A Pretty Mouth (25 page)

“She’s fine,” said St John, waving toward the screen behind which the calico cat perpetually lurked.

“May I—”

“You mustn’t disturb her, Mr. Fitzroy,” said Thomas anxiously. “She’s nesting, and possessed of a delicate temperament, but the happy event should be any day now. Do you still want one of the litter as a companion for Pietra Poodle, sir?”

So Godfrey had a poodle!

“I suppose we’ll see. Don’t want her to get, er, territorial.”

“As you say, sir.”

“Enough,” said St John. “Shall we adjourn and meet our brethren?”

Thomas coughed, and after St John acknowledged him, he handed his master a glass phial. “You had promised your friends, my lord.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you, Thomas. Well, hold down the fort—and wait up for us. I shall need your help when I am finished tonight, I daresay.”

“
Hmmmm
,” said Godfrey, putting a fingertip to his lower lip and then lewdly sucking on it with a loud slurp. “And I daresay—”

“Hush,” said St John.

There was no more talk among the three of them as they went quietly over the gravel quad and through the hallways of the college towards the library. Henry was excited—more excited, even, than the night he had snuck out to the Horse. He had never before seen the Fellow’s Common Room, but had desperately wished to have the use of it as the wealthier students did. For the status of it, of course—not, he admitted readily enough, for the access to the books and quiet working spaces it allegedly provided. Rumor had it that the Common Room saw more silliness than study, and was, late at night, used as a bazaar for black-market goods.

“Here we are,” murmured St John, and knocked in a pattern before opening the door.

The room inside was handsomely furnished with comfortable chairs and heavy oaken tables, lined with bookcases on all sides, and well-lit with several lanterns and candles. Looking around, it seemed to Henry that most of the Blithe Company were already assembled. Anthony Neville and Aldous Clark were playing a hand of cards at a study-table; Nicholas Jay, Edwin Harris, Rowan Zwarteslang, and Matthew Fletcher were passing around a clay tavern pipe whose smoke had a strange odor to it. As Godfrey went over to take a puff, hailing the assembled throng, Richard Smith and Fitzroy Lowell knocked and entered behind Henry and St John, red-cheeked, and with the aroma of a distillery on their breath.

“Hail, hail,” said Lowell, looking about. “Are we assembled?”

“What’s to be the rumpus tonight?” Neville, distracted from his game, swore when Clark set down a card with a triumphant ‘Ha!’

“Peace,” said St John, and his quiet voice, as always, immediately captured the attention of the room. “Does everyone have their bats?” After everyone nodded, he smiled a cruel smile that chilled Henry to the bone. “Excellent. Jones will
know
what hit him, I’ll warrant, but such a drubbing he will not have had before, when we’re done with him.”

“I say!”

Everyone turned to look at Henry after his outburst. He blushed.

“Mr. Milliner has an objection?” St John said derisively.

“No, not really,” said Henry quickly—with all eyes upon him and one hand of every pair holding a cricket bat, he wasn’t going to stick his neck out
too
far. “I just didn’t realize that was, you know. The plan.”

“What did you think we were going to do, invite him out on the pitch to bowl a few overs? For honor’s sake?” Neville was looking at him with a skeptical, if friendly expression. “Oh yes,” he said, in a high, fruity voice, “I’m
thoroughly
satisfied now that Jones has been dismissed from the game!”

Godfrey laughed. “Nay indeed! I aim to give him such a case of Wadham-bottom he won’t be able to sit for a week.”

“Focus on your favorite part all you want,” said St John, blowing a kiss at his cousin. “Personally I’m going to work him over.
All
over.” Henry felt a hand come down on his shoulder, and he looked up into St John’s face. The lord’s expression was unreadable. “Only one caveat tonight, boys: Henry must start things off for us. And I hope he will not disappoint us, being so new to our Company. What do you say, Henry? Do you think you will disappoint us?”

Henry shook his head and said
no
with as much casual ease as he could muster, hoping they wouldn’t notice that he’d begun to sweat. He hated to admit it, but maybe Rochester—and even Mr. Berry—had been right about these lads. Beating someone mercilessly with a cricket bat was a bit beyond anything he’d expected to be a party to in his daydreams of being a member of the Blithe Company. He’d thought they’d be more about wenching it up in style, drinking fine wine laced with Turkish poppy-juice. That sort of thing.

“Good,” said St John, patting him on the back. “Well. Shall we get a bit lubricated before we set out? Don’t want to sprain an elbow being too tight and nervous, eh Henry?”

“Did you bring us something from your laboratory?” asked Nicholas Jay.

“No,” said St John, and produced the phial Thomas had earlier handed him. “Oh, don’t look so glum, my comrades. I have something, of course, but I didn’t manufacture these. They’re
natural
. Coca leaves from the Americas. I could only afford three, we’ll have to divvy them up. You chew them.”

Jay led the group in a series of cheers that panicked Henry—what if they were heard, the crazy assholes—but the passing ‘round of the shredded leaves and subsequent gnawing quieted the Company quickly. Henry accepted his roughage, but took only a few small nibbles before spitting the remainder into his palm and putting it into his pocket. He wasn’t sure what coca was, but another treat from the Americas, cacao, had given him the trots the few times he’d tried it, so better safe than sorry.

“Come with me, in the front,” said St John, as they made ready to leave. “I want you close. No welshing, right Henry? You’re brave enough?”

Henry clutched his hands around the handle of the curved bat. His heart was pounding unusually fast, his hands were slick with sweat and linseed oil, and he felt nature calling to him, as she always did when he was nervous—but then, all of a sudden, he felt a rush of confidence and smiled at St John.

“Don’t you worry, my lord.” He hefted the bat. “I may be a rotten cricketer, but Jones’s arse is a larger target than any ball.”

If only such wit would come to him always! Henry was hailed to the rafters by the Blithe Company, and then they sallied forth in silence, running across the quad and up the steps to the upper-floor dormitory, robes billowing,
shh
ing one another when volleys of giggling burst out. Henry had never felt so good. This was the greatest night of his life he was pretty sure. He could do this!

No, holy shit, what was he thinking? He couldn’t do this! Henry began to tremble and perspire again. Good Christ in heaven, he didn’t want to beat poor Lucas Jones with a cricket bat! What if—what if he
hurt
him? Who would do such a thing? Who would think it was a good idea?

But it was far too late to back out now. They had reached Jones’ door, and St John pushed Henry to the front.

“Here’s your chance to prove yourself,” he breathed down Henry’s neck. “When I left you earlier this night I visited him, and when he wasn’t watching, I drizzled some glue into the latch. It should have stuck by the time he went to bed, but he won’t have gotten it fixed yet, of course. So you can just push on the door and run at him, all right? Make some noise, yell or something. Scare him.”

“I—”

“You welshing?”

Henry looked into St John’s eyes and found nothing there that let him think that running off would be all right, even just this once. Quite the reverse, actually. Henry took a deep breath, promised himself to strike Jones no more than twice—well, maybe three times—and swallowed.

With a nod to his new friends, Henry pushed open the door with a battle cry, cricket bat raised like a Turkish scimitar. He was ready for this. He was ready for
anything
… except for Lucas Jones being awake when he barged into his room.

Henry’s first thought was that St John had set him up, but the look on Jones’ face when the Blithe Company charged his room
en masse
, Henry howling at the forefront and all wielding bats … well, if Jones was acting, he was the best actor in the universe.

The boy lying on his bed, a candle burning beside him on his nightstand, which gave all of them perfect clarity of vision. What they saw was Lucas Jones in just his shirt. He shrieked as he tried to cover himself, one hand grabbing for his bunched-up blanket, the other ineffectively cupped to shield his exposed, swollen prick.

Lucas Jones was jerking off!

“Lucas Jones is jerking off!” cried Godfrey, pointing at Jones’ crotch with the tip of his bat. Every other member of the Blithe Company was struck still and dumb by the sight—whether due to a sense of propriety or good fortune, however, was anyone’s guess. “Look at him, lads! We can’t beat a man in the middle of beating off, it’s
rude
!”

“Get the
fuck
out of here!” Jones had found his voice, and screeched this like a London laundress as he sat up and got the blanket over his lap, where it utterly failed to obscure the source of the general hilarity.

Henry looked over at St John, who seemed dumbfounded—delighted—and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. It seemed he was off the proverbial hook … until St John stepped forward, his eyes glinting like diamonds.

“We shall not, as you request, get ‘the fuck’ out of your room.” Henry again felt sort of terrified by the Lord Calipash. He had already learned to recognize certain of St John’s mercurial moods, and he sensed a shift towards the nasty. “We shall remain as long as we like, and do whatsoever to your person that pleases us.”

“Why are you all carrying cricketing bats?” Jones was beginning to sense his peril. Godfrey and a few of the other boys sniggered. “What’s so funny? I swear, St John, if you—”

“Did you just call me by my Christian name?” St John interrupted. If he had spoken any more quietly it would have been impossible to understand him.

The room went silent. Jones looked momentarily alarmed, then decided to try to bluster through it.

“I did,” he scoffed. “What, am I supposed to ‘m’lord’ every burglar? Rise and bow to you and your, your band of criminals? You
shame
me in front of our class, you
ridicule
me while I’m enjoying a private moment—”

“You will rise and bow to me. Now.” St John’s face was contorted like a tragedian’s mask. Henry wouldn’t have refused him his last morsel of food during famine-time if he’d looked at him like that.

“I shall not!” Jones was getting angry now. “I shall not do that! You cannot make me!” Jones shook his head. “We are both students, both Fellow Commoners. After we graduate I will treat you like the lord you are, but for now, you’re just a prank-pulling school boy with an inflated opinion of his own power.”

The rest of the Company had gone very still. Even Godfrey was no longer tittering. What had started as a simple revenge-jape was becoming a very serious, very volatile situation. All of the boys looked uncomfortable; Neville jumped when Lowell shut the door of the dormitory behind them.

St John’s face relaxed, and he smiled. It was not a nice smile.

“You will.”

Jones snorted. “Or
what
?”

St John handed his bat to Henry, who accepted it meekly.

“You will rise and bow to me, or you will face the consequences.”

Jones’s hard-on had deflated, if the blankets were any indication. He shifted his bottom slightly and sat up a little straighter on the bed.

“Make me.”

St John darted forward and grabbed Jones by the roots of his hair. Jones cried out in pain but choked on his wind when St John wrenched him forward off of the bed, causing Jones to fall onto his shoulder and hip. His bones knocked against the wooden floor of the room with an unsettling
thunk
. Jones righted himself quickly, but his attempt to rise was thwarted by St John rapping him hard on the head with his knuckles. Jones clutched at his skull and remained kneeling.

“You’re on your knees now, aren’t you?”

“And yet I still haven’t
bowed
,” said Jones through his teeth. He looked defiantly up at St John. “You cannot force me to do you honor, my Lord Calipash. And tomorrow, mark my words, everyone shall know about this Company, and what you’ve been up to of late at the Horse and Hat, and even
they
, with their Royalist sympathies, will be none too pleased to hear how you’ve abused their trust and ill-used their property!”

It does not take very long to withdraw a pistol from a coat-pocket, and yet it seemed to Henry to take a thousand years as he watched St John do so. The Lord Calipash’s hand left pale trails in the air as he reached inside the lapel of his jacket and brought out an ivory-handled pistol. It was a beautiful piece, Henry thought—he had never seen a gun so close and thus could not really judge—but its presence was deeply alarming. Someone actually gasped.