T. Boyle - Water Music

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Two days later Gleg was summoned to the front of the classroom. Peat glowed in the stone fireplace, a slow steady drip of meltwater puddled the earthen floor. The place had formerly housed dairy cattle, and the air was stung with the odor of urine and soured milk. Frost silvered the slats of the inner walls, the scholars’ candles flickered fitfully in the gloom, rodents rustled in the thatch overhead. “George Peter Gleg,” Tullochgorm intoned, “come forward.”

The thirtyseven scholars froze at their makeshift desks. All eyes were on Tullochgorm as Gleg apprehensively rose from his seat and started up the aisle. Since the schoolmaster’s face never varied in expression, it was difficult to assess his mood at this juncture — was he angry or merely dyspeptic? Was Gleg to be chastised or praised? It was anyone’s guess — though Adam and Mungo, among others, had a pretty good idea.

Tullochgorm’s totem was the cat-o’-nine-tails that cut an ominous slash in the wall behind him. He liked no one and no thing. Words like wonder, beauty and life were foreign to his lexicon. He was impoverished and embittered, a mere grind dependent upon the niggardly salary the township raised for him, and on the charity of his students. “ Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus ,” he snarled, lashing out at each syllable as if it were a dog to be kicked.

Gleg stood before the schoolmaster’s massive oak table, his head bowed. He answered in Latin: “I–I don’t understand. Sir.”

“What! Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa , you young Turk.”

“But—”

“Silence!” Tullochgorm was on his feet now, delivering the customary lecture about disobedience, lack of discipline, those insidious few who circumvent the established rules of society and weaken the fiber of the Empire. When he was finished he seized Gleg by the scruff of the neck and shook him till the snot ran from his nose. “Two shillings!” shrieked the schoolmaster. “Two shillings! Quamprimum !”

A week later Gleg was called before the class for the second time. Adam smirked at Finn and Colin as the room fell silent and the wind moaned in the thatch. The younger boys blanched, clutching at the edges of their desks till their knuckles turned white. Tullochgorm was livid. Gleg frightened and confused. Mungo merely glanced up, absently fingercombed his hair, and then turned back to the dog-eared copy of Jobson’s African adventures he’d concealed beneath his Latin grammar. “ Bonis nocet quisquis pepercerit malis! ” roared Tullochgorm. And then: “Bend over the desk, reprobate.”

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Adam Park and his cohorts had achieved their end: Gleg was toppled. In the space of seven short days he’d gone from first scholar to thirty-seventh. But it didn’t end there. How could it, after all, when Gleg was so clearly marked, so conspicuously pathetic, so obvious a target he might as well have painted a black spot between his eyebrows? Adam and his friends had found the quintessential whipping boy. The more he suffered, the more they despised him — and the more determined they became to annihilate him, devastate him, squash him as they would have squashed a slug or spider. Adam took his brother aside. “Let’s have him expelled,” he whispered.

The following morning, at dawn, the scholars of Selkirk were gathered outside the schoolhouse awaiting the arrival of Tullochgorm. It was cold, and a number of them were huddled round the doorway, wringing their hands and stamping their feet. Adam and Finn were there, hands in pockets, copybooks tucked under their arms. They grinned at one another like Casca and Metellus Cimber on the front steps of the Senate House. Mungo and a few of the hardier types were out on the glazed-over duckpond, keeping warm with a round of curling. The big forty-pound stones hissed out over the ice like a long insuck of breath, the players panting along beside them with their whisks, the echo of the collisions bludgeoning the sharp morning air. From time to time a shout of triumph would ring out — in Latin, of course.

Gleg was late. He hurried along the path, bent over double, his copybook stuffed down the front of his jacket, a pot of ale cradled in his arms. Today was a tuition day, and each of the scholars was required to contribute a specified item to the schoolmaster’s larder, in lieu of pecuniary considerations. Colin had brought a boll of wheat, Mungo a basket of potatoes. Others had been asked for neeps or butter or a stewing chicken. Gleg’s assignment was to bring a pot of ale for the schoolmaster’s lunch each day for the next two weeks.

As Georgie beat his way around the pond, Mungo turned and called to him. “Hey Gleg — you want to sweep for me?” Georgie was stunned. He couldn’t have been more disoriented had he been hit in the back of the head with a shovel. Sweep for Mungo Park? He couldn’t believe it. Never before had anyone invited him to participate in anything. Though he wanted nothing more. Though he sat for hours and watched them at shinty, football, golf, dying for a chance at it, praying that the goaltender would break a leg and they’d turn to him, Georgie Gleg, slap his back, see him in a new light.

“Well: what do you say? You want to or not?”

He nodded, nodded emphatically, his heart beating agamst his ribs like a bird fighting to burst free. “I’ve just got — just got to drop off the ale —” he stammered, already loping across the lot to the schoolhouse, too caught up in it to be suspicious.

He rushed up to the door, out of breath, twin streams of mucus depending from his nostrils. It took no more than five seconds — he set the pot of ale down among the other offerings, slid his copybook into a chink in the wall, and shot back up the path.

His fate was sealed.

Adam grabbed up the tankard as soon as Gleg turned his back, flipped back the lid and took a long hard swallow. He wiped his mouth and took another swig. Then handed the jar to Finn. Finn drank deep, passed the jar to Robbie Monboddo, who took his turn and passed it on. A moment later Adam drained it. And then, with Colin looking out for Tullochgorm, he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed into the neck of the jar, fighting for every last drop, pushing, pushing, his face red with the strain. Finn was next. And then Robbie, Colin and the rest. At first Colin couldn’t make his water come and the others coached and cajoled him, talking it up as if they were out on the football field and this were a shot on goal. Tullochgorm had been sighted, the jar wasn’t full yet. Come on, come on: you can do it. Finally, with less than a minute to spare, Colin let loose, sweet music, and filled the jar to the rim. A cheer went up. Tullochgorm thought it was for him, and tipped his hat as he stepped past them to open the door.

In the winter, sessions began at dawn and ran through till sundown, with a half-hour break for refreshment at noon. During the break the boys sat at their desks, shivering, and nibbled at a bit of cold porridge, or took advantage of the free time to skate or curl on the pond. On this particular day, no one left the room. There was a low murmur of lunchtime chatter, Mungo chewed at a cold potato, Colin warmed a crust over the fire. Furtively, they all watched Tullochgorm.

The schoolmaster had turned his chair in order to face the side wall. He’d laid up his rod — for thirty minutes at least — and had already begun to shut out the scene around him, already begun to forget the slate board, the dreary room, the unwashed faces at his elbow. There was a book open on the desk before him — the Bellum Grammaticale —and he was alternately skimming through it, massaging his feet and dicing a raw turnip into a dish of groats. Fascinated, the scholars hung on his every move, as if they’d never before seen a man scratch his feet and spoon up porridge at the same time. When he reached for his pot of ale the room was electric with tension, a wave of quiet hysteria cresting and then as quickly subsiding. It was a false alarm. Abstracted, the schoolmaster put the tankard down again and took a spoonful of cereal instead, his eyes all the while fixed on the pages of his book. Finn Macpherson nearly leaped from his seat. Adam couldn’t resist a low nervous chuckle, Colin wiped his nose expectantly. Only Gleg was oblivious to it, scribbling away in his copybook as if he were immune to the nasty little surprises of life, poor dull unlucky Gleg, the sacrificial lamb blindly nosing round the pillars of the bloodstained altar itself.