His father had told Mark Drury not to be so hard on Byron, but the younger master couldn’t help it. He disliked the boy. This was partly because Byron had such a superior attitude. It was also partly because Byron had pointed out an error Mark Drury had made during their last lesson together. He had corrected and humiliated Drury in front of the other boys.

Mark Drury did not see, as his father did, that Byron’s superiority came from a hurt buried in his past. Mark Drury did not see, as his father did, that Byron also did much to irritate the school as a kind of challenge. Byron himself may not have been entirely conscious of this, but the head guessed that it was probably to compensate for having been born with a bad foot.

When Mark Drury heard scuffles and laughter coming from behind Byron’s bedroom door he secretly gloated. All the boys were meant to be down at the pond swimming. It was too early for Byron to have returned to his room. Mark Drury looked forward to discovering Byron in some disobedience. He looked forward to proving to the headmaster that the boy needed more punishment, not less.

Even Mark Drury was surprised by what he found. There were three boys lying on Byron’s bed. Byron’s trousers were laddered down around his knees. The two younger boys were involved in a fascinated exploration of Byron’s genitalia. This was accompanied by giggles, pokes, protests, and gasps.

The masters at Harrow were well aware of what went on among the boys when they weren’t looking. You couldn’t throw several hundred teenaged boys together without some sexual investigation going on. Nevertheless, the penalties for being discovered were well-known and serious. There was no way Mark Drury could shut the door and pretend he hadn’t seen.

Byron immediate pulled up his pants. Clare and De La Warr rolled off the bed and on to the floor, as if the very fact of their lying on the bed increased their guilt. They scrambled to their feet. None of them imagined that their fun would come to such an abrupt and embarrassed ending.

The headmaster had had no choice but to end their few freedoms in the school and to threaten them with disclosure of their crimes. With Byron he had to be somewhat more severe. Byron he had threatened with expulsion, though, he wasn’t sure yet whether he’d follow through on any of these threats.

Byron didn’t know that. He’d been ordered to have no further contact with the two younger boys. He couldn’t sit with them in chapel, nor was he permitted any longer to hire a pony and go down to the pond with them. He was lying on a tombstone in Harrow churchyard. He felt sick.

He blamed himself for what had happened, but he also blamed Mark Drury, whom he thought was jealous of him. Jealous of his rank. Jealous of his superior ability in verse. Jealous of his success—at last—inspiring the confidence of the two other boys. He’d written a line for Clare and De La Warr. “In thee I fondly hoped to clasp friends whom death alone could sever; till envy, with malignant grasp, detached you from my breast forever.”

He wasn’t proud of what he’d written. He didn’t see how poetry could save him now. He felt doomed. One of the older boys had once told him that the sign of his damnation in the afterlife was on his foot. Byron hadn’t believed him. Until now.