The Betrayals

by Bridget Collins

  Then I saw Emile coming down the corridor towards me.

  Obviously, in the dark I didn’t see it was him immediately. It took me by surprise. I froze, I think. All right, all right, I probably jumped and screamed. At any rate, Emile was laughing as he grabbed my elbow and dragged me back to the stairs. ‘Calm down, calm down.’

  ‘Emile—’

  ‘Shut up!’ He pushed me ahead of him. I stumbled down the stairs, with his hands on my shoulders. I shouldn’t have let him shove me like that, but I wasn’t thinking properly. Finally we spilt out into the antechamber to the Lesser Hall and he let go of me. He was still giggling. ‘What were you doing up there, Martin?’

  ‘Me? What about you?’

  ‘Well, I know why I was there. But I’d be surprised if it was the same reason for you. Unless …’ He squinted at me. ‘No.’

  ‘Why, what were—’ Then I stopped. He smelt of sweat, something a bit more acrid, and a kind of rank sweetness. I’d noticed it as he bundled me down the stairs, but I only then realised what it meant. I said, ‘Whoa-ho, Emile. Who? One of the servants?’

  He grinned. There was just enough moonlight to glint on his teeth. ‘Et in Arcadia ego,’ he said. ‘Sex, I mean, not death.’

  I’m shocked. Stupidly shocked. That Emile would risk it here. That would be bringing the school into disrepute, if anything was. We all talk about it, sure, but actually doing it …

  I thought I was such a man of the world, with my fumbles in the dark corners of Dad’s scrapyards, feeling superior because I could keep my own secrets. But this feels wrong. Playing the grand jeu in one room and fucking a servant in another … Sacrilege.

  At the same time I can’t get it out of my head. I don’t mean Emile, specifically. But the spectre of it, the possibility. The idea that Montverre isn’t different, after all. That the whole fleshy, dangerous, messy business is within arm’s reach, in spite of the rules. We’re all as human here as anywhere else. If I wanted – if I dared …

  Why should the grand jeu be separate from desire, anyway? It’s not always sordid.

  And a good grand jeu breaks the rules, doesn’t it?

  Third day of Vernal Term

  Carfax is back. I was on my way to do some piano practice and saw him coming out of Magister Holt’s rooms. He’s arrived here two days late but he didn’t look as if he’d been told off. He didn’t see me; he walked away with a spring in his step and I didn’t call out to him.

  Bloody typical. He doesn’t even turn up on the right day. But does he get hauled over the coals for it? No, he comes swaggering out of Magister Holt’s office like we should all be grateful he’s here. This whole vacation I’ve been remembering what he was like last term – that night when we ended up on the top of the Square Tower, for example – but no, it was all fake, wasn’t it? We were only putting up with each other. Making the best of a bad job.

  Later

  After dinner there was a knock on my door. It was Carfax. I suppose I guessed it would be.

  ‘What do you want, Carfax?’

  There was a split second when I swear I saw his face fall. As if he’d been expecting us to be friends again. As if he thought we were friends. But it was gone almost as soon as it came. ‘Just wondered if you picked up my Hondius, last term,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d put it in my trunk, but I can’t find it.’

  ‘I have one of my own, thanks.’ I picked it up and waved it at him.

  ‘I didn’t mean deliberately.’

  ‘I haven’t got it.’

  ‘All right. Never mind.’ He paused, as if I might say something else. I didn’t. He nodded and turned to go.

  ‘You were late,’ I said. ‘I saw you come out of Magister Holt’s room. Didn’t look like he was worried. Let me guess: you don’t have to follow the rules, because you’re special.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I had to go and explain …’

  ‘What? What happened?’

  He hesitated. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Sure. Why would you turn up on the right day?’

  He rolled his shoulders as if they were aching. ‘I … family business,’ he said at last. His eyes flickered to my face and away again.

  ‘Really? Did someone get hold of a box of—’

  ‘Please don’t—’ he said, at the same time. We both stopped, watching each other. ‘Please,’ he said again, in a strange low voice.

  I didn’t answer. The clock chimed – it was later than I’d thought – but he didn’t give any sign of hearing it. He was still staring at me. I know I hadn’t imagined his tone of voice: pleading, almost. Appealing to my better nature. No, that makes it sound too like Mim. As if for once he was opening himself up, like someone dropping their foil in the middle of a bout, spreading their arms and standing still. Letting me hurt him if I wanted to. Believing that I would.

  And then the moment had gone, and I hadn’t hurt him, and with a silent jolt we were on solid ground.

  I scrabbled around for something to say. I almost asked him if his family had been pleased about our seventy, but something stopped me; suddenly I didn’t want him to think I was being snide. I really didn’t want him to think that. In the end I came up with, ‘Well, since you’re here … I was wondering what you made of the Bridges of Königsberg. I can’t see why it’s supposed to be so brilliant.’

  ‘I agree. It’s bloody awful.’

  We both smiled at the same time. I looked down, flipping through my book without seeing it. There was a sharp, light feeling in my chest. ‘One of the third-years said we’re going to be studying it all term. Imagine.’

  ‘Ugh.’ There was a different sort of pause: easier, like all those evenings we spent working in the library last term. Suddenly he yawned. ‘I’d better go to bed now, but maybe tomorrow …? What are you doing after the Quietus? We can destroy the Bridges of Königsberg together. And there’s something I wanted to run past you, an idea I was playing with. When you have time.’

  ‘Sure. Come and find me.’

  He didn’t say goodbye, just touched his forehead in a sort of salute and shut the door behind him.

  Maybe I am glad to be back, after all.

  Chapter 18

  19: the Magister Ludi

  Please don’t. Please … She looks up from the page and she can hear her voice as she might have said it, as she would say it now if she wasn’t biting her lip to stop herself. She shuts the diary with a snap, flattening Martin’s words against one another. It’s her own fault that he’s inside her head: she is doing this to herself. If she had any sense she’d burn the ledger, along with the two copies of the Danse Macabre and the other papers she’s stolen from the archive. If anyone found them … She tells herself that she is exaggerating the danger. She could explain. Yes. She is Magister Ludi, she has a right to borrow whatever she wants for private study, and so what if she sometimes forgets to let the archivist know what she’s taken? And as for how personal papers found their way into the library at all – well, how would she know? Perhaps her brother might have had a hand in it. There’s no need to destroy Martin’s diary. It would be neurotic. But then, it’s neurotic to pore over it like this, torturing herself. And it would be safer to get rid of everything …

  You were late. What happened? She might as well not have closed the ledger, because she can still see the page in her mind’s eye, as clear as a photograph. Family business … That last New Year, her brother was euphoric, scribbling and composing for whole days, singing into the night until she staggered wearily back to her own bedroom, too tired and resentful even to worry. At first she’d thought he was simply happy: when he’d first seen her he’d swung her round in a flamboyant embrace that became an impromptu polka, saying her name through joyful laughter. And for a little while the atmosphere was intoxicating, like a proper holiday, the sort that they had never had. They played pranks on each other and the housekeeper; when she wasn’t there they ran wild, alone in the crumbling château like the orphans they were. I almost asked him if his
family had been pleased about our seventy … She bites her lip. If Martin had asked, what would the answer have been? The truth? She still remembers how the mere number seventy became a kind of joke between her and Aimé: they’d say it to each other, at breakfast, at dinner, at random times of day, writing it on scraps of paper, in chalk on a door, in gravy on a plate, as though it was a shared triumph, shouting it back and forth along the damp corridors and giggling until they hardly knew which of them had earnt it. They played music together, drank musty antique wine, tried to pretend that the vacation would go on for ever.

  Then, gradually, he became … strange. Perhaps she did, too. Even now she winces at the thought of it. His energy and hers sparked and exploded; his nightmares seeped into hers. The old de Courcy rottenness … But it was Aimé who struggled, who shouted in his sleep and cried out as if he was drowning. Montverre would have been bad enough, full of scholars who thought the de Courcy blood was a joke, an easy target; but the shadow of lunacy must have seemed even darker at home, under the disintegrating roof of the château, where it had already stolen their parents. Both of them were afraid – had always, she thinks, been afraid – but it would have been the basest treachery to say it aloud. Even to think the word madness was to invite it in. No help. No doctors. Doctors took you to the insane asylum. So she watched him, and perhaps he watched her, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if he thought she was trying to poison him. What would Martin have said, if he’d seen Aimé laughing so violently he gave himself a nosebleed? Or smashing a whole cupboard of cut glass, ‘to see the maths on the floor’? Or, oh God, white and silent at the thought of the term ahead, watching her fold his shirts into the trunk? She told herself that he was fine, really, that he’d calmed down, he was ready for another term; but he was dreading it. And if she hadn’t treated him like a child, shamed him into saying that yes, of course he was all right, he’d be fine …? If she hadn’t—

  She catches her breath. Stop it. It was years ago. It’s gone, it’s past help. She shuts the door on her memories, ignoring the seep of red over the sill. This is pure self-indulgent hysteria. She should be working on the Midsummer Game, not wasting time re-reading Martin’s juvenile outpourings, narrowing her eyes at handwriting that’s become more familiar than her own brother’s. She only has months – weeks – before she’ll have to stand in the Great Hall to perform a grand jeu, and so far she has nothing. This is no time to wallow in guilt and self-pity and nostalgia. But she can’t concentrate; there’s a strange gravity-levity inside her, like a ball of mercury expanding in a surge of heat. Martin has been back at Montverre for nearly a week now, and he hasn’t spoken to her beyond a nod and smile when they’ve passed in the corridor. She flinches from seeing him alone, but she wants to get it over.

  She skims her fingers over the ink stain on the marbled cover. It leaves a smudge of darkness in the whorls of her fingertips. It’s been a long vacation, but she’s not ready for the term to begin. She is used to the long winters here, the dead days of New Year, January and February, pillowed and muffled by the snow; the other Magisters leave from time to time, visiting their families or foreign academics, celebrating New Year with more than a quarter of a litre of wine, mingling with other important men in the capital – this year the Magister Cartae boasted about how he’d been invited to advise the Minister for Culture on national policy – but she has always stayed here. She likes to be free, invisible, her own woman. She’s never wanted to stay with Aunt Frances, or to go to Cambridge or Paris or Wittenberg. She’s never wanted to be reminded of the outside world: Montverre is everything and more than everything she needs.

  Was. Was everything she needed. But not this year. There’s a feeling in the corridors, as though the rock underneath the school has started to fall apart. She thought she was safe here – from the world, from desire; but Martin’s presence has stripped a layer off her skin. It’s as if she’s becoming younger day by day, turning into one of the scholars. She can remember too clearly what it was to be their age: those heart-swelling sleepless nights, the terrible vulnerability of happiness. Her ten-years-younger self is too near, selfish and light-hearted, only now and then giving a thought to her brother’s misery. Oh, she tried. She did her best. But she was caught up in her own life, and she didn’t try hard enough; and Aimé died … She has learnt the hard way to protect herself, to keep herself closed, never to give herself away. And yet she can’t help it. This restlessness is foolish. No, it’s dangerous. Irresistible as a drug, and yet, and yet … She’s afraid of herself. Ever since she saw that black automobile roll into the courtyard … Or before that, before the beginning of term, when she felt someone in the shadows, watching her … She catches herself. Hysteria. Or – no – is this how it starts? How Aimé started—

  No, of course not. No doubt it’s much more prosaic: she’d like a change of scenery. To change the ideas, as the French would say. To get out of this place which has always been her home, but which feels more and more like a prison.

  She knocks her temple with her knuckles, deliberately stopping her chain of thought. The grand jeu is her escape. No wonder she’s got gaol-fever; she needs to do some work. If she can’t work on the Midsummer Game, she can write a test paper for her first-years, or glance over her third-years’ vacation essays. Anything to remind herself that she is Magister Ludi. She reaches for the nearest book – Jermyn’s Imaginary Spaces – and flicks through, looking for a quotation she can use as an essay question. Mathematics is the first, and the greatest discipline …

  There’s a knock at the door. She leaps to her feet, drags the book sideways to hide Martin’s diary, and stumbles towards the door. It opens before she reaches it – why did she leave it unlocked? – and for a moment she blinks at the figure in the pale corridor-light. It’s Martin. Of course it’s Martin. For a moment they stare at each other. Too late, she is conscious of how she must look, tense and undignified in the middle of the room. She isn’t wearing her cap and her plait is unravelling. ‘Mr Martin,’ she says. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘It appears you have an admirer,’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There was someone lurking.’ He points behind him. ‘The Christian scholar, I think, I saw the cross on his gown. When I came along he ran away.’

  ‘An admirer?’ It must be Charpentier; the thought of him gives her a pang of guilt. She ought to do more for him. She, of all people, should know how hard it can be, when the scholars turn on someone; but she knows, too, how helpless the Magisters are. Especially with the government – the whole country – on the side of the bullies.

  Martin hesitates. He was smiling, but something in her tone has taken him aback. ‘I’m only joking,’ he says. ‘I suppose … no, perhaps you don’t get much of that sort of thing.’

  It shouldn’t sting, but it does. She doesn’t want to be treated as female – in her experience, the less of that, the better – nevertheless it’s humiliating that he dismisses her so easily; and even more humiliating that she notices, and cares. ‘What do you want?’ she says, more brusquely than she means to.

  He hesitates. He raises one hand and proffers a blue-and-gold wrapped parcel. ‘Your marrons glacés,’ he says. When she doesn’t answer immediately he moves to her desk and puts the packet on top of her papers. She fights not to flinch: he’s so close to his diary that if he merely moved the Jermyn to check the title, glanced down … but he doesn’t. He turns back to look at her.

  He expects thanks. She catches at the thought, almost too late. ‘Thank you,’ she says, but it comes out breathless, bewildered, and he frowns.

  ‘You asked me for them. Last term. When I … You do like them?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did. I do. Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Good.’ He nods, fidgets with his tie. He’s standing awkwardly, half twisted away from her; it’s somehow childish, like a guilty boy who’s hoping to get away with something. He clears his throat, noisily. Then, suddenly, she realises: he thinks he’s at a dis
advantage.

  He must see the thought in her face – or something funny, anyway, because his mouth twitches; and as his expression broadens into a smile, she finds herself smiling back. Blast him. She crosses to the desk and leans past him, casually piling more papers on top of Imaginary Spaces so that even the narrow spine of his diary is hidden from view. ‘That’s kind of you,’ she said. ‘I never thought … that is, I imagined you’d be far too busy—’

  ‘I promised, didn’t I?’ His breath stirs the hair behind her ears.

  ‘Oh? I forgot.’ She has misjudged the distance between them, and as she straightens she brushes against his sleeve. He pulls back, but not as much as he should. ‘Perhaps I underestimated you,’ she says. It comes out more seriously than she intended.

  ‘Impossible.’ He grins.

  She turns away. What is it? The long, long vacation, the days of nothing but snow and books and silence, the years of grand jeu and – yes – loneliness, the flash of warmth that for once someone has brought her a gift, something sweet— Or is it mere morbid sentimentality, brought on by his diary? Whatever it is, she doesn’t trust herself to look at him. ‘If you say so,’ she says. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me—’