Black Wreath

by Peter Sirr

  And then, as quickly as it had welled up, the impulse subsided and he sank down again. What was the point? He would only present an easy target for his uncle and his brutes, and the trouble would all be over. No one would mourn him. Had he not already been mourned in any case? He would be another homeless and entirely surplus boy to be heaped in the common pit.

  He looked hard at his uncle as he shouldered his father’s coffin down the aisle with the other pallbearers, burning the image into his brain so that he would be able to recall it at any time in the future. As the coffin passed his pew he averted his eyes, not wanting the least flicker of himself to be visible to his uncle. The coffin passed by, and he felt a sharp pang of grief. The end of the procession from the cathedral was brought up by the Uglies, whose slovenly gait barely allowed the minimum of respect, and they glared at those in the aisles as if to challenge any man or woman who might think their attitude unsuitable for the occasion. James paled at the sight of them.

  When the procession left the church James crept out as quietly as he had entered and made his way back to the college. There at least he would be safe for a while.

  ‘I’m sorry for you, James,’ McAllister said. ‘We don’t get to choose our fathers, but we only get one, no matter how bad they might be. Can you remember any good times with him at all?’

  ‘Yes,’ James said, after thinking about it a while. ‘Many years ago. I don’t know if I dreamed it or if it really happened. It was in Wexford, in Dunmain. I can see the garden, the sun pouring through the trees. And my father, laughing, throwing me up in the air and catching me. And I can hear myself squealing and laughing.’

  ‘Hold onto that, James,’ McAllister said. ‘Whenever you think of him, think of that.’

  James settled with relief into the routines of college life. He fetched and carried and ate and slept and sometimes heard a lecture, hidden at the back of the hall. He learned a little Latin, a little French, a little Hebrew. It sometimes seemed to him that he would always be someone who got a little of everything: a little warmth, a little sustenance, a little life. One day, he told himself, there would be more than a little, and that was the day he must live for.

  McAllister’s easy ways got easier with every day. He now did very little work and rarely attended lectures. Vandeleur was around constantly, sitting in McAllister’s rooms with his boots on the table, admiring their sheen. He would sometimes ask James to polish them and James felt like telling him to walk into town and get himself a shoeblack. If McAllister was present he would wave Vandeleur away. ‘Leave the boy alone, he has enough to do.’

  Once or twice, Vandeleur called when McAllister was still abed or had gone out somewhere, and then he presented his boots to James like a goad, and James was left with no choice. He performed the job as inexpertly as he could, ignoring all the knowledge of the art he had learned from Harry, until Vandeleur tired of his game. ‘You really are a useless article, aren’t you?’ he sneered, before turning his attention to something else.

  He and McAllister spent more and more of their time in the taverns and gaming houses and often came home drunk. Although the college authorities had forbidden it, Vandeleur usually went out with his sword, the end of whose scabbard he’d removed, just the way the Pinkindindies did it, hoping that he might be provoked into drawing a little blood.

  McAllister had no interest in swords, but one evening when Vandeleur arrived in his friend’s room he came bearing a gift. It was a sword, just like his own, in a scabbard with the end removed.

  ‘Really, Vandeleur, you know I’m not going to go around with that thing.’

  ‘Oh just this once, be a man for one night, and we’ll speak no more of it.’

  McAllister strapped on the sword, turning to James as he did so. ‘It’s possible that we might overdo things tonight …’

  Vandeleur snorted. ‘Possible! It is entirely likely. We shall be gloriously drunk.’

  ‘Could you come to the Bull’s Head around midnight to escort us home? Do you know it?’

  James nodded.

  Vandeleur snorted again in obvious distaste. ‘We don’t need him,’ he said. ‘We’re not mewling infants who need a nursemaid to come and fetch us home. Isn’t that right, Nursey?’

  James ignored him and spoke directly to McAllister. ‘Of course I’ll come,’ he said.

  With Vandeleur still muttering discontentedly, the two left the grounds of the college. As things were to turn out, James wished he hadn’t been given this task. The two companions spent their evening in various taverns and finally ended up in the Bull’s Head in Fishamble Street, where they drank to their companionship, and with pocket knives carved their names on the table; beside their names they carved, as a final flourish, quis separabit, who will separate us? There was an answer to that question, but they didn’t know that yet.

  By the time James got to the Bull’s Head McAllister and Vandeleur were the worse for wear.

  ‘Why James,’ McAllister said, ‘what brings you here?’ He had evidently forgotten his request.

  ‘Why don’t you toddle off home?’ Vandeleur said. ‘You’re not needed here.’

  James was forced to wait until the two had exhausted their capacity for drink and talk. Finally they left the Bull’s Head, with James attempting not very successfully to direct them. As they staggered up the hill, they managed to get into an argument with a man who had been in the tavern earlier. Maybe he had heard something he’d objected to, or maybe Vandeleur or McAllister had said something provocative. James wasn’t sure what the cause was, and he could make no sense of the shouts from McAllister and Vandeleur.

  ‘Come away,’ he said, ‘it’s time to go home.’

  Vandeleur pushed him roughly and James fell. As he got up, he saw that the argument had grown more heated. Angry words were tossed back and forth, and before James could make another attempt to get them to keep the peace, the man rushed at Vandeleur, who grabbed his sword so that the exposed end was pointing at the man’s chest. Possibly Vandeleur just meant to frighten him, but however it happened the man, in his eagerness to hit Vandeleur, seemed to trip on the cobbles and his full weight fell on the student’s blade. It all happened so quickly, James could hardly tell one part of the action from the other. All he knew was that at the end of it all, the man lay dead in the street.

  Nine

  The Pursuit

  Vandeleur and McAllister ran, panic-stricken, back towards the safety of the college. For a moment, James felt he should stay and explain that what had happened was an unfortunate accident. But who would believe him? Instead, he backed away quickly, slipped into a laneway and walked back towards the college, making sure no one noticed him.

  Vandeleur and McAllister had run down Dame Street and hadn’t dared stop until the night porter had admitted them into the college. They’d run on towards Library Square and only when they had gained it did they come to a standstill.

  ‘I think we’re safe,’ Vandeleur said, his breath coming in desperate gasps. ‘No one there knew us’.

  McAllister nodded, out of breath. His face was white, the horror of what they had done only now beginning to dawn on him. ‘Is he dead, do you think?’

  ‘Indubitably,’ Vandeleur replied, not entirely without satisfaction.

  McAllister groaned. ‘If only we hadn’t brought these damned swords!’ He looked down and found that his coat was spattered with bloodstains.

  ‘Quickly,’ he shouted at Vandeleur. ‘We must hurry!’

  They ran to McAllister’s room, where the young student immediately began to wipe at the stains on his clothes. Vandeleur, now that the initial excitement had abated, was less hurried; he seemed to want to contemplate the fruit of his actions a bit longer. When James arrived, he was dispatched to fetch hot water to try to remove the blood from their clothes. When he came back, Vandeleur still had made no attempt to clean his weapon. James looked at it with horror. He couldn’t quite believe what had happened.

  ‘My dear fellow,’
Vandeleur was drawling to McAllister. ‘I’m sure he was a man of no account. I don’t know why you’re troubling yourself.’

  ‘He was a man!’ McAllister shouted at him. ‘Isn’t that enough? We have taken a man’s life?’

  Vandeleur shrugged.

  James asked leave to speak.

  Vandeleur glared at him. ‘Why do you keep this wretch?’

  ‘Oh shut up, Vandeleur. Yes, James, speak up.’

  ‘Did you meet anyone in the tavern? Did you talk to anyone?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ McAllister said.

  ‘Did anyone see you leave?’

  ‘Only the dead man,’ McAllister said.

  ‘And he won’t be giving evidence to anyone,’ Vandeleur said, a smile on his face.

  As he said this, the blood drained suddenly even farther from McAllister’s already pale face.

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘What is it?’ Vandeleur looked up.

  ‘Quis separabit! Quis separabit!’ McAllister’s words came out in a near-shriek.

  ‘Ah,’ Vandeleur said. He looked slightly less composed now. ‘Our names on the table, carved for all to see.’

  James saw at once how serious the situation was.

  ‘There’s no time to lose,’ he said. ‘Once anyone remembers you were there and sees your names, this is the first place they’ll come looking. Who else but students would carve their names like that?’

  ‘With a Latin inscription to boot,’ McAllister acknowledged. ‘We’re doomed, then.’ He sagged visibly, all animation banished from his features.

  ‘You should go now,’ James said. ‘You should both go. And you shouldn’t be seen together.’

  ‘Go where?’ Vandeleur snarled at James, but before James had a chance to reply there was a sudden commotion on the cobbles below. James rushed to the window. He saw four sheriff’s men in the square outside, the college porter with them. They were making for the entrance to the building where Vandeleur’s rooms were.

  ‘They’re here,’ he said.

  Vandeleur ran to the window and when he saw where they had gone his habitual composure seemed to desert him. ‘Damn it,’ he said, ‘this is very inconvenient. Why on earth are they taking such trouble?’ He became agitated as he furiously tried to work out the best course of action.

  For a moment, James thought he might brazen it out and march up to them, but Vandeleur clearly wasn’t as foolish as he sometimes seemed.

  ‘I think a spell away from college is called for,’ he said and, after the briefest of farewells, disappeared down the stairs.

  James gathered up the two swords that were still on the floor.

  ‘I’ll put these in the attic, but in the meantime, sir, you will have to conceal yourself. I’ll tell them you have not returned.’

  With that, James raced upstairs to the attics and hid the swords in a roll of old carpet in a dusty corner, then raced back down. As he reached the landing outside McAllister’s room he heard footsteps on the stairs below. He rushed into the room. McAllister stood frozen by the bed, an abject statue, rooted to the spot by fear. James had already chosen him a hiding place in his mind’s eye as he was hiding the swords. On the wall beside McAllister’s bed hung a large tapestry from his father’s estate, a hunting scene, perhaps intended to remind him of home as he fell asleep. James had helped McAllister put it up. There was an alcove set in the wall, where the student had kept books and various personal effects, but there had been nowhere else to put the tapestry, so in the end McAllister had cleared out the alcove and they’d hung the tapestry over it.

  ‘You never know,’ James had said with a grin, ‘You might need a secret place to store things.’ He hadn’t thought that the secret thing would be McAllister himself.

  ‘Quickly,’ he said now, pulling the tapestry aside. ‘Get in and squeeze yourself as far back as you are able.’

  McAllister mutely obeyed and climbed into the narrow space, and James smoothed over the tapestry as best he could, praying that the searchers’ curiosity wouldn’t extend to it.

  The door burst open and the sheriff’s men came thumping in, swords at the ready, followed by the porter.

  ‘Where is he?’ the first of the sheriff’s men panted. He was quite out of breath from all his running, and the others weren’t much better.

  ‘Who are you?’ one of the men asked, pointing his blade at James’s chest, but James remained calm.

  ‘Do you mean Master McAllister? He went out about an hour ago. He said he wouldn’t be back until late this evening. He said he wanted to see the puppets in the Capel Street playhouse. I am his skivvy.’

  ‘Puppets? Did you say puppets?’ This information seemed to enrage the four swordsmen. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea.

  ‘I’ll give him puppets when I see him!’ the first said. With that, he lunged at the bed with his sword and ran the blade through the mattress, then ran the pillow through for good measure, scattering feathers all over the room. The other men began to search every corner, running the curtains through, emptying the clothes chest and spilling out McAllister’s waistcoats, hose, smallclothes, wig, a hat, and various papers on the floor. They examined the papers. ‘Poetry!’ one of them said in disgust.

  They lifted the rug from the floor and examined the floorboards; they scanned the ceiling, opened books and flung them to the ground.

  James could feel the sweat sticking to the back of his shirt. He forced himself to stay calm in the maelstrom of searching and destruction. He kept his eyes away from the wall where the tapestry hung, terrified that even a glance might lead them to the hiding place.

  ‘Nice picture,’ he heard one of the men say suddenly, and his blood ran cold.

  ‘Hunting,’ another said. ‘Very fitting. We’ll run him to ground and no mistake, and someone can make a picture of that.’

  ‘Does your master carry a sword?’ one of the men asked abruptly.

  As the sheriff’s men turned their attention away from the tapestry, James nearly wept with relief.

  ‘The carrying of swords is forbidden by the provost,’ the porter said, speaking for the first time. James noted that he was eyeing the sheriff’s men with some distaste. He looked James straight in the eye, and James saw something he couldn’t quite interpret, a slight narrowing of the eyes, enough to indicate that whatever might happen in the city, the college was a separate jurisdiction, and the officers of the city had no business floundering around and cutting up its bedlinen. Did the porter suspect McAllister’s whereabouts? James hardly dared to return the man’s gaze.

  In the meantime, the sheriff’s men had tired of their ransacking.

  ‘We’re wasting time,’ one said, ‘we should seek him out at the playhouse.’

  The others seemed to think that this was a sensible suggestion, and the men began to leave. As they were doing so, their leader suddenly lunged at James and caught him by the neck so that the boy gasped for breath.

  ‘If we don’t find him, we’ll be back for you. Mark my words, you’re not too young to swing for murder yourself.’

  The sheriff’s man flung James back on the bed, where he lay until they had all left. Getting to his feet, James watched from the window until he saw the men crossing the square, and only then did he beckon to McAllister to come out from behind the tapestry.

  Ten

  A Strange Meeting

  His time in the college was over, as was McAllister’s, and if they didn’t act fast their very lives would be in danger.

  ‘This is all a terrible mistake, James. I can barely recall what actually happened. There was an argument and then … it all fades. If only I hadn’t brought that damnable sword!’

  McAllister went to the window and looked down forlornly at the square. ‘It’s all over now,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have hidden. I should have given myself up. I am a gentlemen after all, and gentlemen don’t cower under beds.’

  James was disturbed by McAllister’s mood. He seemed to be willing his ow
n destruction. ‘Better to cower in a hidey hole than swing at the end of a rope,’ he said simply.

  ‘What?’ McAllister’s eyes were wide, frightened.

  ‘There’s every chance they’ll hang you for murder. It’s not a pleasant death.’

  ‘Nevertheless …’ McAllister’s couldn’t believe he would be found guilty.

  ‘Look,’ James said. ‘A terrible thing was done. The wrong was more likely Vandeleur’s than yours. But you’re mixed up in it, and a trial might make little distinction between the two of you. And even if they don’t hang you, your life will be over. You’ll be disgraced forever. You may as well be dead.’

  ‘But what am I to do then?’ McAllister cried out.

  ‘You must leave right now, before the sheriff’s men return. Gather whatever you cannot do without and come with me.’ James was surprised by his own decisiveness. He didn’t have time to puzzle out the rights and wrongs of it. Someone else would have to do that. He didn’t want McAllister to die, and that was all the justice he was concerned about.

  ‘But where will I go?’

  ‘Have you got money?’ James asked. ‘You’ll need as much as you can get your hands on.’

  McAllister nodded. He had a good deal of cash, and what he lacked he could depend on his bank to supply, if his family stood by him.

  ‘You must go to the colonies, and you must leave immediately.’

  James had no idea how this was to be accomplished; he only knew it had to happen. The first thing was to get McAllister out of the college, and the rest would somehow follow. Of his own future, after this day was out, he didn’t dare think, but even as he spoke he could feel as if something in himself had shifted. Whatever happened, he knew that quick thinking and quick acting would be part of it, and that his only sure home would be in his own resourcefulness. It was a lonely idea, but there was hope in it too.