Wilberforce (49 page)

He withdrew his feet from the water and reclined on the grass in the sun, his head dizzy. He would close his eyes, and open them … did it matter when?

*   *   *

A whistling, like arrows over walls. They mustered in the scale formation the Romans copied from the Greeks, but still the arrows pricked. His men fell around him, shrill of shells. Captain Cahill said they made your ears feel like bleeding. His men had fallen on top of him, arrows penetrating the gaps of their armor. He couldn't move his limbs, couldn't stop the shells, coming, coming—

*   *   *

—You alive, or what?

A dark Adonis blotted out the sun. Morgan inhaled, and coughed.

—Are you poorly? the creature asked.

Blood rushed to his cock. He was far from poorly. He sat up and licked his teeth. The creature licked his lips.

—You're awfully far away, Morgan said. Why don't you sit down here?

Dark Adonis puzzled, then spoke:

—Mrs. Hallows wants you.

The creature extended a hand—a firm, marvelous hand.

—Best move before she turns savage.

—She hasn't been savage yet?

The creature laughed. Morgan let himself be hoisted.

—I'm Morgan.

—I know. William.

William led him to the kitchen door and called for Mrs. Hallows, who shortly appeared. The look of fear on her face gave way swiftly to relief, then fury. The next thing Morgan knew, his ears were being boxed and she was unleashing a rebuke equal to one of Matron's. Where had he gone? How dare he disappear without bothering to tell anyone? Did he think they had nothing to do but hunt down wicked boys? The cuffs continued. Had she or had she not left him in the library? And where was the work the Bishop expected?

His ears rang, and her words no longer distinguished themselves. Far in a corner of the kitchen, Droit lurked, his hair damp from swimming, wet patches seeping through his soft-collared shirt. He plunged his finger into a bowl cooling by the window, brought it out dripping with custard, and sucked. Morgan burned with shame. Almost gratefully he retreated to the library.

He was thirsty. He was hungry. She'd told him to expect no tea until he'd finished his penance, as she called it. He would have called it prep. The Bishop had said nothing to make him believe it was an imposition, certainly not anything as popish as penance. Whatever you called it, he needed the verse.

The books mocked him with their calfskin secrets. He concentrated his scant mental powers on remembering enough to generate a lead. They'd read it with the Eagle, so it was likely to have been one of Wordsworth's bits of bunkum. Laurie had made rude comments about the pastoral poems. In them the landscape typically represented a woman, didn't it? A woman ripe for conquest. But the Bishop wouldn't have asked him to copy a thinly veiled erotic lyric, would he?

He performed a systematic skimming of shelves until he came upon a volume of Romantic poetry. It contained many boring verses by wordy Wordsworth, but none about battering hearts. On quick glance, “Nutting” did seem risqué. It reminded him of—nothing that he ought to be contemplating if he wished to stay sane. Could the battering-heart poem be a more obscure work of the dreary poet? He didn't know as much as he supposed he ought about Wordsworth; he knew that the man went stiff over daffodils and the French Revolution, and that he otherwise spent his time mooning over fey, abstract subjects with other opium-eating characters such as Shelley (a girl if ever there was one), Byron (a crackbrain and a rake), and Keats (also a girl, and a hypochondriac to boot). Perhaps one of Wordsworth's nancy friends had written the Bishop's poem? The index of first lines disclosed nothing about battering by any Romantic poet. If only he had paid more attention!

He had to think. The day they'd read it with the Eagle, the point had been something to do with the punctuation, but they hadn't discussed punctuation when trawling through Wordsworth's treacly ejaculations. Wait! They'd read it briefly
because
of its punctuation, and then the Eagle had ordered them to copy scads of useless definitions out of their poetry primers. If that had been the context—and he was now certain it was—then the fluttering-heart poem had come from the poetry primer!

Which meant it could be anything, from Lord Randall My Son to brownnose Browning.

He was standing at the garden window watching William clip hedges when Mrs. Hallows intruded and demanded to know what he was about. If he thought such obnoxious disobedience was a clever sign of a modern mind, then she failed to see why the Bishop was bothering with him. Morgan considered defending himself, but he couldn't find a place to begin. Mrs. Hallows continued her assessment: The youth of today were a monstrous invention. They'd never suffered life's travails. They kicked up everything in their path, considered the world their plaything, felt it owed them every luxury their small minds could imagine, scorned what others had made—

—Didn't fight in the War either, Morgan interrupted hotly. And they died for us, all those brilliant, heroic men. We're parasites. We know!

She stared at him, stunned.

—I'm quite sure I'm guilty of everything you say, Morgan continued, but I'll tell you something I am not, and that's a telepathist. Which is why I'm incapable of guessing what book contains whichever poem the Bishop babbled at me. Call me what you will, but I'm not a magician!

They faced one another, breathing more heavily than physical stasis demanded.

—What poem? she demanded.

—I haven't the first idea.

—How does it go?

He sighed loudly and told her: battering hearts, blowing and burning. That was all he had.

In a few moments, she had a volume in her hands. She slammed it on the writing table and, after running her finger down an index, turned to a certain page. Throwing him another glare, she stalked away, muttering (
lazy, ignorant, godless
).

He could not remember detesting a woman more than this one.

*   *   *

The poem wasn't what he remembered. It was something to do with a woman kidnapped by an enemy and betrothed to him. But it seemed that her rescuer was even more savage than the unwanted husband. The woman did not sound well in the head. Was she asking to be ravished? Were her requests to be battered, burned, and conquered sarcastic, or was she warped?

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me.
Droit had made a jest about that, but if Morgan was honest—and wasn't he supposed to be, at least to himself?—if he was honest, he could imagine a situation in which being overthrown might, done properly, indeed make him rise and stand in Droit's sense of the words.

Sometimes Silk knew how to make him hard merely with words. Other times, Silk seemed to know the secret: that Morgan's cock liked it when Silk conquered him. How many times had Silk compelled him against his will? Had he ever? Even recalling it, he felt the heavy flow of blood and hungered for Silk's touch. Spaulding had overpowered him in the Hermes Balcony, an overpowering entirely welcome and delicious. Thinking of Spaulding wasn't allowed, yet thought of him was more real and more recent than memory of Silk. And since by outrageous phenomenon he had seen Silk again in the flesh only …
two days ago?
… could Spaulding not exist as well? There was no reason in the world that he couldn't return from where he'd gone, resume his place in the Flea's House, and find Morgan one lazy afternoon to carry on where they had left off. The notion felt so entirely plausible and palpable that, beside it, reality seemed a twisted dream from which he would shortly awake.

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend.

He hoped that his reason would indeed defend him from everything threatening his sanity, yet in the poem, was reason not weak, captive, untrue?

He had to stop depending on figments of his imagination or he would shortly go round the bend. He had to think clearly about them and sort out once and for all what they meant. Figures of the imagination: Who else had them? Macbeth imagined a bloody dagger. That was a figment. But he was cracking up and had scorpions in his brain. (Literally? Perhaps not.) Hamlet saw his father's ghost, but that couldn't have been a figment because other people saw it, too. So, if other people could see your figment, then it wasn't a figment, but a ghost. But other people didn't see Droit. Droit was something rather like the imaginary friend Flora once had. The only difference was that Flora's friend remained entirely under Flora's control, whereas Droit … He wasn't sure he liked Droit as much as he once had.

But Droit was suave, Droit was witty, Droit did not allow anyone to take advantage. He knew much more about other people and the world than Morgan knew, much more than that childish specimen, the other one, the creature who showed himself only when Morgan was at his worst, who never fought back, who had looked at him as he—perhaps the fight with Alex hadn't really occurred that way. Perhaps they had struggled longer, more desperately. Perhaps the cracks he had felt under his fist were his own knuckles.

Why did the Bishop insist he copy out the poem six times, three with each hand? He'd already done the three with his right (
avec la droite, Dieu et mon droit!
), but he could barely form letters with his left. What's more, his hand was smearing the ink. If he was meant to write with his left hand (
avec la gauche
, and how very gauche it was!), then why not go all the way and write like Hebrews, from right to left? He was having to turn the page and draw the nib along it as if sketching hieroglyphics, not the sensible code of English. This was going to take forever, and he was fainting from hunger. The Bishop wouldn't even be able to read the left-handed copies. The pen was doing everything except what he wanted it to do. The room was stultifying. HE ABHORRED THIS POEM AND THESE LINES. IT WAS THE WORST IMPOSITION HE HAD EVER BEEN GIVEN!

*   *   *

Fourteen times six. Eighty-four lines. Short ones. It could be classed with the mildest of punishments. If not for the unsavory subject matter (
nor ever chaste, except you ravish me
) and the eccentric ambidextrous requirement, it would have been nothing more than a few minutes' labor, the most perfunctory of smacks. But the fourteen lines (so it was a sonnet, then, only ten beats per line) written
à
gauche
brought him to the verge of frustrated tears. He finished the last, broke the nib, and only just restrained himself from hurling the open inkpot across the room. Instead he screwed the thing closed and stomped off to the kitchen.

A ruddy girl labored over onions with a knife. When Morgan asked where Mrs. Hallows was, the girl shrugged and continued her teary chopping. Why was everyone in Wiltshire chronically incapable of supplying information? He needed food immediately. He scanned the kitchen but saw nothing but onions.

—Did Mrs. Hallows say anything about me? Morgan demanded.

She grunted. The entire household was bent on galling him! He asked after William, but apparently William had Gone Out.

—Is there anything to eat? Morgan asked.

—Dinner at eight, she told him.

The clock on the wall declared it half past five. He was dizzy with desperation. What would Droit do? (And where was Droit when he needed him?)

—I'm frightfully sorry, he said, taking a step towards her. I'm afraid I've forgotten my manners, Miss…?

She stopped chopping and blinked the tears from her eyes.

—Maryanne, she whispered.

He gave a little bow.

—Morgan Wilberforce at your service. And what an attractive frock that is, if I may say so.

She blushed. He was relieved that she did not think him as preposterous as he sounded to himself. The remark about her frock thawed the atmosphere, however, and she began to chat back to him. What was for dinner? A relatively large menu involving meat, a tart, various vegetables, a soup, and a trifle. Was the Bishop expecting company? Not company, only Miss Agnes and Mr. Goss. Possibly Miss Lucy, and if the children were feeling better, then also Miss Elizabeth, but if not, then only Mr. Fairclough. Morgan could make no sense of her speech, but he paid her another compliment, this time about her hair, and then confessed that he was faint from hunger.

Why had he not said so? He was pale as a sheet. Mrs. Hallows had left no instructions (Hadn't she, the spiteful hag?), but Maryanne knew better than to let people faint away. She wiped her hands and fetched a plate of scones from the pantry. Morgan fell on them.

He was devouring his third when Mrs. Hallows breezed into the kitchen. He froze midbite. Maryanne punctuated the silence with chopping. Mrs. Hallows took in the scene.

—Finished, have you?

He nodded. She consulted the clock.

—Upstairs, change for dinner. Bishop's study in half an hour.

He fled before she could examine the situation more closely.

 

39

No one had told him what to wear to dinner, of course, and he'd only the clothes in his hateful trunk. Given Maryanne's testimony that there would be no formal company, he decided that his Sunday uniform would be too much. Instead, he chose the cleaner of his trousers and the rest of his summer uniform. He decided he had better polish his shoes, and he gave himself a going over with a flannel. Thus attired, he took the embarrassing lines and went downstairs. He wasn't at all sure of the route to the Bishop's study, but if he could find it without having to encounter Mrs. Horrors, he might have a chance of maintaining his composure.

He thought he had the wrong place when he knocked, but then a key turned. After a silent interval, he let himself in.

The Bishop was gazing out the window and gripping the swivel chair as if his balance depended on it.

When people behaved awkwardly, or when one felt awkward oneself, it frequently helped to behave as if one belonged there. Morgan sauntered over to the Bishop and peered out the window at the empty drive. Time passed.