The Betrayals

by Bridget Collins

  ‘Bernard will be fed up. Is Martin that cocky second-year? Oh, right.’ A suppressed giggle. ‘Oops, didn’t see him there …’

  ‘Wow,’ someone said, with a chuckle. ‘Never seen anyone fail before.’

  ‘Specially not a de Courcy.’

  ‘Yeah, the Lunatic of London Library’ll be turning in his grave.’

  He shut his eyes, and opened them again. At the bottom of the sheet, there was a single line, easy to miss, above Magister Holt’s signature.

  Unsuccessful candidates: Aimé Carfax de Courcy, Red.

  No. He’d thought – he hadn’t imagined – yes, he’d submitted the wrong game, but … And then he was pelting up the stairs, desperate to explain, to protest that all he’d meant was – he hadn’t – not for a moment had he meant to … But it had been too late. He sees again the scrawled ink on the wall of his room: BASTARD. And when he got to Carfax’s room, he was already gone.

  He’d written a letter. It took him most of the next day, while people knocked on his door to congratulate him and speculate about how de Courcy could possibly have messed up so badly … He smiled at them and accepted their compliments and resisted the urge to drive his pen into their eye sockets. When they left he went straight back to his scrawled draft. He’d wiped the wall down as best he could, but while he scraped about for the right words he found himself staring at the smear of grey, and the shape of the word seemed to linger. BASTARD. Yes, he was. A bastard, and an idiot. Please believe me, I never meant to lie to you. I thought … But what had he thought? What if, deep down, he’d known, he’d wanted –? What if, after all …? He squashed the thought. Carfax would forgive him, once he’d explained. I’ll go to Magister Holt and ’fess up, and give them the Tempest instead. They can’t fail you for a game you didn’t even submit … I’m sorry. Honestly. I thought … but he was back to the same sentence, the one he didn’t trust himself to finish.

  He started a new paragraph. Last night – I mean, the night before results day. I … The memory made his insides ache with shame and desire and pleasure; but it was a kind of talisman, too, because Carfax had said … Well, that thing Carfax had said – he wouldn’t have said it unless he meant it. And if he’d meant it, then he’d forgive Léo for being an idiot, and a bastard, and a Gold Medallist …

  He scratched out that line. It was better to leave it at I’m sorry. After all, once Carfax had forgiven him they could talk about – well, anything. Anything they wanted. He copied the letter out, so it looked as though he’d written it all in one go, straightforward and eloquent, and sealed it up ready to put in the post the next day. He didn’t even know Carfax’s address, he had to ask in the office. Château d’Apre, nr. Montravail … But the next morning all the scholars were called to the Great Hall.

  I’m afraid, gentlemen, I have some very bad news …

  He can’t remember much about that day, or the one after. Fragments. Felix giving him a sheepish smirk of sympathy, and then flushing scarlet; Freddie, uncharacteristically subdued; the Magisters elusive and sombre. A deadened feeling, as if all the floors were carpeted with felt. Even Emile, who Léo might have expected to be philosophical or sardonic, was dead silent and white-faced. Perhaps it was even the same day that some servant fell from a window. It hardly seemed to matter, by then; it was part of the nightmare, the same motif played in counterpoint. She was taken away before most of the scholars saw her body, but the rumour spread, and there were black jokes about the time of year and the corrupting influence of the grand jeu. Someone suggested that she and Carfax had been having an affair; she’d been pregnant, they said, and that was why … It was a neat story: Carfax, driven to suicide by a bad mark, and his trollop, driven to suicide by being abandoned … Léo turned away, too sick to correct them. He was the only one who knew exactly why Carfax had died; and he didn’t say anything, because it was his fault. He took his library books back and packed his belongings, ready to go home. His diary had gone. He was dully unsurprised at that; he imagined Carfax pounding on his door after he saw the marks, going inside, skimming the last few pages, and then squeezing his fingers into the inkwell to write BASTARD on the wall. He didn’t know why Carfax would have taken it with him – but, now he was dead, what did it matter? Léo would have burnt it, if he could.

  Felix knocked on his door while he was slinging books into his trunk, and came in before Léo answered. He frowned. ‘I thought … what are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘But the Midsummer Game isn’t for two weeks.’

  ‘I’m not staying.’

  ‘You’re not staying for the Midsummer Game? You’re the Gold Medallist!’

  ‘Leave me alone, Felix,’ Léo said. There was a pause. He threw Hondius on top of the other books without looking up, and heard the door close.

  He didn’t have the guts to tell Magister Holt. He wrote a letter. It was easier than the one he wrote to Carfax; it was much shorter, for a start. Although I’m honoured to have been awarded the Gold Medal, I regret that, due to personal circumstances, I’m unable to attend. He knew he wouldn’t regret it, not ever. It would have made him sick to sit in the space that should have been Carfax’s. All he wanted was to go home. Maybe he should have told Magister Holt the truth – if anyone would understand, it would be him – and the night before he left he actually got up and tried to write something that wasn’t a lie. But he couldn’t do it. And then he was on the train, and the landscape slid past the dingy glass, and the first thing he saw on the station platform was Dad, striding forward to congratulate him.

  ‘Excuse me, sir?’ One of the servants pushes a programme into Léo’s hand. ‘The seats reserved for Party members are here, to your right.’

  ‘I’m a Gold Medallist,’ Léo snaps. He is unwashed and unshaven, and his eyes are gritty. The summoning bell is still ringing but he is one of the last people to sit down; he could kick himself for oversleeping.

  ‘Oh – I see.’ The servant hesitates and ushers him to the front bench. Léo lowers himself down next to the Magister Historiae. The Magisters and Gold Medallists are clearly expected to sit on a bare wooden bench without complaint, but on his right, the Party members are sitting on bottle-green cushions with tassels. Most of the guests had arrived by yesterday evening, but he can see Dettler, Vouter, and Taglioni, who must have been brought up this morning in the black automobiles in the courtyard. Dettler is sitting next to Emile; they seem to sense his gaze, and Emile smiles and raises a languid hand. Léo gives them a nod. Later he’ll have to talk to them; the thought is like a splinter under his thumbnail.

  The bell’s note dies away, and nothing comes to fill its place. It’s clever, this part of the ritual: you get so used to the incessant peal that when it falls silent it’s as if some fundamental part of the world has changed.

  His heart is still beating uncomfortably hard. Harder than ever. He hasn’t been to the Quietus since he’s been back at Montverre; he’s swerved away from the prospect of being stuck with his thoughts, unable to run away. Now he can feel his muscles tensing. He tilts his head back and stares up at the vaulted ceiling, trying to distract himself; but abruptly he remembers the morning when Carfax took him up to the attic above, the soft heat and the shadows. I think I’d kill myself. Oh, what a fool he was to say that – and less than two months later Carfax was dead … He shuts his eyes. The audience is still murmuring and chuckling. He wants to get up and throttle them all, one by one.

  Don’t they know they’re supposed to shut up? Magister Dryden will be getting ready, composing herself in an anteroom.

  On the other side, to his left, is the bank of benches where the visiting professors and masters are sitting. They’ve come from all over Europe, arriving by dribs and drabs in the last week. Now they at least are attentive, a few waiting with folded hands, a few flicking back and forth in the programme to examine a move. Léo’s own programme lies in his lap, but he doesn’t open it. He wants to see Magister Dryden’s grand jeu un
fold in front of him without preconceptions. He wants to see her interpret every move, otherwise he might as well go home and read it later in the special edition of the Gambit. He closes his eyes. Behind him, the Magister Cartae murmurs something to his neighbour, and laughs under his breath.

  Then, like a draught of cool air, silence spreads across the room, deepening until you can hear a sigh or the twitch of a toe. Even the Party members have gone quiet. He sits up straight, blinking, and his heart hesitates and catches up with itself.

  He’d meant to watch the doorway for her entrance, but she’s here already; she must have entered quietly, soft-footed on stone, so it’s only the power of her presence that shut up the muttering audience. She’s performing without notes, so her hands are empty, hanging by her sides with a sort of neutral grace. Is he imagining the scent of incense and smoke in the air? He bites his lip: perhaps she’s wearing his perfume, perhaps not, but it doesn’t mean anything. In her white robe and cap, with the light slanting down from the high windows, she looks taller and slimmer than ever; her face is smooth and serene, and he thinks suddenly of the old war memorial outside the Town Hall at home, a young soldier in pale marble. You can say what you want, but she has the knack of commanding a space. She looks every inch the Magister Ludi – well, she is Magister Ludi – and even the people who want to despise her are leaning forward, attentive in spite of themselves … She steps up to the line of the terra. But before she crosses it, she looks round, taking in the audience, her head held up.

  And flinches.

  She was looking directly at him. A moment, a flicker, and her eyes moved, so that for a moment he thinks he imagined it – but there’s a tinge of rose along her cheekbones, and a second later it’s as if red light floods across her skin, her cheeks and forehead crimson. She bows to her left, to the guests, to her right, the Party members – a shallower obeisance, on that side – and finally to the Magister Scholarium; when she straightens he can see a sheen of sweat on her temples that wasn’t there before. Then she steps into the terra and lowers her head, taking the traditional moment for private contemplation. The folds of her gown quiver: she’s trembling. He swallows, and his mouth is so dry it makes a faint clicking noise. She didn’t know he was going to be here … But why would his presence put her off? Why would he make her more nervous than, say, Dettler, or Emile? He looks down at the fabric of his trousers and counts to five, to give her time to recover. Maybe women players are simply more fragile, more sensitive … Or maybe it’s because, out of everyone, she cares most what he thinks of her game. And she’s wearing the scent he bought her. He tries not to feel a pulse of pleasure.

  But when he looks up, she’s composed herself. The colour is fading from her cheeks, like the last rays of a sunset. She looks straight ahead, the resolute serenity back on her face; and then she moves into the gesture of ouverture as though she’s opening a door to a kingdom.

  She begins.

  He can’t remember the last time he watched a grand jeu. Once or twice in the last few years he’s shown his face at a gala or a charity event, but he only ever sat through one movement at the most before slipping out into the bar for a drink with other Party members; his secretary knew to book him the seat next to the aisle. For the few minutes that he was in the crowded hall he’d hardly pay attention to the player – he saw Philidor’s last performance and can’t remember a single gesture – because he’d be subtly scanning faces, calculating who would be a useful person to know, who should be avoided if possible, and which fat old industrialist should be the recipient of Chryseïs’ charm that night. He thought of the grand jeu the way he’d think of a gramophone or a wireless: background, a mere irritant. So now – watching Magister Dryden, trying to concentrate … it’s a strange feeling, like taking up a book after years of refusing to read. He knows he’s missing nuances in her delivery that ten years ago he would have absorbed effortlessly. And his understanding and attention span are rusty, so that when he loses the thread of the first transition he spends the next few minutes trying to make sense of it, missing more and more, a vague panic rising. He has to bite the inside of his cheek to bring himself back into the present moment. But after that first slippery lapse, he relaxes. Magister Dryden is easy to watch; there’s an authority about her, a knowledge of her own strength, that won’t let anyone look away. Her performance is precise, but it has the fluency of passion; as she moves from a quiet, simple opening into something deeper, more complex, he can almost see the ideas hanging in the air. Around him there’s the rustle of paper as the others turn the page, more or less in synchrony.

  And now she brings in the motif. He has always loved this moment, especially in the great classical games: when the elegance of the resultance, an exercise in restraint and seduction, gives way to something deeper, more human. He takes in a long breath, slow and silent, and around him he senses the audience sharing his anticipation. And she does it justice – holding a rest a beat longer than she ought to, conceding to them in silent complicity, before she makes the move. It’s clean and melodic, with a kind of rightness, setting off echoes and resonances like a song that he’s forgotten but once knew well. The musical element is Beethoven, the Tempest; and the maths is lovely too, letting order form out of disorder, underlined by fragments of poetry. Yes, it’s beautiful. She’s beautiful. But that sense of recognition rises, stronger now, and with it a sour, greasy taste. Nothing of him that doth fade …

  He tries to sit still. But as she winds her way further into the maze of abstraction – with such clarity that he can almost see the thread of her thoughts – a scum of nausea washes into the back of his throat. He knows where this game is going; and it’s not because he knows Magister Dryden. It’s changed – sea-changed – but it can’t be coincidence. He remembers leaning over to Carfax and saying, ‘It’s overwhelming. You need to pull it back,’ and Carfax retorting, ‘Yes, well, storms often are.’ She’s edited it, but it’s the same grand jeu.

  She’s stolen it.

  He opens his programme. He’s clumsy, and Andersen shoots him a dirty look as the pages flap. Other people turn to look as he flips forward – it’s bad form, but he doesn’t care – to the middle movement, then, fumbling, to the dénouement and the conclusure. He has to blink to focus. He wants to be wrong. But he isn’t. It’s been transformed, but the bones of the grand jeu are the same, even down to his own suggestions. Those are pearls that were his eyes … I’ll drown my book … He shuts the programme harder than he means to, and the sound is as loud as a single clap. Magister Dryden doesn’t falter, but she heard. Another flush creeps over her face, like the sun shining through a single red window. Her gaze slides towards him and away, without settling. No wonder she didn’t want him here. The one person who might realise that she’s cheated.

  How dare she? It should be Carfax standing here, performing that game. She has no right …

  He swallows. He can’t do this. He digs his nails into the back of his neck, but he can’t make the pain last; it burns and fades, and even when he adjusts his grip and tries again, it blurs into a single hot ache. He must look like a madman, clutching his own vertebrae as if he’s afraid his head will fall off. He lowers his hand and knots his fingers in his lap. Magister Dryden glides into a graceful transition. Behind her, in his line of vision, even Dettler is sitting up straighter. She has them hanging on her every gesture: even if they still don’t think a woman should be Magister Ludi, they can’t look away. She’ll triumph. With Carfax’s game.

  Breathe. He shuts his eyes and tries to think of something else. He shoves images into his mind’s eye like magic lantern slides: his old flat in town, Chryseïs asleep in pale sheets, Mim’s garden, the railway station, the top of the Square Tower under winter stars … But they flicker, insubstantial. If things had been different, it would have been Carfax in the terra. Unless it was Léo himself. In that other life, one of them would be Magister Ludi, one Magister Scholarium: which way round wouldn’t have mattered. They might have
written the games together. One of them would be standing there, in command of the space.

  Instead, Magister Dryden has taken – plagiarised … How dare she? It’s more Léo’s game than hers: all right, she’s edited it, but he was there when Carfax wrote it, he affected the direction it took, if it hadn’t been for him—

  If it hadn’t been for him, the Tempest would have been handed in ten years ago, and she couldn’t have used it, and Carfax would still be—

  There’s a murmur. He doesn’t remember standing up, but he’s on his feet, his heart pounding so hard he can hardly see. He opens his mouth.

  Magister Dryden has frozen. Slowly she lowers her arm.

  He can’t speak. Everything above his heart feels like stone. It’s appalling, suddenly, that no one else in the hall understands: he shouldn’t have to say it aloud. But his silence can’t go on for ever. They’ll think he’s a lunatic, or that he’s been taken ill. In the corner of his eye he catches a grey-clad servant already scuttling towards him to catch him, waving frantically to a colleague. He clears his throat and he’s horrified by how it’s the only sound in the room.

  Magister Dryden is still staring at him. Of course she is, he’s interrupted the Midsummer Game. But her expression is unreadable; if she’s shocked, she’s hiding it well. The high colour is still in her cheeks, but her eyes are very steady.

  He steps forward, once and then again. His shoes are on the brink of the silver edge of the terra, but he can’t cross it. He hesitates. Magister Dryden tilts her head, very slightly. It’s as if she’s giving him permission to speak; but that’s absurd, if she knew what he wanted to say …