Chapter 56: On Old Age
"Probably."
"I drew On Friendship. Thank God."
He let out a long sigh of relief and tucked the card into his pocket. "What’s your name?"
"Richard Williams, Brighton Greenwood Middle School."
"Simon Haines, King Edward VII School, Bloemfontein."
He extended his hand. His grip wasn’t strong, but it was sincere. "I’m from out of town, too. My train ride was an hour and a half."
"Mine was over two hours."
"Then you had it worse than me." Simon asked tentatively, "What class?"
"Third class."
"Me too." After confirming this, he seemed to relax all at once.
"I just saw Montague’s carriage. The coach alone is probably worth more than my house."
"Very likely."
"The world is so unfair." After saying this, Simon quickly adjusted his attitude.
"But fair or not, once we’re on stage, we’re all reciting the same stuff."
He pulled his card out again. "I’m going to run through it a couple more times. Good luck."
"You too."
Richard didn’t look at his shorthand notebook again, nor did he close his eyes to recite silently.
He closed his eyes and regulated his breathing.
Inhale for four beats, hold for four beats, exhale for four beats, hold for four beats.
The mural’s Seal suppressed the Ether Field, but the rhythm of the Quadruple Breathing itself didn’t rely on Ether.
It was a rhythm, a framework, an Anchor that could return him to his optimal state in any environment.
...
The first round began promptly at nine-thirty.
The host was a tall, white-haired old man.
He wore the formal dress of the Classical Society, with a gold laurel brooch pinned to his chest.
The old man stood at the lectern and read out the competition rules: contestants would come on stage in the order of their drawn numbers, each would be limited to five minutes, and points would be deducted for going over time.
The judges’ panel was set up directly across from the stage, with six people seated behind a long row of tables.
Three were professors from the Classical Society—two with stark white hair, and one who was bald.
This gave Richard a brief sense of familiarity; he had already accumulated considerable experience in observing bald people.
Two were headmasters of famous middle schools in the Imperial Capital, and a woman sat in the seat farthest to the right.
Her dark brown hair was coiled neatly, and she wore a dark blue skirt suit.
She looked to be around thirty and seemed exceptionally young among the rows of white hair and bald heads.
There were nameplates in front of the judges, and hers read: Isabella Ashford, Imperial University Classics Department.
’This must be the aunt my grandfather and Mother mentioned.’
Richard glanced over before pulling his gaze back, his expression unchanging.
His grandfather had said she would be here and that she held positions in two systems simultaneously.
’She’s here today as a judge for the Classical Society. It’s strictly business. Nothing more to think about.’
The contestants went on stage in the order of their drawn numbers.
The first to go up was a short boy from a local Grammar School in the Imperial Capital.
He had drawn a passage from On Duties, a relatively straightforward piece.
But upon getting on stage, he seemed overwhelmed by the size of the chapel and the audience. His voice trembled badly through the first two sentences, and he messed up one of the vocative case declensions.
At the judges’ panel, Professor Sirdon frowned and made a mark on his scoring sheet with the tip of his pen.
The boy only managed to steady himself by the third sentence. The second half of his performance was decent, but the initial mistake had already set the tone.
As he left the stage, he was too embarrassed to even look at the next contestant he passed.
The next few contestants were a mixed bag in terms of skill.
A girl from the midlands did quite well; her voice was clear and her breathing natural.
But she occasionally misplaced the rhetorical stress, delivering a rhetorical question with the intonation of a declarative statement.
A layman wouldn’t notice such a mistake, but the judges certainly would.
Montague was the seventh to go on stage.
The piece he drew was a passage from On Old Age.
It was a relatively gentle text with a relaxed rhythm, perfect for showcasing recitation fundamentals and linguistic sense.
The golden-haired boy stood at the lectern without looking at any notes.
He stood exactly half an arm’s length from the edge of the lectern—any farther would seem timid, any closer would seem cramped. It was poised and proper.
The boy’s voice was rich and mellow, not at all like that of a sixteen or seventeen-year-old:
"Therefore, if you are accustomed to praising my wisdom—which I hope is worthy of your opinion and of the name I bear..."
The tail of every long vowel was drawn out just right, perfectly matching the emotional cadence of the surrounding text.
It was quiet in the chapel. The stone walls reflected the sound, creating a natural amplification effect.
Montague was clearly long accustomed to this kind of acoustic environment.
His volume was never too high or too low; every sentence was adapted to the chapel’s reverberation.
From start to finish, his five-minute speech had not a single superfluous pause, not one moment where the rhythm faltered.
To be cultivated to this level with one-on-one training from childhood was something that couldn’t be explained by hard work alone.
This was a foundation forged by both environment and talent, the kind that came from being born standing in the Roman Senate.
Among the more than five hundred people in the audience, many exchanged glances after Montague finished.
’The champion has probably already been decided.’
Simon, sitting next to him, muttered under his breath, "This guy is just ridiculous, isn’t he?"
Richard didn’t respond, silently noting several of Montague’s technical characteristics in his mind.
’Excellent control of the sound field, masterful use of vowel resonance, and precise timing of his pauses.’
’Those three skills were hard-won through years and years of training; impossible to catch up to in the short term.’
But Montague’s speech had one subtle characteristic: every emotional inflection was perfectly appropriate.
He was on stage performing a piece that had been polished a thousand times over.
’Perfect, but a little lacking in humanity.’
Catherine Blackwood was twelfth.
The red-haired girl’s approach to the lectern was completely different from Montague’s.
There was none of that leisurely pausing to survey her surroundings; she went straight up and planted her feet.
Her hands hung at her sides, fingers loosely clenched, heels together.
Like an infantryman ready to charge at any moment.
She had drawn the famous opening of the first oration Against Catiline.
Her first sentence made everyone in the first three rows sit up straight.
"How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?"
Her speaking pace was at least twenty percent faster than Montague’s, but her enunciation was exceptionally clear.
Every consonant was cut off crisply by her teeth and the tip of her tongue, with no slurring or mumbling.
It was Cicero in the Senate, interrogating the conspirator. She restored the sharp edge of that interrogation to a degree that sent a chill down one’s spine.
"To what end will your unbridled audacity flaunt itself?"
Her Latin pronunciation had a slight Highland accent, which was a demerit in terms of precision.
But when it came to the emotional intensity of this interrogation, that very roughness gave her voice a genuine anger.
By the time the girl finished her last sentence, her fingers were clenched into tight fists.
The audience was silent for a moment, then burst into a tide of applause.
At the judges’ panel, Professor Sirdon’s pen moved much faster than it had during Montague’s performance.
Isabella, sitting at the far right, rested her pen against her lower lip, looking somewhat bored.