Something crunches underfoot – underpaw – underfoot. A scatter of sharp bits digs into the Rat’s soles. Yesterday she would have stiffened at the sound and darted for safety; but now she only blinks and breathes, taking up more space. If this is a trap she is lost. She sits on a bench. She is the only audience now.
What is on the floor is ash, blown from the chimney, out of the hearth and across the stone by yesterday’s wind; no one has swept it up. Tiny fragments of soot and charred wood glint like dark dice. She can feel the fine dust of it on her feet, and one gritty piece of charcoal between her toes. Here, under the bench, the ash is thick enough for a footprint to show, just. She twists her heel back and forth until there’s a bare arc. A rat would never leave a mark deliberately: but it leaves less of a mark than a man’s body on the ground. She stares at the smear, wondering what it means.
‘Oh Jesus, I didn’t – thank God, I – what’s going on? Where is everyone?’
Simon. His voice echoes in her skull.
She looks up. There’s a pain in her gut, as if meeting his eyes is a kind of poison. She wants to be a rat again. She wants him to be only another stomach, or sometimes a warm thing in the cold. She wants not to care that he saw her push a man from a tower. She wants to scratch her human body until it peels away and leaves a little, mindless, scuttling thing. Something that doesn’t mind being alone. She has been so good at not being human, and now it has deserted her, when she needs it most.
‘Has everyone gone? The library’s locked. I don’t know …’ He trails off. He sits on the bench opposite her. ‘I found some money,’ he says, after a long time. ‘Maybe we could …’
She stares at him.
‘Well, a lot of money. Maybe there’s a way to get you some papers.’ He draws his arms into his sides and shivers. ‘I don’t know what’s happening. It’s creepy.’
She spreads her toes and presses. The floor is always cold, even at Midsummer. Cold stone, cold bone.
‘You can’t stay here. There’s no one left. We could …’ He trails off again.
No one left. It’s true. Only the two of them. Two unpeople. Somehow they are here together. She can see a skewed red-hemmed body at the bottom of the Square Tower, a plait of red-gold hair. She can see Simon’s hand holding out chocolate, and although they are different pictures they are part of the same thing, the same mysterious ache. That which makes her human. In spite of herself she knows the word for it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, stumbling on the words as if he’s the one who hasn’t spoken for years.
She raises her eyes to his face.
‘You saved my life. Thank you.’
He waits. He doesn’t understand that she is a trap, that she is poison. He holds out his hand, and even though he is too far away to touch she can feel the warmth of his skin, the not-being-alone of his reaching. She has killed someone, and he is thanking her. He is wrong. He is stupid. A rat wouldn’t … but neither of them is a rat. Not any more. She opens her mouth, and she can feel more words nudging at her tongue and the back of her palate. Whatever you do, darling, you must not. She wants to reach back. She doesn’t know how.
‘What’s your name?’ he says.
She gets up. He shifts, but she’s not trying to leave. She lines up her toes with the runnel of silver between the flagstones. Then she steps into the terra. At the far corner of the space a single feather curls upwards, white tinged with grey. Somewhere at her feet is a smudge of blood, so worn and ingrained that no one would know it was there.
She swallows. There is a lump like clay in her throat. She says: ‘I don’t know.’
He makes a sudden, repressed movement. His eyes are wide; now he is staring at her as if he has never seen her before. It makes her want to scratch his cheeks and leave red tracks like tears.
‘You don’t know?’
A pause.
‘You spoke! I didn’t know you could speak.’
She laughs. It bubbles up, alien, her body betraying her. It makes her eyes run wet and her breath rasp. It’s like a scab coming away too soon; it hurts and hurts and hurts.
‘We can – will you—’
He stops, because she has turned away. She has turned back to the empty hall, and the bare benches. She is hungry and light-headed. Tomorrow, she thinks, and the word is so human it makes her eardrums tighten. Tomorrow she will go with him, or not. There will be time later to wonder what she is, and what he is. Rats don’t think about the future, but people do. There is plenty of time. She feels the rest of her life stretching out, bare and wide as the mountain.
She drops to her knees. Behind her, he draws in his breath. He doesn’t come to her. He stays outside the silver line, and that is as it should be. The space is hers now.
She leans forward until her forehead touches the ground. Then she draws an arc in the ash with her arm, twisting further and further so that when she gets to her feet again, she is standing in a circle. Her hand and knees are dark with soot.
‘What are you doing?’
Then he falls silent. His silence fills the whole hall, as though he is giving her a gift. He nods, once. At her feet, the crooked makeshift circle is nothing and everything, a mess and a perfect grand jeu. One move. Enough.
They stare at each other. Tomorrow there will be time for other things; but now there is only a circle in ash on the floor, two people, an unmade fermeture. The circle holds the grand jeu like a shallow cup. It trembles on the brim, incomplete, on the edge of spilling over.
Author’s Note
As many readers will already have guessed, The Betrayals was in part inspired by Hermann Hesse’s brilliant novel The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi). What I call the grand jeu has a lot in common with the Glass Bead Game as Hesse conceived it: an elusive game that combines maths, music and ideas in an atmosphere of meditation, and is overseen by the Magister Ludi (Hesse’s pun on the Latin for ‘schoolmaster’). The Betrayals is set in a very different world – and is a very different kind of book – but nonetheless it owes a huge debt to Hesse’s masterpiece.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Betrayals is my second book for adults, and I wrote it in a very different frame of mind from my first: I was at once exhilarated and slightly terrified by the amazing work that was being done to publish and promote The Binding, and I sometimes struggled with the pressure of feeling that this as-yet-unwritten book had to measure up. So the first person I want to thank is Sarah Ballard, my brilliant agent and the dedicatee of The Betrayals, who kept me sane, grounded and clear-headed (well, relatively) throughout the process, as well as helping me to nudge the novel towards what it wanted to be. Dedicating a book can seem a bit meretricious if you do it retrospectively, but as I wrote The Betrayals I was inspired by knowing that she would be my first reader.
Equally, my editor at The Borough Press, Suzie Dooré, was – as always – fantastic, combining incisive feedback and razor-sharp editorial talent with tact, humour and across-the-board excellence, and I also owe enormous thanks to Jessica Williams at William Morrow. Between them, they transformed The Betrayals. It’s never easy to admit that 60,000 words of your precious second draft won’t be missed, but I have to concede that they were right.
There are so many other people who have contributed to The Betrayals at The Borough Press, William Morrow, and HarperCollins (on both sides of the Atlantic) that if I tried to thank them all individually I’d run out not only of space but of adjectives. It’s a delight and a privilege to be surrounded by people who are so talented, generous and passionate – thank you all. Massive thanks are also due to everyone at United Agents, and Eleanor Jackson at Dunow, Carlson and Lerner.
And, of course, I should mention my lovely friends and family, who supported, indulged and motivated me. Again, there are too many of you to list (although Nick should get an honourable mention for having to put up with me all the time). The Betrayals is in part a book about the joy we find in our playmates, in moments of shared humour or cr
eativity, in seeing and being seen; I’m grateful to (and for) everyone who has helped me encounter that, whether they knew it or not. Thank you.
About the Author
Bridget Collins trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art after reading English at King’s College, Cambridge. She is the author of seven acclaimed books for young adults and has had two plays produced, one at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Binding, her first adult novel, was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller.
Also by Bridget Collins
The Binding
YOUNG ADULT
The Traitor Game
A Trick of the Dark
Tyme’s End
Gamerunner
The Broken Road
MazeCheat
Love in Revolution
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