Page 8 of Confounding Oaths
Mr. Ellersley drained his glass and poured himself another. “You poor thing. The weight of the world truly does rest on your slender shoulders, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“No, no, I’m serious. Ideeplysympathise.” He did not sound like he deeply sympathised. He sounded like he found the whole subject loathsome, a position with which I sympathised myself. “Although I will say that given your doubtlessly heavy burdens you shouldmaybeavoid running around smacking the gentry in the face.”
Mr. Caesar didn’t know what was worse. That Mr. Ellersley was an arse, or that he was in this instance a correct arse.
“Still,” Mr. Ellersley went on, “it got the attention of Captain James, so there issomeupside.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” lied Mr. Caesar.
“Oh, come off it, you love a soldier as much as I do and Orestes James is thepinnacleof British soldiery. All the dash of an officer, all the grime of the ranks, what’s not to like?”
A scowl came unbidden to Mr. Caesar’s face. He was used to Mr. Ellersley talking like this, of course. Once he’d even encouraged it, but for some reason this time it landed differently. “He helped me when he didn’t have to. I’ll thank you not to speak so wantonly of him.”
Mr. Ellersley made a hollow sound that could have passed in a bad light for a laugh. “Gods and powers, John, you really have stopped being fun, haven’t you? The man is a soldier; we must have fucked a hundred each and scratch the surface they’re all the same. Drunken lackwits who’ll suck every cock in the room if you throw them a guinea for a new jacket.”
“Remind me why I thought I liked you again?” asked Mr. Caesar, genuinely uncertain.
Setting his glass down, Mr. Ellersley rose, sauntered behind Mr. Caesar, and began to massage his shoulders. “Because, Johnny, my lad, you and I are birds of a feather. You can pretend all you like but deep down you’re a catty little Ganymede who hates the world, just like I am.” He paused. “Also I have a truly gigantic member and you areprofoundlyshallow.”
The latter point, Mr. Caesar was forced to concede. Out of his multitudinous memories of Mr. Ellersley, by far the fondest were at least member-adjacent. “I should probably go home,” he told his glass of brandy. In truth he should never have come, and he tried to pretend that he wasn’t sure why he had. Except he was, he just didn’t like the reason.
“You should,” Mr. Ellersley agreed. “But I strongly suspect that you won’t.”
And then he leaned around Mr. Caesar’s chair and kissed him.
I left the gentlemen their privacy—I sayprivacy;the ease with which beings like myself can spy on your kind means you should never truly consider yourselves unobserved—but returned to watching over Mr. Caesar and his family the following day. Events of the preceding evening had convinced me that the gentleman’s life might be on the edge of becoming interesting, and I was determined not to miss out when it did. Thus I was rather aggrieved when I returned to find him standing, quite politely, in his father’s study, waiting for him to finish his correspondence.
Still, I contented myself with the hope that once the elder Mr. Caesar was done writing, they might at least have a heated exchange of words. Much as I enjoy watching mortals harm one another physically, I find emotional damage fully three times as entertaining.
While he waited for his father to be ready, Mr. Caesar found his gaze drawn, as it often was, to the portrait that hung above his father’s desk. It depicted a woman who Mr. Caesar had never met, plain-featured but aristocratic and shown—as all aristocratic women were in her day—surrounded by the trappings of her high station. Thus her wrists and neck were adorned with jewels, horses gambolled in the fields behind her, and by her side knelt a young boy. He gazed up adoringly at his mistress, a pearl in his ear standing out brilliant white against his dark skin. It was the only portrait of his father that Mr. Caesar had ever seen.
He kept it, the elder Mr. Caesar had explained, to show that hewas not ashamed of where he had come from. It was a boldness that his children admired on good days and resented on bad ones.
“John,” the elder Mr. Caesar said at last, leaning back in his chair, “I hear you were involved in an … altercation last night.”
Mr. Caesar nodded. “I struck a man.”
“That isn’t like you.”
“I know.”
Silence fell between them and I began to feel terribly afraid that they might continue in this nothingish back-and-forth for the rest of the encounter.
“He insulted Mary,” Mr. Caesar added, hoping in vain that he would be asked to elaborate no further.
From the look on his father’s face, that was still no excuse for violence. “You told your sisters that he insulted the queen.”
“It seemed kinder than the truth. He insulted her by specific reference to …”
He did not need to finish the sentence. His father understood and had likely understood for some while. “I assume other people know of that detail?”
“Yes. Uncle Richard was there.”
“Ah.” The elder Mr. Caesar looked grave. “Keeping the specifics from Mary is probably for the best. She is having troubles enough, I think.”
“Are you certain?” Mr. Caesar asked. He understood the impulse to protect his sister from certain harsh facts of the world, but his recent experience had taught him that things you did not understand could still hurt you.
