I thank her for this information and assure her it was right and proper that she should tell me this. Then I think on it for a long time.
That evening, as we ready for bed and I am in my nightdress, I take my hairbrush out into the hall and stand there brushing my hair and looking out the window at the end of the hall, the window that looks out on the church. There is a light in one of the upper windows of the Preacher's church.
What is he about? I wonders.
Chapter 5
We're returning from Equestrian, and I'm flushed with victory—Henry and Herr Hoffman had decided I was ready to join the others in the circle of riders! I rode in on my dear Gretchen, both of our heads held high, the Look firmly on my face, and with all eyes on me, I spurred us to the spot right in front of Clarissa, so that she would view my mare's behind as we circled around. Herr Hoffman cracked his whip and we were off on a fast trot, then a canter, then a full gallop, then "Veel!" and we turn about, and as we do I lock eyes with Clarissa and perfect understanding and perfect hatred passes between us. Then it was my turn to stare at her horse's rump, but I didn't care. Later, Gretchen and I were called to the center, and while the others sat their mounts, we showed them a bit of dressage— first walking in place, then turn to right, forward three paces, then back up three and turn to left and then she paces forward, one step, pause with one foreleg held up high, then another step, another pause, then step. Then stop. I get a "Veil done, Mädchen!" and then it's back in the circle with Gretchie and me. Glory!
Later, when we were walking the horses to cool them, I saw the Preacher standing off in the distance. He had climbed a small hill and was standing there, watching us. I got the uneasy feeling he was especially watching me. It put a little chill on my joy, but I shook it off.
Clarissa, of course, does not walk her own horse, but instead flips the reins to Henry for him to do it. She strides off alone back to the school, head high, whipping her riding crop at bushes and leafy branches and anything else she passes.
So the gang of us plunges back into the school. We run up the stairs and burst into the dormitory to wash up a bit and we're startled to find Clarissa standing in front of Sylvie, pointing her finger in the girl's face and yelling at the trembling chambermaid.
"I told you to have that dress brushed and ironed before I got back!" Clarissa's riding habit is thrown across her bed and she is pointing an enraged finger at her dress hanging on a hook on the wall.
"I'm sorry, Miss, I—"
Clarissa's hand lashes out and catches the girl across the face. The sharp sound of the slap startles the room into silence. Sylvie puts her hand to her face and stands there stunned. Then she begins to silently cry.
I charges across the room and shouts, "Belay that, Clarissa! She ain't here for the likes of you to slap around!"
Clarissa whirls around to face me. "You shut your dirty mouth, you low-down piece of trash!" she snarls.
That's it. A red curtain of fury comes over my mind and I launches myself at her, fists all balled up and ready to bash her, dammit, bash her so bad, and she comes at me with hands hooked into claws.
We meet in midair, both of us squealing with rage. I catch her above the eye with my knuckle, which knocks her head back some, but she gets one hand in my hair and brings the fingernails of the other down my face. I cry out and try to get her hand out of my hair, but I can't, I can't, her fingers are locked in there and she holds my head against her front so I can't see to get at her, and I can't, I can't, I can't lift my head and I know she's gettin' ready to claw me again so I pulls back me fist and puts it in her belly and I hear her grunt and so I do it again and she goes oof! and I go to do it again but we fall backward over the bed and then down to the floor and we roll over and over, legs entwined, and I reach up and catch her hair in my fist and pull hard and strain against the hand in my hair and get my head up to where we're nose to nose and eye to furious eye, breathing hard in each other's face. Then I sense her other hand comin' at my face again, but I catch her wrist in time and we lie there locked in what seems to be a draw with me on top, but then Clarissa suddenly bares her teeth and lunges her head toward me and I jerk back just in time to hear her teeth click together a scant half inch before my nose. Failing to bite me there, she turns her head aside and sinks her teeth in my wrist and I groan with the pain of it, but still I don't let go, I'd rather be bit on the arm than clawed on the face, and I'm bringin' up my knee...
...And then I ain't. A very strong hand clamps around my neck and pulls me off Clarissa. She unclamps her jaws from my arm and looks over my shoulder and I know, from the sudden silence in the room, that she is looking up at Mistress.
It is the vile Dobbs who has his hand around my neck and who untwines both our fingers from each other's hair, a smug smile on his vile face.
"Stand up. Both of you," says Mistress.
We struggle to our feet, and we stand there with our chests heaving, steam comin' off the both of us. My eyes never leave hers and hers never leave mine. I sense the other girls standing about, stunned, but I don't see them. All I see is Clarissa, who has the blood from my face smeared on the front of her camisole, the blood from my arm on her lips. She may have a bruise over her eye and I'm sure her belly's gonna be sore, but she came out the better in this battle, that's for sure, for she laid her mark upon me and I did not mark her.
"To my office. Now," says Mistress.
Neither of us turn. Clarissa is working her mouth—had I hurt her there? No, I didn't, I quickly find, for she suddenly leans in toward me and spits full in my face. As I see a thin bit of pinkish spittle hang from my eyelash, Bloody Jack comes unbidden to my whirling mind. Aye, I thinks, but this time it's my own dear blood.
"Crawl back in your gutter where you belong!"
When she says this, I try to go at her again, but the vile Dobbs holds my neck fast in his filthy paw.
"Mr. Dobbs, you will bring them to my office. Now!"
The vile Dobbs reaches out and, with a huge grin on his nasty face, clasps a startled Clarissa about her own neck. Mistress turns and goes to leave, but before she does she turns to the other girls and says, "You have nothing better to do than stand about and gaze at the spectacle of two of your own debasing themselves?"
The girls flee like a flock of birds. Mistress follows them out and the vile Dobbs propels us after her.
My arm is throbbing and I look down to see two neat semicircles of teeth marks, oozing redly. "I know you are diseased, Clarissa," I say, "but I can only hope you are not rabid as well."
Clarissa goes to reply, but the vile Dobbs puts a squeeze on her neck and all that comes out is a strangled gurgle. We are taken into Mistress's office and released. I advance to the desk and put my toes on the line.
"You may wait outside, Mr. Dobbs," says Mistress from behind her desk. "I will call you if I need you. Oh, and make sure none of the other girls is hanging about the door."
A plainly disappointed Dobbs says, "Yes, Mistress," and leaves, closing the door behind him. Poor vile Dobbs, were you looking forward to a jolly good show at our expense?
Stop it. Stop being giddy. You are in a lot of trouble here, and you must keep your mind sharp. Steady down.
Clarissa does not put her toes on the line but instead starts right in with, "Mistress, how could you let that man put his hands on me in my state of undress, how could—"
"Miss Howe, you will put your toes on the line there, next to Miss Faber." Mistress says this with a calm, cold evenness of tone. She leans back almost languidly in her throne and surveys the both of us. Don't be fooled by her calmness, Clarissa, I thinks, Mistress is mad.
Clarissa hesitates, confused. I'm sure she's never been in here under these conditions before. "But—"
"Do you recall, Miss Howe, the rule about never talking back to me? Hmmm?" says Mistress. "And if you want me to call Mr. Dobbs back in here to put you on the line, well, that can certainly be arranged."
A seething Clarissa comes up next to me and puts her toes on the line.
"Now, then," says Mistress, "let's get to the bottom of this unseemly matter. Miss Howe, you will remain silent until 1 ask for you to speak. Miss Faber, would you care to explain your behavior?"
I stand at attention and give her the old Royal Navy response—there is only one answer in a situation like this when a superior officer asks you a question like this and that is: "No excuse, Mistress." What's it gonna matter, anyway? She's sure to believe Clarissa's side of it.
"Come, Miss Faber. I want more out of you than that." Mistress taps her stick on the edge of her desk.
"Miss Howe was mistreating a servant, Mistress," I say, my chest still heavin' and my breath still ragged.
"How so?"
"She slapped the girl Sylvie, who is the most shy and un-forward of any of your staff, Mistress. Miss Howe hit her and made her cry in front of the ladies, and I didn't think it was right." There. I have said it.
"You could have reported the incident to me."
"I am sorry, Mistress. I should have done that."
Mistress eyes me carefully for what seems a long while. Then she turns to Clarissa and says, "Now, Miss Howe. What do you have to say for yourself?"
A torrent of words pours out of Clarissa's mouth. How she was merely disciplining the girl for not doing her duty, how shocked and distressed she was to be assaulted by me and treated most cruelly—at this Mistress glances over at the nail marks on my cheek and the teeth marks on my arm—how someone like me, so lowborn, a common a gutter girl that shouldn't even be in this school, how her father will certainly be told of this incident and—
Here Mistress cuts her off with a sharp slap of her rod on the desktop.
"I would give more credence to your story, Miss Howe, if I did not see you spit into Miss Faber's face with my very own eyes. If I did not see, with those same eyes, the considerable damage you have inflicted upon her. And you will listen to me, Miss Howe, and you will listen carefully," says Mistress, with the iron back in her voice. "If you think for one moment that your family's stature will have any influence in this matter, you are sadly mistaken. If your father withdraws you from this school, then so be it. Adieu, Miss Howe. I will have one less student, and that will be that." Mistress leans across the desk and looks into Clarissa's now perplexed eyes. "I run a superior school here, Miss Howe, and I am happy in what I do. But I would walk out of here tomorrow rather than let my judgment in how I run my school be dictated by anything other than my own convictions!"
Mistress stands to her full height and looks down her nose at us.
"For your disgraceful behavior you will both receive no dinner or supper today. You will instead each stand in a corner of the dining hall during the dining hour, facing the wall, during which time it is hoped that you will each reflect on what it means to be a lady." Again the rod comes down on the desktop. "The Position!"
I immediately flop over the desk and pull up my skirts. Thank God, I thinks, she's not gonna put me out!
She gives me four. Four hard ones. So hard I cry out on each, and my knees buckle on the fourth and I have to grab the edges of the desk to keep from sliding off the desk. But I don't. It's over and I stand up and wipe away at my tears.