to the thrust of the conversation. It was to be another harangue about his refusal—three years previous!—to go through with his confirmation. S-K had nearly expelled him at the time and would have, Morgan felt sure, if he could have justified expulsion on such grounds. However, Morgan’s father had explained Morgan’s decision as a matter of conscience, so S-K could only subject him to verbal pillory. Ever since that day, S-K had ignored him during theology lessons, which permitted Morgan to nap or daydream in the back of the room. During monthly celebrations of the Eucharist, Morgan remained in the pews with the unconfirmed juniors and stray Roman Catholics the Academy tolerated. His brushes with the law had been handled by prefects or masters, so Morgan had never come before the Head on disciplinary grounds. Today’s interview was Morgan’s first with the Headmaster since S-K’s hour-long entreaty-cum-excoriation three years ago.
Why the Headmaster felt it necessary to raise the past at this exact juncture, Morgan could not fathom. Nor could he understand why such unwarranted harassment should have left him unnerved. He was entirely within his rights to have refused confirmation, and he was within his rights to persist in his refusal until the day he died. It didn’t make Morgan an Insidious Moral Acid. It didn’t have any bearing upon a group of arrogant fags rampaging through the school and taking a vow of silence stronger than the Headmaster’s powers of intimidation. And it certainly didn’t, as S-K claimed, tear up the roots of civilization, reaping irreparable damage, taking the Academy, a product of England’s greatness (doubtful), and stomping it into the mud, like so many brilliant, eager, much-loved lives wasted—and for what?—in a tragedy Morgan and his generation would never comprehend no matter how long their shallow lives continued. The present ills, in short, were the inescapable consequence of profligacy in the young, and it was the Headmaster’s well-considered opinion that Morgan was not merely an example of such degradation (Was twice a day any different from once?) but an actual magnet for the forces of dissolution. (He was no magnet, though he did seem to have attracted…)
People were streaming out of the refectory. He fought against the throng but quickly found himself in S-K’s line of sight. The Headmaster threw him a murderous glare. He fled.
He let the crowd carry him to lessons and discovered his friends outside the Latin room. There was no time to address their barrage of questions before Burton-Lee swept down the passage, demanding silence and receiving it. Morgan whispered a bare-bones précis as they filed into the classroom: yes, Alex was in the Tower; no, he wasn’t burnt; yes, he possessed valuable information—
—Wilberforce!
The Flea’s voice froze them as a body.
—Sir?
—That doesn’t sound like silence.
—Sorry, sir, I—
—Here.
The Flea pointed with a flourish to a spot beside his desk. Nathan and Laurie took their seats. From the chalk ledge Burton produced a stick, one Morgan had never seen, but plainly some species of cut switch.
—Sir, Morgan stammered, I—
—You heard the Headmaster. Needs must have. Here, please.
He gestured again. Morgan did not dare try to explain himself. He went where bid and bent over. Half a dozen fiery cuts followed. He gasped in surprise and pain but felt, as he stood up …
—Thank you, sir.
… that he had committed so many beatable offenses in the past forty-eight hours, he could hardly begrudge the Flea a quick sixer from an improvised weapon.
—Sit down, the Flea commanded. What is it, Pearl?
—Please, sir, Wilberforce wasn’t there when the Head said what he said. He’s only just got back from the Tower.
The Flea revealed no remorse. Morgan hovered by the desk, feeling light-headed. The Flea opened his mouth to scold but then ordered him into the corridor.
—Did Matron give you anything to eat? he asked, closing the door behind them.
Morgan shook his head.
—What were you doing in the Tower?
Morgan indicated the stitches on his chin.
—Accident, sir. And then I was queasy.
—Are you queasy now?
—No, sir.
—So that ashen complexion is an empty stomach?
—I—I suppose so, sir.
The Flea sighed and bustled back into the form room. He scribbled something on a piece of imposition paper and handed it to Morgan.
—Return to the refectory and give this to the Headmaster from me, please.
Crossing the cloisters, Morgan eyed the missive: Give this boy lunch immediately. RBL. Although he wished no further contact with S-K, he was almost beyond caring. His chin stung. The Flea’s stick burned. Hunger-induced apathy had him in its clutches. He drifted into the refectory and by the hand of a loving god—Hermes, trickster, messenger, friend—encountered Mr. Grieves near the entrance and gave the note to him.
Grieves read it and then placed a bowl in front of him:
—Don’t tell me you’ve been fainting at Horace.
—Ashen under the rod, sir.
Grieves frowned. He was wise about so many things; why couldn’t he have a bit of humor about the stick? Morgan attacked the broth and bread.
—You, Mr. Grieves said sternly, are an ambulatory disaster.
—Sir?
—You get into trouble at least six times an hour.
—Only on a good day, sir.
Again, Grieves seemed incapable of humor. He left Morgan to eat, but just as Morgan had finished, he returned, removed the empty bowl, and took hold of Morgan’s wrist as if he would wrench him to his feet.
—Listen here, Wilberforce. This is not a game. I have had quite enough tidying up after you these past twenty-four hours.
The remark hurt.
—Stop kicking up trouble.
—Sir, I—
—You’re like an elephant in a crystal factory.
Morgan wanted to argue, but a string of blundered maneuvers paraded before him. Had he learned nothing in his seventeen years? Nothing from Silk, nothing from Laurie, nothing even from Alex?
Grieves continued to clutch Morgan’s wrist harder than necessary. He felt like a child under rebuke.
—I don’t mean it, sir.
—Precisely, Mr. Grieves said. You don’t mean, you don’t realize, you don’t think.
He pulled harder.
—You must think, Wilberforce. You must.
Morgan felt feeble.
—I know, sir.
—Let me ask you something, in strictest confidence.
—Sir?
—What do you know of Rees?
Morgan blinked.
—Rees, sir?
Grieves let go of his wrist as if he’d just remembered he was holding it.
—Well?
—Nothing much, sir. Only that his pater is in the City.
—That isn’t what I meant.
Morgan wondered at him. Mr. Grieves spoke as if in code:
—Who are his particular friends in his House?
—I don’t think he has any friends, has he, sir?
—Do you trust him?
Morgan could not imagine where the conversation was heading.
—In what sense, sir?
—Do you think he is as he seems?
—I can’t see him managing deception, sir.
Mr. Grieves grimaced:
—That is what I thought.
—Why do you ask, sir?
Mr. Grieves appeared to struggle with temptation and then give in to it.
—I’ve reason to believe … let’s just say you were lucky last night not to encounter company on the road.
Morgan flushed.
—I’m afraid I don’t follow, sir.
—Never mind. If you’ve finished there, cut along before you find yourself entangled in another interview with S-K.
Dazed by Mr. Grieves’s bizarre about-face, Morgan decamped to the toilets. There he cupped water to his cheeks and waited for his heart to stop hurling itself around. What under Zeus’s milky sky did Mr. Grieves mean? And what was he playing at? It was one thing to inquire discreetly about Morgan’s exploits when encountering him in the Tower, but to initiate parley in an occupied refectory, and then to make unpalatable and astonishing suggestions about other boys—it was untoward. Masters always had favorites, and certain Housemasters had been known to conduct maneuvers hand in hand with trusted cadres, but Grieves had taken their alliance entirely overboard.
Morgan dried his face on his sleeve. Was the man actually unhinged? In retrospect, something about his rooms in Fridaythorpe was disconcertingly hermit-like. Why was he not living at the Academy proper? The other undermasters lived in the Houses. Lockett-Egan, for instance, served as attaché to Clement and essentially ran the House. Why did Grieves not occupy a similar position, in Morgan’s own House, for instance? Hazlehurst certainly needed setting straight, or at least the energy to give a damn. Grieves, whatever one might say against him, gave a damn.
The edge had come off Morgan’s hunger enough for him to think straight. What had Grieves actually said? The man harbored suspicions about Rees, suspicions that harmonized with the rumor Morgan had heard about Spaulding. It would be absurd for Grieves to approach Morgan over a rumor, so there was only one possible conclusion: Grieves knew that Rees had been abroad, too. It strained reason to imagine that Spaulding had trespassed with a third party while Rees trespassed independently with a fourth, all of them failing to encounter the marauding bands of Third Formers. There were limits to what circumstance could support. Which meant that Spaulding’s companion had to be Rees.
Morgan longed for a cigarette. The idea of Spaulding with Rees was as distasteful as when Morgan first heard it, but now it possessed the weight of possibility. Rees and Spaulding were both in Burton-Lee’s House and both enjoyed their Housemaster’s good opinion. Spaulding’s athleticism drew his Housemaster’s loyalty, but Rees had attracted the Flea’s sympathies for reasons beyond Morgan’s grasp. Perhaps Burton knew Rees’s people.
But even if Spaulding and Rees could be linked through rumor and circumstance, a liaison between them was impossible if one remembered Burton’s particular vigilance against such things. How on earth could they have absconded together in the middle of the night?
Perhaps they had taken their leave for more wholesome purposes: drinking, for instance, cattle rustling, theft. Spaulding could have scouted the target in the afternoon—a nearby farm? the collection box of the church in Fridaythorpe?—and then conducted the burglary in the night, egged on by Revolting Rees.
A vision of Rees done for theft cheered Morgan considerably. How the mighty would fall, and how angry the Flea would be! S-K would have a coronary and dispose Rees in disgrace, perhaps after a public flogging. Such a sight would raise everyone’s spirits. There just remained the problem of Spaulding. Surely such a sportsman could be spared the ultimate penalty? Watching Spaulding undergo a public licking might prove delicious, but expulsion, no.
Another idea came to him then, not shimmering as brightly as the morning’s shimmering idea, but glowing like a bulb at the end of a corridor. It suggested a gentle course of action, and before any alarms could be raised, before the rest of his brain could resume its exhaustive and exhausting cogitation, Morgan’s feet had decamped the washroom and were carrying him across the cloisters to the classrooms. Avoiding the Latin room, they carried him upstairs, along the upper passage, and down the far stairs to Lockett-Egan’s English class, where reclined the Lower Sixth, dazed by torpor, kept just awake by their master’s dynamic reading of …
—Two vast and trunkless legs—
—Pardon me, sir, Morgan said from the door.
Lockett-Egan paused as if hoping for reprieve.
—The Head to see Spaulding, please.
So many exorbitant things turned out to be breathtakingly simple once you did them.