The Betrayals(49)

Was that the week that Emile sent the bottles of brandy? He can’t remember. He let them gather dust in the corner of his bedroom, and spent hours tracing the motif of the Four Seasons in the light of the Broken Seam hypothesis. He didn’t exactly promise himself not to mention the Magister Ludi again, but the next time he wrote his letter was taken up with a slight that had been related to him, indignantly, by the Magister Cartae, and a nasty incident with the Christian scholar – Charpentier, is it? – in the first year. He even went to the Magister’s door, planning to thank her for the book she’d left in his pigeonhole; but he decided against it at the last moment. He despised himself for wanting to go crawling to her, to appease his own conscience. She’d look at him with a transparent surprise that he thought she’d care … When he woke at night (the bloody clock!) he could see her face, and Carfax’s, two faces that were somehow only one. Had Carfax ever mentioned her? What would he think now, seeing her and Léo together? But there were no answers, and that way madness lay. He made himself get up and study the Broken Seam hypothesis until he was too tired to see straight. The grand jeu was nothing if not a shield.

But he’s leaving tomorrow for the vacation, and suddenly life is prickling in his bones like pins and needles. He doesn’t know what made him pick up one of the bottles of brandy; but he’s standing in front of the Magister Ludi’s door with it in his hand, the glass faintly slick against his palm. This time he doesn’t give himself time to think before he knocks.

There’s a pause before she says, ‘Come in,’ as if she knows who it is.

He opens the door. She’s sitting at her desk, her face turned to him but her pen still poised above the page as if she’s mid-thought. When she sees who it is, she slides a sheet of paper down over her work; although he could have sworn the page was blank.

‘Yes?’

‘Am I disturbing you?’

‘You should have thought about that before you knocked.’

‘Yes, I suppose I should.’

She sighs and screws the cap on to her pen. ‘How can I be of assistance, Mr Martin?’

He has prepared himself for this, but all the same it stings. He isn’t an importunate first-year, for goodness’ sake. He puts the bottle he’s holding on the corner of her desk. ‘I brought you this. To say thank you.’

She blinks. All at once he wants to snatch up the inappropriate bottle, with its foreign label and red wax seal, and leave the room without a backward glance. Or dash it against the wall and leave her picking splinters of green glass off her white robe. But if politics has taught him anything, it’s how to hide humiliation.

‘How kind,’ she says at last.

‘A friend of mine sent it. It’s good. French. I thought perhaps …’ If she were her brother she – he – would reach out for it, scrutinise its provenance and nod, trying not to show his pleasure. And then he’d glance at Léo, at his work, and finally with a reluctant grin he’d rock back on the legs of his chair, casting about for something to drink from.

But she doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. Léo pushes his hands into his pockets. ‘Well, never mind. I thought you were allowed.’

‘I am allowed,’ she says.

‘Good.’ A silence. ‘I’ll leave you to your work.’ He turns to go.

‘Thank you,’ she says, a moment before he gets to the door. ‘I didn’t expect … I haven’t done anything for you, Mr Martin. I dug out a few past papers. You don’t have to give me expensive brandy.’

‘I know. Of course. But I … they were … I enjoyed working on them. You seemed to have spent a great deal of time finding interesting questions, suggesting further reading …’ It takes an effort to smile at her. ‘I’m grateful, that’s all.’

‘I’m a teacher, Mr Martin. I’d do the same for any scholar.’

‘And any scholar should be grateful.’ He tilts his head, in a half-ironic hint at a bow. Ah, this insistence that she has done nothing to be thanked for, that he is pathetic to see any hint of goodwill in her actions … He could hit her. The thought shocks him; he has never hit a woman in his life, and never wanted to before. ‘It’s nothing. I apologise if it seems excessive. I can understand – well, living here, like this, as you do …’ He gestures to the room, the dusty austerity, the snow outside, with casual disdain. ‘But honestly, it’s a trifle. It’s not even terribly good. If I gave a bottle of that stuff to my mistress she’d drop it off the balcony into the street.’

Now it’s easier to smile at her. He squashes a spark of self-contempt; it’s her, making him like this. All he wanted was to be polite.

She draws a long silent breath through parted lips. Then, unexpectedly, she gives a quick snort of amusement, as if they’re playing a game. ‘All right,’ she says. ‘I’m glad you liked the topics. I did look for questions that you’d enjoy.’

‘Did you? How did you know?’ He laughs too; then, abruptly, and too late, he realises that it wasn’t a ploy, a flirtatious suggestion that she knows him inside out. She isn’t Chryse?s. Her face has hardened again, and that momentary warmth is gone.

‘It’s what I give the first-years,’ she says. ‘Those questions sound very imposing, but ultimately they’re rather facile.’