Work Text:
Shall I Compare Thee, and All That Rot.
by N. Ranken
spooniekid@yahoo.com
"Harry, pay attention!" The annoyed growl made Harry gasp and snap to, his dark eyes lifting to lock onto his tutor's icy gaze. "Were you off daydreaming again?"
When his brain had centred itself back in his head, the young man nodded, then dipped his chin. "Yes, Bob; I'm sorry. There's just too many numbers, and it's not making any sense."
The former necromancer straightened and sighed, his usual spectacle of frustration less decoration than honest expression at the moment. "Harry, we have been working on this for years, and you still haven't gained much more control than you had when you first came here. If you keep this up, your uncle's going to put you out on the street to panhandle."
A spark of annoyance came to Harry, too, and he ground his jaw as he looked over--no longer up, but over--at the man he'd come to consider his friend. "This isn't Dickens, Bob. This is math. I *hate* math; you know that."
Bob snorted, his nostrils flaring as he turned on his heel to stalk across the room. There was no swish of cloth, no clack of shoes over the floor, and in watching him, Harry realised that the reason his hearing had taken on its keen edge was the result of living mostly in a silent schoolroom of an empty manor. He felt a pang of loneliness, though a glance at the skull on the table smoothed the ache with a sort of balm.
"I do not understand why you have no appreciation or concept for mathematics," the sorcerer growled, posture tense. "It is a game that has always been played by children and adults alike. Numbers are everything, Harry; they describe everything from the turning of the heavens to the beats of your heart."
"Numbers are evil little minions of Satan," the younger one snapped, stalking off on his own. He ran his hands through his loose, floppy hair, a gesture taken from his father rather than his mentor, and gave another growl. "They never stay the same once they get complicated. They dance and shift and shimmer like goddamned faeries in their circle."
"Harry, language! And stop pulling on your hair; it's going to come out if you keep on like that."
"I'm sorry, Bob; I just can't handle any more numbers right now." There was a pause, and then he sighed, moving his hands in front of him as if he could stop his own spinning thoughts with a halting motion. "Maybe I just need to clear my head; what else do we have on the schedule for today?"
Bob looked over at the ledger where he had Harry write out the coming lessons every night. "Discussion on Shakespeare, the great plagiarist. Sonnet one hundred forty-nine."
Harry nodded, moving to one of the many bookshelves. "Words. Okay, words I can handle." He pulled two books from it, one large and heavy for his teacher, and one smaller for himself. In silence, he walked over to the lectern and placed the larger book there, opening it carefully to check the index for the page needed.
***
There was something very absorbing about watching the young man go about a task. He'd drilled early the necessary respect for important books, grimoire-burning notwithstanding. Focused and methodical, almost like a ritual, the combination of Harry's outburst just now and the motions were enough to convey why the young man was perfect at evocation, despite his lack of advancement at thaumaturgy and other, more complicated magics.
Stepping up to the lectern, Bob let his eyes glance over the pages open on it. He could read a book by placing his essence inside it, lazily swirling about the pages until all the information had been absorbed. However, he knew that such a method unnerved Harry when he was trying to learn, and respected the young man's desire to have someone with whom to interact. He watched while the younger of them moved to his customary seat, opening his own book to follow along.
"As we were discussing yesterday, sonnets one hundred forty-seven through one hundred fifty, and possibly the two afterward are part of a section often called 'the frenzy.' Generally, they're thought to be about Shakespeare trying to understand the supposed cruelty of his lover, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." He rolled one hand in the air as he spoke; Bob had no love for the Bard, but Morningway wanted his nephew to have a fully-rounded education. He looked up at a stifled laugh; it wasn't often that Hrothbert of Bainbridge allowed himself any measure of irreverency, and each time it happened, Harry was wont to enjoy it.
"The basic thrust of the matter is that Shakespeare wasn't enough of a man in himself to go and have a talk with the woman in question, and as such gropes blindly through his own mind and not hers to try to figure out the answer to his apparent conundrum. Before we start, tell me the advantages of the iambic pentameter meter."
"It allows a poem to be read with rhythm without letting it become sing-song," Harry replied, obviously confident enough in this realm of thinking. "The iambic foot corresponds with the beat of the heart, and forms the basic underlying structure of human speech, at least as far as the English language goes. It can be read in a specific, overstressed pattern, or the rhythm can be subdued into the normalcy of human speech, depending on the speaker."
The one subject Bob wouldn't have minded the young man to struggle with, and he grasped it firmly. It figured. "Correct. There are fourteen lines to this one; we shall alternate--"
"Bob?"
"Interruption is rude, Harry," the older man chided. "But, what is it?"
"You obviously hate Shakespeare, yet you take the time to go over all his work with me. Why?"
Damn all overperceptive young men. "Your uncle wants you to have a full education, even if it means absorbing things from the greatest literary charlatan who ever lived."
"You don't hate Chaucer so much, and he pretty much ripped off everything, too," the dark-eyed young man pointed out, shifting on the seat. He tipped his head as he often did when listening; it was a mannerism picked up from Bob himself. It sometimes worried him, seeing so much of himself in the boy, but all things considered, he'd rather have Harry pick up mannerisms from him than from his uncle.
It caused Bob to sigh. "I can't explain it. I simply have no respect for Shakespeare, other than in his ability to write in decent rhythm." Even he could hear the frustrated tone in his own voice, and slowed his thoughts down from the whirling annoyance. "Even if I believe him to have no integrity, his writings were preserved for a reason. They were written in a manner that most, if not all people could understand, and there's a commonality about them that has touched people for centuries. At this point, it's just playing with levels; finding shades of meaning that the author may or may not have intended to be there."
There was a silence, and the young man nodded, showing his understanding. "Ramifications--going through and finding the intent that was put into an evocation. It's like turning on the candles." Bob looked about as Harry gestured to the sconces in the wall, unlighted during the day to save on wax. "I'll say *flickum bicum* to turn them on no matter what, but I might just want to put them on so I can see, or I might be scared and make them blaze bright."
The analogy made the older man smile; when he wanted to, Harry could definitely have a way with words. "Yes, just like that."
***
Harry grinned to himself and nodded, enjoying Bob's approval. The former necromancer had many expressions, but it seemed few were positive, and of those that were, a genuinely warm smile was the rarest. "Okay, you start off, and I'll match your rhythm." He liked to hear Bob speak, even if it was droning on about mathematics, and wondered if he could someday coax the man to sing.
"*Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not,*" Bob began, setting the pacing.
"*When I against myself with thee partake*?" Harry answered.
"*Do I not think on thee, when I forgot…*"
"*Am of my self, all tyrant, for thy sake?*" Instead of overemphasising the rhythm, they both let the words flow as if they were talking, a conversation in alternate lines. They paused as Harry pondered the words, forming the explanation for which he knew Bob was waiting.
"Well?" Bob asked after a few moments.
"Gimme another minute. It flows well, but the guy was a nut, and twists his words around so I have to pull them apart and fit them back in order," the younger man grumped. "He's asking her how she could think he doesn't love her, when he thinks about her all the time, and neglects himself out of love for her. He'd do anything for her, and can't stop thinking about her when they're not together." Thinking further on it, he rather understood that. Bob was never far from his mind, even when Harry was far from his skull.
The white head nodded, and Bob pursed his lips in appreciative thought. "Very good. Have you been working with the grammar book I recommended?"
Harry nodded affirmative. "It's weird, but interesting. I didn't realise that saying directly what you mean was so recent. Probably how most of the wars got started, someone saying something that was taken the wrong way."
Bob snerked at that, smiling again before bending down to read. "*Who hateth thee that I do call my friend,*"
"*On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon*,"
"*Nay, if thou lour'st on me, do I not spend,*"
"*Revenge upon myself with present moan?*" Harry ground his jaw after he finished, mind working. "Well, the first two are easy--he wants to know which of his friends don't like her so he can bitch them out, and which of his friends *she* doesn't like so he can drop them…"
"Language…" Honestly, he wasn't sure where the young man had picked up such uncouth vocabulary… probably while on the road with his father, Bob guessed.
"I'm trying to remember 'lour…'" The young man shook his head. "Something about thunderstorms…"
"Lour'st is to look threateningly upon," Bob supplied, trying to help along his student's thoughts.
Dark hair swushed as Harry nodded decisively. "Right, like glower. Lour, glower. Got it. Okay, then the last two are saying that if she gives him the stinkeye for some reason, he's gonna go ballistic on himself and spend time beating himself up for it." In a way, Harry could understand that, too. When Bob got genuinely angry with him, it always served to upset him and make him buckle down, determined to master whatever it is that they'd butted figurative heads over in the classroom.
Blue eyes rolled heavenwards, and Bob shook his head in exasperation. "Stinkeye. Your unconventional irreverence will never fail to surprise me, Harry, but yes."
"Not my fault that I understand things better when they're not garbled with gobbledygook. Your turn."
A sigh, and Bob bent back over the tome. "*What merit do I in my self respect,*"
"*That is so proud thy service to despise,*"
"*When all my best doth worship thy defect*"
"*Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?*" The younger man swallowed nervously, and silently counted to five to steady his voice. "Um, could be a couple things. One, he could be saying he both holds her to a standard and looks down on her--*respicere* and *despicere*--and whatever faults in her he forgives completely, even though she can be rather imperious and controlling."
"Or?" Here, Bob raised an eyebrow, and Harry swallowed again.
"Or, he could be saying that he really, really likes her in the sack, even though he probably shouldn't, since sex was considered unclean and…" Here he broke off, trying to find words for the concepts in his mind. "Unseemly, I guess. Good girls didn't, and she obviously did, so she really couldn't have been that 'good.'"
Bob nodded, a measure of respect in his eyes, though he decided not to push the point and make his ward more uncomfortable. "Excellent observations. Final lines. *But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind*"
"*Those that can see thou lov'st, and I am blind.*" The silence stretched between them as Harry looked over the words, trying to connect them to what he'd just read. "This doesn't make sense," he hummed. "I mean, he's just… nuts. He goes on and on about what she must and mustn't think, and then says she only loves people who can see, but that he's blind… so, he loves her even though she supposedly hates him, and he hates himself for it." Harry took one more look at the book, and sat back. "That ending really sucks."
Bob couldn't help the laughter that escaped him, eyes warm as his shoulders shook. "Well, what would a better end have been, Harry?"
"Well, crimeny, if she hates him that much, can't he just find someone else? Someone who isn't going to be a giant bi--"
Bob cleared his throat.
"Giant churl or something?" Harry shook his head. "Or, you know, tried to be *friends* with someone before jumping in the sack?"
"That's not what a mistress was for."
"Yeah, I know that. But, it just… He was more in love with his own words than he could ever be with anyone else, and it shows. There's no balance at all--" The young man paused, mind spinning. Balance. Equality. "That's… that's it!" Setting the book aside, he leaped up and headed over to the table, shuffling tomes until he found the one he was looking for.
"What's it?" Bob wondered, confused by the sudden motion.
"It's it," Harry replied, mind working too fast to be specific. "We think differently, that's why we work together so well. We can see things from two different sides, like good friends should." Balancing the book in the crook of one arm, he hurried over to the chalkboard and picked up the eraser. "See, we've been going about this all wrong." He smudged the board clean, then picked up the white chalk and began working out symbols. "These things, they aren't equations, Bob. They're poems." His hand worked frantically over the board, and he glanced between the tome and his scribbles, erasing here and there to correct lines or spelling. "You're trying to teach poetry with numbers, and when you're looking for a numerical balance, I'm looking for a rhythmic balance." He flipped a few pages, double-checked his final sigil, and backed away from the board. "There. It's right, now, isn't it?"
***
Bob stepped forward, not sure what to make of the young man's outburst, and looked over the work. The lines were smooth and decisive, the symbols precise. And correct. "Yes, Harry, it's…" He tipped his head and moved closer, pointing at one of the symbols. "Why did you call Lachesis here instead of Clotho? That's not the point of the system."
"Yes, it is." Excitement removed any traces of anger or harshness. "See, this is to encourage health and long life. Clotho only gathers up the raw, base stuff to do it; she doesn't add anything on. It's Lachesis that spins everything out and determines the length. Invoking Clotho isn't going to do any good at all. Lachesis can make a gob of goo go as far as a whole chunk, ad since she's the one who tells Atropos where to cut… Say it out loud with the decline preface, and it reads right."
Instead of looking at the symbols, Bob ran though the words in his own head. Harry had indeed made poetry where he had seen equations, and he had to wonder if numbers and words were really all that different. "You are right, Harry. I hadn't thought that way before."
Setting the book back down, Harry snapped up his tutor's skull and hugged it, the swush of his shoes over the floor ringing loud in the library as he spun about.
Bob put a hand to his head, momentarily dizzy, and gestured for the young man to put the bone down. "All right, all right; no need to make me motion sick." There was no anger or rancour in the tone, only affection and amusement, and he turned back to the chalkboard. "Well then, clear the board, and let's try these again."
end