Chapter 30
Isabelle was disturbed by the sound of the door behind her clicking closed; she hadn’t heard it open. She turned away from the stack of seventh-year reports to investigate the intrusion, and stared in open astonishment at the young woman standing by the door.
“Eleanor?”
Eleanor nodded but said nothing, waiting as Isabelle’s reactions played across her face. She’d aged dramatically over the last few years, her auburn hair had greyed and her face was creased with wrinkles that had been mere laughter lines when Eleanor had left school. It didn’t take long for her to compose herself again – long years of experience in the school had given her practice at dealing with surprises in many forms.
“I’d ask how you got in here, but I probably don’t need to.”
“I always did take after my father,” Eleanor said. “However much you may have wished I wouldn’t.”
Isabelle took a deep breath. “So. You know all that.”
“I know his version.”
“I doubt he’d lie to you.”
“No.”
“You’ve followed your father’s path completely, then? I had my suspicions when you refused your assignment, of course, but... well, that didn’t seem like a good time to talk about it.”
Eleanor picked up a chair and moved to sit alongside her mother. “Can we be honest with one another now?”
“I’d like that.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
“If you thought about it, you wouldn’t need to ask that.”
“You kept me in your school. Wasn’t that breaking a dozen laws already?”
“I wasn’t the headmistress when I had you, just a young art teacher. I only needed a couple of friends to cover for me.”
“Even so. You could have trusted me.”
“I wanted to – every day I wanted to – but I couldn’t.” Isabelle’s eyes were moist with tears. “I was already breaking all the rules by keeping you in my sight. And if the school had done its job properly and persuaded you that your first loyalty was to the Empire, then you shouldn’t have wanted to know. Far better you grew up like everyone else. No child wants to be marked out as different, even if it’s just in her head.”
“I was always different.”
Isabelle stared at her hands for a long moment’s silence. Eleanor watched her, waiting for this new relationship to start to make sense. She could see an echo of her own decision in her mother’s actions – but she’d make sure the younger Isabelle would always know her heritage.
“Can you forgive me?” Isabelle asked at last.
“I can try,” Eleanor said.
“But that’s not why you came here.”
“I have a daughter too. She’s called Isabelle, after you. I wanted her to meet you.”
“Surely you didn’t come all this way just for that. Not the way things are out there.”
“She’s been living with us, but the revolutionary life isn’t right for a child.”
“Ah.” Isabelle nodded her understanding. “So now you want to give her up?”
“Of course I don’t want to.” Eleanor dabbed with her sleeve at the corners of her eyes. “It’s breaking my heart just thinking about it.”
“But you will.”
“I know it’s better than watching her be unhappy and in danger all her life. The schools should be safe from all this nonsense, shouldn’t they?”
“We can only hope so.”
“I didn’t know where else to come. Will you take her?”
“I’d love to, of course, but how old is she?”
“A year and a quarter, more or less.”
“With no assessment records? It’s going to look very suspicious.”
“Does the school keep copies of all the girls’ assessments?”
“Of the tests, yes.”
“You need to get me copies of a complete set for a girl Isabelle’s age. I’ll make you a new set for your records, and I’ll see to it that a copy is inserted into the appropriate files at the College. Then we just need to force a change of assessor for Mersioc, and no-one will be any the wiser.”
“Except for my staff, and her new classmates.”
“The girls won’t remember in a year or two. I don’t remember anything from that age.”
“Maybe, but the staff will. You’re asking me to make a lot of people complicit in your crime, Eleanor.”
“You probably made a few of them complicit in yours. The point is, she’s family. Your own granddaughter. You can’t condemn her for my mistakes.”
“No, you’re right. I can’t.” Isabelle nodded. “Bring her, then, as soon as you’re able. We’ll work something out with the records.”
“I can bring her today,” Eleanor said. “We’re camping out in the forest.”
Isabelle glanced out of the window, and smiled. “You always did like that forest.”
“You have no idea. So, you’ll get me some papers to copy? Probably best to do this as quickly as we can.”
“I’ll go to the records office now,” Isabelle said. “Meet me back here once you’ve fetched your daughter.”
Eleanor took a more direct route out of the school, ignoring the curious glances of the few girls who were playing on the lawns, and disappeared into the forest.
“And?” Raf asked when she dropped down into the cave. “Did she agree?”
Eleanor nodded. “Yes. Bella, are you ready?”
“What ready?”
“To go to school.”
Isabelle chewed her lip, then shook her head. “No mamma. No no no.”
“Bella, sweetie, we have to do this.”
“Why?”
“You’ll have fun,” Raf said, dropping down to his knees to face Isabelle at her own level. “I loved my time at school. You’ll have chance to learn more and more about whatever you’re interested in, and you get to try all sorts of different things.”
“No,” Isabelle repeated.
“It’s better than being stuck with whatever your parents happen to be good at, isn’t it?”
Isabelle wrapped both arms tightly around Eleanor’s legs and squeezed her eyes closed.
“You won’t be on your own, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” Eleanor said. “There’s a whole school full of other girls to keep you company.”
“Daddy?” Isabelle asked, looking round. “Marty?”
“Bella, we’ve had this discussion.” Eleanor smoothed her daughter’s hair. “Daddy’s working right now. We’ll come and see you as soon as things are a bit more settled, but now I need to take you to the school.”
“No.”
“Come with me now, and if you really don’t like it we can come back, okay?”
She took Isabelle’s hand and led her to the mouth of the cave.
“Do you want a hand?” Raf asked.
“I think we’ll be all right. Bella, sweetie, get on my back and hold on tightly, okay?”
“Okay.”
Eleanor knelt down so that Isabelle could climb up. “I really mean it about holding on. Put your arms round my neck and hold really tight. Don’t let go for anything.”
“Okay.”
With the child’s weight heavy against her back, Eleanor stepped across to her usual foothold at the side of the cave and began to climb the rock face. She tried to climb quickly despite the extra weight, knowing she’d never feel entirely comfortable with trusting Isabelle’s safety to the child’s own grip.
She knelt at the top of the cliff to let Isabelle down to the ground, but the girl kept her arms wrapped tightly around her neck.
“Fine, stay up there if you like.”
Eleanor got to her feet again and started to walk down the most gentle route she knew between the trees. As they neared the edge of the forest, though, she stopped again and lifted Isabelle to the ground. They walked hand in hand towards the school, attracting suspicious glances from groups of girls who pretended they hadn’t been looking the moment Elea
nor turned towards them. Eleanor led the way straight back to the headmistress’s office, where Isabelle was waiting for them.
“Isabelle, meet Isabelle,” Eleanor said. “Bella, this is your new headmistress.”
The younger Isabelle buried her face in her mother’s legs and refused to speak while the elder one watched, looking faintly amused.
“Isabelle,” the headmistress said softly, touching the child on her shoulder. “Would you like to come and see your new bedroom?”
The girl shook her head, face still hidden.
“Well, would you like me to fetch your new classmates?”
“No.”
“She’s not usually like this,” Eleanor said. “But we’re not having a good day, are we, Bella?”
She prised the girl away from her legs and picked her up. Sitting on her mother’s hip, Isabelle leaned her head against Eleanor’s shoulder and sucked on the collar of her tunic.
“You’re behaving like a baby,” Eleanor said. “And I know you can be a big girl when you want to be.”
“No.”
“Suit yourself, then.” Eleanor turned back to the headmistress. “Did you find me those forms?”
Isabelle handed her a small sheaf of papers and she read them quickly, recognising the style of the pages from the files Lucille had loaned to her in the past, although she’d never paid much attention to the early questions. She was pretty sure she could represent Isabelle’s development fairly, and they could administer the most recent tests for real.
“I’m going to need to put you down, sweetheart.” She lifted the reluctant Isabelle to the floor. “Sorry, but mamma needs to do this for you.”
The elder Isabelle found a couple of wooden toys for her young namesake, and the child sat on the floor to play while the adults considered her paperwork. Eleanor took a blank sheet of paper and started to construct the record, starting with things she was sure of like the age Isabelle had been when she’d taken her first steps and spoken her first words. For other, subtler milestones she had to guess: she hadn’t been paying much attention to when the child first sat up on her own, or responded to her name, or put a strange object into her mouth.
“This must be really hard,” she said. “You have to watch out for a lot of things.”
“That’s almost all we do for the first couple of years,” Isabelle said. “It’s easy enough to note something down when it happens.”
“But with a whole group of babies...”
“There’s always something to write down, yes. But we’re specialists, just like you are.”
“Of course.” Eleanor turned back to the papers. “How am I supposed to know which of these tests she would have passed in the first year battery?”
“The traditional way is to enroll her before that age and let us do the tests,” Isabelle said dryly. “But since you missed that boat, I suppose you’ll have to guess. Which ones are you looking at?”
“They look like fairly elementary reasoning.”
“Almost nothing is elementary to a toddler.”
“Working out which box a toy is in – that’s pretty simple.”
“How often do you get impatient with her when she looks in the wrong place for something? That’s a clue.”
“And this one, testing whether she eats a cake – that’s just bizarre.”
“It’s an important test, it measures a child’s understanding of delayed gratification. But at one year old, she’d definitely fail.”
“Definitely?”
“Most girls don’t pass until they’re five or six, sometimes even older.”
“Then why test so early?”
“You have to have something to identify the kids who are years ahead of their peers. There won’t be many, but it’s important to find them.”
“Bella’s very smart, but she’s a bit clumsy,” Eleanor said as she considered the questions.
“She strikes me as a fairly normal toddler,” Isabelle said. “Which is precisely what you want at this stage. An exceptional record would stand out too much, with what you’re trying to do.”
“You’re right, of course.”
“So don’t try too hard to make it right. Worry more about making it normal – if she starts to excel as she gets older, that’s great, and it can be handled then.”
Eleanor made a few more notes, then looked up. “Do you promise me you won’t interfere?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Laban told me it was you who steered me away from the subjects I enjoyed. I couldn’t bear to see that happen to Bella.”
Isabelle flushed. “I tried to keep you safe, that’s all. I hoped you’d find something you enjoyed that didn’t involve risking your life every day. But I realise that was wrong for you.”
“It was never your job to shelter me.”
“No.”
“So will you promise me you won’t try anything like that with Bella? Even if, some day in the future, she seems to take after me?”
“I promise.”
“I don’t think she will. I don’t think she’s like me – that’s part of the problem. She’s too clumsy to live out in the rebel districts.”
“Eleanor, she’s one year old. At that age anyone can be forgiven a little clumsiness.”
“Forgiven, yes, but it’s impractical.” She glanced towards the window. “Out there, when there’s a war going on. Wars aren’t designed for children.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll look after her.”
“I’d like to show her round before I go,” Eleanor said. “I’ll bring her back here.”
She took Isabelle’s hand and led her down the stairs and through a couple of quiet corridors to her old dormitory. She knocked at the door, but wasn’t surprised when no-one answered. It was the middle of the day; the girls were in classes, or playing outside. She pushed the door open and lifted Isabelle over the threshold.
“This used to be my room,” she said. “I slept in that bed, just there.”
“Mine?” Isabelle asked.
“No, sweetheart, there’s another girl living here now. But I can show you where you’ll be sleeping, if you like.”
“Okay.”
The headmistress had given Eleanor directions to an unfamiliar corridor, but she found the room without difficulty. A large number seven hung in the middle of the door. Again she knocked, and again the room was empty; this one was a nursery room, with cots for ten girls and a bed for the teacher who’d stay with them overnight.
After a brief tour of the buildings, taking in the dining hall and a couple of classrooms, Eleanor took her daughter back to Isabelle’s office.
“I made a copy of Bella’s file,” Isabelle said, handing the papers across. “If you really can get these into the right branch of the College, that would help.”
“Dashfort, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll do it tomorrow. They’ll never know the difference.”
Isabelle bent down to take her young namesake’s hand. “Bella, are you ready to come and meet your new friends?”
“No,” she said, but the fight was gone from her voice, and she even smiled when Isabelle handed her a doll.
Eleanor kissed her daughter’s cheek, and stood to let herself out. “I’ll come and visit you as soon as it’s safe,” she said. “But right now, it’s not safe for you to be seen with me.”
Revolution (Chronicles of Charanthe #2) Page 79