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Authors: Caroline Stevermer

BOOK: A Scholar of Magics
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L
ambert left Fell in the botanical garden and went to find the gatekeeper who had admitted yesterday's intruder. It didn't take long, as the same man was on gate duty again, Tilney, a Fellow of Wearyall. Lambert introduced himself and explained what he wanted to know.
Tilney said, “I remember you, no question. You were with the young lady who talks. There was no one ahead of you.”
For no more than a moment, Lambert let himself savor
that description of Jane. What a pity she wasn't along to hear it. “Not immediately ahead of us, perhaps. But the person you let in just before us—”
Tilney spoke slowly and distinctly. “There was no one just before you. The last visitor before you and the lady arrived during breakfast.”
“That's impossible. There was a man who came in just before us—bowler hat—”
“Look in the visitors book if you don't believe me.” Tilney spun the heavy volume on the counter so that Lambert could read the entries. There, in chronological order, were neatly ranked entries for each of that morning's visitors to Glasscastle, along with times of arrival or departure.
Lambert persisted. “He was just in front of us. He stood right here. What else was he doing, if he didn't sign in?”
“There was no one in front of you. I remember because of all the talking the young lady did.” Tilney flipped back to the previous day's page, found the spot in the list, and stabbed it with his index finger. “Use your eyes.”
At the spot Tilney marked, Lambert found his own handwriting, his name followed by Jane Brailsford's. The entry before theirs, as the gatekeeper had insisted, was from more than an hour before. Lambert turned pages back and forth to make sure the sequence of pages and days was uninterrupted. “There must be some mistake.”
Tilney scowled. “If there is, I didn't make it. There is the possibility that I've falsified the records in some way. That is a serious accusation. Extremely serious. I should think carefully before I said anything that implied as much. Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do.”
 
 
L
ambert took out his puzzlement on Meredith's targets in the temporary shooting gallery set up on one side of South Quad. Meredith had him use his favorite weapon, the Colt Peacemaker, and the noise he made went a long way toward settling his temper.
“Not your best work today.” Meredith finished marking the sheets on his clipboard. “The light will be gone soon. Perhaps we'd better try again tomorrow.”
“Six more cartridges,” said Lambert. “Then I'll stop.”
“Please yourself.”
Lambert stood at his mark and took a few deep breaths. The light was deceptive. He put his attention on the target, leveled the Peacemaker, and cleared his mind of everything. Six shots clustered at the heart of the target.
“Much better.” Meredith made notes. “Pack it in now, will you?”
Without protest, Lambert sat down beside him and started the soothing routine of cleaning the weapon.
Meredith watched him work. “Fell's back, I hear.”
Lambert nodded. “He took it into his head to go to London to hear a lecture.”
“Without telling you?”
“Without telling anybody.” Lambert shrugged. “He's a grown man.”
“So he is. With the responsibilities of a scholar. One or two of his students are still waiting for him to mark their papers so they can find out if they passed Schools this term.”
Lambert winced. “Impatient, are they?”
“Not half.” As Lambert finished with his task, Meredith
gathered up the bits of cloth and bottle of gun oil, stowing them with the clipboard in the case he carried. “They call him Sabidius, did you know? From that Latin jingle that means, when you cut to the heart of it, ‘I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.'”
“They could call him worse than that before Fell took any notice.” Lambert thought back. “Though they'd better not try swiping his hat again. That made him cross.”
“You'll remind the old boy to see to them, next time you get a change?”
“I'll remind him. I can't promise that he'll do anything about it.”
“No one expects miracles.” Meredith looked thoughtful.
“Listen, I can do my paperwork anywhere. Would you like to visit Upton's room?”
“They let you do your paperwork in Upton's room?” Lambert pretended to marvel at Meredith. “I don't even know why they trust you with the key to this place.”
“I promise to be tidy. Come along.” Meredith beckoned Lambert to follow him to Upton's room. “It's a good place to think.”
“Do I look like a man with thinking to do?”
“To be honest, you shoot like a man with thinking to do.” Meredith retrieved the key from its guardian and signed for it. Together he and Lambert climbed the narrow stairs to a room on an upper floor of Albany House, one of the Wearyall College buildings. The key turned easily in the lock.
Lambert followed Meredith into Upton's room. Upton's shrine was a more accurate term. Philip Upton had been Vice Chancellor of Glasscastle for thirty years. Since his
death in 1870, his room had been preserved almost untouched. Like the botanical garden, it was an area off-limits to all but the Fellows of Glasscastle and their guests. Lambert had only been there a few times, always strictly chaperoned, but he treasured the experience. He welcomed, as vividly as on his first visit and every visit since, the sense of peace that filled the room. To Lambert, it was the silent equivalent of the heart-lifting music of the chant.
Meredith sat at the desk and began filling out his paperwork. Lambert took the chair opposite and let himself ease into the quiet of the place.
It was a small room, by Glasscastle's standards, but the ceiling was high. There was wall space above even the tall bookcases. The height of the ceiling prevented any sense of being hemmed in or confined. Instead, the solid run of books on every wall gave the room a cozy feel. To judge from the arrangement of titles, Vice Chancellor Upton had possessed a highly idiosyncratic sense of what book went with what, but his sense of order was evident.
“They really don't mind if you do paperwork here?” Lambert asked.
“Of course not, if it means I'll do my paperwork better.” Meredith worked placidly on. “This place is for anyone who needs it. That's why the room has been kept the way it was when he used it.”
“Just to let people sit here?”
“Sitting is optional. Thinking is mandatory. Upton was a good thinker. Some dark days he saw Glasscastle through. You could do worse than pick up a bit of Upton's thinking.”
“You sound as if he left it lying around like a paperweight.”
In fact, there was a paperweight lying on the desk, a ceramic tile glazed with a shield blazoned with three red hearts. Lambert toyed with it idly.
“Of course he did. It's in the walls, most likely. Every strong personality leaves an influence.” Meredith took the paperweight away from Lambert and put it gently back on the desk. “That was Upton's device, his sign, three hearts for the three colleges of Glasscastle. His friends said it was because he had three times more heart than most people.”
“Upton died more than forty years ago. No one's personality is that strong.”
“But when he was here, he was here. For thirty years. It hasn't worn off yet, believe me.” Meredith went back to his paperwork.
The room felt as if Upton had gone only a moment ago, as if he might be back at any time. Lambert let himself relax in his ladder-back chair. What would it have been like to study at Glasscastle in Upton's day, before modern theories had come along to overturn the serene assurance of the past? Would it have been easier or harder to live in a world without Darwin and Malthus, a world without Voysey's scientific principles?
The peace of the place sank in. Lambert gave himself up to it. With only the small scratch of Meredith's pen to break the silence, it was easy to let questions and concerns fade as the angled light of sunset dimmed. Whoever Upton had been, whatever Upton had done, those hundreds and hundreds of books had not belonged to a man afraid of questions. The wear on the bindings attested to that.
Lambert sat with Meredith until it was too dim to work
without a light any longer. Meredith put his pen away, and said, “Time to go, I'm afraid.”
“Yes. Thanks.”
“I thought it would help.”
“It did.”
Meredith locked the room up again, returned the key, and the pair of them went their separate ways into the deepening twilight.
 
I
n hall that night, Lambert found himself back in the neighborhood of Cromer and Palgrave's thrice-weekly debate. Fortunately, it wasn't a Bible night, as this time a guest joined Cromer and Palgrave for dinner. Louis Tobias was no older than Cromer or Palgrave were. He was as dark as Brailsford and as personable as Voysey.
“We mustn't overlook Colonel Cody,” Tobias was saying to Cromer as they took their seats.
Buffalo. Bill Cody had been Kiowa Sam's hero and the inspiration for his Wild West Show. The familiar name caught Lambert's attention. He looked up with interest.
“But the man's quite mad,” said Cromer. “They say he sometimes takes a passenger along when he flies.”
It took Lambert a moment to figure out the man Tobias referred to was not Colonel William Cody but Colonel Sam Cody. Sam Cody was yet another American to leave the Wild West for green Great Britain. He'd given up on his career as a cowboy showman, but had been making headlines as an aviator ever since. Necks didn't get risked any more regularly than Sam Cody risked his.
“Cody may have been the first, but these days he is not the
only aviator to take up a passenger,” Tobias replied. “Far from it.”
Lambert said, “When he leaves his aeroplane, Cody tethers it to something, just as if it were a horse. That's what they say.”
Tobias grinned at Lambert. “The man is an American, after all. One must make allowances.” He turned back to Cromer. “Remember, he was the only man flying a British plane even to finish the round-England race. He won the Michelin Cup, after all. We don't count him out, even if Haldane did.”
“Tobias has come all the way from the airfield at Farnborough to spy on us,” Cromer informed the table at large. To Tobias, he said, “I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we feel very honored by your presence, sir.”
“He isn't a spy,” Palgrave countered. “He's gathering intelligence.”
“A nice distinction.” Tobias looked amused.
“Where better to gather intelligence than where the intelligent are gathered?” Cromer finished.
“That's the last time I let Lord Fyvie make my travel arrangements,” said Tobias amiably. “Next time it will be a sneak attack.”
“By air?” asked Palgrave.
“Certainly by air,” Tobias replied. “In the future it will be the only viable form of warfare, you'll see.”
“I can't wait.” Palgrave looked gloomy. “It will be interesting to see which causes more damage, the objects the pilots drop overboard or the bits of equipment that fall off the aeroplane itself.”
“Or possibly the impact of the aeroplane itself as it hits the ground,” said Cromer. “Seriously, what brings you here?”
“Oh, espionage.” Tobias was wide-eyed with sincerity. “Everyone knows that you Glasscastle men have the inside track with the ministry budget. I'm just here to pick up a few pointers.”
“The vital thing,” said Cromer, as he signaled for more wine, “is to keep the men with the money well oiled at all times. Hospitality, that's the watchword. Hospitality, simple self-confidence, and remarkable visual acuity,” he added, with a nod toward Lambert.
“And mental acuity,” said Palgrave. “That never hurts.”
“Don't forget pluck,” Lambert put in. As more claret arrived, he prepared to excuse himself from the table. There was very little in the world less interesting than watching other people get drunk.
“And pluck,” Palgrave agreed. “Pluck is always good.”
“And sheer animal cunning,” said Cromer. “That about sums it up, I think. Do you think you can remember all that?”
“I think so,” Tobias said. “The operative concept being self-confidence to the point of self-delusion and far, far beyond.”
“Well put,” Palgrave said. “But then, if half what I've heard about foolhardy aviators is true, that's your stock in trade, isn't it?”
Tobias seemed to find no fault in that statement, nor in the remainder of the evening's hospitality. When Lambert left
them, the three were lingering at the table, highly entertained by their own wit.

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