There had never been such a flood. Not in living memory, at least. It came up silently. A dark tide clawed from the river, finger by finger, into the sleeping city. Under the cold gaze of the hunter’s moon, it eased past the windows of students and academics, porters and librarians. It brushed their tangled dreams, lapping higher. In the span of one nightfall, the waters claimed the University. At sunset, the cobblestones had rattled with book-laden bicycles. The medieval mouths of the great college gates had gaped wide to welcome their gowned undergraduates and threadbare lecturers, to cradle the ancient dons tottering to their places at High Table. Bells rang out from myriad spires, and evensong silvered the air around Gabriel Tower. By morning, all was drowned. Slick black ropes of water fingered the college foundations. Ankle-deep, knee-deep, waist-deep. Beneath its touch, gold stone weathered green. In the gray dawn, rows of bicycles bobbed at their moorings, as though lifted by ghostly hands.…