That year the weather in Shadewell provided little precipitation so that the craggy grounds of the university looked bare and hostile. The dying, reddish-brown vegetation obscured few of the violent points and toothy ridges of the hillsides and furrows, and the university itself stood in sharp relief against a murky, almost ochre sky. The lack of rain likewise left the air hazy once the temperature cooled sufficiently that the servant class began burning peat to knock the chill from the evening. In turn, those the peat-burners served expected and received coal fires to warm them, which only added to the thickening of the dry, languid, choking air.
In one of the three-story buildings of the university, a middle-aged woman and a young man at the cusp of adulthood were speaking to one another with some passion. They occupied the always chilly office of Terrence Roberts, but that stolid professor of engineering and mathematics had absented himself for the duration of their talk.
“Your father wishes you to continue at school,” Elizabeth Roberts said to her son. Entering her forties, Mrs. Roberts remained a remarkably beautiful woman—not only in her features but in her impeccable balance between reserved poise and ingratiating charm. Indeed, her presence sufficed to enliven and make comfortable the professor's office more than did the slight heat emanating from the small iron floor grate. Her voluminous ebony hair had stayed thick and full and showed not a trace of gray, while her blue eyes and bemused smile (which always seemed ready to play across her full lips) froze women in envy and melted the hearts of men.
“My father?” young William said. He resembled his mother clearly, except in eye color, and, whereas her skin was porcelain, his was a shade duskier. More important than mere physicality, he had either inherited or learned his mother's ability to charm both a room or an individual. Like her, he knew how to make any person with whom he conversed feel he—or, more often, she—was the sole occupant of Will's highly desirable attention.
“Yes.”
“My father.” Will's eyes searched Elizabeth's with meaningful intent.
His mother's face looked pained at the repeated question but then softened. Her son was the one person with the right to ask it. “Yes, the man whom you have always known as your father and whose surname you bear.” Her eyes, however, did not meet his as she glanced around the perfectly ordered office, organized for meticulous efficiency and concentration. On the imposing desk stood a jarful of pencils, each sharpened to the same length, save the one currently in use when the rightful occupant was here at work. That pencil was exactly parallel to the edge of the desk nearest the chair and precisely centered on the surface left to right, waiting at attention for its wielder to return.
“Mother...I have heard the rumors my whole life. Other children were never sparing, and most of my black eyes and bloody noses have been because...well, in foolhardy attempts to defend your honor against those stronger than myself.”
“I know that, Will.” She looked both sad and proud.
“Don't you think you should be honest with me? Don't I deserve that much?”
Today, at last the inevitable reckoning had come. She gazed down at her slender hands and tried to clear her throat. The attempt, however, caused her to cough, and she recovered from the paroxysm only after a moment.
“You should see a doctor, Mother.”
Elizabeth spoke through the handkerchief with which she had covered her mouth. “Tis only because everything is so dry. Once we have some rain, I'll breathe more easily.” The unanswered question hung in the air between them as much as did the choking haze that had crept through cracks and drafts indoors.
“I know how you are about the truth in all things,” she said finally. The recent cough brought out her voice's more sensuous tone. “It is the most naïve characteristic of my otherwise far-too-experienced boy.”
“My ardor for truth is a natural reaction, I think, to growing up in a house in which easy deceit has draped all the pretty furniture and other trappings of domesticity like a coat of perpetual dust.”
She paled, so that her ivory skin contrasted that much more with her black tresses. “You may not think him your father, but you have Terrence's knack for cutting to the core of the apple with a razored phrase.”
“I do?...I certainly hope so, as that is my aim in life, rather than wasting another year with my head buried in the books of pedants who could not, if their eternal salvation depended on it, write an interesting sentence.”
“You may find this truth you worship itself is rather dull.”
He spoke with the unselfconscious earnestness typical of most his age. “I don't care if it is, Mother. It's the only thing in this life that's real. It's the only thing worth spending one's limited time pursuing.”
She brought her handkerchief down. “A mother often hears of her son's pursuits, whatever they may be, truthful and pure. Or otherwise. And idolizing truth does not seem to be your only pastime.”
“What of that?” He knew immediately what she was getting at. “No woman who has shared my company”—he almost said his bed—“can complain that I have lied to her.”
His mother smiled with a bemused, doting sadness. “Is the truth really so easy to get at in your world, Will? To be sure of? I wonder whether Belle Chapman would attest to the truth of what you have said. Would Rachel Finney?”
“I cannot be blamed for—“
“I could go on, you know. A lady with my social connections knows much and keeps silent about most...until her speaking becomes necessary.”
Were it anyone but his mother, Will would have become enraged over having his treasured honesty challenged. Instead, he replied, “Regardless of what any of those girls might claim, my conscience is clear.”
“As is mine.” She stared at him.
“It is not your conscience I question. If a woman bore my son, I would not leave him in doubt and in thrall to a man who was nothing like him, but lorded over him and tried to make the child dance to his own out-of-key tune.”
Her mind seemed momentarily elsewhere, on something—or someone—else. “You might....If the mother wished her son to be brought up in a respectable manner, rather than be turned out as a bastard and herself publicly humiliated.”
“Is that my answer then?”
“That is what your god, the truth, would have caused to happen.”
He carelessly pushed the pencil out of its place and sent it rolling across the desk's surface. It plummeted, striking the unforgiving floor with a crack. “Instead the son was brought up in a manner and station not at all suited to him. Made to study numbers and other...abstractions.” He rose and strode to the window to stare out it into the stagnant smog hanging over Paridon. Terrence's office faced southwest, away from the coast. If the air had been clear, the Clock Tower might have been visible across the polluted Nodnal River. Will, however, looked blindly into the mist and thought only of the far reaches of the island city.
“Blackchapel, that's where I belong.”
“Blackchapel?” His mother said the word as though he told of an unfortunate accident that she hoped had not truly transpired. “Why?”
“Because I am no aristocrat. And I am no damned academic!”
Concern for her son distorted Elizabeth's comely face. “There are many other places besides the university that are hardly so...drastic as Blackchapel.”
“Do you know of a newspaper equal in its reputation to the Newsbill?”
She almost laughed. “Reputation! The Newsbill is a scandal-mongering rag! All those gruesome stories of Bloody Jack....”
“You said truth can be boring. It is also often sensational and scandalous. Just the way a paying audience prefers. Do you want me to tell you something scandalous, Mother?”
“I don't think I do.”
“One of the reasons I have been receiving such poor marks this year is I have already begun working in the field for the Newsbill. Selling papers, but also providing bits of copy. That has received some praise. So regardless of what my father—Terrence—wishes, I won't be returning next term.”
Elizabeth thought for a moment, collecting herself, and then sighed. “I know what it is like to have dreams of which one's parents do not approve. To have them smothered like an unloved infant in its cradle.”
He looked at her with his fullest sympathy.
“I shall relay your decision to my husband.”
Will put his hand over his mother's and employed his most affectionate smile to reassure her that he knew what he was doing. Although Elizabeth recognized the tactic (as she had long mastered it herself), she allowed it to work its magic upon her. She had never been able to refuse Will any of his heart's desires, even when she knew what cost indulging him would bring.