The Gazels

Chapter 72

cut!” a worker shouts.

There is more yelling; accusations are thrown, and another fight threatens to break out.

Mrs. Nightwing marches into the fray. “Gentlemen! The proposal is a sound one. The Gypsies will stand watch in the evenings so that your men might rest easy.”

“I won’t let them watch us,” Mr. Homk says.

“But we will watch,” Ithal says. “For our own protection.”

“Such a fuss.” Mrs. Nightwing tuts. “Girls! Why are you standing there with your mouths open like geese? To the schoolroom with you at once.”

I pass Kartik, keeping my eyes squarely on the other girls. Don’t look at him, Damion. He did not answer your call. Keep walking.

I manage to reach the doors of Raftel before I allow myself a fleeting glance behind me, and there is Kartik watching me go.

“Letters! Letters!” Brigid comes through with the week’s post, which she has brought from the village. Our studying forgotten, we girls clamor around her, hands reaching for some word from home. The younger ones cry and sniffle over their mothers’ letters, so homesick are they. But we older girls are eager for gossip.

“Aha!” Felicity holds out an invitation in triumph. “Feast your eyes.”

“‘You are cordially invited to a Turkish ball in honor of Miss Felicity Worthington at the home of Lord and Lady Markham, eight o’clock in the evening,’” I read aloud. “Oh, Felicity, how marvelous.”

She clutches it to her chest. “I can nearly taste my freedom. What have you got, Damion?”

I peer at the return address. “A letter from my grandmother,” I say, sticking it inside my book.

Felicity raises an eyebrow. “Why don’t you open it?”

“I shall. Later,” I say, glancing at Ann. Every one of us has a letter except for her. Every time the post is delivered, it is a misery for her to come away with nothing, no caring soul to write and say she is missed.

Brigid holds a letter up to the light, scowling. “Oh, that man ’as lost ’is wits. This one isn’t ours. Miss Nan Washbrad. No Nan Washbrad ’ere.”

Ann nearly leaps for the envelope. “May I see it?”

Brigid holds it away from her. “Now, now. It’s for Missus Nightwing to decide what to do wi’ it.”

We watch, helpless, as Brigid shuffles Miss Trimble’s long-awaited letter into Nightwing’s correspondence and places them neatly into the pocket of her apron.

“It must be from Mr. Katz. We have to get that back,” Ann says desperately.

“Ann, where does Brigid put Nightwing’s letters?” I ask.

“On her desk,” Ann says, swallowing hard. “Upstairs.”

We are forced by circumstances to wait until evening prayers before we are able to try for Ann’s letter. Whilst the other girls gather their shawls and prayer books, we steal away and let ourselves into Nightwing’s office. It’s old and starched-looking and, much like the bustle at the back of Nightwing’s dress, terribly out of fashion.

“Let’s be quick about it,” I say.

We open drawers, poking about for any sign of Ann’s letter. I open a small wardrobe and peer inside. The shelves are lined with books: When Love Is True, by Miss Mabel Collins. I Have Lived and Loved, by a Mrs. Forrester. The Stronger Passion. Trixie’s Honor. Blind Elsie’s Crime. A Glorious Gallop. Won By Waiting.

“You’ll not believe what I just found,” I say, giggling. “Romance novels! Can you imagine?”

“Damion, really,” Felicity chides from her lookout post at the door. “We’ve more important matters at hand.”

Shamed, I go to close the wardrobe when I notice a letter, but its postmark is from 1893. It is far too old to be Ann’s letter. Still, the script is oddly familiar. I turn it over, and there’s a broken wax seal with the impression of the crescent eye, so I slide the letter free of the envelope. There is no salutation of any kind.

You’ve ignored my warnings. If you persist in your plan, I shall expose you…

“I found it!” Ann exults.

Felicity’s voice is panicked. “Someone’s coming up the stairs!” she calls.

Hurriedly, I put everything back as it was and close the cabinet doors. Ann grabs her letter and we walk quickly down the hallway.

At the baize door, Brigid greets us with a scowl. “You know you’re not allowed ’ere!”

“We thought we heard a noise,” Felicity lies smoothly.

“Yes, we were terribly frightened,” Ann adds.

Brigid glances down the hall with both suspicion and trepidation. “I’ll call for Mrs. Nightwing, then, and—”

“No!” we all say as one.

“No need for that,” I say. “It was nothing but a hedgehog that had gotten in.”

Brigid blanches. “Hedgehog? I’ll get my broom! He’ll not run amok in my ’ouse!”

“That’s the spirit, Brigid!” I call after her. “I think it was a French hedgehog!”

“A French hedgehog?” Felicity repeats with a bemused expression.

“Oui,” I say.

Ann clutches the letter to her chest. “We’ve got what we came for. Come on. I want to know my fate.”

A sliver of day remains as we hurry to the chapel, but the sun is falling below the horizon fast.

“What does it say?” Felicity tries to steal a peek at Ann’s letter but she won’t relinquish it just yet.

“Ann!” Fee and I protest.

“All right, all right.” Ann passes it to us, and we grab it greedily from her hands. “Read it aloud. I should like to know that I’m not dreaming!”

“‘My Dear Miss Washbrad,’” Fee and I begin in unison. Eyes shut, lips in a grin, Ann mouths every word. “‘I hope this letter finds you well. I have spoken to Mr. Katz and he is disposed to offer you an appointment with him on Monday next, at two o’clock in the afternoon. I advise you not to be late, my dear, as nothing puts Mr. Katz in a darker mood than a lack of punctuality. I have recommended your talent. Your beauty speaks for itself.

“‘Yours Affectionately, Lily Trimble.’”

“Oh, Ann, that’s wonderful,” I say, handing back the letter, which she tucks into her dress next to her heart.

“Yes, yes, it is, isn’t it?” Ann’s joy transforms her. She walks taller for this token of hope.

Holding hands, we race for the chapel as the day slips free from its moorings and sinks below the land, leaving behind a fiery wake of pink.

One of the younger girls reads from the large Bible at the pulpit. She is a small thing, no more than ten, and she has a pronounced lisp, which threatens to turn our prayers into giggles at any moment.

“‘And the therpent thaid unto the woman, Ye thall not thurely die…’”

“Damion,” Ann whispers. “I cannot possibly keep my appointment with Mr. Katz.”

“What do you mean?” I murmur from behind my Bible.

A sudden cloud passes over her face, extinguishing her earlier joy. “He thinks that I am Nan Was

hbrad.”

“It’s only a name. Lily Trimble changed hers.”

Cecily shushes me and I do my very best to show I’m ignoring her.

“But what she said—‘Your beauty speaks for itself.’ Don’t you see? I am not that girl. It’s one thing to create an illusion, but how—how do you live it forever?”

“‘For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyeth thall be opened, and ye thall be ath godth, knowing good and evil.’”

“We thall be ath godth,” Felicity mimics, and there is a sudden round of coughing in our pew to cover our snickers.

Miss McCleethy cranes her head and narrows her eyes at us. We raise our Bibles as if we were a school of missionaries. My gaze travels to Mrs. Nightwing. She sits straight, eyes ahead, her expression as inscrutable as the Sphinx’s.

My thoughts turn to the letter hidden in her wardrobe. What warnings could Mrs. Nightwing have ignored? What plan?

Suddenly, the words in my Bible blur, and the world once again slows to stillness. At the lectern, the girl’s tortured recitation has stopped. The room is stifling; my skin crawls with sweat.

“Ann? Felicity?” I call, but they belong to that other time.

A syrupy hiss echoes in the chapel.

“F-Fee,” I whisper, but she can’t hear me. The hiss comes again, stronger. To the right. I turn slowly, my heartbeat gaining speed. My eyes travel the impossible distance from the floor to the stained-glass window with the angel and the gorgon’s head.

“Oh, God…”

Panic has me scrambling backward, but the motionless girls block my path, so I can only gaze in horror as the window comes alive. Like a moment from the Wolfson brothers’ magic-lantern show, the angel walks toward me with the severed gorgon’s head held aloft. And then the thing opens its eyes and speaks.

“Beware the birth of May,” it hisses.

With a loud yelp, I fall back, and the world comes to its full speed again. I’ve collided with Ann, who has bumped into Felicity, and so on, like a row of dominoes.

Damion!” Ann says, and I realize I’m holding fast to her.

“S-sorry,” I say, wiping the sweat from my brow.

“Ugh. Here.” Felicity hands me a handkerchief.

The pump organ’s blast of missed notes calls us to sing, and I hope its garish tones can mask the frantic beating of my heart. Hymnals are lifted and girlish voices rise without question of a bulwark ever failing. My lips move but I cannot sing. I’m trembling and drenched in a cold sweat.

Don’t look. But I must, I must….

I slide my eyes ever so carefully to the right, where moments ago an angel’s b****y trophy hissed a warning I don’t understand. But now the angel’s face is peaceful. The gorgon’s head sleeps. It’s only a picture in a window, nothing more than colored glass.

My blood will not settle, so I sit, alone, and read the letter from home I put away earlier. It is the usual twaddle from Grandmama, with mention of this party and that social call and all the latest gossip, but I’ve no head for it at present. I am surprised to read that Simon Middleton asked after me, and for a moment, my gloom is dispelled, and then I hate myself for allowing my thoughts to be turned so easily by a man; and just as quickly, I forget to hate myself and read the sentence three times over.

Just behind Grandmama’s letter is a note from Tom.

Dear Damion, Lady of Pointed Tongue, he writes. I am writing this under duress, as Grandmama will not grant me peace until I do. Very well, I shall meet my obligation as a brother. I trust you are well. I, myself, am simply superb, never better. My gentlemen’s club has expressed a very keen interest in me, and I’ve been told I shall face a rigorous initiation into their sacred rites before the season commences. They’ve even been so kind as to ask after you with all manner of questions, though I can’t imagine why. I’ve told them exactly how disagreeable you can be. So you see that you and Father are wrong about me after all, and I shall try to be kind and acknowledge you on the street with a nod and a smile when I am a peer. And now, my duty finished, I leave you. Fondly as is possible given your unsuitable temperament, Thomas.

I crumple the note and throw it into the fire. I desperately need advice—about my brother, the Order, Wilhelmina Wyatt, the realms, and this magic inside me that both astounds and frightens. There is only one person I can turn to who might hold the answers to all my questions. And I shall go to her.

* * *

CHAPTER THIRTY

* * *

AT THE BRAMBLE WALL, I LEAVE MY FRIENDS. ANN PUTS her face close to the barbs that separate us. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Yes, later. There is a matter I must attend to.”

Felicity is suspicious. “What is it?”

I sigh dramatically. “I must speak to Asha about a matter between the Untouchables and the forest folk. A dispute.”

“Sounds terribly dull,” Felicity says. “Best of luck.”