elsewhere in the college. In the distance, a door opened and closed. There were running footsteps in Chapel Court.
He must go to her, he thought, as soon as he possibly could, beg her forgiveness and throw himself on her mercy.
His eyes were still fixed on the bridge. For an instant, he was sure that there was someone on it, someone moving.
Elinor? His heart pounded. Nonsense, he told himself – what would she be doing outside at this time? It must be a trick of the light, a trick of the dark. But still his heart pounded and still the possibility of her remained.
There was only one way to make sure. He walked slowly along the water’s edge towards the bridge.
As he was doing so, the college bell began to ring. It sounded strange, as if further away than usual and filtered through a fog. Holdsworth stopped to listen. The bell tolled on, muted, solemn and sombre. Doors and windows were flung open. Everyone in Jerusalem was coming to unnatural life, as if this were daytime, not night.
But not quite everyone.
A muffled bell tolled for the dead: so Dr Carbury had gone at last. Elinor was free.
Holdsworth glanced at the bridge. The paleness in the dusk had slipped away.
Author’s Note
The eighteenth century was not a glorious period for English universities (by and large they managed things better in Scotland). At Oxford and Cambridge, individual colleges followed their idiosyncratic paths with little to guide them apart from their own statutes, which were at least two centuries out of date, as were the syllabuses that the universities prescribed for their students to study. By the standards of the 1780s, Jerusalem College might have been considered conservative, and some of its fellows perhaps a little eccentric; but they would not have been unusual in this.
Those who know modern Cambridge may notice that there are remarkable similarities between the fictional Jerusalem College and the entirely real Emmanuel College. I should like to emphasize that these resemblances extend only to its layout and aspects of its early history. I should also like to thank Dr Sarah Bendall, Fellow of Emmanuel, and Amanda Goode, the College’s Archivist, for their help. Dr Bendall, with Professor Peter Brooke and Professor Patrick Collinson, is the author of
The Holy Ghost Club is of course fictional. There are rumours, but no hard evidence, of the existence of hellfire clubs at the universities. By their very nature, such societies can be hard to trace. There’s substantial evidence of their existence elsewhere in society, though by the 1780s most of them were growing a little tamer and more discreet in their practices than they had been.
I have used London and Cambridge street names that were current in the eighteenth century, which are not always those that are current today.
I am grateful to Roger Crowley, Martin Dow, Alick Miskin and Christopher Trillo for lending me their names; to Elizabeth Manners for providing Jerusalem with its Letters Patent from Queen Elizabeth I; to my agent, Vivien Green, and my publishers at Michael Joseph for their patience, enthusiasm and meticulous editorial skills; and to my wife, Caroline, for everything else.
Andrew Taylor
Andrew Taylor
