The Betrayals

by Bridget Collins

  There was black on the floor, footprints, a smear. He stepped over the puddle, his mind still lagging behind. Ink. It was ink. There was a broken inkwell on the floor, a spatter of drops in an arc across the wall next to the bed. Someone had knocked it flying. On the desk there was another wet tract of black, smeared at the edge, seeping into the grain of the wood. No papers or stained notes, which was something, although had he left his diary out?

  He glanced up, and then he didn’t know how he hadn’t seen it the moment he came in.

  BASTARD.

  The letters started above his eyeline and extended down to the height of the desk. They were formed from four-fingered swipes of ink, dark at their beginnings and fading to grey. Black trickled down from the upright of the B, the stem of the T, the underbelly of the D. The word was too big to identify the handwriting. How long had it been there? He touched it, and his fingers came away stained. Still wet.

  He never saw Carfax again. The next day, or the day after, the Magister Scholarium stood up in front of the school and said, ‘I’m afraid, gentlemen, I have some very bad news.’

  Ten years have passed since then. But right now – standing in the dark, with his eyes closed – he feels as if nothing’s changed.

  24: the Magister Ludi

  It’s her own fault. She should have known better; she’s been playing with fire. She should never have spent so much time with Martin. All the hours she’s devoted to helping him this term, laughing at his quips, refusing to let him get away with sloppy thinking – she should have known that they were dangerous. That he would read more into them than reluctant politeness; that he would be too vain to attribute her kindness to a sense of duty. Did she enjoy them too much? Has she, God forbid, let him notice that she looks forward to seeing him, that in spite of everything it’s exhilarating to speak to an outsider? No. Be honest. To speak to him. He’s charming, he’s energetic. Having him here is like oxygen, a strong drink, an open door … In spite of everything, she has to admit that. But it’s a long way from that to wanting him to touch her. Inviting him to her room for a brandy, what foolishness! She’s ashamed of her own stupidity. How could she forget she’s a woman, and that he’d treat her like one? From the moment she opened the bottle, it was inevitable that he’d humiliate them both, somehow. Loneliness was no excuse. For a few dreamlike minutes, when she came out of the library, exhausted, sick of herself, she’d imagined that they could be friends. She wanted … what did she want? Not this, anyway. Not to stand here, staring at the door, with her hand over her mouth. Her palm is soft against her lips, her lips moist on her palm. For a strange, thoughtless moment, all her attention is on the place where they meet. She can’t remember the last time she really felt her body. It makes her queasy. In another life … but this is her life, and no one else’s.

  It takes an effort to turn away. She goes to her desk. At least she put her papers away where he wouldn’t see them. She’s been careless, these last few weeks, but not that careless: she has made sure that he never sees anything she’s written. She’s restrained herself even from leaning across him to add diacritics – why can’t he learn, for goodness’ sake? – limiting herself to pointing at the absences with the end of her pen, prompting him to dot them in himself. And his diary … She slides out the drawer, as if it might have disappeared. The ledger is still there, of course. The pebbled marbling on the cover is like a landscape, seen from above: in the unsteady lamplight the black blotch could be as deep as a well. She puts her finger in the middle of the stain and presses down, as if to reassure herself.

  She can still feel the brush of his mouth against hers. How long was the kiss, before she pushed him away? It took her a second to realise – well, to believe – what he was doing; and then another instant to—

  To what?

  She wipes the last trace of dampness from her lips. Her chignon has collapsed on to her neck, heavy and hot. She shuts her eyes.

  What would have happened, if she hadn’t stopped him? She refuses to let herself imagine: but she doesn’t have to imagine. She knows. If she had opened her mouth to his, he would have frozen, then pushed deeper with his tongue, bringing his hands up to clasp the back of her head. A second later, when they came up for breath, he’d have pulled away to look into her eyes. And then he’d begin to kiss her again, but she’d feel him smiling, his teeth bared against her lips, and he’d break off and bow his head, grinning at the floor. If she’d pressed her forehead into his shoulder she’d have felt him laughing softly, as incredulous as she was: until she cupped his jaw and resumed the kiss, harder now. She doesn’t want to think about his hands sliding down her neck, down to the small of her back, or the unexpected tenderness in his touch, a softness – almost a timidity – that you couldn’t have predicted from his usual manner. Now that he was getting what he wanted, he’d be gentle: it would make her want to dig her nails into the back of his neck, make him wince and tighten his own grip until they were nearly wrestling, contesting and matching their strength in a sort of game that wasn’t a game.

  And later – how much later? – he would bunch her gown in his hands, ready to pull it up and over her head. And then—

  She even knows what it would be like, to push him away at that point. Not like it was, this time: he wouldn’t stumble backwards, crimson-faced. He’d blink, half smiling, half confused. He’d raise his hand towards her face, and his sleeve would fall back to show the solid shape of his wrist. The vein, like a trace of blue glaze on porcelain. Skin she’d want to lick.

  And she’d say, ‘No. Not now. Not – no,’ running out of breath on every monosyllable.

  And mean it.

  That’s the point. She’d mean it. She reaches for the bottle of brandy and takes a swig. Perhaps alcohol will numb the hollow, tight sensation in her belly, or drown the incendiary crackle in her spine. She drinks again, and again. She has to lower the bottle and gasp, but immediately she lifts it for another mouthful. Her head spins. Good.

  She shoves the open desk-drawer shut so roughly the whole desk shudders. Then she climbs the stairs, her shoulder bumping against the wall. She’s still holding the bottle; it wasn’t deliberate, but she takes advantage of its being in her hand by drinking some more. Maybe this is the first stage of alcoholism, and she’ll die like her father, bruised and swollen, weeping at the stings of invisible insects. Well, he died; she supposes the details might not be exact. She remembers Aimé whispering, ‘He said there were ants inside his skull. He said they were eating his brain …’ It was late at night, when both of them were hunched together on his four-poster, listening to Mama cry. Aimé must have been too young to remember Papa, too, but for years she thought his deathbed tales were unadorned truth. Now she isn’t sure which are real. Papa died, anyway. And then Mama went, too, going away ‘on holiday’ and never coming back, jumping alone from a moonlit hotel balcony. She wasn’t a de Courcy, except by marriage: but that’s what the de Courcys do, they spread the contagion to anyone who gets too close. At least Mama was dead before Aimé.

  She has reached the top of the stairs. She puts the bottle on her washstand, bends over the basin and splashes her face. It’s too dark to see her reflection, although a slice of starry sky shimmers on the surface of the water. She’s feeling sick. But at least the night’s events seem to have receded – or, rather, grown less convincing, as if a half-open door has turned out to be trompe l’oeil. She’s glad to be drunk. She drags her gown over her head, then stops. Undressing further is too much trouble. She sits on the bed, and the world bounces and resettles. Gingerly she leans back, breathing deeply, and when she closes her eyes oblivion floods up around her.

  She wakes with a raging thirst. It’s still night-time; she couldn’t swear to it, but she’s pretty sure she’s only slept for an hour or so. When she gets up and drinks – from the ewer, because for some reason, fumbling about in the dark, she can’t find her tooth-glass – it satisfies her thirst, but she discovers that the alcoholic languor has passed, a
nd she’s wide awake. Her brain is humming like a machine. The papers she was looking at this evening quiver in her mind’s eye, sparkling with anxiety. How many corners of the library has she mined, fruitlessly, for ideas? And she hasn’t come up with anything. Pages and pages of her notes thrown away, crumpled, still half blank. The prospect of the Midsummer Game grows closer every night, every hour: what if she has nothing to perform? Would they sack her? Could they sack her? Maybe not; but then, no one has ever failed before. And the humiliation … She’s a de Courcy. It might send her mad.

  She tells herself she’s failed before. She’s been humiliated before. It’s not reassuring.

  She walks to the window, vaguely surprised by her inability to hold a straight line. The muscles of her scalp throb, as if they no longer quite fit the shape of her skull. She looks out and up, to the infinite, impersonal stars.

  Could she run away? There’s nowhere to go. She sold the Château d’Apre when she was elected as Magister Ludi; she was sure then that she’d live and die at Montverre, and the château was too full of memories of Aimé, too much of a reminder that the de Courcy line ended with her. She has never regretted it, until now. At a pinch she might go back to live with Aunt Frances. But she can imagine her life there too clearly: the stagnant, stale Sundays, the long weeks of doing good works, the slow-growing claustrophobia. She wouldn’t be Magister Dryden, she would be Claire, Miss Claire Dryden, for ever. She has chosen her life, and it’s here. It’s the grand jeu. It’s the path to God.

  She closes her eyes, listening to the silence. The clock chimes.

  Léo Martin wanted to help her. Wants to help her. It would be so easy to let him. Would he expect her to let him kiss her, afterwards?

  Something flickers in her head. A memory, a thought. A veil slipping. Her eyes fly open. The starlight tingles on her face like a gust of snow.

  Her keys. Where are her keys? She stumbles back to her bed and rummages in the shadows, searches the pocket of her gown by touch. She pulls out the jangling ring and runs it through her hand like a rosary. Here is the big, knobbly key to the Biblioteca Ludi. It’s forbidden to be in the main library alone, but the Biblioteca Ludi is hers, and yes, her fingers find the smaller key, rusty with disuse, that opens the back door to the staircase. She’s never used it – never been there at night – but there’s nothing to stop her. Nothing, that is, except the dark and the fear that her hand might, in spite of itself, throw her lamp to the floor in a splash of flame. Neurosis. Hysteria. She clenches her hand on her keys and gets to her feet, refusing to let her mind race ahead of her down the starlit corridors. She is not going to go mad tonight; but just in case, she leaves the lamp behind.

  She is still drunk. She must look like a puppet, shambling hurriedly along. Doesn’t matter. Who cares? Well. If Léo Martin is still awake. If he sees her like this, looking like a scholar … An imitation of a man, in her trousers and shirt. Hair sagging on her neck.

  She unlatches a door, steps out into the cloister that runs along the outside edge of the building, and through the little back door to the Biblioteca. Here are the library stairs: opposite her is the locked door to the library itself, and the Biblioteca Ludi is above her head. She clings to the handrail as she makes her way up, in case the world starts to tip again, but it stays steady. She opens the door to the Biblioteca Ludi and stands still, smelling dust and spring dampness. The window throws a fuzz of silver across the floor and the bookcases, the piles of pamphlets and papers. As she goes to the far corner, her foot catches a tower of magazines and she hears it slither over with a sigh.

  She kneels down and pulls the metal trunk out from under the lowest shelf. It’s lighter than normal because Martin’s diary is in her desk. She takes it over to the window, where the light is strong enough for her to make out what’s written on the papers. Exercises, exam papers, essays, old games: the Potato, the Chartres Cathedral, a pastiche of the Four Seasons. They’re all mixed up. She takes them out and dumps them, first on the desk and then, when the pile gets too high, on the floor. First- and second-year exam papers. None for the third year, of course. The Danse Macabre. Two copies – the first labelled Aimé Carfax de Courcy, the second Léonard Martin, both scrawled all over with corrections. She bites her lip, staring down at them. If he knew she had them – well, he suspects, doesn’t he? But if he knew why … Was she being overly careful, to take those for the sake of a few words and a few diacritics? It’s too late now, anyway. If it hadn’t been for Martin it would have gone unnoticed that she’d abstracted them from his file – but naturally the first name Martin looked up in the archive was his own. Why on earth can’t she get him out of her head? She was fine before he came, she was untouched, untouchable, she was master of herself and the grand jeu.

  She goes back to the trunk of papers. She is letting herself get distracted. Somewhere in here … Come on. Where is it?

  She draws out an exercise book. On the front is scrawled, A. Carfax de Courcy, and underneath that, Tempest. She hasn’t looked at it for years. She opens it at random: pages of notes in Artemonian, and longhand comments. Link back, prefigure, L says too overwhelming? Next there’s a page in classical notation and opposite it an annotated graph, analysing the arc of the movement. The distant, sober part of her notices that it’s a feinted septime, which is arcane, for a second-year – but then, if you’re a de Courcy, you learn grand jeu moves in the nursery. A is for artemage, B is for botte secrète … She and Aimé learnt Artemonian at the same time as the alphabet, and spent days squabbling over who’d used the last of the coloured pencils and gold ink decorating their ‘Gold Medal’ games. When he was eleven, Aimé spent a whole month composing fugues, hunched over the jangling piano like a little old man. She begged and begged for a turn, but he refused to let her have even an hour at the keyboard; one day, after trying to drag him away, she barricaded the door so that he couldn’t get out, crying with fury. Later, when they were both big enough to play on the Auburn Mistress, they argued about that too, bickering like two rival lovers competing for favours. Small wonder, she thinks, that the de Courcys go mad.

  She turns another page. There’s a paragraph of dense writing; at the bottom, halfway through a sentence, the pen has left a long trail as if the writer’s hand was knocked away from the paper. Underneath, Léo Martin’s handwriting says, I’ve had enough, going to bed, see you tomorrow.

  She flips forward again. It’s familiar, of course, like a map of a country she’s visited. The melodies intertwine in her head; her fingers twitch, picking out silent bars of Beethoven. And it’s good. It would have got sixty-five, at least. If it had only been submitted …

  She takes a deep breath. There’s no point getting angry. Not now. The point is that it’s promising. A game that no one here has seen – except Léo Martin, but he won’t be here for the Midsummer Game. So if she were to use this … not as it is, obviously. But with eight weeks’ work … Yes. She can imagine how it will go – the motifs she wants to emphasise, the subtle intricacies she can introduce, the movements which need to be pulled back from adolescent excess. She can transform it from a competent sixty-five to a Midsummer Game. She closes her eyes and imagines herself on the silver-outlined terra of the Great Hall, her arms raised. How long has she been dreading it? Before, she always loved that moment immediately after the ouverture, when you feel the weight of the audience’s gaze, when you wear their attention like a cloak. She used to love the anticipation. She’s missed it. But with this game … Relief leaps inside her. She breathes out, and her bones feel soft and light. She’s been afraid so long, but now … She can do it. In two months she can present a Midsummer Game. There won’t be anything to be ashamed of. She won’t have failed.

  She bends over the page, laughing softly. Why didn’t she think of this before? All this time wasted on searching for ideas, when what she needed was right here. She raises the book to her face and puts her lips against the cover. Can she smell ink and sweat? Perhaps. The passions of ten years ago, th
e hours spent in the library, the exhaustion and euphoria. The late nights, the sleepless nights, the white nights … Nights like this one. She tries not to think about Léo’s mouth against hers, that moment before she pushed him away. A wave of gratitude crashes over her, and for a moment she doesn’t care that Aimé’s dead, or that it was her fault. She says, under her breath, ‘Thank you,’ and then, because she can, she says it again, aloud.

  25: Léo

  He dreams, not of Claire, but of Chryseïs. She is in front of him in a queue, in mourning – in the dream he isn’t surprised, as if it has come back into fashion – her back turned to him, her hair hidden under an elegant little hat. They are in a hall which is both the Great Hall at Montverre and the Central Immigration Office, and they are waiting for something important. Final marks. There is a slick of blood on the floor but people step decorously around it, without commenting. They have been waiting for a long time. But whenever the queue inches forward there are more people in front of Léo, more people separating him from her, and somehow he is incapable of pushing forward. She is afraid. They are all afraid; and as well as the fear Léo is full of a creeping sense of guilt. It’s his fault that Chryseïs is here, and in black. If he could call out, he would.

  She reaches the front of the queue, and the man behind the desk looks up. In that instant Léo sees that it’s Carfax. He doesn’t understand why he didn’t notice before. If he had been more observant … But it doesn’t matter. For a few flaring seconds he is full of joy, because it has all been a misunderstanding, and Carfax is somehow alive.