Chapter 14: The Tournament
Three days later I sat next to Sarah in the Logres common room. She put her hand on my knee. “I don’t want to be mean Maddie, but you look terrible.”
Pale winter light filed low and weak across the levels and in through the tall, slender common room windows. The smell of toast and the sound of rap music drifted down from the rooms above and from time to time a younger student on their way to breakfast looked at me curiously. I knew the paper whiteness of my face made the dark circles around my eyes especially noticeable.
“It’s okay. I saw myself in the mirror.”
“I can’t believe you came in so early. It’s the first time you’ve ever been in school fat breakfast time, and it’s after you’ve been sick.”
I ran a hand over my wet hair. “I’m better now.” I had only told Sarah about being sick the night we went to the hives, but not the midnight expedition, or the sleeplessness. “That was three days ago.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t been eating, have you?”
I shrugged. I hadn’t been hungry.
“Swimming at six o’clock in the morning.” Sarah shook her head. “You’re so committed. It’s amazing.”
“I don’t know. I just couldn’t sleep.” I hadn’t been able to sleep all week. That morning desperation had driven me out of the house. “It has made me a bit hungry, though. Maybe today I’ll have breakfast.”
Sarah stood up. “Come with me to the cafeteria.” She pulled me to my feet.
The paths between the school buildings seemed different at that time in the morning. Everybody was sleepy, quiet. Uniforms were neat and tidy and hair was wet, or brushed.
In the cafeteria resident students sat at the long tables. Without any of the day scholars and with everybody else drowsy and muted, the cafeteria seemed half empty. I got a sense of a separate, private Levels world for residents.
At the counter the delicious smell of bacon kicked my stomach into gear, for the first time in what felt like forever. We piled eggs, bacon, sausage and toast onto our plates and sat down. All Sarah wanted to talk about was the extraordinary events in Camelot, how Eddy had worked to turn the mood of the house around.
“And apparently he called a meeting and-”
“Sorry, Sarah, do they have ketchup?”
In a state of exhaustion, changing the subject was hard, but I’d rather do that than listen to stories about Eddy. Again and again I sidetracked Sarah with questions about haircuts and magazines, until, buttering her last piece of toast, Sarah frowned at me. “But I don’t understand why you’re not interested in Camelot. Aren’t you and Eddy Moon...?”
“What?”
“Well people say you may be, you know...”
Sarah’s predilection for talking around her point could be super annoying. I shook my head curtly. “We’re not going out, Sarah. If we were, don’t you think he would have told me what happened?”
“Hmm.” She tilted her head to one side, then nodded sadly. “Also, Hari’s really down. He thought this was our big chance to beat Camelot in the House Tournament. But now it sounds like they’re going to be better than ever.”
I raised an eyebrow. I hadn’t considered how helping Eddy was doing my own house disfavour. “You don’t know that, it’s only talk, at the moment.” I pushed my chair back and stood up. “Come on, we’ve got registration.”
On the way to our tutor room I took my phone from my bag. “You go on, Sarah. I just want to make a quick call.”
I stepped sideways to stand against a wall and dialed my home number. “Mum?”
“Oh hi Maddie, how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, Mum. But what about you?” I remembered three nights before, sitting beside Mum in the car, making her drink tea from her travel mug and waiting until her head seemed clear enough to drive.
“Me? Well I’m a bit sleepy, but, you left so early.”
I nodded. “I thought a swim would clear my head, make me feel better.” Now that Mum seemed to have forgotten how she weirded me out I was again annoyed with her. “I have to go now Mum. Registration. See you later.”
At lunchtime I went back to the Logres common room. I had absolutely no interest in wandering around school trying to find Eddy Moon. I sat next to Sarah, but she wouldn’t stop talking about him, so I went to the library. Entering the building, though, I couldn’t help remembering the electricity that had sparked between us when I took him there. I gave up and found an empty classroom to try and do some homework in. I felt so tired I could barely keep my eyes open, and my head whirled with what I had come so close to, then lost, so instead of working I sat and stared at the wall.
The only time, all week, that I had a moment of peace, was in the pool. The rhythm of my strokes and the silence of having my head immersed in the water were almost meditative. Their effect was ruined the next day when Coach pulled me over to the side. “Bride, you’re doing well. I’ve got high hopes for you in the Southern Schools.” He threw me a towel. “We haven’t competed strongly in the girls section for a couple of years. But there’s some stuff I want you to sharpen up.”
He went on to break down my technique, which was apparently horrible, and tell me a dozen things I had to do better. For that training session, and all the next week, swimming became more a labour than an escape. I knew the coaches at Levels – and there were over a hundred – worked under massive pressure, but this was the first time I had the pressure passed on to me.
Eddy texted me most days, but I didn’t reply. There was no point. I sat in my room and glowered through the window at the cormorant in its barren tree. I remembered the hope and excitement for my life at Levels that I felt the day I went to meet Amina. How had I let that happen? How had I let my guard down? I should have held on to the idea that school would be a struggle; that I should keep myself apart and secure. But no. I had opened myself up and got burned.
Mum seemed returned to normal, though sleepy. Each evening when I got home I waited for her to say something about a non-existent lake, or the fact that she was the Lady of the Lake. The only direct question she ever asked was about Eddy. “Have you seen Eddy Moon.”
“No Mum,” was my usual answer.
To which she gave a relieved smile.
Sometimes I said, “Yes I saw him in history.”
When I did, her face immediately tightened. “What did he say?”
“Nothing, we didn’t talk.”
This was the truth. Eddy appeared in the classroom with his graceful, space consuming stride and I ignored him. I still thought him utterly beautiful, he still commanded my attention like a fire, but I turned my head away. He didn’t try to break my silence.
“What’s with you two?” Pippa murmured.
“Nothing.” I kept my eyes on my text book.
“But...”
“Nothing, Pippa.”
I avoided her at lunchtimes, not wanting to have to answer questions about Eddy. I felt like such an idiot for telling people he wasn’t odd, when the truth was that either he was crazy, or worse, we were both weird.
In break times I retreated to the Logres common room. Sarah’s attentions had moved on from Eddy. She switched between whatever magazine she was reading, and the preparations for the House Tournament. She was confident about her own role in the gymnastics, but the modern pentathlon obsessed her. Somehow she had become fixated on the attempts of Hari Kumar and John Owen, the head of Orkney.
“Hari’s such a good runner and rider, but John, he’s fantastic at swimming and fencing, and I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
I could have pointed out to Sarah that what she was really deliberating over was which of the two she liked the most, but I couldn’t be bothered. My own attention was increasingly focused on the Southern Schools competition. It seemed the one aspect of my life I had some control over, and success became more and more important. I had failed at everything else, I had to be good at something.
The equestrian comp
etitions took place the next Saturday afternoon, but it was more or less compulsory for students to attend. First up was the horse riding component of the modern pentathlon. I sat beside Sarah, both of us wrapped in heavy coats against the winter chill. The riders had to criss-cross the ring along an assigned route, jumping twelve obstacles on their way.
“It’s not fair,” I complained. “It all depends on how much money the boys have got, and how good their horses are.”
“No, Maddie.” She shook her head. “The names of all the horses go into a hat, and the riders draw one of them. Most of the horses are from the Levels stables.”
With the rest of the Logres contingent I yelled in support of Hari Kumar. Supporting my house in sports competitions was another simple, straightforward thing to do – and to feel. If I shouted loud enough I couldn’t hear my thoughts.
Hari looked incredibly dapper in breeches and a beautifully cut riding jacket, and he guided his compact brown mare with style and expertise. His time was excellent, and none of the other houses came close. John Owen rode a heavy, snorting black horse, and suffered a series of time penalties for hitting the top of most of the jumps.
“Poor John,” Sarah sighed. “He didn’t get one of the best horses.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue, but it seemed to me that Owen communicated his aggression to his horse, making it anxious. I didn’t care, I had never liked him, and wasn’t bothered that he sat at the bottom of the rankings.
Each house contributed one or two riders to the modern pentathlon, apart from Avalon and Lyonesse, which had none. Camelot, however, had five. The Four Horsemen rode out one after the other, each of them eliciting loud cheers from the crowd. Though obviously expert riders, none of them were brilliant over the jumps, and they filled in the spaces behind Hari.
Beside me Sarah glowed with pride. “Hari’s so good, Maddie, it’s amazing.”
I repressed a smirk, then a desire to get up and leave the stand as I recognised the final Camelot rider. Of course. Eddy Moon.
“Apparently there was a problem, because he was drawn to ride on a horse that they said was too small. He would hurt it. Can you imagine? Apparently he weighs more than two hundred and twenty pounds.”
Memories flooded back, and I squeezed one eye shut, then the other. I knew how massive he was, I knew the kind of horse that carried Eddy comfortably.
Eddy cantered into the ring, riding a rangy white gelding. He paused at the starting point for a while, his head low on the horse’s neck.
“What’s he doing?” Sarah grabbed my arm. “Is he talking to it?”
I shifted in my seat. I didn’t want to think about Eddy, let alone tell Sarah how I had witnessed his ability to communicate with horses. Instead I just watched. He wore an old- fashioned black jacket that strained across his shoulders and riding britches that did nothing to disguise the curves of his thighs.
Then he and his horse started riding. Though I wasn’t a horse riding expert, I could see that Eddy and his horse moved like one being. They sailed through the course as if the jumps were hardly there, and he eclipsed Hari’s time by five seconds.
Sarah glared at me.
“What?” I said. I don’t care.”
We stayed beside the arena to watch the other equestrian events. I clapped Pippa quietly as she won her class by a mile, then headed to the pool with everybody else, for the second part of the pentathlon.
The competitors were drawn in two heats, according to their times. John Owen and the Four Horsemen were in the first, and Owen emerged from the changing rooms, snarling at the others.
“What’s with him?” somebody asked.
“He hates Camelot,” was the flat explanation. “Even more, now that somebody blamed the Orkney lot for the whole Facebook thing.”
“What Facebook thing?”
Sarah frowned at me. “You must have heard. It was the evening Eddy Moon made that speech.”
I shook my head. I had shut down every attempt to tell me the story of Eddy’s big night.
She leaned closer and began explaining what happened. Her style was fractured and disrupted by irrelevancies, so it took me a while to piece the story together.
Apparently Eddy had called a house meeting, then spread the rumour that he would be announcing his resignation as well as how his successor would be decided. His arrival at the Camelot common room was ten minutes late, by which point every Camelot student was jammed into it. He had plugged a computer into the big TV, and told them he had terrible news, he had discovered a plot against Camelot. Students from another house had set up a fake Facebook account in his name and were planning to use it to discredit him, and the whole of Camelot, and get them barred from competition for a whole year.
Despite myself, I smiled. Eddy’s tactical brain was even sharper than I’d hoped. “So that’s why John Owen is furious.”
“It’s part of it. Oh, look. Here he comes now.”
The head of Orkney swaggered along the poolside, leading the competitors to the blocks for the first heat. The race was two hundred metres freestyle and my coach was officiating. I recognised none of the racers from team training, and felt oddly glad. I associated myself with the other swimmers, and I was pleased none of them were participating in this most Levels-ish kind of silliness.
I had to admire John Owen’s swimming, though. From the gun he battled the water as if it was his personal enemy. He charged up and down the four lengths and won by a couple of seconds over Rami Ahmed, with Kieran and the others close behind.
Eddy and Hari were in the second group. I forced my mind into dispassionate mode as they walked onto the poolside. Around me people gasped.
“He looks like a wrestler,” said one.
“Can’t believe he’s only sixteen,” said another.
John Owen was stocky and powerful, but Eddy looked like something else. I realised that I had never seen him in swimming trunks, and as hard as I resisted, I couldn’t stop myself from staring.
The breath left my body. He dwarfed the other boys, in height, but also in the extraordinary width of his shoulders. The myth of Atlas flashed through my mind, the giant who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Those were the kind of shoulders Eddy displayed, massive and rounded at the top of V-shaped torso. His chest and arms bulged, completely ripped without a hint of fat, and his gigantic wrists and elbows betrayed the massive bone structure underneath. I turned my head away. The sight of so much of his golden skin brought home how much I had lost.
At the gun I forced my gaze back to the water. I remembered the last time I had watched him in the water, and willed him on. This time I observed the race without passion. The weight of Eddy’s skeleton dragged him down, and he had to expend as much energy keeping afloat as moving forward. Hari won and Eddy came last, by a second. After two events John Owen, Hari, Rami and Kieran held the top spots. Eddy’s success in the horse riding and been completely discounted by his appalling swimming.
Next up was fencing, in the gym. Pippa squeezed into the seat next to me. “Hey Maddie, you here to cheer on hunky boy?”
I glowered at her.
“Sorry, I meant Hari, of course. Have to tell you though, Eddy’s riding was astonishing. I’ve been in the team for three years, and I wish I had half the gift he has.”
I shrugged. What did I care? In the fencing every boy competed against each of the others in turn. All they needed was one hit, then they won and the bout stopped. No hits and they were both losers. One boy held one of the four fencing strips for five bouts, before they switched. The first few bouts were cautious, and most of the pairings both lost points.
Then a figure appeared who I instantly recognised through his fencing kit and dark mask. The blocky build and short legs of John Owen, who quickly overpowered every one of his opponents. He was replaced by the second recognisable figure, the towering Eddy Moon, who dealt with his opponents even more swiftly than Owen, twice flipping the loser’s sword clean out of his hand.
An illuminated board above the fighters listed their scores. We watched as John Owen, and Eddy chalked up win after win, while Hari, Rami and Gennady Ivanovich hovered around the middle and the rest lost most of their bouts.
Pippa sighed. “It’s amazing really, it only seems like yesterday that Camelot hated Eddy, and nobody would do anything for him. Now look at them!”
Curiosity sparked at the back of my mind, and couldn’t stop myself from turning to her. “Yeah, I only heard part of the story. How did he do it?”
Pippa retold Sarah’s explanation of how Eddy used the Four Horsemen’s nasty Facebook plan against them, to bring Camelot together, embattled. He built the story gradually, weaving into it constantly how much he cared about Camelot, and how he was going to work to keep it the number one house at Levels.
“One of the students there told me that he sounded like a politician, but in a good way. He sounded like the kind of politician you would completely vote for, because you thought he could change the world.”
I flushed with pride, then shook my head. It was irrelevant. Either I was a witch, or he was crazy, and whichever, he didn’t want anything to do with me.
A loud cheer drew my attention back to the fencing. The audience had worked out what the big fight would be. Owen and Eddy were facing one another. The rugby player launched himself forward, hurling an onslaught of blows against Eddy, who parried and sidestepped them all. The big clock ticked past forty seconds, Owen stepped back to catch his breath, then barrelled forward again. Eddy slipped to one side, Owen went past him, then turned like a cat to stab at Eddy’s back. Unsighted, Eddy swept his sword behind him, caught his aggressors blade and pushed it high and to the side. He swivelled and pressed the point of his sabre into John Owen’s chest. He won, and Camelot roared. Down the stands I recognised Sarah’s voice. “John’s not as bad as people make out, he just...”
The board showed that after three events John Owen was still in first place, with Hari in second,
Pippa took my arm and led me out onto the edge of the Levels grounds, where the last two events, the three-thousand-metre run and the pistol shooting, would take place.
“I know you hate him, or whatever,” she said, as we walked. “But he’s doing extraordinarily well, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.”
We sat in the stands beside a rugby pitch and watched the competitors shoot their first set of targets, using laser pistols. As soon as they finished they ran out of the arena, following a cross country track across empty horse pastures and through the Levels ‘nature reserve’. High in the stands we could watch their progress, and my strength of purpose in not caring about Eddy weakened further still, infuriating me. If he wanted nothing to do with me, why should I care whether he won or lost?
After the first cross country lap Kieran Hechter was quickest to return, closely followed by a lean boy from Gaul, and then John Owen. Where was Eddy? I scowled at my weakness and tried to admire the speed with which John Owen fired out his five shots. Eddy ran up to the shooting station just as John Owen and Kieran left. What had he been doing? Why did he take so long? He fired his shots with care, and left at the same time as a couple of boys who came in after him.
John Owen arrived first for the final shooting session, but his barrel chest was heaving with the effort. He wasn’t built for cross country running. Kieran, Gennady and Eddy were close on his heels.
With bated breath we watched the runners head downhill from the rugby pitch and loop around a clump of trees. Kieran caught John Owen and was passing him when the head of Orkney lurched sideways and sent him flying. Eddy was close behind and slowed, grabbing Kieran by the shoulders and setting him on his feet.
Pippa pointed her finger. “See, it’s stuff like that, that makes him so successful as head of Camelot. I’ve never heard of anybody being cheered like Camelot cheer him.”
I bit my lip. “Like Camelot cheered him when?”
“When he made his big speech.”
I turned back to the action, but Pippa could read my body language, and she must have known I would listen.
Apparently Eddy’s voice got louder and louder as he built up the story of what he had done, and what he was going to do. He laced circles of phrasing into his speech, so students knew the climax of a sentence and shouted it out for him. And when he told them that Camelot could join him in putting out the best team for the House Trophy ever the whole house jumped to their feet shouting yes, and hurrah, and Eddy’s name, over and over again.
“So,” Pippa concluded. “That’s why I’m sorry I ever thought he was weird, or whatever. Now I completely want him to win. Look!” She pointed at the runners, who had definitely slowed. John Owen opened up another lead, but Eddy, Kieran, and then Gennady tracked him close behind. The burly rugby player swerved back and forth across the narrow trail, trying to cut out their overtaking lines, and they hung back.
Halfway around the circuit it was Eddy who made the move, seizing a position beside Owen. The two of them ran shoulder to shoulder, John Owen barging at Eddy and pulling on his arm at corners. Eddy stayed on his feet, though, and was right beside Owen as they headed toward the finish line in the stadium. He ran to the right in a wide loop, making it look like he was going to take a much longer route than he needed to.
“What’s he doing?” I hissed at Pippa.
She grinned at me. “What do you care?”
Looking over his shoulder, Owen tracked Eddy’s path to the right, making sure he stayed in front of him, to block him off. The space on his left opened wider and wider, and just before they turned into the rugby field, Gennady and Kieran burst through it, quickly opening up a gap between themselves and the puffing head of Orkney. Gennady won, followed by Kieran, then Eddy and John Owen in a dead heat.
In the stands the Camelot students erupted. A score board showed that Gennady had won the pentathlon, with Kieran in second, Eddy in third and John Owen in fourth. The Four Horsemen all gathered around Eddy. He had sacrificed his own run to give them a chance, they hugged him, high-fived him, and slapped him on the back. The head of Camelot had come into his own.
I shrugged my shoulders and turned away. I wouldn’t get any thanks for it, not that I wanted them.
Pippa turned to me. “Aren’t you going to say something?”
I shook my head. “I have to get back.”
I went to Logres to get my school bag and wait for Mum to come and pick me up. Slumping in front of the TV I tried not to think about the crowd that had gathered around Eddy, or how he had looked on the poolside.
The front doorbell rang, and a moment later the junior responsible for answering it trotted into the common room and looked around for a moment, before whispering into my ear. “Madeleine, it’s Eddy Moon, he wants to talk to you!”
I scowled. “So? Tell him I’m not here.”