Stones of Fire

33

Hoping she didn’t appear too awestruck, Edie discreetly checked out the buildings that fronted High Street.

Everywhere she looked there were hints, some subtle, some in your face, of Oxford’s medieval past. Battlements. Gate towers. Oriel windows. And stone. Lots and lots of stone. Varying in shade from pale silver to deep gold. All of it combining in a wondrous sort of sensory overload.

‘Where’s the university?’ she enquired, scrunching her shoulders to avoid hitting a group of midday shoppers who had just emerged from a clothes shop. She and Cædmon were en route to some pub called the Isis Room, where Cædmon seemed to think they would find Sir Kenneth Campbell-Brown.

Cædmon slowed his step as he gestured to either side of the busy thoroughfare. ‘Oxford University is everywhere and nowhere. Since leaving the bus station, we’ve already passed Jesus, Exeter and Lincoln colleges.’

‘We did?’ Edie swivelled her head, wondering how she could have missed three college campuses. She knew that Oxford University was made up of several dozen colleges spread throughout the town. Having attended a downtown college herself, she assumed there would be signs identifying the various buildings. Clearly, she’d been working under a false assumption.

‘Look for the gateways,’ Cædmon said, pointing to an imposing iron portal wedged in a stone wall. ‘They often lead to a quadrangle, most of the colleges built to the standard medieval pattern of chapel and hall flanked by residential ranges.’

Edie peered through the iron bars. Beyond the gatehouse, she glimpsed an arched portico on either side of a quadrangle.

‘That’s a formidable entrance. Guess it’s meant to keep the little people out, huh?’

‘Having spent an inordinate amount of time on the other side of those “formidable” gateways, I always thought they were intended to keep the students from leaving — the college’s way of cultivating a slavish devotion to one’s alma mater.’ Edie wasn’t certain, but she thought she detected a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

‘Sounds like an academic Never-Never Land.’

‘Indeed, it was.’

‘So, where are the Lost Boys?’

His copper-coloured brows briefly furrowed. ‘Ah, the students. Michaelmas Term ended last week, so the vast majority of students have gone home for the holidays.’

‘Well that would certainly explain all the riderless bicycles,’ she said, nodding towards a mass of bikes parked in front of a stucco wall. Above the tidy lines of chained bicycles, old posters flapped in the breeze, hawking an array of student activities. Debating societies. Drama societies. Choral societies.

Cædmon’s gaze momentarily softened. ‘By their bicycles you shall know them,’ he murmured, his sarcasm replaced with something more akin to nostalgia.

Surprised by his sudden shift in mood, Edie surreptitiously checked out her companion, her gaze moving from the top of his thick thatch of red hair to the tips of his black leather brogues. She was beginning to realize that Cædmon Aisquith was a complicated man. Or maybe she was just dense when it came to men. He’d certainly taken her by surprise with the killer kiss. For some idiotic reason, she’d assumed that because he was such a brainiac he lived a monkish existence. Wasn’t that a stupid assumption? Given the passionate smooch on the bus, he’d make a lousy monk. Wonder what kind of lover he’d make?

Giving the question several moments’ thought, she decided it was impossible to tell, the cultured accent acting like a smokescreen. Although the unexpected kiss most definitely hinted at a deeper passion.

Oblivious to the fact that he was being ogled, Cædmon turned his head as they passed an ATM.

‘Though sorely tempted to use the cashpoint, it would undoubtedly lead Stanford MacFarlane right to us.’

‘Don’t worry. As keeper of the vault, I can assure you that there are enough funds to keep us afloat. At least for a little while.’ The airline tickets and new clothes had set them back a bit, but at the last count she had nearly three thousand dollars.

‘Being a kept man doesn’t sit well with me. Bruised ego and all that.’

She affected a stunned expression. ‘You’re kidding, right? We’ve spent three days together and only now am I learning that you object to being my sex slave?’ Playing the part for all it was worth, she theatrically sighed. ‘Here I thought you were having the time of your life.’

To her surprise, Cædmon blushed, his cheeks as red as holly berries. Raising a balled hand to his mouth, he cleared his throat.

‘Hel-lo. I’m teasing. You’re hardly a kept man,’ she assured him, amused by his embarrassment.

‘Then how about spotting me two quid for a pint?’ Taking her by the elbow, Cædmon ushered her to a panelled wooden door. Above the door a brightly painted sign emblazoned with the pub’s name swung from a metal bracket.

‘Be my pleasure, luv,’ she replied in an attempt at a cockney accent.

Not expecting the interior to be so dim, it took several seconds of squinting before her pupils adjusted, the room bathed in soft amber light. All in all, the joint was pretty much as she had envisioned an English pub — wood-panelled walls, wood-beamed ceiling and wooden tables and chairs scattered about. Framed lithographs of sea battles hung on the cream-coloured walls, a limp bouquet of mistletoe tacked above the Battle of Trafalgar.

Her eyes zeroed in on the easel where a blackboard listed the day’s menu: HOME-MADE LENTIL SOUP, TWO-CHEESE QUICHE, SEAFOOD SALAD. She placed a hand over her abdomen, having long since digested the rubbery chicken cordon bleu she’d been served on the transatlantic flight.

‘Any idea what this Sir Kenneth character looks like?’ she asked over a very unladylike stomach growl.

‘Ruddy cheeks, aquiline nose and a pewter-coloured mop of curly hair. Looks like a sheep before the spring shearing. You can’t miss him.’

Edie scanned the crowded pub. ‘How about we divide and conquer? You take that side of the room and I’ll take the other.’

‘Right.’

A few seconds later, seeing a man of middling height with curly grey hair standing at the bar, Edie headed in that direction. Raising her hand to catch Cædmon’s attention, she pointed to her suspect. For several seconds Cædmon stared at the man’s back, drilling the proverbial hole right through the older man’s head. She wasn’t certain but she thought Cædmon straightened his shoulders before heading towards the bar.

Reaching the target a few seconds ahead of Cædmon, she lightly tapped the grey-haired man on the shoulder.

‘Excuse me. You wouldn’t happen to be Sir Kenneth Campbell-Brown?’

The grey-haired man slowly turned towards her. Although decked out in a brown leather bomber jacket, a red cashmere scarf jauntily wrapped around his neck, he resembled nothing so much as a woolly ram, Cædmon’s description right on the mark.

‘Well, I’m not the bloody Prince of Wales.’

‘Ah! Still the amiable Oxford don much beloved by students and fellows alike,’ Cædmon said, having overheard the exchange.

Slightly bug-eyed by nature, Sir Kenneth became even more so as he turned in the direction of Cædmon’s voice. ‘Good God! I thought you crawled into a hole and died! What the bloody hell are you doing in Oxford? I didn’t think the Boar’s Head Gaudy was your cup of tea.’

‘You’re quite right. In the thirteen years since I left, I’ve yet to attend the Christmas dinner.’

The older man snickered. ‘I suspect that’s because your soft-hearted sympathies go out to the apple-stuffed swine. So, tell me, young Aisquith, if the pig is not your purpose, what bringeth you to “the high shore of this world”?’

‘As fate would have it, you’re the reason I’m in Oxford.’ Outwardly calm — maybe too calm given the older man’s condescension — Cædmon redirected his gaze in Edie’s direction. ‘Excuse me. I’ve been remiss. Edie Miller, may I present Professor Sir Kenneth Campbell-Brown, senior fellow at Queen’s College.’

Sir Kenneth acknowledged the introduction with a slight nod of his woolly head. ‘I am also the head of the history department, secretary of the tutorial committee, defender of the realm and protector of women and small children,’ he informed her, speaking in beautifully precise pear-shaped tones. ‘I am in addition the man responsible for booting your swain out of Oxford.’