“What do you think standards are for?”
W
ith Odile's help, Faris made her way into the pattern of life at Greenlaw College. She followed steep staircases and winding corridors from lesson to lesson: grammar, logic, rhetoric, natural history, natural philosophy, Latin, Greek, algebra, geometry, dance, and deportment.
The sheer amount of work would have overwhelmed her if she'd felt obliged to do any of it. But she had noticed with relish that no one seemed to care what she did or when she did it. Within the confines of Greenlaw College, she was quite free.
“No one expects anything of new students,” Odile confided, over the evening meal at the end of Faris's first full day of classes. “If you turn your work in promptly, you'll be all right.”
Faris refrained from mentioning that she had no intention of turning work in, promptly or otherwise. “But what if it isn't finished?”
“Turn it in anyway.” Odile stirred the gray soup in her bowl and frowned at the residue on her spoon. “I hear we are to have an English cook this year. I see it must be so. Pass the bread, if you please.”
Faris passed the basket of bread. “What if it isn't any good?”
Odile inspected the bread carefully. “It's from the bakery in the High Street, same as ever. Of course it's good.” She selected a roll and broke it over her bowl of soup.
“Not the bread. My work.”
“Oh, don't be an idiot. Of course it won't be any good. How could it be? You don't know anything.” Odile gave Faris a swift and brutal summary of those in the student body she considered to be from backgrounds similar to Faris's.
Faris sheltered her thoughts behind her habitual expression of composure.
“Some of them are all right, I suppose,” Odile conceded. “But most are like the Roman. She's third-year, mercifully. A Russian grand duchess, if you please. They say even her family can't bear her and I don't blame them. They also say the proctors tried to send her down during her first year but it made no impression on her. She couldn't get thrown out if she tried and she's too lazy to try. The pity of it is, she has a voice. She just can't be bothered to practice. A wasted space.” Odile shook her head sadly. “I don't know why she bothers to honor us with her presence.”
Odile's diatribe made Faris think again about the merits of doing nothing. If it were difficult to get expelled, it might be tempting to accept the challenge. But although it might bother her uncle a trifle to have her sent down, Faris knew it wouldn't inconvenience him for long. The world was full of finishing schools. He'd find one that would take her, no
matter what crime she contrived to try the patience of the proctors.
But to Faris, failure at Greenlaw would be dishonor, whether she was sent home in disgrace orâfar worseâkept on condescendingly, as a wasted space. It would be good to be home in Galazon, true. But it would be better to come home a witch of Greenlaw.
“Do you think I'll be able to catch up with the other students?”
“You are at a disadvantage, arriving so late in the term. What possessed your uncle? Anyone would think he wanted you to fail.”
“Harvest was late this year. School fees don't just materialize out of thin air, you know.”
“I know. Oh, I know.” Odile nodded sagely. “It's not impossible to catch up, if you stay out of trouble. Do your reading. Leave the other students alone, particularly second-years. They've been here long enough to know how to get into trouble, and they still have the energy to bother.”
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hat Faris liked best about Greenlaw was that no one paid her the least attention. She took Odile's advice about keeping to herself. Also on Odile's recommendation, Faris cut classes judiciously and used the free time to make up her work as it was called in and graded. The first lecture of the day was the only event that required attendance, the rest were subject to the students' discretion. There was far too much work assigned in each class to make attendance at all of them possible.
Her fellow students at first had given Faris the impression
of high intelligence and strange intensity. Even slight familiarity taught her that this impression was, if not entirely mistaken, sadly incomplete. In fact, her fellow students were simply exhausted. Fatigue took strange forms.
One day in the dining hall, Faris sat across the table from a first-year student who stared blankly at the single artichoke on the plate before her.
“That looks good,” said Faris. The artichokes had vanished before she'd arrived and she cherished a faint hope that her classmate disliked them, perhaps enough to barter for it.
“Extremely good,” agreed the first-year, dashing Faris's hopes. Wearily, she added, “if only I could remember how to eat one.”
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aris tried to follow another piece of Odile's advice and ignore the lack of proper trees in Greenlaw. She found it hard. Though the milder climate was pleasing, she could never quite accustom herself to the utter lack of severe weather. She found herself bracing for what could not comeâno blizzards ever visited Greenlaw. Even so much as a hail storm was rare. It was like waiting for a stern lecture that never came.
The gardens of Greenlaw were a source of wonder to Faris. Some were mathematical in the precise arrangement of herb and simple, some were loose and profuse with merely attractive flowers and shrubs, some were noble in proportion and venerable for antiquity, all held some unfamiliar plant. Anything that did not grow wild in Galazon struck Faris as foreign and probably unnecessary, but since
her own presence at Greenlaw was certainly foreign and very likely unnecessary, she tried to be tolerant.
The best place at Greenlaw, in Faris's opinion, was the Dean's garden, named for its location between the walls of the college and the Dean's residence. The oaks which shaded the Deanery windows and overhung the college wall reminded Faris of Galazon. She stopped there often, sometimes just for a moment between classes. If she closed her eyes and listened to the wind in the branches, the rustle of dry leaves remedied her homesickness.
Much of her free time was spent in pursuit of news of Galazon. There was very little, though reports from Aravill appeared in the press occasionally. She grew adept at picking out an Aravis dateline as she scanned
Le Monde, Figaro, and the International Herald Tribune
in the library.
The Times
of London was her steadiest source of information.
The British ambassador to Aravill led a busy life, attending a wide variety of social functions to commemorate this or that event. Perhaps the widower King Julian of Aravill, who had attained his father's throne after fifty leisured years, aspired to a marriage with one of English Edward's profusion of eligible daughters or nieces.
Poor bride, if he succeeded in flattering the English enough to consent. He brought two eligible daughters of his own to the match. Menary was one of them: The
Almanach d'Ostrogotha
had given Faris Menary's precise pedigree. No wonder Menary's faith in the power vested in the family Paganell had been so complete. Faris could find
it in her heart to pity any theoretical stepmother of hers, however utterly starched with nobility.
The pace of the class lectures proceeded without interference from the students. The instructors at Greenlaw seemed to speak for their own entertainment, without regard to how many or how few came to listen. Such indifference was soothing. When she was able to spare the time to attend class, she sat at the back of the room and let the sound of learned voices lull her. This pleasant pastime was possible in every class save dance and deportment. In dance she had enough technique to go ignored by the instructor.
The deportment lessons were not difficult in a muscular sense. Yet Faris found them strenuous. Nothing was more certain than that she would be reprimanded.
Though she had been drilled in the arts of courtesy for as long as she could remember, her knowledge did not suffice. Any other student, Faris felt, might curl fingers into fists and Dame Brachet would but murmur reprovingly and glide on. But Faris's shortcomings brought Dame Brachet to her side to stay, to hold her errors up before the class, to lecture at length on her elbow, her chin, the hang of her pointed sleeves.
“Point your toe,” Dame Brachet would say to the class, and every student tried. Then Dame Brachet would glide slowly along the rows of earnest girls in their rumpled black poplin robes.
“Remember, Eve-Marie, you are a pearl necklace. Relax your hands, Jane. No, don't curl your fingers. Just relax them. Now remember, your elbows are heavy. Don't let
them stick out. They ought to drop down. Not like that, Faris.”
Faris was mistress of her facial expression but not of her posture. She could stand before the class for an afternoon at a stretch without altering her mask of composure. But every criticism made her more conscious of her flaws, until self-awareness blossomed into genuine clumsiness, and by the end of the class she would find her hands were shaking.
“Shoulders back, Faris,” Dame Brachet said one day. “Why are you doing that?”
“Doing what, Dame Brachet?” Faris murmured through stiff lips. By some miracle, her tone was civil.
“Doing that with your chin.” Dame Brachet seized Faris's chin in cold fingers and thrust it into the proper position. “You must learn to learn, Faris. If you apply yourself, you will find it comes in time. Some day you will delight in the proper deportment of every bone in your body. In the meantime, take this opportunity to earn that delight with the work of learning.”
Faris put her chin out and set her mouth in a hard line.
Dame Brachet lifted her hand to push Faris's chin back into position.
Faris moved her head aside. Very distinctly, she said, “Deportment is a sterile discipline. Habit built on superstition.”
“Criticize it if you please. You are still no good at it.”
“There's nothing to be good at. It's just an arbitrary set of standards. Why should I waste time learning to point my toes in a way that went out of fashion three hundred years ago? Why shouldn't I set my own fashions?”
“You must form your own fashions in a way which demonstrates that you flout the standards from knowledge, not from ignorance,” replied Dame Brachet. “When you leave Greenlaw College, you may or may not be able to practice magic. That is a matter of talent and skill. But you will certainly be a witch of Greenlaw, and that station in the world carries expectations with it. You will be expected to speak with those of high degree and to speak fair to high and low. Your manner will be as vital as your matter, and in some sad cases, your matter will not amount to much. So you had better learn a manner to make up for your other shortcomings.”
From the first words, Faris followed this speech with eyes narrowed. “But I may flout the standards?”
“Of course,” said Dame Brachet, with some asperity. “What do you think standards are for? Now drop your elbows and tuck your chin. Very good, Faris. Now point your toe.”
From that day, Faris's hands shook no more.
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he only instruction given in magic took place at the mandatory lecture each morning. This series, delivered by the Dean herself, was known simply as “The Structure of the World.” It was theoretical in the extreme, but it was all that Greenlaw offered. There was no practice allowed. Ever.
Faris listened attentively to the Dean's instruction and attempted to sketch the armillary spheres used to model the relation of the world to the celestial order. She recorded the sources the Dean cited in her arguments, pursued them
through the stacks of the library: Ptolemy, Cicero, Lucan, and the rest.
Faris was not in the hunt for scholarship, but for details of doctrine that might prove useful to her among the credulous. By the time the term ended at Whitsuntide, she had a good grasp of the Dean's “Structure.”
It puzzled Faris, at first, that the students were neither encouraged to study magic outside the Structure lectures nor permitted to practice it at any time. She decided that the rule was meant to prevent students from discovering there was no magic at Greenlaw to learn. Every student knew that whether or not magic existed within the gates at Greenlaw, it was exceedingly rare outside.
The Dean explained that this was because the rocky promontory of Greenlaw was warded in such a way that magic was easier to perform within its bounds than without it. Given the dearth of magic among the students, Faris felt the Dean's words owed much to the tale of the Emperor and his new clothes. Apparently, all it took to learn magic at Greenlaw College was a willingness to claim one knew it when one left.
In theory, there was the world, the lowest, most mundane sphere in the model. Divided into overlapping hemispheres, north, south, east, and west, the world was theoretically protected by four wardens, whose theoretical wardships enfolded one another.
The warden of the south watched over her dominion almost unhindered by the wardens of the east and west. Most powerful, but most remote, ruling the ocean-guarded south, she never impinged on the warden of the north. The warden
of the east was visited only by the wardens of south and north. He never touched on the wardency of the west. Of the wardens of the north and west, the Dean did not speak.