The Betrayals

by Bridget Collins

  ‘Oh, forget it,’ he said, and collapsed on to the bed. ‘You all think it’s a bloody joke. I tell you, every time the east wind blows, there’s a child’s voice in here, sobbing its heart out.’

  ‘Jacob—’ I was going to laugh at him, but he looked genuinely pathetic. ‘It’s most likely someone practising the violin. Coming through the pipes or something.’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, waving me away. ‘You think I’m crazy. They refused to move me, you know. I should’ve said there was a smell of drains.’

  ‘You think so? Rather than ghostly wailing? Ah, the magic of hindsight.’

  ‘Go away,’ he said, which was ungrateful considering he’d frogmarched me in there to begin with. When I left he was turning his head from side to side compulsively, like a caged bird.

  Actually, as I went out I wondered if I did hear something.

  Ninth day of Serotine Term

  I woke up early this morning and found myself checking my pigeonhole before breakfast. He’d replied. It was a single sheet of paper covered with tiny symbols and a lot of lines. For a second I thought it was Artemonian notation, but I didn’t recognise any of the ideograms, and none of the transition marks were the same. It looked a bit like a spider’s web, if a spider had made prolific, drunken notes at every junction. It was unreadable. After breakfast I went straight up to his room and banged on the door. There was a scuffling sound before he told me to come in, and I had the impression he’d only just got dressed. His hair was all over his face and his gown was inside out.

  ‘Thanks for your contribution,’ I said. ‘That is, I assume it was from you.’

  He sat down at his desk, facing me. ‘So, what did you think?’

  ‘I think it’s illegible.’ He didn’t answer. I pulled the page out of my pocket and flattened it on the desk in front of him. ‘What notation is this meant to be, exactly?’

  He reached out and rotated the page through ninety degrees. ‘It’s a variation of Artemonian.’

  ‘A variation? What kind of variation?’

  ‘I find it useful for sketches. The Imaginists developed it from Artemonian and Occidental ideograms, with some influences from Mandarin and Persian. My grandfather used it for the Fireseed—’ He stumbled on the word but went on before I could say anything. ‘I suppose I’ve put a personal emphasis on some aspects, but—’

  I said, ‘You write your sketches in the family dialect of Artemonian?’

  There was a pause. I mastered the urge to grab him by the collar. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you think I’m going to waste my time on your particular brand of de Courcy mumbo-jumbo, you’ve got another think coming. Put it into classical.’

  ‘What?’ For the first time he looked as if I’d said something unexpected. ‘Do you have any idea how many pages that would take up, in classical notation?’

  I didn’t, obviously, as I had no idea what it said. ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘It’s not that difficult to learn—’

  ‘I never said it was too difficult.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘I’m sorry, but this is how I work. I can’t write everything out longhand, it would take for ever. It’s a sketch. I could explain it to you—’

  ‘Just translate it, Carfax.’

  He ran his hands through his hair. ‘This is ludicrous. I’m not spending hours expanding on my notes because you refuse to behave like an adult. We could talk, Martin. That way, if you didn’t understand something—’

  ‘I’d understand it all, if it wasn’t in hieroglyphics!’ We glared at each other. I was shaking. There’s something about him that gets under my skin – always has done, from the moment I saw him on the path to Montverre, that first morning. ‘Don’t patronise me.’

  ‘I wasn’t! Patronise you? My God.’ He turned his face away from me. He looked down at a pile of books and straightened their spines. ‘I don’t like you, Martin,’ he said. ‘You’re arrogant and unkind and self-absorbed. But I’ve never thought you were stupid.’

  Later, coming down the stairs (literally l’esprit de l’escalier) I wondered why, if I’m not stupid, everyone feels such a need to reassure me on that point. But I think all I said was, ‘Thanks.’

  He finished adjusting the tower of books. For a second I thought he’d forgotten I was there. At last he looked up, at me. He said, ‘We could scratch it, of course.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The game. At the end of next term. If you really can’t bear to work with me.’

  ‘Scratch it? What do you suggest, that we hand in a blank sheet of paper?’

  He tilted his head, as if I’d made a good point. ‘That’s an interesting idea,’ he said. ‘They’re always telling us how important silence is. A blank sheet is about the most silent game you could play.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘What I’m saying is, no one can make us work together. We can hand in a bad game. Or nothing at all.’

  ‘They’ll fail us.’

  ‘One bad mark. What are you so afraid of?’

  He was looking at me like I was five. I wanted to reach out and topple his beautifully stacked books on to the floor. ‘Are you mad?’ I said. ‘Or is it because you’re a de Courcy? You think they wouldn’t dare expel you.’

  ‘They wouldn’t expel either of us.’

  ‘How do you know?’ My voice cracked and I swallowed. Imagine Dad, if I got sent home in disgrace. He’d be mortified. And I’d be stuck for ever in the scrapyard business. ‘Look, this may be a trifling aristocratic hobby for you, but I want to stay at Montverre. If you refuse to work with me—’

  ‘On the contrary, I’m simply pointing out that if you’re not prepared to take the risk, then we have to work together.’

  ‘On your terms.’

  ‘On civilised terms.’ He slid a glance at me. ‘I realise that might take some getting used to.’

  I walked to the fireplace, and then to the window. I had a ridiculous sense that somewhere, if I looked in the right place, I’d find a good answer. A winning move. In the shape of the marks in the dust or the light or the mountain. But I couldn’t see it and in the end I knew the fight was over. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘When do you want to start?’

  ‘We’ve already started.’

  ‘Tomorrow, then. You can explain your …’ I waved at his notes, but he raised his eyebrows as if he didn’t understand what I was talking about. ‘Your whatever-it-is.’

  ‘I won’t have to. It was only a sketch.’ He leant back against the desk, crossing his legs at the ankle. ‘Don’t think I’m any more eager than you are, Martin.’

  For once I believed him. I strode past him, so close he had to flinch. I paused at the door and looked round. He was already flicking through one of the books, too quickly to be reading it.

  ‘Be careful, Carfax,’ I said. ‘Making up your own language … Madness runs in the family, after all.’

  Chapter 7

  8: the Magister Ludi

  She wakes up in sheets stained with blood. Somehow she has managed to spread it in her sleep and there is a rusty smear on her pillow, a deep blot on the cuff of her nightgown. She sits up, her mind still hampered by the weight of her dreams. For a moment confusion and memory overlap and panic floods through her: a floor puddled with red, a handprint on white porcelain, her fault. She squeezes her eyes shut and opens them again, hugging herself until her shoulders crack. Slowly her heartbeat slows. The ache in her bones softens, her breath comes more easily. She is here, at Montverre, and it’s nothing. Only her own blood. Only the magic trick of being female: look at me, I can bleed without being wounded, I can empty myself again and again and still live. She gets to her feet and her nightgown clings to the back of her thighs. There is a meaty, metallic smell in the room. She bends over the basin, her fingers already turning the water pink.

  The clock chimes. She has overslept. She has missed meditation and breakfast; at this moment she should be hurrying along the corridors to the Capitulum,
fully dressed, instead of cursing as she strips off a bloody nightgown. She rinses herself as quickly as she can – hastily, so that water goes everywhere, spattering her feet and the floor – and fumbles for the rubber cup that Aunt Frances posted from England. My dear Claire, I’ve taken the liberty of sending this little gift, which might make you a little more comfortable when you are feeling delicate … From her note, she might have been talking about a negligée, or silk stockings, or lavender water – glamorous, frivolous, feminine; not an inverted bell of vulcanised rubber. Trust Aunt Frances to send something utterly practical and be too squeamish to refer to it directly.

  She inserts it, rinses her hands, gets dressed. She bundles her ragged plait into her cap; she doesn’t have time to brush it or pin it properly. Nor does she have time to empty her bladder or brush her teeth. She splashes her face with one swift movement and hurries out into the passage. It is only as she crosses the courtyard and climbs the stairs to the Capitulum that she has time for resentment. Her body is normally trustworthy, warning her in advance with a familiar ache, holding on to the first moderate gush of blood until she visits the lavatory. Today it is treasonous.

  The meeting – the first Council of Serotine Term – has already started. She straightens her shoulders and walks through their sudden silence to her seat beside the Magister Scholarium. He waits until she has sat down before he gestures to the Magister Cartae to continue.

  The Magister Cartae gives a fussy, multi-syllabic cough. ‘My dear Magister Ludi,’ he says, ‘good morning. Did you perhaps lose track of time in inspiration? What a pity that your genius must be bound by the humdrum routines of bureaucracy.’

  ‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ she says. ‘I was unavoidably detained.’ She wonders how often they have to apologise for their bodies.

  The Magister Cartae waves his hand. ‘As I was saying …’ He peers down at his notes as though he has entirely lost his train of thought. ‘Yesterday I received a letter from the Minister for Culture,’ he goes on. ‘He sent us greetings and thanked us for our hospitality towards Mr Martin, but his primary point … Well.’ He brings a sheet of notepaper closer to his face. ‘“We are keen to examine ways in which Montverre might increase its contribution, not merely as a beacon of academic achievement but also as a crucial influence on developing minds. It gives me great pleasure to know that the traditions imbibed at Montverre are carried through into our Civil Service, and indeed the very highest levels of government, and I continue to wonder how we might ensure that every scholar who graduates is of the greatest possible service to our country.”’

  There is a silence. The Magister Corporeum scratches his ear. ‘Well,’ he says, and grimaces. ‘I’m not sure I know what that means.’

  The Magister Cartae sighs. He smooths his top lip; she suspects that before he came to Montverre he had a moustache, and he still pets the ghost of it. ‘I think perhaps the Minister for Culture is suggesting that we bear in mind our duty to keep the game, and its players … pure.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’ She should have taken a breath before she said it.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve missed the context of this discussion,’ the Magister Cartae says, with a tilt of his head. ‘While you were – unavoidably detained – we were discussing this week’s edition of the New Herald. Very concerning, the report on Christian infiltration—’

  ‘The New Herald is pure propaganda! It’s not worthy of serious consideration.’ The Magister Scholarium stirs, but she can’t stop herself. ‘Next you’ll be saying the Game of the Bloody Cross isn’t a forgery. Or that Christians are cannibals.’

  ‘I don’t think we can dismiss the government’s very real concerns about the compatibility of the older faiths with modern, enlightened—’

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ Now they’re all looking at her. ‘Christianity and Judaism – and Islam, come to that – have never been in conflict with the grand jeu. Not in themselves.’ She stutters and goes on before anyone can bring up the Renaissance popes. ‘There’s no reason to exclude them – just because the Party has got a bee in its bonnet—’

  ‘I find it very hard to believe that you are so relaxed about the survival of Montverre.’

  It takes her a moment to understand that it’s not a non sequitur; and by then it’s too late to answer.

  ‘Magister …’ the Magister Religionis says, leaning towards her, one crumple-skinned hand stroking the air as if it’s an animal. ‘I understand your concerns. We all do. They do you credit.’ He doesn’t look at the Magister Cartae, who snorts. ‘We don’t want to persecute Christians. But these days Montverre has a political role. There is more and more pressure on us to pull our weight. Not to be complacent in our privilege, or encourage parasites. To waste spaces on scholars who can never repay their debt to society—’

  ‘Who are barred from the Civil Service, you mean.’

  He smiles gently, as if she hasn’t spoken. ‘And as you know, my dear Magister, it is perfectly possible to become a great player of the grand jeu without attending Montverre. Those who are truly talented, truly called, will still find a way to study it.’

  She bites her lip. Her insides are being wrung out like a wet cloth. The back of her neck is sticky. ‘It isn’t that easy,’ she says.

  ‘You are yourself a shining example,’ the Magister Religionis says. ‘Evidence that the grand jeu is open to everyone, regardless of their sex or race or religion. If a young woman of no education can become Magister Ludi—’

  ‘All right,’ she says. ‘I understand.’ There are things she could say: that she was hardly of no education, that the grand jeu was in her blood, that everyone knows that when they found out she was a woman they tried to repeal her election. But her throat is tight, and the battle is already over.

  The Magister Scholarium sighs. ‘We must be practical,’ he says. ‘It might be expedient to concede certain … measures to the government. Temporarily.’ He stares into the middle distance, and for a second she imagines what he’s seeing: hundreds of young men slaving over their essays, their exam revision, their submission games, all hoping for a place at Montverre next year. How many of them are Christian? How many of them are like – what is his name? Her Christian first-year, who seems promising: not brilliant, yet, but promising. Stephen? No, Simon.

  ‘No Christians,’ the Magister Corporeum says. ‘Is that what we’re talking about?’ He glances around, like a scholar who has ventured a risky answer and wishes he hadn’t. No one responds.

  She should fight. But she can feel the decision in the room, as blank and solid as a brick wall. Nothing she can throw at it will make a mark. She says, ‘And what of our current scholars?’

  The Magister Scholarium catches her eye. There’s a flash of relief in his look, gratitude for her capitulation, and she swallows a faint taste of bile. ‘It goes without saying,’ he says, ‘that we will never ask an existing scholar to leave the school purely on the basis of their background.’

  ‘Well then,’ the Magister Cartae says, ‘that’s settled. I will draft a memo.’

  She sits back. She still feels sick. Cramp settles deeper in her abdomen and drags downwards. The blood roars in her ears. Someone says something about the next item on the agenda. She lets their voices blur. None of it is important. It is all she can do to stay where she is, as the nausea comes and goes.

  After what seems an age the clock strikes and there is a mutter of cracking joints and creaking wood as the men lean back in their chairs. The Magister Scholarium says, ‘Well, thank you, gentlemen.’

  The Magister Cartae is the first to stand up. He nods to the Magister Scholarium, pats his papers into a pile and drifts towards the door. The others get up and follow him, breaking into knots and couples, murmuring to one other. Slowly she levers herself to her feet. She is light-headed. She can smell the others’ claggy lungs, their windpipes, their tongues.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she says, and pushes past, to the door. Voices come down the stairs behind her. Sh
e swerves right, past a row of identical doors, heading for the little walled cloister below the clock tower. It’s out of bounds for the scholars, which makes it a good place to be alone; and at this time of year it catches a few brief hours of sunlight and some precious warmth. She pushes open the door; after the dark passage, the white arches and green knots of hedge are like a painting, too bright to be real. A gust of cool air wraps her gown around her legs. A wisp of hair tickles her cheek. The sky above the clock tower is a limpid autumnal blue.

  But she’s not alone. Léo Martin is sitting on the bench, a cigarette between his fingers. He’s rattling a matchbox in his other hand. It makes a scratchy, ragged tattoo in the sheltered quietness. Next to him, the pages of a discarded newspaper flutter gently in the breeze. She catches sight of the headline: Bible Bonfire Engulfs Church. The picture is stark, a blaze of white and grey against black, a cross in flames. Below it, a smaller headline announces: Overwhelming Enthusiasm for Social Purity.

  He turns his head and sees her. He smiles politely, welcoming her, as if she’s the one who’s intruding. For a few seconds she is frozen, not quite believing that he is here, with his tobacco smoke and his despicable newspaper.

  ‘Put that out!’

  He blinks. ‘What?’

  She points at the cigarette. The muscles in her arm are as tight as wires. ‘You’re not allowed to smoke here. Put it out.’

  ‘I—’ He hesitates. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s against the rules.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘but why? I’m outside. What harm is one cigarette going to do? There aren’t any scholars here to see me.’ He blows smoke into the blue sky, as if he’s inviting her to watch it evanesce. ‘Unless you’re afraid I’ll corrupt you,’ he adds, laughing. Of course, laughing.

  ‘There are priceless books here,’ she says. Her voice grates in her ears. ‘There is a library which – if someone were careless with a naked flame, a spark—’

  ‘On the other side of the school,’ he says. ‘Not in this cloister.’