by Katie Lowe
‘If this were a horror movie, you’d be about to die,’ Robin said, breath hot against my cheek.
‘You bitch,’ I said, my heart thudding, as she bent double, gulping with laughter. ‘What was that for?’ The match burned out, singeing my fingers, and we stood, again, in the dark. She clicked a switch, and a torch lit the chamber in a bright, full beam.
Seeing me again, she leaned against the wall and resumed her hysterics.
‘Sorry,’ she said, as I began to laugh too (though perhaps with relief, rather than any sense of humour about the situation). ‘I just couldn’t resist.’
‘Well, thanks a lot. That’s at least a decade taken off the end of my life.’
‘See! That’s the spirit. I did you a favour. Die young, leave a beautiful corpse, blah blah blah.’ She looked me up and down, a split-second glance that made me immediately aware of my body, filling the narrow space. ‘Come on. Follow me.’ She paused. ‘Lift’s out of order, so we’ve got to walk.’
She swung the torch around to reveal a flight of steps leading upwards, some strange language etched on the ceiling and walls in faded, white chalk. Up we went, the darkness warped and flickering behind Robin’s silhouette, distorted by the light. After two flights, the floor beneath turned from stone to wood; our footsteps echoed loud and hollow, the occasional board wobbling or creaking underfoot in warning. Robin quickly disappeared ahead, her footsteps heavy above, leaving me feeling my way in the dark. I felt my way through turns in the stone staircase, keeping my balance with the wall; lit another match and looked up to see another five or six floors, the light fleeting in the draught that blew it swiftly out.
‘Violet?’ Robin’s voice rebounded sing-song down each flight, passing me by and continuing into the darkness below.
‘Yeah?’ I shouted back, taking a moment to steady my breath.
‘Come on, fat arse. Pick up the pace a bit.’ I winced, ashamed, and duly hurried, grateful that the darkness disguised my blush.
By the time I reached the top, I was giddy and breathless, all too aware of the altitude and my own horrifying lack of balance, the stairs having lost their railings two floors earlier. There was a horrifying void in the centre of the tower, down into the darkness of what I would later realize was the old elevator shaft, a fall into which one would be unlikely to survive.
In my exhaustion I stood for a moment, listening to the hiss and scratch of rats several floors below (and, I would soon discover, the flutter of bats in the belfry above). I steadied myself against the wall – a fortunate move, as the door swung open with a crack, a rush of warm air rushing into the cool stairwell.
‘Woman, get a move on,’ Robin said, grinning. She extended a hand, and I took it, feeling unsteady with vertigo as the darkness loomed below.
I stepped forward into the wide room, struck by the brightness from within. The moon was streaming silver through the four huge, white clock faces, each of which took up the best part of every wall. I heard my own gasp echo from the walls like a dull chant; above, the bells hummed as a gust of wind brushed by.
It was breathtaking, details clambering one after another: the Victorian chaise longues in faded brocade, piled high with jumbled papers and rolled-up sketches, painting and ink. The marble bird perched on a broad mahogany desk, surrounded by candles and strange, sober little dolls. Even now, decades later, the same trinkets line the walls; with every passing year, still more appear, lost, beautiful things that make the tower their home.
‘Hi, Violet,’ Grace said, not looking up from the book splayed open in front of her. Alex, sat beside her, gave a half-smile, waiting for me to catch my breath. I walked to the farthest clock face and looked out, shoulders level with the lowest point.
Outside, the campus shone lavish in the falling light of the moon winking above the trees. Beyond, the town glowed dull, and farther still the infinite black of the sea glittered as it met the sky. Several feet below, a raven swooped, disappearing into the darkness of the woodland beyond the school gates.
I turned away, struck with a sudden vertigo as my eyes followed it down, and walked a long, slow circuit of the room. I felt the other girls watching, waiting for me to speak. I picked up one object after another, as though only by touch could I make them real. A rag doll in a dirty gingham dress, eyes gouged, posed grotesquely on a stack of books; a vase of flowers which looked long dead but somehow retained their scent.
A comic mask and an infant’s dress, which left my fingers powdery white when I reached out to touch its silk and lace. A winged brass figure, too heavy to lift, though its base was the size of my palm; a blown-glass vase, faded grey and muddy with earth; four deer skulls, antlers broad and piercing, like outstretched hands.
‘Make yourself at home, why don’t you?’ Robin said, finally. She flopped down on the chaise longue, her feet in laddered tights resting on the table, drinking whisky from a bottle she’d tucked inside the lining of her blazer. She held it out to me. ‘Want some?’
‘No, thanks,’ I said, with a weak smile. I’d found the journey up the stairs harrowing enough. The prospect of making my way down while sober seemed impossible, let alone intoxicated.
With a jolt, a mechanism below rattled and shook, the elevator roaring into life. I glanced at Robin, and she shrugged. ‘I thought it was broken. Good exercise though, huh?’ I felt my cheeks burn, cruelly, and turned back to the shelves, running my fingers along the bruised white face of a porcelain doll.
A click of heels echoed on the flagstones outside. Another broad scrape of the door, a rush of cool air from the stairwell, whistling through the cracks in the brickwork, unsettled by the relentless tick-tick-tick. Annabel stood, tall and imposing in the doorway, two books slung under one arm. She looked at us, one by one, as though appraising each of us in turn; I felt exposed, somehow, as she looked at me, her brow furrowed for an almost imperceptible moment. At last she smiled, though her eyes were still flat and cold. ‘So we are five again at last,’ she said, softly. ‘Tea, anyone?’
‘Forgive me, if I may,’ she began, lowering herself into an armchair, legs crossed beneath her. ‘I would like to go over a couple of things we’ve already covered for the benefit of our new student. Is that okay with you ladies?’ She looked at Robin, Alex, and Grace, who nodded, mutely.
She turned to me, eyes bird-like, black and ringed with tan. ‘So, Violet, welcome to our little group.’ She smiled, the slightest of gaps between her front teeth, like tombstones in a graveyard; a warmth that seeped through my skin, a doll becoming real. ‘How much have the girls told you so far?’
‘Nothing. I mean, not yet,’ I said, glancing at Robin, who clicked her pen, and began sketching in the margins of her open book.
‘Good,’ Annabel said. She paused, blowing softly into her mug before taking a sip, looking at each of us as she did so. ‘We meet every Thursday, for two hours, at 6:15pm. You may schedule office hours with me, should you find yourself struggling with the work – but there is to be no mention of this class or discussion of our lessons beyond these four walls. Is that understood?’
I nodded. She smiled, eyes deathly and emotionless. ‘I assume you’re aware of the history of this school, no?’
I wondered why it was that I kept being asked this by tutors, and why each assumed I had some idea. ‘Some of it,’ I said, weakly.
‘I suppose we should start from the beginning,’ she said, placing her drink on the desk, steam rising hot. ‘This institution was founded in 1604, by Ms Margaret Boucher. Originally, it had only four students, all orphaned, or taken from parents who could not provide them with the due care they required. The Poor Law made it rather easier for Ms Boucher to do her work, since pauper children were given the opportunity to become apprentices. Naturally a formal girls’ school would have been something of a tricky prospect, since there were barely any schools for boys in the area as it was, but Ms Boucher was able to tell interested parties that she was simply offering something of a training academy for these
young women, teaching them the arts of good manners, etiquette, and the like.’
She pulled a pin from her hair, and turned it around in her fingers, a thin, white smudge of clay on the edge of her hand. ‘The reality, of course, was rather different. Ms Boucher had been something of a scholar, though of course there were few opportunities for a young educated woman to use this knowledge at the time. She loved the Greek and Roman tragedies; adored folk myths, studying them with an almost anthropological eye. She read plays and poetry, devouring whatever she could get her hands on, and regularly journeyed to London to see performances by Shakespeare and Marlowe, and others since forgotten. She spent three months in Italy, touring Florence and Rome, completely alone, purely to see the great works of Michelangelo and the other great Renaissance painters.
‘So, as you can imagine, she was hardly inclined to teach her students the importance of correct cutlery placement.’ She gave a wry smile; bit her lip, as though catching herself unguarded. ‘Soon enough, the school had sixty pupils, then a hundred; mothers would send their daughters here clutching forged notices of their parents’ deaths, in the hope that they might have a better life than the one which seemed their fate.’
The clouds above shifted and the moonlight began moving from the east clock face to the north.
‘But in 1615, the fashion for witch finding reached the area. Women were dragged from their beds and burned at the stake, or thrown into the sea bound and weighted with stones. Neighbours betrayed one another for the witch finders’ gold. So-called moral society ran amok, with endless accusations made in bad faith. Heaven help the woman who is perceived imperfect, or of unusual character … So I am sure you can imagine the outcome for Ms Boucher, whose school by this point was a source of envy and bitterness among those who believed women should be seen, and not heard. She was accused of occult magic, of summoning demons from the earth and teaching her pupils the wicked arts of witchcraft, and thus sentenced to death.’
She picked up the mug again, and, finding it cooler, began to drink, the silence thick between us. ‘That’s awful,’ I said, finally, willing her to go on.
‘You just wait,’ Robin interjected.
Annabel shot her a warning look. ‘What we know, however, is that her accusers – for their numerous faults – were not entirely wrong, though naturally, they did not know it. At the time, accusations of witchcraft could be based on seemingly anything. She was simply unlucky. A local farmer said she’d cursed his crops, spirits trailing through the fields, uprooting them from the earth. It was his word against hers, and of course, his won out.
‘But Ms Boucher did, in fact, have a rather involved interest in the occult. She knew the myths, the ancient rituals, the Greek mysteries, and Celtic spells, primarily as a scholar – but such knowledge comes with certain temptations. Why simply read about it, when you can experience it for yourself? And so, she had been known, on rare occasions, to attempt these rituals. As she experimented with the arts, her interest became one of almost scientific curiosity. As far as we know, however, before the trial, she had not had much luck.
‘The lore, then, goes as follows. The night before her execution, she invited four of her students, all sixteen years old, for a final dinner in the tower. Right here, in fact, in this very room.’ I felt an involuntary shudder, and looked at Grace, who offered a weak smile, apparently having experienced the same flicker of the past.
‘They ate dinner, sipped wine, talked of their studies. It was as though nothing were out of the ordinary, but that Ms Boucher was to die the next day. And then, at nine o’clock, Ms Boucher performed a ritual, and summoned the Erinyes: the Furies of ancient myth. They stood before the trembling girls, dressed in black sable, tall and regal; their hair writhed with snakes and fire, their fingers dripping blood. In their eyes, it was possible to see the very depths of the human soul, the darkest imaginable desires reflected back into the mind of the observer, irrevocable and sickening.
‘“Erinyes,” she said, “take these girls’ souls in your hands, and help them to protect this place. They will be your conduit, your intention made flesh; they will destroy the corrupt and murder the wicked, oh goddesses, if you will give to them your gifts.” And the Erinyes did. The Furies joined hands, and reached for the girls, who reached, trembling, back, trusting their teacher completely– though they were, understandably, terrified of the ghouls that stood before them. If only I could gain the same respect from my students,’ she added, with a wry smile. The four of us laughed, a nervous flicker. Alex and Grace exchanged a glance, and Robin stared intently at Annabel, pencil hovering just above the page.
‘The next day, she died, burned at the stake in the centre of the Quad, where the wych elm now stands. But as the fire burned, onlookers swore they saw three figures surrounding her, protecting her from the flames. Most of the children had been sequestered in their rooms, so as to avoid the horror taking place on the grounds of their school. You must remember that this was the only home many of them had ever known and Ms Boucher had become their protector in the absence of their own mothers; the one who saved them from their intended fate.
‘But the four girls sat here, in the tower, and watched the burning. And they vowed, among themselves, to avenge the evils of men, the force of the Erinyes resting in their souls.’ She paused, and leaned slowly forwards, her eyes fixed on mine. She held my gaze until I looked away, and laughed, a soft, low sound. ‘That’s all myth, of course. But it does make a very good story. And the basic facts are true.’
I looked up. ‘Which facts?’
She smiled again, curling her fingers around a black pendant that hung around her neck. ‘That a society was founded the night before Ms Boucher’s execution. A society which continues to this day, and of which you four, now, are our newest members. I was a member, as was Alex’s mother; there are other names you would no doubt recognize, but as we keep each other’s secrets, I will not be providing you with a who’s who. The information reveals itself naturally, if required.’
‘And you do … magic.’
Annabel laughed. ‘Oh, heavens no. Some of our members do enjoy practising the old rites and rituals for fun, from time to time – but all that is simply our society’s mythology, a tale that makes the telling a little more fun.’ She folded her hands in her lap, nail imprinting knuckle. ‘What we do in this class, however, is discuss the history of the great women of art and literature, the joys of aesthetic experience – things forgotten these days, abandoned in the curriculum. We teach, essentially, the things Ms Boucher would have wanted, out of respect for her knowledge and love of learning.’
A dull pang of disappointment rose in my stomach, and settled. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But why us?’
Her eyes were pool-dark. ‘Why not you?’
‘I … I don’t know.’ I felt the other girls watching, the air suddenly close between us. After a seemingly interminable silence, Annabel shuffled in her seat, and pulled a book from the table beside her.
‘Shall we continue where we left off?’ she said, turning to the other girls. It was as though I weren’t there, and never had been. Robin gave me a sympathetic glance as she spread her book, and Annabel began to read. The clock’s black hands clicked onwards. ‘So the women had great power,’ I scratched aimlessly in my notebook, writing rote, unsure to which text, or to which women, she was referring, ‘but it came with quite a cost.’
It was that soft, still hour unique to autumn evenings, when the ember smell of bonfires mixes with the salty breath of the sea, and the leaves stop falling for a moment, as though afraid. Pylons stalked above the fields on tip-toe, the only sound our footsteps crunching leaves into the tarmac, damp from the brief shower that had rattled the clock faces while Annabel watched us leave.
At the foot of the stairs, Robin had lit a cigarette, and passed it to me. We stood under the arches, smoking in silence as we waited for the girls to follow, footsteps echoing faint circles far above. When they emerged at last, I followed the t
hree of them down the long driveway, towards (I assumed) the bus stop. I paused to look at the faded timetable, and Robin turned back, brows arched in confusion.
‘Aren’t you coming?’ she said, glancing at Alex and Grace just behind.
‘Where?’ I said, feeling a swell of delight. Stay cool, I told myself, as though I knew what that meant.
‘Church,’ she replied, palms upturned like it was obvious.
So we had walked, through the empty fields, under the old bridge; hopped over railway tracks and badger setts underfoot. Into the woods, brambles snagging ankles and exposed wrists, creatures crawling overhead and rustling through the dead leaves. Robin led the way, whistling a song I felt I knew but couldn’t place, while Alex and Grace whispered, hands clasped tight.
At the edge of the woods, we came to an abrupt stop. The grass bank led down to the train tracks, wires whipping overhead: the mainline, the route out of town, to London, and onwards to the rest of the world. Beyond the tracks, a fence tied with faded plastic flowers in memory of a name long washed away, and behind that the old church in silhouette against the moon. Robin kicked the grass below, and sat facing the tracks. She looked up, and patted the ground beside her. ‘We’re early,’ she said, as I sat down.
I recognized the bottle of wine she pulled from her bag. It was cheap, and potent, and empty bottles of it lined the kitchen, leaving red rings on the counter that neither my mum nor I ever thought to clean. Robin clicked the screw cap, took a long swig, and passed the bottle behind me to Grace, who did the same. Alex, too, took a sip, before passing it to me.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Drink up.’