A Great And Terrible Beauty (4 page)

“What’s the matter now?” Tom raps against the hood of the carriage to spur the driver on. But the lady is really giving the driver what for. We might be here all night. The drunken man leers at me, winks, makes an extremely rude gesture involving his index fingers.

Disgusted, I turn away and look down an empty alley. Tom’s leaning out his window. I hear him, condescending and impatient, trying to reason with the couple in the street. But something’s gone wrong. His voice grows muffled, like sounds heard through a shell held to the ear. And then all I can hear is my blood quickening, thumping hard against my veins. A tremendous pressure seizes me, knocking the air from my lungs.

It’s happening again.

I want to cry out to Tom, but I can’t, and then I’m under, falling through that tunnel of color and light again as the alley bends and flickers. And just as quickly, I’m floating out of the carriage, stepping lightly into the darkened alley with its shimmering edges. There’s a small girl of eight or so sitting in the straw-covered dirt, playing with a rag of a doll. Her face is dirty, but otherwise, she seems out of place here, in her pink hair ribbon and starched white pinafore that’s a size too big for her. She sings a snippet of song, something I recognize faintly as being an old English folk tune. When I approach she looks up.

“Isn’t my dolly lovely?”

“You can see me?” I ask.

She nods and goes back to combing her filthy fingers through the doll’s hair. “She’s looking for you.”

“Who?”

“Mary.”

“Mary? Mary who?”

“She sent me to find you. But we have to be careful. It’s looking for you, too.”

The air shifts, bringing a damp chill with it. I’m shaking uncontrollably. “Who are you?”

Behind the little girl, I sense movement in the murky dark. I blink to clear my eyes but it’s no trick—
the shadows are moving
. Quick as liquid silver the dark rises and takes its hideous shape, the gleaming bone of its skeletal face, the hollow, black holes where eyes should be. The hair a tangle of snakes. The mouth opens and the rasping moan escapes. “
Come to us, my pretty, pretty . . .
”

“Run.” The word is a choked whisper on my tongue. The thing is growing, slithering ever closer. The howls and moans inside it making every cell in my body go ice-cold. A scream inches its way up my throat. If I let it out, I’ll never stop.

Heart pounding hard against my ribs, I say again, stronger, “Run!”

The thing hesitates, pulls back. It sniffs at the air, as if tracking a scent. The little girl turns her flat brown eyes to me. “Too late,” she says, just as the creature turns its unseeing eyes toward me. The decaying lips spread apart, revealing teeth like spikes. Dear God, the thing is grinning at me. It opens wide that horrible mouth and screeches—a sound that loosens my tongue at last.

“No!” In an instant I’m back inside the carriage and leaning out the window, yelling at the couple. “Get out of the bloody way—now!” I shout, snapping at the horse’s rump with my shawl. The mare whinnies and lurches, sending the couple rushing for the safety of the tavern.

The driver steadies the horse as Tom pulls me down into my seat. “Gemma! Whatever has possessed you?”

“I . . .” In the alley, I look for the thing and don’t find it. It’s just an alley, with dull light and several dirty children trying to steal a hat from a smaller boy, their laughter bouncing off stables and crumbling hovels. The scene passes behind us into the night.

“I say, Gemma, are you all right?” Tom is truly concerned.

I’m going mad, Tom. Help me.

“I was simply in a hurry.” The sound coming out of my mouth is a cross between a laugh and a howl, like the sound a madwoman would make.

Tom eyes me as if I’m some rare disease he’s helpless to treat. “For pity’s sake! Get hold of yourself. And please try to watch your language at Spence. I don’t want to have to collect you only hours after I’ve deposited you there.”

“Yes, Tom,” I say as the carriage jostles back to life on the cobblestones, leading us away from London and shadows.

“
THERE’S
THE
SCHOOL
NOW
,
SIR
,”
THE
DRIVER
SHOUTS
.

We’ve been riding for an hour across rolling hills dotted with trees. The sun has set, the sky settling into that hazy blue of twilight. When I look out my window, I can’t see anything but a canopy of branches overhead, and through the lacework of leaves, there’s the moon, ripe as a melon. I’m starting to think that our driver must be imagining things, too, but we crest a hill and Spence comes into glorious view.

I had expected some sweet little cottage estate, the kind written about in halfpenny papers where rosy-cheeked young girls play lawn tennis on tidy green fields. There is nothing cozy about Spence. The place is enormous, a madman’s forgotten castle with great, fat turrets and thin, pointy spires. It would take a girl a year just to visit every room inside, no doubt.

“Whoa!” The driver stops short. There’s someone in the road.

“Who goes there?” A woman comes around to my side of the carriage and peers in. An old Gypsy woman. A richly embroidered scarf is wrapped tightly about her head and her jewelry is pure gold, but otherwise, she is disheveled.

“What now?” Tom sighs.

I poke my head out. When the moonlight catches my face, the Gypsy woman’s face softens. “Oh, but it’s you. You’ve come back to me.”

“I’m sorry, madam. You must have mistaken me for someone else.”

“Oh, but where is Carolina? Where is she? Did you take her?” She starts to moan softly.

“Come on now, missus, let us by,” the driver calls. “There’s a good lady.”

With a snap of the reins, the carriage jostles forward again as the old woman calls after us.

“Mother Elena sees everything. She knows your heart! She knows!”

“Good lord, they’ve got their own hermit,” Tom sneers. “How very fashionable.”

Tom may laugh but I can’t wait to get out of the carriage and the dark.

The horse draws us under the stone archway and through gates that open onto lovely grounds. I can just make out a wonderful green field, perfect for playing lawn tennis or croquet, and what looks like lush, overgrown gardens. A little farther out lies a grove of great trees, thick as a forest. Beyond the trees sits a chapel perched on a hill. The whole picture looks as if it’s been standing this way for centuries, untouched.

The carriage bounces up the hill that leads to Spence’s front doors. I arch my neck out the window to take in the full, massive scope of the building. There’s something jutting up from the roof. It’s hard to make it out in the fading light. The moon shifts from under a bank of clouds and I see them clearly: gargoyles. Moonlight ripples over the roof, illuminating bits and pieces—a sliver of sharp tooth, a leering mouth, snarling eyes.

Welcome to finishing school, Gemma. Learn to embroider, serve tea, curtsy. Oh, and by the way, you might be demolished in the night by a hideous winged creature from the roof.

The carriage jangles to a stop. My trunk is placed on the great stone steps outside the large wooden doors. Tom raps with the great brass knocker, which is roughly the size of my head. While we wait, he can’t resist giving his last bit of brotherly advice.

“Now, it is very important that you conduct yourself in a manner befitting your station while at Spence. It’s fine to be kind to the lesser girls, but remember that they are not your equals.”

Station. Lesser girls. Not your equals
. It’s a laugh, really. After all, I’m the unnatural one responsible for her mother’s murder, the one who sees visions. I pretend to freshen my hat in the brass reflection of the knocker. Any sense of foreboding I feel will probably disappear the minute the door opens and some kindly housekeeper takes me in with a warm embrace and an open smile.

Right. Give the door another good, solid bang to show I’m a good, solid girl, the kind every eerie boarding school would love to claim as its own. The heavy oak doors open, revealing a craggy-faced, thick-waisted bulwark of a housekeeper with all the warmth of Wales in January. She glares at me, wiping her hands on her starched white apron.

“You must be Miss Doyle. We expected you a half hour ago. You’ve kept the headmistress waiting. Come on. Follow me.”

The housekeeper bids us wait for a moment in a large, poorly lit parlor filled with dusty books and withering ferns. There is a fire going. It spits and hisses as it devours the dry wood. Laughter floats in through the open double doors and in a moment, I see several younger girls in white pinafores shuffling through the hall. One peeks in, sees me, and goes on as if I’m nothing more than a piece of furniture. But in a moment she’s back with some of the others. They swoon over Tom, who preens for them, bowing, which sets them to blushing and giggling.

God help us all.

I’m afraid I may have to take the fireplace poker to my brother to silence this spectacle. Fortunately, I’m spared from any murderous impulses. The humorless house-keeper is back. It’s time for Tom and me to make our goodbyes, which consist mainly of the two of us staring at the carpet.

“Well, then. I believe I’ll see you next month on Assembly Day with the other families.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Make us proud, Gemma,” he says at last. No sentimental reassurances—
I love you; it’s all going to be just fine, you’ll see.
He smiles once again for the adoring crowd of girls still hiding in the hallway, and then he’s gone. I am alone.

“This way, miss, if you please,” the housekeeper says. I follow her out to a huge, open foyer where an incredible double staircase sits. The stairs branch off both left and right. A bit of breeze from an open window shakes the crystals of a chandelier above me. It’s dazzling. Gobs of exquisite crystals strung along metal crafted into elaborate snakes.

“Watch yer step, miss,” the housekeeper advises. “Stairs is steep.”

The stairs rope up and around for what seems like miles. Over the banister, I can see the black-and-white marble tiles making diamond patterns on the floor far below. A painting of a silver-haired woman in a dress that would have been the height of fashion some twenty years ago greets us at the top of the stairs.

“That’s Missus Spence,” the housekeeper informs me.

“Oh,” I say. “Lovely.” The portrait is enormous—it’s like having the eye of God watch over you.

We move on, down a long corridor to a set of thick double doors. The housekeeper knocks with her meaty fist, waits. A voice answers from the other side of the doors, “Come in,” and I’m ushered into a room with dark green wallpaper in a peacock feather pattern. A somewhat heavyset woman with piles of brown hair going gray sits at a large desk, a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles on her nose.

“That will be all, Brigid,” she says, dismissing the warm and embracing housekeeper. The headmistress goes back to finishing her correspondence, while I stand on the Persian rug, pretending I’m absolutely fascinated by a figurine of a little German maid carrying buckets of milk on her shoulders. What I really want to do is turn around and bolt for the door.

So sorry, my mistake. I believe I was supposed to report to another boarding school, run by human beings who might offer a girl some tea or at least a chair.
A mantel clock ticks off the seconds, the rhythm lulling me into a tiredness I’ve been fighting.

Finally, the headmistress puts down her pen. She points to a chair on the other side of the desk. “Sit.”

There is no “please.” No “would you be so kind.” All in all, I’m feeling as welcome as a dose of cod-liver oil. The beast attempts a beatific look that could be mistaken for a bout of painful wind.

“I am Mrs. Nightwing, headmistress of Spence Academy. I trust you had a pleasant journey, Miss Doyle?”

“Oh, yes, thank you.”

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

“Brigid saw you in comfortably?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Tick, tick, tick, tock.

“I don’t usually admit new girls at such an advanced age. I find it is harder for them to grow accustomed to the Spence way of life.” There’s one black mark against me already. “But under the circumstances, I feel it our Christian duty to make an exception. I am sorry for your loss.”

I say nothing and fix my gaze on the silly little German milkmaid. She’s smiling and rosy-cheeked, most likely on her way back to a small village where her mother is waiting for her and there are no dark shadows lurking.

When I don’t respond, Mrs. Nightwing continues. “I understand that custom dictates a mourning period for at least a year. But I find that such persistent reminders are not healthy. It keeps us centered on the dead and not the living. I recognize that this is unconventional.” She gives me a long look over the top of her glasses to see if I will object. I don’t. “It is important that you get on here and be on equal footing with the other girls. After all, some of them have been with us for years, far longer than they’ve been with their own families. Spence is rather like a family, one with affection and honor, rules and consequences.” She emphasizes this last word. “Therefore, you will wear the same uniform everyone else wears. I trust this will be acceptable to you?”

“Yes,” I say. And though I feel a bit guilty about abandoning my mourning weeds so soon, in truth I’m grateful for the chance to look like everybody else. It will help me to remain unnoticed, I hope.

“Splendid. Now, you will be in the first class with six young ladies also of your age. Breakfast is served promptly at nine o’clock. You will have instruction in French with Mademoiselle LeFarge, drawing with Miss Moore, music with Mr. Grunewald. I shall direct your lessons in deportment. Prayers are said at six o’clock each evening in the chapel. In fact”—she glances at the mantel clock—”we shall be leaving for the chapel very shortly. Dinner follows at seven. There is free time in the great hall afterward, with all girls in bed by ten.” She attempts one of those confessional smiles, the sort usually seen in reverent portraits of Florence Nightingale. In my experience, such smiles mean that the real message—the one hidden by manners and good posture—will need to be translated.