Byron and Clare wrestled next to the pond until they were both covered in mud and had leaves in their hair. They laughed until their sides were aching. Intermittently, they tried to pin the other’s hands and shoulders against the ground. For a moment one was on top of the other, and then the other managed to reverse the hold. From a vantage point above the other’s chest, each was aware for the first time of how another boy’s body looked when you were allowed to struggle with him, to touch him, to match your strength against his. You suddenly knew him more intimately than you did before. Although Clare was the younger of the two, he could push against Byron with two strong feet, and that gave him the advantage.

Byron felt that Clare might be about to win. That’s when he protested “Mud’s got into my eye!” He let Clare go and rolled away. He covered his face.

Clare got up and kneeled beside Byron. “Let me see.” He pushed Byron’s hands away from his face without Byron’s permission. He felt a new entitlement to ownership of a body that was not his own.

Byron let Clare push his hands away. He went slack. He let Clare be doctor.

“Yes, I see it,” said Clare. “It’s right here. It’s not mud. It’s a blade of grass. Close your eye. Now open. Close again. Now open.”

“It’s no bloody use.”

“Get up. Lean on me. We’ll jump into the pond. The pond water will wash it away.”

“What? Bathe my eye in that filthy water?”

“Shut up.” Clare put his arm under Byron’s neck and made him sit up. He pulled him upright with his hand. Then he guided him, half pulling and half pushing, three steps to the muddy bank. Byron’s eyes were both squeezed shut so he couldn’t see where he was going. “Now jump,” said Clare.

“Jump where?”

Clare gave Byron a swift shove on the back. “There!”

Byron toppled over into four feet of water. He made a huge splash. He came up for air spluttering and spitting. “That was diabolical, Clare. I’ll get you for that.” He gave Clare, still standing on the bank, a murderous glance.

“And the grass? In your eye? What happened to it?”

Byron remembered it. He blinked. He looked left and right. He looked up and down. “It’s gone.”

“So you should thank for me that. Before you get me.”

“You may as well jump in yourself now. You’re covered in muck. You’re a sight.”

A little reluctantly Clare began to remove his remaining clothes. He removed first one damp sock and then the other. He unbuttoned the fly of his linen underdrawers and shucked them down over his hips.

Byron stood with his feet in the cool muddy bottom of the pond. He made lazy circles on the surface with his arms. He thought of the privilege of what he was being allowed to see. A good-looking blond boy was removing his undershorts in front of him. Clare had a pale, circumcised penis with a tuft of brownish pubic hair on top of it. “Oh ho, there he is! Earl of Clare. A man with hair on his head and between his legs too!”

With that Clare launched himself into the water. He curled himself into a cannonball aimed directly at Byron. “I’ll show you!” He landed with a tremendous crash that sent water up both their noses.

Two minutes later, when they’d both snorted and wiped some of the mud off their faces, Byron suggested they both swim out to the middle of the pond. Clare objected. He could swim, but he wasn’t a confident swimmer. He didn’t want to swim out to where it was so far over his head. Byron assured Clare he could swim for two. “Hang on to my shoulders,” he said to Clare.

Clare did as Byron suggested. He held on. Byron swam a breaststroke powerful enough to pull them both through the water. “You are good at this, Byron.” Clare filled his mouth with pond water and then spit it out in an arc. “Equal to Jove that youth must be,” began Clare.

“Greater than Jove he seems to me,” finished Byron as he swam. What had begun as Byron’s lyric now belonged to both of them.  It was their song.

And the two boys, unobserved by the rest of the school, one holding the other and floating behind him, one pulling for two, glided through the water into the center of the pond, which for them, at that moment, was also the center of the world.