Hugh Kenrick by Edward Cline Read Free Book Online

ignorant of Vicar Wynne’s revelations and speculations about the boy’s behavior. To him, his nephew was beginning to take after the king’s oldest son, Frederick Louis, the Prince of Wales: sullen, rebellious, spiteful, and frivolous. The Prince, who was hated by his father the king, was in the Earl’s eyes a witless fool who had no good reason to reciprocate his father’s detestation. Hugh stood before the Earl’s desk, while his parents sat to the side, almost in shadow. “Why did you do this cruel and cowardly thing, young sir?” asked the Earl.
    “Because he was trying to humiliate me, sir,” answered the boy.
    “Were you the only boy levied in this ritual?”
    “No, sir. There were three others.”
    “Tell me what happened.”
    Hugh Kenrick narrated the incident. Two days after arriving at Eton, in the dead of night he and the other new boys his age, still in their nightshirts, were roughly spirited from their cots by older boys and taken to a small wooden structure somewhere off the school grounds. There he was told by the young Marquis of Bilbury that he was releasing another boy from his obligations as a fag or servant, and that henceforth Hugh would fill that role, acting as the Marquis’ valet and cook. “Your handsomeness also recommends itself to occasional, special companionship, when the village tarts are otherwise engaged,” added the aristocrat, and the other older boys giggled. Hugh Kenrick did not understand the import of this last remark, but he noticed, after he had related it, his parents exchanging quick glances with his uncle, whose nostrils flared slightly in distaste, but whose expression otherwise remained stern and unmoved.
    Then he had been told that as part of his initiation, he was to hold a tin bowl of hot coals from the den’s fireplace while the young Marquis tickled his bare feet with a twig. If he dropped the coals, he would be punished with a birching that would leave the back of his legs raw for days. Hugh refused to pick up the bowl. When the Marquis rose and forced it into his hands, Hugh flung it at his tormentor. Angered, the Marquis approached Hugh, screaming that he would break all the fingers on his hands. Hugh picked up the fireplace poker and stabbed at the Marquis’ outstretched hands, which grasped the hot end of it. The Marquis roared in an unearthly scream of agony as the metal fused his palms and fingers.
    In the meantime, the glowing coals Hugh had thrown at the Marquis had fallen on some of the dilapidated cushions that littered the den floor, started a fire and a panic, and the den was consumed by flames. Hugh and the other younger boys had fled in the confusion and sought refuge in the headmaster’s quarters.
    When Hugh was finished, the Earl asked, “Did the other boys submit to their initiation?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Could you not, like they, tolerate a spell of humiliation?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Why not?”
    “I saw no point in it, sir. I will
not
be anyone’s lackey.”
    “It is the practice in such circumstances to submit to the wishes ofsenior students, sir,” replied the Earl. “The sole persons exempt from such customs are the members of His Royal Highness’s immediate family, who may not be touched by anyone except by waiver and leave.
You
are not of royal siring. You had no right to refuse to submit or to question the right and prerogative of any older student to impose service on you.”
    “The Marquis’ son wished to harm my person, sir,” replied Hugh. “He wished to harm my soul.”
    The Earl snorted. “He would not have inflicted mortal injury on you, sir. But
you
have apparently so mangled his hands that he will be denied the use of it for the rest of his life.”
    “
His
intention was harmful, sir,” answered Hugh.
    “How so?”
    Hugh could not answer. He could not find words for the evil thing that seemed to govern the events in the Marquis’ den.
    The Earl said, “
Your
person is not so
precious
that it cannot be