A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)(94)

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.