Tristan remembered the number test and pushed back at the temptation to second-guess. But it was too late: the seeds of doubt gathered quickly into clouds. Tristan moved to the broken puzzle and crouched, ready to engage. His hands became clumsy as his thoughts turned inward, seeking out their motivation. He peered deep, peeling back layer after layer of contrivance. But all he found were more layers. Layers all the way down.
A sudden emptiness tugged at him with a weight denser than sadness. He groped about for the frayed edges of his will and found only her, the young woman, sitting calm in the centre of the storm. Why do you even want to defeat him? Why would you care? I am here. Come to me.
The crucifix was almost finished. Tristan made a final adjustment and moved to the other side of the pile, ready to position the penultimate piece. He felt Louis’ eyes on him, watchful and certain. It was easy for Louis. His purpose was unshakeable. The piece slid easily into place; the cross was solid now. Tristan stood back and pointed to the place where the last piece would slot.
‘Thank you,’ Louis said simply. He moved warily to the puzzle.
Tristan closed his eyes but the room pressed closer still.
Leave the scene. Let the future unfold without you.
No, I am here. Come to me.
Louis leaned in, his hands on the piece. Tristan watched, waited…
He felt his body lurch forward. His shoulder found the small of Louis’ back. The boy attempted to swivel but he was already falling. Tristan felt fingers scrabbling for his eyes. He turned from their grasp, reaching for the last piece of the puzzle. A bony thumb found a socket and Tristan’s head lit up with pain. But his hands had already found the wood and the impulse was past reversing.
Tristan slid the last piece into place.
He threw his defeated opponent from his back and sprang to his feet, expecting Louis to come for him now and punish him for his betrayal. Louis’ eyes were empty. He shrugged and tried to smile.
‘Well played,’ he whispered.
Tristan felt a great rush of regret. ‘I am sorry. I too was playing for my soul.’
Tristan turned to face the back wall, no longer fooled by its blankness. He waited for the verdict. It seemed impossible that they had got to this point before him. Or impossible for anyone but the rector. Triumph flattened to anticipation, and then concern. It doesn’t matter, her voice whispered. But it did. It mattered. Tristan was shaking.
They emerged in single file, three venerable gentlemen dressed in the purple robes of the Holy Council. They walked across the room and Tristan saw in their dazed faces that he had defeated them. Two victories then, sweeter still. One of the men stopped to contemplate the blood at Harry’s head. Another ran a mottled hand across the completed puzzle, as if to confirm this wasn’t a dream. None of the three spoke a word. Tristan made no effort to hide his joy. He skipped from one man to the next as a child might, to look more closely on their anguish. Not one met his eye.
They departed without speaking and it was only then that Tristan realised the rector hadn’t emerged. That was unfair. Tristan had earnt the right to be congratulated.
‘Come on!’ Tristan shouted to the gap in the wall. ‘What are you waiting for? Did you really think you would win?’
There was no response. Tristan walked to the small observation room and found it empty. He felt the same. Why wouldn’t he show himself?
‘The prize!’ he shouted to the empty space. ‘You promised me the girl. Where is my prize?’
Still there was no reply.
Tristan remembered the envelope. He would wait here; someone would come eventually. Simon probably. He would know where to find the rector. In the meantime Tristan would read the prediction, see where the great man had made his mistake:
At first Tristan will struggle with the violence of the game. He will step aside, in order to stay clear of his own instincts. Tristan will offer Louis a deal, believing this will foil our predictions. He will offer to let Louis slot the last piece into place if he in turn can keep Harry out of the game. But Tristan will be shaken by the violence of the competition and this will break his resolve. Strong emotions will bring the girl back into play. He will forsake the game for the girl. At the last moment he will betray Louis, and claim the prize for himself.
Tristan read the words through three times, each time grasping only snatches of their meaning. The greater picture refused to form. He didn’t understand. He had seen the men of the Holy Council. They had walked with the heavy footsteps of the defeated. And yet here he read the opposite. He slumped to the floor.
‘What is wrong?’ Louis asked.
‘I don’t understand.’
The door opened and Simon entered.
‘Where is he?’ Tristan demanded. ‘Where is the rector?’
‘On his way.’
Simon helped a groggy Harry to his feet and escorted him from the room. Louis followed without looking back. As the door clicked shut behind them, the rector announced his presence with a cough, and Tristan turned to him.
The rector walked forward and offered his hand. Tristan refused to take it, standing unassisted. He looked to the ground. Bile rose within him.
‘You tried.’ The rector spoke gently, a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis. ‘You tried your best. They saw that. They cannot argue otherwise.’
Tristan brought his hands to his ears. He would not hear this. It was not possible.
‘No, I have beaten them,’ he cried. ‘I saw their faces.’
It was all he had to offer, a child’s petulance. The rector looked at him with concern and Tristan knew what would come next. A question. Always there was a question.
‘Do you think defeating me and defeating the Holy Council are the same thing?’
Tristan’s thoughts turned slippery, a feeling he had all but forgotten. His mind opened just a fraction and understanding slid into place.
‘They are the opposite things?’ Tristan said.
‘Yes.’
There was a solemnity about the rector now: the teacher returning to his sacred task.
‘What you proposed was heresy,’ Tristan continued. Understanding is never complete: one thought demands another.
‘Of course it is heresy. To have a choice is to have a soul, is this not so?’
‘We have been taught so,’ Tristan answered.
‘But what must we do with all we have been taught?’ the rector probed. There was only one interrogation and it never ended.
‘Question it.’
‘And what first led you to question all we had taught you?’
Tristan’s answer was honest and unguarded. There was no competition now, no enemy.
‘The girl you made me draw. You said she had no soul.’
‘She is a child of the night. It is doctrine that they are beyond salvation, so why would you question it? What did you see that sparked your doubt?’
Tristan considered his question, the pupil as eager as his teacher to reach their destination.
‘Only my instinct. I saw her suffering. I felt it.’
The rector smiled and an old feeling returned to Tristan, the glow that came from pleasing the teacher.
‘Ten years ago a series of secret experiments were carried out, crude things in my opinion. We assembled a group of children of the night and showed that under certain circumstances we were able to predict their behaviour well in advance of the children believing they had made any choices.
‘In the most telling example we used electrical impulses to guide them through simple mazes. Unaware of these external signals, the children created elaborate stories to explain the paths they had taken. We found we could move them quickly to the maze’s heart or trap them in hopeless circles, and either way the children would explain in detail the invented causes of their success or failure.
‘This was taken to the Holy Council, which took it as final evidence that the people of the night were nothing more than automatons, trundling through life dressin
g their trajectories in post hoc narrative. The council embraced the finding, for it appeared to support the Doctrine of the Soulless. It was reasonable to conclude that the people of the night, having no will, possessed no souls. Science had given support to lumbering prejudices. This is what believers do: ask only those questions that cannot hurt them.
‘Of course there were voices of dissent. Ours is a community well trained in logic and the experiment was clearly flawed. I am sure you can tell me why.’
Tristan nodded. It wasn’t difficult. ‘There were two mistakes. The first was in the leap from the specific to the general. To show that in a particular circumstance will can be an illusion does not establish that the same is true in every circumstance. It is well known that by creating the right conditions of light and line our eyes can be deceived, but no one uses this to imply that all we see is false. We cannot assume that because the children did not notice the absence of will in this case, that the will is always absent in them.’
‘And the other mistake?’ the rector asked.
‘There was no control,’ Tristan continued, sensing at once the gap into which he had been thrown. ‘Even if they could establish the absence of will in children of the night, it still falls upon them to show that under the same circumstance those possessing souls do not suffer the same reduction.’
The rector nodded his approval, turning to pace in his theatrical manner. He stopped suddenly, as if puzzled by his thoughts.
‘If you are right, then the Holy Council, made up as you know of our deepest and most respected thinkers, was quite wrong. How could it be that you have out-thought our finest minds? Is not what you are suggesting foolish arrogance?’
‘It may well be,’ Tristan said, hearing in his answers thoughts he barely knew were forming. ‘But we all have blind spots, and perhaps it is the role of the arrogant to ensure that we are not all looking in the same direction.’
The rector laughed, a deep and gratifying boom that warmed the boy.
‘Other arrogant minds approached me,’ the rector said, and the satisfaction in his voice rang clear. ‘They also believed the council’s enthusiasm stemmed not from evidence but from doctrine. Together we devised a further experiment, one that could serve as the control. We presented it to the council for their approval. They raised no objections, for dogma had made them blind. They fully expected to see me fail today, Tristan. They found it inconceivable that a young man like yourself, baptised and schooled in theology, could be reduced to an automaton.’
He gazed down his long nose at Tristan as one might look at the first fruit of a well-tended orchard.
‘I am glad we found you, Tristan. You have done more good than you can imagine.’
‘You didn’t find me,’ Tristan reminded him. ‘Circumstance delivered me to you. I chose to defy the church. I presented you with the opportunity to punish me.’
The rector’s eyes clouded with sadness, an emotion so ill suited to his features that his face became that of a stranger.
‘You see how stubborn our beliefs are, Tristan? After all of this, you still believe in choices. I brought you to the naked girl because I knew how it would pain you. I provoked your rebellion and sent Brother Kevin to lead you further. It was important you thought that you were being punished. It was important you saw me as your enemy. I needed to be able to convince the council you wished for nothing more than my defeat.’
‘I wished for the girl at the church more,’ Tristan reminded him. ‘Or was she a lie too? Did you pay her to act that way?’
‘No, Grace came as a surprise. But not one I couldn’t utilise.’
‘So she’s real?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you can take me to her?’
‘You will have your prize.’
It should have been all that mattered. He would see her again, and this time he would not hesitate. This experiment would fade to a dream in his memory. It should have been that simple. And yet anger rose up in him: an ambitious, certain fury. He would not allow his soul to be erased. Not like this.
‘But you are wrong!’ Tristan shouted. ‘Your reasoning is incorrect. They will see that.’
He advanced on the rector, his fists trembling at his sides, the adrenaline surging again. The rector’s stance was as steady as his stare. He didn’t yield a centimetre.
‘I know what you are going to say.’
‘Are you mocking me?’ Tristan had screamed in rage before.
Still the rector was unmoved. ‘You think I cheated.’
‘Of course you cheated. You had been watching me, through the walls of my room. You observed my meditation. You blocked my method by introducing her, by making it impossible for me to take my mind from the game.’
‘That is true,’ the rector said.
‘Then you proved nothing!’ Tristan felt the triumph as his argument grew solid. ‘All you have shown is that under the right circumstances I can be anticipated, but put anyone under enough pressure and they become predictable. Set light to their house and they will flee it. That’s all that happened here. It establishes nothing more than how badly I wanted to see her!’
‘So you are claiming that under other circumstances you might have foiled me?’
The rector’s calm caused Tristan to hesitate. He felt his certainty leaking from him, leaving his anger to tremble unsupported.
‘Yes.’
‘And how would you have done that?’
Tristan’s mouth opened but the words were blocked by understanding. The truth appeared with sudden clarity and his legs grew unsteady beneath him.
‘It is all right, Tristan.’
‘It is not. You have taken it all.’
‘It was never there to take.’
The rector put his hand on Tristan’s shoulder. He eased his shaking body to the ground. ‘Kneel with me, Tristan.’
‘And do what, pray?’
‘Yes, we shall pray for God’s grace.’ There was no irony in the rector’s voice. They faced the completed puzzle together, the symbol of the greatest martyr, stolen by the Christians for their own macabre ends. They had knelt side-by-side like this once before, at the time of his father’s death. This time Tristan felt his loss might take him under.
The rector spoke gently, as if reciting a prayer. ‘Free will is an illusion, Tristan. You see that now. It is an illusion because the very concept is contradictory. You might have been able to find within yourself a kind of randomness that I could have not anticipated. I am not sure, but I admired your efforts and I cheated to block you. But that is what freedom must look like. It must be random, it must float free of every cause.
‘I was younger than you when I first encountered this. I was walking towards a beggar with a coin in my pocket, and I knew I faced a moral choice. He was only a child and looked up at me, pleading. I stopped and thought, God is watching me, and He wants me to do what is right. So I looked within myself, hoping to discover His will.
‘But you know what I found? What we all find when we try to pick apart our decisions. A collection of desires, expectations and prejudices. The jumble from which we construct every choice. I had been told by my parents never to give to beggars, that it only encouraged them and made their problems worse. I had heard a priest say the same thing. I had earnt that coin, and knew just how I wished to spend it. And yet, against this were those eyes, the hunger in the way he held his body, the great feeling of empathy welling up in me. All of these things mattered. They all needed to be considered.
‘But then what happens? How do we move from influence to decision? We all know how it feels. It is as if some other self, some soul, weighs up these factors and then chooses the best path. But this is incoherent. Either we weigh the factors by instinct—a kind of algorithm, which is what I used to predict your actions—or we do what you tried to do, and open ourselves to randomness. We can have freedom, or we can have will, but it makes no sense to speak of having both.’
It was true. And now that Tristan
understood, he found it impossible to believe it hadn’t always been obvious.
‘What did you do?’ Tristan asked. ‘With the beggar.’
The rector smiled.
‘I could not decide so I let the coin decide for me. I flipped it in the air. Heads he would have it; tails it was mine.’
‘And which was it?’
‘Neither. He snatched it from the air before it hit the ground and ran off with his prize.’
They sat in silence, Tristan as much a part of the room as the walls that surrounded him, nailed to his future, unable to wriggle, or even protest.
‘So why the test?’ Tristan asked. ‘Why not just explain this?’
‘An argument has no force when it runs against our deepest intuitions. The council might have understood the argument, but they would not have believed it. They needed to see the demonstration. Just like you did.’
‘How can you do this? How can you take it all from us?’
‘I have taken nothing.’
‘You have taken our belief,’ Tristan said. ‘What are we without it? We are nothing.’
‘You are wrong,’ the rector replied. ‘There is still God’s grace. And remember, if none of us is responsible, then none of us is past forgiveness. Augustine understood this, even though he resisted it.’
Tristan’s head began to spin and his stomach gave a threatening lurch. Perhaps it was the shock of the game’s violence. It was possible that he had taken a blow to the head. Or the greater shock of realising that whatever he did now, he could no longer claim to be the architect of his future.
‘You need to stand now, Tristan. There is very little time.’
‘To do what?’ Tristan allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. The spinning turned to a wobble and the cross before him split into two and then four.
‘To get you to the girl, and then both of you out of the City.’
‘Why would we leave the City?’
‘The Holy Council will not accept defeat easily. It will want you to confess that you were working to a script.’
‘But I wasn’t,’ Tristan said.
‘No, and you will not lie easily. I don’t wish to be responsible for your torture.’
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