CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“OH! MY DEAREST JAMES! MY CLAUDIUS!” The theater professor, Professor Ilaria, cried out.
She was a dramatic, overly-maudlin woman.
She grasped James’s heated, roseate cheeks in her eccentric hands.
She halted him in the opulent halls of the arts annex with her chest braced against his chest. “May the vile tongues of thine enemies be pierced out! I heard ghastly rumors of a stabbing of a fellow student. Nobiscum Deus!”
James was still flushed with fury. “It doesn’t matter.”
Professor Ilaria balked. “Have you forgotten the solstice play this year–The Paean of the Villains of Winter?” She smoothed her dry thumbs over the blood splattered on his eyes. “How are you to perform if you are expelled, my sweet-inflected protégé?”
He would’ve hurt Kitty, James brooded darkly. Expulsion didn’t matter. James never should’ve relented.
The rest of the College still believed the reciters were performing The War of Alexandrius when instead it was The Paean of the Villains of Winter.
A paean was a song of praise or victory. Paean in Mycenaean Greek was the alternative name and epithet of Apollōn. Paiê?n. There were several names and epithets of Apollo, and James was exhausted by every last one.
He was not the mighty Apollōn.
He was a heathen.
“My powerful Apollōn, my perfect Claudius,” Professor Ilaria lamented, rarely ever referring to her students by their actual names, only their roles or titles.
She cared little that the ancient philosophy department was vile.
Barbaric. “Surely, I can speak with Provost Tytheridge. He will be forgiving given your history, your mother’s passing, and the pressure of the dramatical production. ”
James’s head lifted at the invocation of his mother. “No, it’s fine.”
She whispered, “Professor Hexley witnessed his brother sacrificed at the hibernal. Strung up by his neck with his wrists twined behind his back…poor thing. I remember like it was yesterday how he thrashed and writhed before he went still. The noose was inclined high on the platform as it more of a lynching back then, when everyone brought their dinner to attend…strange fruit indeed. Anyway, this time of year is always difficult for Professor Hexley. Perhaps he will advocate for you. The Paean of the Villains of Winter is a perfect opportunity to lighten his spirits!”
“It’s not necessary,” James started, before Professor Ilaria could usher him into her antechamber of lit sage bundles, labyrinthine pothos, blooming foliage, and healing crystals to purge him of envious spirits.
She was certain one of the understudies was responsible for this, perhaps they uncovered the true nature of the ancient philosophy department. They were fragile milksops in her eyes.
Sensitive sensibilities, these new students, she’d muttered the night before.
She swirled a glass of sanguine claret between her slender fingers.
You are never sensitive to the grisly matters at hand, James.
I adore that of you. You never flinch from the necessary inflictions. I’ve always admired your resilience.
These new students grimace, they retch, they hesitate, and they attempt to escape. Seven of mine fled for the gates, did you hear?
A bit of blood. A bit of flesh. They couldn’t execute any of it. You should’ve seen how they wept with regret.
You never once recoil. Never. You never blanch from what needs to be committed. No matter who pleads to you. No matter how they grovel and beg for help. You are without mercy. You are extraordinary, my dear. No one can replicate your craft with the utensils. You delight me.
Now, Professor Ilaria shouted at the technical students eavesdropping in the hall.
“House Manager Three! Stagehand Fourteen! Return to your dormitories at once!” In her eyes, these were not tragedians and technicians, these were vital gears and levers in the finest machinery ever invented in human history–the arts.
Despite the blatant Hellenistic influences in her plays, she frequently exclaimed in Latin, or incorporated Roman history, if only to demonstrate she intimately knew both languages and cultures. After all, even language was art. Culture was art.
Séverine Ilaria had written The War of Alexandrius in honor of James. For he was her art.
Professor Ilaria returned to James with a twinge of tears in her hysteric, treacly eyes.
“My dearest Apollōn, you were destined for the role, you understand the dramaturgical elements in its purest form. You must perform. I implore you to behave until I can convince Provost Tytheridge that this asinine matter was mere roughhousing among men, yes?”
James lied straight through his teeth. “Yes. I’ll behave.”
She kissed both sides of his palms, then kissed each side of his cheek, as if he truly were a glorious myth.
With a flourish, her periwinkle robes draped the grounds as she headed for the administration property. “This is simply a test from the fates and the furies, my sweet! The Erinyes will not interfere with your destiny, my love!”