A Great And Terrible Beauty (34 page)

His eyes widen. “Tell me you haven’t done what I think you’ve done.”

I step forward. I don’t recognize my voice, it is so desperate and near tears. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s beautiful. I’m . . .” I want to say “beautiful,” but I don’t because I’m on the verge of crying.

He shakes his head, backs away. I’m losing him. I should let it alone. Go away. Stop. But I can’t.

“Let me show you. I’ll take you with me. We could look for your brother!”

I reach for his hand but he practically leaps to the other side of the tent. “No. It’s not for me to see. Not for me to know.”

“Just take my hand. Please!”

“No!”

Why did I think I could win him over? Why did I think I could make him see me differently? Worse, what if the way he sees me is the way I really am—someone to be wary of, not loved? A sideshow abomination. A monster.

I turn and run as fast as I can, and he doesn’t chase me.

I’m making that long, miserable climb up to my room when Brigid stops me, candle in hand, nightcap on head. “Who goes there?”

“It’s only me, Brigid,” I say, hoping she doesn’t get any closer and notice I’m fully dressed.

“Wot are you doin’ skulkin’ round in the dead o’ night?”

“Please don’t tell Mrs. Nightwing. It’s just that I couldn’t sleep.”

“Thinkin’ about your mum, then?”

I nod, feeling craven for the lie.

“All right. It’s just between you and me. But get yourself to bed.”

It breaks me, this sudden kindness from Brigid. I can feel my borders unraveling. “Goodnight,” I whisper, passing her on my way up.

“Oh, by the way, I thought of that fancy name. The one Sarah started callin’ herself. Came to me clear as day as I was doin’ the washing up tonight. I remembered Missus Spence tellin’ me, ‘Oh, our Sarah thinks she’s a goddess of old, just like the Greeks.’ That’s when it come to me, when I was washin’ up the china cups with the Greek key pattern.”

“Yes?” I ask. I’m suddenly very tired and not in the mood for one of Brigid’s long-winded stories.

“Circe,” she says, descending the stairs, her shadow just ahead of her. “That were the name she used to call herself—Circe.”

Circe is Sarah Rees-Toome.

Sarah Rees-Toome, who did not die in a fire twenty years ago, but who is alive and well and waiting for me. She is no longer a shadowy enemy but flesh and blood. Someone I could get to before she gets to me. If only I had some idea where she could be or what she must look like.

But I don’t. I am completely at her mercy.

Or am I?

Circe, Sarah Rees-Toome, was once a Spence girl, class of 1871. A girl in a photograph that has been removed but still exists somewhere. Finding that photograph is no longer a matter of curiosity. It is a necessity, my only means of finding her before she finds me.

BY
THE
NEXT
MORNING
,
OUR
NIGHTTIME
EXPERIMENTS
in power and magic have begun to take their toll. Our faces are pasty and pale, our lips cracked. My mind’s in a fog, and I’m so tired that I can barely speak in English, let alone French, which presents problems in Mademoiselle LeFarge’s class. It doesn’t help that I’ve stumbled in, nearly late.

Mademoiselle LeFarge chooses to make a game of my tardiness. Now that I am her prize student, a shining example of her superior teaching skills, she’s inclined to be playful with me.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Doyle. Quelle heure est-il?”

I know the answer. It’s on the tip of my tongue. Something about the weather, I think. If only I had enough magic left over to help me make it through her class. But sadly, I’m going to have to sail through under my own paltry steam.

“Er . . . the weather is . . .” Bloody hell. What is the French word for rain? Le rain? La rain? Is the rain masculine or feminine? It’s such a bother that it must be masculine. “Le weather est le rainy,” I say, mangling the last bit, though the
le
makes it sound more French.

The girls giggle, which only convinces Mademoiselle LeFarge that I’m making fun of her. “Mademoiselle Doyle, this is a disgrace. Just two days ago, you proved yourself an exemplary student. Now, you have the audacity to mock me. Perhaps you’ll fare better in a room of eight-year-olds.” She turns her back on me, and for the remainder of the class, it’s as if I don’t exist.

Mrs. Nightwing has noticed our pallor. She forces us to take a walk in the gardens, thinking the cool air will put roses in our cheeks. I take the opportunity to tell my friends about my run-in with Brigid last night.

“So Circe is Sarah Rees-Toome. And she’s alive.” Felicity shakes her head, incredulous.

“We’ve got to find that photograph,” I say.

“We tell Mrs. Nightwing we’re searching for a lost glove. She lets us search high and low. We scour the rooms one by one,” Ann suggests.

Pippa groans. “It will take us a year.”

“Let’s each take a floor, shall we?” I say.

Pippa gives me her large doe eyes. “Must we?”

I push her toward the school. “Yes.”

After an hour of searching, I still haven’t found it. I’ve paced the third floor so many times, I’m sure I’ve worn the carpets thin. With a sigh, I stand in front of the existing class photographs, willing them to talk, to tell me something about where I might find what’s missing. The ladies do not oblige me.

I’m drawn to the photograph from 1872, with its rippled surface. Gently, I remove it from the wall and turn it over. The back of the photograph is smooth, not ruined at all. Turn it back over and there’s the wavy front. How can that be? Unless it’s not the same photograph at all.

Hurriedly, I tug at the corners of the photograph, as if I’m pulling back a carpet. There is another photograph behind the one in the frame. A buzzing starts in my ears. Eight graduating girls sit grouped on the lawn. In the background is the unmistakable outline of Spence. At the bottom, in fine print, it reads
Class of 1871
. I’ve found it! Names are written along the bottom in a cramped hand.

Left to right—Millicent Jenkins, Susanna Meriwether, Anna Nelson, Sarah Rees-Toome . . .

My head bobs. My finger traces up to Sarah. She turned her head at the moment the picture was snapped, leaving a blurred profile that’s hard to read. I squint but can’t really make out much.

My finger moves on to the girl next to her. My mouth goes dry. She’s looking directly into the camera with her wise, penetrating eyes—eyes I’ve known my whole life. I look for her name, though I already know the one I’ll find, the one she abandoned and left to die in a fire years before I was even born. Mary Dowd.

The girl staring back at me from that class of 1871 is Mary Dowd—my mother.

I
WAIT
UNTIL
THE
OTHERS
ARE
SETTLED
AT
DINNER
, then slip away to my room. In the gathering darkness, it fades by degrees. Shapes fade into impressions of things. Everything is stripped down to its essence. I am ready. Eyes closed, I summon the door. The familiar pulsing travels through my veins, and I step through, alone, into the other world, the garden, where sweet-smelling flowers fall around me like ash.

“Mother,” I say, and my voice sounds strange and hard in my ears.

A soft wind blows. Behind it, like rain, is the smell of rose water. She is coming.

“Find me if you can,” she says with a smile. I won’t return it. I won’t even look at her. “What is it?”

My mother is not at all the woman I thought she was. I’ve never really known her. She is Mary Dowd. A liar and a sorceress. A killer.

“You’re Mary Dowd.”

Her smile falls. “You know.”

Some part of me has been holding out hope that I’m mistaken and that she’ll laugh, tell me it’s a silly mistake, explain it all away. The truth is a blow.

“No one came to you, told you all those things about me. You knew. You were a member of the Order all along. Everything you’ve told me is a fabrication.”

Her voice is surprisingly soft. “No. Not everything.”

I’m blinking back tears. “You lied to me.”

“Only to protect you.”

“That’s another lie.” I feel such hate; I’m nearly sick with it. “How could you?”

“It was all so very long ago, Gemma.”

“And that excuses everything? You led that little girl into the East Wing. You killed her!”

“Yes. And I spent every day of my life atoning for it.” A bird sings a hollow evening song from a branch. “Everyone assumed I had died, and in a way, I had. Mary Dowd was gone and in her place was Virginia. I made a new life for myself, with your father, and then Tom and you.”

The tears fall hot and wet on my cheeks. She tries to take my hand, but I step away.

“Oh, Gemma, how could I tell you what I’d done? That’s the curse of mothers, you know. We’re never prepared for how much we love our children, for how much we wish we could protect them by being perfect.” She blinks fast, trying not to cry. “I thought I could start again. That it was all forgotten and I was free. But I wasn’t.” Her voice is tinged with bitterness. “Slowly, I began to realize that you were different. That the long-dead power of the Order and the realms was starting again in you. I was afraid of that. I didn’t want you to have that burden. I thought by saying nothing I could protect you until perhaps it would pass and fade into legend again. No more. But I was wrong, of course. We can’t escape destiny. And then it was too late, and Circe found me before I’d had a chance to tell you everything.”

“She didn’t die in the fire.”

“No. I thought she had until a year ago, when Amar came to me, told me she was using her link to the creature to find us all. She’d heard that one of us was a portal to the realms again. She just didn’t know who.” She smiles at me, but her smile is pained.

My tears stop. Anger rises like a new building, shiny-hard and attractive, a place I want to live in forever.

“Fine. You’ve completed your soul’s task. You’ve told me the truth,” I say, spitting out the last word. “Why don’t you go on and leave me alone, then?”

“My soul’s task is in your hands,” she says softly in that voice that once sang me to sleep, told me I was lovely when I wasn’t. “It’s your choice.”

“What could I possibly do for you now?”

“Forgive me.”

The sobs I’ve been holding in check come spilling out. “You want me to forgive you?”

“It’s the only way I can be at rest.”

“What about me? Do you think I’ll ever be at rest again with what I know?”

Her hand touches my cheek. I recoil. “I’m sorry, Gemma. But we can’t live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you.”

I can’t think of anything to say. I never asked for any of this, and I’ve never felt more alone in my life. I want to hurt her.

“You were wrong about the runes. We’ve used the magic twice and nothing has happened.”

Her eyes blaze. “You what? I told you not to. It isn’t safe, Gemma.”

“How do I know that isn’t another one of your lies? Why should I believe anything you say?”

She puts a hand to her mouth, paces. “Then the realms have been left unguarded. Circe’s creature could already have been here and corrupted one of us. Gemma, how could you?”

“I might ask you the same,” I say, walking away.

“Where are you going?” she asks me.

“Back,” I say.

“Gemma. Gemma!”

I pass out of the garden. The huntress surprises me. I hadn’t even heard her coming up behind me, her bow and arrow at the ready.

“The deer is close. Will you hunt with me?”

“Another time,” I mumble through lips still thick with crying.

She bends to pick some berries, pops one in her mouth. She dangles them before me like a pendulum. “Care for a berry?”

She knows I can’t eat the fruit. So why is she offering it to me?

“No, thank you,” I say, walking on a bit more quickly.

As if I haven’t moved, she is in front of me, the berries in her outstretched hand. “Are you certain? They are delicious.”

The hair on the back of my neck stands up. Something isn’t right.

“I’m sorry, but I have to go now,” I say, but I can hear the thin scraping of a voice behind me as I’m hurrying through the green velvet of the grass by the river.

“At last . . . at last . . .”

Ann stands over my bed in the dark. “Gemma? Are you awake?”

I keep my eyes closed and hope she can’t tell that I’m still crying.

Felicity and Pippa shake me till I’m forced to turn over and face them.

“Let’s go,” Felicity whispers. “The caves await, fair lady.”

“I don’t feel well.” I roll over and study the tiny cracks in the wall again.

“Don’t be such a spoilsport,” Pippa says, nudging me with her boot.

I say nothing, just focus on my spot on the wall.

“Whatever’s the matter with her?” Pippa sniffs.

“I told you not to eat the liver,” Ann says.

“Well,” Felicity sighs after a while, “I hope you recover. But don’t expect to get off quite so easily tomorrow night.”

I have no intention of stepping through into the realms. Not tomorrow. Not ever. The door of my room closes, taking the last of the light with it, and the cracks all fade into nothing.

MR.
BUMBLE
IS
NOT
QUITE
THE
EASY
MARK
WE’VE
MADE
him out to be. He’s gone to the Crosses, told them everything. The Crosses are horrified that they’ve lost control over the one thing that should always be in their control—their daughter. Their collateral. They’ve assured Mr. Bumble that it’s all some youthful folly invented by a girl nervous about her wedding day. After all, how could a girl as lovely as Pippa be anything other than the very picture of health? Mr. Bumble accepts their explanation in full, for they are the parents and we are merely silly girls. The whole episode has caused a scene at Spence, however. And so the four of us are assembled in Mrs. Nightwing’s office, under the reproachful eyes of the peacock-tail wallpaper, listening to accusations and blame, watching helplessly as our freedom unravels thread by thread.