Blythewood (20 page)

Since that first day, we had all kept a respectful distance
from the woods. Only the Dianas, who patrolled the edge of
the woods by day with their falcons, and Gillie, who patrolled
by night with his owl, Blodeuwedd, went so close. But Helen,
enraged by being bested by her rival, ignored Miss Swift’s
shouts and marched straight to the verge of the forest—so
close she was in the shadow of a pine tree—grabbed her arrow
and turned, brandishing it in the air like one of the angry Picts
threatening the Roman legions we were reading about in Mr.
Bellows’s class. The blue-faced troll that leapt out of the woods
behind her might indeed have been one of those ancient Picts.
We all gasped while Miss Swift raised her bow and shot the
troll between its eyes before it reached Helen. Then she had
given Helen ten demerits.

The demerit system at Blythewood was designed to keep
us from breaking the rules. A hundred demerits meant you
were expelled. By the end of my first month, I had ten for being late to Latin class when Nathan blew up an experiment in
science class and I had to change my shirtwaist. Daisy had ten
for the same reason (it had been a
big
explosion) and Helen
had thirty—ten from the troll episode, ten for being late to
Latin after the explosion, and ten for egging on Nathan to set
off the explosion.

Nate had eighty. Twenty for the explosion, thirty for tardies, ten for stealing Miss Frost’s bustle and putting it on the
statue of Diana, ten for sneaking into town at night and getting
drunk at the Wing & Clover, and ten for throwing up on Miss
Frost’s shoes the next day.

We all wondered if Nate would make it through midterms.
The only class he excelled in (and showed up for regularly) was
bells. Helen, who hated bells because of her fear of heights,
dismissed this as the one class where brute strength was an
asset, but Nathan’s skill at bell ringing came from more than
his strong arms—which, truthfully, were weaker than Cam’s
when he started out. He had a good head for numbers and could
memorize a complicated-change ringing pattern after seeing it
once; he had a deep, powerful voice that could be heard over the
bells; enjoyed bossing people around and so was a natural for
calling changes; and, most importantly, he loved it and so it was
the one class he applied himself to and never missed.

I thought I knew why he loved it so much. When you were
ringing the bells you couldn’t think of anything else. Your mind
was blank except for the sound of the bells and the pattern of
the change ringing. It was the only time I didn’t think about my
mother, or the fire, or being a chime child, or the Darkling who
still flitted through my dreams. I suspected it was the only time
that Nathan wasn’t thinking about his sister Louisa.

But he wouldn’t be able to keep ringing the bells if he
flunked his midterms and was forced to leave Blythewood. He
told me in October that although his mother had prevailed on
the Council to let him attend Blythewood, she would have to
send him back to Hawthorn if he didn’t pass his exams.

“Weren’t you expelled?” Helen asked one day while we
were all studying in the Commons Room.
“Not exactly. I sort of left without permission, but the
Headmaster says he’ll have me back—not that I want to go.”
“I don’t know why you don’t want to go there,” Cam remarked to him. “I’d give my eyeteeth to be a knight!”
“It isn’t what you think,” Nate replied. “They don’t teach
any magic or swordplay or anything remotely interesting for
a while. Initiates spend their first year sleeping on a bare stone
floor in an unheated cell and bathing in an icy tarn. Mr. Bellows
says it’s all about subjugating the flesh and training the senses,
or some such hogwash. They don’t teach the good stuff until
the third year, and I don’t have time for that.”
“I’m surprised you’re not studying harder.” The words were
out of my mouth before I realized how they sounded. Nathan
glared at me. “I mean,” I explained, “if this is the ‘stuff’ you’re in
a hurry to learn . . .”
“But it’s not,” Nathan said, flinging his notebook to the
floor. “All this nonsense about fairy phylums . . .”
“Phyla,” Beatrice Jager corrected, earning a vicious glare
from Nathan.
“Who cares?” Nathan cried, storming out of the library.
Nathan stopped coming to our study sessions, while our
teachers kept piling on work as we got closer to the exam day
on the first of November. Our stacks of notes piled up as fast
as the autumn leaves falling from the trees and drifting across
the lawn outside the window of the Commons Room, where
we studied.
“I swear,” I complained the day before the exams, “these
facts are falling out of my head as quickly as they go in. Why do
they keep giving us more to memorize?”
“To weed out the weak.” The voice came from the table
across the room where Georgiana, Alfreda, and Wallis were
studying—or rather where Alfreda and Wallis prepared crib
sheets for Georgiana and fetched her cups of tea and plates of
cake. “Haven’t you been paying attention in Miss Frost’s class?
Good breeding always shows in the end.”
“She’s been talking about lampsprites and other fairies,”
Daisy objected. “Not people.”
“The same rules apply,” Georgiana said, dusting the powdered sugar from a Victoria sponge cake off her fingertips. “It’s
even more important for the Order to keep our bloodlines pure.
We’ve been entrusted with the hereditary make-up to resist and
repel evil. That’s why it’s so important that we keep our bloodlines pure. If we breed indiscriminately”—she looked pointedly at me—“we risk weakening or even perverting our race.”
“Ava’s mother is from one of the oldest families of the Order,” Helen said, rising to my defense.
“Yes,” Georgiana replied sweetly. “But does anyone know
who her father was? Does
she
even know?”
I felt the blood rise to my face and heard the bass bell clanging in my head. “That’s none of your business,” I bit out between gritted teeth.
“Oh, but it is,” Georgiana went on. “Miss Frost says it’s our
duty as women of the Bell to choose fit mates to protect the
bloodline of the Order—or to remain unwed if no fit mate is
available.” Georgiana laughed as if that possibility was absurd
for someone of her beauty and wealth. “In fact, she says that nature protects those of the best blood from undesirable matches
because impure mates will appear repugnant to the truly pure
woman.”
“Are you implying,” I asked, the bell ringing so loudly in
my head that I could hardly hear myself speak, “that my mother
chose an undesirable mate?”
“Well,” Georgiana said, spreading her hands so that the
light reflected off her diamond rings. “Why else do you have so
much trouble doing magic? Why else is your power so . . . erratic? Why do things break around you?”
To punctuate her sentence, the teacup in Alfreda’s hand
shattered in perfect concert with the gong of the bass bell in my
head. Alfreda squeaked, but Georgiana went on smiling. “You
see? Temper, like madness, is an undesirable trait that’s been
bred out of the Order. Your father might have been a crude laborer, or even a mental patient.”
The next teacup to break came hurtling across the room
straight at Georgiana’s head. Daisy gasped—I thought because
I’d never made anything fly before—but then I saw she was
staring at Helen, who was holding the matching saucer to the
lobbed teacup. Helen’s face was white with rage.
“How dare you insinuate that my roommate came from
such a base union.”
“Helen . . .” I began, but she was already stomping out of the
room. I followed her out and caught up to her in the foyer.
“I cannot stay in the same room with that . . . that . . .
harridan
! In fact,” she added, looking wildly around her, “I can’t stay
in the same house. I’ve had it with this place! I’m going into the
village!”
Helen stormed out the front door just as Daisy, clutching
an armful of notes and her reticule, came out of the Commons
Room. “But we’re not supposed to go to town without first
asking permission! And we’re not even supposed to leave the
house on Halloween!”
Just that morning Dame Beckwith had given us a long
speech on how dangerous Halloween night was, with demons
and fairies coming out of the woods to roam the grounds.
“What should we do?” Daisy asked, so agitated she was
shredding Beatrice’s notes into ribbons.
“I’ll go with her,” I said. “I’ll make sure she’s back before
nightfall. You can stay here if you like.”
“Oh no, I’d be too nervous!” she cried. She gave one anxious look at her pile of notes and abandoned them on the hall
table, holding on to her reticule—a small, embroidered bag her
mother had made for her and that Daisy carried everywhere
but rarely opened. Helen and I had debated what essentials it
might contain. She clutched it now as we followed Helen, who
was striding down the drive kicking at leaves as she went.
“The nerve of her,” Helen said when we’d caught up to her.
“She thinks that just because the Montmorencys are the richest family in New York she can treat the rest of us like dirt. The
van Beeks are just as old, and a far nobler family. Papa says that
Hugh Montmorency sold inferior lumber to the railroads and
took over the lines when they failed. And Georgiana’s greatgrandfather was in trade!”
“It was
my
bloodline she was impugning,” I pointed out as
we turned onto River Road. We were soon passing fields where
reapers were gathering in the last of the hay and orchards and
village boys were picking the last apples of the season, which
filled the air with their scent. It felt good to be outside the castle
and the gates of Blythewood, even if we were breaking the rules.
“What a lot of rubbish!” Helen cried. “As if we were brood
mares to be bred. Of course our families want us to wed wisely.
Mother is always talking about finding me a proper husband,
but Papa says he won’t make me marry anyone I don’t like.”
“Which will no doubt be someone suitable since you’re a
well-bred young woman who wouldn’t choose a crude laborer
or mental patient.”
“Pish!” Helen cried. “Your mother would never pick a crude
laborer. She was a
Hall
!”
“What does she mean by a crude laborer?” Daisy asked.
“Some of the very nicest people I know are farmers, and come,
harvest we all pitch in. Mr. Appleby milks his family’s cows before going to work at the bank. Does that make him a crude
laborer?”
“My mother said all work is honorable work,” I said, wondering for the first time if she said it so often because my father
had been a blacksmith or a farmer—perhaps one of these farmers pitching hay in these very fields. I found I didn’t really mind
the idea. It was the other possibility that Georgiana had craftily
tossed out—
mental patient
—that scared me.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured Daisy. “Mr. Appleby sounds
very nice.”
“Yes, indeed,” Helen concurred. “And besides, it doesn’t
matter so much for you since you’re not from the One Hundred. No one will care if you marry a country bumpkin.”
“What do you mean a country bumpkin?” Daisy asked, her
brow creasing with confusion. Most of the time Daisy seemed
not to notice Helen’s careless remarks. I had come to believe
that she was so lacking in meanness herself that she hardly recognized it in other people. But she was very sensitive on the issue of Mr. Appleby. The last thing I wanted right now, though,
was another argument. Fortunately I saw, as we came to the
glass greenhouses on the outskirts of town, just the right thing
to distract both girls.
“Isn’t that Mr. Bellows coming out of that greenhouse with
a bouquet of violets?”
“Oh!” Daisy said, instantly forgetting the slight to Mr. Appleby. “Do you think they’re for Miss Sharp?”
“Well, I don’t think he’s buying them for Miss Frost,” Helen
replied. “There’s one way to tell for sure, though. Let’s follow
him.”
“Oh, my!” Daisy squeaked. “Do you think we should? I’d
die of embarrassment if he saw us.”
“I don’t think there’s much chance of him seeing anyone,”
Helen replied. “He doesn’t look like he’d notice an Arabian
Desert foot-licker demon if it jumped out and seized him by the
feet right now.”
I shivered, recalling that the demon, genus
Palis
, had been
described by Miss Frost as a creature that attacked travelers at
night in the desert and licked the soles of their feet until their
blood was gone. Rupert Bellows, sauntering down the main
street of Rhinebeck with a bouquet of violets in one hand, his
head tilted up toward the clouds, and a carefree tune on his lips,
did indeed look as though he could be prey to any number of the
horrid creatures we had learned about in Miss Frost’s class. He
certainly didn’t notice the drunken fellow who lurched out of
the Wing & Clover tavern until he collided with him.
“Ho there, my good man!” Mr. Bellows exclaimed goodnaturedly. “Steady as she goes.”
The drunk belched in Mr. Bellows’s face and careened toward us. Daisy let out a yelp that attracted Mr. Bellows’s attention. He quickly inserted himself between the drunken man
and us.
“Let’s steer clear of the young ladies, sir,” Mr. Bellows said,
attempting to herd the man around us. But the man refused to
be herded. Leering at the three of us he jutted out his grizzled
jaw and shoved his face inches from mine. His eyes were bloodshot and watery, his breath smelled like gin.
“Young ladies, y’say? Witches more like! You can’t fool auld
Silas Trumble. I know what goes on up there at that accursed
school.”
“I sincerely doubt that, Mr. Trumble. If you did, I do not
think you would trifle with me,” Mr. Bellows said ominously,
“or insult my charges.”
Mr. Trumble’s rheumy eyes swiveled toward Mr. Bellows
and raked him up and down dismissively. Although we all admired Mr. Bellows’s height and commanding presence in the
classroom, I could see from the perspective of a rough character such as Mr. Trumble how he might not be much of an intimidating figure with his tweed jacket, gold-rimmed spectacles,
and posy of violets in his hand. Mr. Trumble conveyed his opinion of Rupert Bellows by spitting on his polished brogues.
“
Redirezam tibi-zibus!
” Mr. Bellows muttered under his
breath. Was that Latin? And wasn’t that the speculative tense
combined with the transformative case, which Mrs. Calendar
had told us was the correct way to form a spell? Even as I ran
through the conjugations and declensions in my mind the glob
of sputum was rising in the air in front of the widening eyes
of Silas Trumble. It rose slowly at first, trembling in the bright
sunshine like a soap bubble, but then at another command from
Mr. Bellows it flew into Mr. Trumble’s right eye.
“Why you . . . !” I saw Mr. Trumble pull back his arm, his
hand curled into a fist. Before he could swing his arm, though, I
heard the sound of bells in my head. They tolled loud and clear,
shattering the quiet of the sleepy town. Mr. Trumble’s arm fell
limply to his side and he bent over, his other hand clapped over
his ears.
“Make it stop!” he cried, looking up at me. But I didn’t know
how to make it stop. The bells tolled twelve times and then,
when they were done, Mr. Trumble gave me a wild look and ran
across the street, nearly getting himself run over by a trolley.
“Well done, Miss Hall!” Mr. Bellows said, clapping me
on the shoulder. “Strictly speaking we’re not supposed to use
magic on civilians, but no one’s likely to believe a word Silas
Trumble says.”
“I hope not,” I said, still shocked and a little horrified that
the bells had worked so effectively. I’d never seen them cause
anyone pain before. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
“Oh, I’m sure Silas Trumble has hangovers worse than what
you just gave him,” Mr. Bellows said, taking out a handkerchief
to clean off the tip of his shoe. “But say, what are you girls doing
out of school? Shouldn’t you be studying for exams? And isn’t it
against rules to leave the school grounds on Halloween?”
We exchanged guilty looks. “Please don’t turn us in,” Daisy
pleaded.
“It was all . . .” Helen began, but Daisy interrupted her.
“My idea,” Daisy interjected. “According to recent studies
by . . . er . . . Dr. Freud, a change of scenery is stimulating to the
brain cells. I thought a walk to the village would improve our
memorization skills.”
“Ah,” Mr. Bellows said, pursing his lips and tapping his finger against them. “Does Dr. Freud saying anything about the
effect of tea and scones on brain function?”
We all looked at him blankly.
“Because I’m headed right now to a very congenial tea
party. Would you like to join me?”
Helen and I glanced at each other but Daisy answered for us
without hesitation. “We’d love to.”
“Very well, then,” Mr. Bellows said, grinning. “Come
along.”
He held out an arm for Daisy and she, blushing bright red,
took it. Helen paused to adjust her hat in the window of the
Wing & Clover.
“What exactly did you do to that man?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” I said truthfully. “I just didn’t want to see
him hurt Mr. Bellows.”
“Hmph. Remind me not to get on your bad side. Come on
now. Heaven only knows what boring function we’ve gotten
ourselves committed to.” Sighing, Helen began to turn away
from her reflection in the window. Something caught her attention, though. She gave a little start and quickly grabbed my
arm and pulled me away. Before she did, though, I saw what
had startled her. Nathan Beckwith was at the bar, drinking a
tall pint of ale. That wasn’t what surprised me, though. Seated
a few stools down was Miss Euphorbia Frost and, next to her, a
man in an Inverness cape and Homburg hat.