The Oxford Inheritance Read online

  EPIGRAPH

  The devil is more laborious now than ever; the long day of mankind drawing towards an evening, and the world’s tragedy and time near an end.

  SIR WALTER RALEIGH

  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  After

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Epilogue

  She ran.

  Through the tunnels, feet bare on the stone floor. Torches blazed along the main pathways so she veered deeper into the labyrinth, tripping down hidden stairs and along the dark, winding corridors until the air became heavy with decay and doors groaned their protest as she heaved them open. Still, she ran.

  The chanting was getting closer, a dizzying hum that echoed off every wall, no matter how far she fled. It was all in her mind, she told herself. It had to be. A shadow suddenly reared up in the gloom and she stumbled in fear, falling hard in a bloody scrape of skin on sharp stone. But there was no time for pain, not with the knife gripped, slick in her hand, or the faint clatter of footsteps getting louder. Closer.

  She hurled herself around another corner and up another flight of stairs, almost crying out with relief when she saw a familiar carved archway. Beyond, she knew was a side tunnel, and past that, freedom.

  He stepped out of the shadows.

  She faltered, coming to a stop just inside the anteroom. He didn’t say a word, or even block her path, but the desperate adrenaline that had pushed her on through the darkness seemed to drain away in an instant, leaving nothing but a hollow ache in her limbs and a sob of resignation welling, unbidden in her chest. Her fingers curled open. The knife fell to the ground.

  Of course he’d found her.

  The man strolled closer, reaching to brush the hair from her eyes in a gesture so familiar, it made her legs give way with grief. A sob escaped her, the cry raw in the heavy silence of the catacombs. He pressed his hand over her mouth, muffling the sound.

  “Shhh,” he murmured, breath soft against her cheek. “I’ve got you now.”

  He caught her as she fell, guiding her gently down until they were both folded on the dusty floor, her body cradled against him. Now that she knew the truth, she could feel the blackness seep out of him: drifting and curling in shadowed tendrils from the very tips of his fingers as he traced the outline of her jaw. But worse than the black touch—far worse still—was the unfurling she felt, deep in her breast. A wing-swept flutter as her own dark heart rose up to answer his call.

  She struggled, but it was over. He knew it. “Shhh,” he said, cradling her, gentler than any of the nights he’d held her before. The flutter was a beating now, drowning even her own heartbeat with its insistent thrum. She could feel the darkness rise, ready to take flight, ready to take her over completely.

  “I’ve got you,” he whispered again. His eyes were lit with triumph, a hungry anticipation of what was still to come. Her fingers searched desperately for the knife as he bent his lips to hers, and then she found it: cold steel on the dusty stone.

  She surrendered to the kiss, sending up a silent prayer. Then there was nothing but red.

  1

  OXFORD IN SUMMERTIME WAS A CITY UNDER SIEGE. THEY CAME from across the oceans, from Norway and Brazil, India and Japan: civilizations old and new alike descending on the dreaming spires and neat, lush quads as a single invading army, sounding their battle cry in the chatters of foreign tongues, faces painted with warlike stripes of sunscreen zinc. Uniting to traipse the well-worn trail from the peaceful floral walkways of the Botanic Garden to the vast, soaring dining hall at Christ Church College, divisions of race and nationality blurred beneath the Union Jack baseball caps and souvenir sweatshirts. They clustered along the cobblestones of Cornmarket Street, consulting phrase books and foldout maps, and squeezed through iron gates for a better shot of statues and sweeping sandstone walls.

  Shops along High Street carried a brisk trade in miniature flags, figurines, and long, looping scarves knitted in the muted rainbow of official college colors: mulberry and dark navy, mustard seed and hunter green. Cream teas were served in old-fashioned tearooms—dainty china clinking against gold-ringed saucers—and the river was gridlocked with punts: the long, low barges steered by students through the mossy waters as their passengers sipped Pimm’s from cups floating with cucumber slices and nibbled sweet summer strawberries bought by the punnet from the fruit stands on the bridge.

  From early May to the end of August, the ancient streets were clogged, dusty, and littered—or, more often, drenched with cold summer showers that sent the crowds scrambling into doorways and under shop awnings, maps held aloft to shelter them from the sudden downpours. Then, as September dawned, the great quads were suddenly quiet again. The crowds departed, and the city exhaled a breath. The air took on a new, autumnal chill, and dewy mists hung over the Port Meadow fields each morning as the church bells rang out their baritone dawn chorus.

  It was only a week or two, this gentle lull, for the shopgirls to slump idle behind their registers and the college groundsmen to set about pruning the rosebushes and mowing the neat strips of lawn.

  Too soon, the next set of visitors arrived.

  These weren’t quite so temporary. They came bearing crisp new textbooks and fat induction packets, shined shoes and wide eyes, weighed down as much by their own hopeful expectations as the brand-new possessions they pulled behind them in overstuffed cases.

  Summer was over, and it was time for a new generation of students to take their place in the hallowed roll call of Oxford’s great academic legacy.

  First, Cassandra Blackwell discovered, came matriculation.

  She’d arrived late, her flight delayed by freak storms over the East Coast, so by the time she’d collected her baggage from Arrivals at Heathrow and made the two-hour ride up to Oxford by coach, the first official day of term at Oxford University was already well under way. She knew from reading the thick information packets what to expect, but still, it took her by surprise when she dragged her cases across the bumpy cobblestones and through the gates of Raleigh College to find a sea of students in strange black robes milling about the courtyard, shifting and spinning like newspaper twists in the English breeze.

  Cassie paused in the middle of the bustle, drinking in the foreign scene. The students were assembling on a set of bleachers for an official photograph. But unlike the casual, jeans-clad freshmen she knew from college back home, these new students wore crisp white shirts and suits under the robes; girls in blouses and black skirts, with dark ribbons looped at their necks and wide bands of black fabric trailing from their shoulders. It was an old-fashioned costume, the kind you’d expect to find immortalized in faded sepia ph
otographs, yellowed with age. The only hint that this was the twenty-first century was the sea of cell phones students gripped as they lined up beneath the ancient honeyed sandstone walls to pose for their first photos.

  The chimes of the chapel clock rang out noon across the courtyard. She was late.

  Cassie looked hurriedly around. People were streaming in and out of the small guardhouse just inside the gates, so she made her way inside, ducking to avoid the low doorway carved into the stone. Inside, it was chaos: people lined three deep in front of the desk, clamoring for attention. She waited in line, unsure, before one of the staff—a weathered-looking man in a peaked cap and heavy cable-knit sweater—noticed her bags, and the information pack she was clutching to her chest.

  “Are you a fresher?” he demanded.

  “Yes.” Cassie offered her papers. “Cassandra Blackwell. My flight was delayed; I only just got here.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “You better leave your things and change before you miss the photograph.”

  “It’s okay,” Cassie tried to protest. “I just need to get settled into my room.”

  But the man wouldn’t be dissuaded. “Here, pass me your case.” He grabbed it from her before she could object. “Have you got your sub fusc?”

  When Cassie stared blankly, he explained. “The robes and uniform. Never mind, you don’t have time. Good thing you’re wearing black.” He rooted in a box and pulled out a robe like the ones she’d seen outside. “Get along with you; I’ll find your room assignment. Cassie, was it?” She nodded. “I’m Rutledge. Come find me later, when you’re done with matric. Go on!” He shooed her away and was quickly lost in the bustle again.

  Pulling on the robe, Cassie headed back outside, only to be swept up and directed to a place in line, near the back of the photo. The other students parted to let her through, barely giving her another glance as they chatted and joked, full of first-day nerves. They were too caught up in their own excitement to notice her.

  Cassie felt her own excitement, but it wasn’t the giddy eagerness written all over their faces. Hers was a curiosity at this new world, mingling with the sense of being an impostor, as if one of her new classmates would look too closely and see the truth of her intentions written all over her face. The true reason for her place among them, and all her secret plans for the year.

  “Places! Everyone, please take your places.”

  She was barely in position when the photographer and his assistant began chasing stragglers to the edge of the crowd.

  “Is this right?” The girl beside Cassie was fussing with her neck ribbon, tying and retying it into a looping bow. She had wide, birdlike eyes and a nervous tremble in her fingertips, her face lit up with a breathless glow.

  Cassie glanced around, but the girl was talking to her. “Let me.” She quickly fixed the ribbon in place.

  “Thanks.” The girl beamed. “Can you believe we’re really here?” She didn’t wait for a reply. “I’ve been dreaming about this my whole life,” she babbled. “All that time, and I finally made it. Oxford University.” She breathed the words gently, reverently—like a familiar prayer that had finally been answered. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Cassie glanced up at the crimson Raleigh flag, rippling on the far battlement. She’d seen it in photographs and glossy brochures, even in person, years ago, but now it seemed to loom larger, more vivid than ever before. The photographer’s flash suddenly burst in front of her eyes, sending dark sparks dancing through her vision. She blinked, dazed by the jet lag and travel, and the years of planning it had taken to finally make it inside the hallowed, exclusive gates of Raleigh College.

  All her work had finally come to fruition: the scheming and lies, the sacrifice and risk.

  “Wonderful,” she echoed softly, as the bulb flashed again, blinding them all in the bright afternoon sun.

  2

  THE PORTRAITS TOOK AN HOUR, INTERRUPTED BY THE PLAYFUL roughhousing of a group of boys and sharp gusts of wind that sent papers skittering through the courtyard. Finally, they were finished, but before Cassie could collect her bags and go collapse, she was steered away from the gatehouse.

  “You’re due at the Master’s Tea now,” said a brisk-looking student as he consulted his clipboard.

  “I’ve been traveling all day,” Cassie explained, her exhaustion hitting hard. “I’ll take a shower first, and go later.”

  He stared, surprised. “It’s in the schedule. You only get a short slot. Attendance is mandatory.”

  Cassie opened her mouth to protest, then bit it back. She was supposed to be as eager as the rest of her group, already clustered ahead on the paved pathway. “Tea it is, then,” she agreed.

  “His lodgings are across campus. Neil will take your tour.” He nodded to another helpful-looking student outfitted in the crimson Raleigh scarf.

  Lodgings. It was just one of the foreign words that Cassie was learning. An American in England, there was already a language barrier, but in the few hours since she’d arrived, it had become clear that Oxford University was a world of its own. A federated system of colleges scattered across the city, it was a place with singular rules, culture, and even language. From eavesdropping on her new classmates, Cassie had already learned that Rutledge and the staff were known as porters; the gatehouse, the porters’ lodge. But there was a cacophony of words that were still a mystery to her, even as the students around her dropped the phrases so casually: junior common room, the buttery, pidges and tutes, Michaelmas and Trinity terms.

  Cassie fell in behind her tour group, following the paved pathways that crisscrossed the lush quad.

  “It wasn’t just Sir Walter Raleigh who founded the college.” Neil led them along, speaking loudly. “A circle of influential academics and thinkers of the era all contributed to Raleigh College’s place at the forefront of Elizabethan public life. The famous astronomer Thomas Hariot, playwright Christopher Marlowe—they all gathered here to debate new ideas and share their visionary work.”

  Cassie knew the history. Raleigh wasn’t the oldest of the Oxford schools, nor the richest, but it had an exclusive pedigree all the same. Founded by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 1500s with the proceeds of his Spanish Armada plunder, the college sat on the outskirts of the city, a small kingdom of sandstone battlements and rolling lawns that stretched all the way to the moss-laden banks of the river Cherwell. The glossy prospectus she’d read boasted of the great halls and neat grassy quads, a hushed, wood-beamed library; richly appointed residence halls and open cloisters; and carved sandstone walls that kept the bustle and traffic of the city at bay. But here in person, it was enough to take her breath away, the history and beauty of the estate undeniable in its rich splendor.

  “You have to remember,” their enthusiastic tour guide continued, “that in a time when the church still had an iron grip on academic inquiry, the founding of the college was seen by some to be a revolutionary act. Many charged the group with plotting treasonous acts.”

  “Like that secret society?” One of the girls in the group spoke up.

  There was laughter. Cassie looked around, wondering what the joke was. The tour guide noticed her confusion.

  “Sir Walter Raleigh and his compatriots were the source of much speculation. Even Shakespeare jokingly referred to them as the School of Night, due to the dark robes they supposedly wore during their meetings.”

  “Please,” one of the boys beside her muttered. “If people are talking about your secret society, you’re hardly secret anymore.”

  “Does this mean you won’t be pledging Bullingdon?” his friend asked, smirking.

  “Now, let’s not be too hasty . . .” He laughed.

  Cassie hung back, absorbing the battlements and buildings she felt she already knew by heart. They wound their way across campus, finally arriving at the master’s residence: a stately building in more of the original sandstone, surrounded by rolling lawns and rose arbors, its Elizabethan architecture untouched by the ages. Inside,
the space was equally as imposing: a grand staircase rose up from the corner of the foyer, walls were papered in thick hunter green paper, and there were deep carpets and antique side tables.

  “And here we are,” Neil announced. “Good luck, and remember, don’t be nervous. We’re all family here at Raleigh.”

  Family. The word lingered with Cassie as she stepped into the formal sitting room, where two dozen anxious undergraduates already milled around, chatting nervously as they clutched plates of cheese and crackers and tried not to spill wine on the brocade-upholstered couches. It was a mixer, of sorts, with professors and staff. The first chance for them to get to know the new students—and for her classmates to make a good impression.

  The others made a beeline for the nearest professor. Cassie headed for the buffet table instead. She filled her plate with relief, her stomach growling after a long day with nothing but dry airline food and vending machine snacks. She found a seat on an empty couch and dug in.

  “Chavez was from Argentina, right?” A young man sank heavily on the couch beside her. He was plump and sweating, dark patches already showing beneath the arms of his shirt.

  “Venezuela,” she replied.

  He blinked. “I just spent ten minutes talking to Professor Kenmore about his nationalization of Argentinean industries.” The horror of his mistake dawned. The boy paled. “Oh God.” He lurched up again and fled toward the hall, knocking into another scholar as he passed. The woman stumbled, spilling her tea on the cream carpet in a dark stain.

  The chatter paused for a moment, every single student giving silent thanks that they hadn’t been the one to make such a clumsy mistake.

  Cassie took in the tense postures and anxiously darting eyes, feeling a strange kinship with all these nervous strangers. She may have been older, and had already experienced a life they couldn’t imagine, but today they shared the same need to blend in, to prove they belonged here. Their reasons may have been different, but the stakes were high for each and every one of them. Their futures were on the line.