Read Chapter 5: Terms of Engagement

The Dean’s email arrived at 6:47 a.m., before Elodie had finished her coffee. Subject line: **URGENT – Research Plan**. Three paragraphs of administrative boilerplate wrapped around a single lethal sentence: *I expect a joint proposal for your collaborative edition by Friday, 5 p.m.*

Friday. Four days. Not four weeks, not four months. Four days to shape a partnership that had so far produced one decoded marginal note, one concealed bookmark, and a mutual suspicion that crackled like static between them.

She typed a terse acknowledgment, then sat in her kitchen in her dressing gown, staring at the steam rising from her mug. James would have received the same email. She knew it with the same certainty she knew the Vulgate hand of the folio’s fourth quire. He would already be drafting his version of the plan—structured, efficient, and probably wrong about half of what mattered.

*Compromise*, she told herself. *Compromise does not mean surrender.*

She chose the Eagle and Child, neutral ground. Tourists seldom wandered in at this hour, and the stained-glass light made the old pub feel like a chapel for secular confessions. She arrived first, claimed the corner booth, and ordered a half-pint she didn’t want.

James walked in at 11:03, exactly eight minutes late. He wore a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches that looked less like affectation and more like habit, and he carried a battered leather satchel that had probably crossed more archive thresholds than most scholars’ entire careers.

“You picked the pub,” he said, sliding into the opposite bench. “I assumed you’d want the advantage of home ground.”

“The Eagle and Child is not my home ground. It’s neutral.”

“Nothing in Oxford is neutral.” He flagged the barmaid, ordered a pint of bitter, and then turned his full attention to Elodie. His eyes were the color of the Thames in winter—gray-green, watchful. “You got the Dean’s email.”

“Obviously.”

“Friday. Five p.m.”

“Obviously.”

He waited. She waited. The barmaid delivered his pint, and he took a long swallow before setting it down with deliberate care. “You’re going to make me propose first, aren’t you?”

“I want to hear your instincts before I argue with them.”

Something flickered in his expression—almost amusement, almost respect. “Fine. My proposal: we travel to Chartres together, spend two weeks in the municipal archives, examine the lost companion text you believe exists. Then we return and each write our own interpretation of the folio’s gloss. We submit both to the Dean and defend them in a public debate. The stronger argument wins the fellowship.”

Elodie tilted her head. “That’s not collaboration. That’s parallel submission.”

“It’s honest. We don’t agree on the gloss. Forcing a single interpretation would produce something neither of us fully believes.”

“And the Dean asked for a *joint* research plan. Not two solitudes wearing matching covers.”

“So we present it as a structured disagreement. A documented dialectic. The edition itself can be co-authored—transcription, codicology, provenance—but the interpretation section will present our two readings in explicit tension. That’s not weak scholarship. That’s rigorous.”

Elodie considered. The shape of it was actually not terrible. The folio’s physical evidence—the binding, the ink, the marginal hands—could be documented objectively. The gloss, however, resisted a single reading. She had her theory: the marginal note pointed to a lost companion manuscript, and the true gloss required that companion to decode. James believed the folio was self-contained, a complete devotional text with no external referent.

“Chartres,” she said slowly. “You agree the marginal note points there?”

“I agree it *suggests* a connection worth investigating. Not that it proves your companion exists. There’s a difference.”

“And the terms?”

“Each of us controls our own research notes. We share transcriptions and physical observations. No surprises, no burying evidence that contradicts the other’s reading.”

“No poaching archival access,” she added. “If I secure a document, you don’t attempt to get it first.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like experience talking.”

“That sounds like knowing you.”

James laughed—a short, surprised sound that softened something in his face. “Fine. No poaching. And we travel together?”

The question hung between them. Traveling together meant shared trains, shared meals, shared evenings in a foreign city with nothing to do but talk or avoid talking. Elodie felt the warmth of the pub’s fire on her neck, and she told herself the flush was from the heat.

“Together,” she said. “For the purposes of appearances. The Dean wants photographs of collaboration for the website.”

“Ah, the website. The true arbiter of academic achievement.”

“Don’t mock. The last time I had a collaborator, we were photographed with our arms around each other’s shoulders, and the caption called us ‘partners in medieval crime.’ My mother framed it.”

James’s grin faded into something more thoughtful. “Your mother follows your work?”

“Relentlessly. She’s a retired librarian who believes every paper I publish should have been a book, and every book should have been a bestseller. I disappoint her on all counts.”

“My father’s an engineer,” James said. “He thinks I study dead languages because I’m too afraid of the present to live in it.”

Elodie wanted to say something sharp, but the honesty in his voice disarmed her. She took a sip of her beer instead. “Well. At least we come from similar wounds.”

“Is that what this is?” He gestured between them. “Two people who learned to fight because no one else would fight for them?”

She didn’t answer. The words had landed too close to something she kept locked behind scholarship and precision.

“Terms,” she said, redirecting. “I want final authority on the order of entries in the edition’s editorial notes.”

“No.”

“Then I want veto power over any interpretation you publish under the joint byline.”

“You’ll get it, but I want the same over yours.”

“Agreed.” She extended her hand across the table. “We travel to Chartres. Separate interpretations. Public debate in June. Whatever the fellowship committee decides, we publish the edition with both readings intact, under undetermined authorship until the fellowship is granted.”

He took her hand. His palm was warm and dry, his grip firm but not crushing. “Terms of engagement,” he said quietly. “I can live with those.”

They shook. She felt the pulse in his wrist—or imagined it. The contact lasted a beat longer than necessary before he released her.

“One more thing,” Elodie said. “The silver bookmark.”

James’s expression shuttered. “What about it?”

“We found it together. We examine it together. I won’t have you spiriting it into some private lab and returning with a conclusion I’m expected to take on faith.”

“I don’t spirit things into private labs.”

“Then you won’t mind agreeing.”

Something crossed his face—a hesitation so brief she almost missed it. Then he nodded. “Fine. When we’re in Chartres. Together.”

“Together,” she repeated. The word felt heavy with promise and risk.

They finished their pints in a silence that was almost comfortable. James paid—an old-fashioned gesture that surprised her enough that she forgot to protest. At the door, he paused.

“I’ll draft the formal plan tonight and send it to you for edits,” he said. “You’ll have it by nine tomorrow.”

“I’ll read it by ten.”

“Skeptic by noon.”

“Optimist by five?”

He smiled again, that same surprising warmth. “Maybe by five I’ll have earned your trust, Dr. Marchand.”

She watched him walk away down St. Giles, his satchel swinging, his silhouette sharp against the pale winter sun. The cathedral bells tolled noon.

Back in his college rooms, James closed the door, locked it, and pulled out his phone. The anonymous email glowed on the screen: *The Blois collection holds what you seek. Go before the fifteenth. Your rival cannot know.*

He’d shown Elodie the email, yes—but only the first line. The full instruction had specified a window, and that window closed at sunset the next day. If the letter was in Blois, and if Henri Beaumont was already moving pieces Elodie didn’t fully understand, then waiting for their synchronized travel plan would mean watching the prize slip through his fingers.

He packed a small bag. Train at 6:40 a.m. Blois by mid-morning. He’d be back before their departure date, and she’d never know he’d gone.

The silver bookmark sat on his desk, catching the lamplight. He slid it into his breast pocket without letting himself think about what he was doing. Terms of engagement, they’d agreed. But engagement had rules only if both parties played by them.

He set his alarm for 5 a.m. and did not sleep.