The Betrayals(75)

‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘Don’t be. Please.’

‘It’s been quite a day. I’m so tired. I haven’t slept for ages, thinking about this blasted game. Yes, the Midsummer Game,’ she adds, when he raises his eyebrows. She leans against the desk and pushes the chair towards him. ‘Sit down, please.’

‘Thanks,’ he says. It feels strange to sit while she’s standing.

She takes a deep breath, tapping her fingernails against the neck of the bottle. Then, suddenly, she says, ‘I haven’t got anything. You understand? I’ve got to perform the Midsummer Game in two months, and I haven’t got anything. Not an idea. Not a title. A blank page. I’m terrified.’

There’s a silence. He bows his head, turns his glass between his hands, watching the lamplight roll through the liquid. ‘I see,’ he says, almost under his breath.

‘I have to write it. But I – oh, if I—’ Her voice cracks. He glances up, confused. She’s staring at the window, at her own reflection, with an expression of … what is it? Longing, he thinks, but it doesn’t make any sense.

He says, ‘Have you ever written a joint game?’ Somehow he doesn’t think she’d be a natural: she’s too rigid, too prickly, too passionate. She’d be worse than Carfax. He takes a mouthful of brandy, so big that he has to concentrate to swallow. He doesn’t want to think about Carfax. Certainly not now, when he’s here with her. With the Magister. Ha. How absurd, that even in his head he calls her that. Surely by now he should be calling her by her name. Claire.

She raises the bottle to her lips, but she doesn’t tilt it to drink. She breathes out, and the air rings hollowly across the glass. ‘No,’ she says. ‘No.’

‘It’ll be all right,’ he says. ‘I mean … I could help. If you wanted.’

‘You?’ The edge in her voice flicks him on the raw. Perhaps he is being vain to imagine that he has anything worth contributing, but she could at least pretend to be grateful.

‘It would still be your game,’ he says. ‘I know that.’

‘How humble of you.’ She flicks him a glance. ‘Would it give you a thrill, to know that there’s a Midsummer Game that you’d partly written?’

He’s about to demur, as if it’s the sort of thing that might happen to him every day; then the words suddenly come into focus. A Midsummer Game that he’d partly written. He wouldn’t be standing up himself, as Magister Ludi, but it would be the next best thing. He imagines sitting there, heart beating in his mouth and fingertips, and the joy of seeing his own ideas come into being. Feeling the silence and attention – a whole hall of the finest minds of the grand jeu – form a game out of the Magister’s gestures, like hands in clay. Collective worship, centred on something he’d made. And at the centre of it all, Claire.

He blows out his breath. There’s no point pretending. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘My God, yes.’

She grins. He grins back. As if it’s a joke, that he’s being honest. That she’s right. He wants to laugh. He laughs, and she joins in. He’s been trying to forget the wave of desire that caught him off guard, weeks ago – he told himself it was nothing, a mere brainstorm – but now it’s back, stronger than ever; not that he would ever do anything about it, but it sweeps through him, fierce and heady as the brandy. This is how it felt with Carfax, on the good days: as though they had made their own language. All the words in the world falling into place. It shouldn’t take him by surprise; but it does, it still does.

‘Let me help you,’ he says. ‘Please.’ He hadn’t realised how long he’s been longing to say it: but now the words are out, he knows that they’ve been brewing for weeks. About a month ago she took an old-fashioned partition out of its file in the archive, spreading out the fragile paper on a desk to show him the eighteenth-century notation, and they bent over it together, their heads hardly an inch apart. He can remember the brush of her gown against his sleeve and the soft wisp of hair clinging to a tiny scar below her ear. She was so close he couldn’t concentrate on what she was explaining to him. It was only when she stood up straight and rolled her neck that he noticed how tired she looked, and heard the pauses as she searched for the right words. At that moment he wanted to smooth out the line between her eyebrows with his thumb; he wanted to present her with her own Midsummer Game, neatly written out, just missing a few diacritics. Perfume was all very well, but he wanted to give her a miracle. He wants one back.

‘I’m Magister Ludi. I have to write it myself.’

‘I know. I’m not suggesting … I only want to help.’ He knocks back the last of his brandy, and holds out his glass. She smiles as she fills it up again, but her eyes are still on his face, and still serious. ‘Trust me,’ he says. ‘I promise it’ll be all right.’

‘I don’t need a knight in shining armour.’

‘Of course. Of course not.’ He reaches out and takes hold of her wrist. She freezes. They both look down at his fingers on her skin. ‘Your brother,’ he says, suddenly breathless, ‘your brother would tell you to say yes. If he were you, he’d let me help.’

She blinks, twice. ‘Would he,’ she says, but it isn’t a question. ‘I wish I could be so sure.’