The fact is that King Henry’s School is Oxbridge to the battlements, and Scoones, with his degree from Leeds, was neither polished, nor subtle, nor young enough, nor impressive enough to hope for anything more than a Junior Master’s post and the chance to run the French Exchange. Most days we make a joke of this, but Eric’s defection still rankles; especially for what it meant to Harry, when the time came for his friends to rally round.

Eric handed me the gnome, which seemed to have been laughing throughout. “I’m guessing this is yours,” he said. “I never want to see it again.” Then, without another word, he went on his way to the Bell Tower, slouching a little, as if still burdened with something too heavy to carry upright.

I went back to my form room feeling unexpectedly depressed. I put the gnome on my bookcase, where it continued to laugh at me throughout the day. Sixth-Form Ovid came and went, without the girl Benedicta, who seemed to be missing this morning; then fourth-form Latin, and then on to lunch, where my Brodie Boys seemed distant, almost secretive, and then a long afternoon that dragged on like the tail of a particularly slow and bedraggled bird—a pheasant, perhaps—as the day grew darker and wetter. Devine too came and went, with Jimmy, bringing traps to poison the mice. During my free period, Markowicz allowed his class to make so much noise that I could barely concentrate enough to read the paper.

By the end of School I was feeling tired and discouraged. I looked at the gnome, still watching me with an air of jaunty dissipation, and felt ridiculous. Eric was right, I told myself. I’m wasting my time. And for what? That business is over. Harrington is untouchable. So far, Winter’s “research” has given me nothing I do not know. And as for shaming Devine or Eric into joining my campaign—how could I ever have thought that would work?

The girl Benedicta was waiting for me outside the Common Room after School.

“Sorry I wasn’t in Latin today,” she said. “I was in the Library.”

“Really?” I was curious. St. Oswald’s Library is hardly the obvious place for truancy. “Is there a problem?” I asked.

“Yes.” The girl was nothing if not forthright. “It’s Allen-Jones,” she told me. “He’s being bullied for being gay.”

I felt the old heart sink a little. “Rupert Gunderson again?”

She gave me a look designed to convey the full extent of my incompetence. “He isn’t the problem,” she said. “It’s the Head; Dr. Blakely; the Chaplain; pretty much all of the Games staff—basically, St. Oswald’s, sir. It’s a toxic environment.”

“I see,” I said. “What happened?”