‘No.’ Too defensive? ‘Even with the money they were offering, I couldn’t afford to go.’
‘It is no bad thing to be afraid,’ Blanchard admonished her. ‘Those who think they have nothing to fear usually have nothing to gain.’
Ellie wasn’t sure that was true. ‘Anyway, I got to Oxford in the end.’
‘Indeed. Top of your undergraduate class, a first-class degree in medieval history, you could have walked into any graduate training programme in the country. Instead, you chose to pursue a doctorate. Not many people would have made the same choice. Were you not tempted to go for the money, to escape your background?’
Ellie stiffened. Was he being crass? Or was he testing her? She looked into his face, the handsome lines etched deep into the skin, and thought she saw the curl of a smile. Bastard.
‘Money isn’t the only way to escape,’ was all she said.
Blanchard nodded, rocking in his high-backed chair. ‘The poverty of ideas, no?’
‘Something like that.’
‘But ideas have their own poverty. The ivory tower of academia is an echo chamber, a hall of mirrors. You look at the world through glass and eventually all you see is yourself. Would that satisfy you?’
You aren’t safe here. The policeman’s words suddenly came back to her.
‘Academia’s where I am,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m very flattered you’ve asked me here, but I’ve got three and a half years to go and I’m fully committed to the doctorate. I’m afraid there’s absolutely no way I could give it up at the moment.’
She’d rehearsed it on the bus, knowing the moment would come and wanting to get the tone right. Don’t give offence, but don’t leave a scrap of doubt. Like telling your date you had no intention of going home with him.
Blanchard heard her out and looked bored.
‘You have worked in banking once before?’
It took her a moment to realise what he meant. The memory was so distant. ‘Just a summer job. Very different to this.’ Twelve hours a week in the local ex-building society, brown carpets and pebble-dash walls. The only old money there was pensioners drawing their benefits.
‘What attracted you?’
Ellie blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘To that job. Why not a bar, or a clothes shop — the jobs young women do?’
‘I thought I should see the other side of the coin.’
I wanted to see where the money came from. To handle it. To be close to it. Just once, to have enough. She’d been poor all her life and hated it. The desperation in her mother’s eyes when she came home from the night shift, her terror every time there was a knock at the door. More than once, a sudden departure from a house she’d just started to feel happy in, bundled into a car at night with their few possessions. The injustice of seeing other kids at school coming in with clothes and phones and laptops they’d been given by their parents, while she bought her uniforms second-hand. At university the phones and laptops had turned into cars and flats, while Ellie lived above a kebab shop, sweated over her books late into the night to the smell of chip fat, and filled her spare hours earning minimum wage wherever she could find it.
‘Let me tell you a little about our pay policy,’ said Blanchard. ‘Because we’re a small firm, we know we have to offer more than our rivals.’ He picked up the silver knife and wiped threads of tobacco off the blade. ‘Fortunately, we have deep pockets. As a starting salary, we will offer seventy-five thousand pounds, plus you can expect a bonus that would increase that by about ten to fifteen per cent. As you become more senior, that percentage grows.’
Ellie’s mouth hung open. She didn’t care if Blanchard saw it. Had he really said seventy-five thousand pounds? The grant for her doctorate was eight thousand, and that was more than she’d ever had to live on in her life. People she’d known at university who’d gone to the top London law firms weren’t earning nearly that much. She knew, because she’d heard them bragging about it for months.
‘We know London is a difficult place to live,’ Blanchard was saying, ‘so we try to help the transition. For the first year you work here, you can live in the company flat. The Barbican, the thirty-eighth floor. The views are stunning.’
Ellie nodded thoughtfully. Seventy-five thousand pounds.
‘Naturally, we provide all the tools you need for the job. A laptop, the latest mobile phone, if that matters to you. A clothing allowance.’
Unconsciously, Ellie rubbed the cheap fabric of her skirt and imagined herself in some of the clothes she’d seen in the shop windows.
‘We don’t provide a car, because you won’t need it. Driving in London is impossible. If we send you further afield we have someone to drive you. And most of your travel will be abroad.’
‘Would there be much of it? The travel?’
‘Our clients are spread all over Europe. Switzerland, Italy, Germany; France, of course. Sometimes they come to London, but usually they prefer that we go to them.’
Ellie had only left the country once, at eighteen, when she passed her exams. Six months saving the wages from her Saturday job, gone in a week in a Spanish hostel that smelled of drains.
‘Naturally, we make it as comfortable as possible. We send you first class and try to find agreeable hotels.’
‘I’m sure —’
Blanchard cut her off with a flick of the silver knife.
‘Ellie, let us be honest with each other. Most job interviews are built on lies. The candidate lies about how fantastic he is, how dedicated, and the company lies about how great it will be to work for them and they know he will have a glittering career. Really, they will work him until he goes blind on paperwork, and then let him go.’
Ellie listened in silence. The smoke from Blanchard’s cigar was making her dizzy.
‘We are not like that. We hunt carefully for the one we want and, when we catch him, we keep him. You are an investment for us — potentially worth millions. Like any investment, we want to help you to grow. Yes, the job is demanding. There will be long days — and nights, sometimes — but I promise you, it will be more fascinating than anything you have ever done before. You will come face to face with some of the most powerful and intelligent men in Europe, and they will listen to what you have to say. Eagerly, gratefully. Because you represent the Monsalvat Bank, and because they will recognise in you a kindred intelligence. As we have.’
He clasped his hands together and reached forward over the desk.
‘Ellie, we very much want you to come and work with us. Can we tempt you?’
II
It’s raining on the morning we come to kill the count. The raindrops make rings on the flat sea, a labyrinth of interlocking circles. Our shallow boats glide across the surface and disturb the pattern. The hulls are so thin I can feel the water beneath, like horseflesh through a saddle.
The boats are little more than coracles. In a way, we are pilgrims. My scalp itches where Malegant cut me a false tonsure with his hunting knife last night. My skin crawls where the uncombed wool of the habit chafes it. We took the robes off a group of monks we surprised on the road near Rennes a week ago. The seams stretch around our shoulders: we’re broader than the average monk. And we’re wearing chain-mail hauberks underneath.
A mist has risen off the sea. It encloses us, a blank tapestry on the walls of our world. There are three hundred islands in this bay, but we can’t see any of them. The weather is perfect for us. Dark boats against a dark sea will be almost invisible to the watchmen. Even if they see us, bowstrings soften in the rain. Malegant says it shows God wills it, and we all laugh. We think we understand the joke.