The Book of Bones (2 page)

“Professor Salter,” she said, “someone seems to have dropped a great deal of money.”

Father wandered over to join her and peered down. “Must be one of mine,” he said. Then he bent over and picked it up.

Or rather he didn't.

“Kit,” he bleated again. “This coin is very strange.”

Exchanging glances with Waldo I strode over to help him. “It seems to be stuck,” I said.

“Sovereigns aren't sticky.”

“There must be some …”

“I dropped some glue earlier,” Isaac interrupted. “All a bit of a mix-up I'm afraid.”

Father straightened up, suddenly wincing with pain. “Oh no, I've put my back out again.”

Meanwhile Mrs. Glee had wandered over to the desk and spotted the large paper box, decorated with a red bow, which we had placed on her desk. She read the card attached to it and smiled with delight.

“A present for me!” she fluted. “I do declare, you are the kindest, most thoughtful children I've ever met.”

Beaming, she untied the ribbons and opened the box. I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as Mrs. Glee unwrapped the layers of tissue paper. How could I explain it away to Father, when Mrs. Glee had egg running down her face? Even he would smell a rat.

The sheer awfulness of my behavior struck me, like a blow to the head. If I were someone else, I wouldn't think much of Kit Salter. I would judge her to be headstrong, childish, thoughtless and sometimes, yes, even a bit of a bully.

Why do I never consider the consequences of my actions? I was filled with shame as my eyes locked on the new straw bonnet. It was decorated with artificial silk pansies and violets and skewered with a jeweled hatpin. Really pretty, if you like that sort of thing.

Mrs. Glee clearly did, for her face glowed with happiness.

“My angels,” she gasped, overcome with emotion. “I don't know what to say. You've made me very—”

“May I take a look?” I barged in and held my hand out for the hat. I had to take it away and somehow remove the egg. But Father had already picked it up, while Mrs. Glee tenderly lofted the jeweled hatpin.

“This is very generous of you children,” he proclaimed, lifting it up in the air. “Thoroughly decent.”

“Professor! No!” Waldo blurted.

For a moment Father looked as if he was about to absentmindedly try on the hat. Oh heavens, I thought, visions of egg yolk running down Papa's sodden and dirt-streaked face. (The water in the bucket had not been entirely clean.) But luckily he handed the bonnet back to
Mrs. Glee who tried it on, placing it well forward on her forehead, poking the hatpin through the straw.

Rachel screamed.

I watched in fascinated horror as the egg cracked and a dark dribble ran down her forehead. Isaac and Waldo were gazing at her open-mouthed. We had plotted for this moment, but somehow it was awful, not funny, as we'd expected.

Rachel continued to scream, a shrill note in her voice. “Blood … It's blood!”

“Pull yourself together,” I hissed in her ear. “It's egg.”

“Hard boiled.” Rachel said. “I changed it for a hard boiled egg.”

Rachel's screams had finally attracted attention. Mrs. Glee blinked at Rachel. Her hand flew up to her forehead and dabbed. Drawing her fingers away, she held them up to the light. They were dripping wet. She looked at them as if they belonged to someone else, as if she had never seen her own fingers before.

“Heavens!” she said in surprise. “My hands are quite bloody.”

An invisible claw reached out and grabbed my throat, causing me to choke. I felt awful. Now I could see what had happened, but it was still truly puzzling. Mrs. Glee had pushed the new jeweled hatpin right
through
the straw bonnet. She had literally pushed it
into
her head. I
could see the wound where the pin had entered the side of her forehead.

There was something terribly wrong here, for it should have hurt like the blazes. Mrs. Glee should have been screaming. But clearly she didn't feel a thing.

Either our new governess was the strongest, bravest person I've ever met. Or something very odd was going on here.

“Mrs. Glee,” I said, “I think you'd better lie down. I'll show you to your room.”

My handkerchief was scarlet by the time we reached the room where Mrs. Glee was to live. It was a charming chamber, light and airy, furnished with a lace bedspread, a chest of drawers and a rosewood desk. Our governess twittered her appreciation and then suddenly announcing that she was feeling a little breathless, sank onto the bed.

“Do you mind finding my medicine, dear? It's in the valise.” She pointed to a small leather case, which the maid had brought up. I rummaged around and found several bottles, which I drew out. Each time, however, Mrs. Glee shook her head. Finally, I found a small, glass-stoppered vial, full of a reddish-brown tincture. I could see the relief in my governess's eyes as I handed it to her.

“A little water, my dear. I am absolutely parched.”

I poured her a glass and handed it to her. Taking the vial with eager hands, she put a few drops from the stopper
into the water and then, as it went muddy, gulped the liquid down. She had sunk back against the fluffy white pillows piled on her bed, gazing blankly at the ceiling. Her pupils had contracted to tiny black pinpoints. She seemed to have forgotten that I was there.

“Mrs. Glee?”

There was no answer. As she'd collapsed she'd placed her dirty boots on the bedspread. It shocked me, to see the smear of mud on the clean white lace.

“Please, um, Vera. Can I go now?”

With an effort, Mrs. Glee switched her eyes away from whatever was happening on the ceiling. She smiled at me, her expression full of sweet sadness.

“You mustn't be frightened of me, Kitty dear,” she said. “I suffer from stomach pains and my medicine gives me a bit of a turn, is all. You run along now. I'll be there in a few minutes.”

Something was gnawing at me as I rushed back to the schoolroom. Remorse, you might think. Well, yes. The practical jokes seemed very foolish now. But it was another emotion altogether, something more frightening.

I hadn't liked the way Mrs. Glee's gaze slid out of focus. The way she sprawled on the bed, like a broken puppet. Worst of all were her eyes. The memory of her vanishing pupils made me turn cold.

Her eyes were somehow not human; they were like marbles, not windows to a soul. In the few seconds after she'd downed that liquid, something had grabbed our new teacher and spirited her away from us.

“I agree with Rachel,” Waldo said as we talked things over a few days later. “You're wasting your time worrying about Mrs. Glee. Who ever heard of worrying about a
teacher
, anyway?”

“There's something broken about her,” I mumbled. “I think she needs our help.”

I had been trying to explain my fears about Mrs. Glee, but none of my friends shared my anxiety.

“You're a mystery, Kit,” Rachel said, with a withering look. “You're terribly silly most of the time. Then, out of the blue, you get all het up about the most bizarre things. I'd thought you might have grown up a bit, after what happened in India. But it seems—” she stopped mid-sentence her eyes lingering on my scar.

There was an awkward silence. I hadn't told anyone what really took place in the icy mountains of the Himalayas, when I'd become separated from my friends and stumbled like a sleepwalker on the legendary paradise of Shambala. The whole journey seemed so long ago,
so dreamlike. Sometimes I would wake up in the night feeling sad, but not quite knowing why. Then I would remember our friend Gaston Champlon, the legendary French explorer, who had been buried by an avalanche. He was infuriating and charming in equal measure, the only man alive who could make my Aunt Hilda blush. We owed him our lives. We would never see him again. All that remained of our ill-fated voyage to India was the scar on my cheek. Thankfully, it had faded quickly. Much faster in fact than seemed possible. Our doctor had expressed surprise. Still the marks of a tiger's claw could still be faintly seen in the scar.

“Mrs. Glee's in some sort of trouble. I just know it,” I said, changing the subject back to our governess.

“If she is, it's down to you,” Rachel snapped. “Practical jokes are hardly the way to make someone feel welcome.”

I hung my head. Our failures with the bucket and sovereign had dented my spirit. It was the end, I had decided, of my life as a practical joker. In case you are wondering, I
did
manage to remove the (hard-boiled) duck egg from the bonnet, and our lessons had proceeded without mishap. Well, there had been a few hiccups. The second day with Mrs. Glee, I had been dismayed to see our new timetable chalked up on the blackboard:

“Not a backboard!” Rachel gasped, sounding horrified.

Mrs. Glee smiled gently. “I can't abide slouching.”

“What
is
a backboard?” I asked.

Mrs. Glee had produced a piece of wood with hooks at the side for arms. I recalled, dimly, what it was. Backboards were invented to make girls stand up straight—but
truly they were instruments of torture.

“You really will find it most useful,” she beamed. “It will do such a lot of good for your chances.”

I didn't need to ask what Mrs. Glee meant by “chances”—marriage was clearly what she had in mind for us girls. She meant to be kind, as really she was a good-natured lady. It was just that she had rather old-fashioned ideas about things. A black gloom descended on me.

“You've rather the wrong idea, Mrs. Glee,” I said, gently. “We're used to a bit more time for … general education. My father—the professor—believes—”

“Does he, Kitty?” she said vaguely. “I must ask him about it. In the meantime, kindly turn to page forty-two in your Pliny. Now, do sit up straight, dear.”

Even Waldo had been anxious that our lives would become, well, more difficult. It didn't turn out that way though. Although Mrs. Glee's intentions were strict, she tended to be rather erratic. She would often disappear to “the powder room” or “have a funny turn.” Sometimes I thought it was even easier to pull the wool over Mrs. Glee's eyes than my own father's. Which is why today, as she had disappeared for a good three-quarters of an hour, I was fretting. There was an oddness, now and then, in Mrs. Glee's green eyes. A look almost of despair. Sometimes her face was so strained that the wrinkles on it stood out like raised veins. I had tried gently to ask
her if anything was wrong. But she had just smiled and talked of her stomach.

I thought it was more serious than that. I feared that she was dying.

“I've remembered what the bottle was—you know, that I saw her swig,” I said. “It had Sydenham's printed on it.”

“I know that tincture,” said Waldo. “It's perfectly harmless, Kit. Soothes pain or something like that.”

Isaac had burst out laughing. “Did it say Tinctura Opii on it?” he asked.

“Something like that.” I nodded.

“You really are a silly goose,” he said. “Mrs. Glee is taking laudanum is all.”

“What is laudanum?”

“Opium mixed with alcohol. Perfectly harmless, I believe. Used to relieve indigestion and stomach pains and aches of all sorts. I believe they even give it to babies.”

“But isn't opium a vile drug?” I asked. Vague images flashed through my mind: smoky opium dens, Chinamen with long clay pipes, emaciated artists. I had heard of many artists and writers who took it, and tales of those who became slaves to the drug and even died from it. Fear took hold.

“Opium is terrible,” Isaac said, trying to sound knowing. “But laudanum is a sort of medicine.”

Rachel wasn't listening. She had pulled out her pocket
mirror and was studying herself in the glass. I noticed she had curled her hair in a new way, so glossy ringlets cascaded over her ears. Pretty, I suppose, but hadn't she anything better to do than gaze so lovingly at her own reflection? She may accuse me of being childish, but my best friend had changed. She was always mooning about over dresses and ribbons. Yesterday I caught her applying beetroot to her lips to make them redder! The final straw was when I saw her drooling over a pair of peach satin dancing slippers. Shoes, for pity's sake! The infatuated look on her face made me think I was really losing my friend.

Sometimes, I thought that as we grew up Rachel and I were becoming strangers. She was turning into one of
them
. If you don't know what I mean, you're probably one of
them
too!

“Rachel,” I barked, just to make her start.

“Sorry.” She instantly slipped the mirror back under the desk. “I'm just wondering how to arrange my hair for Miss Minchin's wedding.”

The boys and I exchanged gloomy looks. Rachel might be excited about our former governess's wedding to the Hon. Charles Prinsep, but the rest of us were dreading it. I was looking forward to the ceremony, in the baronet's ancestral castle on Dartmoor, about as much as having a tooth pulled out with a pair of pliers. I would have to
wear a flouncy peach gown for the ball, which Waldo said made me look like a “turnip in frills.”

Of course Rachel looked lovely in her gown.

The door opened and Mrs. Glee appeared. Her cheeks were flushed, little red spots standing high on the wrinkled white skin. Her eyes had a hectic glitter.