before and after it. A handful of boys who arrived before us look up and Charlot makes introductions. All nod and I realise Charlot’s amused approval is enough to ensure we belong. There are desks, tables, old chairs missing half their stuffing. A suit of armour rots quietly in one corner. Since it’s far older than the school someone obviously brought it here. A deer’s skull with a spread of impressive antlers looks down from one wall. A boar’s skull, missing one tusk, sits on a desk I realise Charlot has claimed when he drops languidly into a wooden chair and leans back to examine the ceiling. ‘Killed it myself,’ he says, seeing my gaze.
‘With the help of a dozen huntsman, his father’s hounds and a musketeer on hand to shoot the beast in case little Charlot misplants his spear.’
Charlot blushes and then laughs. ‘I was eleven,’ he protests. ‘My mother was anxious.’
‘Your mother is always anxious.’
For a second I think Charlot is offended by Jerome’s comment, but he shrugs at its fairness. ‘Mothers usually are.’ He turns to me. ‘Let’s ask our philosopher. Wouldn’t you say that, in the general run of things, mothers are anxious?’
‘In the general run of things, perhaps.’
‘Yours is not?’
‘Mine is dead,’ I say. ‘My father also.’
I could have added that the only mother I’d met – apart from Madame Faure, who didn’t count – was Emile’s, and she was stubborn, ambitious, built like a brick wall, and told her husband what to do, for all she was unfailingly kind to me. To say that would have been unfair to Emile, however.
‘Your parents are dead?’
I nodded, and the room waited to see how far Charlot would push this. Already he was our leader; taller, blonder, unquestionably grander. But it was more than that. We were newly arrived at a strange school, mostly strangers to each other, and we would be required to fight to order in the dorms that night. But Charlot behaved as if he’d been here for ever. As if the coming fight were a minor inconvenience to be dealt with when it arose. His utter confidence calmed us. ‘How?’ he asked.
‘The philosopher’s question.’
Charlot’s grin was approving. ‘And when?’ he said.
‘I was five, maybe six . . .’ I was too ashamed to say they’d starved to death in the ruins of a house they’d mortgaged deep into debt. ‘My brother died in the Lowlands. They’d bought him a commission in the cavalry. It was his first battle. They never recovered.’
‘They died of grief ?’
I shrugged. It was better than hunger.
Charlot looked at Jerome, who shrugged in his turn.
‘And your home?’ Charlot persisted.
‘Ransacked,’ I said. It was a grand word for a slow procession of shuffling jacques who wouldn’t meet my gaze, if they bothered to look in my direction at all. They’d arrived like ants, in a line, carrying away whatever they could on their backs. The house, the stables and the outbuildings had been stripped bare by the time le Régent arrived. I had no idea why they didn’t take the horse. Looking up, I realised I still had the room’s attention whether I wanted it or not. ‘By peasants. The duc d’Orléans hanged them.’
‘Le Régent?’
‘He found my mother and father dead.’
‘And you?’ Jerome asks. ‘You were where?’
‘Eating beetles.’ Seeing his surprise, I say, ‘I was hungry. I was five.’
They nod, the boys in that room. They nod and mutter comments from the corner of their mouths, and someone offers me a slice of cake, as if I might be hungry still. The talk turns to what they’ve brought from home – cakes and cheeses, fresh bread, dried dates, a sweetmeat made from egg white and candied fruit – and I realise this school, this college, has proper holidays and pupils who have real homes. Emile no longer seems so exotic.
‘I didn’t know we were allowed to bring food,’ he whispers.
‘You will next time.’
The fight that night is fierce and ritualised.
The bigger boys face off against each other, the smaller boys match themselves – those, like Emile, who don’t really want to fight at all, find others who feel the same and pretend. We let them creep into our dorm an hour after lights out and then throw ourselves from our beds before the attack can properly begin. It is a night campaign and we fight in furious silence by the light of the moon through three long windows along one wall. A thickset boy punches me and flinches as I punch back. He hesitates and I punch again, seeing him clasp his hand to his mouth and look for an easier target. My stomach is a knot and my legs are shaking. I feel no excitement at the fight. I want to hide.
It is over in a handful of minutes.
Charlot stands, unbloodied. Jerome stands beside him with a swollen lip and a ferocious look on his face, his hands clenched into huge fists. He has the build of a cart horse. I stand slightly behind them, not ferocious and not unbloodied, but standing and ready. The rest crowd behind us and wait to see what happens next.
A boy with curls to his shoulders steps forward. ‘You,’ he says, looking at Charlot. ‘What’s your name?’
‘De Saulx,’ Charlot says. ‘This is de Caussard, and this d’Aumout . . .’
The boy scowls as if wanting to match our names to our faces. ‘This is Richelieu,’ he says, naming the house to which we’ve been assigned. ‘We win. We win at everything. You let us down and we’ll be back.’
‘And we’ll be waiting,’ Jerome says heavily.
‘We won’t let the house down,’ Charlot says. The boy takes it that Charlot speaks for all of us and that’s fine because he does. The older boys file out in silence and we hear them on the stairs. Common sense makes us wait to see if it’s a feint and they plan to return to finish what they’ve started but that’s it, the battle is done. None of the masters ask about our bruised lips and black eyes but I see the colonel at a distance in a corridor and he smiles.
Unlike my last school the masters change according to subject. They are severe, mostly military, and leave us alone if we do our work and give the right answers. I follow Charlot’s example and read the books I’m told to read, work out what is likely to be asked and read enough to answer those questions only. My marks are good. My horsemanship, almost as bad as Emile’s when we start, improves week by week. I enjoy sword work – the clash of steel, the noise of our practise, the chatter of the sluice rooms and the lazy exhaustion that takes us afterwards. They work us hard. They work us hard at everything.
That Christmas I spend with Emile and his family. A quiet week filled with questions about the academy and our new friends. Madame Duras seems content with our answers and impressed with the casual way Emile talks about the marquis de Saulx and the vicomte de Caussard and a few of the others, as if they’re the closest of friends. Just occasionally I feel him watching me as if worried I’ll contradict and say they’re my friends really, but he grows more confident as the week progresses, and why shouldn’t he claim their friendship? We go around in a group of four and if
