Jane Steele(19)

“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.





SEVEN



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.


Some 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.”