Changeling (Sorcery and Society Book 1)(17)

Mrs. Winter was very thorough in her instruction, though I wasn’t sure if her information would be useful to me in real life. She did indeed start at the beginning with me, with basic magical runes every Guardian school child learned in their first year of home instruction. And wasn’t I the luckiest girl in the world that she decided to teach me through embroidery? I was painstakingly embroidering each of these symbols into a sampler using a rainbow of blessed silk thread. Mrs. Winter pronounced my stitches “serviceable, but unimaginative.”

To complete the Guardian nursery school theme, Mrs. Winter drew a large wall chart depicting the chapter on the six ancient Mother Houses, as if every Snipe child didn’t have the various Houses, their associated families, and their symbols memorized by the time they reached working age.

Mrs. Winter insisted I study the house chart for at least thirty minutes each night before bed. She claimed it would help me prepare for the “who’s who” at the parties I would be expected to attend. That education included a complete history of Mrs. Winter’s family, the Brandywines. The Brandywines needed the money the Mountforts provided. The Mountforts needed the Brandywine’s political influence, in addition to herbs for their healing potions. Mrs. Winter was the daughter of the Longbourne branch of the Brandywine clan, raised on an herb farm in Suffolk. Her marriage to Mr. Winter, a descendent of the Mountforts, had been arranged by their fathers to seal yet another connection between the two families. Neither of them seemed particularly unhappy with the arrangement, but it wasn’t a blissful union, either.

All of this effort was supposed to prepare me for my interview at Miss Castwell’s. But despite the changes in wardrobe and table manners, I still felt like the tired, scared Snipe girl on the inside.

“Do stop fidgeting, dear,” Mrs. Winter sighed, bringing me back to the present. Her gaze never wavered from the window. My hands dropped to my lap and I made a concentrated effort not to wring them. “Proper Guardian girls from this sphere are expected to attend Miss Castwell’s. More importantly, they expect to attend Miss Castwell’s. And therefore, as a proper Guardian girl, Cassandra would not be nervous about this interview. Cassandra would see it as a formality before she waltzed into her proper place amongst her peers.”

I nodded, pressing my lips together in a flat, grim line.

“Take a breath. Now.”

I nodded, inhaling deeply through my nose.

“Perhaps without the nostril whistling.”

I resisted the urge to snicker. While I had grown slightly more comfortable with Mrs. Winter, she had made it quite clear during my etiquette lessons that proper young Guardian ladies did not snicker at their beloved aunties. Nor did they talk with their mouths full, accept dances from young men to whom they had not been introduced, or touch another student’s athame without permission. I had these rules copied in tiny, scrupulously neat hand-writing on a series of paper cards that Mr. Winter had provided from his desk. I also made cards for the history of the school and the members of Miss Castwell’s faculty. I pulled the cards from my blue silk reticule and reviewed the faculty cards.

“Reference cards?” Mrs. Winter asked. “How very industrious of you.”

I paused, my hand suspending the card mid-air as I tried to determine whether she was being sarcastic. To my surprise, she offered me a quick wink and said, “I did the same thing before I arrived at Miss Castwell’s, listing the girls from the most prominent families, who I might want to befriend. Just make sure you burn them before the other girls see them. Otherwise, you might come across as ‘disingenuous.’”

“What? Proper young ladies don’t want friendships based on reminder cards?” I feigned horror.

Mrs. Winter smirked. “Well, they certainly don’t want to know their friendships are based on reminder cards.”

Before I could respond, I looked through the glass and caught that dreaded first glimpse of Miss Castwell’s Institute for the Magical Instruction of Young Ladies. We rolled down a long white-gravel drive toward a crescent-shaped building, dotted with enough towers and turrets to make any fairy princess want to toss her hair over a bannister. The great grey stone walls stood five stories, supporting a roof set with green scale-shaped tiles. The building curved around an enormous white marble fountain depicting the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone lifting a cauldron together. The building was topped by an enormous bell tower, with all four corners supported by heavily carved green marble pillars. The green scale-tiled tower roof looked a bit like a traditional witch’s hat, but I wasn’t about to make that observation to Mrs. Winter. The stereotypical cone hat had gone out of fashion centuries ago.

Unlike the carefully manicured grounds at Raven’s Rest, the groundskeeper had allowed the woods to reign here, the tree line creeping toward the school gnarled with outstretched fingers. Ancient stone benches were arranged in clusters here and there between clumps of herbs and flowers. I’d heard that at Palmer’s, the school kept a special kennel for the few boys that brought pet wolves, but here I saw no familiar more exotic than a palomino pony wandering the backlawn.

Young ladies in day dresses of pale green stood out against the drab background, strolling across the velvety lawn, their heads turning to watch the carriage clatter by. They moved in clusters, like birds, their heads bent together as they giggled. Under Mrs. Winter’s orders, Madame Dupont made me a dozen dresses in the same pale spring green muslin prescribed to all Miss Castwell’s students – known as Castwell Green. But I wasn’t allowed to wear the dresses, or the dozens of matching gloves meant to hide my rough hands, until I was accepted into the school.