The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School (20 page)

Amy saw Kali was glad of an excuse to put on a mask and hare off into the woods. She had missed out last term, when she was the one tied up and in need of rescue. Amy hoped her friend wouldn’t be too headstrong in the field.

‘We’ll save that dame from a fate worse than death,’ Kali said.

‘You think Bainter might tie her to a tree and deliver one of his sermons?’ suggested Amy. ‘That would be dreadful. She can’t even scream to drown him out.’

‘Yeah, I think he’s rotten enough… or worse.’

For winter, the Moth Club added padded coats and wellington boots to their costumes. The effect was more cocoon than imago, but even daredevil adventuresses had to take care not to catch their deaths of cold.

Quietly, they crept out of the dorms. Kali trained a small battery torch on the crisp snow. The trail was plain. Bainter’s boot-prints were deep and regular, while Rose’s were shallow and scuffed – she was resisting him. She might even have the presence of mind to leave an obvious track.

Because she was pretty and dumb, it was too easy to think Rose empty-headed. Amy knew that wasn’t so. Beauty had learned to be wary. She was sceptical of flattery and suspicious of worship. Amy suspected she was a rose with thorns, not a drip like those Yank flicker serial heiresses.

Along with moth masks, they wore earmuffs and scarves. Amy’s mask kept the wind off her face. She had goggles, adapted from her Goosey Gander helmet, but kept them up on her forehead for the moment.

Kali trod in Bainter’s tracks, trying to make none of her own. A bandit trick her father had taught her. His fiefdom ranged from fertile river valleys to snow-capped mountains.

Making herself light, Amy tiptoed, leaving only the barest impression. The wing-like underarm webbing of her coat caught the air, but she didn’t soar. For the moment, she wanted to keep her eyes on the ground.

Soon there were tall trees around them. By day and in other seasons these were the woods. By night and in winter, this was a forest.

Amy had written off Smudge’s stories about Bainter being head of a white slavery ring as fables, no more credible than the theory that Digger Downs had brass bones. Smudge had also told Amy three entirely different, contradictory yarns about Mauve Mary – each time, with a quivering, infectious conviction.

Was Bainter’s vile villainy harder to accept as fact than Palgraive’s brain maggot? She only had Paule’s word for that, but believed it. Or the Purple, which she’d visited. If she talked about that, people who hadn’t been there would think she was a lunatic.

Far from the lights of School, they only had Kali’s torch to go by. She held fingers over the lens so the shining wouldn’t be obvious if Bainter happened to look behind him.

Amy remembered Hale’s talk of eyes in the woods.

…and those famous wolves.

The high wall didn’t run through the woods. The bounds were marked by flags hung from trees, but they hadn’t been maintained since the first snowfall. Even in more congenial weather, few abscondees scarpered this way. Braving broken glass on top of the wall or shingle bays which could be cut off by tides were more sensible options.

Everything here was dead, frozen or sleeping out the winter.

Except the things that could hurt you. They never slept, they couldn’t die and they didn’t care about the cold.

A huge white thing loomed up ahead of them. A face leered down.

Kali played the torch beam up a swollen white body. It was Captain Freezing, remade again. Did the snowman lurk this far in the woods to lure poor, deluded de Vere into danger?

Bainter’s tracks looped around Captain Freezing, keeping well out of reach of the twiggy fingers stuck into the bulbous ends of its icy arms.

The snowman’s shako was as big as a pillar box.

‘Where did he get a hat that size?’ Amy asked.

‘I last saw that lid on a giant toy soldier in the godawful
Waltzes From Wiener-Schnitzel Land
pageant two terms back,’ said Kali. ‘No clue how it got out here.’

They hurried on.

Up ahead, between the black bars of the trees, they saw lamplight. Muffled voices came on the wind.

Amy and Kali stopped.

Bainter and Beauty were meeting other parties.

‘We get any closer, they’ll rumble us,’ said Kali.

‘Maybe not,’ said Amy. ‘If there’s fuss, chuck some pebbles over that way to distract them. I can get to a better eavesdropping spot.’

Making herself float, Amy rose until she thumped into the lowest branches of a spreading tree. Snow dislodged and showered on Kali, who shook it out of her hair.

Amy sprung from branch to branch, from tree to tree, getting better at it each time. She stopped slamming against branches and began to push herself through the air with some agility. Her wings filled and she was able to glide a little, pushing against the shaking branches to propel herself through the space between the trees.

She ascended, almost to the treetops.

It was colder up here, but snow wasn’t falling. She lost feeling in her face and her mask felt stuck to her skin.

This was as near to flying as she had ever managed.

If she let go of the trees, would she drift upwards until she froze solid and plummeted to shatter on the earth? She extended her mind’s grip like an anchor-line and hauled herself on that.

She couldn’t deny it. She was flying.

Suddenly she couldn’t feel the cold. Exhilaration warmed her. For a moment, she knew what it was like to be literally above it all.

Nothing was keeping her on the ground.

On a moonlit night the view would be spectacular. Now, with heavy cloud cover, she saw only twin funnels of light ahead and the tiny glint of Kali’s torch.

She was growing light-headed. Concentrating, she settled on a perch near the top of the tallest tree.

The light funnels were the headlamps of a car. A track ran through the woods, well beyond School Grounds.

Being here was a Major Infraction.

She clung to a tree trunk, fifty or sixty feet up, above the parked car, and heard voices below. She couldn’t make out what was being said.

Taking a grip with her knees, she crawled head first down the trunk. She had to take back some of her natural weight, but not too much. She did not want to drop on Bainter’s head. Then she’d certainly share whatever terrible fate Rose was being dragged to.

‘…the stones are under the snow,’ Bainter was saying. ‘This is the proper place for the oblation.’

The leafless branches offered little cover. Amy tried not to make a sound so Ponce wouldn’t look up. Her frosted breath came back at her face.

She was close enough to see Bainter talking with two other people. He kept a grip on Rose, one big hand around both her wrists. Beauty wasn’t struggling. She might have swooned or been drugged. Amy hoped the girl was shamming and biding her time.

‘He’s right,’ said a woman – a woman! – ‘this is where we should be. My calculations…’

‘Pah,’ said a man. ‘I believe what I can see. I see snow. Not stone.’

The woman’s voice was distinctive – metallic and shrill enough to hurt. She wasn’t one of the mistresses.

‘I tell you, we are here,’ said Bainter.

Ponce’s confederates wore hoods. They must have come in the car.

Amy’s knee-grip went wonky. She had an uneasy moment, but held fast. She was more stick insect than moth at the moment.

The man who believed only what he saw wore a familiar hood, with a red flame on the forehead. The chief of last term’s Hooded Conspiracy…

…and almost certainly her friend’s father!

How near was Kali? Would she recognise him from his voice?

The woman was a tubby, barrel-shaped person. Her tweed hood matched her Norfolk jacket and stiff skirt. She didn’t seem the sort Kali’s father would take for an umpteenth bride.

Bainter had put on a hood – purple silk, with a tassel on top. Embroidered tears dripped from one eyehole.

So, the Hooded Conspiracy reached the Staff Room?

Amy’s mind raced. Who else might be in on it? Not Gryce – she’d cast out the Crowninshield sisters for associating with Hoods. Unless that had been a cunning ploy to cast off suspicion. Bainter was in the ascendant this term, with the relative scarcity of sightings of Headmistress. He was very pro-Black Skirt.

Black Skirts and Hood Heads? Together?

Amy felt sick… which, considering her position, was inconvenient as well as uncomfortable. Her tummy roiled.

She missed what was being said.

Red Flame clapped grey-gloved hands. A chauffeur got out of the car.

‘Get on with it, Gogoth,’ he said.

Gogoth – if that actually was a name – wore a peaked cap over a stiff, shiny black mask which pushed out in the middle like a snout. Something was wrong with the chauffeur’s backbone, which seemed to be a zig-zag. He cleared away snow with an entrenching tool.

‘Careful, it is forbidden to treat the sacred sites with disrespect,’ cautioned Bainter. ‘Procedures must be followed. There are consequences for blasphemy.’

The spade scraped flint and struck blue sparks. The chauffeur had uncovered paving stones set in a round pattern, like a clock or an astronomical chart. Looking at it from above, Amy’s eye was drawn to spiral grooves she found oddly fascinating – as if she were being pulled towards the centre of the design.

She was reminded of her Purple dreams.

‘Good job, Gogoth,’ said Red Flame.

‘Careful, or we’ll all become oblations,’ said Bainter. ‘One simply doesn’t trifle with the Other Ones.’

Amy had never heard of the Other Ones, but didn’t like the sound of them. A good rule of thumb was not to trifle with groups who liked to be called the Anything Ones… the Old Ones, the Wicked Ones, the Deep Ones, the Comely Ones. All thoroughly bad lots.

Mrs Tweed had an implement with her, like an upside-down sextant with jewelled lenses. She stuck it close to her eyeholes and surveyed the stones.

‘The inscription is clear,’ she said. ‘This is the Runnel. This is the Flute.’

‘Bring over the Girl With the Face,’ Red Flame ordered Bainter.

Rose stirred in her swoon and turned over in Bainter’s grip. Amy saw she was making herself heavy and awkward to handle.

Clever girl.

Amy fixed her mind on Rose.

It struck her all in a flash that if she could move things without touching them, then she could also
prevent
them from being moved. Just by thinking.

She held Beauty. As she made herself light, Amy made Beauty heavy.

Bainter strained, as if he were trying to pull a nail out of a plank with his fingers. He hadn’t expected resistance.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mrs Tweed.

‘She… won’t… be… shifted.’

‘Ridiculous,’ said the woman. ‘You’re a milksop. Let me at her and I’ll…’

She weighed in and fared no better than Bainter.

‘This isn’t natural,’ she said. ‘We’re not alone.’

The hoods swivelled as the conspirators peered around. They didn’t look up.

Kali must be lying flat in the snow. That wouldn’t be comfortable.

‘Not out there,’ said Mrs Tweed. ‘Down here. In the stones. It must be the Other Ones.’

‘Why are they hindering the oblation, then?’ said Bainter. ‘Tell me that, eh?’

He was annoyed with the woman. Amy recognised his snippy, irritable tone from lessons. The chaplain must wish he could force Mrs Tweed to endure the Three Questions just now.

‘Priest, if you’ve misinterpreted the inscriptions…’ began Red Flame.

‘Everything has been checked, over and over. We have the ideal oblation. This is the sacred site. The night is propitious. The Purple is stirring. And yet the girl won’t be shifted a mere
six feet
to the Flute.’

‘She doesn’t
all
have to be shifted,’ said Mrs Tweed. ‘Cut off her face where she is and fetch it over. That’s all we need.’

Shocked, Amy let go of Rose.

Equally shocked – and with more personal interest in not having her face cut off – Rose made a dash for it. Amy had seen Beauty outpace Goneril’s best sprinters at Sport Day. None of the conspirators could catch her if it came to a race through the woods. Provided she didn’t run smack into a tree or trip over Kali. As she disappeared into the night, she shrugged out of her inhibiting coat.

‘After her, Gogoth,’ ordered Red Flame.

Amy twisted Beauty’s cast-off coat between the crookback’s legs. Gogoth fell face forwards in a tangle.

Mrs Tweed made a sound of disgust.

Red Flame drew a revolver from out of his jacket.

‘Don’t shoot… she has to be
alive
when we do it,’ said Ponce. ‘She has to
know
what is being taken from her. It’s what she
feels
about her loss of face as much as the physical skin and blood that makes up the oblation. She has to
survive
this for the Flute to stay open.’

Amy decided the Reverend Mr Bainter was worse than a white slaver.

‘But I can shoot
you
,’ said Red Flame, ‘just to make a point. If I were to take your nose off, you’d feel great loss and we’d have the flesh and blood.’

‘I’m not an unspoiled child,’ said Bainter. ‘I’m not a rare creature, whose shape here and in the Purple is perfection. I’m not the Girl with the Face. And neither are you. Nor is the Professor. I have doubts about Gogoth too.’

‘Pah,’ said Red Flame – who seemed fond of the exasperated exclamation – as he put his pistol away.

Mrs Tweed – Professor Tweed, to go by what Bainter said – manipulated her strange device, folding and telescoping attachments. It fit over her hand like a spiny gauntlet.

‘Gogoth,’ she said. ‘Here!’

She talked to the chauffeur as if she were calling a dog to heel, but Gogoth unwound the coat from his legs, got up and walked over – shoulders hitching as if his bones were rolling the wrong way – as meekly as any trained pet. Amy had a feeling she wouldn’t want to see under his mask.

‘Hand and arm,’ said the Professor.

Gogoth rolled up his sleeve. He had odd, elaborate tattoos – intertwining snakes or dragons or tendrils or tentacles. Shiny, reflective, strangely positioned eyes might be coloured glass sewn into the skin.