II. OXFORD

“I liked knowing why things happened,” she explains, “and the order in which they occurred.”
—from Spring and Fall: To a Young Child, by Francine Prose

Your job is to sit there and make things up, so do it.
—from The Collectors, by Philip Pullman, Author’s Note

Chapter 11: It's Cold Here

[September, 1678]
Oxford, Oxfordshire

IT IS TOO fucking cold here, Amélie thought as she stepped through the mud down Oxford’s High Street. The mud was disgusting. It didn’t matter how careful one was, there was no way to keep it from sticking. And where are the fruits? A banana? Haven’t these people heard of a tomato? Or a mango? Meat. Bread. Onions. A carrot. A potato. That’s it. No wonder they look like ghosts. Unhappy ones. Of course they’re pale. Where’s the sun, anyway? And it’s not even winter yet.

She had hated London. Too many people. Too many horses and carriages. Smelly. Dirty. Noisy. Oxford, on the other hand, seemed to her to be just about the right size despite the mud and the cold and the food. Already home to almost two dozen or so colleges that made up the famous University of Oxford, its streets were full of students from all over the Empire.

Gérard was happy at B— College. The string of tutors Father brought from England as she and Gérard grew up had earned their pay and she and her foster brother had soaked up everything they could teach. He was ready for Oxford, had been ready even before their hasty departure with Antoine years ago.

Merle Heathcoate, Master Printer, read the sign board outside the shop where Father’s cousin had his establishment. His print shop occupied most of the ground floor. On the second floor were the kitchen and quarters of the printer and his wife Geraldine, plus an unoccupied room to be shared by Amélie and Sandrine. It would not have been proper for the two to live with strangers. Once inside, she cleaned her boots as much as she could and left them in the entryway.

Gérard lived in rooms at College. One personal servant and the porter looked after him. In addition to his normal duties, the porter provided additional services for a reasonable sum. To hear Gérard tell it, those services were varied and, after discreet inquiry and the transfer of a suitable amount of silver, included the pleasures of female or male company. She knew Gérard enjoyed both.

She missed the open sea. She missed the heat and even the humidity, the frequent but warm rains of the Caribbean island where she’d grown up. In the kitchen she moved the kettle onto the fire and stirred it. When it boiled and her tea had steeped she made herself comfortable in a nest of comforters and other coverings. She took a tentative sip, and upon finding it right, a longer one. She closed her eyes to remember those events so bright in her memory yet now seemingly so very distant of her life aboard Black Weasel and what finally brought her and Gérard to reconcile with Father and Grace.

Later that night in her room, Amélie sighed. The flesh. Three months now since they’d arrived in England. How she missed sleeping with Gérard, her soulmate, every night.

She fell asleep remembering their first days in Oxford.