In his mind’s eye Léo sees all the Christians, the Communists and undesirables, the beggars and invalids: a long line, stretching into the distance, the last few turning to stare over their shoulders at him as they’re ushered away. Please let Chryseïs not be among them; please let Charpentier not. But that doesn’t mean that the others aren’t real. He can do something for Charpentier, even if it’s only leaving cash in his room, and hoping that it’ll be found – but there are too many to help, too many to fight for.
He clenches his fists. Nothing is safe. Montverre isn’t a sanctuary any more; maybe it never was. Even the grand jeu itself … More than anything he wants to feel the joy of it, the exhilaration of making something from nothing. But with those grey faces watching him, with the walls of Montverre crumbling and the Party looking over his shoulder …
He wants to be Magister Ludi: but here, not in the city. He wants to stand in the Great Hall with the ranks of watchers around him, playing his own Midsummer Game. He wants Claire to be there. He wants to pace the anteroom with her before he goes in, rehearsing the transitions, trying not to betray that he’s nervous. He wants to feel the moment of complete attention – like the stillness at the height of a parabola, the instant between up and down – when the game takes off, and everything is miraculous, needle-sharp and effortless.
But the Great Hall may never witness another game. And Claire has gone. If he plays a Midsummer Game, it will be in front of the stripped altar of the converted Cathedral, and swollen ranks of Party members who don’t know the first thing about the grand jeu. Watched by betrayed stained-glass saints and the ghosts of the people who used to worship there. Complicit.
He’s a politician. Has learnt to be a politician. The scruples are uncomfortable, like a stone in his shoe. He wants to shake them away. He could do some good as Magister Ludi. What did Claire say? Be a thorn in their sides. She gave him permission. She wouldn’t judge him for compromising. It’s only human.
But. But, but, but.
He remembers Carfax asking: ‘Shouldn’t the grand jeu make us better people?’ and then how he answered his own question. Her own question. Yes. What would it mean, to play a grand jeu with an atrocity at the heart of it?
He glances down at the desk. Her letter is lying in the sun. Already the words are well-known, like a text he’s planning to use for a motif. Write to me, to Claire. Send me a letter telling me how sorry you are, how much you loved Aimé. Then I’ll reply. That’s all you need to do. One letter, and I’ll come back from the dead. He thought it was all over, then; but if he had sent that letter …
He doesn’t make a conscious decision. It’s his body that takes over, swinging him into the middle of the room as though there is a tiny terra between the overloaded bookcases. He turns to face the sky. Then he lifts his arms, pauses and then dips them into a wide movement, the motion of farewell-and-welcome that forms the fermeture. And as if in response, the cloud that has dipped across the sun slides sideways and the light floods his eyes. It’s over. In a moment he’ll go to his room and collect overnight things; he’ll make his way down the road to the village, and the station. And Claire. If she’s still there, if an earlier train hasn’t swept her away, if … But some deep, irrational conviction tells him that he’ll find her, one way or another.
He reaches out to the cobweb that’s clinging to the windowpane, idly testing its elasticity. The threads are silver, trembling a little in the draught. Instinctively he starts to swipe it away, to get a clearer view of the trees and the slope below; but something makes him pause. It’s beautiful. His heart is beating as though he’s climbed a mountain.
He turns on his heel and goes out into the dim passage and down the stairs, leaving behind the sun and the web and the fermeture.
42: the Rat
She isn’t sick. She knows what sickness is like, and it isn’t this. Sickness is waiting, drifting, blank as a grey sea, having nothing to do but surrender. Sickness is vivid pictures in her head, thirst, drenched blankets, a bitter smell. This is different. This is like shedding a skin, feeling the old world stretch and split around her, sore as a burn. She curls around her elbows and knees, conscious of her bones, and tries to breathe slowly. If she closes her eyes she sees a man falling, over and over. Sometimes the picture blurs, and it’s a woman, with a plait of hair. Then there is a red smash, and the Rat jerks upright, blinking until she is back, only seeing what’s visible. It takes a long time before she lies down again, shivering.
The noise comes and goes. If she were paying attention, she might realise that there is something wrong. In the summer the school subsides to an easy murmur, a long exhalation of relief as the servants’ workload eases; but not now, not this year. Now there is more noise than usual, thumping and dragging of trunks, emptying of cupboards, a frantic and mutinous muttering. The bus roars and recedes, back and forth, for days. And then, slowly, a silence descends that isn’t the contented quiet of high summer but something thicker, unseasonal. But she isn’t listening.
Until one day she wakes and there is no sound at all, from anywhere. She sits up, and the shuffle of her limbs reassures her for a moment that she hasn’t gone deaf. She gets to her feet. She is shaky; patterns swirl in the dim corners of the room as she walks past. She steps out into the passage and it’s like being underwater. She ventures further out, looking round, until there seems not to be any reason to be afraid. Just this muffled, dead quietness. Rats do not notice the passage of time: but some wary part of her knows it has been longer than an hour since the clock struck. The clock has always been there, the same way her pulse has always been there.
The main corridor is dark. She steps out into the middle of it and looks around, the back of her neck crawling. The windows are shuttered. Thin slats of silver daylight show between the louvres. The corridor is a long stone tunnel, the entrance to a labyrinth. She can’t make out the stairs at the far end, only a doorway and more darkness. Carefully she makes her way towards them. Silence. Such silence, not a footstep or voice or the scrape of a broom. She could be the last moving thing left on the face of the earth. She goes down the staircase.
The door at the foot of the staircase is closed. It is never closed in the day. Her heart jolts into panic, her mouth opening to gasp for air – a trap, a trap – but a second later her fingers are scrabbling at the latch and it yields. She throws the door open. The sky is flat and as pale as a pearl. She breathes deeply; but when she steps into the courtyard the terror is still there, only dulled. Closed doors, shuttered windows, silence. Solitude. A punishment. Whatever you do, darling, you must not. But it’s too late. She looks across to the part of the courtyard where the man was splashed on the tiles in the moonlight. Where Mam … But nothing is there, not even a shadow. The tiles are jet and nacre under this fish-belly sky.
She crosses the court, keeping close to the walls. In spite of the blinded windows she feels watched. The smooth cloud above her is like a pupil-less eye. She unlatches the far door and slips through it into another dark corridor. In front of her is an archway: and beyond it is the Great Hall, full of daylight from the high windows. Another observer might wonder why the servants left these windows unshuttered – laziness, rebellion, or some strange instinct of reverence? – but the Rat only moves forward, searching for something she can’t name. The floor, the benches, the walls, everything is in shades of grey and trompe l’oeil. There is no game board. The silver line demarcating the terra is dormant. Invisible.