Chapter 30 Mrs. Goddard’s School
MRS. GODDARD’S SCHOOL
EMMA
Mr. Knightley, Harriet, and I were hiding in the overgrown back of Highbury square, our shoes squelching in the spring-fed earth but the rest of us nicely concealed by waist-high bracken and dangling branches from the square’s white willow.
We had a good view along Broadway, Highbury’s main street.
It was a large street, wide enough for two coaches to pass but perilously crowded with French and Confederate troops.
“There were fewer soldiers before,” Mr. Knightley said grimly.
“Why so many?” I wondered. There were senior officers among the French, or at least officers with very elaborate uniforms. The Confederate coats and caps were, by comparison, dull gray and rather dirty. The two groups eyed each other with distrust.
Harriet blew a frustrated sigh. “The amulet is right inside! Mrs. Goddard sent me my clothes after I left, but I did not trust the post to carry gold. I wish I had known sooner. We could have called on her and collected it over tea.”
Mrs. Goddard lived in a three-story country home that had been in her family for generations.
She was widowed young, and being an enterprising sort, she had the bedrooms partitioned and the drawing room and parlor merged into a teaching room.
It was a successful school, boarding and educating girls aged twelve to seventeen from several parishes.
A handful of unmarried young ladies, ex-students like Harriet, lived there as well to assist instruction and shepherd girls to and fro.
From Highbury square to the school’s front door was perhaps fifty yards, but twenty soldiers milled on that path.
Harriet straightened resolutely. “In London, you said their kind cannot impede proper ladies.”
“I was referring to some pro-slaver louts,” I said, “not soldiers.”
“But look.” She pointed to a pair of Mrs. Goddard’s students, girls of fifteen, being escorted through the confusion by a French soldier. He opened the door to the school, the girls entered, and he returned to his troop.
“They went in. They did not come out,” Mr. Knightley noted.
“If I can get in, I know a way out the back,” Harriet said. “Waiting and watching will only make it worse. Soldiers keep coming.”
Mr. Knightley shook his head, his lips pressed bloodless. “It is exceedingly dangerous.”
“Harriet is right,” I decided. “It will only get worse. And I must go with her.”
Mr. Knightley turned to me, the foliage dabbing light on his black hair. I expected him to protest, perhaps even attempt to impose husbandly authority. Instead, his features were tight with worry. That damaged my resolve far more than any argument.
“Why you as well?” he asked finally.
“The students travel in pairs,” I said firmly to hide my misgivings. “And the slavers will harass Harriet if she is alone.”
“You cannot pass for a student. Not even a boarder. You are too—” His mouth started to shape “old” but he switched to “elegant” instead.
Oddly, that little kindness restored my confidence.
“My advanced ‘elegance’ aside,” I said dryly, “the soldiers, the French at least, are professionals. They seem to be gentlemen, or whatever a French gentleman is called. If Harriet and I walk with assurance and say we are returning home, they will let us pass. What else could they do? Send us away? Shoot us?” I could not help adding, “And I am only four years older than Harriet.”
He held out his hand. I took it, and his thumb stroked my skin. I felt the muscles work in his palm and fought a blush. The physical aspects of marriage had been bursting into my thoughts at inopportune times.
“Our quest for the amulet is supposition,” he said. “We have no idea if it still matters. But we do know the enemy has gathered here. That is an opportunity. If they have deserted the countryside, we can slip away.”
“We came for the amulet. What if it helps end the war? Ends this?” I gestured to the foreign troops occupying lovely Highbury. “Besides, I promised I would find it. Wyves have duties and honor, just like husbands.”
Reluctantly, he smiled. “Then be cautious. Do not tarry. I will keep watch.” He picked up the long wooden case he had retrieved when he went for his violin, the Baker rifle given to him by Mr. Darcy. I could not imagine what good it would do. “If you cannot safely return here…”
“Meet us at the Westons,” I suggested. “The others are there. Their estate is Randalls, on the way to Hartfield.” He nodded.
Harriet and I checked each other to ensure we were presentable.
I fixed her bonnet with a flick of a finger; it only needed a few stray willow leaves removed.
For some reason my efficiency amused her, and she made an elaborate show of shaping every crease on mine before grinning her most buoyant grin.
“It is a fine afternoon, Mrs. Knightley. Shall we call on Mrs. Goddard?”
We set out along the street as if returning from an afternoon lark. Soldiers’ faces turned, whiskered and bearded in foreign fashions. The Confederate troops eyed us, their gazes on Harriet.
“Swiftly,” I whispered to her through a smile. We were halfway already.
Twenty steps from the door, a French soldier stepped into our path. In a thick accent, he said, “Halt. Who are you?”
“Miss Smith,” Harriet blinked at him with immense innocence. “We are returning to the school, and I am sorry to say, we are very late. Are you having a parade?” I thought that was overplayed, but he looked us over and wordlessly gestured to proceed. He followed us to the door and rapped sharply.
It was opened by an Overseer, one I had never seen, a compact, scrabble-faced man with pronounced cheekbones. Brusquely, he directed us inside. That was frightening, but Harriet, unflinching, curtsied and turned to the staircase to the boarding rooms.
The Overseer held out his arm, blocking her. He pointed down the hall to the teaching room. “That way.”
That was one too many complications. Harriet cast me a frightened glance that loudly announced—wrong direction.
“We have been walking for hours,” I said. His unshaven chin swung to scowl at me. Not knowing how decorous American ladies communicated this, I bounced on my toes with a slightly desperate expression.
He rolled his eyes. “Hurry up.”
We fairly raced up the stairs, which I suppose aided the pretense. At the top, we ducked around the corner, and Harriet thumped back against the wall. “I thought we were done,” she whispered.
“Not yet,” I said.
She shook herself and set off, passing the boarding rooms, attractively decorated despite tiny windows and the folding partitions that crowded the beds.
We climbed more stairs to the top floor.
Harriet touched a door as we passed—“My old room”—then stopped at a bigger door at the end of the hall.
It had a simple painted sign, School Mistress.
Harriet knocked. Stillness. Behind us, a man’s voice was dimly audible, rising through the stairwells from the bottom floor. Or so I hoped. The cadence of the voice seemed familiar.
Harriet’s knuckles hovered over the door, unsure whether to knock again.
“Just go in,” I said.
She gave me a scandalized look. “It is Mrs. Goddard’s room!”
I tried the doorknob, and the door opened. Harriet took a big breath and strode forward. I closed the door behind us.
It was a lady’s bedroom, with a pleasant bed nicely finished with a yellow lace cover. A dark-lacquered armoire stood beside a matched dressing table with a looking glass, brushes, and other feminine items. There was a wooden chair and a cedar wardrobe chest.
Harriet considered. “She kept a box for valuables for each of us, and she retrieved them from her room, so they are here somewhere. But I hate to search.”
I did not think a lady would keep boarders’ belongings in her wardrobe or armoire. “What about there?” One corner had a narrow, almost invisible door, the sort used for servant passages. We tugged it open and found a storage room lined with shelves.
“This is it,” Harriet said immediately. She ran her fingers along a row of identical birchwood boxes, each large enough for a pair of shoes. They had handwritten labels in brass holders. She found one marked Harriet Smith and offered it to me.
“It is yours,” I said.
“Take the lid off, at least,” she said nervously, so I did.
The light was dim, but the amulet’s gold chain caught a faint gleam. In the center, an oval of scarlet seemed to glow.
“Is it the right one?” Harriet asked.
The color was unmistakable, exactly Yuánchi’s glorious fire. But this artifact was made for the wyfe of healing. Mary had thought I would sense it or feel affinity to it. I felt nothing. I saw nothing, not the immaterial streaks that revealed bindings, not the diseased fantasy of the miasma.
I removed my gloves and lifted it by the chain. It spun, the jade whorls on the setting exactly like the drawing the French officer showed me. “It is what the French sought at Hartfield.” I stopped the spin with a finger on the jade, then touched my thumb to the scarlet—
I saw three great wyves crowned in shining auras of gold. They wore ceremonial, thick-soled sandals. Their wraps of silk were radiant with silver thread and pearls. They waited on a lakeshore of white pebbles fouled with streaks of black wrack where the poisoned waves washed.
The first wyfe’s outstretched arm held a gleaming black dagger. The second’s raised hand held an amulet that shimmered scarlet. The third stood simply, her empty hands spread and welcoming.
From the wyfe with the amulet, the wyfe of healing, Yuánchi’s scarlet binding stretched.
From the empty-handed wyfe, the wyfe of song, a dazzling sapphire glow spread.
The wyfe with the dagger, the wyfe of war, was unbound.
The wyfe of war raised the dagger and slashed her bared forearm. The bloodied blade smoked, and a summons formed, an immense black ribbon seeking the sky. The wyves sang music, ancient and inhuman, and the summons rose like a ship’s unfurrowing sail.