“Father told us there would be surprising revelations in store for us here,” Beatrice commented as she spooned brown sugar into her oatmeal. “I thought it might be something of this nature. We have always been quite sure that father had a more important role in world affairs than he was letting on.” Dolores nodded encouragingly and Beatrice went on as if she were conducting a conversation with her mute sister.
“Wherever we have lived, men and women of the most exalted rank and position have come to consult with him—the Emperor Franz Joseph himself consulted Papa on the Serbian question. And of course this explains father’s grave and serious demeanor. How could one be frivolous once one knows of the great evil threatening the innocent unknowing masses? We are most gratified that we will now be able to take our places beside him in this fight against evil.”
“This must be the important cause the hazelnut predicted for me last night,” Cam announced, her eyes burning with a fervor I’d seen in the young women who worked at the Henry Street Settlement and marched in the suffrage parades.
None of my tablemates questioned the evil nature of the creatures we had seen.
“Are all the creatures of Faerie evil?” I asked Sarah Lehman when she joined us.
“Oh, yes,” she answered, briskly buttering her toast. “The Order has done exhaustive study on all the creatures of Faerie. You’ll learn the classifications in science class, hear about the horrible things they’ve done to mankind in Mr. Bellows’ history class, and”—she shuddered—“see the specimens in Miss Frost’s class. Of course there are always naysayers in any group.” She lowered her voice and leaned across the table. We all leaned in to hear her whisper.
“There have been rumors that there’s a faction in the Order arguing for greater tolerance for the creatures and renewed negotiations between the Order and the Darklings, but . . .” She looked around anxiously before continuing. “Dame Beckwith has strictly forbidden any discussion of this topic in class. Personally, I think—”
A phlegmy cough interrupted Sarah. We all looked up into Miss Frost’s imposing bosom.
“It is not the duty of the head girl to share her personal opinions, Miss Lehman. Nor to model inappropriate table manners by leaning across the table and whispering like a parlor maid gossiping about her employees. Unless that is the line of work you would prefer to pursue.”
“No, Miss Frost,” Sarah said, meekly leaning back in her chair and coloring deeply. “I apologize for my behavior.”
Miss Frost sniffed. “Perhaps you are in need of a private etiquette tutorial.”
Sarah’s shoulders slumped at the suggestion. I could hardly imagine anything more disagreeable than being shut up with the overbearing Miss Frost.
“It was my fault,” I said quickly. “I asked Sarah if all the creatures of Faerie were evil and she was explaining to me—” I caught a panicked look in Sarah’s eyes. Clearly the talk about factions proposing more tolerant treatment of the creatures was not something she should have been sharing with me. “That they most certainly are all evil. Every single one of them,” I finished. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief.
“Of course they are!” Miss Frost exclaimed, her face turning the same purple as her dress. “What fool would question such an obvious notion after all you saw last night?”
“That’s what Sarah said,” I replied. “I imagine she lowered her voice to spare me the embarrassment of everybody else knowing what a silly question I’d asked.”
Miss Frost lifted her lorgnette to her eyes and regarded me critically. I held her gaze, aiming for a neutral, bland mien, the same expression I would employ when my landlady came to ask for the rent or the foreman at the factory would criticize a seam I had sewn. As I met her eyes I heard the bass bell tolling in my head and I knew that if I didn’t do something Miss Frost would assign me some terrible punishment. I forced the bell to slow in my head as I had when when I calmed Etta and got her to come out of the dressing room. As it tolled inside my head I saw Miss Frost’s eyes glaze over.
“Well, then,” she said, lowering her lorgnette and blinking like a baby owl. “That’s another matter.” She looked around the table as if she had forgotten why she had come. “I see they’re serving kippers,” she remarked. “Do remember not to swallow any bones.” Then she turned and drifted away, zigzagging across the dining room like a sailboat tacking across a windy harbor.
“How did you do that?” Daisy asked when Miss Frost was out of earshot.
“Do what?” I asked. “I only apologized . . .”
“Euphorbia Frost has never been swayed by an apology in her life,” Sarah said. “You bell-manced her. It’s a technique we learn for mesmerizing our quarry in a hunt, but it’s not taught until the fledgling year and it’s usually done with bells. How did you know how to do it?”
I shrugged, uncomfortable now. All the girls at our table were staring at me. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sure it was an accident.”
“Papa says each of us is chosen for Blythewood because we have some inherent power,” Beatrice said. “This bell-mancing thing might be Ava’s. I’m hoping for bibliosmosis, the ability to absorb the contents of any book by merely holding it in your hand.”
“But wouldn’t that ruin the pleasure of reading?” Daisy asked. The two girls were quickly engaged in an argument over the purposes of reading, which was joined by the other girls at the table—all except Sarah, who smiled and laid a hand on my arm.
“Thank you for saving me from a private tutoring session with Miss Frost. It’s bad enough I have to dust her specimen cases. I shan’t forget it.”
I returned her smile, glad to have won Sarah’s gratitude even though I had no idea how I had done it. Only later, when the bells had rung for class and I was hurrying with the rest of the girls to our first lecture, did I realize I’d never gotten to hear what Sarah thought about the factions that thought the fairies weren’t all evil. I wondered which side she fell on.
z o Z Our first class was in the North Wing lecture hall, which resembled the Third Street Vaudeville House, only the seats that rose in a semicircle around the stage were uncushioned and the performer wasn’t a dancer in spangles and feathers but an earnest young man in a tweed suit, which was much too heavy for the warm weather, and gold-rimmed glasses. Still the story he told was as fabulous as anything I’d ever seen on a vaudeville stage (including Varney the Sword Swallower and the magical feats of the Amazing Houdini).
Rupert Bellows took off his glasses, gripped the podium on both sides, leaned forward, and told us that the history of the world was “one long story of the fight between good and evil.”
“Last night you encountered the face of evil, but it is not always so plainly disclosed. In this class you will learn how evil forces have been secretly at work behind the scenes for centuries. The barbarians that overran the gates of Rome? Mongolian centaurs! The bubonic plague? Spread by goblin-rats! Napoleon’s attack on England? Instigated by a succubus! And wherever evil arises, the Order has been there to strike it down. The Order established their schools throughout the world: Mont Cloche in the Pyrenees, the Glockenkloster in Vienna, the Gymnasium Klok in Holland. That is the tradition you are heir to. . . . Some of you are literally heirs to the men and women who created those schools.”
His voice full of emotion, Mr. Bellows paused and took off his glasses to rub the fog that had clouded them. I looked around the room at the assembled girls in their white shirtwaists and dark skirts and noticed that although many of them were from the Dutch and English families of Old New York, some were from other countries, like the Jager twins, or a Russian girl named Grushenka whom I’d heard someone whisper was related to the Tsar’s family, or a shy Spanish girl named Fiamma who spoke hardly any English. They were all riveted by Mr. Bellows’s lecture, their eyes burning.
Only one student didn’t seem to be under Mr. Bellows’ spell and that was the only boy in the class. Nathan Beckwith sat in the last row, his chair tipped back, a straw boater
tilted over his eyes. “Is it all left to the women, then?” he drawled. “Doesn’t seem quite sporting.”
Mr. Bellows put his glasses back on and regarded Nathan coolly. “The prince who rode to the aid of the bell maker’s daughters sacrificed himself for their safety. His knights founded a knighthood to serve the sisters of the Order. Those accepted into the knighthood train at Blythewood’s brother school, Hawthorn. I believe you’re familiar with the institution, Mr. Beckwith.”
Nathan snorted. “I didn’t see any evidence of knighthood training, only a bunch of boring old men lecturing on obedience and service.”
Mr. Bellows colored deeply and gripped the podium as though he wished it were Nathan’s neck. “Perhaps you’ll feel differently when you learn whom we knights serve.” He went on to tell us that the women of the Order had learned the four elemental magics of the fairies—the magics of earth, air, fire, and water—and how to communicate with the falcons and train them to aid us in the hunt against the most brutal creatures, the goblins and trows. “They learned from the master hunters themselves—the Darklings.”
Mr. Bellows pronounced the name in an ominous voice that created a rustling in the room as girls shifted uneasily and rubbed their arms as if they were suddenly cold. I felt a shiver, too, but not of fear. I was remembering how the dark-winged boy in the woods had looked at me and how his eyes had made me feel warm. I’d wanted to lean into his arms and let him carry me up . . .
“They studied the Darklings because they were their worst enemies. It was a Darkling who abducted and killed Merope.”
The words broke into my head like the lash of a whip. What was I doing daydreaming about one of these monsters? If the other girls knew what I was thinking they would shun me— worse even than if they thought I was mad. I would be a pariah.
There was a sharp cracking noise behind me. Startled, I turned, half expecting that my thoughts had summoned the Darkling, but it was only Nathan, who had tilted forward on his chair and was now following with full attention as Mr. Bellows retold the story of the bell maker’s daughters—only this time explaining that it was a Darkling who had stolen the youngest daughter.
“After Merope’s abduction, the Order of the Bells was founded to protect the world against the fairies and the Darklings. We study our enemies to learn how to hunt them down and we use the bells, made of iron and our own blood, to keep them at bay.”
“And what about the girls they steal? What do we do about getting them back?”
The question came from the back of the room. I knew it was Nathan because he was the only boy here, but I hardly recognized his voice. Gone was the bored, upper-class drawl he’d first affected—gone, too, the excited boyish voice I’d heard in the woods last night. There was an anger and gravity to his voice now that made him sound years older. I glanced back and saw that he’d taken off his hat and raked his hair back off his forehead. His pale gray eyes flashed silver. A muscle twitched above his clenched jaw.
“That is not my area of expertise,” Mr. Bellows began in a faltering voice totally unlike the one he’d used to lecture us.
“Then what good are you?” Nathan demanded. “What good is it to learn the history of these bastards”—several girls gasped—“if we don’t do anything about them stealing our own?”
There was a stunned silence as Mr. Bellows put his glasses back on and stared back at Nathan.
“Now we know why he got kicked out of Hawthorn,” Helen whispered under her breath.
But Mr. Bellows didn’t throw Nathan out. Instead he said, “You make an interesting point, Mr. Beckwith, and I sympathize with your outrage. Why don’t you stay after class a moment to discuss the issue with me. The rest of you—read the first hundred pages in Claveau’s History of the Order of the Bells and write a three-page pensée on the doctrine of bell magic for class tomorrow. Class dismissed.”
We gathered our books and filed out past Nathan, who sat fuming in his seat. I tried to catch Nathan’s eye to show him I wouldn’t ostracize him, but he stared straight ahead in such a rage that I doubted he saw any of us.
“Why is Nathan so angry?” I asked Helen when we were in the hall.
Helen looked around and then pulled me into an alcove. “Nathan’s sister Louisa disappeared a week ago. Dame Beckwith said she went to a sanatorium in Switzerland, but I overheard Mother tell another Blythewood alumna that she vanished.”
“Nathan’s sister is the girl who went missing?” I asked, appalled. “Dame Beckwith’s own daughter? Why didn’t you tell me? Why is everybody keeping it a secret?”
Helen looked puzzled at the question. “Well, it would seem rude to talk about the headmistress’s daughter like that.”
“Rude?” I barked, startling both Helen and myself. “A girl’s gone missing and you’re all worried about the rules of etiquette?”
“You needn’t get yourself all in a twist about it. You sound like one of those suffragettes! Actually, you sound a bit like Louisa the last time she was at our house for tea. Honestly, when I first heard she’d gone missing I was sure she’d run off to England to march with Mrs. Pankhurst, but when I saw Nathan here I knew it must be more serious than that, and after last night . . .”
Her voice faltered. In the brief time I’d known her Helen hadn’t looked unsure about anything, but right now she looked worried.
“You think he’s come back to find her?”
“Yes,” she admitted, “but if she went missing in the woods he must realize it’s hopeless. No one could survive alone in those woods, except . . .”
“Except who?” I asked.
“Except your mother. I think that’s why Nathan was asking me about her. She disappeared into the woods for a whole month and she came back.”
15
I WALKED TO our next class—science with Mr. Jager—in a daze, trying to make sense out of what Helen had told me. My mother had gone missing in the Blythe Wood for a whole month. What had happened to her there? I tried to imagine what it would be like to be all alone in those woods with the fearsome creatures that roamed through them. How had my mother survived? Had she seen something so awful there that she’d never been able to recover? Was that why we moved so often, why she begged me not to talk to strangers? Was she running from something she had seen in the woods—the source of the hunted, shadowed look in her eyes? It was the same look, I realized now, that Nathan had in his.
Growing up alone with my mother, isolated from all family, moving too often to make friends, I sometimes daydreamed about what it would be like to have a sister or a brother, someone with whom I could share my thoughts—and the responsibility of looking after my mother. After she died and I went to work, I saw other girls walking to the factory with, or met after work by, their brothers, and envied them. But now I imagined what it would be like to have a sister and lose her. Worse, to know she was lost in those woods with the monsters we’d seen last night.
178 Blythewood Poor Nathan. Those shadows under his eyes, his brittle, hard way of talking—it was all because he was walking around with a hole inside him.
I reached the laboratory, a long narrow room that ran along the north side of the castle beside the conservatory, and stood for a moment in the doorway. The room was arranged with long high tables that reminded me of the layout of the Triangle factory, except that instead of sewing machines each table was supplied with a spirit lamp, glass beakers, and covered baskets. Mr. Jager stood at the front of the room, head down, shuffling through a stack of notes. He didn’t have Mr. Bellows’s commanding presence and his students were obviously taking advantage of his distraction to gossip with one another.
Helen waved for me to come join her at a table at the front of the room with Daisy, Cam, Beatrice, and Dolores. I suspected Helen had chosen our seat to be near the Jager twins, because they would be able to help us the most with the work. It was a good idea. I had no idea what went on in a science class in a regular school, let alone a school that trained its students to fight f
airies and demons. Would we be concocting magic potions? Turning each other into toads? Crafting explosive devices like the one that had killed Tsar Alexander II in Russia? My gentle mother had never taught me such things. I would need all the help I could get. But instead of joining my friends at their table I took a seat at the last table in the back, which was empty except for Nathan.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why aren’t you sitting with your friends?”
I shrugged. “They don’t look as if they need me.” “And you think I do?”
I met his icy stare. “Helen told me about your sister.”
“And did she tell you that we’re not allowed to talk about her? That once a girl goes missing at Blythewood her name is struck from the rolls and never mentioned again? That they believe to say the name of a lost girl is to conjure the black-hearted monsters that stole her?”
I shook my head, struck dumb by the hostility in his voice. I’d thought yesterday that Nathan’s cool demeanor was a pose he adopted to seem more alluring to girls, but I saw now that the flirtatiousness was a pose that he wore over his icy resolve—there to get what he needed, gone when it would do him no good. I turned away from his cold glare and wondered if it was too late to change seats, but Mr. Jager had collected himself sufficiently to begin class—or at least he had stopped shuffling papers and was looking up at the room, a dazed expression in his watery brown eyes as if he wasn’t sure why two dozen girls were sitting in front of him.
Mr. Jager cleared his throat and said something inaudible under the hum of the girls’ voices. A girl in the second row giggled. Beatrice glared at her and made a loud shushing sound. Mr. Jager looked mournfully at the girl and waved a large bony hand, as if to say it was no matter to him if we listened or not.
Instantly the girl’s hands flew to her mouth and she made a muffled noise. I couldn’t see from where I sat what had happened to her but I saw the horrified expressions of the other girls as she jumped to her feet and ran from the room with one hand clamped over her mouth. Something was dribbling from between her fingers. Something red. A drop fell on the floor by my feet. I cringed away from it, but Nathan reached across me to pick it up.
Blythewood Page 15
