Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (9780063021440)

He didn’t have to say why. Robin, whose father was on the faculty, who could pass for white under the right lighting, at the right angles, was shielded in a way Ramy and Victoire were not. If Ramy or Victoire had faced the police that night, they wouldn’t have been on this ship, they would have been behind bars, or worse.

Ramy’s throat pulsed. ‘Damn it, Robin.’

‘I’m sure it wasn’t easy,’ Victoire said, trying valiantly to broker a peace. ‘They’re so strict with their secrecy, you remember—’

‘Yes, but we know each other.’ Ramy shot Robin a glare. ‘Or at least I thought we did.’

‘Hermes is messy,’ Robin insisted. ‘They’ve ignored my warnings, they hang their members out to dry, and it wouldn’t have done you any good to be sent down your first year—’

‘I would have been careful,’ Ramy scoffed. ‘I’m not like you, I’m not scared of my own shadow—’

‘But you’re not careful,’ Robin said, exasperated. So they were trading insults now. So they were being frank now. ‘You were caught, weren’t you? You’re impulsive, you don’t think – the moment anyone insults your pride you lash out—’

‘Then what about Victoire?’

‘Victoire’s . . .’ Robin trailed off. He had no defence. He hadn’t told Victoire about Hermes because he’d assumed she had too much to lose, but there was no good way to say this out loud, or to justify its logic.

She knew what he meant. She would not meet his pleading look.

‘Thank God for Anthony,’ was all she said.

‘I’ve just one more question,’ Ramy said abruptly. He was really, truly furious, Robin realized. This was not merely a burst of Ramy-esque passion. This was something they perhaps could not come back from. ‘What did you say to make it go away? What’d you give up?’

Robin couldn’t lie to Ramy’s face. He wanted to; he was so afraid of the truth, and of the way Ramy would look at him when he heard it, but this he could not hide. It would rip him apart. ‘He wanted information.’

‘And so?’

‘So I gave him information.’

Victoire touched a hand to her mouth. ‘Everything?’

‘Just what I knew,’ Robin said. ‘Which wasn’t much, Griffin made sure of it – I never even knew what he did with the books I took out for him. All I told Lovell about was one safe room at St Aldate’s.’

It didn’t help. She still looked at him as if he’d kicked a puppy.

‘Are you mad?’ Ramy asked.

‘It didn’t matter,’ Robin insisted. ‘Griffin’s never there, he told me himself – and I bet they haven’t even caught him, he’s so incredibly paranoid; I bet he’s already out of the country by now.’

Ramy shook his head in amazement. ‘But you still betrayed them.’

This was profoundly unfair, Robin thought. He’d saved them – he’d done the only thing he could think of to minimize the damage – which was more than Hermes had ever done for him. Why was he now under siege? ‘I was only trying to save you—’

Ramy was unmoved. ‘You were saving yourself.’

‘Look,’ Robin snapped. ‘I don’t have a family. I have a contract, a guardian, and a house in Canton full of dead relatives that for all I know could still be rotting in their beds. That’s what I’m sailing home to. You have Calcutta. Without Babel, I have nothing.’

Ramy crossed his arms and set his jaw.

Victoire cast Robin a sympathetic look, but said nothing in his defence.

‘I’m not a traitor,’ Robin pleaded. ‘I’m just trying to survive.’

‘Survival’s not that difficult, Birdie.’ Ramy’s eyes were very hard. ‘But you’ve got to maintain some dignity while you’re at it.’

The rest of the voyage was decidedly miserable. Ramy, it seemed, had said all he wanted to say. He and Robin passed all the hours they spent in their shared cabin in desperately uncomfortable silence. Mealtimes weren’t much better. Victoire was polite but distant; there was little she could say in Letty’s presence, and she didn’t make much effort to seek Robin out otherwise. And Letty was still angry with all of them, which made small talk nigh impossible.

Things would have been better if they had had a single other soul for company, but they were the only passengers on a trade ship where the sailors seemed interested in anything but befriending Oxford scholars, whom they considered an unwanted and ill-timed burden. Robin spent most of his days either alone above deck or alone in his cabin. Under any other circumstances, the voyage would have been a fascinating chance to examine the unique linguistics of nautical environments, which blended the necessary multilingualism brought about by foreign crews and foreign destinations with the highly technical vocabulary of seacraft. What was a banian day? What was marling? Was the anchor attached to the better end, or the bitter end? Normally he would have delighted in finding out. But he was busy sulking, still both baffled and resentful at how he’d lost his friends in the process of trying to save them.