erastes

of Mere Mortals....

The door opened just as I was sliding to a sitting position and Jude entered, followed by the footman I had met earlier. Jude carried a bottle and glasses, whilst the footman held a tray. I marvelled briefly at his flexibility, that he had managed to bring such a laden tray up that corkscrew stair, but then the scent of meat and gravy reached me and I stopped caring about how the food was brought, just that it had arrived.

"I trust," Jude said, settling himself in one of the chairs, "that you will forgive that we let you sleep. Myles came to rouse you when the bell rang, but he tells me you were snoring so loudly that he could not make himself heard." The footman placed the tray on the bed in front of me, propped up on cunning little legs which dropped from some mechanism on the underside. I was delighted with the tray and wished that I was alone so I could examine the underside without seeming rude. However, the footman whipped the cover from the plate and for a while, I forgot about the tray entirely, and did justice to a very delicious pudding steeped in its own gravy.

Jude topped up my glass when it ran dry—the footman having melted away at some point after I began to eat. "What time is it?" I asked. With the dark evenings it was hard to tell.

"A little after ten," Jude replied. He looked perfectly at ease, his long legs stretched from his chair to the edge of my bed. "Myles is still downstairs, he wishes you well of the torte and regrets we left you none of the meringue."

"It is kind of you to keep me company," I said.

"Not at all. I've spent a week with Myles and am madly curious to know more about you. I wonder that you haven't already quizzed me to death. I know I wore Myles ragged by my persistence. You, my dear boy, are a positive sphinx. More interested in the food then what your future holds. I think perhaps you are born to be a soldier."

I am ashamed to say that my mouth was full of suet crust and kidney at the moment and I took a little while to reply. Jude, exquisitely polite, waited for me to finish. His eyes were hooded, and he ran one slender finger around the rim of his glass as he stared at the liquid within the crystal as if he were seeking out the mysteries of the world. I watched his hands in short, almost guilty glances, for I hadn't seen their like. I was used to the able, large hands of my schoolfriends, rough, inkstained, ruddy—not like these: so pale as to be almost blue. Had he lived his life wearing gloves like the rare few ladies that I'd seen visit the school. I swallowed the last of my pudding. I had delayed a little so I could observe his hands at their dreamy work, and he had not seemed impatient.

"I am curious," I said at last. "It's just...well, it's hard to put into words, and worry that I sound rather..."

"What?"

"Oh, I don't know. Fanciful. Idiotic. You can't understand I suppose. I don't have parents, you see. I mean, I must have done," I found myself blushing, "But I don't even know who they were." Suddenly the words wanted to come pouring out, as if they were a sickness just poised on my lips waiting for their time to emerge and to heal. "I was the only boy in my school who...and, well—"

He met my eyes then, his expression even and almost serious, the most serious I'd seen him since meeting him at the pier. "As you didn't know who your parents were, you...how can I say...wished them to be something other than the parents of the boys around you? Is that it?"

I looked down, and removed the tray, placing it on the floor, ashamed that I'd said as much as I had.

"I told you that it sounded idiotic."

He smiled again, and regained all of his friendliness and charm. "My dear boy, nothing could be further from the truth. I would imagine—and this, you understand, is only from my observation of Myles, your dear self, and my own experience--but every orphan seems to wish the very same thing."