The Betrayals(16)

‘Tell me, Mr Martin … It has occurred to me to wonder whether your admirable work ethic is driven by a rivalry between you and Mr de Courcy.’

He waited, but it wasn’t a question so I didn’t answer.

‘From what I have observed, that rivalry strikes me as somewhat … unfriendly. Am I right?’

‘I don’t particularly like him.’

‘I believe I know the reason for that.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Magister.’ Lucky I was still holding all my books, or I’d have been tempted to pick up the volume of Hondius on his desk and hit him over the head with it. I thought he was going to say something else, so I added, ‘I don’t think anyone likes him much, to be honest.’

‘A shame. I believe you could learn a lot from each other.’

I didn’t reply.

‘I’m sorry. I see that I have upset you.’

‘I’m not upset.’

‘No doubt you need your lunch.’ He took a step back and gestured to the door. ‘Anyway, Mr Martin … Welcome back to Montverre.’

I wrote all that down this afternoon and then went off to meditation, but I’m still furious. What gives him the right to judge me? My life isn’t a game that he gets to mark out of a hundred and pontificate on. If he wants to dispense his infinite wisdom he can stick to his bloody grands jeux.

Right. I’m going back to the library. If the Magister wants authentic, that’s what he’s going to get. It can’t be that hard. I have a cunning plan: I’m going to find the most authentic game ever written and work out how to copy it.

Later

I cannot fucking believe it.

Chapter 4





5: the Magister Ludi


The first-years fall silent as she walks into the classroom for their first grand jeu lesson. She’s late, deliberately; they’re all seated, tense and waiting, unsure of themselves and one another. It’s an art, finding the right moment, before their unease tips over into nervous chatter or bravado, but it’s the same instinct that guides her through a grand jeu, and she knows as she crosses to her dais that her timing is exactly right. She pauses before she looks up. Then she lets her eyes sweep across their faces, noticing who meets her gaze and who looks away, which ones shift in their seats or cross their arms. Which will resent being taught by a woman.

There’s a small movement by the window. It’s a tousle-haired young man with a thin, good-humoured face, fiddling with his collar.

She recognises him. Simon – Charpentier, is it? She was at his viva. He was charming then, incoherent with enthusiasm, stumbling over his words. He described the Four Seasons as if no one else had ever heard of it. The thought of it makes her want to smile, now. ‘It’s the way it isn’t – it shows how music and maths and – it’s all different but it isn’t, it’s still the game, the game is—’ he’d said, and stuttered to a halt. She’d leant forward, in the pause, and said, ‘I think, Mr Charpentier, you’re talking about beauty.’ Yes. He was so young; but everyone is, to start with.

Abruptly he realises what he’s doing and drops his hand, ducking his head. He was trying to cover a stain – was he? – no, a rip – no. Her heart gives a little flip. There’s a cross sewn to the fabric of his gown. A Christian. She knew that, although she’d forgotten. There’d been a Party official at the viva, too. ‘I’m afraid,’ he’d said, with a sort of sigh, ‘that no matter how enthusiastic you believe yourself to be, there may be a time when you realise that as a Christian you are not quite fitted – and you have your own culture, of course, far be it from me to disparage your faith, it is a very ancient one, if somewhat melodramatic – that, in fact, you cannot participate fully in the life of the grand jeu and thus in the life of Montverre …’ She’d bitten her tongue, raging. Later she’d taken particular pleasure in signing Charpentier’s acceptance letter.

He looks up and registers her eyes lingering on his gown. He shrinks down in his chair, hunching his shoulders so that the cross disappears into a crease of material. There’s something in the gesture that looks habitual. The pang in her chest turns into a deeper misgiving. The crosses have only been law for a few weeks – this is the first time she’s seen one – and yet he has already developed this reflex, to make himself look smaller. She wants to snap at him to sit up straight. Show weakness here, and you’re doomed.

She draws in a long breath. She has given this lesson over and over again, but now for some reason she is hesitating. Part of her wants to speak to Charpentier directly, but what would she say? Launch into a brief history of the grand jeu that explains its origins in the Christian Mass? A diversion into the Cordoba and Jerusalem games, a short essay on the compatibility of scriptural religions with the new forms of worship? That would get her into trouble, but nonetheless it’s hard to resist. We search for the divine everywhere, she could say, and we may find it in the grand jeu or in the liturgy or both. There were grands jeux played in the Hagia Sophia, and in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and at the Western Wall. It is modern arrogance to imagine that the divinity we hope to touch through the grand jeu is better than, or even different to, the deities of other religions. A younger way to worship is not necessarily a better way; nor is it the only way … A brief attack on anyone who can use the grand jeu and its theology as a basis for discrimination, when the whole point of it is humility, attention, silence …? Or on the people (she’s not reckless enough to name the Magister Cartae specifically) who seem to resist regarding it as worship at all, who wince at the word ‘God’ as though it’s embarrassing? Or merely a few acerbic words on the government, and the long years of economic unrest, and its choice of scapegoats?