Page 29 of Babel

‘Don’t you worry.’ Professor Playfair tapped the needle. ‘I’m quite good at this. Won’t take me too long to find a vein. Who’s first?’

Robin volunteered; he didn’t want to suffer the anticipation of watching the others. Ramy went next, and then Victoire, and then Letty. The whole procedure took less than fifteen minutes, with none the worse for the wear, though Letty had turned disturbingly green by the time the needle left her arm.

‘Have a hearty lunch,’ Professor Playfair told her. ‘Blood pudding’s good, if they have any.’

Four new glass vials were added to the drawer, all labelled with neat, tiny handwriting.

‘Now you’re part of the tower,’ Professor Playfair told them as he locked the drawers. ‘Now the tower knows you.’

Ramy made a face. ‘Bit creepy, isn’t it?’

‘Not at all,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘You’re in the place where magic is made. It’s got all the trappings of a modern university, but at its heart, Babel isn’t so different from the alchemists’ lairs of old. But unlike the alchemists, we’ve actually figured out the key to the transformation of a thing. It’s not in the material substance. It’s in the name.’

Babel shared a buttery in the Radcliffe quadrangle with several other humanities faculties. The food there was supposedly very good, but it was closed until start of classes tomorrow, so instead they headed back to the college just in time for the tail end of lunch service. All the hot food was gone, but afternoon tea and its trappings were on offer until supper. They loaded trays with teacups, teapots, sugar bowls, milk jugs, and scones, then navigated the long wooden tables in hall until they found an unoccupied one in the corner.

‘So you’re from Canton, then?’ asked Letty. She had a very forceful personality, Robin had noticed; she asked all her questions, even the benign ones, in the tone of an interrogator.

He’d just bitten into a scone; it was dry and stale, and he had to take a sip of tea before he could answer. She turned her gaze on Ramy before he could. ‘And you – Madras? Bombay?’

‘Calcutta,’ Ramy said pleasantly.

‘My father was stationed in Calcutta,’ she said. ‘Three years, from 1825 to 1828. Could be you saw him around.’

‘Lovely,’ said Ramy as he slathered jam over his scone. ‘Could be he pointed a gun at my sisters once.’

Robin snorted, but Letty blanched. ‘I’m only saying I’ve met Hindus before—’

‘I’m Muslim.’

‘Well, I’m just saying—’

‘And you know,’ now Ramy was buttering his scone with great vim, ‘it’s very irritating, actually, the way everyone wants to equate India with Hinduism. “Oh, Muslim rule is an aberration, an intrusion; the Mughals just interlopers, but tradition – that’s Sanskrit, that’s the Upanishads.”’ He lifted his scone to his mouth. ‘But you don’t even know what any of those words mean, do you?’

They’d got off to a bad start. Ramy’s humour did not always work on new acquaintances. One needed to take his glib tirades in one’s stride, and Letitia Price seemed capable of anything but that.

‘So, Babel,’ Robin interjected before Ramy could say anything else. ‘Nice building.’

Letty cast him an amazed look. ‘Quite.’

Ramy, rolling his eyes, coughed and set down his scone.

They sipped their tea in silence. Victoire clinked her spoon nervously around her cup. Robin stared out of the window. Ramy tapped his fingers against the table but stopped when Letty shot him a glare.

‘How have you found the place?’ Victoire tried valiantly to rescue their conversation. ‘Oxfordshire, I mean. I feel like we’ve only seen a fraction of it so far, it’s so big. I mean, not like London or Paris, but there are so many hidden corners, don’t you think?’

‘It’s incredible,’ Robin said with a bit too much enthusiasm. ‘It’s unreal, every single building – we spent the first three days just walking around, staring. We saw all the tourist attractions – the Oxford Museum, the Christ Church gardens—’

Victoire arched an eyebrow. ‘And they’re letting you in wherever you go?’

‘Actually, no.’ Ramy set down his teacup. ‘Remember, Birdie, the Ashmolean—’

‘Right,’ said Robin. ‘They seemed so certain we were going to steal something, they made us turn out our pockets on the way in and out, as if they were convinced we’d stolen the Alfred Jewel.’

‘They wouldn’t let us in at all,’ Victoire said. ‘They said unchaperoned ladies weren’t allowed.’

Ramy snorted. ‘Why?’

‘Probably because of our nervous dispositions,’ said Letty. ‘They couldn’t have us fainting against the paintings.’