Chapter Text
Dear Amelia,
Your letter was a welcome surprise, my friend, earning much enthusiasm particularly from your former pupils. The little girls clamoured to be read to this past Sunday afternoon, and so we gathered under the oak tree together after church and I promise, I have not seen JP so rapt and entranced since she first discovered the existence of the caterpillar. One would think you had woven Magic into your account of Scarborough. Indeed, I was requested to read it once, then twice, then again after tea, and handed it around to the teachers as well.
It is my commission now to write to you of the various news and events of our little scholarly kingdom. You should know that Mary has accepted a good position in the South, which will bring her close to Avebury, in a well-appointed family situation consisting of five daughters and ample countryside through which she may happily ramble. Caroline heads for London, to the family of P-S (though of this I think you knew already). Miss Fontaine has decided to retire to her niece’s home in Banbury, and our own Jane will accept her vacant position. We are all, of course, bubbling with happiness for each of them, though there is an accompanying twinge of sadness as well.
As for my own future, I am quite pleased to tell you that Reverend Wakely and Miss Pine have offered me the position of instructor for the youngest class. My charges already haunt about my ankles most of the day, and so little will change except that when I, in future, extol them to remember to wash their faces, perhaps they may heed!
When I first arrived here at Highbridge, I had not expected to feel such a homely situation and attachment. The other schools failed to produce those sensations, and yet now I am heartily thrilled to spend my days here, among such genial companions, and with so many friends abroad to write to and keep apprised of our country adventures here. Please accept our most heartfelt wishes for the best in your own seaside travels, dear Amelia, and write to us again of what you have seen and learned. You have a lively wit and a gift with the pen.
Little JP also reminds me (she has marched to my desk, Amelia, with her hair in curling rags and a most determined expression amidst her freckles) that you ought to tell us more of the orange cat and the marmalade, for she has told NL that the marmalade has caused the cat to be orange, and NL protests most boisterously.
Waiting to hear more,
I remain,
Your Friend,
EMILY NORRELL
A fine enough day to turn nineteen, she thought, having risen early enough to attend both to her toilette and march out of doors promptly into sunshine. As she walked, with her firm, sturdy gate most reminiscent of her father, so they said (a man who might have been an athlete, if he were able to clearly discern up from down, or left from right), she covered more ground than was her usual habit, and ascended Highfield Rise within eight minutes of making her own bed.
“There,” said Emily Norrell, to no one in particular, as she settled on the low wooden bench donated to the school some nine years ago. Placed there before her time, for in 1778, she had been a pupil in the home of Mr and Mrs Butcherbury, a pair as jagged as their name. She could yet recall the sharpness of the home, both in tone and style, for there had been not a cushion or a spare place to sit in any corner. The day her stepfather -- weary, annoyed, and frazzled in the way burdened men who think they ought not to be burdened can be -- arrived in a hired coach to take her away had been one of the happiest of her young life.
Followed swiftly by the worst.
“There,” she said again, to the bench, the broad oak overhead, or perhaps the merry sight of her school, chased down the sloping hill to nestle in a valley of its own. Made of gray stone and Christian benevolence, Highbridge School had both the curious sense of having been hewn from the sprawling moor itself, and the absence of any sort of bridge in particular, high or low. It was the nicest building she had ever seen. Nine years had done little to dissuade her from the first teary impression, on a rain-soaked night in September.
Miss Fontaine had been the first face she saw, and the one from whom this present habit had been inherited. Early mornings viewing the school from this rise, as though to make sure the vegetable garden still reached around the far corner; the henhouse still cackled; the chimneys still smoked. A casual sort of inventory that, though she was to inherit the position, Jane Kingfisher could not hope to rise much before six o’clock.
A shy dawn gave way to a robust morning, spreading marmalade-sticky fingertips over the horizon. Good spring days like this were of a heartening sort; nothing bad could happen in May, of that Emily was firmly certain. She finished her survey of the schoolyard and buildings, waved to the Fourth Group (a trio of thirteen-year-olds tasked this week with chicken chores), and then set off back down the hill, wishing she had time for a longer constitutional. Or, at least, a few more minutes to herself. After dinner, she would take the First Group for a walk of their own, perhaps into the village for post, but those journeys tended to be far noisier than her own private asides. The recent addition of Jericho Pennyworth, for example, generated a constant stream of thoughts about caterpillars. Where they might be found. What they might look like. How many undiscovered varieties there might be.
Indeed, when the Reverend and Mrs Pennyworth had delivered their youngest daughter (one of four, following Nineveh, Bethany, and Antioch) to the school in January, they had done so with a bewildered sense of mourning. “What sort of caterpillars do you have here?” Jericho had asked Miss Fontaine -- by then well into her sixth decade and having ferried through every sort of parental goodbye in the school vestibule -- only to receive a series of owlish blinks behind her spectacles.
“I am…well, the sort that generally turn into butterflies,” Miss Fontaine had replied, with a kindly smile at the parents of Miss Pennyworth, who blanched in unison.
“Oh,” said Jericho, deflating in her little cloth shoes. “I was afraid you might say that.”
Indeed, there was Jericho Pennyworth the precise moment Emily entered the school, pushing open the heavy main door to the vestibule, wide enough to house most of the populace as they waited for the dining hall to open. Most of the girls stood meekly, some with damp collars on their blue dresses (in varying shades, so as to determine their age group; the youngest of which wore a deep, affordable shade of indigo, so as to hide all manner of learning experiences). But not Jericho. She swept across the flagstones wearing a neat, minuscule braid, and a determined expression most impressive for a girl of only seven.
“Miss Emily,” she said firmly, squaring herself up to an invisible pulpit. “Did you see any?”
Over the shoulders of Second Group, Jane smothered a smile behind one hand.
Emily swallowed one of her own, attempting to school her features into an arrangement such as Miss Fontaine might wear, or even Headmistress Snipes (though without quite so many moles). Jericho blinked up at her during this process, waiting with uncharacteristic patience. Finally, after perhaps forty seconds, Emily fixed on a facial expression that felt matron-like, educational, and perhaps even a little saintly.
“I think, Miss Pennyworth,” she said archly, “you mean to say, ‘Good morning, Miss Emily.’”
The doors to the dining room swung inward, and Headmistress Snipes lurched forward on her fox-handled cane. Amidst many moles, she summoned a kindly smile to survey the school, as all girls (save for Jericho). “Breakfast will be served promptly, my ladies,” she called. “Who is next on the list to say Grace?”
As it turned out, Grace Lombard was to say it.
The older girls began filing in after their teachers, each small herd of students walking silently in a single-file line past the headmistress. Emily glanced over at the rest of the First Group, who ranged in age from four to seven, all of them staring at her sleepily, uncertain of what to do next. “I did not mean to say good morning,” Jericho interjected. “I meant to ask if you saw any caterpillars on the hill. Did you?”
“Did I what?” Emily, frazzled now that Headmistress Snipes had turned, with furrowed brows, to see where the youngest children had got to, began shifting from one foot to the other, attempting to get around Jericho’s other side. The girl, however, merely took a lateral step left, and then right, to block her way.
How could so small a person wield so much force? Emily looked down at her directly, and Jericho repeated her question. “No,” Emily said, rushed now. Within the dining hall, the rest of the school stood dutifully behind their chairs, waiting for the First Group to enter. She caught Jane’s eye from the teacher table: her strained, and hungry expression. “No, Jericho, indeed I did not see a caterpillar, not one. Now, it is time for breakfast. Follow me, please.”
In her periphery, through the march into the dining hall, Grace and the saying of Grace, and the cook and kitchen maid delivering pots of porridge to each table, Emily observed her charges gathered around the long trestle table in the very middle of the hall. Not a single one of them in the First Group could reach the floor with their feet once balanced on the long benches straddling each side of the table. Most sleepily mined at their bowls, but not Jericho Pennyworth. No, that child puddled on the bench, shoulders sunk and expression downcast.
Emily sighed.
To her right, Jane Selbourne scooped another hearty, heaping spoonful of slightly-burned porridge, and made a small noise in her throat. Of interest, of question -- Emily had not the presence of mind to speculate further. Only a, “Yes, Jane?” would suffice.
Oh, dear.
A red hair curled in Emily’s bowl of porridge. Curious enough, given that the cook and her maid (aunt and niece) both had brown hair.
She plucked it free, and let Jane advise.
Jane, Jane, saintly Jane. Consistently collected and eternally patient. She was a natural candidate for the position of reading instructor, as well as matron for the Second Group. A clergyman’s daughter from Manchester, she never had a moment of spare time, for she believed in devils and fairy spirits, who used their own time looking for lazy humans to corrupt. Teaching seemed to come as easily to her as breathing, and even now, she had some solid words of advice for dealing with insistent children like Jericho Pennyworth -- though she was, in total, a whole year younger than Emily herself.
“One needs to dig deeper within oneself,” she said crisply, but kindly, gesturing across the hall to a set of Third Group students wearing matching braids. “Take the triplets, for instance, if you will. I had them last year in my dormitory. They’ve created a language only they can understand, you know? All manner of beeps and twisted vowels. When they wish to evade censure, they hop to that and I promise you, Emily dear, ‘tis most aggrieving.”
She sucked in a deep, trembling breath, as though remembering the frustration. “But I had to, as I said, dig deeper within myself, to pull out some resolve. When th’girls would start up with their secret language, instead, I would smile, and wait. Patience, you see. Once they realized I was not to be put off, they found themselves digging deeper to find something agreeable in themselves, as well. And then they would make their beds or polish their shoes, or whichever task they had decided to resist.”
More patience. Emily nodded thoughtfully, chewing at a particular lump of porridge. Patience and time often walked hand in hand, did they not? And time here was one thing Emily was assured of, after all. Her stepfather may have ceased to pay her school fees, but that mattered little now. She was nineteen years old, that very day, and had achieved the curriculum well enough to be considered for the rudimentary teaching position. The position would cover her board, meals, and a small stipend. Riches beyond her wildest imaginings, she supposed.
Yes, indeed, she had plenty of time left at Highbridge. A lifetime, to be sure. The years stretched out pleasantly before her, rather like a well-appointed carpet runner, stitched and hooked with all manner of excellent prospects. Friendship, conviviality, plenty of books, and morning walks. What more could one desire from society?
Breakfast passed reflectively, as did the first class of the day. Emily taught the beginnings of the alphabet to her youngest charges, including Jericho, who seemed much mollified by Emily’s apology and the astonishingly lifelike drawing of a caterpillar under the letter C upon the blackboard. The school trundled along quite pleasantly, and there were eggs with dinner, a hard-boiled one for each student, and a slice of bread, to settle along with stew. Emily was asked to inspect the dormitories and supervise a knitting lesson, both tasks appealing to her eye for neatness and love of repetition. Before she knew it, it was early afternoon, and the youngest class had lined up by the door, cloaks bound against their shoulders, faces shining with the thrill of Outdoors.
Jericho slipped her hand within Emily’s, and off they went.
Around the courtyard and down the lane, by the apple trees weighed down with pinkish blossoms. Past the Morrison’s north field, where all the girls requested (in high-pitched unison) to be permitted a moment to greet Bessie and Rosie and Daisy, as they had decided every cow ought to be named. Emily lingered there indulgently for a while, until the softly thunderous sound of hooves parted the girls’ excitement, and she had to offer some strident instructions to remove yourselves from the road, kindly, girls and line them up along the fenceposts.
A coach-and-four rolled by, and the coachman was kind enough to lift his hat and call out, “Good afternoon, ladies!” to the utter delight of nine girls. Their eyes shone as they watched the carriage proceed down the lane towards the school.
Not an unusual sight, Emily decided, debating whether or not to cut their walk short in order to investigate, or carry on to the post office. Coaches and carriages, barrouches and phaetons, all made their way at some point or another to the courtyard of Highbridge School. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, godparents, and one time, a town mayor -- all arrived infrequently throughout the year either to deposit a pupil, or tour the facilities for a future one.
Odd, though, that none of the other teachers had mentioned such a thing to her.
After a series of awkward steps forward, Emily decided against delivering the newest letter hidden in her plain reticule. That could wait; the girls’ mutual curiosity rose high and greedy -- indeed, a small cheer went up when Emily herself said they ought to return, to see if she was needed.
Once again, Jericho made her way to the head of the line, slipping her damp palm into Emily’s, and began to talk of a caterpillar she had only ever seen in her dreams. A marvellous thing, which did not become a butterfly, and which ate snowflakes and thistledown exclusively. “What colour is it?” Emily huffed, picking up the pace as she came within sight of the schoolyard, close enough now to see the coach had stopped, and that two men in dark coats were in the process of climbing out. A tall one first, she noted, then a much shorter one. Miss Fontaine and Jane stood at the open school doors, hands clasped neatly at their fronts.
“What colour? What an odd question, Miss Emily,” said Jericho Pennyworth, chuckling faintly. “But you are clever to ask, for it is the colour of a mirror, truly.”
“A mirror?” The taller of the two men hung back, hat cocked down to shadow his face, while the shorter -- his white wig visible even from the lane -- moved forward, saying something to Miss Fontaine, who stepped aside to let him through the door.
“Yes,” Jericho said, swinging Emily’s hand. “It’s a mirror caterpillar. It looks like everything it crawls by. Isn’t that marvellous?”
“Marvellous,” Emily repeated, though the word tasted quite sour in her mouth. A curious sensation tiptoed over her shoulders, down her spine. Growing certainty that this was no usual arrangement, no ordinary visit -- but how should she have known that, indeed? Fathers and servants arrived together all the time. Uncles and grandfathers, too. Two men in dark coats, of different heights and in a fine coach-and-four -- these were not outlandish circumstances.
And so why did she abruptly feel as though she’d dropped a stitch? Run out of yarn? Found a rare mirror caterpillar, only to immediately trod upon it?
Of course she was summoned. Within mere seconds of entering the school, Jane Selbourne had her cap ripped from her head and her charges filed into the main classroom for play. “Caroline, please fetch the hobbyhorses,” she said absently, poking and prodding efficient, if bony, hands over Emily’s entire body.
The cap and cloak disappeared. Jane, her own golden hair scraped mercilessly back, adjusted the braided knot at the back of Emily’s head, and licked her thumb to secure flyaways framing her face. “Miss Fontaine has brought them in for tea and scones,” she muttered. “I do not know who they are. One is young and tall, the other of middling age and my precise height. They seem to be here upon some business, but of what, I cannot say.”
Nerves fluttered riotously in the pit of Emily’s stomach; she stared hard at the plain wooden door of Headmistress Snipes’ office. She had not been within for nearly nine years, not since her first afternoon there. Sitting beside her sullen stepfather on two precarious chairs, counting the constellation of moles on Headmistress Snipes’ ample chin. She could recall only the briefest patchwork of elements therein: a fine carpet; a fireplace; a collection of china dogs along the mantel. And a rather severe painting of a man who bore an astonishing simultaneous resemblance to both a border collie and the ancient village postmaster.
“They asked for me?” Emily whispered, as Jane smoothed and smoothed again the sleeves of her sky-blue day gown. “Which? The younger or the shorter?”
“I do not know, my friend,” Jane said. “How on earth do you have apple blossom petals in your hair?” She reached to pluck a few free, and the door swung open. Miss Fontaine, ever so kind and ever so warm, stood there expectantly.
“Excellent, Miss Norrell,” she said, beaming. “My dear sir, a niece has been found! And she comes bearing the pink tidings of spring, how lovely indeed.”
At the word ‘niece,’ there came the creaking of the remembered chair, and indeed, the force of memory slunk against her own trembling frame, and slapped her clean across the face.