The Crafters Book Two (27 page)

“Relight that!” she demanded.

“Apologies, miss, but it’s time.”

“I’ll decide when it’s time. I’m not finished.”

Emily shook her head. “Rules, miss. Good night.” She fumed away, throwing her shadow huge and wavy on the wall “Am I supposed to undress in the dark?” Madeleine shouted. Rose, already in bed, threw back the covers and sat up.

“Come on, Madeleine. I’ll be maid to you. There’s a full moon to see by.”

“No. I wasn’t finished with my letter. I will see Miss Crafter,” Madeleine said, storming toward the door.

“You won’t find her,” Rose called after her.

“Why not?” Madeleine asked.

“At night, she’s never around. We hear her tiptoe away, and then we hear mysterious voices in the night,” Rose said, her voice vibrant with excitement. “We think she’s part of a secret society ... or something
else.”

Madeleine’s mouth opened into the letter O. This smacked of wild tales told to her by her elder cousins, who had traveled to India and other strange places of the world. “Well, I will get to the bottom of this,” Madeleine said, sounding a little less sure. “But I won’t go to bed at nine like a child. At home, I’d just be getting ready for parties at this hour.”

“Oh, don’t! What if there
is
something going on?”

Rose’s words intrigued Madeleine. Mysterious voices in the night, tiptoeing away secretly ... Was she about to stumble into the midst of a coven with Miss Crafter as its chief witch? She’d heard that such people danced around fires naked—imagine! Madeleine tried to conceive of a fire blazing in the center of Miss Amanda’s neat sitting room, and people in their altogethers sitting around it sipping tea. The picture made her giggle nervously.

She crept down the steps, listening. The staircase seemed long and very narrow in the dark, almost as though the walls couldn’t wait to close in on her. A lone gas flame burned low in its sconce on the landing. Madeleine stood in its light for a moment as if gathering its energy to go on.

Towards the ground floor, she heard voices. They appeared to be chanting rhythmically together, though she couldn’t make out their words. Madeleine followed the sound all the way down. It led her to the door of Miss Crafter’s sitting room.

Daringly, Madeleine grasped the door handle. It felt reassuringly ordinary. The, smooth bite of its cold, smooth surface gave her the jolt she needed to turn it and push the door open.

There were a lot of people in the room, but disappointingly they were all fully clad, and the flicker of flame came from gaslights and a small fire in the grate, not a bonfire. Gradually, Madeleine realized that all except for Miss Crafter, who was standing beside the fire pointing at a slate, they were black. Surprised at the interruption, they turned to look at her, their eyes rounded, showing the whites around the irises. She saw that every pair of them held a book between them. The voice she had heard was the cook’s assistant, Leah, reading aloud a poem by Lord Byron. Miss Crafter turned to confront Madeleine’s accusing glare.

“You’re teaching slaves to read?” the girl demanded, outraged.

“Ladies, that is all for tonight,” Miss Crafter said, turning back to the group. Immediately, the servants rose and began to move the chairs away from the fire. Miss Crafter rounded on Madeleine. “I see that it is past nine o’clock. What are you doing still awake?”

“What are
you
doing?” Madeleine retorted. “Teaching black slaves to read. Ha! I would almost rather that you
were
practicing sorcery.”

Miss Crafter’s lips pressed together and tightened into a white line. “For your information, they are all free women. They work for their education, prizing it above fancy clothes and a life of ease.
Every one
of those girls knows more Latin than you do. They apply themselves. They ask questions when they do not know something. They are
interested,
which makes them students any teacher would prize. They pay in the only coin they have, their work, while you do not even show appreciation for the instruction you receive. Goodness knows why you feel education is worthless to you.”

For a moment, Madeleine wondered if the teacher had it in mind to sentence her to corporal punishment. She was justified: Madeleine had broken the rules rather flagrantly. The pointer she held would leave painful strokes on the palm or back of one’s hand. The same idea must have occurred at the same time to Miss Crafter, but she rejected it. She put the stick firmly away from her. It was the first time Madeleine had seen Miss Crafter become excited, and she wondered if she had found a vulnerable crack in the imperturbable headmistress’s exterior. Could this be used for blackmail? No, even better, Madeleine decided. Even better than blackmail: liberty.

“Well?” Rose’s voice hissed at her across the darkness.

Madeleine was at last in bed, marched up the stairs and assisted to undress by Miss Crafter herself. “What did you find?”

In a hushed whisper, Madeleine began to narrate her adventure, detailing the chanting noise, and creeping up to clasp the door handle.

“Ooh! You’re a brave one.” Rose gasped. “I would have died of fear!”

“And I turned the handle, and pushed open the door ...”

“Yes?”

“And there was Miss Crafter ...”

“Yes?” breathlessly.

“Teaching the servants to read poetry!” Madeleine concluded, her voice rising. Hastily, she clapped her hand over her mouth.

Rose giggled in the dark. “Really?”

“Cross my heart. Can you imagine?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Rose wanted to know.

“What a waste of time!”

“No, it’s not.” Rose quickly changed the subject. “None of us others would have dared go down to see where the voices were coming from. I think you might be quite mad. That’s what we’ll call you. Mad Madeleine!”

Madeleine protested, but privately, she was pleased. When the others heard the tale, they picked up on the nickname, praising her courage. She didn’t mind at all. It meant they thought her daring beyond any of their ken.

She meant to be more daring yet. Miss Crafter’s all-seeing eye appeared to be shuttered while she was teaching her night class. Mrs. Madison, the wife of the new President, was to be honored at a party held by Madeleine’s aunt two days hence. Madeleine had an invitation card.

That night, when the lights were down, and her roommate was safely asleep, Madeleine rose from her bed. She had purposely left her cupboard door ajar, so it made no noise when she opened it and took out her party dress. She stole out into the hall with the dress bundled in her arms to keep the crisp silk skirts from rustling. In the cupboard under the stairwell, she dressed swiftly, and wrapped herself in a dark cape. When she tiptoed past the parlor door with her shoes in her hand, she heard the respectful voice of Emily reciting a Latin poem. Madeleine recognized it as the same one she herself had botched badly only that afternoon. She felt the urge to burst in on the lesson and cause a disturbance, but it would curtail the fun she was planning to have elsewhere.

Her great-aunt’s house was only a few streets away. The card, which Madeleine kept in her hand the entire walk, had been kept hidden from all eyes underneath her lace box. She didn’t want Miss Crafter to know about it, since she would surely tell Madeleine’s father, who disapproved of his aunt’s parties, considering them to be filled with louts and coquettes. It was unlikely that he would be there, even for the honor of meeting Mrs. Madison, so Madeleine felt she would be safe from discovery.

The party went on until four o’clock in the morning. Madeleine had two glasses of champagne, which made her limbs feel rather loose as she staggered back to the school. Congratulating herself on her stealth, she made her way back to her room without awakening the house, and fell heavily asleep.

She was awakened late the next morning by Rose, who shook her urgently. “Madeleine, you must get up. Can you hear me?”

“Go away,” Madeleine muttered.

“If she does not open her eyes by the time I count five”—Miss Crafter’s precise voice came from across the room—“Emily is going to pour the pan of cold water she is holding onto the pillow. If Miss Gentry’s head is still on it at that time, there is nothing I can do to keep her from getting wet. One, two, three ...”

“I’m awake!” Madeleine exclaimed, sitting up. The sudden flood of sunlight into wine-shot eyes sent a spear of pain piercing through her brain. Rose caught her arm as she swayed. Emily set the pan of water down on the floor and helped the girl out of bed.

“You slept through breakfast,” Miss Crafter informed her. “Are you ill?”

“No, not at all,” Madeleine assured the headmistress, willfully ignoring the pain in her head. “I ... woke in the night. It was some time before I fell asleep again.” That much was true, Madeleine told herself smugly.

“If you have recovered, then please get up,” Miss Crafter commanded. “Classes will begin in twenty minutes. I shall expect to see you there. You have prepared your analysis of your stanzas of Homer, have you not?”

Thankfully, Madeleine remembered that she had. Rose had helped her with some of the Latin vocabulary the afternoon before.

The rest of the day was a blur. Madeleine found herself dozing in class, dropping off, it seemed, only seconds before Miss Abigail or Miss Letitia called upon her with a question.

Still, no one guessed the truth, and Madeleine felt she was free to carry on her evening carousing.

Invitation cards came now and again by messenger, and were conveyed sealed to Madeleine’s room. She opened them and kept them hoarded under the collars in her lace box. She confided their existence in no one, not even Rose, who, in spite of Madeleine’s earlier cruelty and constant inconsideration, was fast becoming a close friend. No one seemed ever to suspect that she was living a secret life.

“Soon, I will tell the others, and they will marvel at how I carried on so boldly, right under Miss Crafter’s nose!” Madeleine told herself, hugging the notion to her like a treasure. She dressed in the dark cupboard again that evening, and tiptoed out of the house, never noticing the tiny line of blue light through which she passed as she trod over the threshold.

Before she was more than a hundred yards up the street, a figure rushed out of the rear door of the school, and hurried after her.

* * *

At the end of one day, when the classes had been especially hard and the mistresses more than usually strict, Madeleine felt she needed an evening’s diversion to put herself at ease. She thumbed through her growing collection of invitation cards to see if there was anything going on that evening. Alas, there was nothing.

A new diversion was called for. Madeleine considered the possibilities. It was an indecent hour to call upon any of her friends. She couldn’t go home. Her father would cane her for running away from school, and haul home her things under a cloud of disgrace. But wait—her father’s warehouse on the wharf was not far away. She could easily get there on foot. The rear of the school pointed toward the waterfront. All of the servants were in the parlor, doing equations or some similar nonsense on their slates, so the way would be clear. She put on her clothing and sneaked down the back stairs, then made her way through the dimly lit streets to her father’s warehouse on the waterfront, near the mouth of the Charles River.

As soon as the door closed behind her, Madeleine felt a rush of exhilaration. Such a daring trip was frightening and exciting at once. Rumors told of terrible dangers to virtuous young girls if they strayed onto the waterfront. Even Miss Amanda Crafter, when she went to meet the trading ship commanded by her affianced, Captain Gregson, always went with an escort, most often one of the footmen, and always during the day. It would be something to go down and come back again without being caught.

It was a little tricky finding her way, since she had never approached it from Miss Crafter’s before. The streets were ill-marked, and no one was in the long rows of shops to help her. Every window was shuttered, which she found more intimidating than if they had been open and full of strangers.

At last she emerged onto the waterfront. It seemed most sinister. The very gaslights were less bright overlooking the Charles River. The wharf near her father’s warehouse was deserted except for a few men smoking in the dark, leaning against a bollard; a stray dog, and the horrible squeal and scurry of rats. Madeleine had a strong constitution, but she felt she couldn’t tolerate seeing a rat. By the echo of their scratchy feet on the boardwalk, they were surely each the size of a small dog.

Gentry & Co. was one of the largest buildings on the inner curve of the river. There was room for three ships to moor before it. At present, none that sailed for her father were in port, but by the heaps of crates and boxes marked with the names of foreign parts sprawled on the dock, it hadn’t been long since they were there.

Madeleine knew that her father had a habit of leaving a door key hidden. The location was known only to his warehouse master and himself, but Madeleine had wheedled it out of him long ago, and she knew if it was still here, it would be in the same place. Reverend Gentry didn’t trust the memories of others to be as facile as his own in recalling changes.

The heavy bar of metal was where it had always been concealed, hung on a nail inside the rain-butt at the rear of the building. Rolling up her sleeve, Madeleine felt around in the barrel. The water was very cold, chilling her fingers so much they went numb just as she clutched the key. Gasping, she fished it out, and stood massaging life back into her fingers.

Two watchmen wandered past the building, chatting. She hoped they weren’t stopping at Gentry & Co. She held her breath until they turned in to the next warehouse and unlocked the door. Swiftly, Madeleine took the dripping key around to the front and let herself in.

The darkness within the warehouse was velvety and fragrant. Madeleine lifted her nose and inhaled the strong smells of spices, tar, sea water, tobacco, and glue, all familiar and pleasant as perfumes to her. They were scents she had known from childhood. This warehouse had been a second home and a playground to her. Reverend Gentry liked to bring his little girl with him, to “teach her the business, after all, she’s my only child,” as he always said.