Caulder advanced into the room like a rat that has discovered the cat is away. “Oh, aye, I’ve a message for him. Someone should tell him that he’ll get the dick-scald if he doesn’t stay away from Garter Anne’s girls.”
Rory gave a great “hah!” of laughter at this unexpected pronouncement and the rest of us joined in. Garter Anne’s was a cheap brothel at the edge of town closest to the Academy. We had all been sternly warned away from it and like establishments in the first Sixday service we had attended, and heard tales of Anne’s wild girls from every upperclassman every day since then. Caulder stood grinning, a bit pink on the cheeks, well pleased with the effect he had wrought. Later I would come to know that this was a pattern with the lad. He would first fling about his father’s authority, to see who was impressed, and if that did not bring him welcome, he’d next sink down to some crude jest to see whose interest that would win. Had I been older, I would have recognized it as a boy’s floundering attempt to win approval and acceptance with any coin he could muster. At the time, caught off guard, I laughed along with the rest of them, even as I was appalled at Caulder’s words. In my home, at his age, they would have earned me a severe whipping from my father or tutor. Here, having earned his entry into our company, Caulder advanced into the room.
“Well, I can see you’re all hard at work here!” he said, his tone conveying exactly the opposite. Eyes bright, he wandered through the room as if he had a right to be there. Most of the cadets watched him advance curiously. Kort put a blank sheet of paper over the letter he had been composing. Caleb opened a book to conceal his pamphlet. Across from me, Spink’s pencil continued to scratch its way through another set of exercises. As if drawn to him by this very lack of attention, Caulder stopped at Spink’s elbow and rudely peered over his shoulder at his work.
“Eight times six is forty-eight, not forty-six! Even I know that!” He stabbed at Spink’s error. Spink’s lifted arm casually blocked him. Without even looking up from his work, Spink asked, “And do you know that this is the study room for Carneston House first-years, not a playroom for little boys?”
The mocking smile melted from Caulder’s face. “I’m not a little boy!” he declared angrily. “I’m eleven years old and the first son of the commander of this institution. You don’t seem to realize that my father is Colonel Stiet!”
Spink lifted his gaze from the page before him and looked at the boy flatly. “My father was Lord Kellon Spinrek Kester. Before that, however, he was Captain Kellon Spinrek Kester. I am his soldier son. As your father was a soldier son, and not a lord, all his sons are soldier sons. That would make us peers and equals,if you were old enough to be a cadet here. And if, as the son of a soldier and not the son of a noble, you were guaranteed entry to the Academy.”
“I…I am a first son, even if I will be a soldier. And I will go to the Academy: when my father took over this post, he asked that of the Lords Council and they granted it. My father has promised to buy me a good commission! And you…you are just…just a second son of a second son, an upstart battle lord’s son, jumped up to the status of a noble’s son! That’s all you are!” Caulder had lost not only all his charm but also his veneer of maturity. His name- calling unmasked him as the child he was, even as his rash reply revealed what he truly thought of all of us. The words were scarcely out of his mouth before he realized what he had done. He looked around at all of us and seemed torn between attempting to mend fences and defiantly putting us all in our places. He drew breath to speak.
Trist saved him. He had been reading a book, his chair tipped back to lean against the wall by the hearth, when the boy came in. Now he tipped it forward so that the front legs landed with a thud on the floor. “I’m going out for a chew,” he announced to no one in particular. Caulder looked at him in puzzlement. At first I thought Trist was announcing it aloud just to irritate Spink further. Trist had recently discovered that although the smoking of tobacco in “paper, pipes, water tubes, or containers of any sort” was expressly forbidden by Academy rules, the chewing of it was ignored. Some said it had been forgotten when the rules were drawn up; others said it was well known that the chewing of tobacco could stave off certain diseases that bred in close quarters, and thus it was tolerated, although spittoons were forbidden in our rooms. For whatever reason, Trist interpreted that whatever was not specifically forbidden was allowed, and openly indulged in the habit. It annoyed Spink, who regarded it as a churlish sidestep of gentlemanly behavior. He had grown up in an area where tobacco was not commonly used, and seemed to find any use of it disgusting. As predictably as the sun rising, Spink observed, “A filthy habit.”
“Undeniably,” Trist agreed affably. “Most manly pleasures are.” He won a general laugh for that, and then I perceived his true target as he turned his inclusive grin on Caulder. “As befits an indulgence of ‘battle lord upstarts.’ Don’t you think, Caulder Stiet? Or have you never been exposed to tobacco chewing?” Before the boy could reply, Trist answered himself, “No, doubtless you are too wellborn to have ever even heard of the simple pleasures a cavalla man may carry in his own pocket. A bit too rough for a gently reared lad like yourself.” Casually, Trist took a plug of tobacco from his pocket. He peeled back the bright wrapper and then the waxed paper to reveal the dark brown brick of dried leaf. Even from where I sat, I could smell the harsh tobacco. It was cheap, rough snoose, something a sheep farmer might chew.
Caulder looked from the plug to Trist’s smiling face and back again. I could almost feel the charismatic pull myself. He didn’t want to be seen as ignorant, nor as “too genteel” to enjoy the manly pleasures of a cavalla man. Too genteel was only one step away from being a sissy. I didn’t envy him his dilemma. If I had been a boy burning to distinguish myself in front of a roomful of manly young cadets, I’d probably have taken the bait also.
“Seen it before,” he said disdainfully.
“Have you?” Trist’s reply was lazy, and he let it hang a moment before he asked, “Ever tasted it?”
The boy said nothing, but only stared at him.
“A demonstration,” Trist offered affably. “Like so, lad.” He made a show of breaking a corner off the plug. “Now, it doesn’t go into your mouth on your tongue. Rather, it tucks into the lower lip. Like this.” Snugged into place, the plug barely showed as a lump in Trist’s lip. He nodded his head sagely. “A man’s pleasure. Rory?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Rory replied enthusiastically. I had known that he chewed, also that he had been too short of coin to bribe a second-year to buy him snoose in town. He stepped forward to receive the offered plug, broke off a share, and tucked it into his lip. “Aw, that’s the stuff!” he exclaimed when he had it in place.
“Caulder?” Trist asked, extending the bar of pressed tobacco.
All eyes were on him. Except for Spink’s, of course. His pencil had not paused in its scratching. His diligence was a rebuke to the rest of us, but even Gord seemed transfixed by Trist’s seduction of the boy. Trist was so golden, so relaxed as he leaned an elbow on the mantel of the fireplace. He was one of those rare men on whom a uniform looks unique. Every one of us in the room was dressed in the same green jacket and trousers and white shirt, but Trist looked as if he had chosen the garb rather than donned it by default. His shoulders were wide, his waist trim, and his gleaming black boots hugged the calves of his long legs. Our severe haircuts made most of us look like shorn sheep, or, as Rory had aptly put it, “bald as scalded pigs.” But Trist’s dense blond curls hugged his skull in a golden cap rather than, as my own hair did, stand up in a forest of coarse bristle. If ever a young man exemplified a cavalla cadet, it was Trist. How could any lad who longed to distinguish himself turn away from such an offer of camaraderie?
Caulder couldn’t. A hushed silence held as the boy advanced, saying with bravado, “I don’t mind saying that I’ll try it.”
“There’s a lad!” Trist exclaimed with approval. He broke off an overly generous chunk of the harsh stuff and handed it to the boy. Caulder tucked the whole wad into his lower lip and then tried to smile bravely around the bullfrog bulge of it.
“Well, let’s go outside for a stroll about before curfew shuts us in, shall we?” Trist invited him and Rory. Caulder was already turning pinkish about his eyes as they walked out of the room. Rory and Trist, well experienced in the way of chew, were chatting about the day as their boots clattered down the stairs. For a time the silence held in the room. Then Oron and a couple of other cadets were suddenly inspired to rise and tiptoe down the stairs after the trio, barely managing to contain their mirth as they went.
“Bet he don’t even make it to the second landing,” Nate said quietly. Kort lifted one dark eyebrow skeptically, then drifted across the room and moved silently to where he could watch the descent.
Someone chuckled, and then silence filled the room again. We listened to the regular cadence of boots descending the stairs. Then suddenly we heard a desperate rush of footsteps down the stairs. A truly impressive bellow of retching reached our ears, echoed almost instantly by Sergeant Rufet’s roar of outrage, and drowned in the hoots of laughter and cruel applause of Caulder’s audience. Kort reappeared and announced solemnly. “Vomited down two flights of stairs. I’ve never seen one plug of tobacco go quite so far.” We all burst out laughing. Spink lifted his eyes from his books and slowly shook his head at us. “Picking on a lad,” he shamed us solemnly.
