called Molly Price. She was not as pretty as Tabitha Skinner, but she knew what she was about. Mrs Phear had looked over the arrangements, visited the kitchen, and made her presence felt among the servants. This was all to the good, for there was no getting away from the fact that the servants were a slovenly, greedy crew who needed careful watching. They would serve the company, wait at dinner, clear away and serve supper. But once supper was on the table, they would go, leaving the club to serve itself, with a little help from Augustus if necessary. Then the real business of the evening would begin.
Harry Archdale was one of those who arrived in a sedan chair. His face had lost its usual high colour, and the pallor of his complexion contrasted curiously with the careful arrangement of his hair, which he had had thickly powdered in a shade of white with a distinctly pink tinge. Whichcote smelled brandy on his breath.
Before dinner, the members of the club strolled in the garden. It was, all in all, not a bad turnout. When dinner was announced, Whichcote led the way upstairs, where they arranged themselves around the table in the order of precedence. He placed Harry on his right hand.
He had spared no expense with the food. The first course consisted of cod, a chine of mutton, some soup, and a chicken pie as well as many puddings and roots. For the second course they had fillet of veal with mushrooms, pigeons and asparagus, roasted sweetbreads, a hot lobster, apricot tart and, in the centre of the table, a great pyramid of syllabubs and jellies. Dinner was more than a meal: it was an investment.
Afterwards, some members, including Archdale, showed a tendency to linger over their wine, but Whichcote weaned them away to the card tables set up at the far end of the room. This was, after all, the lucrative part of the proceedings. He did not encourage club members to engage in such games as piquet, which took too much time and involved only two people. Simpler, shorter games were much better, both cards and dice. With these, the players won and lost with such rapidity that they became infected with a mania for play; and each loss was obliterated by the hope of winning next time.
Whichcote moved from group to group. He carried loaded dice in a concealed pocket of his waistcoat and had also taken the precaution of opening a pack of cards, filing the corners of some of them and carefully resealing the pack in its original wrapper. Not that he liked to rely on such shabby shifts. Usually there was no need: if he kept himself sober and took the trouble to calculate the arithmetical odds, he would win the cost of the dinner within twenty minutes.
The hours passed agreeably. The invisible servants, who screened off the table from the rest of the room, came and went, making preparations for supper. The drinking continued steadily, and the laughter and the voices grew louder as the last of the daylight ebbed from the room. The air filled with smoke, shifting in the draughts, and the muddy glow of candles swayed with it.
Whichcote’s winnings, partly in ready money but mainly in notes of hand, steadily increased. As he moved from table to table, he kept an eye on Harry Archdale. The young man was drinking as heavily as anyone in the room. His face had lost its pallor and was damp with sweat. His elaborately arranged hair was a ragged mop and the shoulders of his green coat were sprinkled with dislodged powder. He was playing so wildly that he had already lost at least a hundred guineas, and not all of it to his host.
It was after another loss that Archdale suddenly pushed back his chair and stumbled behind a screen in the corner where a line of commodes had been arranged along the wall for the convenience of the guests. Five minutes later, when he had not returned, Whichcote went in search of him. The young man was slumped on a window seat. His face was pressed against the glass.
‘Harry – what ails you?’
Archdale turned his head sharply and straightened up on the seat. ‘It is nothing – it’s so damned hot in here – I wanted air.’
‘Then let us take a turn in the garden.’
Whichcote led the way downstairs. The sky was now dark. A lamp burned in the doorway, and two or three more beyond, marking the path up to the side door of the house. They strolled along the gravel path between the pavilion and the river. On the far side of the water, Jesus Green lay in darkness, apart from the soft gleam of lights from the college itself and, further to the right, the lights of the town.
‘You seemed a little melancholy just now,’ Whichcote observed.
‘It was nothing,’ Archdale said hastily. ‘The closeness of the air made me feel a little fagged – I am perfectly restored now.’
‘I am rejoiced to hear it,’ Whichcote said. ‘After all, you have a man’s work to do tonight. You must go to it with a will, eh?’
‘Oh I shall, I shall indeed.’
They were now walking along the rear of the pavilion on the side facing the house. Archdale swayed. Suddenly he stopped, leaning against the wall. He stared fixedly at the row of ground-floor windows.
‘Is – is she already here?’
‘The sacrifice? Oh yes,’ Whichcote said. ‘The virgin awaits your pleasure.’
‘Does she know what is to happen?’
Whichcote laughed softly. ‘How can she? She’s a maid. Her knowledge of such matters must be entirely notional.’
‘But she knows I will lie with her?’
‘It is all arranged. You are to have the way of a man with a maid. You need not trouble yourself in the slightest about her. If she puts up any resistance, you must not scruple to overcome it. Indeed, many of us find it adds relish to the conquest. The fruits of victory are all the sweeter if hard won.’
‘Yes, yes – Philip, would you excuse me one moment?’
Without further warning, Archdale stumbled away from the path and made his way blindly to a large shrub standing in a pot. Whichcote waited, listening to the sounds of retching. Archdale returned, wiping his mouth on a scented handkerchief.
‘Very wise,’ Whichcote murmured.
‘What? I beg your pardon?’
‘Your decision to vomit. As the French say, it is a case of
‘Yes,’ Archdale said weakly. ‘Yes, that’s it. Vomiting for that purpose was much practised by the ancients, I believe. Seneca refers to it somewhere in the
Whichcote said nothing. Archdale set out to play the part of a rake but somewhere inside him was a scholar. He touched Archdale’s arm, and they moved away. They passed the shuttered window of the whitewashed bedchamber where Molly Price was waiting with Mrs Phear.
‘I wish Frank was here,’ Archdale said.
‘So do I. We all do.’
‘I asked him how it was that night – when he became an Apostle. He would not tell me.’
‘That was very proper of him. He swore a most terrible oath never to reveal what passed on that occasion to anyone who was not an Apostle. And so will you when your time comes. But since you are so nearly one of us, I may tell you in confidence that Frank dealt manfully with his virgin, just as you will, I am sure.’
They re-entered the pavilion and went upstairs. Whichcote had presided over too many initiations to be surprised by what had occurred. For two pins, Archdale would have slipped away from the club. But he was too rich a prize to lose. That was the point of the ceremony – and of the ceremony with the virgin in particular. Archdale had mentioned Caesar: well, Caesar had crossed the Rubicon when he invaded Italy and, in doing so, had taken a step that could not be reversed. Archdale would believe he had done the same when his manly ardour overcame the feigned resistance of Molly Price.
They reached the head of the stairs. Whichcote stopped. They heard the hubbub of voices in the room beyond. Some of the Apostles were singing.
Archdale blinked rapidly. He looked on the verge of tears.
