The Oxford Inheritance

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The Oxford Inheritance Page 10

by Ann A. McDonald


  She shook her head. “Indiana, way out in the middle. But we moved around a lot.”

  “And what brought you all this way?”

  She gave him a smile as she turned to leave. “Why does anyone come to Raleigh? History.”

  She made her way through the gatehouse and out onto the main street outside. Half a block away stood Harvey’s—a deli/sandwich shop that was apparently as much a daytime staple to the Raleigh students as Ahmed’s kebab van was come nightfall. Ever since Evie had introduced her to it, Cassie had found it the perfect place for an inexpensive—if not entirely nutritious—meal, and she often detoured there after her runs to wait in line in the small, fog-steamed storefront to claim a hearty breakfast bap of sausage, egg, and lashings of tomato ketchup.

  That day, the line was only a few people deep. Cassie took her place in the queue, turning her attention to the day of study ahead. Her next philosophy tutorial with Tremain was the next morning, and she hoped to have her essay written and submitted by the end of the day, leaving plenty of time for a long night’s rest so that she would be alert and prepared to defend it.

  This time, Cassie was determined to prove Tremain wrong. He thought she was a waste of the place, that she wasn’t up to the standard of her classmates, but Cassie knew he was wrong. She might not have attended the best schools like them, enjoyed private tutors and costly after-school activities, but she could hold her own.

  She had to. With the threat of expulsion hanging over her head, there was too much at stake to fail over poor grades. She wouldn’t be intimidated by Tremain’s sneering; she would find a way to change his mind.

  The line inched forward, until Cassie drew level with the glass-fronted cabinet filled with containers of wafer-sliced salami, crumbling chicken, and salad, dripping with oil. The grill behind the counter hissed, staff moving in a practiced ballet around one another to expertly crack eggs onto the blackened hot plate, flipping and sliding orders along as the demands kept coming. They had her order filled and packaged in barely a couple of minutes.

  “What about the Merton ball?”

  A pair of girls was walking in front of Cassie, effortlessly fashionable, even bundled in their autumn wear, the ubiquitous Raleigh college scarves looped around their necks.

  “Not this year.” Their voices drifted back to Cassie. “It’s been a bore over there ever since Freddie and the gang graduated.”

  “What about your dear professor?”

  “Oh, right. Whoops!” The girls laughed, and Cassie realized one of them was Olivia Mandeville, with a dark-haired girl Cassie hadn’t seen before. They paused at the traffic lights, and Olivia turned, noticing Cassie three paces behind them.

  “Oh, hi!” She bobbed forward, kissing Cassie on both cheeks before she had time to react. Olivia’s blue eyes shone; her cheeks were pink with the cold. “You found Harvey’s then?” she said, noticing Cassie’s brown paper packages steaming in the cold air. “You have to try the bacon and brie, it’s divine.” She turned back to the other girl. “Paige, this is Cassie, Evie’s roommate.”

  “Oh, of course.” Paige scanned Cassie from head to toe with a curious stare. “Lovely to meet you.”

  The lights changed, and Cassie fell into step with them, crossing toward Raleigh’s imposing front gates.

  “How are you liking it so far?” Olivia asked in a friendly voice, a world away from her calculated smiles the first time they’d met. “Evie says you’re doing PPE.”

  “It’s . . . an experience,” Cassie replied evenly.

  Olivia laughed. “You’ll have to come out with us sometime; there’s a whole city you never see stuck in here. Where is Eves, anyway? She was supposed to meet us for breakfast.”

  “She’s feeling under the weather,” Cassie told them as they entered the courtyard. Students were bustling across campus, and a group of early tourists was milling about under Rutledge’s watchful gaze, waiting for a guided tour to start.

  “What a shame. Shall we come by with a care package, cheer her up?”

  “Maybe later,” Cassie said. “I think she’s just resting today.”

  “It’s this bloody flu.” Olivia sighed. “Everyone’s dropping like flies. Send our best, will you?”

  The girls took off toward the cloisters, drawing attention from the group of tourists as they passed. Cassie watched them go. There was something glamorous about Olivia, paired with easy confidence; she was always relaxed and secure like a gleaming gemstone against the gray weather and scruffy students.

  Girls like Olivia had always fascinated her, the way the world parted so easily to let them through. Here in Oxford, it was magnified: the circles of old private-school friends and boarding-school chums strolling about the city like they owned it. And perhaps they did, sharing a comfort and security the rest of them never knew. Vacations and first drunken nights sneaking champagne from their parents’ wine cellars; a sprawling web of friends, and cousins, and old classmates that stretched so wide they need never be faced with a room of unfriendly strangers. Cassie envied their security, their certainty of their place in the world. They would never have to face the judgmental stares of strangers or wonder for a second about the correct protocol for a formal dinner or event.

  They would never be told that they weren’t good enough, that they didn’t belong.

  She made it to the attic just as the sky broke, and the few splatters of drizzle were replaced with a torrential downpour. Cassie opened the door to her rooms to find Evie looking more like her usual self. Dressed in a capricious cashmere sweater and flowing woolly skirt, she was flitting between her bedroom and the living room, unloading great armfuls of files and paperwork in crooked stacks on the large, low coffee table.

  Cassie shrugged off her damp sweatshirt, hanging it on the radiator to dry.

  “I need to look at the big picture,” Evie announced, slamming down another stack of loose-leaf notes. The pages shivered at the impact and slipped out of order, drifting to the floor. “I’m spending too much time caught up in the small details; I have to see how it all fits together. What Raleigh and the group were trying to achieve, their manifesto, instead of all the historical minutiae. If I figure out their purpose, it should give me mine: a broad thesis of intellectual ambition, and how it related to the Crown and church. They were on the forefront of everything: Science, arts, literature . . . right here in Oxford. I need to find the link that bound them together, and how it shaped the evolution of the fields.” Evie stopped. “Sorry, listen to me. I guess I just need a sounding board.”

  “Sound away.” Cassie smiled, glad to see Evie’s cheeks flushed with determination and the haunted look in her eyes replaced with something livelier. Although the skies outside were cloudy and wet, the attic was bright with lamplight, and with such a bustle of life and activity now filling the small apartment, the dark terrors of night seemed like a distant dream.

  Leaving the food packages on the table, Cassie drifted closer to the table, seeing photocopies of old documents and curled, typewritten pages. “I found some papers by an undergrad from years ago,” Evie explained. “She was looking at the myths and conspiracy theories surrounding the School of Night, but she led me to a whole new cache of documents. Well, new old. They’ve been sitting down in the vaults for decades, can you believe it? If it wasn’t for that break-in the other week, nobody would have remembered they were even down there.”

  “I’m glad you found something useful.” Cassie hid her smile.

  “Not yet, but I will.” Evie exhaled, looking around at her piles of notes. “Eventually.” She shook her head swiftly, as if to snap out of the contemplative mood, and wandered over to the kitchen. “Ooh, you got food. Thanks so much!”

  “No problem.” Cassie joined her, pulling down plates from the drying rack and unpacking the wedge of paper napkins. Her breakfast sandwich was still warm, oozing ketchup and the vinegary brown sauce Cassie had become so attached to since arriving in England. “I ran into Olivia,” she remembered
. “And this other girl too, Paige.”

  “You did?” Immediately, Evie brightened. “Aren’t they the best?”

  Cassie nodded slowly. “They said they hoped you felt better.”

  “They’re just great. I can’t believe we only just met this term; we have a ton of people in common.”

  Cassie was surprised. “You seem so close, I assumed you guys went way back.”

  “I know, right?” Evie took another bite. “That’s how it is sometimes, I suppose—you run into someone here and find out they spent their summers in the next villa along, and their sister dated your best friend from riding camp.”

  Not for everyone. Cassie thought back to her friends and neighbors in Indiana. She wasn’t likely to meet any of them here, so far away.

  After their lunch, Evie bent her head over a thick stack of essays, and Cassie returned to her philosophy essay, cozy in the attic as the rain slashed against their windows. But only a couple of hours had passed when Evie’s phone sounded with a chirp. She glanced at the screen, and then snatched it up. “Hi you,” she breathed, voice low and intimate.

  Cassie tried to focus on her books. It was Hugo—she could tell from the delight in Evie’s voice and the coy giggle she sounded in response to whatever he said. “I can’t,” she murmured, wavering. “I have to work . . . No, you know I can’t . . . I have that outline due, remember?” As Cassie watched, Evie blushed, biting her lip in indecision. “Hugo, I can’t. No . . . Without me? You wouldn’t . . .” Finally she laughed. “Okay, all right. I’ll be down in ten.” She snapped the phone shut and leaped up. “They’re going down to London,” she explained. “It’s Miles’s birthday.”

  “What about the outline?” Cassie asked. “Another late night, after what happened . . . ? You need your rest.”

  “I feel fine,” Evie insisted, already heading for her room. “Hugo says we won’t be out too late. One or two at the most. And he really wants me there . . .” Her face slipped into the secret smile again, and Cassie knew there would be no stopping her.

  “Have fun,” Cassie told her, accepting defeat. “Think of me, working the night away, while you’re off sipping champagne.”

  Evie laughed, and soon she was out the door, leaving Cassie alone for the evening. The rain continued its soothing drum against the attic windows, and she read on.

  12

  “. . . SO DESCARTES’S ATTEMPTS TO RECONCILE A BENEVOLENT God with errors in human judgment are fundamentally flawed, and his reliance on faulty interaction between understanding and will cannot support his larger argument.”

  Cassie lowered her paper and took a deep breath, trying to calm her fluttering nerves. She was back in Tremain’s study, and all the attention was on her. She’d gone overboard preparing: proofreading her essay three times and submitting it well before the six P.M. deadline. This morning she’d arrived, alert and neatly dressed, long before the nine o’clock bells began to chime, carrying a freshly printed copy to read aloud. She’d even declined the begrudging offer of a cup of espresso, for fear of knocking it to the floor and doing irreparable damage to the antique rug. Now she waited, looking to Tremain for some indication of approval, any reaction at all.

  The professor scribbled a note in his leather-bound file and gave the slightest of nods. “Mr. Rhodes?”

  Sebastian raised his head from the Moleskine notebook that, from her angle, Cassie could see was hollowed to contain a slim phone. Julia sat across from them, but as usual remained silent. Sebastian had barely glanced over as Cassie read, instead absorbed by whatever he was surreptitiously reading on-screen. “Well, clearly he didn’t have a leg to stand on.”

  There was a pause. “Would you care to expand on that?” Tremain prompted.

  Sebastian shrugged. “They were all pretty much stuck, weren’t they? I mean, as long as you try and bring God into the equation, everything else falls apart. There’s an irony to it, really: all these men going on about certain knowledge and fact, and then wiping it all away with their ancient ideas about God.”

  “You find the two incompatible?” Tremain raised an eyebrow.

  “Not just me, all of the analysis.” Sebastian lifted his lip in a superior sneer. “For supposedly smart men, they were all rather stupid. Why bother wading through all that history if it all relies on a faulty premise?”

  Cassie happened to be looking at Professor Tremain as Sebastian spoke and saw the change in his expression, an almost-imperceptible stiffening of his jaw. “Is that how you feel about our curriculum?” Tremain asked, his voice quiet. “A waste of your precious time?”

  Sebastian seemed to realize his mistake. “I . . . no, I was just saying, I mean . . .” He blustered, finally lost for words.

  Tremain regarded him coolly. “Perhaps your classmates agree? Miss Jessops? Miss Blackwell?”

  Julia slouched lower in her seat, shaking her head, eyes wide.

  “I don’t,” Cassie said, her voice clear in the small room. “Even if their arguments were flawed, they’re a reflection of the era. We’re looking at the evolution of the debate here,” she added, with a look to Sebastian. “You can’t just take what we know now and cast off everything that came before. That doesn’t tell you anything about how we got here, how the arguments developed. It’s all nothing without context.” Cassie kept her tone controlled, but there was a special fervor to her voice. “Nobody—not ideas, or people, or things—exist as their pure current state; everyone and everything is the product of their past. Acting like that doesn’t matter is willfully naive at best.”

  Sebastian’s face darkened, but Tremain let out a chuckle. “Well said, Miss Blackwell,” he said, and Cassie felt a wave of relief. “Now, Mr. Rhodes, you’re excused.”

  Sebastian startled, and even Julia looked up from her notes in shock. “What?”

  “From the tutorial.” Tremain let his gaze slide across to him. “Since discussing flawed reasoning holds no interest for you, I think it’s best you leave. Perhaps you can study Miss Blackwell’s essay and return next week more willing to participate.”

  Sebastian flushed, an angry mottled color. He opened his mouth as if to protest, and then closed it again. Shooting Cassie a look of pure venom, he grabbed his coat and strode to the door. His footsteps echoed angrily down the staircase.

  Professor Tremain waited until the sound had faded, then lifted his copy of Cassie’s essay, stone-faced again. “Miss Blackwell, let’s discuss your points about limitless will. I have some issues with your theories on dual faculty reasoning . . .”

  Cassie made it through the tutorial with her nerves—and scholarship—intact. Although Tremain tried to trip her up with questions, she was able to keep it together and defend her essay until at last the college bells rang out, signaling the end of the session.

  “Your structure is still sloppy,” Tremain added as a final word, passing her back the essay that was now covered in red marks. “We don’t have time to play catch-up with you every week.”

  Cassie gritted her teeth and held back her retorts until she was safely out of the room.

  “He’s not always like this,” Julia offered, as they made their way downstairs. “He’s the nice one. At least, he used to be. I don’t know what’s happened this year.”

  Cassie watched as Julia scurried away. Just her luck. Cassie sighed, crossing the courtyard and ducking into the mail room, brushing past a girl who came bolting out of the room at full speed. “Hey,” Cassie protested, but the girl was already gone, the brim of her winter cap pulled low over her eyes.

  Cassie found her pidge and sorted though the mail, still thinking about Tremain and his inscrutable glare. Flyers, society leaflets—and a photograph.

  She stopped, her breath freezing in her chest.

  It was her mother, Joanna. No, Cassie corrected herself, Margaret; she was wearing a formal gown, arms linked with another girl, flanked by two boys in tuxedos. They were posing at a dinner table set with silver and polished goblets, in a room somewhere with po
rtraits on the wall.

  Cassie turned the photo over, her heart racing.

  Black is the badge of hell, the hue of dungeons, and the school of night.

  She felt a shiver of fear. Then it hit her: there was no envelope, no address on the photo. Somebody had delivered it in person. Somebody who knew the truth about who she was—and what she was looking for.

  Her secret was out.

  Cassie rushed straight to the Radcliffe library. She found Elliot in the back room cataloging returns. “Did you send this to me?” she demanded, putting the photo on the desk in front of him.

  Elliot barely glanced at it. “Nope,” he replied, distracted. “Say, are you free for a shift this afternoon? I know we haven’t done the paperwork yet, but I’m snowed under.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t you?” Cassie asked again. “Elliot, look. Does this look familiar at all?”

  The panicked note in her voice made him look up properly this time. “I’ve never seen that. But it’s Margaret, right?” Elliot studied her, curious. “What’s going on? Where did you find it?”

  Cassie quickly caught her breath, trying to sound calm. “Someone put it in my mail. It must have been one of my other friends, that’s all.”

  Elliot gave her a look, as if he was unconvinced, but didn’t press. He flipped the photo over and read the back. Then he sounded a laugh. “Somebody’s big on intrigue.”

  “What?” Cassie asked. “Where’s that from? I don’t know what it means.”

  Elliot slid his wheeled desk chair across the floor. “Here . . .” He clicked through on the computer, loading a search site. A moment later, the same quote appeared on-screen. “It’s from Love’s Labour’s Lost. Meant to refer to Sir Walter Raleigh and his cabal of dastardly atheists.”

  “You mean the founders of the college?” Cassie asked, recognizing the names listed on-screen. “My roommate is doing her research into them. She says they were at the forefront of all the big advances of the time. An intellectual group.”

 

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