by Sally Watson
“And who are you to decide what’s bad?” demanded Miss Turner.
Jade just looked at her, and then turned to stare coldly out of the window, over the garden and hedge to the dusty width of Gloucester Street. Miss Turner had admitted to her that she thought society was unfair to women; she needn’t try to back down now! And Miss Turner, interpreting her silence correctly, sighed and tried a different logic.
“Even supposing the wall does want tearing down, you can’t do it that way. It needs a subtle approach, especially from us females, or we only put their backs up. Miss Lavinia understands that. We must wheedle the men, play up their sense of importance and superiority, let them think they’re having the ideas, and then admire them for it.”
Jade stuck out her lip. Vinnie looked smug. She already had Father wrapped neatly around that slim finger and fully intended to do the same with her husband and sons and sons-in-law.
“That’s right,” she agreed with a rather malicious glance at her small brother. “Just keep them happy thinking how superior they are, and the poor sillies never guess it’s really us.”
“It isn’t!” cried the outraged Matthew.
Jade sighed. Her high courage and defiance were trickling away now that they were no longer needed, leaving her, as always, sore and empty and depressed. And she didn’t even understand why she had to go on beating her head against that wall—except that it was unjust and evil, and so must be attacked. It was no good to go around it, or twist it to your own convenience as Vinnie would always do, or even just kick it now and again in a spirit of fun as Matt did. Matt, to be sure, was better than nothing —but he was a boy, and of the ruling race and class, and everything was to his advantage as it was. Why should he seriously try to change it?
“Oooh!” said Jade, turning her face from Gloucester Street back to the sunny schoolroom. “I hate men!”
Matt looked hurt. “Even me?”
She pulled his fair hair, forever escaping from its queue to rise like a mane around his face. “Not yet, but I expect I will if you grow up like all the others,” she prophesied gloomily.
“Just because your father punished you—” began Miss Turner. Jade looked at her blankly. What had that to do with it?
She lay awake for a long time that night, lying carefully on her front, but otherwise not really noticing that her back smarted. Woe swept over her in waves. What was she, that she must be so lonely and alien? Was she indeed possessed of a devil? In all the world, only four people lived in her heart: her dead grandparents, an eccentric old Frenchman, and a slave. For the rest, she was a mosquito in Williamsburg’s ear, and Williamsburg was to her a bed of roses: sickly-pink roses, overperfumed, and very thorny indeed. As for her family—Jade sighed and turned her head away from the shaft of moonlight. Love, yes—but between alien species, who thought in different languages and spoke through a thick glass wall, who were engaged in an endless war waged, as Jade always waged her battles, with no quarter asked or given. What with one thing and another, she couldn’t really much like the looks of the future.
CHAPTER TWO
The Fencing Lesson
Jade awoke at the usual early hour, blinked at the pale sky, and wriggled her shoulders experimentally. They at once protested, and she grimaced. It was, as she’d feared, going to handicap her movements for a day or two. Father had been particularly annoyed this time, and of course she never let him know how much he was hurting her.
She considered it without rancor. She never bore him any resentment for punishments; they were a logical consequence of her actions, just as a burn was the logical consequence of touching fire. Nor could one hold it against the fire. This was part of the Code Monsieur Maupin had taught her. Still, it was rather discouraging that in all these years of consequences, she hadn’t really got anywhere. Father was as stubborn as she, and so far she had just managed to hold her own.
A cock crowed, and she got up, stuck her head briefly out into the fresh dawn, and curled her lip at the pink roses. (She detested pink, preferring the clean lines and scent of flame-colored tulips.) Then she withdrew her head and went to stand before the long mirror, frowning judiciously. It was Melanie who stared back at her from a soft young face quite out of character for Jade. Melanie Lennox—not as pretty as Lavinia, but with a look of sweet femininity that Jade found quite revolting. Her short round chin ought by rights to be sharp and jutting, her eyebrows severe. That thin little neck looked positively fragile, and as for her arms and legs. . . .
Jade began to grin. Such softly rounded little arms, such slender, shapely legs, giving no hint at all of the trained muscles beneath! And only two people knew. No one else even suspected—how should they?—unless one counted the puzzled glances William Howe had been giving her ever since that day he had tried to kiss her and she knocked him flat and bloodied his nose. . . .
She grinned again and tensed one of those long legs. Like a rock it was, beneath the silken flesh. They were nice looking legs. Jade couldn’t for the life of her see why female limbs were considered so shameful. Why was it perfectly proper to show as much bosom as possible, but disgraceful to reveal so much as an inch of ankle? Grownups, she decided, not for the first time, were a species bordering on the totally irrational.
Another cock reminded her that she had no time to dawdle. Joshua would be worried. Hastily she dressed, ignoring the steel-and-whalebone horror of stays (a diabolical invention which Jade, abetted by Zelda, usually did ignore), and put on a blue riding habit. Down the wide stairs she ran, with only the slaves about to smile and nod as she went past, out to the stables where Joshua had saddled the horses and stood waiting, as he had waited nearly every morning since Jade was nine. His ebony face had begun to pucker anxiously. Was she too stiff to get up this morning?
A huge, muscular, gentle man, Joshua was more than groom, much more than slave. He was Missy Lanie’s closest household friend and ally, her partner in crime. Her blazing rebellion was unawakened in him, who had been born another man’s property. But it was there. It took the form of noticing with great sympathy that the lot of white females wasn’t, after all, so very different from that of blacks. Neither had rights or property or liberty, both could be bought and sold, for there was the Divorce by Sale law, by which any Englishman could actually sell his wife for cash. Joshua pitied anyone who tried to buy Missy Lanie! He smiled at her, watched carefully as she mounted, not missing the slight caution of her movements.
“Morning, Missy Lanie,” was all he said, and they set off, riding as they always did to the end of Duke of Gloucester Street, past William and Mary College, and then along the Richmond Road, all with glowing innocence, just in case Williamsburg should be paying any attention. As a matter of fact, Williamsburg wasn’t. It had long ago stopped noticing the daily morning ride, which, after all, was the least of that Lennox minx’s idiosyncracies.
A mile or so along the empty road there was a path that led eventually to a white-painted house where lived that old Frenchman commonly known to Williamsburg as Mad Maupin. Many things were whispered of him, at least one of them being true. He was indeed a master of the rapier.
He put a scowling white-peruked head out of the door as Jade dismounted.
“Late,” he grumbled. “I ask of myself why I bother with you, bad enfant.”
“Because I’m the best pupil you ever had,” she told him cockily and ran into the house and to the small changing room where knee breeches and a long-sleeved shirt awaited her. This was the best hour of the day; the only hour, in fact, the others being a long bore to be enlivened only by getting into trouble or arguments. Here she was alive and challenged. Here she wasn’t merely a female named Melanie, but a human being called Jade. Monsieur Maupin had no use for irrelevant categories such as male and female; he trained her to the top of her considerable talent, demanded still more, and took great pains to conceal his delight in her. She was the pupil every fencing master dreamed of: one with speed and precision, coolness and audacity, subtlety and
fire. He had seen the fire at once in the scrawny child brought by her grandfather, and he had trained her for some seven years now, an hour or two every morning, a secret miraculously and assiduously preserved.
“Bien,” he said when Jade presented herself in the large room. “We work now on defense, a thing at which you are very bad indeed. You wish always to attack, never to defend yourself, non?”
Jade grinned. Monsieur Maupin returned it with a frown and tossed his peruke to the watching Joshua. “It is a pride of the most stupid,” he told her. “A fencer who does not parry first will never live to riposte, however quick she may think herself to be. Now, I shall attack in any quarter I choose, and you shall complete the parry before riposte, or I skewer you.” He scowled ferociously.
Chuckling, Jade went on guard.
Within three minutes the fierce scowl had become a genuine one, and Monsieur Maupin lowered his point. “Ah, bah! you are today even more bad than yesterday, and as slow as—” He stopped. His eyes narrowed. “It is that you have been wicked again, eh?” he demanded, not without approval. Jules Maupin, rebel and reformer himself, never tried in the least to curb these tendencies in his pupil. “Why do you never tell me when it hurts you to move?”
Jade merely grinned again, derisive.
“Mais non, of course you would not,” he agreed. “It would not at all fit your role of Amazon.” He twinkled a little, for Jade had quite recently discovered Greek drama, and this very much amused him.
Jade frowned. “Well, I don’t think much of those Amazons. They gave in too easily, or at least Antiope did. I like Medea better, or Clytemnestra. They fought back.”
“Ma foi!” He tried to look shocked, failed utterly. “Such murderous ladies! Clytemnestra killed her husband, even. And both came to very much violent ends, you remember.”
“Agamemnon deserved it, the beast,” said Jade, unrelenting. “And a violent end’s a lot better than dying of boredom!” She scowled in vast anger at the lot of young ladies in this modern day. Breakfast, with dull chit-chat, and lectures on behavior. Lessons in dull things like Deportment and Household Management. Embroidery. Backboards. Sedate walks wearing a face mask to protect the delicate white skin essential to well-bred young Ladies. Visits, with incredibly twitter-witted conversation. Silly boys trying to pay silly compliments, and looking as if they feared to have their ears boxed—which they well might, at that. The nearest thing to any kind of mental activity was French, and Jade was already fluent in that language, from her practice with Monsieur Maupin, so the only really interesting bit about French lessons was trying to keep Miss Turner from guessing how much she knew.
The old Frenchman was looking at her thoughtfully, as if reading her mind. But he merely jerked his head, stern again. “Bien, to work. We practice the swift footwork, retreat, advance, and lunge, and your back shall tell you if you move your shoulders when you should not.”
Jade nodded, brimming with affection for the peppery old man, who paid her the compliment of demanding much and making no concessions. No quarter asked or given was the bond between them, and mutual respect as well. Why couldn’t other people be like that?
A moment, and it was already time to go. Jade sighed, mopped her perspiring face, and wished it were tomorrow already. So did her teacher, who hadn’t the slightest compunction about deceiving her parents. His conscience, if he had ever had one at all, had long since perished of neglect . . . or almost.
“You are like your grandparents, cherie—both of them. They and I, we defied prejudices; you try to make war against the whole structure of society, I think.” He gave her a sharp look. “Society will punish you, enfin. You know this? You are prepared to pay a so-high price for going your own way?”
“It’s none of society’s business what I do,” she told him truculently, but he shook his bald head at her.
“But yes, it is very much society’s business, when you break its rules and defy its conventions and refuse to respect its values. You are a danger to established order, and society cannot permit that you endanger its existence.”
“Pooh,” said Jade. She had always defied conventions and done things no lady must do. She laughed. “No quarter asked or given!”
“Ah, bah!” he growled, his own words turned against him. “Impudent child, you challenge the world and the gods, and it is a thing you cannot possibly guess, the revenge they will take. How you will suffer for it! Be prudent! Go away and study to be a lady and never come near me again.”
Jade felt herself going scarlet with furious disbelief, felt it glowing hot on her cheeks. How dare he ask her to cage herself like that poor fox of William’s? Then she laughed. “You don’t mean it!” she discovered, relieved.
He laughed too, the moment of conscience gone. “Parbleu, if I were a good man, no doubt I should mean it, but I am a wicked old fool who sees that you are bound to be in trouble always in any case, and what use for me to tell you to be someone different?” His clever old face wrinkled with amusement and he gave a very French shrug. “So I abet you. Now go home, or you will be late for breakfast again, and they will punish you by taking away your morning rides.”
Joshua spoke unexpectedly, his deep voice amused. “No, they won’t. The time they tried it, she wasn’t fit to live with and the governess quit and they had a terrible time finding a new one. But you’d best hurry anyway, Missy Lanie. No need to ask for any more trouble quite so soon after yesterday.”
Jade chuckled and went to change.
They started down the lane again presently, Jade once again in her riding habit, and somehow (though with difficulty) contriving to ride astride in spite of it. The pale blue sky to the west was piling high with swift ominous thunderheads, and a sudden wind swooped upon them with rain on its back. Jade chortled gleefully and lifted her face to it. She loved storms.
“We’ll be soaked,” she predicted happily. “Race you to the road!” And digging her heels into Seagull, she was off, around the double curve that hid Monsieur Maupin’s house so well from the Richmond road. Rumbling thunder and wind and the pelt of rain blocked out sight and sound, and it was most unfortunate that another rider happened to be racing back to Williamsburg just at that spot and that moment. The two horses nearly collided at the point where path and road met, scaring each other into near hysterics, and for several exciting moments both riders were quite thoroughly occupied in controlling them. Seagull in particular seemed inspired by the spirit of a whirlwind, and Joshua—his own horse calm—hovered nearby, watchful but unalarmed. He knew his Missy Lanie. She’d be furious at any unneeded help. She laughed aloud, intoxicated by the bright storm and the face of danger.
The other rider failed to enjoy the fun. “You little devil, Melanie Lennox!” raged William Howe, who had already had more than enough of her this week. “Just you wait!” And, his horse under control again, he spurred on toward the town, his dignity even further assaulted by the derisive laughter that followed him.
The storm passed as quickly as it came, and Joshua and Jade, soaked but in sunshine, arrived back at the stables. Jade ran lightly up the back stairs, carrying the wet train of her riding habit. At the top of the stairs she met Lavinia and Matthew, fresh and clean and well-groomed, ready for breakfast. They looked at her.
“You’re wet,” observed Matt, a trifle wistfully. An idea struck him. “I’m nine now; I think I’ll go on your morning rides, too.”
“You won’t!” shouted Jade.
Matt bristled. “I’ll ask Father. He’ll say I may.”
“I don’t care if he does! Jade’s greenish eyes darkened with anger, and her face looked pinched. She almost hated Matt, or anyone else who threatened the one thing that made life enjoyable. “I’ll push you off your horse if you try! It isn’t fair! You already get everything because you’re a boy. You go to William and Mary school, and learn interesting things like math and history—”
“Yes, and you’re always taking my books!” he accused her, indignant.
“—and you have a fencing master, and you’re learning to shoot, and you’re allowed to climb trees, and ride astride, and you don’t have to be ladylike and mind your petticoats and face mask, and—and now you want to spoil the only nice thing I’m allowed. Selfish pig!”
Matthew looked startled and crestfallen. He had a good opinion of himself, and didn’t at all see that his presence would spoil things. He said so.
Before Jade could answer to that, it was Lavinia’s turn. “You’d better go get clean and changed for breakfast, Lanie,” she said with a disapproving glance at the sodden blue broadcloth and dark wetness of hair, all out of curl. “Mother’s sure to be feeling languid; she always is after a megrim. And Father’ll be cross. And anyway, don’t forget the Howes are coming to coffee and you’re supposed to apologize. You’d best hurry. Zelda’s in your room waiting for you this minute.” And she swayed her own immaculate small self past Jade and along the hall toward the front stairs.
Jade, irresistibly tempted as always by the sight of conscious virtue, made no effort at all to resist the temptation. She reached out a hand . . .
“Awp!” squeaked Lavinia.
CHAPTER THREE
Challenge
Jade had never liked William Howe, who heartily returned the sentiment. This was largely because William considered himself to be a special gift from a benign God to humanity—or at least to Virginia—and Jade, to put it simply, didn’t. Since William’s parents had spent most of his life fostering this notion, it was perhaps not fair to blame William entirely. Jade, nothing if not fair, impartially spread her dislike to include them as well.
His parents sat now in the charming green-papered parlor sipping coffee, and William—who always put on a grand show in public—rose to bow with elaborate charm as Jade entered with Lavinia and Matthew in tow. His smile was that of a cat with one paw planted firmly on a mouse’s tail, just waiting for the mouse to notice.
