Daniel Friedman - Riot Most Uncouth

I nodded. “In light of my recent accomplishment, I do find the classroom to be small and provincial and an impediment to my artistic development. My great talent carries with it a moral duty to experience the world; to live, to love, to never deny any impulse.”

Fat Cheeks snorted.

Old Beardy leaned forward and placed a hand on mine. “There will be time for all of that. But the academy has value you’ve been rash to discount. We provide the frame of reference through which you may filter your future experience. We provide the tools to examine the pleasures of life and to find meaning in them.”

“What use have I for your frame of reference, when my own is already so refined?” I asked. “I am, after all, the finest romantic poet in the history of the world.”

“Mr. Shakespeare would dispute that contention,” said Fat Cheeks.

“Seeing how Mr. Shakespeare is quite dead, I’d be extremely surprised if he did,” I told him. “And, anyway, Shakespeare was a man of no imagination who cribbed all his stories from old novels. He was also a limp-wristed cross-dresser who probably spent his evenings getting buggered in alleyways.”

Fat Cheeks’s eyes narrowed. “We’ve heard unsettling rumors of your own immoral predilections, especially in regard to your relationship with young Mr. Edleston.”

My fingers twisted around the thin silver ring I wore on my left small finger. “Mr. Edleston did not return to Cambridge this term.” Little needs to be said about John Edleston, except that he was my protege, and I loved him. His voice was honey-sweet, his features were pleasing to look upon, and by the fall of 1807, he had been ejected from Trinity, which was part of the reason I, too, wished to take leave of Cambridge.

Edleston was an orphan of modest means, brought to the College to sing soprano in the choir. When his voice changed, the College revoked his scholarship. Thus, we parted. I could not draw enough credit against my holdings to fund his education as well as my own, and he never would have taken my charity. Love blooms in the spring and dies in the fall. My fallow period would not last. My ardor was rarely dormant, and some new infatuation would soon quench my heart’s grief and rage. But none had yet.

“That’s not what I asked you,” said the fat man.

My burning gaze locked with his. Old Beardy, stuck between us, squirmed a bit. “Like many gentlemen of my class, I went to boarding school at Harrow,” I said. “A boy there, especially one of small stature and clear complexion, must learn to fight with his fists and feet and teeth, or else he must learn to savor whatever dubious pleasures are foisted upon him.”

“I hope you’re telling us you learned to fight, Lord Byron.” His voice was low and his jaw was clenched, and his shiny pinched features squished together from the sheer force of his contempt toward me.

“I shall happily punch you in the face, if doing so will alleviate your concerns,” I suggested.

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” said Beardy.

“You still haven’t answered my questions.”

I bit my lower lip. “If you and I were to meet in one of Mr. Shakespeare’s alleyways, it would not be I who would end up buggered.”

He rose from his big chair. “Is that a threat, Lord Byron?” The tension of confrontation set his whole body jiggling.

“Think of it as a compliment,” I said. “You have very lovely skin. Has anyone ever told you that? You are like a ripe piece of fruit.”

Fat Cheeks remained standing but turned his rage upon Beardy. “I don’t need to hear any more of this. My recommendation regarding this matter remains unchanged.” He pivoted on his heel and turned to Shar-Pei, who had not spoken at all. “And you’ve been thoroughly useless today, Sharp, so, congratulations.”

Then he heaved himself out of the room, the aged floorboards complaining about his ponderousness each time he brought a stumpy foot down upon them. When, at last, the oak door at the far end of the hall slammed closed, Shar-Pei turned on his stool to make sure Fat Cheeks was indeed gone.

“What a colossal twat,” he said.

Silence shrouded the three of us, until Beardy cleared his throat.

“Lord Byron,” he said, resting a patrician hand on my shoulder. “You are one of the most brilliant boys any of us has ever encountered, but you are also intemperate and arrogant and disrespectful. You have the potential within you to be a great man. It is our mission to help you, if you are willing to pursue a righteous path. The question we must address is whether you really wish to be here at the College.”

“I think I do not,” I said.

“To leave would be a rash decision, and a regrettable one,” Beardy said. “Take some time to think about your future, and we will speak again at the end of the term.”

He stood and departed. Shar-Pei trotted out after his master, leaving me alone in that dim, cavernous space.

I waited a few minutes, and then I stole one of the chairs.

My father threw a china plate straight up. Its gilt edges glinted in the sunlight, and its painted pattern, pale pinks and greens, swirled as it spun near the top of its arc. Mad Jack drew his pistol and fired at it, but he was too drunk to aim properly, and the shot was far to the right of its mark. The plate fell to the ground and shattered. I covered my face with my arms to protect my eyes from errant shards.

He rose and flung the spent weapon as far as he could. Then he staggered backward a step and collapsed into his high-backed chair.

“In the East, little George, the dead are not content to remain in their graves,” my father said. “They rise, and they walk, and they hunt and feed upon the living.” His church bell voice was rusty and jagged, like he’d swallowed a fistful of gravel.

I was six years old and delighted by his attention, but he was talking to me only because he required an audience and his friends had deserted him. The money was almost gone. Men had been coming into the house over the last several days to carry things away. They’d taken all the paintings off the walls. They took away my mother’s jewelry, the pretty things she told me had once belonged to her own mother and would one day be my wife’s. My father, having finally exhausted all the credit he could draw, was powerless to protect himself from such indignities. The significance of these events quite escaped my comprehension.

“Tell me about them, Father.”

He was drinking whisky from a crystal glass. The bottle sat open next to his chair, along with the china, which he was entertaining himself by destroying. He had taken to imbibing in the daytime lately, as well as at night. He had hauled his chair, the last of the heavy high-backed ones, onto the lawn so he could look out at the garden. It had been weeks since he let the groundskeeper go, and the landscape was turning wild again. The shrubbery had grown tangled from lack of pruning, its carefully maintained shapes dissolving into chaotic messes of brambles. The beds of flowers were choked with weeds, and the once-manicured carpet of grass had grown long and uneven.

“The gypsies pin corpses into coffins with wooden stakes, through the heart and the mouth so they will stay where they are put. If they are improperly secured, those who make a bargain with the Devil can arise as vrykolakas, as vampire. And the vampire would dearly enjoy the blood of a plump boy like you, if you weren’t so damaged.”