by Kara Silver
“Are you all right?”
Kennedy jerked around at the gravelly voiced enquiry, uttered by a guy who must have snuck up, and who now hugged the wall next to her. Woah, the lighting was dim, but he looked grey in the low light. Ashen, maybe? Like she should be enquiring after his health. Not ash, stone. Like a part of the stone wall. Like rock. Stupid, Kennedy. “Yeah. Thanks. Bit stuffy in here.”
She made a show of listening to the professor, who was explaining that the collection demonstrated everyday human activity across history and geography, showing how people coped with the demands of life—and death.
“And the collection being grouped into themes makes their interconnections visible,” the professor continued. “So, please, split into groups and explore at will, then decide on an area of life you want to examine more closely. Most of the exhibits in the cases and the drawers underneath can be handled. My teaching assistants and I will be floating around to listen in to your discussions and thoughts, steering and guiding as necessary.”
An assistant slid back a panel in the wall, indicating a pile of folding stick seats, and a shelf holding boxes of gloves. Excited chatter broke out, and most of the students, who already seemed to be in groups, surged off. Kennedy cursed again that she’d missed the first crucial week of term when the bonding and cliquing occurred. She sneaked a glance at the dark blond, grey-eyed guy.
“Would you like to partner up?”
“I’d be honoured.”
She narrowed her eyes—was he taking the piss? She didn’t recall seeing him in the lecture at all. Oh, yeah, the practical sessions were also for students from archaeology, human sciences, and ancient history. “What’s your name?” He wore no lanyard with his name and department on. Well, neither did she. Years of working jobs requiring nylon uniforms and plastic nametags had given her an aversion to wearing her name.
He sighed, as if this would be painful. “Aethelstan. Call me Aeth.”
“I’m Kennedy Smith.”
“Hello, Kennedy Smith.” He indicated she should walk ahead, into the depths of the museum.
Kennedy was surprised he didn’t ask why she was called that. But then, with a name with his… “Call me Kennedy,” she said, imitating his raspy-voiced pronouncement.
“It would be my pleasure. Do you have a preference for a theme?”
“Something on this floor. I don’t fancy those spiral staircases.” Although she’d have to, soon enough.
“Your ankle?”
“Broke it a week or so back. It made me late for term start.” He must have had sharp eyes to have noticed her slight limp. “What’s this…oh, making music!” She pointed at the different instruments displayed in the case, until the group gathered there, who’d chosen that subject, coughed a polite “buzz off”.
“Over here.” Aeth detoured to fetch two folding seats, then led the way to the back, to a shadowy recess and a case there. “This looks more…useful.”
Strange choice of words. Kennedy bent low, fascinated by the display labelled MAGIC, RELIGION, AND BELIEF. There wasn’t time to examine all its artefacts now, to delve into imitative, contagious and sympathetic magic, but when she was here alone, she’d linger over them.
“This…this is why I wanted to study anthropology!” she babbled. “At the interview, they asked what I wanted to read—I’m here on the Promising Person scheme—and I said whatever best explains what it means to be human.”
“To be human?” Aeth queried.
“It’s about being scared of what makes up this world.” Kennedy couldn’t articulate what she meant. But that was what she was here for, right? “Like closing your eyes in the dark, so you can’t see there’s no light? I mean, look at this variety of charms and amulets. That need to believe something has the power to affect the world around us. To protect us from it, to influence it, influence others…”
“Just this world?”
“This…” She tried to understand his meaning. “Oh, you’re an international student?” He sounded English, but that name… “Or is Aethelstan the name of the street you were born on and your parents were fresh out of ideas?”
“No.” His grey eyes gleamed.
“I’m named after the two people who found me on the church porch where I’d been left as a baby. I was lucky, when you think of some surnames. I had a teacher called Mr Allcock, and there’s a Chinese family near us called Wang…”
She bent in mock innocence to the display case, leaving Aeth to snort and splutter as a teaching assistant came up, to stand there with a clipboard, presumably to catch their pearls of wisdom. Kennedy was still smiling about it as they all filed out an hour or so later.
“What d’you think? Easier than the tutorials, eh!” Emma exclaimed, nudging her.
“And the TA we had was nice!” Maja added.
Kennedy nodded at Emma, who’d helped her get orientated in the lecture earlier, and Maja, whom she’d spoken to at breakfast. “Yeah.”
“Oh, did you get the notice about the First Years, First Drinks night later? In the cellar bar?” Emma asked. “Free drinks too.”
“Yeah? I thought I must have missed all that stuff last week.” Kennedy beamed.
“Nah, it’s party town here. At least, for the first couple weeks of term. That’s what I’ve heard. Going?” Emma continued.
“The bar here in college? Count me in!” She needed to make friends. And have free drinks.
“No. You shouldn’t go,” Aeth interrupted.
“What the hell?” Kennedy stared at Aeth. “Not go?”
Emma backed away. “Well, I’ll let you decide. See you later. Or not.” She shook her head at Maja, and the two strolled off, catching up with another bunch of students.
Aeth stepped in front of Kennedy, still in the museum entrance. “I mean, you shouldn’t go alone.”
Still a little thrown, Kennedy couldn’t stop a grin spreading. “Hey, if this is some weird, geeky way of asking me for a date…”
“Yes, I’ll escort you.”
And Mr Formal’s back in town. “Do you go here?” she asked, gesturing to the college.
“I belong to this college, yes.”
“Okay… So, I’ll see you at dinner? Or if not, see you in the bar after?”
In turned out to be after, when Kennedy had just descended the steps to the underground bierkeller bar, the Vaults. She peered around and almost jumped when Aeth turned and sort of peeled himself from a stone arch. “Plastered already?” She laughed at her own joke, raising her voice above the music and chatter. “Isn’t this place weird?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, it looks like a Medieval undercroft, like of a church or castle?” Kennedy slapped a huge stone arch. Aeth winced. “Yet this college dates from after that period, and there’s no church or castle here!” The stone floor and exposed brickwork could feel damp, she guessed, something the candles lit on the upended barrels serving as tables were trying to counteract. The stools grouped around the makeshift tables were mostly occupied.
“Over here!”
Kennedy stood on tiptoe to see Emma and Maja waving from the other side of the room. The actual First Year gathering was in the narrow room through that archway, everyone crowded in and rap music playing. This can’t be all the new first years, she thought, surveying the people and wondering which club or society, trying to recruit new members, was organising this. She should have checked. She didn’t want to find herself suddenly auditioning for a choir or a drama group. Still, the cocktails, being mixed at a long table by the hosts, were very welcome. And free.
“So, let’s get the holy trinity of questions out of the way! Where’s everybody from, what subjects did you do at A-Level, and which college did you really want to get into?” cried a redheaded girl, to catcalls and claps as she deposited the drinks onto the smaller tables.
“And the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, seeing as it’s Heylel—what scheme are you here under?” added a tall dark-hair
ed boy, to loud laughter, following the redhead around to drop sliced fruit into the drinks she’d poured. “That is, if there are any of you here tonight, and not slaving away already!”
There were protests and a good few students raised their hands, Kennedy among them. “I’m Promising!” she announced, when it was her turn to speak.
“Way-hey!” called the tall guy, looking her up and down. He lobbed an extra segment of orange into her glass, splashing drink onto her, and stood back for the girl to take their names.
Maja explained the links the college had with her boarding school in Opole, Poland, not any kind of exclusive institute but a local authority place for low-income parents’ kids.
“Pity Angelina Jolie didn’t adopt you!” called a guy.
The crowd found that hilarious. Wow, the drinks were strong. Kennedy fished out a circle of cucumber from hers and nibbled on it.
“I don’t want anyone to think I’m one of the at-risk children in the province, removed from their parents and placed there,” Maja confided, having to almost shout her confession over the background noise and movement. “Oh, I missed that—how is Khloe here?”
“I think she said via a bursary to her school by an alumnus who studied History here,” Kennedy answered. “Hey, I hadn’t realized this was such a party college, had you?” She tilted her head at the table next to them, and the group openly smoking weed there.
“It’s decriminalised in my country!” Amalia-first-year-from-Portugal, as she’d introduced herself, informed them.
Kennedy soon began to feel a little woozy, hardly a surprise with the smoke, drink, and noise. The chatter ebbed and flowed against the music, laughter and cheers rang in punctuation, and people eddied about, hemming them in. She could hardly keep track of the few people she knew. There seemed a lot going on at the far end of the room they were in. “Khloe!” came a shout, a roar, from whoever was down there.
“I don’t like this.” They were the first words Aeth had spoken in a while.
Kennedy twisted to follow the redheaded girl laughing and pushing Khloe to a small archway at the end of the room. “Like Alice in Wonderland,” she commented, watching the pair duck low to pass under it. What was going on in there? They weren’t the first people she’d seen enter, she realized.
“Ma-ja, Ma-ja!” came a shout, a chant, from inside the hidden space.
“Go on!” The tall dark-haired guy nudged Maja, then hauled her to her feet. “Your turn.”
“For?”
He didn’t answer the question, just gave her such an unbalanced grin that Kennedy wanted to shrink back against the wall. “Maja, don’t—” But her voice couldn’t be heard in the din and her attempt to grab her friend’s shirt as she passed was in vain. For God’s sake. She had to stop being a big sister to people, although that was hard, after being the eldest for so long in Holden House. Well, she wasn’t there anymore. She was here now. And then the chant changed.
“Kenn-ed-y. Kenn-ed-y. KENN-ED-Y!”
Cold, sick dread gripped her, and she sat barely breathing, unable to move.
3
“This is so lame.” Aeth pushed his untouched drink away. “Let’s go?”
His words seemed to breathe life into her, warm relief buffeting her. She let Aeth help her to her feet and shepherd her toward the stairs, as tense as if she expected a knife in the back at every step. She faltered, off-balance literally and figurately, but carried on walking out, her name ringing out behind her and the tight, scratchy feeling shrouding her.
“Are you all right?”
“You know, you can stop asking me that.” Kennedy straightened up from leaning against the doorpost of the beer cellar and glared at Aeth. She felt a lot better in the fresh air, even if it was getting colder and damper. “And I’m sure you have an elsewhere to be, rather than babysitting a fresher.”
“Actually, I don’t. And not so much a babysitter as a tour guide, if you’d permit me?” He held out an elbow, the gesture complementing his formal speech, and it made her grin. She slipped her arm through his.
“I guess you’ve been here a while.”
“Oh, ages. Rock of ages.”
If she’d expected him to say what year he was in, she was disappointed. “Fine. So, enlighten me, oh sage one.”
“Stay on the path.” He pulled her back when she strayed. “Enlighten you? About…”
“Everything. From the beginning.”
“Hmm. Well, I suppose you know the university itself was originally founded by a witch?”
“What?” Kennedy stopped under a lantern on a tall post and gaped at Aeth. He was grinning, the light catching his eyes.
“Wise woman, witch, whatever.” He shrugged. “Princess Frideswide, who wanted to dedicate herself to a life of study. But the king of Mercia wanted to marry her, so she fled to Oxford to escape him. And when he came here after her, some spell or power conveniently struck him blind. His sight only returned when he begged forgiveness and released Frideswide from her engagement. He then left her alone and she founded a nunnery, and then the first colleges were built for monastic scholars.”
“Oh. Useful bargaining power to have, I guess, striking people blind until they give you what you want.” Kennedy tugged a packet of peanuts from her pocket and tore them open. She held the bag out to Aeth, wondering why he looked so puzzled. “They’re not poisoned.” She gave the bag an inviting shake, and he hooked a finger in to take out a peanut and rolled it between his forefinger and thumb, then smelt the nut before placing it on his tongue.
Kennedy wondered if he did a stand-up routine at a drama society. “So, a witch…any ghosts?”
“Oh, a good few. Charles I haunts Christ Church College; a gang of Royalists soldiers haunt the castle, and some Parliamentarians haunt a pub.”
“Have you ever seen any of them?” Kennedy asked.
“I’ve never met His Highness. I think he must be nervous of me.”
Kennedy laughed, then tsked as raindrops splatted on her. They were out in the deserted open, having wandered to the back of the farthest quad on the opposite side of the campus to the museum. “I guess we’d better make a run for it, get to the common room, or somewhere? Unless you know anywhere to shelter?”
“There’s here.”
“What—?” Kennedy stared the square hole a now squatting Aeth had made in the ground by sliding a flagstone free. It revealed a dark space that stretched from the path to a nearby tree on the lawn. “Is that a tunnel?”
“Part of the network under the city.”
“Wait. I know there were, what, service tunnels under some colleges for laundry and deliveries of coal, in the past. Oh, and at the huge bookshop, Blackwells, and under the Bodleian Library, but—”
“Actually, tunnels connect most of the libraries and the Radcliffe Camera.”
Kennedy squinted through the rain to where she recalled the Heylel library as being. This entrance didn’t seem to be facing that way.
“Only, this isn’t part of that system.”
A rumble of thunder sounded. “I don’t care. Let’s just shelter?” She switched on the flashlight on her phone—good to know that worked when there was hardly any cell reception here—and descended the steps. It really was a tunnel! She been too quick with the Alice reference earlier, because she was down the equivalent of the rabbit hole now. And she’d half-thought the dry, laconic Aeth was kidding. She stood upright—the roof was high enough. “Hey! Don’t close the opening!”
“There’s a ring on this side to open it. Wouldn’t want anyone to fall in, would we? Kennedy? Where— Stop!”
She was on the move, exploring. The earth floor was straight, with bits of stone and brick serving as haphazard paving.
“I wish you hadn’t done this,” he said when he caught her.
“Oh, it seems sound enough. You know, we must be off college grounds by now!”
“We are. We crossed the road behind the grounds.”
“We’re coming up!”
“Yes. Let me go first.” He pushed past her and fiddled with the slab above them, getting it open within seconds.
“You’re handy,” she remarked. “Planning to be a locksmith? Or a burglar? Where…are we?”
It looked like a small park or garden, hedges and a fence behind her. Beyond that must be the road he’d mentioned, with the college yonder, she guessed.
“Where? No Souls Cemetery.”
The twilight seemed to thicken then, to condense into real goop. Oh for God’s sake—just the tree branches blowing and cutting off what light there is. And revealing darker grey slabs projecting irregularly and at odd angles from the ground.
“That’s not the name nowadays, but it’s what this was known as. In the mid-nineteenth century, when the graveyards of the six parishes in central Oxford became full, Heylel College ceded some of its land to form this burial place.”
“For people with no souls?” Kennedy shone her phone torch at Aeth, hoping to detect some sign this was a huge put-on, some ‘freak out the fresher’ prank.
“Judged to have no soul. Suicides, non-baptised infants, non-Christians… They were conveyed here via underground, I suppose not to offend the decent, moral citizens above. This tunnel’s part of that. It connects to the network in the Jewish quarter.”
“Wow. And I think I’ve figured you out.”
Aeth stilled, as immovable as stone. “Oh, yes?”
“Yeah, you must be studying History, and you run those Ghost Tours! Do you dress up in Victorian costume and put stage makeup on your face and get some of your crew to hide and leap out during the tour to— Jesus!”
The thin, high shriek cutting suddenly through the dusk made Kennedy jump, to land awkwardly on her injured ankle. “That sounded like…a fox?” The sound came again, still muffled by the trees and bushes, but stark in the rain-heavy night, and Kennedy could no longer fool herself. It was a scream. A woman’s scream. “This way!”
She ignored Aeth’s commands to stay where she was, instead crashing through branches and hedges, despite the now falling rain, and relying on the streaks of lightning to show her the way. How could she stay still when someone was— Being attacked!