‘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.’