Thomas counts them down and they each place it on their tongues, like sugar lumps, gently pressing it against the roof of their mouths waiting for it to melt. It takes a while for the taste to spread. Lemon and the sharp herbal notes of Chlorodyne. The sweet dissolves very slowly, one has to suck on it, chew it, wear it out with one’s tongue. Charlie is waiting for something, a tingling, a giddiness, some sensation of change: a surge of strength, a sudden sleepiness, the elation of alcohol. But nothing happens, nothing at all. A look at Thomas tells him it is the same for his friend. At long last they swallow the final few shards. All that remains of the sweet is a medicinal flavour clinging to their gums, like they have just cleaned their teeth.

They both sit in silence, feeling crushed.

“So what does that mean?” Charlie asks when he can no longer bear it.

“It means,” Thomas says, “that we don’t understand anything. Not a thing.”

The spider above them quivers when they rise, in imitation of life.

SWINBURNE

The boy asks me after vespers: name of Kreuzer, Martin Herman. First year upper school. A German. Naturalised, I suppose, the whole family, for generations.

But still.

“Sir,” he asks, nervous, perhaps on a dare. “What is theatre?”

He does not smoke when he says it, so he thinks the question must be safe. I make him kneel in the pew. Sore knees. Good for the soul. He’s been reading Mr. William Shakespeare, he admits after some probing. A book of plays. Where does he have it from? This he is not supposed to say.

His crying is unbecoming.

I bring all this to Trout. His brother gave the book to him: Kreuzer, Leopold Michael, five years the elder. I remember him well. Daft little shite. Wouldn’t have thought him capable of something quite so monstrous.

“There has to be a letter,” I say. “An investigation.”

Trout won’t have it. Soft, he is, or else adaptable. Changing times: turning with how the wind blows.

“Confiscate the book,” he says, “and let it rest.”

Let it rest indeed. He didn’t hear the boy: “Please, sir. I don’t understand. Why is it forbidden?” Snot on his lip from all the crying, sitting there like a wet moustache.