Second Draft Chapter 9

I heard a clicking sound, and I knew the door was opening. David jumped off the bench and sprang to his feet. I also got up and walked to the edge of the jail cell.

My father came through the door, followed by a policeman. They looked through the bars at us. “Yes, that’s them officer.” He then turned his back on us. “Thank you very much for bring this matter to my attention.” It was exactly the same way he had acted in the headmaster’s office. He was deliberately ignoring me and talking only to the policeman.

“Now as I’ve told you before sir, we’ve examined them and their story checks out. We don’t think they were part of the uprising. We don’t think they even knew about the uprising. They were just sneaking into the campus to go exploring, and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The lips on my father’s face drew into a tired smile that was not reflected in his eyes. “Of course. I’ll handle things from here officer. Thank you again.” The officer nodded in acknowledgment, turned the keys to open our cell door, and then left the room, bowing slightly as he shut the door. During this time my father kept his eyes on the officer instead of looking at me.

My father opened the door and looked at David. “You’d better go straight home. If your family has heard anything, they will be worried about you.” David cast a parting glance at me, and then quickly ran out of the room. My father stayed still until he was gone. Then, once David had shut the door behind him, my father turned without saying anything and began to walk out of the room as well. I guessed that I was supposed to follow him.

There was nothing I hated more than his silence. I wished he would just yell at me and get it over with. I could have handled that. But his deliberate silence was unbearable. We walked out of the police station and into the sunshine. As we stood on the front steps, I decided to try and pre-empt his anger by trying to offer my explanation first. “Dad, all we wanted to do was see the campus.”

“You know school children aren’t allowed on the University campus.” I opened my mouth to ask why they even had this stupid rule in the first place, but he kept talking, “And when the guards at the gate told you there was trouble, why did you still enter? You picked the worst possible day to do your little adventure.” His face, which he had kept under control until now, was becoming red with anger.

He broke himself off suddenly. “I don’t have time to talk about this now. I’m very busy today. I want you to go straight home. Do not leave the house until I come home. We’ll discuss this more then.” And with that he turned and walked quickly away. He didn’t even wait to make sure I began walking in the right direction.

I suppose I could have gone in any direction I wanted to. I could have gone to David’s house, or gone to Icarus’ house to try and see if he had made it out all right. I could even have gone back to the campus if I wanted to.

But I went home. The servants would probably have already received a message from my father, and they would know if I was late.

I trudged home with my hands in my pockets and my eyes fixed on the ground. I wondered what it would be like when my father comes home in the evening. He’ll probably yell a lot. Actually he’ll definitely yell a lot; no probably needed in that sentence. After that he was difficult to predict. I was always getting into trouble at school, but he never had to come and get me out of jail before. He’ll probably ground me for a month. Or maybe make me spend another week scrubbing floors with the cleaning lady.

I arrived home and opened the door. The butler was there waiting for me. “Good afternoon sir. Welcome home. Your father sent a message back here about an hour ago. He wanted to make sure you saw this.” He handed me a note, unmistakably in my father’s handwriting.

“Jonathon, Don’t you dare leave this house until I get home.”

“Yeah, I know, he told me already,” I replied. “I’ll just go out back and play with the dogs I guess.”

“Actually your father was quite explicit that you not even go into the garden,” the butler said in his matter of fact tone, as if he were telling me what was for dinner. “You are to stay in the actual house itself, and not leave even to go into the garden.”

“Oh, well I just stay in here I guess.” I suddenly remembered how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten anything since I left the house in the morning. “I’ll just go into the kitchen and make a sandwich then,” I said. I was worried that even this might be forbidden to me, but the butler simply nodded. Apparently he had received no instructions to deny me food.

When I walked into the kitchen, Abel was already sitting at the kitchen table. He wasn’t doing anything, just sitting with an expectant look on his face. He must have heard me come in the door.

Abel was the last person I wanted to talk to right now. I simply did not have the patience to deal with him. I walked across the kitchen without saying anything to him and opened the cupboard door.

When he saw I was not going to begin a conversation, Abel blurted out excitedly. “A messenger came an hour ago from Dad’s office. He says you’re in big trouble.”

I took my head out of the cupboard long enough to glare at Abel and say in an acid tone, “Yes, I know.”

Anyone else would have known from my tone of voice that I didn’t want to pursue this conversation. Abel didn’t always pick up on these things though. “What did you do?” he asked.

“Nothing.” I picked out two slices of bread from the cupboard, and got some of the Cheese out from one of the drawers. I began looking around for a knife to slice the cheese.

“You must have done something. The messenger said Dad was really mad.”

I turned on him sharply. “Abel I don’t want to hear it,” I yelled. I opened a drawer and took out a knife.

“Where did you go today? Why don’t you ever take me with you? Why won’t you tell me what happened?” The words all blurted out of Abel’s mouth as if he had been holding them in, but now could contain them no longer.

I picked up the cheese and threw it at Abel. I was so angry I didn’t take time to aim and the cheese sailed right by him. He turned and ran out of the kitchen.

I picked up the cheese and dusted it off. I had acted in a fit of rage but immediately I felt remorse for it. First and foremost I wished that in my anger I could have had the presence of mind to throw something other than my lunch. I brushed the dirt off of the cheese. It should still be all right, I thought

Secondly I felt bad for snapping at Abel. It wasn’t his fault he was an annoying little kid. I was probably like that when I was his age as well. If I was trapped in this house all day I would be just as eager to hear about any bit of exciting news.

Abel avoided me for the rest of the afternoon. After I had eaten, I went up to my room and lied down on the bed. I didn’t feel like sleeping, but since I couldn’t even go into the garden there was nothing else to do in this house. I just stared at the ceiling.

My father came home about three hours later. I heard him enter the house. Although my bedroom door was closed, I strained my ears to hear what was going on downstairs. I heard the muffled deep voice of my father, and the muffled high voice of Abel answering him, but I couldn’t make out what either was saying. I sat in bed and waited for him to come up.

I waited for a long time. I wondered if he was deliberately postponing the confrontation just to make me more nervous. Finally, close to an hour after he had first entered the house, he came up to my room. The door opened slowly, and he walked in. I sat down on my bed as he came in.

He had a certain presence to him that prevented him from doing anything gently, but he didn’t seem angry. He walked in slowly. His face was not flushed red as it had been earlier. He was surprisingly calm, in a way that almost made me more yet.

“Jonathon, I-,” He stopped suddenly, as if he wasn’t sure how to begin. He held his lips tightly together for a moment, and then started again. “I’m worried that I gave the wrong impression earlier this year when I met your headmaster. I’m afraid I let you think that you can get away with breaking the rules sometimes. That is my fault, and I take full responsibility for it.”

He wasn’t a lot more subdued than I thought he would be. And yet there was something in his tone that made me worried about what was coming next. I looked up at him and nodded blankly.

“I’m not angry with you, because it was my fault. But I’m going to make sure that the message is very clear this time. You’re a good kid inside. I know you are. I think the problem is that you have too much free time on your hands. I’m going to fix that.” My heart began beating rapidly. “I’ve made arrangements with the Fabulae Junior Cadets. You’re too young to enlist, but they’ve created a special position for you as an assistant. Every day after school you’ll go straight to the Cadet center. You’ll stay there until 8 or 9, and then you’ll come home, and the servants will supervise you as you do your studies. On weekends and during summer break you will spend 8 hours working at the Cadet center, and then you’ll come straight home and do your studies. You can see your friends at school, but I don’t want you getting into any more trouble outside of class. You understand why this is so important, don’t you?”

In my view this was almost the equivalent of a death sentence. It was the end of life as I knew it. But it would be sheer folly to argue with him now while the incident was still fresh in his mind. My best way out of this would be to put in a good effort at the Cadet center for a week or two, or however long it took for this whole thing to blow over, and then try and renegotiate terms then. I nodded, and with my dry throat managed to say, “Yes, I understand.”

His eyes narrowed and he looked at me carefully. “I don’t think you do. Not yet anyway. You’re not like your friends. David can get in trouble at school, and run around on the streets, and even got it jail. It doesn’t matter for David, because David is going to end up just like his father anyway. A nobody. A man who can barely make enough money each week to keep his house. All your friends are going to end up like that. But I’ve given you a chance for something more. When you grow up, you’re going to be somebody. You want to be somebody, don’t you?”

I guess I did. “Yes, I do,” I answered.

The answer seemed to satisfy him. “Good. You’ll spend all day tomorrow at the house. On Monday you can go to school, but straight afterwards go to the Cadet center. They’ll be expecting you and they’ll know if you are late.”

********************************************

Sunday was absolute hell being kept inside all day. And with the incident of the previous day still fresh in everyone’s minds, I didn’t dare to cause any trouble. I was allowed out into the garden to play with the dogs a little. Otherwise I kept myself occupied playing games with Abel.

Poor Abel. Now I could see why he always whined about being home all alone. If I had to stay home everyday, I would complain just as much.

I never thought I would look forward to school, but when Monday came I couldn’t wait to get to the school building. I even woke up early and left the house long before I usually do.

The whole walk to school I wondered if Icarus would be there or not. Perhaps Icarus had been caught by the soldiers in the end, and was now sitting in some jail cell somewhere just like David and I had been earlier. Or maybe Icarus had escaped the soldiers, but had decided to stay with the University students.

I saw several soldiers in the street when I arrived in town. They paid no attention to me, but I overheard a couple of them speak in the same strange accent I had heard two days before. I didn’t even need to look to know that the majority of them were concentrated at the University. Whatever trouble we had stumbled onto on Saturday was obviously still going on.

I saw David just outside of the school grounds. He gave me a grim smile and said, “Well, you look healthy. I see your father decided not to skin you alive after all.”

“No, it’s going to be much worse than that,” I answered. Before he could ask me what that meant, I added, “Where is Icarus? Did he make it out safely or what?”

David pointed to where Icarus was entertaining a large group with his story about Saturday. I couldn’t help but laugh. It was the kind of wild story Icarus was famous for. If I hadn’t been there myself, I wouldn’t have believed a word of it. But aside from the occasional exaggeration, Icarus was more or less telling the story faithfully to what had happened.

“…They were building this huge castle in the middle of the campus. But they needed mattresses.”

“Why did they need mattresses?” asked Ares suddenly.

“Because they needed something to sleep on at night,” Icarus answered. “Anyway, no one knew where the mattresses could be found, except for me. ‘It’s lucky for you gentlemen I happened to be passing by’ I said. ‘I couldn’t help but overhear your problem. I know where the mattresses are kept.’ ”

“How do you know?” Matthew interrupted.

“Because my father designed the campus. So I said, ‘The mattresses are kept in the storage room, and it just so happens I hold the special key.’ ” Icarus stopped his narrative briefly to dig a key out of his pockets, and held it for everyone to see. “ ‘This key will open any door on the University Campus,’ I told them.”

“How did you get that key?” Clodius asked.

“I liberated it from the office of the University President himself. So anyway, Jonny and David and I go to the storage room. Now they have the mattresses there, but the mattresses are very old, all the way from the olden days of heroes. In those days people were a lot bigger. These mattresses are so big that today two men of modern times could hardly carry them…”

When I turned back to look at David, a smile was on both of our faces. I could have listened to Icarus all day. I completely forgot all the things I was upset about.

We walked away a little bit, and Icarus’ voice faded into the background. “What about your parents?” I asked.

David shook his head. “I’ve never seen them so upset. You would have thought I killed somebody. You wouldn’t believe my mom. I didn’t think she had that many tears in her.”

“But they didn’t skin you either?”

David returned my smile. “My dad said spending the afternoon in jail was punishment enough.”

The bell rang, and we all lined up and filed into school. There seemed to be a nervous energy not just between David and I, but among the whole class. There was an unusual amount of chatter as we took our seats. “Is it true what people are saying?” Helen asked me.

I could only assume this was a reference to my adventures. I immediately thought of Icarus’s stories of course. “Parts of it are,” I said. “Don’t believe everything you here though.” The teacher entered the classroom, and I whispered that I would tell her more later.

The bald teacher with the eyeglasses strode in. We all stood to attention and bowed but the nervous chatter remained in scattered pockets. He frowned and the room quickly became quiet. He wasn’t the kind of teacher that you could fool around with.

“Please open your textbooks to page 48. You’ll see a list of all the irregular Fenestram verbs.” LJ had his hand raised, and the teacher paused to acknowledge it. “Yes, Lucius? This had better be about irregular verbs.”

This unusual qualification startled LJ, and he started out hesitantly. “Well, no sir, not exactly but I was wondering if you could tell us about all the soldiers in the street. There have been several different rumors floating around and I was wondering--.”

The teacher cut him off with wave of his hand. “That has nothing to do with Fenestram, Lucius.”

“Yes, but,” LJ paused briefly, and then decided to burst out with the rest, “But sir, how can we talk about irregular verbs at a time like this? The soldiers have already entered the University and there are rumors that they are shooting the students.”

“Just so there is no misunderstanding,” the teacher began in his usual deep booming voice, “I want it clear that we will continue our studies today as we do everyday. Whatever is happening on the outside has no bearing on the inside of this classroom.”

“You mean we’re not going to talk about it?” LJ asked incredulously. “We’re going to sit here and pretend that it’s not even going on?”

“Lucius, that is enough. One more word and you can discuss this matter with the headmaster. Besides, I understand some in this class are very well informed about the situation already.” I barely had time to wonder if this was a reference to me or not, when the teacher looked me straight in the face and said in his iciest voice, “Having an influential father must be very useful. If you had been anyone else’s child, you wouldn’t be coming back to this school.”

Well, I guess he knows about it then. The way Icarus had been blabbing about it, it was hardly a secret, although I doubted the teacher pays much attention to Icarus’s stories. He probably got his information directly from the police.

“Now,” the teacher said, shifting his focus from me to the rest of the classroom, “the next comment I hear better be about Fenestram verbs. If there are no questions, please take out your notebooks and copy down what I write on the board.”

And so the discussion ended there. We continued the rest of the class studying verb declensions as usual. And after that class, the other classes continued the same as usual.

In the brief break between classes, Helen turned to me wide eyed. “What happened to you this weekend?” she asked. “What was the teacher talking about?”

“Didn’t you hear Icarus talking?” I asked. She shook her head no. I explained everything briefly to her.

Few other people asked me what happened. Icarus had made such a production out of the story that there wasn’t too much more to tell. I could have contradicted Icarus in small places if I wanted to, but I felt no need. I enjoyed his version more than the reality anyway.

It wasn’t until after school that Icarus came up to talk to David and I. “I’m glad to see you guys are alright,” he said. “I was really worried about you.”

I didn’t mind Icarus running off and leaving us. There was nothing he could have done against all those soldiers anyway. And I didn’t even expect him to be all that concerned about us. It wasn’t like he was my best friend or anything. Before last week we hardly ever talked to each other at school.

What I minded was the phony sentiment. After I saw Icarus telling stories this morning as if he didn’t have a care in the world, the last thing I wanted to hear was this garbage about how worried he was about my well being. I brought this point up politely. “You didn’t seem concerned this morning,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s because I knew you were alright by then. David told me Saturday night what had happened.”

“He came by my house Saturday evening to make sure we were okay,” David explained. “He asked about you also, but I told him it probably wasn’t a good idea to go visit your house.”

David was right of course; it wouldn’t have been a good idea. It’s a good thing he knows my family so well. And here I was thinking Icarus hadn’t been genuinely concerned. I was reminded of the way I had felt when Icarus had helped pull me up to the wall two days before. Icarus was really all right after all.

Simon also came over to talk to us. He had known absolutely nothing about what had happened until this morning at school, and he didn’t believe Icarus’ stories. I left David to deal with Simon. I didn’t feel like talking to him, and I had to leave for the Cadet center anyway.

I ran into Helen as I was leaving the school grounds. “Where are you going, Jon?” she asked.

I grimaced. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh.”

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders to try and take the edge off of what I had just said. “I’ll tell you about it later. I promise.”

“Okay. Actually I was wondering if I could talk to you about something else. Do you have a minute?”

I was reluctant to say no to her, but I didn’t really have a choice. I had overstayed my time already talking to David and Icarus. “No, listen, I’m really sorry, but I’m late already. I was supposed to be at the Cadet Center 5 minutes ago. If I don’t get over there now, my Dad’s going to kill me.”

“Oh. I see.” She looked slightly disappointed.

“I am really sorry. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, okay. And we can talk at school then.”

She nodded, and gave me a small, but beautiful smile. I waved good-bye and then ran off towards the Cadet Center.

**************************************

The Cadet Center was pretty horrible, but I suppose it was no worse than I expected it would be. I was all office work, and I didn’t know the first thing about offices, or filing, or typing, or any of the stuff they were doing in there.

Not that any of that mattered. They would never have given me anything with any real responsibility. I was just a 15-year-old kid, and they had only given me this job as a favor to my father so that I would stay out of trouble. They would create work for me that didn’t need to be done: alphabetizing out-dated files, re-sorting papers that had already been sorted. After the second day they taught me how to make coffee, and then at least I had the feeling that I was doing something useful, but it was still boring as hell.

The next few days the streets were filled with soldiers. It seemed like there were more of them everyday. And they were all concentrated along the roads leading to the University.

I was so busy going to the Cadet Center I didn’t really have time to take too much notice of what they were doing, but I was told later that David and Icarus went along the road one day to try and see what was going on. I think Clodius and Ares might have gone as well. Anyway, they didn’t get far. They got turned away before they even got close to the University.

One day, as I was walking to the Cadet Center, I noticed the soldiers were a lot more active than usual. Instead of standing in the streets, or crowding into the cafes, like they usually did, they were running around everywhere like it was the end of the world. I could even see smoke coming from the University building.

And when I came to school the next Monday, all the soldiers had vanished. There were a lot of police in the streets, but not a single soldier. I almost missed them a little. I was enjoying hearing their funny accent on the way into school.

Of course I wasn’t the only one who noticed. “Where did all the soldiers go?” David asked me.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re asking me for,” I answered. “You know I’m stuck at the Cadet Center everyday.” I had, by this time, finally told everyone what I was doing with my afternoons. “Why don’t you tell me? You and Icarus are always trying to get a look at what they’re doing.”

“We couldn’t see anything yesterday. They had the roads shut down as usual.” He paused, and added in a more somber tone, “But Clodius says they shot all the students in the University.”

Clodius could be almost as bad as Icarus with his story telling sometimes. I was surprised David was taken in by this. “How would he know? If the roads were shut down, how did he find out? Clodius doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Nobody would shoot all the students. That’s just ridiculous.”

“Yeah, I guess it is,” David answered.

At any rate, it was impossible to get accurate information on what was going on because our teacher refused to talk about it. In fact he came in the room looking even meaner than usual, and shot glances around the classroom as if he were daring someone to bring it up. Not even LJ mentioned anything.

None of the real drama came until chapel that afternoon. We all filed in as usual and the chaplain gave his usual sermon. Something about the importance of keeping our minds pure from sexual thoughts, or something like that. It’s always the same chapel.

We all stood up at the end of it for the usual benediction. “God bless you, and God bless the Duke,” the chaplain said.

“God bless the Duke,” we answered.

Only Emma didn’t say, “God bless the Duke.” In fact she didn’t even stand up.

She was right in the middle of the pew, so there wasn’t too much our teacher could do about it, although during the walk back to class he glared at her the whole way. As soon as we were all back in our desks, he asked, “Emma, is there anything you want to say?” He was making a bit of a theatrical presentation, addressing Emma by name but really speaking to the whole class. He could be like that sometimes. Emma stayed silent, so he added, in the same theatrical manner, “something you forgot to say at Chapel, maybe?”

“No,” Emma answered. I couldn’t believe it. It was like she was trying to get in trouble. You were never supposed to try and get in trouble. Sure, you might court danger, and if you got in trouble you had to accept the consequences. But to stare a teacher in the face and dare them to punish you was…

My thoughts were cut off as the teacher strode across the room. He grabbed Emma by the arm and yanked Emma to her feet. There was something very unsettling about this scene. He was a huge hulk of a man, and she was only a 15-year-old girl.

“Say ‘God Bless the Duke’” he demanded.

“No!” Emma screamed it out this time. She had red eyes, and I realized she was crying.

He threw her onto the ground. She screamed again. This wasn’t right, I thought. Someone has to do something. The whole class was watching this with disbelief. I looked around the room and saw faces just as shocked as mine.

It was LJ who stood up first. “Sir, I have a question.”

The teacher straightened himself and turned his attention away from Emma to look at LJ. “You always have a question,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Yes sir, I know, but this is just a short one.”

The teacher didn’t respond to this. He didn’t tell LJ to go ahead, but he didn’t tell him to sit down and shut up either. He was probably too shocked that LJ had dared to speak up. LJ took this silence as license to proceed.

“During the Restoration, the Duke was officially excommunicated from the Church, isn’t that right?”

“That was a long time ago,” the teacher growled. “People saw things differently back then.”

“Yes of course sir, I know. So my question is: in another 20 years do you think we might be seeing things differently again?”

The teacher said nothing at first, but just stared silently at LJ. LJ was always confident when he was speaking, but he did less well at the staring. He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

The teacher left Emma alone and walked back to the front of the classroom. He kept his eyes fixed on LJ the whole time. “You better watch what you say Lucius,” he said. “Someday you’re going to run into someone who won’t be as forgiving as me.” There was something about the way he bit the words off that gave them an added viciousness, but he let the matter drop. LJ simply nodded and sat back down again, looking relieved to have the confrontation ended.

Emma’s sobs had quieted now, but here eyes were still wet. She crawled back into her chair and sat up straight in an effort to recover what little dignity she had left after this whole incident.

And the teacher proceeded with the lesson as if nothing had happened.

Looking back, I think this incident was a major turning point for our class, but there are also two minor things that I remember as a result.

One is that Emma was never again made to say, "God Bless the Duke." In all the chapels that followed she never stood up again for benediction, and no one made her.

The second was that during break Rosa, the prettiest girl in school, walk right over to LJ, easily the biggest nerd, and actually talked to him. 　I overheard just a little bit on my way out the door.

"How did you know that? The thing about the Canaanite Wars. It’s not in our textbook."

"Of course its not. None of the real stuff is in our textbooks. But you can find it out if you’re interested in the right books." That was all I heard. I was eager to get outside and I certainly had no desire to stick around and listen to LJ talk about his books.