Read Online Conquerors of the Sky by Thomas Fleming - Free Book Online

equally icy stone stairs to the top floor of the three-hundred-year-old dormitory.
    Candles flickered in teacups. The council sat in an awesome row, their faces obscured by silk stockings they had stolen from their mothers. “Who’s this?” asked the chairman.
    â€œThe American wog.”
    â€œWhat’s the charge?”
    â€œFor the fifth consecutive night, he was told to get a pound of butter from dinner for the usual purpose and he refused. He also failed to save the correct portion of his dessert. We suspect he’s trying to start a bloody revolution.”
    â€œWe’ve been checking on you, wog. We think your real name’s Von Ness. We think you’re a bloody German,” the chairman said.
    â€œI’m not. Van Ness is a Dutch name. My father is descended from some of the first settlers in America.”
    â€œWhat does your father do for a living, wog?”
    â€œNothing.”
    Laughter. “Why doesn’t he do anything, wog?”
    â€œNone of your business.”
    â€œWe’re making it our business, wog. Explain.”
    â€œMy mother has money. He doesn’t have to work.”
    â€œVery suspicious. He’s either a spy or a layabout. Tell us more about your mother.”
    â€œHer maiden name was Ames. She’s from Boston.”
    â€œWhy is she living in England while your father stays in New York?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œIs she a spy, wog?”
    â€œNo. She hates the Germans like everyone else.”
    Adrian did not pretend to understand the antagonism for Germany seething through England in 1911. Even schoolboys talked confidently, eagerly, of fighting a war to teach the Kaiser and his generals a lesson in humility.
    â€œYou know what the butter is used for, wog?”
    â€œIt’s for the Rammer,” Adrian said.
    â€œWhat does the Rammer do, wog?”
    â€œHe—he breaks in virgins.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you bring the butter, wog?”
    â€œI don’t want to be broken in.”

    â€œWog, how many times do you have to be told what you want doesn’t matter? We’re the rulers, you’re the slave. Tomorrow night you will visit the Rammer with the pound of butter or your life will cease. You will become one of the living dead. Do you understand that, wog?”
    â€œYes.”
    No one spoke to the living dead. They were treated as if they were invisible. Everyone walked straight at them in the corridors. They stepped on their feet in class. They refused to pass them food in the dining hall.
    â€œFor the present you are sentenced to double the usual punishment. Bend over.”
    Adrian pulled down his pants and bent double, his hands gripping the back of a chair.
    â€œMy god, that’s a fat one. I can practically hear the Rammer salivating,” one of the council said.
    â€œApply the punishment.”
    Again and again the paddle smashed against Adrian’s buttocks. Waves of pain flooded his body. He thought for a while he was going to suffocate. Tears poured down his face. The council counted each stroke in chorus. “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three.” They stopped at twenty-five.
    Curled into a sobbing fetal ball in his icy bed, Adrian vowed not to tell anyone why his father lived in such a peculiar way. Last spring, before they left for England, Adrian had found the courage to ask his mother to explain it. His mother had taken him into her bedroom, which smelled of lilacs. They sat in two barrel chairs by the bay window overlooking Central Park. She told him how his father had been ruined in 1893, seven years before he was born.
    The word ruined had tolled on her lips like a funeral bell. The stock market on Wall Street had crashed and some people who had given his father money to invest blamed him for losing it. She said the crash had not been his fault and no one really thought he should go to jail. When people lost money they said mean things.
    His