If We Were Villains: A Novel

I got lost on my way out of the basement and was late for combat call. James, Camilo, and three second-years were already there.

“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, I lost track of the time.”

“Where’ve you been?” James asked, with a strange deadpan expression. I was burning to ask him the same question, but not in front of other people.

Camilo interjected. “Let’s talk later. We’ve got a lot to get through and not a whole lot of time to do it. Did you two work this over the weekend?”

I glanced at James, who said, “Yes,” before I could answer. We’d only run through the blocking twice, because he’d been out of the Castle most of the day Saturday and all day Sunday.

“Then let’s get started,” Camilo said. “Shall we go from Edgar’s challenge?”

The set for Lear had been outlined on the floor in blue spike tape. It was a curious design, the proscenium stage stretching into a catwalk that ran down the center aisle of the audience. We called it the Bridge; the elevation was marked at four feet.

I took my place upstage, my rapier hanging on my left hip. James and the rest of them were already in place—he at the top of the Bridge, the soldiers on stage left, Camilo and the herald on stage right. Meredith should have been there, too, but there was no sense summoning her when all she did was watch.

Me: “What’s he that speaks for Edmund Earl of Gloucester?”

James: “Himself. What say’st thou to him?”

I glared at him, fists clenched against the churning of my stomach. There was no need to impress anyone with emotions for a fight call, but I was already on edge.

Me:                              “Draw thy sword,

That, if my speech offend a noble heart,

Thy arm may do thee justice. Here is mine.”

I drew my sword, and James raised his eyebrows, faintly amused. I crossed downstage to the top of the Bridge.

Me: “Despite thy victor sword and fire-new fortune,

Thy valor and thy heart, thou art a traitor,

False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father,

Conspirant ’gainst this high illustrious prince,

And from th’ extremest upward of thy head

To the descent and dust below thy foot,

A most toad-spotted traitor.”

Somewhere in the middle of my speech, James’s wry amusement faded from his face and was replaced with a cold, ugly look. When it was his turn to speak I watched him closely, uncertain whether he was acting only, or if he and I both were gnashing secrets between our teeth.

James: “What safe and nicely I might well delay

By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn.

Back do I toss those treasons to thy head!”

He may as well have spat at me.

James: “With the hell-hated lie o’erwhelm thy heart,

Which, for they yet glance by and scarcely bruise,

This sword of mine shall give them instant way

Where they shall rest for ever. Trumpets, speak!”

We raised our weapons, bowed to each other without breaking eye contact. He attacked first; my block was sloppy and his blade slid along mine to the hilt with an angry hiss. I threw him off and clumsily recovered my balance. Another blow, another block. I parried, struck at his left shoulder. The foils clattered together, their blunt edges colliding with the rattle and snap of a snare drum.

“Easy,” Camilo said. “Easy, now.”

We danced a rapid grapevine down a narrow aisle between two long lines of tape. That was the choreography: I beat him to the end of the Bridge, where he would fall, one hand on his stomach, blood blossoming beneath his fingers. (How this would happen, we had yet to be informed by the costume crew.) We fought with our bodies parallel, swords flashing between us. He staggered, lost his footing, but when I raised my arm to deliver the killing stroke, his fingers curled more tightly around the hilt of his sword. The pommel and guard cracked across my face, white-hot stars burst through my field of vision, and pain hit me like a battering ram. Camilo and one of the soldiers shouted at the same time. The rapier slipped loose from my fingers and crashed down beside me as I fell backward onto my elbows, blood gushing from my nose like someone had turned on a faucet.

James dropped his foil and gaped down at me with wide, bulging eyes.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Camilo yelled.

James stepped back like a sleepwalker, slowly, entranced. His fingers flexed at his side, his knuckles gleaming red. I tried to speak, but my mouth was full of iron, blood dribbling down my chin, soaking the front of my shirt. The two soldiers propped me up, and my head drooped heavily forward, like all the tendons in my neck had snapped.

Camilo was still shouting. “Unacceptable! What the hell’s gotten into you?”

James looked up at him instead of me. “I—” he began.

“Get out,” Camilo said. “I’ll deal with you later.”

James’s mouth moved wordlessly. Water suddenly welled in his eyes, and he turned and ran out of the room, leaving his coat and gloves and everything else behind.

“Oliver, are you all right?” Camilo crouched beside me, lifting my chin. “You got all your teeth?” I closed my lips, swallowed blood, and gulped hard against the reflex to vomit. He pointed first at the taller of the two soldiers, then at the other one. “You, help me get him to the infirmary. You, run and find Frederick, tell him I need to see him and Gwendolyn immediately. Move.”

The world reeled as they hoisted me up, and I hoped dully that I’d lose consciousness and never wake up again.