by Libba Bray
“Gracious me.” Mademoiselle LeFarge chuckles. And that’s when I notice that Miss McCleethy’s chair is empty. Surely, McCleethy isn’t frightened by a magic-lantern show; she isn’t frightened of anything.
I spy her hurrying out of the gallery.
“Gemma,” Felicity whispers. “Where are you off to?”
“The ladies’ dressing room, if anyone should ask.”
McCleethy slips into a long room and behind a curtain that hides a winding staircase. I take a deep breath and trail her at a safe distance. When I reach the bottom, I fear I have lost her. But soon, I hear her footsteps. Taking great pains to be as quiet as possible, I follow. We seem to be in a tunnel under the hall, for I still hear the hustle and bustle above us.
Miss McCleethy goes into a large dimly lit room that houses all sorts of exhibitions—statues, exotic costumes, magic apparatus, a placard for the Wolfson brothers with the word scoundrels painted across it. I secrete myself behind a bust of some Egyptian goddess sporting a lion’s head.
McCleethy is arguing with someone in the shadows. “You lied to me. I don’t take kindly to liars. This is not a game we’re playing! I saved your life. You’re in my debt. Or have you forgotten?”
I can’t hear the answer, nor can I see more without revealing myself.
“I must know everything from now on,” McCleethy commands. “I don’t think I need remind you that they would kill you where you stand if they knew you were here with me. If you mean to save them, you must follow me. It’s the only way.”
She pushes her hair into place and fiddles with the brooch at her collar until it’s straight. “For twenty-five years, I’ve been devoted to the cause. I do not mean to lose to the Rakshana or a sixteen-year-old girl. Go on, then, before you’re seen.”
The figure in the dark retreats. I shrink behind the giant statue, and Miss McCleethy hurries back the way she came. I wait until I no longer hear the echo of her footsteps, and then I return to the hall, where the audience delights in the merry image of a jumping dog and a clown juggling balls.
I steal a quick glance at McCleethy. The triumph I felt earlier at deceiving her has been replaced by wariness. To whom could she have been talking? Was it Fowlson? Is he her spy within the Rakshana? You lied to me, she said. Lied about what? And whom did they mean to save?
At last, Mr. Wolfson shuts down the lamp that fuels the magic lantern. The room burns with light once again, and the ghostly apparitions vanish from the walls. But the haunts inside me won’t leave so easily.
“I thank you for your kind attention, ladies and gentlemen!” Mr. Wolfson’s voice booms out. “These images are enchantments of a sort, but they are illusions—dreams born of gas and light. Our good hosts, Maskelyne and Cooke, have made it their work to expose the fraudulent among us. I would advise you to be on guard against all forms of trickery and deceit disguised as truth. We shall play again at eight o’clock this evening and tomorrow again at three and eight. We bid you good evening, all!”
We’re ushered from the hall in a crushing sea of excited people making their last-minute purchases. I try to keep a safe distance from McCleethy, holding fast to my friends’ arms.
“Where did you go, Gemma?” Felicity asks.
“I followed McCleethy. She had a secret meeting with someone.”
“Who?” Ann asks.
I look behind me, but McCleethy is deep in conversation with LeFarge and Inspector Kent. “I couldn’t see who it was. Perhaps it was someone from the Rakshana or the Order,” I say, and tell them all I know.
The streets are a madhouse of people and carriages, gloom and bustle. The program has promised carriages at five o’clock but there are far too many people for so few carriages, and we shall be forced to wait an eternity.
“Right,” Inspector Kent says. “Let’s see what the law can do.”
He marches purposefully toward the man corralling the cabs.
“I am sorry to abandon you like this, Mademoiselle LeFarge,” Miss McCleethy says. “Are you certain you’ll be fine on your own with the girls?”
“Of course,” Mademoiselle LeFarge says, patting Miss McCleethy’s hands.
“Miss McCleethy, are you leaving us?” Felicity pries.
“Yes, I’ve a dinner engagement with a friend this evening,” our teacher answers.
“What friend is that?” Fee says, abandoning all propriety.
“Now then, Miss Worthington, it’s none of your affair, is it?” Mademoiselle LeFarge reprimands, and Fee falls quiet. Miss McCleethy does not grant us an answer to the impertinent question.
“I trust you’ll give Mademoiselle LeFarge no trouble, ladies,” she says. “I shall see you on the morrow.”
“I didn’t know Miss McCleethy had any friends,” Ann mutters once McCleethy has taken her leave of us.
Nor did I, but Miss McCleethy has been full of surprises tonight.
The London fog envelops us in its murkiness. Figures emerge at first like ghosts, like something that belongs to the mist, before taking on form—top hats, coats, bonnets. It is an effect as thrilling as anything conjured by the Wolfson brothers’ magic lantern.
Ann, Felicity, and LeFarge are distracted by the sight of a Mr. Pinkney—the Human Calliope—as he mimics the sound of the instrument with his mouth while also banging a drum.
Dr. Van Ripple emerges from the fog, hobbling quickly on his cane. He collides with a gentleman. “I do beg your pardon, sir. It’s this leg and the damp.”
“No harm done,” the gentleman says. As he helps to right Dr. Van Ripple, I see the magician reach into the man’s pocket and relieve him of his gold watch.
Master illusionist, indeed. Master pickpocket would be more like it.
“Pardon me, pardon me,” he says, shooing the ladies and gentlemen in their finery out of his way. I block his path. He locks eyes with me, startled.
“Did you enjoy the show, my dear?”
“Which show would that be, sir?” I say sweetly. “The Wolfson brothers’? Or the one I just witnessed in which you relieved a man of his pocket watch?”
“An honest mistake,” Dr. Van Ripple says, his eyes wide with fear.
“I shan’t tell,” I assure him. “But I expect something in return. When Miss LeFarge mentioned Spence, you paled at the name. Why?”
“Really, I must be going….”
“Shall I call for the constable?”
Dr. Van Ripple glowers. “My assistant attended the Spence Academy.”
“She was a Spence girl?”
“So she said.”
I search his face. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”
He puts his hand over his heart. “On my reputation as a gentleman—”
I stop him. “I believe your reputation as a gentleman is very much in question, sir.”
He holds my gaze. “On my reputation as a magician, then. I promise you this is the truth.”
Our carriages have arrived. “Come along, girls!” Mademoiselle LeFarge calls.
“Best not keep them waiting,” he says, pocketing the stolen watch.
Can I trust the word of a thief?
“Dr. Van Ripple,” I start, but he waves me off with his cane. “Please, sir, I only wish to know her name, nothing more, and I shall leave you in peace. I promise.”
Seeing I will not surrender, he sighs. “Very well. It was Mina. Miss Wilhelmina Wyatt.”
Mina, Miss Wilhelmina Wyatt, author of A History of Secret Societies and the lady in my visions, was a Spence girl, and one of her sisters betrayed her.
The moment Mademoiselle LeFarge falls asleep in the carriage, we break into low chatter.
“Wilhelmina Wyatt! To think that we have her book—and its dangerous secrets—in our possession!” Ann blurts out.
“But we’ve read the book,” I say. “What could we have possibly missed? There is nothing dangerous there.”
“Unless it is the danger of putting one to sleep.” Felicity yawns.
“We did discover some tru
th about the Order,” Ann says, defending herself. “Without the book, Gemma, you’d never have discovered the true identity of Circe,” she reminds us, and she’s right. For that was how we discovered that the Order often hid their identities by use of anagrams, and that Hester Asa Moore, the name of our trusted mentor, was an anagram for Sarah Rees-Toome.
Felicity drums her fingers on the seat. “There is something that has always troubled me about that book. What purpose could Miss McCleethy have had in purchasing it? If she’s a member of the Order, why should she need a book about the Order?”
At Christmastime, we followed Miss McCleethy to the Golden Dawn bookseller’s in the Strand. She purchased the book, so we did the same, but until now, I’ve thought it one of her peculiarities. I’ve not thought there could be a deeper, and perhaps much darker, reason for her wanting it.
“I saw McCleethy’s face briefly in one of my visions,” I remind them. “She could be the sister Dr. Van Ripple mentioned.”
“Yes, though you said you only saw her face,” Felicity adds. “You didn’t see them together.”
Outside our windows, the still-bare branches scrape against the carriage. The night has claws, but we escape, bumping along until Spence comes into view once more. With its lamps still ablaze, the sprawling estate glows brightly in the sooty night. Only the East Wing is dark. The clouds shift; the moon shows her face. Atop the roof, the leering gargoyles perch, the high arches of their wings formidable shadows against the moon’s light. The stone beasts seem taut and ready. And for a moment, I remember that chilling hallucination in the carriage that day with Felicity—the creature’s open mouth, the glint of sharp teeth coming down, the thin stream of blood—and I have to look away.
“Well, I still say if there were some grand secret within the book we’d have discovered it by now,” I insist.
Ann peers out at the vast expanse of stars. “Perhaps we didn’t know where to look.”
An hour later, we’re in Felicity’s room, crowded around our copy of A History of Secret Societies, trying to read it by faint candlelight.
“Look for anything that makes mention of this Tree of All Souls,” I instruct. “Perhaps we missed it the first time round because it held no meaning for us before.”
We read page after frustratingly oblique page until the words begin to blind us. We take turns reading aloud. There are entries on the Druids, the Gnostics, witchcraft, and paganism, a few illustrations that add nothing. We read again about the Order and the Rakshana and find no new facts of interest. There is not a single word about a Tree of All Souls.
We turn the page and there’s an illustration of a tower. I keep reading.
“‘Glastonbury Tor. Stonehenge. Iona in the Hebrides. The Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza. These are all thought to be imbued with magic derived from the alignment of the earth and the stars,’” I read with a yawn. “‘Sacred points within the earth are indicated by various markers, which include churches, cemeteries, stone circles, the wood, and castles, to name but a few. For the great priestesses, the venerable Druids, the noble pagans believed that here the spirits walked—”
“Gemma, there’s nothing more there,” Felicity grouses. She hangs her head and arms over the end of her bed like a bored child. “Can we please go on to the realms? Pip’s waiting.”
“The book is five hundred pages long,” Ann agrees. “We’ll be here all night, and I want to play with magic.”
“You’re right,” I say, closing the book. “To the realms.”
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
* * *
NOW THAT MISS MCCLEETHY HAS RETURNED TO US, SHE wastes no time in making her presence felt. She cracks her whip at every opportunity. There is a right way and a wrong way to do things, and the right way, it would seem, is always the McCleethy way. Despite her will of iron, she is a great one for taking walks, and as the days grow greener, we are grateful for these sojourns from the stuffy halls of Spence.
“I believe we shall sketch outdoors today,” she announces. As it’s a rather lovely day, this news is greeted with enthusiasm. We don bonnets to protect our fair complexions from the threat of freckles, though it is, of course, a moot point for me. I remember beautiful, hot days in India, running barefoot over cracked ground, the sun tattooing a reminder of those days in small brown patches, as if the gods threw a handful of sand across my cheeks and nose while my skin was wet.
“The sun has blessed you,” Sarita used to say. “Look how he has left his kisses on your face for all to see and be jealous.”
“The sun loves you more,” I said, rubbing my hands over her dry arms, the color of an aged wine gourd, and she laughed.
But this is not India, and we are not prized for our freckles here. The sun is not allowed to show his love.
Miss McCleethy marches us through muddy grass that makes a ruin of our boots.
“Where are we going?” Elizabeth grumbles behind us.
“Miss McCleethy, will it be much farther?” Cecily asks.
“The walk shall do you good, Miss Temple. I’ll hear no more complaining,” Miss McCleethy answers.
“I wasn’t complaining,” Cecily sputters, but not one of us shall join her cause. If there were a championship held for whiners, she would hold the trophy easily.
Miss McCleethy leads us through the woods, past the lake with its mirror image of the gray sky, and down a narrow, crooked road we’ve not seen before. It winds for some time before coming to a hill. A small graveyard is visible at the hill’s summit, and that is where Miss McCleethy takes us. She spreads out a cloth between the headstones and settles our picnic basket upon it.
Elizabeth holds her cloak fast to her. “Why have we come to such a dreadful place, Miss McCleethy?”
“To remind us that life is short, Miss Poole,” Miss McCleethy says, catching my eye ever so briefly. “It is also a lovely spot for a picnic. Who would care for cake and lemonade?”
With a flourish she opens the basket and the smell of Brigid’s heavenly apple cake drifts from its depths. Thick slices of it are offered all around. Lemonade is poured. We sketch and eat in lazy fashion. Miss McCleethy sips her lemonade. She gazes out at the expanse of rolling green hills, the clusters of trees like tufts of unruly hair on a balding man’s head. “There is something quite special about this land.”
“It’s lovely,” Ann agrees.
“Bit muddy,” Cecily grumbles through a mouthful of cake. “Not as pretty as Brighton.” I imagine her polishing that whining trophy.
Ann pipes up. “Brigid said that Jesus himself may have walked these hills with his cousin, Joseph of Arimathea, and that the Gnostics were also drawn to this place.”
“What are Gnostics?” Elizabeth titters.
“A mystical sect of early Christians, more pagan than Christian, really,” Miss McCleethy answers. “I’ve heard that story, too, Miss Bradshaw. Many Britons believe that Camelot itself may have been erected in this region, and that Merlin chose the spot because the land held such enchantment within it.”
“How could the land be enchanted?” Felicity asks. Her mouth is far too full, and McCleethy gives her a hard look.
“Miss Worthington, we are not savages, if you please,” she chides, handing Felicity a napkin. “Many of the ancients did believe that there were sites that held extraordinary power. That is why they worshipped there.”
“Does that mean that if I stand in the center of Stonehenge, I could become as powerful as King Arthur?” Cecily asks with a laugh.
“No, I rather think it was not meant to be given to everyone indiscriminately but governed carefully by those who know best,” she says, pointedly. “For when we read about magic in fairy stories or tales of myth, we read time and again that it is subject to strict laws, else chaos follows. Look out there. What do you see?” Miss McCleethy waves her hand toward the green horizon.
“Hills,” Ann offers. “Roads.”
“Flowers and shrubs,” Cecily adds. She
looks to Miss McCleethy as if there might be a prize for the right answer.
“What we can see is proof. Proof that man can conquer nature, that chaos can be turned back. You see evidence of the importance of order, of law. For conquer chaos we must. And if we see it in ourselves, we must root it out and replace it with steadfast discipline.”
Can we really conquer chaos so easily? If that were so, I should be able to prune the pandemonium of my own soul into something neat and tidy rather than this maze of wants and needs and misgivings that has me forever feeling as if I cannot fit into the landscape of things.
“But aren’t many gardens beautiful because they are imperfect?” I say, glancing at McCleethy. “Aren’t the strange, new flowers that arise by mistake or misadventure as pleasing as the well-tended and planned?”
Elizabeth purses her lips. “Are we speaking of art?”
Miss McCleethy smiles broadly. “Ah, a perfect segue to the topic at hand. Look at the art of the masters and you will see that their work has been created according to strict rules: Here we have line and light and a color scheme.” She holds my gaze as if she has me in checkmate. “Art cannot be created without order.”
“What of the Impressionists in Paris, then? It is not ordered so much as felt with the brush, it seems,” Felicity says, eating cake with her fingers.
“There are always rebels and radicals, I suppose,” McCleethy allows. “Those who live on the fringes of society. But what do they contribute to the society itself? They reap its rewards without experiencing its costs. No. I submit that the loyal, hardworking citizens who push aside their own selfish desires for the good of the whole are the backbone of the world. What if we all decided to run off and live freely without thought or care for society’s rules? Our civilization would crumble. There is a joy in duty and a security in knowing one’s place. This is the English way. It is the only way.”
“Quite so, Miss McCleethy,” Cecily says. But really, what would I expect from her?
I know that is to be the end of the discussion, but I can’t let it go. “But without the rebels and radicals, there would be no change, no one to push back. There would be no progress.”