Mortal Fire

by C F Dunn

  “Yes – I’m Emma D’Eresby.”

  The girl looked relieved and her smile broadened in welcome, showing perfectly even teeth, brilliantly white against her tan. She made me feel pale just looking at her.

  “We have been expecting you, ma’am. Did you have a good trip?”

  I returned her smile. “Thank you, yes. It’s very kind of you to meet me”

  She beamed. “Professor Shotter – the Dean – thought you might like someone from the history faculty to meet you; I volunteered. I’m Holly Stanhope – I’m a post-grad and you’re my tutor.” She smiled shyly. Every sentence ended on a rising note like a question. I remembered her name from the list I received before I left home.

  “Hi, Holly – that was brave of you.” She looked blankly at me. “To volunteer, I mean.”

  “Oh!” Holly nodded enthusiastically, “I get it,” and she laughed. Her attention switched as she looked at my luggage on the floor, frowning slightly.

  “Did the porter get your bags already?”

  “No, this is all I brought with me.”

  Her frown deepened; obviously visiting English academics were expected to arrive with a baggage train.

  “I sent most of my books and things on in advance,” I explained.

  “Oh, sure,” she nodded, but that wasn’t the sort of luggage she meant, and I wondered if I would find myself short of clothes. “I’ll show you your room, Professor.”

  I followed her, our footsteps echoing through the empty atrium towards the far end of the room where a large, modern glass door filled one of the series of high glassed arches that separated it from what lay beyond. Above them, carved into the stone and gilded so that each letter reflected the subtle light, a Latin inscription teased:

  Res ipsa loquitur.

  Holly heaved the huge door open with her shoulder and held it for me, forestalling my urge to try and puzzle out the caption.

  The damp smell of old stone hit me as we entered an enclosed cloister, the familiar, haunting scent of old buildings everywhere, of the castles and abbeys, hall houses and churches with which I grew up. Ornate windows framed the view onto a large grassed area, surrounded on all sides by buildings and, from every arch, grotesque gargoyles spewed water into stone urns for as long as the rain fell.

  Holly led me along the cloister, chattering animatedly as she described the history of the college. It had been conceived as the culmination of a rich man’s desire to emulate and recreate all that he admired on his Grand Tour of Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. The bequest of the philanthropic owner led to the formation of a university college in the early part of the twentieth century, establishing a reputation for academic rigor that rivalled its much larger cousins. It felt steeped in its own history and would perhaps have been hidebound but for the addition of the new building enclosing the quadrangle with an altogether different structure. Conceptually brilliant, soft red sandstone enclosed extensive walls of glass. Holly noticed my evident admiration.

  “That’s the faculty of medicine. It has the med centre and the medical research facility. It’s won awards,” she added, with evident pride.

  “I’m not surprised,” I said with feeling; Holly glanced at me appreciatively and I smiled back at her and, even if we hadn’t found the same wavelength yet, I felt that we were beginning to tune in.

  I scanned the quad out of the cloister windows as we rounded the corner, looking for the reason I came here in the first place. No building within view matched the description I had been given.

  “Where’s the new library, Holly?”

  “The library’s beyond the med fac, that way,” Holly nodded towards it. “It’s awesome; it’s got an amazing collection of historic manuscripts and texts. That’s what I’m basing my research on.” The upward cadence made her sound uncertain, as if she sought reassurance.

  “You and me both,” I thought. The opportunity to indulge my obsession, to follow my desire, lay in that library. Other women of my age were married, had children, at least a boyfriend – a life. History was my lover – where its strands of truth led, I followed as slavishly as a mistress.

  “What’s your area of research, Holly?”

  We reached the end of the cloister and she hesitated with one hand on the stone newel of the stairs curving away towards the floor above.

  “Yeah, uh – it’s ‘Religion and Reality in Early Modern Europe’.” She cast a brief look at me to gauge my reaction.

  “Ah,” I said.

  “I based it on your dissertation, Professor D’Eresby; it was my…” she struggled for a word, “… inspiration,” she finished, reddening.

  “Oh!”

  I felt at once both flattered and embarrassed by the admiration in the girl’s eyes; my students at Cambridge were less reverential and after all, barely six years separated Holly and me in age. I glanced away, seeking something appropriate to say in response.

  “Thanks,” I ventured lamely. She looked doubtful and I realized that my answer inspired little confidence. As she led the way up the stairs, I fought against the blunting influence of the long journey on my increasingly soggy brain to make more of an effort.

  “What particular aspect did you find interesting?”

  She looked pleased to be asked her opinion. We reached the second-floor landing and took a left turn down the long corridor to a smaller wooden staircase leading to what would have been the servants’ quarters in the past. She shifted the bag she carried to the other hand before replying.

  “I really liked your theory on the mystery plays – you know, where you said ‘religion is the shadow of reality’. That’s where I got my idea from, right?” She stopped outside one of the doors and beamed at me. Had I really said that? Even repeated with such sincerity by this girl, my own words sounded absurdly pompous now that my outlook on things had changed so completely. But that was then, and this was now, and she wouldn’t know what I went through to get to this point in my life, so I just murmured, “I’m glad you found it useful,” and changed the subject. “Is this my room?”

  “Uh huh.” Holly unlocked the door to the attic room with a key she fished out of her jeans pocket, holding it out for me and stepping to one side to let me through.

  “I hope you like it,” she said brightly. “It’s not very big but it has the best views.”

  The view through the window to the mountain range was indeed spectacular and the room considerably bigger than my one in Cambridge.

  “This is perfect, it reminds me of home, but the views are so much better – and it’s so quiet.” That reminded me – I’d hardly seen anyone since I arrived. “Where is everyone?”

  She looked surprised. “They’re in class; they don’t get out yet.”

  Of course. I forgot that here term began weeks earlier than at home.

  “The Dean said for me to show you where the dining room is if you would like some refreshment; or I could show you your tutor room – if you prefer.”

  I did prefer. The thought of meeting more people whose accents and humour I would have to negotiate with the single brain cell left to me was too much to contemplate at this stage of the day. Food could wait; too tired to eat anyway, the memory of the dead woman’s face curbed what appetite I might have summoned.

  I deposited my bags on the single bed in the tiny adjoining bedroom and poked my head around the door of the bathroom. With only a cramped shower in one corner and no natural light to brighten the drab tiles, it still contained everything I needed. I left the exploration of the little kitchenette until later.

  Holly led me back to the side of the quad where the floors seemed to be divided into faculties, and up a set of stairs. History twinned with English, the long corridor divided by a communal meeting area with a few, low-slung seats upholstered in a coarse fabric the colour of beech leaves in spring. Open staff pigeonholes, gaping like teeth, lined the back wall. Numbered tutorial rooms lay on either side of the corridor with my room halfway along on the left. The door
already proclaimed my name and designation: “Visiting Professor”. Holly needed to get back to class and I thanked her profusely and wondered vaguely, watching her ponytail swing as she disappeared down the corridor, what she would report to her fellow students about their new tutor.

  Large enough for a modern desk with a half dozen chairs ranged in front of it, the room provided ample space for five students and my books. Two big windows let in plenty of light and an old-fashioned radiator belted out heat; but it was stuffy and felt as if it had been unoccupied for some time, with that musty smell that comes with layers of dust and a lack of fresh air and humanity. I threw open one of the windows and welcomed the clean scent of rain-washed grass and wet brick that accompanied the cool breeze.

  Turning my back on the window, I then surveyed the rest of the room. Deep-set bookshelves lined the short wall behind the desk and on them were the boxes of books I sent in advance. I opened the box nearest to me and lifted the book from the top: Monsters, Magic and the Mediaeval Mind. I smiled fondly, oddly comforted by the familiar title. A sudden squeal followed by laughter from the quad below reminded me it must be nearly lunchtime. Weaving unsteadily across the wet grass in the rain, students made their way towards the atrium, a boy throwing handfuls of soggy leaves that a girl attempted to dodge. No change there, it seemed. I waited a few moments more until the flurry of student activity in the corridor outside my door subsided, then, tucking my book under my arm, shut the door behind me. The key jammed in the lock and the wretched thing wouldn’t budge. I wriggled it in frustration and muttered at it under my breath.

  “You have to turn it the other way.”

  I jumped, spinning around in embarrassed confusion, already beginning to apologize for my language, and a willowy dark-haired woman of about my age admonished the lock with mock severity and no malice. Her light, accented voice cut through my protestations.

  “Americans,” she tutted, her eyes dancing. “It is something about being ex-colonists, I think – they had to put the lock in upside down to make a point.”

  She held out her long-fingered hand to me, her head tilted to one side so that her dark, short hair formed a glossy curtain that caught the light.

  “Elena Smalova, lecturer in Post-Revolutionary Soviet Society, and you must be…” she made a show of reading the name on my door, “… ah yes, Professor D’E-re-sby.” She pursed her lips as she struggled with the alien pronunciation. “How do you say that?”

  “Dares-bee. And it’s Emma, by the way; it’s good to meet you.”

  Her name seemed familiar but, too tired to remember why, I took her offered hand instead and we shook with all the dignity our Imperialist past could muster before bursting into giggles at the absurdity of it. Her brown eyes tilted up in the corners, tiny creases emphasizing the laughter that seemed to be on the verge of breaking out at any moment.

  “This is my room.” She patted the door of the room opposite mine. “I am so glad you are here, we can keep each other company. Have you eaten yet? Everyone can’t wait to meet you. If you come now, I can show you the staff dining-room. It was a shock when they found the old professor; nobody knew he had a bad heart, but now it is good to have someone who is young. We did not think you could be here so soon.” She rattled through her words and phrases so rapidly that I lost track of what she asked at the beginning, although I thought it might have been something to do with food, so I winged it in the hope I wasn’t far off the mark.

  “Thanks, that’s very… er, kind, but I haven’t unpacked yet and I’m bushed, so if you don’t mind, I think I’d better get back to my rooms and sort myself out.”

  Elena pulled her eyebrows into a tight “V”. “Booshed, is that where you are from? I thought you are English?”

  “No. Yes – sorry, my mistake. I’m tired; I couldn’t sleep on the flight so I won’t make much sense at the moment.”

  “Da, I understand now. So, you must have tea. Come with me; I will make you Russian tea and all will be well.”

  She eyed me with such a look of expectation that it would have been rude to refuse. Linking her arm companionably through mine, we began to walk down the corridor towards the stairs, out of the humanities fac, across the quad, to her rooms the floor below mine.

  Bigger than mine and much more homely, the room had cheerful throws covering each chair and, above the sofa, a distinctive needlepoint wall-hanging with stylized roses in reds on a cream-and-black background. Elena saw me looking at it.

  “It is an Uzbek Suzani embroidery; do you like it?

  It reminded me of the painted barge-ware I had once seen on holiday on the Norfolk Broads.

  “Yes, I do – it’s very unusual.”

  I held back a yawn and she pointed wordlessly to an armchair with a sheepskin cushion by the window. I sat gratefully, the high back supporting my aching shoulders into which I locked all the tension of the last forty-eight hours. Elena disappeared through a door; shortly afterwards I heard running water and a kettle being filled. I let my head rest on the back of the chair and closed my eyes.

  I woke abruptly. It took me a moment to remember where I was and a second more to locate Elena sitting in the armchair opposite, her legs slung over one arm, reading.

  She looked up at my sudden movement.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I must have been more tired than I thought.” I rubbed my eyes and sat up. She didn’t seem in the least bit put out by the stranger falling asleep in her chair.

  “That’s OK; you are tired, I think. You would like some food?”

  I shook my head. “No thanks, I’m not hungry.”

  “Yes – yes, you are hungry; you must eat now.”

  Before I could reply, she disappeared only to return a minute later with a bowl and a large mug, which she placed on the low coffee table before me. I peered blearily at the food, trying to locate my appetite.

  “Soup – chicken soup. I make it,” she declared triumphantly, then with a slight note of anxiety, “You are not vegetarian, are you?”

  I shook my head.

  “No, and not a chance of becoming one with homemade chicken soup on offer.”

  I picked up the spoon and gingerly sipped at the hot liquid. It tasted very good. A second later the paprika hit my throat and I coughed involuntarily, tears springing to my eyes. Elena looked pleased.

  “Good?” she asked.

  “Very,” I wheezed. The warmth spread through me, my brain becoming more alert. She nodded again and picked up the book she had been reading. A company of demons danced across the front cover in the glaring colours of a fifteenth-century manuscript; I recognized the book I brought with me. I finished the soup and started to drink the hot, black tea thirstily. Elena looked up from the page she read, frowning slightly.

  “This is your area of study, no?”

  “Yes, sort of.”

  She narrowed her eyes as if assessing me, and turned back to the page. I finished my tea. Elena sucked air in through her teeth and closed the book with a snap. She gazed at nothing in particular for a moment, then suddenly asked as if in mid conversation: “And do you believe all… this?” she indicated the book in front of her with a flick of her hand.

  “In what way, ‘believe’?” I asked, taken aback.

  “Do you think this is true? All these demons, these monsters; this book… it talks as if they were true.”

  I couldn’t fathom the sudden change in her manner. I thought carefully for a moment, choosing my words.

  “It’s not so much a question of what we believe, it’s what they believed that matters.”

  Thoughtful again, she peered at me, searching for hidden meaning in my words.

  “But what if it is true?” she whispered, her eyes becoming round.

  “I haven’t ever considered that,” I admitted. “Why?”

  “No, it’s nothing. I am just being ridiculous.” She squirmed upright, swinging her legs around and turning to face me.

  “Now,” she said, slapping her hands de
terminedly on the tops of her thighs. “What are you going to wear for your welcome reception?”

  I couldn’t help the alarm in my voice. “What welcome reception?”

  “For you, of course. Every new senior member of staff must be introduced; it is the tradition here.”

  “To the history faculty?” I asked hopefully. “I can handle that.”

  Elena looked shifty. “Not exactly, no.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “To the college staff,” she admitted.

  “What, all of it?”

  “No, no – not everyone,” she backtracked rapidly. “Just the senior members.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed. I couldn’t think of anything I would hate more at this point.

  “I suppose it can’t be helped,” I said, almost to myself.

  Elena’s face brightened.” Da – it will be fun…” She stopped and adjusted her choice of words. “Well, not fun, perhaps; but you will meet everyone and then you won’t have to see them again.”

  That was so far from being encouraging, that I laughed. She saw the funny side of it and joined in.

  “I thought I’d got away with it – no welcoming committee or anything,” I said ruefully.

  She obviously thought that highly amusing. “Oh, no! You can’t expect to be a highly respected visiting academic from Cam-bridge…” she emphasized the word, “and not be… what is the word…?”

  “Humiliated?” I suggested.

  “No, no!” she laughed again, “proclaimed to all the world.” She waved her willowy arm with a flourish.

  “Well, let’s just hope that the world isn’t listening.”

  “Ah, but it will be; the college has to celebrate your arrival. The Dean will want to show you off.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “Because…” she hesitated, “because he will think you a great catch for the college.”

  “Good grief,” I muttered.

  “Now, what will you wear?” she asked again.

  “I haven’t a clue,” I answered truthfully, considering I hadn’t known about it in the first place. I mentally scanned my luggage. “How formal will it be?”