Chapter 3
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
Mark Twain
Marigold was more than pleased to have been given the corner bedroom President Irvine had promised, along with a larger sitting room with a wonderful view over the lawns to the lake, and immediately set about organizing it into the cozy study of her academically minded waking dreams—tidying and getting organized always calmed her mind and eased her soul.
She opened her windows to the fresh country air before she set to work.
Her trunks of clothing she unpacked first—she respected both Isabella’s genius and her seamstress’s hard work too much to ever take them for granted or mistreat such stylish clothing.
Second, she set up her ingeniously engineered steamer trunk that unfolded into a three-tiered chest of drawers, so she would have all the extra storage she might need for her archaeological field gear, as well as her bicycling tools and accoutrements.
Her bicycle itself she was sure had been uncrated by the efficient Mr. Duckett and now stood in the well-filled bicycle rack outside the building, awaiting her much anticipated first ride around the campus.
The ringing clarity of the Japanese bell hanging at the second floor of College Hall’s atrium, signifying the supper hour had thankfully arrived was a welcome interruption.
After freshening up and checking her appearance in the modern and hygienic washroom adjacent to her rooms to ensure she was unsmudged by dirt and dust—one might alter one’s standards to fit the occasion, but never let them down—she made her way downstairs to the dining hall.
There, the students gathered in informal groups at tables designated by interest and field of study.
Marigold passed by the German table and the French table, where students were conversing in the foreign languages, looking for the familiar faces of the Classics table.
Only to find the familiar figure at the head of the table looking at her with something less than welcome.
“Well, look what the tide’s brought in.” Sarah Appleton’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Decided to grace us with your presence after all, Marigold? Did you finally come into enough money to scratch together your tuition?”
“How kind,” Marigold returned with her own crocodile smile—all bright teeth and cynical eyes.
She had long ago learned from Jane Austen’s example that one’s courage should rise with any attempt to intimidate.
“So like you to take an interest, Sarah. And yes, I did come into money, though I’m quite sure no one wants to hear the vulgar details.
You’re looking marvelously athletic, Aggie—I heard you made a hole-in-one on the golf course this afternoon.
And Fannie, my dear girl—your sonnet in the last issue of the poetry magazine was sublime.
You are to be congratulated.” And so Marigold went, on down the familiar row of faces, moving at a measured but steady pace away from Sarah Appleton, who was left alone with no company but her own spleen.
Aggie pulled out a chair for Marigold at the far end of the table, where a lively group of students who were more interested in the study of archaeology than in the classical languages were gathered.
“How was Kefalonia?” Fannie asked guilelessly before being shushed by another, better-informed student. “What?”
“It’s all right,” Marigold said with a calm smile.
“I don’t mind. I am sorry to report that I was not able to join the field season at Leivathos on Kefalonia this past summer as planned, due to the unfortunate family circumstances our Miss Appleton so kindly alluded to.
But as she also alluded”—Marigold sent what she hoped was an ironic nod up the table at Sarah Appleton—“my fortunes have reversed themselves, so I am hoping that I will be able to take up my forfeited position next summer—along with a number of you, who, I hope, will also be applying to the field school?”
What ensued was just what Marigold had hoped and longed for—a lively discussion on scholarship, research, and opportunity, now made broader by Wellesley’s joining into the American School for Classical Studies in Athens.
“What do you think, Marigold—had you rather apply to the school in Athens, to better be able to work on your translations of the Greek myths, or will you take your chances with a field season on the island?”
“I’m not sure,” she answered truthfully.
While she had made some small progress on her intended Honors thesis translations of the Greek myths, her true goal had always been to become a working field archaeologist. “The thought of a summer in Athens certainly has its charms. And now that we American scholars have our own excavating concession in Greece, I shall have to look for deficiencies in my plan of study, so I shall be ready to apply.”
“Are you sure you can afford all the extra credit hours that will require?” was Sarah’s seemingly innocent query from the far end of the table—her clear blue eyes all but danced with a sparkling mixture of malice and privilege.
“Not sure at all,” Marigold laughed. “But where would be the fun, or adventure, in that if life were always so predictably, stultifingly set? I rather like rolling the dice and taking my chances.” She spread her smile around her end of the table like butter over bread.
“That’s why I’m an archaeologist—we’re naturally more adventurous than … others.”
It was as if Marigold had issued a clarion call to adventure, so enthusiastically was her pronouncement met.
But it served its purpose—to keep Sarah from spreading either her well-bred, well-camouflaged venom or her influence.
Her day in the sun might continue—there was no way Marigold might take away her assistantship at this point in the school year—but Sarah’s time as the leader of the table had all but come to an end.
And that was all the triumph Marigold would allow herself. She would not gloat or let herself be consumed by the passing pleasure of pettiness—she had far too much work to do.
Which she began as soon as she got back to her sitting room, settling into preparation for the following day’s classes as well as the backlog of reading and translations she needed to complete to be up to date for the semester.
It was a powerful load of work, as her old friend—or nemesis, depending upon how one looked at it—from Great Misery Island, Cleon, would have said.
But she, with her determination and her ambition, was just the person to do it.
And so, she burned the metaphorical midnight oil quite literally—using one of Seviah’s old shuttered lanterns that she had brought with her from Great Misery Island as a preservation against the “ten PM rule” that all lights had to be doused as soon as the Japanese bell rang out the appointed hour.
The tightly focused lamp gave her just enough light to read her text of Antiphon’s oration, the “Anonymous Prosecution for Murder,” along with his first oration, “Against the Step-Mother for Poisoning”—which, given Marigold’s own recent experiences on Great Misery, made for absolutely riveting reading.
But while Marigold was keenly caught up in suspecting the poison used would prove to be the botanical Atropa bella-donna, or nightshade, the lamp’s circle of light extended just far enough for her to catch sight of something being slipped under the crack of her door.
The object proved to be a withered, dead rat, presumably plucked from one of the porters’s many traps.
Marigold’s first fleeting thought was that its appearance was nothing more than a collegiate prank.
But due to her recent experiences on Great Misery Island, Marigold, like the Jane Austen heroine she had recalled at dinner, had a stubbornness about her that could never bear to be frightened at the will of others.
She was up and across the floor, wrenching open the door before the desiccated specimen had slid to a stop against the rug. “Good evening, Sarah.”
Sarah Appleton reared up from where she had knelt to deliver her stealthy gift, handkerchief in which she had transported her rat still in hand, her mouth gaping open in a comic admixture of shock that she had been caught and horror that she would therefore be punished.
Neither reaction would serve Marigold. Humor was a more useful tool. “How thoughtful of you to welcome me with a gift.”
Sarah was not wise enough to take Marigold’s offering—her shock slid easily into disdain. “It is a gift. One to tell you you’re as welcome here as that rat.”
“Naturally,” Marigold agreed as pleasantly as she was able, given the circumstance. “I can see how you might feel that way. But honestly, you needn’t.”
“Someone has to tell—”
“What’s going on?” The ever-vigilant faculty member resident on the hall—recognized as such by her matronly personage as much as her air of inviolable authority—came striding down the corridor. In her wake, curious kerchiefed and braided heads popped out of the doors to witness the event.
“Good evening, Professor,” Marigold answered, stepping into the corridor to block the woman’s view of the rat’s corpse, lest her apparent schoolgirl rivalry with Sarah Appleton blossom into something more volatile.
“I had forgotten an important Greek lesson and Miss Appleton was kind enough to deliver the notes to me.”
“Was she? Lights are out,” the professor reminded them. “Which, as Miss Appleton knows, means no passage of the corridors or stairs. Perhaps you have forgotten the rules, Miss Manners, but I will brook no nonsense on my hall. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Professor,” said Marigold, while Sarah Appleton murmured a meek, “Yes, ma’am.”
The compliance mollified the woman. “I will let this incident pass this once, as it is your first night, but let there be no repeat offenses. Have I made myself clear?”