A Golden Fury Page 4

  I’d dismissed him at the time. He spoke as if total madness were a natural result of a woman pursuing rigorous scientific endeavors, as if he had seen it many times before. He hadn’t. My mother’s change was utterly strange, utterly uncanny. This was no common madness, not something for him to sigh over as if she could have prevented it only by listening to him. And yet, something had caused it. And I could not deny that madness might be a family trait, as I knew nothing at all of my mother’s family. The more I pushed my fear down, the more it grew. I could think of nothing worse than to become what my mother was now.

  The spires of Oxford came into view, pulling me from my anxious reverie. Domes, peaks, and turrets cut through the mist, like the oldest castles in France intermixed with its most beautiful gothic churches. Yet these were not churches, but houses of learning, of science. For all my mother’s fame as an alchemist, she had never been welcomed into the universities and academies of France. And where my mother could not go, I could not, either. I touched the window and stared at the town with rising excitement. That was where my father lived, amid those cathedrals to science. He had made a place for himself there. A place for his work.

  I drew my mother’s letter to my father from my satchel, not for the first time. It was the letter the Comte had insisted that my mother write before her illness, the one she had written and never sent. I had been on the point of opening it more than once on my journey, and most likely would have if I had some way of sealing it again before giving it to my father. I am not a person who lightly invades the confidence of others. But these confidences in particular—confidences from my unpredictable mother, about me, to my mysterious father—these I struggled to respect. This letter would be the first knowledge my father ever received of me. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to let my mother make the introduction.

  In the town, the streets were dark with recent rain and crowded with tall stone buildings, the halls of the colleges mixed with the humbler brick dwellings of the townspeople. In the center of town, the carriage rolled to a stop next to a towering wooden gate built into the medieval stone walls. The gate was adorned with flowers and crests at the top and triangular patterns lower down. The coach driver opened my door.

  “Oriel College, miss,” he said, and went to the back to unload my trunk.

  I stepped out of the carriage, pulling my shawl more tightly around my shoulders. The walls of the college rose up above me. They were several stories high, made of stone, and topped with pointed facades on the side and a crenellated parapet at the top. It looked like, and perhaps was, a medieval fortress. I could imagine archers aiming down from the battlements. Together with the tall, dark gates, it all sent a clear message of exclusion. I squared my shoulders and knocked on the door.

  An elderly man opened the gate. He stooped, and I saw he had huge, bushy brows that obscured the eyes beneath them. He peered at me, my obvious girlhood, slightly foreign clothing and trunk, with a mild, quizzical glance.

  “I am looking for Professor Vellacott. He is a fellow here, I believe.”

  “Vellacott?” repeated the porter. “Yes, he is that, miss. Might I ask what your business is with him?”

  His eyes went from my trunk to my green bonnet. The Comte had bought it for me not long ago. It was the latest in Parisian fashion, and the porter clearly found it out of the ordinary. I tried not to imagine what conjecture he might be making.

  “I am—” But I could not say I was his daughter, when as yet the professor did not know he had one. “The daughter of a friend of his, a very old friend. I’ve had a very long journey, sir, and I really must see him. It is important. I have a letter—”

  I pulled it from the pocket of my gown, a robe à la polonaise, and it occurred to me to wonder whether this, too, might not be a common fashion in England. The porter had glanced askance at my rather thin chemise, which the robe did not fully cover in front.

  “He’s in the dining hall now, at high table,” said the porter. “But I’ll ask him—what’s your name?”

  “Thea—Theosebeia Hope.”

  “Theabee—?”

  “Thee-ah-see-bya. Miss Hope.”

  With his bushy eyebrows raised, the porter reluctantly invited me into the gate house. He pulled in my trunk, and I stood beside the fire. It was a pleasantly warm, wood-paneled room, and while I waited I looked around at the various seals and coats of arms that hung on the wall. They all signified some king or earl or the like, some rich and powerful man who had cast his beneficence here.

  The porter returned not much later, not with my father, but with a slight young man with untidy dark hair and terrible posture.

  “Master Dominic, this is Miss Thee—Miss Hope.”

  Dominic inclined his head and didn’t meet my eyes.

  “Miss Hope,” he said. He had a low, raspy voice that I liked. It seemed older than he was.

  “Are you a student of Professor Vellacott’s?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Something like,” said the boy. “Is he expecting you?”

  “No,” I said, and a nervous laugh escaped me. Dominic looked at my trunk, confused. He did not know what to make of me any more than the porter did.

  “I have a letter of introduction,” I said. “I think—I think he will want to know I’m here.”

  It was the best explanation I could manage under the circumstances. Dominic’s eyes flicked to my face, and then away again.

  “I’ll take you to the dining hall.” There were traces of an erased lower-class accent in his speech. He dropped his h’s and his l’s were nearly w’s. “It’s just across the quad. We can try to get his attention from the back.”

  Dominic went out abruptly, without another word. I followed, too nervous to mind his poor manners. The walls opened onto a grassy square lined with carved stone buildings. We crossed to one that glowed from the inside. The door was ajar, and high-spirited masculine voices rang out into the chilly evening, along with the smell of roasted meat and hot butter. I followed Dominic through the stone door into a small hallway. To our left were two archways, looking in on a handsome, crowded dining room. The ceiling soared up into wooden beams arching crosswise across the length of the hall. Three long rows of gleaming wooden tables were filled with young men, eating and laughing and belonging there. A few of them caught sight of me and stared. I ignored them and looked to the front of the hall at the head table, slightly elevated above the rest. Ten older men sat there, talking with a little more dignity than their students, but no less contentment. I scanned the table, quickly ruling out the oldest of the fellows, until my eyes rested on a dark-haired, carefully dressed man in his midthirties. He was sipping wine and looking at home.

  “Professor Vellacott is there, third from the left,” murmured Dominic, confirming what I instinctively knew. I stared at him, hungry to take in every detail I could. He was tall, or else very long-waisted, judging from his seated height relative to the other fellows. He looked young—younger than I had pictured him, though not quite as young as my mother. His curly dark hair was elegantly cut, as were his clothes. He held himself rather carefully as well. Straight-backed. His smile to his dining companion was restrained. He looked out across the hall, and his eyes caught mine. He set down his wine glass, and the smile vanished.

  Perhaps it was the strange presence of a woman inside the college that made him frown. Perhaps it was that I was drawing the attention of his students and causing a disturbance. Or perhaps he recognized what I did, looking at him. My face was a younger, feminine copy of his own. In any case he did frown, very deeply, and then cast a look of distinct disapproval at Dominic.

  “Are you going to go speak to him?” I asked Dominic, who still hovered by the archway.

  “I’m not meant to be here,” he said. “No more than you are. I hoped he’d come speak to us—ah, here—”

  The professor—my father—was coming toward us, still frowning. He stepped past us, out of the archway so that he was no longer visible from the hall.r />
  “Is something wrong at the laboratory?” he asked Dominic, his eyes gliding over me with discomfort.

  “No, sir, I only came to tell you the substance is ready, but this young woman was asking for you at the gate. Miss Hope.”

  Vellacott turned to me, and if he had seemed stiff before he had gone rigid now. He stared at me for a long moment, his dark eyes wide with shock.

  “Miss—Miss Hope—?”

  “Theosebeia Hope,” I said, and sank into a shallow curtsy. “I believe you knew my mother, Marguerite Hope. Do you remember her?”

  “I—” Professor Vellacott recovered himself enough to lower his eyes. “I did. Certainly I do. She—is she here?”

  He looked alarmed at the idea.

  “No, sir,” I reassured him quickly. “She is in France. But I had to leave her there. I find myself in need of a place to stay.”

  “And she sent you here?” Vellacott’s frown deepened. “I can’t imagine why. I suppose—”

  He looked at me again, disquiet behind his disapproval.

  “Dominic, see Miss Hope to the inn.” He bowed to me. “Miss Hope. We may speak—” He hesitated long enough to betray his distress at the prospect. “Later.”

  He went back into the warm glow of the dining hall, and Dominic went quickly to the door. I followed him across the quad, forcing down the unruly feelings that tightened my throat and chest. I was grateful, now, that Dominic seemed so determined to look only at the ground. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice my trembling hands and twisting mouth.

  Back at the gatehouse, Dominic lifted my trunk more easily than I expected, and the porter opened the gate to let us out. He said goodbye politely, and with evident relief.

  The great door shut behind us with a clang. I had been inside half an hour, at most, and the whole time everyone who saw me had been wishing me out.

  Except Dominic. He shot me a keen glance that might have been sympathy, then looked back at the cobbled ground.

  “Professor’s got a room rented at the Tackley Inn.” He nodded up the road. “Not far.”

  We set off toward it, and I let the brisk air and exercise loosen my tight chest and steady my shaking hands.

  “Why does he stay at an inn?” I had hoped my father was better established than a rented room would suggest, though of all my hopes to be disappointed today, this looked likely to be the least. “Doesn’t he have a house?”

  “No house. Fellows usually live in the college if they aren’t married. But the professor gave his rooms to a visitor of his.”

  I eyed Dominic, easy to do when there seemed so little danger of him looking up. Other than the poor posture, there wasn’t much to distinguish him from all the young men we’d just left behind. I remembered what he’d said when we were there.

  “Why aren’t you supposed to be in the college dining hall?” I asked. “Aren’t you a student?”

  “No,” said Dominic. “I’m not enrolled. Can’t be.”

  “Why not?”

  “Costs money, for one thing,” he said. “And I’m a Catholic.”

  “Are you?” This was just interesting enough to distract me from my own painful feelings. “I didn’t think there were many of those left in England. Are you Irish?”

  I supposed that might explain the squashed accent. I had assumed he was hiding a London slum argot, but perhaps it was in fact an Irish brogue.

  “No,” said Dominic shortly. “English Catholic. Church of England didn’t stamp us all out.”

  “It’s harder to do than you’d think, isn’t it?” I mused. “You can still find the occasional Protestant in France as well.”

  “Is that where you’re from?” He said it with a glimmer of interest, the first he had shown in me.

  “I suppose it is.” I laughed, and Dominic glanced at me for another fleeting moment. He did have very nice eyes, when one managed to get a glimpse of them. Warm brown and very serious. “Though in France, I always said I was from England. I was born here, but all I remember is France.”

  “You don’t have an accent,” said Dominic.

  “I learned English from my mother,” I said. “French, too.”

  Thinking of her was as painful as thinking of my father. I frowned.

  For a moment I thought Dominic might say more. He looked as though he wanted to, but instead he turned left onto a wider and busier street. The buildings were fronted with shops here, and in a few yards Dominic stopped in front of a bookseller’s. We passed through an archway into a very narrow, covered alley. I followed Dominic up two flights of stone stairs and watched him set down the trunk and try the door at the top.

  “It’s locked,” he said, and frowned. “I should have thought to ask for the key.”

  “He should have thought to give it,” I said.

  Dominic glared at the doorknob. “You could come down to the tavern until he gets back. I imagine you’d like supper.”

  I was on the verge of denying it, out of habit. My mother always forgot to eat, too absorbed in her work, and found it disappointing when I preferred regular meals. But I was hungry, in fact, and there was a pleasant smell of bread coming from across the alley.

  “I would, yes.” The words came out sounding defiant, and I glanced at Dominic in case he found it strange. He could have no idea whom I was defying by admitting a strong preference for food over hunger.

  He lugged the trunk down the stairs again and down another set under the first floor. The tavern, it turned out, was a spacious vaulted cellar, sparsely inhabited, dotted with tables between the stone arches. Dominic pulled out a chair for me at one of them, then went to the bar in the back. I looked around while I waited and quickly noticed that I was the only woman here, as well. The few patrons were men, gentlemanly in appearance, but not in manners. They stared at me openly. I assumed my most forbidding expression, one I had practiced often on my mother’s last patron before the Comte. It was a mixture of contempt and boredom that had usually frozen him quite effectively. I was still wearing it when Dominic came back, which perhaps explained why he left an empty chair between us and didn’t try to make conversation.

  A boy brought us a platter of food, some roast beef and boiled potatoes. After a few moments of attentive eating, I started to feel more warmly toward Dominic, despite the ill-mannered way he hunched over his plate.

  “Thank you for supper,” I said. He nodded, mouth too full to reply.

  “So you aren’t a student,” I continued. “But you work with my—with Mr. Vellacott?”

  Dominic looked up. He had caught my slip. However unpolished his manners, he had a sharp mind. He swallowed his food.

  “I do,” he said.

  “Are you an alchemist, then?”

  “Not really. Just a useful hand in the laboratory,” he said. “How do you know about—about that?”

  “Is it a secret?” I asked. Traditionally, alchemy wasn’t considered a respectable science within the academy, but I thought Vellacott had made a place for his work here.

  “Not exactly,” said Dominic. “It’s just not very well known. Most of the undergraduates think Mr. Vellacott only does chymistry. That’s what he teaches them.”

  “Where is his laboratory, then?” I asked.

  Dominic had another bite of beef, and he took his time chewing it. “I reckon you better ask him that,” he said.

  I sat back and regarded him. I was beginning to feel irrationally irritated.

  “Is that why he employs you? Because you’re so good at keeping your mouth shut you hardly know how to open it?”

  “That’s part of it.” He looked at me steadily for a moment, unsmiling. “Mr. Vellacott does like his secrets.”

  I could hardly miss the challenge. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that it was no fault of mine that no one here knew about me, when my father came in.

  “There you are, Miss Hope,” he said. “I wasn’t sure where you’d got to.”

  “The door was locked,” I said. “Dominic was ki
nd enough to buy me dinner.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Vellacott. “Thank you, Dominic. Why don’t we go—upstairs—”

  Vellacott looked around the cellar, obviously nervous. I thanked Dominic, then left with my father.

  Vellacott’s rooms were rather spare—two bedrooms adjoining a parlor, where I sat while he paced around. There were two plush chairs around a small tea table and a window that looked out over the street. It was clear that he hadn’t lived here long. There were few possessions in the room, no pictures or other such attempts to make the place a home. There was, however, a less faded square on the moss-colored wallpaper. So it seemed his attempts at decorating had extended just as far as removing a frame.

  “I ordered tea,” he explained, looking out the window. “It should be here any moment.”

  The professor’s obvious discomfort had a strangely calming effect on me. He was afraid of me, and that meant I had some kind of power. I tried to put aside the disappointment nagging at the back of my mind and taking the form of the knowing voice of my mother. Never pin your hopes on a man, she always said, though she never took her own advice.

  The tea arrived, and Vellacott set down the tray on the table.

  “Sugar?” he asked.

  “No, thank you,” I said without thinking. I rather liked sugar in my tea, but we never took it that way at home.

  Vellacott made a production of pouring the tea, stirring his own with more than the necessary attention. The silence stretched on long enough that I wanted badly to break it, to make conversation and put him at ease. But I didn’t. I needed to know what he would say.

  He sat back, his nervous glances at me becoming more frequent and obvious.

  “I didn’t catch your first name, Miss Hope,” he said, finally.

  “Theosebeia,” I said.

  His eyes widened.

  “She—she named you that?”

  Theosebeia was a pupil of the famous Egyptian alchemist Zosimos. My father would know that.

  “Everyone calls me Thea,” I said. Not quite everyone. Thea meant “goddess,” and Will had felt the need to come up with another name for me.