The Betrayals(117)

Léo walks to the door and opens it. He holds Emile’s gaze, and waits.

Emile nods. He moves to the door, passing closer to Léo than he needs to. He pauses, his face a hand’s breadth from Léo’s. ‘Goodbye, traitor,’ he says, and smiles.





39: the Rat


After the black ones leave, the corridors should be quiet. But this year there are people, new people, chattering and rustling like termites, spilling into the courtyards and wandering at night. They aren’t black or grey or white ones, they are brown and green and stone-coloured. They murmur. They get lost; once, catching sight of her at the far end of a narrow gallery, one called out to ask her where the lavatories were. He had glasses that glinted moonlight; when she froze, he took them off and peered at her. She ran away, and he didn’t follow, but that feeling of visibility stuck to her skin like grime. He thought she was human. She’s not human.

She doesn’t know what to do. A rat would eat when it was hungry, rest when it was tired, shit and scratch and yawn without thinking. But the world has changed. She can’t stop wondering about Simon, and whether he’s still alive and huddled in the room under the eaves; and about the dark-headed dangerous one, the one she recognised. They lurk at opposite ends of her mind, so whichever way she looks she is afraid. She tells herself that soon they will be gone, and it will be quiet again: the long, quiet, lonely summer, when the grey ones lock doors and cover furniture in white sheets. When the building is empty, her head will be, too.

Then there is a morning when the bell rings on and on. It isn’t an alarm. Although it’s daylight she creeps out to look. More men than she’s ever seen are crowded in the courtyard; slowly they clump and ooze through the doorway to the Great Hall, until there are hardly any left. Black shiny vehicles arrive purring and spit out some more. These new ones are fatter and smoother. They bray and gesticulate as they follow the others. Finally a single straggler hurries across the black-and-white, and disappears after them. Not long afterwards the bell stops chiming. She imagines them in rows on the benches, surrounding that silver-edged panel of stone. But there is no way of knowing why, or what they are trying to achieve. She waits, hunched in the warmth of a windowsill, but the door is closed. Whatever arcane human mystery takes place in that hall, she is shut out. Dust swirls in the courtyard. Nothing else moves.

She goes back to her nest. Sometime later there is a stormy feeling in the air, sounds of confusion and men’s voices, things having gone out of joint. She lets them wash into her ears and away again like a tide. Later still she emerges, turning her head from side to side as if she can hear someone calling. No one is calling. Nevertheless she finds herself creeping out into the open. She has food and water in her nest – the kitchens were well-stocked, so she took as much as she could, enough to be able to hide for days – but she can’t stay there. It is too like being small again, watching the roof inch down towards her open eyes. Is that how Simon feels? It gives her a strange, seasick feeling to wonder what he’s thinking, as if she’s spilling out of her body.

A rat wouldn’t take the risk. But she keeps moving. And although she takes a roundabout route, she gets closer and closer to the room under the eaves. Her mind is blank; she doesn’t have a plan, or even an intention. She wants to see Simon, that’s all.

And then she rounds a corner and the fat dark-haired man is standing there. She turns to stone, except for her heart. She is safe in the bars of light and shadow, camouflaged by a cage of moonlight. In a moment he will look away and she will run.

Then he speaks. He says, ‘Simon Charpentier. Yes?’

A split second. A wave of vertigo goes through her as though he might be addressing her. No. But for the first time she feels the absence of her own name. She isn’t Simon, but who is she? Her mother’s voice: darling, sweetheart. But those aren’t names. She has time to feel a kind of human, unfamiliar panic. What injury is this, that she hasn’t noticed before?

Another voice answers.

‘I – yes. Who are you?’

Simon. He’s there, at the far end of the passage. His voice is thin and hoarse, as though his windpipe has begun to corrode. He steps into a patch of light. He is shaking, and pale; his shirt is spattered with bile-coloured flecks. What is he doing here? He should be hidden. She wants to call out to him, to warn him: the only clever thing is to run. But he won’t.

‘You know people thought you’d got lost in the mountains?’ The man leans his elbow on the banister and looks at him sideways. ‘Where have you been lurking? I suppose someone’s been helping you. Bringing you food and so on.’

‘I’ve been … I found some. Enough.’

‘Ah, I thought Léo Martin was taking an interest. Or was it Magister Dryden?’

‘No.’ His croak barely reaches the Rat’s ears. Run, she wants to say, run.

The man smiles. ‘In any case,’ he says, ‘I’m glad I’ve finally tracked you down. How about we get you to the infirmary? No offence, but you don’t look like you’re in tip-top condition.’

‘What?’

‘You can’t go on like this, Simon, can you? Now don’t worry, I’m not going to get the police involved. They’re thugs. I understand why you wanted to avoid them.’ He chuckles, and the Rat’s lips curl away from her teeth. ‘Let’s get you checked over, and then we’ll see what we can do to get you home.’