by Lyndsay Faye
“Well, that won’t go at all well,” Taylor echoed in a singsong fashion, though she sounded more intrigued than appalled.
“What—” I began.
“Enid Robinson,” Mr. Munt boomed, his facial creases deepening to holy fissures, “do you think that vanity relieves you from the shame of having failed to assist your fellows?”
Robinson jerked, a hare caught in a trap. “No, sir.”
“Perhaps you imagine that worldly accomplishments will cause God to overlook the sin of self-satisfaction?”
Perhaps Robinson meant to reply to this last, but she was prevented.
“An example must be made!” Mr. Munt’s soldierly command rang through the hall, and his ever-roving grey eyes glinted. “Robinson, please lead the queue of girls being punished for Latin infractions and waste no time about it—in addition, you can replace luncheon with prayer in the chapel for the following fortnight.”
Robinson paled but ducked her chin. I watched as the hapless Latin students picked up their bowls and carried them to the cauldron; one by one, they dumped the stew back into the vat. They then strode out of the dining hall.
This, I thought, is very much worse than I supposed.
Suddenly several hands shot into the air, a giddy springtime of sprouting fingers. They seemed to belong to the most peakish of the girls, the ones on whom I would not have laid money should they challenge a dandelion to a duel.
“Clarke,” Vesalius Munt called out gladly. “Yes, go on, my dear—lean on Allen there, you seem fatigued, though you deserve no less for having stolen from the poorest of God’s servants.”
Rebecca Clarke, who only managed to pull herself to a standing position by means of the better-fed Allen, raised her leaf-green eyes. Several teachers (including Miss Werwick) stared on with pleasure as if this were some grotesque circus, whilst others (including Miss Lilyvale) concentrated all their attention upon ceiling beams and bootlaces.
I had not been mistaken in my hazy examination of Clarke—she was no more than seven years old if she was a day, and affecting an uncanny look of forced piety, the one I suppose scientists adopted when strapped to a stake and asked whether or not the Earth was flat.
“What happens if you refuse to throw your supper away?” I whispered, horrified.
“Hsst.” Fox shot me a jaundiced glance of warning.
“Clarke, allow your natural urge towards repentance guide you.” Mr. Munt’s eyes roved, hither and thither, tinsel glints seeking out his victim’s victim; I knew who was to be led to the chopping block and felt a contrary surge of pride.
“Poor little mouse has been on a diet of water and brimstone for four entire days now, after the larder raid,” Taylor explained, sounding bored.
“The new girl,” Clarke’s tiny voice called. “Please don’t punish her, for I hardly know her name. Steele, I think, and she was very tired, as she only arrived today. Miss Lilyvale told her to say her prayers, and she … didn’t, sir. She fell asleep.”
Dozens upon dozens of eyes swept to me as I stood; Mr. Munt frowned happily, returning his attention to Clarke.
“You have redeemed yourself, my child!” he cried. “Clarke, you may eat.”
No wild dog ever set upon any limping deer’s frame as assiduously as Clarke attacked her stew. She had been reduced to pearly teeth and pink tongue and soiled fingers; I pitied the sight even as my stomach growled.
Miss Lilyvale, a red flag flying across her cheeks, pressed her palm against her stomach and refused to watch.
“Steele, please step forward. You shall not be punished in the usual way, as you are new,” Mr. Munt declared, “but you must learn the value we place here upon obedience.”
Stepping over the bench, I advanced towards the teachers’ table. Scuff, scuff, scuff went my shoes and thud, thud, thud went my heart as I advanced to be caned or set on a dunce’s stool or adorned with a chalkboard or have my hair shorn off.
Mr. Munt smiled as I approached. He extended his hands; Miss Lilyvale, I noted, turned a striking shade of caterpillar green as Vesalius Munt glanced back at her.
“Miss Lilyvale has of late begged me to embrace forgiveness alongside justice, and I hereby publicly grant her wish,” he declared.
Mr. Munt is in love with Miss Lilyvale, I thought feebly as his fingers gripped my still-bruised wrists. That cannot lead to good. Mr. Munt tugged me so hard that my knees struck the stone floor in front of him.
“You will not go without supper today, Steele,” Mr. Munt announced. “You will lead us in prayer instead, for I surmise that despite your reputation for wrongdoing you intended to mind Miss Lilyvale. Pray say what is in your heart, and your brothers and sisters in Christ shall pray alongside you.”
Mr. Munt’s eyes bored into me, silver picks illicitly nudging a lock open.
I stared back, thrilling with revulsion.
He is not satisfied unless we are complicit: he likes us responsible for our own abuse.
I recalled Cousin Edwin’s features, sweat-slick and satisfied, as he played what he thought was a game.
You’re every bit as bad as I am. You liked it.
Meanwhile, Mr. Munt’s request that I say what was in my heart was a deliberately humiliating one, for what girl on her knees before an authoritarian feels anything save the pooling of hot shame in her belly, alongside bitter resentment that she should be treated no better than a slave?
I felt these insults, reader, and I collected them, strung them like sand hardened into pearls, and I wore them, invisible; I wear them today.
“Our Father, who art in heaven,” I called out clearly with my eyes shut. The flagstone bit further into my knees when Mr. Munt gripped the top of my head as if blessing me. “You delivered me safely to the hands of these godly people, who want to stop the, ah, excesses of my nature. I’m so truly sorry that when Miss Lilyvale told me to pray I did not thank You for, um, her kindness and for Mr. Munt, whose attentions are so … thorough, and wise.”
The hand on my head like an iron halo shifted, running an approving thumb over the part in my hair before Mr. Munt pressed my brow into the muscle of his thigh; I could smell him, something faintly sweet like candle wax and tarry like cigar smoke. Stifling a revolted choking sound with a cough, I hastened on.
“Please, Lord, will You take pity on this poor sinner, and please will you grant Miss Lilyvale and Mr. Munt patience when dealing with my shortcomings, and, ah, please will You bless all Your beloved children at Lowan Bridge. Amen.”
The palm on my crown vanished, and the headmaster stepped back. Looking up, I found Mr. Munt wearing a blended expression: part feigned outward joy, part real inner perplexity, and a final ingredient I think surprised even him—recognition.
I’ve earned my bowl of supper, I thought, gazing up with a holy smile on my lips and a knife at the back of my teeth. Try to take it from me.
“Remarkable!” cried Mr. Munt, easily lifting me to my feet again. “Even the untamed, when moved by the Lord’s grace, can inspire an entire congregation with her example. Steele, you may return to your seat.”
I kept my head down as I stumbled on battered joints back down the gauntlet, but I stole glances at my classmates from behind the bars of my lashes. Clarke, who sat half-slumped over her empty bowl (by empty I do not mean finished, but rather as clean as if the touch of stew had never kissed this particular vessel), winked at me.
“Well,” Taylor huffed when my journey had ended, “I never.”
“Didn’t you?” I returned, and her pretty eyes narrowed sullenly.
“I never did, no.”
“Did you mean a word of that?” Fox whispered.
“Of course,” I lied, but I crossed my fingers upon the tabletop, and she granted me a brief smirk.
“That was either spectacular, or else the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever seen,” Taylor continued.
Can’t it be both? I thought, and I must have been delirious with the strain, for I belted out a laugh I covered with a sneezing fit.
Mr. Munt was calling on other girls now, ones who had been sentenced to diets like Clarke’s and were shattering like fine china; one by one, the Reckoning forced about half of those present to dump our meals.
“How is he allowed?” I mouthed.
“If any refuse, it’s two hours with him in his private office. God knows what happens inside—Fisher went, and would never speak of it afterwards. Anyway, it’s the best school for young ladies within fifty miles of London,” Fox muttered glumly. “It isn’t just the food; they’ve dozens of ways to make us mind them. Miss Martin gives you hours’ worth of lines to write, Miss James will actually ink your offence on your forehead, Miss Lilyvale is a great one for early bedtime—which sounds harmless but we’ve too many studies for it not to be awful—and Madame Archambault has a little rattan cane in her desk. A fortnight ago, Harper didn’t sit for three days.”
“None of that’s so bad,” sighed Taylor, her attention pinned to Mr. Munt, “by comparison.”
“No.” Fox picked at the skin edging her thumbnail. “It isn’t.”
“And that concludes our Reckoning for this evening!” Mr. Munt surveyed the room, finding no further quarry which tempted him. “I commend you for your diligence, children. Sit, and partake of God’s bounty.”
The stew was thick and sweet and savoury, chunks of carrot and potato and speckles of currants swimming alongside succulent mutton; we set upon it like the beasts Mr. Munt intended us to be.
“Have girls not asked their parents to lobby for Mr. Munt’s removal?” I asked Taylor.
She tossed her shapely round chin. “It’s quite hopeless, I’m afraid. Mr. Munt sells the leftovers at reduced rates to the manufactory men four miles from here, and what’s left he gives away at soup kitchens. He’s positively worshipped from here to London.”
“Is that why he said Clarke stole from the poor when she really stole from the larder?”
“Exactly,” murmured Fox. “She was the only one caught, caught with her arms full and pockets stuffed after lights-out no less, but they knew more were involved. These four days she’s been refusing to give him any names.”
“She must be very brave.”
Taylor snorted, reaching for another slice of bread. “Very silly, you mean. Clarke has never really been punished before; they wanted her for the raid because she could fit through the door for the barn cats. She’s new, only six, can memorise anything you put in front of her, perform terribly difficult figures—and from a very queer family. Literary, I think, God knows what sort of horrid people that entails.”
“Your parents are tradesmen,” Fox said with visible satisfaction.
“Your parents just sold half their estate, and you are a cow,” Taylor said sweetly.
“My parents are dead,” said I, “so I do hope to be friends with you all.”
“Hush this instant!” Taylor gasped.
“Thank you, no,” Fox mumbled.
“The instant you really detest anyone, by all means become friends with her,” Taylor sang with studied indifference. “When Mr. Munt sets you against each other, be sure to have picked someone you can outtalk, which I’m confident you can after that … display. Remember when he forced Abbott to tell him that Dunning had helped her study for the botany project?”
“Don’t.” Fox shivered dramatically.
“How about when Fiddick and Hooper giggled during Communion?”
“I’m trying to eat,” Fox complained, jabbing the air with her spoon.
“Mr. Munt just adores friends.” A pale blue tinge of melancholy had deepened Taylor’s tone. “Most of us know better.”
We finished the meal in silence. When I rose to depart with Taylor and glanced back at Mr. Munt, I saw that his attention was likewise on me—displaying reluctant approval tinged with the desire to run the new Thoroughbred through its paces.
If Edwin had not been so stupid, I thought as the knot of fear in my chest tightened, they would have been very much alike.
SEVEN
And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell: and for the first time it recoiled, baffled; and for the first time, glancing behind, on each side, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf: it felt the one point where it stood—the present; all the rest was formless cloud and vacant depth; and it shuddered at the thought of tottering, and plunging amid that chaos.
Some memoirs explain social hierarchies by means of illustrative anecdotes, but mine is about homicide, not ladies’ schools.
Four varieties of females attended Lowan Bridge. First, there were girls from wealthy untitled families (like Taylor) who were considered too gauche to deserve their fortunes and were being educated in hopes of finding a good position in a household of a higher class or becoming more easily marriageable. Second, there were girls from poor titled families (like Fox) who were expected to become governesses because their fathers had poured thousands of pounds into the gutter. Third, there were orphaned girls who had incurred the wrath of their moneyed relations (like myself) and were being gifted the privilege of becoming drudges on other people’s estates.
Finally, there was Becky Clarke, whose parents wanted her to attend school despite the fact they could afford to keep a tutor and a well-stocked library, and had said nothing to her of being a governess; and I have this anomaly to thank for the lesson that there is no accounting for taste.
“Are you feeling better?” I asked her when the bell rang next morn and the girls began to stir, for I had sensed her pensive eyes upon me since daybreak.
“Much,” Clarke chimed.
“I heard what happened and admired that you gave no one away.”
“When you’re half the size of everyone else, you take care not to offend.”
“Yes, but you’re very … noteworthy, for your age.”
“Can’t be helped,” she said in her high, absent way. “My parents say there’s no use in clapping a turtle shell on a parrot or gluing wings to a reptile. So they sent me here. That shan’t happen again if I can help it, singling you out at Reckoning.”
I thought of Mr. Munt’s strong hand on my head, my skin against his trouser leg, and thought, I’d not have liked that to happen to you in my place either.
“What I said about you was true, but saying it was dishonourable,” Clarke mused lightly, pulling a straw-hued strand of her hair through her fingers. “How beastly. I can’t bear dishonourable people.”
I was such an inappropriate addressee for this remark that I buried my face in my pillow and laughed heartily.
“Friends,” groaned Taylor. She kicked me with feet cold as snow, rolling out of bed. “I told you. Don’t bother.”
Donning my new uniform and pairing with my new bedmate as we walked to classes was of no interest other than the fact I was nearly dizzy with anxiety; a brief account of that first day, however, will fully acquaint the reader with my new life.
My first class was art, headed by Miss Constance Sheffleton, a timid silver-haired rabbit who would not have recognised discipline had it whipped her across the palms. Nevertheless, she knew where her bread was buttered, and proved it when she called tremulously, “Davies, you are here to sketch the bust, not contemplate the maple outside the window. Please inform Mr. Munt that I caught you idling.”
“Yes, Miss,” said a thin waif, and we winced, for this was clearly worse than any other punishment.
Following art was sewing lessons given by Miss Kitts. Ages were combined during class periods, but thence divided into circles appropriate to our ability; having been separated from Clarke, I asked her in high alarm what the matter was when we rejoined in the hall and I saw her doll’s mouth a-tremble.
“I was just feeling better and now I’m to miss luncheon, all over badly embroidering a pansy,” she confided, angrily swiping at the tears in her eyes. “I’m useless at stitchwork, my mind wanders so. What are decorative pansies to us, Steele?”
When I arri
ved at Latin, Miss Werwick briefly quizzed me, found me dismal, and bid me sit with the youngest girls, muttering happy imprecations about the amount of meals I should likely be forced to sacrifice. Never having studied Latin previous, I congratulated myself when at the end of the hour, I was explaining the lesson to the perplexed circumference, and Miss Werwick forgot herself far enough to frown at this development.
Midday dinner was allowed me, though it seemed a mere two thirds of the young ladies initially assembled the night before were present. Not seeing Taylor, I sat across from Fox, who fiddled with a piece of her already-greasy hair before saying, “Anything immediate?”
I swallowed hearty cabbage and pork broth, regarding her questioningly.
“It’s what we say,” Fox confided. “A code. To find out if anyone is … well, really in trouble.”
“Oh.” I set my spoon down, sobered. “Clarke isn’t here—an embroidery mishap.”
“I’ve an apple in my pillowcase,” Fox said matter-of-factly. “All’s well.”
This was the day I learnt that friendship need not be labelled as such in order to be a very similar thing indeed.
A combined history and geography course given by Miss Halifax followed dinner. She was a hatchet-faced woman with animated hands—but there was no harm in her, and her enthusiasm was engaging.
“Why, Steele, though you are not well-read regarding the Ottoman Empire, you ask exceedingly incisive questions,” she exclaimed. “You shall sit with the thirteen-year-olds and with Clarke here.”
Clarke, whose brilliance on all subjects, save that of rendering decorative flowering plants with thread, was the envy of the entire school, seemed strangely happy when I descended into the hard-backed chair beside her.
“Good, we can go over dates of battles before bedtimes,” she decreed lightly, adjusting the strange white cap we wore. “My parents are pacifists, the disgrace of our entire street, and when I arrived, I didn’t know a Cossack from a dragoon.”
“Of course. Anything immediate?” I asked, a shower of golden sparks prickling my skin as I did something illicit.
“Ha. No,” said Clarke, one cheek dimpling. “Thank you, indirectly, for the apple.”