Ottilie shook her head.
Stella started to say, ‘I have a —’ But she stopped. She had promised that she would keep Luna a secret. She bit her lip.
Fortunately, Agapanthus did not notice her hesitation, or wait for an answer, but went right on in an angry whisper, ‘I’ve got six sisters. Six.’ She counted on her fingers. ‘Rose, Violet, Lily, Hyacinth, Zinnia, Gardenia. Mother named us after flowers. She thought it would be picturesque. Mother is artistic.’ Agapanthus rolled her eyes. ‘But when I came along, of course, she had utterly exhausted all the flowers she could think of. So she just opened the flower book and shut her eyes and jabbed it with a pin. And the pin landed on Agapanthus. Which is idiotic, of course. It is an utterly dreadful name, don’t you think?’
‘Well, it could have been worse,’ said Stella, remembering her botany lessons with her cousins’ governess. ‘The pin might have landed on Toadflax. Or Hellebore.’
‘Or Sneezewort,’ whispered Ottilie.
‘Yes. Or Bogbean,’ agreed Agapanthus, pulling a face.
Stella and Ottilie giggled, and Agapanthus went on, ‘My sisters are all very old. Rose and Violet and Lily are married already. And Hyacinth and Zinnia and Gardenia are out, which means they look at dress patterns and have their hair curled and put lemon juice on their freckles to make them disappear, which does not work at all, by the way, and they go to dances so they can meet someone eligible and get married too. It’s utterly stupid. I shall never get married. Will you?’
Stella had never thought about getting married. ‘I don’t know,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I don’t —’
‘Silence, girls!’ They all jumped. Miss Mangan appeared in the doorway. Stella nearly swallowed her toffee. She pushed it to the side of her mouth with her tongue and hoped the mistress would not notice.
Miss Mangan stalked around the fat walrus. ‘What are you doing in here? I trust you are not wasting time with idle chatter. Show me your work.’ She held out her hand impatiently, took their sketchbooks and inspected their walrus drawings. Stella’s looked like a hairy potato with whiskers. Agapanthus had drawn the fur on her walrus with such force that it resembled a deranged pincushion. And Ottilie’s drawing was so tiny that it looked more like a garden slug than anything else.
‘Remarkably poor, indeed,’ said Miss Mangan. ‘There is considerable room for improvement.’
‘Yes, Miss Mangan,’ they said together, their voices slightly muffled because of the toffees.
‘Sketching is an elegant and unobjectionable occupation for a gentlewoman,’ Miss Mangan said. ‘Begin again.’ She stood over them, watching them work for several minutes. Then she sniffed and said, ‘In silence,’ and went away.
Agapanthus waited until Miss Mangan was gone, sucked the toffee and went on with her story, ‘Everyone in the family wanted me to be a boy, especially Father. I was his last hope, and I am a ghastly disappointment to him. He is always away in the city, because he cannot bear to look at me. And Mother lies on her divan all day. She is unwell with nerves and artistic notions.’ Agapanthus made an exasperated sound. ‘I knew school would be utterly dreadful. And it is, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Stella.
Ottilie started to say something, and then stopped. She took a breath and started again. ‘There was only M-Mother and me. Just the two of us together. And we were happy. We were. We had a little shop here in Wakestone. A locksmith shop. I helped mother in the shop, and she taught me my lessons. But then she went away —’ She hesitated and said in a tiny, miserable whisper, ‘Something dreadful happened. M-my mother is gone. And so now there is only me. I was sent to school, because there is nowhere else for me to go. I would run away, I think. If I was b-brave enough. And if there was somewhere for me to run away to. But there is nowhere.’ Her voice quavered. She sniffed, and a tear trickled down her face. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
Stella patted Ottilie’s arm. ‘I am sorry.’
‘That’s dreadful,’ said Agapanthus, frowning.
Stella said, ‘My mother is dead too, but she died when I was little. I don’t really remember her at all. But it won’t be so bad if we can be friends. We can look after each other, don’t you think?’
Ottilie sniffed again and nodded.
‘Of course we can,’ said Agapanthus. ‘Let’s shake on it.’ She put out her hand. Stella took hold of it, and after a moment, Ottilie did too. They gripped their three hands together.
‘Friends,’ said Stella.
‘Yes,’ said Agapanthus. ‘We should make a pact, don’t you think? We should swear on something.’ She looked around the room. ‘Let’s swear on the walrus.’ In an impressive voice, she said, ‘I swear on this fat walrus that we three will be true friends, and always help each other at this utterly horrible school.’
Stella giggled and repeated, ‘I swear on this fat walrus.’
Ottilie did not say anything, but she clutched their fingers tightly and gave them a tiny smile.
It was raining heavily by the time they left the museum, and they hurried back along the High Street, heads down, huddled in their coats, struggling against the icy wind, their boots slipping and sliding on the wet cobblestones.
Stella shivered as they trailed back into the cold classroom. The first afternoon lesson was Household Management. How to remove ink stains from velvet, tallow stains from ivory, Macassar oil stains from mother-of-pearl and blood stains from mahogany.
Stella stood beside her desk and waited for her turn to repeat the lesson. She supposed it was useful to learn about removing stains. Perhaps when she returned to live with the Aunts, they would be impressed with her new stain-removing abilities, and also with all the other things she was learning at school about fish knives and visiting cards and button holes, and they would be pleased with her.
She sighed. It seemed extremely unlikely. She glanced at Agapanthus, who was frowning, and Ottilie, who gave her a quick, nervous smile.
Certainly, school would be more bearable now she had two friends.
The classroom was freezing. Her toes felt like ice. She wriggled them inside her shoes, and behind her back she rubbed her cold fingers together.
There was a knock at the door. The Headmistress’s elderly, grim-faced maid stalked into the room and muttered something to Miss Mangan.
Miss Mangan looked up. ‘Ottilie Smith,’ she said. ‘Miss Garnet wishes to see you in her parlour.’
Everyone gasped and turned around to gape at Ottilie.
Ottilie gave a startled squeak. ‘M-me?’ she faltered. ‘But —’
‘Do not keep Miss Garnet waiting,’ said Miss Mangan.
Ottilie seemed to be frozen with fright. She glanced desperately at Stella and Agapanthus.
‘Ottilie,’ snapped Miss Mangan.
Ottilie swallowed, bobbed a curtsy, and then followed the maid out of the room.
Stella looked at Agapanthus.
‘Eyes front,’ said Miss Mangan.
Ottilie did not return during that lesson, or the next lesson, which was French Conversation with Mlle Roche (where they were learning how to make remarks about the weather), or during Preparation (where they were learning a long, sad poem by heart).
Stella sat at her desk and stared at her lesson book, but she could not concentrate on learning the sad poem, because she kept thinking about Ottilie. What was happening to her? Had someone found out about the sausages?
The poem was about a lady who was pining for a gentleman who had gone away. Every day, the lady sat underneath a drooping willow tree and cried. Her teardrops, and the leaves of the willow tree, fell into the river, where they mingled together and flowed towards the sea. Stella frowned at the poem. It was very long and dull, and impossible to learn, and surely it was quite pointless anyway, to just sit and cry into a river. If the lady wanted to find the gentleman so much, why did she not stop crying and go and look for him?
She read the first verse of the poem again and tried to commit it to memory,
without success.
Preparation dragged on and on. At last, the dressing bell rang, and they all closed their books and put them away in their desks, stood up, curtsied, and filed upstairs to wash and change for supper.
‘I hope she’s all right,’ whispered Stella to Agapanthus, as they climbed the stairs to the dormitory.
‘Of course she is,’ said Agapanthus, frowning.
But when they reached the dormitory, Ottilie’s bed was empty. Her blankets and sheets were folded up. The drawers of her dressing table were open, and the dormitory maid was packing her trunk.
Ottilie was gone.
Six
‘Where is she?’ gasped Stella. ‘What happened?’
The maid looked over her shoulder, and then whispered, ‘Her uncle sent for her, so he did.’
‘Her uncle?’ repeated Agapanthus.
‘He sent some men for her,’ said the maid. ‘I answered the door to them. Two of them, and one more waiting outside. The little girl didn’t want to go with them. She was up here in the dormitory, packing a little case, and all the time she was crying. She didn’t know them, she said. She didn’t want to go with them. Fair broke my heart. But then she went into Miss Garnet’s parlour, and when she came out again, she was as good as gold, so she was, and off she went with them, quiet as a mouse.’
‘Poor Ottilie,’ said Stella.
The maid shrugged cheerfully. She slammed the lid of the trunk and gave it a pat. ‘There, that’s done. It’s being called for after supper.’ She picked up the folded sheets and blanket. ‘It’s my evening off and my young man’s taking me to the Steam Fair, so he is. We’ll be going on the flying boats. And the merry-go-round. And there’s fireworks, later.’ She giggled and went away.
At supper, Stella and Agapanthus sat beside Ottilie’s empty place and ate in silence. Stella found it difficult to swallow, the dry bread stuck in her throat. She gulped a mouthful of water.
After supper, there was mending for an hour. Stella hated mending. She darned a little hole in the heel of her stocking, while Miss Mangan read another chapter of a dreary serial story from The Young Ladies’ Magazine and Moral Instructor. It was an extremely long, annoying story called ‘Florence in Fairyland’, about a little girl who was stolen away from her family by a bunch of elves because they admired her golden hair and blue eyes and her pretty ways. The elves took her down to fairyland, where she went to parties, drank flower nectar and danced with fairies and goblins and mice and birds and other wild creatures, and made eyes at a handsome fairy prince.
Stella stabbed her needle into her stocking. She disliked Florence intensely, and the more she heard about her, the more she disliked her. She glanced up, frowning, and met Agapanthus’s gaze. Agapanthus rolled her eyes and made a mocking, simpering face, and Stella had to bite her lip to stop herself from giggling.
The bedtime bell rang at last, and they stood up, sang the school song again, curtsied and filed up the back stairs. As they passed the door to Miss Garnet’s parlour, they heard voices coming from the entrance hall. Stella twitched Agapanthus’s sleeve, and they tiptoed along the passageway and peered down through the bannisters to see what was happening. Two men were carrying Ottilie’s trunk through the front door. Outside, the wheels of a waiting wagon gleamed red and yellow in the light of the street lamp. The men loaded the trunk onto the wagon, and the maid closed the door behind them.
Stella and Agapanthus trailed sadly up to the dormitory. As they were undressing for bed, Stella remembered something.
‘Ottilie never said anything about an uncle, did she? Just her and her mother, nobody else. And when her mother died, she was all alone. That’s what she said.’
‘Perhaps she didn’t know about him,’ whispered Agapanthus, as she pulled on her nightgown over her head. ‘And perhaps her uncle heard that her mother had died and found out where she was, so he sent for her.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Stella doubtfully.
But it was true that sometimes people had relations they did not know about. Stella had never heard of her cousins until she had been sent away to live with them, and she had been very happy at Wormwood Mire.
She hoped Ottilie was happy. Perhaps right now she was eating a hot supper, or was already tucked up in bed at her uncle’s house, sleeping peacefully.
‘I hope she is all right,’ she whispered.
‘She’s better off with her uncle, isn’t she?’ said Agapanthus decisively. ‘Better than being here.’
That night, Stella had another frightening dream. The pale creature was chasing her again, diving through the darkness. She ran as fast as she could, gasping for breath, but the creature was faster. It caught her, clasping her around her neck with its long, clammy fingers. She was pulled off her feet, into the air. She struggled and fought, but it was too strong, and she could not escape. Its fingers were as cold as ice, and its claws dug into her neck, tearing her skin.
Suddenly, a huge owl swooped down from the sky. The creature howled. It released Stella, and she fell to the ground. The creature leaped towards the bird. The owl dived. They came together with a clash and a scream. Stella held her breath as they struggled overhead, a blur of movement in the darkness, talons raking through the air, pale fingers clawing and scratching. There was a horrible, rending sound and a shriek.
The owl fell to the ground and lay still.
‘No!’ gasped Stella, her voice choking. ‘Gram! No!’
‘No crying,’ the owl whispered, right into her ear. ‘No crying.’
Stella woke up, gasping for air, shaking with sobs. The dormitory was quiet. Moonlight shone in through the window, a gleaming, misty light.
She sat up and hugged her arms tightly around her knees. She could still see the owl, lying so still. Mrs Spindleweed had been hurt. Badly hurt.
‘Luna,’ she whispered.
There was no answer.
Stella swallowed and wiped the tears from her face, then rubbed her neck, where the creature had grabbed her. She could feel the scratches on her skin, fading as she touched them.
‘Luna,’ she whispered again, her voice shaking.
She remembered the musical box. It was always comforting to hold it. She listened, in case Miss McCragg was clumping around nearby, but everything was silent and still. Cautiously, she climbed out of bed, tiptoed to the door and looked out. Nothing moved.
She crept along to the washroom, slipped inside the last stall and locked the door behind her. She pulled up the linoleum and lifted the floorboard, feeling around inside the cavity. Ottilie’s toy rabbit was gone, but the musical box was there. Stella clutched it and curled up on the floor. She stroked its smooth wood with shaking fingers. Her mother’s name, Patience, curved across the lid in silver letters, faintly gleaming in the darkness. A tiny silver star and a moon were hidden amongst the curling pattern of flowers and leaves that decorated the box.
Stella would have loved to wind up the musical box and listen to the tinkling tune, which reminded her of Luna singing. She hummed under her breath as the tears trickled down her cheeks.
She opened the musical box. Inside was a wooden doll, a little photograph, a strip of paper with a message on it and an owl feather. She took out the photograph. It was too dark to see the picture, but that didn’t matter, because she knew it by heart. Her mother, and herself and Luna, as tiny babies.
Stella picked up the owl feather and stroked it. She remembered Mrs Spindleweed saying, I’ve kept her safe, all this time. And I will now.
Stella had kept the promise she had given to Mrs Spindleweed. She had told nobody about her sister.
And now Mrs Spindleweed had tried to save Luna, and she had been hurt.
‘I’m sorry,’ Stella whispered to Luna in the darkness. ‘Is Mrs Spindleweed all right? Are you safe?’
Stella wished there was something she could do. But there was nothing.
She touched the little doll, and then picked up the strip of paper with the message written on it. Crossroads. Midnig
ht. I will wait. When they were little, her mother had taken Stella and Luna, and had gone to meet the writer of the note. But that night, their mother had died.
Stella ran her fingers along the paper. Had her father written it? Had he waited for them, at the crossroads, at midnight?
She knew nothing about her father. She did not even know his name. Who was he? And where was he? Was it from their father that she and Luna had inherited their strange ability to disappear? There was so much she didn’t know.
Her mother was dead, but perhaps her father was still alive.
She would love to find out.
Stella put all the things carefully back inside the musical box and closed the lid. She held the box again, for a moment, and then put it back into its hiding place. As she did, her fingers brushed against something. She felt around inside the cavity and found a folded piece of paper.
She unfolded it, but it was too dark to see properly. She unlocked the door of the lavatory and tiptoed to the window, where a faint beam of moonlight slanted in. She tilted the paper into the light. It was Ottilie’s tiny drawing of the fat walrus. It had been roughly torn from her sketchbook. Two words had been scribbled across the drawing. The words were shaky, but the pencil had been pressed so hard that in several places, it had made holes in the paper.
HELP ME.
Stella caught her breath.
Something touched her shoulder. She jumped and spun around. A pale figure was standing right beside her. She almost shrieked.
Agapanthus put a hand over Stella’s mouth. ‘Shhh. It’s only me. I couldn’t sleep,’ she whispered. ‘I saw you were gone. What are you doing?’
Stella passed her the note. ‘It’s from Ottilie,’ she said.
Agapanthus held the paper in the moonlight and read it. ‘HELP ME. That’s her walrus. Where did you find it?’
Stella showed her the hiding place behind the lavatory. ‘Something has happened to her,’ she whispered.
Wakestone Hall Page 4
