In the prolonged absence of Stonny Menackis’s attention, it had fallen to Muril shy;lio to assume most of the school’s responsibilities, and he was finding this very distant relation of Rallick (and Torvald) in every respect a Nom, which alone encouraged a level of instruction far beyond what he gave the others. The young man stood before him sheathed in sweat, as the last of class hurried out through the compound gate, the echoes of their voices quickly fading, and Murillio sensed that Bellam was far from satisfied with the torturously slow pace of the day’s session.
‘Master,’ he now said, ‘I have heard of an exercise, involving suspended rings. To achieve the perfect lunge, piercing the hole and making no contact with the ring itself-’
Murillio snorted. ‘Yes. Useful if you happen to be in a travelling fair or a circus. Oh, for certain, Bellam, point control is essential in fencing with the rapier — I wouldn’t suggest otherwise. But as an exercise, I am afraid its value is limited.’
‘Why?’
Murillio eyed the young man for a moment, and then sighed. ‘Very well. The exercise requires too many constraints, few of which ever occur in the course of a real fight. You achieve point control — useful point control, I mean — when it’s made integral to other exercises. When it’s combined with footwork, distance, timing and the full range of defence and offence demanded when facing a real, living opponent. Spearing rings is all very impressive, but the form of concentration it demands is fundamentally
Bellam Nom grinned suddenly and Murillio saw at once how much he looked like his oh-so-distant cousin. ‘I still might try it — in my own time, of course.’
‘Tell you what,’ Murillio said. ‘Master spearing a suspended ring at the close of a mistimed lunge, an off-balance recovery to your unarmed side, two desperate parries, a toe-stab to your opponent’s lead foot to keep him or her from closing, and a frantic stop-thrust in the midst of a back-pedalling retreat. Do that, and I will give you my second best rapier.’
‘How long do I have?’
‘As long as you like, Bellam.’
‘Extra time with an instructor,’ said a voice from the shaded colonnade to one side, ‘is not free.’
Murillio turned and bowed to Stonny Menackis. ‘Mistress, we were but con shy;versing-’
‘You were giving advice,’ she cut in, ‘and presenting this student with a challenge. The first point qualifies as instruction. The second is an implicit agreement to extracurricular efforts on your part at some time in the future.’
Bellam’s grin had broadened. ‘My father, Mistress, will not hesitate to meet any extra expense, I assure you.’
She snorted, stepping out from the gloom. ‘Any?’
‘Within reason, yes.’
She looked terrible. Worn, old, her clothes dishevelled. If Murillio had not known better, he would judge her as being hungover, a condition of temporary, infrequent sobriety to mark an alcoholic slide into fatal oblivion. Yet he knew she was afflicted with something far more tragic. Guilt and shame, self-hatred and grief. The son she didn’t want had been taken from her — to imagine that such a thing could leave her indifferent was to not understand anything at all.
Murillio said to Bellam, ‘You’d best go now.’
They watched him walk away.
‘Look at him,’ Stonny muttered as he reached the gate, ‘all elbows and knees.’
‘That’ll pass,’ he said.
‘A stage, is it?’
‘Yes.’ And of course he knew this particular game, the way she spoke of Harllo by not speaking of him, of the life that might await him, or the future taken away from him, stolen by her cruel denial. She would inflict this on herself again and again, at every opportunity. Seemingly innocent observations, each one a masochistic flagellation. For this to work, she required someone like Murillio, who would stand and listen and speak and pretend that all this was normal — the back and forth and give and take, the blood pooling round her boots. She had trapped him in this role — using the fact of his adoration, his love for her — and he was no longer certain that his love could survive such abuse.
