At the top she’s written, Midsummer Game. There isn’t anything below, not even notes.
She’s always been able to compose. That is, in the worst days, ten years ago, the grand jeu was an irrelevance, like prayer or food, and no doubt if she had tried to play she would have failed; but it never occurred to her. And for a long time afterwards she was too dazed to think at all. Aunt Frances and Cousin Helen taught her girlish pursuits – embroidery, gardening, découpage – and she flung herself into them, soothed by the trivial prettiness of flowers and stitches. It was a relief to let her musician’s fingers lose their agility, and her brain atrophy until she struggled to remember what day of the week it was. She worked at becoming someone new. Helen helped her to buy new clothes, steering her tactfully towards muted colours instead of black; and she grew to like them, the looser cuts and softer fabrics, the dove grey and mauve and violet of a life in twilight. Everyone was very gentle with her, and she was grateful for that, too. It was as though she was the one who’d died.
But the grand jeu was in her blood – no, deeper than that, in her cells, in her nerve-endings – and it wooed her back, seducing her slowly with a whistled melody, a chance remark, a copy of the Gambit inadequately hidden in Helen’s stationery drawer. It must have taken a year, or two; but finally something inside her awoke and unfurled. At first it was sly, elusive as the smell of a thaw. Then, like spring, it took her over in a wild rush and left her gasping. She composed the Primavera in six weeks, and Twelve Variations on the Moon in two months. After that she caught her breath and forced herself to slow down, to study and broaden her knowledge; but that dim half-life had been left behind, and she knew she would never go back to it. There were moments, composing or playing or arguing (because although the Drydens weren’t grand jeu masters they were educated, at least, and so were their friends) when she felt an echo of the pure joy she’d felt before her brother died. It would never be the same, not ever, but it was all she had. It was always there. She could step into the clear air of the grand jeu as easily as opening a door. Even when she became Magister Ludi, she was never afraid that she’d fail; she’d as soon have doubted her ability to swallow.
Not until now. Not until this blank page.
Midsummer Game … She doesn’t have a title, or a theme. Before, inspiration has come like a wave, knocking her to her knees; or like a trail of sweetmeats, scattered along a forest path; or like a torch-beam that showed only the next step, and the next. She’s used to the differences between grands jeux, the way they have to be trapped or cajoled or even resisted. It makes her think of an old exam question: Make a case for ONE of the following as a metaphor for the grand jeu: a garden; an automobile; a banquet; a railway accident … But she has never had nothing. She has never wondered, with a clench of panic in her gut, whether she will ever compose another game again.
If she can’t write her Midsummer Game … She can’t imagine what would happen if she defaulted. Even if she were ill, another Magister would be asked to perform it in her place, from her score. She has no choice. She must produce a game – and not just any game, a game good enough to be worthy of the first female Magister Ludi – or else she will lose everything. In front of the other Magisters, the invited dignitaries, foreign professors, journalists …
This time is precious. Every second wasted is a second lost. Come on. Think. But her mind stays empty. She feels an unexpected surge of sympathy for yesterday’s class of scholars, gaping at their first page of Artemonian.
It’s no good. She tells herself that it will come. She flicks her notebook shut. The desk is piled so thickly with books and papers that barely any wood is visible. The top volumes have grown a sparse fur of dust. She picks up a few tomes and looks around for somewhere to put them, but the shelves closest to her are already chaotic and overloaded. After a moment she replaces the books in the clean square of dust-shadow. A few old envelopes have been propped half-hidden against the wall. She can’t tell exactly how long they’ve been there, but it’s too late to bother opening them. She recognises the franking mark on one; it’s from the Ministry for Culture, who’ve been pestering her about a grand jeu festival in the capital, in the Summer Vacation. For the common man, they said in their first letter, as if that was something she would approve of. She drops it straight into the bin, followed by the others. Recently the Council has been arguing about whether scholars should be allowed to receive post during term-time; she sometimes wishes that the Magisters weren’t. The outside world is a distraction, at best. At worst, it can destroy you. For a split second she remembers the sensation of a curl of flimsy paper between her fingers, a telegram, COME HOME PLEASE STOP AM AFRAID TO BE ALONE. Then she jams the lid on the thought and pushes it to the back of her mind. She resists a sudden urge to get up and check that Léo Martin’s diary is safely locked away. Of course it is.
She raises her head with a jerk. Did she hear a noise outside? She thought so; but when she winds through the mess of books and boxes to open the door, the corridor is empty. She sags against the side of the doorframe. She has found herself listening too much, recently; raising her head at the slightest noise, wondering if the murmur in her ears is a voice or the rush of her own blood. As if someone is calling her, from a long way away. She finds herself straining her ears, trying to make out words in the sound of the wind, or the syncopated Morse of rain on the windows. Sometimes she’s heard footsteps, approaching her room; but then they stop, and if she wrenches open the door to see who it is, it’s no one. Not even a draught, or a drift of fine snow melting on the floor.
She doesn’t believe in ghosts – in spite of the rumours there’ve been here for years, about a phantom child sobbing in the walls. Nothing is haunting her except herself. It’s because she can’t work: her mind is undisciplined, spinning and sparking like a Catherine wheel. The energy she ought to be spending on the grand jeu is lighting on other things. Sounds, memories, the constant hot itch of knowing that Léo Martin is under the same roof. She refuses to admit the possibility that it’s the other way around, that Martin is the cause and not the symptom.
He walks down the steps from the archive as if she’s summoned him into being. Startled, she rocks back into the shelter of the archway. The movement catches his eye and he turns his head as he passes. For a heartbeat or less they hold each other’s gaze; and then he’s gone, running lightly down the lower staircase to the library with a patter of leather soles. She feels heat bloom in her face and scalp and armpits. Thank goodness he can’t see inside her head.
After his footsteps have died away the corridor is very quiet. The librarians have the day off on Sundays. There are probably a few scholars in the library below, poring over their books or gazing vacantly into space: some of them are keen, some are the usual misfits, bullied and miserable, who would rather seek sanctuary with a book than risk encountering their classmates in the Lesser Hall. But they’re quiet. From the thick, winter-muffled silence she could believe that she’s alone in the building. She looks around, listening; then she walks a few paces to the door of the archive and pushes it open. There isn’t anyone here, either. Pale light lies over everything, filtered by the snow that clings to the windowpanes. She shuts the door behind her and leans against it, breathing a faint scent of books and something spicy that might be cologne or scented soap. She walks down the aisle between the bookcases, glancing from side to side. One of the desks has been in use for months, since before the beginning of term, but the Magister Historiae – supposedly working on his magnum opus – hasn’t moved the books from their neat pile. The servants clean in here, so there’s no dust; but one day when she was at a loose end she slipped a long chignon-kinked hair between the pastedown and fly of the top volume, and she can still see the tiny glint where it catches the light. She has always despised those who couldn’t make progress. Now it gives her a pang of shame.