Jane Steele(14)

I stood in silence with my head bowed, wondering whom she would talk to at all without me left to hate.

This morose thought followed me home, where a cold meat supper awaited. Directly before sleep finally captured my twitching eyelids, I mused over whether Aunt Patience would rouse herself and march—froglike, determined, hateful, as she used to be—down to the gate and see me off.

She did not . . . only Agatha kissed my cheek as I was helped onto the rickety wooden step of the coach, with my trunk strapped above.

? ? ?

There is no practice more vexing than that of authors describing coach travel for the edification of people who have already travelled in coaches. As I must adhere to form, however, I will simply list a series of phrases for the unlikely reader who has never gone anywhere: thin eggshell dawn-soaked curtains stained with materials unknown to science; rattling fit to grind bones to powder; the ripe stench of horse and driver and bog.

Now I have fulfilled my literary duties, I need only add that other girls travelling to school may not have dwelt quite so avidly upon the angular faces of police constables as I.

We had journeyed for some seven hours, and I had flicked the curtain aside as the towns came thicker along our misty route, blinking into view as faint collections of red roofs and stone chimneys. I tugged at the rope strung above the window. The otherwise empty coach stopped abruptly, nearly throwing me from the hard seat. A few seconds later, the driver’s whiskered face appeared in the act of spitting upon the side of the roadway. He gestured at the string tied to his arm as if my signalling him were the final straw in a long list of liberties I had taken with his person.

“Are we stopping at all before we reach Lowan Bridge?” I asked.

“Stopping!” He rubbed as if to wipe the red from his nose. Even had he succeeded, the pistol flask peeping from his lapel pocket would have replaced the stain in short order. “Are ye sick?”

“No.”

“Faint?”

“No, but—”

“Hoongry?”

Glancing at the basket Agatha had lovingly filled with bread and pickles and potted rabbit, I shook my head. “I only need some air.”

“Air!” repeated the driver. He shook his head as if from this day forward, no offence would ever be met with surprise. “Ye’ll have air enough in half an hour, when we reach yer destination. Ye’ll live on the stuff.”

“Is the board a frugal one?” I asked, desperate for a hint.

“Ye might say so. Ye might say scraps tossed to pigs are a point of frugality.”

“What is your name, sir?”

Rolling his eyes so I could see every feathery red vessel, the man answered, “Nick. What of it?”

“Nick, is life very hard at Lowan Bridge? I only want some warning, as Mr. Munt seemed . . . peculiar.”

Nick tapped his finger to the side of his ruddy nostril. “Peculiar! Aye, he is that. Ye’ll learn a plentiful heap o’ facts, if all goes well.”

“And how if all goes ill?”

“Then ye’ll not need to worry yerself—” he coughed “—as it’s prodigious difficult to trouble a corpse.”

This intelligence was punctuated by the stomping of boots as the coachman returned to his high post, a friendly cry of “Damn you, Chestnut, you bloody useless sack o’ glue!” and we were off again.

Quaking, I ate some pickles and a small piece of bread—however ill I felt, it seemed a prudent precaution. When the carriage ground to a halt, my door opened; Nick tugged the rope line off his sleeve as I stepped down to the road.

We had stopped before a tall iron gate set in a stone wall, a gate with sinister floral embellishments and brutal points like demons’ teeth. Half the entrance stood open, a portal to a grim new world; a gravel path drew my eyes into the grounds, which were dotted with weeping trees lamenting my arrival. The building I guessed comprised Lowan Bridge School was grey as a feudal fortress. It possessed three stories, narrow windows excellently suited for a gaol, and a crenellated roof; if it had featured actual cannons thrusting through the stone gaps, it could not have made a clearer impression.

Nick harrumphed, and I turned to see that he had fetched my trunk from the roof and my basket from the coach.

“How can you leave children here to die?” I asked tremulously.

Setting my basket next to the trunk, Nick shrugged. “There’s a real education to be had here—that’s better than can be said for most o’ these governess manufactories. Anyhow, the world is a hard place, and I live in it alone—what’s it to me if you do too?”

“Here.” I offered the considerable remains of my luncheon. “If they don’t want me to have this, they need only take it away. You keep it.”

“Keep it! What the devil are ye a-doing of? I’ve been paid already, ye daft child,” Nick said, frowning.

“This is payment for something else.”

“What, then?”

“The world is a hard place, and I live in it alone.” I swallowed back my tears. “If you don’t remember the others, remember me.”

Nick studied me; in the end, he merely accepted my basket and shook my hand. Turning, he strode towards the dingy coach and Chestnut, who stood stamping and generally articulating his desire to be rewarded with a bag of hot oats. I could sympathise.