John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

I was so relieved that I broke ranks (as much rank as two people can be in) and ran across the hall to him. He looked so astonished when I threw my arms around him, and he looked so young that, for a moment, I thought he was the five-year-old Quentin I used to push around in Mr. Glum’s wheelbarrow.

“Quentin!” I exclaimed. “I thought you were dead! What happened last night?”

His expression was lost, hopeless. “I don’t remember. It’s gone. The last thing I remember was palming his foul medicine. I woke up in the infirmary. Dr. Fell was… he…”

Sister Twitchett came up behind me. “Miss Windrose! No talking! This is blatant insubordination. Get back in line this instant, or I shall have to bring your name to the attention of the Headmaster!”

I turned on her, blazing eyed. “And what is he going to do, kill me? Kill us all? Throw us down into Hell? I will remember you, Twitchett. Do you want to be my enemy? I will not be a child forever.” And I realized that, by saying that as I did, I was, as of that moment, no longer a child.

For a moment, I no longer feared them.

But the moment passed. I shrank back as the Sister advanced on me.

“Miss Windrose! This is unprecedented. You shall certainly be placed on report. You will behave yourself this instant! Apologize and take your place in line!”

I opened my mouth, but Victor coughed. His glance at me told me this was not the most opportune time, from a tactical point of view, for this scene.

So I merely apologized and took my place in line.

Twitchett knocked on the door of the kitchen. Mr. Glum’s voice answered. We all marched in and took our seats.

No one was there except for Mr. Glum, and he had bags under his eyes and looked even more foul-tempered than usual. Sister Twitchett turned us over to him.

Our usual breakfast with china plates and centerpieces, folded napkins, and so on, was not there. There was nothing on the table except cold cereal. There was not even milk. Cook and Cook’s assistant were not present.

Victor said, “What’s going on? Where’s our breakfast?”

Mr. Glum said sourly, “No talkin’. Rule o’ silence and all that.” He was seated at his usual place in the window box, not at the main table with us.

Colin said, “I need a proper breakfast with bacon and eggs. Otherwise I might have another fit of epilepsy.”

“Shut up,” said Glum.

“It’s a medical condition! Dr. Fell said so! You can ask him, if you like. Where is he?”

Glum squinted angrily at him. “You shut up, or I’ll give you a lip so fat ’twill stop up that hole in your face like a cork!”

I had seen Mrs. Wren at breakfast too often not to know the signs. Mr. Glum had a hangover.

It was Quentin who spoke up next. “If you please, Mr. Glum, can’t we cook ourselves some breakfast? The cooking staff seems to be absent. The kitchen is only just through that door. You want something better than toasted wheat, don’t you? I will make you a fine pot of hot coffee.”

That Quentin was talking, and talking calmly, drove a cold fury over Mr. Glum.

“Will not be quiet, eh? Will defy me, eh?”

Mr. Glum stood up, a bald, wiry, stocky man. He was not muscular, but his body was toughened by many years of work in the gardens and grounds around this house. His tool belt was in a heap on the floor beside where he sat, and he stooped, took a hammer in his hand, and straightened up again. From the look in his eye, he was ready to do murder.

Vanity jumped up to her feet. “Grendel! I mean, Mr. Glum! There’s no need for you to get up! I’ll get the food! You want me to serve you, don’t you?”

He squinted at her, dumbstruck. “Serve me?”

“Serve your breakfast, silly! I can cook, really I can. You can sit at my place, and I’ll go make you coffee and eggs and stuff. Every man wants a woman to cook for him, doesn’t he?”

“Oh,” said Glum. “Oh, aye, that he does.”

“Well, then!” she smiled brightly. She patted the seat cushion of her chair. “Just sit down here where I was sitting. I got the seat all warm for you. I’ll go put the kettle on. No one will know.”

Almost like a sleepwalker, Mr. Glum walked around the table. I could smell the soil and grease in his work clothes as he walked past my chair. He was not a tall man, but Vanity is rather short, and he loomed over her. He stepped very close indeed to her. From the way he bent his head I thought he was going to kiss her. Vanity, never flinching, kept her smile firmly fixed in place.

But Mr. Glum just sighed, and threw himself down in her seat, and put his hammer (clangk!) on the table next to his plate. He leaned back and put his boots up on the table. Tiny flakes of soil fell onto the polish.

“Aye,” he said, tucking his hands behind his head. “Who is to know? Eh? Who is to know?”

We sat in silence, staring at Mr. Glum, while he whistled and stared at the ceiling. After a little bit, there came a noise or two of drawers rattling, a crash of crockery, and a sad little, “Oh no!” from the kitchen.

Then: “Um…? Mr. Glum? I may need some help in here. Could you send in Quentin?”

Suspicion flickered in his eyes. “No, I think not. Quentin, is it? I will let Miss Amelia in there to help.”

“But she doesn’t know how to cook! She’s a tomboy!”

Mr. Glum gave me the most unpleasant stare. “I am sure she will shape up into a woman, right enough, if’n she just had a man to train her to it. G’wan, Goldilocks. Go help in the kitchen.”

Without arguing, I went to the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” I whispered to her.

“Quentin is up to something. He wants Mr. Glum to drink coffee. I’m making coffee.”

“I know all that. I mean, what are you doing putting the coffee grounds into the coffeepot? This isn’t instant coffee, you ninny!”

I found the filter and the brass percolator, spooned in the amount specified on the bag, and waited. The brass cylinder of the coffee percolator was very highly polished (Cook kept his kitchen as neat and bright as a Man-o-War) and I could see my reflection, distorted and thin, in it.

After a moment, I felt heat on my face and my nose felt heavy and there was a stinging in my eyes.

Vanity said in frightened wonder, “Why are you crying?”

“Quentin kissed me last night.”

Vanity looked stone-faced. “What? Are you and he…”

“Don’t be a ninny! He did it to shut me up! We were floating and the wind spirits were going to drop us. I slapped him. And he treated me horribly after that, ordering me around and everything!”

Her expression softened. “So what was the…”

“It was my first kiss. Dr. Fell erased his memory. And now, to Quentin, it never happened. Can you think of anything more horrible? Reaching into someone’s skull and taking away their most precious memories? It’s worse than death.”

I wiped my eyes with my palm impatiently.

When the coffee was ready Vanity insisted on making us both put on the little lace caps the maids sometimes wore. She had found them in a cupboard.

Vanity also found some white aprons. She tied one so tightly around my waist that I could not breathe. I paid her back by tying hers even tighter.

She forced me to unbutton the top three buttons of my blouse and tuck my collar under, to make an impromptu décolletage. She did the same, and also stuffed some napkins into her brassiere, to push up her breasts like a showgirl’s. (Not that she needed it to begin with.) She tried to do the same to me, but I put my foot down.

As a compromise, I hiked up my skirts till the waistband sat above my ribcage. With my blouse tails and the apron to cover it, it merely looked as if I were wearing a miniskirt. Vanity liked the look and copied me, and we spent another moment tying and untying the apron bows again, to see which one of us could force the other into the more wasp-waisted figure without fainting from lack of air.