The Betrayals Read online

  She draws in her breath. There are flickering lights at the edge of her mind’s eye, the image of thousands of matches scattered across a stone floor. ‘Don’t you have a healthy fear of being burnt to death in your bed? You of all people—’ She wants to shame him, to throw his endless, merciless jokes back in his face; but that would mean admitting to having read his diary.

  His eyes narrow. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Mr Martin. Put out your cigarette. Now.’

  He holds her gaze. Something hardens in his face. He says, ‘Perhaps if you said please.’

  She grabs his arm and before he has time to react she has reached across his body and plucked the cigarette from between his fingers. She dashes it to the ground and grinds it out with the toe of her shoe, and then they are staring at each other. She is so angry it’s difficult to breathe. Even though she has let go of him, she can feel the warmth of his body, the sturdy flesh-and-bone of his arm; the sensation is so strong that she wipes her hand on her gown. She is shaking.

  He says, ‘What on earth …?’

  He is looking at her as though she is hysterical. Is she? She wants to cover her face, but it’s too late. Instead she bows her head and fusses with her cuffs until her fingers are steady and the heat has left her cheeks. She says, at last, ‘While you’re here, Mr Martin, you must obey the rules. This isn’t a holiday camp.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’ A new angle of light falls on his face as he turns his head, and for the first time she notices the dark circles under his eyes, the gaunter cheekbones. The fine-veined flush of good living he had on arrival has faded, but there’s a pallid tinge around his mouth that doesn’t look any healthier. He hasn’t shaved, and it gives his jaw a gritty, silvery look.

  ‘Mr Martin,’ she says. ‘You’ve chosen to be here. If it doesn’t suit you, why don’t you leave?’

  He fiddles with the matchbox, pushing it open and shut.

  ‘You’re not actually studying the grand jeu, are you?’ When he doesn’t answer she shakes her head. ‘This is a sacred place. If you want to sit and read the paper, go somewhere else.’

  He glances up at her. ‘Where do you suggest?’

  ‘Go back to government,’ she says. ‘Go back to the Party. Draft more Purity Laws. Exile more Christians.’ She gestures at the paper. ‘That’s what you do, isn’t it? Burning Bibles, burning churches … Go back to that.’

  He takes out a match and strikes it. The flame hisses and dies. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Really? Why not?’ There’s a silence. He throws the spent match aside, into the flowerbed. She wants to pick it up and press the hot end into his skin. ‘You think I don’t know why you’re here?’ she says, fighting to keep her voice under control. ‘The Party wants to take over Montverre, or to close it down. You’re a spy. You’re here to give orders to the Magister Scholarium. Well, I can’t stop you. But don’t imagine you’re welcome. You’re not part of this place, and you never will be.’

  He pauses, his head bent, another virgin match ready in his fingers.

  ‘Today we agreed that next year no Christians will be admitted. I expect that makes you happy, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ he says. Suddenly his voice has an edge to it; as if for once he’s telling the truth.

  ‘Oh? Well, at least you must think it’s a step in the right direction.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake!’ He’s on his feet, turning on her, the matches and their box scattered in the soil underneath the bench. ‘I’m not part of the Party any more. I’m stuck in this blasted place because they don’t want me back.’ He grimaces, as if he’s said too much, but after an instant he goes on. ‘You really want to know why I’m here? I tried to water down the Culture and Integrity Bill. I thought it was going too far. That’s why they sacked me. I’m here in disgrace.’

  ‘Going too far?’ she echoes, trying to cling to her advantage, but it comes out sounding thin and petty.

  He shoots a look at her. ‘I don’t see you packing your bags in protest.’

  ‘That’s unfair – I did my best—’

  ‘As did I.’ He scuffs his heel at the matches on the ground, driving them deeper into the soil. ‘Unfortunately, our best isn’t much good, is it?’

  There’s a silence. She tips up her face to the sky. Her head is spinning. Perhaps he’s lying, but she doesn’t know why he’d bother; it’s not as if he cares what she thinks of him. Why would he?

  He sits down. After a moment he picks a match and the empty box out of the earth and lights another cigarette.

  ‘You might as well work on the grand jeu,’ she says. ‘While you’re here.’

  He raises one shoulder, without looking at her.

  ‘You were a promising player, once.’ Now he does flash a glance at her. She stoops and brushes her hand along the top of the hedge, releasing the scent of box. ‘I’ve – I heard that your Gold Medal game wasn’t bad.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She can’t tell whether he’s being sarcastic.

  ‘If you put your mind to it, you might write something – good.’ It sticks in her teeth, the word: but it’s true.

  ‘How kind.’

  ‘This is Montverre. It’s a waste to be here and—’

  ‘Yes, it’s a waste! You think I don’t know that? It’s a prison.’

  She folds her arms. ‘Then do your time.’

  He blinks. After an instant a reluctant half-smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘By all means,’ she says, ‘leave as soon as you are able. In the meantime – write a game. Study. You may tell the librarians that I said you could look at the archives.’

  A silence. ‘Are you trying to keep me out of mischief?’

  ‘Ideally.’ And for a second, swift and elusive as a breath of wind, there’s warmth between them. Not as much as a smile, but a kind of … complicity. She turns away, disgusted with herself. The smell of tobacco is half nauseating, half seductive. When was the last time she smoked? A memory catches her off guard: wide night sky, endless stars, a voice laughing in her ear. She shakes it away. That life has gone. She’s here, now, in the autumn sunshine, with a man she doesn’t know. ‘I must go,’ she says, and immediately despises herself. She doesn’t have to make excuses to him.

  He doesn’t answer.

  She pauses in the archway. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘and please don’t use this courtyard again. It’s reserved for Magisters.’

  She can’t settle to anything. She teaches her third-years like a five-finger exercise – automatic, joyless, distracted – and lets them go before the clock strikes. Afterwards she hurries down to the Great Hall. Part of her flinches from the prospect of silence, but she is still enough herself to know that it will be good for her. To let go of routine – to let go of the grand jeu, of God – would be dangerous; now more than ever she needs the reassurance of it, the bedrock. She collapses on to a bench and bows her head. She tries to breathe slowly, but now that she’s sitting down her heartbeat seems to get louder instead of softer.

  She can’t keep still, so she tries to focus on listening. Beyond the dominant thump of blood in her ears, there are other sounds. The wind is a whole orchestra. Deep notes surge in the trees outside, a loose windowpane rattles, the stone chimney sings. But she can’t concentrate. She rubs her hand on her gown, as if her palm is sticky: but the memory of grabbing Léo Martin won’t be wiped away. It makes her grit her teeth with shame for having lost her temper – what would the other Magisters think, if they’d seen her? – but there’s a deeper unease, a creeping sensation under her skin. When was the last time she touched someone, was touched? She can’t remember. Magisters bow, they don’t shake hands, and she trims her own hair when it gets too long. Can it have been when Aunt Frances said goodbye to her, when she left England? Surely not; that was years ago. But she has been at Montverre continually since then, in spite of being allowed to travel in the vacations; she has kept herself impris— no, protected, safe – here. And she doe
sn’t want to be touched. When she was elected Magister Ludi, it was a relief to know that she would be celibate now, for ever; she’d almost laughed at Aunt Frances’ concern, her gentle questions about children and marriage and … well, you-know-what, darling … Maybe the other Magisters had secret mistresses, maybe not; it didn’t matter that they’d treat her differently, that she’d be out at the first hint of scandal, because scandal was the last thing she wanted. The thought of someone else’s flesh made her skin crawl.

  But now … She tries to evoke the feeling of an embrace, the brush of a mouth on her cheek, but it is like something she once read about. It’s certainly nothing like remembering Martin’s jacket under her fingers, the solidity of his arm, muscle and bone … He smelt of tobacco and newsprint. It surprised her; now that she is alone, she can admit that to herself. Which is foolish, of course, since he was smoking and reading a newspaper. What had she been expecting? The scent of tweed and cheap soap? The mustiness of the scholars, of too-seldom-laundered linen? Or something more … glamorous?

  She opens her eyes. She hadn’t realised that she’d closed them. How can she sit here, in this sacred space, thinking about Martin? Or rather, how dare he worm his way into her head, when she has earned the right to be here, alone, her own master, Magister Ludi …? And why did she tell him he could look at the archives? She wants him gone, as soon as possible. He should be playing his own, more puerile games: politics, oppression.

  All of a sudden, without meaning to, she gets to her feet and steps into the silver-edged space where the grand jeu is played. She sketches a gesture of ouverture, a deep unflourished bow that she knows would make the Magister Motuum nod in appreciation. But for once it feels theatrical, the triumph of technique over inspiration.

  She bows her head. There are always days when the grand jeu is out of reach. There’s no reason to feel that today is especially significant. She’s distracted, that’s all.

  Something on the floor catches her eye. A dark stain between the stones. Rust, soil, paint.

  Blood.

  She crouches down. For a stupid, dislocated second she thinks that somehow it is her fault, from her: as though she could have bled here without noticing. But it’s dry, and the stones have been scrubbed, so the stain only lingers in the crevices. In a different light, you wouldn’t see it. There’s no way of telling how long it’s been there. If not her, then who?

  She stares at the neat dark line between the stones, her mind racing. Perhaps she’s mistaken. How can there be blood here? Have the scholars been fighting? Scholars do fight, sneaking down to the gymnasium at night. In general it’s simpler to let them get on with it, so the Magisters pretend they don’t know. But it would be different, if they came here; if they were caught, they’d be expelled for sacrilege. To defile the very ground of the grand jeu – yes, that would be unforgivable.

  But someone has done it.

  In a rush, out of nowhere – unless it has been shadowing her all day, trailing red footprints behind her, breathing hotly down her neck ever since the moment when she woke in a bloodstained bed – a memory punches into her and she is staring at a crimson smear on white porcelain, so vivid she can’t see anything else. For an instant – a few seconds, an eternity – she is caught in the clarity of shock, where everything is simple. She is at home, and a minute ago she dropped her suitcase in the hall and came upstairs, wincing at the new rot in the staircase and the crumbling plaster, calling her brother’s name; but all that is already forgotten. The bathroom door was ajar. She pushed it open. And there must have been a moment when she saw what was there, but for some reason that too has disappeared, as if her whole life starts now – now, as she steps over the scarlet puddle on the clay tiles, which creeps outwards, silently encroaching on the painted birds and fleurs-de-lis. Now, as she takes in the handprint on the washstand, and the looser smear on the bathtub, her mind following the logic: here he grabbed for balance, here he slipped to his knees, losing consciousness, and here … And inexorably her gaze goes to the thing on the floor, the thing she has in fact been trying not to look at, the thing that is, or was – and her mind teeters on the tense of the verb like a cliff edge, as if she can still stumble back to safety – is or was, was is was—

  Her brother. Her brother who was her own self, only not; so close he was like a twin, like a mirror, only so different he was always out of reach—

  Who has poured all the colour in his body out on to the floor. Who has come to the end of colour, and air, and light. Has gone – has chosen—

  Who is dead. He’s dead.

  And it is her fault. If she had been here. If she had come straight home when he telegraphed. If she had, had not, had—

  She wrenches herself back into the present. Or tries to. The Great Hall of Montverre blurs and wavers as if she is seeing it through water. She staggers to her feet. She can’t shake it off.

  There is someone watching her. She spins round, damp-faced, off balance. But the doorway is empty.

  Then the clock strikes, making her jump; and gradually – barely audible at first, until it broadens and swells into cacophony – a chorus of young male voices trickles along the passage, joking and arguing as if they’ve never heard of the divine or the grand jeu or death.

  9: Léo

  He’d forgotten what rain was like in the mountains, until this morning. It’s set in like gravity: impersonal, unchanging, the inexhaustible sky falling on and on. After an hour, it’s hard to imagine a world without it; after two hours, he stops trying. After breakfast he takes the long way round to the gatehouse to pick up his paper, but the final dash across the corner of the courtyard leaves him soaking and wet-footed. He might as well not have bothered. He pauses in the doorway to shake himself off like a dog. The porter nods at him and holds out his post. ‘Filthy, isn’t it, sir?’

  He takes the proffered bundle and looks through it. A headline catches his eye: New Security Measures Welcomed. Later he’ll read the paper all the way through, but out of duty, not curiosity. These days, every edition seems the same, full of the same story, the same people. Dettler, the new Minister for Culture, announcing a festival of the arts, defending the tax on books; the Old Man exhorting the army to keep the peace in lacklustre rhetoric that no one believes. Violence. The absence of his own name … There’s a letter from Mim; he tries not to notice that her handwriting is shakier by the week. An envelope addressed in an unfamiliar hand, but franked, not stamped, and with the crest of the Ministry for Information on it – a Party circular, which must be someone’s idea of a joke. And … He hesitates, an unexpected warmth running through him. There’s a letter from Chryseïs. She has never written to him before, but he recognises her ‘e’s and ‘r’s from her signature. It’s thick, too – two pages. They parted on bad terms; perhaps this is an apology, or at least some news, government gossip or something about the latest fashions … Right now he’s hungry for all of it. He turns his back on the porter and rips the envelope open.

  It’s the tailor’s bill, forwarded from his previous address. She hasn’t included a note. He crams the whole bundle of post into his pocket and stares out into the courtyard. Rain, grey light, grey stone, a sky so swollen it gives him a headache.

  That’s it. He has lost. It’s not exactly that he’s made a decision: more a realisation that at some point, without noticing, he’s swallowed his pride, like a rotten tooth. There’s nothing but a sore gap where it used to be, and the weary knowledge that today, finally, he’ll go to the library and begin work on a grand jeu. He’s lasted less than three weeks; boredom has broken him faster than he thought possible. Well – boredom, and regret, and the clock that strikes every blasted hour above his bedroom. And Mim’s plaintive letters, and Chryseïs, and the way the world goes on turning without him. He hates the grand jeu, it’s a waste of time; but right now he wants to waste time. He wants time to pour through his hands like water.

  He dumps the newspaper in the bin and steps out into the courtyard before he
can change his mind. Rain slides down into his collar. He sprints the last few metres, ducks into the doorway of the library and pushes the door open. Drops of rain patter on the floor and the scholar at the nearest desk looks up from his work, frowning.

  Léo puts his hands in his pockets. Good God, the smell … Dust, books, damp wool and male bodies, and under it all a perverse woody sweetness. He draws to a halt, his stomach tightening, tempted to leave again. But the door has already swung closed with a clunk. Instead he makes his way to the stairs that lead up to the Biblioteca Ludi and the archives. The attendant is making a note; he finishes it before he glances up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Léo Martin. I have permission to work in the archives. From Magister Dryden.’

  The attendant says nothing until he has found the right ledger and flipped to the right page to check his name; then he nods and stands up to unlock the door. So Magister Dryden kept her word; Léo isn’t exactly surprised, but he isn’t grateful, either. She’s the sort of woman he would never have looked at, in his last life – not beautiful or charming, not even amiable – and he resents being indebted. She thinks she owns Montverre, but she was never a scholar here; he’s the Gold Medallist, and one who could have been in her place, now, if – well, if he’d wanted to be. He used to be Minister for Culture, damn it. Why should he—

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes?’ He hopes he wasn’t thinking aloud, in a petulant childish whisper. He summons a reassuring smile to show that he’s not a madman.

  The attendant beckons Léo up a little corkscrew of a staircase, and through another door. Léo never knew that the archive was so big; the room stretches the whole length of the main library beneath, cabinet after cabinet, shelves and shelves of books and files. The assistant says, ‘Do ask me if you need anything,’ without meaning it, and scurries away.

  There are desks set between the cabinets, a long way apart from one another. A few are piled with papers and books, but most are empty. Léo chooses one in mahogany with green leather and gold tooling, next to a low, round window. Rain patters on the glass, and a damp draught slides like a blade around the edge of the central casement. He leans forward and wipes the pane with his sleeve, but all he can see is louring sky and – if he bends at an undignified angle – a glimpse of treetops.