A Pretty Mouth (17 page)

“Fellow Commoners dine with the Masters, don’t we?” said Rochester, with a shrug. “I heard Master Fulkerson comment that you’d be polishing his shoes all night.”

“Thank you, my friend,” said Henry, feeling a little overwhelmed by this show of kindness after the day he’d had. He hoped his misty eyes wouldn’t drip.

Rochester smiled, his beautiful, almost girlish mouth turning upwards, the lips parting to show pearly teeth. “You’re a good friend to me, too, you know.”

“But to give up your dinner!”

“Oh, that’s not mine.” Rochester shook his head. “It’s Robert’s. I asked them for a second helping, but they wouldn’t. He said he didn’t mind.”

Robert was Rochester’s manservant. Henry felt a brief flash of guilt, but then shrugged it off. “Well, thank you. It’s more than appreciated.”

“My pleasure. You can’t know how nice it is to have someone I can, I dunno … be myself around. The rest of the Fellow Commoners … well, I’d rather be here with you in the garden than out at that beano at the Hors—ah.”

“You were invited?” Henry paused, pie-slice halfway to his mouth. “You didn’t tell me!”

“I—well, I didn’t, well …” Rochester looked as miserable as a cat in the rain. “Henry, I couldn’t bring you, and I didn’t want, you know, to—”

“Nonsense!” Henry bit into his pie and yamed the slice noisily. At last, the opportunity he’d been waiting for! Today was finally looking up, at last—if he could but convince Rochester to take him hence to the Horse and Hat, he could use it as an opportunity to thank St John for his benevolence—and tell him, in turn, of his recent academic woes. He was sure, if St John knew how badly he struggled in Greek, he would agree to tutor him. Why else would he have shown him such mercy today if he did not care for him a little?

“Henry—”

Henry spoke through a mouthful of pie. “Let me just finish this and we’ll be off. I haven’t anything better to change into anyway.”

“But we’re not allowed to leave the campus except in the company of an older student—”

“I’m older than you.”

Rochester’s lip trembled, he looked as though he might burst into tears at any moment. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Henry. What if we’re caught?”

“We won’t be caught,” scoffed Henry. “We’ll slip out the back gate and be home before anyone notices!”

“But if they see you! They’ll know you weren’t invited …”

“You saw the Lord Calipash’s kindness to me in class, did you not? You think he, after such treatment, would kick me in the whirlegigs and cast me out into the street like a dog?”

Rochester was shaking his head so vehemently Henry thought his cap was in danger of flying off. “It’s not a good idea, you don’t understand what they’re like away from school—”

Henry frowned. “And you do?”

“Oh. Well …”

“So you’ve gone off to these parties before, without me?” Henry huffed. “I should’ve known.”

“Yes, I went once,” snapped Rochester. “I need not give
you
an account of all my activities, you know. But before you ask—yes, there was drink, and there was music, and there were women, too. Lots of them, breasts everywhere, their skirts hiked up to show their dark hairy cunnies.” Rochester snuffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Edwin Harris stuck his tongue into one and wiggled it about for the—I don’t know, edification of us all, he said, as well as for her pleasure. He kept at it for so very long that your precious, kindly, benevolent Lord Calipash, exclaiming how boring it was to watch such a display, snuck up behind them and poured claret down her belly.”

“I say!”

“Edwin nearly drowned. And afterwards, your St John announced he would use them all in a line, so the ladies—women, rather—bent over the tables while the rest of the Company cheered him on.” Rochester sighed. “A few other lads did it, too. I wouldn’t, and they mocked me for it—as if chastity wasn’t
respectable
.”

Henry thought back to Phineas Berry’s allegation that Rochester was ‘a stick in the mud.’ He was such a soggy merkin, what was wrong with him? Could he be allergic to fun? His nose was certainly running enough while he described a scenario Henry thought sounded jolly good. “How did I never hear tell of this? Surely there must have been a scandal …”

“They wear disguises,” sniffled Rochester. “If you go like that, in your robes, there’ll be a scene.”

“Then lend me a coat!”

“But I don’t even want to go!”

Henry looked away, disgusted. How like a lord to despair of an invitation; to scorn what he’d been handed by right of birth. It was so very unjust. Here he was, sitting in this clammy garden, alone except for a prudish little boy, while others drank and sang and—

“You really want to go, don’t you,” said Rochester softly. “You’d rather be there with them, than here with me.”

Henry felt a pang. “I—well.” He coughed. “I wouldn’t put it like
that
.”

“Fine then.” Rochester stood, his slender figure silhouetted against the candle- and torchlight of Wadham College. “We’ll go, and you’ll see how
miserable
it is. But you’ll have to wear Robert’s coat.” Rochester turned on his heel and said over his shoulder, “You won’t fit into any of mine, you great pudding.”

Chapter Three: Here The Deities Disapprove

“
Shh
,” cautioned Rochester. Henry had uttered a prodigious groan as he heaved the Earl up onto the ledge of the wall surrounding the college. “Come on, before someone sees you!”

Henry mopped his brow with a handkerchief and stuffed it back into a pocket of the coat Robert had—rather grudgingly, Henry thought—given him the use of for the night. With a sigh he dug his fingers in among the bricks and managed to scramble up after his friend. He heard a rending sound and, panicking, risked reaching around to feel his behind; it wasn’t his trousers that had split, thank God. Just a rip in the coat where a button had torn free from its moorings. Too bad for Robert.

“Come down!” cried Rochester, when Henry crested the wall. “
Hurry!”

With another grunt, Henry jumped, nearly twisting his ankle as he landed on the hard earth of the street. He readjusted the hideous cap he’d also borrowed, checked his pocket to make sure his mask was still there, and nodded. “All right, I’m ready. Dunno how we’ll get back in, though.”

“They always have a plan,” said Rochester, trotting down the street away from the college. “St John has a manservant, too, and he usually stays behind to prepare some sort of discreet ingress after-hours. Now, come on, we must go quickly. They’ll have been there some time already.”

Henry was very nervous. He had trouble catching his breath as he took off after Rochester; the urge to urinate came upon him strong every few seconds. He’d never snuck out of the college, and after Mr. Berry’s lecture that afternoon, he knew that should he be caught he might very well be thrown out, having no academic record to balance the scales against this indiscretion.

But to hell with all of that—he was going to a party!

The Horse and Hat was not particularly far from Wadham; given that the tavern’s politics were as flexible as the college’s, Henry knew the professors with Royalist sympathies, oblique or otherwise, went there to drink and get a bite to eat on Saturday nights. Henry, however, had never been there, and was glad Rochester knew the way, for he was lost within five minutes, Oxford after dark being much, well, darker and more confusing than he had anticipated.

Down alleyways they tramped, and scampered across thoroughfares, until, perhaps a quarter of an hour later, a sign-board, swinging in the light spring breeze, came into sight: A rearing stallion and, behind it, a plumed hat. Lights blazed inside, and through the windows Henry saw many figures moving about within. He mopped his forehead again, and hoped against hope he wasn’t sweating too badly, like he usually did when he was anxious.

“Here we go,” said Rochester. “Put your mask on, and someone at the Horse will direct us accordingly. They have an understanding with the management.”

“Who’s they?”

“The Blithe Company, nodgecombe!”

“Oh,” said Henry, and tied the black mask over his eyes, knotting it behind his head. “Let me do yours—you won’t be able to manage with that awful wig.”

“I like this wig.” Rochester was pouting.

“Pick up that lip or you’re liable to trip over it,” said Henry, clapping his friend on the back. “Come—I have dreamed of this for so very long. Let us have some fun!”

“You may be surprised,” said Rochester, but he pushed open the door of the inn and bowed Henry inside.

It was very crowded, and smelled strongly of middling beer and body odor. Men and women of all sorts bumped shoulders as they tried to make it to the bar and back again; the three sweaty-faced barmaids could not serve the throng quickly enough. A sign of the changing times, a bearded fellow in a weathered leather jacket was singing “When the King Enjoys His Own Again” from atop a table to much general raising of tankards and exclamations of “Long live the King!”

Henry thought it a splendid scene, and drank it all in eagerly. Now
this
was what he’d been missing! He was all smiles until a yeoman lurched into him and then swore at him for the outrage; Henry panicked and began to blather apologies—but the man moved on without further aggression, and he relaxed.

He was concerned, however, that he could see no one else wearing masks—or for that matter, anything remotely fine. Desperate, he looked around for Rochester, but it seemed he had been pushed or pulled away from Henry by one of the currents in that ocean of humanity. Seeing a flash of the dark purple of the boy’s coat in the rear left corner, Henry tried his best to wind his way quickly over.

Rochester had his ear pressed to a wooden door.

“What’s the rumpus?” Henry asked. “What are we to do?”

“They’re in the private room behind this door. It’s begun already. I’m waiting for them to finish whatever they’re doing so we don’t interrupt.”

“Interrupt them at what? A party? I thought—”

“Shut
up
, will you? Ah—here’s our moment,” said Rochester. He knocked in a pattern Henry didn’t fully catch, then ducked inside. Henry followed after.

There were perhaps nine masked gentlemen and a handful of “ladies”—also disguised—in the private chamber, but it seemed far more crowded than it was, being a small space and better-furnished than the common room. All present were bedecked in the kind of finery that might get one arrested for anti-Puritan sympathies in mixed company. Mother-of pearl buttons gleamed on coats of hunter green, slate grey, wine red, and deep purple. Long wigs trailed everywhere; ladies’ wide skirts endangered cups of claret.

Now
this
was the party Henry had been expecting!

“Stop gawping,” hissed Rochester, bringing Henry back to himself. “Try to look natural. I’d suggest sitting, and keep in mind if you speak to anyone they’ll know you don’t belong.”

That the little weasel should lecture him about looking natural—why, Rochester looked about as comfortable as a Roundhead at an Anglican mass. But Henry took his point, and, pouring himself a glass of wine, sat on a crimson-velvet upholstered chaise not too near the stage he’d spied at the back of the room. All seats and benches pointed toward it, and after Rochester’s remark about “interrupting” he assumed some entertainment would happen upon it presently.

He was correct. Just as he was growing weary of crowd-watching—enough so to get up and attempt to mingle, as Rochester had been doing—the very person he had been trying to catch a glimpse of all night appeared on the stage.

Henry had been able to recognize most of his masked colleagues as they milled about, eating things and chatting. There was Nicholas Jay, kissing the left breast of a similarly masked woman, and beside him, Anthony Neville, who said something that made everyone giggle. There was Edwin Harris, and Rowan Zwarteslang, and Richard Smith, placing wagers on something. Some of the other lads resisted identification—but there was no mistaking St John Clement.

His appearance caused the din to momentarily rise and then recede, like a wave crashing upon the seashore and quickly withdrawing. He was, to Henry’s eyes, magnificent: dressed in a coat of pearlescent sea-foam green embroidered with silver thread, he stood out among the darker raiment of his comrades, and his wig was white, rather than black. He was wearing white stockings, too, and his slender calves seemed to shine against the red curtain that obscured the makeshift backstage.

“What do you think will be the final act tonight?”

Some masked young man plunked down beside Henry on the chaise, smelling of wine and some sort of perfume. It was Aldous Clark, he thought—they had several classes together, so Henry shrugged, not trusting himself to speak. He didn’t want to be recognized. Not yet.

“Last time was rather entertaining, if—not to sound unappreciative—a little more outré than usual, don’t you think? Never watched a fellow go at it with a blower before.” Clark giggled. “Interesting, that. Can’t say I didn’t learn a few things, that St John can really give it to the ladies. But here we go anyhow, no need to wonder further.”