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26
Finlay’s shoulder, it turns out, is the most delightfully comfortable place in the world to nap. Every so often, he kisses the crown of my head and flicks back to his newspaper, and it feels like we’re proper grown-ups traveling together. I have no idea how he’s able to concentrate on a newspaper while on a moving, jiggling bus, but then he seems to have been born with a newspaper permanently fixed between his hands.
Countryside whips past us, whooshes of green behind wavy lines of rain spattered against the window. Clouds above us gather and blacken and descend as we head east. I do my best to tamp down on any queasiness. I’ve endured this journey several times now, in cabs and cars, but a hulking great bus is a new torture as it winds its way around the narrow Highland roads.
Every time I’m away from Lochkelvin, I’m struck by the beauty and majesty of Scotland. The permanent low-lying mist. The landscape, so alien compared to anything back home. I wonder, ruefully, what Mom made of it. I’d been too shocked to ask. I wonder what Dad would have thought about it, or of me even studying here in the first place. There are Scottish ancestors on his mother’s side, so I think he’d have been hyped.
I find myself drifting off, mostly out of self-preservation. The wheels feel like they’re directly beneath me and rural Scotland has never heard of tarmac, so every bump in the road feels like an attack against my gut.
When I wake, the landscape has shifted like a kaleidoscope twist and we’re somewhere totally urban and gray. I don’t know how long I was out of it, but long enough to have a red indent on my cheek from leaning heavily on the ball of Finlay’s shoulder — and long enough for him to laugh fondly at it.
“Almost there,” he says, kissing my sore red cheek. His newspaper is rolled up and stuffed between the little plastic table behind the seat in front, and he sits with his arms crossed, wearing a pensive expression.
“Anything good in it?” I ask, nodding down at the broadsheet, even though the answer is always ever no.
“Well…” He looks uncertain. “There’s somethin’ Ididnaeexpect.” He grabs the newspaper and peels it open to somewhere in the middle. I catch the front headline —King James Planning to Strip Royal Assets, above an image of Benji looking victorious in a medieval-style bronze crown.
Finlay shakes out the newspaper and, as though he has some kind of photographic memory for articles, offers it to me and begins to recite it.
Raleigh Sales Surgeis the article that caught Finlay’s attention. It’s so small, barely more than a paragraph. and buried underneath what appears to be a glowing, long-winded opinion piece on Benji, who’s apparentlyrevolutionizing Britain for the better.The fresh face of modern Britain, they describe him as, with an optimistic dash of “let’s put the youth in charge.” I mean… I’m young, too — have theymetyoung people? Most of them are batshit insane, and I readily include myself in that. It’s not our fault when our brains are supposedly underdeveloped.
“Maybe we’re measurin’ this debate a’ wrang,” Finlay murmurs. “Tilda Raleigh, that author fae the Book Fest they were attackin’? A’ her books have entered the bestsellers’ chart. It’s the Streisand effect a’ over.”
I frown at the text. “So… isn’t this a good thing, then? If she’s selling enough to be a bestseller… well, presumably it’s not Benji’s supporters going out to buy them?”
“Exactly. It’s whit I always believed. It doesnae matter whit ye stand for, naebody likes an extremist. In fact, folk will go runnin’ in the other direction tae avoid it.” He rolls the newspaper back up. “Turns oot there’s nae such thing as bad publicity.”
Luke leans over from the seat across the aisle. “Only people who possess none believe in that particular adage,” he declares in a pointed tone.
I don’t know if it’s the wisest thing for Luke to be here. He already had to be talked into stepping onto a shared bus by the chiefs, certain his life would be cut short by a demonic driver with a death wish. He’s done his best to disguise himself, but with every week that passes, even people who had only the faintest idea of what the Royal family looked like now know the unique details of their faces intimately. There’s only so much that trendy streetwear can conceal, and Luke’s draped head to toe in it, swapping brogues for sneakers and his crown for a baseball cap.
In the far distance, peaks appear. Like Lochkelvin, St. Camford is based in the middle of nowhere. The photos I’ve seen of it make it look like a gargantuan Lochkelvin, a whole bunch of Lochkelvins smashed together, with extra turrets and walls mushrooming from the core fortress. It’s these turrets I see first, as we glide over a hill and descend into the university village surrounding the campus.
When I see St. Camford for the first time, I get that strange premonition in the pit of my stomach that it could become important in my life, the same as when I first locked my eyes on Lochkelvin.
The castle resembles a giant sculpted boulder in the middle of a pretty town. The grayness of it reflects its rock-like hardiness, and there’s something strangely alien about its ancientness, as though it’s both prehistoric yet could have fallen from the stars. So few modern buildings have that old, dominant energy that indicates it could only have been designed for knowledge.
Because the building radiates knowledge — centuries of it. The instinctual knowledge that this place is one of the most important and influential spaces on the planet, having sheltered and educated some of the finest creative and scientific minds in history, having enabled major scientific discoveries and strong political leaders, kicking off enlightenments of thought and philosophy and scientific spirit, its name and status propelling power across the centuries to the brightest as well as to the wealthiest and least deserving…
The surrounding town is adorably quaint and picturesque. The shops and houses have medieval-looking signage which appears as old as the castle. It makes me think about history versus modernity, about preserving the past while focusing on the future, and how people either seem to lean in one direction or the other.
Several other buses are parked in bays close by the university. I watch Luke’s face grow grim with determination as the trial of the bus journey finally ends without him being claimed by a political enemy, and a new trial is foisted upon him. How to go through life like that, wondering if your next moment will be your last, because everyone hates your family. It must really screw with a person’s mind.
“We’re here,” Finlay says, unbuckling his seatbelt and standing. He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, looking excited about diving straight in. “A thousand years o’ history, ready tae be ruined by entitled shitheads like us.”
“Excuse me, I amnotan entitled shithead,” Arabella snaps, and she pushes past Finlay to get to the front of the line with neither a sense of irony nor self-awareness.
As I step off the bus, Rory makes sure to hold my hand. I smile at him as he squeezes my hand tightly and helps me down the steep stairs. He raises my hand to his lips and kisses the back of it softly before curling his arm around my waist with a hint of dark possession, as we observe the hundreds of other students from across the land who’ve come to visit St. Camford as a kind of rich kids’ pilgrimage.
Most of our year group has attended this open day, too. If I were a more cynical person, I’d say it’s because the Lochkelvin leadership wants as many students as possible to progress to the oldest and most prestigious university in the world in order to look good.
Thankfully, Finlay voices this thought for me.
“Who’d have thought? Every one o’ us Lochkelvin alum, about tae be thrust intae the bosom o’ St. Camford. How strange we should a’ have the same academic ambitions.”
Arabella shoots him a weird look. “I don’t want to hear about you being thrust into any bosoms, thank you.”
“Would ye prefer cocks?” Finlay asks innocently, and Arabella stomps away from him in disgust.
