Jane Steele(24)

So I had lied, and grown still better at it—for myself, and for my fellow prisoners. It only followed, since Miss Lilyvale was our unquestioned ally despite being a teacher, that I ought to ferret out what was wrong with her.

I wonder about the verb to ferret now I am grown. If a conjugation of a similar verb, to snake, existed, I believe that would have been closer to the truth—for my slithering, slinking capabilities had been honed by age sixteen to a nearly reptilian pitch.

? ? ?

I did not dream of inviting Clarke to raid Miss Lilyvale’s office that night, which in hindsight was a monstrous error; had we made the discovery together, we might have talked through what was best to be done.

Quietly, I eased my coarse frock on and skipped the apron, that material being too pale for untrammelled moonlight. I flinched as the door creaked, but no one stirred; if the girls knew one thing, it was that my disobedience tended to benefit the majority. Shutting the door behind me and risking further noise would have tempted Fate, so I stepped into the hallway, leaving a draught of air in my wake.

It had cost me two weeks’ practice with a bent nail to pick my first lock at the age of ten, aptitude for larder raids being a highly esteemed skill. As I knelt before Miss Lilyvale’s music-room door, however, I felt strangely inept—my fingers were clubs, my ears abuzz with fanciful susurrations. At last, I prised open the lock and was greeted by the predictable midnight sight of an empty room within a sinister stronghold, its shuttered windows and watchful walls.

The desk was also locked. After fiddling with the nail, I substituted a hat pin, which swiftly worked its magic, and I pulled open the drawer.

As Clarke had suggested, a stack of letters rested there.

I lit the lamp with a lucifer from my dress pocket, hid the light under the desk, and sat upon the floor Indian-style. At first glance, I thought the letters must have dated back at least a year or two, for how else could some of the eggshell-coloured paper have deepened to pale yolk in tone? The envelopes were blank save for the addressee, Miss Amy Lilyvale, and I frowned in concentration as I slid the thin foolscap out.

Then my lips parted ways as I gazed upon the contents of what seemed the oldest correspondence.

They were confessions.

Dear Miss L——

I can suffocate no longer under this mask, nor daily live a falsehood when such misplaced secrecy makes hypocrites out of honest Christians. I do beg your forgiveness for what I am about to say, and indeed, begging your forgiveness ought to have been a duty I performed years previous; if I cannot confess all to you now, however, my integrity is meaningless, and my boundless love nothing finer than a canker eating away at my swollen tongue.

I long to put my mouth upon you; yes, your lips, but I confess to far more fervidly desired locales. I wish that when your eyes met mine, they travelled a slow route to my trouser front. I wish that I could taste you where you must ache for me as I do for you. My mouth upon your sweet flesh, and then my journey back up your body, and your face when I finish the first slow thrust into you, the one I compelled you to beg for; these images soak my dreams until there is nothing left of my free will, and I urge you to answer me: Are you innocent regarding my torment?

My hope is that you will not shun me after these disclosures. I am your employer, after all, and so must promise that your reputation as well as my own rests in my careful palms—safe from the censure of a prurient world, I assure you. I only hope that you can help to absolve me now I have disclosed my desires, and that we may unite forever as one flesh, or else live as forthright and forgiving siblings in Christ.

In brotherly love,

Vesalius

After blinking for what seemed hours, I edged under the desk beside the sour-smelling metal lamp with what I have subsequently learnt was a pile of ripe erotica.

Reading the second letter took me ten minutes, as half my body physically shrank from looking; reading the remaining thirteen took half an hour; I was, in this as in all other vices, a fast learner. I hoped that subsequent missives would deplore his initial one, but they were all of a kind, save that vocabulary like breast and cunny and arse and rut liberally seasoned later disclosures.

When I had finished, I scrambled out and leant over the desk, feeling a profoundly strange admixture of nausea and high-pitched excitement like the sensation of dismounting after a hard gallop.

Had this been what Edwin had meant?

You’re every bit as bad as I am. You liked it.

I did not like this feeling, this unsettled tingling wrongness; I felt it with Clarke sometimes at the edge of the rooftop when I thought, How easy it would be to simply step off, and my heartbeat soared, and I flinched away from the edge, unspeaking and ashamed of myself and giddy with quicksilver nerves which fired from scalp to spine and lower.

I did not strictly dislike the sensation either, however.

I stole the letters and stole back to our dormitory. Crawling into bed next to Taylor following questionable excursions by now carried no risk, and she snored through my manoeuvres; Clarke, however, was aquiver with attention in the next bed, her eyes dancing over me in the grey not-light as I pulled back the coverlet.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked.

At a loss for words, I passed Clarke the letters and curled up with my back to her golden curls.

This was not my first mistake, but would prove to be the most careless—no matter how confused I was by the strange pulse of blood in my groin. Sharing my findings with Clarke seemed the only option; the thought of digesting those letters alone, without her to partake in the disgusting yet exotic meal, revolted me—I girlishly wanted someone else to be as agitated as I was.