Page 116 of The Villains of Winter

“WHY HAVE YOU INVITED ME this far into the trenches of the hibernacula?” Perseus Swann asked as James led him deeper in the depths of the underground caves where they boarded the Underground Reagan Railway. The URR was restricted to the cabal only and, after the summer ritual, the final examinations were finished. Neither of them had a reason to board the train. There were no extensive, mandatory curricula, orphic lessons, or exhaustive practice exercises until the fall term. Perseus retrieved a 1951 newspaper on internal political affairs that the country’s citizens would never learn of in their lifetime. Eventually, Perseus questioned, “Are you trying to ask me to come to bed with you?”

“I’m surprised I would need to ask you to come to bed with me, Perseus.” James held his charming aura with ease. He was magnanimous, extinguishing both of their torches, before he opened the private compartment for him.

As they stepped inside, Perseus reminded him, “I am a married man.”

“When has that ever stopped you before?” James remarked with a smirk, entering the scent of twentieth-century engineering and liquor. The servers waited in a structured line to greet them and accommodate their needs with efficient execution.

“I would never betray Lucy.” Perseus smiled his infamous traitor’s smile.

Lucy Swann already had her young widow’s gown. The chiffon was exquisitely tailored, and the veil trimmed perfectly in case she grew bored of him earlier than expected. Whenever Lucy went shopping, she swiped his card, and she rehearsed his eulogy. She studied the ancient tragedies to learn convincing expressions of morbidity, anguish, and grief. She was expressionless otherwise.

She practiced his burial rites as she perused her magazines.

She hunted men with crude crossbows for leisure in case that was how she decided to end Perseus’s life.

Lucy was as loyal as her husband, which made them the perfect pair.

“Perhaps you’ve invited me to a private bacchanal?” Perseus presumed. On September third in the annals of Æscwulf history, the fourth year students that survived the winter ritual celebrated with Bacchic frenzy. In their final year, they were finally freed of terror. They stripped themselves naked in wild, drunken nights of promiscuous revelry, folkloric songs, and intense passion in ritualistic madness. The Feast of Bacchus. To reach a state of divinity, they purged themselves of fear and repression, partaking in the orgiastic traditions of the Ancient Romans. “I’m hardly dressed in proper 200 BC regalia. Will we be headed to the wilderness afterward?”

James hailed a server. “I could procure mountain laurels for you, if you are particularly interested.” James mused with him. “Perhaps we will be possessed by Dionȳsos in the wilds.”

“If you plead to me nicely, I might possess you.”

“If you plead to me on your knees sweetly, I might teach you true possession, Perseus.”

Perseus was entertained with the rivalry. Their forefathers had participated in bacchanals in their time at the College; it was tradition. “You and I will partner in September?”

“You will be very pretty in your laurels when I penetrate you, Perseus. You feel like the forest princess of the night.”

“I will not be the one penetrated, James. The honor will be reserved entirely for you.” Perseus held no interest in men; he never had sexual attraction to men either; but attraction was of little relevance to sexual acts in the Baneburian mindset. Carnal rites. Primal instinct. Psychedelics. Their intention was to attain momentary immortality. “I will give you a coronet of thorns, petals, and rowan before I enter you, James. You’ll be the most beautiful prince in the wilds. That rouged mouth of yours will cry with praise when I have my way with you.”

James suppressed his smile. “Your mouth is even prettier when you pretend. You will blush furiously for me.”

Perseus was served his usual earl grey English tea by white-gloved servers as he sat beside James. “In all seriousness, where could we possibly be headed? Surely not to Wulfram’s antechamber?”

Perseus did not recognize the ancient theater antechamber with immediacy. However, he knew only cabal mentors held their private antechambers furthest from even the sight of the students.

While Professor Ilaria lavished James with frequent invitations to visit her at his will, Wulfram had never invited Perseus to his private antechamber. Wulfram wrote almost entirely in dead languages, therefore, Perseus transcribed his Hellenistic lecture notes and documents for him. He handed the organized paperwork to Wulfram in his train compartment. Then, Wulfram locked him out afterward.

Perseus was not permitted to take the train expedition to his antechamber. Helmut Wulfram did not believe in fraternization with students as though they were his colleagues or his peers.

“No, not Wulfram.” The train lurched them forward, propelling them into the dark, as the cabin lanterns were dimly lit for their comfort. James kept him well distracted. “Wulfram could inform us of how to properly perform a bacchanal, surely though? Perhaps we should pay him a visit.”

“Of course not.” Perseus helped himself to sugar cubes and a spot of mink milk. “He scarcely wrote more than a few terse sentences in his account of his own Bacchanal.”

“A few sentences?” James piqued a brow. He expected far more than a few sentences. Wulfram delivered the annual lecture on Friedrich Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian duality in The Birth of Tragedy for the week of the bacchanal. It was one of the rare weeks Wulfram lectured on modern philosophy. Nietzsche was a philosopher that was too modern for his taste. “Perhaps the terse sentences could be useful.”

Neither of them had ever experienced a bacchanal, they’d only heard of the debauchery from former students. In history, the Bacchanalia had been a cult of secrecy, and privately funded, therefore the tragedians and laureates of the time might not have even known the exact rites. The students of Æscwulf relied on Euripides’ The Bacchae to initiate themselves in the rituals. Who knew what the students did at the Æscwulf Bacchanal? What if they all stood around, anxiety-struck, and they smoked cigarettes until the sun rose? What if the young men leaned themselves against the trees, flaccid, and the women dryly recited The Bacchae aloud, bare-breasted, until nightfall? I am Dionysus, the child of Zeus, and I have come to this land of the Thebans, where Kadmos’ daughter Semele once bore me, delivered by lightning-blast.[22]

“Isn’t your bloodline Greek?” James asked him. He knew Perseus had a great-great-grandfather who had been the former president of the Second Hellenic Republic. Further, Perseus’s father had a noble lineage from England and Norway, Perseus had inherited his aristocratic, erudite accent whenever he was angered. Wilde’s own father was an aristocratic Englishman; he couldn’t escape his high born inflection either.

“What detail did Wulfram provide on the bacchanal?” James inquired in interest. “We could do it the way he did it.”

Wulfram was likely very popular in his fourth year. His attractive features were of Antiquity; the prominent bridge of his Roman nose resembled historic sculptures, Wulfram’s perceptive eyes were reflective of aged knowledge, and his muscled physique was reminiscent of the mythic statue of Achilles. His fierce eyes were burnished hazel and dark; his waves the brunet of a bronzed crown.

“I will not treat the Bacchanal the way Wulfram did.” Perseus set aside his tea. Perseus was visibly triggered by his mentor and his telestic practices. “Wulfram desecrated the honorarium.”

James was served iced, briny sterlet caviar with champagne. “Who was the honorarium in his year?”