“You’re quite right. I shall follow your advice to the letter, Mr. Bumble,” Mrs. Nightwing says in a rare capitulation. She’s appeasing him, but he’s far too pompous to realize that.
The men leave with Brigid. Mrs. Cross stands and adjusts her gloves, pulling them tighter on her hands, smoothing out the wrinkles. “Come along, Pippa. We must have you measured for your wedding dress. I think a duchesse satin will be nice.”
Pippa’s quivering lip gives way to a quiet, desperate wail. “Please, Mother! Please don’t make me marry him.”
Mrs. Cross’s mouth tightens into an ugly, flat line that lets the words escape in a hiss. “You are shaming this family.”
“Pippa,” Mrs. Nightwing says, stepping between them. “You shall be a beautiful bride. The talk of London. And after your honeymoon, when you are blissfully happy and this has all been forgotten, you will come to visit us.”
Mrs. Cross’s mouth has relaxed and there are actually tears pooling in her eyes. She cups Pippa’s chin tenderly. “I know you despise me now. But I promise, someday you will thank me. There’s an independence in marriage. Truly. If you’re clever, you can have whatever you want. Now, let’s see about a dress, shall we?”
Pippa follows her mother out, but as she does, she turns to us with such a look of despair that I feel as if I’m the one being forced to marry against my will.
It’s just the three of us across from Mrs. Nightwing and her equally imposing desk. A drawer is opened. Mary Dowd’s diary drops with a thud onto the desk’s gleaming mahogany surface. Fear turns my insides. We are all marked for death now.
“Who can tell me about this?”
Seconds, loud as cannon fire, tick by on the mantel clock.
“Ann?”
Ann is on the verge of tears. “It’s-s-s a b-b-book.”
“I can see that it is a book. I have examined every page.” Mrs. Nightwing glowers at us over the tops of her spectacles. “Every page.”
We know the one she means, and we tremble in our seats.
“Miss Worthington, would you care to tell me what you were doing in possession of this diary?”
Felicity’s head shoots up. “You searched my room?”
“I’m waiting for an answer. Or will I need to contact your father about this matter?”
Felicity looks as if she’s going to burst into tears.
I swallow hard. “It’s mine,” I say.
Mrs. Nightwing whips her head around suddenly and blinks. The effect is of an owl spotting prey. “Yours, Miss Doyle?”
My stomach goes fluttery. “Yes.” Fine, let them expel me. Let this all be over.
“And where, pray tell, did you come upon such filth?”
“I found it.”
“You found it?” She repeats my words slowly, showing just how much she believes me. “Where?”
“In the woods.”
Mrs. Nightwing glares at me but I’m too numb to be afraid. “It seems a great many things have been going on in the woods. Pippa has confessed to me.”
Beside me I can hear Ann starting to cry, Felicity squirming in her chair. But I’m hollowed out, waiting for the inevitable.
“She told me that Miss Moore gave you the book.”
It’s not what I expected. I’m pulled back into the room by it.
“Is this true?”
My mouth opens, ready to say no, it’s all my fault, but Felicity is quicker.
“Yes,” she says so calmly that I can scarcely believe it. “It was Miss Moore.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. But you’ll need to tell me everything, Miss Worthington.”
“No. That’s not true,” I say, finding my voice at last.
“You said yourself that you got it at the library.” Felicity has a hard, desperate look in her eyes. “And Miss Moore did tell us that if we wanted to know more about the Order, we should go to the library.”
“The Order? Why on earth was Miss Moore filling your heads with such poppycock?”
“She took us to the caves to see their drawings.”
“Some of them are in blood,” Ann adds. They’re joined in this.
“I never gave Miss Moore leave to take you to any caves,” Mrs. Nightwing says.
“She took us all the same, Mrs. Nightwing.” Felicity widens her eyes, trying for an innocent look.
“That’s not the way it happened. I found the diary—”
Felicity puts her hand on my arm. It looks as if it’s just resting there, but she’s giving it a sharp squeeze. “Mrs. Nightwing already knows what happened, Gemma. We’ve got to tell the truth now.” To Mrs. Nightwing, she says, “She even read part of it to us in my sitting area.”
I’m on my feet. “Because we asked her!”
“Miss Doyle, sit down at once!”
I drop into my seat. I can’t look at Felicity.
“These are very serious charges against Miss Moore.” Mrs. Nightwing has already taken the idea and shaped it into exoneration for us, for Spence, and for herself. She needs someone to blame. She needs to believe anything but the truth—that we are capable of all of it, all on our own. And that we did it all right under her very nose. “Is this true, Ann?”
“Yes,” Ann says, without stammering once.
“Mrs. Nightwing,” I plead. “It’s all my fault. You can punish me as you see fit, but please don’t blame Miss Moore.”
“Miss Doyle. I know your heart is in the right place, but there is nothing to be gained by protecting Miss Moore.”
“But I’m not protecting her!”
Mrs. Nightwing softens. “Did Miss Moore read to you from this book?”
“Yes, but—”
“And did she take you to the caves?”
“Just to see the pictographs . . .”
“Did she tell you stories about the occult?”
I can’t make a sound. I only nod. I’ve heard it said that God is in the details. It’s the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it. Mrs. Nightwing settles against the great wingback chair. It creaks and sighs under her weight.
“I know how impressionable young girls are. I was a girl once myself,” she says, though I can only see her behind the bars of what she is now. “I know how much girls wish to please and how powerful a teacher’s influence can be. I shall deal with Miss Moore at once. And so that this sort of behavior does not occur again, I shall see that all the doors are locked each evening and that the keys are in my keeping until such time as you have earned my trust again.”
“What will happen to Miss Moore?” I ask. It’s barely a whisper.
“I will not tolerate a reckless disregard for my authority in my teachers. Miss Moore will be dismissed.”
This can’t be happening. She’s going to sack our beloved Miss Moore. What have we done?
A bloodcurdling scream rips the quiet of the room. It comes from downstairs. Mrs. Nightwing is up and flying down the stairs with us right behind her. Brigid is standing on the diamond-patterned floor of the foyer, clutching something in her hand.
“May all the saints protect me! It’s her—she’s come for me.”
Mrs. Nightwing has her by the shoulders. Brigid’s eyes are wild with fear. She drops the thing in her hand onto the floor as if it were a snake. It’s a Gypsy poppet, slightly burned, with a lock of hair wrapped tightly about its throat.
Circe.
“She’s come back,” Brigid whimpers. “Sweet Jesus, she’s come back!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
REVEREND WAITE HAS US STANDING, BIBLES IN HAND, reading in unison from Judges, chapter eleven, verses one through forty. Our voices fill the chapel like a dirge.
“And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return . . . I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”
“I had to tell her about Miss Moore,” Pippa whispers low in my ear. “It was the only way to keep us together for one last night.”
At the front of the church is a stained-glass window of an angel. There’s a large chip of glass gone from the angel’s eye like a gaping wound. I stare at the hole and say nothing, mouthing along to my Bible verse, listening to words swirl around me.
“. . . and the Lord delivered them into his hands . . .”
“It’s not as if she was entirely blameless, you know.”