Wilberforce (39 page)

Morgan stalked through the woods and ignored his companion, but Droit was not so easily dismissed. It wasn't that he doubted Morgan's amorous instincts. What concerned Droit was Polly.

—You leave her alone! Morgan warned.

But Droit had no personal designs on Polly, though she was certainly a delicious morsel. Droit was only thinking of the inconstancy of girls. Morgan demanded that he explain what he meant. Droit implored him to stop flying off the handle. What Droit meant had been the subject of plaintive literature since bards began barding, viz, the tendency of girls to promise every sort of thing when trying to capture boys. Having hooked their prey, however, girls invariably procrastinated.
I promise
quickly became
I would
.
Tomorrow
faded to
soon
.
I adore you
gave way to feeling poorly, and so on, the eternal swindle of the female of the species.

Morgan was fairly confident that Polly would not renege on her promise. Fairly confident was the same thing as doubtful, Droit informed him.

But Droit was not there to undermine his nerve. He only desired to warn Morgan of the pitfalls and with that warning enable him to develop a backup plan.

Morgan lengthened his stride and told Droit that he was sure Polly would wish to do what she had promised to do, but if at the last moment she changed her mind, he would do everything possible to reassure and convince her.

—And if that doesn't work?

Morgan thought that it ought to work, especially as luck had been with him so very much that day.

Droit spat in disgust. If Morgan was going to cling to luck, then he was a child. Men did not believe in luck. Men arranged affairs to their liking, and if impediments presented themselves, men swept them away.

Morgan stopped at the fork that led to McKay's barn. Was Droit suggesting Morgan force himself on Polly if she proved unwilling?

Droit would never suggest such a crude thing—Morgan was glad to hear it!—but Droit was suggesting that girls sometimes found the appearance of overpowering attractive. It was a fact that girls were created in a way that was fundamentally flawed, that caused them to resist what was most natural and right. Therefore, it was Morgan's obligation and his burden as a man to press forward when Polly expressed reluctance. She hoped for it, longed for it, indeed required it from him. If he failed, she would never forgive him. Of course, he needn't behave like a cad, but he must remember that an initial
no
was not an outright refusal, and that if certain sensations were not precisely pleasurable at first, they would shortly become so if she could only be convinced to give them a chance. Morgan himself surely remembered having misgivings about certain sensations that turned out to be very agreeable indeed. So it would be for Polly.

They'd arrived at the wall. Morgan gazed down the slope at the barn. The midsummer sun drenched the scene, nothing like the place Morgan had surveyed with Spaulding that day in the other life when he had brushed against Spaulding for the last living time and recalled the interval in the balcony, hoping for its completion and fulfillment.

Droit hoped Morgan wasn't going to contaminate the evening with unsavory recollections. The time had come to keep his aims in mind, his nature in mind, and to carry on, steadfast, until the final threshold had been crossed. Morgan hopped over the wall, ran down the slope, and crawled through the hatch to the smaller chamber.

Polly was not there, but someone else was.

*   *   *

—Just what the hell do you think you're doing? Morgan cried.

Alex raised his head momentarily, but then lay back and continued smoking.

—Get the bloody hell off those rugs!

Alex tapped his cigarette conspicuously onto the blankets:

—Yours are they?

Morgan crashed over, took hold of the blanket, and rolled Alex onto the hay.

—Listen to me, Pearl. This is about the farthest thing from a joke your puny mind can imagine.

Morgan hauled him to his feet:

—I know what you've been up to, you …

—Fragment of festering foreskin? Droit murmured.

—you little horror.

—Think that up all on your own, did you? Alex snapped.

Morgan shoved him against the wall.

—I am not pissing about, Alex. Leave.

A languorous expression came across Alex's face:

—I don't think I will.

—
What?
Why?

—I'm much too keen to see this tart of yours.

—She's no tart!

—None of them are.

Morgan slammed the palm of his hand against the wall in lieu of Alex.

—Just what do you want?

Alex glanced at the ceiling:

—Oh, where to begin?

Morgan took hold of him. Alex appeared to calculate.

—No, Alex concluded, there's too much to discuss right now, but let's start with the money you owe me.

—For winning the match despite the bat you buggered?

—I know nothing of buggery, but you owe me six guineas—

—Six—are you
insane
? How much did you bet?

—The problem isn't the bet I placed, Alex replied. It's the bets I ran.

—
Ran?

—Thanks to you and that vicious piece of work you call a friend, I'm stuck with a bad book and no way to pay out.

—But … I thought Colin was running the book.

—His book was a joke, Alex scoffed. Mine had the best line, until you interfered.

Morgan felt unsteady.

—If you think you can blackmail me, you're mistaken.

—Am I? Alex retorted. Shall I go back to the Cad and suggest someone peruse your love bower? Or how about your poacher's tunnel?

Morgan's heart raced.

—You'll be killed if you do something that low. If not by me, then by every boy in the school.

Alex narrowed his eyes:

—Do you think I care?

They regarded one another. Alex relaxed in his grip, and Morgan realized he'd seen this before, the gaze of someone with nothing to lose.

—All right, Morgan said, I'll get you the money.

Alex tilted his head:

—Hang on a tick. Is that your tart calling?

Shower of dread. It was Polly, calling Morgan's name just outside the hatch. He dropped Alex and crawled outside.

She was more beautiful than he remembered her ever looking. She wore a frock in dusty rose, and behind her ear she'd tucked a red flower. He could scarcely breathe. She reached up and kissed him, her mouth warm, soft, tasting of ale. She pulled away after only a moment and presented her basket. He looked under the cloth and saw four bottles and some pies.

—My aunt, Polly, you are the
most
astounding girl.

She peered over his shoulder to the hatch door. He snapped around, but Alex was not there.

—Do you mind waiting just a moment? Morgan asked. I'm only …

He had never been good with words.

—Take your time, pet.

She tugged his ear affectionately and plopped down on the grass. He slipped back through the hatch. Inside, no Alex. A strand of hope.

—Don't be an idiot! Droit exclaimed. He isn't gone, and he won't be until you get rid of him properly.

—But—

—This isn't a nursery. Do you want to go outside and tell Polly it's off?

Morgan did not. Droit unleashed a string of curses and then showed Morgan the panel through which Alex had passed, into the main part of the barn.

—Go on! Droit urged. Or are you still afraid?

—I am not!

—Then get your feeble girl of a carcass in there and teach the little snake a lesson about trespassing on sacred ground.

Morgan squeezed through the panel and found Alex climbing the ladder to the loft.

—Is this where it all happened? Alex asked.

—Pearl, I am warning you. Get out
right now
.

—I'll take that as a yes.

Alex gestured to the fallen beam, a scrap of rope tangled around it.

—Is that the fateful cross? Did Rees rope himself to the same exact thing that killed Spaulding?

A terrible fire froze him.

—You've got to be joking, Alex scoffed. It's too hilarious! And here's you gunning for Tess of the D'Urbervilles on the very spot where that dolt crashed his head open.

Droit wasn't speaking; he was acting. Together they were bounding across the barn and hauling Pearl from the ladder. Crash in the hay, fists falling, gasps. Knees, arms, each blow releasing something jarring and sweet, like a monumental, back-cracking—

—Pax. Pax—

Noise beneath, nonsense.

—Pax—

Arm back, but there—with Pearl, not beside him or upon him but amidst him—the other one, looking and seeing and knowing. Fist falling to the middle of that face, knocking it out.

Pulled to his feet. Dragged to the door and through it. Shoved towards the road. Given a kick and sent on his way.

*   *   *

John had a soft spot for Polly, the publican's daughter. When he first came to the Academy, seven years before, she had made a pet of him. She considered him her particular friend and would climb onto his lap and lisp her lessons to him. They didn't ask much of her at the village school, just her letters, arithmetic, her Bible, a little geography. John used to quiz her on her multiplication tables and her recitations. He had made her stretch her tongue out of its lisp with a gentle, humorous method that did not shame her. Now, at the threshold of fifteen, she no longer asked for his help with lessons, but she still kissed him on the forehead in a way she kissed no one else. His goddaughter had a special kiss for him, too; her practice was to kiss each of his palms and then press them to his lips, transferring her kisses thus. His goddaughter was now the age Polly had been when he'd met her, though far more precocious and demanding in her curiosities about the world.

Presumably Polly would begin to walk out with boys in a year or so. He hoped fervently that no boy would ever do anything to mar the perfect girl Polly had become. Her education had been basic, and her prospects as the only child of a rural publican were nothing grand, yet her simplicity testified to a heart unhindered. Polly loved now as a child; in time she would love as a woman; and then she would love as a mother. She and her husband would eventually take on the pub, providing sustenance and fellowship to an uncomplicated rural society. She knew God, and he knew her. If any misfortune ever befell her, if any boy wounded her or insulted her honor, John would leap to her defense. His pacifist vows notwithstanding, John felt he would be prepared to thrash any boy who did her wrong.

Not that they need worry about that for several years, thank the Lord. Tonight she left the Keys looking as only a fourteen-year-old girl can look before she is aware of her beauty and the power it wields over men. A friend had invited her to a midsummer party. Ribbons flowed through her hair, her cheeks showed a slight and becoming sunburn, and a pulsing, girlish excitement coursed through her conversation and her mien. She would spend the longest evening eating strawberries and trifle in a Yorkshire garden. Polly and her girlfriend would likely braid flowers into each other's hair, make fairy lanterns, and dance and laugh and play whatever games girls played when they imagined the men they would marry. When as a boy John had gone to the Rectory for the summer holidays, Jamie's sisters used to stay up long into the night playing all sorts of unfathomable things—half sorcery, half whimsy—hoping to glimpse their future princes. He remembered once they had constructed a fortune-telling device out of ribbon, an alphabet puzzle, and their late mother's wedding ring. They'd allowed him and Jamie to play it with them, and by candlelight the ribbon and the ring had moved by themselves around the alphabet spelling out the names of the girls they would love. John, the ring said, would marry Eleanor, and Jamie would wed Mary. It had been goose-pimply and eye-wateringly frightening, which had egged Jamie on to more audacious questions such as how they would die. When the Bishop had discovered them, John had almost wept with relief, though of course they'd all wept by the time the Bishop had finished with them. Apparently the ribbon and the ring were a sacrilege and a desecration of their mother's memory; furthermore, the apparatus was a classic tool of witchcraft. The Bishop took an exceedingly dim view.

But John's firm habit was never to think of the Rectory, most especially on a day as outrageous as this. Time moved in one direction only, and while history might be enthralling, no good ever came of dwelling on matters that had expired. The errors of his youth had been thoroughly renounced.

*   *   *

She said she wanted to. She said she loved him and consented fully to the thing they had come there to do. She had lain willingly on the blankets he provided. She had herself removed his jacket, his shirt, his trousers, his pants. She had met his cock before, but now unencumbered, it induced a certain awe. Warmth and confidence flooded through him.

—Are you sure? he asked as the tip touched that softest spot.

She was sure. She told him so. He pressed through a warm wetness he had never conceived. Everything he'd read told him to be quick. It would hurt for a moment, but as soon as that threshold had been passed, she would discover a pleasure she couldn't yet imagine. He was pressing against something now. She tightened, there and everywhere.

—Stop.

*   *   *

The evening had turned so beautiful and benign, it was all John could do to force himself to leave the Keys and return to the Academy. But return he must, and soon, before Burton realized John had shirked his evening duties, whatever they were supposed to have been. The sky looked as though someone had daubed it with blushing powder. Roses drooped across the garden walls of Fridaythorpe, and the air was thick with a vibrant aroma that stirred every fertile potential.