But how to recognize the Earl? He had no light. Apart from the breathing of the janitor the dormitory was in absolute silence. There was no time for anything but to put his first notion into operation. There were two rows of beds that stretched away to the south-west. Why he turned to the right hand wall he did not know, but he did so without hesitation. Feeling for the end-rail of the first bed, he leaned over. ‘Lordship!’ he whispered. ‘Lordship!’ There was no reply. He turned to the second bed and whispered again. He thought he heard a head turn upon a pillow but that was all. He repeated this quick, harsh whisper at the foot of every bed. ‘Lordship … lordship! …’ but nothing happened and the time was slipping by. But at the fourteenth bed he repeated the whisper for a third time, for he could feel rather than hear a restlessness in the darkness below him. ‘Lordship! …’ he whispered again. ‘Lord Titus!’
Something sat up in the darkness and he could hear the catch in a boy’s breathing.
‘Have no fear,’ he whispered fiercely and his hand shook on the bedrail.
‘Have no fear. Are you Titus, the Earl?’
Immediately there was a reply. ‘Mister Flay? What are you doing here?’
‘Have you a coat and stockings?’
‘Yes.’
‘Put them on. Follow me. Explain later, lordship.’
Titus made no reply but slid over the side of his bed and after fumbling for his shoes and garments, clasped them like a bundle in his arms. Together they tip-toed to the dormitory door and, once without, walked rapidly in the darkness, the bearded man with his hand upon the boy’s elbow.
At the head of a staircase Titus got into his clothes, his heart beating loudly. Flay stood beside him and when he was ready they descended the stairs in silence.
As they drew nearer to the quadrangle Flay in short broken phrases was able to give Titus a disjointed idea of why he had been woken and whisked out into the night. Much as Titus sympathized with Flay’s suspicions and with his hatred of Steerpike, he was becoming afraid that Flay himself had gone mad. He could see that it was a very odd thing for Steerpike to spend the night leaning against a thorn tree, but equally there was nothing criminal in it. What, he wondered, in any event, was Flay doing to be there himself? and why should the long ragged creature of the woods be so anxious to have him with him? There was no doubt about the excitement of it all and that to be sought out was deeply flattering, but Titus had but a vague idea as to what Flay meant by needing a
But when they reached the cloisters and when he peered along Flay’s outstretched arm as they lay upon the cold ground, and saw, all at once, after a long and abortive scrutiny of the thorn, the sharp profile, as angular as broken glass save for the doming forehead, then he knew that the gaunt man lying beside him was no more mad than himself, and that for the first time in his life he was tasting upon his tongue the acid of an intoxicating fear, of a fearful elation.
He also knew that to leave Steerpike where he was and to return to bed would be to deliberately turn away from a climate of sharp and dangerous breath.
He put his lips to his companion’s ear.
‘It’s Doctor’s quadrangle,’ he whispered.
Flay made no reply for several moments, for the remark made little sense to him.
‘What of it?’ he replied in an almost inaudible voice.
‘Very close – on our side,’ whispered Titus, ‘just across the quadrangle.’
This time there was a longer silence. Flay could see at once the advantage of yet another witness and also of a double bodyguard for the boy. But what would the Doctor think of his reappearance after all these years? Would he countenance this clandestine return to the castle – even in the knowledge that it was for the castle’s sake? Would he be prepared, in the future, to deny all knowledge of his, Mr Flay’s, return?
Again Titus whispered, ‘He is on our side.’
It seemed to Mr Flay that he was now so deeply involved that to argue each problem as it posed itself, to study each move would get him nowhere. Had he behaved in a rational way he would never have left the woods, and he would not now be lying upon his stomach, staring at a man leaning innocently against a tree. That the figure’s profile against the saffron dawn was sharp and cruel was no proof of anything.
No. It was for him to obey the impulse of the moment and to have the courage to risk the future. This was no time for anything but action.
The dawn, although fiercer in the east, was yet withheld. There was no light in the air – only a strip of intense colour. But at any moment a diffusion of the sunrise would begin and the sun would heave itself above the broken towers.
