Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Thirty Four: Dark French Hope

Jack left for the River Club an hour early, just for the feeling that he was doing something. 

All the things that usually made the Faculty bearable – actually, he didn't know why he was pluralizing them, because it was just Ellini – had withdrawn their aid, and now he felt as though the electric lights and the over-arching ceilings were hammering him into the ground.

And yet he didn't feel worried – or rather, it was his body that was worrying for him, without the intervention of his brain. It had driven him to pace restlessly around his bedroom for two hours. His left arm had taken to grabbing anything that was sharp, hot or dangerous.

He needed to be outside, that was all. Outside, away from the Faculty, using his energy and his wits. He wished he could have gone up on the rooftops with Ellini again, but with Alice in her current mood, it probably would have been unwise. Dancing with his mouse would be the next best thing.

And it didn't matter if all indications pointed towards a dire outcome. It didn't matter that his feet had taken to pacing uncontrollably and his left hand wouldn't stop reaching into the fire. He still had the moment. He was used to living on his wits when matters came to a crisis. In fact, in many ways, he was a better man on the spur of the moment than he ever was when he took the trouble to plan.

It would be all right. It would have to be. The alternative was just unthinkable.

He walked on with a spring in his step after coming to this conclusion, which meant that, when the Turl Street Music Rooms came into view, he had to throw out a hand and grab one of the pillars outside the Sheldonian just to slow his momentum.

The Star-spangled Banner was flying from a flag-pole at the top of the steps. Seeing it was like getting punched in the face all over again. He remembered something – a feeling rather than an image. It was dark, it was French, and it was hopeful, but not in the pitiful sense that had come to be associated with that word. It was hopeful in the same way that the crowd at a football match was hopeful – it was an electric, convulsive hope that drove you to your feet and made you yell out loud, regardless of where you were and who you thought was watching.

And, at the same time, he could hear a voice whispering soft, meaningless phrases in his ear. He felt as though, if he could only de-code them, he would have the answer to the whole mystery – but they were in a language he didn't understand. Their tone was hard to mistake, though. The soft, lovely voice was practically purring. It was Ellini's, perhaps – but in a state of abandon that she had never allowed herself in Oxford. There was a whole other world in that voice, and he wanted it much more than he wanted to stay free and clear-headed.

And then, when he came out of that pictureless reverie, he noticed two separate but equally worrying things.

The first was that his left hand had been grinding its knuckles against the stone-pillar he'd been clinging to.

The second was that a woman was standing motionless on one side of the steps, with her hands clasped decorously in front of her, waiting to be noticed.

She was watching him with the expression of someone who thought she was patiently enduring an insult, but she was mistaken. The insult may have been there, but the patience wasn't.

It was clear that he was supposed to know her, and that she was waiting for him to speak, but her face betrayed no anxiety to help him, or hurry over the awkward moment. She seemed to be hungry for the awkwardness as well as the insult.

This woman was pretty enough, but there was something hard and expectant about her face, as though she was longing for you to slap her just so she could bitterly congratulate herself on having judged you rightly.