Why should the grand jeu be separate from desire, anyway? It’s not always sordid.
And a good grand jeu breaks the rules, doesn’t it?
Third day of Vernal Term
Carfax is back. I was on my way to do some piano practice and saw him coming out of Magister Holt’s rooms. He’s arrived here two days late but he didn’t look as if he’d been told off. He didn’t see me; he walked away with a spring in his step and I didn’t call out to him.
Bloody typical. He doesn’t even turn up on the right day. But does he get hauled over the coals for it? No, he comes swaggering out of Magister Holt’s office like we should all be grateful he’s here. This whole vacation I’ve been remembering what he was like last term – that night when we ended up on the top of the Square Tower, for example – but no, it was all fake, wasn’t it? We were only putting up with each other. Making the best of a bad job.
Later
After dinner there was a knock on my door. It was Carfax. I suppose I guessed it would be.
‘What do you want, Carfax?’
There was a split second when I swear I saw his face fall. As if he’d been expecting us to be friends again. As if he thought we were friends. But it was gone almost as soon as it came. ‘Just wondered if you picked up my Hondius, last term,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d put it in my trunk, but I can’t find it.’
‘I have one of my own, thanks.’ I picked it up and waved it at him.
‘I didn’t mean deliberately.’
‘I haven’t got it.’
‘All right. Never mind.’ He paused, as if I might say something else. I didn’t. He nodded and turned to go.
‘You were late,’ I said. ‘I saw you come out of Magister Holt’s room. Didn’t look like he was worried. Let me guess: you don’t have to follow the rules, because you’re special.’
‘Don’t be stupid. I had to go and explain …’
‘What? What happened?’
He hesitated. ‘Nothing.’
‘Sure. Why would you turn up on the right day?’
He rolled his shoulders as if they were aching. ‘I … family business,’ he said at last. His eyes flickered to my face and away again.
‘Really? Did someone get hold of a box of—’
‘Please don’t—’ he said, at the same time. We both stopped, watching each other. ‘Please,’ he said again, in a strange low voice.
I didn’t answer. The clock chimed – it was later than I’d thought – but he didn’t give any sign of hearing it. He was still staring at me. I know I hadn’t imagined his tone of voice: pleading, almost. Appealing to my better nature. No, that makes it sound too like Mim. As if for once he was opening himself up, like someone dropping their foil in the middle of a bout, spreading their arms and standing still. Letting me hurt him if I wanted to. Believing that I would.
And then the moment had gone, and I hadn’t hurt him, and with a silent jolt we were on solid ground.
I scrabbled around for something to say. I almost asked him if his family had been pleased about our seventy, but something stopped me; suddenly I didn’t want him to think I was being snide. I really didn’t want him to think that. In the end I came up with, ‘Well, since you’re here … I was wondering what you made of the Bridges of Königsberg. I can’t see why it’s supposed to be so brilliant.’
‘I agree. It’s bloody awful.’
We both smiled at the same time. I looked down, flipping through my book without seeing it. There was a sharp, light feeling in my chest. ‘One of the third-years said we’re going to be studying it all term. Imagine.’
‘Ugh.’ There was a different sort of pause: easier, like all those evenings we spent working in the library last term. Suddenly he yawned. ‘I’d better go to bed now, but maybe tomorrow …? What are you doing after the Quietus? We can destroy the Bridges of Königsberg together. And there’s something I wanted to run past you, an idea I was playing with. When you have time.’
‘Sure. Come and find me.’
He didn’t say goodbye, just touched his forehead in a sort of salute and shut the door behind him.
Maybe I am glad to be back, after all.
Chapter 18
19: the Magister Ludi
Please don’t. Please … She looks up from the page and she can hear her voice as she might have said it, as she would say it now if she wasn’t biting her lip to stop herself. She shuts the diary with a snap, flattening Martin’s words against one another. It’s her own fault that he’s inside her head: she is doing this to herself. If she had any sense she’d burn the ledger, along with the two copies of the Danse Macabre and the other papers she’s stolen from the archive. If anyone found them … She tells herself that she is exaggerating the danger. She could explain. Yes. She is Magister Ludi, she has a right to borrow whatever she wants for private study, and so what if she sometimes forgets to let the archivist know what she’s taken? And as for how personal papers found their way into the library at all – well, how would she know? Perhaps her brother might have had a hand in it. There’s no need to destroy Martin’s diary. It would be neurotic. But then, it’s neurotic to pore over it like this, torturing herself. And it would be safer to get rid of everything …
You were late. What happened? She might as well not have closed the ledger, because she can still see the page in her mind’s eye, as clear as a photograph. Family business … That last New Year, her brother was euphoric, scribbling and composing for whole days, singing into the night until she staggered wearily back to her own bedroom, too tired and resentful even to worry. At first she’d thought he was simply happy: when he’d first seen her he’d swung her round in a flamboyant embrace that became an impromptu polka, saying her name through joyful laughter. And for a little while the atmosphere was intoxicating, like a proper holiday, the sort that they had never had. They played pranks on each other and the housekeeper; when she wasn’t there they ran wild, alone in the crumbling château like the orphans they were. I almost asked him if his family had been pleased about our seventy … She bites her lip. If Martin had asked, what would the answer have been? The truth? She still remembers how the mere number seventy became a kind of joke between her and Aimé: they’d say it to each other, at breakfast, at dinner, at random times of day, writing it on scraps of paper, in chalk on a door, in gravy on a plate, as though it was a shared triumph, shouting it back and forth along the damp corridors and giggling until they hardly knew which of them had earnt it. They played music together, drank musty antique wine, tried to pretend that the vacation would go on for ever.
Then, gradually, he became … strange. Perhaps she did, too. Even now she winces at the thought of it. His energy and hers sparked and exploded; his nightmares seeped into hers. The old de Courcy rottenness … But it was Aimé who struggled, who shouted in his sleep and cried out as if he was drowning. Montverre would have been bad enough, full of scholars who thought the de Courcy blood was a joke, an easy target; but the shadow of lunacy must have seemed even darker at home, under the disintegrating roof of the château, where it had already stolen their parents. Both of them were afraid – had always, she thinks, been afraid – but it would have been the basest treachery to say it aloud. Even to think the word madness was to invite it in. No help. No doctors. Doctors took you to the insane asylum. So she watched him, and perhaps he watched her, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if he thought she was trying to poison him. What would Martin have said, if he’d seen Aimé laughing so violently he gave himself a nosebleed? Or smashing a whole cupboard of cut glass, ‘to see the maths on the floor’? Or, oh God, white and silent at the thought of the term ahead, watching her fold his shirts into the trunk? She told herself that he was fine, really, that he’d calmed down, he was ready for another term; but he was dreading it. And if she hadn’t treated him like a child, shamed him into saying that yes, of course he was all right, he’d be fine …? If she hadn’t—