Chapter 19. William
william
William sits at the usual dining hall table.
He hears footsteps attached to a couple of bubbly voices, and he turns toward the entrance. As soon as they walk into the dining hall, the two girls notice him.
He locks eyes with one after the other and uses his powers of compulsion: “You do not want to join this club.”
Both of them spin around and leave, same as the students who came before them. William goes back to inhaling deeply, finally picking up the right scent.
When she enters the hall, he does not turn around. He does not even look Lorena’s way until she sits in her usual chair next to him.
“Apologies for my tardiness,” says Director Minaro, darting in a moment later and taking a seat across from them. “Looks like you two are it. Are you sure you still want to have this club with only two members?”
“Maybe not—”
“Certainly,” he says, speaking over Lorena. She looks at him like she suspects a trap.
Yet even he is not sure why he is doing this—other than that it would be enjoyable to reread the plays, especially since it comes with the bonus of getting under Lorena’s skin.
“Okay, then,” says Minaro with a sigh. “I have too much to do today to make this a long meeting, so discuss it between yourselves and come up with how you would like to structure this club. Bring your ideas to the garden next Saturday at eleven AM, and we will make a plan then.”
She takes off, leaving the two of them alone.
“What did you find in her office?” Lorena asks as soon as Minaro’s footsteps fade out.
“The letter,” he answers. “It was in a thin metal envelope buried under some stones.”
“What did it say?”
He stands up. “You can come see it if you want. It is in my room.”
Lorena’s throat bobs as she swallows. She looks uncertain, which bothers him, so he does not wait for her. Yet as he exits the dining hall, she still has not stood up.
The fact that her hesitation vexes him means he wants to show her the letter, which vexes him even more. When he reaches the wall-paneled billiards room, he slows to listen for her steps, but she is still not following.
His gaze drifts to one of the green felt tables, and he remembers a different life, when he would play this game at a pub near Harvard with his best friend, Roman. Loser always paid for drinks. William never spent a cent.
When he finally hears Lorena’s footfalls, he waits for her to spot him before he keeps moving. Yet a few minutes later, she stops again.
He retreats to find her in a wide-open space packed with games of various types—rectangular tables with small balls and handheld paddles, square tables with decks of playing cards, round targets with darts hanging on the wall, a miniature-sized golf course that takes up half the area, and a host of what appear to be mechanical games.
“What is this?” she asks him.
“I watched them set it up last night. The director plans to announce it at dinner, after you all have selected clubs.”
“Wow,” she says, turning to him. “Way to spoil the surprise.”
“Do try to keep up.”
He leads her past the red velvet rope cordoning off the first tower, and before they climb up, he offers his hand. She looks at it suspiciously and shakes her head.
“I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself.” He starts climbing, yet rather than speed to the top, he stays only a couple of rungs ahead of her, in case she stumbles.
She manages to skip over the caved-in steps, leaping up two at a time, and when there are two broken steps in a row, she takes them at a quick stride, careful to only touch down on the outer edges.
She has almost made it to the fourth story when her foot crashes through a step that was on the cusp of giving in.
“Ah!”
He catches her and pulls her up to the landing. Then he steps back to open the door. “Welcome to Thornfield Hall.”
Lorena shivers and hugs her arms around her torso. “It’s so cold!” is the first thing she says on walking in.
William did not think of how the lack of windows would affect her. He digs into his box of clothing, and he pulls out his waistcoat, perching it over her shoulders.
She feels along the embroidery, and while she inspects the fabric, he strides up to the loose rock in the wall and removes it. Then he sticks his hand in and pulls out the letter in the metal envelope.
“That’s it?” she asks, walking over.
He hands her the piece of parchment.
“February 13, 1769,” she reads, then she stops abruptly and looks up. “Does that date mean anything to you?”
William nods, not seeing the point in hiding this from her. “It would have been my twentieth birthday. It is also the last day I can recall before awakening here.”
Her eyes widen with a kind of awe, and then she looks back down at the letter.
“To the Esteemed Huntington,” she reads, “the parcel shall reach you in due course, though it may be several months hence. Disperse the fortune I have entrusted to you with prudence, ensuring it is spent but sparingly over the course of the century, that none might harbor suspicion. When sufficient time has passed, erect a stronghold to ensure this estate is safeguarded above all others. Mark well our agreement, and you and your descendants shall prosper for eternity.”
She stares at the paper after she has finished reading.
“It’s unsigned.”
“I noticed.”
Yet even without a name, William recognizes the handwriting. He would know it anywhere, in any time.
It belongs to his killer.
“What does it mean?” asks Lorena.
“I suspect … I am the parcel,” says William, and it feels strange to say the words out loud. “I must have been shipped here from London in that coffin and kept hidden for centuries. The question is … why?”
“What about the timeline we found on the ceiling of the LUB last night?” she asks. “What was all that?”
As she has already seen and heard too much, William does not see any point in shielding her from some real world history. “The Black Death was not an illness … it was us.”
Her eyes widen and glaze over with awe.
“After we had eaten our way through half the European population, human mortality plunged to dangerously low levels, and we risked starvation, which could cause our bodies to go into death-sleep indefinitely. Since our lifestyle of limitless drinking was unsustainable, in 1429 we agreed to a Treaty with the humans. Vampires would no longer drink to kill, and we would limit our numbers to no more than five percent of the human population—in return, we could integrate into mortal society. The Treaty also called for the creation of a human law enforcement division called the Legion of Fire.”
She seems too entranced to interrupt with questions, so he goes on.
“The ensuing peace held for a while, but in time, some vampires began reverting to the old ways. And some branches of the Legion became radicalized and went rogue, hunting immortals indiscriminately. By the 1700s, tensions worsened to the point that both sides were predicting an existential war.”
Did that war break out?
Did the vampires lose?
Is William a prisoner? Or is he a secret survivor?
These questions have been plaguing him since he became conscious, and he feels no closer to finding the answers.
“What about the Spell of 1775?” asks Lorena. “It was written on the ceiling.”
“I do not know what that is, as I was already asleep by then.”
“Maybe if you told me more about yourself,” she says in a tentative tone, like she is walking a tightrope, “we could finally figure all this out.”
He is insulted by her implication. What does she think he has been trying to do this whole time?
“How could you figure this out when I cannot?” he asks.
She crosses her arms, too proud to face his logic. “Such arrogance from someone who doesn’t even know who Einstein is!”
“Who?”
“Exactly.”
She rips off his waistcoat and drops it on the floor, then stalks off. William listens intently for the sound of her falling through one of the steps.
To his disappointment, she makes it down unscathed.
“MR. ROCHESTER should have told Jane about Bertha from the start,” says Lorena the following Friday in English class, speaking in what William perceives to be a superior tone.
“That way she would have known what a monster he was, keeping his wife locked up like a rabid animal, before falling in love with him.”
William is already twisted in his seat. “Am I going senile, or was it not you defending his behavior just last week, bemoaning how he was trapped by societal norms?”
“At your age, you really should get yourself checked out,” she says, and Salma kicks her under the table while Zach whispers ouch.
“Well, for a senile person,” says Minaro, “William has perfect recollection because that is word for word what I remember you saying as well.”
William’s gaze lingers on Lorena, enjoying the mortification plastered on her face. When he straightens in his chair, the instructor is staring at him. “How flattering for Lorena that you seem to hang on her every word.”
Ire flashes through William, nearly making his cold blood generate heat. “I merely find it fascinating,” he says in his own defense, “how fickle her feelings are for Mr. Rochester.”
“If you’re really listening,” says Lorena, and he turns around again, eager for the next round of their bout, “then you should know it’s about the context, William.
I was never defending him in particular.
I think the whole culture of that time was at fault for oppressing people and presenting them with bad options. ”
“That sounds a lot easier to say today than it was to do yesterday,” says William, not caring that anyone else is here. “You sit there and judge him from your twenty-first-century pedestal and do not even try to see things from his point of view, yet you fault him for not considering Jane’s.”
“There is a term,” says Minaro, “that explains our tendency to interpret past events through modern values. It is called presentism.”
No one even pretends to care.
“Okay, how about we end class here today?” asks Minaro. As everyone gets up, she adds, “William, Lorena—I will see you tomorrow morning after breakfast. Be prepared to discuss your vision for your Shakespeare club.”
AFTER DINNER, Lorena and her friends, along with the rest of the student body, make their way to the game room that opened last weekend.
William also travels in that direction, but instead of joining them, he keeps to the shadowy outskirts, where he can listen without being seen. He would much rather be in the library reading, but he still does not trust Lorena to keep his secrets.
She and her friends go straight to something called a pinball machine, just as they did last Saturday and Sunday nights. He watched them then, too.
Trevor goes first as usual, and the ball pings through the obstacle course, triggering sounds and lights as it knocks into things.
“So, Navarro,” he says to Lorena, “how come your boyfriend doesn’t hang out with us outside of meals and the LUB?”
“I’ve been asking her the same thing,” says Tiffany.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she says, “and I don’t know. He probably thinks he’s too cool for us or something.”
“Maybe we don’t make him feel included enough,” says Zach, who always seems to lead with empathy.
“We literally made a place for him at our table,” says Tiffany, “and the staff now sets ours up as the only six-person table. What more do we need to do—send him a formal invitation?”
“We don’t need Rochester here,” says Lorena, taking her turn at the ball while Trevor chuckles appreciatively at her joke. She pulls back on the lever as she says, “We’re better off without—”
“Thought I heard my name.”
She lets go of the lever at the sound of William’s voice and looks up at him in shock.
“Mind if I join you tonight?”