As school let out one evening, four of the older scholars — the Park brothers, Finn Macpherson and Colin Raeburn — took a detour on their way home and met at Ballindalloch Glen. The air was crisp and dry, the snow crepitated under their feet. Adam and Mungo had a fire going by the time the others arrived, uncertain shadows emerging from the black screen of the woods. They greeted each other silently, grimly; Finn slipped the jar of whisky from his pocket as if it were a dirk. No one mentioned Meg Munro. There was no talk of football or shinty, there were no jokes. This was serious business. This was a council of war.
Gleg had done the unthinkable — he’d won the Hogmanay prize for accomplishment in the scholarly tongue by outdoing his classmates in a sight translation from the Eclogues. The prize was half a crown, donated each year by Mrs. Monboddo, a widow with an enormous bosom and a taste for culture. Never before had a first-year boy won the prize.
“This is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Adam said. “We’ve got to teach the little bastard a lesson.”
Finn passed the jar to Mungo, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and assented. “I’m for layin’ his ears back.”
“No, no. We’ve got to be more subtle, trip him up with the old man. ” Adam, at fourteen, was the leader among them, though Mungo and Colin were a year older and set to graduate at the end of the term. Mungo, in fact, wasn’t much interested in the whole affair — he’d come along merely to show solidarity. It wasn’t so much that he liked or disliked Gleg — of course he disliked him — it was simply that he couldn’t be bothered with such petty concerns. At fifteen, Mungo was something of a golden boy: an average scholar, but the best athlete in school, despite a tendency toward clumsiness. He was already six feet tall, and he had the musculature of a grown man. “I’m with Finn,” he said.
Adam took his turn at the jar. “Hear me out,” he said, and leaned forward to outline his plan. It was fiendish in its simplicity, and what’s more it involved Gleg in a major transgression of school discipline: Since the raison d’être of the local grammar school was to inculcate an understanding of Latin, all students were interdicted from speaking Scots — at work or play — during the hours that school was in session. This rule was enforced through the use of spies or “private clandestine captors,” who would report violations to the schoolmaster. The first offense was punishable by a public upbraiding and a fine of two shillings, the second by a whipping before the class. The older boys, of course, knew who the spies were and bought their silence in one way or another. Of the six or seven finks operating in a class of thirtyseven, Robbie Monboddo was the most dependable. They’d simply have him give the schoolmaster a false report on his star pupil. Mr. Tullochgorm. I’ve a boy to report, Sir. Young Gleg. Profaning the Lord — and in broad Scots, Sir.
♦ ♦ ♦
Two days later Gleg was summoned to the front of the classroom. Peat glowed in the stone fireplace, a slow steady drip of meltwater puddled the earthen floor. The place had formerly housed dairy cattle, and the air was stung with the odor of urine and soured milk. Frost silvered the slats of the inner walls, the scholars’ candles flickered fitfully in the gloom, rodents rustled in the thatch overhead. “George Peter Gleg,” Tullochgorm intoned, “come forward.”
The thirtyseven scholars froze at their makeshift desks. All eyes were on Tullochgorm as Gleg apprehensively rose from his seat and started up the aisle. Since the schoolmaster’s face never varied in expression, it was difficult to assess his mood at this juncture — was he angry or merely dyspeptic? Was Gleg to be chastised or praised? It was anyone’s guess — though Adam and Mungo, among others, had a pretty good idea.
Tullochgorm’s totem was the cat-o’-nine-tails that cut an ominous slash in the wall behind him. He liked no one and no thing. Words like wonder, beauty and life were foreign to his lexicon. He was impoverished and embittered, a mere grind dependent upon the niggardly salary the township raised for him, and on the charity of his students. “Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus,” he snarled, lashing out at each syllable as if it were a dog to be kicked.
Gleg stood before the schoolmaster’s massive oak table, his head bowed. He answered in Latin: “I–I don’t understand. Sir.”
“What! Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa, you young Turk.”
“But—”
“Silence!” Tullochgorm was on his feet now, delivering the customary lecture about disobedience, lack of discipline, those insidious few who circumvent the established rules of society and weaken the fiber of the Empire. When he was finished he seized Gleg by the scruff of the neck and shook him till the snot ran from his nose. “Two shillings!” shrieked the schoolmaster. “Two shillings! Quamprimum!”
A week later Gleg was called before the class for the second time. Adam smirked at Finn and Colin as the room fell silent and the wind moaned in the thatch. The younger boys blanched, clutching at the edges of their desks till their knuckles turned white. Tullochgorm was livid. Gleg frightened and confused. Mungo merely glanced up, absently fingercombed his hair, and then turned back to the dog-eared copy of Jobson’s African adventures he’d concealed beneath his Latin grammar. “Bonis nocet quisquis pepercerit malis!” roared Tullochgorm. And then: “Bend over the desk, reprobate.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Adam Park and his cohorts had achieved their end: Gleg was toppled. In the space of seven short days he’d gone from first scholar to thirty-seventh. But it didn’t end there. How could it, after all, when Gleg was so clearly marked, so conspicuously pathetic, so obvious a target he might as well have painted a black spot between his eyebrows? Adam and his friends had found the quintessential whipping boy. The more he suffered, the more they despised him — and the more determined they became to annihilate him, devastate him, squash him as they would have squashed a slug or spider. Adam took his brother aside. “Let’s have him expelled,” he whispered.
The following morning, at dawn, the scholars of Selkirk were gathered outside the schoolhouse awaiting the arrival of Tullochgorm. It was cold, and a number of them were huddled round the doorway, wringing their hands and stamping their feet. Adam and Finn were there, hands in pockets, copybooks tucked under their arms. They grinned at one another like Casca and Metellus Cimber on the front steps of the Senate House. Mungo and a few of the hardier types were out on the glazed-over duckpond, keeping warm with a round of curling. The big forty-pound stones hissed out over the ice like a long insuck of breath, the players panting along beside them with their whisks, the echo of the collisions bludgeoning the sharp morning air. From time to time a shout of triumph would ring out — in Latin, of course.
Gleg was late. He hurried along the path, bent over double, his copybook stuffed down the front of his jacket, a pot of ale cradled in his arms. Today was a tuition day, and each of the scholars was required to contribute a specified item to the schoolmaster’s larder, in lieu of pecuniary considerations. Colin had brought a boll of wheat, Mungo a basket of potatoes. Others had been asked for neeps or butter or a stewing chicken. Gleg’s assignment was to bring a pot of ale for the schoolmaster’s lunch each day for the next two weeks.