Tracing the Shadow (15 page)

“What have we here…?” Kilian relinquished his hold on the ladder. Jagu felt the ladder sliding away sideways and made a grab for the shelves to stop himself from falling off.

“For heaven’s sake, Kilian, hold on—” The sound of frantic coughing interrupted him.

“Damn. Someone’s coming,” said Kilian, stuffing the object that had fallen from the top shelf into his jacket. Jagu slid down the ladder, burning the palms of his hands in his haste.

“What are you boys doing in here?” To Jagu’s relief, he saw not Père Albin but doddery old Père Servan, who taught classes on the Sacred Texts.

“Er, Père Albin sent us to do some research on the prophets,” said Paol swiftly.

“The prophets? You’re looking in the wrong section.” Père Servan pointed with his walking stick to another stack at the opposite end of the library. “You’ll find no prophets here; these shelves are devoted to the history of the Commanderie and the missions overseas.” He turned to Paol and prodded him in the chest with the end of his stick. “Unless you’re planning to follow in the footsteps of Laorans and join our brothers at the new mission in Serindher?”

“Well, I’ve always dreamed of traveling abroad.” Paol pushed his spectacles back up onto the bridge of his nose.

“It’s not the traveling, it’s the desire to spread the holy word that should inspire you,” said Père Servan severely. “Have you young men today no sense of vocation?” He shook his head and continued on past Jagu and Kilian, muttering under his breath, “No spiritual rigor!”

Paol caught Jagu’s eye and gave a quick nod. The boys moved toward the library doors, slowly at first, then quickening their pace before Père Servan asked any more questions.

Outside in the empty corridor, the boys huddled together to examine their discovery.

“It’s just another book,” said Kilian, disappointed.

“What did you expect to find in a library?”

“I thought that magus might have made his bird conceal something in there. Something magic—an ‘eye,’ maybe, so that he could spy on us from afar.”

“An eye?” echoed Paol incredulously.

“Not a real flesh-and-jelly eyeball, stupid, some kind of necromantic device. A magic stone.”

“You have a weird imagination,” said Paol. “Why would anyone want to spy on schoolboys?”

Jagu had been wiping sticky cobwebs from the cover of the little book with his handkerchief as the other two bickered. He opened it carefully, prising the first two puckered pages apart. “It’s handwritten,” he said. All his earlier feelings of excitement faded, faced with an almost unintelligible blur.

“How can we read this scrawl?” said Kilian impatiently. “It’s useless.”

Paol peered at it through his awry spectacles. “It’s all blotched. The book must’ve got wet.”

“So why were they keeping it in the library?” Jagu took it back from him and opened another two pages. “Wait…this looks like a date at the top. Monday. Then Wednesday. D’you think it’s a diary?”

The bell for the midday meal began to ring.

“You two scholars can decipher it if you want. I’m starving.” And Kilian, with a careless wave of the hand, hurried off in the direction of the refectory.

Jagu wavered, torn between the need to eat and the desire to find out more about the book. “It’s in our own tongue, at least.” He stared again at the looping script and began to make out words. “Hey, Paol, I can read this bit. ‘Reached the Enhirran border…sunset…the local tribesmen made us welcome…’”

“Enhirre?” said Paol, his eyes wide with surprise behind his round lenses.

The midday bell stopped ringing. Jagu’s empty stomach had begun to rumble.

“Whatever it is, we’ll miss our meal if we don’t hurry.”

During his daily journeys to practice in the organ loft, Jagu had discovered many secret places in the old chapel. Behind the organ loft was a poky little room where piles of dusty choir music were stacked from floor to sloping ceiling in overspilling ledgers. And the steep, claustrophobic spiral stair leading to that room continued on upward until it opened out onto a hidden, sunny lead-lined platform between the sides of the chapel roof that allowed access to the bell tower beyond.

After Jagu had finished his practice, he, Kilian, and Paol hurried up onto the roof. As both the others had been working the bellows for him, no one would question their whereabouts for a little while, affording them some rare free time to examine their discovery without interruption.

“What are you eating?” demanded Paol.

Kilian smiled secretively but didn’t reply.

“Aniseed drops. Don’t deny it, I can smell them on your breath! But how—?”

“One of the Intermediates owed me a favor. He happened to be going into Kemper on an errand, so I made sure he called at the sweetshop on his way back.” Kilian lay back on the sun-warmed lead, hands clasped behind his head, smiling in self-satisfaction.

“An Intermediate student owed
you
?”

“Don’t waste your breath asking, he’s never going to tell,” said Jagu. Kilian had several “business arrangements” with the older boys; Jagu suspected that Kilian had acted as go-between, arranging the occasional forbidden tryst with the girls at the nearby convent school. “The least you could do is share them round, Kilian.”

“Not till you’ve told us about my diary.”

“Yours?
I
found it.”

“Ah, but it fell on
my
head.”

The feathered whisper of wings made Jagu glance round, dreading what he might see. But it was only a pair of collared doves, alighting on the ridge above their heads. “I think,” he said slowly, removing the diary from his pocket, “that it’s Père Laorans’s journal. The master who was sent to Serindher to the new mission. Informal notes, jottings, place names, observations about the local flora and fauna…”

“And that’s interesting because…?” Kilian’s eyes were closed; he appeared to be half dozing in the sunshine.

“There’s some really gruesome stuff about the magi of Ondhessar. It says they practice soul-stealing.”

Kilian rolled over onto his stomach and grabbed the journal from Jagu, eyes moving avidly over the intricately looping handwriting. “I’ll bet this never made it into the official record of the mission.”

“Read it out aloud!” insisted Paol.

“Then don’t blame me if you can’t sleep tonight.” Kilian rolled his eyes dramatically. Then in a hushed voice he began to intone, “‘In the moonlight, a strange yet chilling sight was revealed. Many ruined towers lay below, the last vestiges of a lost, ancient civilization. At this point our guides refused to go any farther. They told us that the hidden valley was haunted by soul-stealing
ghaouls
who preyed upon the unwary traveler. One, Jhifar, related how he had once been unwise enough to enter the valley with his brothers. At nightfall, the eerie sound of a woman’s singing began to issue from one of the ruined towers below. It was so strange yet so beautiful that the eldest brother went in search of the singer. Later he returned to their campfire. “You must come with me and hear her sing,” he told them. They followed him but as they drew near to the first of the towers, a host of shadow birds swooped down upon them, feeding upon their life essence, sucking out their souls, while the shell that had been Jhifar’s brother looked on and laughed. The evil magi had made him their puppet to lure the unwary travelers into their trap to feed their accursed shadow birds.’”

“Um…what was it you said about the magus in the garden?” said Paol with a slight quiver in his voice. “Didn’t he have a bird with him?”

“Surely you don’t believe any of this, do you?” Kilian looked up over the top of the book. “Ooh, Jagu, poor little Paol’s scared. I don’t think we should read any more, in case he has nightmares.”

“Cut it out.” Paol made a swipe at Kilian and snatched the journal from him. “‘Even more obscene is the rite Jhifar described to us,’” he continued in a loud voice, “‘to initiate a new member into the secret cult of soul stealers.’” He squinted at the book, turning it upside down. “It’s illegible. Pity. Something about a fresh corpse…and its tongue—”

“Give it here.” Jagu took the journal back and turned to the passage that had been puzzling him.

“Are you planning on boring us to death, Jagu?” Kilian got to his feet and stretched. “Since when were you so keen on ancient history?” He went to the edge of parapet and leaned over to scan the courtyard below.

“I haven’t got to the curse yet.”

“There was a curse?”

Paol crept up behind Kilian, hand reaching toward his jacket pocket.

“The guides told Père Laorans that anyone who entered the hidden valley would be cursed by the magi, fade away, and die.”

Paol made a sudden move and snatched the bag of aniseed drops from Kilian’s pocket.

“Give those back!” Kilian made a lunge but Paol was too swift. Crowing with delight, he darted away and disappeared down the stairwell, with Kilian hurrying after. Jagu sighed and followed.

“So you’re Jagu de Rustéphan.” Henri de Joyeuse was standing in the music room, one hand resting on the worn ivory keys of the fortepiano. “I’ve heard much about your gift.”

Jagu opened his mouth and stammered a few words of greeting. “And I—I’ve heard so much about you.” The fortepiano stood half in shadow and he could not quite distinguish Maistre de Joyeuse’s features. His hair was fair, pale as ripening summer barley, and far longer than any priest’s in the seminary, tied back at the nape of the neck with a black ribbon.

But what was I expecting? He trained in Lutèce. He must have adopted the fashions of the royal court.

“Perhaps you’d like to play something for me.” The Maistre’s voice was softly modulated, yet unusually kindly in tone for a teacher.

“What, now?” Jagu had not expected this. “But I’m supposed to show you round the seminary.”

“The tour can wait. I’m eager to hear you play first.” Joyeuse moved away from the keyboard, gesturing to Jagu to take his place.

Jagu felt suddenly unsure of himself. “What shall I play?”

“Whatever you like.”

Jagu’s mind blanked for a moment. And then he remembered the prelude he’d been practicing that morning, the fifth of six by Marais, where the familiar melody of an old plainchant hymn to Saint Argantel was woven through an intricate pattern of running notes. It required both dexterity and control to let the melody sing through the decorative figuration and Jagu had been working on it for months, refusing to be defeated by its difficulty.

Maybe it was a rash choice. Maybe he wasn’t ready to perform it yet. But it was a piece that he cared about, that he had labored over for a long time. He raised his hands over the keys and saw to his shame that they trembled. Yet as soon as fingers touched the familiar yellowed keys, his nerves melted away. Absorbed in the demands of the prelude, he forgot that Maistre de Joyeuse was watching him until he played the final chord.

“Marais’s Fifth Prelude?” Joyeuse was smiling. “You’ve mastered the technical difficulties extremely well for a student of your age.”

Jagu heard the words as he surfaced from a trance of deep concentration. He felt himself blush with pleasure at the compliment and swiftly lowered his head.

“But there’s so much more to this piece than just playing the notes. Listen…” Jagu slid off the stool to make way for him. “Close your eyes.”

Jagu obeyed. The prelude began to reveal itself beneath Joyeuse’s swift, sure fingers. The plainchant melody sang through the gentle patter of notes, like birdsong heard through falling rain. Joyeuse made it sound so effortless. When he had finished, Jagu did not know what to say. Now he wanted to blush with shame at the clumsiness of his own playing.

“How about that tour of the school?” Joyeuse closed the lid and stood up. “I hear the new chapel organ is a fine instrument.”

“Oh. Of course. Please follow me, Maistre.” Jagu didn’t know whether he felt grateful or disappointed that there was to be no further analysis of his playing tonight. As Jagu held open the door, Maistre de Joyeuse stopped and put his hand on Jagu’s shoulder. “You’re young, Jagu. To play that prelude as Marais intended, one must have lived a little.”

Jagu stared up at him, not understanding. Maistre de Joyeuse was smiling at him again, an enigmatic smile, reserved, yet kindly. None of the priests had ever treated him with kindness; they controlled the boys with strictness and frequent applications of the cane. As Jagu led Maistre Joyeuse from the music room, he was not sure whether he knew how to handle the situation. He was used to resenting and fearing his teachers.

Paol climbed slowly up a library ladder, carrying a pile of books. In Père Magloire’s absence, Abbé Houardon had arranged a library roster and the senior prefects had been deputed to ensure that the boys did not shirk their duties. And the seniors preferred to send the youngest ones to tidy the highest shelves, while they lounged about at the front desk, “keeping an eye on things.” Anyone—like Kilian—who dared to argue was dismissed with a cuff and extra duties. But this afternoon, the library was deserted, as the senior students were being examined on their knowledge of the Holy Texts.

“Take care, Jagu.” Paol was just leaning out to replace the last well-thumbed volume when a quavering voice called out. He grabbed at the ladder, almost losing his balance. He looked down and saw the Père Magloire peering up at him through cloudy spectacle lenses.

“I’m Paol, mon père. Jagu is showing a visitor around the seminary, so I’ve taken his duty instead.”

“Ah well, I suppose you will have to do for now…”

“Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, thank you, Paol.” The elderly librarian was smiling at him and nodding.

Paol reached the bottom rung of the ladder. “It’s good to see you back in the library.”

“And it’s good to be back. Although there are misplaced books everywhere I look,” said Père Magloire, pointing to a nearby shelf. “Someone has mixed the saints up with the prophets.” He pulled out a thick volume. “And since when have the learned commentaries of Erquy been classified as mathematical theorems?”

“I’ll sort them out for you.” As Paol knelt down, he thought he saw a flicker of shadow out of the corner of his eye. He blinked. A bird must have fluttered across the window blinds…