Chapter 6 The Room #2
As time went on, Jackie found himself torn between both worlds.
His visits with the chancellor had grown longer and more frequent.
Mum’s health was only getting worse, making his time at home challenging in other ways.
He wanted to be with her, but he also didn’t like being away for too long.
He frequently worried he’d forget everything he learned, but Mr. Carrow always remembered exactly where they left off.
Whenever he returned home, Mr. Carrow sent him with a book, but Jackie always kept it hidden for safekeeping, guilt gnawing at him for staying away for so long. When he got lost in stories, it was easy to forget his mother was fighting her own battle, but every visit instantly reminded him.
His mother’s arms were pockmarked from needles, and her gaunt face no longer resembled the lovely creature he remembered.
Sometimes, she mumbled gibberish for hours on end, snapping at him as if he were someone else.
He knew it wasn’t her fault, but it hurt all the same.
Jackie had found her unconscious many times, making it all the more difficult to leave her side, but she always urged him to go, claiming she needed more medicine or she wouldn’t be able to live.
By Jackie’s tenth birthday, he was spending holidays with the chancellor. Often, when Jackie wasn’t in a cooperative mood, the chancellor would remind him of his mother’s illness and how costly her medicine was.
“Why isn’t the medicine making her better?” he finally asked, a question that angered the chancellor greatly.
After that, the chancellor no longer used his mother’s failing health as a threat. Instead, he threatened to send Mr. Carrow away. Jackie couldn’t let that happen. And once the chancellor understood he would do anything to ensure his tutor would stay, his nights at the estate became much worse.
“I want to read you something,” Mr. Carrow said one afternoon, opening the cloth cover of an old stitched book. “A poem written two hundred years ago, about the mightiest king who ever lived.”
Jackie leaned forward, his insides aching in ways that made his breath catch.
“But first, a question.” He set the book between them. “What do you think happens to kings when they die, Jack?”
No one else called him Jack except Mr. Carrow. “They’re buried?”
“Yes. But what about their kingdoms? Their castles? Their gold?”
Jackie was no longer mesmerized by gold. It dripped from every fixture with such profusion that he now saw it as garish and gaudy rather than a sign of class. “It goes to the heirs?”
“And if there are no heirs?”
Jack shrugged.
“Let’s find out.” Mr. Carrow flipped to a specific page, smoothing it flat as he brought the book closer.
“This poem’s about a self-righteous king named Ozymandias who ruled an empire so vast it stretched beyond the horizon.
He built statues of himself so tall they touched the clouds, believing such self-inflating displays would make his legacy last forever. ”
“Did it?”
“Give it a listen and you decide.” Mr. Carrow’s voice shifted into an easy cadence as he read of a cruel leader who stamped his name and face on lifeless things and mocked his people.
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings!” He pounded his fist dramatically on the table.
“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” His voice then grew softer as he told of time passing and the king’s inevitable death.
“…Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.” He snapped the book shut, but the words lingered in the golden room like dust motes falling through light.
“What do you think?”
“I like the part when he says ‘sneer of cold command’.” Jackie thought of the chancellor’s face. The way his lip curled when servants didn’t move fast enough, the flat contempt in his eyes when he looked at anyone smaller than himself.
“Does it remind you of something?”
Jackie stilled, his interested gaze reflexively lowering to the ground.
He knew better than to answer that question honestly, and Mr. Carrow knew better than to ask such things. They were alone, but anyone could be listening.
“Jack?”
“No.”
“What’s left of his power now, Jack?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“That’s right. Nothing.” Mr. Carrow tapped the book.
“Just sand. Erased by the wind and time. ‘A colossal Wreck,’ the poet says. That was the biggest thing he ever made.” He pushed up his glasses and grinned.
“So you see, Jack, even the marks of tyrannical giants and the most powerful kings will one day fade.”
“What the hell are you teaching him?” The voice boomed from the doorway, and Jackie flinched, his body instinctively shrinking at the growl of the chancellor’s displeasure.
He towered over the threshold, his bulk filling the frame, his face twisting with disgust. Behind him, Marco, his advisor, cowered in a rumpled suit.
“We were reviewing a classic poem by—”
“Poetry?” The chancellor spat the word as if it were a curse. “I’m paying you a fortune to educate this boy, and you’re wasting time on poems?”
Mr. Carrow folded his hands, but not before Jackie saw them tremble. “Poetry develops language skills and critical thinking, Chancellor. It’s a foundational element of—”
“Foundational?” The chancellor’s laugh was disparagingly ugly. “You want to know what’s foundational? Strength. Power. Winning.” He thundered into the room, disrupting any temporary sense of peace.
Marco followed like a shadow, a dog in human form that had been kicked so many times it no longer remembered it could bite back.
“What is this?” The chancellor rummaged through Mr. Carrow’s stack of books, tossing them carelessly aside and causing several to slide from the table onto the floor.
No one missed when the stitched spine split from the glue, and the delicate pages fell out.
Nor did anyone have the courage to pick it up and fix it.
“I want him learning real subjects,” the chancellor shouted. “History. The important parts about conquest. Teach him something useful, like how empires are built. Not this artsy garbage about how they died.”
“With respect, Chancellor—”
“Respect? You want to show me respect? Do as I say. You’re not to fill my boy’s head with this rubbish.”
My boy. Jackie’s stomach clenched at the possessive label, embarrassed in ways he couldn’t describe.
Mr. Carrow’s face went carefully blank as he gave a single nod of understanding. “As you wish, Chancellor Aurin.”
“That’s better. I want you to focus on the rise of strong leaders, men who knew how to take power and keep it. Hitler, Mussolini… Say what you want about them, they knew how to command a room. They knew how to make people listen.”
He rounded the table and planted a meaty hand on Jackie’s shoulder, causing his spine to stiffen. “Loyalty, Jackie, that’s the only currency that never devalues. Remember that.”
Jack held his breath until the chancellor released him. Then he was gone, Marco trailing behind like a devoted dog.
Mr. Carrow sat very still for a long moment before even exhaling. Then, quietly, he picked up the poetry book from where it had fallen and smoothed its cover with gentle fingers, the way one might comfort a wounded thing.
When he finally looked at him, he searched Jack’s face for a long time, and Jack wondered what he saw.
After that, the lessons changed, but Mr. Carrow made sure they were no less interesting. He’d teach about totalitarian men, the kind that impressed the chancellor most, but never without reminding Jack that no evil lasted forever.
It was a good principle to keep in mind, because being in the presence of evil for even a few minutes could sometimes feel like an eternity.
The chancellor met with his religious advisor regularly.
Reverend Webb was a performatively devout man with small hands that, when they weren’t passing envelopes full of money to the chancellor, were clasped in front of his belly as if in prayer.
He nodded emphatically at everything the chancellor said, even when he lied.
Webb often claimed that good deeds were rewarded by wealth, backing his claims with scripture from the gospel.
Jack knew this was a lie because there was nothing good inside the chancellor, yet he was the wealthiest man he’d ever met. Reverend Webb was not a good man at all, because good men didn’t tell lies.
“I’ve personally spoken to several congregations,” he claimed. “They see you as a defender of traditional values.”
“Of course they do,” the chancellor agreed, hunched over the half-eaten cheeseburger on his desk. Grease soaked through the paper wrapper. “I have more values than any other member of parliament. The smart ones know that. That’s why they see me as a savior.”
Webb nodded enthusiastically. “The moral majority believes—”
“The moral majority believes what I tell them to believe.” The chancellor laughed, spraying crumbs over his desk. “That’s the beautiful thing about sheep, Reverend. They’ve already been trained by a good shepherd. You just keep leading your flock to me, and everything will work out fine.”
Jack watched as the reverend’s face twitched the way people’s expressions often did when they didn’t fully agree with the chancellor.
But like everyone else, the reverend didn’t disagree.
The chancellor reached for another burger, his third, only to pause when he caught Jack staring.
Jackie immediately dropped his gaze, but it was too late.
“Come here, boy.”
Abandoning his book, he moved slowly across the room.
“This is a smart kid,” the chancellor told Reverend Webb. “One of the smartest. I’m having him tutored by a Cambridge man. Best education money can buy. Sit.”
There was no chair.