The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  Light Fingers would be proud of Amy. She’d just worked out how to duck the best boxer in school. But Light Fingers wasn’t here and staying to watch a punch-up wasn’t helping find her.

  Still, Amy couldn’t walk away yet.

  Lucretia ‘Lungs’ Lamarcroft, a Sixth who had seriously tried to persuade Miss Dryden to let her compete in archery with one breast bared like an ancient Amazon, raised a curly hunting horn. The tooter usually hung among trophies in an overstuffed cabinet in the Goneril dorm. A deep yet shrill view halloo sounded… and echoed mournfully, like Kali’s mi-go moanings.

  Goneril began to march towards the theatre.

  Lungs tooted her horn again, and a ragged war song was raised…

  ‘Stickses and stoneses and broken boneses,

  Heed our dreadful warning!

  Thumpses and blowses and bleeding noses

  You’ll ache tomorrow morning!’

  Amy had heard that before. Goneril sang it before every game of everything. Including tiddlywinks and Old Maid. Always, they played aggressively, but within the rules. And they always won.

  The girls’ breath plumed like snorting cavalry horses. They stamped across the snowy Quad. Digger Downs stood, somewhat surprised, in a doorway. She covered her black ribbon with her hand and let Goneril pass unmolested.

  Amy tagged along, well behind the army. A few other girls – Gifford, Harper, Jones-Rhys – were similarly interested. Gawky and Taff, Desdemona Firsts, knew enough to shun Shrimp Harper. Amy made sure she kept well away from the mind-leech too.

  Shrimp had her notebook out, though Amy doubted the Drearcliff Trumpet would cover what happened next. Apart from anything else, there had been a slight coup at the paper. The long-serving Tamora Fifth was demoted to ‘Our Correspondent in the Remove’, with a cabal of Viola Thirds – Pulsipher, Stannard, Vail – elevated as the new editorial committee. Now the Trumpet had ants on the masthead and took a Black Skirt line. A ‘review’ by the lepidopterally illiterate Stannard fawned over Rayne’s mother’s latest outrage against entomology What We Can Learn From Our Insect Chums: Eugenics in Nature and Progress Towards Human Perfection.

  It was impossible to feel sorry for Harper, but the girl hadn’t had much – besides being the sort of Unusual no one wanted to be around – outside of being editor of the Trumpet and now she’d lost that.

  Like camp-followers, Amy and the others trod in the trampled slush footprints of an army which expected to be all-vanquishing.

  The two Black Skirts left as skipping sentries didn’t miss a step, even as the mob – bristling with bats and projectiles – swarmed across the Quad. Rhode-Eeling, a discus in each hand, cried halt and the Gonerils formed battle lines.

  The song continued…

  ‘Stickses and stoneses and broken boneses!

  Thumpses and blowses and bleeding noses!’

  The Black Skirts skipped, unconcerned.

  ‘Antoinette Rowley Rayne,’ hollered Rhode-Eeling, ‘come out to play!’

  Pinborough punched her gloves together and hopped on the spot. Her arms and legs were goosefleshed. Presumably, she hoped to warm up while punching some girls’ heads for them.

  The last time Rayne had won against the odds just by not staying down.

  Now, she was up against athletes, not bullies. The average whip relied on fear and tradition to prevail against girls who only had to stand their ground to see them off. Ker and Pinborough were used to fighting people who fought back… and the Gonerils weren’t all good sports. McClure’s beamers were deadly.

  ‘Look, up on the roof!’ gasped someone.

  The Playhouse had a pretentious frontage, with columns, an arch and large masks of crying tragedy and laughing comedy. Rayne perched on the apex of the arch, black skirt flapping in the wind, the Queen Ant looked down on the crowd. Amy wouldn’t have been surprised if cauldrons of boiling tar were at hand, to tip on the army of Goneril.

  Polyphemus flew up from Kinross’s armlet. Rayne didn’t so much as flinch. The bird halted in mid-air, making kites of its wings, and flapped off altogether, spooked from the field of battle by Rayne’s stare.

  Kinross whistled but her bird didn’t come back.

  ‘Give us Gould and we’ll say no more about it,’ shouted Rhode-Eeling.

  This wasn’t about the Wolf Girl, not really. Before all this, Rhode-Eeling wouldn’t have had the hairy, toothy Fourth round to tea. Goneril was, of all Houses, least happy with Unusuals in its midst. Marsh’s swimming cups were hidden at the back of the cabinet.

  For a moment, Amy was sure Rayne was about to jump off the theatre.

  The Queen Ant couldn’t fly… though ant queens generally could.

  Amy realised she was several feet off the ground and reached out to grab the Heel. She scrabbled and settled on the broken-off ankle. If anyone noticed, they’d assume she’d climbed up for a better view.

  The only person who might have seen her in the air was Rayne. The Queen Ant was so wrapped up in herself Amy doubted she’d have noticed.

  ‘…or come down and take your porridge, Wet Blanket Rayne!’

  Pinborough jogged up the theatre steps and punched very near the head of one of the skipping Black Skirts without intending to connect.

  ‘We can settle this right now,’ Rhode-Eeling continued.

  Rayne raised her arms above her head, and made fists. The signal looked like the extended antennae of an insect. She waved her arms from side to side.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ Gifford asked, looking back to where she thought Amy would be and then craning up to see her on top of the Heel. ‘Cor, what a climb!’

  Then, from everywhere, the Black Skirts swarmed in. Like ants.

  XV: Under the Black Skirts

  VIOLA TROUNCED GONERIL, but it wasn’t about Houses. Black prevailed over Grey.

  No one – least of all, Amy, who saw it from the Heel – could say how the battle was lost, but numbers told. And the element of surprise, and ruthless commitment.

  In games, Goneril always won… but the Black Skirts weren’t playing games.

  Despite the crowing about broken boneses and bleeding noseses, the sportists marched on to the field as if already celebrating victory. They were prematurely of a mind to console not-yet-actually-vanquished opponents with back-slapping, warm congratulations for putting up a bally good show under the circumstances and mugs of strong sweet consolation tea.

  The Black Skirts weren’t the match-conceding sorts Goneril were accustomed to bowling out, scoring against or running past. They didn’t put up with having their backs slapped and they spat strong sweet tea back in the faces of anyone foolhardy enough to offer it.

  Skipping, as the Black Skirts did it, was not a pastime. As Amy and Light Fingers had perceived, it was prep for war.

  The Black Skirts were quick, harsh, and everywhere.

  The next day, Rhode-Eeling – powder over her bruises, crushed hand in plaster – showed up for breakfast in a black skirt and blazer. After the ruckus, her grey kit wasn’t wearable. Even the laxest whip would notch her for rips, bloodstains and general dilapidation.

  By the end of lessons, Goneril was virtually Black-Skirt Only.

  Inevitably, the other Houses fell. Desdemona, to Amy’s disgust, followed Pelham’s lead and quietly went Black. Ariel managed with tiresome nonchalance. It might have been that they were thinking of going Black for some considerable time but only now happened to get round to making the switch. If they deigned to notice lesser Houses had beaten them to it, they were too well-bred to care. Then, Tamora got changed in an undignified hurry, as if there were a wooden spoon for Last in Black.

  The next Monday, as the full register was called in Chapel, Marsh was marked absent. According to Smudge, the Gill Girl swam out to sea after the Fall of Goneril and was sulking on the bottom among the wrecks and skeletons.

  ‘Good job too,’ snorted Bryant, a Tamora Third Amy didn’t know well. ‘No place for flukes here. Not at all at all.’

&nb
sp; Amy had an urge to slap Bryant’s face for her, but the comment provoked mutters of agreement from all sides. Hot rage turned cold. Bryant just said what most Ordinaries thought.

  She had heard the term ‘fluke’ before. Since the rise of the Black Skirts, it was commonly used… and never in an approving manner. Talk of Unusuals gave way to jibes against flukes. In two minds about being classed among Swan’s cygnets, Amy still bridled at being called a fluke. The word was always bitten down on like an unpleasant pill, uttered with venomous contempt… the way ‘shirker’ or ‘Hun’ were during the War… or ‘sneak’ and ‘wet’ were in School.

  Bryant’s remark was loud enough to be heard beyond her pew. Bainter, who was calling the register, issued no rebuke. Talking in Chapel ought to earn at least a Minor. Were Dr Swan at the lectern, the impertinent chit would be quartered by steam engines and the bloody parts buried in salted earth at the four corners of the grounds.

  Headmistress was absent again. Did the coup extend all the way to her study?

  Ponce Bainter all but wore the Black Skirt himself.

  Amy remembered him saying ‘she has to be alive when we do it.’

  Rose sat with Frecks and Kali, seemingly unconcerned that the man at the lectern had wanted to cut her face off.

  The oblation had been about ‘opening the Flute’.

  …Amy worried that their action that night hadn’t kept it closed. What had gone on under the stage before the battle was another ritual of the Runnel and the Flute, and had presaged spilling of blood.

  An oblation had been made, Amy realised. More important than cuts and bruises sustained by individual girls was the overturning of the established order. Bainter said cutting off Rose’s beautiful face wasn’t enough – she must be alive to understand her loss. Now, Goneril had lost face and felt it keenly. Their status as Sport House – their pride – had been slaughtered on the altar of the Quad. Going Black was more than an admission of defeat, it was a total submission. The fall of Goneril meant all Houses were lessened. The Black Skirts superseded them. A few Gonerils and Ariels were bitter that Viola, of all Houses, had prevailed… but Amy understood Rayne had eaten away at Viola from within. It was the Ant Queen’s first conquest. Viola, for all the foolishness and blubbing, had stood for something which the Black Skirts now threw away. Poles Apart! was cancelled without explanation. The Black Skirts had stolen Viola’s theatricality. Frivolity aside, they were all about dress-up and performance. Now they took what they needed from other Houses. Goneril’s pride, Ariel’s hauteur, Tamora’s violence and Desdemona’s… well, Desdemona’s distinctiveness, its not-like-the-others-and-happy-about-it attitude. Among Houses, Desdemona had been the Unusual, the fluke. Now, it was All Black Skirts Together and never mind the rest. House Spirit was at an end.

  Amy thought more and more of the Other Ones. She sensed their silent, invisible presence in School.

  She missed Mauve Mary – the comparatively harmless ghost hadn’t been seen lately – and even wondered whether Captain Freezing hadn’t had his good points.

  Light Fingers sat glumly beside Amy on the pew, fists in her pockets.

  The talking-to Pelham had prescribed didn’t seem relevant any more. Things had gone too far South.

  Pelham was spiffy in black. A fashion-setting ant-head hatpin was stuck through her boater. She had banished Poppet Dyall and taken the puddingishly Ordinary Dottie Fulwood as her new familiar.

  Light Fingers nudged Amy and directed her attention to Poppet.

  Dyall sat on a wonky bench to one side of Chapel, well out of the light, lumped in with Harper, Palgraive and other awkward, unlovely Unusuals. From time immemorial, or at least the founding year, the far pew was reserved for the Leper Colony. Here sat the Remove, a floating form of girls who didn’t fit in their years on account of being held back, sprung forward, arrived late or destined to leave early. The extraordinarily gifted and the terminally dim alike gravitated there. The Remove had lessons with whichever mistress drew the short straw in a former potting shed called Temporary Classroom Two. Temporary Classroom One was not on current maps, having gone over the cliff in the Landslide of ’08.

  All the Remove were in Grey, except Shrimp Harper. Trotting up in her new kit, the canny little leech suffered a severe disappointment when it transpired that the crucial ant emblem couldn’t be bought but had to be bestowed – by Antoinette Rowley Rayne, of course. In Shrimp’s case, the ant was withheld. Just wearing a black skirt didn’t guarantee acceptance into the Black Skirts.

  Light Fingers nodded at the Remove and then at Amy. Her meaning was clear. She expected they’d eventually be transported to the Leper Colony.

  The only House Captain still in Grey was Gryce. The terror of last term cut a sad figure and tried to avoid the public eye. Her craft had run out when Goneril lost her battle for her. Unlike Harper, she had been issued with an ant badge. She wore the insect speck on her grey lapel… not as a way of fitting in, but as a sign of giving in.

  Tamora was otherwise Black as an ace of spades down a coal mine. The Murdering Heathens had defected to join the Soldier Ants. They showed no particular malice to their former patron, but their indifference must be devastating.

  Dora Paule was daffier than ever. One Break, she had gone barefoot in the snow – an unthinkable Uniform Infraction – and had been packed off to the Infirmary with frozen feet. Amy had tried to visit but Paule had been babbling, and Nurse had said she needed her rest.

  There were still dwindling pockets of Grey resistance.

  Knowles of the Fourth proved an object lesson when she tried to present a list of grievances to Dr Swan.

  Charlotte Knowles could speed-read and learn by heart reams of information. The knowledge she gobbled only stuck in her head for a short time, but her bursts of expertise were a great advantage. Given a half-hour in the library, Know-It-All could be fluent in Portuguese, master tapestry-weaving, follow complex algebra, sail a dinghy well enough to compete with Hern or play harpsichord to a professional level. She didn’t merely stuff her head with facts but could use what she knew. Whatever her current craze was, she was a prodigy at it… for four to six weeks. Then, it poured out and she was virtually a Dim. Knowles came top in every test, provided she had forenotice of what she’d be quizzed on. When her crazes were wearing off, she grew clumsy and suffered fainting fits and crippling migraines. Like Amy, she got nosebleeds if she pushed her Abilities too far – by cramming two or three subjects at the same time.

  Knowles was in Martine’s cell. The two were great chums before the Black–Grey divide. Amy had looked up to them and wondered if she and Frecks would be as worldly and glamorous when they were a whole year older. Know-It-All was Desdemona’s most prominent Unusual. Though her looks were changeable, depending on her current hobby horse, she always seemed impossibly mature, poised and confident. Just the sort to form a committee of action and carry the day with eloquence and righteous determination.

  The little rebellion in the Fourth began when Miss Borrodale took Knowles aside and told her that from now on she would sit tests on her own. She would not know the subjects in advance. Without her Abilities to rely on, she was a mediocre scholar. A level playing field was mentioned. To the delight of the Dims, Not-so-Know-It-All Knowles was no longer always top of the form. Martine advised Knowles against complaining and Pelham flat out told her not to, but she gathered a deputation of Unusuals and tried to get a hearing with Headmistress. Amy guessed Knowles had been given Swan’s speech of welcome too, and felt betrayed that she was back to being treated as a fluke.

  Joining Knowles to present her petition were Devlin and Paquignet. Stretch Devlin, another Desdemona Fourth, was always using her Abilities to help girls out when reach or long fingers were needed. Green Thumbs Paquignet, a rare Ariel Unusual, had a sympathy with nature which meant she could make anything grow in flower garden, vegetable patch or greenhouse.

  Without a glance at the document, Keys turned the deputation away. Her Lee–Enfield h
appened to be assembled at the time. And loaded.

  Headmistress was indisposed… which might mean imprisoned. She’d not been seen for weeks. The sense of always being watched didn’t go away, but Amy thought that might be because the Black Skirts had eyes everywhere, more even than Dr Swan. Every ant shared what they saw with the Queen.

  Over the next days, Knowles and her cronies were Minored for hitherto-undreamed-of Infractions. Paquignet raised snowdrops and was punished for defiance of nature. The Cerberus shut Devlin in a disused dumb waiter as ‘an example to others’. She escaped, only to be written up for ‘resisting discipline’. Knowles attempted to cram the entirety of Drearcliff School Rules and several shelves of Board of Education reports, in the hope of finding loopholes. Blood vessels burst in her nose and she was cited for ‘impertinent bleeding’. Black Skirt whips insisted these persecutions had nothing to do with the deputation’s temerity in crying injustice. Few believed them. The sorry trio replaced Blacker-than-Red Absalom on the Heel-brushing party. Which ought to be lesson enough for anyone.

  Then, inevitably, Knowles, Devlin and Paquignet were Removed.

  Smudge sat next to Amy at Supper and spun yarns about life in the Remove… more swede and fewer crumpets, extra prep upon extra prep, regular visits from Crowninshield II and Aire, Minors treated as Majors, painful inoculations…

  ‘Know where they find sparring partners for Pinborough to knock down? The Remove. Know who they send into the woods as hares when Gould is leading the hounds? The Remove.’

  Smudge went on and on, shamming pity.

  Amy noticed that Smudge shifted from describing what it was like for Knowles and company in the Remove to explaining what it would be like for Amy when she was sent there.

  When Smudge went Black, her modus operandi changed. Formerly, her wild tales were almost endearing and few took them seriously. Frecks said Smudge couldn’t help but make things up. It was almost an Ability, a way with words to make dull reality more exciting. Now her exaggerations were nasty and sly, more threat than fable. Smudge knew exactly what she was saying. Every whisper was a poison pinprick.