It smelled of dead things.
“It’s—I think—the sunken garden—” coughed Imogen.
Emma’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. The garden below was a maze of rotting rosebushes, sagging with late blooms. Every rose blackened through; every thorn softened to mush.
“It must have been the flood. It drowned them.”
“It’s awful.”
Even as she gagged, Emma found herself wondering if the flood had carried some contaminant, to leave the roses so damaged. A waterborne pest, perhaps? Her mother would have known.
But that was not what held her body rigid, a field mouse scenting an owl, scanning the garden. Something wasthere.It was a ridiculous thought. But for an instant, the fallen roses seemed like plucked eyeballs, pupils of rot rolled up to watch her. Then Julia tugged her arm, and Emma gladly stumbled away with her, toward the light at the end of the gardens.
They emerged in a vast, brightly lit quad, and Emma’s macabre imaginings loosened their claws on her brain. She was rather inclined to laugh at herself.
“Old Hob Quad,” said Julia, finally lowering her sleeve from her face. “The most beautiful student rooms in the University.”
“But by God, they make you walk for them,” growled Imogen, storming past in a blaze of red curls. She leapt up the first staircase and hammered on the door at the top. With one last look at the rot-scented darkness behind them, Emma followed.
CHAPTER 4
When the door opened, Emma had to steel herself not to gasp. The University was lavish, but she had never known students could have such palatial rooms. Leading off the main space, Emma glimpsed a kitchen and at least two bedrooms. Dark paneling and velvet dominated. Portraits glowered from gaps between Gothic windows. Someone had set up a bar in one corner atop what looked to be a sixteenth-century sideboard.
Emma looked up to find she had lost the other fellows. Adrift in a sea of dinner jackets and blazers, she wandered until she spotted Julia Colefax-Lee perched on a sofa.
“Can I join you?”
Julia smiled. “Oh. The natural sciences fellow. Emma, was it? Sorry, come.” She patted the cushion next to her, still scanning the crowd. “People watching is my favorite sport.”
“I thought you captained the running team.” Emma settled next to Julia, trying not to seem far too tall. “I see you sometimes in the Great Hall at Gabriel, with the other runners.”
“Running is my second-favorite sport. You’re observant. I’dforgotten you said you were at Gabriel, if you’ll forgive me. It can make you a little inward facing, this kind of thing.”
She waved a hand at the party. Emma was surprised at how tired she looked.
“‘This kind of thing’ is new to me,” Emma admitted.
“Well, with your keen observation, we can make an expert people watcher of you yet. Now, where shall we start?”
Five minutes later, Emma’s head was spinning. From their sofa, Julia had been classifying the rest of the party into the correct social taxonomies with Linnaean accuracy.
“—and don’t even bother with the ones in the corner, dreadful social climbers.”
“Julia! Brought you a drink. And your friend too.” A large, solid boy had ambled up, his face shining with equal parts kindness and perspiration.
“In a second, Hugo. I’m just educating Emma here. Now, it’s the University Union election coming up—picking the student body president, you know—so prepare for everyone’s conversation to be the dullest. But nineteen of the last twenty prime ministers have come from the University, so perhaps it’s fair this lot feel there are stakes.”
“Over three-quarters of all the prime ministers in history,” Hugo added helpfully. “They made us learn that one in school.”
“That many? From one place?” Emma said.
“Well, the odd one came from the next rung down of universities. Oxford or Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh. That sort.”
“They’re still excellent schools, surely.”
Julia wrinkled her nose. “Fine, as later universities go. Oxford and Cambridge were actually born from offshoots of the Universityproper. But they’ve never really had any big names going for them, have they? Not like us. Imagine Newton going to Cambridge. Or Oxford being home to Shelley or Tolkien—you can’t. The greatest works and discoveries are all from us.”
“It does mean people expect rather big things from you, if you’re here,” said Hugo, in a doleful tone.
