The Betrayals

by Bridget Collins

  Thanks to Carfax.

  It was him knocking, earlier. He’d come to show me something he was working on, and he sat down on my bed and watched me while I looked over his notes. It was his summer game – all meticulously planned, naturally – and it was all about storms and maelstroms and whirlpools, fluid dynamics and wave mathematics and Beethoven. I told him it was quite overwhelming and he bristled and said, ‘Yes, well, storms often are,’ but a second later he said, ‘All right, then, smart-aleck, so what should I do about it?’ So we got into a discussion about that, and I told him I thought it was too abstract and too clever, and that he needed some narrative. (Narrative! Dear me! Whatever next?) I suggested he have a look at The Tempest, and he nodded with that non-committal expression that means he thinks I’m talking drivel, and I threw a pencil at him. Anyway, we got on to my complete dearth of ideas, and he asked without conviction whether there wasn’t some old draft I could resurrect, and I said no, and he said, well, why couldn’t I find inspiration in the library, and I said without thinking that the library might as well have been burnt to the ground for all the help it was. He shot me a glinty-eyed look, but he didn’t say anything, so I couldn’t tell if he was offended or not. In any case I was already babbling about how I’d been to try and look up adversarial games and found literally nothing.

  He said, ‘You went to look up adversarial games? Yes, of course you did,’ and laughed.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You are absolutely obsessed with winning, Martin, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s not that. No one’s ever told us about adversarial games. I wondered what they were like. How they worked.’

  ‘You want to start with Wright and Percy. They were mid-sixteenth, I think. Or the Poets of Nishapur. Or have a look at Babbage and Klein – early nineteenth, they were probably the last to play really adversarial games, after that it all started to merge into joint games, which isn’t exactly the same.’

  ‘How come you know so much about it?’

  ‘I don’t know. My— someone probably told me. Lots of the players were women, incidentally. Gransen and Gransen were sisters. And there were a lot of married couples. In an adversarial game, no one could pretend it had all been written by the husband.’

  ‘I don’t get it. How can the grand jeu be competitive? I mean – was there a point system? How did they know how to score?’ I reached over to make a note of the names. ‘I can’t imagine what it would look like. Is it like an antiphon? Or harmony?’

  ‘Go and read the books, Martin. I can’t explain it to you.’

  I scowled at him, and he grinned.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Imagine you’re playing the Bridges of Königsberg. No, bear with me,’ he added, as I stifled a groan. ‘You’re in the middle of the first movement, trundling, as it were, over the eternal bridges.’

  ‘Resisting the urge to throw myself into the Pregel.’

  ‘Yes, and you’re pausing before the node where the historical motif comes in.’

  ‘Please, put me out of my misery …’

  ‘Concentrate, Martin. Now, you’ve just completed that measure. But, as it happens, you’re not playing the Bridges of Königsberg as we know it, you’re playing an adversarial game against, let’s say, Felix. Who stands up with a gesture called the assauture – stop me if I’m patronising you – which looks like this.’ He sketched an unfamiliar flourish. ‘And then, being Felix, he decides that the best way to proceed is to elaborate on the literal map of Königsberg, restate the original motif, introduce something only tenuously relevant, and then step back with the conjuration, inviting you to proceed.’ He paused in the middle of his impersonation and added, ‘Control yourself, please.’

  I was sniggering like a kid, but I couldn’t help it. His mimicry was uncanny.

  ‘Or perhaps your opponent is Emile, who will slip in sideways,’ he said, demonstrating a sort of wriggle, ‘and perform something so obscure it’s impossible to say exactly what it is, and then go completely blank and look at you as if expecting more from him is only showing your ignorance.’

  ‘Stop it—’

  ‘Or …’ He was laughing by now, too, although not as much as I was. ‘Or Paul, who’d go straight for the maths and sort of stamp it into a circle like a dog getting ready to lie down.’

  ‘I can’t bear it, it’s like they’re in the room.’

  ‘Or if it was the Magister Cartae, he’d make sure you’d understood your own work by repeating it back to you, and then step back and glare without adding anything new, and you’d flounder like an idiot, because anything you did would get reflected straight back …’ He tried to go on, but the giggles had caught up with him. It made me laugh even harder.

  For a few seconds we couldn’t speak. Then I took a deep breath. ‘Like the bridges in the water. Back and forth. The same, only another voice – the—’ I stopped.

  ‘What’s up?’

  I was suddenly sober. At least, I had that rising, queasy feeling in my gut, the quick heartbeat, the shivers. An idea. Like falling in love.

  ‘Will you – I’ve had a thought. Go away. I need to write it down.’

  Anyone else would have asked a question. Carfax made an obeisance like a genie from the Arabian Nights, handed me the pencil I’d thrown at him, and disappeared.

  Reflections. Left-handedness and right-handedness, symmetries, canon. Abstract, but with hints of imagery – the trembling of water, the sharp edges of a mirror, a modulated section on shadows. Echoes. No narrative. Or, if there is, only hints and fragments. The sense of a voice answering itself. Clear, clean, classical. Lucid, transparent. The opposite of the Danse Macabre.

  I know Carfax didn’t exactly give me the idea – I mean, not like a present, he wasn’t deliberately handing inspiration to me like a parcel – but I feel so absurdly grateful I want to stand outside his room and serenade him. Maybe Magister Holt was right to make us work together. Maybe, after all, he knew what he was doing, the wily old crosser.

  Chapter 20

  21: Léo

  He leans back, puts his hands behind his head, and watches sunlit drops of water flashing past the window. He’s been working, but the falling gleams kept catching his eye, and now he can’t bring himself to go back to his book. He’s restless. It’s not the end of winter, not by a long way, but on the end of every icicle there’s a trembling bead of light; and for the first time this year the air carries the scent of water and earth. This morning, when he crossed the court to the refectory, the sun struck his face with real warmth. Suddenly the short mountain days are opening like buds, heralding the spring. He knows that the weather can be treacherous, that it can plunge Montverre back into winter, refreeze the waterfalls, blanket the shabby snow with another layer … But all the same, his spirits rise. Soon – well, fairly soon – there will be wide green slopes instead of this endless monochrome. Wild flowers, the scent of herbs on the breeze, birdsong. And as the days lengthen the Magisters will look more and more harassed, tempers will run high, scholars will come to blows in the library over choice volumes. Spring will turn to summer; they’ll hand in their games and take their exams. For years, Léo has paused in his work on hot summer days to look up at a cloudless sky and be glad he wasn’t in the Lesser Hall, sweating over an exam paper that wrinkled and stuck to his hand as he tried to write; but this year he feels different. He’s almost nostalgic. Almost.

  He rolls his head from side to side against his linked hands, and then stretches his arms over his head. His muscles creak. He’s not in his twenties any more, and the lack of exercise this winter has taken its toll. But he feels younger than he has for ages – since he left Montverre – no, since he won the Gold Medal – since the moment when the Magister Scholarium stood in front of them and said, ‘I’m afraid, gentlemen …’ He has to swerve away from that memory, but it’s easier than it used to be. He can turn his attention deliberately towards this afternoon, when he’ll knock on Magister Dryden’s door w
ith a first draft of what might turn out to be a pretty decent article for the Everyman’s Game or the New Herald or even, if he’s lucky, the Gambit. He knows already what she’s going to say – that in quest of populism he’s sacrificed subtlety – but he’s looking forward to it anyway. These days he sees her often; they have evolved a routine, and he turns up at her door almost every other day, half supplicant, half pedlar, offering articles, essays, plans for grands jeux. A few times they have ended up talking about the Midsummer Game, although she’s refused to show him any work-in-progress. She’s still, of course, as graceless and prickly as ever; but his perseverance is paying off. She has gone from hostile resignation to acceptance: sometimes she forgets herself far enough to argue with him, leaning forward and pounding her fist on the desk, passionate about Philidor or Harnoncourt, and sometimes she even grins at something he’s said – although that’s a Pyrrhic victory, because she always dismisses him a few minutes later, claiming curtly that she has to get back to work. And every so often, as though she doesn’t realise she’s doing it, she gives him a glancing, elusive look that could almost pass for tenderness. The thought takes him by surprise, and he straightens in his chair, pursing his lips. Tenderness? Really? But yes, he’s not making it up, he’s definitely seen something of the kind – and why wouldn’t he? He can be charming when he tries; he built a whole career on it, for goodness’ sake. And he’s trying as hard as he can, because in spite of himself he wants her to like him. Those moments when she cracks a smile, or gives him a look as though she knows him better than he realises, or … They kindle sparks inside him, sparks that sting a little and warm a little. She isn’t Carfax, but gradually he’s starting to forget that.

  A moist breeze rattles the window, and a sudden spate of drips streaks down from the eaves. He blinks away the vertical comet-tails of darkness that linger on his retinas. She’s never mentioned the perfume he bought her, but perhaps that’s a good sign; she’s not the sort of woman who’d be used to getting gifts, who’d accept them as her due or coo meaningless thanks, like Chryseïs. Perhaps she was overwhelmed and still doesn’t know what to say. He’s imagined it over and over, her unwrapping the bottle, the flame-colours shining in that austere room like a jewel. When she took the stopper out, the scent must have risen like smoke, exotic, bewitching. He should have gone back and looked through the keyhole. He wants to see her face off guard, open, wiped clean by beauty.

  He gets up, shaking the circulation back into his fingers and toes. The sun may be swinging through the seasons, but it’s still chilly. He turns back to his desk and picks up the book he was reading. It’s an anonymous little octavo, a Treatise on the Harmonical Form of Play that he picked out of the furthest, darkest corner of the library. Recently, as well as the grand jeu, he’s begun to play another sort of game: can he find an idea that Magister Dryden hasn’t already encountered, or make an argument she can’t refute? So far he hasn’t managed to score a single point. He can’t tell whether she knows what he’s trying to do, and enjoys her victories, or whether it’s a sort of childish solitaire, as though he’s making faces at himself in the mirror. He despises himself a little for how much pleasure he takes from it, but it’s an antidote to boredom, at least. And his knowledge of the obscure points of the grand jeu has come on by leaps and bounds; it might not outstrip Magister Dryden’s, but every flicker of her eyebrows as she suppresses surprise gives him a tiny jolt of pleasure. In any case, he has high hopes for the anonymous Treatise. He flicks back a few pages, to a line he’s drawn in the margin: the claim that all the disciplines, so apparently discrete and separate, are merely facets of one ineluctable Truth, and may find their apogee in combination, is the same claim of religion, that every man shares a spark of the divine essence and his sense of individuality is a mere illusion. But on second reading, it strikes him as commonplace: in other words, the grand jeu is an act of love. That goes without saying, doesn’t it?

  Underneath the little book is a half-finished letter to Emile. These days, with belated circumspection, he keeps himself to the small comedy of Magisters jostling for status, the hints of scandal among the scholars (nothing new there, as Emile himself will know), and the occasional conversations he has with the porters or librarians: a Christian first-year beaten up in the corridor, the mayor of the village taken away on a trumped-up charge, the perennial rumour of a ghost. Nothing significant. In return for his musings, Emile sends parcels of tobacco and chocolate and books, which are much more welcome than Mim’s inept offerings; and, more importantly, Léo sleeps well at night. He hasn’t forgotten Pirène’s warning.

  But he can’t be bothered with the rest of the letter right now. His restlessness won’t let him stay still. He puts the book into his pocket and goes out into the corridor. He crosses the court and pauses for a moment to look up at the blue sky. The low hedges are still covered in snow, but he can smell soil and sap and the metallic tinge of meltwater. Icicles hang like clear tusks from the gutter, and a gargoyle has a jagged beard of glass. He walks through the doorway into the murk of the passageway. His heart is light again, as though cheerfulness is carried on the spring air.

  Down this corridor are the music rooms. Someone is practising scales and arpeggios. He pauses, listening to the clean clarity of the notes as they rise and fall, until a pang of not-quite-memory makes him turn away. His mind’s eye catches at a crescent moon in a window, the deep blue of an evening sky. A face, a shiver on his skin …

  And there’s a voice. For a split second it’s both past and present, a familiar inflection that tugs at him like a dream. He turns. Magister Dryden is coming down the corridor with a scholar, laughing.

  Laughing. Why does that bother him? Because he wants to be there at her side, the way he would have been with Carfax, the one to make her laugh. He draws back into the doorway of the furthest music room to watch her approach. She’s not like the other Magisters; she wouldn’t be, even if she were a man. She’s different in other ways, in almost every way … She pauses, turning to the scholar, and he hears a fragment of speech: ‘… clever,’ she says, ‘but is it true?’ The scholar grins and ducks his head, conceding.

  It’s a strange feeling, watching her like this. Léo’s not exactly hidden, but at the same time he feels the shameful, irresistible rush of spying on her. He wishes he could have seen her at her viva. She must have been exceptional, even if she was only elected because the shortlist was mismanaged. But he’ll see her play the Midsummer Game. He asked the Magister Scholarium if he could stay for it; he wasn’t expecting to be refused, but neither was he expecting the Magister to offer him a seat on the front bench. ‘I understand that you were unable to attend the year you won the Gold Medal,’ the Magister said, ‘so perhaps you should consider yourself to have earnt your place there.’ It was absurd how much that pleased him, even if he suspected that his Gold Medal wasn’t the only reason for the privilege. He hasn’t told her yet that he’ll be there; he wants to surprise her.

  The scholar says, ‘Yes, I will. Thank you, Magister,’ and scurries through the door into the main courtyard. A gust of air – cool but scented – swirls down the corridor. The Magister stands looking after him, that amused, authoritative look still on her face.

  He almost doesn’t say anything. He’s relishing the pleasure of observing her without her knowing. But there’s something about her expression which stings him into stepping forward. ‘Magister Dryden,’ he says.

  She smiles. There’s no hesitation, no thought: she sees him, and her face lights up.

  It hits him like a draught of water when he didn’t realise he was thirsty, like the first drag of a cigarette or the first mouthful of a Martini. He smiles back. For maybe half a second the world hangs immobile, the space between them singing. The niggle of jealousy – was it jealousy? how absurd – evaporates; there’s nothing but her gaze meeting his, the sense that they are the only people in the world.

  He laughs. He doesn’t mean to, but he can’t help it: a gulp of del
ight and mirth because he can’t quite – and yet he does, he knows, it’s crazy but he suddenly realises how she isn’t only different from the other Magisters, she’s different from everyone else in the world, except possibly Carfax. What’s happening to him? But he knows. He wants to stand here and stare at her, for ever. There is nowhere else he’d rather be, no one else he’d rather look at. In spite of her plainness, her masculine jaw and straight brows, in spite of – no, because, because she’s herself, she’s lovely, and he never saw it. He hasn’t felt this way since—

  She blinks, as if conscious of what her face is doing. She fusses with a loop of hair that has fallen out of her cap, and when she looks up, her expression is deliberately impassive. Momentarily she was so like Carfax it was uncanny. Now she’s herself again, keeping him at bay; but that instant of pleasure and complicity has given her away. She likes him. In spite of herself, perhaps. He feels it like sunlight reflecting off snow. It blots out everything else. He tips his head back, still smiling at her, and the scent of spring whistles damply through the cracks around the doors and windows.

  ‘Mr Martin,’ she says, striding towards him, ‘what are you doing here?’

  ‘Waiting for you, Magister,’ he says.

  22

  Fourth week of term

  Haven’t had time to write for ages. Composing a whole game in nine weeks …

  I love it, though. On good days I’m sure it’s a good idea. Reflections, I mean. I’ve got that nervous euphoric feeling. When I’m in lessons I’m constantly struggling to listen; I’ve started taking my rough notebook to every class, in case something comes to me and I have to write it down. I’m having real trouble sleeping because things start whirling round in my head. As soon as I get an idea I’m trying to hold on to it, clenching my mind around it in case it slips away. I’m all sewn up, but in a good way, I suppose. At least, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.