The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School (25 page)

‘I’ll keep looking for Light Fingers,’ Amy said.

‘Please yourself,’ said Frecks.

Amy walked on. She happened to look back and saw Frecks’ triad ambling towards the theatre. Were they invited to the meeting after all? If so, they were late. Being late wasn’t a Black Skirt sort of thing. Rayne had spoken about being ‘neat, efficient and cheerful’. She was most likely always on time. Or early, in order to catch you out. It was impossible to tell whether she was cheerful or not. By her own strange standards, she might be. And being cheerful wasn’t the same as being happy.

Crossing the Quad, she saw Wychwood – blazer still streaked with black – and a few other Greys milling about in the cold. Black Skirts were suddenly in short supply. Usually, they were all over the show. They couldn’t all be under the stage, surely? There wasn’t room, even in the scenery vault. Like so much else lately, this struck Amy as ominous.

Wychwood was heading towards the Gym. Amy hadn’t thought of checking there for Light Fingers. It was skipping territory. With Black Skirts in session elsewhere, Light Fingers might have found refuge between wooden horses and climbing ropes. Amy followed Wychwood out of the Quad.

Outside the Gym, Goneril House was gathered. Captain Flo Rhode-Eeling, proudly Grey, was flanked by stars of the cricket elevens and netball teams, plus the outstanding runners, jumpers and chuckers. Some wore cricket caps and scarves and held bats as if they meant business.

The javelin champion Kat ‘Shoshone’ Brown wore the Red Indian headdress she affected on Sports Day and shouldered her favourite spear, Strikes-Like-an-Adder. The shot-put virtuoso Helen ‘Overwhelming’ O’Hara juggled miniature cannon balls. Euterpe McClure represented the Murdering Heathens.

Amy was brought up short by the Goneril Gang. All were still in Grey.

They were preparing for War – or, at least, serious scrimmage. Shoshone Brown wasn’t the only girl flying martial colours. Sharpshooter Jemima Sieveright wore a trenchcoat inherited from her Victoria Cross-winning brother, with darned bullet holes and slight singeing. She had an air-gun, not the wooden rifle issued by the QMWAACC.

The school falconer Netta Kinross had Polyphemus, her one-eyed prize bird, perched on her leather armlet. Amy was wary of Kinross. She hoped never to have a falcon set after her while aloft.

Roberta Hale, still nervous in the open, had showed up, hands mittened and a muffler around her face.

Pinborough, who fought under the soubriquet of the Blonde Bruiser, wore singlet, shorts and big red boxing gloves. She jabbed the air to keep the circulation going. Smaller girls kept heads well away. Smudge said Pinners strung the knocked-out teeth of former opponents on a necklace. Ker, whose father was a rebel general in Formosa, sat on the steps with her knees up under her chin. The least-bullied Second in School, Ker was proficient in Chinese Boxing. She could (and did) floor girls twice her weight. Her family were headhunters, which made Pinborough’s string-of-gnashers seem tame.

Even Nellie Pugh wouldn’t take bets on a match between Ker and Pinborough, and neither was inclined to take on the other. Indeed, Amy would worry about anyone who went up against the both at the same time… assuming they could get close enough without being impaled by Brown’s feather-tipped spear, brained by one of McClure’s beamers, ripped apart by Polyphemus or catching a discus in the throat from Rhode-Eeling.

Amy was surprised.

Tamora
was the warlike crew, but they stayed home. Aside from the odd maniac like McClure, Goneril was known for ritualised, formalised, good-humoured competition… not extremes of violence. Generally, they got on with their games and chose not to intervene in other business. Wary truce between Rhode-Eeling and Gryce kept Tamora and Goneril, perceived as the strongest Houses, from outright hostilities. The usual Goneril girl was jolly if on the dim side. They had a few Unusuals, like Marsh and Gould, but generally relied on the tiresome, demanding business of exercise and practise to maintain their reputation for being top at sport.

Relying on Abilities wasn’t quite playing the game, old thing.

Marsh, scarf around her gills, was here. Her sport, of course, was swimming – which was only held in summer term. To keep in trim, she took a dip in the ocean every day, even when it was stormy or freezing. She was pop-eyed and fish-lipped, but sleek as a seal in the water.

Gould, one of Goneril’s few Black Skirts, was under the stage with the Cerberus. She was School champion at Hare and Hounds and an accomplished huntswoman. Her cell was decorated with heads, furs and antlers. She brought back broken-necked rabbits for midnight stews, though softer-hearted girls baulked at eating bunny-wunnies.

Seeing the massed ranks of Goneril – down to Firsts and Seconds with cricket stumps and huge boxing gloves – ready for battle didn’t make Amy queasy the way the Black Skirts did. But she didn’t care for the implications either.

‘…it’s
Viola
,’ Rhode-Eeling said, contemptuous. ‘Have you forgotten what
babies
they are? New bonnets don’t change that. Goneril can’t let the affront stand, can’t let this rot go on. Skipping is not a sport… it’s a bally
pastime
.’

A Viola advantage, Amy realised, was that Mansfield had memorised acres of
Henry V
and would deliver more stirring addresses to the troops. They’d still get a battering, though. A stage-trained swordswoman accustomed to blunt tips and opponents primed to bleed and fall down and die on cue would come off worst against a sporty duellist who cared more about winning than looking pretty as she fought. This was likely to mean more Grand Guignol. The Violas would get a chance to play the death scenes they so loved.

Despite herself, Amy felt a surge of hope.

The battle Light Fingers had worried about, that she had herself dreaded, would be fought and won and the Black Skirts broken before any more damage was done.

And Amy didn’t even have to be in it.

…then she remembered the way the
Macbeth
backdrop had shimmered into the Purple, and had dreadful premonitions.

Rhode-Eeling had the heartier Ariel Greys – like Haldane and Manders – on board. The Goneril mob even took in a lone Desdemona Sixth – Hern, School’s best yachtswoman.

But Amy wasn’t invited into this army, and nor were any of her intimates. Despite Frecks’ urging, she and Light Fingers hadn’t gone up for netball.

‘Girls,’ continued Rhode-Eeling, ‘one of our own has fallen into
black
company…’

That was about as clever as it got in Goneril.

‘…and it’s down to us to rescue her, to show her the error of her ways, to bring her back to our side and the right track.’

So this was about Aconita Gould, of all people. The right head of the Cerberus.

Amy didn’t see how this was going to work. Did Rhode-Eeling expect her House to march across to the Black Skirt rally like the Greeks intent on reclaiming Helen of Troy? That had lasted ten years and no one came out of it terribly well. Even if they got Wolf Girl back, what then? They could hardly strip her kit and force her into Grey. Perhaps there would be an intensive talking-to, with Rhode-Eeling appealing to Gould’s House pride. If so, she’d missed the latest news… Black and Grey cut across the whole school, and meant more than Houses or anything else.

Ker leaped up and flexed, doing light bends and passes to show off her limberness – then flat-palmed the wall with enough force to crack a brick and shake a rind of ice off the lintel. Pinborough punched the air and, in her signature gesture, flicked her fringe out of her eyes before launching her knock-out blow. Now Amy came to think of it, that mannerism was a dead giveaway. If the Blonde Bruiser were ever matched with a fighter who wasn’t a Dim, she’d regret that tell.

Light Fingers would be proud of Amy. She’d just worked out how to duck the best boxer in school. But Light Fingers wasn’t here and staying to watch a punch-up wasn’t helping find her.

Still, Amy couldn’t walk away yet.

Lucretia ‘Lungs’ Lamarcroft, a Sixth who had seriously tried to persuade Miss Dryden to let her compete in archery with one breast bared like an ancient Amazon, raised a curly hunting horn. The tooter usually hung among trophies in an overstuffed cabinet in the Goneril dorm. A deep yet shrill
view halloo
sounded… and echoed mournfully, like Kali’s
mi-go
moanings.

Goneril began to march towards the theatre.

Lungs tooted her horn again, and a ragged war song was raised…

‘Stickses and stoneses and broken boneses,
Heed our dreadful warning!
Thumpses and blowses and bleeding noses
You’ll ache tomorrow morning!’

Amy had heard that before. Goneril sang it before every game of everything. Including tiddlywinks and Old Maid. Always, they played aggressively, but within the rules. And they always won.

The girls’ breath plumed like snorting cavalry horses. They stamped across the snowy Quad. Digger Downs stood, somewhat surprised, in a doorway. She covered her black ribbon with her hand and let Goneril pass unmolested.

Amy tagged along, well behind the army. A few other girls – Gifford, Harper, Jones-Rhys – were similarly interested. Gawky and Taff, Desdemona Firsts, knew enough to shun Shrimp Harper. Amy made sure she kept well away from the mind-leech too.

Shrimp had her notebook out, though Amy doubted the
Drearcliff Trumpet
would cover what happened next. Apart from anything else, there had been a slight coup at the paper. The long-serving Tamora Fifth was demoted to ‘Our Correspondent in the Remove’, with a cabal of Viola Thirds – Pulsipher, Stannard, Vail – elevated as the new editorial committee. Now the
Trumpet
had ants on the masthead and took a Black Skirt line. A ‘review’ by the lepidopterally illiterate Stannard fawned over Rayne’s mother’s latest outrage against entomology
What We Can Learn From Our Insect Chums: Eugenics in Nature and Progress Towards Human Perfection
.

It was impossible to feel sorry for Harper, but the girl hadn’t had much – besides being the sort of Unusual no one wanted to be around – outside of being editor of the
Trumpet
and now she’d lost that.

Like camp-followers, Amy and the others trod in the trampled slush footprints of an army which expected to be all-vanquishing.

The two Black Skirts left as skipping sentries didn’t miss a step, even as the mob – bristling with bats and projectiles – swarmed across the Quad. Rhode-Eeling, a discus in each hand, cried halt and the Gonerils formed battle lines.

The song continued…

‘Stickses and stoneses and broken boneses!
Thumpses and blowses and bleeding noses!’

The Black Skirts skipped, unconcerned.

‘Antoinette Rowley Rayne,’ hollered Rhode-Eeling, ‘come out to play!’

Pinborough punched her gloves together and hopped on the spot. Her arms and legs were goosefleshed. Presumably, she hoped to warm up while punching some girls’ heads for them.

The last time Rayne had won against the odds just by not staying down.

Now, she was up against athletes, not bullies. The average whip relied on fear and tradition to prevail against girls who only had to stand their ground to see them off. Ker and Pinborough were used to fighting people who fought back… and the Gonerils weren’t all good sports. McClure’s beamers were deadly.

‘Look, up on the roof!’ gasped someone.

The Playhouse had a pretentious frontage, with columns, an arch and large masks of crying tragedy and laughing comedy. Rayne perched on the apex of the arch, black skirt flapping in the wind, the Queen Ant looked down on the crowd. Amy wouldn’t have been surprised if cauldrons of boiling tar were at hand, to tip on the army of Goneril.

Polyphemus flew up from Kinross’s armlet. Rayne didn’t so much as flinch. The bird halted in mid-air, making kites of its wings, and flapped off altogether, spooked from the field of battle by Rayne’s stare.

Kinross whistled but her bird didn’t come back.

‘Give us Gould and we’ll say no more about it,’ shouted Rhode-Eeling.

This wasn’t about the Wolf Girl, not really. Before all this, Rhode-Eeling wouldn’t have had the hairy, toothy Fourth round to tea. Goneril was, of all Houses, least happy with Unusuals in its midst. Marsh’s swimming cups were hidden at the back of the cabinet.

For a moment, Amy was sure Rayne was about to jump off the theatre.

The Queen Ant couldn’t fly… though ant queens generally could.

Amy realised she was several feet off the ground and reached out to grab the Heel. She scrabbled and settled on the broken-off ankle. If anyone noticed, they’d assume she’d climbed up for a better view.

The only person who might have seen her in the air was Rayne. The Queen Ant was so wrapped up in herself Amy doubted she’d have noticed.

‘…or come down and take your porridge, Wet Blanket Rayne!’

Pinborough jogged up the theatre steps and punched very near the head of one of the skipping Black Skirts without intending to connect.

‘We can settle this right now,’ Rhode-Eeling continued.

Rayne raised her arms above her head, and made fists. The signal looked like the extended antennae of an insect. She waved her arms from side to side.

‘What’s she doing?’ Gifford asked, looking back to where she thought Amy would be and then craning up to see her on top of the Heel. ‘Cor, what a climb!’

Then, from everywhere, the Black Skirts swarmed in. Like ants.

V
IOLA TROUNCED
G
ONERIL
, but it wasn’t about Houses. Black prevailed over Grey.

No one – least of all, Amy, who saw it from the Heel – could say how the battle was lost, but numbers told. And the element of surprise, and ruthless commitment.

In games, Goneril always won… but the Black Skirts weren’t playing games.

Despite the crowing about broken boneses and bleeding noseses, the sportists marched on to the field as if already celebrating victory. They were prematurely of a mind to console not-yet-actually-vanquished opponents with back-slapping, warm congratulations for putting up a bally good show under the circumstances and mugs of strong sweet consolation tea.