“It was great. They’ve invited me to visit them in St. Andrews, and I’m going to go.”
He moved so he could see my face. He thought I was kidding. “Really?”
“They want you to come with me. Plus, they’re making me a crazy good offer.”
“How crazy?”
“Fifty grand.”
His eyes popped.
“There’s more. I’ll have research freedom and barely any teaching. She also mentioned a private collection of manuscripts that’s never been studied before. They’re going to let me work on it. They’re also offering me a rent-free cottage with a sea view and two bedrooms.”
“Bloody hell, Anya!” he said. Then, cautiously, “What about Yale?”
I didn’t answer the question directly, because in my heart of hearts, I did still want to go to Yale, but I could also see a way that St. Andrews could work better for me and for Sid. I couldn’t forget Mum in all this, either. She was desperate for me to go to Yale, but I couldn’t be that far away from her while she was so sick.
“This is obviously hypothetical until they actually make me an offer, but would you consider moving to Scotland with me? Professor Cornish mentioned that they could look into finding you work opportunities at the university, but even if that doesn’t happen youcould concentrate on developing Lucis and we could both live off my salary.”
“Nowthatis an interesting idea,” he said. I watched him think about it, watched the smile spread across his face.
“Come with me to visit? If it turns out it’s all a fever dream, at least we get a free weekend away by the sea.”
“Yes. Obviously, yes!” he said.
Here’s something I wonder, now that I have the bittersweet benefit of hindsight: If the Institute’s recruitment process hadn’t worked just the way they planned it, would they have got to me some other way?
I think they would have.
Clio
On the morning after Lillian’s retirement party, Clio arrived early at the British Museum and flashed her badge to bypass the lines. Visitors were already crowding the ground-floor galleries, streaming toward the Rosetta stone and the Egyptian mummies. Upstairs, the Medieval Europe gallery was relatively empty.
Clio barely glanced at the famous rotunda or at the exhibits. Her expertise was in modern art: Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Surrealists. She’d always found medieval art and artifacts somewhat creepy, and nothing she saw as she walked through the gallery changed her opinion. A lot of the artifacts and paintings on display were simultaneously familiar and strange, unsettling versions of modern things, as if humankind hadn’t so much progressed over the past few hundred years as gone a little sideways. But perhaps she shouldn’t be too cynical. It could be a useful trait at work but a downer outside of it.
She stopped beneath a sign: “The Everly Bequest: Medieval Treasures.” It marked the entrance to a very small room, big enough for only five or six people to enter at once.
Lillian was already seated on the narrow bench set against the right-hand wall of the gallery, facing the display cabinet, which ran the length of the wall opposite. An information panel told the story of the van ambush in Russell Square and the recovery of most of the stolen artifacts. It was entertaining and included copies of old newspaper articles and photographs. The embroidery, by far the least valuable piece, only got a small mention.
The back and sides of the display cabinet were painted velvety black; the shelves were glass. It was lit from the top, the lights angled to make the treasures glow, especially the gold.
Lillian indicated that Clio take a seat beside her, and when she did, she saw that she was sitting in front of the embroidery. It was at eye level. She leaned forward to study it. It had been ripped diagonally, across the bottom. Through glass it was impossible to look as closely as she wanted, but she was surprised to see that it was quite gorgeous. The linen was fragile, the frayed edges especially so, and the threads were extremely fine. What she hadn’t been able to see online was how prettily the metallic ones glinted when light struck them.
She saw better, too, how lovely the intact portrait on the upper left corner was, and the foliage around it, that seemed to have a letterIwithin it at the bottom of the roundel that framed the portrait, or perhaps it was a Roman numeral, and she felt it a shame that the other portrait, on the upper right, had been ripped through, leaving only part of another woman’s head visible. There was another detail, too, part of a geometric shape containing a sort of pattern. It was positioned between the two roundels but ripped so badly it was impossible to tell anything from it.
“What do you think?” Lillian asked.
“It’s much more impressive than in the photographs I saw online. It has life in it. What a shame it got ruined.”
“I agree.” Lillian folded her hands on her lap. Was it Clio’s imagination, or were they shaking? She looked away, uncomfortable witnessing vulnerability in someone she looked up to so much.
“I need to tell you a story,” Lillian said. “And everything I’m about to say is true.”
Clio thought that was a strange thing to say. Lillian’s hands were clasped so tightly now that the knuckles were white. She exhaled, nerves on her breath, before she spoke.
“There are two very different, very powerful groups of women that exist today, in almost total secrecy. They are hiding in plain sight, embedded in our society. Both are fighting for the same goal, which is to improve the right of women to live free from violence and discrimination, but they can’t agree on how to achieve it. Their methods and ideologies don’t align.”
“How so? And whatever happened to women supporting women?”
