Lawrence Looks for Treasure

Part 2 - Chapter 26

26

Inès spent her free time in empty classrooms, studying. Even on days off—school was only three days of seven—Inès would walk to the schoolhouse, slip inside and study. On one such day off, I walked to school in the morning, hoping she would turn up. I entered the classroom—doors were never locked, in those days—turned my desk to the window, and alternated my gaze between my textbook and the windowpanes. Soon enough I saw her through the glass, lugging her immense bookbag down the road with graceful unease.

She entered the classroom, and was at first startled, and then bothered, by my presence. As she walked to her desk, she smiled to me. I did not reciprocate; instead, I asked her a question about our most recent arithmetic material. I had no patience for pleasantries, not with her. Respecting Inès's time too much to waste it on feathers and fur, I was anxious to get to the guts.

The question I had asked was one to which I knew the answer. I also knew that reaching the answer was no small feat. I had spent the evening banging my head on my knee before making it out. Perhaps it was sly of me to spring on her a question I had already answered, and to do it so early in the day, but I needed assurance that she was as she seemed to be, Minerva incarnate.

Of course, she was. Inès knew the answer, and explained to me each step she had taken to get to it. She answered as though the question took her no time at all. That was it, then: she had passed my exam. I asked her if I could sit next to her. She equivocated, but ultimately agreed. And from then on, Inès and I studied together every day—excepting the days when she hid from me, although, even on those days, I often managed to track her down.

For months and months, we studied together, and when we were too tired to study, we talked and joked and laughed. I learned much about her. For instance, she loved a farm boy. Did the farm boy know how much time Inès spent with me? He was no match for her intellectually. Of that fact I was surer than any other, except this: I was no match for him physically.

Over time, my affections for Inès grew. Her affections for me grew too, although, at the time, I did not know it; I knew only that we got along like sticks and mud. Then, one day, I mustered the courage to tell her I loved her. In truth, I confessed as a coward does his sins. I did not expect her to feel as I; thankfully, she did. From thence, we were inseparable.

Each morning, I woke early, took a half loaf from the kitchen, and fetched Inès from her family home, a diversion of several kilometers. We breakfasted on our walk to school. I provided the loaf, she the milk. We talked about lessons and classmates, our lives in the future and our lives in the past. There was far more to her than I imagined when I first saw her in class. She came from a bourgeois family, one who built their wealth in the trade of coins, and whose clientele included viscounts, barons, and even one feckless marquis. She had a habit of admiring boys whom her family found entirely unadmirable. I would be no exception. In consequence, when I gathered Inès from home, she had me remain on the road, so that her mother would not learn that I was of this earth or any other. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

Inès also had the refinement of a merchant's daughter. She taught me much in that regard. As she took me over, she began to correct my manners, which she thought quaint—not wrong, just quaint. She made it clear that one cut bread neatly, instead of tearing it, and buttered it only in bites, which I thought a time-wasting affectation; she also stopped me from dressing like a man who hasn't a penny to spare, a childhood habit that had worsened in the circus and still overcomes me when I'm left to my own devices. I enjoyed Inès' instruction. She taught me with humour and charm; there was not a nagging breath in her. I, on the other hand, taught her about poverty and magic. I described my running from home, my time in the circus and my arrangement with the Innkeeper. She saw an adventurer in me, and was impressed by those parts of my past that caused me great shame. In her I saw a wife, and I admired the family that caused her great ire. We were a pair, truly.

We planned for the future often. Inès had a mind for business, and had promised her tomorrows to the family coin trade. She could not, as a woman, be seen to run the operation. That posed no problem, however, as she was comfortable reigning from behind the throne. She already kept her father's books—first on her insistence, then on his—and she was increasingly advising on strategy. Yet Inès was desperate to make out on her own. She idealized independence in a way only those with a family could.

Inès set her gaze on Bar Ferryman, an English alehouse at the crossroads of a trading route. M. Ferryman, the owner, was a useless man. He drank more of his supply than did his clients, and, in consequence, he had borrowed a great deal of money from Ines' father. When Ferryman could no longer pay, he returned to England, and left his very small business to satisfy his very large debt. Ines' father hardly knew what to do with it, holding the bar idle in the hopes that someone would, in time, make a worthy offer. Inès had a greater vision for it.

She hardly drank; I even less. But after seeing me perform, Inès thought the bar could serve as an outpost for dinner and entertainment. She enlisted my friend the Innkeeper, an accomplished barman in his own right, as a partner, and set to convince her father. That took less time than tea. She was responsible; he had no interest in the bar. So off she went, and I by her side.

We were hard at work, attending school by day, setting up the restaurant by night. I also had my performance duties at the Inn to maintain—while Inès was provided for, I still needed to provide for myself. Inès modelled the restaurant for broad appeal. It was not too expensive to exclude the aspiring, nor too cheap to keep out the accomplished. With her father's wealth at her disposal, Inès offered high salaries, and after a year of operation, she had tripled the clientele and doubled the revenue. That was just the beginning.

I put down the book and closed my eyes, still in Dmitri's world, a world that felt more real than the world I was in. Dmitri's was neat and tidy and made good sense. My world was the one I found unbelievable. How did I get here? High in a sleeping bag in the middle of the woods. And where was I supposed to go?

My eyes closed. I can't be sure how long. But next thing, I woke, book still in hand, to shouting and flashlights. I poked my head out the tent. Two large, dark men stood by the fire shining flashlights over my friends. Suddenly, one of the men grabbed stinky Mike and took him away. The other man remained.