Mr. Sharpe and Mr. Gitney both felt considerable trepidation at the onset of what promised to be the most mischievous of calamities. With the closure of the port, most of the College’s income was stopped up and its investments nullified; and so to anxiety was added penury.

As a result, Mr. Sharpe and Mr. Gitney’s remonstrances with the committee of investors were grown particularly groveling and obsequious. To this date, I know not what terms they discussed, what blasphemous deal they tried to strike, abhorrent to their humanity. I know only that, in the course of negotiations, they elected to deliver Pro Bono as a garnish to a gentleman donor in the Virginia Colony.

Bono and I sat in the country house’s garden. A thin snow had fallen the night before and grimed the weeds.

“A new light of liberty appears in the land,” I said, without hope.

“Aye,” said Bono.

“It may be that we shall not long be slaves.”

He nodded without reply.

We both surveyed the bedraggled stalks of dead things. The wind blew across us, over the brick walls. The sky was gray that day, and mobile.

I asked him, “What do you think of?”

“Coffles,” he said.

“You will be a gentleman’s valet.”

“I’ll be one skip closer to the West Indies,” he said. “Where they don’t bother to feed a man because they don’t bother to keep him alive.”

I could not think on it. I wished to embrace him.

O Lord of heaven — place Your hand upon him now, Your palm incised with age and suffering. The deeps of heat there in the Indies — he shall not go there — the ranks of chained men led out to the sugar-fields — the sun, buzzing in the heavens. O Lord — say that he shall not go there — decree it — the mud where men lie whitening as they die.

“Bono,” I said, choking on my own panic — thinking thus then, as I pray devoutly now —“Bono, you have been like my —,” and I held forth my hand to touch him, not knowing what word could supply his curious role — a brother? A father?

“Do not speak,” he said, rising. He took my hand and pulled me to my feet. He yanked my arm, and dragged me through the desolate orchard. He said, “I ain’t going anywhere I don’t wish. You be sure.” He led me through an arbor; we stood in a small grove of dead vines trailing purple across furniture of marble. There was a door there which led out into the pastures of Canaan. There were, as well, several terms, stone satyrs in the brambles.

Bono pushed my head down towards a flat rock, on which the snow lay.

“You see that?” he said. “Commit it to memory. It’s a magic rock.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You pray to that rock sometime, and it give you what you wish for. You see it now?”

“Is this some frenzied retreat into your native animism?” I asked.

“God damn, I’ll retreat my boot up your arse. Do you see it?” He thrust my skull towards the stone.

“I see it.”

I could hear him close to tears. “There’s going to be some day when you need it, and you come out here, and you pray to it. And you hold it close to your belly. And it will give you everything you ask. Does His Highness understand?”

“I understand.”

“Does His Highness remember?”

“His Highness does.”

“Does His Highness, King of Nowhere, Monarch of Nothing, Lord of the Shit-hill Isles —”

“Bono,” I said. “His Highness wishes to entertain a more decorous final image of you than being held over a rock and berated by some parcel of insanity.”

He let loose his grip on me. I stood to my full height. I was of a height with him, though he was broader.

He looked out over the wall into the orchard, squinting. “First week I was at the College,” he said, “they lit some kind of gas on fire. You recall that? Out in the orchard. You were little. A minikin.”

“I recall it,” I said.

“I thought they was gods. I thought, Now I’m walking in heaven, and it won’t ever matter what happens on Earth.”

Together, we looked at the apple-trees against the winter sky.

“Fine, then,” he said. “I’m going to go in now to put a bow in my hair. As befits a gift.”