The Crafters Book Two (26 page)

After all this?
Two mind-voices demanded incredulously.

After all this.

But, brother, I do beg you, think if you did so much under such circumstances, consider what a fine master of the family craft you could become!

Dear brother John. Whatever I’ve done, I still fail to see any real point to it all. Besides, if I find I ever do want something else to do,
Davy added happily,
I won’t lack. You’re not the only Crafter to take a commission from Captain Isaac Hull, you know. I think it will take at least four full-sized paintings to do justice to today’s battle, don’t you?

Boston

Anno Domini 1821

Most of the Crafter family spread across America. One group chose to stay in the growing, vibrant port city of Boston, where, it should be noted, life was not any less perilous than along the frontier. Perhaps among all the Crafters in this group was the most adept at remaining inconspicuous and concealing their power. Sometimes this isn’t east, particularly when a great evil threatens.

“ ... Providing Instruction in Deportment, French, Embroidery, Latin, Astronomy, Algebra, and Cooking,” read the discreet brass plate next to the door of the large house on the edge of Boston. “Miss Amanda Crafter, Headmistress.” A school cousin Davy’s prize money had helped to open.

Within the study in the front of the red-brick and white granite building, the same Miss Amanda was going over the advertised agenda with the parents of a prospective pupil. A straight-backed woman of thirty-five with severely coiffed black hair, Miss Amanda exuded confidence and the deportment she promised to imbue in her students.

“I assure you, Mrs. Gentry, your daughter will receive instruction here which will ensure her warm reception among the very best people. We intend to fit out our girls to grace any room, and to excel in any walk of life in which they may find themselves.”

“I do not doubt the quality of the education, Miss Crafter,” Mrs. Gentry said, delicately. “I only doubt whether you’ll succeed in getting any of it into Madeleine. She’s ... resistant to outward influence.”

“She’s a willful hoyden,” the Reverend Mr. Gentry grumbled. “She’s driven away six tutors and governesses in as many years. I’ve got a business to run, imports and exports, you know, beside my duties to the Church. I cannot continue to be called away to reason with people she has offended.”

“Ours is not a large institution,” Miss Crafter pointed out. “Therefore we are able to give close attention to the needs of each girl. At present we have seventeen pupils. Your daughter would raise that number to a most pleasing total of eighteen. I and two other teachers serve as their schoolmistresses, their chaperones, and occasionally their confidantes. I would be happy to make available to you their references.”

“Well ...” Mrs. Gentry considered, “that is a rather better ratio than Mr. Grimes’s school ... .”

“My dear,” Mr. Gentry said, “the man’s a Roman Catholic. I told you I wouldn’t consider him.”

“But my dear,” his wife countered, “his is the best school in Boston.”

A gentle ‘hh-hhm’ distracted them from their argument and back to the present. Mrs. Gentry realized with horror that she had made a breach of manners in making such a comparison aloud. “Oh, I am so sorry, Miss Crafter. I didn’t mean to imply that your institution was in any way wanting.”

Miss Crafter smiled. “I find it entirely natural, Mrs. Gentry, that you would want the best of everything for your only daughter. Would you care to have a tour of the school before making a decision?”

“No, thank you so much, madam,” Mr. Gentry said, rising.

“It isn’t necessary. What appurtenances you have will be of no interest to us. We shan’t be attending. I believe Madeleine will be happy here, don’t you, my dear?” He assisted his wife from her chair.

“I agree. Miss Crafter, thank you. When may we send Madeleine’s things?”

“Tomorrow or thereafter,” Miss Amanda said, after a moment’s consideration. “I make it a policy to have the girls room by twos. We will have to prepare her room and choose a roommate for her.”

“She has always had a room of her own,” Mrs. Gentry began, affronted.

“Pray, Mrs. Gentry,” Miss Amanda said, interrupting her smoothly, “consider the pleasures and responsibilities of coexistence with a girl of her own age and class to be one of the first lessons she will learn.”

* * *

Madeleine Gentry arrived two days after her luggage. A tall girl with a thick mass of honey-colored hair and the promise of an attractive figure, Madeleine was accustomed to ruling a situation. Her, dainty features had fooled more than one governess into believing she was sweet and tractable. Madeleine prided herself on being daring, willful and unmanageable. Arriving in the room first, she had taken the only comfortable chair, a deep green velvet armchair, and drawn it close to the small fire, She regarded the slim, dark schoolmistress who came to meet her in the parlor with open disdain.

“Well, Miss Gentry, I hope you had a pleasant drive,” Miss Amanda said, sitting down in the straight-back chair next to hers. To Madeleine’s annoyance, the schoolmistress seemed not at all upset that Madeleine had disposed herself in the green armchair. In fact, it would appear that the stiff, unpadded ladderback was her usual seat. Though her delicate bones might rue it, Madeleine vowed to take that one the next time she was summoned into the headmistress’s presence.

“I suppose you’ll be asking me about the weather next,” Madeleine said, assuming a bored posture.

“Not if you don’t choose to discuss it,” Miss Amanda replied. “I thought we might have a few moments to get acquainted before I showed you to your room and introduced you to your

roommate.”

“Yes, Mother told me about that,’ Madeleine said. “I won’t have it. You may give me a room of my own.”

‘‘Miss Gentry,” Miss Amanda replied evenly, “that is impossible. All our pupils share rooms. They may switch between themselves occasionally as special friendships crop up and the friends wish to stay together; I encourage that. But as you are a member of an even number, there are companions enough for all. Rose Keating Adams has agreed to be yours. You should be pleased. Rose is a charming girl, and of very good family.”

A black servant girl brought in tea and arranged the tray on a table at Miss Amanda’s right hand. “Thank you, Emily,” Miss Amanda said, smiling at her. The girl bobbed a curtsey, and left.

“I hope we will at least have servants? I will require the services of a maid to help me dress in the mornings.”

“Early in the day,” Miss Amanda replied, “the house staff is engaged in preparing the morning meal and lighting fires throughout the house. If you should prefer to be dressed rather than fed and warmed, I am sure we can come to some arrangement. But I believe that if you approach your roommate in the spirit of cooperation, the two of you can do up one another’s laces.”

The schoolmistress had an answer for everything. Madeleine was cross, but decided to continue her air of boredom. “Very well, I would like to see my room.”

Miss Crafter smiled. The girl was not used to having her confrontational demands answered. “Follow me. Later, we will introduce you to your classmates.”

* * *

That afternoon, Madeleine joined the school for luncheon. Her seventeen classmates were seated at three wooden tables spread with plain white cloths. Each was presided over by one of the mistresses. At the table with the eldest girls there was an empty chair next to the tall one occupied by the mistress. As Miss Crafter led her toward her place, Madeleine walked with her head high, trying to conceal her nervousness. The girls stared at her, and whispered behind their hands, but she caught the gist of one murmur.

“She’s so pretty. Look at her hair.” Madeleine felt better after that.

“Girls, may I present Madeleine Gentry? She is our new pupil. I hope you will make her welcome.”

While they dined on their simple fare, the pupils pressed Madeleine with eager questions. Her prospective roommate, Rose Adams, was among the most curious. Rose had shiny black hair with purple and red highlights in it like a blackbird’s wing. She was not pretty, with her pinched-looking little nose and hooded eyes. Madeleine felt no competition from a face such as that She knew then that she would have no trouble becoming influential among these innocents. The ‘only thing which troubled her was the tedious prospect of schoolwork.

She had always been an indifferent student; never having found a reason to apply herself to her books. It showed embarrassingly, during the very first class in algebra the next afternoon.

The youngest student, Priscilla Townsend, kept looking around at the other students while she was calculating her assigned equation. Madeleine noticed that the others seemed eager to encourage her and smiled and nodded when the child met their eyes. In a flurry of mouse-colored braids and red cheeks, Priscilla rose to her feet and announced her solution.

“If
x
is two, then the answer is six,” she said. Miss Abigail smiled at her, and the other girls murmured their approbation. Priscilla was evidently the school pet. Madeleine was disgusted. The little girl, relieved at her triumph, flopped into her chair with a sigh.

“I feared I would never get that,” she said, very low. She felt Madeleine’s gaze upon her and tilted her head to meet it.

Madeleine sat back languorously. “Only a silly pipsqueak like you would think that it was important to get it.”

Miss Abigail, Miss Amanda Crafter’s younger sister, who was teaching the class, overheard that, and called upon her. “Madeleine, perhaps you would care to do the next sum?” She wiped the slate clean with the damp cloth hanging by a string from the easel, and scratched in a new line of numbers.

The girl perused the baffling equation on the slate, and made a vague attempt to reason it out. The style of the mathematical phrase looked familiar but not enough to give her a clue as to how it worked. She decided to guess. “The answer is eight.”

Miss’ Abigail hid a smile. “You did not need to work it out on your own slate?” she asked.

“No, of course not,” Madeleine said.

“Then it might surprise you to know that the correct answer is seventy, mightn’t it?”

“I don’t care,’“ Madeleine replied, in the same airy, disinterested tone. “I see no use for these equations in my future life. I will have servants to do that kind of calculation.”

“And what if you find your servants are cheating you?” asked Miss Abigail. “You won’t know how to tell.”

“They would not dare. My husband will take care of those details,” Madeleine said, with a proud toss of her head. There was a titter behind her, and Madeleine turned red. She vowed to track down the girl who laughed and make her sorry.

Reckoning for her own transgression was not long in coming. Miss Amanda Crafter was waiting for her outside the door of the classroom when the session broke up for tea. She took Madeleine’s arm in a friendly way, but Madeleine realized that the grip was sufficiently strong that she couldn’t break away if she chose.

“I have an assignment for you, Madeleine,” Miss Crafter said. Her voice sounded pleasant, but it did not match the disappointed expression on her face. She drew the girl into the sitting room and closed the door. “I won’t keep you from tea with the others. You will have some free time between French instruction and the time you should dress for dinner. I would like you to write an essay on the elements of friendship.”

Madeleine stared at her. Had she overheard her remarks to the class brat? It was impossible. The doors of the schoolroom fit tightly, and they had been closed the whole time. “An essay?” she repeated weakly.

“Yes, I think two pages would be sufficient.” It was evident that she did know all about it. Madeleine swallowed. Miss Crafter continued. “If you can’t apply any of your own experience to your thesis, I suggest you examine your surroundings for material. You may learn something.”

“It’s as if she has eyes in every cupboard and comer,” Madeleine grumbled, later on, when she and Rose were dressing for the evening meal. She had scrubbed the ink off her fine, white hands, and had noticed a spot on her cuff. There wasn’t time to see to it now.

“Sometimes it seems that way,” Rose admitted. “She hates a sneak, so none of us can guess how, with no one to tell her, she knows everything that goes on. One of the others suggested it must be black witchcraft. I pointed out that Miss Amanda wears a cross, which would burn her if she practiced evil. Perhaps there are speaking tubes in the walls?”

Rose was as unflappable in her own way as Miss Crafter, moving through her days with sunny tolerance. All of Madeleine’s attempts to make the Adams girl angry and move out of their shared room failed. She had even stolen the girl’s best and most prized embroidered shawl to wear to church on Sunday. Rose had noticed, but still would not react.

“You look very well in cream,” she had commented, arranging the folds higher on Madeleine’s neck for the best effect. Annoyed, Madeleine had contrived to dip the fringes of it into the morning coffee. Even that had raised no criticism from her roommate, who simply removed the stained fringes and added new ones.

“I made it, I can mend it,” Rose laughed, when Madeleine asked her about the change. After that, she left the other girl’s things alone. There were more likely victims in the school.

The girls were expected to be in bed at nine. When the clock struck, the lights were extinguished by one of the servants; who went from room to room, giving one last warning to frenzied letter writers and young needlewomen with their arms full of mending to put their tools down for the night.

“No!” Madeleine shrieked as Emily descended on her lamp and turned it out. She was in the act of writing another letter of complaint to her father about her treatment at the school. She felt for the inkwell with her free hand to keep it from being knocked off the table, and rounded on the servant, who held a candle to see by.