Prologue
Michelmas Term 1796
It was a trap.
Matthew Forrester, The Right Honorable The Viscount
Southerton, had willingly, even eagerly walked into it
knowing that. Where would have been the game otherwise?
Now, he had assured his friends, all the elements were in
place. A challenge. A dare. A wager. And finally, a trap.
South refrained from naming it a battle of wits, because
the wits were so obviously distributed on his side as to
make the entire intrigue a bit of a yawn. Still, it was a
jolly good diversion for a Sunday evening.
Only a few months past his eleventh birthday, Matthew
could most kindly be described as gangly. His mother said
he hadn't come into his hands and feet yet. His father was
not pleased to hear it, though it explained his heir's
awkwardness well enough. Upon heating the countess's
pronouncement, the earl had wryly regarded his son at the
breakfast table while a servant hurriedly cleaned the
upended platter of eggs and tomatoes in front of the
boy. "Thought it was only his head he hadn't found. Demmed
dreamy lad, your boy." His mother had merely smiled at
each of them in turn, indulgently at her husband, then
encouragingly at her son.
Now, in what he hoped was an attitude of casual, even
insolent disregard, Matthew stretched his long frame in
the chair set before the tribunal, folding his arms on his
thin chest and crossing his feet at the ankles. He had
someone in mind as he struck this pose. An acquaintance of
his father's--and not the usual sort of young man the earl
was likely to know well--Matthew's brief glimpse of the
stranger in his father's library had captured his
imagination. That man had also struck a pose, though
Matthew had not consciously realized it was affected until
he found himself in the same position. Dashing. Perhaps a
bit dissolute. Dating in the raised chin. (Upon this
thought Matthew lifted his chin at the appropriate angle.)
And finally, the devil-may- care smile.
"He's grinning like a trout," one of the tribunal members
pointed out. "I've had a trout grin like that at me
before." He leaned slightly forward until his upper body
cast a shadow on the table in front of him, then he looked
down from his place on the dais. It was an aggressive
overture, neither sly nor subtle. "Just before I filleted
it."
There was appreciative laughter among the other four
tribunal members, not for what was said but for its
immediate effect on the young viscount. Matthew visibly
gulped, the smile disappeared, and a directive went out to
his arms and legs to come to attention. The chair actually
slid several inches to the rear as he forcefully sat up
straight and braced his shoulders and spine firmly against
the ladder-back.
"Ate it then," the tribunal member went on. "Fish never
stopped grinning at me."
Matthew didn't blink but stared straight ahead. This had
the unfortunate effect of making his light-gray eyes,
which had begun to water, seem absent of life and more
fishlike than not.
The archbishop raised his hand to halt the laughter. Quiet
reigned among the tribunal members as smiles faded along
the length of the scarred table. It was time to reflect on
the serious business before them.
"Well, Trout?" the head of the Society of Bishops demanded
in bored tones.
The dais rumbled as the tribunal laughed as though with a
singular voice.
"It's a good name for you," he went on when only a ripple
of amusement remained among them, and the fish caught on
their line began to wriggle a bit. "Do your friends call
you Trout?"
Matthew finally blinked. He wanted to wipe his eyes, but
he was certain the gesture would be misinterpreted. No one
on the Society's tribunal would credit the abundance of
lighted tallow candles in the small room as the cause for
his watery eyes. He would certainly be damned for all time
if they thought he was on the precipice of weeping. Better
to be named a fish than a girl.
"Do they, Trout?" There was impatience now from the
archbishop. At fourteen he was not older than every other
member of the Society who had elected him, but he was
unquestionably what they were seeking in a leader. He was
a handsome young man who gave no more thought to his bred-
in-the-bone confidence than he did to the color of his
hair or the shape of his mouth. He was too clever to be
cocky, but not wise enough not to be cruel.
"No," Matthew offered simply.
There was a faint lift to the archbishop's brow and a
disapproving murmur across the tribunal. "No?"
"No, your Excellency." Matthew had no liking for the form
of address the archbishop demanded. His voice quavered
slightly. "That is, no, your Excellency, my friends do not
call me Trout."
Albion Geoffrey Godwin, Lord Barlough, permitted himself a
slim smile. "A fine response," he said after a
contemplative moment. "Yet I cannot help being struck by
its falseness."
Matthew stared at him, not understanding.
The archbishop prompted in carefully cajoling
accents, "Are we not your friends, Trout?"
"I believe that has yet to be put to the vote, your
Excellency."
Young Lord Barlough nodded approvingly. "Right enough." He
looked to the pairing of friends on his right and left
flank and caught their eyes, communicating a message
without altering a single facial muscle. "But surely that
is a mere formality. You are here before us now at our
invitation. Invitations are never issued lightly; an
audience is never granted as a matter of course."
It was the Society's way to couch its activities in
comforting language. To say that the Viscount Southerton
had been brought before them by invitation was to entirely
dismiss the fact that he had been jumped by two of the
Society's Praetorian-like brothers in the cobbled
courtyard of Ham- brick Hall and carded bound,
blindfolded, and gagged to this room deep in the moist,
subterranean bowels of the school. To name this an
audience when in fact it was a trial was further proof of
the Society's penchant for couching the truth in an
innocuous phrase.
Archbishop of Canterbanter. Matthew almost smiled as the
title came to his mind. Lord Barlough would not like it if
he knew about the name or the scornful, irreverent way in
which it was often said by those on the outside of the
Society. Of course, since there were many on the outside
who wanted, even yearned, to be part of the inner sanctum,
and Matthew and his closest friends--the ones who did not
call him Trout--never referred to Canterbanter where they
might be overheard. The spies among them, the ones with
their noses out of joint because they'd been pressed for
so long to the Society's collective arse, would reveal a
classmate's disrespect if they thought it would gain them
entry to the exclusive and powerful cabal.
For as long as there had been a Hambrick Hall, there had
been a Society of Bishops. The origins of the organization
were not known to the uninitiated. Within the Society the
history was passed orally from archbishop to archbishop, a
tradition that was maintained for almost two hundred years
and that deviated neither in the words used nor their
inflection. For a communication that was so sacred as the
genesis of their order, the first archbishop devised a
chant, and in this manner the story flowed uninterrupted
from leader to leader for generations of boys.
Southerton had never been particularly curious about the
Society's beginnings, or about the Society at all. When he
arrived at Hambrick Hall three years earlier for his first
term, he had heard about the Bishops before he had
finished unpacking his trunk. He had put them out of his
mind, being much more interested in when dinner would be
served and if there would be custard as his father told
him there some- times was. A trifle vague in his own
approach to the world around him, neither an avid student
nor an indifferent one, friendly but not gregarious,
cooperative but not obsequious, Matthew fell outside the
notice of the Society until late in the last term, with
the arrival of Mr. Marchman.
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