A Great And Terrible Beauty (9 page)

We’ll be watching you.

What did he mean by that? Who is “we”? And why would anyone want to keep an eye on a girl who wasn’t clever enough to outwit a quartet of boarding school pranksters? What does he know about my mother?

Just keep looking at the school, Gemma. You’ll be all right.
I keep my eyes on the rows of windows ahead. They bob up and down with each step.
You will not bring on any more visions.

It’s ridiculous. Galling, in fact. As if I have any control over them. As if I could just shut my eyes, like this, right now, and will myself into one. The sound of my breath slows, grows louder. My whole body has gone warm and relaxed, as if I’m floating in the most delicious bath of sweet rose water. At the smell of roses, I snap my eyes open.

The little girl from the alley stands in front of me, shimmering. She beckons me with her hand. “This way.”

“
WHERE
ARE
WE GOING?”

She doesn’t answer, just darts into a thicket of trees, her brightness leading the way in the night, like a flame under glass.

“Wait,” I say. “Not so fast.”

“We’ve got to hurry.”

She flits ahead on the path. What am I doing? I’ve gone and done the one thing I’ve been asked not to do—bring on more visions. But how could I know that I could do it at will? We’re in a clearing of some kind. There’s a dark mound just before us. I’m terrified that these shadows will come alive and I’ll hear that ghastly voice from the alley, but the little girl doesn’t seem afraid. The mound is hollowed out inside, a sort of makeshift cave. She leads me down into the dank-smelling darkness. Her light fills the cave but even so, I can barely make out anything beyond a bit of rock, a spot of shiny moss.

“Behind that rock.” Her hand, incandescent and tiny, points to the near wall of the cave, where a large rock sits just at the base. “She says you’ve got to look behind it.”

“Who is she?”

“Mary, of course.”

“I’ve told you—I don’t know any Mary.” I’m arguing with a vision, a spirit. Next I know, I’ll be calling myself the queen of Romania and wandering down the lane wearing my bed linens for a cape.

“She knows
you
, miss.”

Mary. It’s only the most common name for a girl in all of England. What if this is all a trick, a way of testing me? He said I was in danger. What if this otherworldly little girl is a malevolent spirit who means to do me harm? What if the bedtime stories used to keep children at heel—tales of ghosts and goblins and witches ready to trick you into giving up your soul—are true? And now I’m trapped here in a dark cave with some sinister force who only seems like a lost urchin?

I swallow hard but the lump in my throat stays. “Suppose I don’t want to look.”

“She says you must, miss. It’s the only way to understand what’s happening to you. To understand the power.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. I only know I don’t particularly fancy turning my back on her.

“Why don’t you get it, then?”

She shakes her head. “She says you have to find it yourself. That’s the way of the realms.”

I’m tired and cold and in no mood for a mystery anymore. “Please, I don’t understand. Just tell me what this is all about!”

“You’d best hurry, miss.” Those large brown eyes flit toward the mouth of the cave and back again, and I shudder to think of what she could be afraid of out there in the dark.

Whatever happens, I can’t end up knowing less than I do right now. The rock is solid, but not unmovable. With effort, I push it away. There’s a hole in the cave wall, about an arm’s length deep. My heart is racing as my fingers feel their way inside the cold, hard rock. God only knows what’s crawling around in there, and I have to bite my lip to stifle a scream. I’m in up to my shoulder when I feel something solid. It’s stuck fast, and I have to pull hard to bring it into the light. It’s a leather-bound diary. I open to the first page. A stream of dirt trickles free; the rest I brush away. An envelope has been tucked into the book’s binding. The paper crackles in my fingers as I pull out one of the pages roaming loose inside.

What frightens you?

What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged?

Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire?

Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you’ve glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside?

If you will listen, I will tell you a story—one whose ghosts cannot be banished by the comfort of a roaring fire. I will tell you the story of how we found ourselves in a realm where dreams are formed, destiny is chosen, and magic is as real as your handprint in snow. I will tell you how we unlocked the Pandora’s box of ourselves, tasted freedom, stained our souls with blood and choice, and unleashed a horror on the world that destroyed its dearest Order. These pages are a confession of all that has led to this cold, gray dawn. What will be now, I cannot say.

Is your heart beating faster?

Do the clouds seem to be gathering on the horizon?

Does the skin on your neck feel stretched tight, waiting for a kiss you both fear and need?

Will you be scared?

Will you know the truth?

Mary Dowd, April 7, 1871

Is this the Mary who thinks she knows me? I don’t know any Mary Dowd. My head aches and I’m cold out here in just my nightgown.

“Tell Mary to leave me alone. I don’t want this power she’s giving me.”

“She’s not giving you the power, miss. Just showing you the way.”

“Well, I don’t want to follow! Do you understand, Mary Dowd?” I’m shouting at the cave till my voice echoes in my ears. It’s enough to pull me hard from the vision, until I’m alone in the cave, the diary in my hands.

The life of Mary Dowd sits on my bed, taunting me. I could burn it. Take it back and bury it. But my curiosity is too strong for that. Alone in my bed, I light a candle, place it on the windowsill, and read as much as I can in that weak light. I discover that Mary Dowd is sixteen in 1871. She adores walks in the woods, misses her family, wishes her skin were fairer. Her dearest friend in the world is a girl named Sarah Rees-Toome who is the “most charming and virtuous girl in the world.” They are like sisters, never apart. I find myself jealous of a girl I’ve never met. All in all, the first twenty pages of the diary are a thudding bore, and I can’t understand why the little girl wanted me to have it. The threat of sleep makes my eyelids flutter and my head nod, so I place the diary at the back of my closet behind Father’s cricket bat. And then I’m off to sleep, banishing it from my mind.

When I dream, it’s of my mother. She pulls my hair back gently in her hands, her warm fingers weaving through it like sunlight, making me drowsy and content. Her arms hold me close, but I slip out of her embrace into the ruin of an ancient temple. Snakes slither along deep green vines grown heavy over an altar. A storm blows in fast, thick ropes of clouds knotting up the sky. Mother’s face looms, tight with fear. Lightning fast, she takes off her necklace, tosses it to me. It hangs in the air, making slow spirals, till it lands in my hands, the corner of the silvery eye cutting my palm. Blood seeps from the cut. When I look up, Mother is shouting to me over the storm. The howling wind makes it hard to hear. But I catch one word above all the others.

Run.

WHEN
I
WAKE
,
IT’S
AN
ACTUAL
BRIGHT
BLUE
MORNING
with real sun streaming through the window, making windowpane patterns on the floor. Everything outside is golden. No one asking me to steal anything. No young cloaked men issuing cryptic warnings. No strange, glowing little girls standing guard while I rummage about in dark places. It’s as if last night never even happened. I stretch my arms overhead, trying to remember my strange dreams, something about my mother, but it won’t come back to me. The diary’s in the wardrobe, where I intend to let it gather dust. Today, revenge is first in my mind.

“You’re awake,” Ann says. She’s fully dressed, sitting on her tidily made bed, watching me.

“Yes,” I answer.

“Best get dressed if you want a hot breakfast. It’s inedible once it’s cold.” She pauses. Stares. “I cleaned away the mud you tracked in.”

A quick glance down and ah, there it is, my dirty foot sticking out from the stiff white sheet. I quickly cover it up.

“Where did you go?”

I don’t want to have this conversation. It’s sunny out. There’s bacon downstairs. My life is starting over today. I’ve just made it official. “Nowhere, really. I simply couldn’t sleep,” I lie, managing what I think passes for a radiant smile.

Ann watches as I pour water from a flowered pitcher into a bowl and scrub at my mud-caked feet and ankles. I step behind the dressing screen for modesty’s sake and pull the white dress over my head, then sweep a brush through my Medusa curls and secure them in a tight coil at the base of my neck. The hairpin scrapes against my tender scalp on the way in, and I wish I could just wear my hair down as I did when I was a young girl.

There is the problem of the corset. There’s no way that I can tighten the laces at my back by myself. And it would seem that there is no maid to help with our dressing. With a sigh, I turn to Ann.

“Would you mind terribly?”

She pulls hard on the laces, pushing the air out of my lungs till I think my ribs will break. “A bit looser, please,” I squeak. She obliges, and I’m now only uncomfortable instead of crippled.

“Thank you,” I say when we’re finished.

“You’ve got a smudge on your neck.” I do wish she would stop watching me. In the small hand mirror on my desk, I discover the spot, right below my chin. I lick my finger and wipe it off, hoping this offends Ann enough that she’ll look away before I’m forced to do something really horrible—pick at my scabs, examine a blemish, search for nose hair—in order to gain a little privacy. I give myself one last glance in the mirror. The face staring back at me isn’t beautiful but she isn’t something that would frighten the horses, either. On this morning with the sun warming my cheeks, I’ve never looked more like my mother.

Ann clears her throat. “You really shouldn’t wander around here alone.”

I wasn’t alone. She knows it, but I’m not eager to tell Ann about my humiliation at the hands of the others. She might think it bonds us together as misfits, and I’m an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.

“Next time I can’t sleep, I’ll wake you,” I say. “Goodness, what happened here?” The inside of Ann’s wrist is a nightmare of thin, red scratches, like crosshatch stitching on a hem. It looks as if they’ve been gouged there by a needle or a pin. Quickly, she pulls her sleeves down past her wrists.

“N-n-nothing,” she says. “It was an a-a-accid-d-ent.”

What sort of accident could leave such a mark? It looks deliberate to me, but I say only, “Oh,” and look away.

Ann walks toward the door. ”I hope they have fresh strawberries today. They’re good for the complexion. I read it in
The Perils of Lucy
.” She stands on the threshold, rocking back and forth on her heels slightly. Her unnerving gaze falters a little. She examines her fingers as she says, “My complexion could use all the help it can get.”

“Your complexion’s fine.” I pretend to fiddle with my collar.

She’s not bought off so easily. “It’s all right. I know I’m plain. Everyone says it.” There’s a hint of defiance in her eyes, as if she’s daring me to say it isn’t true. If I disagree, she’ll know I’m lying. If I say nothing, she’ll have her worst fears confirmed.

“Strawberries, you say? I’ll have to try some.”

The glazed calm is back. She was hoping for the lie from me, for one person to disagree and tell her she’s beautiful. I’ve failed her.

“Suit yourself,” she says, leaving me alone at last to wonder whether I’ll ever make a single friend at Spence.

There’s just enough time to make the morning’s first stop—a little offering of appreciation for Felicity’s kindness last night—and then I’m off to breakfast, suddenly famished. As I’m late, I manage to avoid seeing Felicity, Pippa, and the others. Unfortunately, it means I cannot also avoid the now lukewarm eggs and porridge, which are every bit as bad as Ann predicted and then some. The porridge congeals on my spoon in cold, thick clumps.

“Told you so,” she says, finishing the last of a piece of bacon that makes my mouth water.

When we report to our first class, Mademoiselle LeFarge’s French lesson, my luck runs out. Felicity’s clique of girls is clumped together in their seats, waiting for me. They guard the back row of the small, cramped room so that I’m forced to walk the gauntlet past them to take a seat.
Right. Here goes.

Felicity sticks out her dainty foot, stopping me in the narrow row between her wooden desk and Pippa’s. “Sleep well?”

“Quite.” I give it an extra cheeriness it doesn’t deserve, to show how little I’m bothered by schoolgirl pranks in the night. The foot remains.

“However did you manage it? Getting out, I mean?” Cecily asks.

“I have hidden powers,” I say, amusing myself with this rueful bit of information. Martha realizes she’s been left out of the night’s foolery. She can’t bring herself to say so. Instead, she tries to be part of them by mimicking me.

“I have hidden powers,” she singsongs.

My cheeks go hot. “By the way, I did secure the object you requested.”

Felicity is all attention. “Really? Where do you have it hidden?”

“Oh, I didn’t think it wise to hide it. Might not be able to find it again,” I say, cheerily. “It’s sitting in plain view on your chair in the great hall. I do hope that was the best place for it.”