Chicken Leg

There wasn't much time left before the Cicero Cup.

Richard was pressed for time.

The Ashford Family's dinner was set for the fifteenth of this month, and his family had to leave for the Imperial Capital ahead of time.

The train from Briston to the Imperial Capital took most of a day. After accounting for transfers and settling in, he had less than two weeks left to prepare for the competition at school.

After lunch on Monday, he told Mr. Holland about it.

The bald, middle-aged man was lifting his cup of black tea to his lips. At the word "Ashford," his brow furrowed at once.

Steam from the tea fogged his glasses.

He set the cup back on the table and wiped his lenses with the back of his hand.

"I seem to remember that's your mother's family name."

"Yes."

Holland finished cleaning his glasses and put them back on. "Mind your manners while you're in the Imperial Capital."

He sounded remarkably like Richard's father.

Richard noticed that he wasn't unfamiliar with the Ashford name.

"We'll need to adjust your coaching." Holland pulled a notebook from his desk drawer and circled today's date.

"The original plan was to hold three mock speeches over the final two weeks. Now we'll fit them all into five days.

"It'll be more intense than before. Can you handle it?"

"I can."

"Then we'll start this afternoon."

He drained his tea, stood up, and grabbed a ring of keys.

"Come on. Let's go to the East Wing Lecture Hall."

The lecture hall was free from three to five in the afternoon, and Mr. Holland had arranged it in advance with the academic office.

He had Richard stand at the lectern, then carried a chair to the back row and sat down.

The distance was as great as it could be, with twenty rows of empty seats between them.

"Start from the first paragraph of the first speech. Give it in full."

Richard planted his feet, took a breath, and opened with the first line.

"Quo usque tandem..."

The chair legs scraped across the floor with a sharp squeal.

Mr. Holland dragged the chair half a foot to the left. The noise bounced off the stone walls twice.

It threw off Richard's rhythm.

He struggled to steady his breathing, then picked up where he'd left off.

Then came the sound of pages turning.

Mr. Holland opened the lesson notes he'd brought on his lap and turned them page by page. The rustle of paper carried through the empty hall to the stage.

Then he started coughing.

It was the light, repeated cough of someone clearing his throat—not loud, but persistent.

As Richard reached the fourth "nihil" in the third passage's series of parallel phrases, the chair scraped again at the back of the hall.

He closed his eyes briefly and anchored his focus to the rhythm of his breathing.

The framework of Quadruple Breathing worked just as well onstage:

Inhale to steady the breath, hold it to steady the rhythm, then exhale to drive the voice forward.

"...nihil horum ora vultusque moverunt? (Can none of this move you?)"

As the final "nihil" fell, he followed Mr. West's advice and paused for nearly two seconds longer between the third and fourth instances.

Silence filled the hall and mingled with the echoes, carrying more weight than sound.

After he finished all four passages, Mr. Holland came over from the back row.

"When I interrupted you, you paused, but you did it the wrong way."

He stopped directly in front of the lectern and looked up at Richard.

"You paused because you were distracted. The audience can tell.

"The right thing to do is fold that pause into the rhythm and make it your own.

"The audience can't tell which pauses are intentional and which are forced... but you need to know the difference.

"When a pause is forced, your shoulders tense up. When it's intentional, they stay relaxed."

He tapped the edge of the lectern.

"Again, from the beginning."

"The Cicero Cup will be held at St. Augustine Chapel in the Imperial Capital."

Mr. Holland walked back, speaking as he went.

"The stone walls make the echoes very strong. There'll be hundreds of people in the audience, with the teachers accompanying each school and the Classical Society judges in the first three rows."

He sat down in the back row again. The chair squeaked once more.

"They'll hear every pause, every breath, and every change in the length of your vowels."

The second attempt went much more smoothly than the first.

Mr. Holland kept making noise throughout, turning pages, coughing, dragging his chair—switching it up each time.

But Richard's shoulders stayed relaxed.

He didn't force his way through the interrupted parts anymore. He held his breath for half a beat, then let it out, making the pause part of the rhythm.

When he finished all four passages, Mr. Holland nodded and said nothing.

Saying nothing was the best praise of all.

Hugh arrived during the third attempt.

He slipped through the side door and crept over to the end seat in the first row, crouching low.

He set his schoolbag by his feet and pulled a pencil and a sheet of white paper from it.

He was there to observe Richard's stage presence.

Richard had assigned him the job: watch his posture, gestures, and how he directed his gaze, then give him feedback afterward.

Hugh took the task extremely seriously. After all, it was the only way he could help.

Mr. Holland glanced at the new audience member but said nothing.

The third attempt began.

This was Richard's best of the three. There was an actual audience member sitting there.

(Holland didn't count. He was a noise machine.)

Even a single listener made it a completely different experience from speaking to empty chairs.

He made a small adjustment to the parallel phrasing, drawing out the vowel in the fifth "nihil" slightly to build up more tension.

Hugh sat in the first row, pencil in hand, his eyes following Richard's movements.

He looked serious, his mouth slightly open. He really did seem to be getting swept along by the speech.

After the four passages, the echoes lingered in the hall for several seconds.

Mr. Holland stopped midway down the aisle. "Better than the first two."

He glanced at Hugh in the first row. "It's different when someone's listening. Remember how this feels."

The bald, middle-aged man tucked his notes under his arm and checked his watch.

"That's about enough for today. You two wait here a moment. I'm going to the restroom."

With that, he pushed open the side door and left.

Richard stepped down from the lectern and sat beside Hugh.

"How was my stage presence?"

"Pretty good." Hugh lifted his pencil from the paper.

Richard leaned over to look at his notes.

There was a picture of a fried chicken leg on the page.

The linework was good, and the details were surprisingly rich. He'd shaded the bone and used short crosshatched lines to give the meat a glossy, greasy look.

He'd circled "crispy skin" and "add salt," and beside an arrow pointing to the end of the bone, he'd written "gnaw up to here."

The kid seemed to have a bit of an artistic talent.

"Why'd you draw a chicken leg?"

"I'm hungry." Hugh tucked the pencil behind his ear, looking as if that went without saying.

"You talked for forty minutes, and I sat here for forty minutes. Of course I'm hungry."

"What about your observations?"

"I've got them all in my head." He tapped his temple with a finger.

"You rested your right hand on the lectern at the start of the second passage. It didn't look great. Everything else was pretty good."

"Only one thing?"

"I'm not Mr. Holland. Being able to spot one thing is already pretty good of me."

He yawned, opening his mouth wide enough to show even his back teeth.

"Tired?"

"A little." Hugh rubbed his eyes. His perpetually unruly fringe was pushed aside by his fingers, then sprang back into place.

"Stanfield played an away game last night. I put the radio under my pillow and listened."

He perked up at that, most of his sleepiness swept away.

Hugh's radio was an old one he'd picked up at a flea market. One corner of the casing was missing, and the speaker was blown, so he could only listen through the earphone wire.

When a goal was scored, he didn't dare shout for fear of waking his parents in the next room.

He just gripped the corner of his pillow, clenched his teeth into the fabric, and tensed his whole body, trembling along with the commentator's voice.

"You have no idea how exciting that goal was. It was stoppage time in the second half, the score was two-all, and Stanfield's striker got the ball and charged into the box. He got past two players, took the shot..."

He stood up and mimed the shot, kicking his right leg forward. The pencil flew from behind his ear and rolled under the desk.

"It hit the post and bounced out."

Richard was about to reply when the side door of the lecture hall opened.