Eton, 1859
“VULGARIAN!”
“Boor!”
“Peasant!”
I stood at the kitchen door with the pot of tea I’d prepared for Thorkell warm in my hands. Three of the senior boys were in the hall outside the kitchen, pushing around another junior. I’d noticed the boy before. I was small for twelve, and he was as slight as me. He had an agreeable face and ruddy cheeks that looked like someone had just pinched them. There was a certain congenial shyness about him that had made me want to befriend him at first glance, but so far I’d not even learned his name.
He was doggedly trying not to spill the tray with the cup and pot of tea he’d prepared, even while being pushed around. He said nothing, keeping his eyes on the floor.
One of the boys snatched the pot from the tray, opened the lid and sniffed, then made a face. “Don’t even know how to make a proper English tea. You’re a disgrace!”
“Do it again!” another ordered. “And make it right this time or else.”
I’d only been at Eton for a few weeks, but I’d heard stories from my older brothers, and I knew enough of the way things worked to assume two things. First, the boy was not of the upper classes. He might be a scholarship case or maybe even a foreigner. Hence the bullying. And second, the state of the boy’s tea had nothing to do with it. They’d likely reject any pot he made.
All first year boys like me were “fags,” or servants, to an upper class boy. Fags made their fag-masters breakfast, midday tea, brushed their shoes, and did whatever other small chores they might need. In exchange, the fag-master acted as mentor and should, in theory, protect a boy from just such bullying. But in fact, bullying was rife at Eton. I’d had my share of it, despite my name.
My name. I straightened my spine and tried to summon the imperial affect I’d seen my older brothers use. “What are you up to there?” I demanded, approaching the group with the pot of tea still in my hands.
One of the senior boys eyed me up and down. “Who are you?”
“Hastings,” I said proudly, lifting my chin. “And my brother will not be amused to be delivered cold tea.”
I spoke with as much disdain as I could muster, which was considerable. I sounded positively haughty to my own ears. I was taking a chance, though. My eldest brother, Rupert Hastings, was well-known. He was the House Captain of Games, and as heir to the Earldom, he had that sheen of untouchable success that all Etonians, as well as the rest of the world, bowed and scraped to. But he was not the bullied boy’s fag-master, nor mine, and his tea had nothing whatever to do with what was happening in the hall. I hoped these boys didn’t know that.
The chance paid off. The three boys exchanged wary glances, and with a final flick to the boy’s ear, they sauntered off, leaving us alone.
“You didn’t have to do that. Thank you,” the boy said. He sounded British but rough in his speech. He was from the North, I guessed, working class. His hair had fallen forward over his eyes, and with his hands full, he could do nothing about it.
I quelled an urge to brush it back for him. “All in a day’s work,” I said, rather stupidly.
“I suppose the tea isn’t very good,” he admitted sadly. “My fag-master is Wheaton, and he always makes a sort of face when he drinks it. But he’s too polite to say so.”
“Let me see.” I put my own tray on the floor and lifted the lid off his pot. It was the color of piss. “Hmm. Did he ask for it weak?”
“No.” The boy blushed. “My father imports coffee, among other things. We never drink tea at my house. Now if Wheaton liked coffee, I’d be on my game. I make the best you’ve ever tasted.”
I smiled at his boasting. “I’ve never had coffee. I’ll like to take you up on that sometime, see what it’s like. But for now, why don’t I show you how to make a proper tea?”
“Would you?” he looked surprised. “Why?”
“Must do right by poor Wheaton,” I said, though I had no idea who Wheaton was. “I’m Colin, by the way.”
I was rewarded with a huge grin. He had a small gap between his two front teeth that was rather endearing. “I’m Richard. Richard Wesley.”
“Come on then, Richard Wesley. Let’s make some tea.”
London, August 1, 1870
My Dear Colin,
You know how to give a fellow a heart attack, don’t you? Five days have gone by since I received your letter about attending that Obeah ceremony—are you truly mad, old chap? And since then, nothing. You’ve spoiled me with a letter a day since you left, sometimes two, and then, after such an explosive revelation, you leave me hanging?
Right then, you’ve done it now. I’m utterly terrified. I booked my passage. I leave today, and I hope to be there by the beginning of September. I’m sailing on the Libertine II, so if you are not, in fact, dead, please meet me at the docks.
I hate that I’ll have no chance of hearing from you on the journey. If not for the fact that I was praying for a letter, I might have left two days ago. But I can’t wait any longer. I’m sending a telegram to Kingston as well, in case this letter arrives later than I do.
I pray you are soon showing me the sights of Jamaica and we can laugh about this. I may even refrain from punching you, if only you are well and abjectly repentant. Please, Colin. Please be safe.
Your friend always,
Richard
AT THE beginning of August, I received a telegram.
Arriving in Kingston early September on Libertine II. Stop. Letter to follow. Stop.
Richard
I was not surprised that my lack of correspondence would drive my friend to such an extreme, though I was surprised it had only taken five days. In fact, I had not put pen to paper to write to him since the ritual. I was unable to even think about him without my whole being seizing up with indecision. I did not know what I wanted to say to him or how to say it.
I was waging an internal battle.
The bird was winning.
It was the full heat of August. In the evenings I sat in the parlor, doors and windows open to catch a breeze, and indulging myself with scotch, a fanning servant, and chips of ice bound in a cloth for my forehead. I burned inside and out until I was sure I would be consumed. Often Major Pivot would come to play cards and, sometimes, his brother Lester too.
West Falls, the Pivots’ plantation, was managed by Lester Pivot. He was a small man with a compunction to evangelize to the natives and, if the gossip was to be believed, a weakness for his native housekeeper. John Pivot, whom everyone called Major, was the younger brother, in his late forties. He was a small, round man with an impressive mustache. He had apparently lost his wits during his service in the Second Boer War and been sent to Jamaica to be hidden away like a dark family secret. He believed himself to be an actor and would burst into song at the slightest provocation.
At least he provided a distraction and he was a decent tenor—for a madman.
“I have sought, but I seek it vainly, That one lost chord divine,” he sang as he sorted his cards. “Which came from the soul of the organ, And entered into mine.”
“It’s your turn,” I said, having to remind him to draw every single time.
And then there was the bird. I’d had it moved from my bedroom to the parlor, and there it sat in the evenings, watching me. It was hungry, always. The servants fed him crickets and beetles and little fish they bought from the fishmonger. I watched the bird gulp them down by the dozen, its black beak sharp and its gullet bottomless.
And the red eyes—always those red eyes!
Every time I looked at the bird, I thought of the ceremony. Had Tiyah-Erzulie really pulled something from inside me and given it to the bird, or had it all been a trick? Was the bird me? Was I it?
I hated the creature. I feared it. I ordered the servants to give it anything it wanted. I would have gotten rid of the thing, but I was afraid of what might happen to me if I did. No way could I kill the winged monstrosity.
So in the evenings, I drank, and played rummy with genial Major Pivot, and I alternated between ignoring the bird and staring at it.
As for its part, the bird had no such division in its nature. It was always staring at me.
After that night, there had been no laughing remarks or sly looks behind my back amongst the servants as I had feared there would be. It was as if nothing had changed. The young native man I thought had been my lover was gone for about a week, and then he reappeared with the other laborers. He did not approach me, nor I him, though at times my eyes drifted to him of their own accord. Even Tiyah went back to her work and did not try to speak with me again, though I could sometimes feel her watching me, wondering.
No one came to me in the night again. I was both relieved and… disappointed.
As the days passed, my fear and confusion lessened under the dullness of routine. I could pretend nothing had happened, but it had. And I was left alone to sort it out. It was between myself and the bird.
The nights were the worst. Whatever had been done to me, it had changed me physically. I would lie in my bed, my very skin restless and craving, my body slick with the swamping heat of lust. I could not stop the memory of that night, the feeling of that man, or fantasies of Richard in his stead. I imagined Richard’s mouth on me, Richard laying heavily on top of me, his cock hard against my hot flesh. No matter how often I brought myself relief, it was never enough, only a momentary reprieve. It was like an addiction.
Had I really wanted this? To feel passion? Now I was being driven mad by it.
During the day, I drove myself hard in the sun so I didn’t have to think. But in the parlor in the evenings, I could not escape it, especially once I’d received the telegram.
Richard was coming. He was on his way even then.
We’d been the best of friends since the day I’d taught him how to make tea at Eton. We’d spent six years together there and another four at Cambridge, where we had rooms side by side.
He’d been such a good-hearted boy, young Richard. He was the son of a self-made businessman from Manchester, and often had to take sly comments about being lowborn and nouveau riche. It did not matter one whit to me. His hair was a light brown, the color of a robin’s back, and his cheeks as ruddy as a robin’s breast. He was slender and tall and as hopeless at sports as I was, but he loved to walk. The boy could walk for hours and hours, and we’d often follow the River Cam out of Cambridge until we could see hedgerows. Hedgerows, said Richard, were when you knew you were in the country. And how he loved the country.
I missed his shy smile and his laugh, which was open and bright. I missed his whispered confessions—people he liked and didn’t like, what he really thought of his parents, our professors, our lessons. I remembered a week when I’d been deathly ill with a stomachache and he’d brought me water and biscuits and sat by my side all evening, reading to me to take my mind off the pain.
Together, we didn’t need any other friends, though one would orbit around us from time to time before moving on. We were content just the two of us.
Once when we were fifteen, Richard slipped into my room in the middle of the night. He crawled into my bed, claiming a nightmare. We lay on our sides, facing one another. There was a flush on his cheek and a look in his eyes that was nothing like fear. And after we’d stared at each other for a long time, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine, warm and hesitant. Then he lay back and watched me for a response.
My heart had pounded in my chest until I thought I might die. I remembered hating the hope on his face. I’d felt a blind panic. But I merely rolled my eyes and told him to “stop kidding around” and go back to bed. He went pale and left without a word.
But I knew in my heart what he wanted… he wanted us to kiss and touch each other, there in the dark. Maybe I knew, deep inside, that he’d always wanted it, wanted me that way, intimately.
Did he? Or was I wrong? Was he as incapable of conjuring up such a fiery and subversive idea as I was, in the cold and pristine landscape my mind had once been?
Had once been—and was no more.
We’d never spoken of it again. He never kissed me again.
I wouldn’t have let him; I think he knew that. I had a wall around my heart. I loved Richard more than I’d ever loved any other person. He was part of my soul. But… there was no way I could be that. My family… my father… our friends… the very fabric of our society forbade it. They had laws about such things, for God’s sake. I was not an outcast! All I wanted was to be successful, worthy, respectable. I would do well in Jamaica so that I could return to England and take up my rightful place, my place among the best of society, be a credit to the Hastings name.
One night, after Major Pivot had gone home and I’d drank too much, I threw my glass in a rage. Crystal and scotch shattered against the wall just to one side of the birdcage.
“Stop staring at me!” I screamed at the bird.
It flapped its wings in alarm. Its wingtips struck roughly against the sides of the cage, hurting it. I felt bad immediately. After it settled, the bird turned its back on me for the first time and sat huddled on its perch, head down.
Blast it. It only made me feel worse.