Chapter 4
By the middle of November, Pen was feeling comfortably settled in and just the right amount overwhelmed.
There were ways that Oxford was very like Bletchley Park had been.
There were heaps of terribly clever people everywhere she looked or listened.
The rooms had about the same amount of annoyance.
Though she rather particularly missed the lashings of hot water on demand at Schola.
Decent plumbing, near at hand, should be one of the wonders of the world.
But there were also ways everything was different from the Park.
For one thing, her day no longer started with the need to bicycle three miles in all weather.
And while the dons had standards for behaviour— especially in the women’s colleges— they were far less strict than her landlady had been at her billet.
Certainly, she was much less lonely. She’d been in a house with only two other women, both working in entirely different huts and often on opposite schedules.
More importantly, she had far more control over her own time. No more shifts rotating around the clock. There was far more variety of things to do with the time she had, between her tutorials, preparations for them, and the lectures she wanted to attend that week.
One of the other women had been trying to convince her to join a choir.
Pen had resisted, but she had taken up going and listening to them more often.
She might not be exactly religious, but Grandfather had instilled in her a proper respect and appreciation for the rituals of evensong.
Pen had found herself slipping into one or the other of the college chapels more frequently on the nights it was sung for a few minutes of time with something beautiful.
Today, though, she’d come down to the Academy a little early for one of the regular Thursday lectures.
And to check on two books she was interested in at the library.
They hadn’t been returned yet, but the librarian had promised to send her a note and hold them for a day or two when the books came back.
Pen had brought the newspaper with her, because she’d not yet had time for the crossword, and that was a lovely way to stretch her mind.
The Junior Common Room was fairly quiet. It often was, this time of day. People with workrooms here would go up to them if they wanted to read or study. Or to the library. The common room only got those people who were at least open to the idea of conversation.
She’d got through several of the clues properly, and she had been rather proud of herself for getting ‘demisemiquavers’ out of a clue of “shaky quarters”.
It had helped that 1 Across involved “a soft way to cook an egg”.
That was obviously ‘coddle’, and that had given her the first letter.
And there were only so many words quite that long, especially if she took the clue as suggesting music.
Pen filled out several more and then sat there staring at the puzzle, chewing slightly on the end of her pencil.
She was concentrating so fiercely she didn’t notice that anyone had come in, until whoever it was coughed rather closer than she expected.
Pen flinched, bother. Immediately a pleasant voice offered, “Beg pardon, didn’t mean to— oh, is that the crossword?
” The voice was decidedly posh as well as pleasant.
Pen looked up to find Edmund Carillon looking at her.
She couldn’t tell from the first words whether he was a tenor or baritone, but the second half made her more sure he was the former.
She knew who he was, of course. For one thing, anyone at the Academy this year and last knew that.
But also, she’d known him on sight since they were at Schola.
Even though she’d been a fourth year when he started, people had talked about him.
Heir to his father, Lord Carillon, of course.
Edmund Carillon had a shimmer to him that wasn’t just his magic, as if he were always standing in a prism of light.
More than that, he’d had a serene confidence with adults— nearly all the professors— that Pen had utterly envied.
Oh, she’d been on good terms with them as well, especially Professor Acharya for maths and Professor Morwen as her Head of House.
But the bits of those conversations she’d seen from a distance had seemed easygoing on both sides.
Not like Carillon had been trying to impress and going a bit too hard at it.
He had that sort of ease that one expected from that sort of family, all full of Fox charm and the sort of smoothness that was impossible to get a solid grip on.
Now, she blinked up at him. Pen was wearing her glasses, of course, so he was a little fuzzy where he was standing, maybe six feet away. They were a help, especially staring at the newsprint. “The Times, not the Moon.”
“Ah. Well, I shan’t lean over your shoulder. Terribly rude.” He waved the letter in his hand. “Besides, I’ve got other puzzles to keep me occupied.” That was a cryptic statement. Then he added, bafflingly, “You’re Miss Sterling, aren’t you? Maths, I believe.”
There was absolutely no particular reason he ought to know her or remember her, and it made her a tad uneasy to feel so noticed. But it would be rude to ignore him, and he was actually not being difficult in all the ways men sometimes could be. “Pen Sterling, and yes, maths.”
“A pleasure.” He offered his hand. “Edmund Carillon, Greats.” Of course, saying he was reading Greats covered a tremendous amount of ground.
Greek and Latin, of course, both translation and the literature in general, but also everything from the relevant history to art and architecture to archaeology.
What other universities except for Cambridge referred to as Classics, but Oxford had her own ways.
The more he spoke, the more she was aware of that cloak of genial certainty that the world was going to shine on him.
She offered her own hand, more out of reflex than anything else, meeting his eyes for a moment.
Then she was staring down at the paper again.
“Corona.” It came out of her mouth with a slight squeak before she looked up, flushing.
“Sorry. 20 across, ‘ring of sunlight’.” She couldn’t possibly explain the chain of thought that had got her there.
He didn’t ask, just nodded and hummed agreeably, a snatch of a few notes, before he stopped. “Anywhere talking it out might be a help? Or do you prefer to do them in solitary splendour, only the work of your own mind?”
“My own mind and reference books, once I get stuck,” Pen admitted, gesturing at the shelf of such things kept in the corner. “I enjoy doing them with my aunt, but she’s the one who taught me how to do them.”
“The cryptic crosswords take a particular approach, don’t they?” She’d been bracing for something disparaging. Either about doing them, or about her skills, or— well. Something. And there wasn’t that at all. It had been almost confiding, somehow drawing her in.
She hesitated, then asked, “Do you know Wales much at all? There’s one I’d have to look up.” She wasn’t sure what to make of his offer. There was a thread of something that seemed like he might be teasing. But there wasn’t anyone else around to mock her, and she did actually have a question.
“Try me.” Carillon came around to perch on the arm of one of the chairs, without crowding her.
“Great or Little in North Wales? Four letters.”
“Orme.” The word made little sense to her for a moment until he spelled it out. “O-R-M-E. Place names. Off the north coast, the name means sea serpent. That’s the English name; I forget the Welsh. It’s not one of my better languages.”
“Certainly not classical,” Pen agreed. She could reliably assume that his Latin was excellent.
He’d gone through Schola, and he didn’t seem like the sort to have had one of the other ritual languages.
Her Latin was decent enough. It kept coming up in a great deal of the maths discussion, older texts and all that, but her German was better, for all that was awkward now.
“Ah, but that’s the interesting part, seeing how different languages go together.” Carillon took a breath. Before he could say anything more, there was a bell ringing. “That’s the lecture. Are you attending, Miss Sterling?”
“Yes, I was planning on it, but I ought to gather up my things.” She didn’t want him to linger around her.
“A pleasant afternoon, then.” There was a hint of a movement that might have been a bow.
Then he put something in his pocket and went back out the door, toward the Academy’s lecture hall.
She went down the hall to the loo, and by the time she came out, she judged there was sufficient space between them.
Walking back with Audrey afterwards, arm in arm, she kept thinking about it. “Why would he know who I am?”
“It’s not as if the Academy is that large.
Larger right now than at other times. There’s what, seven thousand at Oxford this year?
Thirty at the Academy in our year, with people coming back as they have?
” It was a large number, especially compared to Schola— that would have been half of her year, nearly.
But plenty of the magical folk at the Academy hadn’t gone to Schola.
Aubrey hadn’t, nor had Vesta. There were plenty of people whose brains were excellent, but who hadn’t focused on magic as strongly.
For her part, Pen had always felt a bit like a fish out of water at Schola, the metaphor particularly apt because she’d ended up in Salmon House. She’d expected Dunwich, for the maths, like her aunt. Or at least Owl House.
Aubrey shrugged. “You both went to Schola. And you’re enough older he might have noticed you from that. Do you look that much different?”
“I had schoolgirl plaits. No glasses yet, at least not where anyone would see me. And a hand-me-down uniform, even before the clothes rationing. It’s not like Mum had the coin to spare, exactly.
” They’d agreed the uniform wasn’t the place to spend what they had.
“And if he was in the library, it wasn’t the bits I was in. ”
“So he can’t keep up with your maths. Which makes him like most men, and most women, too.” Audrey snorted. “Most people anywhere.” They walked along a little. “Does it bother you? That he noticed you?”
“I’m not used to people noticing me.” It came out of Pen’s mouth before she thought better of it, but Aubrey just patted her arm.
“In school, I did my work. I didn’t stand out.
I had friends; I still have friends.” Well, sort of, they were people she couldn’t talk to about her war, not in any sort of detail other than being assigned somewhere in England, and strongly implying clerical work. “And he’s...”
“What?”
“He was polite. Considerate.” Then she stopped in the middle of the pavement.
“Equation. Why didn’t I see that sooner?
” She was chewing on how things about Edmund Carillon didn’t quite add up.
She couldn’t explain why, but she could see the patterns in her head well enough, how lines that ought to be solid connections weren’t.
“Clue?” Aubrey was at least used to her by now.
“Yes. Equations. Nine letters. The clue’s about ‘they keep a son quiet, certainly’, so looking at rearranging some of the letters.”
“There you go. See, the man has some use, if it got you an answer.” Aubrey tugged her along. “Come on. I want to get some more reading in before hall.”