Chapter 10
Pen found being back up at Oxford both delightful and frustrating.
It varied depending on the minute, the hour, and the day.
Possibly also the week, but she did not yet have a sufficiently large data set to be certain.
But at least her uncertainty had a rhythm to it.
She had the lectures she ought to attend.
She had problem sets for tutorial to work on.
And she had whatever else she wished to fill her time with.
Today, she’d attended a lecture before hall, and then come back along to the Academy after supper to look at books in the library.
She was still trying to decide which she wished to borrow.
Some had only a few pages relevant to her particular interests of the moment.
Others, she probably wanted handy to look at some morning before dawn when she’d had an idea.
If she had ideas. Such things couldn’t be forced.
They could only be coaxed by a combination of attempting to do something else, going across the quad for a bath, or getting caught on the wrong end of Oxford from a notebook.
At the moment, she was contemplating her particular puzzle.
It was one big tangle of a problem, like unsnarling necklace chains or yarn.
And right now, she couldn’t see a way through it.
Not enough metaphorical light, or from the wrong angle.
She could, she supposed, think about writing a very polite letter to Professor Acharya and Professor Wain at Schola, and see what they recommended.
People did. But it felt as if it were overstepping.
The lecture that afternoon had been given by the esteemed Professor Born.
He’d been a refugee before the war, a theoretical physicist. He’d taught first at Cambridge, and now at Edinburgh.
But this term, he was at Oxford for a series of seven weekly lectures.
Tonight had begun with an introduction and the topics of chance and causality.
Future weeks promised a lecture on astronomy.
Actually, perhaps she would write Professor Wain.
The Waynflete lectures were open to the public if space allowed.
Pen could at least offer to take detailed notes and pass them along.
That made her feel rather better about writing and about asking if Professor Wain had suggestions.
Professor Born had begun by laying out how he intended to proceed.
That was not, interestingly, principally with the maths.
As he had pointed out, that was too technical a language for the audience.
Instead, he had approached it as much as a philosopher, raising questions of free will and predestination almost from the first minutes.
He’d even touched on the distinctions between astronomy and astrology.
Specifically, proponents of astrology held that the movements of the stars had a causal impact on the world.
But since it could not be measured or replicated, scientists ignored it.
That rather left out magic, at least as Albion used the term, and that was the part she was going to be thinking about for a long time.
Oh, they’d touched on some of this in their courses on the Trivium and Quadrivium at Schola, and in some of the Time and Place work, her last two years.
But no such class could cover all the details.
Pen believed that magic, the magic she had in her hands and her breath and her body, worked by rules, much as the other things she did had rules.
Throwing a ball or shaping magic to do a task had a response in the physical world, even if the means of activation were different.
Professor Born had gone on to define his terms. Those were all familiar to Pen, thanks to her training in rhetoric and logic.
Schola had prepared her well on that front, something she was grateful for many more days than not.
She had not truly appreciated the rigours of either field at the time, but as Aunt Agnes said, all thirteen or fourteen-year-olds were young savages. Proper understanding came later.
It was not just the content of his lecture that Pen had appreciated, though she’d scribbled down many notes in shorthand.
It was also the way Professor Born had framed it.
Anyone could convey knowledge or information.
Rather fewer could speak compellingly, especially on a dense topic such as natural philosophy and mathematics.
Pen had sat through many abominably given sermons in her day.
At any rate, she looked forward to the future lectures, and to the conversation she expected to have with her tutor about it.
Just as she was packing up her things, there was a touch on her arm.
Audrey grinned at her. “Walk back?” She kept her voice low.
The Academy had good charms to muffle the sorts of casual sounds that could be a bother in the various non-magical libraries, but the librarians did not approve of disruptions.
Pen nodded, and finished packing up her things, leaving the books she’d been looking at to be re-shelved.
Once they were outside, in the courtyard, Audrey slipped her arm through Pen’s. “You were gone both before and after hall. Oh, right, that lecture?”
“I’m glad I went. It was fascinating. Not too much maths, actually, he said he intends to talk more about the philosophy of it, with many explanations of the maths. You ought to come along.”
“Maybe. And after?” Audrey seemed about to say something else, when she paused, waving decorously at one man nearby. They’d come out onto the main street by then, but the man wasn’t anyone Pen knew.
“Audrey?” Pen waited until they’d got about half a block down. “Someone you know? Someone you want to know?”
“Want to know better. You really ought to come to the O.U.D.S. with me. So many interesting people.” Audrey had taken up rather whole-heartedly with the university dramatic society that autumn. Pen was not sure where she found the time. Pen was certain she couldn’t make that happen.
Oh, they seemed congenial enough as a group, but also entirely capable of taking up whatever space they spotted with their own desires.
Besides, Pen did not much want to deal with that set of egos.
Doing it about maths was one thing. Doing it about theatre was another.
It would also involve arguments with Grandfather that she didn’t much want to have, though that was in fact a side consideration here.
“I’m glad you enjoy it, but thank you, no. I’ll come see the performance, though. Whatever it is.”
“Good. You ought.” They walked along for a bit more, past the Bod, until Audrey bumped her once. “Don’t you want to meet someone?”
Pen did not have a quick answer to that. She shrugged. “Not something I want to talk about on the street, honestly, Audrey.”
Audrey predictably took that as a challenge. “Come to mine, then. Or do you have more maths to do?”
“I can come chat for a few.” It was the right thing to say.
The people were at least a third of the reason to come to Oxford.
It was spoiling the experience to always have her nose down in her books or her maths or whatever she was focusing on.
Besides, Audrey was right. Pen had found none of the societies particularly worth her time, and that meant finding other ways to be social.
Twenty minutes later, she’d dropped her satchel in her own rooms, changed out her shoes for slippers, and put on a different jumper.
By the time she knocked on Audrey’s door, the fire was comfortably going, and there was a mug of mint tea waiting for her.
Pen cupped her hands around it— her fingers were still chilled from the walk— and sat.
“So. Men.” Trust Audrey to get right to the point. “Are you interested in anyone? You could be.”
“I’m not.” Pen had to figure out how to talk about some of this, because actually, rather a lot of it had been complicated by Bletchley.
Though maybe that gave her a general way to get at it.
“During the war, I was working somewhere with mostly older men. Not necessarily old, but you know. Been at university and finished, up to actually old.”
“That is remarkably numerically imprecise for you, Pen. Go on.” Audrey leaned forward.
“So now, some of the men are— well, my age. Our age. Went into the war straight from school or what have you. And that’s all right, I suppose.
But some of them, just coming up, our year or the year before, they’re awfully immature.
I don’t think I have it in me to deal with that.
I don’t know that I want a man with vast experience with other women, but I don’t see why I should have to do the housebreaking. ”
The way Pen put it did at least get her friend to giggle. Audrey went on once she’d had a sip from her mug. “There are, in fact, plenty of men our age handy. Or a little older. Some of them are quite good looking and confident. Watts, for example.”
“That’s who you’ve had your eye on?” He was magical, Pen knew that, though she forgot at the moment what he was reading.
“Reading Modern Languages. Quite a wit, but he’s not nasty about it. Some of them are. I agree, that’s not remotely attractive. But that leaves the rest.”
“Many of whom already have particular women of interest. And most of them aren’t magical, and...” Pen shrugged.
“Ugh. Don’t, Pen.” Audrey grimaced. “You’re used to that, aren’t you?”
“Living among the non-magical? Yes. But some of what I want to do is specifically magical.” That was the rub.
Pen had spent years of her life unable to talk about what was in her head, except in extremely limited circles and circumstances.
She could not imagine decades of it, in her own home.
“Could I work with someone non-magical? Yes, potentially. Do I want to share a house and a bed and whatever else with them? Not particularly, no.”
“All right.” Audrey waved a hand. “I suppose you have a point. Or at least I don’t have a good argument, seeing as how you don’t explain your work to me.”
Pen shrugged agreeably, without making an argument about it.
She didn’t want to argue. None of this was Audrey’s fault, just like none of it was actually Pen’s fault.
It was how the world was at the moment, and it was foolish to rail against the facts of the matter.
“So. Someone magical, none of the people I’ve seen appeal much. I’m not saying no, but.”
“Well. You’ll come to the Academy ball, though?
” There was one every year in Trinity term.
The annual scheduling was deliberately in contrast to the other colleges, which held them triennially and after the end of the term.
Pen suspected that it had begun as a way to show how much better the Academy was in all ways, even celebration.
Or how many resources the Academy could draw on.
On the other hand, it was a chance to dress up and have some good food, even given the rationing limitations. There’d be a fair bit of excellent things to drink, too. “I will. And I suppose I can probably find someone to escort me, given that.”
“If you don’t, I will.” That was an amicable threat. “Think about whether there’s someone you’d like to get to know. You’ve got all this term and most of next.”
“I also have other things to do this term.” Pen set her mug down. “Like my problem set. I’ll wash out your mug.”
“Ta.” Audrey held it out, then hesitated. “Look, would you do me a favour?”
“Possibly.” Pen knew better— she had certainly been trained better in Ritual class— than to agree to something without knowing what she was agreeing to.
“Could we work out a way to spend a night away? One of us. Well, probably me, the way you’re talking.
Hopefully me. Not immediately, obviously.
” The trick of it for women undergraduates was that the scouts paid attention to which beds had been slept in, and knew when their charges normally woke up.
If Audrey were out all night and caught at it, she might well get sent down.
The men had more options. If they were gone overnight, half their scouts looked the other way. And more of the men had digs in town anyway. That meant decidedly less supervision or need to sneak back in over a wall or through someone with a conveniently placed window on the ground floor.
“Probably,” Pen said. “Um.” She could see a number of challenges. “Let’s both think about the practical bits, what would make sense. We both have journals, so if I’m checking mine, that would help.”
“You’re best.” Audrey beamed at her. “Not that I expect to need it right away, but a woman might want to have hopes.”
“We’ll talk,” Pen said firmly. Then she took the mugs off to rinse them, bringing them back before she went up to her own room and the waiting work.