Against the Odds by Jasmine Webb

Author:Jasmine Webb [Webb, Jasmine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

At six o’clock, Sophie, Maggie, Ada, and I met in the parking lot outside Lisle University, a thirty-minute walk north-west of town. When I heard university, I thought of what I’d known in America: neoclassical architecture combined with modern designs as the university grew. Expansive spaces. Long tracts of land. Sports fields.

Lisle University, on the other hand, was a literal freaking castle.

Built along the edge of the sea in the twelfth century, it was named for one of the most important women in Cornwall at the time—Alice de Lisle. Alice had been born in Oxfordshire, on one of the estates her family owned, although they were originally from Cornwall. However, her husband and father’s families were both executed and their lands forfeited. The medieval world was a wild time. In the following years, Alice managed to not only get her family’s lands back, but she then became the Lord of Alverton in the fourteenth century, ruling over much of the area. She successfully petitioned King Edward III to allow Penzance to have a weekly market and a yearly fair, which brought economic growth to Cornwall and completely changed the course of history in both Penzance and this part of Cornwall as a whole.

The castle built here, which once belonged to her family, eventually fell into disrepair until the eighteenth century, when a local noble decided they were going to build, in Alice’s honor, the best university in England devoted almost entirely to the sciences.

And now I stood in front of the main entrance for the first time. Leading up to the university was a forest of tall trees before it opened into an expansive field. In the background, waves slapped against the rocks far below; this castle was set up against a cliff. Large sandstone rocks emerged from the ground, battered by the elements over the centuries to make the castle look as if it, too, was simply part of the land now.

The main door was at least twenty feet tall, made of thick, dark logs with cast-iron hinges. At the bottom, a much more normal-sized door had been carved out, letting people walk in and out as they pleased. The three of us crossed through it into a beautiful courtyard with a perfectly manicured lawn lined with deciduous trees on either side of the two paths that led to the main castle building.

I gazed skyward at a single tower emerging from the top of the high castle, with the black-and-white St. Piran’s cross of the Cornish flag waving in the wind.

“I can’t believe you work in a literal castle,” I said to Ada, shaking my head.

She grinned. “There are worse places in the world.”

Ada led us inside and through the halls. The interior of the castle had obviously been restored but kept the original stone walls, with tall rectangular windows letting in the light. Large stone tiles covered the floors, and hewn wooden beams acted as accents. I glanced out one of the windows on the way to see we were on a path between two sections of the castle, overlooking the sea.

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