Grievous

by H. S. Cross

  Over the wall he went, skidding down the grass. Gray leapt over, too, following Trevor’s line to beat him to the box, but then Trevor was waving at him, scrambling back up the slope and over the wall, crouching breathless behind it.

  —What…?

  —Pearce …

  —What…?

  —In there …

  Pearce was in the barn.

  At this moment?

  Even now.

  At times of catastrophe, a cold calm always filled him. This was no exception. He asked placid questions, asked them again, but Trevor couldn’t explain Pearce’s purpose, only that the sub-prefect was sitting just inside the door, his head in his arms, awake or not, impossible to say.

  —But … why?

  Who could tell the ways of the loon? Not the prophet’s bones, and not Trevor Maxwell Mainwaring. Their only option was to wait.

  Wait here, beyond the wall? Indefinitely through the night? As their mortal enemy held the holy of holies?

  Trevor saw no alternative. But not to fear! Hours remained before they must needs turn back. And Trevor had a bag of sweets.

  —We’ll be like the passengers in the mail coach, Trevor said, bound for France to recall the prisoner to life.

  Or burn him to death.

  —Wonder if we’ll be robbed by the Captain.

  These and other now bland enactments trickled from Trevor’s mouth as they worked through the bag of licorice. Jacques even now guarded the prisoner, Trevor confided, but soon he would be freed. Madame Defarge would not knit their names into her register; they would ride, un-pursued, back to England. They would mount the steps of Whitby and plunge a stake in the vampire’s heart. They would, like Sikes and Oliver, rob the house and escape.

  —But didn’t Sikes—

  Gray was not to take a gloomy line. Such was not the night. Such was a night like the night Trevor had once run away to sea. Gray had never heard of such a night, but he heard of it now. Trevor’s tale had more than a whiff of fiction—absconding from his prep school, trekking out to Dodman Point, receiving news from the heavens in the form of a comet that his venture would succeed, scouring the horizon for the vessel that would take him to the treasured high seas …

  The ground was damp, his seat soaked, his teeth coated in licorice. If they could make it back intact in every sense, Gray silently vowed to devote himself to ordinary life and stop confusing it with stories. In stories, you didn’t risk your life and your arse waiting in a field to perform your heroics. In stories, no one left stupid things to rot for years. In stories, a coherent hand guided the plot; there was no tumble of make-believe just when you needed to think clearly. Friends in stories never lied to one another.

  —I have a confession, Gray said.

  —Speak.

  The truth dried before he could get it off his tongue—the box not a record of their campaigns but a record of Wilberforce’s …

  —I confess, Gray said, that I’m freezing my balls off.

  —Maybe we’ll get frostbite! M’pater lost a finger in the war.

  —To frostbite, in Egypt?

  —It got cold.

  —Which finger?

  Trevor wasn’t sure, but he felt his father’s admiration would be enhanced if he himself were to lose a digit, or at least part of an ear. Trevor had every confidence that upon hearing their adventure, his father would at last give up talking about his subaltern, Lieutenant Victor. How many letters had been taken up with vile Victor? Victor, who’d been thrown out of three public schools in his day, on the bill every week, the vexation of timid officers, always taking his exploits too far, now in Palestine enjoying wider scope, fulfilling the Colonel’s wishes without having to be told how, inventive, fearless, brazen. Now, this summer, when Trevor would see his father for the first time in over a year, Trevor’s curriculum vitae would at last be up to snuff. Perhaps his father could arrange a place in his unit? Once he’d passed his Remove, naturally.

  —Naturally.

  Trevor stopped chattering and cocked his head as the barn door whined below. A figure staggered out, hugging itself, surveying the horizon, and then stalked down the track to the road.

  It was happening before he realized: Trevor over the wall, Gray scrambling after, slipping, fall broken by a hand that should have been too cold for bruises. More noise as Trevor dashed into the barn and a figure scurried round the other side—Pearce circling back? Someone else entirely? Gray froze in place. Time was never his friend. The figure darted into the barn, and before Gray could work out what to do, a crash rang out and the figure burst forth, barreling down the track like a fox flushed from cover.

  Whatever the figure had seen inside the barn, the clock had begun on their return: thirty minutes by the road, shorter if you ran, longer in the dark; by the night woods, forty at least. Gray bounded to the source of the crash and found Trevor on the grass, debris around him.

  The exchange as such made not enough sense. Pearce had come back as Trevor was in the loft searching vainly for Stalky.

  —Are you sure it was Pearce?

  —Who else would it be?

  As the invader flashed his torch up the ladder, Trevor had taken to the window.

  —You jumped?

  Had to. Wasn’t hurt, not much, hopefully something to show for it, but— Gray helped him sit up.

  —Bloody hell!

  —Shh, Trevor hissed, Pearce!

  —He’s gone, and you’re bleeding all over the place!

  It was wet on his neck, Trevor mumbled. Somewhere in his head was a sound, and a taste, and a— Gray shone the torch on his scalp, took a handkerchief—

  —Don’t touch me! Trevor cried.

  A boot caught him in the knee. Gray backed out of reach:

  —Stay there.

  Inside the barn, torch to the wall, to the back, very back. Like a fist to the gut. Like the diagnosis you never wanted to hear. Royal tomb robbed.

  Up the ladder, nothing. All the straw kicked overboard, bare boards brazen. How many ways could you spell disaster?

  Outside, Trevor’s face was damp with sweat.

  —I’m going to touch your chin. Don’t hit me.

  Garbled curse.

  —I’m going to turn on the torch. Follow it with your eyes.

  —Ow, you bastard—

  —Hold still!

  —Where’s your box?

  Torch off. Silence thick as fear.

  —Did you look?

  —I looked.

  The patient struggled to his feet:

  —We’ll get it back.

  The physician turned his patient towards the road, but the patient wrenched away:

  —Pearce went that way, so we’re going this way.

  Trevor weaved up the slope, scrambled over the wall, and staggered through the pheasant nests, slipping—

  —Careful!

  —If you touch me, I’ll knock your lights out.

  He fell again, got up again.

  —This is all your fault.

  At the poacher’s tunnel, Trevor sat down on the old fallen tree. His trousers were torn. Everything was gray. So many things could be stopped. People could be murdered, cities burned, nations destroyed, but dawn came every day, never rushed nor slowed by anything.

  —This, Trevor cried, was a lark! The larkiest lark ever.

  —It’s late, Gray said. We’ve got to—

  —I’m not going anywhere, Brains, until you admit it was the best night of your life.

  —We got nothing from the barn, you bashed your head open, and every second we’re sitting here is one second closer to getting caught.

  Trevor laughed disconcertingly:

  —It’s always doom and gloom with you! Eye on your Uncle Stalky.

  They wriggled down the tunnel and up the other side, where the silhouette of the school brightened against the sky. Squelching fields, drainpipe. The patient began to climb but then lost his grip and fell to the grass.

  —I’m done for, he gaspe
d. Save yourself.

  —Don’t be absurd!

  —When they find me, I’ll say I did it.

  —Did what?

  —I was never going to make it.

  He sounded delirious. Was this how it was when shells hit the front?

  —I wanted to do this thing, you see? One good thing, before the end.

  —This isn’t the end!

  It wasn’t the front, and the wound wasn’t fatal.

  —This is the best thing I’ve ever had, Trevor said. Good things always end.

  —Not now.

  —When they find me, there’ll be a flap, and—listen, Brains—while everyone’s off their heads, you go to Pearce’s study and get your box. And if he ever says anything, tell him it’s his fault, what happened to me.

  —I’m not leaving you here on the ground.

  —If they haven’t found me by second bell, send someone, won’t you? It’s beastly cold.

  Trevor was shuddering, incapable of climbing anywhere, heat draining every second they stood there. The amateur physician did the only thing he could: drainpipe, inside, stocking feet down the back stairs. If only hearts pumped ideas with the blood. What doors gave outside? The gates would be chained until Farley unlocked them. Wilberforce had told of a window in the Tower. Through it he’d climb when bunking off at night. Trevor couldn’t climb through windows; he might not even be able to climb stairs.

  Light glared across the passage. He no longer needed the torch.

  Wasn’t there another way Wilberforce told of one time, when Gray had been ill and he’d come to the Tower to see him? He told the story of the Fags’ Rebellion, of going out that night and coming in another way, through a French window, in his Housemaster’s study, whose door had no key.

  11

  The birds had a lot to say, and they’d risen early to say it. John had never been a heavy sleeper, but to be wrenched from dreams by their song seemed symbolic somehow. Come o’er the eastern hills, and let our winds kiss thy perfumed garments. The days were getting longer, and better now. His goddaughter’s voice played in his head as it had chattered in the carriage, broad and frank, Let us taste thy morn and evening breath, as they tasted in Eden.

  The birds were pecking at the slate and bickering in the gutter, a morning for rivals and wooing. John poked the studs through his collar and reminded himself to remind Mrs. Firth to make him get a haircut. One day, when gray streaked, he’d let his hair have its way, like a nineteenth-century poet, neckerchief and all. O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour thy soft kisses— Tapping inside now, rapping actually, at the door? He checked his flies and shouldered his braces, expecting—

  —Pearce?

  —Sir—

  —What on earth?

  Fire?

  —It’s Mainwaring and Riding, sir. They aren’t in their beds.

  Things were racing, crawling his scalp.

  —I’m sorry, sir—they’re made up to look—I thought you ought to—

  He told Pearce to show him. It was one thing to have emergencies during waking hours, or perhaps someone ill in the night, but quite another to be assaulted before he’d fully dressed and led upstairs like a rough customer, which brought out a distressing click in his knee.

  Light through the long windows, all fourteen beds piled with blankets. John looked to Pearce for explanation.

  —They weren’t there, Pearce whispered, five minutes ago they weren’t.

  John sent him away to finish dressing. No, he should not wake his fellow prefects, or anyone else for that matter. John thanked him. He would handle this.

  John’s slippers clapped across the floor, loud enough to wake the whole room if they hadn’t been sleeping the drugged sleep of youth. At the far end, Mainwaring and Riding huddled under covers, backs to him. He cleared his throat. The covers rose and fell. Could Pearce have come unhinged under the pressures of his new post? They were rising and falling just like the others … except faster. The thing that had crawled his scalp now clamped his temples. He stepped around the beds. Their eyes were closed, their faces flushed.

  —Get up, both of you.

  Mainwaring opened his eyes. The mound that was Riding froze.

  —Now.

  Riding stretched as if from a long winter’s nap.

  —Stop messing about. You’re making it worse.

  He spoke in an undertone but still managed the voice that could instill fear. Riding sat up first, and now it was obvious. They were dressed and filthy. Mrs. Firth would tear strips off them both, though that was the least of their problems. Riding kept his eyes on Mainwaring, who stumbled out of bed. John caught his arm:

  —What on earth happened?

  —Nothing, Mainwaring mumbled.

  —None of that!

  —He fell and hit his head, said Riding. I stopped the bleeding. He was sick twice, but he’s not hurt anywhere else. I checked.

  John realized his mouth was open. Who was this child physician standing before him in stocking feet and the deepest trouble, reporting as at a Battalion Aid Post?

  —Can he walk? John asked.

  —He shouldn’t.

  —I can … walk.

  He should never have sent Pearce away, but there wasn’t time to rouse another prefect.

  —Riding, he said, dressing gown, slippers, wait in my study. I’ll see Mainwaring to the Tower.

  He took the boy’s arm, but Mainwaring pulled away:

  —I can on my own!

  —All right.

  —To Timbuktu or Tipper-gally or—

  The boy actually pushed John aside and strode down the dorm with a lopsided gait. The room was beginning to stir. Riding fumbled with his slippers:

  —He really shouldn’t, sir.

  John went to the corridor, bright with bulbs. At the step by the linen cupboard, Mainwaring stumbled, caught himself on the door, and then slipped down the wall. John caught him under the arms and lifted him as he’d lifted other fallen men, when he was young and strong and the world was coming down in shells.

  * * *

  They had gone for a walk. Trevor couldn’t sleep. They’d been walking in the cloisters, places such as that. They’d walked, he’d slipped. You could slip on flat ground. Dark, tired, puddle. They shouldn’t have done it, but they were sorry. He was sorry. He was young and stupid but he wasn’t bad. He’d done a foolish thing, but he’d only been trying to help. He would never do it again. Exams soon, he’d even study Trig. He’d try at football. He’d answer properly at call-over. Of course he deserved gating. He knew that. Accepted it.

  He stopped at Pearce’s study, but the box wasn’t there. Pearce must have given it to Grieves, which was why Grieves had come up … Oh, that box? Stolen from him, terms ago. Third Form? Fourth? No idea what that paper was. No idea there was a bottom that came up. Not his handwriting, not much like, he could give a sample, no notion why anyone would steal, and write, and hide—

  * * *

  John’s arms had stopped shaking, but if he had to lift anything else, he was sure they’d shake again. He was not as young as he’d been.

  In his study, he opened the drapes and closed the French windows where they had come loose. Turning, he startled; Riding had been standing in the dark, hands tucked monastically into the sleeves of his dressing gown.

  —Whatever possessed you, Thomas?

  The boy flinched. John began again. Bade him sit, sat beside him, asked if he wanted a glass of water. The boy kept his gaze on the cold grate.

  —What’s going to happen, sir?

  Voice rough, unused.

  —You’ll have to tell me everything, John replied.

  —I mean Trevor. Is he…?

  The boy still didn’t look at him but turned instead to the door, as if his friend stood just outside.

  —Kardleigh’s with him. He said you’d done a commendable job with the first aid.

  The boy scowled.

  —Thomas, John continued, please start at the beginning. I can�
��t help until I know the facts.

  A deeper scowl. John thought he heard teeth grinding.

  He could wait. Not long, but some. He would sit beside this boy and wait on the light. He would use the Christian name, which he hadn’t used with this one in years. This bone-crushing person beside him bore little resemblance to the child who had first entered his study, too young for the school but enrapt nearly as much as John had been by the woman accompanying him. John remembered thinking the mother was too young to be a widow. The war had produced a nation of them, but even though ten years had passed since then, this woman, girl, wore black head to toe, looking lost and fierce, as if she, not the boy, were being dispatched. He remembered thinking she needed a governess. He remembered, when she spoke, how much it seemed like playacting, as if she’d raided the dressing-up box. He remembered the monologue she embarked upon, concerning the boy’s hair, its streaks of yellow and brown, yellow from her, brown from his father, neither color winning the battle but flecking side by side in brindle—as if she were describing a stray dog. John remembered thinking her prattle a charming form of hysteria, and he remembered inviting the two to sit and drink the tea Mrs. Firth had provided while he stepped across the quad. Jamie was in his study with his secretary, and John unleashed in front of them both. Lewis had tried to wheel himself from the room, but Jamie had told the man to stay as he was. He told John that since Riding was here now, he couldn’t be put out at the gates. End of discussion, good day, where were we, Lewis?

  John knew he’d left the boy and his mother alone too long, and as he strode across the cloisters, he remembered thinking, She’s too young to manage; he remembered thinking, They’ll eat him alive. And then he remembered Morgan Wilberforce.

  Then as now, the boy sat hunched forward, as if balancing something at the base of his neck. Then as now, his gaze darted, grasshopper eyes someone had said, looking everywhere but at John. Then as now, he mumbled, and John had to ask him to repeat.

  —He couldn’t sleep.

  Mainwaring, he meant. They’d gone for a walk.

  —Where did you go?

  Grasshoppers.

  —You weren’t at McKay’s barn, were you?

  If the boy pulled himself in any more tightly, he’d break. It was killing John to watch.