Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/73135.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      Other
  Fandom:
      John_Wilmot_-_Fandom, Lord_Rochester
  Character:
      John_Wilmot, Lord_Rochester_-_Character, Mr._Gilbert
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-03-22 Words: 858
****** FIC: Carillon ******
by Hippediva
Summary
     After his first term at Wadham College, Oxford, the young Earl
     returns to Adderbury for Christmas. Merry Christmas to all my fellow-
     Libertines!
 Current mood:
                artistic
Current music: La Sonnerie de Ste. Genevieve---Marais
   Entry tags: fiction
FIC: Carillon
DISCLAIMER: Rochester was God's. The rest is all imagined from my brain,
although Mr. Gilbert did exist and was Rochester's tutor until he went to
Oxford.
RATING: PG, maybe a bit more implied
SUMMARY: After his first term at Wadham College, Oxford, the young Earl returns
to Adderbury for Christmas. Merry Christmas to all my fellow-Libertines!
The carriage clattered and the wheels rattled, thumping over roads turned into
rutted seas of frozen mud. He stretched, restless, and earned an arched brow
from Mr. Gilbert, who sat, straight as with the village Maypole inserted
behind.
His lips twitched at the thought.
Mr. Gilbert was displeased. He radiated it, from the top of his head to his
sober shoes, glaring over his volume. The gilded lettering was worn away and
John could only imagine what tedious matter his former tutor would produce to
show his acute distress at having been left behind at the beginning of term in
Oxford, then obliged to accompany his lost charge home. The advantage was
Christmas-tide at Adderbury with her Ladyship's country largesse.
A suddenly chill wind rocked the carriage like a ship on a crusted sea.
John bounced up to rub the frost from the window.
"My Lord! I should have thought a scholar of your years would behave in a more
decorous manner."
"Decor must for its own sake, be observed, must needs crush Freedom." The young
lord was having none of that. He unlatched the window and the bitter wind
nipped at his face.
Mr. Gilbert's pale eyes narrowed. My lord Rochester was much the worse for
three months unattended at Wadham College. He had known it would be so and
certainly, the young scholar would be all but ruined by another. He would
complain to her Ladyship in most strong terms.
A tedious journey and the bad weather had made it more so. Last night's
snowfall had frozen hard and there was naught to see but miles of petrified
fields, held fast in Winter's grip; copses of trees stabbing iron limbs to
leaden skies.
"My lord, the window!"
They rounded a hedgerow, crunching through puddles, the carriage fishtailing
and the horses' hoofbeats drumming. The signpost hung, a whitewashed gallows,
pointing the way to what promised but a dull holiday.
For a moment, the boy's face scowled.
A few of the local lads looked up from their snowballs to watch the carriage
rattle past and one impudent heaved a handful that fell short and landed in the
muck.
Perhaps it would not be all that dull, if he could devise an escape from
edificational reading around the hearth. There were the fields, the woods to
explore and that little housemaid whose smile was so sweet.
Mr. Gilbert was quite alarmed at the smile stealing over his lordship's face.
He was woolgathering and the dimple in the left corner of his drooping lower
lip deepened. The discomfited tutor could only imagine what mischief and sin
had been his exploits, all alone at Oxford without a strong hand. He was so
promising, beautiful and bright far beyond his years. It was her Ladyship's
worst fear that he should have inherited his father's giddy ways.
John wondered if the same wit and fluid tongue could charm the chit as well as
it had that sweet little drab at last night's inn. Mr. Gilbert was much off his
game not to have felt him slip away from the bed past ten o'clock.
The old stone church lowered, its lychgate floating in sullen drifts, snow
spotted with muddy splashes.
"My lord!"
The bells were ringing for Evensong.
The satyr faded from the dark eyes, his head moving with the complex rhythms,
memorised from childhood.
It was fine ring, the bells; eight of them, bronze voices calling one another,
to the beat of the pounding hooves and the creaking wheels.
The threatening skies sighed, a few stray snowflakes drifting on the wind to
melt in John's dark curls. The bells raced each other, muffled in a blanket of
grey; cottonwool softened their tones, and they slipped away, lost once more to
the thumping of the carriage. Words echoed in his head, tripping over one
another; pictures half-formed, cadences giving birth to phrase.
Bells of words, bells of bodies; swinging out against one another, each seeking
completion in the other's song, rippling away into nothingness.
For just a moment, a spark lit, flared, showing clear.
"Wilmot, close that window at once!"
It slammed shut and the earl turned, his face suddenly shadowed, his smile
playful but his eyes were too old.
Mr. Gilbert bit his lip and inwardly cursed anyone who gave an impressionable
twelve-year-old into the hands of Oxford and the dangerous theories of Hobbes.
Rochester sat back, listening, not watching a lifetime of dancing syllables and
felt the first stab of a chill. He thought more of the maid than a snowball
fight.
The bells carried something away with their insistent rings; cacophony
transformed to music and an innocent voice, seeking recompense for its
abandonment in the enchantment of the carillon.
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