Wilberforce (12 page)

*   *   *

John got under the covers and closed his eyes. He thought he ought to sleep, or at least instruct his body to repose. He could feel weariness overcoming him just as it always did when there was no longer any chance for rest. His mind's eye saw Morgan Wilberforce at his table, red-eyed, drawn, pretense shattered. He felt the thrill of the boy's raw appeal, his eyes begging the relief he could not ask.

The timepiece at John's ear erupted. He slapped it silent and dragged himself into the dank, chill room. With cold water he shaved, cleaned his teeth, and bullied his hair into presentable form. He changed his shirt and socks, arranged his necktie, gave his suit a cursory brush. With an anxious yet excited glance at the mantel clock, he shouldered his bulging satchel and departed.

If he could understand somehow what burden Morgan Wilberforce needed to have carried, then perhaps he could find a way to pick it up for him. Perhaps John actually was needed, and perhaps the night was a sign writ large that he must not quit the field even if Burton and the Eagle did. Perhaps Morgan Wilberforce would abscond again during Prep tonight and meet him at the Keys. They might talk again. They might make a custom of it for the nights that remained to the term. They might—but he mustn't get ahead of himself. It was his unhelpful habit, he knew, to allow his mind to fly far in advance of facts, losing the plot altogether.

He had a composition to spring on the Remove that morning, and a lecture for the Third on Vikings. The Fourth would have to be flogged through a revision of their Charlemagne paragraphs, if such a thing was possible without actual anarchy, and as for the Sixth, he doubted he could stomach another day of their jaded complacency. He hadn't marked their compositions from four days ago, and he knew they would ask. The mere thought of the dog's dinner they would have made of the Reform Act, not to mention the English language, was enough to make him throw up his breakfast, if he'd eaten any.

But he could see the shed now where he expected his bicycle, and if Providence possessed a measure of mercy, Morgan Wilberforce would have kept his word and John would be permitted to cycle the last stretch and take the pressure off the blister that had formed vengefully in his left shoe. And in fact, there was the bicycle! He mounted it and filled with hope—that the blister would fade, that the highly irregular night would not lead to disaster, that despite his somewhat late arrival he would be able to cadge a bit of breakfast before prayers. He wheeled up to the gates, almost triumphant, and found them … locked.

Beyond them, in the middle of the quad, a heap of debris smoldered, filling the air with the scent of gunpowder.

John's heart began to race. He called out. No one answered. The Tower clock began to toll. As if in reply, Fardley burst into the quad from the cloisters arch.

—Hello! John shouted.

Fardley raised his hand as if silencing a nuisance of a child and disappeared into Burton-Lee's House. John called after him, annoyance rising. Whatever had transpired, Fardley ought to enlist John's help. He might be only an undermaster, but he'd been on a battlefield; it made no sense to leave him standing in the road like some kind of patent-medicine salesman.

Minutes passed. At last Fardley emerged from Burton-Lee's and waved his arms in the direction of the playing fields:

—Go round!

—Pardon?

—Go round! Fardley elaborated.

—Go round where?

—Thataway! Hazlehurst's study.

—What happened? John demanded. What's the matter with the gates?

—No time!

Fardley veered towards Clement's House, issuing over his shoulder another foghorn
Go round!

John went round. Suppressing panic, he picked his way across the flooded playing fields, but his shoes broke the skin of ice, plunging his feet entirely into water. He cursed Fardley for his idiocy, cursed Hazlehurst for the location of his study, and cursed S-K for everything else.

*   *   *

Morgan lay under the covers mentally retracing the madcap route he had been forced to take across the playing fields, through his Housemaster's French windows, ajar thanks to indolence or to the benevolence of some god, and up the back staircase to the changing room. The windows were glowing gray when he slipped back into the long, open dorm, but no one had been awake, and he'd regained his bed undetected. He was lying there, eyelids off duty, when Rabbet burst in to wake the dorm prefect at the other end. A fierce, hushed exchange, and Rabbet dashed away. The dorm prefect, after a moment of resentful hesitation, lunged from bed, snatched dressing gown, and followed their Head Boy.

Morgan realized he had been holding his breath. They were apparently not exercised about him, yet his mind raced: Had he left Hazlehurst's windows as he'd found them? Had he left anything amiss in the changing room? Had he been seen?

A pair of fags at the other end were whispering, and now it seemed they were out of bed, clattering about, receiving clattering visitors. Morgan could not, after a sleepless night, countenance fevered gossip. Whatever had roused the prefects would make itself known to everyone soon enough. Perhaps there had been a break in the recent mystery … what was it, again? Oh, how distant school business seemed! How could he drag himself, cotton headed, through the day?

Whatever was exciting the fags now stirred others from their beds. Morgan burrowed farther under the covers, his arm tingling and sore. He would get up in a moment, but now his limbs refused to budge, longing for the sleep they were owed, bewailing the failure of night to knit up their ragged sleeves, heavy, aggrieved, allergic to the day.

*   *   *

It took John longer than he considered decent to decipher what was happening. Prefects, hastily dressed, dashed two steps at a time up and down staircases. Masters, half dressed, barked things after them and shouted orders to the servants, who moved more quickly than their sullen demeanors usually allowed. John sat at the masters' table for breakfast, joined only by Clement. A prefect said the grace, which seemed to disconcert everyone, as if the words were sacrilege if spoken by anyone but the Headmaster. Clement, in his typically serene manner, provided John a précis: Those with windows giving onto the quadrangle had been wakened that morning by a fizz and a crack and a whoosh, all announcing fire in the center of the courtyard. Various parties had rushed to extinguish it, but had been thwarted by doors whose locks were frozen with a substance thought to be wax. Two of Burton-Lee's prefects had climbed out windows, but by the time they reached the fire, it was waning. The collection of canes had burnt quickly, and the conflagration had not spread to the architecture, thank the Lord. In addition to the gates and the doors of the Houses, a good many of the school's other locks had been bunged-up, to use the language of the Third Form, and John was exceedingly fortunate that Hazlehurst's study possessed no lock, else he might even now be standing outside the gates, freezing like a tradesman. The fracas, Clement concluded, had been rousing.

Clem's serenity usually irked John, but this morning he found it refreshing, even comical. John wondered idly whether the form rooms would be opened in time for lessons, and if not, what S-K would do with the school. It struck him that obstinate normality was the only suitable response. If form rooms could not be opened, lessons must occur standing in the cloisters, seated on gravel in the quad, striding briskly across the playing fields, or in ranks in the refectory. S-K must on no account let himself be drawn by the business. He must not make precipitous announcements or idle threats. Prefects must not be authorized to take justice into their own hands. Investigations must occur quietly, and the school given the impression of solid, unruffled authority.

 

10

S-K had gathered them into the chapel and was now letting loose with all the brimstone he possessed. Never in the history of the Academy had he witnessed such wanton destruction, such despicable anarchism, such utter disregard for one's fellow man. Where was their shame? Whither their pride? How long would they permit a perverse few to lay waste to the bonds that united them as Christians and as human beings? Surely the War had not been fought so that pert, amoral schoolboys could indulge themselves at the expense of an entire society. Thus was the way of wholesale dissipation, the way of cities whose doom had shortly come upon them, of Sodom, Gomorrah, of the idolatrous nations of Israel.

Coughing from the masters' pew interrupted the Headmaster's tirade long enough to recall him to his purpose. For they were not to imagine, vile wastrels, that he would spend another farthing of his outrage on them. (Morgan could feel the mental rejoicing within each boy, and likely master.) Nay! The Headmaster would leave them to rot in their own putrescence until the guilty parties came—or were brought—forward.

To that end, lessons were canceled. Games were canceled. Even meals were canceled. (A muted gasp, followed by tremors of grumbling.) S-K called for silence with the thunder of Yahweh, and got it. Until such time as this hideous misdeed vomited its perpetrators onto his study floor, until that time, the Lower School and Remove would be confined to the refectory. The Upper School would remain in its studies. Further, S-K boomed, pitching his voice even higher to drown out their protests, further! They were not to entertain illusions regarding the instruments of justice so crudely incinerated. The Headmaster had already ordered replacements, which his supplier had promised to dispatch posthaste. In the meantime, they had better know that the Headmaster's deputies were under direct instruction to spare nothing in the maintenance of order. To their chambers, therefore, would they go, and in their chambers would they remain until such time as the guilty stood before him, prepared to suffer his full and righteous wrath.

*   *   *

A grim life, a hungry life, but one that miraculously provided opportunity to sleep. Morgan felt he had crossed into a new world. Whether the frontier had been passed when he'd crawled out the Tower window, or when Mr. Grieves had walked towards him in the garden, or when he had spied Spaulding on the road, he couldn't say, but the events that enraged the Headmaster failed to touch him. Who could care about pranks after such a night?

No study was to have coal, but they settled not unhappily into the unexpected free time. Morgan called bags on the window seat and stretched across it under a rug. The room had just begun to spin pleasantly when he heard steps. He opened his eyes to Nathan and Laurie looming above.

—What?

Nathan inhaled sharply. Laurie murmured:

—We'll hear it now instead of later, thanks.

He felt he ought to sit up. If they were going to haul him through last night again, he had no intention of taking it literally lying down.

—You were behind this whole mess, Nathan said evenly. Admit it.

Morgan relaxed:

—I wasn't.

—Then you helped.

—I don't know anything more than you do. That's the truth.

He shoved a cushion against the draft in the window and pulled the rug up to his chin.

Then—how did it happen?—Laurie had hurtled onto his chest, as he did to Alex when they set upon him. With iron knees, he pinned Morgan's arms to his sides, aided by the rug and Morgan's sling.

—What's the idea?

And someone had wrenched off his shoes and socks. A sick weight landed, heavier than Laurie's eight-odd stone. They were doing to him what they all did to Alex, the same technique to the letter.

Nathan elbowed back Morgan's head, pinched his nose, and stuffed the sock into his mouth. He struggled, helpless.

They said nothing. Silence was part of the technique. Nathan took hold of his hair and commenced the first interval. The technique never varied, and they had learned, both receiving in their youth and now giving, the chilling power of unvaried routine. You knew what was coming, which in ordinary circumstances would provide a measure of comfort; but you knew what was coming, so you could never entertain any doubts as to what would happen if you continued to resist.

He'd been sore before they began, and now he had reached the wall faster than Alex ever had. He yelled through the sock.

Nathan paused. There was no acknowledgment, as when Morgan did the same to Alex. No spark, no life at all. His friends not only had trapped him like a criminal, but were now regarding him as a vile object.

Laurie inched up his chest and tightened the vise. Nathan pulled the rug back—practiced, deliberate—and ran his knuckle across Morgan's chest until he found a place in Morgan's left shoulder.

The sock barely muffled his scream. Nathan let go of the place:

—We know you were part of it.

Crisp, civilized. They had learned from experts.

—We know you're lying, Laurie said.

He spoke not as they spoke to Alex, but colder. Nathan rested his knuckle against the place.

—But, Laurie continued, if that's the line you intend to take, then you've only yourself to blame.

Laurie's knees tightened. Nathan pressed.

It was essential to keep air flowing through his nose. Presently, they would take the sock out of his mouth, and he would be allowed to explain. But they hadn't believed him just now when he told the truth. They thought he could orchestrate an appalling prank and keep it from them. Nathan removed the sock, and Morgan gulped for air. The technique proceeded to the next stage, Laurie taking the lead:

—You look tired. Are you tired?

Morgan knew better than to answer vocally.

—You look as though you had a short night. Did you have a short night?

He nodded.

—When I looked, it seemed as though no one was in your bed.

His heart sank.

—Did it look that way to you, JP?

—It did look that way to me, Nathan said.

—It looked that way to JP, too. Was there anyone in your bed when JP and I looked into it?