The Betrayals(67)

‘How come you know so much about it?’

‘I don’t know. My— someone probably told me. Lots of the players were women, incidentally. Gransen and Gransen were sisters. And there were a lot of married couples. In an adversarial game, no one could pretend it had all been written by the husband.’

‘I don’t get it. How can the grand jeu be competitive? I mean – was there a point system? How did they know how to score?’ I reached over to make a note of the names. ‘I can’t imagine what it would look like. Is it like an antiphon? Or harmony?’

‘Go and read the books, Martin. I can’t explain it to you.’

I scowled at him, and he grinned.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Imagine you’re playing the Bridges of K?nigsberg. No, bear with me,’ he added, as I stifled a groan. ‘You’re in the middle of the first movement, trundling, as it were, over the eternal bridges.’

‘Resisting the urge to throw myself into the Pregel.’

‘Yes, and you’re pausing before the node where the historical motif comes in.’

‘Please, put me out of my misery …’

‘Concentrate, Martin. Now, you’ve just completed that measure. But, as it happens, you’re not playing the Bridges of K?nigsberg as we know it, you’re playing an adversarial game against, let’s say, Felix. Who stands up with a gesture called the assauture – stop me if I’m patronising you – which looks like this.’ He sketched an unfamiliar flourish. ‘And then, being Felix, he decides that the best way to proceed is to elaborate on the literal map of K?nigsberg, restate the original motif, introduce something only tenuously relevant, and then step back with the conjuration, inviting you to proceed.’ He paused in the middle of his impersonation and added, ‘Control yourself, please.’

I was sniggering like a kid, but I couldn’t help it. His mimicry was uncanny.

‘Or perhaps your opponent is Emile, who will slip in sideways,’ he said, demonstrating a sort of wriggle, ‘and perform something so obscure it’s impossible to say exactly what it is, and then go completely blank and look at you as if expecting more from him is only showing your ignorance.’

‘Stop it—’

‘Or …’ He was laughing by now, too, although not as much as I was. ‘Or Paul, who’d go straight for the maths and sort of stamp it into a circle like a dog getting ready to lie down.’

‘I can’t bear it, it’s like they’re in the room.’

‘Or if it was the Magister Cartae, he’d make sure you’d understood your own work by repeating it back to you, and then step back and glare without adding anything new, and you’d flounder like an idiot, because anything you did would get reflected straight back …’ He tried to go on, but the giggles had caught up with him. It made me laugh even harder.

For a few seconds we couldn’t speak. Then I took a deep breath. ‘Like the bridges in the water. Back and forth. The same, only another voice – the—’ I stopped.

‘What’s up?’

I was suddenly sober. At least, I had that rising, queasy feeling in my gut, the quick heartbeat, the shivers. An idea. Like falling in love.

‘Will you – I’ve had a thought. Go away. I need to write it down.’

Anyone else would have asked a question. Carfax made an obeisance like a genie from the Arabian Nights, handed me the pencil I’d thrown at him, and disappeared.

Reflections. Left-handedness and right-handedness, symmetries, canon. Abstract, but with hints of imagery – the trembling of water, the sharp edges of a mirror, a modulated section on shadows. Echoes. No narrative. Or, if there is, only hints and fragments. The sense of a voice answering itself. Clear, clean, classical. Lucid, transparent. The opposite of the Danse Macabre.

I know Carfax didn’t exactly give me the idea – I mean, not like a present, he wasn’t deliberately handing inspiration to me like a parcel – but I feel so absurdly grateful I want to stand outside his room and serenade him. Maybe Magister Holt was right to make us work together. Maybe, after all, he knew what he was doing, the wily old crosser.

Chapter 20





21: Léo


He leans back, puts his hands behind his head, and watches sunlit drops of water flashing past the window. He’s been working, but the falling gleams kept catching his eye, and now he can’t bring himself to go back to his book. He’s restless. It’s not the end of winter, not by a long way, but on the end of every icicle there’s a trembling bead of light; and for the first time this year the air carries the scent of water and earth. This morning, when he crossed the court to the refectory, the sun struck his face with real warmth. Suddenly the short mountain days are opening like buds, heralding the spring. He knows that the weather can be treacherous, that it can plunge Montverre back into winter, refreeze the waterfalls, blanket the shabby snow with another layer … But all the same, his spirits rise. Soon – well, fairly soon – there will be wide green slopes instead of this endless monochrome. Wild flowers, the scent of herbs on the breeze, birdsong. And as the days lengthen the Magisters will look more and more harassed, tempers will run high, scholars will come to blows in the library over choice volumes. Spring will turn to summer; they’ll hand in their games and take their exams. For years, Léo has paused in his work on hot summer days to look up at a cloudless sky and be glad he wasn’t in the Lesser Hall, sweating over an exam paper that wrinkled and stuck to his hand as he tried to write; but this year he feels different. He’s almost nostalgic. Almost.