“Sycamore, dogs run off. They chase rabbits, rats, and cats. They run out in front of coaches, and if somebody inadvertently killed a duchess’s dog, he’d keep that to himself.” Dogs also fell in love, or their version of it, and no amount of training prevailed against that biological imperative.
Though two large dogs from wealthy households was enough of a coincidence to make Will uneasy for the dogs as well as for his brother.
“Is this why you attend the bear-baitings?” Will asked when they’d moved out of earshot of the terrace. “You think you’ll find the missing dogs in the pits?”
Cam tossed himself onto a bench near a blooming hedge of honeysuckle. By torchlight he looked about eleven years old, too young for the violence and gore of a bear-baiting.
“You’re not supposed to know about that,” Cam said. “I wasn’t looking for missing dogs, though. Did Ash peach on me?”
Will came down beside his brother as the strains of the waltz wafted from the ballroom.
He should have asked Lady Susannah to dance with him once Lady Della’s plight had been addressed. That would have given him a chance to ask her why she’d kissed him, and then invite her for a stroll in the dark, fragrant garden. In private, he’d explain to her that calling a man an old friend one minute and kissing him the next rather muddled a fellow.
Muddled him to the point where he was thinking about kissing her, which would not do.
“Willow, if you’re trying to flagellate me with your disappointed silence,” Cam said, “it’s working quite well. I only went to the bear garden twice.”
And yet Will’s disappointment was infinite. “Did you learn anything?”
“I don’t recall much, to tell you the truth. Had a bit to drink before. Bear-baiting is legal,” Cam said, taking out a gold case and extracting a cheroot. He rose to use a torch to light his smoke, then leaned against the lamppost. He smoked not with the restless self-consciousness of a youth attempting adult vices, but with the careless grace of the experienced devotee. Now he looked not eleven years old, but a man full grown, and then some.
He really should be at university.
“Bear-baiting is legal,” Will said, “so is wife beating and selling your children into bondage. So are opium dens, so is prostitution.”
Cam studied his cheroot, the smoke wafting around him in the shadows. “Why do they go, Will? Why do the crowds go week after week, to see the same bear chained by the same back leg, the same dogs hectoring him? The dogs tear at the bear, the bear bites and claws the dogs, a great mess is made, and much suffering endured on the part of the poor beasts, over and over, until death do them part. I don’t understand it.”
Thank God. “Why do you think the crowds go, Cam?”
Cam took a long, thoughtful draught on his smoke. “To be more horrified at the fate of the animals than at their own lives? To see somebody who has it worse than they do? I don’t know. A lot of the crowd is swells and cits, Will. They aren’t living brutal lives. Queen Elizabeth liked a good, gory bear-baiting. The cockfights are just as bad.”
“Bear-baiting is worse,” Will said. “The cock who won’t fight or doesn’t fight well is gifted with a summary execution, not staked in the pit over and over. You know your Roman history?”
Cam’s cheroot was growing short. He tapped the ash off, the movement competent and graceful.
“Bread and circuses?” Cam asked, taking another drag. “That’s for the masses, Will. What is a duke’s heir doing at a bear-baiting? A German prince and his cronies? Members of Parliament? Puking drunk and howling with mirth at a tormented bear, the lot of them.”
Cam dropped the last of the cheroot and stubbed it out with his toe, then slouched against the lamppost. His posture signaled disillusionment and bewilderment, necessary acquisitions on the road to maturity.
“I don’t understand the appeal of violence as entertainment, either,” Will said. “Papa took me to a bear-baiting when I was twelve. I left in tears, walked seven miles home in a howling rain, and wouldn’t talk to him for weeks. I never respected him quite as much after that.”
“Yes,” Cam said, straightening. “I can’t respect it, but the fellows think it’s quite the crack. Can’t wait to go, must sit right up front.”
Oxford had no bear gardens, not in the literal sense. “Next time somebody wants to attend a bear-baiting or a cockfight, Cam, you tell them a lady waits for you whom you’re loath to disappoint. Tell them her company is preferable to a pathetic old bear, a pack of mangy curs, or a lot of drunken boys.”
Cam pushed away from the lamppost. “You’d lie to your mates?”
Will rose, because the waltz had ended, and the conversation with Cam would take years to conclude. At least they’d made a start.
“I wouldn’t be lying, and they wouldn’t be my mates. Georgette is a lady, and I prefer her company to most anybody else’s. Let’s find Casriel and lecture him about his duty to the wallflowers, shall we?”