The White Devil (8 page)

Then something caught Andrew’s eye. Down and to his right. A candle, in a dull metal holder. This had been the source of that dim light all along.

Wait—a candle?

The boy moved faster toward him now. Andrew continued his retreat until his foot struck something. A tinkle of metal on tile. A
pssh
sound.

The candlestick
.

The room went black.

“HELLO.”

Andrew found himself hoarse. The lights from the basement stairwell cast a highway of fluorescence down the center of the showers. All else remained in shadow.

“Are you there?”

He rose slowly. He crossed the darkened floor and found the light switch. The lights came up. Bluish, fluorescent, flickering.

Chrome showerheads. Soap dishes. The room was empty.

Andrew’s mind spun. He had struggled with real people. He was slick with perspiration. His back hurt like hell. The seat of his pants, his elbows, were all wet. But where were his defeated combatants? Where was the boy in the torn clothes? He walked stiffly back across the showers. He approached the claw-footed tub on its pedestal of tile.

Water filled the tub. It was brownish, slightly cloudy—used bathwater. It rocked back and forth in a lazy, swinging motion, as water would that had been recently disturbed.

Andrew rolled back his sleeve. He reached down and stroked the surface with his fingertips. The bathwater remained steamily, pleasantly warm.

6

Mrs. Byron’s Short Skirt

ANDREW GROPED HIS
way in a dark passage. Was he in the right place? Was it the right hour, even the right night? Andrew scarcely knew anymore which door led to which place. What set of rules governed him. Who he was.

He pushed open the door. Color, people, steamy warmth enveloped him.

“Lord . . . Byron,” announced a heraldic voice.

His eyes adjusted. Speech Room lay before him.

“You’re fifteen minutes late,” snapped the same voice. “For the first rehearsal. My God, what an ego. Go on, take a seat. You’re not the last, for what that’s worth. No one, not even title roles, are to be late for rehearsal, is that understood? Those are my ground rules. We’ll have enough trouble pulling together this production without prima donnas. To start, it would be nice to have a script.”

Andrew stood there. Speech Room was warmer, cozier at night. You noticed the deep rust hue of the paint, the touches of gilt, the pillars rising like slender trees. A dozen students sat scattered across the first rows of chairs, down front; there was something strange about this scene, but Andrew couldn’t put his finger on it. On the stage stood a small man of about forty-five with fashion-forward wire glasses and gelled hair. He had square-featured good looks and wore a snarl and a collared sweater of bunched white wool that gave him the air of being a really pissed-off lamb.

Then it struck Andrew what was strange about the students lounging in the seats.

Some of them were girls.

Of course. He had heard about this from Hugh at lunch.
Fawkes sees himself as an iconoclast
, Hugh had told him in the affectedly knowing and bitchy style of theater folk.
Fawkes recruited girls from North London Collegiate to play the girls’ parts in the Byron play. People say he does it to annoy the headmaster, because boys are supposed to play the female roles. That’s the tradition at Harrow
, Hugh had continued, haughtily.
If it was good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for Piers Fawkes.
There were three, four, Andrew counted . . . with Persephone, five girls; they were dressed to withstand the attention a boys’ school would bring—meticulously, but not ostentatiously—with two exceptions. One wore an attention-grabbing short brown dress and black stockings on curvy legs and possessed rich, brushed, chocolate-colored locks, with stylish bangs. The seat next to her—front row—was open. Up in the back sat Persephone. Andrew had to smile. She wore full Harrow dress—grey skirt, white shirt, and black tie Annie Hall–style—because she was the only girl who could. She had wedged herself between the pale Hugh and a strapping redheaded Sixth Former in whom she seemed to have acquired great interest. Her body turned toward the redhead and away from Andrew, while Andrew felt all the other eyes on him, heard all the murmurs: the whispered names of
Byron
and
the American
, and, quieter, with a hiss,
Theo Ryder
. He willed her to turn, but she wouldn’t. His smile faded. A vengeful hand guided him toward the seat next to the girl with the black stockings and short skirt.

He sat down and waited a beat, then leaned over to her.

“Who
is
that guy?” he growled resentfully in her ear, with a nod at the man on the stage.

Strands of perfumed, chocolate hair brushed Andrew’s cheek.
Female contact
. His skin sizzled. He wondered if Persephone was watching, or whether she was so preoccupied by the redhead that she would not see him.

“The director? That’s James Honey,” answered Short Skirt in a whisper. “He went to Harrow years ago. He did Royal Shakespeare. Then eight seasons of
Nebula
as the cyborg leader.” She paused. “He teaches here now. Didn’t you know?”

He didn’t. “What are we waiting for?”

“Piers Fawkes. He’s the real ego,” she said.

“Is he?” Andrew prompted. His evening with Fawkes suggested that the man knew a great deal about poetry and maybe did have a healthy professional ego. But Andrew had noticed something else, too: a lack of formality; a sincerity about his work. Andrew had liked it. Yet Fawkes seemed to inspire sour reactions in people. Andrew wondered why.

“Well, he
is
a Whitestone winner,” she sniffed.

Maybe that was it, Andrew mused.

But he won for a collection he wrote sixteen years ago, she added. (This was the other part, Andrew figured; Fawkes once was mighty, and now that he was fallen people felt entitled to take their shot.) After casting for the Byron play was announced, all the actors had read it.
She
didn’t think much of it. Nothing but smut.

“Really?” said Andrew. He allowed himself a glance back at Persephone. She was still speaking, gesturing to the Redhead; but her eyes had wandered to him. A bolt of adrenaline passed down Andrew’s spine. She turned away quickly.

“Scenes from his sex life,” Short Skirt was saying. “Traveling across America. Are American girls really like that?”

“Like what?”

“You know, getting soaped in the bath by twins.”

Andrew’s eyes went wide in answer.

“One’s called
Thirteen Ways of Buggering a Black Bird
.”

“Wow,” Andrew said, imagining a younger Piers Fawkes leering like a satyr. It wasn’t hard to picture.

“He beats the bird joke to death. The girls have birds’ names.
Robin, Jewess, large white teeth / footsied; cocked her til she queefed
.” She blushed. “Revolting. And racist.”

“Yet you seem to have read it closely.”

“Well.” She tossed her head. “He did write the play.”

“Who are you?” Andrew asked.

She swung her head back around and met his eye. “I’m your wife.”

Andrew blinked; then he recovered. “I mean in real life.”

“What’s the difference?” She met his eye dramatically, then laughed and tossed her head again. She was flirting. It was working. Andrew crossed his legs. He hoped he wouldn’t have to stand up and read anytime soon. Now he felt Persephone’s presence keenly, beating at the back of his head like a hot sun.

“Rebecca.” She extended a slim, warm hand.

He took it. “Andrew.”

The door from Speech Room passage banged open. Piers Fawkes propped the door halfway, pushing it with his backside, then paused; he was carrying an armload of photocopied and stapled scripts, and he was reading through the top pages, proofing them as he walked. Honey cleared his throat. Fawkes looked up, did a stagey double take, earned a laugh from the cast. Then he charged into the center of the group at the level of the chairs, black robes flying behind him, leaving James Honey alone onstage. Honey waited for anybody to notice that he remained there, then, grumbling, he descended to Fawkes’s side. The cast clambered to Fawkes, hands extended for their copies, and sat back to bury their noses in the pages.

“Save one for me, Piers,” boomed Honey. “I’m only the director.”

Rebecca fought her way to the stage and brought back two scripts: one for her, one for Andrew. Andrew watched Persephone pass without giving him a glance.

Rebecca observed this. “Do you know Persephone Vine?” she asked privately.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Hm,” Rebecca opined primly. “She
does
know a lot of
boys
.”

A part of Andrew withered, as it was no doubt intended to. He watched Persephone chatter with the redhead, who had accompanied her to the front.

“I know her father teaches here,” Rebecca continued. “But it does seem ironic.
Her
, of all people, attending an
all boys’ school
.” These words were pronounced more loudly than was necessary. Persephone stood eight feet away; her antennae went up. Rebecca addressed the rest of her speech directly into Andrew’s ear. Her whisper tickled his nerves and he tried not to squirm and cringe with pleasure. “She’s slept with half of London,” she hissed. “Her nickname is Thumper. Like the rabbit.” Rebecca withdrew and screwed up her face in disapproval. “You understand?”

Andrew merely panted from the sensory assault. But he had no time to inquire further. Fawkes stood waiting for the students to settle.

“Tonight,” announced Fawkes, “is my night. After tonight there will be movement . . . emotion . . . brutality . . . and violence—all James’s department.” (They laughed. Honey mugged.) “But tonight, it’s words, words, words. We’ll read through the first act. You have it in your hand. By the way, we finally have a title. No longer ‘the play about Byron.’ Now, officially
The Fever of Messolonghi
. Until I change it.” He turned to the first page of the script. “We join Byron at the end of his life—a mere thirty-six; still young, eh James?—dying of a fever in Messolonghi, Greece, after joining the cause of Greek independence from the Turk. His one friend, a munitions officer, persuades him to tell his life story.” Fawkes paused for effect. “
To find out who was Byron’s one true love
. There are many,
many
to choose from,” said Fawkes with a grin. “Byron was, shall we say, a highly motivated lover. Let me introduce them. I’m having them come to Byron like the ghosts come to Scrooge. In order of appearance, then.” He gestured to one of the students in front of him, a skinny girl with short red hair and a nervous manner.

“Lady Caroline Lamb,” he announced with a flourish. The girl stood. “Byron spends two years abroad, in what he would call self-imposed exile. What others would call a holiday.” This got a chuckle. “He publishes the first two cantos of
Childe Harold
, and—in his own phrase—he wakes up one morning to find himself famous. He’s invited to fancy London dinner parties, suddenly a sensation, ostensibly to scout out a wife. But he finds instead the married
Caro
—his nickname for her. She is potty about Byron. It later becomes clear, potty full stop. She chases Byron relentlessly, once gaining entrance to his rooms by disguising herself as a page boy, another time stealing into his study and scrawling
Remember me!
across the pages of the book. Byron responds with a poem.” Fawkes lifted a green book that Andrew recognized as the one he auditioned from.

“Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not.

Thy husband too shall think of thee:

By neither shalt thou be forgot,

Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!”

The redheaded actress gave a mocking demonic cackle, and earned a laugh.

“Next. Miss Rebecca?” Fawkes gestured to the girl in the short skirt. Rebecca stood up next to Andrew in a cloud of perfume, her black stockings so tantalizingly close, Andrew thought he could feel their static electricity. “Annabella Milbanke. History has not made up its mind. Victim or victimizer? Either way, Byron makes a classically bad decision to marry her. He thinks she’s rich. She’s not. He thinks he can push her around. He can’t. He later satirizes their marriage, in
Don Juan
.” Fawkes read:

Don José and the Donna Inez led

For some time an unhappy sort of life,

Wishing each other, not divorced, but dead.

“It was a spectacularly unhappy marriage. And with good reason. All the while Lord Byron was having a sexual relationship with his own sister. Or half sister, Augusta Leigh.” He gestured to the back of the room, where Persephone had retaken her seat next to the redhead. “Miss Vine, if you please?”

Persephone rose.

“He brings his half sister along on his honeymoon, and perpetuates one of the most miserable and sadistic ménages à trois in literary history; the seeds of Brontë’s Heathcliff. Needless to say, I have a lot of fun with it. Byron is rather more sincere:
For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart / I know myself secure, as thou in mine.
He fathers a child by this sweet sister . . .”

Rebecca, in character, groaned.

Fawkes grinned. “And now that Byron has created a national scandal, he goes into proper exile, in Switzerland and Italy, and after much
sampling
, finds himself in love with the Countess Guiccioli. Stand up, Amanda?” A heavyset girl a few rows behind Andrew stood and blushed.

“Teresa Guiccioli is the closest Byron came to a nurturing, supportive, adult relationship in his life. No storms, no temper, no madness. Yet like Byron’s poetry, his late love turns from brooding to comic, and this one is a drawing room farce. First—typical—she’s married. And Byron somehow gets himself invited to
live
with the Count and Countess Guiccioli at their villa near Ravenna, and, a grown man, scampers around the place like a teenager trying to find places to snog without being caught. You can understand why he would choose political martyrdom, after that. He’s run away to Greece to fight for freedom. It’s there we find him. Lying on a pallet mortally ill. Where’s our munitions man? Hugh!” Hugh stood. “The prologue, if you please.”

Hugh cleared his throat and started in a clear, ringing voice. Andrew watched him and now understood why the others in the Lot teased him; the boy had lush eyelashes and rounded, freckled cheeks, the very picture of a tempting choirboy. Hugh began the story, setting the stage with confidence and an affected Cockney. Silence fell on the group.

Expert in my own craft, demolitions,

My tools in trade dynamite, nitroglycerine,

I never thought to find myself co-habitant with greatness.

Yet here lies the person of Lord Byron, whom even I, unlettered, know.

My dear Mum, when I wrote and told her, chided me to stay away.

(Then asked me many details—is he as handsome as they say?

Is his foot clubbed or cloven? Is he poxy with corruption?

Or does he shine with the surface perfection

of the Enemy of God?) She does not ask about his poetry.

I do not tell her we share a chamber pot.

Byron stoops to make himself my companion.