The Oxford Inheritance

by Ann A. McDonald

  “Or, as many think, a corrupt secret society who ruled the country through scurrilous means,” Elliot said, smirking.

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “Do I think a group of intellectuals hung out in the sixteen hundreds, chatting about God and literature? Yes.” Elliot gave her a look over the rims of his black square-framed spectacles. “Do I think they were an all-powerful secret society whose influence still runs the country today? Not so much.”

  Cassie perched on a bench nearby. “People think the School of Night is still around?”

  “Rumors and legend.” Elliot shrugged dismissively, turning back to his card catalog. “If Oxford held even half the secret societies people say it does, you and I and every person in the city would have to be a member. Don’t get me wrong, there are groups around,” he added. “Drinking societies, so-called secret groups. But they’re just excuses for overprivileged children to dress up and prance around with secret code words. The real power you need to worry about is out in full sight.” He nodded toward the bulletin board of flyers on the wall behind her, covered with political campaign ads for the upcoming Oxford Union elections.

  “But the photo.” Cassie tried to focus his attention back on the most important thing. “Do you think Margaret had something to do with one of these societies? This School of Night?” She stared closely at the photo, trying to distinguish some new clue from the frozen scene. The students were wearing their formal robes, but she didn’t recognize the paintings behind them, so they weren’t in the Raleigh dining hall.

  Elliot plucked the photo out of her hands. “That’s stretching a little. Odds are, they were just palling around with some rich bastards.”

  “But those are the people who would be part of a secret society, aren’t they?” Cassie’s mind ticked on, pulling apart the puzzle. “Groups like that wouldn’t advertise if they were really powerful. It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  “And therein lies the conundrum.” Elliot laughed. “How do you know which drunken idiots are just pissing away the family fortunes, and which are secretly running the world?”

  He kept working, scanning bar codes for returned books, but Cassie thought carefully. “Well, groups like this are always hereditary, right? Legacy students, passed down from generation to generation. They don’t just invite anyone, they keep things private, to their own kind.”

  “I guess.” Elliot shrugged, not taking it seriously. “Welcome to the joys of the British class system.”

  Cassie drummed her fingertips on the pockmarked old desk. “So how do I find out more about this School of Night?”

  Elliot sighed. “You really want to track them down? Find a group of the most obnoxious rich bastards in this whole place. Odds are it’ll be them.”

  “Elliot,” Cassie protested. “I’m serious.”

  “I know you are, but this is just someone messing with you,” Elliot insisted. “If you want to know more about your Margaret, just call up her old classmates and ask. You don’t need to go chasing after conspiracy theories. Now, do you want to help with these returns? I was supposed to be done already, but someone’s been distracting me.”

  Cassie stayed until evening, helping Elliot and working on her own studies. She decided to take his advice and use the class rolls to try and track down Margaret’s old classmates. It was a risk, especially now that somebody knew she was looking for Margaret, but Cassie told herself she was being paranoid. She needed the information, and there was no harm in seeing if anyone remembered anything. They’d scattered by now, some as far afield as China and Australia, but a few were still living in London and even Oxford itself. She sent a short e-mail, explaining she was a friend of the family looking to talk about Margaret’s time in college; hopefully at least a few of the former students would reply.

  By the time she arrived back at Raleigh, it was almost dinnertime, and students were making their way in the direction of the grand dining hall, decked out in their flowing black formal robes. Twice a week Raleigh hosted a “formal hall”—a lavish three-course meal complete with wait service and wines, for which ceremonial robes and RSVP payment was required. Cassie had never attended, but she knew it was popular with the other students, who enjoyed inviting visiting family or friends from neighboring colleges and dressing up in their fancier clothing. They would gather in some of the event rooms for cocktails beforehand, and often afterward too, tipsy laughter echoing late into the night.

  When Cassie walked in the door, Evie was getting ready to leave, fixing on a pair of sparkling diamond earrings and shimmying her feet into a pair of heels. “There you are!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been waiting for you. When will you get a cell phone, like everyone else?”

  “Sorry,” Cassie apologized, setting down her bag. “What’s up?”

  “Formal hall at Merton,” Evie announced, naming a college nearby. “We’ve got a spare ticket, want to come? It’ll be fun, I promise.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Cassie was already shaking her head.

  “You’re always promising to come out with me, and you never do,” Evie told her, mocking a pout. “Olivia was asking after you.”

  Cassie paused. “Olivia will be there?”

  “The whole gang.” Evie nodded, slipping a lipstick into her jeweled clutch. “What do you say?”

  Cassie thought fast. She wanted to talk to Evie about her research into Raleigh and the rest of the School of Night. Despite Elliot’s denials, she wasn’t so sure that this society was just a rumor; somebody had slipped the photo into her mailbox for a reason, and if the group still existed . . . If her mother had been involved with one of Oxford’s most elite secret societies . . .

  There were too many questions whirling around her mind, shadows and possibilities, but Cassie knew she wasn’t going to discover the truth holed up alone in her garret or cloistered in the library. She needed access to the most exclusive social circles in the city for her answers. And there were none more exclusive than the Mandevilles and their clique.

  “Okay,” Cassie agreed.

  Evie gasped in surprise. “Really?”

  “Really.” Cassie laughed at her shocked expression. “I’m in.”

  13

  MERTON COLLEGE WAS HIDDEN DOWN A COBBLED BACKSTREET lined with old-fashioned streetlamps. The traffic and city noise from High Street faded as Cassie followed Evie up to the main gates, their footsteps clattering on the uneven paving stones.

  Cassie looked around, intrigued to go behind the walls of another college. When they ducked through the wooden gatehouse, they emerged into a small courtyard. While there was a chapel, and wings of sandy brick three stories high, manicured quads and squares radiating out from the long pathways, it was nothing compared to the scale and grandeur of Raleigh’s great spread of buildings. Instead, the college was thick with history, age showing in the thin slit windows carved deep into the buildings they passed, the faint curve of the buckling supports, and the scarred cobblestones underfoot.

  “It was built back in the thirteenth century,” Evie explained.

  “Before Raleigh?”

  Evie nodded. “There was a big rivalry when Sir Walter Raleigh moved in. He got the lands as part of his reward for his naval victories, and he swore he’d built the grandest college in the city. It wasn’t as prestigious as it is now,” she added. “People were suspicious of academics. With the church and Crown in such upheaval, it was dangerous just to be associated with the colleges.”

  “I guess that’s why so many groups gathered in secret, right?” Cassie said.

  Evie nodded, leading them across the courtyard. “All it took was one wrong lecture, and you could be brought up on charges of heresy or treason. It’s why it’s been so hard for me to find original source materials. I thought the college would have plenty among Raleigh’s archives, but they were all pretty cagey with their correspondence. Nobody talked about their meetings at all, even though I know from secondhand sources that they all met regularly, every
month here at the college, sometimes more.”

  Cassie was just about to ask more about these group meetings when the bells chimed through the courtyard for dinner. They joined the crowd heading up the stone staircase to the grand dining hall. She tugged awkwardly on her hem. Evie had insisted on lending her a dress for the occasion, and although Cassie had rejected all the wispier chiffon outfits, she had finally submitted and accepted the loan of a simple dress in deepest black silk. The bodice hugged her torso, but she was several inches taller than Evie, so the hemline skimmed several inches above her knees. Even swathed in her usual thick down coat, with her formal robe layered over the top, Cassie felt exposed, vulnerable to the brisk winds that played around her. Still, as she glanced around at the other students and diners slowly filing into the building, she was glad of the outfit, and Evie’s simple gold bangle on her wrist.

  Inside, the dining hall was wood-paneled and imposing. After weeks at Raleigh, Cassie was used to the style: high arched ceilings and long tables running the length of the room, adorned with heavy silver place settings and vases brimming with white roses and lilies.

  “Evie!” The call came from across the room, and Evie quickly led them through the crowd. The Mandeville group was clustered at a table near the head of the room: Paige, Olivia, and Hugo with a few others, all of them dapper in formal suits and glittering cocktail dresses.

  “You made it.” Hugo rose to kiss Evie on the cheek. “You didn’t say you were bringing company.” His eyes drifted over to Cassie. “Good to see you again, Cassie.”

  Cassie tried not to react to his dark stare. “You too,” she murmured, busying herself by taking off her coat and carefully folding her scarf into a small, neat square as the others exchanged their usual round of air-kiss greetings. She was so focused on ignoring Hugo that she was startled to hear someone greet her by name.

  “Cassie, good to see you again.” It was Miles, Cassie recognized, the blond man from the drinks mixer. He was wearing a suit with a small red bow tie, and he reached to shake her hand enthusiastically. “How are you settling in? Any three A.M. breakdowns yet?”

  “Not yet.” Cassie smiled. “But it’s early days.”

  “Don’t say that,” Evie scolded. “She’s doing great. I can’t imagine it, getting plunged into everything without any time to adjust. We all at least were freshers first.”

  “Are you crazy?” Miles asked, eyes wide with drama. “First year was the worst. I nearly dropped out half a dozen times. I was going to go set up a surf shop in Brazil,” he told Cassie, pulling out a chair for her to take her seat.

  “Why didn’t you?” Evie asked, moving to a free place beside them.

  “No, Evie, you’re here with me,” Olivia interrupted, patting the free space beside her. Evie obediently circled the table as Hugo spoke up, answering for Miles.

  “Because he hates the water and can hardly swim.” Hugo slid into a seat directly across from Cassie. He met her gaze with a small knowing smile. “Don’t listen to a word of it. Last month he was convinced he should go live in an ashram for a year.”

  “I should,” Miles protested, shaking out his cloth napkin with a dramatic gesture. “Inner calm would serve me a whole lot better in life than this bloody doctorate.”

  They all laughed, and Cassie felt herself relax, just a little. She’d been wary, bracing herself for the same chilly indifference she experienced from her classmates in her tutorials at Raleigh, but instead, the group seemed welcoming and warm.

  “That’s a cute purse,” Olivia remarked from Cassie’s other side, as the waitstaff began to circulate with wine and water.

  Cassie glanced down at the only part of the outfit that was her own, a small box clutch with gold detailing. “Oh, thanks.”

  “Vintage?”

  “Uh, yes.” Cassie had found it for a pound in a thrift store on Cowley Road.

  “The best things are.” Olivia sipped her wine and glanced around the room, eyes drifting over the crowd. “Lewis,” she called out. Cassie watched her flutter a wave to an older man. In his thirties, he wore the traditional professor’s tweed jacket and a boyish, eager grin that stretched across his face as he hurried over to their table, jostling a waiter on his way.

  “Sorry, so sorry,” he stammered in apology, arriving at Olivia’s side with flushed cheeks. “Liv, if I’d known you were coming . . .”

  “Last-minute thing.” Olivia shrugged, leaning up to kiss him lightly on both cheeks. “Come sit by me.”

  Lewis looked conflicted. “I have guests.”

  “They can take care of themselves.” Olivia’s mouth curved downward into a pout. “You know how these things bore me.”

  “I . . . of course! I’ll be right back.” Lewis all but sprinted across the room.

  Olivia turned back to the table and caught Cassie’s observant stare. She gave a tiny shrug, her lips curving in a smile. “Sweet man. I had him for tutes last term.”

  “He’s a professor?” Cassie was surprised. Olivia must have been twenty at the most, and from his clear adoration, she would never have guessed the man was her teacher.

  “Oh yes, an expert in Renaissance art history,” Olivia replied.

  “That’s not all he’s an expert in,” Paige added with a wicked grin.

  Cassie dropped her voice, turning to Miles. “I didn’t realize staff could date students.”

  “Not officially,” he replied, smirking. “It’s frowned upon. But no one pays attention to the rules. Especially Olivia.” He gave her a meaningful look. “Playing with fire, that one. If the tabloids found out . . .”

  “Why would journalists care?” Cassie asked.

  “Her father, of course.” Miles took in her blank look. “You don’t know? Mandeville Senior is head of the opposition in Parliament. Striking distance from the prime minister’s office come May, if the polling’s to be believed.”

  “Oh.” Cassie looked back across the table, where Olivia was whispering in Evie’s ear, the pair of them flushed and giggling. “I didn’t realize.”

  “Everybody here is someone,” Miles continued, pointing around the table. “Paige is really Lady Pembroke, heiress to half of Gloucestershire. Harry’s parents run an aeronautics company that supplies the armed forces, and Sasha’s family runs one of the largest shipping companies in Europe.”

  “What about you?” Cassie asked.

  “Me? I’m practically a peasant,” Miles joked. “Aristocracy fallen on hard times, as my mother likes to say. We’re up to our eyeballs in debt, will probably go into foreclosure on the estate before the year is out.”

  Cassie took in the crowd, wondering if they were likely suspects for the School of Night. They seemed more concerned with cocktails than any shadowy rituals, but they certainly fit the bill when it came to exclusive backgrounds.

  Soon, the diners were all seated, and an elderly man seated at the dais table rose to his feet. A hush fell over the hall.

  “Welcome. Professors, students, honored guests. Welcome to Merton.” He paused, and everyone bent their heads. “Oculi omnium in te respiciunt, Domine. Tu das escam illis tempore opportuno. . . .” As he murmured what were clearly familiar words, Cassie looked around from under her eyelashes. She was struck with the sense of history, of continuity to these solemn words, how they had been performed week after week for hundreds of years, the faces the only thing that changed in the great hall. How many times had this incantation been made—the silver candlesticks lit, the words echoing through the cavernous space as if passing back through history itself?

  Cassie’s eyes met Hugo’s across the table. All heads around them were bent, cast low for the grace, but his gaze was steady on hers. Again, Cassie felt that instinctive shiver, a strange sense of recognition passing between them. She snapped her eyes down as the incantation drew to a close, determined to ignore him. He belonged to Evie. He shouldn’t be looking at her like that.

  “Per Jesum Christum dominum nostrum, Amen.”

  “Amen,”
the crowd murmured, and then noise and chatter swept through the hall. Waitstaff came out, dressed in formal black outfits, expertly balancing heavy silver trays carrying the first course, and at every table, diners greeted their seatmates and refilled their glasses of wine.

  “Red? White? What’s your poison?” Miles asked, holding a bottle in each hand.

  “Red, thanks,” Cassie answered. “But only a little.”

  “There’s no such thing.” He grinned, continuing to pour, until her glass was almost full. “To Oxford.” Miles raised his glass in a toast, and around the table the others followed suit. “Long may we enjoy its bountiful fruits.”

  “Some, longer than others,” Olivia murmured with a pointed look at her cousin.

  Hugo laughed. “To Oxford.”

  14

  AFTER DINNER, THE GROUP HEADED FOR THE OXFORD UNION buildings across town, piling into black cabs along with their coterie of friends and hangers-on. Dinner had been a parade of delicious, elegant food, a far cry from Cassie’s usual snatched takeout. They’d started with pheasant and persimmon salad —“Bird shot on the college lands,” Lewis informed them proudly—followed by filet of beef, rich and bloody. By the time the waitstaff cleared their dessert plates, which had contained tiny meringue cages filled with cream and fruit, Cassie was sitting easy in her chair, laughing along to Miles’s eccentric future plans, and Paige’s account of walking the runway at Paris fashion week the previous fall.

  She’d accepted the invite out of curiosity, wanting to learn more about the group and maybe even the mysterious School of Night, but to her surprise she found herself enjoying the evening, lulled by the wine and friendly chatter that enveloped the group. Cassie’s usual sense of being other, somehow, adrift from her fellow students and their cut-glass accents, melted away under the twinkling chandeliers, until she felt the warmth of being included, on the inside at last. She sat sandwiched between Miles and Evie in the cab after dinner, the city slowly passing outside the windows in a blur of shadows and neon streetlights, until they were ejected, stretching, on a familiar patch of cobbled street, close to Blackwell’s and the other shops of the high street that now sat empty and still.