A Great and Terrible Beauty

  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.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  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.

  Tomorrow, Pippa will leave with her parents, and she will be married to Mr. Bumble by the week’s end. Hasty preparations have begun. Order will be restored. Pride upheld. Who cares about one girl’s lifelong happiness in the face of such important matters as maintaining appearances?

  She stares into her lap, biting hard at her bottom lip, completely beaten, while Mrs. Nightwing works to soothe her parents and fiancé. Mrs. Nightwing rings a bell on a long rope—the one that leads to the kitchen—and moments later, Brigid appears, huffing and puffing from the race up the stairs.

  “Brigid, please show Mr. Cross and Mr. Bumble to the library and offer them a glass of our best port.”

  This pleases the men. They’re all smug smiles and puffed chests.

  “I do hope you’ll accept this with a full apology and my assurance that there’ll be no further unpleasantness.” Mrs. Nightwing gives Mr. Bumble a sideways glance.

  Mr. Cross waves the idea away. “No great harm done, fortunately.”

  Mr. Bumble crinkles his mustache as if choosing a cigar. “I’m a reasonable man. But you should keep a much tighter rein on these girls. They shouldn’t be left to their own decisions. It’s not healthy.”

  I close my eyes and imagine Mr. Bumble careening headfirst down the long staircase and snapping his neck before he can sip that port. The great irony is that we told him the truth. And now we’ll be punished for it.

  “You’re quite right. I shall follow your advice to the letter, Mr. Bumble,” Mrs. Nightwing says in a rare capitulation. She’s appeasing him, but he’s far too pompous to realize that.

  The men leave with Brigid. Mrs. Cross stands and adjusts her gloves, pulling them tighter on her hands, smoothing out the wrinkles. “Come along, Pippa. We must have you measured for your wedding dress. I think a duchesse satin will be nice.”

  Pippa’s quivering lip gives way to a quiet, desperate wail. “Please, Mother! Please don’t make me marry him.”

  Mrs. Cross’s mouth tightens into an ugly, flat line that lets the words escape in a hiss. “You are shaming this family.”

  “Pippa,” Mrs. Nightwing says, stepping between them. “You shall be a beautiful bride. The talk of London. And after your honeymoon, when you are blissfully happy and this has all been forgotten, you will come to visit us.”

  Mrs. Cross’s mouth has relaxed and there are actually tears pooling in her eyes. She cups Pippa’s chin tenderly. “I know you despise me now. But I promise, someday you will thank me. There’s an independence in marriage. Truly. If you’re clever, you can have whatever you want. Now, let’s see about a dress, shall we?”

  Pippa follows her mother out, but as she does, she turns to us with such a look of despair that I feel as if I’m the one being forced to marry against my will.

  It’s just the three of us across from Mrs. Nightwing and her equally imposing desk. A drawer is opened. Mary Dowd’s diary drops with a thud onto the desk’s gleaming mahogany surface. Fear turns my insides. We are all marked for death now.

  “Who can tell me about this?”

  Seconds, loud as cannon fire, tick by on the mantel clock.

  “Ann?”

  Ann is on the verge of tears. “It’s-s-s a b-b-book.”

  “I can see that it is a book. I have examined every page.” Mrs. Nightwing glowers at us over the tops of her spectacles. “Every page.”

  We know the one she means, and we tremble in our seats.

  “Miss Worthington, would you care to tell me what you were doing in possession of this diary?”

  Felicity’s head shoots up. “You searched my room?”

  “I’m waiting for an answer. Or will I need to contact your father about this matter?”

  Felicity looks as if she’s going to burst into tears.

  I swallow hard. “It’s mine,” I say.

  Mrs. Nightwing whips her head around suddenly and blinks. The effect is of an owl spotting prey. “Yours, Miss Doyle?”

  My stomach goes fluttery. “Yes.” Fine, let them expel me. Let this all be over.

  “And where, pray tell, did you come upon such filth?”

  “I found it.”

  “You found it?” She repeats my words slowly, showing just how much she believes me. “Where?”

  “In the woods.”

  Mrs. Nightwing glares at me but I’m too numb to be afraid. “It seems a great many things have been going on in the woods. Pippa has confessed to me.”

  Beside me I can hear Ann starting to cry, Felicity squirming in her chair. But I’m hollowed out, waiting for the inevitable.

  “She told me that Miss Moore gave you the book.”

  It’s not what I expected. I’m pulled back into the room by it.

  “Is this true?”

  My mouth opens, ready to say no, it’s all my fault, but Felicity is quicker.

  “Yes,” she says so calmly that I can scarcely believe it. “It was Miss Moore.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. But you’ll need to tell me everything, Miss Worthington.”

  “No. That’s not true,” I say, finding my voice at last.

  “You said yourself that you got it at the library.” Felicity has a hard, desperate look in her eyes. “And Miss Moore did tell us that if we wanted to know more about the Order, we should go to the library.”

  “The Order? Why on earth was Miss Moore filling your heads with such poppycock?”

  “She took us to the caves to see their drawings.”

  “Some of them are in blood,” Ann adds. They’re joined in this.

  “I never gave Miss Moore leave to take you to any caves,” Mrs. Nightwing says.

  “She took us all the same, Mrs. Nightwing.” Felicity widens her eyes, trying for an innocent look.

  “That’s not the way it happened. I found the diary—”

  Felicity puts her hand on my arm. It looks as if it’s just resting there, but she’s giving it a sharp squeeze. “Mrs. Nightwing already knows what happened, Gemma. We’ve got to tell the truth now.” To Mrs. Nightwing, she says, “She even read part of it to us in my sitting area.”

  I’m on my feet. “Because we asked her!”

  “Miss Doyle, sit down at once!”

  I drop into my seat. I can’t look at Felicity.

  “These are very serious charges against Miss Moore.” Mrs. Nightwing has already taken the idea and shaped it into exoneration for us, for Spence, and for herself. She needs someone to blame. She needs to believe anything but the truth—that we are capable of all of it, all on our own. And that we did it all right under her very nose. “Is this true, Ann?”

  “Yes,” Ann says, without stammering once.

  “Mrs. Nightwing,” I plead. “It’s all my fault. You can punish me as you see fit, but please don’t blame Miss Moore.”

  “Miss Doyle. I know your heart is in the right place, but there is nothing to be gained by protecting Miss Moore.”

  “But I’m not protecting her!”

  Mrs. Nightwing softens. “Di
d Miss Moore read to you from this book?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And did she take you to the caves?”

  “Just to see the pictographs . . .”

  “Did she tell you stories about the occult?”

  I can’t make a sound. I only nod. I’ve heard it said that God is in the details. It’s the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it. Mrs. Nightwing settles against the great wingback chair. It creaks and sighs under her weight.

  “I know how impressionable young girls are. I was a girl once myself,” she says, though I can only see her behind the bars of what she is now. “I know how much girls wish to please and how powerful a teacher’s influence can be. I shall deal with Miss Moore at once. And so that this sort of behavior does not occur again, I shall see that all the doors are locked each evening and that the keys are in my keeping until such time as you have earned my trust again.”

  “What will happen to Miss Moore?” I ask. It’s barely a whisper.

  “I will not tolerate a reckless disregard for my authority in my teachers. Miss Moore will be dismissed.”

  This can’t be happening. She’s going to sack our beloved Miss Moore. What have we done?

  A bloodcurdling scream rips the quiet of the room. It comes from downstairs. Mrs. Nightwing is up and flying down the stairs with us right behind her. Brigid is standing on the diamond-patterned floor of the foyer, clutching something in her hand.

  “May all the saints protect me! It’s her—she’s come for me.”

  Mrs. Nightwing has her by the shoulders. Brigid’s eyes are wild with fear. She drops the thing in her hand onto the floor as if it were a snake. It’s a Gypsy poppet, slightly burned, with a lock of hair wrapped tightly about its throat.

  Circe.

  “She’s come back,” Brigid whimpers. “Sweet Jesus, she’s come back!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  REVEREND WAITE HAS US STANDING, BIBLES IN HAND, reading in unison from Judges, chapter eleven, verses one through forty. Our voices fill the chapel like a dirge.

  “And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return . . . I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”

  “I had to tell her about Miss Moore,” Pippa whispers low in my ear. “It was the only way to keep us together for one last night.”

  At the front of the church is a stained-glass window of an angel. There’s a large chip of glass gone from the angel’s eye like a gaping wound. I stare at the hole and say nothing, mouthing along to my Bible verse, listening to words swirl around me.

  “. . . and the Lord delivered them into his hands . . .”

  “It’s not as if she was entirely blameless, you know.”

  “And Jephthah came . . . unto his house, and behold, his daughter came out to meet him . . . and she was his only child . . .”

  “Please, Gemma. I have to see him again. Do you know what it is to lose someone without saying goodbye?”

  If I stare hard, the hole grows and the angel disappears. But if I blink, I see the angel, not the hole, and I have to start all over again.

  “. . . when he saw her, . . . he rent his clothes and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low . . . for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back . . .”

  Pippa starts to plead with me again, but Mrs. Nightwing turns around to inspect us from her pew. Pippa buries her face in her Bible and reads along with renewed fervor.

  “. . . And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity . . .”

  Some of the younger girls snicker at this. It’s followed by a loud chorus of shushing from the teachers—all of them except Miss Moore, who isn’t here. She’s back at the school, packing to leave.

  “. . . And he sent her away . . . and she went with her companions . . . upon the mountains.”

  Reverend Waite closes his Bible. “Thus sayeth the Lord. Let us pray.”

  There is a wave of shuffling and thumping as we sit and pass our Bibles down, girl to girl, till they’re stacked neatly on the ends of the pews. I pass mine to Pippa, who holds it tight.

  “Just one last night. Before I’m gone forever. That’s all I’m asking.”

  I let go, and the Bible crashes into her lap. Freed, I go back to staring at the angel. I stare so long and hard that the angel seems to move. It’s the dark coming in, making everything hazy. But for a moment, I could swear I see the angel’s wings fluttering, the hands tightening on the sword, the sword cleaving through the lamb quick as a scythe. I look away, and it’s gone. A trick of the light.

  I don’t join the others in the great hall after dinner. I hear them calling for me. I don’t answer. Instead, I’m sitting alone in the parlor with an open French book on my lap, pretending to pay attention to conjugations and tenses that make my eyes hurt. But really, I’m waiting for her footsteps in the hall. I’m not certain what to say, but I know I can’t let Miss Moore leave without trying to explain or apologize.

  Just after dinner, she passes by in a smart traveling outfit. On her head is a broad-brimmed hat trimmed with cabbage roses. She looks as if she could be heading to sea for a holiday—not leaving Spence in a cloud of half-lies and shame.

  I follow her to the front door.

  “Miss Moore?”

  She buttons a glove at the wrist, stretches her fingers into it. “Miss Doyle, what brings you here? Aren’t you missing out on valuable socializing?”

  “Miss Moore,” I say, my voice catching in my throat. “I’m so sorry.”

  She gives a wan smile. “Yes, I believe you are.”

  “I wish . . .” I stop, trying not to cry.

  “I’d give you my handkerchief, but I believe you’re already in possession of it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I gasp, remembering the one she loaned me after Pippa’s seizure. “Forgive me.”

  “Only if you forgive yourself.”

  I nod. There’s a knock at the door. Miss Moore doesn’t wait for Brigid. She opens the door wide, directs the driver to her trunk, and watches as he loads it onto the carriage.

  “Miss Moore . . .”

  “Hester.”

  “Hester,” I say, feeling guilty for the luxury of her first name. “Where will you go?”

  “I should like to travel for a bit, I think. Then I shall take a flat somewhere in London and offer my services as a tutor.”

  The driver is ready. Miss Moore nods to him. When she turns to me, her voice is halting, but her grip on my hands is sure.

  “Gemma . . . should you ever need anything . . .” She stops, searching for words, it seems. “What I mean to say is, you seem a breed apart from the other girls. I think perhaps your destiny does not lie in tea dances and proper place settings. Whatever path you should decide to follow in life, I do hope I shall continue to be a part of it, and that you shall feel free to call on me.”

  A shiver travels up my arm. I am so very grateful for Miss Moore. I do not deserve her kindness.

  “Will you do that?” she asks.

  “Yes.” I hear myself agreeing.

  Head held high, she releases my hands and sails through the door toward the carriage. Halfway there, she calls back. “You’ll have to find a way to make those still lifes interesting.”

  With that, she steps into the carriage and raps twice. The horses whinny into action, trotting toward the gate, kicking up dirt as they go. I watch the carriage getting smaller in the distance till it turns a corner and folds quickly into the night and Miss Moore is gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  AT HALF-PAST TEN, MRS. NIGHTWING MAKES HER rounds to ensure that all her tender chickens are accounted for—lying safely in bed, far away from any wol
ves. When the downstairs clock gongs midnight, there’s a scratching at our door by Pippa and Felicity, letting us know that it’s safe to come out for one last evening together.

  “How will we get out?” I ask. “She’s locked the doors.”

  Felicity dangles a key. “It seems that Molly the upstairs maid owed me a favor after I caught her with the stable boy. Now, get dressed.”

  The caves welcome us one last time. The nights have grown colder, and we huddle together for warmth over the last of our candles. When they realize that I won’t take them into the realms, they’re furious with me.

  “But why won’t you take us?” Pippa cries.

  “I’ve told you. I don’t feel well.”

  I have no intention of going back through the shimmering door. Instead, I shall master French. Perfect my posture. Learn how to curtsy and draw clever pictures. I shall be what they want me to be—safe. And nothing bad will ever happen again. It’s possible to pretend I’m someone other than who I am, and if I pretend long enough, I can believe it. My mother did.

  Pippa kneels at my feet and puts her head in my lap like a child. “Please, Gemma? Darling, darling Gemma. I’ll let you wear my lace gloves. I’ll let you keep them!”

  “No!” My shout slaps at the cave’s walls.

  Pippa plops onto the ground to sulk. “Fee, you talk to her. I’m doing no good.”

  Felicity is surprisingly cool. “It would seem Gemma won’t be moved this evening.”

  “Now what shall we do?” Pippa whines.

  “There’s still some whiskey left. Here, have a little.” Felicity pulls the half-empty bottle from its hiding place inside a rocky crevice. “This will change your mind.” After two quick swallows, she dangles the bottle in front of me. I get up and move to another rock. “Are you still cross about Miss Moore?”

  “Among other things.” I’m cross that we let her down so terribly. I’m cross that my mother is a liar and a murderer. That my father is an addict. That Kartik despises me. That everything I touch seems to go wrong.

  “Fine,” Felicity says. “Go off and sulk, then. Who wants a drink?”

  How can I tell them what I know? I don’t even want to know it. I wish I could make it all go away, just go back to that first day in the realms when everything seemed possible again. Felicity keeps passing the bottle, and soon, they’re all flushed and glassy-eyed, noses running a bit from the sudden warmth of the whiskey in their blood. Felicity twirls around the cave, reciting poetry.