“Well, thank you for taking the blame anyway,” I said as we reached our floor. “I would have hated to be expelled on my first night.”
“Expelled on your first night? That would be an accomplishment even for me.”
The disembodied voice startled me all the more for being male and for coming from an open window.
“Nate!” Helen cried, rushing to the window. “Are you trying to break your neck?”
I followed Helen to the window and craned my head out beside her to see Nathan Beckwith sitting cross-legged on a narrow cast-iron catwalk that hugged the west side of the castle. His fair hair and pale skin looked ruddy in the light of the setting sun, which was just sinking behind the mountains on the other side of the river.
“Not at all,” Nathan replied. “Although I am touched to hear your concern about my neck. Oh, hullo,” he said, noticing me. “You’re the girl who made the bell ring, aren’t you?
I colored deeply. “Is that what people are saying?” I asked.
“I don’t know about people,” Nathan replied with a sniff as if the general herd of humanity was beneath his notice. “I was in the kitchen cadging leftovers from Cook when I overheard my mother say to old Peale that he should keep an eye on you when you handle the bells. Capital of you to step in like that and take the blame, Helen.”
Beside me Helen blushed and dimpled, trying not to smile. “Well, I couldn’t let her get kicked out, could I? We’ll both be, though, if anyone sees us talking to a boy in dormitory.” Helen glanced nervously behind us. The landing was still empty, but on the stairs we could hear voices of girls making their way up.
“Come on out here, then,” Nathan suggested. “No one will see you and you can watch the sunset with me. Don’t you want a breath of fresh air before you’re stuck inside all night with a bunch of giggling girls drinking cocoa?”
A moment ago I’d been looking forward to the cocoa party. It was another detail I’d read about in Mrs. Moore’s books—nighttime dormitory feasts where girls sat around in their nightgowns braiding each other’s hair and telling ghost stories—but now I wondered if rumors of my making the bell ring were spreading around the school. How well would I fit in with the other girls if they thought I was an intruder? Suddenly I felt as though I were suffocating.
“That sounds lovely,” I said, edging past a startled Helen and picking up my skirts to climb through the window. Nathan Beckwith’s gray eyes widened with surprise. Apparently, he hadn’t thought we’d be brave enough to join him.
“Well, shove over,” I said, “unless you want us both to end up cracked like eggs on the flagstones below.”
Behind me, Helen yelped and exclaimed, “Well, I suppose one of us has to get the fire going for cocoa.” When I looked back she was gone.
“That’s funny,” I said, settling myself on the catwalk. “Why would she go?”
“Fear of heights,” Nathan explained, grinning.
“Really? I wouldn’t have thought Helen van Beek was afraid of anything.”
“That’s what she likes people to believe, but when we were ten I dared her to climb up to the roof of her house and she froze there. I had to carry her down.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t an excuse to get you to carry her?” I asked, remembering what it had felt like when the dark-eyed boy had caught me in the air, his arms around my waist. But I had only imagined that.
“I suppose . . . but would she have spit up all over my shirt, then? You don’t seem at all afraid of heights, though. You look as comfortable as an eaglet in its cliff-side aerie.”
I smiled at the image. Perhaps it wasn’t the most flattering comparison a boy could make—weren’t boys supposed to compare your skin to milk and your cheeks to roses?—but then, what did I know of boys? Mother had always forbidden me to talk to them. And yet here I was, sitting only a few feet away from one with no one else around. I smiled, thinking that while my mother might disapprove, Tillie would be proud of me.
And I hardly felt awkward at all. In fact, I felt peculiarly comfortable—snug in the nest of wrought iron with the river valley spread out below us. The sun had slipped behind the mountains, turning their dark, undulating slopes purple and blue. The banks of the clouds beyond them could have been another range of mountains—lilac and pale blue and silver in the distance. The Hudson shimmered with a mysterious glow, as if it held secrets below it that it was carrying swiftly toward the ocean. It was strange to think that it was the same river that I’d seen from the windows of the city apartments where I’d lived all my life. I understood now why my mother had always found us lodgings with a view of the Hudson: the river was the thread that connected her to Blythewood. Now it was the thread that tied me to my old life.
To Nathan I said, “I guess I’m just accustomed to heights. I used to climb the fire escape onto the roof whenever I needed a breath of air. In the city it’s the only place where you can be alone and think.”
“Yes, fire escapes also come in quite handy if you need to make a quick escape from a police raid or a jealous husband.”
I glanced over at him. He was rolling a cigarette, his eyes cast down. Now that the sun had set, his face had turned pale again and I noticed lavender smudges beneath his eyes. “What kind of places do you frequent that the police raid, Mr. Beckwith?”
“Well, Miss Hall, it’s not really a subject for a lady’s ears, but there are certain establishments that purvey the most illuminating elixirs.”
“Opium joints, you mean.”
He was so startled that he dropped the cigarette paper he had been rolling. It slipped between the slats of the metal grate, was caught by the wind, and fluttered toward the river like the first pale moth of evening. “What do you know of those places?” he asked.
“There was an opium den in the building we lived in one year. Fancy coaches and hansom cabs pulled up in front all night long, and men and women, cloaked to disguise themselves, would slip into the building. Later, when they came out, they wouldn’t bother to hide their faces. They always looked as if they were walking in a dream. I watched the same ones come and go for months until their faces changed and they began to look like they were in a nightmare . . . then they would stop coming altogether. Sometimes an ambulance would arrive—”
“Stop!” Nathan cried, holding up his hands. “I’ll never go to one again. You’re worse than the settlement house reformers.”
“I wasn’t trying to reform you, Mr. Beckwith,” I said, trying not to smile as I glanced at his flushed face. “What you do is your own business. I’m sure if you frequent the opium joints you have a reason. My mother always said we should pity the poor souls who came there because something in their lives had caused them a terrible pain and this was what they did to forget that pain. . . .” My voice trailed off as I thought about my mother drinking laudanum in the last months of her life. What pain had she been trying to forget?
Slowly I became aware that Nathan was staring at me with eyes so wide they looked like silver disks reflecting the lilac evening light. In the fading light I saw that the smudges under his eyes were a deep mauve, the same color as the shadows under his cheekbones and in the hollows of his throat exposed by his unbuttoned shirt. The evening shadows seemed to be creeping over his skin, threatening to take him. A breeze from the river, as chill as if it had traveled straight from its icy headwaters in the northern mountains, ruffled his fair hair and we both shivered.
I recalled what Sarah had said about Nathan’s fatherless childhood at Blythewood being the cause of his bad behavior at all his schools. What had he seen here? And why had he been interested in my mother’s disappearance from the school? He looked as if he were disappearing into the shadows. I was tempted to reach out and grab him to keep him from slipping away, but then he spoke in a voice as cool as the evening air.
“What an extraordinary imagination you have, Miss Hall. I can assure yo
u I only visit those places for larks . . . much like the cocoa party you will be late for if you do not hurry.”
“Oh yes,” I said, taking his hint. I’d managed to shock even the resident reprobate. Sarah Lehman had been right: I had better not reveal my lowly origins to anyone else here at Blythewood. I gathered my skirts and crawled back through the window. When I was on the landing I looked back to say good night to Nathan Beckwith, but decided not to disturb him. He now looked entirely lost to the shadows.
After that wind on the catwalk, the roaring fire was a welcome sight as I entered my room—as were the faces of the five girls gathered around the fireplace.
“There you are!” Helen cried, scrambling to her feet and rushing across the room to pull me into the circle. “You must have gotten lost looking for Cam and Beatrice and Dolores. And look—you didn’t need to go invite them to join us. They invited themselves!” She squeezed my arm and widened her blue eyes at me. Clearly Nathan was to remain our little secret—as was the fact that she’d had no intention of inviting the three girls to our cocoa party.
“We just figured the more the merrier, right-o, Dolly?” Cam said, clapping Dolores on the back and jolting the frail-boned girl so that she spilled milk from the pail she was hanging over the fire. “And this way we can pool our booty. Bea and Dolly have got some lovely chocolates from Vienna and I have the tin of biscuits my mother packed for my train ride. I hardly ate a bite I was so excited to be on a train for the first time. Do you want to hear the states I went through?”
“We were just telling how we all came to be Blythewood girls,” Helen interrupted. I could see that she was put off by Cam’s blunt manners. “Camilla’s from a ranching family in Texas. She’s been telling us how very rich they are.” She widened her eyes, obviously aghast at the idea of someone talking so openly about money. “Of course Ava and I are legacies, and so are Dolores and Beatrice, but Daisy here was discovered by a teacher at her school. Isn’t that interesting?”
Daisy paused from spooning cocoa into the milk pail and looked up, blushing. “I wouldn’t say discovered exactly. My music teacher, Miss Baines, was an alumna of Blythewood. She thought I would do well here, and so a committee of Blythewood women came to Kansas City to interview me. It was a most peculiar interview.”
“How?” I asked eagerly, wondering if Daisy had seen her interviewers turn into crows as I had.
“They asked me a lot of questions about Latin and such—I’ve always been quite good at languages, Mother says because I have a musical ear—but then they blindfolded me and had me listen to a series of bells and describe to them what the sounds reminded me of.”
“Crickets!” Cam exclaimed. “They blindfolded me, too, and had me shoot arrows. I’m a crack shot, if I say so myself, but I’d never tried it blindfolded. Queer thing was, I hit the bull’s-eye on every single one.”
“Most curious,” Beatrice said, narrowing her hooded brown eyes at Cam. “Papa says that the selection committee recruits for particular skills to enhance the student body. If only the children of alumnae were allowed to attend, Blythewood would become quite stale. You are new blood.”
“My mother says old blood is the best,” Helen said. “Mmmm . . . the cocoa smells almost done. Shall I pour? I always do for tea.”
No one objected to Helen pouring the steaming frothy chocolate into teacups bearing the Bell and Feather insignia.
“We’re all here for a reason,” Beatrice opined somberly, blowing on her hot cocoa.
“I can’t imagine what the reason could be for me,” Helen moaned. “I’ll be missing the season in New York. I don’t know how I’ll ever find a husband here when Ava’s gone and taken the only eligible young man on the premises.”
I opened my mouth to object that I certainly hadn’t taken anyone, but Helen was on to a new idea. “I know, let’s find out who will marry first! We’ll toss hazelnuts into the fire. Here—I stole a bunch from the kitchen just for this reason.”
“My aunt Lucille always says that divination is wicked,” Daisy said. “We shouldn’t try to know what the Lord has in store for us.”
“Then whyever did God make hazelnuts?” Helen replied promptly. “Or give us minds to wonder? Here.” She handed a nut to Daisy. “All you do is toss it in the fire whilst reciting this poem:
“A nut I throw into the flame,
to it I give my sweetheart’s name.
However flares this nut’s bright glow
so may my sweetheart’s passion grow.”
Daisy looked hesitantly down at the shiny brown nut in her hand, her cheeks turning pink. Did she have a sweetheart? Curling her fingers into a tight fist she recited the rhyme dutifully, as she might have said her Latin declensions, and then flung the nut into the fire as if it were already burning her hand. We all leaned forward to stare at Daisy’s nut where it lay among the coals. Within moments it began to glow.
“A nice steady glow, Daze!” Helen exclaimed. “That means your beloved has a true heart and will be faithful to you. Come on, do tell, who is he?”
“Roger Appleby,” Daisy whispered, her eyes lit up by the flames. “He works in the Kansas City Savings and Loan.”
“Well, I bet he’s thinking of you right now. Who’s next? What about you, Beatrice?”
“As I mentioned,” Beatrice said solemnly, “my sister and I have sworn off romantic—” Before Beatrice could finish, her sister Dolores snatched a hazelnut from Helen’s hand and lobbed it into the fire, silently mouthing the poem. The hazelnut instantly burst into flames.
“Aha!” Helen crowed as Beatrice stared appalled at her sister. “I knew it! Let me guess, you’re in love with a Russian count who was forced to go back to his motherland but promised one day to return to you!”
Dolores covered her mouth to hide a smile and emitted an incongruous-sounding giggle. Beatrice grabbed a nut and tossed it disdainfully into the fire, where it was immediately lost in the flames. “Ah,” Helen said wisely, “you will fall in love with a man who goes missing in war. It will be a grand passion that nearly kills you, but that in the end makes you stronger. You will do great things in his memory.”
“Well,” Beatrice sniffed, looking secretly pleased, “I suppose the doing great things part might be true.”
“My turn,” Cam said, flinging a nut into the fire so forcefully that it bounced off the fire screen and fell into the half-full pail of milk.
“Ah, you know what that means, don’t you?”
Cam shook her head.
“It means you’ll refuse all offers for your hand in order to devote yourself to a very important cause, but just when everybody has given you up for an ancient spinster you’ll have a wild and dramatic affair.”
Cam hugged her knees to her chest and stared. “Really? Will it be a happy love affair?”
“No,” Helen said, touching her hand, “but it will be heroic.”
Cam nodded solemnly. “Like Abelard and Heloise?”
“Exactly.”
Cam bit her lip and looked strangely pleased. Helen, I saw, knew exactly what to tell each girl. I wondered what story she would spin for me. I certainly didn’t believe there was anything to this silly game. At least that’s what I told myself as I took one of the last two nuts from Helen’s hand.
I didn’t even have a sweetheart to think about. I supposed I could think about Nathan Beckwith, but as I said the rhyme, an image of the dark-eyed, dark-winged boy rose in my head. I saw his face hovering above mine, felt his strong arms wrapped around me, heard the thunder of wings beating overhead . . .
I tossed the nut into the fire. It landed on top of the flaming logs. For a moment it lay still and dark, and then it split in two, each half catching fire and soaring upward on a gust of flame so that for a moment it looked like two wings spreading out over the fire.
“Oh my!” Daisy said. “Does that mean that Ava is going
to fall in love with an aviator?”
“Perhaps it means she will be an aviatrix,” Beatrice said. “Like Miss Harriet Quimby.”
“Oh, she’s marvelous! The Aero Club of America awarded her a pilot’s certificate this summer. The first time ever it was given to a woman!” Cam said. “Pa says if I do well in school he’ll buy me an airplane.”
Cam and Beatrice began a spirited debate about how exciting it would be to fly a plane. I was glad to have attention diverted away from me, but I noticed that Helen kept looking at me strangely. And I noticed that she never threw her hazelnut into the fire.
12
WE STAYED UP talking and drinking cocoa until the eleven o’clock bells alerted us that it was time for lights out. Cam and the twins went back to their room and we got into our beds. I thought it would take me a long time to fall asleep in this strange, new place with its odd rituals and the murmur of two strangers talking quietly to one another. I felt a pang that since I’d gotten the bed farthest away I was excluded from their conversation. Helen had seemed friendly enough at first, but would she freeze me out now that she thought I liked Nathan Beckwith? Would she take sides with Daisy against me? I’d read about such things in Miss Moore’s books. If only my hazelnut hadn’t exploded quite so vehemently—like flaming wings.
As I drifted into sleep I felt myself falling. Then I was caught up in the arms of the dark-winged boy, as if he’d been there waiting for me all along. We climbed through the clouds into the pure blue ether of the upper stratosphere. His face was limned with a halo of red from the setting sun, as were his great dark wings. We were climbing toward the sun.
Too close to the sun. I remembered the old story of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun. His wax wings melted and he plummeted to earth and died for daring to reach too high. Stop! I wanted to scream, but he couldn’t hear me above the sound of his wings beating the air. He was flying straight into a raging inferno. Each feather was tipped with fire now, a fire that spread with each beat of his powerful wings. I felt the heat on my face, heard the roar of the fire, the glare of flames blinding me . . .