Chapter 8 The Weight of Crowns #2
“Are you afraid he’ll see the sort of sniveling coward his father is?
” His lip curled. “Look at you, trembling like a whipped dog. Cowering. Pathetic.” He spat the word.
“You know what your problem is, Marco? You’ve got no spine.
No balls. You’ve turned soft. Weak. And that’s exactly what you’ll teach your son to be. ”
“Sir, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be sorry! Be a man!” The chancellor boomed. Then mimicked Marco’s trembling voice with savage accuracy. “‘I’m sorry…’ You’re a bloody flea on a lion. A pest!”
His face darkened and Jack watched as unblinking as the rest of them. How many also hoped his heart might explode? That he’d get so worked up he’d drop dead at their feet?
“You’re a waste!” His jowls quivered with rage. “The connections I’ve given you, the opportunities, and what have you offered in return?”
No one spoke. No one moved. Jack stood rooted to the marble floor, the first edition still clutched in his hands, as a grown man was humiliated in front of his child.
“Get out.” The chancellor’s voice turned deadly quiet.
“Sir?”
“Get out of my house! You’re finished! See if you can find better bothering someone else!”
Marco’s face greyed another degree. Years of sniveling to the chancellor, and he was just as dispensable as anyone else.
Snatching his son’s hand, he hauled him out of the room.
The stark contrast of the decorations was more obscene than ever in light of the new mood. Others stood stock-still, terrified of catching remnants of backlash.
Jack should have pitied them—Marco, the kid that just watched his father get humiliated in front of an entire household of servants. But nothing stirred.
How many times had Marco stood there while Jack flinched or cried? How many times had he chosen loyalty to a tyrant over human decency.
If anything, a twinge of justice flickered, but the inconsequential glimmer of compassion died before it fully sparked.
“Well.” The chancellor adjusted his long, clown-like tie and smoothed the thatch of brassy hair atop his head.
He turned to Jack with a smile. “That’s how you deal with cancer, son.
You carve it out—so nothing’s left behind.
” He glanced back at the table still stacked with presents. “Bring out the cake!”
The servants scrambled to obey. Jack stood motionless, the book still in his hands.
That night he paid dearly, not just for his presents, but also the chancellor’s frustration with the staff. Jack did little more than rest over the weekend. His body pained him in ways he couldn’t escape.
The following week, when Mr. Carrow returned, he watched him with acute concern. “Are you feeling ill, Jack?”
Jack shook his head, but didn’t vocalize the lie.
A mixture of grief and concern flickered across his tutor’s face—a helplessness that made Jack’s chest ache. He shut the book in front of him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Jack wanted to talk about a lot of things, but he didn’t know how. Instead, he said, “The chancellor fired Marco.”
“Oh? For what reason?”
Jack briefly explained what had happened at the party and all the awful things the chancellor had said. “All he did was cough.”
Mr. Carrow sighed and pushed the book aside. “Men like the chancellor don’t need reasons. They need victims. They need to remind everyone, constantly, of their power. And the surest way to demonstrate power is to destroy someone without cause.”
“But Marco always did everything the chancellor asked of him.”
“And for that very reason, the chancellor was never going to respect him. Loyalty only offers momentary protection. The real currency that matters with bullies is fear.”
It was the first time he ever heard Mr. Carrow call the chancellor what he actually was—a bully. It made Jack proud but also nauseous with fear. “You shouldn’t say that.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
The chancellor reshaped reality any way it suited him, manufacturing a stunning amount of lies in a single day just to manipulate others and shape the world to his narrative.
He lied so much, people doubted the truth right in front of their eyes.
It was a trick to control others, not through strength but through confusion.
“Just once,” Jack whispered, shaking his head, “I wish someone would call him out on his lies.”
“They need to believe him, Jack. The alternative is admitting they’ve given their loyalty to a monster. That they were wrong. So they double down and defend him even more fiercely.”
The tutor met his eyes with a meaningful stare Jack was afraid to translate. He looked at him that way for a long time, as if seeing the real him he kept carefully hidden from everyone else.
“You deserve better, Jack,” Mr. Carrow finally said after a long moment.
“You’re remarkable, you know? Brilliant, but also strong.
Most children who’ve endured what you’ve endured would have shattered by now.
But you...” He shook his head. “You see the world for what it is and somehow manage to still show shocking integrity for a boy your age.”
Jack didn’t know how to respond to such praise, so he fidgeted awkwardly, accidentally knocking his arm against the table in a way that made him flinch.
“Can I see your arms, Jack?”
The request was quiet. Not a demand. Not an order. A secret. And Jack learned long ago how dangerous secrets could be.
But he trusted Mr. Carrow more than anyone else in this world, so he carefully pushed up his sleeves.
“Jesus.”
Fat purple fingerprints had started to yellow at the edges. Scars showed in silver dashes along his skin.
Mr. Carrow’s jaw tightened as his hands curled into fists. “You won’t be here forever,” he finally whispered. “Somehow, we’ll figure this out.”
Jack rolled down his sleeve, glad Mr. Carrow couldn’t see the other parts of his body. That was where the real ugly marks hid.
They never talked about his bruises again.
And the months that followed blurred together like watercolors in the rain.
Spring eventually surrendered to summer, summer burned into autumn, and through it all, Jack sensed something shifting in the pressure, the way it does before a terrible storm rolls in.
Danger approached. It hummed in his bones the way animals feel earthquakes before the ground shakes. Mr. Carrow seemed to feel it too.
Their lessons took on an urgency they hadn’t carried before, as if time were running out and there was still so much to cover. And despite years of traveling back and forth between his flat and the estate, a strange pressure urged him not to leave.
“You’re going home.”
“I don’t want—”
“Did I ask what you want?” the chancellor snapped. “The car will be ready in an hour. I’m away on business for the next few weeks, so pack what you need.”
Jack’s jaw tightened.
“Go.” The chancellor ordered.
The car ride home was silent, cutting through the lush countryside before plunging him back into the grey maze of London’s lesser streets.
Despite all the money the chancellor had deposited into his mother’s accounts, the exterior of their home never improved, it only grew more dilapidated with age. Much like the woman inside.
When he entered the dreary flat, he was greeted by a rhythmic, static pounding that carried through the walls and floorboards overhead. Jack set his bags down in the entryway.
“Mum?”
The pounding stopped. Muffled voices and heavy footfalls moved above. A door opened and snapped shut. Then an unshaven man appeared on the landing. “Oh, hey. She’ll pro’ly need a minute.” He chuckled, skipping down the stairs two at a time, then dashing out the door, reeking of sweat and chemicals.
Jack took the stairs. “Mum?”
A stench hit him the moment he reached the second floor. Sharp and sour, layered with the sweetness of decay. A mix of rotting food, unwashed sheets, and the acrid odor of her medicine that always clung to the back of his throat.
“Mum?” Floorboards creaked under years of dust.
The flat was freezing.
He pushed open the door to her room and stilled at the threshold.
“Jackie? Is that you?” Her voice was sand and glue.
Reaching for the dark bottle on the nightstand, she took a long swig and coughed. Then she fished a half-smoked cigarette from the overflowing amber ashtray brimming with butts and trash. “I wasn’t expecting you. I would have cleaned up.”
A lie.
“The chancellor’s going away on business.”
Her eyes, when they found his, were tinged with yellow. The eyes of a stranger. She took his measure as the cherry of her cigarette glowed in the shadows, blowing out a long stream of smoke.
“I haven’t been feeling well.”
Another excuse.
Her hair hung in lank strings around her gaunt face. She’d always been thin, but now she looked skeletal, hollowed out, as if something had reached inside her and scooped out everything that mattered.
“Is that a new jacket?” she asked, like an accountant reviewing some sort of ledger. “You were gone a while this time. I’m owed some money.”
Disgust kept him from responding.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped, taking another long drag from her cigarette. “Like you’re better than me.”
He glanced at the dresser. Burnt spoons, glass pipes, discarded needles… “How can you live like this?”
A wet, ugly laugh escaped with a puff of smoke, only to devolve into a fit of coughing.
“This shit is making you sick.”
“Jackie—”
“Don’t.” The word cracked through the smoky air like a whip. “Don’t call me that anymore.”
“It’s your name.”
“I go by Jack.” Only one person still called him Jackie, and he hated that person with every ounce of his soul.
“I’m sorry this isn’t the luxury you’re used to. Things have been hard.”
“Hard?” He laughed without humor, jaw clenching, but his fury only flared. “Hard?!” He swept his hand across her dresser in one violent motion. Glass shattered. Powder scattered. A pipe rolled beneath the bed, disappearing into the dusty shadows. “You have no idea what hard is!”
“Jackie!”