“What’s a lover, sir?”
George smiled. “A lover is a man who lives with a woman, but not in the state of holy matrimony.”
“Then there’s no chance of a lover being virgo intacta, is there, sir?” said Wainwright with a smirk.
“You are quite right, Wainwright, although I suspect that Elizabeth never took a lover, as it would have called her authority as monarch into question.”
Another hand shot up. “But wouldn’t the court and the common people have preferred to have a man, like the Earl of Essex, on the throne rather than a woman?”
George smiled again. Graves, one of those rare boys who preferred the classroom to the games field, was not one to ask frivolous questions. “By that time, Graves, even Elizabeth’s original detractors would have preferred her to the Earl of Essex. Indeed, over three hundred years later this woman surely ranks as the equal of any man in the pantheon of English monarchs,” he concluded as the chapel bell sounded in the distance.
George looked around to see if there were any more questions. There were none. He sighed. “That will be all then,” he said. “But gentlemen,” he added, his voice rising, “please be sure that your essays on the religious and political significance of Henry the Eighth’s marriage to Anne Boleyn are on my desk by midday on Thursday.”
An audible groan went up as the lower fifth gathered their text books and made their way out of the classroom.
George picked up the blackboard duster and began to rub out the names and dates of Henry’s six queens. He turned around to see that Graves was still sitting in his place.
“Can you name all six of them, Robert, and the years in which they became Queen?” he asked.
“Catherine of Aragon, 1509; Anne Boleyn, 1533; Jane
Seymour, 1536; Anne of Cleves, 1540; Catherine Howard, 1540; and Catherine Parr, 1543.”
“And next week I’ll teach you a simple way of recalling their fates.”
“Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. You told us last week, sir.”
“Did I indeed?” said George as he placed the duster back on his desk, seemingly unaware of just how much chalk had ended up on his gown.
George followed Graves out of the classroom and made his way across the quad to the masters’ common room to join his colleagues for the mid-morning break. Although he had proved to be a popular master with the majority of staff as well as the boys, he was well aware that not all of his colleagues approved of what they described in hushed tones as his laissez-faire attitude, and one or two of them openly voiced the opinion that the lack of discipline in his classes was undermining their own authority, especially when they had to teach the lower fifth on the same day.
When Dr. Rendall decided the time had come to take Mallory to one side and have a word with him on the subject, George simply informed him that he believed in self-expression, otherwise how could any boy realize his full potential? As the headmaster had no idea what “self-expression” meant, he decided not to press the matter. After all, he was due to retire at the end of the school year, when it would become someone else’s responsibility.
George had made only one real friend among his colleagues. Andrew O’Sullivan had been a contemporary of his at Cambridge, although they had never met. He had read Geography and won a boxing blue while he was at Fitzwilliam, but despite the fact that he showed no interest in mountaineering, and even less in the beliefs of Quintus Fabius Maximus, he and George had immediately found that they enjoyed each other’s company.
When George entered the common room he spotted Andrew slumped in a comfortable leather chair by the window, reading a newspaper. George poured himself a cup of tea and strolled across to join his friend.
“Have you seen The Times this morning?” Andrew asked.
“No,” said George, placing his cup and saucer on the table between them. “I usually catch up with the news after evensong.”
“The paper’s correspondent in Delhi,” said Andrew, “is reporting that Lord Curzon has brokered a deal with the Dalai Lama to allow a select group of climbers to enter—”
George leaned forward a little too quickly and knocked over his colleague’s tea cup. “Sorry, Andrew,” he said as he grabbed the newspaper.
Andrew looked faintly amused by his friend’s rare lapse of good manners, but said nothing until George had handed the paper back. “The RGS is inviting interested parties to apply,” continued Andrew. “Are you by any chance, my dear Mallory, an interested party?”
George didn’t want to answer until he’d given the question a little more thought, and was relieved when the bell alerting masters that break would end in five minutes came to his rescue.
“Well,” said Andrew as he rose from his chair, “if you feel unable to answer that particular question, allow me to put a less demanding one to you. Are you doing anything other than reading The Times on Thursday evening?”
“Marking the lower fifth’s essays on the Armada,” said George. “I do believe that lot finds a sadistic pleasure in rewriting history. Wainwright even appears to think that the Spanish won the battle, and Drake ended up in the Tower.”
Andrew laughed. “It’s just that one of the school governors, a Mr. Thackeray Turner, has invited me to join him for dinner that night, and asked if I’d like to bring a friend.”
“It’s kind of you to think of me, Andrew,” George said as they walked out of the common room and into the quad, “but I expect Mr. Turner meant a lady friend.”
“I doubt it,” said Andrew. “At least not while he’s still got three unmarried daughters.”