Immortal (4 page)

I got back to the dorm and put on my unfamiliar uniform: the dark gray skirt, the bloodred stockings, the old-fashioned tie. I looked in the mirror hanging on the wall and didn’t quite recognize the girl who looked back at me.

Celeste, India, and Sophie came jostling back from the bathroom.

“Hey, how sweet,” said Celeste. “She’s admiring her uniform. Isn’t it a shame that she won’t be wearing it for long?”

I remembered my resolution to be tolerant and swallowed down the angry reply that I wanted to shoot back at her. It was a massive effort.

“Come on, Evie,” said Helen. “Let’s go to breakfast.”

I looked at her in surprise. I hadn’t expected Helen to show me any support. Gratefully I followed her out of the room, but she didn’t go down the marble staircase, where girls were starting to make their way to the main hall. Instead she pulled me into an alcove partly hidden from the corridor by a curtain. At the back of the alcove was a plain wooden door. Helen drew back a bolt and pushed the door open.

I saw a dim, secret landing where some twisting wooden steps snaked down into total darkness. Helen groped behind the door, then picked up a flashlight and switched it on. “I keep this here. Come on,” she said. “It’s officially out-of-bounds, but I’ll show you the way. Then we don’t have to bump into Celeste and her crew.”

“But…where are we going?”

“We can go down here. It’s the old servants’ staircase.”

Helen shut the door behind us and pointed her light at the spiraling steps. They were so narrow they seemed to have been squeezed into a gap between the walls, like a ladder going down into a dark pit.

“You must be joking.” I didn’t really want to admit it to Helen, but I’d always been spooked by enclosed, dark spaces. “I’m not going down there.”

“It’s perfectly safe. Or would you rather hang out with Celeste?”

She set off, the light bobbing in front of her.

“Helen! Wait!”

I plunged down the crooked stairs after her, trying not to imagine that the walls were pressing in on me. After a few turns we came to another dark landing.

“That’s the staff floor,” said Helen. “Keep going.”

We finally reached the bottom and stepped into a dank, deserted passage. Helen swept the light over the cobwebbed walls.

“So where are we now?” I asked, hoping that wherever it was, we’d get out of there as quickly as possible.

“This used to be the servants’ quarters in the old days, when the Abbey was a private house. That door over there leads back into the main part of the school, near the marble steps, but if you go down this passage in the other direction you get to the old kitchens and out to the stables. I like it here. I’ll show you, if you want.”

The last thing I wanted was to go exploring some crummy back rooms that no one had used for more than a hundred years, but Helen seemed entranced by the place. I had no choice but to follow her as she headed farther into the old servants’ wing. Everything was painted a depressing dark brown, and it was all thick with dust. I was sure I heard the rustle of mice in the walls. I’d had enough. I was just about to ask Helen to turn back when I caught sight of a row of old bells in a mahogany frame. There were faded labels under them saying things like, DRAWING ROOM, BLUE SALON, and BILLIARDS ROOM.

“What were they for?”

“The bells rang when the servants were needed in all the different rooms. The maids would have run up and down the back steps a hundred times a day, some of them younger than us. They wouldn’t have been allowed to use the marble staircase, of course. That was only for the Templetons.”

“Who were they?”

“The people who owned this place.”

Helen opened the door of an abandoned kitchen. “This is where the servants would have worked.” She gazed around. “Can’t you hear their voices?”

She was really beginning to freak me out now. I had no desire to hear the voices of some dead Victorian maids, however much Helen was into all that. My heart seeme to slow down, and the weird feeling of being watched pressed in on me again. Whispers and secrets seemed to vibrate in my head….

Just then a bell sounded in the distance, and I jumped. Helen blinked.

“That’s the breakfast bell. We mustn’t be late!” She darted back down the passage toward the main house. “Come on! Hurry!”

I struggled to keep up with her long legs, and in a few minutes we were back at the old servants’ staircase. Then Helen pushed open a door that led into the main corridor, near the marble steps. The sound of footsteps trooping down to the dining room echoed away to our left. We raced to catch up with them, but it was too late. As we entered the dining hall, flushed and out of breath, the girls were already standing in their long rows by the tables. Mrs. Hartle was at the high table, saying grace. Helen looked agonized and waited nervously by the door. I caught sight of Celeste, smooth and pure as an angel, her mouth curved in a secret smile.

The High Mistress finished her prayer, then glanced at me coolly.

“So, Evie Johnson is late again? We’ll have to help you and your friend Helen to remember that unpunctuality is against the rules at Wyldcliffe. Miss Scratton, two demerit cards, please.”

Miss Scratton walked over and gave us each a printed red card. She frowned as we took them, and I gathered from Helen’s miserable expression that this was a deep disgrace. Another of Wyldcliffe’s dumb traditions.

“This is to remind you that the rules must be kept,” said Miss Scratton. “And perhaps I should explain, Evie, that when a girl has been given three demerits, she must report to the High Mistress for a detention.”

It all seemed a fuss about nothing, but Helen flinched as she held the card. I realized with astonishment that she was absolutely terrified of Mrs. Hartle. Helen was kind of strange, I thought uneasily. I couldn’t help being annoyed with her for landing me in trouble on my first morning. Yet she had tried, in her own way, to protect me from Celeste. I was still trying to work her out when the bell sounded for the end of breakfast and the beginning of class. We filed out of the dining hall, and I found Celeste at my side.

“You’ve made a great start, Johnson. A demerit on your very first day. Must be a record. Just shows what happens when you hang around with a loser like Helen.”

I tried to keep my temper. “It wasn’t Helen’s fault.”

“Are you sticking up for her? That’s so sweet,” she mocked. “But don’t expect Helen to be a real friend. She’s completely crazy.”

“She’s not,” I said stubbornly, though I had been pretty much thinking the same thing. “She’s just…high-strung; that’s all.”

“Is that what you call it?” Celeste’s face suddenly looked sickly white under her tan. “Was she too high-strung to talk to the police, even though she was the last person to see Laura alive? Was she too high-strung to tell us the truth about what happened that night?” Her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t talk to me about Helen Black, or get involved in things you know nothing about.”

She walked away, her blond hair swinging.

“Come along, Evie,” said a brusque voice behind me in the corridor. It was Miss Scratton. “You don’t want to be late again today. I will be teaching you this morning. Follow me.”

She kept up a monotonous flow of information about my schedule and where to find the various classrooms, but I could hardly take it in. Why would Helen have needed to talk to the police about Laura? I suppose I had assumed that she’d been killed in some awful car accident, but it seemed as though she had died here, at Wyldcliffe. Had she been ill? And why were the police involved? Even more bizarrely, Celeste seemed to be suggesting that Helen knew something about it.

“You can see from the thickness of the walls and the low ceilings that this part of the building is much older than the rest….” Miss Scratton was saying as we marched side by side down yet another corridor. “It’s part of the original medieval nunnery, possibly once used as a hospital wing.”

I dragged my mind back into focus, murmuring, “Yes. Very interesting.”

She led the way into a classroom. It had white walls, rows of desks, and a tall bookcase. A large framed poster of the witches in a production of
Macbeth
hung behind Miss Scratton’s desk.

“Find yourself a seat.”

There were about twenty girls in the class. I was pleased to see Sarah sitting at the back. At least that was one friendly face. She gave me a quick smile, but the other girls seemed to flick their eyes over the scarlet punishment card I was still holding, then turn away as though they didn’t want to be associated with my disgrace. There was an empty desk next to Helen. I sat down and pretended to busy myself with my notebook and pens.

The atmosphere was hardworking and studious, quite different from the free and easy ways I was used to at home. Miss Scratton taught English and history, and despite her dull, dry voice, she was an excellent teacher. After a while I found myself actually enjoying trying to keep up with the arguments and theories she put forward. It was a relief to lose myself in the work and forget about everything else. I bent over my books, absorbed by what I was reading. And when I looked up, I got the biggest shock of my life.

The room had changed.

Oh, I don’t mean the whitewashed walls and the latticed windows—they were exactly as they had been before. And the room was still set up as a schoolroom, but instead of rows of wooden desks and girls in dark uniforms, I saw a large polished table scattered with papers and heavy books. Old-fashioned furniture crowded the room, and a large globe was displayed on a stand. A plump, middle-aged woman with flushed cheeks and a fussy dress was pointing something out on the globe to her only pupil, a girl dressed in white.

The girl’s gray eyes were alive with concentration, and her auburn curls were caught in a black ribbon. The image of the shadowy girl I had seen the night before in the mirror swam into my mind. This girl was real, though, not a reflection like a vision of a long-lost sister in a half-remembered life. But I didn’t have a sister; I’d never had a sister…. As I watched her, I heard the sudden roar of fire and saw the blinding light of clear white flames. I cried out, then felt myself dissolving into nothingness.

When I came to I was slumped across my desk, and Helen was bending over me. The other girls pushed her out of the way.

“What’s the matter? Has she hurt herself? Why did she scream like that?”

A low voice cut across their eager questions.

“Evie fainted for a few seconds, that’s all,” said Miss Scratton. “Please don’t crowd around her. Back to your places, girls, and start reading quietly.” Miss Scratton frowned at me as she felt my pulse. “Have you ever fainted before?”

I thought confusedly of my encounter with the boy and his horse, but I shook my head. I couldn’t tell what was real anymore and what was just a daydream.

“I felt dizzy, that’s all,” I mumbled.

“Well, you’d better go outside. It is rather stuffy in here.” She glanced at Helen, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then said, “Sarah, take Evie and show her the grounds. She’ll soon feel better in the fresh air.”

“Come on, Evie,” said Sarah. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Her simple friendliness touched me and tears stung my eyes. I blinked them away. As I followed Sarah out of the classroom, I remembered the vow I had made. No one, absolutely no one at Wyldcliffe would ever see me cry.

Six

W

e sat on a bale of straw in the dusty, warm stable. Sarah smiled and offered me a bag of apples. “I keep these here for Bonny, but they’re perfectly okay, especially if you haven’t had much breakfast.”

I bit into one of the yellow apples. It was sweet and good. That exactly described Sarah too, I thought, with her rich brown hair and freckled complexion. She looked as though she belonged outside, in the fields and woods. As I munched my apple, Bonny, her sturdy little pony, tried to steal it with snuffling lips. Sarah laughed, then looked at me curiously. “So what happened to you just now?”

I avoided her eyes. I wasn’t really sure myself. All I knew was that it wasn’t the first weird thing that had happened to me since arriving at Wyldcliffe. But how could I tell Sarah all that nonsense about a handsome guy on horseback, and broken glass that wasn’t broken, and a redheaded girl who couldn’t possibly have been there? Sarah seemed the first normal person I had met so far, and I didn’t want her to think I was totally crazy. I was just stressed, I decided. Nothing like that would happen again.

“Just a dizzy spell.” I shrugged and jumped to my feet, wanting to change the subject. “What about you taking me around the grounds, like Miss Scratton said? I haven’t seen them yet.”

“Okay.” She smiled. “Bye, Bonny, darling. See you later. You wouldn’t believe that she was a skinny wreck a few months ago, would you? My parents helped me to rescue her from some people who knew nothing about horses and were mistreating her. Now she’s as fat as butter. My other pony is called Starlight. Come and see him first, Evie; then I’ll show you everything.” I followed Sarah to another stall, where a handsome gray pony nuzzled her hand and graciously accepted an apple. “Thank goodness Wyldcliffe allows us to bring horses to school. I spend every spare minute with them. I’d be lost without some of my animals around me. At home I have three dogs, two cats, and a donkey, and they’ve all been rescued from one place or another….”

Sarah chattered on, and I remembered what Celeste had said about her collection of “waifs and strays.” Well, I really was one of them now.

We wandered around the stable yard, which was attached to the side of the main house. I noticed a faded green door that looked as though it was hardly used. I guessed that it led into the old servants’ quarters where Helen and I had been that morning. A black cat crossed the yard. We followed it and came to a walled kitchen garden set out with rows of beans and black currants.

“We can have our own little garden plots here,” Sarah said. “I like growing things, digging in the earth and watching new life spring up. And I love the stables too. The grand parts of the Abbey can seem cold and gloomy, but out here I can really see what it must have been like when the whole place belonged to a proper family, with their gardeners and carriages and horses and dogs. But that was over a hundred years ago, when Lady Agnes was alive.” She looked at me and frowned, as though she was trying to remember something.