Chapter 5
FIVE
GWENNA
Dinner. Finally.
All I have to do is eat this, pass a few more hours, and go to sleep, and I’ll have completed my first day at Caliburn.
Successfully.
Or mostly.
Never mind the roommate who seems to resent my existence. Or the French class where I seem to have made another enemy by daring to speak with the blue-eyed class hottie I have zero interest in.
Or the guy who told me point-blank to watch myself. While holding a sword.
I grip the handles of my tray and look for a place to sit.
The dining hall at Caliburn may not look like a high-school cafeteria, but as I proceed with my dinner tray and look for a seat, it sure feels like one.
None of the linoleum floors, fluorescent lights, and chipped-edge tables of St. Catherine’s.
This is plush carpet, glowing lantern lights suspended from a cathedral ceiling, and long wooden tables that could’ve been borrowed from Henry VIII’s personal collection.
Even the tray feels more elevated than the scarred gray plastic I’m used to, with actual handles to hold onto and a neatly folded napkin—cloth! —in a matching Caliburn red.
I have no appetite, but after having nothing but coffee all day and procrastinating dinner until the last half-hour of the second sitting, I know I should force something down.
And the Friday menu—locally-caught whitefish in a beurre blanc sauce with thyme-honey carrots—does smell terrific, and I say this as someone with the deep-seated aversion to fish Fridays that only Catholic schoolgirls can appreciate.
It’s a weekend, at least, which means no formal second sitting—those are every other Wednesday, not that I ever intend to pay the extra for high dinner service, let alone find a gown to wear—but still fairly crowded, which isn’t helping my seating dilemma.
And, unlike at St. Catherine’s, I don’t think taking this tray to the girls’ room to eat is a possibility.
The weight of my bag starts to dig into my shoulder.
Every second I stay and stare is another second I’m making it weird, but there’s too much information pouring at me all at once—the social calculus of who knows who, who’d welcome a stranger, whether it’d be better simply to eat by myself except for the fact that there are no lone seats available.
As my eyes flick around the room, I catch a glimpse of a familiar face—Morgan, my beloved roommate—but if she’s seen me, she’s studiously pretending not to have, frowning at a book she has propped up against an empty glass.
“‘Scuse me.” Someone sidles past me from the serving line, waving to friends. “Hey, cut that shit out!”
That’s it. I take four decisive strides and plunk my tray down at the first of three empty seats—next to, I realize, another recognizable face.
“Bonsoir, mademoiselle.” The ponytail guy—Brett?
Brent?—from this morning gives me a little imaginary doff of the hat.
He seems…harmless enough, if a little dorky.
I suppose that’s the sort of cohort I’ll have to get used to in a medieval studies track.
Might as well bite the bullet and learn to adapt. “Brett. From class.”
“Hello,” I say, hoping the English will be enough to clue him in that I’m not in the mood for conversation.
I shake out my napkin and cut a bite of my fish that I chew absentmindedly as I look around the room.
Every panel in the wall’s hung with an oil portrait of some dean or another—all men, all white, no surprises there—with the style of dress getting gradually more up-to-date a decade at the time.
We must be at the bleeding edge, here, because the nearest portrait shows a golden-haired man in a modern three-piece suit who’s broad-shouldered, imposing, and much less portly than his compatriots.
I chew and read the brass plaque.
Luther Victorinus Pendragon
President, Caliburn Board of Trustees & Dean Ex Officio, 2008 ? —
“Ah, yes, the illustrious board president.” Ponytail Brett, says, straightens his glasses as he follows my gaze. “Quite wealthy, from what I’ve heard.”
“Hm.”
“You know him?”
What? No. I shake my head. “Just…an ironic name, is all.”
Ponytail Brett frowns. “Luther?”
I set down my fork. “As in, Martin? The Protestant Reformation?” I gesture at the fish on my plate. “Are we not a nominally Catholic university?”
We . It’s not until I say it that I realize I’ve already, subconsciously, attached myself to this place.
And I like that.
If it’ll have me. If I can stay.
“Oh. Ha!” Ponytail Brett laughs a little too loudly. Calm down, buddy, it wasn’t that good of a joke. “I never thought of that, but you’re right! Especially since he’s the one who funded so many of the rare book archives?— ”
“You’ve seen them?” I interrupt. Maybe too forcefully, because Ponytail Brett looks startled.
“Oh,” he says. “I mean…no, not yet. Except the ones they rotate out on display. I don’t think first years are allowed to handle the books at all, usually. But—you’re history?”
“Medieval studies,” I say.
He brightens and nods. “Even better. There’s this seminar—Latin, with Dr. Emrys—where you get to read directly from the archives. In facsimile, obviously, and it’s competitive to get in, but?—”
“Dr. Emrys?” I shuffle around my bag, pull out my schedule.
LATIN 302 — EMRYS
Ponytail Brett’s eyes go wide. “Whoa, really?” He casts a bashful look at me. “You must be, like…a genius.”
“Oh, I…don’t know.” I stir my beurre blanc self-consciously, gaze drifting to Morgan, who’s furiously flipping pages through her book. I wouldn’t have her as the study-at-dinner type—or study much at all type—but then again, you don’t get to Caliburn without at least a little academic inclination.
“Rumor has it there’s an original copy of Magna Carta in the archives,” Ponytail Brett goes on.
I snort. Not likely. Ponytail Brett shrinks a little.
“Okay, yeah, maybe not,” he admits.
Because there are only four of those on Earth , I think. Then I chastise myself. Do I need to be such a bitch? Ponytail Brett is the only person on this campus who’s been anything more than chilly to me. And he at least knew enough not to call it the Magna Carta.
“Could be a reissue,” I venture. “Later thirteenth century, or early fourteenth.”
“Yeah!” He sighs, leaning into his hand. “I’d kill to see that up close.”
Me too , I think, and I’m about to say as much when there’s a clunk of someone setting down a tray beside me. I look up, and see…
Elena.
“Oh,” she says, pursing her lips. “Um.” She glances over her shoulder, to Claire, who’s waiting an arm’s length away, and bugs her eyes at Elena in response.
I hold still, expecting some apology or flimsy excuse for why she doesn’t want to sit next to me, but none comes.
She just lifts her tray and leaves, turning her back like she never even saw me.
So abrupt it’s genuinely a little shocking, and freezes me in place to watch them depart.
And as I stare, I inadvertently lock eyes with someone else who seems to be staring at them.
Morgan.
She sees me, blinks, gives the barest flicker of her lips that is either a smile or a nervous tic, and slams her book shut.
God, I’m really crushing it, socially.
I set down my fork, what’s left of my appetite evaporated, and mumble some farewell to Brett as I take my bag and get up, walking slowly enough so that I’m not dogging Morgan’s steps on the way out.
She exits to the right, following the path that goes to Broceliande and her—our—room, so I instinctively head left.
That puts me on the path to the Divinity School, and that means coffee. And with coffee, I can stay up until, presumably, Morgan either goes to sleep or goes…to do whatever she does on Friday nights.
Impulsively, I pull out my phone to check for communication: nothing.
No texts, no missed calls. I should be relieved, but all I can feel is suspicion.
Like my mom is waiting for me to make the first move, secretly testing whether I’ll reach out like a normal, happy little college girl or if she’ll have to force me into contact.
Just the thought of it makes me so pissed that I decide to text her out of spite.
Great first day of classes! Going to hang with some new friends tonight. Miss you.
I pause, consider.
Then delete the last two words, and hit send.
After the chapel and the library, Holy Grounds might just be my favorite place on campus.
It’s dark and crowded and cluttered and full of life, even on a Friday evening—a perfect place to hide in plain sight.
The armchairs are mismatched and overstuffed, the coffee machines are ancient, dented things, and the decor is a combination of art museum posters, zine-line linocuts, and prayer cards from various shrines around the world.
“People bring them back from vacation,” says the barista, a guy who’s so thoroughly bald he doesn’t even have eyebrows, catching my stare. “If you ever visit a saint, bring one back. Good karma.”
I blink. “Um, sure.”
He nods, and taps a a sign in front of the register. “Got an answer? No one’s gotten it yet. Fabulous prizes are on the line.”
I look down, to where TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE DAY is chalked on a small board.
What book of the Bible is included in the Catholic Vulgate, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Septuagint, but NOT the Masoretic texts or Protestant Bible?
Dear God. Obscure much? Even for a coffee shop located in a divinity school, that’s a deep cut.
“Any guesses?” He hums the Jeopardy theme song, and points a little lower on the chalkboard. “There’s even a hint. ”
So there is: Hint: It contains the verse “It is good to guard the secret of a king, but glorious to reveal the works of God.”
Wait. I might actually know this. I screw up my face in concentration, rack my brain, to the term paper I wrote for Theology in junior year…
“Tobit,” I say. “The book of Tobit. Is that right?”
“Hell yeah!” The barista offers me a high five, which I awkwardly return. “Congratulations. You’ve won our fabulous prize.”