Trophies (9 page)

But the bits and bobs of jewelry were
barking. Besides the huge blue necklace, there was a smaller one of
linked mountings, each shaped like a stylized swan with a clear
stone on its back. A third was practically a waterfall of
intermixed blues, purples, and greens. There were several
bracelets, equally as gaudy; yellow and green dangly earrings that
reached halfway down the wearer's neck; and other pieces too
tasteless to describe. Last of all was a man's ring, again huge,
with an oversized blue-glass rectangle.

I angled the ring toward the light. It needed
polishing badly but the glass still glimmered at its heart. "Bet it
would hurt to be hit with that."

"This doesn't look as if it was selected by
the same person who bought the emerald ring. It's a completely
different style." Caren sighed and picked up her silverware. "Not
all love gifts are selected equally, I suppose. But I can't
believe. . . ." Her voice trailed off again.

"You know, Uncle Hubert was fairly oversized
himself."

She brightened and tasted a bite. "Mmm. No, I
never met him."

"Not a tall man, but stout," I said through a
mouthful of cheese. "Do you think he might select jewelry that was
too large for his wife because it wouldn't seem so to him in the
store?"

"Possibly. And Edith might have selected that
little emerald ring herself. Green seems to have been one of her
favorite colors. Oh, this is delicious."

"Patty does have her good points. Although
some days I must dig to find them."

"Are you going tonight?"

"Have I honestly any choice?"

seventeen years earlier

At school, it took me two days to snuff out
Langstrom and figure out what to take from him. For the most part,
he had only the ordinary belongings that a first-year would have:
uniforms, schoolbooks, a soccer ball. He took no specialized
classes such as art, which would have left a sketchpad lying
handily about, and he kept no personal books of any significance.
The deeper I delved, the more boring he seemed, and I wondered at
my own idiocy in selecting him for a companion.

Only when I had the lid of his chest open did
I see the photograph, a posed Langstrom family portrait, the five
of them smiling at each other or the camera. The mother, sitting,
encircled her two young daughters with her arms and they leaned
their blond Fabergé eggheads toward her. Langstrom Senior,
standing, draped that long arm casually across his son's shoulders
and stared proudly at the camera with an expression I could only
regard as sappy, particularly as he seemed to be the original
egghead and should have known better than to spread his genes about
with such abandon. The photograph was wedged into the underside of
the lid, between two slats that formed an impromptu frame, and it
drew me like a gravity well.

I looked no further. I slid the photograph
free, shut the chest, let myself out the window, and at the
greenhouse gathered all my booty together. With my original cache
betrayed to Langstrom, a move was necessary. I stuffed my pockets
and set out for the small woodland that neighbored the school.
During soccer that afternoon, I had spotted what seemed from a
distance to be a much better, permanent hiding place.

The rear of Corwald Prep, past the wings and
greenhouse, led directly to the soccer field, which was bounded by
a rail fence with the little woodland beyond. Once across the
stile, I struck off through the underbrush, using the penlight in
brief flashes to find my path. Again the forbidden night called to
me, and again my soul expanded to meet it. I sucked in deep
breaths, pausing twice to close my eyes and revel in the night and
its scents. The stars looked like chips of ice nestled above the
treetops, close enough to yank from their black-sky drink.

Even at night, the oak tree I had marked in
my mind was easy to find, its gnarled roots the only ones curving
out of the ground as if it found the open air more desirable than
its native environment, or it was reaching for something it
couldn't have. For that reason, I decided against using those roots
as my hiding place: they stood out too much. Instead, I searched up
the trunk until I found a narrow hollow. It was just big enough;
the spyglass, penlight, knife, and photo, wrapped in more of the
sacking, squeezed inside. I closed up the hole with a bit of bark
and returned to the dorm.

Langstrom, of course, raised a fuss and
didn't hesitate to snitch, and I found it entirely satisfactory to
make him eat his words. But he went to Hardenbrook as his
instructor of choice, and that's when my juvenile world began
falling apart around me.

Hardenbrook didn't knock. He strode into the
dorm, hair as usual not quite combed, shirttail working free, one
shoe untied. He wore the first scowl I'd seen on his face, equal
parts anger and disappointment, and he stared at me with his lips
thinned to a straight line as he crossed the room.

I rose from beside my footlocker. The
lingering euphoria of the night shrank within me to a small, cold,
indigestible lump within my stomach, as if I'd swallowed a hefty
chunk of ice. Even for me, classes with Hardenbrook had been a
lark, and he'd allowed me to take the part of Bottom as the
first-years had read Shakespeare aloud during the first two weeks
of term. The experience had convinced both of us that my instinct
had been accurate, that the part had been written centuries ago
specifically for me, and I'd started looking forward to trying out
for the role in the spring performance. I'd rather relished the
opportunity to play myself as a bit of an ass, even if it was only
the head thereof. But with Hardenbrook seemingly fed up with both
asses and larks, I realized I hadn't listened when I'd reminded
myself not to like anyone at Corwald Prep.

"All right, Ellandun. Where's the
photograph?"

The other first-years in the section glanced
at each other and shrugged. But Langstrom pushed forward and stood
beside his chosen adult. "You're nothing but a thief." His voice
raised on the final word, and it rippled through the dorm like an
echo.

I gave him my coolest look. "Well, I did warn
you."

"That's enough," Hardenbrook said. "The
photograph, Ellandun."

I turned my look on him. If he truly wanted
to be my friend he should have understood. But there was no sign of
softening in his expression, if anything his lips thinned further,
and a sense of unreality drove me deeper into my body. My hands
were cold, and I wouldn't have been surprised if our breaths had
puffed before us in little clouds.

"Bugger it. All of you." I looked straight at
Langstrom. "And you especially."

Amidst that gang of young toughs, such a
comment was enough to get me lynched. But Hardenbrook retained
control over the outraged first-years and hustled me out the door,
up the stairs, and through the carved wooden door on the top floor
where Tufton held court. When he heard the crime of which I was
accused, he looked as if he'd swallowed his cannonball, which was
even more authentic upon closer inspection.

"I thought you were joking," he said.

"Why, was it funny?" After all, the time for
good manners was past.

The vein in his temple pulsed. He folded his
hands atop his papers and riveted me with his flattest stare. "We
don't allow thieves at this school. Return the photograph, and
you'll be punished, but you can stay. Otherwise," he paused, as if
about to pronounce the worst of all possible judgments, "otherwise
you'll be expelled and sent home."

But the time for facial impressionism was
past, too. The school, and everyone within it, was at cross
purposes with my own newly-discovered goal in life. Never mind that
home hadn't changed. I had. I'd made my own place and now I could
see it. No longer would I have to compete with William or even
worry about him. He won the junior championships at the local
gymkhanas, at rowing meets, at boxing matches, at cricket, at
ruggers; I rode my stubborn pony over the fields, poled the clumsy
punt downstream, avoided people I didn't like or respect. He
garnered the good marks, the position in the church choir, the
compliments from neighbors; I read Shakespeare beneath the trees
and turned up my radio when I felt lonely.

William's trophy case was full. Mine
contained four items: a penlight, a spyglass, a Swiss Army knife,
and a photograph. And through the gathering of that whimsical
collection, currently hidden within my compatriot oak tree, I felt
I'd found something special within myself. I didn't have to live
beneath William's shadow and I didn't have to follow in my father's
footsteps. I could do something exciting and unique, and now they'd
all notice me.

"Bugger it," I said again. "I'm going to be a
burglar when I grow up."

Mum, of course, was not happy when she
arrived.

"I don't quite see how you could turn him
into a thief inside three weeks."

Tufton was equally stiff. "He has much to
learn before he can be accepted at school again."

She sniffed. "If he's so obviously unsuited,
why did you accept him in the first place?"

"Could we just leave?" I interrupted.

Mum looked down, surprise etched into her
well-bred face. Her eyes seemed puffy and red-rimmed; for a
fleeting moment, I wondered if I had made her cry rather than
Langstrom's sister. I'd always been obedient although cynical and
into everything that wasn't hermetically sealed against me, and I'm
certain those were my first words of real defiance in her
presence.

She stared at me. I returned her gaze without
a blink. After a moment, it was she who turned away.

"You'll discuss this with your father." She
pulled on her gloves with angry jerks. "Come along, Charles."

I followed her and didn't look back — until
Hardenbrook, who huddled on one of the soft tan chairs in silence,
called my name. Beside the carved door, I glanced over my
shoulder.

"Good luck." His usually smiling voice was
sad. "Remember Bottom."

I thought Hardenbrook meant to tell me not to
be afraid of being an ass, that sometimes it's good for the soul. I
gave him my night-time grin — he really was my friend, after all —
before following Mum out of Corwald Prep forever.

For years, I followed that dictum. For years,
I misunderstood his real meaning and, as usual, didn't stop to
think it through.

See, Bottom had been completely and horribly
wrong. Even though he had
known
he was right.

current time

I knew, if I went to the gallery party that
night, there would be a battle in the House of Ellandun.

I looked up from the ring I was polishing and
stared at myself in the mirror of my old dressing table. From the
familiar framework of the Army white shirt and black four-in-hand
tie, my all-too-ordinary face stared back at me. In preparation for
wearing uniform amongst civilians, I'd done all the little
personal-grooming tasks, and I was as presentable as I was going to
be. And there was no getting around it: it didn't make all that
much difference. I'd been born ordinary and ordinary I
remained.

The ring I'd polished was the one from Aunt
Edith's hat box and I couldn't decide why I'd bothered. At best it
was garish. A bit of polish, some swiping with a soft cloth, and it
glittered shamelessly, oak branches twining about the big blue
glass rectangle and the wearer's finger. I angled it toward the
overhead light; the flash reflected from the mirror and sliced
around the room like some sort of
Star Trek
weapon. I'd
never seen Uncle Hubert wear anything like it. Granted, I wasn't
the world's keenest spotter, but this was of a size not to be
overlooked even on his big hands.

I sighed, set it on the dressing table atop
the chamois, and rubbed my eyes.

The ring reminded me of nothing so much as my
declaration to the world, at the age of eleven, that my life's
ambition was to be a burglar. Of course I became nothing of the
sort: after a dozen wrong turns, I fell in with Sherlock and the
gang, and now I'm a safecracker and lockbreaker for NATO special
forces. But the family's last memory of me was a would-be juvenile
thief and, later, a college drop-out, kicked off the Cambridge
campus for reasons unnamed and sent back to Boston in disgrace.

The family. To me, that term was not a
compliment and I reserved it for William and my father; my mother
died years ago. Never mind that Patty, her parents, her brothers
and sister, and Aunt Edith all shared blood with me, too. When I
meant any of them, I referred to them by name. The impersonal term
implied an impersonal relationship and that was the way I preferred
to keep the family.

By attending the gallery party, I was making
myself available to them for the first time in seventeen years. No
one who shared genetics with me could possibly bypass such an
opportunity to attack.

On top of that, Father and William united
would outnumber me, always an important consideration for a
military man. And I couldn't forget that I
was
a military
man, a lowly Regular Army captain — in the U.S. Army, the colonial
army — whereas both my father and William were nationally-known
barristers on the proper side of the Atlantic.

Damn them. I pressed my palms against my
closed eyelids. Damn them both.

I'd received notes and presents, birthday and
Christmas, from Father without fail throughout all the years I
lived with Aunt Edith. But he never returned for me and never
visited me, not even during the eight months I'd spent at Cambridge
University in England. No words had passed directly between us
since I was eleven, only greeting-card platitudes. I could only
take his long silence to mean he did not approve of the choices I'd
made in my life.