The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (41 page)

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ARE A QUARRELSOME LOT AT THE best of times. Young blood runs hot and rises suddenly to a boil in defense of its passion, whether it be a man or a woman, an idea or an ideal. Nearly every winter brought a cause to divide the University into factions that spat when they met in the street and occasionally blacked one another’s eyes.

Older magisters reminisced about the academic feuds of their youth, when students threw rotten fruit at Doctor Darlington of Geography when he debated Doctor Russom over the earth’s roundness, and carried Weedin of Rhetoric shoulder-high through the streets, waving his defeated rival’s gown behind him like a banner. But not even the oldest of them could remember feelings running quite as high as over the ancient historians’ debate.

In the King’s Horn, where Governors, Chairs, and the older magisters were accustomed to drink undisturbed by lesser mortals, it was generally agreed that young Doctor St Cloud had gone too far. It was all very well to shake things up—that was what young magisters did, what they themselves had done in their salad days. But to declare the wizards were real and their magic true! First off, he couldn’t possibly prove it, not by those so-called “new scholarly methods” of his, not by any methods at all.

Doctor Leonard Rugg walked into the thick of it one afternoon when he joined his old magister and sponsor, Doctor Polycarp of Metaphysics, for a friendly cup of the Horn’s famous brandy-punch.

“It’s a thing that shouldn’t be proved, whether it’s true or not,” Polycarp was saying as Rugg approached. “Ah, Rugg, there you are. Take a cup, lad, and sit down. Doctor Standish and I were just talking about this challenge business. Standish, you remember Leonard Rugg. I know you’re not much on metaphysics, but you ought to hear him on the Essence of Being.”

Rugg disclaimed modestly, declared himself honored, dipped himself a fragrant cup of punch from the pewter bowl on the table, and installed himself in a comfortably shabby chair.

“It’s a bad business,” Polycarp went on. “Bad for the City, bad for the University. I don’t know what the Governors were about to allow it.”

“They can’t refuse permission for an academic challenge,” said Standish. “It’s a bad precedent.”

Rugg struggled briefly with the knowledge that he ought to keep out of this, and lost. “Just so,” he said cordially. “It’s what academic challenges are for, after all: to bring up uncomfortable subjects and put them to public scrutiny, find out the truth, whatever it may be.”

“Truth!” Polycarp snorted. “The truth is, magic is nasty and unnatural, whether it’s ‘real’ or not.”

“What,” said Standish, “is ‘real’ anyway, in this context? No one disputes that the wizards did
something,
something they made a great mystery of, something that did considerable harm. That’s ‘real’ enough. I don’t see that there’s anything to dispute.”

“Of course there is,” Rugg said. “The harm came from the mystery. Remember what Arvin said: ‘Truth is a lamp. Shuttered, covered, hidden, it illuminates nothing, and leaves us stumbling in the dark.’ ”

“Arvin wasn’t talking about magic,” Polycarp objected. “He was talking about metaphysics. In any case, we already know the truth about the wizards. From Vespas on down, the authorities are in absolute agreement. It’s as if this Basil St Cloud has offered to prove that the sun rises in the west. It’s pointless and useless and dangerous.”

“That’s what Doctor Crabbe says, certainly,” Rugg began, “but—”

“St Cloud, too,” Polycarp barreled on. “Dangerous, I mean, and ambitious. I wouldn’t be astonished to learn that he means to throw over the faculty and the Governors and turn the University into a college for wizards.”

Rugg looked at Standish, who was shaking his head in somber disapproval. “Well, I’d be astonished,” Leonard Rugg burst out. “I’ve never heard such nonsense. In the first place, if magic isn’t real, how could St Cloud teach it? And in the second, I know the man, and he hasn’t an ambitious thought in his head.”

Understandably offended, Polycarp puffed himself out like an owl. “Nonsense, is it?”

“Don’t rise to his bait, Poly,” Standish said. “He’s one of them. I’ve heard your name, Rugg. You’re St Cloud’s second, aren’t you?”

With the two old men glaring at him, Rugg was overcome with a complex mixture of defiance and fear he hadn’t felt since he was twenty. “Yes, I am,” he snapped. “What of it?”

Polycarp bristled. “Keep a civil tongue in your head; that’s the Halliday Chair of Mathematics you’re speaking to.”

Standish said, “You tell young St Cloud that he’s likely to end by being stripped of his position and his rank. It’s a pity, as bright as he is, but he’s only himself to blame, making a mockery of the University and her institutions. He can still withdraw, save us all a lot of grief. You tell him.”

Leonard Rugg set his untouched punch down gently on the table and said, “I will, Doctor Standish. But he won’t withdraw.” He stood up. “You’re quite right to be nervous of St Cloud. This debate will show the whole lot of you how true scholarship works against a moribund tradition that should have been put down along with the dead kings! What price the Halliday Chair then?”

He bowed and beat a strategic retreat.

LEONARD RUGG WAS NOT THE ONLY MAN TO JOIN Battle in St Cloud’s cause. Students quarreled with their magisters and with each other. Catchwords began to appear: a sure sign of trouble. “Wizard’s boy” was a taunt that could bring erstwhile friends to blows. Some of the noble students, or their families, took umbrage at the subject of the debate and stopped coming to classes altogether. Peter Godwin might have been one of them, had his grandfather, Michael, Lord Godwin, not required his parents to let the boy follow his own loyalties without interference. This inspired Peter to examine his loyalty to St Cloud and his cause very carefully indeed.

“It’s not St Cloud, really,” he told his grandfather, with an air of astonished discovery.

The old man was amused. “It’s not?”

“It’s true he’s a great teacher, and he never laughs at you the way some of them do and he makes you feel brighter than you thought you were. But that’s not worth fighting for.”

“Are you planning to fight?” Lord Godwin inquired gently. “If so, perhaps we should add swordsmanship to your course of study.”

“Don’t tease me, Grandfather. I’m serious. What St Cloud is going to debate has to do with our right to speak the truth, no matter who objects. And that’s worth fighting for.”

“Oh, dear,” said Michael Godwin. “You’d better see your knife is sharp, then.”

“It’s not that kind of fighting,” his grandson said.

PERHAPS IT WASN’T KNIFE FIGHTING, BUT IT WAS close enough. Coming out of LeClerc one day, St Cloud and his followers were set upon by a dozen Crabbites, none of them quite sober.

“Traitor!” they shouted. “Wizard’s bumboys! Superstitious pigs!” And they let loose a volley of rotten apples and snowballs. One of the latter, packed around a stone, hit Benedict Vandeleur on the arm. He let out a roar and swung his fist at the foremost Crabbite, a bulky man with a wild shock of curls, who roared back like the bull he resembled and set himself to wrestle Vandeleur to the ground. Justis Blake swore, pushed Doctor St Cloud into the safety of the arched doorway, and launched himself into the melee.

It would have been more fun for everyone concerned if the street had not been freezing cold, with yesterday’s snowfall churned to a frozen mush with mud and filth. Blake’s knuckles stung and ached with each blow he landed. Beside him, Peter Godwin was sobbing with pain or anger, tears runnelling his muddy face as he flailed at his sneering opponent. Blake tripped the sneering man, who fell heavily back into the man Blake had been fighting, who reflexively punched him before he realized that they were on the same side. Blake laughed, seized them both by the scruffs of their gowns, and banged their heads together with a great crack. He was beginning to warm up nicely.

Suddenly, a Crabbite at the edge of the fight shook off his opponent and took to his heels, shouting, “The Watch! The Watch!” Two of his fellows followed him, dragging a downed friend between them. Blake heard the telltale whistle, close and drawing closer. He froze, as did his opponent, stared wildly around, and dropped into the mud, felled by a farewell blow to his jaw.

By the time the Watch sauntered onto the scene, the street was empty. Trampled mud, three mangled caps, a muffler, and a torn sleeve bore silent witness to the recent combat, but combatants there were none. The Watch shrugged, pocketed their whistles, and went back to their warm guard-house. It was nothing to them if the idiots all killed each other, as long as they cleared away the bodies after.

Inside LeClerc, Doctor St Cloud was rather helplessly stanching Peter Godwin’s bleeding nose with his own handkerchief, while Fremont and Vandeleur revived Blake with a handful of snow. One man had lost his sleeve; a bruise spread like an inkstain across another’s cheek. Lindley was nursing a sore jaw and scraped knuckles. They were all filthy, shivering with cold and reaction, and chattering sixteen to the dozen.

“Did you see the buggers run?” inquired Vandeleur happily.

“We showed them who were the better men.” Godwin’s voice was rather muffled by the handkerchief.

“They called us traitors!” Fremont was indignant. “Reactionary pigs!”

A chorus of agreement: “They’re nothing but sheep! Parrots! Geese!”

“Silence!” St Cloud, who had been listening to all this with mounting impatience, lost his temper. “You are carrying on like small boys at a fair,” he said into the astonished lull. “We are civilized men, are we not? We settle our differences with words, not blows; reasoned arguments, not curses. Are you dockmen, or are you scholars of ancient history?”

Glances were exchanged, sullen or shamefaced or amused.
Poor Doctor St Cloud,
Blake thought muzzily.
Who’s going to
tell him?

Oddly enough, it was Lindley. His flaming hair was quenched with mud, and his narrow jaw sported a painful-looking lump, but he spoke clearly and proudly. “We are scholars of ancient history. We are scholars of truth. There are those who must silence truth at all costs. When they come at us with blows and curses, what may we do but answer them in kind?”

“Well said, Lindley!” exclaimed Vandeleur, astonished, and there was a murmur of approval from the other students. Lindley blushed scarlet and sucked blood from his knuckles.

St Cloud shook his head. “I am ashamed to be the cause of this,” he said. But even as he said it, he knew that he was lying. There was something in him that gloried in the sight of these young men, battered and bleeding in his cause—something that accepted their service as its due, that counted each drop of blood shed as an offering. “But you have fought nobly, and I am proud of you for that, at least.”

They all looked pleased with themselves. St Cloud considered telling them not to fight again unless attacked, decided that would be spitting into the wind, and recommended that they clean themselves up before going to the Nest, “to save Max the trouble of kicking you all out as vagabonds.” This mild jest raised a laugh, so he went on, “I’ll go ahead and bespeak a pie for you.” And then he left them.

THE BLACKBIRD’S NEST WAS NOT IMMUNE TO THE GENERAL late-winter infection of change and upset. It was no longer the cheerful haunt of humanities scholars out for a drink and a good argument, but a kind of radicals’ headquarters, full of St Cloudites of all academic persuasions. Whatever they thought of St Cloud personally, they all agreed that Truth was to be found in the examination of empirical data rather than in the writings of previous generations. There were contingents of astronomists, physicians, and natural scientists of all kinds. And there were Northerners.

There’d always been some Northerners at the Blackbird’s Nest: they were an insular lot, but not too insular to drink with their fellow students from time to time. Now there were more of them, making faces over Max’s excellent beer when he ran out of cider, and repelling friendly advances with stony silence. But not Anthony Lindley’s.

To everyone’s astonishment, Lindley often forsook Historians’ Corner for the Northerners’ table, and even took to wearing his hair in the multiple braids they affected. Whatever unpleasantness there may have been between them over Finn, Greenleaf, and Smith, had obviously been forgotten. He and the Northerners were, as Fremont put it, thick as gruel.

“I wonder what he sees in them?” Peter Godwin wondered one frozen afternoon. “It’s not as if they have anything in common with him—they’re all natural scientists and lawyers and physicians.”

“And they’re all dreamers at heart,” Blake explained. “They share a vision of the ancient North as an enchanted land, and they’d love to wake up one morning and discover that enchantment returned.”

Vandeleur added, “There’s hating Finn’s guts. They’ve got that in common, too.”

“The incendiary Master Finn,” said Godwin. “I do wonder what has become of him. He can’t still be in the Chop, surely.”

Vandeleur shrugged. “They could have forgotten about him or mislaid him, I suppose; but it’s more likely that he took off downriver as soon as they let him go. He did betray his friends, after all, and, as far as I know, Greenleaf and Smith are still in prison. The Northerners don’t impress me as being as understanding and tolerant as our kindhearted Blake here.”

Blake fetched Vandeleur a gentle clip on the head, designed to demonstrate just how tolerant and understanding he really was. Vandeleur shoved him back, and there might have been a friendly scuffle had not Anthony Lindley joined them, tankard in hand.