28 January 2010
One Score and Four, Hour One: Likely is Risen
12:00pm, January the 28th, 1891.
AS I awoke at twelve o’clock in the afternoon (as is my wont as an aristocrat who can do whatever he ruddy pleases), I had no inkling that the day ahead of me would transpire to be the longest day of my life thus far.
Not in a literal sense, of course. There were no extra hours tagged onto the end of the day, the earth’s rotation did not slow, or anything quite so fanciful. It was still the standard twenty-four hour day, but by God – each hour slapped me about the face like an insolent masseuse. I thought the day would never end.
It began quite innocently enough. I sat up in bed and waited for the arrival of my man-servant, Botter, and my breakfast (or lunch or whatever it was by now). After a few minutes of increasingly irritable waiting, I finally decided to pull the chord on the bell to summon the filthy wastrel to my side.
“Ah, there you are, Botter,” I remarked dryly as my man-servant huffed and puffed his way into my bed-chamber, having evidently dashed up the stairs in quite a haste. “What in the name of Dutch tossery took you so long? Were you laying the eggs yourself, perchance?”
“S-sorry, milord,” Botter panted as he laid my solid-gold breakfast tray upon my lap. “My-my watch stopped working again.”
“Honestly, Botter, you must get yourself a new watch, you know. That one works less than you do, I swear.”
“I…I would, milord, but watches are rather expensive and I fear I could not afford one on my humble wage,” Botter replied, leaving a pregnant pause hanging in the air, a pause so very pregnant that it could have given birth to a litter of tiny pauses had I let it remain there.
“Well, you shall just have to be awake all the time then, to be sure of being ready for when I call, shan’t you?” I grinned, picking up the morning’s edition of the London Sheet of News from off of my breakfast tray.
“Very good milord,” Botter said.
“Egad!” I exclaimed as I flicked through the news-paper idly. “I do wonder why I choose to have a paper delivered every morning. Look at this all! Death! War! Famine! Murder! Why, ’tis enough to put a gentleman quite off his delicious quail’s egg baguette, I can tell you.”
“Indeed, milord.”
“Do you know what would make this more palatable?” I asked, as I took a bite out of my breakfast.
“Um….some mayonnaise?” ventured my cretinous servant.
“I’m not referring to my breakfast, Botter you arse-tube. I’m referring to all this misery served up as news! Do you know what would make THAT more palatable?”
“No, my lord,” Botter answered.
“I shall tell you – if they had a picture of a scantily-clad maiden on the third page in, sharing with us her thoughts on the events of the day. Mmm, that would certainly make things more interesting! Botter, jot that down in my Ledger of Excellent Ideas!”
“Very good, my lord.”
“I know, I know,” I said absently, as I ran my eyes up and down the columns of text on the front page. It all seemed like the usual, dreary garbage, but my interest was piqued by one headline that stood out from the rest by quite a considerable margin.
‘GENTLEMAN KILLED BY HAT,’ the headline screamed.
“Ah-HA!” I cried, thumping the breakfast tray with such force that I wound up catapulting a fork into the wall by Botter’s head. “I smell ADVENTURE!” I paused and sniffed the air. “And have you soiled yourself, Botter?”
- Lord Likely.
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