The Oxford Inheritance

by Ann A. McDonald

  “Ahmed’s?” Cassie repeated.

  Evie’s eyes widened. “You haven’t been? Oh, you must, he’s practically an institution here at Raleigh. It’s a kebab van,” she added. “Although you should never touch the kebabs. We don’t know what he puts in them, but only the strongest of stomachs survive.” She took a bite, her face melting in contentment, then pushed the box toward her. “Go on, try.”

  Cassie cautiously speared a fry and tried it, soggy yet pungent. “Good, right?” Evie asked. “One time Ahmed got into an argument with Rutledge down in the lodge about the noise, and he up and parked on the other side of the city for a month. There was an uproar. Letters were written; the JCR, the Junior Common Room, passed a motion in defense. In the end I think the master had to go beg him to come back before we all rioted.”

  Cassie slowly chewed, warming to her new roommate. There was something effortlessly sweet about Evie’s tumble of gossip, the vivid spark in her blue eyes.

  “So what’s your story?” Evie looked her over with interest. “I would have thought you were too old to be an undergraduate. Did you switch degree specializations?”

  Cassie paused. “Not exactly. I started late. I . . . left education, out of high school. It took time to find my way back around.”

  Time, and resources. When she’d first opened the package, she’d bolted straight for Oxford: taken her meager savings, hopped a flight, and found a cheap motel on the edge of the city to stay in while she hunted down her mother’s past life.

  She’d found nothing.

  She hadn’t even known where to begin, or what she was looking for. The closest she’d gotten to Raleigh was an official tour: ushered along the public pathways with a group of tourists, kept away from any dorms or student areas, anything of use. She was an outsider.

  So she’d bided her time. First, back in the States, a place at Smith, a college that had both a program for nontraditional adult students and strong study-abroad ties with Oxford. She’d studiously amassed recommendations and glowing transcripts until finally, her junior year arrived, and the Raleigh program accepted her application.

  “You came back to academia after all that time? That’s great,” Evie chatted, still munching on her food. “And brave, putting up with all these kids again. I couldn’t do it.”

  Cassie remembered the pages of notes she’d seen strewn around Evie’s room. “What is it you’re studying? You’re a grad student, aren’t you?”

  Evie brightened. “History, Elizabethan literature, a real mishmash. I’m doing my thesis on Sir Walter Raleigh and the intellectual renaissance here at the college.”

  Cassie tried to remember her tour from yesterday. “You mean that secret society everyone was talking about?”

  Evie laughed. “It sounds strange, but the conspiracy theories aren’t actually that far-fetched. The ideas being bandied about at the time were heresy and treason, so they did stay pretty secretive. But no dark rituals and murder. They just sat around discussing philosophy.”

  “Wild,” Cassie noted dryly.

  “I was worried when I applied that the subject would have been done a million times,” Evie confided. “But it turns out only a couple of people ever researched it. Most of the papers and documents haven’t been touched for years, so I’m practically living in the vaults these days.”

  “Are they part of the library?” Cassie inquired casually.

  Evie nodded. “You don’t need to worry about them yet, most of the catalog is aboveground. It’s only us grad students who get banished down into the cellars.” She yawned as her cell phone buzzed loudly on the table with a text. Evie checked it, then bounced to her feet.“Shit, I’m late. Some friends are having a get-together at Carlton Hall. You should come.”

  Cassie shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m beat.”

  “Okay, sleep well. And if you have any questions or anything, just ask,” Evie told her, pulling her jacket back on. “I know this place can be rather overwhelming. I was wandering round in a daze my first few weeks.”

  “Thanks.” Cassie watched Evie slick on a fresh coat of lipstick and bound out the door, just as the bells outside began to chime midnight.

  Alone again, she drifted back to the windows. On this side of the walls, Raleigh lay dark and still. The heavy gates were shut, and old spotlit lamps glowed along the side of the buildings, casting shadows that seemed to flicker and dance. She caught a glimpse of movement from the cloisters as someone emerged, striding across the courtyard, a smudge of black against the dark cobblestones. A dedicated student, heading to the library, perhaps, or a professor back from a late drink. Then the shadow was gone, and all was still again.

  Cassie retrieved the photo of her mother again. She didn’t have time for mixers and college parties; she’d come here for a reason. It had been almost twenty-five years since that sun-dappled day in the photograph, and although Cassie wasn’t naive enough to think her mother’s classmates would still be here, she knew places like Oxford never liked to let you go. There would be alumni associations, old boys’ club meetings, mailing lists, and donor events. She was no great hacker, but she could track a man using nothing but his supposedly anonymous online username; these people, who weren’t even trying to hide, would be far easier for her to find.

  All Cassie needed was one of them, just one, to tell her who her father was.

  5

  CASSIE HAD SPENT MOST OF HER LIFE BOUNCING RESTLESSLY between apartments and cities, until she found it easy to make a home wherever she found herself. She quickly settled into the attic apartment and turned her attention to the start of classes. She’d hoped that the pomp and ceremony of the first day of term would be quickly replaced with a more regular blue-jeans version of the college experience, but she was mistaken. Her formal matriculation ceremony led to a welcome dinner in the grand hall, complete with soaring wood-paneled ceilings and long rows of dining tables silently waited on by staff. And still the invitations continued, materializing in her pigeonhole every day, a confetti of colored paper and stiff cards all beckoning her to some new social function.

  Departmental drinks, JCR games night, pleas from sports teams and student organizations to join their festivities—the avalanche of social engagements gathered pace over the course of the week. Even her new roommate left nightly invitations to join her out on the town, but Cassie stood firm, watching from her corner of the couch as Evie dashed out in a flutter of silk cocktail dresses, her high heels clattering on the cobblestones beneath the window late into the night.

  Luckily, thanks to the tutorial system of learning at Oxford, Cassie would be given free rein to pursue her extracurricular mission. Instead of being graded on attendance, and issued pop quizzes and final exams, students at Raleigh were left largely to their own devices; they were taught in small groups of two or three, meeting weekly with a professor to discuss the research essays they had prepared from a set reading list. There would be no classes, and only the occasional seminar; even lectures were entirely optional.

  Cassie was certain she could breeze through the work required for her tutorials and have plenty of time left over to track down her mother’s past. For the fall semester, she would be studying economics under Professor Kenmore and philosophy with Professor Tremain, the disheveled man she’d met at the mixer on her first day. He had already sent out a summons demanding her presence at an induction session; “Mandatory” had been written in bold, so at six P.M. on Friday she reluctantly put her mother’s files aside and headed out across the campus.

  Professor Tremain’s office was located on the north side of a set of open stone cloisters that, even now in early October, whistled and hummed with a wind that slipped beneath her bulky parka and sent shivers along her skin. Cassie climbed the staircase to the first floor and pushed open the door to find a dim, wood-paneled study already filled with a group of students crammed on the threadbare couches and old antique chairs. They all turned to look at her, and Cassie flushed as she stepped inside the room
.

  “Come on in,” Professor Tremain called from behind his desk. He was wearing an identical outfit to the first time she’d met him at the introductory tea: a tweed jacket with worn leather elbow patches and a pair of faded corduroy pants. He gave her an encouraging nod and then continued: “I was just explaining about research resources. You should be familiar with the libraries by now,” he added, turning back to the group. “Raleigh is well stocked, and there’s also the Ashmolean, for older texts. Being unable to locate the right reading material is never an excuse for substandard work.”

  As the professor moved on to proper footnote citations, Cassie looked around the room. Her classmates already seemed at home. They squeezed together on the couches, passing printed sheets around and loaning each other pens as if they’d known one another forever.

  But of course, they had. She was the interloper here; they’d all been studying together for a year, at least. Sophomores now, nineteen or twenty years old, they all looked impossibly young to her, but completely at ease with Tremain’s stern warnings about source materials.

  One girl, hair neatly styled in a French twist, raised her hand. “Are there specific lectures you recommend?”

  Tremain gave her an approving smile. “We’ll be starting this term with Descartes and his meditations, but you need to prepare for later in the year. Each tutor will send out a list, but I can tell you now you should be looking at Ethics, perhaps the series on Kant and Rousseau. By now, you’ll all be familiar with Warnock, Soteriou . . .”

  The students scribbled on as he listed a dozen different recommendations, and Cassie felt a flicker of unease. She struggled to copy down the roll call of unfamiliar texts; maybe she’d been too quick to dismiss the amount of work it would take to stay afloat.

  Professor Tremain paused his list of reading recommendations and looked around the small, dim room. “Essays should, of course, be around three thousand words. If it’s less than two thousand, you haven’t explored the material in enough depth. Footnotes don’t count. What we expect from you is a reasoned, persuasive argument that assesses the major concepts of the reading, while also drawing original conclusions.” He gave them a wry smile. “Be warned, you may think just because you survived the first year it’s smooth sailing from here on out. I’m afraid to say there’ll be some choppy waters as you come to grips with the more advanced materials. But don’t worry—I’m here to help, however I can. If you have questions about the reading lists, just ask. It’s not a test, we’re all here to learn.”

  Cassie let out a small breath of relief. Tremain produced another sheaf of photocopied pages and began passing them around. “These are your first week reading lists. I’ve listed your tutorial group and schedule on the back. That’s it for now. I’ll see you all for your first tutorials next week.”

  Cassie glanced at her study materials as the rest of the class gathered their things and spilled back down the stairs. According to Tremain’s list, she was grouped with students named Sebastian and Julia, set for eight A.M. Friday morning to present their essays on Descartes and his meditations about body and mind. That seemed simple enough. She’d already picked up a grasp of basic philosophy from her patchwork education, so she should be able to rattle off a paper in no time. Her new economics professor had e-mailed her other essay questions already, and they were just as basic—a breakdown of simple macro- and microeconomic concepts that anyone with access to an Internet search engine could answer.

  She crumpled the reading list in the bottom of her bag as she reached her classmates, gathered in the cloisters.

  “Time for a pint,” a tall, reedy boy with carrot-red hair groaned.

  There was laughter. “How are you not still hungover from last night?” the girl with the braid demanded as the group began sauntering toward the college bar. “You puked all over the roses.”

  “Fertilizer, my dear. I was doing them a favor.”

  Cassie turned away and headed in the opposite direction, across the courtyard toward the looming spires of the college library, a tall and ornate building with iron-paned windows and a stained-glass frieze. At the entrance, she heaved open the heavy wooden door and waited a moment on the threshold, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. The library was set on three levels, with the main room housing the circulation desk and a bank of gleaming new computers. Stairs led off to the side up to the reading room above, which was bordered on every wall by more stacks—these old and wooden, bearing clothbound volumes, stiff with age. Above that level was a mezzanine, the balcony running the full circumference of the room, with books stretching even higher, up to the lofted ceilings crossed with thick beams.

  Consulting a map on the wall, Cassie saw the entrance to the vaults was in the back of the main floor. When she got there, she found a heavy wooden door propped ajar, with a dim stone staircase spiraling downward, leading to another door. This one was shut, armed with a surprisingly modern card swipe.

  Cassie’s heart fell. Of course it wouldn’t be so easy, she scolded herself: library archives would be restricted to authorized personnel who had a legitimate reason to be rooting through the old college files. And her reasons were anything but. She studied the access panel carefully, wondering if it could be hacked. Most of these security systems, for all their bells and whistles, could be bypassed with a magnetic strip and some electronic store equipment. She snapped a quick photo with her cell phone, then climbed back up to the main library level.

  Navigating her way into the depths of the stacks, she found the next best thing to the archives: a case of college yearbooks like the ones she’d seen in Sir Edmund’s offices. Cassie heaved down several books, covering the time period her mother must have attended the college, and found herself a study carrel in a dark corner.

  The years fell away, each page a snapshot from a different era. She worked systematically through the yearbooks, checking the student lists for the freshman class of 1992. The undergraduate intake at Raleigh was always small, and that year the college had admitted only eighty-five new students, but as she’d seen in the study, there was no Joanna Blackwell listed on the page—nor for 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, or 1995. Cassie stared at the books, her disappointment blossoming into curiosity as she examined the pages again, lit by the dim glow of an iron-cast lamp in the corner.

  Why wasn’t her mother’s name listed? Even if she’d been a foreign transfer student like Cassie, her name should still be on the rolls with the other study-abroad programs. Cassie expanded her search to other college records and rolls, working through the evening until darkness fell outside the windows, but still, she found no trace of her mother among the dusty faded pages. Joanna Blackwell was a ghost, a figment.

  Cassie stretched. Her eyes were dry and tired from hours poring over the tiny type, but she felt more frustrated than anything. She’d thought that once she was here in person to access the records, the answers she’d been searching for would fall into her lap.

  She returned the yearbooks to their shelf, then stopped by the front desk. An older woman with a gray-blond perm and a drab cardigan was stacking returns. “How would I get access to the college archives in the vault?” Cassie asked.

  The librarian looked up. “I’m afraid the vaults are restricted. Too many delicate manuscripts to have people trampling through all day,” she explained. “You need to have a faculty member apply for a pass-card for you.”

  “Oh.” Cassie’s face must have fallen, because the librarian paused.

  “You can also request materials and we’ll bring them up. What is it you’re looking for?”

  “Nothing in particular,” Cassie said hurriedly. “I was just wondering, that’s all.”

  Luckily, the librarian was prevented from quizzing her further by the blare of the alarm from the door sensors, where a wide-eyed boy froze, guilty.

  “Did you demagnetize?” the librarian called, impatient. Cassie quickly slipped away.

  Outside, it was dark and chilly, and the campus pathways were busy
with students on their way to the dining hall, or heading out to dinner. Cassie zipped up her parka and headed back toward the attic, deep in thought. The information had to be there somewhere. She just wasn’t looking in the right place. Maybe her mother had attended a different Oxford college, and only stopped by Raleigh to celebrate with friends, or perhaps there was a simple explanation why her name was missing from the rolls. An administration mistake or a printing error. She would just have to dig deeper—and that meant gaining access to those locked archives.

  6

  “MORNING.”

  Cassie did a double take when she emerged from her room early the next morning. Not only was Evie awake, but she was bright-eyed and waiting in the living area, lacing up a pair of running shoes. “I thought I could come out with you, if you don’t mind,” Evie asked. “I haven’t done any exercise in so long I swear my muscles have atrophied.”

  “Sure,” Cassie replied slowly. She preferred the time alone to think, but she’d been rebuffing Evie’s invites all week. “I mean, of course you’re welcome to. It’s not very interesting,” she added, zipping up her sports jacket. “Just out to the meadows and back.”

  “Believe me, I need it.” Evie laughed. “See if I can’t sweat some of these cocktails out of my system.”

  “You were out again last night, weren’t you?” Cassie asked.

  Evie groaned. “Too late, and I shouldn’t have gone. But someone was having a party, and then we needed food, and before I knew it, we were propping up the bar until closing, like always!” They headed downstairs, walking out toward the back entrance. “Have you been past the Botanic Garden?” Evie suggested. Cassie shook her head. “It’s not far, out beyond Magdalen College. We could loop around by the river, it’s nice and peaceful.”