by Lyndsay Faye
I could no longer afford to be like my mother; my heart must be carried not on my sleeve but deep in my breast, where the complete darkness might mask the fact it too was black as pitch.
• • •
The day before my departure, Edwin was placed beneath the grass and the buttercups before a very small assembly. Aunt Patience would have sobbed if she could, but only swayed, murmuring; she may have been addressing Edwin, or the droning minister, or the shovel in the gnarled hands of the gravedigger—who could say?
I stood in silence with my head bowed, wondering whom she would talk to at all without me left to hate.
This morose thought followed me home, where a cold meat supper awaited. Directly before sleep finally captured my twitching eyelids, I mused over whether Aunt Patience would rouse herself and march—froglike, determined, hateful, as she used to be—down to the gate and see me off.
She did not … only Agatha kissed my cheek as I was helped onto the rickety wooden step of the coach, with my trunk strapped above.
• • •
There is no practice more vexing than that of authors describing coach travel for the edification of people who have already travelled in coaches. As I must adhere to form, however, I will simply list a series of phrases for the unlikely reader who has never gone anywhere: thin eggshell dawn-soaked curtains stained with materials unknown to science; rattling fit to grind bones to powder; the ripe stench of horse and driver and bog.
Now I have fulfilled my literary duties, I need only add that other girls travelling to school may not have dwelt quite so avidly upon the angular faces of police constables as I.
We had journeyed for some seven hours, and I had flicked the curtain aside as the towns came thicker along our misty route, blinking into view as faint collections of red roofs and stone chimneys. I tugged at the rope strung above the window. The otherwise empty coach stopped abruptly, nearly throwing me from the hard seat. A few seconds later, the driver’s whiskered face appeared in the act of spitting upon the side of the roadway. He gestured at the string tied to his arm as if my signalling him were the final straw in a long list of liberties I had taken with his person.
“Are we stopping at all before we reach Lowan Bridge?” I asked.
“Stopping!” He rubbed as if to wipe the red from his nose. Even had he succeeded, the pistol flask peeping from his lapel pocket would have replaced the stain in short order. “Are ye sick?”
“No.”
“Faint?”
“No, but—”
“Hoongry?”
Glancing at the basket Agatha had lovingly filled with bread and pickles and potted rabbit, I shook my head. “I only need some air.”
“Air!” repeated the driver. He shook his head as if from this day forward, no offence would ever be met with surprise. “Ye’ll have air enough in half an hour, when we reach yer destination. Ye’ll live on the stuff.”
“Is the board a frugal one?” I asked, desperate for a hint.
“Ye might say so. Ye might say scraps tossed to pigs are a point of frugality.”
“What is your name, sir?”
Rolling his eyes so I could see every feathery red vessel, the man answered, “Nick. What of it?”
“Nick, is life very hard at Lowan Bridge? I only want some warning, as Mr. Munt seemed … peculiar.”
Nick tapped his finger to the side of his ruddy nostril. “Peculiar! Aye, he is that. Ye’ll learn a plentiful heap o’ facts, if all goes well.”
“And how if all goes ill?”
“Then ye’ll not need to worry yerself—” he coughed “—as it’s prodigious difficult to trouble a corpse.”
This intelligence was punctuated by the stomping of boots as the coachman returned to his high post, a friendly cry of “Damn you, Chestnut, you bloody useless sack o’ glue!” and we were off again.
Quaking, I ate some pickles and a small piece of bread—however ill I felt, it seemed a prudent precaution. When the carriage ground to a halt, my door opened; Nick tugged the rope line off his sleeve as I stepped down to the road.
We had stopped before a tall iron gate set in a stone wall, a gate with sinister floral embellishments and brutal points like demons’ teeth. Half the entrance stood open, a portal to a grim new world; a gravel path drew my eyes into the grounds, which were dotted with weeping trees lamenting my arrival. The building I guessed comprised Lowan Bridge School was grey as a feudal fortress. It possessed three stories, narrow windows excellently suited for a gaol, and a crenellated roof; if it had featured actual cannons thrusting through the stone gaps, it could not have made a clearer impression.
Nick harrumphed, and I turned to see that he had fetched my trunk from the roof and my basket from the coach.
“How can you leave children here to die?” I asked tremulously.
Setting my basket next to the trunk, Nick shrugged. “There’s a real education to be had here—that’s better than can be said for most o’ these governess manufactories. Anyhow, the world is a hard place, and I live in it alone—what’s it to me if you do too?”
“Here.” I offered the considerable remains of my luncheon. “If they don’t want me to have this, they need only take it away. You keep it.”
“Keep it! What the devil are ye a-doing of? I’ve been paid already, ye daft child,” Nick said, frowning.
“This is payment for something else.”
“What, then?”
“The world is a hard place, and I live in it alone.” I swallowed back my tears. “If you don’t remember the others, remember me.”
Nick studied me; in the end, he merely accepted my basket and shook my hand. Turning, he strode towards the dingy coach and Chestnut, who stood stamping and generally articulating his desire to be rewarded with a bag of hot oats. I could sympathise.
“Straight down the path,” he ordered. “Best o’ luck to ye, though brains’ll be of better use—and mind the headmaster.”
“I mean to.”
“Good,” Nick grunted, clicking his tongue at his weary horse. “Ye’ll live longer.”
I walked with a palpitating heart, dragging my trunk, up the lane under the brightening glare of midafternoon. The sun had sliced through the cloud bank, leaving an unmendable gash of blue across the sky’s face, starkly lighting the battlements before me. Reaching the front entrance, I hesitated and then knocked; the door was of thick wood strapped with iron as if bound in a strait waistcoat. A uniformed servant girl with a pockmarked face answered and beckoned me inside with the instruction, “Mind you wipe your boots. This way.”
We marched through corridors lined with carpets of forbidding black and blue, lit with wall-mounted dips rather than gas, featuring art suggesting that a great love of our Lord would be rewarded by the righteous being pelted with rocks. Half having expected a mean hovel lined with manure-seasoned straw, my childish jaw dropped; wherever my aunt had sent me, she had paid a pretty penny to do so, for this was no barnyard masquerading as a school, but rather the castle of a malevolent monarch. Had a dragon inhabited the dungeons, I should not have been in the least surprised. When we reached a smaller side room with books dimly lining the shelves, the servant said merely, “I’ll fetch someone,” and I was left with my trunk at my feet and mind in turmoil.
About ten minutes later, the door swung open. The woman standing there was quietly dressed in grey, her blond hair parted in the middle and her slender hand lifting a rushlight towards the darkened interior. She had a classically lovely face, features calling to mind a songbird or a sonnet, with a sweet afterthought of a nose and pale blue eyes. I thought her around twenty-five, which seemed a most distinguished achievement and one I felt unlikely to duplicate.
“Are you Jane Steele?”
I nodded.
“Welcome. I am Miss Amy Lilyvale, and I teach music here. If you apply yourself at Lowan Bridge, you will be a valuable addition to any great household in the world. If you are feckless and idle, you will find life hard.”
She said these words as if required to deliver them; then she smiled. “You must be weary—you can have a wash before supper, and lie down if you like. Come.”
Lifting my little trunk, I followed her light step back into the corridor and up a stately central staircase. We had not halfway climbed it when a bell clanged loudly enough to summon the dead, and the sound of pattering feet from all directions met our ears.
Girls poured into the murky corridors, books clutched to flat bosoms and full ones, for they seemed to range in age from as young as I was to as old as eighteen. They were all dressed in navy blue stuff frocks—coarse material which must have chafed—with quaint white aprons, and a queer cloth cap fastened over their hair. I must have glanced down at my trunk, for Miss Lilyvale touched my elbow gently.
“Your own clothes will still serve you for holidays when you return to see your family.”
“I have no family,” I answered without thinking.
“Surely you must have a provider, or you could not afford to attend Lowan Bridge School.”
“Yes, I am very grateful to my aunt,” I replied, recovering my wits, “but she is not fond of me. She means to keep me away.”
“Oh, Miss Steele … and to impart a sound education to you, surely?”
This, I was coming to realise, was undoubtedly true—for had my absence been Aunt Patience’s whole design, I might have landed in a Yorkshire sty and been left to moulder there. Meanwhile, the rush of footsteps and the jostling of elbows all around us unnerved me; most of the girls murmured words I could not catch, as if fixing something in their minds, whilst the few who were silent cast brushing looks at me like the scrape of minnows in a shallow brook.
“Here we are.” Having reached the dormitories on the topmost level, Miss Lilyvale pushed a door open.
She revealed a long rectangular room furnished with two rows of double beds, several pine tables with basins and unadorned white pitchers thereon, unlit fireplaces at either end, and a window granting us a view of fragmenting clouds. The ceilings were high and imposing, the air as chill as it ever is within a stone tower, where we were to be kept prisoner like dozens of forlorn princesses. Suddenly weak with fatigue, I clutched the nearest bed frame, all but dropping my poor trunk.
“Goodness! That was a very brave show, but now I see the way of it,” Miss Lilyvale tutted as she snatched the luggage from my trembling fingers. “Take off your shoes and lie down for a while. Here is your bed, and later you will meet your bedmate, Sarah Taylor, but for now no one should disturb you until I return to fetch you for supper at half six. Till then, rest quiet, dear, and remember to thank God for your safe arrival.”
Miss Lilyvale departed. The bedclothes, though cheap and stiff, were clean, and the bed suitably big for the unknown Sarah to share henceforth. I wondered whether she was a good girl, a bright one, a pretty one; I wondered whether Nick would remember the potted rabbit if I ever required precipitate escape.
Sleep was finally weighing down my lids when I spied a ghost in the stark bedchamber.
Gasping, I tightened my loose grip upon the coverlet.
A lump of sheets had transformed into a child who could not have been above six years old—a blond apparition with a pale, freckled face and a tiny mouth. She regarded me stoically with her head on her palm.
“Miss Lilyvale told you to give prayers of thanks, and you haven’t done.”
Her voice was high even for her age—queerly so, like the tinkling of a bell.
“Why aren’t you at lessons?” I returned.
“Ill.” Indeed she looked it, for her skin was nigh transparent and her eyes dull, apart from the green circles of her irids. “You’ll own up to it and not be angry with me? You forgot your prayers after Miss Lilyvale reminded you?”
“Yes,” I agreed, nettled. “What of it? I’m Jane Steele. Who are you?”
“Rebecca Clarke. Call me Clarke, that’s the way of it here. And thank you.” She let her pale curls fall back to the pillow. “I couldn’t have stood another day of this. I’ll tell it as mild as I can, I promise.”
“Tell what?”
“Tell Mr. Munt you lied about your prayers.”
“But why—”
“You can report me in a week, when I’ve recovered. Fair is fair, after all.”
“Report you where?” I demanded as my sluggish pulse sped.
“At Mr. Munt’s daily Reckoning,” Clarke chirped before burrowing back under the linens and effectively vanishing once more.
SIX
“Madam,” he pursued, “I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world; my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and sobriety …”
A soft hand on my shoulder woke me, and I dragged sleepy eyes open to view the blurred face of Miss Lilyvale. My slumber had been thin and fitful; rising, I glanced about for the mysterious Rebecca Clarke, but her bed was now neatly made.
“Wash up, Steele, and we’ll be off.”
The shock of the cold water was reviving, and I used my wet hands to smooth the countless ripples from my hair. When I turned back to Miss Lilyvale, she took my arm companionably and we quit the dormitory for the stairs, muddied evening sunlight trickling through the high, grimy exterior windows. The cracks of blue had retreated whilst I slept, beaten back by regiments of austere cloud banks. I watched a great line of girls emerging from a wing of classrooms, marching in pairs towards the open timber doors we approached.
“The housekeeper will leave two sets of uniforms on your bed this evening,” Miss Lilyvale informed me. “For tonight, you need not worry about your dress, but afterwards be sure to keep yourself clean and well presented. Oh!” Miss Lilyvale brightened. “Taylor! Steele, this is your bedmate, Sarah Taylor.”
The girl who had broken off from the line was twelve, with a moon face which was so beautiful I had no notion whether she should be congratulated or censured for taking matters a trifle too far. Her lips were rosy, her hair a sleek raven black, and the navy of the Lowan Bridge uniform served only to make her own blue orbs shine the brighter. She reached out with her palm down as if she were a noblewoman accepting obeisance—which was not entirely unfair and then again rather tiresome.
“How do you do?” said I. “I am happy to meet you.”
“Yes,” said she, in a strangely lazy drawl, “very likely.”
This was less than promising, but the queue of schoolgirls had nearly entered the dining hall, so we hastened into the cavern from which the rich aroma of stew emanated. The huge chamber could have been a Viking hall, from bare flagstones to immense rafters. Miss Lilyvale walked to a dais at the end of the room; there the remaining teachers were assembled, including—to my dismay—Vesalius Munt. His staff was otherwise made up of females, a bevy of dull pigeons clad in stone and fawn and charcoal and ash. A great black cauldron was perched on sturdy iron before this assembly, with a matronly cook standing next to it.
When Taylor and I sat, to my astonishment I beheld the mutton stew already ladled into a bowl, and a respectable portion at that. Several platters had been set along the roughhewn table, piled high with rustic bread, and mugs of steaming black coffee sent bittersweet curlicues to the distant ceiling.
“Is … is this usual?” I marvelled. Taylor had made no move to lift the pewter spoon, so I folded my hands in my lap.
“What?” she returned peevishly.
“Is the fare always so good? It smells divine.”
“Well, that of all things doesn’t matter in the slightest,” she retorted languidly.
This was peculiar, and likewise was it cause for a pulse of concern that none of the girls appeared happy about the fare; they regarded their bowls with slightly less dismay than I had once levelled at my cousin’s genitalia. Before I could ask why, Mr. Munt rose from his chair and raised his hands elegantly skyward as we folded our fingers together.
“For what we are about to receive, may the Lord
make us truly thankful,” Mr. Munt called out in sonorous tones. “May He create in us humble gratitude for this nourishment, and may this fine meal strengthen our bodies that we may serve our Lord with greater steadfastness every day. Amen.”
“Wouldn’t that be grand,” the girl across from me muttered after we had repeated the closing word of the prayer. She had a thin, sallow face and limp ash-coloured hair.
“Oh, do hush, Fox, your efforts at humour are dreadful,” Taylor crooned snidely.
“Now!” Mr. Munt exclaimed. “The time has come for our daily Reckoning. I adjure you as I always do to be thorough, and above all truthful, for the narrow path to purity lies solely in confession. First, Miss Werwick reports that the advanced Latin class did miserably poorly on their surprise examination. Let them stand and explain themselves.”
A block of twenty or so girls rose, looking as if they had been asked to face the Spanish Inquisition.
“If you will not volunteer further information, it is my honour-bound duty to call upon you,” Vesalius Munt said reluctantly. “Please raise your hand if you were the highest scoring student in Miss Werwick’s class?”
An awkward older girl with a belly slightly wider than her hips and a queer shoulders-backwards posture lifted what resembled a flipper.
“I scored nineteen points out of twenty, sir,” she said tragically.
“And do you think you ought to escape punishment for your triumph, Robinson?” Mr. Munt persisted.
Robinson took a long pause. Her classmates regarded her as one might a crouching lion being sighted down a rifle barrel—frightened, threatened, still dangerous.
“Yes.” She set her teeth; the others flinched. “Yes, I think that earning so high a mark means I ought not to be punished.”
“Oh no,” whispered the lacklustre girl called Fox.