Jane Steele (7 page)

“None of
that’s
so bad,” sighed Taylor, her attention pinned to Mr. Munt, “by comparison.”

“No.” Fox picked at the skin edging her thumbnail. “It isn’t.”

“And that concludes our Reckoning for this evening!” Mr. Munt surveyed the room, finding no further quarry which tempted him. “I commend you for your diligence, children. Sit, and partake of God’s bounty.”

The stew was thick and sweet and savoury, chunks of carrot and potato and speckles of currants swimming alongside succulent mutton; we set upon it like the beasts Mr. Munt intended us to be.

“Have girls not asked their parents to lobby for Mr. Munt’s removal?” I asked Taylor.

She tossed her shapely round chin. “It’s
quite
hopeless, I’m afraid. Mr. Munt sells the leftovers at reduced rates to the manufactory men four miles from here, and what’s left he gives away at soup kitchens. He’s positively
worshipped
from here to London.”

“Is that why he said Clarke stole from the poor when she really stole from the larder?”

“Exactly,” murmured Fox. “She was the only one caught, caught with her arms full and pockets stuffed after lights-out no less, but
they knew more were involved. These four days she’s been refusing to give him any names.”

“She must be very brave.”

Taylor snorted, reaching for another slice of bread. “Very
silly,
you mean
.
Clarke has never really been punished before; they wanted her for the raid because she could fit through the door for the barn cats. She’s new, only six, can memorise anything you put in front of her, perform terribly difficult figures—and from a very queer family.
Literary,
I think, God knows what sort of
horrid
people that entails.”

“Your parents are tradesmen,” Fox said with visible satisfaction.

“Your parents just sold half their estate, and
you
are a cow,” Taylor said sweetly.

“My parents are dead,” said I, “so I do hope to be friends with you all.”

“Hush this
instant
!” Taylor gasped.

“Thank you, no,” Fox mumbled.

“The instant you really detest anyone, by
all
means become friends with her,” Taylor sang with studied indifference. “When Mr. Munt sets you against each other, be sure to have picked someone you can outtalk, which I’m confident you can after that . . .
display
. Remember when he forced Abbott to tell him that Dunning had helped her study for the botany project?”

“Don’t.” Fox shivered dramatically.

“How about when Fiddick and Hooper giggled during Communion?”

“I’m trying to eat
,
” Fox complained, jabbing the air with her spoon.

“Mr. Munt just
adores
friends.” A pale blue tinge of melancholy had deepened Taylor’s tone. “
Most
of us know better.”

We finished the meal in silence. When I rose to depart with
Taylor and glanced back at Mr. Munt, I saw that his attention was likewise on me—displaying reluctant approval tinged with the desire to run the new Thoroughbred through its paces.

If Edwin had not been so stupid,
I thought as the knot of fear in my chest tightened,
they would have been very much alike.

And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell: and for the first time it recoiled, baffled; and for the first time, glancing behind, on each side, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf: it felt the one point where it stood—the present; all the rest was formless cloud and vacant depth; and it shuddered at the thought of tottering, and plunging amid that chaos.

S
ome memoirs explain social hierarchies by means of illustrative anecdotes, but mine is about homicide, not ladies’ schools.

Four varieties of females attended Lowan Bridge. First, there were girls from wealthy untitled families (like Taylor) who were considered too gauche to deserve their fortunes and were being educated in hopes of finding a good position in a household of a higher class or becoming more easily marriageable. Second, there were girls from poor titled families (like Fox) who were expected to become governesses because their fathers had poured thousands of pounds into the gutter. Third, there were orphaned girls who had incurred the wrath of their moneyed relations (like myself) and were being gifted the privilege of becoming drudges on other people’s estates.

Finally, there was Becky Clarke, whose parents wanted her to attend school despite the fact they could afford to keep a tutor and a
well-stocked library, and had said nothing to her of being a governess; and I have this anomaly to thank for the lesson that there is no accounting for taste.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked her when the bell rang next morn and the girls began to stir, for I had sensed her pensive eyes upon me since daybreak.

“Much,” Clarke chimed.

“I heard what happened and admired that you gave no one away.”

“When you’re half the size of everyone else, you take care not to offend.”

“Yes, but you’re very . . . noteworthy, for your age.”

“Can’t be helped,” she said in her high, absent way. “My parents say there’s no use in clapping a turtle shell on a parrot or gluing wings to a reptile. So they sent me here. That shan’t happen again if I can help it, singling you out at Reckoning.”

I thought of Mr. Munt’s strong hand on my head, my skin against his trouser leg, and thought,
I’d not have liked that to happen to you in my place either.

“What I said about you was true, but saying it was dishonourable,” Clarke mused lightly, pulling a straw-hued strand of her hair through her fingers. “How beastly
.
I can’t bear dishonourable people.”

I was such an inappropriate addressee for this remark that I buried my face in my pillow and laughed heartily.

“Friends,” groaned Taylor. She kicked me with feet cold as snow, rolling out of bed. “I
told
you. Don’t bother.”

Donning my new uniform and pairing with my new bedmate as we walked to classes was of no interest other than the fact I was nearly dizzy with anxiety; a brief account of that first day, however, will fully acquaint the reader with my new life.

My first class was art, headed by Miss Constance Sheffleton, a timid silver-haired rabbit who would not have recognised discipline had it whipped her across the palms. Nevertheless, she knew where
her bread was buttered, and proved it when she called tremulously, “Davies, you are here to sketch the bust, not contemplate the maple outside the window. Please inform Mr. Munt that I caught you idling.”

“Yes, Miss,” said a thin waif, and we winced, for this was clearly worse than any other punishment.

Following art was sewing lessons given by Miss Kitts. Ages were combined during class periods, but thence divided into circles appropriate to our ability; having been separated from Clarke, I asked her in high alarm what the matter was when we rejoined in the hall and I saw her doll’s mouth a-tremble.

“I was just feeling better and now I’m to miss luncheon, all over badly embroidering a pansy,” she confided, angrily swiping at the tears in her eyes. “I’m useless at stitchwork, my mind wanders so. What are decorative pansies to us, Steele?”

When I arrived at Latin, Miss Werwick briefly quizzed me, found me dismal, and bid me sit with the youngest girls, muttering happy imprecations about the amount of meals I should likely be forced to sacrifice. Never having studied Latin previous, I congratulated myself when at the end of the hour, I was explaining the lesson to the perplexed circumference, and Miss Werwick forgot herself far enough to frown at this development.

Midday dinner was allowed me, though it seemed a mere two thirds of the young ladies initially assembled the night before were present. Not seeing Taylor, I sat across from Fox, who fiddled with a piece of her already-greasy hair before saying, “Anything immediate?”

I swallowed hearty cabbage and pork broth, regarding her questioningly.

“It’s what we say,” Fox confided. “A code. To find out if anyone is . . . well, really in trouble.”

“Oh.” I set my spoon down, sobered. “Clarke isn’t here—an embroidery mishap.”

“I’ve an apple in my pillowcase,” Fox said matter-of-factly. “All’s well.”

This was the day I learnt that friendship need not be labelled as such in order to be a very similar thing indeed.

A combined history and geography course given by Miss Halifax followed dinner. She was a hatchet-faced woman with animated hands—but there was no harm in her, and her enthusiasm was engaging.

“Why, Steele, though you are not well-read regarding the Ottoman Empire, you ask exceedingly incisive questions,” she exclaimed. “You shall sit with the thirteen-year-olds and with Clarke here.”

Clarke, whose brilliance on all subjects, save that of rendering decorative flowering plants with thread, was the envy of the entire school, seemed strangely happy when I descended into the hard-backed chair beside her.

“Good, we can go over dates of battles before bedtimes,” she decreed lightly, adjusting the strange white cap we wore. “My parents are pacifists, the disgrace of our entire street, and when I arrived, I didn’t know a Cossack from a dragoon.”

“Of course. Anything immediate?” I asked, a shower of golden sparks prickling my skin as I did something illicit
.

“Ha. No,” said Clarke, one cheek dimpling. “Thank you, indirectly, for the apple.”

Music class ensued immediately afterwards. Remembering Vesalius Munt’s opinion that spiritually contented artists were beings not to be found upon this teeming globe, I looked forward to Miss Lilyvale’s tutelage with intrigue. Was her virtue so potent it could withstand the moral ravages of even art? A simpler answer proved true: Miss Lilyvale’s musical ear was the happy amalgam of a deaf mockingbird’s and a colicky newborn’s, and thus could not have troubled her character in the smallest degree.

“Class, we have much to do today!” she called. “But first as ever,
I will lead us in a hymn. Young ladies, here is our music. As this is a new piece—do think of it as an exercise in sight-reading.”

We stood all in a semicircle and sang Horatius Bonar’s latest opus. My ignorance of whether the Almighty’s glory swelled in the wake of our praise remains profound to this day; I can inform the reader, however, that no gain in sight-reading skills resulted. Taylor was present, and I greeted her afterwards, even as she mumbled
George Louis, George Augustus, George William Frederick, George Augustus Frederick. . . .

“Taylor,” I whispered, “anything immediate?”

“Oh, go
away
, you horrid nosy thing,” cried Taylor, her eyes edged in pink. “I’ve had
nothing
to eat since the porridge, and meanwhile Granville is such a sweet girl, all those golden curls and her family from a simply ancient coffee fortune, and so the
best
sort of people, and she was made to slap herself in the face—
herself
, mind, and hard—after Mr. Munt caught her laughing over a sketch Fiddick did of Miss Hardbottle. Don’t touch me, I can’t bear
anyone
,” she sobbed, fleeing.

Mathematics followed, and theology, and French (at which I excelled,
naturellement
, and thus forever after avoided the red welts my classmates carried as souvenirs from Madame Archambault), and after we had crammed our heads full of geometry and the Book of John, the inevitable Reckoning followed.

I ate my stew and kept my head as low as any true acolyte.

I reproduce this workaday agenda to illustrate that we lived practically in one another’s pockets, so that in moments of emergency—which were as frequent as moments of breathing—we might offer help. If we succeeded thanks to cleverness and collaboration, we might fall asleep with a meal or even two, perhaps, rounding the hollows of our bellies. We were not
friends
; but so many others strove to make us wretched that we lacked the energy to turn upon one another save in the extremest necessity.

When I dropped exhaustedly next to Taylor at nine o’clock that first night as the sun vanished, I felt the same electric charge I have always gained from thwarting authority traversing the narrow ridge of my back.

You haven’t missed a meal yet,
I thought.
You could be very good at this. And the others might be made better off as well.

“Steele?” came a piping voice.

“Yes?” I answered Clarke.

“Good night,” said she, as Taylor’s warning toes jabbed me.

Grief is a strange passenger; it rides on one’s shoulder quiet as a guardian angel one moment, then sinks razor talons into one’s collarbones the next. No sooner had Clarke offered me this kindness than hot salt tears were soaking my pillow. My mother had once bid me good night, and good morning too; and my mother had loved me, and she had died for no reason I could discern, and was never coming back.

I would cry often for Mamma’s loss, as children are wont to do—but I could never have guessed that my own melancholy would lead to discoveries which once more dashed my world from its orbit.

•   •   •

T
he event which caused me fully to embrace my true nature took place some six months later.

By this time, I had come to know many facets of Lowan Bridge School. I knew that Taylor was secretly terrified not of being a governess but of being married to someone tyrannical, as her mother daily hid fresh bruises under flounces and lace; I knew that the curse of Fiona Fiddick’s life was that she was the funniest creature on earth, which meant that she weighed a stone less than she ought to have; I knew that under Fox’s dour attitude hid a girl who somehow always had an apple in her pillowcase, and never kept it for herself.

I knew that there were stables, unlocked ones, and horses
available for caressing. I knew that the roof above our dormitory was accessible if one crept carefully, and that Clarke’s eyes as she mapped the swath of glittering black not obscured by the reek of London to the south of us were mossy pools in the moonlight, and that though she seldom laughed, she laughed at a stolen glimpse of the night sky most blithely of all, and her laugh was like the treble of a silver flute.

Sunday was both beloved and dreaded, for while we had no classes and were allowed to play on the lawn or read in quiet nooks, we were compelled to attend chapel. As we marched towards the elegant stone building on the day my life altered forever, a parade of dull blue soldiers plodding under stony November skies, the casual observer might have supposed we were going to be executed.

Sunday, after all, was the day Mr. Munt performed a
weekly
Reckoning, in order to catch out any sins we might have foolishly neglected to mention.

“Steele, will you help me with the Catullus assignment?” Fox’s ungainly form landed beside me in the third pew. “I can’t make heads or tails of it, and even if Miss Werwick doesn’t have a cane—”

“Of course,” I agreed. Censure from Madame Archambault was humiliating and painful, but Miss Werwick of all the teachers relished referring us to Mr. Munt, as if we were chess pieces (or, better still, ninepins).

Clarke sat upon my other side. “Anything immediate, mi’ladies?”

Clarke was wont to trill when she was well fed, as if beginning to compose a folk tune, and I adored her for it. I was about to answer in the negative when Miss Lilyvale advanced to take her seat before the pipe organ and commence our two hours of agony.

“With a true spirit of praise, girls, sing with me!” Miss Lilyvale called out.

A veil of authorial privacy will be drawn here; it would behove neither the reader nor the author to dwell upon musical atrocities which reside wholly in the past and cannot now be remedied.

After the initial three hymns had been sung, Mr. Munt ascended to the pulpit. Vesalius Munt was never more happy than when every student’s attention speared in his direction, fixed to him like nails as he stood before the crucifix.

“Happy Sabbath to you, my girls,” he announced, beaming, and the
my
stuck in our thorny throats, for it was the truest sentiment he would admit to all morning. “I encourage you to rest peacefully upon this holiest of days, and repose knowing that Christ died to save you from your own ignorance and infamy. Let us proceed with our weekly Reckoning, that we might cleanse our souls.”

A hand raised. Mr. Munt devised a demeaning punishment for the accused—and often for the accuser. There were no rules in this jungle, no trails we might tread so as to escape the tiger’s tooth. We were paying as much mind as we ever did, Fox and I and Clarke, ears pricked for danger, when I startled at the sound of my name.

“Steele
means
well,” my bedmate was drawling exhaustedly from two pews distant. “And she’s as clever and helpful as everyone says, and oh, it’s
dreadful
, but she . . . she doesn’t mean to, and I
hate
to say it.”

I turned to gape at her. Taylor’s face was bloodless, a mere illustration: black hair thickly inked, eye and lip hinted at in delicate pen strokes. Her beauty had been marred of late by her uselessness at memorisation, and she had forsaken sleep in favour of struggling alone over data which meant nothing to her; now she embraced the only option guaranteed to merit a hot meal. I did not marvel that it was me—I was a proximal target, even a sensible one, already having earned a reputation for lying my way out of scrapes.