The Betrayals(8)

‘What are you doing?’

The youth looked round. There was something unexpected about his face, something Léo couldn’t put his finger on. ‘Looking,’ he said. The softness of his voice seemed to mock Léo’s rudeness.

‘Looking at what?’

He didn’t answer. Instead he raised his arm, his hand open. Something in the grace of it reminded Léo of the opening gesture of the grand jeu: here, it said, is my creation, which you have no choice but to admire.

Léo squinted. ‘I can’t see anything.’ Then he did.

A cobweb. It was huge, a billowing sail of silver, glinting and flickering as the breeze tugged it back and forth, stretching right across the path. Trembling on every intersection were tiny beads of dew: sparkling blue where the light from the sky caught them, dim and star-ridden in the shadows. Léo stared, full of a strange rush of elation and melancholy that was like home-sickness for somewhere he’d never been. It was the feeling he got when he watched a perfect grand jeu – and this was as symmetrical and intricate as a game, a perfect classical game. He wanted to have discovered it himself; if this other boy hadn’t been here …

He stepped forward – felt the infinitesimal cling of threads on his face – and through. A broken shred of gauze clung to his sleeve.

‘Didn’t you see? You tore right through – there was a spider’s web.’

‘Oh,’ he said, picking the grey strands off his coat. ‘Right. Is that what you were gaping at?’

‘It was beautiful,’ the other scholar said, as if it was an accusation.

Léo shrugged. ‘I have to get going,’ he said, and jerked his chin towards the path that led upwards. ‘I guess I’ll see you around.’

He felt the scholar stare after him. But what else was he supposed to do? The cobweb had been across the whole path; someone would have ripped it down eventually. He refused to let it bother him. He was on his way up to the school, and he was going to be first.

And in the excitement of going through the gates and crossing the famous threshold he almost forgot about that encounter. Then later, when he was trying to find his way from the scholars’ corridor down to the dining hall, Felix had bounded towards him, hand outstretched, and said, all in one breath, ‘Are you new too? I’m Felix Weber, I’m lost, this place is a maze, let’s try this way,’ and they turned down a new passage as a door opened further along. There, heavy-eyed and dishevelled, was the young man he’d met on the path. Automatically Léo’s eyes went to the name above the door. Aimé Carfax de Courcy. ‘It’s you,’ he said, stupidly. ‘Hello.’

‘I’m Felix Weber,’ Felix said. ‘We’re going to find something to eat. Are you a first-year too?’

He glanced at Léo, and then nodded. ‘Carfax,’ he said.

‘Carfax de Courcy?’ Léo said, pointing to the neat white-painted lettering. ‘De Courcy, as in, the Lunatic of London Library?’

‘Edmund Dundale de Courcy was my grandfather.’

Léo whistled through his teeth. A perverse bolt of envy went through him. What wouldn’t he have given to be here by birthright, not just exam results? He grinned, trying to conceal it. ‘Well, I hope the porters frisked you for matches.’

Carfax looked at him, unsmiling. Without a word he pushed past them both and disappeared round the corner.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ Léo said. He’d only been trying to be funny; surely no one should be that sensitive about something that happened decades ago? ‘It was a joke.’

‘Obviously inherited the crazy strain,’ Felix said, and caught his eye. They both started to laugh at the same time, Felix with a high yelping giggle that echoed off the walls.

But it was true, Léo thinks now. Wasn’t it? The signs were bloody obvious, even then.

He opens his eyes. The sudden brightness is dazzling; he blinks and wipes away automatic tears. After a moment the bleached wavering shapes settle into houses and trees.

He catches a movement at the edge of his vision. A man moves backwards into a patch of shade; a second later he drops to one knee and fumbles with his shoelaces. But although his head is bent, his eyes keep flicking back to Léo. He stays where he is for an improbably long time before he gets to his feet and lights a cigarette. The smoke drifts along the path, greyish in the sunshine.

A watcher. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. But somehow it does, a sick shock of outrage rising in Léo’s belly. He wants to shout or throw a stone, as though the man’s a vulture he can scare away. He clenches his jaw. Stupid. Childish. Of course they’d send someone to follow him; of course they want to be sure he goes to Montverre. Possibly it’s a kind of courtesy to have let him spot the surveillance: or a warning. Do as you’re told. Otherwise there are steep cliffs and treacherous paths … He holds on to the fury, because he knows that underneath he’s afraid; and when he turns and walks down the path to the village – passing so close he nearly knocks the cigarette to the ground – it’s the other man who flinches, and he’s glad.

He orders the car for an hour earlier. He has lunch in the hotel restaurant, looking out at the slope of the village, watching the rising trail of steam as the next train puffs into the station and away again. More first-years pour into the streets as he sips bad coffee and brandy. At last the clock chimes, and he pays his bill and makes his way out to the car. The chauffeur has already loaded his suitcases. He gets in and shuts his eyes. The road up the mountain is as steep and bumpy as he remembered. A tune goes round and round in his head, almost but not quite keeping time with the potholes. The Bridges of K?nigsberg, again. He opens his eyes and looks out of the window, trying to distract himself, but the game has taken hold of him and won’t go away. The bloody tune, the move into the Eulerian path, the mathematical proof, the sweep of Prussian history … It’s ungainly, awkward, and he’s always hated it. It’s the most overrated game ever played. As they drive up the final bend and come within sight of the gates, it reaches a crescendo. The chauffeur gets out of the car and knocks on the porters’ door to ask them to open the gates, and Léo gets out too, suddenly desperate for some fresh air. The music sings in his ears. He turns to look back the way they came, down towards the valley, the forest and the scattered waterfalls, the road disappearing out of sight. It’s almost the view he had from his cell when he was a scholar. The air is thinner up here and it’s hard to breathe.