Sons of Fortune by Malcolm Macdonald

hand, its fist in clenched silhouette against the gaslight, rise above the dark cliff of the shoulder. It floated in an unreal space, remote from him. It fell.
    The world exploded in a riot of pain; his foot became a gulf that swallowed everything. He vanished, dissolving into that vast, molten anguish where his toes had been. He could see nothing in the sudden, searing light.
    There was a thud. A voice, de Lacy’s, said, “You utter sod!” Blenkinsop’s weight vanished. De Lacy had clouted him with a boot swung by its laces.
    The dorm began to return. The pain was still excruciating but no longer all-embracing. He was somewhat separate again from his agonizing toes. There was an argument going on. De Lacy was saying, “No you’re not! Swift’s chucked you out. You’re just an ordinary buck now. This isn’t the old days. If you lay a finger on any one of us again, we’ll go straight to Swift and you’ll get a house beating. And shan’t we just gloat!”
    “You’ll be sorry you said that, de Lollipop,” Blenkinsop threatened. “I’ll be King o’ the Barn again yet. Then I’ll show you what toe-taps can really do!”
    But at least twelve boys stood around him, all holding impromptu weapons. Through the pain Boy found time to wonder that de Lacy, who had been so petrified of Blenkinsop as King o’ the Barn, now stood up to him so calmly when the title was stripped away. Then he fell back to sleep.

Chapter 5
    In games of cruelty nature holds all the trumps. Her gift of oblivion allowed Boy to awaken not knowing he was at Fiennes, not remembering the savageries of the previous evening, his conscience wonderfully clear of all the uncertainties about Lorrimer’s death or survival. For several seconds the blissful state persisted. It was odd, because he had not awakened spontaneously. The cries of the pharaohs still rang around the room: “Come on everywhere! Stiffen up! Out o’ those chariots!” It was half-past six and dark as midnight inside the almost windowless dorm.
    One pharaoh, Malaby, the one who had tied the rope around him last night, gave Boy’s toes a friendly tweak. “You, too, Stevenson ma.”
    The pain, sudden and fierce, brought back all the rest: Blenkinsop, the beam, drum-drum-drum… and Lorrimer. What was the fate of boys who killed boys? Or even half-killed them?
    “We’re all going for a little run.”
    It was a new tradition at Fiennes that all the boys, from the meanest roe to the pharaohs, as well as the two younger masters, Mr. Cusack and Dr. Brockman (the bringer of this new tradition and its staunchest proponent), ran up the winding sheep paths to a cairn placed exactly one thousand feet above the school and a mere three hundred and twenty feet below the summit of Whernside; only on Sunday were the celebrants of Holy Communion excused—which went far to account for the school’s reputation for piety.
    “Go in your vest and trousers,” de Lacy advised.
    Boy hobbled painfully downstairs in the general crush from junior dorm. Nobody said that dreadful punishments awaited the last man back from the run but he had already been at Fiennes long enough not to need telling that sort of thing.
    Going down the stairs, where the windows were at eye level, he saw that the dawn was, in fact, well advanced. Caspar joined him in the passageway that led to the yard—the old cloisters.
    “How’s the foot?” he asked.
    Boy shrugged. “It will heal.”
    “I’d love the chance to hurt Blenkinsop. My toes are raw.”
    “Did he do the same to you, before me?”
    “No.” Caspar coloured. “He keeps trying to tickle my wetty. I hate him. His breath smells.”
    “What’s going to happen about Lorrimer, I wonder.”
    “It depends on how idiotic you are,” Caspar said, thinking that Boy was merely asking about which story they should all tell.
    The sun was just rising as they came out into the yard. They could not yet see the globe itself but it struck a pink sheen across the cold,