The Betrayals(18)
The Magister Domus smiled. He wasn’t the same Magister Domus who had been there ten years ago, when Léo was a scholar; this one was plump and younger, with a placid look on his face that made Léo want to take him by the collar and shake him. ‘You don’t understand, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘We don’t have any other rooms suitable for a guest.’
‘I’ll sleep in a cell, I don’t care.’
‘I’m sorry. Those are the only rooms we can offer you.’
Léo stared at him. In his office, he would have sacked someone for a flat refusal, especially if it came with a smile; here, he felt his own helplessness, as if suddenly his fingers had decided not to button up his flies. ‘If it’s a question of money …?’
‘Not at all. It’s an honour to offer you our hospitality,’ the Magister said. ‘I’m very sorry not to be able to help.’ He nodded, with deliberate courtesy. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me … I must hurry, the clock has to be wound every morning. It’s never run down in two hundred years.’
Léo watched him go, feeling queasy and murderous. He was too used to having enemies to mistake hostility when he saw it; but to encounter it here, at Montverre, when they should have been grateful to have him … He straightened his tie, as if someone was watching, and walked down the corridor back to his rooms with his hands in his pockets, whistling the tune of a risqué ballad.
Now he crosses to the washstand and splashes his face until the grit washes out of the corners of his eyes. He pulls on a shirt and trousers. He fumbles for a match and strikes it, squinting at the flare of the flame, and then lights the lamp. If he reads, eventually he’ll fall asleep. But he’s long since finished the detective novel he bought at the station. He picks up the lamp and takes it out into the corridor before he remembers that the library will be shut for the night; but he can’t bring himself to go back to his room. Instead he goes down the staircase into the little cloister that joins the clock tower to the Magisters’ building. Summer is over: out here the night air is chilly and has the clean, sharp scent of autumn coming, with winter on its tail. He pushes the heavy door open and turns right, past the Magisters’ Entrance, past the music rooms and offices, up the spiral staircase, and into the wider passage of the scholars’ wing. The Square Tower houses the scholars’ cells; he turns in the other direction, towards the classrooms. He has only been up here once since he arrived, one morning when he was pacing the corridor and paused outside the grand jeu classroom to listen. Now he walks to the classroom door, puts his hand on the doorknob, and hesitates. He’s half afraid that he’ll open the door on a silent class, turning to look at him with vacant eyes. The image sends a shiver down his back. It’s the lack of sleep, and the lamplight, sowing shadows in the corners of the corridor. If he walks away it’ll be cowardice, or hysteria. He throws the door open with a kind of daring flourish: and of course the room is empty, quiet, the moonlight spilling through the windows so strongly he can see every outline, every desk and chair. There’s no need for the lamp; he puts it down on the windowsill in the corridor, and goes into the classroom without it.
It’s changed since he was last here. When Holt was Magister Ludi the walls were covered in diagrams and charts and grand jeu scores: but as Léo looks round there’s nothing on them but austere planes of moonlight. The notation graph has gone. Even the blackboard is wiped clean. He runs his hand along the shelf below it to feel the thick softness of chalk dust on his fingertips.
Then, without knowing why, he goes down the aisle to the desk beside the window and sits down. It’s the same desk, his desk: the same nick beside the inkwell, the same scars and dents, the same L carved into the top. He touches it, like a blind man trying to read, and his heart gives a thud. He remembers scratching an old pen-nib into the wood, one lesson early in Vernal Term of his first year, anticipating two hours of boredom while they critiqued other people’s sketches for grands jeux. He had his head down, listening with half an ear to Carfax summarising his ouverture. Carfax’s games were always clever – and flashy, as well – but Léo was determined not to show any interest; when he’d presented his own sketch a few days before, Carfax had watched with insolent attention, suggesting improvement after improvement with overstated courtesy until Magister Holt sighed and said, ‘Perhaps … someone else …?’ Léo knew he wouldn’t be able to retaliate in kind – Carfax was the top of the class, week after week – but at least he could pretend complete indifference. And later, when they were at dinner, there would be a joke or a snide comment to be made, another opportunity to balance the score. He drove the point of the nib across the grain of the wood, deepening the bottom line of the L. On the dais, Carfax cleared his throat and said, ‘So I’ve decided to focus on the first development of the musical theme, and the transition into the lyric element …’
Léo kept his pen moving, scraping splinters out of the groove he’d made. In a moment it would be clear enough to last for years, and he could move on to the E.
‘So with that overview, we have the introduction of the first theme: the potato.’
Léo looked up. Felix caught his eye and gave a tiny, bemused shrug; other scholars were repressing smiles. Carfax had noticed their reaction – you could see that from the way his eyes swept across the room – but his composure didn’t flicker. He used his notes to gesture, with the insouciant authority that set Léo’s teeth on edge. ‘We begin with an exploration of musical notation as both itself and an almost literal pictogram: that is, the semibreve acts as a kind of pun, providing both the melody and a portrait of the potato. Thus—’ He demonstrated the musical theme: a single dull thump of a note, repeated. It was like something heavy falling into a bucket. For a few bars everyone sat silent, watching him; and then the first snort came from Dupont in the back row. It set off a ripple of smothered amusement. Carfax tilted his head, with a tiny acknowledgement.