Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [56]
“What for?” asked Mason, warily.
“You may not know it, but the Navy Cadets have proved as chivalrous this morning as one could expect them to be.”
“I’d say more than some could expect them to be,” said Mason with a frown. “I just got the news myself. I’m surprised you’re in the know.”
“I was there. Some mysterious Gentlemen were brutalizing a girl.”
“I doubt a Gentleman would do such a thing.”
“Some Gentlemen have a dark, if not nocturnal, side, obviously. Your men performed honourably.”
“I will be asked to punish them, though,” Mason said, indicating the Council’s Cabinet door.
“They did not cause the trouble. They didn’t start it, at least.”
“I heard there was a riot.”
“There was a demonstration, which I think is different. It was peaceful until it was interrupted.”
Mason seemed to be thinking hard about it.
“What sort of demonstration?”
“Hmm … A new kind. It looked poetical at first but then became rather poletical.”
“And my men defended it?”
“I have been a cadet myself. Unless things have changed considerably, I think defending the fair sex was their only concern.”
Mason stared at Brentford, hesitating to speak, but finally let go.
“Would you say so in front of the Council?”
“I have no reason to lie to them.”
“And of course, I could take a more moderate view on that hunting matter.”
Brentford raised his hand.
“I have no doubt about your honesty.”
Mason nodded, which Brentford interpreted as a reluctant “Thank you.”
The Council of Seven could certainly be criticized, or so thought Brentford, on many levels. But they understood that governing was not so much about words, nor even about actions, as about images, and that made them powerful.
The Meeting Room was well designed to put those called before them in awe. The room was as beautiful as could be, with its black marble floor, mother-of-pearl ceiling, and ancient geographical and astronomical maps circling the walls. It was at the long table around which discussion took place that the nightmare began.
At their end of the table, the members of the Council sat alternately with the wax figures of the Seven Sleepers who had founded the city. This was meant first as a way to mark their allegiance to the founders, but also as a sign of their own uncontested legitimacy, as if they were finishing the sentences or completing the moves started by the frozen effigies, who all directed their fixed, transfixing looks toward the guests.
The seven members of the Council were almost as motionless, croaking among themselves like a murder of crows and letting their spokesman pronounce the conclusions they reached. From where he sat, Brentford could barely distinguish these black-clad, balding men from one another, all the less so since he had seldom seen them together: ritual required that they take turns when it came to public appearances, each one always on the day of the week for which he had been nicknamed.
Bailiff-Baron Brainveil was the one Brentford had seen the most often, the longest-standing member and already an unpleasant old man when Brentford was a youngster. The tall one, on his left, must be the severe Bornhagen. Froideville was next, a thin moustachioed scientist Brentford’s father was always complaining about. Then came the eggheaded De Witt, who was also the head of the Gentlemen of the Night, followed by the bearded Imruzudov, who was all the more dreaded because nobody knew what his business was. The remaining two, then, must be Houndsfield, the stout so-called economist, and the wiry Auchincloss, who was in charge of military affairs. The Spokesman for the Seven was Philip Surville, who had married—and recently divorced—Seraphine Le Serf, Brentford’s adolescent sweetheart.
Sitting alongside Brentford and Mason at their uncomfortable end of the table was another man who was already in discussion with the council when