“I suppose you’ll be asking me about the weather next,” Madeleine said, assuming a bored posture.
“Not if you don’t choose to discuss it,” Miss Amanda replied. “I thought we might have a few moments to get acquainted before I showed you to your room and introduced you to your
roommate.”
“Yes, Mother told me about that,’ Madeleine said. “I won’t have it. You may give me a room of my own.”
‘‘Miss Gentry,” Miss Amanda replied evenly, “that is impossible. All our pupils share rooms. They may switch between themselves occasionally as special friendships crop up and the friends wish to stay together; I encourage that. But as you are a member of an even number, there are companions enough for all. Rose Keating Adams has agreed to be yours. You should be pleased. Rose is a charming girl, and of very good family.”
A black servant girl brought in tea and arranged the tray on a table at Miss Amanda’s right hand. “Thank you, Emily,” Miss Amanda said, smiling at her. The girl bobbed a curtsey, and left.
“I hope we will at least have servants? I will require the services of a maid to help me dress in the mornings.”
“Early in the day,” Miss Amanda replied, “the house staff is engaged in preparing the morning meal and lighting fires throughout the house. If you should prefer to be dressed rather than fed and warmed, I am sure we can come to some arrangement. But I believe that if you approach your roommate in the spirit of cooperation, the two of you can do up one another’s laces.”
The schoolmistress had an answer for everything. Madeleine was cross, but decided to continue her air of boredom. “Very well, I would like to see my room.”
Miss Crafter smiled. The girl was not used to having her confrontational demands answered. “Follow me. Later, we will introduce you to your classmates.”
* * *
That afternoon, Madeleine joined the school for luncheon. Her seventeen classmates were seated at three wooden tables spread with plain white cloths. Each was presided over by one of the mistresses. At the table with the eldest girls there was an empty chair next to the tall one occupied by the mistress. As Miss Crafter led her toward her place, Madeleine walked with her head high, trying to conceal her nervousness. The girls stared at her, and whispered behind their hands, but she caught the gist of one murmur.
“She’s so pretty. Look at her hair.” Madeleine felt better after that.
“Girls, may I present Madeleine Gentry? She is our new pupil. I hope you will make her welcome.”
While they dined on their simple fare, the pupils pressed Madeleine with eager questions. Her prospective roommate, Rose Adams, was among the most curious. Rose had shiny black hair with purple and red highlights in it like a blackbird’s wing. She was not pretty, with her pinched-looking little nose and hooded eyes. Madeleine felt no competition from a face such as that She knew then that she would have no trouble becoming influential among these innocents. The ‘only thing which troubled her was the tedious prospect of schoolwork.
She had always been an indifferent student; never having found a reason to apply herself to her books. It showed embarrassingly, during the very first class in algebra the next afternoon.
The youngest student, Priscilla Townsend, kept looking around at the other students while she was calculating her assigned equation. Madeleine noticed that the others seemed eager to encourage her and smiled and nodded when the child met their eyes. In a flurry of mouse-colored braids and red cheeks, Priscilla rose to her feet and announced her solution.
“If x is two, then the answer is six,” she said. Miss Abigail smiled at her, and the other girls murmured their approbation. Priscilla was evidently the school pet. Madeleine was disgusted. The little girl, relieved at her triumph, flopped into her chair with a sigh.
“I feared I would never get that,” she said, very low. She felt Madeleine’s gaze upon her and tilted her head to meet it.
Madeleine sat back languorously. “Only a silly pipsqueak like you would think that it was important to get it.”
Miss Abigail, Miss Amanda Crafter’s younger sister, who was teaching the class, overheard that, and called upon her. “Madeleine, perhaps you would care to do the next sum?” She wiped the slate clean with the damp cloth hanging by a string from the easel, and scratched in a new line of numbers.
The girl perused the baffling equation on the slate, and made a vague attempt to reason it out. The style of the mathematical phrase looked familiar but not enough to give her a clue as to how it worked. She decided to guess. “The answer is eight.”
Miss’ Abigail hid a smile. “You did not need to work it out on your own slate?” she asked.
“No, of course not,” Madeleine said.
“Then it might surprise you to know that the correct answer is seventy, mightn’t it?”
“I don’t care,’“ Madeleine replied, in the same airy, disinterested tone. “I see no use for these equations in my future life. I will have servants to do that kind of calculation.”
“And what if you find your servants are cheating you?” asked Miss Abigail. “You won’t know how to tell.”
“They would not dare. My husband will take care of those details,” Madeleine said, with a proud toss of her head. There was a titter behind her, and Madeleine turned red. She vowed to track down the girl who laughed and make her sorry.
Reckoning for her own transgression was not long in coming. Miss Amanda Crafter was waiting for her outside the door of the classroom when the session broke up for tea. She took Madeleine’s arm in a friendly way, but Madeleine realized that the grip was sufficiently strong that she couldn’t break away if she chose.
“I have an assignment for you, Madeleine,” Miss Crafter said. Her voice sounded pleasant, but it did not match the disappointed expression on her face. She drew the girl into the sitting room and closed the door. “I won’t keep you from tea with the others. You will have some free time between French instruction and the time you should dress for dinner. I would like you to write an essay on the elements of friendship.”
Madeleine stared at her. Had she overheard her remarks to the class brat? It was impossible. The doors of the schoolroom fit tightly, and they had been closed the whole time. “An essay?” she repeated weakly.
“Yes, I think two pages would be sufficient.” It was evident that she did know all about it. Madeleine swallowed. Miss Crafter continued. “If you can’t apply any of your own experience to your thesis, I suggest you examine your surroundings for material. You may learn something.”
“It’s as if she has eyes in every cupboard and comer,” Madeleine grumbled, later on, when she and Rose were dressing for the evening meal. She had scrubbed the ink off her fine, white hands, and had noticed a spot on her cuff. There wasn’t time to see to it now.
“Sometimes it seems that way,” Rose admitted. “She hates a sneak, so none of us can guess how, with no one to tell her, she knows everything that goes on. One of the others suggested it must be black witchcraft. I pointed out that Miss Amanda wears a cross, which would burn her if she practiced evil. Perhaps there are speaking tubes in the walls?”
Rose was as unflappable in her own way as Miss Crafter, moving through her days with sunny tolerance. All of Madeleine’s attempts to make the Adams girl angry and move out of their shared room failed. She had even stolen the girl’s best and most prized embroidered shawl to wear to church on Sunday. Rose had noticed, but still would not react.
“You look very well in cream,” she had commented, arranging the folds higher on Madeleine’s neck for the best effect. Annoyed, Madeleine had contrived to dip the fringes of it into the morning coffee. Even that had raised no criticism from her roommate, who simply removed the stained fringes and added new ones.
“I made it, I can mend it,” Rose laughed, when Madeleine asked her about the change. After that, she left the other girl’s things
alone. There were more likely victims in the school.
The girls were expected to be in bed at nine. When the clock struck, the lights were extinguished by one of the servants; who went from room to room, giving one last warning to frenzied letter writers and young needlewomen with their arms full of mending to put their tools down for the night.
“No!” Madeleine shrieked as Emily descended on her lamp and turned it out. She was in the act of writing another letter of complaint to her father about her treatment at the school. She felt for the inkwell with her free hand to keep it from being knocked off the table, and rounded on the servant, who held a candle to see by.
“Relight that!” she demanded.
“Apologies, miss, but it’s time.”
“I’ll decide when it’s time. I’m not finished.”
Emily shook her head. “Rules, miss. Good night.” She fumed away, throwing her shadow huge and wavy on the wall “Am I supposed to undress in the dark?” Madeleine shouted. Rose, already in bed, threw back the covers and sat up.
“Come on, Madeleine. I’ll be maid to you. There’s a full moon to see by.”
“No. I wasn’t finished with my letter. I will see Miss Crafter,” Madeleine said, storming toward the door.
“You won’t find her,” Rose called after her.
“Why not?” Madeleine asked.
“At night, she’s never around. We hear her tiptoe away, and then we hear mysterious voices in the night,” Rose said, her voice vibrant with excitement. “We think she’s part of a secret society ... or something else.”
Madeleine’s mouth opened into the letter O. This smacked of wild tales told to her by her elder cousins, who had traveled to India and other strange places of the world. “Well, I will get to the bottom of this,” Madeleine said, sounding a little less sure. “But I won’t go to bed at nine like a child. At home, I’d just be getting ready for parties at this hour.”
“Oh, don’t! What if there is something going on?”
Rose’s words intrigued Madeleine. Mysterious voices in the night, tiptoeing away secretly ... Was she about to stumble into the midst of a coven with Miss Crafter as its chief witch? She’d heard that such people danced around fires naked—imagine! Madeleine tried to conceive of a fire blazing in the center of Miss Amanda’s neat sitting room, and people in their altogethers sitting around it sipping tea. The picture made her giggle nervously.
She crept down the steps, listening. The staircase seemed long and very narrow in the dark, almost as though the walls couldn’t wait to close in on her. A lone gas flame burned low in its sconce on the landing. Madeleine stood in its light for a moment as if gathering its energy to go on.
Towards the ground floor, she heard voices. They appeared to be chanting rhythmically together, though she couldn’t make out their words. Madeleine followed the sound all the way down. It led her to the door of Miss Crafter’s sitting room.
Daringly, Madeleine grasped the door handle. It felt reassuringly ordinary. The, smooth bite of its cold, smooth surface gave her the jolt she needed to turn it and push the door open.
There were a lot of people in the room, but disappointingly they were all fully clad, and the flicker of flame came from gaslights and a small fire in the grate, not a bonfire. Gradually, Madeleine realized that all except for Miss Crafter, who was standing beside the fire pointing at a slate, they were black. Surprised at the interruption, they turned to look at her, their eyes rounded, showing the whites around the irises. She saw that every pair of them held a book between them. The voice she had heard was the cook’s assistant, Leah, reading aloud a poem by Lord Byron. Miss Crafter turned to confront Madeleine’s accusing glare.
“You’re teaching slaves to read?” the girl demanded, outraged.
“Ladies, that is all for tonight,” Miss Crafter said, turning back to the group. Immediately, the servants rose and began to move the chairs away from the fire. Miss Crafter rounded on Madeleine. “I see that it is past nine o’clock. What are you doing still awake?”
“What are you doing?” Madeleine retorted. “Teaching black slaves to read. Ha! I would almost rather that you were practicing sorcery.”
Miss Crafter’s lips pressed together and tightened into a white line. “For your information, they are all free women. They work for their education, prizing it above fancy clothes and a life of ease. Every one of those girls knows more Latin than you do. They apply themselves. They ask questions when they do not know something. They are interested, which makes them students any teacher would prize. They pay in the only coin they have, their work, while you do not even show appreciation for the instruction you receive. Goodness knows why you feel education is worthless to you.”
For a moment, Madeleine wondered if the teacher had it in mind to sentence her to corporal punishment. She was justified: Madeleine had broken the rules rather flagrantly. The pointer she held would leave painful strokes on the palm or back of one’s hand. The same idea must have occurred at the same time to Miss Crafter, but she rejected it. She put the stick firmly away from her. It was the first time Madeleine had seen Miss Crafter become excited, and she wondered if she had found a vulnerable crack in the imperturbable headmistress’s exterior. Could this be used for blackmail? No, even better, Madeleine decided. Even better than blackmail: liberty.
“Well?” Rose’s voice hissed at her across the darkness.
Madeleine was at last in bed, marched up the stairs and assisted to undress by Miss Crafter herself. “What did you find?”
In a hushed whisper, Madeleine began to narrate her adventure, detailing the chanting noise, and creeping up to clasp the door handle.
“Ooh! You’re a brave one.” Rose gasped. “I would have died of fear!”
“And I turned the handle, and pushed open the door ...”
“Yes?”
“And there was Miss Crafter ...”
“Yes?” breathlessly.
“Teaching the servants to read poetry!” Madeleine concluded, her voice rising. Hastily, she clapped her hand over her mouth.
Rose giggled in the dark. “Really?”
“Cross my heart. Can you imagine?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Rose wanted to know.
“What a waste of time!”
“No, it’s not.” Rose quickly changed the subject. “None of us others would have dared go down to see where the voices were coming from. I think you might be quite mad. That’s what we’ll call you. Mad Madeleine!”
Madeleine protested, but privately, she was pleased. When the others heard the tale, they picked up on the nickname, praising her courage. She didn’t mind at all. It meant they thought her daring beyond any of their ken.
She meant to be more daring yet. Miss Crafter’s all-seeing eye appeared to be shuttered while she was teaching her night class. Mrs. Madison, the wife of the new President, was to be honored at a party held by Madeleine’s aunt two days hence. Madeleine had an invitation card.
That night, when the lights were down, and her roommate was safely asleep, Madeleine rose from her bed. She had purposely left her cupboard door ajar, so it made no noise when she opened it and took out her party dress. She stole out into the hall with the dress bundled in her arms to keep the crisp silk skirts from rustling. In the cupboard under the stairwell, she dressed swiftly, and wrapped herself in a dark cape. When she tiptoed past the parlor door with her shoes in her hand, she heard the respectful voice of Emily reciting a Latin poem. Madeleine recognized it as the same one she herself had botched badly only that afternoon. She felt the urge to burst in on the lesson and cause a disturbance, but it would curtail the fun she was planning to have elsewhere.
Her great-aunt’s house was only a few streets away. The card, which Madeleine kept in her hand the entire walk, had been kept hidden from all eyes underneath her lace box. She didn’t want Miss Crafter to know about it
, since she would surely tell Madeleine’s father, who disapproved of his aunt’s parties, considering them to be filled with louts and coquettes. It was unlikely that he would be there, even for the honor of meeting Mrs. Madison, so Madeleine felt she would be safe from discovery.
The party went on until four o’clock in the morning. Madeleine had two glasses of champagne, which made her limbs feel rather loose as she staggered back to the school. Congratulating herself on her stealth, she made her way back to her room without awakening the house, and fell heavily asleep.
She was awakened late the next morning by Rose, who shook her urgently. “Madeleine, you must get up. Can you hear me?”
“Go away,” Madeleine muttered.
“If she does not open her eyes by the time I count five”—Miss Crafter’s precise voice came from across the room—“Emily is going to pour the pan of cold water she is holding onto the pillow. If Miss Gentry’s head is still on it at that time, there is nothing I can do to keep her from getting wet. One, two, three ...”
“I’m awake!” Madeleine exclaimed, sitting up. The sudden flood of sunlight into wine-shot eyes sent a spear of pain piercing through her brain. Rose caught her arm as she swayed. Emily set the pan of water down on the floor and helped the girl out of bed.
“You slept through breakfast,” Miss Crafter informed her. “Are you ill?”
“No, not at all,” Madeleine assured the headmistress, willfully ignoring the pain in her head. “I ... woke in the night. It was some time before I fell asleep again.” That much was true, Madeleine told herself smugly.
“If you have recovered, then please get up,” Miss Crafter commanded. “Classes will begin in twenty minutes. I shall expect to see you there. You have prepared your analysis of your stanzas of Homer, have you not?”
The Crafters Book Two Page 24
