I could have told him, of course, could have recited the Stratford Verdict, chapter and verse (Seeing that theatre depicteth sin and maketh it a matter of entertainment; that it maketh bad actors commit the action of sin without the sign of Smoke, and good actors inhabit sin so thoroughly that their crime showeth on the skin; that the former createth an illusion that sin be possible without Smoke, and the latter forceth paid servants to distort their souls for the sake of spectacle; that in short the whole enterprise be lewd and filthy, unbecoming to gentlemen and dangerous for the crowd; that its lessons and morals, however pious, be lost behind intemperate words and idle shouting; and theatres be cow barns plastered with Soot; for all these reasons, and by the power invested in us by the Crown, we henceforth forbid and banish the performance, circulation, writing, and reading of theatre plays, be they comedy or tragedy, history or romance, from this our realm from this day forward etc. etc.), but that is hardly the point. Obedience is. A boy must not question. A new wind is blowing indeed. Renfrew’s kind of wind. Some mornings one can smell its stench all the way from London.

There are other portents. Spencer has begun to smoke. Julius, the head boy, primus inter pares. He has been seen, coming out of Renfrew’s office, with Soot on his sleeve. A pure boy, the purest we’ve had. Corrupted by his own master.

And by the presence of that other boy. Argyle, Thomas Winfried. A child of sin. He smokes most every day, like a workman’s boy in puberty. Even the servants avoid him, the kitchen hands, the groundsman living in his shed on the south field. Noble by birth, Mr. Argyle is, if we have faith in the honour of his mother. Yet common as dirt. There is some mystery attached to his father’s name, but Trout forbade all questions and discussion on pain of suspension. Argyle must have a powerful sponsor indeed.

For now he has been summoned by one of the highest in the land. Baron Naylor, lord of Stanley Hall, Marquess of Thomond. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him for nigh on ten years. Fell out with the Queen, some say; lost her trust. Trout’s sending Cooper, Charles Henry Ferdinand. The future Earl of Shaftesbury. A redhead, more pedigree than a prizewinning bitch; his father a beacon in this, our dusk. He must be disappointed with his son.

Naturally Trout will want a report from the boy. I wonder. Is it the state’s business, or his own? And if the state’s, which corner of its civil service? There are divisions now, where there once was unity: the commonweal crumbling like a slice of sailors’ rusk.

The New Liberalism. Science. Self-Governance. Progress. Fancy words harbouring heresy. A sin turned political movement. Sitting there, in Parliament, in plain sight.

Renfrew is a liberal.