She catches her breath. Stop it. It was years ago. It’s gone, it’s past help. She shuts the door on her memories, ignoring the seep of red over the sill. This is pure self-indulgent hysteria. She should be working on the Midsummer Game, not wasting time re-reading Martin’s juvenile outpourings, narrowing her eyes at handwriting that’s become more familiar than her own brother’s. She only has months – weeks – before she’ll have to stand in the Great Hall to perform a grand jeu, and so far she has nothing. This is no time to wallow in guilt and self-pity and nostalgia. But she can’t concentrate; there’s a strange gravity-levity inside her, like a ball of mercury expanding in a surge of heat. Martin has been back at Montverre for nearly a week now, and he hasn’t spoken to her beyond a nod and smile when they’ve passed in the corridor. She flinches from seeing him alone, but she wants to get it over.
She skims her fingers over the ink stain on the marbled cover. It leaves a smudge of darkness in the whorls of her fingertips. It’s been a long vacation, but she’s not ready for the term to begin. She is used to the long winters here, the dead days of New Year, January and February, pillowed and muffled by the snow; the other Magisters leave from time to time, visiting their families or foreign academics, celebrating New Year with more than a quarter of a litre of wine, mingling with other important men in the capital – this year the Magister Cartae boasted about how he’d been invited to advise the Minister for Culture on national policy – but she has always stayed here. She likes to be free, invisible, her own woman. She’s never wanted to stay with Aunt Frances, or to go to Cambridge or Paris or Wittenberg. She’s never wanted to be reminded of the outside world: Montverre is everything and more than everything she needs.
Was. Was everything she needed. But not this year. There’s a feeling in the corridors, as though the rock underneath the school has started to fall apart. She thought she was safe here – from the world, from desire; but Martin’s presence has stripped a layer off her skin. It’s as if she’s becoming younger day by day, turning into one of the scholars. She can remember too clearly what it was to be their age: those heart-swelling sleepless nights, the terrible vulnerability of happiness. Her ten-years-younger self is too near, selfish and light-hearted, only now and then giving a thought to her brother’s misery. Oh, she tried. She did her best. But she was caught up in her own life, and she didn’t try hard enough; and Aimé died … She has learnt the hard way to protect herself, to keep herself closed, never to give herself away. And yet she can’t help it. This restlessness is foolish. No, it’s dangerous. Irresistible as a drug, and yet, and yet … She’s afraid of herself. Ever since she saw that black automobile roll into the courtyard … Or before that, before the beginning of term, when she felt someone in the shadows, watching her … She catches herself. Hysteria. Or – no – is this how it starts? How Aimé started—
No, of course not. No doubt it’s much more prosaic: she’d like a change of scenery. To change the ideas, as the French would say. To get out of this place which has always been her home, but which feels more and more like a prison.
She knocks her temple with her knuckles, deliberately stopping her chain of thought. The grand jeu is her escape. No wonder she’s got gaol-fever; she needs to do some work. If she can’t work on the Midsummer Game, she can write a test paper for her first-years, or glance over her third-years’ vacation essays. Anything to remind herself that she is Magister Ludi. She reaches for the nearest book – Jermyn’s Imaginary Spaces – and flicks through, looking for a quotation she can use as an essay question. Mathematics is the first, and the greatest discipline …
There’s a knock at the door. She leaps to her feet, drags the book sideways to hide Martin’s diary, and stumbles towards the door. It opens before she reaches it – why did she leave it unlocked? – and for a moment she blinks at the figure in the pale corridor-light. It’s Martin. Of course it’s Martin. For a moment they stare at each other. Too late, she is conscious of how she must look, tense and undignified in the middle of the room. She isn’t wearing her cap and her plait is unravelling. ‘Mr Martin,’ she says. ‘How can I help you?’
‘It appears you have an admirer,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘There was someone lurking.’ He points behind him. ‘The Christian scholar, I think, I saw the cross on his gown. When I came along he ran away.’
‘An admirer?’ It must be Charpentier; the thought of him gives her a pang of guilt. She ought to do more for him. She, of all people, should know how hard it can be, when the scholars turn on someone; but she knows, too, how helpless the Magisters are. Especially with the government – the whole country – on the side of the bullies.
Martin hesitates. He was smiling, but something in her tone has taken him aback. ‘I’m only joking,’ he says. ‘I suppose … no, perhaps you don’t get much of that sort of thing.’
It shouldn’t sting, but it does. She doesn’t want to be treated as female – in her experience, the less of that, the better – nevertheless it’s humiliating that he dismisses her so easily; and even more humiliating that she notices, and cares. ‘What do you want?’ she says, more brusquely than she means to.
He hesitates. He raises one hand and proffers a blue-and-gold wrapped parcel. ‘Your marrons glacés,’ he says. When she doesn’t answer immediately he moves to her desk and puts the packet on top of her papers. She fights not to flinch: he’s so close to his diary that if he merely moved the Jermyn to check the title, glanced down … but he doesn’t. He turns back to look at her.
He expects thanks. She catches at the thought, almost too late. ‘Thank you,’ she says, but it comes out breathless, bewildered, and he frowns.
‘You asked me for them. Last term. When I … You do like them?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did. I do. Yes. Thank you.’
‘Good.’ He nods, fidgets with his tie. He’s standing awkwardly, half twisted away from her; it’s somehow childish, like a guilty boy who’s hoping to get away with something. He clears his throat, noisily. Then, suddenly, she realises: he thinks he’s at a disadvantage.
He must see the thought in her face – or something funny, anyway, because his mouth twitches; and as his expression broadens into a smile, she finds herself smiling back. Blast him. She crosses to the desk and leans past him, casually piling more papers on top of Imaginary Spaces so that even the narrow spine of his diary is hidden from view. ‘That’s kind of you,’ she said. ‘I never thought … that is, I imagined you’d be far too busy—’
‘I promised, didn’t I?’ His breath stirs the hair behind her ears.
‘Oh? I forgot.’ She has misjudged the distance between them, and as she straightens she brushes against his sleeve. He pulls back, but not as much as he should. ‘Perhaps I underestimated you,’ she says. It comes out more seriously than she intended.
‘Impossible.’ He grins.
She turns away. What is it? The long, long vacation, the days of nothing but snow and books and silence, the years of grand jeu and – yes – loneliness, the flash of warmth that for once someone has brought her a gift, something sweet— Or is it mere morbid sentimentality, brought on by his diary? Whatever it is, she doesn’t trust herself to look at him. ‘If you say so,’ she says. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me—’