Authors: Lauren Henderson
“Come on!” Taylor hisses, and we turn away from the window, though not before I dart a final glance back at Plum. She still looks stricken with fear.
“Who saw
that
coming?” Taylor mutters, when we’ve hoisted ourselves off the fire escape onto our own windowsill and back into our room.
“I literally can’t process it,” I say in a heartfelt voice. “It’s too juicy.… I’m too tired.…”
“I know,” Taylor says, giving such a deep yawn it sounds like she’s pulled it up from the soles of her feet. “I’m way overloaded.”
“She was always having a go at
you
about being gay!” I say, yawning in return, so hard I almost split my jaw. “Like it was a bad thing!”
I start to pull my clothes off.
“Well, she must feel weird about it if she’s keeping it a secret,” Taylor says, her voice already thick with sleep. She kicks off her shoes, her jeans hitting the floor a second afterward.
“I can’t believe it,” I mumble, undoing my bra and crawling under the covers in my knickers, too tired to put on my pajamas.
“I can,” Taylor says, her mattress creaking as she climbs into bed.
“You know what, though? They looked really pretty together,” I say drowsily, my eyes closing, exhaustion hitting me like a ton of bricks to the back of the head.
Taylor starts to say “Mmn” in agreement, but halfway through she falls asleep and the “Mmn” morphs into a rumbling snore.
That’s so funny,
I think.
I have to tell her she did that.…
And then I hear my own breathing heave into a snore as I pass out as well.
fifteen
“GHOSTS AND GHOULIES”
It’s dark down here. Dark, and eerie, and very, very cramped. This is the first time since stopping gymnastics (where it really helps not to be too tall) that I’ve been happy I’m barely five foot three. The taller girls are having to duck every time we pass under a lintel, and they’re tripping in their heels on the cobbles.
“None of these young leddies are claustrophobic, are they?” the tour guide, a burly old man dressed in a frock coat and wig, asked Miss Carter ten minutes ago, when we were all gathered in the bright, shiny guest shop, with no idea of the subterranean tunnels into which we were about to descend.
Plum started to say something, but Miss Carter was too quick for her.
“Oh, they’re not so claustrophobic they can’t visit dimly lit nightclubs on a regular basis,” she said cheerfully, raising a guffaw from the guide. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
Still, these tiny rooms, these narrow passages, are enough to induce claustrophobia in anyone. It’s the atmosphere, the chilly, damp air seeping through the uneven brickwork, and the ghost stories at which the guide is hinting that make us shiver. He herds us into a room that’s mercifully big enough for us all to stand at one end, huddled together for warmth and companionship, as he paces at the other, pounding the cobbled stone floor with his silver-topped cane for extra emphasis as he explains to us with relish exactly where we’re standing. We climbed down a wooden staircase two stories below street level, but it feels as if we’re buried alive.
“Up there,” he says, reaching up to the ceiling with his cane and tapping it, “up
there
is the center of Edinburgh. The Grassmarket, the Royal Mile. Edinburgh’s finest Old Town streets, thoroughfares any capital city would be proud to boast. Perhaps you young lassies have been there already, spending some of your fathers’ hard-earned money on the shiny trinkets you love, eh?”
“Sexist,” Taylor mutters in my ear.
“But down
here
”—he swings his cane down and pounds the stone floor, so loudly that Lizzie whimpers in shock—“down
here
is where the poor people of Edinburgh lived, three centuries ago. No toilets down here! None of the modern luxuries you’re used to! The rich people’s servants would shout
‘Gardez loo!’
and throw their brimming buckets of waste out the windows! Do you know what I mean by waste, young leddies? Human waste! Buckets of it, running down the streets, the alleys—alleys like this one. Imagine it all, under your feet, day after day. Stinking, nasty filth! Edinburgh was known as Auld Reekie in the nineteenth century, because of all the smoke from the breweries and mills, but it reeked much more with all that excrement, wouldn’t you think?”
“He’s enjoying this
way
too much,” Taylor hisses.
“And not just human waste either!” he continues gleefully. “Right here”—he walks over to the long wall behind him and taps at a series of projecting, ancient metal rings, heavy with rust—“here is where their animals would live! Imagine, living right next to your animals, day in, day out, with them of course adding to the waste that would pour down these stone runnels, down the side of the steep castle rock on which we’re standing.…”
“There
does
seem to be rather an obsession with
fecal matter
of all kinds,” Jane mutters to Miss Carter.
“Who can tell me what kind of animals there would be tethered here?” the guide is asking.
To my surprise, it’s Susan who pipes up.
“Cows,” she says in her soft, quiet voice. “For milk.”
“Exactly! Well done, young lassie! Cows, for milk! And, in due time, for meat as well,” he says. “The puir animals would be led in here, never to leave again. They’d be slaughtered where they stood, when they were old, and their blood would run down these gutters—”
“Let me guess,” Luce, who’s always had a sarcastic sense of humor, suggests dryly. “Mingling with the poo and the wee?”
“No!” he says triumphantly. “Made into black pudding, the fine Scots delicacy whose main ingredient is nice rich blood!”
He rolls the
r
of
rich
theatrically, and lingers on the word
blood
so long that Lizzie and Sophia giggle nervously and cling together.
“Perhaps we could move on to the
history
?” Ms. Burton-Race says loudly. “Could you explain a little bit about the architecture of this place? I understand where we’re standing was originally not closed in like this?”
“Indeed!” the guide says, grinning widely. “Imagine, if you will, that all this above us is open sky, for so it was for centuries. People shopped here, came to visit their lawyers, had their saws sharpened, bought their bread, had their clothes altered. And they lived here too, in these tiny rooms. Where we’re standing right now was known as the Fleshmarket. Can anyone tell me why?”
“Prostitutes, I imagine,” Plum drawls. “Standing in doorways. Like in Amsterdam. Only without the red lights, because they hadn’t been invented yet.”
The guide looks completely taken aback. I have to hand it to Plum—at least she’s managed to stop him in his tracks. He scratches his head, sending his wig askew.
“No,”
he says eventually, sounding very disapproving. “Not at
all
. This is Edinburgh, young leddy, not the Continent.” He makes the rest of Europe sound like an absolute hotbed of vice. “No, this was where the slaughtermen did their grim business. The butchers. And over there”—he gestures across the room, to another narrow alley—“that was Skinners’ Close, where the tanners would make leather from the skins. Och, there’d be a stink in the Fleshmarket and Skinners’ Close!”
He’s getting back into his rhythm now.
“But of course, then, as I said, there’d be open air above our heids! To carry some of the reek away! Then, during the seventeen fifties, in came the town council, who built the floors above that you see today, to make their smart Royal Exchange, where people could do their shopping in more comfort. Shutting the people of the closes in”—he lowers his voice to a whisper—“like rats in a maze.”
Although we all know everyone would still have been able to get in and out, we still can’t help shivering. That’s the feeling of being buried alive, bricked up in these passages, with no daylight above us. It’s very eerie, and our guide smiles in triumph as he sees our reaction.
“Och, and I haven’t even started on the ghost stories!” he says, leading us into a smaller room with a wooden floor that creaks as we file in one by one, since the doorway is so narrow. I’m one of the last, and as I wait in the corridor, a cold breeze glides along the back of my neck, as if a door has been opened somewhere down the passageway.
Only I haven’t seen any doors.
I swing around, and out of the corner of my eye, I spot a dark shape slipping across the close, disappearing into a room farther down.
“Who’s there?” I say quickly, involuntarily. “Taylor?” I nudge her, my heart racing. “Did you see that?”
“See what?” she asks.
“I thought I saw something—someone—”
“Oh
please,
” Nadia says loudly to Plum as I walk into the room. Rough floorboards shift underfoot. “Did you hear that? Scarlett’s trying to pretend she saw a
ghost.
How
pathetic
and attention-seeking!”
“There are many stories of ghosts down in the closes,” the guide says immediately. “A woman in black, called Mary King, comes and goes as she pleases! And I’m about to tell you all the story of the plague that ravaged Edinburgh”—much rolling of the
r
on
ravaged
—“and the ghosts and ghoulies that haunted the Coltheart family in 1685, in this very room.…”
He’s indicating that we should all sit on a long bench along the wall. Alison and Luce are already taking places next to each other, and as I meet Alison’s eye she nods at me. It’s an acknowledgment of the fact that ever since the night out at the Shore, we have what Ms. Burton-Race, in her lectures, would call a détente. That isn’t as big a deal as having actually made peace; it’s more that you’ve mutually decided not to be hostile to one another. Luce, seeing Alison nod, looks up as well and actually flashes me a half smile.
Wow. That’s a nice change. I wish I could enjoy it more.
I still think Alison and Luce, with their physical dexterity and their grudge against me, are the most likely candidates for having set the smoke bombs and left me that note, though it would really kill me to think that one of them had pushed me over the stair rail. And Taylor’s suggestion that they could have slipped the antihistamines in my water, but that Alison had had a fit of conscience and saved me when it looked as if I might seriously injure myself, or worse, also makes sense.
Well, if it was Luce and Alison behind the attacks, I have the sense I’ll be safe from now on. After the Shore, after hanging out with the boys and walking back to school together, they’ve softened toward me. Neither of them has ever been fake; they say what they mean, and mean what they say. They wouldn’t nod or smile at me if they were still furious with me. (Of course, if they knew we’d sneaked out last night to go to a party with Callum and Ewan, they’d probably be livid with jealousy, but mercifully, they have no idea why Taylor and I look so tired today.)
Maybe one day—if I find out the truth, if I can clear them of trying to hurt me—we’ll be friends again. I’d like that. But right now, the tables are turned. It’s me being wary of them.
I look over to see where Plum is, and notice that she and Susan aren’t sitting beside each other. They didn’t share a double seat in the coach coming here either; Plum very pointedly plopped herself down next to Nadia, and Susan equally carefully selected a place next to another Wakefield Hall girl. It’s the first day on our trip here that the two of them haven’t been joined at the hip, and I can guess why. Plum’s clearly told Susan that Taylor and I saw the two of them sharing a bed this morning, and they’ve embarked on a policy of total denial.
Well, I don’t care if Plum and Susan keep a distance of a hundred feet from each other at all times or sit in each other’s laps. What I
do
care about is that Nadia Farouk is sniggering to Plum about me seeing ghosts and being pathetic, her gold bracelets clinking as she pushes her hair back from her face. And Plum, beside her, is letting her do it.
I know perfectly well that Plum decides who she and Nadia bitch about. Well, it’s time to get Plum to shut Nadia’s nastiness toward me down for good.
“I might have been seeing things ’cause I’m a bit tired, Plum,” I say, sitting down on her other side. “I didn’t sleep that well. Is your bed comfortable? Mine really isn’t.”
I can feel her whole body stiffen.
“And the mattresses are so narrow, aren’t they?” I add, not raising my voice, because I don’t need to. “Barely room for one!”
“Overkill alert,” Taylor mutters.
Everyone’s sitting on the bench now, and the guide is shushing us. Plum turns her head to look at me. It’s too shadowy in here for me to read her expression, but I hear the one word she whispers at me:
“Please.”
I’ve never heard Plum like this. Vulnerable. Pleading. Desperate.
In my time at St. Tabby’s—particularly when I was getting my boobs, which caused her to taunt me on a daily basis—I’d have pictured myself jumping six feet in the air with triumph at having finally reduced Princess Plum to begging me for mercy. And it does feel good. I’m surprised, though, that I’m not quite as giddy with euphoria as I would have imagined.
The guide’s telling a story in his best creepy voice, clearly intent on scaring the living daylights out of as many of us as possible. But I’m not listening. The fleeting sight of that figure in the corridor has already managed to creep me out so thoroughly that I don’t even have room in my brain for a ghost story; I’m scared I’m being stalked by someone who’s flesh and blood, not a phantom. Occasional phrases—“disembodied head,” “severed arm,” “dreadful groan”—float past me, but don’t sink in, though I can hear girls around me emitting delighted squeaks of fear.
Plum, beside me, is still as rigid as a statue. I don’t think she’s taking in a word either. When the guide reaches what’s clearly a thrilling climax, and marshals us all up again to continue the tour, Plum’s the last to stand, her long legs wobbling in her knee-high boots. I’m almost out of the room when I feel something tug at my sleeve, and I have to repress a squeal of shock.
It’s not a phantom or a stalker. It’s Plum. But she’s white as a sheet, looking as scared as if she’d just seen a ghost.
“
Please,
Scarlett,” she whispers plaintively. “
Please
don’t tell anyone, or let Taylor tell. I’ll do
anything.
”
“Don’t talk to me,” I say, jerking my sleeve free from her grip. “Don’t talk to Taylor. Leave us both alone. And make sure everyone else does too.”
“I will! I promise! I will!”
She still looks utterly terrified. This, I suppose, is what I’ve wanted all along from Plum: to have her completely in my power, to be able to neutralize her evil tongue, at least when it’s directed at me and Taylor. Plum was an absolute cow to Taylor last term, intimidating Lizzie and Susan into helping her physically bully Taylor, who couldn’t stand up to her because Plum knew Taylor’s brother’s secret.
Well, Taylor won’t need to worry about that anymore,
I reflect as I follow the rest of the group out into the close, leaving Plum behind. Turning my back on her as if she doesn’t matter to me. Because from this moment on, she doesn’t.
I’ll never be afraid of what Plum’s saying behind my back again.
And yet the triumph I should be feeling just isn’t there.
I hurry to catch up to Taylor, who’s waiting for me at the tail end of the crocodile of girls winding their way down the narrow passages. She raises her eyebrows as I reach her, two strong dark lines rising in a silent inquiry.
“Total surrender,” I whisper. “Anything we want. She begged me.”