A Great And Terrible Beauty (14 page)

“Well?”

“I told you—they won’t allow her in. She’s not of their class.”

“Sorry to hear your little club is doomed before it starts,” I say, feeling a bit smug.

“Did I say it was off? I know I can sway Pippa. Cecily’s gotten too arrogant these days. I brought her along from nothing. If she and Elizabeth think they can make a go of it at this school without my influence, they are sadly mistaken.”

I’ve underestimated Felicity’s need for control. She’d rather be seen with Ann and me than admit defeat to her acolytes. She’s an admiral’s daughter, after all.

“When should we meet?”

“Tonight at midnight,” Felicity says.

I’m fairly certain this will all lead to shame, misfortune, and at the very least, having to listen to Pippa go on to the point of queasiness about the romantic ideal of love, but at least they’ll have to stop tormenting Ann for a bit.

At the bend in the road, Ithal is there. Felicity stops suddenly, like a horse spooked. She holds tight to my arm, refusing to look in his direction.

“Dear God,” she gasps.

“He wouldn’t dare to speak to you in the open, would he?” I whisper, while trying to ignore Felicity’s fingernails dug deep into my arm.

Ithal stops to pluck a flower from the ground. Singing, he hops up onto the wall and presents it to Felicity as if I’m not standing between the two of them at all. The others stop and turn to see what the fuss is about. They gasp and titter, both shocked and delighted by the scene. Felicity keeps her head low and stares at the ground.

Miss Moore seems amused. “I believe you have an admirer, Felicity.”

The girls look from Ithal to Felicity and back again, watching and waiting.

Ithal extends the flower to her. It’s there in his fingers, red and fragrant. “Beauty for beauty,” he says in his low growl of a voice.

I can hear Cecily whispering, “The nerve,” under her breath. Felicity’s face is a stone as she tosses the flower to the ground. “Miss Moore, can’t we clean out these woods of all this riffraff? It’s a blight.” Her words are a slap. She raises her skirts delicately with her hands, steps on the flower, crushing it with her boot, and races ahead of the pack. The others fall in behind her.

I can’t help feeling humiliated for Ithal. He stands at the wall and watches us go, and when we reach the turnoff for the school, he’s still there with the mangled flower in his hand, far behind us, a small, dying star fading out of our constellation.

WE
SNEAK
OUT
JUST
PAST
MIDNIGHT
,
WEAVING
through the woods by lantern light till we’re deep inside the dark womb of the caves. Felicity lights candles she’s stolen from a cupboard. Within minutes, the place is alight, the drawings dancing again on the rocky walls. In the eerie glow, the skulls of the Morrigan twist and bend like living things till I have to look away.

“Ugh, it’s so damp in here,” Pippa says, sitting gingerly on the cave floor. Felicity has managed to talk her into coming, and all she’s done so far is complain about everything. “Did anyone think to bring food? I’m famished.”

Her gaze falls on Ann, who has pulled an apple from her cape pocket. It sits in Ann’s hand while she debates which will win, her hunger or her need to belong. After an excruciating minute she offers it to Pippa. “You could have my apple.”

“I suppose it will have to do,” Pippa says with a sigh. She reaches for it, but Felicity grabs first.

“Not yet. We have to do this properly. With a toast.”

There’s a gleam in Felicity’s eye as she reaches into her shift and pulls out the bottle of communion wine. Pippa’s squeals of delight fill the cavernous space. She throws her arms around Felicity. “Oh, Fee, you’re brilliant!”

“Yes, I am rather, aren’t I?”

I want to remind them that I’m the one who risked life, limb, soul, and explusion to get the wine, but I know it would be pointless and I’d just look sullen.

“What’s that?” Ann says.

Felicity rolls her eyes. “Cod-liver oil. What do you think it is?”

The color leaks from Ann’s face. “It’s not spirits, is it?”

Pippa clutches at her throat melodramatically. “Heavens, no!”

Ann is just realizing what she’s in for. She tries to make light of the situation by putting the joke on someone else. “Ladies don’t drink spirits,” she says, mimicking Mrs. Nightwing’s plummy tones. It’s a dead-on imitation, and we all laugh. Thrilled, Ann repeats the joke again and again till it’s gone from amusing to irritating.

“You may stop now,” Felicity scolds. Ann retreats behind her mask again.

“Mrs. Nightwing certainly never misses her sherry at night. Oh, they’re all such hypocrites. Cheers,” Pippa says, taking a generous, unladylike swig from the bottle.

She passes it to Ann, who wipes its mouth with her hand and hesitates.

“Go on, then, it won’t bite you,” Felicity says.

“I’ve never had drink before.”

“Really? I’m shocked.” Pippa giggles in mock astonishment, and I can’t help wondering what it would be like to pour that bottle right over her perfect ringlets.

Ann tries to hand the bottle back, but Felicity is firm. “It’s not a request. Drink or you’re out of the club. You can make your way back to Spence by yourself.”

Ann’s eyes widen. The spoiled girls haven’t any idea how agonizing it is for Ann to break the rules. They can always charm their way out of a certain amount of trouble, but for Ann, an infraction could be her undoing.

“Let her alone, Felicity.”

“You’re the one who wanted her to come—not us,” she says, letting the cruelty sink in. “No more favors. If she wants in, she has to drink. The same goes for you.”

“Fine, then. Hand it over,” I say. The bottle passes my way.

“And no spitting it back in,” Felicity taunts.

Raised to my lips, the bottle smells sweet and harsh at the same time. The scent is all things powerful, magical, and forbidden. It burns going down, making me cough and sputter, as if someone has set a match to my lungs.

“Ah, the vine of life.” Felicity breaks into a devilish grin, and they all laugh, even Ann. There’s gratitude for you.

I can barely croak out, “What is this?” It’s like no wine I’ve ever sipped from my parents’ glasses, and I’m sure it’s something the servants use to clean floors or mix varnish.

Felicity is more pleased than I’ve ever seen her. “Whiskey. You accidentally took Reverend Waite’s private collection.”

Tears sting at my eyes from the pungency, but at least I’m breathing again. A surprising warmth floods my entire body, weighing me down in a delicious way. I like the feeling, but Felicity has already snatched the bottle away and sent it to Ann who takes her medicine like a good girl with just the slightest grimace at the taste. Once Felicity has her drink, we’ve all been initiated. Into what, I’m still not certain. The bottle goes around a few more times till we’re all as loose-limbed as new calves. I’m floating inside my skin. I could go on floating like this for days. Right now, the real world with its heartbreak and disappointments is just a pulse against the protective membrane we’ve drunk ourselves into. It’s somewhere outside us, waiting, but we are too giddy to bother with it. Watching the rocks glimmer, my new friends talking in soft murmurs, I wonder if this is what the days look and feel like for my father, wrapped tight inside his laudanum cocoon. No pain, only the distant beating of memory. The sadness of that is overwhelming, and I’m drowning in it.

“Gemma? Are you all right?” It’s Felicity, sitting up and looking at me, confused, and I realize I’m crying.

“It’s nothing,” I say, wiping at my eyes with the back of a hand.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to be one of those maudlin drunks,” she says, trying to joke, but it only makes the tears come faster.

“No more for you, then. Here, have something to eat.” She puts the bottle behind a rock and hands me the still uneaten apple. “This party is getting very dull. Who’s got a clever idea for us?”

“If this is a club, shouldn’t we have a proper name?” Pippa’s head lolls against a rock. Her eyes glisten from the drink.

“How about the Young Ladies of Spence?” Ann offers.

Felicity makes a face. “Makes us sound like spinsters with bad teeth.”

I laugh a little too loudly, but I’m grateful that the tears have stopped, even if I’m still having trouble catching my breath.

“It was just my first thought,” Ann snaps. The whiskey has given her fangs.

“Don’t get prickly on us,” Felicity shoots back. “Here, have another go.”

Ann shakes her head, but the bottle is still there at the end of Felicity’s hand, so she takes another tight-lipped swig.

Pippa claps her hands. “I know—let’s call ourselves the Ladies of Shalott!”

“Does that mean we’re all going to die?” I ask, starting to giggle uncontrollably. My head is a feather on the breeze.

Felicity joins my snickering. “Gemma’s right. Too moping by far.”

We throw out names, laughing at the completely outrageous—Athena’s Priestesses! Daughters of Persephone!—and groaning at the truly terrible—Love’s Four Winds! Finally, we fall silent, leaning against the rocks, our heads touching softly. On the walls, the goddesses hunt and cavort, free from all restraints, these makers of their own rules, punishers of trespassers.

“Why not call ourselves the Order?” I say.

Felicity sits up so quickly I can still feel the warmth of her next to me, trailing behind her by seconds. “How absolutely perfect! Gemma, you are our genius.” I’m a little embarrassed, so I twist the stem of the apple in my hand till it breaks with a snap. Felicity pulls my hand to her mouth and bites into the fruit cupped there. Her mouth is still sticky sweet from it as she kisses me full on the lips. I have to put my hand to them to stop the tingling, and a blush has flooded my entire body.

Felicity raises the apple and my arm into the air, both held tight in her pale fist. “Ladies, I give you the Order, reborn!”

“The Order, reborn!” we all echo, our voices bouncing around the cave in ripples of sound. Pippa actually embraces me. We’re alive with our new secret, with the way we belong to each other and to something other than the dull passing of hours with nothing to look forward to besides our routines. It makes me feel even more powerful than the whiskey, and I want it to go on forever.

“Do you suppose there was really such an order of women?”

Felicity snorts. “Don’t be daft, Pip. It’s a fairy tale.”

Pippa is hurt. “I only wondered, that’s all.”

I don’t want the spell of our evening to be broken so fast. “What if it were true?” The slim leather-bound diary is in my hands and out in the open before I can really think about it.

“What’s that?” Ann asks.

“The secret diary of Mary Dowd.”

Ann is afraid she has missed something. “Who’s Mary Dowd?”

I tell them what I know of Mary Dowd, her friend Sarah, and their participation in the Order. Felicity grabs the diary from me, and the pages turn faster and faster as they read, their mouths hanging open in astonishment.

“Have you found the part where she goes into the garden?” I ask.

“We’re past that,” Felicity says.

“Wait a minute!
I
haven’t even read past that! Where’ve you got to?” I say, sounding like a whining child.

“March fifteenth. Here, I’ll read aloud,” Felicity says.

“Sarah and I were quite naughty today and entered the realms again without the guidance of our sisters. At first, we feared we were lost as we found ourselves in a misty wood where many lost spirits, those poor, wandering, wretched souls, asked us for help, but there was naught we could do for them yet. Eugenia says—”

“Eugenia! Do you think she means Mrs. Spence?” Ann asks.

We all shush her, and Felicity continues.

“Eugenia says they cannot cross over until their soul’s work is done, whether on one plane or another, and only then can they take their rest. Some of these wanderers never find release, and they are corrupted, becoming dark spirits who can cause all manner of mischief. These are banished to the Winterlands, a realm of fire and ice and shadows. Only the strongest and wisest of our sisters is allowed there, for the dark ones of that realm can whisper a thousand longings to you. They will make you a slave for power if you do not know how to use and banish them as the elders do. To answer such a fallen spirit, to bind it to you, could change the balance of the realms forever.”

Felicity stops. “Oh, honestly, this is the worst attempt at a gothic novel I’ve ever read. All we’re missing are creaking castle floors and a heroine in danger of losing her virtue.”

Pippa sits up, giggling. “Let’s read on and find out if they do lose their virtue!”

“Today, we were once again in that garden of beauty where one’s greatest wishes can be made real . . .”

“This is more like it,” Felicity says. “Bound to be something carnal here.”

“Heather, sweet-smelling, the color of wine, swayed under an orange-gold sky. For hours, we lay in it, wanting for nothing, turning blades of grass into butterflies with just the touch of our fingers, whatever we imagined made real by our will and desire. The sisters showed us wondrous things we could do, ways of healing, incantations for beauty and love . . .”

“Ooooh, I want to know those!” Pippa shouts out. Felicity raises her voice, talking over her till she shuts up again.

“. . . for cloaking ourselves from the sight of others, for bending the minds of men to the will of the Order, influencing their thoughts and dreams till their destinies shake out before them like a pattern in the night stars. It was all written upon the Oracle of the Runes. Just to touch our hands to those crystals was to be a conduit, with the universe flowing
through hard and fast as a river. Indeed, we could only stay for mere seconds, such was its greatness. But when we came away from it, we were changed inside. ‘You have been opened,’ our sisters said . . .”

Pippa giggles. “Perhaps they did lose their virtue after all.”