22. Inconvenient Truths
In the midst of a black mood and constant downpours, Robert Parker’s office is just as cosy a refuge as Briar had hoped it would be.
It’s simple enough to ask Ben to get more keys cut for the others, so that they can let themselves in whenever they please, and he doesn’t ask questions.
On Tuesday Briar has a very successful day in the attic, filled with good finds - a vintage Rolex that looks like it might just need to be serviced, a framed black-and-white photograph of a very large dog sitting next to a very small one, a few interesting, leatherbound notebooks - and then meets with the others in the tower after dinner, spirits slightly lifted.
Westby manages to get the fire going, and won’t stop going on about his manly prowess until Briar produces the notebooks for his perusal.
‘I found these,’ Briar says, carefully handing them to Westby. They can’t tell how old they are exactly, but they’d bet at least a hundred years. ‘I can read it, so I guess it’s not thaumaturgical, although the handwriting is terrible. It looks like a history of the school.’
‘Fascinating,’ Westby breathes, turning the pages with utmost reverence.
Briar wonders if they should feel guilty for contravening Eugenia’s rules about scholars and the attic, but this isn’t magic, so surely there’s no danger here.
‘Looks like it was written by a scholar, but they must have done so much research.’
Tate is sitting in an armchair knitting a cerulean vest, but he keeps dropping stitches, swearing, and having to do something complicated to retrieve them again.
‘Let me see,’ he says. ‘I need a break.’
‘I thought the knitting was a break from revision,’ says Hadley.
‘It is, until I hate it. And then revision seems like a pi?a colada at a swim-up bar.’ He takes the notebook from Westby, who surrenders it with reluctance, then clears his throat and begins reading aloud.
‘“In May of 1846, tensions between scholars and their families divided over the politics of Robert Peel and the repeal of the Corn Laws came to a head. War broke out, commanded by self-appointed lieutenant-generals of the seventh form, the younger boys acting as their witting and unwitting foot soldiers. Lasted until Peel’s resignation in June.”’
‘Jesus,’ Briar says.
‘It doesn’t say exactly how they waged war,’ says Tate, frowning, skipping ahead to the next page.
‘Maybe that’s for the best. Oh, wow. “Former headmaster Sir Andrew Deal remembers a time in which the school pulled together in the Temple spirit: when two boys from the neighbouring village scaled the fence and stole from the administrative offices, scholars from all houses chased them down, and the rugby captain and head boy Thomas McKenna beat them bloody before they were ordered to walk until they reached the sea.”’
‘That’s nice,’ says Westby. ‘What a lovely memory.’
‘Oh, you’ll like this, West. “One of the law plods I interviewed referenced a number of lost texts he wished to read. One colleague insisted these were dangerous Workings removed by the board, and another scoffed that they were fictitious, but he scoured collections and auctions, steadfast in his determination to discover them.”’
‘We’ve got enough fucking books to read,’ groans Hadley. ‘I’d like to go on the record and say no more books.’
‘Apparently in the late 1800s there was a pub on campus,’ says Tate. ‘People used to have to be carried back to their dorms on stretchers.’ He keeps reading, and his face falls.
Briar nudges his knee. ‘What?’
‘Nothing. More grim stuff. I’m going back to hateful knitting.’
Briar takes the notebook. The tall, looping handwriting takes them ages to decipher, so it’s slow going.
‘“Dennis Carlson remembers a fellow seventh-year who was killed on Temple grounds. He had procured a rifle and was threatening his classmates, and was skilled enough in the field of Conduct that other scholars found it difficult to convince him to avail himself of his weapon. He was shot by another member of the rifle club as he exited onto the road.” Why did they have to kill him, if he was leaving?’
‘A seventh-year?’ Westby says. ‘Probably knew too much.’
Briar keeps reading. ‘“The initial dispute began when it was discovered by fellow scholars that this boy had falsified a life of great prosperity that was entirely fiction. He was a butcher’s son from the village, and Carlson believes the board would have acted and ensured his removal had the issue not resolved itself.”’
‘That’s bizarre,’ Tate frowns. ‘How was he unsuitable? He’d made it to seventh year, and they said he was great at Conduct. There must have been some family connection.’
‘Well, perhaps it was more about all the lying,’ says Westby. ‘They didn’t stand for that sort of thing in the nineteenth century. Scholars were gentlemen of honour.’
‘Except when they were being carried out of the pub,’ says Hadley.
‘It sounds more like they decided they didn’t want a butcher’s boy in their club,’ says Briar, more hotly than they’d intended.
They haven’t encountered anyone at Temple who seems like they’d be in need of the scholarship funds mentioned on the application form; yes, it makes sense that if thaumaturgy is genetic, power and the money that accompanies it is hoarded down family lines.
But it doesn’t entirely add up. Surely some people must have distant, poorer relations able to do the Work - and Hadley’d said that prospective pips were given a nudge, if they hadn’t already applied.
Maybe the nudges are selective. Maybe there are people out there with thaumaturgy lying dormant, and no access to texts.
‘Sounds like he was kind of deranged, anyway,’ says Hadley, annoying Briar further. Her attention span is miniscule; they can see her eyes darting around the room, desperate for a new diversion. ‘Briar, do you know how to braid hair?’
Briar actually does. Kay has put them to work doing precisely this many times, badgering them until they perfected a straight middle parting. They’re still thinking of the dead butcher’s boy, but it’s clear nobody else is.
‘I can only do normal plaits,’ they say. ‘Not French.’
‘Oh, well, we wouldn’t be having anything to do with the French,’ says Westby. He takes the notebook and keeps reading. Tate knits. Briar braids, then re-braids when their first attempt is not up to standard.
‘How’s it going with Wolfe?’ Hadley asks Briar quietly once the hair salon is closed and they’re sitting side by side on the ancient sofa, passing a very thin joint back and forth.
The ceiling here is empty of smoke detectors.
Westby and Tate have unearthed an old TV in one of the cupboards and are trying, without success, to get it working.
‘Bad,’ says Briar. ‘I mean, it’s just kind of . . . complicated.’
‘Well, I think you should uncomplicate it,’ Hadley says, blowing an impressive smoke ring.
Briar’s always wanted to learn how to do that, like Bilbo with his pipe-weed.
‘For the cause. It doesn’t make you a bad person or whatever.
He sucks. Every Mon sucks. They torture people for fun.
If I told you some of the shit they do . . .’
‘I mean, I’ve seen it.’
‘Scratched the fucking surface of the iceberg,’ she says, mixing her metaphors. ‘Your pal Bastian once blinded a kid.’
Briar’s blood runs cold. ‘What? How?’
‘No idea. We were in fifth year, he was in a foul mood about something, and this third-year kept following him around. Hero-worshipping, probably, although God knows why. Derbyshire was there - she said he lost it at this kid, told him to leave him alone, stop following him, that he shouldn’t even be looking at him.
And the poor guy turned right around and stuck sharpened pencils in his eyes.
’ Briar stares at her, mouth open. ‘Yeah. Wolfe laced his words with something a bit too spicy. Faculty had all these meetings with him, but the thing is, they’re mad about him.
Have been since first year. They love power, and he’s got oodles of it. ’
‘What happened to the third-year?’ Briar says, mouth dry.
They’d been letting their guard down too much, lulled into complacency by Bastian’s vestiges of humanity.
Every argument they’ve had with him is cast in different light.
It sounds like Briar’s lucky to have walked away with just a few scratches.
‘He’s still here, because he was a good sport about it, but he was transferred out of Bastian’s house.
Lost almost all his vision. So come on.’ She shifts towards Briar, the joint flaring between them.
‘That’s who he is. You should stop picking fights with him anyway, if you want to keep both your peepers.
’ She glances over at Tate and Westby. Satisfied they’re still occupied, she says, ‘You still in?’
Briar feels sick to their stomach. ‘Yeah,’ they say. ‘Yeah, okay.’
‘Excellent,’ she says. ‘Do you want the rest of this? It’s basically just paper.’
Briar lets her smoke the last of it, and goes to bed that night dreaming of bloodied eye sockets and Bastian’s breath on their neck.
The next day, still short-staffed, Eugenia asks them to clean one of the classrooms. It’s in the main building of the school, the oldest part, where the interiors are of such historical importance that Briar has to receive special instructions about how to clean them without damage.
Eugenia tells Briar that the room should be empty by three o’clock, but when Briar pushes open the ancient, heavy door, they find that a class is still in session.