Chapter 6: The Challenge
Though I thought him a bit of an idiot Tiago really drew my eyes. In evening dress, with a black bow tie, he looked like he had walked out of a cologne commercial.
I took his arm. Another couple dressed for the party crossed the lawn in front of us. We paused a moment, then followed. Inside my head was like a see-saw. I couldn’t decide whether I was the frivolous Bond girl, partying because I was good at it, or the Bond villainess chuckling under her breath, with a little dagger strapped to her thigh. The confusion almost made me dizzy and so, eyes down, I watched my black high-heeled shoes progress delicately along the path. When I decided to be a party princess I hadn’t considered the shoes princesses had to wear.
I looked up at Tiago. “So tell me about this party. What’s it all for?”
He slowed and looked down at me. “You don’t know? Really?”
Sarah had told me, but I didn’t pay attention, something that happened quite often when she talked to me. I shook my head.
“It’s to choose the head of Camelot. Other houses, the house parents choose the head.”
“What are the house parents?”
“They used to call them the house master and mistress, they’re the teachers who live in the house and are in charge of us. Usually they also choose the head of house, but Camelot is different. The students choose.”
“Really?” I feigned interest in more Levels madness. “How? Do they vote?”
“No!” He laughed. “We have the challenge. I can’t believe you don’t know.”
“What challenge?”
“You know the sword in Mr. Neil’s office?” Tiago led the way along the wide path beside the cricket pitch.
I nodded. “Yeah. Why does the chairman of governors have a sword on his wall? I wondered about that.”
“It’s the symbol of the school. Anyway, the outgoing Head of Camelot has to sneak in to Mr. Neil’s office and take the sword. Then he-”
“He? Why not she?”
Tiago snorted. “She? That’s funny. He takes the sword to the Olympic pool and throws it into the water. The first boy to get it is the new head.”
“Okay, fair enough. I can see why no girls would want a part in playing silly games like that.”
“Silly game? It’s amazing!”
“You’re not joining in are you?”
“Of course I am. We all are.” The turrets of Camelot loomed ahead. “That’s why we were at the pool the other day, training.” Rough, grey stone composed the front wall of the house. Asymmetric, higher in some parts than others, and bulging outwards at the foot of a tower, it really did look like a castle.
“Oh God.” I shook my head. Why had Mum enrolled me in such a lunatic asylum? She must have known how I would feel about all the weirdness.
“We’re here.” Tiago stood aside and put a hand to the small of my back as he ushered me through the great double doors. A throng of students in evening dress filled the hallway. “I’m sorry, we’re only allowed soft drinks, what would you like?”
“That’s fine. Um, just water.” I began to calculate how I would avoid looking like a loser, standing by myself in the hall. What did party Madeleine do in these situations? My phone rang. Perfect. Something to do. I stepped back outside to answer it. Sarah sounded breathless with excitement. “Maddie, Maddie, I don’t know what to do, what should I say?”
“I don’t know. About what?”
“There’s this guy at Logres, come to talk to you. He says it’s important. The tall new guy with the weird haircut.”
My heart flipped over. The magnificent Eddy Moon. What was he up to? “Put him on.”
“Hi, Maddie, I’m really sorry for bothering you.” In contrast with Sarah, Eddy’s voice sounded low and measured. “Just, I thought I should tell you, Kieran knows you’re going to the party with Tiago Toscano and he’s furious. He’s going to have a go at you there.”
I bit my lip. I had avoided the idea of Eddy knowing I’d be at a party with boys. I didn’t want him to have that image. “Don’t worry about it Eddy. It’s nothing. Um, I’m not even exactly going with Tiago.”
“Really? Good.”
He sounded pleased. I smiled.
“But, anyway, Kieran’s still like, steaming. He can be, you know.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know Kieran, Madeleine.”
Eddy’s chivalry, coming and going, could be quite annoying. “I’m a big girl Eddy, thanks for the warning.” I ended the call and tapped my phone against my teeth. What would party Madeleine do in a situation like this? Probably she would quite enjoy it, but it made me uneasy. I turned towards the door just as the crowd inside began leaving.
“What’s going on?” I asked the first couple to pass me.
“The challenge! It’s now.”
Tiago hurried out a moment later. He passed me a bottle of water. “Here.”
“How are we getting in to the pool? Isn’t it all locked up?”
“I don’t know. They’ve got keys to the side door. We sneak in. I think they bribe security.”
I stopped dead. “Students bribe the security guards so they can sneak into the swimming pool with a massive sword?”
He shrugged. “Welcome to Levels.”
We parted at the swimming pool entrance. Tiago headed away to the changing rooms and I climbed up into the stand with the rest of the audience. The atmosphere unsettled me. I knew the pool so well, but I had never seen it from the tiered seating, or glimmering and glowing under artificial light. My nose recognised the smell of the chlorine, though, nothing could change that.
A tall boy appeared at the end of the pool and ascended the steps to the five metre diving board.
The girl next to me glanced in my direction with wide eyes. When I didn’t respond she leaned closer. “That’s Ken Guthrie,” she whispered. “He was last year’s head of Camelot. He’s on a gap year, travelling around the world before he starts uni.”
“My lords, ladies and gentlemen.” Guthrie raised a hand. “Welcome to the challenge. May I remind you to please, keep your voices down. The less attention we attract, the better.” He bent and lifted a metre-long sword from the platform beside him. “Behold the Levels symbolic sword, bearing the names...” he turned it in his hands. “Of fifty six head masters. Bless them.” He hefted the sword for a moment, then tossed it in a long glittering arc out across the water. It splashed into the surface and sank to the bottom in a moment. He watched it go, then turned back to us. “Now behold the participants in the challenge.”
I gaped as a line of boys in swimming trunks filed from the changing rooms and around the pool. Fifteen on each long side, clustered close to the halfway point, staring at the water. I realised that the shallow sight lines from where they stood made the sword practically invisible. Tiago and Kieran claimed the centre of the group on one side of the pool, Gennady Ivanovich and Rami Ahmed faced them on the other side.
In the row in front of me a boy with his arm in a sling turned to his companions. “They draw lots for who gets the middle spot.”
One of his neighbours pointed. “Look! What’s he doing?”
A recognisable shape emerged from the boys changing room. Tall, broad-shouldered, golden-haired, but bizarrely dressed in a tuxedo and bow tie, beside all the boys in their swimming shorts. Eddy.
My heart sank for him. He stood out more than I had in my wildest nightmares. Giggles and snickers rippled up and down the lines of spectators. Somebody brayed like a donkey and people burst into laughter.
Eddy had to be looking for me. Peering blindly into the darkness of the stand, he moved to the end of the line. He couldn’t see me; I waited for him to turn away. Why wouldn’t he go?
Ken Guthrie spun a whistle on a short cord. “Unconventional costume.”
Everybody laughed. I put my hands over my face. He hadn’t been invited to the party, his horrid brother hadn’t told him about the challenge. Poor Eddy didn’t unde
rstand what was going on, but he didn’t care. He thought I needed help. My heart flipped over with delight, the beautiful, brawny boy was prepared to get dressed up and gatecrash a party just to rescue me. Though my heart flipped, my stomach twisted. His role as laughing stock would last far beyond the night, I was sure.
Guthrie raised the whistle to his mouth. The sword glinted under three metres of water, then disappeared as somebody turned out the pool lights. What was Eddy going to do?
The whistle shrilled, thirty taut bodies arced over the water. Eddy stood alone for a moment, then somebody snaked from the shadows and shoved him. Fully clothed, Eddy dropped into the water.
“No!” I yelled. “You...”
Eddy hadn’t turned back to the edge, for some reason he took a stroke following the others toward the centre of the pool. He was confused, he would look even more of an idiot blundering around in the middle of the pool when whoever found the sword was holding it on the side. I willed him forward, willed him to make at least a competitive showing. I focused on the line between his dark suited form and the spot where I knew the sword was. A couple of other boys had neared it, but returned to the surface, out of breath.
If only the water could feel like a slope to Eddy, as it did to me. If only it could push him along like a river, as it had in my dreams.
Away from the side he disappeared. In the stand we peered at the swirling water in the centre of the pool. Wet heads gleamed, breath puffed. An unseen blow sounded and a muffled. “Do that again and...”
Another fist thumped, answered by a shout of protest.
“Look!” shouted somebody in the audience, repeated by others, pointing. A swimming shape appeared at the edge beneath the diving board. It lurched awkwardly, one armed, the other holding a long heavy object, dragging the swimmer down to one side.
There was a cheer from the audience, and a clang as the winner dropped the sword onto the poolside. He hung in the water a moment longer, wriggling out of the jacket that had slipped down his back, hampering his movements. His arms free, Eddy Moon planted his hands on the poolside and vaulted out of the water. The lights blazed on and all the heads above the pool turned towards him.
His black trousers stuck to his legs and gleamed in the light. One hand held the hilt of the sword and the other slicked back his dripping, golden hair. His white dress shirt clung to his chest and shoulders and as he moved his arms the long curves of his muscles were as clear and defined as if he had been naked. Eddy Moon, triumphant.