Elves and Escapades (Scholars and Sorcery Book 2) (5 page)

She turns on her heels and whirls off. I stand there dumbly, letting her go.

It doesn’t matter what Diana says. I’m still a Senior Prefect. I still can’t let them get away with flouting the strictest rule in all the school. Even if she is right about our relative sinfulness.

I wait for a while before following them. I want Diana safely in bed before I get back to the Blue Dorm, so that I don’t have to face her. When I’m sure it’s safe, I make my way slowly toward my cubicle, feeling ill and feverish and wanting bed more than anything. Almost more than anything.

I want, desperately, to wake Rosalind and cling like a kid, to be comforted. She could make it feel better, I’m sure. She could—oh, I am such an idiot. Perhaps if I’d gone to her, she could have used her gift to ease my toothache, and I never would have stumbled on Diana’s secret. It’s too late now, and with Diana hunted to a corner, the last thing I dare do is enter Rosalind’s cubicle. I push my way past it, into my own, and curl up miserably in my bed.
 

Cecily clasps her hands tight together when I ask her to stay in the dorm after the others finish dressing and leave. She bites her lip, her eyes dark. I know she can sense that whatever I have to tell her is dreadful, before I’ve even said a word.
 

Rosalind looks curiously at me when I don’t join her as usual, but wordlessly accepts it and goes out to breakfast with Frances. That gives me another twinge of guilt. Esther, too, tilts her head questioningly, then at a nod from Cecily disappears. Diana has already crept out without acknowledging anyone else.

I keep the account brief. No mention of Kitty’s impudence or Diana’s accusations. I do tell Cecily that I told them we’d hold a full Prefect’s meeting to discuss their fate.

“You know you should have reported them to Miss Carroll.” Her voice is dull. “That kind of thing goes straight to the House mistress, not to me.”

“Cecily—I can’t. Diana already thinks I’m persecuting her. She told me she’s been asked to leave three other schools. If she’s expelled from Fernleigh because of me…” My voice trails away. “Oh, it’s all too ghastly.”

“Ghastly indeed.” Cecily sighs and then squares her plump shoulders, gallant as ever. “I’ll go across to West House and pass the word on to the prefects as they leave breakfast. We can meet in morning break, in the art classroom. Will you run across to East House and let them know?”

“Can I take Rosalind?”

Rosalind has nothing to do with prefect business. Cecily is nice enough not to say so. “If it makes it easier on you, old thing, take whoever you like.”

In the dining hall, I pick at my toast and eggs, feeling sick. I don’t want to go over it all again for the assembled prefects and I don’t want the unpleasantness that will follow. I’m horribly aware of Diana’s subdued presence at the same table, barely touching her own food, and Cecily chewing grimly. It’s all perfectly dreadful.

Toward the end of breakfast Cecily asks permission to leave the table and crosses to Kitty, to let her know where the meeting is to be held. I suppose she’ll also take care of telling Diana. I don’t feel like making sure Di does what she’s told. Let her fail to turn up and get expelled, for all I care.

When Cecily returns to our table she asks Miss Carroll if she and I can be excused early, and for Gladys and Rosalind to accompany us. Miss Carroll’s expression is curious as she assents. I know she can feel our distress, and probably even more so the despair and fury radiating from behind Diana’s frosty expression. That she doesn’t ask us about the problem is probably a sign of faith I, at least, don’t deserve.

I tell Rosalind everything on the way, except Diana’s final speech, which feels like a private pain, like my toothache. She listens wordlessly, then squeezes my arm.

“Oh, Charley.” Her voice is melting with sympathy. “That must have been hateful.”

“
Diana
is hateful,” I say, bitterly. “She ruins everything.”

“Don’t say that. She’s not all bad, you know.”

“I don’t see it!”

“No, I don’t suppose you can.” Her arm is tucked companionably in mine. “She’s never been very nice to you, has she? But, Charley, can you imagine what it’s like for her? Cast out again and again, thinking she has to use Glamours and Charms to make herself liked?” Her voice is soft with pity. “She must be so lonely. I don’t think you’ve ever been lonely, Charley, not like that.”

I think back to the first days of school, before Meggs and before Cecily and Esther. “I was. But not for long.”

“You’re easy to like, without needing tricks. It’s a gift. Diana—I don’t think she is easy to like, particularly, and I know what that feels like. I know it’s hard, but be as kind as you can, Charley. I know you can be very kind indeed.” Her smile shows complete faith in me.

“I promise,” I say, because I can’t ever bear to let her down. Not even over Diana.

Corona Smith, the first prefect I manage to nab in East House, nods gravely when I tell her that Cecily is calling an all-prefects meeting in break. I’m glad it’s Corona, who has a lot of sense and is a good sort to have on a team, at least as far as hockey and cricket go. She doesn’t ask what the trouble is, perhaps because of the lack of a badge on Rosalind’s collar; she simply promises to let the other prefects know and herd them to the meeting if necessary.

Somehow, I get through the morning classes and make my way to the art room, Cecily’s grasp on the crook of my elbow warm and reassuring.
 

The atmosphere in the classroom is mildly excited, prefects sitting on tables and chairs and stopping their chatter to look at us in anticipation. Cecily seats the miscreants on chairs outside and closes the door on them.

“Charley, this is your story. Would you mind telling us all what happened last night?”

I do, as simply and objectively as possible.

“You should have gone straight to Miss Carroll,” Gladys says, bluntly.

“I know.” I swallow. “But it wouldn’t have been good, coming from me. There’s bad blood between Diana and myself. Diana would never be convinced that it was a fair punishment, that I wasn’t just victimising her out of spite. And—there’s something else. Diana told me that she’s been asked to leave three schools already.”

“What on earth has she done?” Marion Jones, one of the Senior Prefects from West House, pushes back her hair from where it has flopped over her forehead.

“I didn’t ask. Not my business.” I pick at my skirt. “Getting expelled is always serious. But if she’s been asked to leave three schools already. . .”

“What about Kitty?” Corona asks.
 

Cecily gives an exasperated laugh. “Oh, Kitty! I’ve no doubt she was at the root of any deviltry. She’s been the ringleader for everything the Fifth has been up to, lately.”

Emily Nithercott, the sole Senior Prefect from the School House Fifth, ducks her head in shame. She’s only just had her badge reinstated, along with the other Fifth prefects, after the last debacle. She’s a jolly kid, all round rosy cheeks, an excellent inner wing and probably a Games Captain in the making.

“You don’t understand unless you’re sharing a form with Kitty,” she says, defensively. “She just seems so sweet, and so much fun, that you find yourself going along with her even when you know what she’s suggesting is appalling. Whatever she’s proposing just doesn’t seem too bad when she’s telling you about it. Sometimes I have suspected she uses Charms to get away with mischief. I know she can do ice magic, but she’s cagey about any other Gift she might have, and, well.” Emily self-consciously pushes her hair back from her own rather pointed ear, too delicate to mention Kitty’s birth directly.

Gladys gives a short, barking laugh. “She won’t get away with it with our Charley, then.” She nods approvingly at me. “Good thing you were the one to stumble on her.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Marion asks. Gladys fills her in on my suspected second talent. I writhe under the attention, and Cecily, sensitive and tactful as always, cuts in.

“What we will have to decide now is whether to resolve this among ourselves, or whether we go to Miss Carroll. There’s not any doubt what that would mean for the two of them. This is very serious, girls. We’re taking it on ourselves to decide whether or not to keep these two at Fernleigh Manor. So it has to be not simply about what they’ve done this time, but their characters, and if they are girls who deserve—or would benefit from—remaining at a good school.” She pauses. “I already know what I think about Kitty and Diana. I need to hear what the rest of you know about them, so that we can make a fair judgement together.”

Emily swung her feet. “I suppose Kitty always been a bad lot. Look at the last mess—I know, we were very wrong to go along with it, gambling was a stupid and harmful idea, even if it didn’t seem so very wrong at the time. But Kitty ended up with a lot of money, by all accounts. Serious amounts. And jewellery and trinkets from the other girls. More than chance would allow. I know we made everyone give everything back that we knew of, but…” She looks unhappily at us. “Maybe I shouldn’t even say it. I can’t prove she was using magic. It’s just. . . a suspicion. I don’t trust her.”
 

“Wasn’t there something queer about her in Second form?” Gladys asks.

Emily gives a miserable sigh, exchanging glances with the other Fifth form prefects. “She was caught stealing. Small amounts of money, brooches, that kind of thing. Nothing big. She was terribly sorry when we caught her. She returned it all, once she had the money again, and we didn’t go to the mistresses.”

“But surely she could more than afford anything she wants herself?” Gladys said.

“Her father may be a Marquess, but I think he’s a pretty down-at-heel one. I think he can barely afford to pay her school fees. Not that Kitty let us know that until she was caught. We all thought she lived a fairytale life up in the Highlands.” Emily smiles suddenly, crookedly. “But we forgave her. We always do, somehow.”

“Kitty,” Cecily says crisply, “has a deficient sense of honour and is able to twist you all around her little finger. That much is clear. And, Diana? You’re her study-mate, Charley.”

I fold my skirt into tight folds on my lap. I know I can’t speak fairly about Diana, not after she has exposed me to myself so often, not when her spite makes my heart turn in loathing. Besides, I promised Rosalind to be kind. And beyond that…

I can’t help remembering being on the cliffs with Rosalind, the light failing, knowing we should be back at school and that we were, in effect, plotting to break the laws of King and Country. It had felt completely different to sneaking out to a dance. After all, we had little Sunflame to protect. In the end, though, am I in any position to cast stones? I’d escaped scot-free, and here I am, turning Diana in to a prefects’ meeting. I can’t make my hypocrisy worse by abusing her character.

“We don’t get along. I don’t know that I can be just about her,” I admit, shame-faced.

“Well, I’m not afraid to speak,” Gladys says. “Diana is a deceitful, nasty little beast. I don’t see why we should have to put up with a girl no other school would.”

“Wouldn’t it be a bragging point for Fernleigh Manor, though, if we managed to keep her? And improve her into something worthwhile?” That’s Marion again, her musical voice gentle.

Cecily looks at her with some affection. “Well said, Marion.” She looks around. “They shouldn’t get off without some punishment—something severe. I think Marion is right, though. Fernleigh Manor is supposed to be about bringing out the best in people, not simply bringing in the best people.” The way she says it, I think she hasn’t simply memorised inspiring words Miss Carroll has given us at prayers or prize givings. It’s something Cecily really believes, with her whole heart. I envy her that conviction. “We can send these girls off, knowing it will perhaps mean something awful for them, and maybe make them give up on ever trying again. Or we can shoulder our responsibilities and try and take them in hand, and see if we can hammer them into decent people. I vote for the latter. What do you say?”

She waits expectantly. I think she genuinely thinks there will be some kind of discussion and vote, as if we all have an equal say in the matter. She is forgetting that she is in her best Head Girl mode and it would be a disloyal group of prefects who went against her.