Haggard (39 page)

'And so you shall,' Matthews agreed, also getting up. 'But not until I have thrown you out of the window.'

'Eh?' Webster leapt backwards so fast he overturned his chair. 'Byron . . .'

'Got you.' Matthews seized Webster's shirt front. 'Now for the window.'

'Byron,' Webster screamed, wriggling to very little purpose as Matthews was at once bigger and stronger. 'You'll not permit it, Byron.'

'My dear Wedderburn
,' Byron said, leaning back in his chair to laugh, and to wink at Haggard, 'if Matthews says he is going to throw you out of the window, he will certainly throw you out of the window. But I should not take it to heart. There can never have been a window so intended for defenestration as that one. Four feet to the ground, and a flower bed at the bottom of it. Mud, my dear Wedderburn. Soft, glutinous mud.'

'Put me down.' Webster begged. 'Put me down. I don't really mean to fight you, Skinner. For God's sake, we are all friends together.'

Matthews hesitated, half way to the window, both arms around Webster's waist to lift him from the ground.

'Oh, let the fellow go,' Hobhouse suggested,
‘I
am sure we can think of better things to do than listening to Wedderburn's screams.'

'Aha.' Byron leaned forwards, his face suddenly intent. 'We are in an Abbey, thus it behoves us to be monks.'

'Monks?' Matthews inquired, with so much interest that he released his victim, who hastily ran to the far side of the table, sheltering behind Haggard.

'Indeed. The habits are waiting for us in the next room. Let us don them.' He wagged his finger. 'And only them, mind.' He led them from the table, already removing his coat and loosening his cravat.

'And then what?' Webster demanded.

'Why, then, my dear Wedderburn, we act the part. Were there ever monks who were not up to mischief?'

They tore at their clothes, laughing and joking amongst themselves while the alcohol in their brains dispelled their inhibitions. Whatever am I doing, John Haggard wondered, but he was certainly not going to stop now. He was almost the first of them naked, his body already flaming into an erection at the thought of the untold pleasures before him.

There's an anxious man,' Byron said with a shout of laughter, and he hastily dropped the habit over his shoulders, adjusted the cowl.

'And now, action,' Byron commanded, and led them in a rush along the corridor. 'We seek a virgin. Well, to be sure there is little prospect of discovering such a creature in Newstead, but as long as she
looks
like a virgin we shall be satisfied. There.'

One of the upstairs maids could be discerned at the next comer. The young men gave a whoop and chased at her. She gaped at them for a moment, her smile changing to alarm as she understood their drunken passion. She turned and ran for the stairs, scattered down them, her cap falling off and with it one shoe, which left her on her hands and knees on the next level. Before she could regain her feet they were upon her, seizing her arms and her legs to lift her from the floor.

'Oooh,' she squealed. 'Oh, sirs. Oh,
sir,
whatever are you at?' as a hand slid up her leg under her skirt.

To the dining room,' Byron shouted. To the dining room. We shall make a meal of this one.'

He cannot mean it, Haggard thought, but how his heart pounded. He had been at the back of the rush, and could only now catch a hold of a handful of toes, which wriggled and squirmed in his fingers, while her gown had been thrown back above the knees to reveal her legs; it came as a shock to Haggard to realise that he had never seen a woman's legs before—he could remember at one stage in his life, not so very long ago, doubting whether his half sister Alice even possessed any. But here were legs, short and plump, to be sure, and lightly covered in brown hair, but none the less, female legs, leading to
...
he discovered they were in the dining room, and the gasping, giggling girl had been laid in the very centre of the as yet uncleared table, in and out of half demolished plates of tarts and blancmanges. Byron was upending a bottle of wine over her face, so that she gasped and licked as she attempted to swallow some of the liquid.

'Now then,' Byron shouted. 'The wench must be stripped and prepared. Lay on, my lads. Lay on.'

They surged up her arms and legs to reach her body itself, grasping handfuls of material to pull and tear it. Haggard found himself staggering backwards from the table, holding half a yard of skirt. He threw himself into the fray, found some petticoat beneath, ripped this off instead, and gazed at the naked body of the girl, almost still now as she had entirely run out of breath. The plumpness spread upwards from her thighs into her hips, had her belly quivering like a jelly, as were her breasts. But Haggard was fascinated by the seething mass of hair on her groin, the suggestion of what lay beneath.

'Now for the moment,' Byron shouted. 'Who . . . ?' He looked around them, pretending to make up his mind, as if his mind had not been made up from the beginning. 'Young Johnnie here. I'll wager he's a virgin.'

'Well . . .' Haggard began, but he was not going to confess that. Not that it would have made any difference. Hands seized him in turn, pulled the habit from his shoulders and threw it on the floor, and he was lifted and deposited on the girl's body. Whatever must she think of it, he wondered, but her eyes, wide and staring, hardly seemed to notice him at all.

The scoundrel isn't hard,' Matthews said.
^‘
‘
Tis the excitement,' Hobhouse panted.

'We must assist," Byron said. Someone's hand touched his penis, he did not know whose, and gave it several gentle caresses. His hands gave way and he was lying on the girl's breasts. He wondered if he should kiss her, and felt her legs closing on him while her lips parted and her tongue came out to lick his cheek. He seized her mouth even as he felt himself sinking into her, in and in and in into a warmth he had never known before. Only a second later he was shaking with a convulsive passion, while someone was patting his buttocks and someone else was shouting in his ear.

'Oh, good lad,' Byron shouted. 'Good lad. You went into her like a veteran. Now, who's to be next?'

John Haggard found himself in a chair, still naked, while Byron held a glass of wine to his lips. 'You did well, lad,' he said. 'Well. I can see we are going to be the best of friends. When I come back from my tour.'

'And did you discover any buried treasure?' Haggard asked.

'No, sir,' John said. 'We found a variety of skeletons. Including a skull of great size. Lord Byron said he was going to have it made into a drinking cup.'

'Ha ha,' Haggard shouted. 'Sport, eh? What sport. By God, we had none of that in my day.' He fell serious, brooding into his glass.
‘I
had none of that,' he said thoughtfully. There was none of that in Barbados.'

John gazed across the table at his sister. As usual she had been silent throughout the meal. Now she looked even more sad than usual. He endeavoured to signal her with eyes and eyebrows, but although she returned his gaze, her expression did not change.

'Aye, well,' Haggard said, it sounds like a splendid couple of days. I had supposed you'd be staying longer.'

"I think that was the intention. But they soon got to quarrelling. Matthews, mainly, he quarrelled with everyone. So the party broke up. And it's good to be back in Derleth.'

'It's good to have you back.' Haggard leaned across to squeeze his son's hand. Then he pushed back his chair and left the room.

John Haggard finished his wine. 'Why do you and he never speak?'

'We speak, when we have to,' Alice said.

'But you hate him. I wish you'd tell me why. He couldn't have known Charlie would die. Or Roger either. If either of them were alive, I'd be happy to go into the Army, or the Navy. I think it's a man's duty, with a war on.'

‘I
do not hate him because of Charlie.' Alice said. She also got up. 'I hate him . . . because of what he is, what he does. What he has always done.'

'Such as?'

'Oh, you would hardly know. Anyway, it was before you were born. But he is being hateful again now. Do you know what he plans? To build a factory.'

'Here in Derleth? I say, what fun.'

'Do you really think so?' She stood above him. 'He means to spin cotton, on those machines. He means to put all the villagers who supplement their incomes by hand weaving right out of business. They'll have to work for him or starve. And do you know why? Just so his millions won't become a million less.'

'Well
...
I suppose that makes economic sense. Machines will spin much more cotton than any person could do.'

They'll be slaves,' Alice said. 'Johnnie . . .' She rested her hand on his shoulder. He could not ever remember her doing that before. 'I'd be so very grateful if you'd have a word with him.'

'Me?' He gazed at her. What a lovely young woman she was. Compared with her, that girl on the table in Newstead Abbey had been a carthorse. That girl on the table, at Newstead. He could remember everything about it, and yet nothing about it. He had been so ashamed, and the next day when he had encountered the same girl in one of the corridors, while she had broken into a fit of giggling, he had turned and walked the other way. Run the other way.

But she was the least of the problems which had arisen from that evening. What would Father say, just for instance, if he knew the truth of it. how Byron had held his cock, how he had, indeed, suggested they do more than that. Byron had been equally unsure. There was the point. It was a great crime he had proposed, and the moment he had discovered no immediate response he had changed the subject. But he had come back to it, with hints and innuendoes, time and again. Had the others ever felt that way? Webster and Hobhouse and Hodgson? What absurdity. Matthews perhaps, because Matthews would try anything once.

Anything once. Did I wish to try it, he wondered? Does wishing to try it make me less of a man? And try what? He had no idea.

Anyway, he reflected, so long as I can discover beauty, even in my own sister, there is nothing the matter with my manhood.

'He adores you,' Alice said. 'If you'd oppose this scheme, he might just not do it.'

'Father? Put off a scheme for increasing his wealth because I didn't like it? There's a likely possibility. Anyway, as I said, I think he's probably right.'

She gazed at him for some moments, her face sombre. 'Will you ride with me this afternoon?'

It was the first time she had ever asked him to do that, and he, like everyone else in Derleth, was aware of her solitary expeditions. 'Would you really like me to?'

'I have asked you to,' she said. 'Weil leave as soon as you are ready.'

The weather was warm for Easter; the sky was blue as the clouds of a week ago had cleared away. Alice Haggard's habit was in pale green, showing off the colour of her hair, the pink and white of her cheeks. John felt quite proud to be riding at her side, as they turned away from the Hall and the village, and took the cut through the hills for the mine.

'What does it feel like?' she asked. To know that one day all of this will be yours?'

it gives one a very pleasant feeling of security,' he said, and watched her frown. 'Believe me, Alice, I know how lucky I am. Nearly all of my chums are head over heels in debt.'

'Even Lord Byron?' she asked.

'Even Lord Byron. He more than most, in fact.'

'Yet he is going on his tour.'

'On borrowed money.'

She touched her horse with her heels, cantered away from him, waited for him to catch her up. They stood on a knoll looking down on the mine, listening to the clanking of the air pumps, watching the donkeys coming out of the shaft entrance each with its two panniers of coal, the grimy men emptying the buckets on to the ever growing pile in the bottom of the first barge.

'Don't you find that hideous?' she asked.

‘I
t's our wealth.'

'Wealth,' she cried. 'Is that all you think about?' 'Did you bring me out here to quarrel?'

Once again the appraising stare. 'No,' she said at last. 'No, I did not do that. I wished to speak with you. I had supposed Cambridge was a place of liberal views. Father accuses it of being so. He says you have been imbibing dangerous ideas.'

John Haggard smiled,
‘I
suppose by his notions they are dangerous enough. We oppose the continued Tory dominance of government, the way they trample on the people. We abhor the continuance of the war with France. Britain and France are the two most civilised nations in Europe. We should be allies in opposing Russian barbarism, not fighting each other. Certainly we should not be trying to pull down the greatest man of our age.'