‘You wanted honesty, didn’t you?’ But I didn’t turn round. I didn’t care if he heard.
I’m not a thug. I’m not a bully. Am I? Who does he think he is, to say that?
It wasn’t even me. It wasn’t even me.
Later
I went to find Felix. He wasn’t in his room. When I finally tracked him down he was in one of the music rooms, bashing out scales. He didn’t notice that I was there until I closed the piano lid and he barely got his fingers out of the way. ‘Hey! What the—’
‘Leave Carfax alone,’ I said.
‘What? It took me ages to get all those matches, even with my cousin sending me two packs a week.’
‘It wasn’t funny.’
He rocked back on the piano stool, screwing up his face. ‘Yes, it was. What’s up with you? I thought you’d—’
‘Leave him alone, all right? I’ve had enough. It’s boring.’
He stared at me. Then he reached for some sheet music and flicked through. Without looking up, he said, ‘You’re going soft. Or are you scared he’ll go running to Magister Holt?’
‘No! I don’t want him to crack up before the end of term, that’s all. Come on, Felix. We’re doing a joint game together, I need him compos mentis.’
‘You said you still hated him. You said—’
‘That’s not the point!’ I pulled the music away from him and slapped it down on the piano. (Am I a thug and a bully?) ‘Once our game’s handed in, you can make his life a misery. Until then, hands off. All right?’
He muttered, ‘All right.’ There was nothing else to say, so I left him to it.
Once, when I was small and Dad took me to the scrapyard, I found a watch on the floor of the office. It turned out it had been dropped by one of his clients. Dad asked me if I’d picked it up. It was beautiful, with a rotating dial for the phases of the moon, and I wanted to keep it more than anything in the world. So I shook my head. Dad got down on his knees and said, ‘Léo, if you tell me the truth you won’t be punished. Did you take the gentleman’s watch?’
I started to cry, I think. I nodded, and got the watch out of my pocket, and held it out to him.
He hissed through his teeth like he was disgusted with me. Then he smacked me across the face, hard.
Why on earth am I thinking about that now?
Chapter 10
11: the Rat
It has begun to snow. For a long time – for days – the clouds empty themselves like old sacks; and then the last rags blow away and the sky clears. The moon slides from one window to the next, and the next, without curiosity. The snow reflects so much light you could almost read by it: if you can read at all, that is, and if you were awake to read. Almost everyone under this roof is asleep. If the Rat were to pause, she could hear the long murmur of their breaths, the tiny thrum of their collective unconsciousness. Someone else might imagine the school as a boat, drifting on that sea-sound; but the Rat has never heard the sea, or of it. And she doesn’t pause, creeping on numbed feet along corridor after corridor. As long as she is invisible, she is safe.
It is cold: a deeper cold than ever, now. There are fires in the scholars’ hearths. Soon the days will be as brief as a blink and she will hardly move from her knot of blankets beside the blank bulk of a chimney, close under the roof, huddling against the stone for the faintest warmth. She will starve a little, and freeze a little, and slowly slip into an aching half-sleep that will linger till the first thaws. She can feel it coming. But she isn’t afraid. Hunger is hunger, and cold is cold, but she is a rat. Rats survive the winter.
She scampers down the narrow staircase. Down here – where the grey ones work – it is dim, lit only on one side by windows set high up on the wall. These rooms are half underground, and the passage smells of damp stone; but when she pushes open a heavy door and slides through, the harsh scent of soap fills her mouth and nose. Deep in the bottom of her mind – under layers of shadow, almost lost to sight – a child gags, cries, promises never to say the bad word again. But that child was not yet the Rat; and what do rats care for memories, except of food or traps? She pauses, watching, listening. Opposite her is the dim bulk of the great copper; beyond, beside the banked fire, a flock of shirts droops from a washing line. A single drop of water clicks faintly on the floor.
Quick. She darts across the room and yanks a shirt loose. The other shirts sag and bounce as she pulls them closer together, to hide the gap. She unhooks the loose pegs from the line, crouches and slips them neatly under one of the presses, where no one will ever find them. The shirt flicks a damp arm into her face. Then she is still, straining her ears. Nothing.
She slides through the door at the far end of the room, squashing the shirt up inside the one she is already wearing. It forms a moist knot against her chest and makes her shiver. Most of all she would like another blanket, but the blankets are only washed every few weeks. She is careful to make them think the shirt she has taken is lost, not stolen. She is the wind, the scholars’ carelessness, the distracted maid, the accident that leaves the laundry count one short. She must never be a person.
The kitchens are still warm. Her mouth runs with saliva but she hardly takes anything: the stale heel of a loaf, a cupped handful from the pot of cooling stew, an apple, a bit of cheese. She bolts it all on her feet beside the oven, watching the doorway. Sometimes the grey ones steal food too – sometimes, even, the others. She has had to hide, holding her breath, while a dark one helped himself from the pantry, loudly furtive in the way that only humans are. Another night there was a white one, old and portly, who smelt heady and rank and knocked a plate to the floor. She was under the table, huddled as small and shadowy as she could; her heart nearly choked her as she waited for him to crouch and pick up the pieces. But he only swore and staggered out of the room. She wondered then what it would be like, to break something and not be afraid.
The clock strikes. She doesn’t count the strokes, but it reminds her to glance up at the windows. The sky has lost its moonlit sheen. There is no sign yet of morning, but it’s time to go.
It is too cold to cross the courtyard in bare feet, so she takes a longer route, up above the Great Hall, the space between the angle of the roof and the curved vault of the ceiling below, and out by a trapdoor. The sudden light of stars breaks on her face like spray. She doesn’t look down as she crosses a flat ridge, accepting the freezing squeak of snow between her toes, refusing to let the pain throw her off balance. She jumps to a ledge and clings to the wall, face to face with a leering gargoyle. And here there is a narrow window that only a rat could ease through, and a long drop on to a tiled floor, and finally she is back in the others’ world, full of easy paths of corridors and stairs. In spite of the chill she is sweating. But the shirt she stole is safe, tucked into her waistband.
She stops, in the middle of the corridor. Out in the open, where anyone could see her.
Someone is crying.
She is always listening; she is the Rat. But what she is hearing catches her by the throat; she can’t choose to listen, or not to. She cannot hear anything beyond it. A sobbing voice. She is deaf to everything else. It is a man, not a woman – outside her head, not inside – but the Rat is not strong enough to drag herself away from the sound, or even to move out of sight; for once, the child the Rat used to be is in control, and she listens and listens, aching. Not for this one, but for another, a long time ago. A half memory, not even a ghost.