Orphans of Chaos tcc-1

by John C. Wright

  Even Miss Daw, the music teacher, was there, wearing her dress of blue chiffon set with ribbons of white and pale pink. Miss Daw, as I have said, is graceful and delicate, a creature of impeccable manners, with a voice as soft as the coo of a dove.

  She sat at the chair which was reserved for her, but which she almost never used, between Victor and Colin, and both the boys had subdued manners in her presence. She was eating a cold French soup, using a silver spoon so small it might have come from the place setting for a doll. She wore gloves at breakfast.

  We were not allowed to speak, except when spoken to, or to ask someone to pass us something. I was burning to ask the boys what had happened last night.

  From Quentin’s subdued posture, and Colin’s expression, which was a mix of sleepy annoyance and an I-told-you-so smirk, I assumed failure surrounded last night’s expedition. But whether they had made it to the Barrows, or been caught along the way, was not something I could ask them with our simple pass-the-whathaveyou code.

  Also, the cream was not on the table, so I could not ask for the cream, which was our code to ask if we were facing a punishment. If all were well, you poured the cream for the person who asked; if not, you spilled a little bit.

  I was waiting for breakfast to end, thinking there would be a moment of confusion while we queued up for our first lessons, and I could exchange a whisper or two with Victor and discover what happened. But even that hope was frustrated. Before breakfast ended, there came commotion at the door, and the Headmaster appeared.

  2.

  The Headmaster was dressed, as he nearly always was, in his full academic regalia. Above his suit of charcoal gray, he wore his flowing academic robes of black, trimmed with white ermine and dark blue velvet. Around his neck he wore a chain of office, from which depended a jeweled starburst. Down his back draped that silly scarf academicians wear, which they call a hood. His mortarboard was trimmed with ermine.

  I do not know how many schools in England still have their professors dress in robes. Headmaster Boggin, in addition to whatever duties he had as Headmaster (heading things, I suppose), taught Astronomy, Philosophy, and Theology. For Astronomy, we were allowed to dress as normal. For the other two classes, we had to don black robes of our own before lecture, no doubt to impress us with the gravity of the subject.

  Headmaster Boggin was broad at the shoulder and thick through the chest, like a wrestler or a blacksmith might be. His face was dark and weathered and craggy. His overhanging brow gave him a frown of stern command; yet the lines around his eyes and hook nose showed grave good humor.

  His hair was red and, unlike every other man I had ever seen, he wore it long, though tied with a black ribbon in a ponytail flowing down his back, like a pirate or a Chinese mandarin. He was clean-shaven, and the tiny reddish stubble from his imperfectly shaven jaw seemed to give a rough blush to his cheeks, as if he were in high spirits, or red-faced from some passionate exertion. His jaw was large and strong. The ghost of a little smile seemed always to be fading in and out of existence on his lips.

  With him were his secretary, a thin and gray hollow-cheeked man named Mr. Sprat, and his rough-looking sidekick, Daffyd ap Cymru, who dressed in brown leather. We had to call him by his last name; the grown-ups called him Taffy. He was supposed to be some sort of groundskeeper or gamekeeper or something for the estate. None of us could ever remember seeing him do a lick of work.

  When the Headmaster stepped suddenly through the door, with his two flunkies in tow, Dr. Fell rose to his feet and offered him his chair.

  “No need to stand on ceremony, Ananias,” said the Headmaster solemnly, while Mr. Sprat scuttled around to hold out the chair at the foot of the table for the Headmaster, and Mr. ap Cymru sauntered after, looking over the gathering as if trying to assess who might or might not be armed. When the Headmaster gathered his robes and sat, by some sleight of hand it seemed, he was now at the head of the table, and Dr. Fell was at the foot. Ap Cymru and Sprat took positions to either side of the Headmaster’s chair, like supporters on a coat of arms.

  “Please don’t allow me to disturb your normal routine,” the Headmaster intoned in a genial voice. His voice was a deep basso profundo, like a thunderhead talking. “I am sure whatever your normal breakfast table conversation might be, is suitable for me. Think of me as your guest.”

  No order was ever disobeyed so blatantly. Dr. Fell stared at the Headmaster without expression, like a machine on standby, awaiting further input. Mrs. Wren’s good humor had evaporated. She looked like a wild-eyed rabbit, petrified, and nibbled her toast with tiny bites. Even the cool Miss Daw seemed subdued, although, with Miss Daw, such a thing was hard to tell.

  A few minutes crawled by in frozen silence. The Headmaster asked for nothing more than a cup of coffee with cream: but it required three members of the Cook’s staff to come scurrying out of the kitchen to make sure all was in order. The Headmaster sipped the coffee and thanked the Cook, who backed out of the room, bowing and smiling.

  Well, I saw a chance. I cleared my throat and said, “Please pass the cream?” For the Cook’s man had brought a silver creamer in on its own plate, surrounded by chips of ice, for the Headmaster.

  Victor said, “Permit me…” and stood to reach for it.

  The Headmaster, however, picked up the creamer and, using his right hand to hold back the drapes of his left sleeve, leaned across the table toward me. He seemed to loom like an approaching thunderhead in my vision. I thought the distance too far, since there were two empty seats between us, but he leaned farther than I could guess, or the distance was less than I thought.

  “Ah, no; please permit me,” he said in a voice like a genial earthquake. “But, Miss Windrose, you seem to be drinking only orange juice this morning. This seems odd. For what particular purpose did you require the cream, Miss Windrose?”

  Every eye was now riveted on me. Time seemed to slow, get slower, and finally freeze, as everyone around the table—Mr. ap Cymru, Mr. Sprat, and the assistant Cook—all waited for me to say something.

  Across the table from me, a slow sneer of impatience was forming on Colin’s features. Evidently, he did not think it should be so terribly difficult to think of something clever to say. Impatience? Disgust, rather. He thought I was letting the group down.

  Whatever it was that was so obvious, I couldn’t think of it.

  Headmaster said, “Why did you want the cream again, Miss Windrose? Surely I am not to pour it over your kippers?”

  I sat in miserable silence.

  The Headmaster merely smiled, and said, “Here, well, why don’t you keep it near till your memory returns, then?”

  He set it down so abruptly on the tablecloth that a little cream slopped out onto the linen.

  “Oh dear,” he said, smiling, settling back into his chair like a mountain sinking into the sea. “It seems that did not go as planned. Well, fortunate for me that, as Headmaster, there is no one to punish me for my little slips, is there? Rank hath its privilege, as they say, what?” He looked around, as if expecting a polite laugh.

  No one laughed.

  “Very good,” he said, not one whit disturbed by this reception. He sipped his coffee, one sip, put it down in his saucer, and straightened up a little in his chair as if he were about to make an announcement.

  “Since we are all sharing breakfast together so comfortably, let me just say to all of you, staff and students alike, that this institution has a deep interest—I am tempted to say a crucial interest—in the upcoming meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors. Fundamental changes are in the offing. Fundamental changes. There should be no real cause for alarm. We can go about our daily business as we always have done—one big, happy family, dedicated to learning and improvement.

  “However, I would like to emphasize that we must put our best foot forward. Our institution here, is, I dare say, unique, and some of what goes on here may be subject to misinterpretation by certain less generous souls. But is there a way to less
en, may I say, mute, this threat?

  “Well, ladies, gentlemen, children, we have all been on this Earth for some years now, and I trust that we all know how to act. We all have high spirits; some of us have very interesting hobbies. But let us all dedicate ourselves, yes, dedicate, in keeping those high spirits and those unusual habits in their proper orbit.

  “I am speaking as much to the staff here as to the student body, for how our charges behave, is, ultimately, a reflection on the care with which we have carried out our duty.

  “Oh, I realize what some of you must be thinking…”

  Mrs. Wren turned pale as a sheet of paper when he said this…

  “…and I know what is in your hearts. You think that the students have grown now to an age where we can be a little more relaxed in the discharge of our duties, that we can encourage the young birds to fly, so to speak.

  “And you youngsters are no doubt thinking that you are as old and wise as can be, and have no more need of our guidance and instruction.

  “Well, such thoughts must be held in check. This institution does not look favorably upon any act of insubordination or impertinence, no matter who the originator might be. Especially now, at this crucial time, when the situation here—in which we have all been so comfortable for so long—may be in danger of upset.

  “Dedication is the key. As long as we are all, as a group, I dare say, as a family, dedicated to preserving a proper appearance before each other, before society, and before the rather important guests we are about to receive, then all will be well. I assume I can count upon all of you. Remember that whichever link in the chain proves to be weakest is the one that shall be broken first. Broken. This is the significant word here.”

  He stood, told us to return to our breakfast, and sailed out, Mr. ap Cymru and Mr. Sprat trailing in his wake.

  Victor and Quentin were staring with grave disquiet at the little puddle of cream the Headmaster had made upon the tablecloth. It did not seem as if all would be well after all.

  3.

  None of us had a chance to speak. At the end of the meal, Dr. Fell stood and told Vanity to go with him. The rest of us stayed in our places. A moment later, Mrs. Wren led Quentin from the room, and Miss Daw made the slightest possible sigh in her throat, which indicated she was waiting for one of the boys to hold her chair as she rose. Both Colin and Victor scrambled to their feet, and she gravely informed them that harpsichord practice was to be held early this day, and would they be so kind as to accompany her immediately?

  I was left alone at the table. Mr. ap Cymru came sauntering back into the room, both hands in his back pockets. He grinned down at me wolfishly. There was a toothpick hanging between his teeth, which wiggled up and down when he grinned.

  There was something in his eyes I didn’t like. I stared down at my knees, blushing.

  “Well, if it isn’t Miss Windrose, sitting pretty and all alone here at table.”

  That comment did not seem to call for a response, so I said nothing.

  “Here we are, Miss Windrose. I’ll let the devil take me if this fails to cheer you up. I know it made me laugh.”

  He put out his hand, but I did not reach for what he was offering. He snorted, and dropped a slip of paper on my empty plate. Without a word, he ambled out of the dining room. I do not know where he ate his breakfast. With Mr. Glum, I supposed.

  I opened the paper.

  The note read: “Report to the Headmaster’s office at 9:15 sharp. This note will excuse you from classes or other duties.”

  4.

  Headmaster’s office was on the highest floor of the West Wing, an area of the manor where we had almost never been. Mr. Sprat had an office filled with dark mahogany, with law books on heavy shelves. Double doors, with red leather tacked to their surfaces, led from Sprat’s office to the waiting room.

  Mr. Sprat merely nodded at me, and motioned toward the doors. The room beyond was empty of people. Tall wing-backed chairs of red plush faced a long divan of the same material across a coffee table made of a slab of green marble. There were trophy cases on two walls, filled with cups and plaques, and stuffed and mounted fish hanging high near the ceiling. Above the divan was a truly enormous swordfish.

  There were two narrow arrow slits between the trophy cases, letting thin slivers of light into the otherwise dark room. Frost coated the glass.

  I rubbed at the glass, leaving a white, hand-shaped streak of visibility in the blind surface. Snowflakes were falling onto the gray grass below, the first fall of the season. Silent, white, implacable. The world never looked so lonely.

  And there were two clocks, one to either side of the door leading to the inner office. They were half a second out of synch, so that one loud ticking noise seemed to be jumping back and forth between them; first one would tick, then the other would, then the first again, then the second again, in endless monotony. Both clocks were oblong, tall and thin, but were slightly wider in the upper half, before narrowing again at their crowns. I felt afraid of those clocks for a reason I could not name, a fear like none I had known since my days, as a little girl, before Colin made clowns out of the gargoyles in my room.

  As if my thought of him had summoned him, Colin stepped suddenly out from the inner office. Seeing me, he shut the door quickly behind him, before the Headmaster should know I was there.

  He hissed, “Mr. Headmaster, I was going to ask for the tea in a moment, but I wanted to be sure they did not take the cream away again. Tea.”

  I hissed back, “He knew.”

  “He guessed. Your deer-frozen-in-the-headlights act convinced him.”

  “What happened last night?”

  “Nothing. Quentin stood on a tombstone with a cape from the theater stores around his neck. He hopped up and down a few times. He said the air was embarrassed, and wouldn’t carry on when anyone was watching. What happened to you?”

  “Glum’s dog talked. It was going to catch us, but led Glum on a wild goose chase instead. The dog wants to be our friend when our star is in the ascendant. Oh, and Vanity can either bend space-time, or create secret passages at will. There’s crawl spaces behind the walls, and peepholes to watch us. Dr. Fell said His Highness is coming, and that this was never an orph…”

  The door swung open behind Colin, and there stood the Headmaster, tall and black in his robes. He had taken his pony-tail down. I had never seen him with his hair undone before. It fell to his shoulders in loose red ringlets. He looked like a picture of an ancient king. Or like a lion standing on its hind legs.

  There was such a dangerous glint in his eye that I was sure he was going to strike Colin down on the spot. But he merely nodded to the far door, saying to Colin, “That will do.”

  Colin looked at me, but could ask nothing further. So he shrugged and walked off.

  The Headmaster stepped back, making a grand gesture with his arm, so that the drapery of his sleeve filled the doorway for a moment, and then receded, like curtains being drawn before a play. “Miss Windrose, if you please.”

  His was a massive desk of oak. Behind the desk was a chair whose back reached all the way to the ceiling. The surface of the desk was entirely bare. The desk and the chair stood on a dais, which was covered with red carpet. Before the dais was a small uncomfortable chair of black wood. It sat on a floor of wood, which was harder and no doubt colder than the carpeted dais.

  Two framed paintings filled the wall behind him, one to either side of the chair. One showed a green mountain in the midst of the sea, atop which a walled city rose, with towers and colonnades. Above the island rose, even higher, a great wave poised to drown the city.

  The other painting showed a mariner tied to the mast of a ship, his face contorted with longing and agony, and, on the rocks past which they rowed, sat beautiful women with harps, their mouths wide with song.

  5.

  The Headmaster said, “I see you are observing the masterpieces. The one on the left depicts Atlantis. You are familiar with the myth? A virtuous p
eople under the leadership of the sea god Poseidon enacted laws, which they inscribed on a pillar of orichalchum in the center of their great public temple. But when, as time passed, they came to forget these laws, an angry Zeus called destruction down upon their greatness, and sank the island. He had cause to be angered, you see. All other laws are written by mortal legislators, who had only the wisdom of men to guide them; and human laws can be good or bad just as human men are good or bad. But the laws of the gods are the order of nature.

  “The painting here on the right shows Odysseus being tormented by the Sirens. Their song is so beautiful, you see, that anyone who hears it is enchanted. Fortunately, he had the wisdom to have his men lash him to the mast, since he knew he would not be able, just by his own effort, to exercise the self-control he would need. No doubt he was terrifically annoyed at those bonds at the time. No doubt he was glad of them later, once he had wits about him enough to see the danger of the Sirens’ song. They were cannibals, you see, and ate the flesh from the men they lured onto their reefs.

  “Or so the story goes. One must remember that, according to Homer, it was Nausicaa who found the shipwrecked Odysseus on the shores of the magical isle of the Phaeacians. The whole tale we think of as the travels of Odysseus, was nothing more than his report to Nausicaa’s father, the king of Phaeacia. Since he was the only survivor of his journey, there was no one to contradict him, was there? He may have learned more from the Sirens’ song than he admitted.”

  He folded his hands on the desk before him, and leaned his back against the carven back of his tall, tall chair.

  I was beginning to learn that when grown-ups drone on and on about something, they are driving at a point they don’t want to admit they are driving at.

  It was with a sense of wonder that I realized that such indirectness might be meant to spare my feelings. In other words, it was a sign of kindness, not cowardice. What cause could the Headmaster have to fear me? His expression was a friendly one.