Victor’s voice suddenly cry out in pain from behind the wall, and Quentin’s only once.
But nearly a month passed while that whisper hole was in place, and no teacher really minded if you spent a long time in the shower. And we supposed the sound of the water might hide our voices.
That was the summer Victor formalized our rules, and put them to quick votes which we registered in whispers, or by a quick knock on the wall.
It was Quentin who insisted we all take once more the vow we had made, and forgotten, in the coal cellar. “Vows are powerful things,” he said. “They set things in motion.”
We could not all put our hands together through the tiny hole in the locker room, so Vanity and I held hands, while the boys (I assume) did their Three-Musketeers slogan.
And Quentin added one personal codicil to the group oath. “Whatever has been hidden in darkness, I will discover. I will learn the secret, I will find the key, I will dare to turn it; I will pass through the door. The sleeper slumbers; he shall awaken.”
Quentin was the one who discovered the secret. It was more than a year, but he kept his word.
6.
We had been told that the boundaries were bad for our health, that we would become ill if we passed too far beyond them. Victor dismissed this alarming news as a trick, something to keep us away from the estate boundaries, gathered in toward the center of the grounds. He defied this ban as often as he could, and the Headmaster could invent no reason to keep Victor from climbing among the rocks and slopes of the Eastern Downs, provided he stayed inside the bounds.
As I said, it was Quentin who discovered the first of the secrets. He had been among the barrows and ancient graves of the North, perhaps in some place told to him by a winged shape which flew at night, late in the year.
It was an autumn day, then. It was cold for the time of year. Morning dew formed frost on the windowpanes. I remember how, in that season, the rising red-gold sun sent weakened beams to bring a mist rising from the North Lawn like steam from a cauldron. The trees to the South seemed to be afire, if fire could burn cold. We had icicles hanging from the rain-spouts and the saints in the chapel, even before the leaves had turned.
I remember it was not long after Quentin’s first experiment with shaving. He appeared at the breakfast table, dressed, as we all were, in formal morning clothes, but with daubs of cotton clinging to his cheek where he had nicked himself. I remember this was about nine months after Colin’s first attempt to grow the stringy mess he called a goatee, and almost two years after Victor’s lip began to show fuzz.
On that day, Quentin announced at the breakfast table that he had learned how to fly. He spoke in a very low voice, without moving his lips.
Dr. Fell and Mrs. Wren, who normally sat at the great walnut table at breakfast, had been called away that morning to prepare for some important meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors (who were due later that week). Only Mr. Glum was there to watch us, but he was not allowed to sit at the table as the teachers were. There was a window seat at the bay window, and the morning sun was sparkling off the diamond-shaped panes. Mr. Glum sat there, yawning and grumbling over his porridge. The sunlight glanced off his balding head, and he kept pushing aside the drooping ferns Mrs. Wren had placed in the hanging pots before the bay window.
He was too far away to hear us, and Quentin had given Colin the secret sign (asking for the butter twice) that told Colin to make a racket. Colin was asking Mr. Glum about the trees in the orchard, whether they moved at night, or spoke to each other in leaf-language when the wind blew, or if they felt pain when their branches were lopped off.
I held a piece of buttered toast before my lips and hissed to Quentin, “Where did you get an airplane? The nearest airfield is in Bristol.”
I remember feeling green with jealousy. But I do not remember doubting him, not for an instant.
“No plane. I don’t use a machine. I can make the wind dense. Its essence is to give way, but other essences obtain when the signs are right.”
I daubed my lip with a napkin. “You’re going to show me tonight.”
Victor leaned across the table, teapot in hand as if to pour some tea into my (full and untouched) teacup. Victor whispered, “Not tonight. There are workmen and a cleaning crew going over the Great Hall. We’ll be locked in early. Tomorrow. Their guard will be relaxed.”
He was right. We knew the Headmaster had ordered a large antique table, made of a single huge slab of green marble, to be moved into the Great Hall to prepare for the meeting. It was too large for the main doors. Workmen were tearing shingles off the roof and were going to lower the enormous table in on a crane. The table was resting in a temporary shed on the North Lawn, covered in rope and canvas.
We also knew the teachers kept a closer eye on us whenever there were outsiders around.
And yet it was Vanity who said, “Oh! I’ve an idea! Oh! Listen! Being locked up is better! No one searches for a locked-up person.”
Victor looked dubious.
Quentin rubbed his nose, so that his hand hid his mouth. He whispered in his soft, smooth voice, “Triune of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn tonight. Jupiter moderates between the warm violence of Mars and the leaden coolness of Saturn. Good time for transitions. Should be tonight.”
Vanity wiggled and whispered excitedly, “I can get us out of the girls’ dorm room. Secretly. It’s my Talent. If you can get out of the boys’, we’ll meet. Where?”
Quentin muttered, “Barrows. Midnight. Look out—!”
Mr. Glum straightened up from his porridge. Evidently Colin had not completely distracted him, or maybe he had been resting his eyes on Vanity, and had seen her lips move. She had also been louder than the rest of us.
Now Mr. Glum stood up. “What’s all this peeking and whispering, then? What plot are you lot hatching?”
Vanity half-rose from her seat, and leaned forward, palms on the table top, exclaiming in her cheerful, earnest voice: “But Mr. Glum! Dear, dear Mr. Glum! We were just talking! It cannot be wrong to talk: you did it just now, when you told us not to talk!”
Whether she intended it or not, her posture was such as to afford Mr. Glum a clear view down her shirt.
That same youthful electricity, which often I found annoying in her, adults (especially adult men) found fascinating. She was so fair skinned that she blushed at the slightest emotion; her eyes flashed like emeralds. Between her red lips, red eyebrows, and red hair, Vanity was an incandescent thing, glowing.
Mr. Glum was not what could be called handsome in any part of him. His nails were grimed with dirt, always. I assumed the only woman who ever spoke to him was Mrs. Wren; I don’t think he ever saw any pretty young girls, except us. Usually he was out in the garden, weeding, and we were behind the windows of the classrooms, gazing outside with longing. I wondered in pity if perhaps he ever looked up and saw Vanity and me staring out, dreamy- eyed, and wished we were dreaming of him.
Mr. Glum was confounded with lust for a moment. He could not take his eyes from where Vanity’s bosom strained against her starched white shirt.
But he gathered himself and barked at her, “Enough of your jaw! Impertinence! Rule of silence! You’ll eat your food as quiet as Jesuits, you will. Rule is on!”
Victor said stiffly, “But I didn’t talk back to you, sir. I wasn’t talking at all.”
“Then you won’t notice any difference, will you? And you’ll have detention for talking when I just put the rule on! Rule is on for all of you! Any more back talk? Eh? No? And no passing notes nor making signs with your fingers, neither!”
And so Victor had no chance to overrule our plan. Tonight was to be the night.
7.
