Unhallowed Halls

1.

September 15

“What did you do?”

Streaks of rain glitter on the windows as the train races through unending bleak moorland. I didn’t think the journey would take so long--night has fallen and all I can see past the raindrops are shadows, deep and full of secrets.

The carriage is nearly empty--a woman bent over a laptop, fingers tapping a staccato counterpoint to the steady rhythm of the train. A man asleep, his head against the window. Three teenage girls, their feet on the seats. One of them stares at me from under false eyelashes, her question hanging in the air.

“What did you do?”

I always imagined British people would have posh accents, but this girl is proving me wrong. I can smell hairspray and spearmint and cherry lip gloss.

Since they got on a few stops ago, the girls have filled the carriage with their presence. Their shrieks of laughter, their cursing, the snap of their gum. I feel a stab of jealousy at their ease with each other, with the world. They inhabit their bodies so comfortably, propelling themselves through time and space with such confidence. I can’t imagine how it must feel.

The girl is still waiting for an answer, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I did.

She stands and approaches me, swaying with the movement of the train.

She’s wearing an outfit that is simultaneously casual yet completely over-the-top--camo-print tracksuit bottoms and a lurid green tube top.

Her makeup is thick and applied with painterly precision, her skin unnaturally orange, her brows like perfectly sculpted punctuation marks.

She nods down at the brochure poking out of my battered copy of Middlemarch. I’ve been using it as a bookmark.

“That school is for posh fuckups,” she says. “So why are you going? Drugs? Stealing? Did you get into fights?”

I follow her gaze back down to the Agathion College brochure. Images of arched windows and turreted spires surrounded by romantic moorland grace the glossy pages. Blue-gray stone walls, wreathed in creeping ivy. Serious-looking students in wool kilts and tweed blazers bent over ancient books. When the brochure arrived in the mail, along with a full scholarship offer, it seemed too good to be true. It still does. I imagine myself there, surrounded by books and knowledge and history. I’ll wander the moors like Catherine in Wuthering Heights and curl up in the huge stone castle with a steaming cup of tea to read Dickens and Austen and my beloved Shakespeare.

A life of the mind.

Maybe sometimes I’ll engage with the other students, debating poetry or philosophy. Not friends, because I’m not doing that again. Colleagues, perhaps. Intellectual peers. Previous Agathion students have gone on to become famous politicians, writers and artists, according to the brochure. There’s even one former British prime minister who attended.

“Bet she killed someone,” says another one of the girls, whose long fingernails are pointed slashes of teal and gold. “She looks the type.”

Do I?

I stuff the book and brochure into my backpack. Out of the corner of my eye, I see green Tube Top Girl recoil slightly, and I know she’s noticed my hands.

“Come on,” the girl with the long fingernails says. “Before she puts a spell on you.”

I let my gaze drift up to meet Tube Top Girl’s, and see the faintest hint of fear there, behind her enormous false lashes and brash confidence. My hands curl in on themselves, obscuring my shiny pink palms.

The girl shrugs and returns to her friends.

My parents offered to come with me, but I insisted on traveling by myself. I wanted to get on board that plane and never look back. I wanted to get as far away from Lakeland, Florida, as I possibly could. From the smell of burning flesh and jasmine, and the sound of Cassidy screaming.

Agathion feels like the only way out.

A place where I can learn to control myself.

I can feel the train start to slow. We’re nearly there.

I feel a twinge in my abdomen--an echo of the deep dragging pain that is so familiar to me, and my pulse quickens.

Not now.

But, I remind myself, I only just had my period. This is nerves.

I stand and head down the swaying carriage to the luggage rack. I have to pass the three girls, who look up at me as I walk.

“Loosen up a bit, hey?” the bold girl says. “Let your freak flag fly.”

My cheeks feel hot and sweat prickles down my back. I am frozen in place, pinned by the casual, insolent gaze of this girl who I’ve never met before and will never see again. She doesn’t matter, so why can’t I move or speak? The dragging sensation in my belly intensifies.

Someone screams, and I’m back at St. Catherine’s, my hands burning and my lungs filling with acrid smoke.

But it isn’t Cassidy screaming. It’s just the squealing of brakes as the train slows. I’m thrown forward against the bold girl as we shudder to a halt.

“Hey,” she says, laughing. “Buy me dinner first!”

Her skin is smooth against mine; the scent of her lip gloss is overpowering.

I scramble to my feet and away to the luggage rack.

I can’t miss my stop.

I can’t.

The doors hiss open, and I am shaking with panic. I grab the handle of my suitcase and yank, but it’s stuck. I pull and pull, but it won’t budge. I try pushing instead, trying to jostle it into a better position, but that only seems to make the problem worse. I kick it.

Outside, the train’s whistle blows.

I’m out of time.

“Do you need a hand?” asks the bold girl.

It’s too late. The train is about to leave the station.

And I realize that whatever’s in that suitcase--I don’t need it.

I’m coming to Agathion to live a life of the mind.

I have everything I need.

“Weirdo,” mutters the girl, turning back to her friends.

I leave my suitcase behind and step off the train.

The platform is sparse and entirely empty. The air is cold--much colder than I had expected. I breathe deeply until my lungs ache, and I love the feeling. Icy drizzle caresses my skin, and I turn my face up to it.

I’m here. I’m really here.

A fluorescent light spits and hums next to a weathered sign reading RANNOCH MOOR. The train pulls away behind me, disappearing into the darkness. For a moment I panic, thinking I’ve gotten off at the wrong station. But I checked a million times. I’ve rehearsed this journey in my head over and over.

There’s a ticket office, but it doesn’t look like it’s been open for years. I step through the gate, and peer into the darkness. I can hear something huffing out there. Some kind of animal--barrel-chested and hulking.

A hazy orange glow emanates from behind the ticket office. I head toward it, past an ancient-looking pay phone and down a set of stone steps, finding myself on a worn dirt road.

Before me is a lamp, burning golden, affixed to, impossibly, a horse and buggy--the kind you might find in a Regency novel. The horse is black and broad, its head bowed, its breath blowing out in steaming clouds. It shifts from one foot to another as I approach, and it nickers softly.

Perched in the driver’s seat, reins slack in one leather-gloved hand and the other holding an umbrella, is a tall, thin woman wearing a dark wool coat. Her steel-colored hair is pulled back in a rather severe bun. Dark eyes turn to me, sharp as struck flint.

“Page Whittaker?” She’s Scottish, her accent elegant and polished.

I nod.

“I am Magistra Hewitt. I’ll be your tutor during your time at Agathion.”

According to my internet sleuthing, every student at Agathion is assigned a tutor, who acts as a mentor and guide. There are regular teachers, too, but it’s the tutors who live on campus with us and provide the unique experience of Agathion.

I look up at this woman, and I see intelligence in her eyes and the worn lines of her face. She seems a little terrifying, but I’ll take it over the limp sacks of apathy that passed for teachers back home, who could do nothing for me other than shrug and shake their heads.

Magistra Hewitt looks down her strikingly assertive nose at me. Her eyebrows seem permanently raised in a manner that makes me feel like I’m being assessed.

“You have no luggage? Good.”

She tilts her head at the bench next to her, and I scramble up, feeling awkward and entirely out of place in my jeans and puffer jacket next to her simple elegance. She adjusts her grip on the umbrella so it covers both of us.

“One of the foundational principles of Agathion is that you come as supplicants, like the akousmatikoi of Pythagoras, who shed their hair, their clothes and their names, and spent five years in total silence as a form of initiation.”

Without thinking, I raise a hand to my ponytail, and she smiles a thin-lipped smile.

“Fear not, Miss Whittaker. You may keep your hair. And your name, for that matter. And we will not require five years of silence.” She hesitates, side-eying my puffer. “You will be provided with a uniform, of course. You bring no baggage, figurative or literal. No technology. These things link us to the material world, and Agathion is a school for the mind.”

Yes. That’s why I’m here.

“ ‘ ’Tis the mind that makes the body rich,’ ” I quote. “ ‘And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honor peereth in the meanest habit.’ ”

If the magistra is impressed by my knowledge of Shakespeare, she shows no sign of it. Instead, she twitches the reins, and the horse starts to walk forward. I shrug my backpack off and hold it in my lap. My new tutor eyes it distastefully.

The horse pulls us into the darkness as rain patters gently on the umbrella like a caress. The lantern hanging from the side of the buggy casts a dim golden glow around us, but beyond the horse’s nose is nothing but black. I wonder how it knows to stay on the road. Has it done this trip many times?

“Ms. Hewitt?” I ask tentatively.

“Magistra Hewitt,” she corrects, but not unkindly.

“Magistra Hewitt. Does everyone get picked up in a horse and buggy?”

She hesitates again before replying. “We have learned that keeping a car on campus overnight can be rather more temptation than some of our students are able to resist.”

I think of the girl on the train.

That school is for posh fuckups.

“Of course the day teachers bring their own vehicles,” she adds as an afterthought, like she forgot there were day teachers. “But they leave midafternoon, and the rest of the staff depart after dinner.”

“But not the magisters?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “We are your mentors,” she says. “We live here alongside you, to guide you at all times.”

I hope she doesn’t mean literally alongside us. I don’t want to share a bedroom with a teacher.

“Agathion College is located on the Great Moor of Rannoch,” Magistra Hewitt continues. “There is evidence that it has been a home for unwanted or troubled children for more than a thousand years. However, it was in the eighteenth century that we transformed the school into an exclusive haven for gifted young people. A sanctuary for those who live in the realm of the mind, who seek to see past the shadows and distractions of base feelings, and glimpse the true secrets of the universe.”

There’s a note of pride in her voice, like she was personally responsible for this shift in educational philosophy.

I breathe in the rich scent of the moor, earthy and botanical. There’s a faint edge of woodsmoke as well, sweet as incense. It smells glorious.

“You’re lucky to be here, Miss Whittaker,” Magistra Hewitt says. “We don’t often offer scholarships.”

I want to ask why me? How did they even know about me? Did they hear about what happened at St. Catherine’s?

“Try not to feel intimidated by the backgrounds of the other students. At Agathion, all are equal. Bloodline, wealth, class--these things cease to exist when you cross the threshold. I’m sure you’ll make friends.”

Unlikely, but that’s not why I’m here.

“You’ll have questions, I’m sure,” Magistra Hewitt continues. “I ask that you save them for our first meeting.”

I nod again.

“You’ve missed dinner,” Magistra Hewitt continues. “But a tray has been sent up to your room. We’ll meet in a few days, after you’ve settled in.”

I know from my obsessive googling that Agathion doesn’t have set terms or holidays--students arrive and stay until they graduate. I’m still not really sure what that means--is there an exam or test that has to be passed, or is it something the magisters decide? Some alumni seem to graduate after only six months, but I’ve read about others who stay for three or four years--like superstar violinist Ryu Yasuda who was an Agathion student in the 2000s.

The horse speeds up a little as the lantern’s dim yellow light falls upon a huge set of gates, black iron wrought in heavy bars, topped with a row of wickedly sharp-looking spikes. The gates are open, and the horse’s gait seems to lighten, as if it is anticipating a nice dry stable and bucket of oats.

The scent of woodsmoke grows suddenly strong and pungent as I get my first glimpse of Agathion, looming magnificent and haughty from the darkness like a castle from a fairy tale.

My extensive research means I already know that Agathion has been a school since the mid-1700s. The hill where the school sits has been inhabited since before the Romans invaded Britain, according to archeological records. I know that there is a small farm that raises pigs, ducks, and chickens, as well as growing many fruits and vegetables.

But the facts I’ve ingested from brochures and websites don’t come close to actually being here. Now I really see the exceptional grandeur of Agathion. The embellished moldings and plasterwork. The turrets and spires, thrusting sharply into the night sky. The grotesquerie of the gargoyles that spout inky rainwater from where they crouch on the edge of the slate-tiled roof. The central tower, tall and proud. Wet stone glistens darkly, and shadows gather at the edges of the building where golden light that spills from the narrow, arched windows cannot reach. The air is cold and rarified, scented with smoke and damp earth.

I feel like Catherine Morland arriving at Northanger Abbey. Or Jane Eyre approaching Thornfield Hall.

It feels right.

Magistra Hewitt gets down from the buggy, every movement controlled and elegant.