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‘It’s dazzling, sir,’ said Letty. ‘Incredible.’
Professor Playfair winked at her. ‘It’s the most wonderful place on earth.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Now I’d like to tell a story. Forgive me for being dramatic, but I like to mark this occasion – your first day, after all, in what I believe is the most important research centre in the world. Would that be all right?’
He didn’t need their approval, but they nodded regardless.
‘Thank you. Now, we know this following story from Herodotus.’ He paced several steps before them, like a player marking out his position on the stage. ‘He tells us of the Egyptian king Psammetichus, who once formed a pact with Ionian sea raiders to defeat the eleven kings who had betrayed him. After he had overthrown his enemies, he gave large tracts of land to his Ionian allies. But Psammetichus wanted an even better guarantee that the Ionians would not turn on him as his former allies once had. He wanted to prevent wars based on misunderstandings. So he sent young Egyptian boys to live with the Ionians and learn Greek so that when they grew up, they could serve as interpreters between the two peoples.
‘Here at Babel, we take inspiration from Psammetichus.’ He peered around, and his sparkling gaze landed on each of them in turn as he spoke. ‘Translation, from time immemorial, has been the facilitator of peace. Translation makes possible communication, which in turn makes possible the kind of diplomacy, trade, and cooperation between foreign peoples that brings wealth and prosperity to all.
‘You’ve noticed by now, surely, that Babel alone among the Oxford faculties accepts students not of European origin. Nowhere else in this country will you find Hindus, Muslims, Africans, and Chinamen studying under the same roof. We accept you not despite, but because of your foreign backgrounds.’ Professor Playfair emphasized this last part as if it was a matter of great pride. ‘Because of your origins, you have the gift of languages those born in England cannot imitate. And you, like Psammetichus’s boys, are the tongues that will speak this vision of global harmony into being.’
He clasped his hands before him as if in prayer. ‘Anyhow. The postgrads make fun of me for that spiel every year. They think it’s trite. But I think the situation calls for such gravity, don’t you? After all, we’re here to make the unknown known, to make the other familiar. We’re here to make magic with words.’
This was, Robin thought, the kindest thing anyone had ever had to say about his being foreign-born. And though the story made his gut squirm – for he had read the relevant passage of Herodotus, and recalled that the Egyptian boys were nevertheless slaves – he felt also a thrum of excitement at the thought that perhaps his unbelonging did not doom him to existing forever on the margins, that perhaps, instead, it made him special.
Next, Professor Playfair gathered them around an empty worktable for a demonstration. ‘Now, the common man thinks that silver-working is equivalent to sorcery.’ He rolled his sleeves up to his elbows as he spoke, shouting so they could hear him over the din. ‘They think that the power of the bars lies in the silver itself, that silver is some inherently magical substance which contains the power to alter the world.’
He unlocked the left drawer and pulled out a blank silver bar. ‘They’re not wholly wrong. There is indeed something special about silver that makes it an ideal vehicle for what we do. I like to think that it was blessed by the gods – it’s refined with mercury, after all, and Mercury is the messenger god, no? Mercury, Hermes. Does silver not then have an inextricable link to hermeneutics? But let’s not get too romantic. No, the power of the bar lies in words. More specifically, the stuff of language that words are incapable of expressing – the stuff that gets lost when we move between one language and another. The silver catches what’s lost and manifests it into being.’
He glanced up, took in their baffled faces. ‘You have questions. Don’t worry. You won’t start working with silver until near the end of your third year. You’ll have plenty of time to catch up on the relevant theory before then. What matters now is that you understand the magnitude of what we do here.’ He reached for an engraving pen. ‘Which is, of course, the casting of spells.’
He began carving a word into one end of the bar. ‘I’m just showing you a simple one. The effect will be quite subtle, but see if you feel it.’
He finished writing on that end, then held it up to show them. ‘Heimlich. German for the secret and clandestine, which is how I’ll translate it to English. But heimlich means more than just secrets. We derive heimlich from a Proto-Germanic word that means “home”. Put together this constellation of meaning, and what do you get? Something like the secret, private feeling you get from being somewhere you belong, secluded from the outside world.’
As he spoke, he wrote the word clandestine on the flip side of the bar. The moment he finished, the silver began to vibrate.
‘Heimlich,’ he said. ‘Clandestine.’
Once again Robin heard a singing without a source, an inhuman voice from nowhere.
The world shifted. Something bound them – some intangible barrier blurred the air around them, drowned out the surrounding noise, made it feel as though they were the only ones on a floor they knew was crowded with scholars. They were safe here. They were alone. This was their tower, their refuge.*
They were no strangers to this magic. They had all seen silver-work in effect before; in England it was impossible to avoid. But it was one thing to know the bars could work, that silver-work was simply the foundation of a functioning, advanced society. It was another thing to witness with their own eyes the warping of reality, the way words seized what no words could describe and invoked a physical effect that should not be.
Victoire had her hand to her mouth. Letty was breathing hard. Ramy blinked very rapidly, as if trying to hold back tears.
And Robin, watching the still quivering bar, saw clearly now that it was all worth it. The loneliness, the beatings, the long and aching hours of study, the ingesting of languages like bitter tonic so that he could one day do this – it was all worth it.
‘One last thing,’ Professor Playfair said as he accompanied them down the stairs. ‘We’ll need to take your blood.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Letty.
‘Your blood. It won’t take long.’ Professor Playfair led them through the lobby to a small, windowless room hidden behind the shelves, which was empty save for a plain table and four chairs. He gestured for them to sit, then strode to the back wall, where a series of drawers were concealed inside the stone. He pulled out the top drawer, revealing stacks and stacks of tiny glass vials within. Each one was labelled with the name of the scholar whose blood it contained.
‘It’s for the wards,’ Professor Playfair explained. ‘Babel sees more robbery attempts than all of the banks in London combined. The doors keep most of the riffraff out, but the wards need some way to distinguish scholars from intruders. We’ve tried hair and fingernails, but they’re too easy to steal.’
‘Thieves can steal blood,’ said Ramy.
‘They can,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘But they’d have to be much more determined about the whole endeavour, wouldn’t they?’
He pulled a handful of syringes from the bottom drawer. ‘Sleeves up, please.’
Reluctantly, they pushed up their gowns.
‘Shouldn’t we have a nurse in here?’ asked Victoire.
