Hardoak was the end of the line.

Usually the station would have been teeming with eager students arriving in readiness for the first day of term, but Leigh had caught the last train of the evening, and only a few seasoned graduate students now alighted on the platform and began making their way to their lodgings in the village with certain steps. A couple of them could be heard continuing an interminable discussion on Plato’s use of the word “pharmakon”, that they had kept up for the past two hours. Leigh put his valise and typewriter down, threw his overcoat and cap on top, and stood breathing the air. He could smell the sea salt, and steam, and in place of the medley of close city scents, a heady union of wet vegetation that was vitality itself. He ought not to have been elated, but he was. He ought not to have felt light and free, but he did. The train hissed and clinked behind him, cooling fast as the conductor worked his way down the carriages, opening, pausing, and closing the doors in an approaching cretic.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ he asked, at last drawing level with Leigh who stood with his face turned up to the drizzle. 

‘Thank you, is there a bus up to Rosfort Academy?’

‘I’m afraid the last bus left several hours ago.’

‘A taxi, then?’

There were no taxis. Leigh put on his coat and cap, and prepared himself for a long hike up the hillside with his luggage. He hadn’t realised until now how heavy books could be.

‘Follow the road up the hill is best,’ said the station master, his keys poised to lock up. ‘Might find someone at the pub as can give you a ride.’

Leigh took the direction indicated up the deserted country road. Between the cottages with their bright floral curtains it was almost pitch dark, and it was with an unexpected gladness that upon turning a bend he discerned the pub’s pool of warm light marking the meeting point of the town road, and the road up to the Rosfort campus. Even gladder, a black car stood idling by the door. He could just make out the sign of the pub as he passed under it: ‘The Scholar’s Oak’. A sleepy murmur came from within; it was late to be out, even for the locals. He peered inside the car but it was empty. As he turned to enter the pub, the door opened and the publican stepped out, carrying a crate of jangling bottles.

‘Can you give us a hand?’ asked the man, indicating the car boot.

Leigh dropped his bags and hastened to open the door for him, saving a small pile of books from being crushed and creased as the man swung the crate heedlessly inside.

Leigh looked at the books he had scooped up. There was an old university catalogue, an untitled and loosely-bound typescript, and a medieval Latin treatise with a major title on minor deities.

‘Do you know whose car this is?’ he asked, as he placed the books carefully back in and shut the car boot.

‘It’s mine,’ said a melodious voice behind Leigh.

He spun around to see a woman silhouetted in the doorframe.

‘Thank you, Mr. Green,’ she said to the other man. ‘You can send the bill directly to me.’

‘Understood, m’lady.’

She stepped forward, and Leigh recognised her face at once. His eyes had rested on it many times in the university catalogue, under the title, “A Welcome Letter from Our Rector and Proprietress”. This was Lady Hardoak.

‘Leigh Brookman,’ he said, thrusting his hand out for her to shake. ‘Forgive my impertinence, my lady, but I was wondering whether you might be able to give me a ride up to campus?’

‘Mr. Brookman,’ she repeated, opening the door to the drivers’ seat and sliding in. ‘Somewhat tardy, aren’t you? You missed the first years’ welcome reception.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I was… unavoidably detained.’

She nodded. ‘Put your case in the back. You’re lucky I had to come down to pick up the wine order for the high table or you would have had a long, dark, and treacherous first evening as a first-year.’

Just how long, how dark, and how treacherous, Leigh came to appreciate as the car wound up and up the steep, wooded hillside. Lady Hardoak drove with such amazing speed that he had the feeling the headlights could hardly keep up with their progress. Once or twice he saw foxes diving into the undergrowth, and as the car swept up the final bend that terminated in the dimly-lit gateway with the brilliant constellation of the main edifice of the Academy behind it, an owl flew across their path, its white wings spanning the windscreen.

‘A good omen,’ said Lady Hardoak, tapping her fingers impatiently on the steering-wheel as they waited for the gatekeeper to open the gates. 

‘Thompson, would you call a porter to the main entrance?’ she said, as she drove through.

‘Very good, my lady,’ said the gatekeeper, doffing his cap.

Lady Hardoak drove around to the main door, the gravel crunching beneath the tyres with that soft sound that always heralded arrival or departure.

‘Welcome to Rosfort,’ she said, shutting off the engine.

They sat in perfect quiet for a few moments, watching figures moving across the bright windows of the building.

‘You have a lovely voice, Lady Hardoak,’ Leigh said, unexpectedly. ‘Do you lecture?’

She looked surprised. ‘No, not since… not since I was a graduate student.’

‘You were a student here?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said. The musical laughter in her tone held something of both amusement and mockery.

He was eager to hear more, but with an exasperated protest at the tardy porters, she stepped out of the car and opened the boot. Leigh followed, heaving his suitcase and typewriter out of the back. Lady Hardoak selected a bottle from the case and held it out to him.

‘Would you hold this for me?’ she asked. 

Then she took up the case herself, and carried it up the steps, Leigh following behind with unheeded offers of aid.

She marched with angry strides to the porter’s lodge, and deposited the case on a table just as a flustered porter rushed in.

‘To Mr. Golding’s keeping,’ she ordered. ‘And be so kind as to show Mr. Brookman to his rooms. He’s one of our missing first-years. Good night, Mr. Brookman,’ she said, turning to him and speaking with less severity. ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for at Rosfort.’

‘Thank you, my lady,’ he said. ‘I feel certain I will.’

‘I do not think it will be in my wine, however,’ she said, indicating the bottle.

‘Well, they say in vīnō vēritās,’ he said, handing it to her with a small bow. ‘Good night.’