The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School (17 page)

Rayne skipped as if she weren’t simply (or even) enjoying herself.

Girls got closer to Rayne. Her eyes were open and alert, but her ever-faster and more intricate skips didn’t require inordinate concentration. She went through the moves as if by instinct. Every fifth hop was a reverse, every tenth a twist under her feet that somehow didn’t knot the rope. On every twentieth skip, she let go of one handle – which flailed out like a bullwhip – then caught it again. It was tantalising, knowing she
must
make a mistake eventually. No one could keep at this without tiring, without missing, without tripping. Rayne sped up and slowed down.

Maybe she
could
go on forever?

She spoke as she skipped. At first, she just moved her mouth, making word shapes but no sound. Then, the odd word of her private rhyme escaped…

‘Ants… pants… France… ments… vance…’

Then, phrases, meaningless but distinct…

‘Ants in your pants… take another chance…’

Girls gathered in a semicircle. Fascination almost made them forget frozen faces and air which frosted inside lungs. This was at least a novelty.

In the wings as usual, Prompt marked a distance beyond which spectators shouldn’t approach. No one wanted to be beaned with an outflung rope handle.

Rayne was speaking confidently now.

‘Ants in your pants
All the way from France
Send reinforcements
We’re going to advance…’

Frecks wolf-whistled. Amy came down with the quease whenever that black hat bobbed in view, but Frecks was inclined to take Rayne’s part. Her sneaking admiration for the new bug was blooming like a black rose.

‘Ants in your pants
Take another chance
Spend three and fourpence
We’re going to a dance…’

Repeat… repeat. Two verses, over and over…

A murmuring hum. Other girls took up the rhyme, which grew louder.

Rayne was unaffected by her audience. She skipped on and on, just as she had when no one was watching.

Amy looked at her face. She showed no pride, no enjoyment, no pain.

Again, Amy thought of a clockwork toy. One which would not run down like a self-winding watch. Amy knew Digger Downs wasn’t really a brass automaton, but she wasn’t sure Rayne was fully human. Did she have a maggot in her brain like Palgraive? Or was she Mauve Mary taken physical form?

Amy shuddered. She had a strange, queasy, yet exhilarating sensation – similar to the stomach-shifts and skin-prickles she felt when floating. She got the same thing from Light Fingers, sometimes – and from Paule, always. It was what happened when Amy met someone Unusual. Someone who was like her.

Being like her wasn’t the same as being her friend. Strength-sapping Jacqueline Harper, ‘Shrimp’ of the
Drearcliff Trumpet
, was an Unusual, but no one’s friend. Indeed, she showed a particular, quiet, veiled animosity towards Amy. The
Trumpet
had run mocking, knowing squibs about the Moth Club. Even Gryce wouldn’t have Shrimp as a Murdering Heathen. The Tamora Fifth was reduced to battening on to inexperienced Firsts and Seconds, and they caught on after a few days or weeks and gave her the elbow. Shrimp was in danger of wasting away, which Amy reckoned would be no bad thing.

After a few minutes, girls lost interest in the skipping. What Rayne was doing was odd, but not more than that. After a while, her proficiency was tedious – like looking at the insectile innards of a watch ticking off the seconds with repetitive cog-turns and spring-bounces. There was the cold to worry about. If Rayne wasn’t going to fall over and break her head, they might as well watch de Vere lay into Captain Freezing with a lacrosse stick.

‘Think that’d work for anyone?’ Light Fingers asked.

Frecks shrugged. ‘Doubt it.’

Light Fingers took off her mittens and stuck them in her pocket. She flexed her fingers and whizzed her hands through the air several times. The ends of her arms were blurs. She stopped and looked at her hands, which were already blue-ish. She sucked her fingers, another futile endeavour.

‘Yup,’ she said afterwards. ‘Still chilly.’

She stuffed her hands back in her mittens and looked at Rayne’s thinning audience.

‘Good luck to her though,’ said Frecks. ‘We’ll just have to shiver it out till next week. Who’s on Break after Digger?’

‘Wicked Wyke,’ said Amy.

Frecks managed a shivering smile. ‘Wicked’s a softie. We’ll be indoors again…’

‘…
if
we survive. Ho, what’s afoot now?’

Digger Downs stood at her post by the Refectory doors, whistle poised to shrill at any Infraction. What Rayne was doing seemed within the accepted limits of School Rules. No clause forbade inordinate skipping, though Amy wouldn’t put it past the whips to dream one up.

Garland approached the Break Mistress and tugged the end of Digger’s cardigan as if it were an old-fashioned bell-pull. The Second needed the protection of the whips and teachers for whom she snooped. The school motto applied especially to Snitcher Garland. Everyone she had told on – which, by now, was nearly the whole school – would cheerfully have shoved her over the precipice or left her in the woods for the wolves.

‘Someone’s for it,’ observed Amy. ‘Snitching is in process.’

Downs creakily bent and Garland went up on tiptoes to whisper in her ear.

‘There’s ways to deal with squealers,’ said Kali. ‘Some fine day, Garland’s gonna be found wearin’ a South Side necktie. That’s when they cuts your sneakin’ throat across and pulls yer snitchin’ tongue out through the slit. All the best stool pigeons are wearin’ ’em this season.’

Downs expressed annoyance. She took off her whistle and passed it to a whip who happened to be nearby – Sidonie Gryce! – then tramped off, led by Garland, out of the Quad and off towards the woods.

What was Gryce doing out here in the cold? She could invoke Head Girl’s privilege and be in the Whips’ Hut, warming herself with fags, gin and a picture of Antonio Moreno with his shirt off. Instead, she was out among the cold and desperate. She twirled the whistle idly around her forefinger. Air rushed through it, making a tiny screech.

The other Heathens were in the Quad too, not in their usual gaggle, but stationed at strategic points. Crawford, wearing her flared Hans von Hellhund coat, stood in Mauve Mary’s walkway, casually blocking traffic. Though barred from fencing after giving Minty Armadale a Heidelberg duelling stripe, Vanity carried a sabre.

‘They’re going to get her,’ Amy said.

Everyone understood.

Gryce wore calf-length white leather boots and an elegant number with fur-trim and whips’ frogging. She looked like an Archduchess at the execution of a commoner.

Amy was tense. She wished she were in her Kentish Glory uniform. But the Moth Club flew by night. Out in the open, they were just… Thirds.

A ripple of understanding went around. Many found reason to quit the Quad. Crawford stood aside to let them pass, encouraging stragglers with the flat of her sabre. It was a good time to get up a game of scratch cricket or form a posse to help Digger pursue whichever outlaw Garland had peached on. The diversion would be detailed enough to include a sacrificial miscreant, whose infraction would detain the mistress… Gryce wasn’t an amateur.

Beeke and Pulsipher, Rayne and Prompt’s cell-mates, fled. The cowardly custards didn’t want to get lynched next to their House Sisters. Viola’s reputation for wetness was built on such craven actions.

Amy stayed. Frecks, Light Fingers and Kali did too. A scattering of Violas still watched Rayne, heads nodding in time with her rhyme. Prompt sucked her lips anxiously. Palgraive and Paule floated in their own bubbles, seeming not to notice anything. Crowninshield II skulked, an outcast among outcasts. Even Firsts knew they could get away with pelting her. Their squeezed missiles were more like ice grenades than snowballs. Inchfawn, another untouchable, huffed into her hands and peered through filmed-over specs. Shrimp peeped from behind the Heel, hungry and fascinated. Rayne could keep her going, keep her
warm
, for months,
years
… provided she lived, which was at present doubtful.

Alexandra Weston Vansittart, Countess of Crouth and Kiloyle, Droning of Skerra, House Captain of Ariel, made a rare appearance among the commonality. Amy noticed Sixths from all Houses, as if they’d been invited to observe. Vansittart was so above-it-all she didn’t even deign to wear whip’s braid – ‘who would want to be a species of policeman?’ she drawled – but knew how School worked. Gryce, apparently, had obtained scented letters she had written as a foolish Second to one of the mistresses. If the Ariel House Captain ever dared to go against the Head Girl, they might become public.

The other House Captains were present: Matilda Pelham of Desdemona, Helena Mansfield of Viola, Florence Rhode-Eeling of Goneril. With Digger away hunting the wild Infractor, Pelham and Rhode-Eeling risked sneaking crafty cigarettes. Vansittart gulped something eye-wateringly warming from a silver flask which bore one of her family crests.

Now, everyone watched Rayne.

She was still skipping, showing no sign of noticing the circling shark-fins.

‘Ants in your pants

All the way from France…’

Ridiculous words, spoken in solemnity, repeated until all trace of meaning was lost.

‘Spend three and fourpence

We’re going to a dance…’

With a deft reverse, Rayne turned to face the Heel and skipped on. Her back was to the observers.

Henry Buller and Euterpe McClure moved closer.

Buller had her gloves off and was cracking her knuckles. McClure bowed her head and made blades of her hands.

Amy was fascinated by the back of Rayne’s hair. Cut straight across, showing her hackles.

Prompt cried soundlessly, tears streaming over her plump cheeks. Amy felt prickles in her own eyes.

Gryce, a field marshal in scarlet lipstick, was at her ease, twirling the whistle on its thong. She waited for Downs to be well away on her fools’ errand. Smiling sweetly at the Captains and other interested parties, the Head Girl made a gesture in the air, as if flicking something away from her face.

Buller and McClure went in.

R
AYNE TURNED AROUND
again and skipped with her back to the Heel. She rhymed on, face shining, eyes bright.

Amy was queasier than ever.

She glanced aside at Dora Paule. The Sixth had her eyes screwed shut and fingers pressed to her temples. Amy thought she saw ripples of violet in the air around her.

You didn’t have to have Abilities to know what would happen next…

Prompt, of all people, stepped in front of Buller and McClure, interposing her quaking body between Rayne and Gryce’s myrmidons.

McClure tapped Prompt’s breastbone, indicating she should step aside.

For seconds, it seemed a Viola Third would stand up to a Goneril Fifth. That was, in itself, unprecedented…

Then Prompt, sobbing silently, got out of the way.

Rayne didn’t show any sign of noticing.

McClure considered the situation, big hands flexing. A sly one, she gave victims a moment to think about the coming pain before flicking the lash. Rayne ignored her.

Buller, less reflective, just ploughed in.

The whip swung a roundhouse right to the side of Rayne’s head. A great hollow clap sounded as knuckles impacted against skull. It was a wonder the blow didn’t take the skipping machine’s head clear off.

Rayne staggered towards a snowdrift, but kept her balance… her head kinked unnaturally, but her legs and arms still worked.

She was still skipping.

A few girls applauded. Gryce’s narrowed eyes shut them up. Amy thought she detected the ghost of a smirk on Vansittart’s lips.

Buller couldn’t believe her first punch hadn’t scored a knockout.

Rayne straightened her neck. A few Violas clapped in time to her rhyme.

McClure eyed the situation and kicked Rayne’s right knee, hooking her shoe behind the smaller girl’s leg and sweeping her off balance.

This time Rayne fell… smashing backwards into the drift. It was at least a cushion for her tumble.

Buller snorted and drew back her size eleven for a nasty kick to the ribs.

…but Rayne was up again, and skipping.

She had leaped up like an acrobat, landed on her feet, and resumed her routine as if nothing had happened.

‘Ants in your pants

All the way from France…’

Nasty bruises marked Rayne’s forehead and leg. Her blazer, skirt and hair were dusted with snow.

‘Send reinforcements,

We’re going to advance…’

The clapping was louder, like a war drum.

Enraged, Buller got her head down and charged, aiming straight at Rayne’s midriff. The girl somehow jumped higher than before, three or four feet off the ground, and the whip slammed into the Heel.

Rayne touched down, and skipped on.

‘Ants in your pants

Take another chance…’

Now other girls were chanting for her. This wasn’t an execution any more. It was more like a prizefight.

Buller turned round, blood on her face. Her boater was crushed. She shook her braids. She didn’t know what had just happened…

And neither did Amy.

Had Rayne
floated
? Or simply jumped like a grasshopper.

‘Spend three and fourpence

We’re going to a dance…’

Buller might be afraid. Awe was stirring in her underused brain.

‘No no no no,’ muttered Paule, unnoticed by anyone but Amy. The tug of the Purple came. Amy thought the world was about to
shift
again…

But it didn’t. Paule scuttled off, hands pressed to her face. Amy thought the Sixth had a sympathetic nosebleed – as if she’d caught Buller’s self-inflicted injury.

Paule was not a comforting presence, but Amy had never seen her flee in terror… and worried about whoever was capable of frightening her.

McClure wasn’t as headstrong as Buller. She was subtle, cruel, ingenious. And wary. She had no intention of beaning herself.

Crouching, she felt around, naked fingers rooting in the snow. She dug out a chunk of rock from the gravel surround of the Heel. She weighed it in her hand then packed snow about it. School Rules said nothing about such missiles, but they violated the Code of Break, the rules girls made among themselves. You could fling an ice bomb at your best friend or worst enemy and it was all in fun, but a stone in a snowball was not done.