The Midnight Gate (4 page)

“What is she planning?” she asked finally.

“She and those friends of hers have been working a chair apart. Loosening the joints. They've had it hidden in the caretaker's closet. They've been working on it since last week, but I just saw them take it to the classroom. They took your chair away and put the wobbly one in its place.”

Belladonna sighed. Now that Elsie had told her, she knew she'd have to do something. She reached forward and opened the door into the dark stairwell. Elsie was waiting, practically glowing with anticipation.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, following Belladonna up the stairs, the enormous black taffeta bow bobbing in her hair.

Belladonna didn't answer, she just peeked into the room to make sure no one was there before creeping in and walking up to her chair. She laid a hand on it and rocked it lightly—everything wobbled and one of the stretchers fell off.

“Right,” she said, grim determination in her voice.

She dragged Sophie's chair away and carefully slid the broken chair into its place, leaving plenty of room between the chair and the desk so that Sophie wouldn't have to move it to sit down.

“A little more to the right,” said Elsie. “You should try to make it look just the way she left it.”

“Why do I think you've done this before?”

“It's a classic,” beamed Elsie. “The collapsing chair. The classics always work.”

“I'm going to get into so much trouble for this.”

“No, you won't. No one except Sophie will know it was you, and she can't tell on you without revealing that she tried to do it to you first.”

“I meant Sophie,” said Belladonna, going to the door and admiring her handiwork from afar. “Sophie will make it her life's work to make my life miserable. Yes, I think that'll work.”

“I thought she already did that.”

“Well, yes, but…”

At that moment the bell for the end of lunch blared through the school and across the grounds, and children began to meander indoors, fingers and noses nearly numb from the cold.

Sophie and her friends walked in and took up their usual positions in the window with their backs against the radiators. Belladonna knew that they were looking at her, but she tried to adopt an air of nonchalance and wandered to the opposite window. She stared out across the wintry park as if she were really curious about something. As if a herd of wildebeest had suddenly decided to migrate through the middle of the playground while unbeknownst to them a cheetah lurked behind the broken fountain.

For a few moments it seemed that the whole world and everything in it had stopped. As if time itself had paused. But, inevitably, Mr. Watson eventually strode in, books, folders, and handouts under his arm.

“Right, everybody,” he said, dumping his papers onto his desk, “I'm going to be collecting your permission slips for the abbey in just a moment, but first Miss Parker would like a word.”

At the name of the redoubtable headmistress of Dullworth's, everyone scuttled to their desks and stood at attention.

Oh, no!
thought Belladonna.
No! Not in front of Miss Parker!

Miss Parker walked into the room. As usual she was wearing a crisp navy blue suit, with a skirt that reached exactly three centimeters below her knees. Her shoes were black and sensible, and around her neck was a string of pearls that was neither too small to be worth the bother nor so large as to be ostentatious. Her expertly cropped hair curled into two spikes at her jawline, perfectly framing her pale face with its gimlet eyes and pursed red mouth.

She stopped in front of Mr. Watson's desk and nodded to him before turning back to the students.

“I just want a word or two about the responsibilities of Dullworth students when they are out on school trips,” she said. “You may sit down.”

There was much scraping of chairs on the floor as everyone sat down. Miss Parker had taken to delivering these brief words of warning ever since the Year 11s had visited Fordham Farm on the same day as a group from Beeston Secondary and ended up tossing several of them into the pigstys. Belladonna sank into her chair and tried not to look across at Sophie, as if her not looking might prevent the inevitable.

It didn't.

There was a yelp and a crash and the roar of laughter as everyone in the room luxuriated in the most undignified fall of Sophie Warren. Everyone except Belladonna … and Miss Parker. Even Mr. Watson could barely conceal his delight, and as Belladonna turned slowly to look at Sophie, she had to admit, even in the midst of her foreboding about what would happen next, that seeing her nemesis sitting on the floor, surrounded by the constituent parts of her chair, her legs stretched out and her perfectly coiffed hair hanging over her stunned face, was almost worth the amount of trouble she was about to be in.

She turned around and glanced at Steve, confident that he would be impressed with her achievement.

But he wasn't. He wasn't even looking at Sophie. He was looking at Belladonna, and his face was shocked and serious and perhaps a little angry.

Belladonna turned away. Why was he looking like that? Could it be that he really liked Sophie? He certainly spent plenty of time with her, but Belladonna had always assumed that it was because his friend Gareth was her brother.

“Quiet!” Miss Parker's voice cut through the giggles and guffaws like a hot knife through butter. “Get up, Miss Warren. There appears to be a spare chair over there.”

Sophie scrambled to her feet and retrieved what had been Belladonna's chair from the front of the room.

“Right.” Miss Parker raked the class with a humorless glare. “This is exactly the sort of behavior I do
not
expect from Dullworth students. Tomorrow you will be out in public for an entire day. I am confident that your behavior will be exemplary. Am I correct in feeling so confident?”

There was a pause, then a mumbled “Yes, Miss” rolled around the room like the distant lowing of cattle.

“Right. Carry on, Mr. Watson.”

She raked the class with a final steely stare, then turned and walked out, closing the door behind her with a click. Mr. Watson sighed, then turned to the blackboard and began writing a list of the different orders of monks. Benedictine, Cistercian, Dominican …

Belladonna opened her textbook and glanced around. Everyone was copying down the list in their workbooks. Everyone except Sophie Warren. Sophie was chewing on the feather-maned pink velvet pony that adorned the end of her pencil and staring at Belladonna with unalloyed hatred in her eyes.

“Right,” said Mr. Watson, turning around. “Who can tell me the differences between the various orders of monks?”

Several hands shot into the air, but Belladonna didn't hear what was said. She turned slowly to see what Steve was doing, but he was gazing out of the window as usual. She turned back and began to doodle on her exercise book. The minutes ticked slowly by. She turned to look at Steve again. This time, he was looking at her. His face was grim and as she caught his eye, he shook his head slightly and looked away. She looked at the clock above the door. The lesson wasn't even half over. Why had she done it? She'd been managing alright before. Why did she listen to Elsie?

The minutes ticked by.
You know,
thought Belladonna,
I'm probably making this worse than it really is.
After all, Sophie played practical jokes on loads of people. She probably didn't think anything of someone doing it back. And it must have happened before, though she had to admit that she couldn't think of a time when it had. Still, Sophie was just an ordinary girl, and Belladonna was the Spellbinder and really ought to stop being so gloomy about everything.

Belladonna had almost talked herself into feeling alright about the whole thing when there was a loud
CRACK
to her left.

Sophie Warren had just bitten the head off her pony.

 

4

The Last Paladin

“WHAT ON EARTH
were you thinking?”

“I don't know. It seemed like a good idea. Like it would serve her right. Elsie said—”

“Oh, right!” Steve rolled his eyes. “I should've known!”

They were huddled in the library, near the shelves of classics and the hidden entrance to the Sibyl. Belladonna had hurried in there as soon as History ended, on the basis that the library was the last place she would expect Sophie to go. Steve had soon joined her, throwing his backpack on the floor and earning a hissed “sh!” from Mrs. Collins, the librarian, as she popped in to sharpen a pencil. Mrs. Collins never spent any time in the actual library, which she found claustrophobic, instead preferring to linger in the much larger study hall next door.

Belladonna and Steve pretended to be looking for books until she'd gone.

“Anyway,” said Belladonna, starting to get angry, “why is it such a big deal? She does it to other people all the time.”

“Didn't you notice that no one ever retaliates?” asked Steve.

Belladonna shook her head.

“We were in the same junior school,” he whispered. “One day, Gareth played some joke, I can't remember what. We all thought it was really funny. Anyway, a couple of days later, Gareth didn't come to school. He'd broken his leg.”

“Broken his leg?”

“Yeah, they both took riding lessons and she loosened the … the thing that holds the saddle on…”

“The girth.”

“Yeah, the girth. And he fell off and broke his leg. And that was her own brother! And they're twins—twins are supposed to be really, you know, close.”

Belladonna sighed, then looked up and tucked her hair behind her ears in what she hoped was a convincingly defiant gesture.

“Well,” she said, “it's done now. I'll just stay out of her way, that's all.”

She smiled swiftly and strode out of the library and off to double Geography.

It was all so stupid. Sophie Warren was just a girl. She wasn't a Kere or an evil alchemist. She didn't have magic powers. Still, by the time the school day ground to a close, Belladonna was ready for a warm fire and her tea, and she barely felt the rain as she splashed through the streets, straining to hold on to the purple umbrella as the greedy wind tried to snatch it from her grasp.

She paused by the church and watched the rain pounding on the old gravestones, as the wind whipped through the yew trees, scattering the floral tributes. For a moment she thought she saw someone on the opposite side near the church, but when she looked again, no one was there. She shrugged and turned for home—it was probably just a charnel sprite taking a break from conducting the dead to the Other Side.

*   *   *

The weather was no better the next morning, though the wind seemed to have died down a bit, and Belladonna didn't feel quite so much like an arctic explorer as she made her way to school. She paused at the gate to the churchyard again and strained to see if any charnel sprites were about, but they apparently had more sense than to linger in the long grass on a dismal day.

She reached into a side pocket of her backpack and pulled out a packet of Parma Violets. She'd had a perfectly decent breakfast, of course, but there was something about rainy days (or any days, for that matter) that just cried out for sweets on the way to school.

Almost everyone was on the bus by the time she rounded the corner, and Mr. Watson was gazing anxiously up the street, attendance sheet in hand. He waved her on, exasperatedly tapping his watch.

“Late again, Johnson,” he said as she scrambled onto the bus.

Belladonna looked around. The only seat left was next to Peter Davis, who was sitting on the aisle, deeply engrossed in the handheld game that he'd got for Christmas. He swiveled around to let her have the window seat but didn't look up. So far as Belladonna had been able to make out, he never looked up. The most any teacher had been able to get out of him was the occasional grunt, though he always did well on tests. Belladonna glanced at him as his fingers sped over the small machine and wondered if he was like this at home and if he'd ever spoken a complete sentence.

Mr. Watson did a final quick head count, tapped the driver on the shoulder, and the bus lurched off. The decibel level immediately skyrocketed and Belladonna hunkered down, trying to cut herself off from the cacophony by concentrating on the view from the window.

It wasn't much of a view. First there were city streets as they made their way through the gray town, then the highway on-ramp, and after that, nothing but road and cars and steadily pouring rain streaking across the windows.

“Hey, Belladonna,” hissed a voice at her ear.

She turned around. The face of Sophie sidekick Louise Pargiter was pressed into the space between the two headrests.

“What?”

“Why did your mother name you after a
weed
?”

Belladonna rolled her eyes and turned back to the window, but Louise wasn't going to be put off so easily.

“I suppose you thought that chair thing was funny yesterday?”

Belladonna didn't respond.

“Huh. Well, enjoy your last day of freedom.”

“Shhhh!” Sophie yanked Louise back into her seat. “You'll spoil it!”

Belladonna sighed. Great. Now she'd be spending the whole rest of the day waiting for Sophie's revenge. She wished she'd just do whatever it was and get it over with.

“Idiots.”

Belladonna glanced to her left in surprise. Peter looked up from his game.

“They're idiots,” he said, smiling. “You probably already know that.”

Belladonna nodded and smiled back, but he had already returned to the delights of his game. His concentration gave him a certain sense of calm, which Belladonna couldn't help but begin to share. Even among the whizzing uproar of the rest of the class on the bus, their two seats seemed somehow apart and silent. She settled down and gazed out of the window at the wet roads and the cars and the occasional distant house, its windows bright against the gloomy morning.