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intend to give voice to our concerns. Your class attendance has shown a marked decline this period. Your instructors feel you have become contemptuous toward them and toward your studies since the publication of your book.”
    I nodded. “In light of my recent accomplishment, I do find the classroom to be small and provincial and an impediment to my artistic development. My great talent carries with it a moral duty to experience the world; to live, to love, to never deny any impulse.”
    Fat Cheeks snorted.
    Old Beardy leaned forward and placed a hand on mine. “There will be time for all of that. But the academy has value you’ve been rash to discount. We provide the frame of reference through which you may filter your future experience. We provide the tools to examine the pleasures of life and to find meaning in them.”
    â€œWhat use have I for your frame of reference, when my own is already so refined?” I asked. “I am, after all, the finest romantic poet in the history of the world.”
    â€œMr. Shakespeare would dispute that contention,” said Fat Cheeks.
    â€œSeeing how Mr. Shakespeare is quite dead, I’d be extremely surprised if he did,” I told him. “And, anyway, Shakespeare was a man of no imagination who cribbed all his stories from old novels. He was also a limp-wristed cross-dresser who probably spent his evenings getting buggered in alleyways.”
    Fat Cheeks’s eyes narrowed. “We’ve heard unsettling rumors of your own immoral predilections, especially in regard to your relationship with young Mr. Edleston.”
    My fingers twisted around the thin silver ring I wore on my left small finger. “Mr. Edleston did not return to Cambridge this term.” Little needs to be said about John Edleston, except that he was my protégé, and I loved him. His voice was honey-sweet, his features were pleasing to look upon, and by the fall of 1807, he had been ejected from Trinity, which was part of the reason I, too, wished to take leave of Cambridge.
    Edleston was an orphan of modest means, brought to the College to sing soprano in the choir. When his voice changed, the College revoked his scholarship. Thus, we parted. I could not draw enough credit against my holdings to fund his education as well as my own, and he never would have taken my charity. Love blooms in the spring and dies in the fall. My fallow period would not last. My ardor was rarely dormant, and some new infatuation would soon quench my heart’s grief and rage. But none had yet.
    â€œThat’s not what I asked you,” said the fat man.
    My burning gaze locked with his. Old Beardy, stuck between us, squirmed a bit. “Like many gentlemen of my class, I went to boarding school at Harrow,” I said. “A boy there, especially one of small stature and clear complexion, must learn to fight with his fists and feet and teeth, or else he must learn to savor whatever dubious pleasures are foisted upon him.”
    â€œI hope you’re telling us you learned to fight, Lord Byron.” His voice was low and his jaw was clenched, and his shiny pinched features squished together from the sheer force of his contempt toward me.
    â€œI shall happily punch you in the face, if doing so will alleviate your concerns,” I suggested.
    â€œI’m sure that won’t be necessary,” said Beardy.
    â€œYou still haven’t answered my questions.”
    I bit my lower lip. “If you and I were to meet in one of Mr. Shakespeare’s alleyways, it would not be I who would end up buggered.”
    He rose from his big chair. “Is that a threat, Lord Byron?” The tension of confrontation set his whole body jiggling.
    â€œThink of it as a compliment,” I said. “You have very lovely skin. Has anyone ever told you that? You are like a ripe piece of fruit.”
    Fat Cheeks remained standing but turned his rage upon Beardy. “I don’t need