La Residencia (The House That Screamed)

by Elphinstone Dalrymple

Therese is young and pretty, and ripe for the horrors she will encounter in every room of The House That Screamed!

La Residencia

A Gothic Romance by

Elphinstone Dalrymple

'She shrieked aloud, and sank upon the steps,

On the cold stone her pale cheeks. Sickly smells

Of death issue as from a sepulchre,

And all is silent but the sighing vaults.'

William Blake

1

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

We learn the histories of others because people always feel compelled to tell. For we all know how impossible it is to keep a secret! Because of such human foible, I feel compelled to tell you now about my secret, about the horrors that lurk behind these locked gates and within these forbidding walls. What though, is it about the nature of human beings that begs a need for disclosure? Is it a fascination with all that attracts and repels, titillation and shock, is it a need for absolution, for forgiveness or simply for a thrilling gratification of the senses? Perhaps it is all of these things, for when we listen to those who tell we take on the role of sympathiser, of confidant, of friend and advisor, and when we do derive power and dominion over their weaknesses. Is this a primal compulsion, a wish to probe into the dark and to know, to promise to guard against the night and to never tell and then never to keep that promise? In this fact, I am the same as any other person, both elated and ashamed, but unable to resist the immediate compulsion to tell. Thus, here I am, precariously poised upon my own moment of revelation, bound to your ear and ready to relate, dear reader, a story so shocking that your wits may never be the same again. Perhaps you will be both moved and horrified, feel my pain and at the same time be repulsed at what I must disclose. Yet the act of telling may prove no catharsis for either you or me, for what I must unburden might not guard against future bad dreams. Beware, when the sleeping soul recalls the horrors, for nightmares will wake you screaming.

My revelation concerns my mother and our estranged relationship, and it plays out beyond your hearth and home, beyond the village and at the edge of a shadowy wood, at the end of a long and winding road. In a dream perhaps, find us within the walls of this ancient Gothic Residence, locked away in the dark. Here, in the dark, like in all other crumbling domiciles, we cringe in its forbidding and tenebrous space; and within that space are corridors that dissolve into gloaming and doors that open upon musty rooms. Secrets hide in these rooms, and vague echoes are whispered in the shadows, and if you want to know those secrets you must dare enter and find us- but be forewarned, you are bound to encounter ugliness and ultimately revulsion. Yet before you can penetrate these chambers and their strange mysteries, before you cross the threshold and place your foot hesitantly upon the riser and stretch out your hand to the rail, hold tight, for what you are about to encounter is a surprise that may well leave your nerves in shreds, your stomach in turmoil and your unbelieving mind in tatters. This house harbours the most hideous secret of all, and though I must vainly try to prepare you for that unnamable horror, once you enter, nothing, I swear nothing, will spare you the dark at the top of the stairs!

Before encountering the dark and climbing the stairs you must first know my mother. As you cannot know her personally, I will describe her to you, for you shall have a mental picture of her physicality and her temper. Some say that mother is intellectually cold and narrow in her views, and far too strict. In her defence I say that she has known the ways of the world and perhaps it is the world that has made her cynical and harsh. Think of this statement not as an accusation but rather an illustration that my mother does not suffer fools lightly. She is most beautiful, even now in her forty-seventh year. Mother looks as if she were half that age, for the lines of time are not scratched too deeply into her visage. Despite her world-weary and aloof demeanour, there are no crows' feet at the corners of her eyes and no creases either in her brow. Her eyes, are brown, and they shine with the strangest glow. It is a soulless luminance, a cold radiance, for they flicker between the contrary pole of warmth and winter, beguiled by dim fires that scintillate with chips of amber. Red are her lips; though once sensual and rubescent they have now curved into a narrow, cynical arc, almost pinched closed. Long is her hair, and auburn, combed straight and piled up with pearl-tipped pins into a tight bun on her head. Little spots of brown do not discolour the backs of her alabaster hands and her figure, though slim, is as taut as a wire. Her narrow white fingers are not adorned with any rings or baubles, not even a wedding ring, and on that matter, she never discusses my father and never speaks of her betrothal. It is like he is exiled and does not exist, has never existed, and although I wish to ask about him I do not for fear that I will be rebuked. Once I did just that, ask about the man, and her replies were retaliatory and almost vicious, and she warned me never to speak of my father again. I still feel a thrill of revulsion and horror when I remember the terrible anger in her lovely face.

The clothes mother chooses to wear also speak volumes about her peculiar severity, for she gowns her slim frame in restrictive folds of black, in long and plain skirts, her waist encircled with a black leather belt threaded through a wide brass buckle. Her blouse is white and her tie, for contrast is black with red stripes. Over her breast is fixed a gold watch on a gold chain, an opal tie pin dances a myriad peacock-coloured sparks amid the black. These are the only baubles she wears. When she walks her back and her shoulders are straight, for she likes to give the impression that her deportment is as rigid as her resolve, and she seems to glide rather than to take step. Until recently, when she speaks, her tones have always been confident and modulated and delivered in a clear intonation; but alas, this assurance is no longer, for her anxieties are her betrayal. Once her conversations were always astute, but now she is rattled. Something has come undone, unravelled inside of her tight, black, for she was once wise but now she is unsure.

Here, in this Residence, you will find, in every room there is at least one occluded corner and in that darkness bad things take place. Expelled from mother's body in one of those shadowy corners, I emerged wailing from darkness into dawn, seventeen years ago, christened in blood and washed in sin. No man was there to alleviate mother's pain, and no man was invited to share the utterly female ordeal of childbirth, only the confidant Señorita Desprez witnessed my coming into the world. All my life I have respected and feared my mother, and she has disciplined me too, have no doubt about that, worried me for all my failings, and has persecuted and punished me whenever she was fit to do so, making a ruthless tyranny of my life. Nevertheless, I have discovered that she harbours secrets too, and those secrets, before I divulge the worst of them, she has long kept hidden in the dim recesses of this house.

Shadows stain my eyes, and I have existed for seventeen years in the shadow of exclusive female authority, caught in a repressed female abode. This house is like an ant colony and my mother its queen. Crawl inside if you dare and settle into a comfortable chair before the warm fire, while I tell you my secret, and by the time the last sentence is uttered and its echo dead, perhaps you will understand my mother's plight. Mother would never willingly concede her weaknesses to any human soul, not to her detriment, but this tale is a tale of horror and it is indeed to her detriment, not mine, that it comes to its shattering climax. I shall wait for a little while here in the dark at the top of the stairs, and although she will no doubt refuse my demands I know she will at length break and give in and I will be triumphant. Come with me now, into a twilight world of unspeakable horror. To visit we must begin our journey in a tawdry street in Paris, a long way from the neighbouring le Reposete, beyond the forest, and the Cantabrian mountains- we must travel up a narrow, forgotten road, and the road leads along a shadowy carriageway; the trace leads through the park, the park ends in the door, and the door bids you welcome to the house that screamed.

2

Avignon to Comillas

Sometimes life brings you between a rock and a hard place, between the Devil and the deep blue sea. For Thérèse Gravaine, it did just that. Thérèse, being a young woman, was not the reciprocate of choice, and now Avignon, her home, receded like the river Acheron, vanishing abruptly, and left behind as if the town had only existed in a dream. Stranded at the meridian of life, her untimeous departure dividing her from her mother and her home, Thérèse had wanted to protest her leaving, but it would not have proven any use to argue. Perhaps it was by the decrees of fate that she found herself in what she considered exile, the casualty of a doomed necessity in which she had no power to intervene. Consequently, Thérèse now found herself on the open road, leaving Avignon, and she was nervous and emotionally frail and could not wonder at how delightful the pastoral view might have been as it rolled away beyond the dusty carriage window. How could Thérèse take any pleasure in the supposed novelty of adventure when she was being forced to leave her home? The world beyond her berth soon changed from civic to rustic, and the road that led her into banishment was long and without divarication. Quickly it twisted into agony and became a dirge. The journey was ponderous, and its termination point a destination that weighed heavily on her heart. How anxious Thérèse had been, right from the beginning, anxious and distraught and sick with the reality of abandonment, when Señor Baldie informed her of her going away, and that he would accompany her as chaperon. Bravely, Thérèse had tried to make sense of this new and altogether unwanted requirement in her young life, and though she told herself not to externalise her inner terrors, she could not help but feel betrayed. Regardless, she felt only terror and did not trust the Señor, whose concern she suspected was an affectation and whose fealty to her mother nothing but sophistry.

When she tried to discuss the situation and her anxieties with either her mother or Señor Baldie, Violette Gravaine only seemed to become terribly agitated, and her hyperaesthesia had escalated into hysterics and rage. Of late her mother had suffered regular fits of anger and fits of depression followed by physical illnesses that left her weak and incoherent and insensible. During these torpors, she would lose control of her mind and her physical functions, urinating and excreting and vomiting until a state of coma made her sleep like the dead for days on end. She loved her mother, but this sickness filled Thérèse with horror, and at night, after her mother had raged, Thérèse's dreams were consumed by fearful, faceless monsters, the dreaded commentators upon madness, and she now awoke to unspeakable misery. Yet was being sent away the answer? Señor Baldie, the woman's strange and only confidant, argued that Thérèse needed to remain here, in France, with her mother, but Violette, in a now rare but lucid moment, had vented an extreme displeasure at that suggestion and demanded that the girl be removed to Comillas, in faraway Spain, for her own good. Violette Gravaine needed specialised medical treatment and she did not want her only daughter to see her descend into what might eventually be a terrible and painful and suppurating death. Yet what medical help was needed and how it was to be administered was never explained to Thérèse, who remained vague and in ignorance and dread as to the nature of Violette's mysterious illness. The mental traumas had come upon the woman so rapidly, and the physical changes that mental illness had wrought were worse. No longer was Violette pretty, but become haggard, her teeth yellowed, her fingernails grown into talons, her hair a cloud of grey straw. The woman's body had become skeletal, her visage a pasty white, and knowing that her condition was terminal terrified the poor girl. Yet what was Thérèse to do? She had no money for a sick hospital, and there would soon come a point where Violette would refuse food and medicine. Thérèse, terrified, knew she must obey her mother and go away before the men came from either the asylum or the mortuary. However, she could not understand what good it would do to be sent away when she was needed here with her mother? What if something unthinkable happened in her absence? It took a great deal of courage for Thérèse to keep her fears clamped down, more fortitude than she possessed, and she realised that she could not trust Señor Baldie, who would only tell her even more lies.

Thérèse was in her eighteenth year, she had recently celebrated her birthday, if celebrate was the correct term, for it had not been an event with cake and candles, and no one had attended. There had been no celebration, only the gift of a little antique cameo that her mother had pinned to the velvet choker at her daughter's throat. Whenever she wore the brooch she would always think of home, that is what her mother had told her, and that remark had made the young woman even more miserable. For whatever was the true reason she was being sent away, it felt no less like punishment. The feeling was altogether horrible and the separation from her mother distressing in that it was like the worst kind of betrayal, for no matter what, this parting lead directly to the death of the soul. The girl suspected all too clearly that it might be the last time she would see her mother, but that acknowledged, home had become a place that harboured the growing nightmare, especially now that Violette admitted no one to her room and sometimes cried out in agony from behind her locked bedroom door. When the decision had been made to send Thérèse away the girl had already felt disengaged, alone and isolated and angry.

No one had taken one solitary moment to discuss her mother's illness with Thérèse, or what might eventually become of her in the event of Violette's death. Why, there had been no mention at all how Thérèse was to survive in the world if her mother passed away. Perhaps provision had been made, but it seemed most unlikely. No one had ever asked if Thérèse might have liked to learn a profession, if at all a profession and a career were hers to be had. Perhaps she might have liked to sing, like her mother sang, to entertain the masses and sing with soaring notes to the adulation of the crowds. Violet Gravaine did not sing anymore. Thérèse's life, it seemed, was not for her to choose and she was powerless to protest or to have any say in determining its course. Thérèse understood that her options were certainly limited, and she hated the fact that she lived at the behest of a man she knew, but whom she hardly knew at all. It was a vague understanding at best, that Señor Baldie looked after Violette Gravaine and her daughter, that all the money upon which they lived came from his pocket. Thérèse concluded that an awful guilt lay at the centre of this drama, and that guilt was the cause of her mother's illness. Was it disgrace and indiscretion that reached out and stained the core of her fresh, young life. As her mother could not leave Paris, it had fallen to Señor Baldie to accompany Thérèse on her journey from Avignon to Cantabria, for it was not thought right that a young woman could travel that far on her own. Fortunately, for Thérèse, her schooling had not been utterly neglected, and by some miracle she had learned to speak, quite well enough, both Spanish and Italian. Regardless, communicating demanded other forms of expression that had nothing to do with words, and happiness was a weight that was heavy in the young woman's heart.

It would be a long and arduous journey, sharing a cramped coach with someone who made her feel nervous, worse even when she thought about what life would give her at the end of that long journey. Why she had to be sent so far away the girl was unsure, and perhaps it was like that awful fairy tale where the children were abandoned in the wood and forced to leave a trail of crumbs to guide them back home because ultimately their parents did not want them. If they could ever get back home! Yet, what was left of her life at this point other than crumbs supped from the estranged benefactor's table? She had no wish to appear ungrateful, yet none of this made any sense to Thérèse and it only made her morose. Thérèse watched with sick anticipation as the black Courier Coach with its blue and midnight crest emblazoned on the door clopped up the Place des Artes. Emblazoned with the legend, 'Avignon-Aix-Marseille-Toulous', it was to be the first of many such coaches to draw her far, far away. It stopped outside of the apartments in Avignon, directly at her curb, at her front gate, and she turned her eyes to Señor Baldie. They both stood silent and stared at each other in discomfort.

Thérèse thought that this coach was bound for hell, not Comillas, and there was no running away. Gripped with angst, Thérèse stifled a sob. Now that she had climbed up into her seat, her heart had filled with a queasy emotion that had spread throughout her body and mapped its poisonous resentment into every vein and every nerve. In dread Thérèse had almost burst into tears. As the carriage wheels turned from the cobbled street and out upon the open road, so did her heart move painfully into exile, pinned to the wheel of fortune, or misfortune as was more appropriate to her circumstance. Fate was the same no matter which way you looked at it, harsh and cruel. All the while Señor Baldie had tried to appear oblivious and would not engage her eye. It was all so horrible and distressing and there was no indication that Thérèse would even be happy at journey's end. Yet did anyone really care? They were travelling south, to the Provincia de Cantabria, across the border and into Spain and Comillas. It was such an exhausting Odyssey, a journey that would take the best part of three weeks. From the start, Thérèse had not been inspired with a sense of adventure. Every forty or so kilometres there was a need to change horses, for the road was long and tiring and the mares barely cantered for most of the way. The teams had to be walked up and down the hills, a requirement that dragged out the hours into eternity and drove Thérèse into a terrible boredom. From her window, the blue of the sky had at first been vaguely pleasing, but as the sun rose to its pinnacle the days invariably became extremely hot and the dust billowed, and this too slowed the team to a snail's pace. Thérèse could not help but think that she would arrive at their destination faster if she got down and walked.

Sometimes the sky became grey and a phalanx of storm clouds piled up their ranks in the arched vault of the sky. Sometimes it rained and Thérèse had to draw the carriage window closed and pull the curtains against the lightning. When this happened, they would stop by the roadside and wait out the storms, and the road would become muddy. When the rain became a drizzle they would start again, but the road was often littered with rugged potholes, and this caused the coach to bounce and rattle even more. Nonetheless, for most of the journey the sun had shone, and the carriageways stretched ever onward, long and narrow and brown like lengthy parched tongues. They crossed through vineyards and olive groves and climbed over mountains, and the passengers who boarded and later got off when the coach stopped had all become a faceless collection of shades. They smiled at Thérèse, but she could not talk to them, instead, to relieve her lassitude, Thérèse tried to read, but the carriage constantly jostled and pitched violently in the corrugations in the road as the wheels ran into the ruts. Fortune favoured them on many occasions, for no spokes split and no axle snapped. This discomfort took away any pleasure that might have been had in the passing vistas or from the reading of romance and poetry. Relaxation became almost impossible. The young woman gave up reading quickly, for when she tried her only reward was a headache. Day after day of monotony followed, fuelled by the strangely heated autumn days and the dull chatter of somniferous travellers, and this soon left Thérèse in an irritable and unsociable torpor. It did not take long for apathy to make her withdraw within her coil and sulk behind the blinds at the windows, and close her eyes against the day, tossed about mercilessly in the stifling coach interior. During the entirety of that long and tedious journey Señor Baldie hardly even spoke to her, but he chatted to all else and sundry. For this Thérèse was thankful, for she resented him and disliked him, and now she was wishing she was dead.

While Thérèse groaned in silence the coach passed through vales and fields and over the mountain ridges, by villages and forests and meadows and hills. The horses clopped along picturesque roads and continued along byways that were of lesser interest. There were roads, dry and dusty and endless, that seemed to lead to nowhere. Sometimes the roads led into towns, villages both large and small with colourful plazas all bursting with flowerbeds and bubbling fountains of clear, sweet water. Again, the carriage exchanged its passengers. In the mirror of a black river the reflection of the coach had trailed alongside picturesque vistas, by waters that shimmered with cathedral spires that danced in a hallucinatory and weaving dream. Like frescoes rendered in water colour, Thérèse saw clerestories with exquisitely ornamented windows and wrought-iron screens and grilles, behind which sacristies drew the faithful to prayer. Twice now they had encountered festivals in the towns, carnivals spinning with vortices of pretty girls whose fingers flew coloured ribbons for pretty boys dancing to the lute or the guitar. There were fetes and there were bazaars, but the kaleidoscope of gaiety did not make Thérèse smile. She watched with resentment at the world going on without a care and looked upon Señor Baldie as he enjoyed the spectacle and the riot of colour, and never seemed to tire or become bored, no matter how many kilometres they had travelled. His world of course was not her world and his understanding of her angst was obviously limited.

Southward their coach continued, beyond Poitiers and Labenne, beyond the province of Guéthary and then along the roads of the Puente San Miguel. They passed by fields of lavender that undulated in the wind and when they came to the town of Ruiseñada they drove into twilight, into evening painted cobblestone streets, into squares and markets and into laneways illuminated by aureate candles held high as the sun turned to blood on the horizon. Through these streets the people walked and chanted in a dithyrambic chorus, and they carried idols with flowing cobalt robes all trimmed with gold. The figures were radiant figures of the Virgin and the child, but each one, person and idol alike, had despair in their eyes. Mary and the Christ never smiled from their painted faces but were frozen in perpetual misery, pained in their sublime torture, hands clasped in prayer and each with a sacred heart exposed in a flaring corona, and seeping bright crimson blood from the dripping stigmata riven into plaster palms. Most of the villages were quaint, the larger towns vivid, and the bucolic peasants were friendly enough, but they warned of places along the trail that were bizarre and frightening in their customs and of thieves like the long-time bandit Plumitas, who had raided the area for many years and evaded the law, and that travellers should be wary.

There was a priory in one town that had been commemorating the Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, and from its vaginal, Gothic doorway had issued forth the sound of chanting and strident screaming. It was not the voice of the faithful at prayer but the sound of calamity, of horror and of the disturbed. The suddenness of the wailing had chilled Thérèse, and as she stared from her coach window a thin cascade of people had poured forth from the church doors and had swarmed about the carriage. Thérèse had felt in fear of her young life, and even Señor Baldie had appeared worried as the peasants had jostled about the horses, their faces like yellow parchments and their teeth broken and blackened. They had pointed aggressively in the direction of the chapel and all had begun shouting, but Thérèse did not understand. It was a brief spectacle that the young woman would not forget in a hurry and she had caught the phrase 'Es la posesión por demonios...le ayudan!' and she was confused. The fanatical noise made by the devout had frightened Thérèse, and when she directed her wide and startled eyes to the interior of the church she thought she had glimpsed a woman in a white robe writhing in the grip of a dozen men, shrieking blasphemies and foul invective from foaming lips.

'¡Usted bebe la sangre del Señor y usted come su carne!' the woman had shrieked.

The men were wrestling her thrashing body to the floor. The coach driver had calmly nudged his team forward with a gentle tap of his riding whip and the sea of people had parted and the horses had trotted onward, leaving the small crowd and the strange and niveous female behind, resigning their images to a veil of dust. Thérèse was thankful for once to be on the open road again despite the ominous threat of bandits, and it took some hours before her calm and her apathy returned.

Stopping overnight in the hôtels had become the only mercy. In the Town of Bishops, they stayed for three days, Señor Baldie was not seen for two of those days and Thérèse grew ill with panic in her hôtel room when he did not come back on the first night. She was afraid that she would be abandoned and dared not venture alone into the narrow callejon that cut between the stuccoed buildings, but at least in her tiny room at a tiny washstand, Thérèse could clean her skin of the road grime and freshen up her face and crawl into a tiny cot for a few hours of troubled sleep. At noon on the following day she partook of a meagre almuerzo, and in the evening, she was brought a meal from the tavern restaurant. She did not have the courage to leave the hôtel or the palazzo though she wanted so much to run up the boulevard and escape, but instead she climbed into bed. If only she could have done the same with her thoughts, put them to bed, but she couldn't. Above her bed was nailed a cross of walnut and pinned to that, like a tortured insect, Jesus sagged and bled and inspired a night of bad dreams filled with clamouring monsters that wore the wretched face of her mother. Thérèse found herself obsessing in her dreams, beseeching those surreal holy figures from the fetes to free her, but their bizarre beatitude was no answer to her plight. They brought no peace and the night mantled their glory; the darkness only seemed to amplify the dread that consumed Thérèse's mind.

As the journey progressed, the road to Comillas wound by orchards of purple and white grapes, of green and black olives, by apples and oranges and almond trees, and the carriage crunched along, its dutiful beasts trudging in the unenlivened noon day heat. From the window Señor Baldie sometimes watched the view because Thérèse had become so bored and uncommunicative and now only wanted to sleep. He saw ancient towns and time-weathered Castillo where no nobles now reigned; he glimpsed rivers that ran alongside fragmentary walls and centuries old gateways that opened into village squares and markets. In the towns were houses all painted white, sturdy and with balconies and there were just as many abodes that were crumbling away on rotting timber pillars. Every town seemed to have a church; some of those churches were exquisitely ornamented whereas some were quite modest. Along this stretch of the road the coach passed a ruin, the crumbling skeleton of a Gothic monastery whose façade was carved with ecclesiastical vestments.

Close by this ruin they saw a Romanesque cemetery at the entrance of which stood a white marble angel. It was an exterminating angel with fractured wings and raised sword, and Señor Baldie nudged his ward from her weary sleep and through veiled eyes she looked to the ruin as they passed it slowly by. The view was depressing, for the graveyard reminded Thérèse of the recent day that she had gone by the Cimetière Saint Ouen, and a burial she had glimpsed taking place within. Soon the burial would be her mother's and she would not be there to mourn. Nevertheless, what was so different, Thérèse asked herself, to be buried in the ground or to have your young life cut short somewhere alien and a long way from home? Each amounted to some dreadful point of darkness, loneliness, cessation and termination. Thérèse was miserable, and this exile was simply another form of dying. One might just as well be dead and gone to the tomb, for who cared?

Señor Baldie had struck up a friendly repartee with a passenger from the last stop, a gentleman of comparable age, a Señor Clavileno who was travelling beyond their destination to the Medina del Campo. The two men had exchanged talk of the bullfight, although, as Señor Baldie had joked, it was not a sport that had an appreciable following in France. Their conversation had conjured horrible images of the poor, tortured beasts and the thought of all the blood spilled in the sand had made Thérèse feel sick, but soon enough the conversation had drifted into something spoken lowly. The travelling Señor's eyes had widened in interest and Señor Baldie's tone had grown lower. As the two men whispered, Thérèse did not know what it was that they discussed. The gist of the conversation was not meant for her ear no doubt, and besides she cared even less. The things men discussed, things only men needed to know, were to the exclusion and perhaps to the detriment of women.

Thérèse pondered her chaperon for a moment. She had known Señor Baldie for all her eighteen years and yet there had never been a moment in all that time in which she had liked him. There had come a time, she could not quite recall when, that she had grown to dislike him with profundity, yet still the gentleman was ever somewhere close by. Though she knew not who her father was, Thérèse had never actually considered Señor Baldie a father figure, for she had always been vaguely suspicious of the man. Her mother neither encouraged nor discouraged that notion. In appearance Señor Baldie was tall and thin and seemingly distinguished, with piercing eyes of pale, glacial blue and a narrow, curling black waxed mustache. If he resembled the villain of a poverty stricken theatrical cavalcade, hovering in the background of her life, there could have been no better description of the man. It was his peculiar hand that made things happen, like a marionette master, always somewhere behind the scenes and mysterious.

Sometimes his presence was felt rather than seen, and as he drifted within the boundaries of Thérèse's existence it seemed his purpose was at best nebulous and senseless and dreamlike and with no obvious objective. His presence brought with it some peculiar and unspoken power to which Thérèse's mother bowed, but it was a fear too, of him, and it was through Violette that this penultimate moment of exile to Cantabria had come about. Nonetheless, Thérèse did not like the man, so why should she pretend? Señor Baldie was quite well spoken, a seemingly educated man, and sophisticated, well dressed and articulate, no doubt versed in the ways of the world. Yet that was the strange thing, his relationship with Thérèse's mother was peculiar to say the least. They never engaged in a physical love as far as Thérèse knew, and yet his involvement in the relationship went beyond the call of charity. Their home, their whole existence was predicated upon his generosity and patronage, and this was why Thérèse felt without power in her situation; she felt obliged and she distrusted.

For one small moment, the ghost of a smile flickered over Thérèse's lovely mouth, for she had cast her mind back to another time. It was a fragmented moment in a happy dream. She was hearing music, someone was playing a melody at the piano and her mother was singing. She loved to hear her mother sing. Violette was possessed of a beautiful voice, she did not trill or warble, but was able to reach the higher notes without any difficulty, and that lovely sound swept everyone who listened away and into the gilded world of fantasy. Thérèse was seated in her mother's room, seated in a little painted chaise among the glittering trinkets, the shimmering tassels and the floating silks. There were sepia photographs of her mother all along the piano case, all in frames both gold and silver, neatly stationed upon a finely tatted lace; and thereupon also resided a gilt Cupid. Cupid held a bow and his arrow was readied to fly. Eros bestowed a kiss upon the lips in those frames, upon the subtle hues of flesh that had been hand-painted upon the paper, giving each photograph a unique and yet unnatural suggestion of life. Those portraits were little slices of the past that caught Thérèse beguiled between love and remorse- 'piégé entre le monde des vivants et les morts'. The flesh tones glowed in the soft amber halo of the lamp. There was an old poster on the wall, old but still vibrantly coloured, an elegantly stylised rendering that proclaimed her mother's name, 'Violette Gravaine', and her supple, graceful figure was twisted in a strange and sinuous dance. The poster must have adorned many a music palace foyer, and yet it did not reveal too much of its mysteries, for its depiction of the woman was schematic and abstract and enigmatic at best. Singer, dancer, entertainer, she might have been one or all, and such were the enigmas of the past. On this day, in this memory, Thérèse's mother was dressed in a scarlet taffeta gown and about her slender neck there curled a soft and extravagant boa to match. Thérèse was not yet fifteen years of age, her skin still as white as porcelain and her hair tumbling in thick auburn ringlets.

It was not Señor Baldie at the piano, but a handsome man with eyes like cobalt stars and hair as black as jet, hair so black that it seemed wet and shining. He played softly, slowly, and he needed not look at the music sheet when his fingers danced across the noon and eve of the keys. He had held out his hand and invited Thérèse to sit beside him on the piano stool, and he smiled all the while as he coaxed her soft hands up to the scales, those yellowed ivory and midnight ebony keys, alternating between the hues of light and dark, of day and night, of purity and desire, and they were cool, those keys, under her fingertips. Her mother had laughed a little tinkling laugh.

'Would you like to learn how to play?' When the man had asked, Thérèse had been thrilled, and she had nodded her enthusiasm.

'Then you shall play!' the man stated, and all laughed together.

Excited and enamoured, Thérèse had then asked her mother for piano lessons. Perhaps Señor Baldie had paid for a few, but the lessons had soon stopped, leaving the young girl to cry in bitter disappointment. In the slipping moment of the present, Thérèse's smile abruptly faded, for she was certain, and she did not understand why, that the happy memory had a sad ending, one she did not wish to willingly recall. Or perhaps she could not remember because it had all been in her fantasy, in her fervid imagination, in a dream. In her mind that young girl slammed down the piano lid and the music ceased upon a boom of thunder and a flood of tears, and Thérèse returned her thoughts to the here and the now. Both bored into the gripping listlessness of ennui and emotional fragility, Thérèse had looked away from Señor Baldie and the Spaniard, and they neither perceived her upset nor gave her comfort, and again she watched a dusty and pallid world fly by through the dirty glass. Further south they rode, and they saw cloisters and cloister gardens from their coach window, although by this stage Thérèse was possessed of little interest. She heard the two men laughing in the background of her cognizance, and they were joking about the women who inhabited those cloisters, and what a peculiarly erotic disposition was theirs without men. She caught a nasty whisper from the lips of Señor Clavileno that women in such places were purely diabolical and subject to criminal outrages that were against human nature. He half-laughed that such females should be castigated for their rejection of men. Señor Baldie concurred that they were indeed diabolical, and that witches and demons were a more tolerable entity than women locked up in cloister. Thérèse had coloured with embarrassment at their talk and became even more disturbed at what might be her parallel fate.

Just after the hour of one the team of chestnut mares approached one last tiny wayside inn and its paved Plaza de la Provincia, wherein a dog barked, and a donkey was tethered, and where the humble hacienda was the less than glamorous gateway between the rising sun and doom. Outside in the road the dog barked at the horses as they turned sharply to the right. Thérèse glimpsed a stone wall and an arched gateway under which the carriage passed into an inner courtyard. The courtyard ended in an earthen glacis laid with gritty tiles of slate that inclined up to the house. They had arrived in the middle of their third week of travel in a little town and a little wayside hôtel. Hens squawked and darted between the horse's legs and flapped under their jingling harness. The driver gave a shout of 'Whoa!' and the carriage came to a jolting halt. A man with a thick dark beard, his hair plastered down by a black cap, stepped up to the door and pulled it open.

'This is le Reposete, isn't it?' asked Señor Baldie as he clambered from his seat.

'That's right, sir,' the man replied in Spanish. Another young man had already proceeded to unfetter the horses, talking to the animals in endearments and stroking their dusty manes while another team of horses were brought forth from the stables. The driver jumped down from his box seat. Thérèse sat quietly within the coach and although she was silent she remained perturbed and tense and emotional. It was a strain to hold on to her composure, for she knew the journey was now coming to its close. Inside her head, the demon of melancholy was conceding to the demon of anger, a restless spirit who had begun to kick at her insides, for she had been contrite for the entirety of the journey and it had called her a coward for not having had the courage to tell her mother that she did not want to go, or to tell Señor Baldie to go to hell. Of course, the man seemed completely unaware of her state of mind. He was merely doing what needed to be done, to escort this young lady to her new home, as were her mother's wishes. Thérèse, if she did not understand immediately the reasons, would at length come to realise that it was supposedly all for the best. Yet if that were the forecast for her life then she told herself that she was justifiably miserable.

A modest two-storey house, slightly ramshackle in its appearance, the inn loomed out of the dust. From its upper storey she could see a balcony from which clothes and bed sheets were hanging, drying in the noon day sun. There were narrow galleries up there too, from which to view the road and the world; the lower storey was white-washed mud and brick. To the east, facing the direction of the rising sun, a covered arcade supported on either side by wooden pillars led to a vegetable garden and a large well fed by an underground spring. Just off the veranda there was a trellis upon which was entwined a grapevine. The scene was pleasant but at the same time dilatory, a last post before the frontier of nothingness and oblivion. The Frenchman turned about and took Thérèse's hand, assisting her to alight. In one respect, she was glad to have arrived at a rest station, for her bones had long ago begun to ache from all the rocking back and forth, but this hacienda looked so primitive that she doubted its comforts. 'This is almost the final moment before I am doomed,' she reconciled, 'and the world will now forsake me.' Her eyes pleaded with Señor Baldie one more time. It wasn't too late yet, they could still go back, couldn't they? It was a useless plea and she understood that there would be nothing to gain in the humiliation of begging. The girl looked over to the inn and groaned inwardly.

'Put our luggage in the tavern,' Señor Baldie instructed the driver, 'and I'll come and pay you there.'

'All right, sir.'

As the new team was being harnessed to the traces Señor Baldie turned his attention to the man still sitting in the coach. 'I hope I can hire a carriage here,' he remarked, his voice betraying a degree of uncertainty. The Frenchman pulled his billfold from a coat pocket.

'Yes, I'm sure you will,' the Spaniard replied.

Señor Baldie reached up and passed Señor Clavileno a rectangle of stiff parchment. 'This is my card, visit me any time.'

The other man smiled lasciviously and licked his lips and welcomed the invitation with a laugh.

'Thank you. I most certainly will.'

'Au revoir.'

With the goodbye said Señor Baldie tucked his wallet back into his pocket and turned to his charge. Thérèse was so beautiful, fresh with the bloom of youth, white of skin and with auburn hair despite her harrowing journey. She would have made the perfect 'Matronit', an observation made even more cheerless by her fine figure being bound into its conservatively long and flowing fawn coloured skirt, travelling cloak and gloves. How demure, so demure and obliging was she in this hour of wretchedness, but she had promise this girl, real promise, but who was he to go against the wishes of her mother? It was a shame to have to send her away, but the affairs of home could only get worse with Violette's illness, and besides, he was not always there to supervise. The young woman was nearly of age, her adulthood would only complicate matters that were, to say the least, already delicate. The girl had potential, but that was primarily the reason why her mother wished to send her away, much to his chagrin.

'Come along, dear,' he sighed, taking her elbow with an aloof disdain and escorted her into the inn.

Within the course of half an hour they were seated in a rickety buggy with red painted wheels, its tray piled high with Thérèse's luggage. She was squeezed uncomfortably in beside her portmanteau. Beyond the village, through a forest, thick and gloomy and oppressively dim they passed and at length the vehicle wound alongside a great stone fence, high and imposing as if stating boldly that what lay on the other side was secluded and secret and would forever be. The wall was overgrown with climbers, spikes and thorns, like the way to the chamber of the Sleeping Beauty, and it was far too high to climb if the need to do so should ever transpire. The wall screened off the world into which she was passing and divided her from the one she inhabited, and this filled Thérèse with a terrible sense of loss and of doom. Soon they came upon an iron postern, a portal more like a portcullis than a gate, and the driver halted his horse and jumped down from his seat and waited by the grating. Peering between the impregnable bars Thérèse saw a man cresting a grassy slope, he carried a ring of chinking keys and he walked slowly as if time meant nothing and that he could move in slow motion for as long as he pleased. His vision was surreal, almost a phantasm, but surely that was simply Thérèse's tired mind playing tricks, and she blinked as if to reassure herself of his reality. He came up to the gate and did not even look at the carriage driver.

'Yes?' he asked warily, his eyes raking over the young woman in the gig, the word bespoke his risible attitude.

'I've brought a new girl,' the driver informed, but the man appeared disinterested.

Señor Baldie looked from the man to the driver and shrugged his shoulders. To the man this new arrival was simply another, like the many others who had passed through this castellated portal in the last twenty years. He had seen them all before, ill-bred and ill-fated, the lot of them.

'All right,' the man muttered at length and fitted a great iron key into the great iron padlock that held the great iron chain about the black and rigid bars. The lock sprang open and the chain rattled audibly against the iron, the gates whining in protest as he pulled them open. The driver climbed back up to his bench and coaxed his horse forward with a soft whistle.

They descended a narrow, graded road and through a vast park, the way screened by a copse of Holm oaks and conifers and Malaga trees, the lawns edged with manicured shrubs, and after a few moments they made the curve in the driveway and the great house came into view. It was a most impressive residence, as imposing as the Palacio del Marques de Comillas, a great and sprawling neo-gothic sandstone edifice with elaborate flourishes and ornamented cathedral-like windows. The main door was a great pointed arch and the façade with its colonnettes and flamboyant decorations was partially covered with thick ivy. The building was more castle than house and the sight of it sent a shiver jumping up Thérèse's spine. She did not want to go in there, but by the time the driver had done the circuit and stopped the buggy at the base of a wide set of granite steps, with a cry of 'Whoa! Stand still there!', the man they had met at the gate had loped down the embankment and met them once again. Señor Baldie alighted first and the man reached up and helped Thérèse to the ground.

'May we go inside?' asked Señor Baldie of the man, and he disinterestedly replied that they might. It seemed a silly thing to say under the circumstances, for whoever came here with their charges generally never came back. He indicated that they go up the stairs. Señor Baldie respectfully removed his hat. Thérèse hovered at the entrance, loathe to go inside, and she bit her lower lip in angst as she turned about and saw her luggage being piled up at the steps. After he had placed the last of her equipage upon the stairs the strange man jumped up into the buggy beside the driver. Even as she watched on, her eyes growing bigger with fear, the gig pulled away and retreated along the way, back through the park beyond the oaks and the Malaga and the topiary. With the carriage went any hope of freedom, and once it had passed again through that wrought iron gate, with the man remaining on this side of the way, and he had looped the chain and fastened the lock snapped tight, Thérèse knew in her heart the penultimate and most agonising moment of abandonment.

Inside Thérèse strained her eyes, for the interior was dim and her pupils had not yet adjusted to the shift from sunshine into shadow. The residence was awash with sombre shades and it was expansive. The hall was cavernous, with a floor laid out with large black and white glazed marble tiles; the stairs that led to the upper floor were wide and carved with a volute swirl at the newel post. The risers swept up with the banister, the handrail was edged with decorative scroll work. The posts were ornate with dentil mouldings and the stair pickets were of turned oak. The steps ascended to the upper floor, itself seeming to disappear into the heights of forever. Thérèse and Señor Baldie walked with trepidation. The tiles made Thérèse nervous. It was a silly thought, but any other day she might have imagined it a completely preposterous and ridiculous notion, yet here, in this place she felt that she must avoid stepping on the black tiles at all costs. That of course was impossible. Nonetheless, she was afraid that if she trod there, if her foot strayed into just one black diamond, she would be lost, and the darkness of the residence would devour her wholly. She hesitated in her stride but Señor Baldie insisted that they go forth, and as they moved into the throat of the beast the hall clattered with the echo of their boot heels. From somewhere close, but somehow muffled, perhaps by the thickness of the oak walls and doors, Thérèse heard the intonation of a female voice, repeating what it uttered and ceasing only to start again. A little chill breeze blew in from nowhere and caressed Thérèse' cheek.

'No,' she thought, 'this place hates me and I hate it too!'

Nonetheless she could not leave, it was too late, and she was trapped, the door about to shut fast upon the snare.

Thérèse had arrived at the Finishing School.

3

Dictation Lesson

'Moliēre was an absolute master,' projected Señora Fourneau forcefully, her voice carrying over the stifled agitations of the classroom. Señora Fourneau sat in her chair, and the chair was on a raised dais before a class of twenty young women. On her desk was a brass bell with a polished cedar handle, a bell with which to summon an end to a lesson or attention to a miscreant. Beside the bell was a lengthy rod, hewn of ash ready to strike at flesh, and there were several reference texts bound in various cloth finishes, some in velum. In her direct sight sat the eldest of the young women in the class, Irènée. At twenty-one years of age Irènée was handsome, but not classically beautiful. She had long black hair, gathered together in a ponytail and sensibly tied back; her eyes were dark, almost black. The young woman raised an eyebrow as she looked up as the Señora spoke, and her lips, although not thin, were pursed in an attitude that surely suggested a superior station and worldly contempt for her peers. As a resident of the school for the past four years, Irènée saw fit to take whatever advantage had extended her, and if that meant that she was not so popular with the other girls, then she hardly cared, for she considered them stupid. Irènée smiled thinly and met Señora Fourneau's gaze.

When the headmistress spoke her words seemed forceful, but those words belied an interior conflict. Moliēre might have been a master, thought Irènée, but Señora was not that here; she might have been once but now she only deluded herself upon that score. The dark-haired girl smirked at the thought for she was fully aware of the Señora's weaknesses, despite the smoke and mirrors. Those weaknesses were many, and they grew in number as the days passed. Time's promise, that Señora Fourneau must eventually step down, touched the headmistress like the shadow cast from a gnomon, crawling and yet shrinking along the face of authority's might. Although Irènée's expression remained blank she looked deeper into her teacher's heart than the other woman could ever see, and she thought for a moment that the older woman was approaching a loss. It was not simply a loss of power and control but a loss of the emotional and the physical, she was tired and strained and edgy. Irènée had perceived a storm cloud gathering about the headmistress some time ago, when the incidents had begun to plague the school. It had begun to come undone for the Señora when three of the girls enrolled at her college had gone missing. Of course, they were wayward examples of weak womanhood, but unaccountably they had disappeared without trace and were never seen or heard from again. The embarrassment this had caused had precipitated a fault line in Señora Fourneau's credibility. As a result, Señora Fourneau had not been quite herself of late and her agitations grew more frequent and impulsive. The older woman held the younger woman's gaze and she suspected what Irènée was thinking, and she raised a disapproving eyebrow, her lips betraying a slight twitch. She cleared her throat and repeated her recitation.

'Was an absolute master,' she continued, 'in creating his characters… in creating his characters.'

Irènée did not look away. It was common knowledge that Irènée enjoyed a position of privilege, and that Señora Fourneau had come to rely upon her, sometimes quite heavily. There had been times in the past, infrequent though they were, but nonetheless telling, when the head of the school had seemed poised upon the veritable brink of hysteria, and then it was Irènée who had to calm her down. What had precipitated these emotional outbursts, Irènée sometimes speculated was beyond the disappearances of a few uncivilised girls, and, she suspected, derived from some past shame of the Señora's, some past and telling personal mistake. The Señora had divulged little about herself or her family, and it seemed her only true friend was the black-clad raven Señorita Desprez. Irènée took a sort of aloof amusement from the idea that the two women enjoyed a relationship that was beyond mere friendship. She was certain that she knew part of the answer, despite Señora's protestations that all was well and that nothing had changed, even if a few uncouth young women had absconded into the night. Nonetheless these demonstrative states were occurring now with more rapid frequency than they had in the past, and Fourneau's frustrations sometimes erupted to the surface without warning, abusive and violent and unrelenting. There had occurred a few instances wherein Señora Fourneau had taken her rages out upon the students, disciplined them under the pretence of punishment for their own good. There was a strong suggestion in it all that the Señora had begun to enjoy the pain she inflicted upon her charges.

Not that this bothered Irènée, because she loathed and despised almost all the simpering wretches in the school, but she filed the Señora's improprieties away in her head and recorded the headmistress's escalating mental infirmity with interest. Despite the friction she herself always remained cool. Irènée understood that the Señora's now teenage son, Luis, was probably a primary factor concerning the woman's emotional chaos. He was a veritable invalid, closed up in a room in the school's second floor private quarters, sickly and hardly even able to walk, and his welfare had become a strain and a burden. Irènée did not like Luis, he was a waste of a person as far as she were concerned, a snivelling, weedy and morbid individual who required more attention for his miserable life than was necessary. In ancient times, such an individual would have been exposed on the hillside, to be eaten by the wolves. However, thought Irènée with a vague and secret smile playing about her lips, that was probably a better fate than the parasite deserved. Irènée returned to her class work, listening as she wrote, to the strangled stillness that surrounded her, inscribing the Señora's drone in the black ink of her pen. She lowered her head, shelving for the moment thoughts about the rather infirm power base of her superior. It was no surprise either to see that she was attired in a similar sartorial concept that mirrored the dress code of her headmistress, for if she were to wrest an opportunity for power then she reasoned that she might as well look the part too. Nevertheless, she took pride in the flourish of her beautifully rendered cursive script. Likewise, all the class put nib to ink and ink to paper, scratching out Señora Fourneau's dictation as quickly and as neatly as they could.

Señora Fourneau glanced away from Irènée and looked about the room. Her beautiful face was illumined by the glow of the afternoon sunlight as it filled the Gothic windows in the back wall. The light created an aureate halo about her visage, making light shadows under her high cheekbones and sparkling scintillates upon her scarlet mouth. She felt tight for some reason, tight about her chest and constrained by the confines of the room. The room seemed filled with dusty motes that floated visibly in the golden light, sifting over old-fashioned artifacts and time-worn books. The classroom was abruptly filtered not only by light but with a taut and horrible tension. Why did the stuffed falcon on its perch seem to have such sharp talons that she thought wanted only to claw at her, and why did the globe that promised exotic faraway lands never spin her to those far and foreign ports? The whole world was ultimately static and stifling, throbbing with unspoken apprehensions and disquieted in its resentments. At length Señora Fourneau's glance fell upon Catalina. Catalina, with her long blonde tresses roped off in a ponytail and dressed irreverently in a yellow cotton blouse. The girl was toying with her hair and idly turning the pages of her exercise book where she had scribbled juvenile obscenities, but she was certainly not practicing her writing. The older woman stood up straight, pushing back her shoulders until she was as rigid as a plank and stepped down from her dais. She walked forward, slowly and deliberately, not taking her gaze from the girl in the primrose chemise. Señora Fourneau took a dislike to that piece of flippant apparel as vehemently as she had some time ago taken a dislike to Catalina. Rebellious, troublesome and foolish Catalina; that girl defied her every day and in everything that she said and did, even down to her silly choice of clothing. This was a finishing school, not a gala party, and that dress was not suitable for the classroom. Catalina had to understand this much and repent or she would be regretting her imprudent behaviour.

Señora Fourneau moved towards the back of the room, her eyes fixed ahead, even as she noted that Catalina had begun to pick at her fingernails with a corner of folded paper. A ripple of fury scintillated in Señora Fourneau's skin, and abruptly she stopped to stand beside the stuffed raptor. Both falcon and woman watched Catalina with narrowed, hardened, obsidian eyes.

'He had an inimitable gift…' the headmistress continued evenly, but it would not be long before her voice either sharpened to a knife edge or broke with the repression of her anger, for her ire was rapidly beginning to flare. 'He had an inimitable gift…'

A few of the girls sensed the wave of the Señora's ire pulse through the room, a troubled waft of discontent, and they risked a quick glance to the teacher. One of the girls gave a stifled, nervous cough.

'Of portraying life…' continued the Señora, '…of portraying life… in its most vivid aspects… in its most vivid aspects.'

Señora Fourneau focused on Catalina, her gaze locking upon the girl, and her stare bored into the back of the girl's blonde head. Señora slid into an empty pew and her lips began to twitch. It was the fly of resentment that had settled on her mouth. At any moment, her resolve might snap like a withered stick, or she would take that cane of ash from her desk and beat this indolent young trollop into submission. Irènée watched with curious intent as the drama played out between the two women. Girls like Catalina Lacienne were the worm at the core of Señora Fourneau's troubles. They were the rebellious fools who could not keep their legs closed and who ran off into the night in search of a young buck to quell their fires. It was the one thing they all craved, a man's dick, and it was all they thought about, and the thought made Irènée suppress a laugh.

'Señorita Lacienne,' the teacher addressed the troublesome girl, but Catalina chose to ignore the intonation of her name, but rather continued picking at her fingernails in idle distraction.

'Perhaps you don't feel like writing this afternoon?'

Catalina did not respond. The girl heard several her fellow classmates take an audible breath, but silence extended the moment of suspense to its extremes.

'I am speaking to you, Señorita Lacienne,' continued Señora, her irritation welling up like lava in a caldera.

'No!' spat Catalina defiantly as she turned towards her tutor and sneered her contempt. A gasp of horror pulsed throughout the classroom. 'I don't want to.'

The girl contemptuously flicked onto the floor the paper she had been using on her nails. Señora Fourneau rose from her seat and scanned the room. Everyone was staring at her rather than at the reproachable Catalina. This was intolerable. The headmistress stepped toward the insolent maiden, and chose her words, and they were sly words, calculated to garner a fierce response from her foolish charge.

'Perhaps you are also bored with the company of so many girls?'

Catalina's eyes narrowed. She wanted to shout out that the filthy accusation the woman was making might have proved more astute had she asked it of herself, but then Catalina was not so stupid as to completely undermine her rebellion, and she realised the sharp teeth of the trap the headmistress was opening. Isabelle, the youngest student in the school, who sat beside Catalina, flinched and felt her stomach tighten. She did not like to be so close when conflict reared its ugly head. Sometimes that conflict collected you in its wave and you unintentionally became collateral damage. The young girl's fingers gripped a dangling crucifix about her slim neck, in the hope of almighty protection in the face of Señora Fourneau's wrath. Like a mouse, she shrank to the edge of her seat, pushing away from Catalina.

'How would you like…' Señora Fourneau paused deliberately, because she knew fully that Catalina was not going to like at all what was to come next, 'to spend a few days in complete seclusion?'

The entire class, everyone but Irènée, cast their eyes to the floor. Señora Fourneau turned aside and idly flicked through another girl's paper, giving Catalina a moment to ponder the inevitable. When a few moments had passed she pushed the writing book away and it rasped as it slid over the pockmarked desk.

'If I remember correctly, you have already had that experience?'

Catalina pursed her mouth shut but resisted the temptation to give a reply. Instead, she chose apathy.

'How would you like to try it again?'

With a sigh that was far from defeatist, Catalina gave a roll of her eyes. 'As you wish.'

'No, as you wish, Señorita Lacienne.'

'I don't give a damn!'

Thus, they were spoken, the words of condemnation, provoked from Catalina's own mouth just as Señora Fourneau had confidently predicted they would be. 'I doubt that,' she replied, and she edged the words with a sharp and horrible and malefic threat.

'Puede fucking duda todo lo que usted, por favor, vieja puta!' Catalina erupted vehemently.

A collective gasp of shock reverberated about the room, and it seemed that even the stuffed falcon cocked its head in attention, after which the room fell as silent as a tomb. Señora Fourneau turned her cold eyes upon the young woman and all she did was smile coldly. 'You forget your place, and your language is vulgar. It is so obvious why you are here. We shall see who is right.'

The headmistress addressed Irènée: 'Señorita Toupain?'

'Yes, Señora?'

Señora Fourneau turned on her heel and strode to the front of the class. Irènée stood up and met her at the front of the room, just before the dais.

'Accompany Señorita Lacienne to the seclusion room and come back at once.'

'Yes, Señora.'

'Here is the key.' The teacher lifted a ring that jangled with the tongues of steel keys tied at her hips and wrestled one free. She passed it to Toupain.

The whole room cowered.

'Señorita Lacienne,' Señora Fourneau summoned the recalcitrant student to the front of the room. 'Come up here.'

Catalina stood up and moved sluggishly forward. She cared little, the damage was already done. These other girls were fools because they always rolled over and gave in to the bullying. She was disgusted that there was not even one of them who might question this tyrannical bitch, and that they would take her punishments without ever rebelling. It was sadism, and Catalina knew it, the physical and the mental abuse that this woman meted out. Catalina realised that she had been singled out because she was not afraid to be outspoken, but her treatment had now veered into the sadistic. Part of Catalina knew what her punishment might be but another part of her vowed that Señora Fourneau would never know the questionable pleasure of breaking her spirit.

'May I take a book with me?' she asked, knowing of course that she would be refused.

'No,' Señora replied flatly.

'No doubt I will see you later,' Catalina smirked. She herself implying that Señora Fourneau got a personal thrill from the tortures she administered. Toupain sneered.

'Yes,' returned Señora Fourneau, wiping the smile from Toupain's lips with a withering look. 'We will have a talk.'

Irènée reached out to take hold of Catalina's elbow and propel her forth from the room, but Catalina shrugged her off unceremoniously and strode to the door. When Toupain and Lacienne reached the door, it opened before them and Señorita Desprez entered. She was an older woman, in her sixties, Señora Fourneau's second in charge, and she was dressed from head to heel in the most severe of black garments. She looked like a corseted black bird as she gave Catalina a reproachful look. Catalina passed through the door, followed by Irènée. Señorita Desprez stepped aside to allow them to leave. She barely concealed her disgust and shut the door. The raven heard Señora begin again from the dais.

'Now, where had we come to? Oh... yes... in its most vivid aspects...'

When Señora Fourneau had finished her sentence Señorita Desprez presented her with a white card.

'There's a gentleman with a girl to see you,' she told her superior. Señora Fourneau cast a quick eye over the card.

'Girls,' she called for their attention, and all the young women looked up. 'Señorita Desprez will continue dictation in my place.'

Although they were not told to do so, all the girls stood up. Someone was sniffling, and another girl suppressed a cough. Señora Fourneau walked briskly to the classroom door. There her hand hovered over the handle, like a spider's slender legs, flexing, testing, but before she touched it she spoke.

'Señorita Nöel, are you too tired to stand up?'

Suzanne Nöel leapt abruptly to her feet. 'Excuse me please, Señora Fourneau.'

The girl was all simpers and false smiles. She curtsied ludicrously to Señora Fourneau's back. The teacher turned with a waring, steely eye. Her gaze dared Suzanne to test her further. She had already sent one insolent rebel to the seclusion room and it would be no trouble to send another. Señora Fourneau opened the door and exited, closing it slowly behind her. Through the ancient timber she heard Señorita Desprez resume the dictation.

'Now, which paragraph were you up to? Ah, yes... We will continue...' The woman's voice faded as Señora Fourneau walked away, crossing the hall and gliding over its tide of black and white tiles with the dull click of her heels. At the gallery of the upper floor, Toupain was struggling with Lacienne. Irènée had hold of the other's arm and had proceeded to drag her along, Catalina was resisting.

'Go to hell!' she snapped at Toupain, and then wrenched her arm free from the other's grasp. She glared over the balcony and saw the Señora below, and the recalcitrant girl spat over the railing. A few drops of spittle flecked Señora Fourneau's cheek, but without flinching she wiped them away. Still, the volcano was poised upon the tip of eruption.

They met in the grand hall, Señora Fourneau, Señor Baldie and Thérèse. The Señora had received no prior knowledge that the man or the girl were arriving at her school and she was inwardly a little indisposed, but she managed a welcome smile and extended a hand in greeting.

'Señor Pedro Baldie,' she read from the introductory card, 'I am Señora Fourneau, the Principal of this college. What can I do for you?'

Thérèse looked at the older woman and her heart sank immediately. There was no concealing the truth of this woman; she literally oozed 'strict' despite her congeniality. Thérèse tried to smile but joy could not be coaxed to her lips.

'It's a pleasure to meet you,' began Señor Baldie, but his flattery was useless and wasted on Señora Fourneau. The Señora's eyes scanned him quickly and she made a prompt judgment. There were secrets here, behind the guise of a half-respectable looking gentleman. That much was obvious, even though the man had not even begun to speak. Señora narrowed her gaze but held her smile as the man bowed his head. 'I'd like to enroll Señorita Gravaine as a pupil here.'

'What a surprise. We have had no correspondence and no introductions,' said Señora Fourneau, her expression nonetheless blank. 'This is highly irregular. How can you be certain that this is the right school for this young woman?'

'We read about your school…' Señor Baldie stammered, taken slightly off his guard by the direct speech of the Principal. He was not used to women being forthright, for women were supposed to be submissive. 'A colleague of mine recommended your establishment. I showed Thérèse's mother your advertisement in 'Le Gaulois, le Plus Grand Journal du Matin' and we agreed upon your establishment, despite its distance.'

'I see,' Señora Fourneau replied, waving Señor Baldie's card through the air, her expression becoming wry. 'I grant you that, France is so far from here, and I truly had not expected that anyone would come such a long way to engage my services. My clientele are generally the daughters of those families in the vicinity. So surprisingly it appears that it pays to advertise!'

Thérèse gave a demure curtsy and dropped her eyes, but she could not help feeling that the older woman's gaze was critical and scathing.

'Are you a relative?' Señora asked. Her question was artfully contemptuous, and Señor Pedro Baldie, abruptly put out, confessed that he was but a friend of the girl's mother. Señora Fourneau was always suspicious of interested parties, but she gave no hint that she suspected some colourful history. She pondered this man's real motives and whether he was genuine. It was not the first time she had been duped by such people and was left with wayward teenage girls and bad debts with which to contend. The headmistress paused as if to make an unspoken statement, one that suggested that she would not be played a fool and that Señor Baldie should recognise that fact straight up before the interview went any further.

'Well,' Señora breathed finally, her cordiality overcoming her scepticism, I hope you like it here.' She stared at Señorita Gravaine with her large, dark and knowing eyes. The woman's look seemed to penetrate the girl's flesh, and Thérèse felt her guts wither. Señora Fourneau felt justified in her stance and she had delivered Señor Baldie a little soupçon of her steely resolve because she could not allow generosity to overcome business by simply admitting anyone off the veritable street to a place within her finishing school. This establishment had a reputation to uphold, despite the tenuousness of that reputation of late. 'Would you like to look around?'

Señor Baldie was flattered and shook his head in the affirmative and the odd tension that had made the conversation difficult seemed to ease somewhat. Señora Fourneau opened her arms in a wide arc of invitation and swept them about the space before her, indicating that the house was large and that there was much to see before a final decision was made. The Principal stepped to the right and motioned her visitors from the hall, Señor Baldie taking Thérèse gently by the elbow and coaxing her forward. Despite her angst, Thérèse did not protest, but remained as meek as a lamb, and all three crossed through the vast hall and went via a door into another high-ceilinged and cavernous room. This room now served as a studio, for its furniture was sparse, and different mediums seemed to engage in the different spaces. One corner appeared devoted to clay and ceramics, another corner was flagged by paint-spattered drop sheets and canvases that were stretched upon easels. Pigments that comprised the rainbow and brushes of all sizes rested alongside a tin bowl on a bench top, and the bowl was empty but for a worn and tattered sea sponge.

'This is the room for painting, drawing and modelling' Señora explained. The Principal and Señor Baldie walked to the centre of the room, Thérèse trailing a few steps behind. 'Three times a week our pupils copy from real life in oil, aquarelle and clay.' Two unfinished busts sat atop Grecian columns, their open heads spiked with wooden rods and indented with the impressions of fingertips. One bust looked vaguely Roman, almost like Caesar, the other possessed an ambiguous similarity to the Señora herself, but that was simply an impress that the artist had yet to confirm. Wetted by the sea sponge the clay could take on any form or fancy that the artist so desired.

'Some of the paintings you see hanging on the walls of this establishment are the works of our pupils,' Señora Fourneau proclaimed proudly, her voice ringing in the deserted room. Señor Baldie remarked that he was undeniably captivated by the talent on display and that he hoped the college would one day be duly recognised. Señora gave him a thin smile, for she detested men that simpered, and as they engaged in slight conversation she did not hear the creak of the door as it opened just a fraction. Thérèse heard though, and she snapped her head about in the direction of the sound. The door clicked closed again before her vision perceived anything, leaving Thérèse to stare at its dull oaken panel with a look of surprise that no one should be there.

'Thérèse,' Señor Baldie called, for he and the Principal had already begun to move toward another exit, and the Señora's hand was hovering impatiently upon the door handle. With a little vexed nod that prompted them not to be tardy, Señora asked them to follow. 'This way please,' said she, gently reminding them with those few, short words that she was a busy person and intimated that she could not afford to waste her time. She coaxed her guests to pass through, but she herself was oblivious to what had just occurred. She strode into another corridor that swept its labyrinthine way through the heart of the residence.

'I believe in healthy minds and healthy bodies for the girls entrusted in my care,' the headmistress enlightened, and as she talked her slim fingers tilted the little gold watch on her breast up so that it gleamed in the filtered illumination streaming in through a galleria of pointed Gothic windows. She noted the time as she opened another door. 'This room is for music and dancing.' It would not be long before the last music lesson of the day began. Inside Thérèse found herself gazing at a great golden harp with celestial strings that glimmered like spiders' silk in the sunlight, and there were several stands sans sheet music. Leaning against one of the stands was a violoncello. Señora swept about dramatically, pointing to the various instruments with a raised index finger as if to emphasise a higher tone to her establishment.

'Solfège is obligatory, but afterwards the pupils can choose piano, violin, harp or the violoncello.' She pointed to the instrument that lay abandoned on the floor. It caused her ire that anyone should treat such an expensive musical instrument with such flippancy and not store it properly away in its case. Yet that was the way that these girls had been brought up and a sense of duty and care was flagrantly missing from their lives. She went on, ruminating privately for a moment that so few of the girls who came to her school knew anything of music, of composition or pitch. Not many of their parents deemed a musical education valuable, not many of the girls themselves understood tone, scale or note or how such things taught one valuable discipline. To teach them was the chore of Señorita Desprez, and though she tirelessly put the girls through their paces it always seemed to amount to little that was good. Few of these young women could even mentally picture the notes or movements that were required, and then of course they could barely perform them if they did. There was simply no poetry in the clumsy bodies of these coquettes. Whenever Señora had the misfortune to take the class herself all she ever heard was the sound of tortured chromatically altered syllables, a cacophony that would have shamed the squawk of a sick parrot. Still, there were those few who did shine, but, even less were those who were interested in musical theory at all. The sinuous weave of the musical note was ignored over the sinuous undulations of their own awakening flesh. Señora Fourneau looked across the room and both she and Señor Baldie were replicated in duality in the great mirror that covered one wall.

'The bar and the mirror are for ballet exercises,' she explained needlessly. That was another loss- that so many of these girls were so graceless and uncoordinated and would amount to nothing but slutty vixens. She had seen crippled people in the circus who could dance better. 'I don't insist on them perfecting this art,' she went on, her words scornful and her mind mordant, knowing full well that such a thing was preposterous, 'but they must practice for one hour a day.' The girls all hated that, for the ballet bar tortured their muscles and the mirror joylessly reflected their misery. This thought half-amused the Señora and she turned her attention to the piano. 'Besides providing them with graceful movements,' she told Señor Baldie, and she found herself on the verge of laughing at herself and at her scepticism, 'it also provides them with useful exercises.' Her hands made little demonstrative movements in the air, her fingers fluttering like the wings of a little bird. 'Don't forget,' she went on in a half-distracted, half-serious tone, 'that most of these pupils are no longer children…' For a moment, the sentence hung in the atmosphere, the words wafting with a peculiar, unsavoury and unhealthily implied emphasis. 'Dance class diverts them, prevents them from indulging in morbid thoughts.'

Señor Baldie coloured a little and audibly cleared his throat and seemed to understand quite literally the teacher's suggestive implication. Señora watched Thérèse's reflection, tracking the girl in the corner of her eye, even as she continued her conversation with Señor Baldie. The girl walked slowly up to the piano and sat down at the stool, lifting the cover gently she began to softly tinker at the keys.

'You play the piano, Thérèse?'

'I learnt a little, three years ago, but I had to stop.' For some peculiar reason, she thought about why the lessons had ceased, but there was to be no answer. The man who had given her those lessons, the handsome man with the blue, jewelled eyes, who often visited her mother, had one day simply stopped paying visits, and the lessons of course had ended. Thérèse was saddened at this intrusive thought and her face sagged. She had enjoyed learning the piano and when she played her mother had laughed and smiled. There were days of happiness but they seemed so far and few between. All that remained were worries about her mother's illness.

'You still remember your Solfège?' Señora asked, for with a little instrumental étude, perhaps this girl might still be able to coax the semblance of a melody from the keyboard and transpose the vague ether of the imagined scale into a harmonious musicality.

'Yes, I think so,' Thérèse replied, but her voice was not filled with confidence. As she spoke she looked beyond Señora Fourneau and her glance scaled the heights of the music room door, up to the ornamental transom with its dusty and opaque glass. There she saw the wavering shadow of a hand pushing against that glass, opening it just a crack. Thérèse gave a little gasp and her startled intake of breath drew Señora's attention. The older woman's eyes darted up to the top of the door. There was nothing there, just the transom slightly ajar.

'What's the matter?'

'No… nothing,' Thérèse replied hesitantly, for how could she be certain that she had really seen anything herself? She looked down at the piano keys in confusion and gently closed the lacquered walnut lid. Thérèse felt more worry and anxiety seeping through her veins. Was someone watching them, no, was someone watching her? It was a creepy and unsettling thought that someone unseen should be tracking her progress throughout the residence. She wanted to run away, right now, but knew that to do so was impossible, and she could not tell Señor Baldie or Señora Fourneau what she thought she had seen because she did not know if they would believe her. They would say, no doubt, that it was a matter of nerves, of anxiousness, of separation and that such an emotional state was only natural but that she was only imagining foolish things. Yet she could have sworn that there had been someone above the transom, someone hiding and watching from the shadows, someone who moved quickly and who would not show their face.

They followed Señora Fourneau to the greenhouse, a lush tropical garden protected from the night's frost by the thick rear brick wall against which it was erected. This indoor garden was saturated with sunlight that glowed amber through a gallery of large, misty glass panels. Once one stepped within the structure one perceived that the temperature became quite humid with the sun beating down through its grimy panes and growing in pots and raised earthen beds were a variety of fruits and vegetables and ornamental plants. Along the rear brick wall, a row of terracotta pots was blooming with geraniums and violets, but the raised beds that made up the bulk of the interior space were seeded with all variety of edible plants, of potatoes and suedes and the leafy greens of the salad family. There were little red tomatoes that looked ever so sweet, scarlet and emerald capsicums and even strawberries in tiered planters, and they grew alongside the incongruous pineapple. Yet most glorious of all were a row of white azaleas, all blooming in big earthen pots. The large enclosed garden allowed an extension of nature's seasons, and Señora Fourneau knew it was a jewel whose maintenance she fostered seriously. All year long one could harvest basil and garlic and rosemary and sage, tomatoes and citrus like lemons and oranges were provender assured the year throughout.

'We want our girls to be expert in gardening,' the headmistress told Señor Baldie, who listened attentively. 'One of our pupils, Margueritte Selgren,' Señora continued proudly, 'became an authority on the subject.' It was truth. 'In our library, we have many of her essays on botanical specimen.' It was, unfortunately, troubling and unrelenting worry that caused Thérèse to care little for the scholarly achievements of the studious Margueritte Selgren, and she wondered if the encomium of Señora Fourneau was somewhat exaggerated. Thérèse could never be that kind of student, for one thing she knew absolutely nothing about plants. While consumed with this thought, she glanced nervously over her shoulder. Señora lead them to the exit that pointed to a path that wound about the house and branched off into the fenced-off park and the woodlands.

'They have been published in the Academia de Ciencias…'

A clay flower pot crashed noisily to the paved floor before she could finish her sentence. All three spun about to face the direction of the sound. Nothing could be seen among the azaleas and the vegetables. Señora Fourneau scanned between the ferns and the herbs too, but all she could see was a broken pot on the tiles and a scattering of red earth. She excused herself for a moment and walked back into the greenhouse. Perhaps it was an illusion, perhaps not, but she thought that she had glimpsed a shadow among the waxy turquoise fronds. The shape darted low and kept out of sight and was gone, masked by its shifting, illusory non-corporeal swiftness. Her lips tightened into a hard line. If someone was playing at games they would be punished, she would make certain of that fact.

Señor Baldie pursed his mouth upon the brink of the question, but the Señora fended his query off before his lips gave it intonation. 'Oh, it was nothing,' she reassured, just a flower pot that fell down. It was probably the wind.' When the man and the beautiful girl still hovered and failed to proceed, Señora Fourneau urged them to follow, 'This way, please,' and they left the greenhouse behind and headed towards the park so that they might briefly partake of the views before returning to the main building. They could see the high stone wall off to the right, all vine-covered, shutting out the world and demarcating the boundary beyond which lay the hay shed and the fields and the orchards, the forest, the village and the mountains beyond the road that led back to France. Thérèse heard Señora Fourneau's voice droning quietly in inconsequential conversation before it trailed away into silence, telling of how the garden in springtime was the envy of the entire neighbourhood and how only the most natural and the best of fertilizer was used in the propagation. The new student kept looking back over her shoulder.

The next stop on their tour of the residence brought Señora Fourneau, Thérèse and Señor Baldie into a lower level of the building, the kitchens. They descended into a room where garlic hung in thick ropes from a high beam and where the shelves were neatly stacked with pots and plates. Like the greenhouse, it was some degrees hotter in the cooking area, for the ovens had been fired and stoked, despite the window being open there was little air flow. However, an inviting smell of pastry cooking was emanating from the stove and in an alcove beside a narrow staircase stood a hardwood six-door geladeira made of perobo do campo. Another young woman was presenting a pie to the cook so that it might be baked. Another student, her form tied up in a white but blood-stained apron was employed at a carcass, cutting through ribs with a cruelly sharp cleaver, and grimacing unhappily as she performed the task.

'Our pupils are also given cookery lessons,' Señora said proudly, and she thought that there was some truth in the cliché that the true way to a man's heart was through his stomach and thus these girls needed to acquire domestic skills. Otherwise what was the point of their 'education' for how else were they ever to find a husband? Hopefully they would make a suitable marriage and remember with gratitude the womanly skills taught them at La Residencia.

'As you know,' said Señora to Señor Baldie, as his nose sniffed the agreeable perfume of pastry baking, 'the culinary art is most important for future housewives.'

'Future housewife!' The idea made Thérèse vaguely sick. She had no desire to be that, not when the world loved a singer, not when… Well, she confessed to herself, she really did not know what course her life should take. Of course, she hoped like most girls, that she would meet a man and she would marry that man, but she hoped too that such a man would also foster her creative spark and love her above all others. Women often died of boredom in their dank little kitchens; it seemed, with no money and no agency of their own, and no escape from the tedium of wedded 'bliss'. No, Thérèse could only pose the argument to Señora internally and never speak it aloud, for she felt that being a 'future housewife' would be the end of her existence and that soon enough, at some point, the older woman and she must clash upon the subject. It would not be a pretty day when it came, and that fatalistic idea now seeded like the vegetables in the greenhouse, to bloom and then to be consumed. Is that what was earmarked for all young women's flesh? The nasty notion made Thérèse's boots itch to flee once again. Señora Fourneau led them through the stifling atmosphere of the kitchen and up a narrow flight of steps away from the heat. Her slim fingers tracing along the wrought iron railing as the stairs lead to an upper floor. They emerged from a door into a gloomy section of the house and this in turn opened into a vast and appropriately appointed dining hall.

'There's a cordial atmosphere between our pupils,' droned Señora Fourneau, although her assurance did not ring with truth. 'Their ages vary from between fifteen and twenty-one.' Señora Fourneau was chatting and Señor Baldie was listening, although his ward seemed distracted, even mildly agitated. Glancing at Thérèse the Principal added: 'Although I am sure that the Señorita will shortly meet new and good friends among them and that she will soon feel absolutely at home with us.' Thérèse was far from convinced. They hovered in the room, looking about at its fittings and marvelled at its width and breadth, here might be seated one hundred people, and all quite comfortably. There were candle trees at either ends of the tables and each table was spread with starched, bleached linen. Settings were laid out with utensils forged from tortured silver. A large, Jacobean fireplace of polished oak, with a castellated shelf and top, commanded its own space, but no fire was lit within. It sported intricate and boldly carved leaf adornment, and on its frieze, a pair of life-like caryatids on the jambs observed everyone who entered the room. Their eyes were smooth and with hollowed-out pupils, and they wore crowns of woven grape leaves. The supports and the plinths of the grate were twined with acanthus, and they terminated in unadorned foot blocks. Thérèse half-expected the carvings to blink and to move...to groan aloud their unrelieved boredom.

'This of course is the dining room,' said Señora, and as she spoke she glanced at the clock on the wall as it marked the passing hour, ticking loudly, its pendulum lazily swinging back and forth. Music class would begin soon, and she would have to relieve Señorita Desprez. 'Would you like to see the dormitories?' The caryatids seemed to sigh at the provocative invitation. Señor Baldie raised his eyebrows in surprise and did he detect just the hint of a vaguely insulting smile at the corners of Señora Fourneau's lips? 'No,' he returned flatly. 'That won't be necessary.'

Señora lead the way from the dining room and they walked into darkness, as if traversing a tunnel, for the light was extinguished for a second and all that could be discerned was only the click of their boots upon the hard floor. Thérèse reached up her hand in the dark, for she thought she had glimpsed a chain dangling from the shadowed, vaulted heights. It was indeed a chain and it sounded the clang of a bell as she tugged at it nonchalantly. The bell rang sharply throughout the house. At once Thérèse felt a little foolish and flooded with reprimand and regret, and she let go of the iron links. Señora Fourneau threw her a look of censure. When all three of them, Señora Fourneau, Señor Baldie and Thérèse had emerged from the passage and into light they were once again in the main hall, standing again in the middle of that sea of black and white tiles. They had come full circle. Señora turned about and looked at her new pupil. Her expression did not lie, for it told the young woman that she must learn a modicum of respect. Such silly impulses must be restrained or there would be consequences to face. Thérèse read the look and coloured with embarrassment.

'How old are you, Señorita Gravaine?' There was a vague but hostile authority in the Principal's question.

'Eighteen and a half,' Thérèse responded with reserve, and Señora simply stared at her for a long moment. Old enough not to act like a child.

'Have you ever been to Finishing School?'

'No, Señora.'

Señora Fourneau glanced at Señor Baldie, but she said nothing further. Nothing needed to be said, the young woman had already been chastised for her impetuousness. Such things, she must learn, and quickly, were not permissible in this establishment. It was best to wise up now and integrate before stepping alone into the big, bad world. Or that world would eat you. Turning on her heel, Señora headed towards the library, stepping over those dreaded tiles and Thérèse roiled in her stomach and roiled equally as much in her mind. She knew she was going to hate it here because the atmosphere bespoke of no joy. Down the grand staircase came a maid, an older, grey-haired female all tightly corseted in black and wearing a spotlessly white apron and cap. Señora Fourneau hailed her to approach.

'Ah, Marie,' said she, holding up her index finger as if to add a visual punctuation to her words, 'would you please take Señorita Gravaine to the dining room. It is five o'clock; she might like some tea and biscuits.' Señora turned to Thérèse and gave a thin smile. The new girl understood that she was being deliberately excluded, but there was nothing she could do to protest the fact. Instead she curtsied and nodded her acquiescence. 'We will join you there in a few moments.'

Marie dutifully led Thérèse away.

Alone with Señor Baldie, Señora Fourneau addressed him solemnly. 'Shall we go into the library?'

'Certainly. After you, Señora.'

As they walked toward the library Thérèse disappeared again into the darkness of the narrow tunnel, swallowed up by the shadows.

'Please sit down,' Señora Fourneau instructed Señor Baldie, and she waved him into a leather-buttoned chair. Shelves of dusty volumes comprised every available wall space, their green and red and blue spines stamped in gold and ebony. None looked as if they were ever actually read. Señora Fourneau approached her desk and sat down. There were a few files on the desktop, a crystal ink pot, various letters of correspondence and an ornate stone box. There was also a bone-handled letter opener gleaming silver in the lamplight, sparking with flaring stars, as lethal looking as a knife. Señora Fourneau reached over and took up her nib.

'Name of the parents?' she asked as she opened her ledger.

Señor Pedro Baldie crossed his legs and fidgeted absently with his hat. He paused indecisively and seemed at a loss as how to speak the right words. It was as if he might be trying to avoid some surreptitious confidence, one that might incriminate by implication. Señora Fourneau noted his discomfort.

'Her mother's name,' said Señor Baldie at length, 'is Violette Gravaine.' He mumbled a few words incoherently and then cleared his throat. 'She… she is a good friend of mine. As I said…'

Señora Fourneau placed her nib back in its stand and she looked him directly in the eye, her stare cutting through his words like a knife cuts through cake. There was no more need to pretend, for the knife was sharp, glinting, lethal.

'I want you to know that we are discreet here,' she told him, sounding strangely earnest and yet at the same time totally threatening. 'Particularly with what concerns the parents of our students.'

There was a moment of awkward stillness in which neither of them could speak one word.

'A friend of mine told me,' Señor Baldie stumbled under the tidal force of the Señora's personality, 'a Señor Moreau who lives in Avignon, about your school. He recommended you to me, knowing that you would understand our requirements. He showed me the advertisement in the newspaper and I showed that to Violette. However, Violette has not been well and was unable to make the journey here to take care of these arrangements. You understand, of course?' Señor Baldie cast his eyes to the floor. 'Violette only wishes,' he continued, 'that she could educate Thérèse herself, but I am afraid that is impossible. She is not well enough to do that, so I came in her stead.'

There came then a strange little sparkle to his eyes that Señora Fourneau suspected intimated something even more obfuscated than the matter of a woman's illness and a girl's finishing school enrollment. A secret perhaps? Señora Fourneau laughed behind her mask, sizing up this pathetic 'gentleman' with a summary look and a disinterested shrug.

'Well, she can stay with us until she comes of age.' Señora Fourneau pondered why the need for such a vast distance between mother and daughter and no doubt she understood the answer. Señor Baldie nodded his acquiescence and he seemed relieved, even though he did not take his eyes from the woman. She was predatory and cold and not an individual who was easily outsmarted.

'All we need to know is the name of the person directly responsible for her, and the sum of three hundred pesetas per term must be always paid in advance.'

'All right,' Señor Baldie agreed. 'Her mother's name is Violette Gravaine, Place des Artes, Avignon.'

Señora Fourneau repeated the information under her breath as she reached again for her pen and made a new entry in her ledger. Señor Baldie placed his hat on the desktop and took his wallet from a pocket, extracting the required sum of money, and passed it to Señora Fourneau.

'For two terms in advance,' he told her as she counted it.

'Would you like a receipt?' she asked as she stood up and crossed to a bureau from which she took a box. Quietly she folded the money into the box and returned it to its place in the escritoire.

'No, that won't be necessary.'

Señora Fourneau returned slowly to her chair, her movements inexorable, calculated. A little tremor passed through her regal frame as she placed her lovely white hands upon the curved back of the chair. Her slim fingers traced along the grain of the polished timber, flexing and caressing and then gripping until her knuckles turned white. There was a faraway, cold and altogether unsettling look in her eyes and her tone ratcheted up to a tighter note.

'Let me be frank with you… this school specialises in students whose character is… shall we say… difficult. Señor Baldie, you already knew this. That is why you came here.'

Her face had become a featureless mask and she held the Frenchman to her declaration so that he almost trembled in his seat. 'There are few among them, I must admit, who, in spite of their youth, have not exactly led exemplary lives.'

Señora Fourneau's eyes darkened to polished agate and she avowed; 'In order to bring them back to the right path I must run this establishment with a firm hand!'

4

Dinner and Luggage

Thérèse sat alone in the dining hall, in a hard, stiff-backed chair in the middle of a refectory table flanked by thirteen other chairs. Another table of equal length and breadth and seating composed the opposite side, and a smaller table was positioned at the head of the room. Two great candle-trees, both of gleaming silver and both branched by nine tall tallow candles was positioned in the exact middle of each table and at either end. The wall behind was bisected by a large Gothic sash window set in a casement of mahogany; the lower half of the portal was down and latched. The window drop was hung with dark, heavy drapes that were partially pulled back. The last of the afternoon sunlight was dying in its tall and pointed top section of coloured leaded glass. Stains of refracted colour pooled transparently on the tabletop, but still the room was depressing and gloomy. There were no paintings on the walls to offset the tall and heavy pieces of furniture; the ornate fireplace, and a hutch behind the table at which she was seated, rose high and spread wide. On the dresser's open shelves were neatly stacked water glasses and cutlery and napkins. An elaborate Swiss clock with a monotonously swinging pendulum was the only object hanging pinned to the wall, and as the girl glanced at it the hour rang out five.

Filtering from another room Thérèse could hear a piano lesson in progress, a lesson that no doubt must soon be finished, and she cringed within at the sound of the jagged notes. Whoever played was an amateur, one who was struggling, for the notes lacked any level of proficiency. They stopped and started and went awry, unable to reproduce the marks of tempo with any expression or tonality. The handsome, dark-haired man who used to give her piano lessons would have quipped that whoever the player, by the sound of it, could never hope to be virtuose. Having been seated for over half an hour, Thérèse had begun to get bored, listening to that broken attempt at melody while she wondered fretfully at the outcome of Señor Baldie's interview and of her fate. Earlier, Marie had set out a bowl of tea and a few biscuits on a starched and white napkin. The beautiful French girl stared at her cup of tea, and she imagined the conversation that Señor Baldie must have had with Señora Fourneau. They would have been discussing her life, her character and her moods, and her mother. Shuddering, Thérèse conjectured the irrational, that there were other things they would talk about, her health and if she had ever had carnal knowledge. Those were things that should remain unspoken, though somehow, she understood that should he be asked, Señor Baldie would have obediently given Señora Fourneau all the information that he knew upon the subject. Casting that thought into the pit, Thérèse knew that whatever the outcome, she was to be imprisoned in this house without any say in the matter, and Señora Fourneau would at length fashion her into a proper lady.

Thérèse shook her head in defeat and the clock struck the quarter hour. The girl had removed her travelling cloak and draped it over the back of the chair beside the one in which she sat. Perhaps she would be chastised for being untidy, but at this point she was too depressed to care. Stirring the teaspoon through the tea only made a spinning vortex that spun to the bottom of the cup. It chinked against the china and Thérèse saw her vague reflection in the brown, milky liquid. At the cup's rim, as the liquid settled, she glimpsed the ribbon about her neck; a choker of crimson velvet, and pinned to it was a lovely little cameo, her mother's birthday gift. Thérèse liked to imagine that the girl in the cameo was herself, and that she had sat an entire afternoon in a roof-garden studio as the artist's model. The girl put down the spoon and absently toyed with the brooch and its pale face only made her think again of her mother. Señora Fourneau was most definitely a commanding and intimidating entity and in no way, could she ever be considered a substitute parent. Thérèse had to concede that the woman exuded harsh, and she did not warm to her at all, nor she doubted, would she ever. The Principal of the college could not conceal the hard edge of contempt that steeped within her lily-white skin, and she made no bones about the fact that in this realm she was in command. No one should be fooled by her mantle of exquisitely crafted flesh and make the mistake that she was nothing but a feeble woman, for her controlling psychology was strongly evident. She seemed to be a person who would brook no foolishness. As Thérèse ruminated over her new Principal she raised a sweet biscuit to her carmine tinted lips and her eye travelled over the table. To her revulsion a large brown cockroach scrabbled obscenely toward her plate. It crawled and wriggled upon the purity of the napkin, resembling a faecal stain, and with a startled gasp Thérèse dropped her cookie and snatched up the napkin, swiping at the insect repeatedly and flicking it to the floor. On its back it twitched and shuddered, and grimacing, her pretty face knotted into disgust, Thérèse put down the napkin and retrieved her biscuit. When she raised it to her mouth again she found her appetite had completely disappeared and the thought of eating made her stomach turn. She replaced the biscuit on the napkin and sat in quiet misery as the clock continued to tick and the broken music continued to play.

When the piano at last stopped Thérèse gave a quiet sigh and began to think about what was to become of her life and what the results might be of this 'education'. It was then that a low sound broke into her reverie, for she heard the creak of a door opening slowly, covertly. She saw the curtains ripple in a silent breath and looked sharply in the direction of the sound. The handle of the door by the fireplace gently rattled and moved downward, and the oak panel opened just a crack. Beyond the crack was a void of black in which could be perceived nothing. A shiver ran up Thérèse's spine. She sat frozen for a moment, unable to move, staring at the door handle and at the door, but it opened no further. There was someone there and that unseen individual was staring at her, she knew this to be true. Although she could not make out their form she sensed their presence. Was that the flashing glint of light in a mad eye that she caught in those last and waning rays of the sun? The fleeting moment caught the breath in Thérèse's throat and a frisson quaked through the new pupil. Alarmed Thérèse stood up and her heart began pounding like a hammer. Hesitantly she walked towards the door. With an almost involuntary step she approached that crack into darkness. The girl stood hovering before the window and the flowing, partially drawn drapes, uncertain that the wind had not blown the door open. She stretched out her hand to the door handle.

'Señorita,' pronounced Marie abruptly. 'Would you be looking for something?'

Startled Thérèse snapped her figure about to face the maid. Marie was standing by the great ornate fireplace with her hands clasped together before her apron, her face a blank sheet of wrinkled parchment. Marie seemed ignorant or simply unaware that there had been someone, or at least a noise on the other side of the door. Fear ran a cold little stream through the girl's veins.

'No,' Thérèse replied defensively, looking back at the door. It was closed. 'No, I wasn't looking for anything.' Foolishly she apologised and returned to her seat. If terror was to be her future, Thérèse wanted to be gone immediately, and she cursed the Frenchman for depositing her in a cloister so far away from civilization. Who knew what would happen to her in the end, the prospects were frightening.

'Have you finished your tea yet?'

'Yes,' Thérèse smiled limply.

'Why don't you eat the biscuits?' Marie indicated the untouched cookies on the saucer. 'They're good ones. Cook made them herself.'

Thérèse flattened her palm upon the starched linen spread out beside the biscuits. All she could think about was the obscene insect. The thought of that horrible thing so close to her food had negated any desire to eat. 'No,' she said queasily. 'I'm not hungry.'

'Then keep them for later,' Marie suggested strongly, and then added, 'you won't get much to eat for supper.'

There was an awful insinuation in the words that made Thérèse ponder just what it was that she would get for supper. The terrible notion that the girls of this establishment were perhaps deprived of food caused her even more alarm. Diligently she wrapped the biscuits up in the white napkin and carefully held them in her hand so that they did not break or crumble. Things seemed to be only getting worse as the day progressed, worse by implication, and it had become almost impossible for Thérèse to distinguish any future light of escape shining to guide her from this dark and bleak house.

A girl stood at a lectern, trying desperately to stand straight. She did not appear to be enthralled and her vocal delivery was monaural. Upon the point of boredom, she was reciting long and dull passages from some long-unremembered Greek lore.

'Aeneas the true made his way to the fortress where Apollo rules on high…'

At first, the story had captivated Thérèse, but she wondered if the recital were not in fact some form of exercise that she must commit to memory only to be queried and tested later as to how she had listened and what she could remember. It did not take long before the words lost their sheen, for even the girl speaking them aloud seemed disconnected by their dry monotony.

'Into the vast cavern beyond which is the awful Sibyl's secluded place…'

Was the dark cavern of the Sibyl to be discovered in this house? Was Señora Fourneau the awful Sibyl? Thérèse had not learned much by way of antiquated writings in her life, but she vaguely understood who the Sibyl was, and it scared her again with a wish to flee this house. For this building might have been likened to the 'awful Sibyl's secluded place,' wherein the captive women breathed anxiety and agony and pain. The girl at the podium continued to describe the Sibyl's ocular shrine, and the blinding light that streamed from the murky and secret realm of the Delphic Priestess, the light of future troubles and reckless deeds and death. Down there, in the bowels of the earth, in a hollow riven into the rock, lit by a burning brazier, that was where fate waited. Thérèse looked nervously about the dining room. All the chairs were full now, but one. The unoccupied seat shivered lonely at the end of the table, its place set with an untouched plate and bowl and water glass. Thérèse noted that true to Marie's prediction, not a great repast had been set out for supper. The food had consisted of a bland and insipid lamb and haricot bean stew, the odour wafting from which proved far from tempting, a soggy apple pie for dessert and a glass of water. No condiments were offered and no dulcification.

'Here the prophetic Delian God breathes into her the Spirits' visionary sight, revealing things to come…'

As Thérèse sat dumbly she could only ponder what revelations were to come and hope that she did not encounter trouble, but she knew something dreadful was inevitable. A pall of utter silence hung over the dining hall and Señora Fourneau presided at its head, seated at a table at the top of the room, watching with harsh eyes. Every once in while the stern superintendent sipped from a glass of water, but her gaze as it scanned the dining hall never faltered. She was watching for the slightest indication of misbehaviour. Señorita Desprez was seated at her right, absently cutting up her food and barely putting it to her mouth. Marie was going between the tables collecting the used plates and piling them onto her tray.

'They were already drawing near to Diana's wood and the golden temple there. Daedalus, for this is the story, had ventured his life in the sky…'

As the girl continued she described a horrible adventure, one which Thérèse only partly understood. A mythical place was being depicted, an island in the middle of the wine dark sea upon which there was built a winding, secret and inescapable prison. Over this prison there presided a cruel king named Minos. This monarch was insane and he had laughed maniacally at the gaol's architect and his son. There was a frightening episode in which the two men were bound and lowered into a pit upon the king's command.

The oration continued monotonously: 'Daedalus had consecrated his wings to Apollo, for whom he had founded a gigantic temple. On the temple gate, he depicted the death of Androgeüs… Lower down, the Athenians obeying the ghastly command to surrender seven of their stalwarts under his annual reparation…'

As the students masticated their insipid food, the girl reciting went on to describe the boy Icarus.

'Father,' addressed the youth to the elder, 'how are we to escape, how do we seek for the way out?'

Just like Icarus Thérèse didn't like her confinement at all, for she perceived it as more punishment and incarceration than boarding school. Was she ever going to be free of oppression and perhaps one day get out of this place? All Thérèse wanted now was to simply go home.

'We shall not venture out, but up, into the sky my son, into the sky, into the realm of Helios.' This Daedalus had told his son Icarus, for their confinement must soon come to an end or they should be smitten by a monster that stalked for their blood. Few of the girls were paying much attention.

'Father,' sayeth the son, through his tears and entreaties, concluding that they would soon be dead, 'the sky dome is so high. How are we to go up?'

'We shall fashion wings from these feathers…' Daedalus, for it is told, was wily and dexterous in his craft, and he had pondered escape even as he had looked upon the black-sailed barques that brought to the island the tribute of the fourteen virgins. He had gathered together a bale of coloured plumes and with frantic fingers had worked wax and gut string and a cunning set of springs into wings so that the two, himself and his son, might soar into the firmament and fly to liberty above the Icarian Sea.'

Nonetheless there could be no wings and no liberty for Thérèse. She wondered whether her mother would have approved of this place, and if not, would she have recanted her plea to Señor Baldie to take her daughter away. Thérèse had begun to feel the disquiet in her nerves again and to deflect a flood of tears she began to unwrap her biscuits from the napkin. The oral went on and Señora Fourneau continued to watch.

'Do you want one?' Thérèse asked a girl, passing a biscuit and the girl was at first delighted and then checked herself. Thérèse noted her hesitation and her eyes flicked in Señora Fourneau's direction. The headmistress was not looking directly at them.

'It's all right,' Thérèse reassured, and the girl took the sweet and smiled.

'The island in which Kronos stands rising high above the sea…and the intricate Labyrinth, wherein dwelt the hideous monster…'

The discourse now conjured that monster in a vile tale of virgin sacrifice, of seven young men and seven young women, brought by the Athenians and thrown down into the pit. The Minotaur being vexed, stomped in the pit, for it was a twisted and deformed horror that partook of human flesh, a monster spawned from some unspeakable and unnatural union. Into the yawning abyss the youths and maidens were tumbled, thrust down, the virgins launched like stones, their faces screaming, distorted masks of unbelieving terror as they fell. Onto the marble flagstones many feet below, each youth struck the ground with a sickening thud, sprawled bruised and with shattered limbs, and they moaned in their agonies. Those that could stand struggled to their feet. There was not one youth who did not slip in the gross puddles of stinking filth that had been excreted by the creature and was spattered all about the walls. Death exploded from the red darkness, rushing to meet them with baleful eye and gnashing fang; and the prey were seized with shredding claw and smashed between slavering jaws. The monster stalked, sprinted upright as a beast should not, striding like a giant man deformed by bent leg and cloven hoof. It bellowed and roared, and there was to be no escape, for the scent of blood was a euphoric lure, the bait that drew the hellish creature to its target. The corridors of the maze echoed with ghastly screams and many died thereupon the spot; those that could run had nowhere to hide, and in terror where they pursued through the winding passages, eventually caught and torn asunder, limb from limb.

The monster rent its victims, ripping out hearts and lungs and intestines, pulping bone, flaying skin and staining the walls all livid scarlet. The Labyrinth was awash with blood, horror and violence, and its twisting halls resounded with the most dreadful cries that have ever called out upon mercy. Soon the halls sounded only with the squelching noise of the cloven hoof as it stamped in human gore, and the discordant latration of the beast's triumphant roar, the sporadic grinding and smashing of bones, the revolting ecstasies of virgin blood lapped like ambrosia. At length, the monster paused in its sickening mania, having caught the scent of something other in the thickening air. The smell it sensed was a malodorous and pungent waft, stronger than the stench of its own faecal matter, stronger than the smell of the kill. The creature lifted its horned and ghastly head, its fleshy, blood-smeared nostrils snorted steam and it raised baleful eyes yet could not behold what it sought. From somewhere the smell of fear fanned from pores sweating pure terror. It could not see the man and his son as they trembled in the dark, but it knew they were there.

Some of the girls blanched at the thought of excrement and they looked at each other in disgust and put down their spoons. It was not a pleasant recital and they were glad that they had already finished most of their eating. A couple of girls giggled and then stifled their laughter. They had been thinking that in this school, even the basic commodity of toilet paper was so often in shortage. Irènée sat at the other table, flanked by a blonde and a brunette. She was staring at Thérèse and the dark-haired girl was slowly peeling the skin from an apple. The green coil drooped and hung in the air as the knife slid around the fruit. It was like someone stripping off their clothes and exposing the ivory skin beneath. The blonde girl looked up and was about to engage in a whisper, but then she noted Irènée's interest in the new pupil and fell silent. Irènée was ever so suggestively biting into that apple. In that act, the biting of the flesh of the fruit with its spurt of sweet juice and the wetness of Irènée's lips, a thousand words might never have described its intent. She was most certainly no innocent as was Eve, and she stared at Thérèse and the girl felt uncomfortable. Was this then the 'awful Sibyl' whose telling light shone upon all the reeking sins of the female flesh? Such temptation, from sweetness into sin only made the moment worse. Having anticipated the 'cordial atmosphere' that Señora Fourneau had espoused, Thérèse looked away shielding a vague sense of loathing, but Irènée held her stare. What was so wrong in that gaze? The girl ate slowly, almost grinding the fruit to pulp and swallowing only to take another bite, executed with the same emphasis.

Thérèse's mind fumbled with Irènée's exaggerated expressions, frightened by concepts that she had never had to deal with before, of erotic yearnings of a homosexual nature. In her life, Thérèse had for the most part been shielded in her innocence from such vice and perversion, and such sexual manifestation, as she understood, was to be encountered in its diversities only in places of ill repute. It spoke of a love that Thérèse did not understand, for such love was a divergence from the normal predispositions of man and woman. It was an allure, a beguiling, the temptation for the delight and joys that bespoke gratification in the indulgences of the same sex. In that girl's look was surely a sensuous manifestation and its compulsion was crude and sinful. A shiver of Sapphic desire was flowing from the dark-haired girl at the opposing table, something primitive and depraved that might well be disseminating throughout the entire school. Thérèse felt her heart begin thudding in panic and Irènée took another bite of the apple and smiled knowingly.

The tale continued the horror and dread.

'There in their midst, as a warning to wicked love, the offspring of Minos and Pasiphaë, child of two breeds, the Minotaur sought the architect Daedalus, the one who had caused the its incarceration, a man who had tinkered with the nature of obscenity and madness, used his wizardry to fashion a wooden caricature of bovine life, and who had inadvertently precipitated its most vile and unnatural birth.'

Thérèse trembled in disgust. 'A warning to wicked love,' words that described perversions just like Irènée's gaze suggested corruptions. Sexual relations with other women and now with animals had coloured the imbibing of supper with a truly disgusting palette, one as off-putting as the nasty insect that had crawled upon the napkin earlier that evening. Sickened in her stomach, Thérèse could hardly comprehend such criminal acts, for they were offensive and indecent, and she could see the other girl knew the turmoil of her feelings. Irènée seemed almost upon the brink of laughter for what she knew to be Thérèse's naiveté. One of the girls giggled and Señora Fourneau looked sharply about the room. The girl at the lectern cleared her throat noisily and went on.

'The Minotaur had roared in anger, replete in its fetor of brimstone and thunder, and had spasmodically flicked its tail and strewed fresh wads of stinking faeces up the walls and over the floor.'

'Find a way out fools!' the mad king Minos had called down to Daedalus and Icarus, down into the depths of the abyss, and the youth had untangled his ropes and worked to set his father free. 'Perhaps my depraved wife's offspring shall spare you, but I doubt that!' Minos had screamed. 'Quickly, quickly, run, it comes, it comes!'

The monster came to kill and to feed, anticipating the glorious wine-red blood of youth as it stumbled along the twisting halls of the cavernous lair, its cloven feet echoing like claps of thunder. Daedalus and his son had looped the wings they had fashioned to their naked shoulders and they leapt from the parapet of the Labyrinth straight up into the sky.

'Don't fly too close to the sun,' warned the elder.

'I can almost touch Helios, father, look!'

Up, up and higher still, up to the burning disc of the sky god, crowned with a golden halo they volted. Below the sea was blue and the earth was a great round jewel spinning in a void of black nothing.

'No, my son, no!'

'Oh, but to know such glory!'

Icarus beat his wings harder, faster, climbed steeper, sped swiftly to the glowing furnace of the star. Too high, too high. Ah, the folly of youth, for the price to pay was sadness and sorrow for his arrogance. Pride, denial, youth, strength, vanity. Foolishness.

A torrent of hot, softened, waxen tears. Death fall.'

Señorita Desprez, unable to eat, put down her cutlery in a bored apathy and took a sip of her wine and suppressed a yawn. She had heard all the Greek legends and tragedies before, and then some, and there was no magic left in such tales for her. In fact, life itself might as well offer her nothing by way of surprises, for although these silly young creatures did not think so, she had seen much in her sixty years and little perturbed her emotionless demeanour. She turned and gave Señora Fourneau a blank and drained glance. The Principal responded with the ghost of a smile. She had known Señorita Desprez for a long time, in fact long before they had set up this school together, and no one knew the Señora better than she. If the older woman was now growing fatigued and bored with these restless and ungrateful young women, then it was probably time to finish for the evening and to send them to the dormitory. The clock on the wall with its lethargic pendulum swinging to and fro, chimed the hour. The girl at the lectern had finished her paragraph and was about to commence unenthusiastically upon the next adventure.

'Enough,' Señora Fourneau commanded. 'Enough, Señorita Perriere.'

The girl gave a thankful sigh, for she was at last released from the agony of reading to the class and now she might drink a glass of water. She closed the tome before her, careful to mark the page with a dangling ribbon of red silk. Along the tables, as if the act had been choreographed, the seated girls, every one of them, dutifully rolled and tucked the white serviettes into brass napkin rings. They waited silently for Señora Fourneau to release them from the formality of the dining table. After a calculated moment, the Señora stood up. Her movement from sitting to standing was executed in an elegant punctuation; the same could not be said about the pupils. They clattered and scraped the chairs on the floor and the sound grated in Señora Fourneau's ears.

'You are excused, Señoritas,' she told them, dismissing them quickly and they began filing towards the door. Señorita Desprez had already taken her post by the dining hall entrance and was watching the girls as they passed. Her face was set in a mask of disapproval, but she did not see Suzanne extend her hand and lift an apple from the table. The girl enclosed her hand about the forbidden fruit and tucked it within the folds of her long skirt. When all the girls had reached the staircase, they began to ascend to the dormitory on the second floor.

'What's your name?' a girl asked Thérèse as they went up the stairs.

'Thérèse Gravaine.'

'Did you bring much luggage?'

'Everything I own,' Thérèse confessed, curious as to why she should be asked.

'I've run out of stockings,' the girl told her. 'They've all got holes. Can you let me have a few pairs?'

Why the girl's family could not send her new underclothes troubled Thérèse and she quite suddenly and wretchedly realised that the girls with whom she would be boarding had been exiled from home and hearth. They had nothing. With that horrible realisation came another horrible thought, that she too had been exiled and would soon have nothing. She was now locked up and forgotten. Thérèse would have begun trembling had another student not told the other girl to be quiet.

'Oh, shut up, you!' the girl snapped back.

Señora Fourneau and Señorita Desprez followed the girls up the stairs but they did not hear the conversation. There was an unspoken insinuation that talking on the stairs was forbidden and that some of these girls curried favours by telling tales when they caught others being bad. In a few brief moments, the girls had reached the landing and they all filed dutifully into the dormitory and began at once to undress for bed. Señorita Desprez took her post once again by the door, to supervise and when she was satisfied that all the girls were inside she nodded to Señora Fourneau.

'Señoritas Toupain, Fragonar and Rigeaux…' She paused as the summoned young women, the blonde and the brunette who had sat beside Irènée at supper, came up to her side. 'Will you please come with me?'

They nodded their acquiescence and marched in behind the Principal as she strutted briskly down the gloomy, candle-lit corridor. Señorita Desprez closed the dormitory door and returned downstairs to supervise the closure of the residence for the night, she would return soon to lead the girls in their prayers. The moment the door clicked closed, as if it were upon a silent signal, a young girl by the door exclaimed 'It's all right, she's gone!' There erupted an explosion of chatting and giggling. Most of the girls had stripped to their underclothes, glad to be free of the heavy garments forced upon them by a ridiculous dress code. Some were now removing shoes and others were undoing laces. They swarmed about Thérèse and Thérèse was besieged by a barrage of excited questions.

'What's your name?'

'Where are you from?'

'Shh! Quiet a moment,' one girl reprimanded. 'Not so loud,' she warned and glanced to the door.

The girls closest the new pupil reached out and gently touched her in welcome.

'Her name is Thérèse,' espoused the girl who had asked for the stockings.

'Yes,' Thérèse replied, almost overwhelmed, 'Thérèse Gravaine, from Avignon.'

'Oh!' exclaimed the girl who had taken the apple. She pulled the fruit from her skirts and began to eat it, talking as she did so. 'Do you know my aunt, she lives in Avignon?'

'Don't be stupid, Suzanne!' snapped another dark-haired girl in irritation. 'How could she possibly know you or anyone in your family?'

Suzanne gave a shrug but she didn't seem to care. The girl who had spoken took on the role of spokesperson.

'I'm Hélène,' and she began pointing to the other girls. 'That's Isabelle, Clare, Cécile…'

'I'm Suzanne.'

'My name is Margueritte,' said the girl who had asked for the stockings.

'I'm Julie,' gushed the girl who had been giving the recital, no longer the victim of apathy but now animated and happy.

'You'll soon get to know us,' said Hélène, and she smiled and in that smile, was a small extension of friendship and understanding that made Thérèse feel a little more relaxed.

'Can we look at your luggage?' Suzanne exclaimed excitedly. When Thérèse consented, a whirlwind of girls descended upon the new pupil's belongings. There came gasps of pleasure as the straps on the cases were undone and the trunks were thrown open. Fervid hands plucked at the clothing, pulled forth petticoats of crinoline, shawls of silk and a short jacket and numerous blouses. A girl called Regine snatched up a shawl and Margueritte donned a hat and posed before the looking glass. She giggled and passed the hat on to Regina and Regina in turn pirouetted and fluttered her eyelashes. Thus, were the clothes passed from girl to girl, and each girl tried to imagine what best complimented her figure, and they exchanged salutations and gentle criticisms until the raucous calls of delight and astonishment began to fade and the fabrics, piece by piece made their way back to Thérèse.

'You family must have a lot of money,' remarked Suzanne as she placed a pretty pink blouse with a pretty pink rose with a pretty pink ribbon threaded through the lace against her bosom.

'Oh, no,' Thérèse admitted openly, half ashamed that most of the contents of her ports were hand-me-downs.

'These things are such good quality,' Suzanne remarked, admiring the soft feel of the chemise between her fingertips and imaging that it was hers to wear. 'Isabelle,' she gushed, 'doesn't this suit me?'

Isabelle ignored the girl and quickly plaited her long blonde hair.

'My mother gave me most of these things. She does not need them anymore.' Thérèse's excuse was the truth but it was of little relevance, for Hélène had selected an emerald tornure from the largest portmanteau, and she unravelled the whale bone corset and dangled the provocative undergarment before the eyes of the new girl. Thérèse blanched but Hélène only smiled.

'Did this belong to your mother?'

It was appalling that Thérèse should be so humiliated in front of these girls, that anyone should think but for a moment that her mother dressed inappropriately. A flush of rose coloured Thérèse's cheeks and she grabbed at the corset and wanted to hide it again.

'Yes,' she admitted lowly, for she did not know what else to say.

'Well,' Hélène said, 'I think it's lovely. Will you sell it to me?'

It was a moment of quiet impasse and Thérèse handed the corset back to the other girl. 'I'll give it to you.'

'Thank you,' Hélène returned and accepted the gift with grace. Nonetheless, the girl still wore a look of concern. 'Does your mother know anything about this school?' she asked.

'I think so,' Thérèse lied, for little had been discussed with herself upon the matter. Señor Baldie had taken care of most of the arrangements.

Cécile interjected as she pulled on her nightie. 'Do you think your parents will let you leave here if you want to?'

Another girl passed the hat back to Thérèse and thanked her for letting her try it on.

'Of course,' said Thérèse, but how could she be sure? She began to fold up her clothes and to return them to their cases.

'Then you won't be staying here for much longer,' said Cécile, and there was gravity in her voice and consternation in her face as she looked to Hélène.

'Three have already escaped,' said Hélène, confirming every suspicion that had been growing within Thérèse that her stay at Señora Fourneau's institution was not going to prove a pleasant experience.

Fresh, young Isabelle called to all three girls, waving her tiny hand in the air. A little fulvous fire sparked on a slim chain about her neck, a confirmation cross made of starry orpiment that gleamed in the pale-yellow light of the great lamp. The cross scintillated as she skipped to finish dressing. 'Thérèse, Señorita Desprez will return in a minute. Get ready, quickly.'

'Don't listen to those two,' said Suzanne, stooping down to unbutton her right boot. 'You won't find it all that bad here.'

'Well,' Hélène whispered, 'tomorrow, when you see Catalina… that is unless they keep her for another day and night in the punishment room, ask her what she thinks of the place.'

'Who is Catalina?' Thérèse asked Hélène as she reached up to her throat to unfasten her cameo, and she remembered the empty chair in the dining hall and pondered the unnamable horrors of the 'punishment room'.

'A nice girl,' her new friend replied, and then all three fell silent.

5

Punishment Room

Catalina had waited for hours in the dark of the seclusion room, and she had spent those hours contemplating the abominable actions that must surely follow. Catalina cared less now, for she had been punished before on several occasions and now she hated Señora Fourneau, for she was an egotist and a frequent visitor to the voyeuristic pleasures of watching as her cronies made young women scream. Perhaps she would try to make Catalina scream tonight, but the girl had vowed that no matter what the punishment, she was not going to give Señora Fourneau the satisfaction of her cries. With an almost calm resolve she awaited the events to come, and soon enough she heard the footfalls upon the boards in the corridor and the lock sprang back and the door pushed open. Orange light from the candle flame washed into the chamber and Catalina rolled over in the rude cot and faced the women. Fragonar and Rigeaux entered first, they were followed quickly by Irènée who was holding aloft the candle. Fragonar and Rigeaux shuffled to the side as Señora Fourneau entered and the door was closed and locked again. Catalina simply looked at them all with bored contempt, but she did not stir from her bed.

'Well,' remarked Señora Fourneau, 'have you thought about your behaviour this afternoon?'

Catalina did not respond. Irènée placed the candle upon a narrow shelf. Around the bed the other girls took stations, like sentries flanking the gates to hell. Rigeaux was breathing quickly for her tightly laced bosom heaved as she trembled.

'Are you ready to apologise in front of your friends?' asked the Principal, but Catalina continued to remain dumb and merely batted her eyelids slowly, indicating her boredom. 'Señorita Lacienne, I am talking to you.'

Catalina still did not speak, and then Señora Fourneau declared with more emphasis, annoyed at this churlish performance. 'Answer me.'

The troubled student gave a tired groan and turned again to face the wall.

'Don't ignore me. Get up.' commanded Señora Fourneau, and when Catalina failed once more to respond, the Principal exploded. 'Get up!' In a wild asperity Señora Fourneau began twisting up the smooth lines of her porcelain visage. The candle light glinted in her eyes and made fire in her auburn hair. She resembled a constrained fury. The penitent student rose from the tousled cot and stood up defiantly before her mistress. The three other girls waited like cats, perched upon the brink of springing, with claws bared and fangs dripping with anticipation.

'You are a bad influence not only on your friends but on the other girls as well,' Señora pronounced, but Catalina did not show remorse of any kind. The girl wanted to ask why it was so bad to have feelings, and what right Señora Fourneau had to crush those feelings and kill whatever spirit for living Catalina held within. 'I will not stand for your insolence any longer,' the headmistress declared vehemently.

'Why don't you throw me out?' Catalina responded, for this confinement made no sense to her at all to her. All she wanted was to be gone from this house, to escape from this boarding school and find happiness, if that was at all possible.

'There is nothing I would like more,' the Principal seethed, 'but your people insist that you must stay.'

Catalina heard the word 'people' and how Señora Fourneau substituted it for family. It seemed that the punishment was really all about being a young woman and not about anything that you had done. Catalina's people only insisted because they saw her growing into womanhood and that brought with it problems that their repressed Catholic beliefs found too confronting. Oh, yes, she remembered being packed off to the finishing school straight after the commencement of her female cycle. Tears and pleas had not returned her to home, but Catalina had hardened somewhat in the interim and she was not even sure that home was where she really wanted to be, for it too was no longer welcoming. In exasperation Señora Fourneau snatched at Catalina's fingers as they played in her golden locks. The woman's eyes narrowed into hard and bronze slits.

'This is not the first time that I must punish you,' she declared, justifying her bent for discipline and pulsing visibly in her growing rage. Irènée watched on with eager expectancy. 'Remember?' Señora paused so that Catalina could recall the incident of her former mistreatment and squirm in terror. Catalina hardly even flinched. 'Now,' went on Señora Fourneau, and she was almost at the extension of her patience for her palms itched to strike the girl, 'for the last time… will you come down now and apologise in front of everybody?'

That was just it, that was the fuse at the heart of Señora's power, the submission and the humiliation, but Catalina was not going to concede. Instead she looked aside and smirked, and Señora returned the look with a chilling smile.

'All right. Take off your clothes.'

'What?' Catalina replied incredulously, shaking her head in the negative. 'I don't think so.'

'This is an order,' Señora Fourneau reiterated, her voice pitching into a higher register. Irènée and her two cronies simultaneously took a tentative step forward. 'Take off your clothes,' the headmistress demanded.

'This time you will have to do it!' Catalina hissed and threw her head back in defiance.

'As you wish,' Señora Fourneau said flatly, turning to the waiting women and signalling with a wave of her hand that they should commence. 'Go on.'

Upon that command Fragonar and Rigeaux leapt forward and grasped at Catalina's supple flesh. The girl struggled. Fragonar gripped Catalina's right arm and twisted it up painfully behind the girl's back, wrenching it higher until the pain almost made the victim cry out. The assailant's fingers went deep into Catalina, indenting and bruising the skin, and pushing in close, Rigeaux hooked a foot about Catalina's ankle. Roughly grasping Catalina's left arm, they grappled and struggled to overbalance the girl. Catalina gasped and fought, but she did not scream, not even when her shoulder seemed to be upon the point of dislocation.

'Get your hands off me!' Catalina spat out in indignation. 'Get your hands off me, you bitches!' Catalina reviled her attackers with a string of profanities. 'Consiga sups mamos de mi. usted mullah assures que lame a hembras! Le matter, jury. ¡Degema if! ¡Le odious! Steads son condos son secados ya, le joden, ¡vete a tomar por culo!'

Fragonar raised her other hand and clamped it upon Catalina's lips so that no further abuse should issue forth from her dirty mouth. Yet still Catalina managed to utter brokenly through the gag of fingers that closed off her mouth and restricted her breath, and Irènée moved toward the bed. The women thrashed and wrestled with the girl, tearing at her clothes, stripping off her girdle and rending her yellow skirt. Catalina's tormentors tore at her clothing and they pushed her forward as she fought against them, popping the buttons from her yellow blouse and rending the fabric from her bosom, exposing her breasts. They did not hear Señora Fourneau's sharp intake of breath as she beheld the girl's exposed bosom. Irènée licked her lips, and Catalina in disgust spat into the older girl's face. Spittle flecked Irènée's cheek and mouth, but the act of expectoration only stoked the fire of Irènée's passion, and she wiped the spittle away and continued to claw at Catalina's chemise. In a crazy tarantella, the violators forced Catalina onto the bed and pushed her face down into the dirty sheets so that she could barely breathe. Rigeaux made a long tear in the back of Catalina's blouse and the saffron taffeta came free from the girl's body and was thrown against the wall beyond the bed. With her free hand Toupain began to strip away the rest of her victim's clothes, and as she pulled the long skirt she hooked her fingers into the girl's drawers.

The room began to spin with the wavering shadows conjured by the nacarat flame of the candle, and amid the shadows the light and the dark began spinning and whirling and blending together in Catalina's vision. Copper and red and fiery hues spun into a maelstrom that blended with Señora Fourneau's white face, and she looked like a demon, some hideous Euryale, her eyes aflame, while about her a trio of harpies flapped black wings. The Señora crossed the room, stepping around the struggling girls and presented Toupain with Catalina's discarded belt. Irènée's mouth became a thin red slit as she smiled coldly and brushed the belt away. Instead she reached up to a hook on the wall and retrieved a leather whip. The whip had a turned, tightly wrapped handle with a loop for hanging, from its shaft flowed several supple leather tails that promised both pain and pleasure in the deliverer's stroke.

In the dormitory at the other end of the house the students were hurrying from the bathroom and back to their beds. The beds had all been turned down, white sheets against dun coloured blankets, and the big room was awash with muted candle light and flickering shadows. Señorita Desprez was returning from below, they saw her approaching through the open door. Like a crow she hobbled into the dormitory and made a visual sweep of the room. Two girls scuttled past and dashed for their sleeping bunks, hurriedly tying laces and fixing errant strands of hair. All the lights would be extinguished within moments and the girls had to line up before their bunks.

'Hurry up, Señoritas,' Señorita Desprez called for them to finish. 'It's late.' The older woman intimated their positions, waving them to stand still with a flutter of a wrinkled claw, and then she clasped her wiry talons together and began to pray. She closed her eyes, genuflected with a cursory stab at her head and her heart and began chanting.

'In the name of the father, the son and the holy ghost…'

In repetition, all the girls bleated like sheep.

'Thou art our refuge and our shelter,' they intoned, twenty voices as one, strangely muffled in the stale airs of the dormitory. 'Thou shalt be our shield and our strength. In your protection, we shall find peace.'

Yet each one of the twenty knew that peace was not to be found, nor protection either. For although they could not see the vile act as it was meted out, they understood the horror and the violence that was taking place down the hall in the punishment room, even as they prayed to a hypocritical deity. Prayed that the kiss of the lash should never have cause to rend at their fair skins. Wisely, Señorita Desprez preferred ignorance too and cast out any thought of Catalina's plight, but continued to lead the girls in their benediction.

Catalina continued to curse, even with her young body thrust upon the bed, face down into the stained and sweaty sheets.

'Beat the Devil out of her,' thought Señora Fourneau, and she shuddered as if there were a lizard crawling in her skin.

Lined up in the obfuscated shadows that filtered through the dormitory, the girls continued to pray: 'We will fear for evil things,' they chanted, clinging to hope that their lot would never be like Catalina's, 'that appear at night… and we will be vigilant against sudden death and any injury that may befall our companions…'

Young Isabelle grasped her confirmation cross as she sang to God on high, both fervid and fearful that her life should ever embrace the dire predicaments that had befallen Catalina Lacienne. 'We will be ever grateful in the light of thy eternal presence…'

Señora Fourneau turned and sat down at a bench and nodded that Catalina's punishment should commence. Toupain gave a smile that warped her mouth into a misshapen line and raised her whip and lashed out. The leather tips sliced through the stale air and stung Catalina's back, hot and sharp and painful. The sting set the girl's back on fire, like a droplet of acid, like a nettle that penetrated and lodged in the skin, a lash that hurt and wounded and throbbed and burnt. A scarlet welt appeared immediately, and Catalina shook in a spasm of agony, but she did not scream. In her mind, she cursed Irènée and she vowed revenge, and the pain was so intense that she shut her eyes and imagined she was completely enveloped by the dark. It did no good, for the whipping tendrils flicked back and arced again in the air and bit into her flesh a second time.

'Father,' continued the dormitory congregation, 'we recognise your miserable pain and suffering and the harm that befell you.' Hélène had clasped her eyes shut tightly and her voice trembled as she prayed. 'Send us, oh Lord, thy nocturnal guardian angels to protect us…'

The lash bit into Catalina's back, resonating in the air with a serpent's hiss and again brutally meeting the girl's soft flesh with a sickening thud. Toupain raised her arm over and over, merciless and grinning in ecstasy, and in her frenzy, she did not see that Señora Fourneau could not drag her own eyes from the spectacle of pain, that the headmistress sat upon the edge of her seat with her hands clasped together in her lap, the knuckles turned white. Six times the whip rose and fell, and on the sixth assault a spatter of crimson spurted from Catalina's tender flesh and flicked into Irènée's face. As Toupain wiped away the blood Catalina's eyes were swimming with tears, but she choked back her screams and went limp with submission, no longer struggling against the beating.

'May those guardians protect us with their own hands,' chanted Suzanne, unconvinced that in this house there were really such beings who had the power to shield one from harm. 'That we may not suffer unto evil wrath,' sang Regina, imaging the wrath that tortured her friend Catalina right now, right at this moment. 'May we know forgiveness and humility,' finished Andrée, crossing herself and scrabbling along with all the other girls into their cold and friendless cots.

Irènée's whip made another stinging arc in the flickering light and raked across the prostrate girl; a spray of vermillion now speckled the pillow. Catalina lay broken on the bunk; trickles of ruby were pouring down her sides and staining the soiled bed linen. Her tormentors forced her legs apart and Toupain looked upon Catalina's exposed vulva. Irènée stooped and flipped the whip handle about so that she now gripped the other end, bunching up the lethal tassels, and she pointed the handle between her victim's legs.

'Enough!' commanded Señora Fourneau, but Irènée ignored the order and advanced; the tip of the lash handle with its quivering leather loop poised but inches from the beaten girl's cleft.

'I said that's enough!' shouted the Principal, and she stood up and was trembling from head to heel.

Fragonar and Rigeaux released their grip on Catalina and stood back, one wiped a film of sweat from her brow; the other placed her hands on her hips.

'Goodnight,' said Señora Fourneau, dismissing her squadron of harpies, and she unlocked the door and let them pass into the hall. Outside in the dark they waited for their leader, Irènée Toupain.

'Goodnight,' Irènée said tersely, flinging the whip aside and Señora Fourneau snatched out and caught the blood-christened cat-o-nine tails in her grasp.

'Goodnight to you,' replied the Señora. 'Say your prayers.'

Toupain chortled and left the room. Señora Fourneau waited until their footsteps had faded in the corridor before she returned to the room and looped the whip upon its hook. She walked up to the bed and looked upon the exhausted, quivering form of Catalina Lacienne lying thereon. The Principal sat down on the edge of the bunk.

'You made me do this to you again,' she spoke to Catalina, but her words were not an excuse, neither were they meant to reaffirm that it was the only option left for the headmistress if the child was so willful and insolent. Catalina did not respond but remained silent. The older woman lent over to the shelf and picked up an ewer and a cloth and began to dampen it with some water. She daubed at the punished girl's naked back. Catalina did not flinch, even though the water stung almost as much as the whip and her exposed nerves leapt with fire.

'Don't you realise that I cannot allow anybody to defy me?' Still the girl would not utter a sound. 'Not even you.'

Señora Fourneau's eyes roved over her student's bruised and shuddering body. Reaching down the headmistress pulled up the sheet, up to the girl's hips, covering her buttocks. 'You know this, don't you?' the Señora said weakly, as if justifying the brutality of her regime.

'Try to understand my position,' the Principal urged a response from the girl and sighed when one was not forthcoming. 'Please?'

Catalina closed her eyes and a stream of tears spilled from their corners. There was pain and humiliation, wasn't that enough?

'I'm sorry, Catalina.' Señora Fourneau trailed her fingers lightly along the tracery of scarlet wounds that crisscrossed Catalina's back and then she stooped down and placed a long and lingering kiss upon those wounds. A smear of blood stained her lips. 'Get some sleep,' she told the girl, 'I know I won't.'

As if driven by some concupiscent primal urge the Señora licked her lips.

The woman stood then and did not look down again. She daubed at her lips, wiping away the remaining iron-salt taste of the girl's ichors and she opened the door and crossed into the corridor. As she closed the door the shadows blackened her face and she stood silently for a moment, as still as a block of carved stone. When she looked at the door to the confinement room it was as if she were looking directly through the timber and into a room filled with the darkness and the totality of the void, but there was no expression on her face. Emotions always festered on the other side of doors, she thought to herself, and it was better when the door was closed, that way others could not see, did not perceive even the slightest hint of your own vulnerability. It was a peculiar notion, that all which separated her from desire seemed to be the narrow panel of a wooden door, but in this house, there were many doors. Many doors hid many secrets, but secrets always had a habit of being exposed. Señora Fourneau did not hide her emotions as well as she thought she might. Toupain saw her faults, and she had not wanted to stop the flogging, and secretly Señora Fourneau did not want her acolyte to stop either. For the pain was ecstasy and liberating, and who really cared for the recalcitrant little bitch, Catailina, anyway? However, she caught herself in a doom-laden slice of providence, and Señora Fourneau locked the door, trapping her victim within, closing Catalina up in an oubliette as black as pitch and as cold and lonely as was her frozen heart. Closing that door meant temporarily closing away love's outrage, for such love that diverged from the normal was an immorality against nature and must be rebuked through homicidal censure. That Señora Fourneau's own mind felt desires that were ambiguous bothered her. She had never felt this compulsive urge before, despite the ongoing rumours. Where had it come from, this merciless predisposition for the fresh youth of Catalina Lacienne?

The frenzy of the whipping had awakened a fierce aching hunger within the Principal's heart, and just when that hunger had begun gnawing away at her insides she did not know. Nonetheless it was in her now, calling to be fulfilled, roiling her mind with an agonising turmoil that she did not understand. If Señora Fourneau gave that vice license over her world then everything would collapse, she knew this, and she could not allow even the slightest whisper of gossip and rumours to emerge. Judgment and opinion, should they discover the strange predisposition for one's own sex and latent torture, had the potential to vibrate beyond the walls of this institution, beyond the thick oak doors of the punishment room, and ultimately prove her undoing. Toupain knew this too, but could even she be trusted?

After a few moments had passed Señora Fourneau moved and the shadows moved with her, and as she navigated the narrow passage she clipped the key to the punishment room back on the key ring at her hip and then passed her hand across her brow. She glanced at her little watch and she felt strangely excited and curiously terrified at the same time. She closed her eyes for a second. Her heart was in turmoil, and it thudded like a mallet, her veins were bubbling with an overspill of lava. Señora Fourneau took a deep breath and composed herself and walked on, her heels rapping hollowly on the wooden floor. She could hear the tinkling tintinnabulation of a music box jangling in the dark and at length she came to another door which she opened.

6

These Girls are Poison

Down the dark corridor she comes, and I can hear the ire and sense the determination echoing in her step. There is no mistaking the fact that she is angry. For a moment she stops outside of the apartment, hovers like a bird of prey and I liken her to that motley stuffed falcon on its perch in the classroom; I can imagine the ruffling of her blackened feathers and the wetted sharpening of her red, red beak, ready to spit words of castigation and hurt. In one hand, I hold a tiny music box, it is shaped like a miniature heart, a tinkling, clockwork heart. Lamplight flickers amber on its gilded, painted surface. With my other hand I raise a glass tumbler to my dry lips and take a sip of water. Her arrival always precipitates anxiety in my mien, and it is all I can do to calm the beating of my own heart. Forcefully she throws the door open and a storm of discontent enters the room, rushes along the passage like a blast of cold wind. Fills the space with pitch. Flowing in on this black tide she sweeps down the short corridor and into this room, past my drawing easel, its canvas all drawn with interlocking geometric circles and lines and numbers. Navigating a path under the four Swiss clocks that decorate the wall, she weaves like a pillar of black silk, a tenebrous vortex that spins through the spaces between the hard and austere furniture, honing her vision and her ears to the tinkling sound of the musical automata. With dark solidity, she materialises before the table at which I am seated.

'Why did you watch the new girl?' she accuses. 'Why did you follow her around all day?'

I do not answer her, do not want to answer because I know it will be useless to defend myself against her stupid recrimination. Instead I block her vision with the breadth of my hand as I hold the little heart up to my gaze. Thus, I ignore her, pretend that she does not exist, absorbed by the jingling notes coming from the little musical apparatus that I hold. A wonder is the music box, a tiny thing that makes an aerial and soothing sound, making me think of pleasant dreams, of floating airs and fragile, happy memories, dew-soaked mornings, lying in a drifting punt on the river under painted skies, or the hush at twilight, instead of black and horrible shadows. Instead of this fury- my mother. Slowly I wind the tiny stud in the back of the heart so that the music shall not stop. I alone hear it playing my rapture in Hephaestus' workshop, finished upon his anvil, fashioned with a tiny, tiny hammer.

'Answer me!' she demands, and her eyes are furious, her form tightly bound and wrapped in sable, shuddering in a paroxysm to contain its wrath. Mother is a tempest made manifest, one that threatens destruction.

'It's not true,' I tell her, and I laugh inside. How could it be true, me, in my condition? Is she suffering from a delirium, a temporary lapse of her sanity that she thinks I could so easily jump up out of these leg braces and dance about the house. If anyone in the world should know about the pain that I suffer because of my half-crippled limbs it must be her, so why does she accuse so? The grace of God denotes that she need not know orthopaedic discomfort, that she need not wear uprights twisted in a blacksmith's forge, bound to her legs and finished with leather straps that rub and hurt, just so that she may have the privilege of standing upright and walking straight, the advantage of storming doors and the dispensation to accuse.

'I don't know what you are talking about,' I reply, and I deliberately clank my knees together under the table so that she can hear the iron braces ring a dull descant.

'I saw you,' she reviles.

'I don't know how that is possible,' I think, but I did not risk saying the words aloud.

She bends over the table, closer to my body, closer to my face, her big dark eyes blossoming like moons in eclipse.

'Why do you always watch the girls and follow them around?' Slamming her palm down flat upon the table emphatically as if to underscore her disgust and her authority, the table shakes and the glass of water I have been drinking trembles. What she is proposing is preposterous and she knows it, but it seems that it is always easier to lash out at me. This conversation would be humorous if it were not for my injuries, why, the scoliosis in my spine makes it even difficult to stand up properly let alone walk for extended periods, and none should know better than she. My lips purse open and I am about to retort when her hand flashes out and she slaps the little heart from my grasp and sends it spinning into the air. The music box flies by the stretched canvas on my easel and strikes against a piggy bank that sits upon a shelf. Gold dipped metal chinks against pale pink porcelain. The abrupt violence makes me flinch. Perhaps she will beat me, throw me down to the floor and kick me with her hard, sharp heels as she has done in the past.

'If you are not watching these girls you are always tinkering with something!' Exasperated she points a finger at the guts of one of the clocks that I have taken down from the wall and splayed out all over the table. Groaning she intimates that I am surely an imbecile that she must deal with to her constant regret. 'What of these!' she bawls, swishing aside my drawings. 'What are they?'

'They are orthographic projections, mother…'

'Ortho what?' Her eyes grow bigger and wilder with incredulity, as if I am deliberately obfuscating some ridiculous fact. It is odd that she should even have noticed the sketches, although I doubt she understands their detail, and yes, I do like to look inside of things, to see and to understand how the world works. Clocks fascinate me, clocks with their precise gear work, with their whirring components of cogs and wheels and plates. In the guts of the clock are to be counted the span of a human life! Clocks tick off the minutes of one's existence, but when those minutes cease… Well, how could I even begin to explain to mother about such complexity of thought? My illness has made me feel that the clock has stopped for me, halted upon the point of my youth and denied my participation in the things other boys take for granted, like standing and walking and running, and loving. Yet I have begun to think that perhaps this biological disability might be interwoven with the mechanical, a marvellous and revelatory thought, and then I could be a designer of my own Time. Recently, I have read the writings of Leclanche and Graves, and they have inspired my yearning for knowledge. Under their auspices, it seemed to me that by incorporating a catapult mechanism into my design, one that contracts and at the same time compliments the muscle properties, I might attain a miracle of my own invention. Ultimately, I would be able to stand straighter and walk steadier and do some of the things that other boys did and that I cannot. Upon some joyous day, I might partake not only in a confident stride, but in the wonderful symmetry of the jump! Some weird and logical part of my mind thought that surely such a miracle would make her happy.

However, there is no way that I can make mother understand or happy, especially not now, not in her anger, that through a greater perception and awareness of the mechanism of the clock I might be able to experience a better quality of life. There is no use trying to explain that my drawings are not childish scribbles but indeed the designs, my designs, for a new set of leg braces, constructed with copper pipes and the component cogs of the clock. If I understood the mechanism better, and the only way was to pull the clock apart, I could incorporate pinions and wheels and levers into my drafts and designs. With ratchet and spring so that the joints can bend, and if the parts are interchangeable, I thought it might just be possible to construct new braces. Of course, I understand that the alloy I need to use must be more malleable than iron, a softer alloy like copper. My proposal needs softness and strength, rather than the hardness of unforgiving steel. If I could fuse the flexible and the dynamic, what dreams might be made real! My ideas though are like the air, intangible, invisible, a wonder of enthusiasm matched only by my mother's scepticism.

No matter what negative thoughts mother thinks about my curious scientific probing, I will prove her wrong, and if she ignorantly does not wish to understand the truth about my condition, the truth about my withered, striated muscles, she must accept my wish to understand my affliction. After all, mine is a body that had been twisted from birth and the pain in my legs is a terrible agony that she shall never know!

'What rubbish you do go on with, Luis!' she retorts with irritation, disregarding my feelings and treating me as if I were stupid. 'You're quite the little inventor, aren't you? The dull little, obsessed scientist with his nose buried in pointless books. Scribbling on paper, and reading trash and spinning little wheels and cogs! You're not a baby anymore, so isn't it time you started to grow up? Stop playing, Luis and face the reality!' With an audible groan of disapproval, a sound that tells me she accepts that she is getting nowhere, she manages to reach the peak of her ire. 'You need to forget about this rubbish,' and she waves her hand about the room. 'There's another thing...let me assure you that you are not old enough to think about girls, Luis. Not yet!'

Thinking about girls, I muse, is a far cry from thinking about invention. If I point that fact out she might well have called me facetious and struck me a blow to the head. Ha! She accuses me of stalking, and I find the allegation so ridiculous that I cannot even respond. With a raised hand and a voice pitched higher she continues vilifying me.

'I can't afford to have a girl come to me complaining about my own son!'

With darting eyes, I watch her throw up her hands and spin about, gesticulating she strides to the other side of the room and spins about dramatically and points at me with a stabbing finger. It seems to me that she is performing in a stage comedy, and she looks and sounds so highly strung.

'What if her parents came to see me, and with good reason?' she protests, her voice lowering in pitch and tone to somewhere between threat and ultimatum. Walking back to the table at which I sit she faces me, her lips quivering, rapping her knuckles on the wood to drive her point home. 'Do you understand?'

Do I understand? Of course, I understand. She intimates a warped biology, of getting one of these girls pregnant. Oh, God, as if any of these girls would even look at me, let alone perform connexion with me! 'Yes, mother,' I reply with a defeated and yet disgusted sigh, for how can I argue with her? Although I find it amusing that she even entertains the bizarre idea that I could get one of these girls with child! In times of stress she has no grasp on logic, and this is not the first or the last time she will accuse me in my innocence of things that I have not done. Why, the whole thought conjures imagery into my mind of things less than pure and chaste, things that she would revile me as being base and bestial. What she does not see is that her intolerance is a damnation.

'Then why do you keep on doing it?' With a dramatic shrug, she groans again when I do not answer. 'I grow tired of saying the same thing over and over,' she declares.

'Mother,' I start to say, in my own defence, wanting to know how she can explain my agility in this case, but I find I cannot utter a word for I know it will avail only futility. She is beyond listening to reason. Instead I stammer a limp response that I hope will placate and diffuse her thunderous mood. 'If I sometimes leave my room it's only to…'

Rudely she cut my words short.

'Don't you understand that none of these girls are any good?' Her tone is one of deadly earnest, as if I were a fool who could not comprehend the gravity of my situation. Circling the table, she stands behind my chair, behind me, and extends her arms and violently wraps them about my body. Mother is suddenly, alarmingly calm, her voice returned to its usual musical modulation; she holds me close, hold me tight, almost to the point where I cannot breathe.

'You must realise,' she says, 'that by the time they bring these young women to me they are already marked.'

No doubt she is implying their sexual impurity, that they were inferior and sullied and had been the instruments for other men's vile lusts.

'If they have not sinned in the flesh then they have stolen or done other things, worse things.' What could be worse? She warns that I should not seek for passion among this dirty lot, despite the hopeless and burning desires that my flesh must know. All boys awaken at some point, yet for virtue I am to steer clear. These girls are sinful, blackened in their souls and depraved in the flesh. Why it was even implied that some of them conceived a predilection for the desires of Sappho and pursued this lust with a vile gusto. Alas, she reiterates a litany of their vices, about their corrupted wombs, wombs that will atrophy into sterility while their sexes take them into painful and unrelenting consumption. Mother tells me this because of her concerns for my welfare. 'If they are not marked…' mother hesitates as if struggling for clarity in her blinkered hypocrisy, but her rationale fails, and she becomes lost in the exegetics of her own foul imaginings. 'Well, you know what I mean!' she exclaims, drawing in a deep breath and I can feel the warm softness of her bosom pressing into my back, and her lily-white hands clasping me in a fervid, unbreakable embrace. 'They are broken…broken and ruined, and they will break and ruin you!'

The joke of course is that I am already broken! It is truly difficult for me to imagine just what could be worse for these girls until mother answers the thought for me.

'When they discover their lusts, and act them into filthy proclivities, their miserable families hand them over to me for correction,' she declares scornfully, shaking her head from side to side. 'Yet what can I do? Impossible!'

That was it then, that was what was worse, that I was less than a man. This collection of pulsing female parts would place my health in danger, riddle me with their lustful diseases, cause me the sin of the solitary vice, provoke sexual arousal and masturbation. Oh yes, these women were the embodiment of corruption, every one of them, shaped by the Devil and scented with sin. I must never touch them, and I should be duly cautioned, and thus be imprisoned here in this house, locked up with all those perverted girls smelling like alluring spice just outside my prison door! Mother looks down at me then, but she fails to perceive my angry thoughts, and I watch her reflected in the looking glass above the mantle. She looks like a black candle, a candle for the Devil.

'In time, Luis,' she tells me, her voice having finally dropped to a whisper. 'In time, we'll find the right girl, and you'll marry her, and you will live in your own home. These girls are poison! You need a woman like me.'

I see her lips part and they glisten in the lamplight, and it seems to me that her face has taken on a peculiar beauty that I have never noticed before. She looks both glorious and baleful, like the Seraphim of the Old Testament.

'A girl who will love you, always,' she continues, 'and take care of you, protect you.' Yet even as she speaks her features change. It is her face, her lovely face that has altered, the angel has realigned in the mirror. The Seraphim now sports a skull with no lips, no eyes, and no flesh, just a gleaming white and wicked deaths head.

'We will find her,' the skull chatters through clicking, castanet teeth. 'You'll see, you'll see.'

Slowly, inexorably she runs her fingertips through my hair, traces a finger, a white boned finger down my pale cheek, and across my trembling lips. With her thumb, she caresses my hairless chin.

'Trust me Luis, I know best.'

Upon her avowal one of the clocks above the mantle ceases to tick, its pendulum ceases to swing, and I feel my thudding heart skip a tremulous beat.

7

Domestic Duties

The Residence stands in a picturesque location, in a park beyond a shadowy and deeply viridian forest, behind the protection of locked gates. It keeps its secrets hidden within forbidding walls. A great house, it was built in another century, fashioned from sandstone and granite and with towers and turrets and spires and great Gothic windows. From the heavy wrought iron gate, the carriageway delivers any visitor to a grand flight of granite steps at the entry, steps that flow under an ivy-covered portico at the front doors. A great oak tree stands sentinel near the house, at the crest of a grassy knoll, and about the tree the lawns are perfectly mowed. The gardens and the parkland are cleanly hedged with topiary and there are fragrant roses and bluebells and brilliant gazanias, beds of red carnations and white lilies and white azaleas. There are many rooms in the great house, some of them locked and unoccupied, and the decors reflect its austerity for it is not comfortable or fashionably furnished. Its accommodations are not overly lavish. One can sit in the library and digest literature from the vast collection of antiquated books therein or one can walk in the gardens and admire the flowers and trees. The main floor is connected to the upper floor by a staircase with a gleaming rosewood banister, and along the walls hang stilted portraits and etchings of forgotten people whose flesh has long turned to dust. The kitchen has its own herb garden, and upon the sturdy trellises hangs clusters of purple and white grapes with jewelled skins damp in the morning dew. A variety of seasonal fruit trees grow in the orchard, olives, figs and oranges, lemons and pomegranates too and many a soil bed is planted with yellow corn. Of course, there is the green house where miniature citrus can be found growing in big clay pots. Beyond the kitchen is a barn wherein the firewood is stacked, and the hay bales ricked, and the path from the barn leads through a locked gate and high fence to a meadow. No one, unless you are the shepherd, tends the livestock, but there among the grass and the daisies a small herd of cows and sheep provide fresh milk and cream and meat for the table, along with the poultry, the chickens and the ducks. In the bright gleaming sunshine of the morning the Residence does not appear so ominous but deceptively it invites the foolhardy into thinking it might be a warming and welcoming place to live.

Inside, in the dormitory on the first floor, the schoolgirls were awake and preparing for breakfast. Some were performing quick ablutions, rinsing the sleep from their eyes, stepping into skirts and buttoning blouses, some were chatting idly, some were combing their hair straight and tying the tresses back with ribbons. Señorita Desprez had fluttered up the grand staircase and poked her black beak into the great bedroom. She was dressed in a most unappealing dark grey tunic and the severity of the cloth gave the impression that it transferred a dim sheen to her wrinkling visage. Her face seemed darkened by thunder. That Señorita Desprez hardly ever smiled was no surprise to anyone, but perhaps no one had ever stopped to think that maybe she had never had anyone to make her smile, no one with whom she trusted enough to share a happy moment. The matron entered, and the girls divided into two streams as she passed. She was a shadowy, almost biblical figure composed of totalitarian threats and a no-nonsense attitude. The woman observed that there were girls who lagged, girls who moved so slowly that they might have moved backwards in time. She clapped her hands together, signalling those so tardy to hurry along. Irènée Toupain was seated upon her bed, compiling a list in a little blue notebook with the deft stroke of a pencil. She looked up at her colleague.

'Good morning, Señoritas,' Señorita Desprez called aloud, but her words were perfunctory, and she certainly did not truly wish any of these girls a good morning. There were lessons to be had and work to be done, and of course there was breakfast to eat, but anyone who partook of the first meal had best not complain that the fare was sparse. Oats without sugar and tea without milk.

'Good morning,' the girls chanted in unison.

'Good morning, Señora,' returned Thérèse and this made Cécile chortle as she braided her hair. Thérèse turned to face the girl seated before the mirror. She looked to her new friend questioningly, not understanding why the girl had smirked.

'She's not married, you know, she's still an old spinster!' Cécile disclosed and Thérèse realised her foolishness. 'There's a shrivelled up walnut between her legs!'

'She is not very attractive,' remarked Thérèse in a whisper. 'Perhaps that's the reason?' The French girl stared for a short moment at the matron. 'What happened to her nose?'

'I should say that someone broke it at some point,' replied Cécile. 'It's a bit twisted, like her!'

The two girls stifled a giggle.

Irènée spoke, even as she registered the quiet shock that blanched Thérèse's face and then the suppressed laughs.

'Today,' Toupain called loudly as she rose from her cot, 'the beds will be made by Suzanne Nöel and Catalina Lacienne.'

Suzanne pulled up a netted stocking and fastened it to her garter. There was a silly question about to spill from her lips. Fortunately, she did not have to ask it for Hélène spoke in her stead.

'You know that Catalina is not here today.'

Irènée Toupain let her eyes rove over Hélène's body, half-dressed the girl was tying the laces to the viridian corset that Thérèse had given her. Irènée's eyes narrowed in contempt.

'I said,' she reiterated with an annoyed tonality, 'that today the beds will be made by Suzanne Nöel and Catalina Lacienne, but as Catalina is not here, then you can take her place.'

Irènée looked sharply at Thérèse as she tucked her notebook into a pocket in her skirt.

Thérèse felt stupid in that she had given the performing of chores no thought whatsoever, and even more ridiculous when she replied 'Me?' Like a wide-eyed doe she looked for help from Cécile, but the other girl shrugged and turned back to the mirror. Embarrassed Thérèse bit down on her lower lip.

'Yes, you!' returned Toupain, challenging the new girl to say something else that was thoughtless and selfish while Señorita Desprez raised an eyebrow and shook her head in disgust. Suzanne sat down on her bed, stretched out her leg and pulled her other stocking over her toes.

'Suzanne will tell you what has to be done,' explained Irènée, and with an ersatz and self-satisfied smirk she addressed Señorita Desprez. 'We're ready, Señorita.'

'Right,' the older woman said in reply. 'Señoritas, come to breakfast, now.' The woman in dusk strode briskly from the dormitory, followed by Toupain and all the other girls, tripping hurriedly down the stairs towards the dining hall and leaving Suzanne and Thérèse alone to perform their housekeeping.

When they were quite alone Suzanne got up and put on her shoes.

'There's not that much to do really,' she reassured her companion, but Thérèse appeared stunned and confused. Suzanne wondered what it was that Thérèse had been expecting from boarding school. It certainly was not silver service here, everyone had to do their bit whether it be cooking or cleaning. 'We just have to make a few beds and open the windows,' said Suzanne, 'nothing too difficult.'

'No sweeping?' asked Thérèse as she began to help strip a bed of its sheets.

'No,' replied Suzanne flatly. 'All the rest of the cleaning and dusting is done by Lucie.' As she spoke she removed the pillow slips and plumped up the duck down, and she read the question that her helper must answer. 'Lucie is a maid who works in the kitchen as well. Not to forget Marie, but everyone does!'

The two girls moved on to the next bed.

'Don't worry, we'll be finished this in no time.'

Together they removed sheets and covers and made up the beds again with fresh linen. Half way through the chore Suzanne smiled and stated that she sometimes liked to be without the company of the other girls, that there were times when she did not want them around. 'Do you have a boyfriend?' she asked Thérèse and Thérèse replied that she did not.

'You mean…' Suzanne hesitated. Surely Thérèse had desired a boy, even done some things, things like those that had caused Suzanne herself to be imprisoned in this dark dungeon of a house. The girl found it difficult to believe that Thérèse was chaste and pure. Why none, absolutely none of the girls in this finishing school were pure! Not even Isabelle! The idea was unbelievable, preposterous, and it made Suzanne laugh aloud, a laugh that caused Thérèse to colour in discomfort. 'You've never been out with a boy… alone?' Suzanne probed, growing more excited as she spoke.

'No,' Thérèse told her, glancing over her shoulder to check that no one was in earshot.

'Really!' Suzanne was incredulous.

'Yes, really,' responded Thérèse and she hoped that Suzanne would soon get off the subject, but the girl relentlessly went on.

'I'm glad for your sake,' she told Thérèse, shaking her head in consternation, and when Thérèse asked why, Suzanne answered that she was happy for her friend's chastity but could not see herself being joyous under that circumstance. She liked boys far too much. It was their skin, their odour, their strength and their sex. Once you had entertained that length of silken iron inside of you there was no going back.

'It's better for you, I suppose,' Suzanne conjectured, trying not to drift into fantasy. 'You won't mind being locked up here without boys. As for me, well, personally I cannot stand it! The rest of the bad things are really not that important. You can do without food and put up with chores and even Señora Fourneau's angry moments, but to go for months and months…' Here she stopped as if she were looking at herself in a pool of regret. When Thérèse continued to play ignorant she reiterated, 'You know… without seeing any boys?'

Thérèse found that her back was beginning to ache from all the stooping and she hoped that the bed making would be over soon. She did not make reply to Suzanne's question.

'Why, most of the girls here are on the edge of a nervous breakdown.' Suzanne declared that it was true and that she could justifiably speak for every last female on the premises. 'Every three weeks a young man comes to visit here.'

Thérèse listened with renewed interest. 'Here?' she declared unconvinced, wondering how Señora Fourneau would possibly allow such a thing. In her naivety, she had not speculated that the Principal would never allow the visitations of any young man to make advances upon this domicile of tawdry young females. A whole nest of other horrors would no doubt be released then...female troubles that must at all costs be avoided.

'That's right, here!' said Suzanne excitedly, warming to her confession. 'His name is Henry and he delivers wood from the village. He's not much to look at,' she admitted, 'but at least he…'

Suzanne imagined Henry's body. Tracing her vision along the breadth of his stomach and the line of his hips and thighs, she licked her lips. It did not matter that he looked not like Adonis when the eye went straight to his long and throbbing member. She went wet and hot whenever she conjured that manhood into her thoughts, and she liked Henry's smell too, his sweat and the rough grasp of his woodcutter's hands. Suzanne licked her lips again and stifled a little moan, and she thought it best that she did not say exactly what it was that Henry was good at when they were together in the barn. 'Anyway,' she went on, 'he comes to stock up the woodshed outside.' Suzanne intimated with a nod the building that lay adjacent to the kitchen. Each time one of us has a chance to meet him there.'

'What, in the woodshed!' Thérèse could not withhold her shock at the revelation. What if Suzanne or any other girl ever got caught with Henry? Would you wind up in the punishment room? The thought did not bear thinking about.

'Next time,' Suzanne pronounced proudly, 'it will be my turn.'

'How do you mean, your turn?'

Suzanne smoothed out her side of a blanket and her companion smoothed the other. Together they folded down the top sheet and placed the pillows at the head of the bed.

'Yes,' Suzanne returned eventually, strangely distracted in her speech. 'We all draw lots to see who is going to meet him,' she related by way of explanation. Suzanne did not want her friend's condescension or her approval, but Thérèse needed to appreciate the needs of the body and to acknowledge those needs. 'You'd understand better why we do it if you'd ever had a boyfriend before.'

'Oh,' Thérèse stammered unconvincingly, 'I understand.'

'I think that all of the girls who ran away did it because they wanted to be with their boyfriends, or at least find one.'

There it was again, that awful suggestion that girls had disappeared from this school, eloped because this place was a bad place to be despite Suzanne begging to differ.

'That's why,' continued Suzanne, 'the only one who doesn't mind being here is Isabelle.'

The two girls moved to their next bed and Thérèse rubbed at her lower back.

'Isabelle?' she asked, trying to put a face to all the names that she had been bombarded with the night before and not picturing the sweet young girl who had urged her to hurry and get ready for bed.

'Yes, Isabelle Delorme, she sleeps just over there.' Suzanne pointed to Isabelle's bed. 'She's a blonde, about fifteen years old.'

'Oh, yes,' replied Thérèse, suddenly remembering. 'I know who you mean, the girl wearing the little cross.'

'Well,' said Suzanne contemptuously, 'she's in love with Señora Fourneau's son. Why, I will never know!'

'Her son?'

They threw up a quilt and pulled its corners into place, and then moved again to the next mattress.

'Yes,' Suzanne retorted. 'He lives in his own apartments on the second floor. I suppose he's about seventeen, pale and he limps. I've seen him in leg braces and he hardly ever socialises with us girls, not that his mother would let him anyway. She'd kill any of us who dared to even talk to him. He must have had disease when he was younger. Anyway, if you had met him and spoken to him you would feel as unimpressed as I feel, I'm sure. Personally, I don't understand why Isabelle is so smitten, because I think he's stupid. She thinks he's a genius, but if he is, he's a Peeping Tom too!'

Thérèse could not hide a look of disgust, and she began to think of the unseen person who had followed her when she had arrived yesterday.

'He spends most of his time watching us, I'm certain of that, watching through any door or window he can find.'

'Perhaps he's just lonely and misunderstood,' Thérèse said in his defence, even though she had not laid eyes on the young man, but she could not repress the shudder that rippled over her pale skin. She saw the door in the dining room creak open and the aperture above the music room door fill with a shadowy hand; she heard the flower pot smash in the greenhouse. Thérèse did not like to think that a man would be spying on her, why, there would be times when she might not be clothed! Another shudder passed through her lovely young body.

'Isabelle,' continued Suzanne 'thinks he's terribly intelligent.' Suzanne remarked that she had yet to see any evidence that verified that fact.

'Are you suggesting that they meet?' asked Thérèse and Suzanne declared that she knew they did. They met often, Suzanne exclaimed, but Suzanne intimated too that it would soon be all over because the Principal would find out eventually. It was inevitably only a matter of time that Isabelle came under the lash for her temerity.

'Oh, yes,' she preened with confidence, hardly even bothering to suppress a sneer of condemnation for Isabelle and a smile of duplicitous triumph for her success in her lottery draw, 'when Señorita Desprez is in charge of class you can always slip away!'

8

Music Lesson

Señorita Desprez walked through the music room, slowly, like a somnambulist trapped in a monotonous and tiresomely repetitious dream. Keeping tempo with her rhythm stick, a student was attempting a piano lesson but failing miserably. The girl was trying ever so hard to learn her notes but to her they seemed so strange. The music was simply markings that looked like black squiggles and curling lines on the paper, a long series of vague characters jotted in straight lines on the paper, and all mostly indecipherable. There was no true understanding in her head that the notes on the treble clef were the higher pitch notes, and those on the bass clef were the lower pitch. The girl had been practicing for over a month now yet with little knowledgeable gleaning. In a confused tangle, the music skipped and tripped awkwardly from the middle C and jumped many notes, making horrible and discordant gaps in the music. Señorita Desprez merely continued to pound her stick into the floor, and as Clare went from right to left up the keys instead of the other way, the teacher closed her eyes and shook her head. Señorita Desprez had tried to explain on numerous occasions that the notes were unfamiliar because the girl had no wish to learn them, but the teacher refused to excuse the pupil from the torturous instrument. 'You had to learn your alphabet, didn't you?' Señorita Desprez had declared and spoke with antipathy. 'Only with practice will you ever learn to sight read,' she had scolded, and so Clare stumbled on but with little encouragement or success. The jagged notes made it extremely difficult for those girls at the bar and mirror to hold their poise and practice their ballet and deportment. They would begin by extending a limb and reaching down and then the music would falter. It was exasperating.

Thérèse stood by the piano, wondering when it might be her turn to play, but Señorita Desprez ignored her as if she were not even there.

'Put your chins up, Señoritas,' uttered Señorita Desprez flatly, but she knew all the girls were useless, and ultimately useless at everything. They were an awful and lazy bunch of simpering young women and she disliked every single one of them. 'Shoulders level,' she demanded 'and keep your backs straight.' The older woman wondered why she even bothered with this lot, or even any of the girls who had passed through this establishment in the last seventeen years. It was always the same story with the broken and damaged youth who were enrolled here. They were uninterested in anything other than their own fervid biology. These young women were always whispering about unnatural urges, about boys and what boys were like. Some of them already knew about such things, about what young men had between their legs and where they might put that thing. Virtue was a notion lost upon these rouées, and their confinement amounted to little more than an anecdote to their sexual lusts, making those drives even worse. Very little was ever going to quell those fires, so they needed distraction, and the torture of learning the ballet made their bodies ache so badly that Señorita Desprez hoped they would have little time to contemplate the length of the male penis. Señorita Desprez shivered in disgust. She had not thought about a man's private parts for almost forty years. Men were blasphemous creatures, libertines and hypocrites all. These girls needed guidance and they had to learn that the spiritual and the intellectual pursuits demanded the physical be monitored, for they were often wild and uncouth. Some of them had been dragged up in the gutter and with filthy souls to match the filthy flesh.

When these creatures stretched out a limb it was with the most leaden effort, as if gravity itself pulled them down and held them gracelessly pinned to the bonds of the terrestrial. They were more adept to sprawling open-legged on the floor with a man thrusting into them, right up to the hilt. Few were swans who would ever fly. Señorita Desprez was to find no angels among this lot. As if to justify her thoughts there was Suzanne Nöel, that incorrigible and witless individual who could not even stand up straight. Look, her arm was drooping like the stem of a fatigued plant. Señorita Desprez thought the girl had little cause for lassitude, making a few beds and tidying up was hardly a reason to soporific behaviour. The teacher reached out and smacked Suzanne's wilting hand and Suzanne flinched and scowled but stood erect. The older woman moved on as the girls all groaned, shifted toward the piano and glanced at her watch, keeping rhythm as best she could to the discordant playing. Ultimately, she could take no more; no more of the dreadful playing nor the stolid contortions of those attempting the ballet.

'We will continue tomorrow,' she said in defeat, and propped her rhythm stick against the piano. The girls relaxed their bodies, some sagged against the bar rail, others sat down to massage their feet and to wipe the sweat from their brows. Clare stopped playing the piano and folded up her sheet music. A multitude of sighs passed through the room, sighs of relief for their aching thigh muscles and the cessation of the pinching cramps, sighs of reprieve from their tight slippers that caused the crushing together of their toes, and sighs of circumspection because on the morrow Señorita Desprez had threatened that the torture would rear its ugly head yet again.

Isabelle skipped quickly to the opposite side of the room. Earlier she had chosen a chair nearest the door and draped her towel over its wooden hoop. She took the towel now and wiped at her forehead and daubed at her chest, but her eyes never left the figure of Señorita Desprez. Sunlight from the window glinted on the filigree chain from which was suspended the tiny confirmation cross that hung from her slender throat. The cross had belonged to her sister, Constanza. She had given it to Isabelle on the day she herself had left home, gone to be wedded to Christ in the ancient Castelló de la Plana, in Valencia. The sister did not seem to regret that her life would be forfeit to a cruel and vengefully misogynist god, to be locked up with the other women in the Santa Maria de la Asunción. Isabelle had always thought that it was strange that Señora Fourneau had let her keep the trinket, not that it had much worth other than sentimental value, but Señora Fourneau was not known for a predisposition to the sentimental. Señorita Desprez was occupied chastising the girls who were covering the canvas over the piano, and so she did not notice when Isabelle, on the other side of the room, slipped through the door and exited the music chamber. Outside, Isabelle walked quietly and quickly up the dim corridor. When she came to a place where the corridors intersected, and a staircase wound about to the floor above, she paused and looked about, looked to see if anyone was there. The way was clear. With a spring in her step she sprinted towards the stairs and dashed up them two at a time. These stairs ended in a landing, and the landing spread into a passage and the way was arched and supported by pillars at either side. Into the passage Isabelle moved, her tread pausing in horror as her foot creaked on the step leading into the corridor.

Hastily she leapt from the step and propelled herself into the occluded throat of the passage. On each side of the corridor hulked heavy pieces of neglected, old-fashioned furniture; to the left was a dresser with a speckled mirror, to the right a stand with a tarnished lamp. This was a part of the residence that few people inhabited, it led to rooms that were locked and to another floor above, and high above that, hemmed in by castellated buttresses was the attic. Isabelle took a short breath and relaxed, slowing her step in the certainty that no one had followed her and that she was quite alone. A little anticipatory smile turned up her pretty mouth. Of course, she realised that she did not have long before she must return downstairs, and as she thought this a sudden and loud clank and creak sounded at her back. In terror, she jumped into an alcove and pressed her slim body into the shadows. A door opened, and a woman passed through. Isabelle's heart thudded in expectancy, and when she at last risked a glance she saw that it was Lucie, the maid from the kitchen, carrying a bucket and a mop, going to clean the music room after class. Lucie's foot also made the step creak, and the sound told Isabelle that the woman had gone and that her danger of discovery was over. The young girl gave a sigh of relief and ran the last few steps to a door that she perceived in the half-light and gripping the handle she pushed the portal open.

9

Secret Rendezvous

As Isabelle creeps up the passage I ease myself to a standing position, stretching out my palm to the rough stone wall. In this small, hidden room the walls are not lined nor are they rendered but are coarse and filmy with grime. It is a room with a boiler, an intersection, a cistern for containing the hot water from Bréchard's furnace. There is a big cast iron reservoir that hulks beside one wall, a wooden bench is on the other side. There is no furniture, only dust. Anticipating Isabelle's arrival and her knock, I open the door. Looking like a scared rabbit she glances nervously over her shoulder, and I wave her inside.

'Hello,' I greet Isabelle and she returns the greeting. Isabelle almost runs to me, fighting to suppress her excitement. Walking around her with my staggered gait, hampered by the steel encasements strapped about my legs, I close the door and draw the iron bolt. Turning around awkwardly, I motion that she come to the bench beside me and be seated.

'Were you waiting long?' she asks with concern, looking to my legs. She speaks her agonies with her eyes. She has lovely eyes, big and brown, round and soft and full of adoration; eyes strangely like my mother's.

'I came after lunch,' I tell her as I sit beside her on the stall, and we are divided only by a pure white napkin that I have spread over the dusty timber. She looks down at the cloth and I know she wants to ask what it is that I am hiding.

'Did anyone see you come up here?' I query. 'I don't wish that you should get into any trouble.'

Showing my concern, I offer her a little smile, just so that she feels secure and to prove that I truly care. If mother found out she would punish Isabelle and berate me, both of us would probably be beaten. With my little grin reassuring this pretty girl, I place my palms flat upon my thighs, just above the straps of my braces. Isabelle gives me a demure, shy look, the towel she has used in ballet class is draped over her white shoulders concealing the gentle swell of her breasts. Her chemise is damp with perspiration.

'No,' she replies, 'I don't think so.'

Both of us are fidgeting nervously.

'I'm terribly worried,' I tell her, my tone filled with trepidation and it is difficult not to fumble and to stutter when I am seated so close to her warm, young body. Mother's cautions begin to reel in my head, a dangerous and tempting invasion of shameless erotic cerebration. If I were to let Isabelle touch me, let her kiss me, would that be tantamount to the death sentence? 'I am worried in case they find out about you, of course. Worried for your sake, I mean. There is always someone watching, ready to tell.'

Funny that, watching and spying seems the norm around here, and my mother accuses me in all my innocence. She lives in a dream, I am sure, and she has no idea how exhaustingly painful it is for me just to keep this tryst, to walk this far with so much pain in my back and legs. As if she understands what I am thinking, Isabelle reiterates my anxiety.

'I worry for your sake too.'

For a moment, we say nothing to each other, simply look in each other's eyes and I feel the emotion swelling, the yearning pouring from her heart. She is a victim, just as much as I am a victim, just as much as we all are victims who dwell within the Residence. I know her family are poor, and that her father is rumoured to be an outlaw, a thief. I know too that her sister went mad and was sent to a convent, and the worse part of it all is that Isabelle is so young and so pretty and yearning for someone to love her, and I know that Isabelle loves me.

'What is it that happened with your legs, Luis?' she asks, as if to break the spell of longing and to diffuse the terrified trembling in her skin. I can forgive her for asking such a question, although talking about it makes me a little uncomfortable.

'You should not worry about my legs,' I tell her. 'Besides, did you come here to be my friend or to interrogate me, like mother always does?'

'Oh, don't be angry with me Luis. It's only because I care about you.'

'I'm not angry with you,' I reassure her. 'The unromantic answer to your question is probably nerve damage because of my scoliosis. My back is twisting, and my legs are withering. It gets worse the older I get, and more painful. The doctors don't seem to know why.'

'How terrible,' Isabelle whispers and I am almost melted by her empathy.

'I feel pain all of the time,' I confess, 'pain in every waking hour, every moment, every step. A little laudanum relieves it temporarily.' I grasp my thighs and shake them violently with both hands. 'How I wish they would work properly, just so that I could be a normal person, to walk normally, run normally, go places, be happy, be free.'

'Oh, Luis, don't,' cries Isabelle, alarmed, 'What if...'

'What if what?'

Her pretty features screw up in a mixture of anxiety and embarrassment.

'It doesn't really matter, does it?' I tell her, and that is the awful truth. 'Because it is ultimately my body and my mind. It's no one else's problem.'

We look at each other for a long moment, seeing and not seeing each other as we really are, two young hopeful people robbed of promise, trapped in a prison not of our making, existing in the same space and yet in two completely different places. It is as if we both live in a lunatic asylum, with my mother the worm with her fangs in our hearts. We both know that it is the truth. Silence falls between us and that silence is awkward. Feeling clumsy, and not simply because of my cumbersome leg irons and twisted spine, I sense that Isabelle wishes so much to understand the hidden parts of my heart. In this I cannot cede to her desires or let her into that heart, not yet. Smiling, I pull back the napkin and present her with a slice of dobos torte that I have stolen from Marthe's kitchen. Not that any of the girls would ever get to eat such a delicacy.

'Is that for me?' she asks, and I can sense that she has proceeded almost to the brink of tears.

'Yes, for you,' I confirm, nodding and smiling and I push the cake plate closer to her side.

'Thank you ever so much,' she whispers, for she has not had cake in such a long time. The slice looks so sweet and so inviting. Just like she is at this moment, sweet and oh so inviting. Am I the boy of her dreams, handsome and smart and caring and kind? This all seems like some fantasy stolen, like the cake. In her heart Isabelle is singing a love song for me and I am feeling a deep attraction for her, but not a profound amour. Tasting the cake, I watch her, watch her lips, red and lush, and when she reaches out to break off another tiny piece I risk touching her skin. My fingers run over the back of her hand and I feel her shudder. She might melt there and then, just like the chocolate is melting in that cake and I bet she tastes just as nice. I stroke her hand and note the little confirmation cross that dangles about her neck on a fragile golden chain, and how its fire gleams in her eyes. When I look into those eyes I tremble. Gasping and holding in her tears she looks away, looks down.

'One day,' I vow, 'the two of us will leave this prison. We'll leave this unhappy place.'

'What about you mother?'

'Isabelle,' I whisper, and my voice is growing hoarse, beginning to crack with emotion, 'I've told you again and again, it doesn't matter about her. I can't… I don't want to go on living like this. I know you don't. I hate having to hide so that we can be together, frightened that at any moment they might catch us and punish us. I'm afraid that…'

Abruptly I stop talking and Isabelle's mouth freezes upon a question, but I silence her with a finger placed gently against her lovely lips. There comes a sound in the shadowy hall without, and we both see the dancing light of a flickering candle leak beneath the crack of the door. I hear the click of boots on the floorboards. The footsteps stop, and the shape is immobile, only the weak light vacillates in the dark. Both Isabelle and I hold our breath and dare not move, not a muscle, not a twitch. We watch on in horrified awe as the door handle moves. The handle rattles violently and flicks madly up and down. Our hearts pound with apprehension. The handle rattles again and the shape on the other side applies pressure to the door, but it holds shut fast. After the passing of a few thudding heartbeats the shape moves away, and the light is extinguished. We both expel our breaths, simultaneously in profound relief.

'Who was out there?' Isabelle quivers in terror.

'I don't know,' I reply, as scared as she and just as confused.

10

Gardening Lesson

In the greenhouse the students were gardening, trimming off browned leaves and pruning bushes. It was the practical knowledge that they gained here, especially in the variations of edible plants and herbs that would prove invaluable in their cooking class. Of course, should they have wished to, any student was more than welcome to research the works of the incomparable Margueritte Selgren, and to pursue under her tutoring, the wonders of the plant kingdom. Somewhere, buried in the dusts of the library shelves, Julie proved to be the only one who could be bothered locating the former student's incunabulum and codices, what she had termed the 'Art of Gardening'. Then of course there were those wonderful writings by that American fellow, Luther Burbank, who had invented new strains of plants. Julie, in her love for flora was held mesmerised by the wonder of planting. Julie loved flowers first, because they were beautiful, and fruits second because they sustained life.

How the perfume of flowers filled up her senses and intoxicated her to the point where one might have thought her drunk. There was nothing prettier than the fragrant redolence of native deciduous azaleas, so today, as she was to play mentor to Thérèse; they were going to plant her favourite blossoms in seed boxes. When the seedlings sprouted she would tend them diligently and then she would transplant them, nurturing them until the plants grew tall. When they at last bloomed, opening their stainless white flowers with yellow centres to the sun, Julie would revel in and savour their bouquet. Julie ushered her charge into the hothouse and Thérèse donned an apron.

'Right, we'll plant the seeds here!' declared Julie exuberantly, ready to begin straight away, ready to start mucking in the dirt, for nothing felt better than the tactile joy of the soft loam in your hands. She stopped at a raised bench along the length of which were rows of timber frames filled with earth. Julie halted her friend with a light touch on her forearm. 'Here, not over there!' The gardener pointed to the box in front of her and showed Thérèse the watering can. All about the other girls were performing their gardening duties and were busy trimming and watering, chatting as they tended the greenery.

'Later on,' said Julie, 'when the seeds start shooting, we will put them into flower pots.' She nodded and gave Thérèse a beaming grin as if she were imparting to her all the secrets of the world. Perhaps she was, for she was proud that she understood so much about the subject. Her pride literally blossomed from her homely face.

'What do I have to do?' asked Thérèse in her ignorance.

'Oh, it's easy,' Julie imparted, and she began a physical demonstration. 'Like this...' She began poking holes in the soft earth with her index finger, humming as she proceeded. 'A hole,' Julie explained needlessly. 'Another hole… and another hole… and all at equal distances.'

The soil became dotted with perfect little indentations.

'Then when you've finished the whole box,' she continued, 'you start planting.'

Beside the watering can was a smaller box and this Julie gave to Thérèse. The contents of the box made a faint scratching patter when the beautiful girl shook it back and forth. The sound intrigued Thérèse and she opened the little container. From inside the box spilled a myriad of tiny, dusky spots. With them came an earthy, graveolent nidor. Thérèse gave her companion a questioning look, being somewhat inept in the processes of planting.

'Those are the seeds,' Julie explained. 'You put them in the holes and you cover them with earth. Then you cover it all with this stuff.' Julie's hand plunged into another nearby box and sifted a mouldy and pungent earthy limature. This she sprinkled over the planted seeds. When Thérèse gave a quizzical look, Julie elucidated. 'It's fertilizer.'

Thérèse did not know what fertilizer was, and in her ignorance, she rubbed it between her fingers. Julie laughed.

'You know what I mean?' said the mousy gardener, but when Thérèse shook her head and replied that she did not, Julie laughed again. 'Well, it's composed of… you know…' The girl was trying to find a more acceptable way of describing fowl excrement. When the words could not be found she gave up. 'Oh, it's for growing. It turns the seeds into plants.'

'What seeds are they?' Thérèse asked, wondering when she would get to see the flowers bloom.

'Azaleas, like those over there.' Julie pointed to her rows of pristine, flowering azaleas, basking in the gleam of her horticultural knowledge. 'You know...the poisonous plant. They say the seeds are poisonous as well,' continued Julie, busily watering the new garden that she had just sown.

With a little shock Thérèse shook the seeds from her dirty palm. From her short distance away Suzanne piped up, pausing as she stripped the withering leaves from a potted palm. 'Don't believe it Thérèse. If those seeds were poisonous Señora Fourneau would be stone cold dead by now!'

Several girls turned and chuckled, but Julie screwed up her face in indignation.

'I'm sure we've all put a lot of those seeds in her supper!'

'When do the seeds become plants then?' asked Thérèse as she pushed some pips into the dirt.

'Well,' returned Julie as she took up the watering can again, 'we'll have to tend them and plant them and transplant them…' The girl droned on. 'Then we water them, and water them, and fertilize them a bit more and then…' and here she paused for dramatic effect, 'in the end they flower!' She fluttered her eyes and she could imagine and smell the future blooms. The earth was lovely in its gifts, wasn't it?

Suzanne watched Julie as she simpered. Scoffing, she retorted. 'They flower, we cut them and of course they fade and die.'

Something inside Thérèse became possessed of another anxiety, an extension of the worry that had plagued her, even before her arrival. Was someone going to cut her down just as her mother was now being cut down? Was she going to fade and die? The analogy was frightening.

'It all seems so stupid a waste of time,' said Suzanne matter-of-factly, contemptuous of this 'Art of Gardening' that Julie loved so much. Julie began to reply that Suzanne did not know what she was talking about and that her interdiction of the true purpose of flora was a denial of the beauty of nature. From these plants not only came beauty and fragrance, but they also contained the magic of medicinal knowledge. Philtres could be made from them to assist with coughs and gout and even the sanguinary difficulties experienced by young ladies during their menses. Why, unlocking the secrets of flora could only be of benefit to everyone, but Suzanne was being boorish, and Julie looked at the other girl with seething contempt.

'The 'Art of Gardening' is the poetry of nature!' Julie exclaimed resentfully and defensively and returned to her planter box. She pushed more holes into the earth with her finger, nudging Thérèse to disregard the jibes of those other foolish girls and to understand that Margueritte Selgren was right, and that these girls were nothing but ignoramuses.

'Huh,' was all that Suzanne could utter, for there was no convincing her that all this labour was in any way worth her while, despite what Margueritte Selgren espoused. Julie's conjugal tethering to the plant kingdom made Suzanne believe that the girl was destined to be an old spinster, stooped and withered upon the sanction of unreality, only digging a hole for herself, a hole that might as well have been six feet deep because that was where everything wound up eventually- as fertilizer.

Suzanne watched Thérèse pushing her finger into the dirt, making a row of holes for the pips. The analogy of the finger entering the earth suggested a sexual act, the penetration of the male into the female and the sowing of the seed. The comparison made Suzanne giggle, for it would soon be time for Henry's visit, and it was her turn to be with him again. Perhaps the other girls were jealous that she had drawn the winning tile in the lottery, again! Suzanne hardly cared, for it would be her skin that was caressed under his hot hands, her breasts that were tasted by his lips and her vulva that knew the rigid length of his eager sex. The last time had been too brief, and he had taken her against the barn wall, hitching up her skirt and rough in the act of entering her body. Perhaps it had been a little disappointing because he had not stayed any distance, but she would be in control this time and he would have to pleasure her before he indulged in his own delectation. Of course, Suzanne mused, that thoughts of Henry's throbbing phallus, had they come into Julie's head, would have horrified the girl. She almost laughed at the idea of Julie even entering a tile in the lottery. Imagine that, Julie and Henry. She wouldn't even know where to begin, where to put her lips, where to… Why, Julie wouldn't have known what to do with a man, especially one without his clothes. Such a carnal vision would most certainly have driven the frumpish gardener right back to her boring and conservative books. Perhaps that was where she belonged, swooning over fronds and ferns and encouraging vegetables to grow. Perhaps, thought Suzanne rather cruelly, that a parsnip would best serve the girl because no man would ever want her for a lover. Imagine her turning up to Henry's visit! That girl would have hotly contested that sexuality even entered her life, why, there was only time for gardening, and then more gardening, nothing else.

Thérèse made her final indentation in the earth and began dropping in the seeds, and it was then that she looked up from her box of loam and she saw the hideous visage of Señor Bréchard staring at her through the filthy window. The sight of the man startled Thérèse and her heart skipped a beat with fright. He was grimacing and held his stare, and it was even more disturbing for his eyes were not symmetrical, one looked off in a direction that was opposed to the other. The girl recognised him as the man who had unlocked the gate when she had first arrived at the school, the man who walked slowly and insolently as if he had all the time in the world to waste. The girl stifled the cry of dismay that wanted to leap to her lips, and she felt frozen, rooted to the spot. Bréchard did not speak. Thérèse knew now that Bréchard looked after the grounds, stoked the heater and maintained the building, but that was no excuse for being here and staring at her in that way. Was it he who had been following her about, hiding in the shadows, watching, calculating? As she watched on, powerless to move back and to flee, she began rubbing her dirty hands together, and Thérèse discovered that she was trembling and all over goose flesh. Why was everyone in the Residence always watching, and spying? It was horrible. After a short moment Regine asked if anyone had heard any news of Catalina.

'No one knows,' replied Suzanne, and there was genuine concern in her voice but everyone knew Catalina's fate. The girls resigned themselves to their gardening and tried not to think about their classmate confined in the punishment room. A female voice called to Thérèse, and the new pupil turned sharply around to see who it was that had summoned. It was Señorita Rigeaux. When Thérèse looked to the window again, Bréchard had vanished.

'Thérèse,' said Rigeaux, 'Señorita Fourneau wishes to speak with you. Come with me.'

'I haven't finished planting yet,' she protested.

'That doesn't matter!' snapped Señorita Rigeaux in irritation. How dare this girl challenge her command! Rigeaux spun about officiously and strode away.

'All right,' said Thérèse defensively, 'where can I wash?' Thérèse stared dumbly at her soiled hands.

'Do it later,' retorted the other girl impatiently. 'She's waiting for you.'

Thérèse removed her apron and hung it on a peg by the door and collected her coat. So that she did not mark it with dirt she tucked it under her right arm and held her arms to her front. They stepped into the hallway.

'What does the Señora want with me?' Thérèse asked.

'I don't know' replied Rigeaux flatly, and she strode on briskly as if there was no time to lose. They went up the stairs and entered the dormitory, and when Thérèse had stepped inside the room Rigeaux closed the door and stood before it, guarding the way like a sentinel. Thérèse could not see any sign of Señora Fourneau.

'Where is the Señora?' she asked. The only person in the room was Irènée Toupain. Irènée was stooping beside an occasional table, and she was setting the table for a tea service. The china winked brightly in the light from the window, its pure white porcelain decorated with Asian motifs that had been beautifully rendered in a blue cobalt oxide pigment. The china was almost transparent. The decorations seemed to float and shimmer in the porcelain under the hard, clear glaze, and when one poured a brew one could vaguely see the amber of the tea.

'I called you' she told Thérèse. 'Come in, come closer.'

The older girl placed a tea cup on a saucer and stood up straight. 'I am making some tea.' Some sweet vanilla biscuits, just like those that Thérèse had been given upon her arrival were spread on a plate beside the milk and the sugar and the folded white napkins. A tiny burner kept the pot hot.

'Would you like some tea?' Irènée asked cordially, inviting the new school student to partake of some afternoon refreshment. Thérèse was suspicious and did not reply. She remembered the lascivious way that Irènée had looked at her, looked over her, almost defiling her with her eyes. The woman made the new girl nervous. Irènée began to pour the tea, blissfully aware of the disconcerting effect she was having upon Señorita Gravaine.

'This morning,' Irènée divulged, 'I left you alone with Suzanne on purpose.' She finished pouring and placed the teapot back on the fire. 'She talks a lot.' Toupain proffered the saucer and cup to Thérèse but the girl did not reach forward to take it from her hand. 'I imagine,' Irènée continued confidently, 'that by now you understand how this school is run?' She walked slowly closer to Thérèse, the teacup rattled gently on the saucer.

'No, I don't,' Thérèse returned, glancing about to see Rigeaux guarding the exit. Was she not going to be allowed to leave? Her stomach began to churn.

'Didn't she talk about me?' Irènée questioned, and Thérèse replied that Suzanne had not.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, of course I am!'

'Didn't she tell you about Henry?'

Thérèse had begun to squirm within her skin. If Henry came here to dally with the other girls then she did not want to know about it at all. She had no interest in the woodcutter's man nor for what throbbed erect between his thighs.

'Did Suzanne blurt out what goes on with Henry every three weeks?' Irènée gave a supercilious chuckle.

'Yes,' admitted Thérèse, but she was not interested. 'She told me about that.'

'Ah! She did tell you that!' declared Toupain in haughty triumph, staring down the sweet, chaste prude of a girl, for that was where she must encounter the true humour behind all of this, the knowledge that Irènée held the authority and that she could cajole her fellow students, bend them to her will. Señorita Rigeaux was listening attentively and at last moved from her post and circled the other two girls like a predatory cat, coming up to the table and pulling out a chair. Thérèse shook her head and her mind reeled a little. She knew she was dealing with demons, not young women, devils that had taken on the guise, the form and face of girls. It was beyond her to understand all that went on in this house, why, she had only just arrived and so much had already happened. The French girl was frightened. Rigeaux sat down and poured herself a cup of tea.

'I'm the one who organises everything around here, among other things,' Señorita Toupain professed, 'and you must become wise to this fact. I arrange the visits to the shed on the day that Henry comes, and many other things too, which you will find out soon enough.'

Thérèse blanched and she began to stammer.

'Oh, don't pretend so,' Irènée inveigled, 'you yourself may require special pleasures at some point, some stimulation if Henry is not to your taste… another form of erotic peculiarity perhaps?'

Señorita Gravaine could not hold in her grimace of revulsion, a look so comical that Toupain derided her aloud. Rigeaux chinked her teaspoon against her cup deliberately, and she was smiling at Señorita Toupain, revelling in the power that flowed in the sumptuous and undisguised preference for one's own sex. With a harder and more serious edge to her voice Toupain abruptly switched the subject.

'Señora Fourneau does not appreciate anyone who is lacking in discipline.' Her words conveyed a horrible undercurrent, a threat towards violence should she be challenged and disobeyed in her rule. 'It's up to me whether she finds out or not,' and Irènée held Thérèse riven to the spot, taking a sip from her tea and taking pleasure in the girl's terror and discomfort. A few moments passed in which the horror of the situation began to sink into the French girl's head, and then with controlled politeness Irènée said, 'Have some tea.' She passed a fresh cup to her beautiful victim and involuntarily Thérèse reached forward to accept. It was only then that she realised it wasn't just her hands that were soiled, and should she take that cup of tea, simple refreshment that it was, dirt would besmear every part of her, inside and out. She rubbed at the soil but its stain had leached into her pores, and Irènée noted the girl's hesitation. Some filth could not be washed away.

'What have you been doing?' the older girl asked.

'I…I was gardening,' Thérèse stumbled, digging in the dirt, but only just below the surface. There were nastier things to find the deeper into the dirt you dug, things worse than worms and slugs.

Irènée led her to the washstand and Thérèse beheld herself reflected in the mirror. For some reason, she saw a girl who no longer looked like she looked, there was something changed and awful spreading over her lovely face, a cloud of panic and dismay. Her complexion looked grey and scared.

'Wash your hands,' Irènée instructed, putting down the tea cup that Thérèse had rejected and reaching up to remove Thérèse's coat from under her arm. The older girl draped it over the nearest bed end. 'It depends on you,' Irènée continued, picking up the ewer, 'whether your life here in school will be nice or not.' Her voice was lowly, soothing even, despite the threats, as Thérèse placed her hands in the bowl. 'I can see that you eat well…' Thérèse rolled back the lace of her sleeves and Irènée poured the cool water over her dirtied hands. 'I can assure you that you won't have to work hard…' The water splashed over the bowl and Irènée brought up a clean towel to wipe those hands dry. 'I can even let you meet Henry.' She didn't want Thérèse to meet Henry, or any young man for that matter because she wanted the auburn-haired French mademoiselle all to herself. Face to face it was a sick and dangerous moment from which Thérèse wanted to flee, but there was nowhere to go. They stared at each other.

'All you have to do is obey me. Obey me in everything I tell you,' said Irènée, and she wiped Thérèse's hands with long and lingering strokes, a caress that made the girl's skin leap as if an insect were crawling upon her flesh. Just like the cockroach in the dining hall, but she could not flick this one away. With controlled desire Irènée continued, gently squeezing, fawning, pawing and grasping, even after she had dropped the towel. As Irènée touched Thérèse's skin she mused just how delicate the new girl was, as delicate as a lily, the proudest of all flowers, white with gold-tipped petals, whiter than a snowflake, virginal, impossibly pure: a slender stem tall against the pastel blue of a summer sky. She stared into the other girl's eyes, deep into their depths and she imagined that she was sharing this moment in the glorious golden day of a summer field. Under a cloudless and cerulean sky, they had stopped under a spreading yew, sat on a chequered blanket beside the tranquil eddies of a stream. In the sun-dappled shade their lips had met and their supple bodies had pressed one against the other. The thought caused Irènée to smile happily, but albeit for only a short second. Yet she sensed Thérèse's terror in the unknown, and she pressed the girl's fingers hard, almost until she was sure she was bruising this elegant flower, wanting to crush her will. Irènée's eye commanded and her lips burned red, as red and as potent as any ruby flame can burn. Toupain could smell her companion's skin, fragrant with the rose water, and she stared shamelessly into her beautiful face, a visage as luminous and transparent as the white and blue porcelain tea cup she had just put aside.

The older girl marvelled at Thérèse's hair, oh, that weave of spun chestnut, so red and so fine she wanted to smother herself in its tresses. In her Sapphic delirium Irènée imagined that broken stars scintillated in the halo of Thérèse's blazing locks, flashing sparks of red and silver. The moon entranced could only fall trapped in the pools of this girl's eyes; the pure white, winter snow was sullied compared to the fine alabaster shade of her skin and the ruby could do no justice to the hot fires that played upon her lips. Enraptured, Irènée had completely forgotten Rigeaux, but Rigeaux did not even begin to compare. Rigeaux looked on, and inside a wave of hurt coursed through her veins, but she saw that Thérèse shivered in revulsion, and pulled back her hands. Rigeaux smiled at that. Irènée did not speak as she watched those hands retract, but her eyes told of her longing, and in her heart, she stoked the fire of lust, and if that fire burned those around her, 'Well,' thought Irènée, 'they need never know cold.'

11

Key Note

Night settled upon the Finishing School. A vale of undulating fog enveloped the house. From its windows, nothing could be seen of the grounds and the park, even the trees were obscured in a grey and drifting sea of vapour. With the fog came the chill. Inside the great old house, the rooms had been warmed slightly through a heating duct connected to the boiler room, but it was expensive to keep the heat running for long periods and Bréchard had ceased to stoke the boiler over an hour ago. The brief warmth was now fading, and the night time chill was beginning to seep between the mortars. In the dormitory, the girls were preparing for bed. They floated as if they were figures in Aphrodite's dream, visions out of the fog, ethereal under the light of the great lamp that hung from the brass chain over their heads. The lamp threw down amber light, a glow that caught the rose blush of the mouth or illumed with mercury or xanthous the weave of loosened tresses. The young women seemed to move in slow motion, disrobing, chatting softly, drifting, hovering and attenuated, like rare birds. Theirs was a supple and pliant flesh divided by a wall of ivy covered sandstone from the inspissate atmospheres of thickening mist just outside the window. Girls were taking turns in the washroom while others awaited their turn, disrobing and dressing for bed. Some were lined up waiting to use the sinks, to flush their faces with a stream of cold water, to brush their teeth and to comb their hair, to use the lavatory. The sinks and the toilet facilities were old, like else everything was in this place, old like Señorita Desprez who would soon douse the lights, old and rusted and with pipes that shuddered and protested whenever anyone turned on a tap. Señorita Desprez was overseeing the bedtime ablutions. As she supervised with steely eyes the school girls laced up their nighties and turned down their bed covers. Hélène and Cécile were chatting as they strolled unhurriedly towards the washroom.

'This is the third night they've kept Catalina locked up,' said Cécile, wringing her towel in her hands, watching the raven matron from the corner of her eye.

'She's used to it,' Hélène responded, her words implying that Catalina was strong, and that both she and Cécile might need to be just as strong one day. They sauntered slowly past Señorita Desprez, ignoring the obsidian petrel of a woman.

'Don't go out looking like that!' Señorita Desprez remarked severely, pointing to the jade corset that Hélène was still wearing. Her look of disapproval should have stopped an elephant in its charge.

'Why?' Hélène quipped back, for she saw no shame in wearing the whalebone corset, in fact it made her feel good, made her feel slim and attractive. 'Are there any men around?'

Of course, there were no men here, unless you counted Bréchard, and the thought of him touching one's skin made Hélène shudder with disgust. Cécile blanched and moved away, and they heard the nearby sound of a suppressed giggle. Hélène was risking punishment and Cécile had no desire to be punished too.

'It's freezing,' retorted Señorita Desprez. 'Put something on!'

Hélène merely shrugged with indifference and returned to the dorm to find her nightdress. Irènée sat upon the edge of her bed and was combing her long black hair. With each slow downward stroke, she stared across the room at Thérèse, watched as the beautiful new girl began to remove her chemise. Irènée's stare was unflinching, disquieting and even sensual as she combed through her locks. Such languor might have inspired a cavalcade of calamities in any decent household, however, here in this dormitory, there was no one else to see or to make remark. Nonetheless, she held the other girl with her gaze, wondering what it might have been like to go against public decency and plunge into the vacillating maelstrom of forbidden Sapphic love, right here and now, while everybody watched with lustful eyes. Thérèse was radiant, her skin so fair and flawless, and as Irènée looked on her glance beheld a white shoulder exposed as Thérèse pulled down her chemise. Thérèse became aware, quite abruptly, that she was the object of Irènée's intense observation, and the knowledge made her pull the material swiftly back up over her skin. Irènée only smiled and continued to stare and licked her lips lasciviously. This desire, this lust was abominable, thought Thérèse, and into it she was being plunged unwilling to survey the basest liberality of human nature. Quickly, and self-consciously, Thérèse picked up her nightie and donned it with her back turned to the other girl.

On the edge of her own cot Isabelle was stooping to loosen her shoes. When she had done this, she stretched over and folded down her blanket. Under the blanket were revealed two iron keys, and to the keys was pinned a folded paper. Isabelle gasped and spun about to be certain that no one saw, not any of the other girls, and especially not Señorita Desprez. If the matron caught her with a key she would be thrown into confinement for sure and then worse. Isabelle could not help but dwell upon the fate of Catalina Lacienne, and how the girl had pushed Señora Fourneau to the brink of fury. It had been three days and Catalina still had not come back; and then there was the matter of her own trysts with Señora Fourneau's son. Isabelle had become nervous for she did not know how long she could keep lying, lying to protect her friendship. She found herself thinking of ways to explore the smouldering amour that had been lit in her young heart. Her hand shot out and she grabbed the keys and hid them in the folds of her bathrobe. For a moment she did not move, her heart thumping wildly, contemplating what she should do. She must go to the washroom, she thought, into one of the toilet cubicles, only in there would nobody see as she peeled the note open to reveal its message. It took all of Isabelle's self-control not to run to the washroom, clutching at her bathrobe with the keys bunched up tightly in her hand.

The washroom was antiquated and in need of renovation, paint peeled from the walls, the door hinges were rusted, many of the tiles were stained and cracked, some were even missing exposing the plaster beneath. The girls often complained that the water sometimes did not run, and occasionally it was impossible to flush away your own bodily waste. A nasty smell was wafting from one of the cubicles right now. There were the stragglers in there too, those girls who milled about gossiping until the last moment, lingering even with the stink of excrement in their nostrils. Cécile was complaining that there was no toilet paper again and Mireia was groaning at this disastrous revelation. The girl was feeling bilious as she held her stomach and danced upon the spot outside of one of the stalls. Isabelle stepped around the girl and tried the other compartment, but it was bolted; in an agony of suspense she bit down on her lower lip. When one stall became vacant Isabelle had to let Mireia use it, and the sounds that came from within once the door had barely closed were simply awful. After a few moments of horrible suspense, the toilet flushed, and the other booth opened and a girl came out, her nose wrinkled in disgust, and she went to the sinks to wash her hands. Isabelle jumped inside and quickly slid the bolt.

In the dim light of the grotty lavatory, Isabelle, with trembling fingers, began to decorticate the narrow slip of paper. Carefully she unpinned the keys from the note so as not to tear it and revealed the short message.

'One of the keys is to the dormitory and the other is to the main door. I will wait for you in the greenhouse at 11 o'clock. Luis.'

Isabelle read the note three times before she tore it into little shreds and pulled the chain to flush it down the privy. She watched intently until she was certain that no stray shreds of paper resurfaced and floated. In the dorm Señorita Desprez was pulling another chain, the one that made the lamp come down. She turned out the light and retracted the linked cable.

'Goodnight, Señoritas,' said Señorita Desprez, and they all returned her prayer. Her face a mask of black, her dress inextinguishable from the gloaming, Señorita Desprez left the room and locked the door. The dormitory blinked into deep shadows, shades in which girls like wraiths slid into their beds and settled into their pillows. Each one curled up lonely in the dark. Isabelle did not attempt to sleep, she could not have slept even she had wanted to, for her heart was still tripping like a hammer. Trembling in the dark she waited and listened to the clock. The matron extinguished the lamp in the hall too, Isabelle saw the light through the door jamb as it was doused, and the Residence settled into a night of dark shadows.

On the lower floor Señora Fourneau sat at her desk. She had been going through the accounts and some of the paperwork was wanting. Poring over it all for the last two hours had taxed her somewhat and she had begun to feel a slight throbbing in her temple. Perhaps it was simply mild eyestrain and perhaps there was not enough light in this stuffy old room, she thought to herself, looking up and staring at the dancing flames of the candles. A suffused luminance washed over the white paper, staining it yellow. With a sigh, she pushed her ledger aside and stood up, stretching her back. Enough of that for now. The Señora tilted up her little watch and checked the time. It was nine o'clock. For a moment she paced about, restless like a great cat in a cage and her mind was filled with thoughts of Catalina Lacienne and thoughts about the new girl Thérèse and even about Toupain and about Luis. There were too many thoughts, and they were crowding her head. Taking a deep breath, she turned on her heel and walked from the room. When she reached the main hall, standing in its ocean of stark black and white tiles she looked up to the second floor, looked up to the dormitory. Everything was quiet, and everything was in darkness. On a stand in the hall was a lamp and Señora Fourneau crossed to it and turned it out. She returned to her office and shut the door.

Thérèse Gravaine and Señor Baldie were seated in the Pont d'Avignon, the river Rhone winding along under the vault of the bright blue sky. They sat beside each other and yet were divided, on a white painted bench, under a brass Satyr poised in a frolic high upon a fluted column. The casting was breathing into a zampoña and jutting from between it legs was an erect and exaggerated phallus. The girl glanced upon the sculpture only once and then in embarrassment diverted her attention by feeding the ducks from a bag of crumbs she had purchased with a Franc Cérès at a little cafe. Somehow the crumbs recalled an awful thought, one that had frightened her some weeks ago but had now re-emerged unsolicited from her fears. It was the Grimm tale of Hansel and Grethel, that story about the children lured into a dark forest, and how they had dropped breadcrumbs along the trail so that they could find their way home again.

'Oh, wait till the moon comes out,' said Hansel, 'and then we shall see the crumbs of bread which I have dropped, and they will show us the way home.'

Had she been lured to this park, away from her home with a handful of crumbs, only to find that home would not welcome her any more when she got back? Thérèse became worried at the implication of her abandonment, and after the commotion of fluttering wings and quacking had subsided she looked out upon the Rhône. On a tiny island stood the nude Venus con Golondrinas, and Señor Baldie remarked that Thérèse was more beautiful than the goddess, an observation to flattery and deceit that made the lovely girl blush with ruddy discomfort. Up the paths to the terrace Thérèse watched the couples stroll, up to the Rocher des Doms to the Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, where they could view the Fort Saint Andrée and the panoramic ruins of the Saint-Bénézet Bridge. Señor Baldie stared at her, but she could not look at him, so she watched him from the corner of her eye. With a peculiarly glazed and gleaming stare he gazed, and perhaps, thought Thérèse, he might have chosen a more appropriate spot in the park to sit and to talk.

Despite the sun's warmth, Thérèse shivered, sitting under the provocative faun and disdained by the melancholy of her young life. This seat could have been reserved for those who pursed the sweetness of kisses, those enamoured of mutual contention, but not for a conversation about finishing school. It did not seem right to Thérèse that there had been any great need to spend a day in the park, the last day of her young life in Avignon, and this made her anxious and her body began to tremble. Señor Baldie had made an awful, repulsive, laughing remark about the statue of the faun, and how it made him think of how rams and she-goats came together. The girl had not known what to reply, but she squirmed within, for this was not correct, this was a Señor Baldie so different to the cordial and mysterious man who came briefly to visit their apartments every week.

He sat beside her, close, so close that she thought he might clasp her hand, and the look in his face, his eyes flashing and wide, his lips slick with spittle, had begun to make Thérèse feel so uncomfortable that she imagined she might take sick with nervous expectation. She shifted slightly, moving away from him, throwing the ducks and geese another shower of crumbs. Señor Baldie had talked of her mother, talked of how Thérèse had grown more beautiful than her mother, and how such beauty should not be wasted. Such talk confused Thérèse and she had not known what he meant, but his smile was possessed of a nasty little twitch and he insinuated things that proper manners did not discuss in public. The man talked about Thérèse's mother and about the bitterness of love. Again, his speech was fragmented and his meaning obscure. This talk created turmoil inside of Thérèse for her mother's health had begun to deteriorate. It had been a long time since the handsome man with the dark hair and the blue eyes came to visit and play the piano, and over the last few months the changes in her mother's demeanour had been rapid and extreme.

The woman no longer sang, and she no longer danced; her senses given to torpor or rage, peevish, sleepless, anxious fearing, and she remained at home, closed off in her room, a room where the piano stood but was never played and where pretty feather boas only stirred in the breeze from the window. Sometimes, when the night came, Violette would suffer a fever of the brain and she would scream. Those screams were filled with pain, and they made Thérèse sob, and sometimes the cries were crudely suggestive, less like the nightingale who sang for the pleasure of Paris and more like a lewd witch. For fear of God only knew what, her daughter had been instructed to limit her visits to her mother's room, and Señor Baldie's own visits to their apartment in the Place des Artes, in the Rue de la Chappelle in Avignon had become more frequent. His interest in the young woman's welfare had grown significantly and he recommended that in Violette's sickness a nurse be installed, and few visitors admitted. In her lucid moments, Violette protested the need for a nurse, and somehow won her case, yet her condition worsened, and she petitioned her benefactor to send her daughter away to finishing school, to be properly educated, but Señor Baldie was feigned to comply.

In the park, under the sun, Thérèse had grown to hate the day, for it would become tomorrow, the date set in which a carriage would come and gather her up and sweep her away from Avignon and her home, but not like the princess in a fairy tale but rather as a mote of dust, cleaned away, removed and forgotten. Señor Baldie talked on, told her of how much he cared for her and how he did not want to send her off to boarding school. When Thérèse found enough courage to ask why it was that the handsome man had not visited for so long, Señor Baldie feigned ignorance, in that he knew not of whom Thérèse spoke. As he protested his hand had strayed to her arm. There his fingers had touched her pale skin, inched towards her hand like a spider hopping along a silken thread. When she gasped and withdrew, invaded by a thoroughly unwanted sense of déjà vu, Señor Baldie did not apologise, but suggested they take a walk upon the terrace. Nervously she walked with him up the manicured ways to the broken walls, and Señor Baldie stopped to buy some flavoured ices from a confectioner's stall before they made the climb. The ices melted away as do tears, and Thérèse was vexed by the man's strange conduct.

In the afternoon Señor Baldie hailed a taxi and they scrabbled within, Thérèse was glad to be going home, even if it were for the last time, and as the cab clopped by the Cimetière Saint-Véran d'Avignon, with its great stone wall over which a thick, viridian vine crawled, the girl found that she was upon the brink of tears. Through the gate a funeral cortège could be glimpsed, a black and plumed hearse and a line of mourners robed in charcoal veils, and Thérèse felt a frisson of both horror and finality crawling under her skin. She did not want to go to Comillas and to boarding school, for it might as well be a prison sentence, for what was it that she had done, what sin had she committed to warrant such an extreme exile? Thérèse worried for her mother and agonised if Violette should pass in her absence at school, who would tell her that the woman had gone to the realm of the dead? A little wind rippled over her skin. Inside the cemetery she glimpsed the stone garden, a garden nurtured by the putrescent dead, a wild, eclectic nether land of cracked cherubim and verdigris-tinged seraphs. The cortège was filing through an elegantly wrought avenue of granite and marble, a gorgeous celestial city of richly ornamented tombs crumbling silently under the weight of neglect. Between the burial rows, the bereaved passed, under eaves of carved stone, to drift in slow motion by biers sculptured with fractured rosettes and hung in rigid tassel. An open grave awaited the coffin and the cold earth was the stronghold that would keep custody of the yellow bones.

In Avignon, in a tree-lined avenue at the end of Rue del la Chappelle, the cab dropped Thérèse and her benefactor, outside a deteriorating apartment that crumbled in the lane with peeling paint and rusty iron lace. The young woman made her excuses to disentangle herself from the unsettling company of Señor Baldie, and she ran inside the house and up to her room. Once inside she locked her bedroom door and threw herself down upon her bed and began to weep. Outside the daylight faded and eventually the sky turned from blue to mulberry and finally to jet; and drowning in a well of tears, Thérèse drifted off to sleep. Close to midnight she awoke with a start, thinking that she had heard the light sound of footsteps tip-toeing along the boards, and as her eyes fluttered open in the nightshade she thought she saw a phantom. The shape was a dark stencil that moved softly but quickly, navigating the room in the space of seconds, and then it arrived at the door and it passed through. When Thérèse blinked she saw that she was in her cot, in the darkened dormitory, in her island of loneliness in a sea of sleeping young female flesh, in the Residence and not in Avignon, and that Isabelle Delorme's bed was empty.

When the clock at last crawled to the hour of eleven, all the pupils were soundly asleep. All but Isabelle. She listened to the stentorous breathing of the other girls as they slept. Over near Irènée's bed, Andrée was talking lowly, declaring her love for someone, muttering a declaration that would last beyond the death of the everlasting stars, Julie was walking in the garden of the Hesperides, plucking at the golden apples of the sun. Hélène was tossing about quietly, her right leg twitching from under her blanket. Isabelle could not see Thérèse's face but she was sure the girl was asleep, and certain that she would not be discovered, she rose from her bunk and slid her bare feet into her slippers. Next, she put on her dressing gown and with quick and silent step she crept past Toupain's bed and slid the first of her keys into the lock. Breathing a silent sigh when the key turned without protest, she was relieved that she did not have to try the other. One quick glance at Irènée reassured her that the girl had heard nothing, for she did not stir. Opening the door just wide enough for her slim body the glide through, Isabelle stole from the dormitory into the darkness of the corridor and headed toward the gallery landing and the grand staircase. Trepidation clawed at her step as she navigated her way in the dark, and it was difficult to discern the risers of the stairs as she descended. Isabelle dreaded the thought of faltering and missing her footing, for she could have tumbled down the stairs and broken her neck in the fall. She felt for the banister and traversed the darkness with care until the darkness delivered her to the great Gothic entry doors and the key turned in its lock and she was outside.

With no torch to guide her in the night and no moon gleaming through the fog, Isabelle stumbled in the slowly tumbling vapours. She walked slowly because it was difficult to find the way, the path occluded under the roiling sea of mist. The fog rose like a veil, a wetly cloying shroud, an obscurity of vision and emotion through which she must pass. A terrible thought assailed Isabelle, one in which she was regaled in punishment for having lost her way. On the edge of an unnamable apprehension the girl tried to push that thought aside. She hadn't done anything, not like that, at least, not everything. Why, she had only kissed, and perhaps Luis had touched her bosom, but she was not like those other girls, not like Catalina and Suzanne, sullied and spoiled and lusting under the tight coils of their repressed flesh. No, Isabelle was innocent and in love. Towards the rear of the house she moved, towards the greenhouse and her rendezvous with Luis. Grey veils of mist curled and parted in her wake, rolling around her and enveloping her, and Isabelle was not confident that she would find her way back. Yet she hoped that there would be no need to go back, that Luis would take her away from here, that the two of them could escape this dreadful house tonight. She prayed that they would marry once they had eloped. To be wed would be the realisation of her wishes and the fulfillment of his promise to take her away. There were strange and haunting sounds in the dark, sounds that lilted and drifted from the park, from far away, and they fell upon her ear and made Isabelle nervous. A rabbit screamed as it was caught in the claws of the owl, a canine howl was an aria sung to a moon that had not risen, and a night bird sang a high, shrill note. Nervously she moved on, the walls of the house rising into occultation above her tiny form as the mist crawled before the blocks of sandstone. Soon the greenhouse loomed up out of the mist, its tall glass sides wet with humidity, its foliage lushly dark and secretive within. A snail slid lethargically up the damp pane, leaving an argent trail on the glass, its shape vacillating and throbbing. Isabelle tried the door and it opened. With a thudding heart, she stepped into another level of shadows.

'Luis,' she called quietly, for she had arrived upon his summons and she was ready to escape. There came no answer. The darkness forestalled the moment of their meeting. All Isabelle could hear now was the muted dripping of water from a tap and the echo of her own expectant heartbeat. The girl smelled the thick odour of the flowers and the earth in the soil beds, and the perfume was so heady that she could almost taste it upon her lips. She called again as she slipped deeper and deeper into the greenhouse, fumbling between the rows of planter boxes and the black leafy fronds. There was dew upon the lengthy emerald stems, damp upon the tips of her fingers as she pushed the leaves aside. Something whispered to her that she had been a fool, a young and stupid fool in thinking that she could find liberty and happiness, for to be truthful, where could they go? Her family had deserted her and her father was a bandit, the infamous Plumitas whom the authorities found difficult to apprehend. Nefarious in his dealings, Isabelle suspected that her father had paid a lump sum to Señora Fourneau, and no questions had been asked, and the deal for Isabelle's incarceration struck. When you were fifteen you had no say, no agency of your own. Though really, simply being female gave you no say, for even her sister was gone to a nunnery and her mother was abandoned. Isabelle had no home that would support her, and she could never return to her family domicile. As for Luis, well his mother hated all the girls in her care, and she was stern and nasty, and Luis had no money and no prospects and most tellingly of all, he was a cripple. To escape was a fantasy and it would always be so. Alone and tense, her mind wrought with the torments of Tanatalus, Isabelle began to feel vulnerable, for there was no trusting the dark, no faith in what you could not see. Rising at her back, Isabelle did not see the blackness evolve, the shape of Erebus, eclipsed by the darkness through which she moved.

It advanced quickly, bounding to her in long and confident strides, its footfall silent, its shape a silhouette of wicked nigritude. The form reached her in the space of a heartbeat and it enclosed her mouth in a grip of steel, pulling her back and against its cold, cold contour. Startled, the girl had no time to scream, her eyes popping from their sockets in terror. An icy thrill entered her then, entered and went in deep between her ribs, cutting between the filigree chain from which dangled her tiny orpiment crucifix. It was strange how the thrill was cold and yet burned like fire. Isabelle thrashed against the shadow. The penetration went deep, and she shuddered. At the same time the elation brought pain, for there was a peculiar exhilaration in the violence, a release of frenzy, a loss of innocence. Some remote part of her brain told Isabelle that she was being stabbed with a knife, and yet the spicule incision of the blade was almost exquisite, and she knew fervency in the spike's lethal kiss. The pain redoubled as the lance plunged into her body again. The girl whimpered and struggled feebly, stiffening her body, flailing her free hand as if clutching at something, someone, but her fingers only grasped the dark and vaporous nothingness of air. Like a butterfly pinned to a board, Isabelle clawed and fought, the pain becoming unbearable, the tears streaming from her eyes.

There was somehow a strange verity in the knife edge, a queer kind of elation that swelled in its intensity. It filled her body with a terrible joy, and the pain of that joy came again and again and promised that she was now going to cross over from this world into a realm of angels and pearly light, going to meet her sister, Constanza. In a mirage Isabelle saw her older sibling, saw her enrobed in a golden corona, but within that pulsing light she was convulsing in the throes of possession. They were holding hands, and the aureate glow shimmering about her sister burned all over Isabelle and enveloped her body. The two girls were both shuddering in a horrible and fatal dance. Constanza's confirmation cross was looped between their joined fingers. Constanza, the exiled child was screaming in the fog, shrieking to Isabelle that God was a bastard and that all men drank burro piss. The woman let go of her sister and then spat and hissed and exposed her genitals and urinated and thrashed about. As she screamed Constanza challenged the men, those fools who watched her so lasciviously, challenged them to drink the yellow fluid from her privy, and repulsed they swarmed out of the veil of grey mist. They came running like mad dogs slavering and dragged Constanza off to Hell, not Heaven, pushing her into the earth and defiling her in a gang rape.

All this Isabelle saw as if it flashed before her eyes, as if time had been slowed down, as if the past were the present and the present was a prophecy. Time abruptly stopped frozen. Between the stuttering images of her sister gone mad there was the flashing, stabbing rise and fall of the knife blade, and it rose in one final, silver arc. When Isabelle flailed no more, her fingers gripped the tiny auripigmentum yellow cruciform stone about her neck, and the slender chain from which it dangled unravelled and fell through air. Sagging against her assailant she closed her eyes and the image of her sister was gone, replaced by that of the Holy Virgin with her heart exposed in an open rib cage and a torrent of blood pouring from her wound, even as her face beamed with a beatific smile. The Virgin opened both her lips and her legs, and a gush of blood and filth spattered forth. With that Isabelle felt one last sensation, the black shape's icy physicality, and she gagged on the tide of red that vomited from her lips. The blade sang in the dark again, tearing into the girl's flesh, cutting and stabbing repeatedly until the blood squirted like a garnet fountain over the pale white petals of the azaleas. Isabelle took one last, wetly laborious breath and she fell to the ground and was still, crimson pooling about her body. The shape reached down and stabbed the knife into her body again and again and then it slid the knife's sharp edge across Isabelle's throat, slitting it from ear to ear. In the dark of the greenhouse the knife shone chrome and black and scarlet, its tip poised upon Isabelle's eyelid and then it thrust beneath the lashes. When the shape had finished its butcher's work, gory fingers plucked the crucifix from out of the dead girl's stiff fingers.

12

Threats

On the fourth day of confinement it was Lucie who came to reprieve Catalina. The girl had slept for most of her incarceration, in a coma punctuated by terrible agonies whenever she moved. In the passing darkness, she sometimes woke to relieve herself in a pot on the floor at the end of the bunk; she tasted little of the pallid food they had brought her to eat, and only sipped at the tepid water in the jug. Gradually Catalina's wounds began to scab and close over, turning from red raw to a purple, and the pain receded but did not go away. When she slept she did not dream, and perhaps this was the only way her mind could shut out the fervid reality of this house that screamed. Rats scurried about the cot in the dark and insects crawled upon her face. When Lucie opened the door, she did not speak to Catalina, just stood in the doorway waiting for the girl to get up. Days ago, Catalina had fumblingly dressed herself in the dark, dressed once again in her torn clothing. Her menses had begun but there was nothing in the punishment room that she could use to stem their flow apart from the soiled sheets. The odour of stale vaginal blood had become intense. Her skirt was almost intact, but all the buttons had been stripped from her yellow cotton blouse. Modesty demanded Catalina gather it together to cover her breasts, but there was not much that she could do to aid the problem. Obediently and silently she followed Lucie downstairs, and the punishment room was again locked. Catalina, even though she had slept away most of her confinement, was tired. The stairs were steep, and her legs did not want to bend, her back still smarted from the lashing. As they approached the bottom of the stairs and came up to the dormitory Catalina could hear Señora Fourneau's voice, loud and angry resounding through the door.

'I ask you for the last time,' she shouted, and only stilled tongues attended to her rage. 'Did anyone of you see Isabelle Delorme leave here last night?'

Catalina listened. A strange prickly excitement filled her, quite suddenly, and the knowledge that young Isabelle Delorme had absconded both thrilled and frightened her. It was not the first time that unhappiness had driven the girls from this nasty penitentiary, and it would probably not be the last, but Isabelle… Well, that petite blonde was perhaps the last candidate Catalina would have picked to run away. Isabelle was smitten with amorous feelings for Señora Fourneau's crippled son, and because of that Catalina imagined that the girl was bound to the house, locked by her own will behind these iron gates and forbidding walls. Catalina opened the dormitory door and walked in, slowly, deliberately, and although several eyes looked upon her dishevelled face and figure, everyone remained silent.

'It is better for all of you,' continued Señora Fourneau, 'that you tell me the truth. Now!'

Catalina stood at the end of the row of young women, leaving a wide space between herself and the last girl, aware of her need to wash and of her bleeding unsanitary state, and she stood facing Señora Fourneau. Lucie slipped around the released prisoner and passed Señorita Desprez the key to the punishment room. The matron nodded and gripped the key in her palm.

'I must warn you…' the Principal continued, having not elicited the confession or the response that she might have wished. 'That anyone covering up for Isabelle Delorme will be punished in exactly the same way as the one who escaped!'

This threat sent a shiver throughout the pupils. None of them wanted to taste the tongue of the lash and none of them thought that they could stand being locked up alone in the dark for days on end in a room where roaches crawled over you at night and where food and water were small portions indeed. If you wound up in there you'd go mad. Señora Fourneau's face had taken on a wild and frantic look, for her eyes had bulged to twice their size and her lips, red as they were, had begun speckling with froth. Lucie turned away and bowed and left the room. Once she had disappeared Señora Fourneau pointed towards that door.

'This morning,' she roared, strutting up to stand beside her matron, 'when Señorita Desprez came to wake you, this door was open!'

Señora Fourneau stood before the dormitory door, her black skirt and her tautly bound locks giving the impression that her body was a portcullis that had slammed shut against the castle and trapped them all within. She stood erect, trembling with barely restrained venom, pointing at the door repeatedly as if no one had ever seen it before.

'Therefore, Isabelle Delorme left this way. How else could she leave?'

None of the students gave an answer, they were all so frightened into submission and yet none of them knew anything.

'She must have used a key, or something,' the Principal continued to rant; thereby hoping that her fury would make at least one of these useless pieces of flesh cave and tell. 'A key makes a noise.'

Refusing to be intimidated Irènée spoke up. 'Well, I sleep by the door and I heard nothing.'

At the sound of Irènée's declaration Señora Fourneau spun about, as quick and lithe as a feral cat, crossing her arms over her breasts and she glared at Toupain.

'Isn't that strange, Señorita Toupain,' the headmistress seethed, her words loaded with suggestion, 'since you are the only one with a key to the dormitory?'

Irènée stared at the older woman with as much indignation as surprise, her hand flying to the cord that looped about her neck and from which hung the dormitory key and a key to the main entrance. She gripped the keys defensively.

'The keys that you gave me were with me all of the time,' she protested. 'It would have been impossible to take them from me without waking me.'

Angrily, but without retort, Señora Fourneau looked away. She had begun to feel that awful tightening beginning again in her chest again, and her heart was thudding hard and fast. This rebellious behaviour and the secrecy had to stop. She wondered what it might take to put an end to the shameless behaviour of these crass young females, more punishment, more beatings and more whippings perhaps. Well, that was certainly a possibility if they continued to push her to the boundaries of her tolerance. Her eyes roved over the nineteen girls who all stood quivering in their pajamas and their night dresses, insolent and cunning, the lot of them! The escape of that one impudent child had thrown the whole house into turmoil. These girls were bad news, all of them, creatures who only responded to the vile and aberrant lures of sexual deviation. Señora Fourneau would beat it out of all of them if she had to, and as for Isabelle Delorme, if she did not pay for her crime right now she would no less pay for it later, abandoned and pregnant and no wiser for her stupidity.

'Don't let me catch you lot at it!' Señora Fourneau shouted vehemently. 'For if I find another girl trying to escape…' She stalled deliberately, placing a crushing weight upon her sentence. The young women looked on and listened in fear. 'Well… you know me by now!'

With those words she stared at Catalina, raised her keys in her palm and chinked them together loudly as if they were castanets. Oh, yes, she said with her eyes, take this one here as an example and do not cross me. Her glare swept about the room and then she stormed towards the door and strode into the hall, followed closely by Señorita Desprez.

The two women began to descend to the lower floor.

'Have the locks changed at the dormitory and at the main door,' Señora Fourneau demanded. She clutched at her chest and took a deep breath. This anxiety did no one any good she confessed to herself, and she must regain a little calm.

'How many keys shall I get?' asked Señorita Desprez.

Señora Fourneau deliberated for a short moment then declared that the matron should order three keys. 'One for me, one for yourself and one for Toupain.'

'You don't think that Irènée Toupain helped Isabelle to escape?' Señorita Desprez suggested suspiciously, and Señora Fourneau stalled as she looked at the woman and then scoffed off the idea.

'Irènée? No!' She stopped half way down the stairs and began pointing at all the windows. 'Get a carpenter,' she instructed 'and have every window on the ground floor nailed down.'

The Principal continued to the lower level and stepped into its expanse of monochromatic tiles, stopping on a black diamond and looking up at her matron. Señorita Desprez saw a pillar of agitated black flame issuing out of dark crack in the world.

'If they want to escape, they will,' the older woman said drily, for she had seen it all before and quite frankly the shenanigans bored her. 'This is a boarding school,' she reminded her superior, 'not a prison.'

'Well, if it isn't one,' Señora Fourneau snapped back, 'we'll make it one!'

Señorita Desprez rolled her eyes and suppressed a droll yawn. Everything had become so tedious of late and this business of Isabelle's disappearance was just one more thing with which to contend. Three other girls had already vanished in the last few months and they were never heard from again. The Principal had been awfully mum about that. As if the headmistress were reading her thoughts the woman narrowed her eyes and pointed at Señorita Desprez. She knew exactly what the Señorita was thinking, she had known her long enough, but she was boiling with rage.

'Go to the village and see if there is any news of Isabelle.'

'Yes, Señora,' replied Desprez in apathy, 'but of course it's Tuesday. The girls take their showers. Who will be there?'

'I will!' Señora Fourneau returned coldly and emphatically, and she darted away to her office as rapidly as a black arrow is fired, leaving the matron staring disinterestedly at the empty tile upon which her superior had stood but a moment before.

13

Tunnel Vision

There is a room in this house which was, many years ago, converted into a communal shower. Once a week, this place is where the girls perform their ablutions. This room and its shower stalls become transmuted, quite literally, into a prurient crucible of wet and pulsing female flesh. Through a thick oak door, you will enter a white salon, and beyond the salon, behind a slatted bar-room swing door the corruption of female corporeality attempts to wash away it sins. Indeed, just because the walls are white, and the shower recess screened off with those creaking, swinging doors does not necessarily mean that the booths are sanitary. No indeed, because I have seen the flesh that bathes therein, as it foams and lathers its iniquity. At either side of a big and cloudy window there are recesses, in one there is a pitcher and a bowl, in the other there is a speckled argent looking glass. Above these, the window glances into blackness, strains into a dimmer and concealed compartment of the house, a dank place where Bréchard stokes coal into the furnace and where the water pipes entangle. The shower stalls and the shower heads drip in the next room behind the swing doors. In there the water sometimes does not run, sometimes the pipes shudder violently and loudly, and sometimes the tiles fall from the mortar and break in two Here the girls try to purify their skins, sponging and washing in the sluice, purging the tainture of their monthly cycle from between their thighs, scouring the demon of lust from their private places. The good that it does them is minimal, at least that is what mother would say, because some dirt cannot be washed away. Note that the floor in the salon is like the floor in that main hall, spread out under bare feet is a sea of black and white tiles, and there are low benches there too, long slatted boards upon which the girls sit to dry off and to dress, to comb out their long tresses and lace up their boots.

On Tuesdays, I wait in the darkness, in the shadows beyond the boiler room and I listen with anticipation to the sound of heels clicking on those black and white ceramics. Of course, I know it is Lucie, the maid, who enters first, ungainly as she ambles across the room and clambers into a shower cubicle, to turn the stiff lever and to test the tepid water. Nothing happens. She waits for a few seconds, but the pipes do not even deliver a single drop. Her little groan of annoyance propels her to the window, to reach up upon a short ladder and to open the portal just a fraction.

'Señor Bréchard!' she calls out. 'Turn on the water', and Bréchard grunts his irritation, moving slowly to rotate the valve and release the water flow from the reservoir. The sound of steam escaping hisses in my ear. Waiting patiently in the dark I hear Bréchard return to the blast and throw open the iron grate and I listen as he once again takes up his shovel and piles coke into the hell within. Soon the boiler is gorged with water and pressure and heat and the flames leap and dance and light the dark room with a hideous orange glow. When the grate has slammed shut again, Bréchard wipes his brow with his neckerchief, and then with a painfully dilatory gait he dawdles from the boiler room. Upon this moment, I leave my post in the shadows.

To inspect the ribbons of copper tubing that run up the wall and along the ceiling might have been the reason that I find myself hovering outside Bréchard's domain, but regardless, that is merely the excuse I would give if ever I were caught, for I know that Senor Bréchard stores his piping off cuts, due to their varying lengths, in the air vent. Occasionally, the pipes burst or buckle and he has need to perform repairs. Perhaps I figure that he would not miss a length or two, for I have conjured a plan to start work on a design for my new leg braces. Needless to relate that I have not told anyone about my creative plans, because all they ever do is deride and scoff and tell me that my efforts will prove useless and that I am a fool. Mother sneers and says horrible derogatory things, and yet I defy them to walk with my pain and I ask if they know of a better aid to help my stumbling gait? Half-a-dozen medical professionals have availed little help, and all I have gained for their efforts are these nasty iron braces that give me rank and suppurating sores and twist my bones until I think I might scream. If I can make for myself more practical and more comfortable orthoses than these torturous irons that I now suffer, why should my talents not be made real? Even if I do have to make the things myself! Yet the best laid plans often fall astray, and the pipes today, in Bréchard's boiler room, are expanding and banging in dissent. In the other room, I hear the water gushing from a calcified shower head. Lucie mutters aloud and closes off the squeaking lever. The flow stops. She clatters out of the shower room and in a little while I hear other footfalls. The girls are coming in to bathe. Here I can but imagine their movements as my mother ushers them into the first chamber. Several times I have been in that room before, even though mother and Señorita Desprez are the only two who keep a key. As with all teenage boys I am filled with curiosity, and I must know, so I have looked inside of that room. Upon the benches I have sat, my fingers tracing the auras of the girls whose naked flesh has thereon perched. Birds of paradise and swans, and a few cuckoos too! Oh, I have felt the traces of their heat, and for all my life there have always been girls floating in my vision. Some as pretty as angels, some more robust, and I have found myself wondering about the mystery of their forms, my thoughts filled with the curves of their alabaster bodies. Even in my sleep I have been haunted by their flesh. Has nature designed these girls to be pure and innocent or has it made them the bane of man's sexual urgency? How they writhe and weave, and I imagine their hands all over their forms, indulging in a practice that violates female immaculacy. Compelled by my awakening desires I cannot help but look again today, any boy would have looked, and in any case who was I harming? Nobody knew, not even mother.

'Everything is ready for you,' I hear Lucie say, and there comes the sound of muffled noises, soft noises as young bare feet shuffle through the door and file off left and right. I listen as they mill about the low benches upon which they place their dry clothing, as they unpin their hair and I hear the rustle of their shower robes against their lovely, soft bodies. During their ablutions, they are forbidden to remove their tunics, and I often ponder how it is that they get themselves clean. Perhaps it is an abject lesson in self-restraint, to forgo the vanity of the flesh, but the fact that they are made to wear those thinly transparent bathing uniforms only inspires me to more luscious and dangerous dreams.

'Hurry up girls. Hurry up!' I hear my mother urge and they attend diligently as the swing door creaks and is held back, and the first wave of girls enters the vestibule. To the grated vent in the wall I creep, a gate that closes off a flue, a long crawlspace through which the damp steam from the showers is expelled. Opening the grate, I start as its hinges screech in protest. When I am certain that Bréchard does not hear, I haul myself up into the aperture and lie at length within. Inside the tunnel is roughly hewn and mouldy, cut-off lengths of old piping are placed along one side and there are fungi sprouting between the cracks in the bricks. With difficulty, I unbuckle the straps of my braces and push them aside into the shadows; doing this allows me the freedom to crawl more easily down the incline of the vent, down and down, inch by inch toward the murmuring sounds in the adytum. It is something of a strain, pushing forward and crawling, but I can squeeze along, able to bend my knees just enough to boost my body along inside of that cramped and dark and exiguous enclosure. Along that tight and slippery, almost female canal, I inch, and an expulsion of hot, wet steam eructs into my face. The steam is sucked up the flue, and gasping, I choke back a cough. I can hear the boiler shaking and shuddering as the water inside it begins to boil. At the end of the crawlspace is an elliptical opening of wrought iron, one of its four traceries are broken, and close to that hole I press my eye and I blink and I squint. Down there I can see them, but they cannot see me. My vision though is limited, for it does not take in the entire antechamber, but it allows through the veils of wafting mist a view of a space wherein walks my mother, pacing back and forth like a blackened shadow calling out instructions.

A tide of pink and white and supple flesh steps into the shower cubicles, still robed in their loose fitting white cotton mantles, and in synchronised choreography they all reach forward and pull down the levers to make the water flow. Gushing forth in a hot stream the water glistens on arms and cheeks and saturates yellow and raven locks into long and tangled streamers. Blinking again I try to focus through the steam, to catch a better glimpse of the female form as the water wets the fabric, as the fabric clings to skin, as the dirt of existence is rinsed from that flesh. How my heart beats faster as I watch, engrossed as my mother walks in and out of my field of vision, up and down slowly, around and observing, her eyes raking over these beautiful birds of paradise. True, I admit it, I was jealous of her, for I would have liked nothing better than to stand amid those birds, stand close to their fleshy parts, soft as silk and white and smooth. Ah, such is their power over me, the desire they inflame, the water pouring like liquid crystal, their skins beaded with sparkling droplets, slowly luxuriating in the warm stream. Under that saturated fabric I can discern the swell of breasts, some small, some ample, some firm, all are ripe with promise. Awkwardly the girls soap beneath their attire, lifting the clinging material and foaming between their thighs. My heart leaps with excitement as I stare transfixed at the spectacle of these beautiful buds, scoured and renewed afresh, sparkling and clean. I wonder how many of them are still intact, how many had come to be in my mother's 'care' because they were wild and had departed with the ever so perishable commodity of their maidenhood? Not Suzanne nor Catalina, that much I knew! The thought of these girls' impurities only made my heart beat faster yet still.

'Get out,' mother calls after five minutes under the warm water. 'Hurry up, Señoritas. You can get out now.'

The first wave of girls turns up the levers and steps from their stalls and reaches for their towels. Señora Fourneau ushers them out and admits the next parade of female youth. It is then that I see Catalina Lacienne. The recalcitrant walks into the shower room, slowly, deliberately, and she looks about at her friends as they turn on the water. Her look is haughty and assured and she reaches up and begins to unpin her hair. Golden it spills upon her shoulders, wetly her lips glisten like garnets. Clouds of steam rise immediately, obscuring her lovely body, and she looks at my mother through the vapour with a sly and shameless stare. How those red lips purse and her eyes glow with a subtle fire. Catalina flinches slightly as the water streams abruptly forth from the faucet, hot upon her back, hot through the clinging fabric, stinging her healing wounds. Arrested, Señora Fourneau stops before Catalina. She holds her keys aloft in her palm and is clicking them together as if counting off the minutes that impose her absolute authority. Their eyes lock and I know what mother is thinking. She is thinking the same thing I am thinking, that Catalina is beautiful, that her body should be naked, for it pronounces extreme and erotic excitements because it is the fine-tuned instrument upon which might be played every conceivable music, melodious or raucous. That body should give joy to both men and women, that body should be defiled. Catalina reaches up and pulls down her robe.

'Señorita Lacienne!' mother exclaims in alarm, her face blanching and turning as pale as the clouds of billowing mist. At the sight of that flesh I hear my own sharp intake of breath. 'What do you think you are doing?'

Quietly I groan as the haze parts, as Catalina steps out of her saturated tunic and kicks it to the side and is naked. There I behold her body in all its supple glory, that perfect form of the Venus come ashore in the clamshell, the vision captured by Botticelli's brush, the most potently voluptuous thing that I have ever seen. There too I glimpse a thin crimson ribbon as it trickles down her thigh, to mingle with the warm water. Mother's eyes grow wide and her lips tremble, in both horror, disgust and desire.

'I think you know why,' says Catalina, pirouetting about as gracefully as a dancer and showing every girl in that shower room the crisscross patterns that decorate like red lace the alabaster width of her shoulders. Catalina begins cleaning the stale blood from between her legs. The other girls gasp in fear and quickly finish their ablutions.

'I want to really wash myself for a change,' she retorts, and even though the water stings the welts lashed into her back, Catalina smiles and knows her triumph. 'Does it bother you?' she asks with the demon's intelligence, not turning around, deliberate in her movements and speech, reducing mother to the status of a weaker animal. Mother stands as still as a plank, roiling within, unable to respond, and Catalina delivers with aplomb my mother's humiliation and her clever and sweet revenge. Stumbling in her response mother replies that it does not, and she shrugs and turns away. The other girls too all turn their heads, spectators in a theatre that reveals the truth of my mother's cruelty and violation, and her weakness. Mother turns back then, perhaps knowing that she has been bested by this wayward girl, and she open her mouth as if she is going to recall her permission, but Catalina throws back her head and lets the water run over her face and her hair and her high and lovely breasts. She begins to stoke her own body, laughing as she does so, lathering the soap over her bosoms, and writhing as she inches the soap lower, lower, writhing in an ecstasy that challenges my mother to whip her again. In suppressed anger mother calls the rest of the girls to get out of the showers.

Unexpectedly, Señor Bréchard returns to the boiler room. I hear him as he checks the temperature of the gauges, for the valves squeak as he turns them, and I look up in alarm that he should discover my presence. Señor Bréchard must have noticed that the vent gate is open for I heard it bang shut, and shortly thereafter I hear the door to the boiler room close.

Panic enters me like a knife and I squeeze my body about and crawl back to the entrance, peering through the bars to be sure that Bréchard has gone. The boiler room has returned to virtual darkness, for the orange glow of the furnace is dimmed. Pushing against the grating I discover that not only has Bréchard closed it but he has also slid the bolt, locking it fast. My panic escalates upon that moment and I rattle at the iron. The portal does not give, and I find that my breath is becoming short and that I have broken out into a cold and clammy sweat. Gasping I force my body about, finding my leg braces again and in the cramped tunnel I force my legs into their irons and fumble with the straps. When I have at last fitted them I brace my feet flatly upon the grate and try to kick. It is a feeble attempt to burst the bolt from its grip, but I must try, or I will be ensnared in this hell hole and my secret vice eventually discovered. Soon I become anxious, unable to secure my liberty, and then in the dark my fingers scratch and scrabble and claw at the iron grating. Still it is useless and for all my exertion I do not gain my liberty. With a half-surrendered groan, I inadvertently touch a length of pipe beside my body, and I grip it hard and thrust it against the bars. The copper clangs loudly against the iron, and the throbbing resonance echoes through the catacomb, and I am certain that my mother hears the noise, her ear no doubt tilted to the rattling commotion. How could she not have heard that muffled cacophony as the cylinder repeatedly crashed against the hard iron, and not wondered at its causation, its source? Still the bolt does not give and in frustration and frantic mounting terror, in a wetly sweaty exhaustion I drop the pipe with a dampened clank and whimper. Breathing is becoming difficult and the narrow confines of the mouldy tunnel stifle and entomb.

Weakly I manage to turn about again and scramble back to the broken fanlight, and perhaps I can call out, if I dare. Perhaps someone will hear. With my eye pressed to the hole I peer down into the shower room. I see Catalina wrapping her body up in a towel and then she drifts away, and I see my mother as she tells the last student showering, Thérèse Gravaine, the new girl, to hurry up and get out. Waiting in an agony of suspense as mother leaves the room, I risk a whisper. Thérèse is afraid at first, for I see fear flicker over her lovely face. She cocks her head up to the ceiling as she pauses as she dries her hair.

'Señorita,' I whisper hoarsely, 'Señorita, please.'

The girl looks around but is unable to discern from which direction my voice comes, and I dare not risk calling aloud.

'Señorita, I am here,' and I rap lowly on the casement of the fanlight and again she looks up. 'I am trapped in the passage in the boiler room,' I tell her, and I see her eyes grow wide with amazement. 'Señorita, help me.' I gasp and gulp for air, my lungs fighting to gain breath, and I sound pathetic, but how else am I to get out? 'Help me,' I plead again, and I collapse exhausted, gasping for air in the dark and the dirt and I hope that Thérèse will not forsake or judge or betray me.

14

Sewing Lesson

In the kitchen, the stove was filled with wood and lit, the oven prepared for the task of cooking supper. It had fallen upon Almuna to assist Marthe, the cook, to prepare the food. The girl was resentful and hated the culinary art. Why, you slaved all morning and all day for little, for no one ever appreciated your efforts, they just ate their portion and never said thanks. Even Marthe could be quite difficult. If you were struggling with a recipe she always retorted that she was not supposed to help with the cooking. Almuna was indeed struggling. She had been given the task of making Migas from a basket of stale bread, and after that she must make pork pies. As if making the pastry wasn't difficult enough she had to choose the right seasoning. Almuna wanted to weep, for she knew that no matter what she did the dishes were not going to be nice, and then everyone would grumble and Mireia would be doubled up again outside of the lavatory.

She opened the geladeira and withdrew a large bowl of diced meat. The meat must have been prepared the day before and Almuna was glad that the gist had already been skinned and chopped into portions, because the smell and the act of cutting it up always made her vaguely sick. She reserved some strips of meaty flesh for the Migas and then she rubbed the greater portion with the salt and the pepper and the nutmeg. Nonetheless, she was completely unsure how much to use, and she refused to query Marthe because she would have been scolded. If making the filling for the pies proved a trial, well, she had yet to attempt the crust. After this task, she must peel and core a veritable orchard of green apples, even though Toupain was supposed to send another girl to assist! Perspiration was beading on her brow as she plunged her fingers into the uninviting and cold bowl of flesh. Well, Almuna told herself sorrowfully, if the school got their supper tonight at all it would be a miracle.

'What are you doing, Thérèse?' Irènée's question was pointed and accusatory; her expression was hard with ire and in her heart, she was simmering with violence. 'What do you do in the boiler room almost every afternoon?'

The older girl had called Thérèse to the dormitory again because it had been reported to her that the new pupil had been engaged in a secret rendezvous. Fragonar and Rigeaux were in attendance, Fragonar simpered as she poured herself a cup of tea.

'In the last two days, we have seen you go in there several times,' Irènée inculpated, and she looked to Rigeaux. The other girl smirked for she had been waiting for an opportunity to put the knife into the little French hussy, and give that blade a nice, delicious twist.

'You've seen me?' Thérèse returned lamely, and Toupain crossed her arms over her breast and shook her head.

'Don't take us for stupid!' she declared, and her face shone with venomous spite. 'One of the things that Señora Fourneau resents most is anyone of us talking with her son.'

The thought of the Señora's weakling offspring repulsed her to the core, but this was inexcusable. If Irènée turned a blind eye to this it would no doubt come back upon her with a vengeance, and she was not going to jeopardise her position of authority because of this vapid girl.

Señorita Gravaine gasped, knowing she had been caught and unable to offer a plausible excuse.

'Didn't you know?' Irènée replied sarcastically, tut-tutting and unfolding her arms. She approached Thérèse. 'All three of us can swear that Luis and you have locked yourselves in there alone… quite a few times!'

Thérèse was silent, for she realised that there would be no use trying to explain.

'We want to talk to you later,' Irènée said quietly but angrily. 'After music class, we'll expect you in the dining room, and if you're not there we'll have to have a little talk with Señora Fourneau.'

The three of them swept from the room and left Thérèse to ponder her fate.

Bréchard unlocked the chain at the main gate. As he turned the key the lock sprang open and the chain rattled, dropping and twisting like a thick black snake. He pulled the wrought iron gate inward, its rusting hinges grating metal on metal with complaint. A wagon stood outside the gate. It was loaded high with a pile of chopped wood. In the box sat a young man with curly black hair. His face was square jawed and his eyes brown, his muscles strong with youth and hard work; he was not handsome, certainly not the prince of a fairy tale, but his features were not unpleasing. When he smiled his face lit up like a beacon, and perhaps that was the attraction of Henry. With a little tug on the reins the young man eased the horse and cart inside the gate and Bréchard again closed the portals, looped the chain and snapped the lock closed. When he had done this the handyman jumped up onto the box beside Henry with a mutter to be going and the driver coaxed his chestnut mare down the drive through the park and then around to the rear of the Residence. To the right a footpath led between the topiary and beyond another high gate to the gardens and then continued to the orchards and the meadow, and Henry could see the greenhouse and the blue smoke threading like a ribbon from the kitchen chimney. He stopped the cart in front of the shed and Bréchard leapt to the ground. Half a dozen hens scattered in his wake, fluttering madly and clucking, hoping for seed, Bréchard ignored them. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, but Henry need not hurry, this lot would probably take only the best part of an hour to unload.

'Do you want a hand?' the handyman asked.

'No,' replied Henry, for his business did not require the assistance of another. 'I can manage,' he reassured and smiled. Perhaps the smile did not work its magic on other men, for Bréchard's face did not display a change of expression. 'When I've finished I'll give you a shout and you can lock up the shed.'

'All right, very well' Bréchard mumbled, thankful in his own way that he did not have to tackle that pile of kindling with its splinters and the repetitive walking to and fro from cart to shed. His back had already begun to ache with age and he did not need the extra pain of struggling to carry the timber for the furnace and the kitchen. He gave Henry a peculiar look before he loped off, but because his eyes were not rightly aligned it was difficult for the young man to interpret any insinuation. Henry merely shrugged and jumped down from the cart and began his task of unloading the wood.

Suzanne had drawn the lace curtains back and tied them off with a braided cord. She was watching from the window. Sewing class had started a quarter of an hour ago and she was becoming agitated already. What if, and she could not stem the thought, the woodman did not come? She swallowed, and her mouth felt thirsty, her lips desiccant. That was an awful thought indeed, or worse, what if the village sent someone else in Henry's stead? An old man! That was unthinkable! Perhaps she was being stupid, but the suspense, the expectation of the young man's hard body had possessed and consumed her thoughts all day, from the moment she had awoken. It was her turn again. That seemed most unfair to the other girls, but that was the luck of the draw, wasn't it? The tiles went in and only one could be drawn. Kismet had touched Suzanne twice. The pupils were now seated in the sewing class and were obediently spreading out their needlework before their Principal. As the cart came down the track, Suzanne's eyes began to blaze, and her nerves were stretched to breaking point, wanting to leap through the glass and throw herself upon the young Satyr. It was so difficult to keep those emotions in check, keep them down when Señora Fourneau was at your back, sitting there like a spider waiting to catch you in the threads of her own sticky silk.

The Señora's power laid others impotent, and the abuse that accompanied that power, Catalina's treatment was an example, made everyone's life in this school a torment that could not be endured. Why, it only seemed like human nature that young people should want to explore their bodies, for if they denied the impulse they risked some form of dreadful hysteria. Why was it so wrong to want to be with a man? Suzanne found no negatives in her head regarding male flesh, for she loved broad shoulders and a hairy chest, she loved, just as much, the hot and wet insertion of the male member, she even loved the taste of the seed. The girl felt a warm rush tingle through her skin as she mused upon this truth, wondering if she were simply justifying her own carnal urges and being reckless or simply going mad. How exciting it would be if she could but habituate herself to erotic freedom and tell Señora Fourneau to shrivel up like the old walnut that she was becoming- and die. How long had it been since a man had touched her body? Since before the ancient Egyptians were long dead, no less! A tide of great force was battering Suzanne's insides, for she needed this and it was a need that Irènée preyed upon, but only Toupain had the power to see it done and Suzanne always did what Toupain wanted her to do. It was insistent, the thirst for male flesh, and Suzanne had begun to feel hot and flushed and humid. When she saw the wood cart clop into the drive she went damp between her thighs with excitement and her eyes sparkled. The girl checked her responses, not wanting to alert the Principal to anything amiss.

'The woodman has just arrived,' Suzanne remarked aloud, turning to look at Toupain with a slightly arched eyebrow to indicate that she could wait no longer. All the girls in the sewing class paused upon that sentence, looking up and then quickly looking down. Hélène took an audible breath and reached for a scissor to trim a cobalt thread and Cécile felt her throat become a desert. Irènée sat rigid in her chair, flanked by Rigeaux and Fragonar. Fragonar was smiling knowingly at Thérèse and in discomfort the new girl looked away. Thérèse was beginning to feel an awful dread, that same horrible doom that had possessed her from the beginning when she had stepped up onto the coach and set off from her home in Avignon. She knew that these three women were bristling with intent and she also knew that she may not be able to hide her life's secret. All her indiscretions would no doubt come out in the wash at the meeting Toupain had called for, and Thérèse had begun to feel sick. Concentrating on the headmistress was her only distraction, and Thérèse took up an embroidery hoop but she had no real idea of its use so she looked to Catalina who had already begun work on her own sewing. Señora Fourneau watched as Thérèse's fingers fumbled with the little brass screw, turning it nervously around and around, widening the inner hoop but not stretching a piece of fabric across its width. Then the beautiful girl sat with lowered eyes and silence held her tongue. When the cart had pulled to a halt and Bréchard had departed, Suzanne gave Irènée a little nod, her signal that the older girl should now make good use of her power and speak up. Señora Fourneau was possessed of a quieter moment. Perhaps it was the application required for needlepoint that soothed, for she was smiling a rare smile even as she spoke.

'Needlework can be beautiful,' she said with controlled enthusiasm, 'especially when you learn to mix the colours. It's almost like painting.' She held up the piece of embroidery that she had been sewing as an example. Señora Fourneau had learned decorative sewing when she was young. It was the one class that she enjoyed teaching, for these girls must develop some useful and practical skills. She found, sewing and needle lace making to be relaxing and it helped to fine tune the mind and keep it in order, kept it from wandering into the shady realms of perversion. God only knew the depths of depravity that sparked within this unholy lot. Still, just instructing those who showed any remote promise in the art was a chore, because they were as clumsy with the needle as they were clumsy at ballet. Sadly, their attention spans were minimal. It frustrated Señora Fourneau to no end, for Hélène had a beautiful hand, and her work was outstanding, but she had an attitude that girl and that attitude had to be checked. Every once in while Señora Fourneau gave praise, but when the girls failed at the most basic blanket or buttonhole stitch, she often felt like giving up. She was watching Hélène now, admiring the pretty swallow taking form in the calico.

'Excuse me Señora,' Toupain interrupted Señora Fourneau's thoughts, 'but an hour ago, in our cookery class, we used up some apples to make a stew. We left it on the stove, so I wonder, could one of us possibly go and check the pot?'

'Yes,' said the Señora, 'of course you can go.'

Sewing and cooking, she thought, were the two things that these young girls needed to know best, and perhaps there might just be interest and promise in some of them after all.

'Well… I…' Irènée stumbled with a broken reply. 'If you don't mind I'd rather finish this.' She held up her own uninspired needlepoint, a badly rendered iris. 'Could I send…' and she paused, scanning the sewing room until her eye fell upon the girl standing by the dress maker's mannequin near the window, 'Suzanne?' It amused Irènée to think that the tailor's dummy was nude and pinned, and that Suzanne would also soon be sans clothes and likewise 'pinned'. Señora Fourneau glanced over to Suzanne and a flicker of disgust rippled through her elegant features. She did not like that girl for she was disrespectful and an ignoramus. The incident in the dictation class the other afternoon was becoming one of many occasions wherein the Principal found her simmering ire provoked to its peak; perhaps the girl's mind was straying into the dominion of forbidden thoughts and it was best to keep her focus on things other than her own turgid biological weaknesses. The girl was not engaged in embroidery but stood at the window, simpering between a most unimpressive display of hardly repressed restraint and suppliance.

'All right, you can go, Señorita Nöel,' declared Señora Fourneau, even though something told her that her guard was being obfuscated. As Suzanne bowed the Señora eyed her as she left the room, drawing the thread she was stitching ever so slowly through the cotton as if to measure more than just time. At the end of the needle was a sharp point and if tested the pin could plunge deeply. On a piece of linen, the Principal had traced out an intricate and elegant single dahlia bloom, and it was to be the focal point of a cushion, blooming bright orange and red and yellow, like a flame. She would begin her cushion in delicately shaded solid cross stitches. Señora Fourneau vowed that she would teach these girls something of value, to make something of timeless beauty and perhaps some of them would learn. She knew that Suzanne Nöel was not one of those girls who could never learn, and that teaching her was hopeless, and that was why she excused her to the kitchen. In a rush Suzanne tripped to the scullery, for there wasn't a moment to lose, for not only did she risk missing her tryst altogether, but she risked Bréchard coming back or Señora Fourneau discovering her secret assignation. Marthe, the cook, was standing in the torrid airs dressed in a soiled apron and she was busy at a large portion of meat that she was chopping into cubes. Lucie was at the sink performing the thankless task of washing up dirty dishes. Upon a wide bench top, nearby Almuna was rolling out her pastry, toiling in a confused sweat, but she did not look up nor offer a greeting. Everyone knew that cooking was torture for Almuna and everyone dreaded her culinary offerings. Suzanne ran up to the stove and checked a pot that was simmering on the hot plate. She removed the lid and picked up a big spoon and gave the purée a quick and disinterested stir. The apples were to serve as a condiment for tonight's supper. Suzanne thanked her lucky stars that it was Almuna and not herself who had the unrewarding task of cooking the pie. The heat from the stove washed over her face, and Suzanne was already flushed with the fervour of mounting desire. Her head took a flight of fancy, imagining that Henry flung her over the kitchen bench and had his way with her right there in the kitchen, in front of the startled Marthe! She almost giggled.

'Well, how is it going?' asked Marthe, with insouciance, for she found so few of these girls wanted to know how to cook at all and that teaching them bored her. Marthe put down her sharp knife and wiped her bloody hands on her apron. The cook stepped closer to Suzanne and inspected the contents of the saucepan. It did not look altogether promising.

'Oh, it's all right,' Suzanne smiled, reading cook's negative reaction by the look on her face, hoping to be done quickly in her fraud and meet with Henry. 'Although,' and she hesitated just for a second, 'I think it isn't ready yet.'

'Have they put you in charge?' Marthe asked incredulously, for she had never met a more vacuous creature than this one.

'I'm in charge of everything today…' retorted Suzanne merrily, although she knew well that Marthe despised her, but she didn't care. This was the moment to take the old maid off guard, so Suzanne began to shrewdly spin her deceptive little yarn. 'The cooking, the gardening and the greenhouse as well!' It was a statement that even caused Almuna to guffaw. Marthe half-closed her eyes and shook her head and thought it would probably be best for everyone if she at least tasted the stewing apples.

'Keep an eye on them for a moment, would you?' Suzanne pleaded insincerely. 'I must go over and check the greenhouse. I don't want them to burn.'

Marthe glared at her sceptically but she relented.

'All right, but don't be too long. You know we're not supposed to help you girls with your cooking.'

'Yes, I know,' piped Suzanne hurriedly, 'I know. Thank you.' Without another word, she ran up the kitchen steps and out into the yard.

Hélène put down her sewing and stood up and walked to the window. Through the glass she saw the lawns and the azaleas and the manicured shrubs and the Malaga trees, she even saw the high bright cloudless sky. The stainless world without provoked an idyll for the virtuous, but she wasn't really looking at any of nature's glories. Inside her skin the voice of vice was singing, and it was taunting her. After a moment of suspense, she saw Suzanne, her skirts hitched up so that she could sprint faster, flit across the yard unobserved and head toward the shed. Hélène's face was a mask with no expression printed thereon.

'What are you looking at, Señorita Chanson?'

Hélène snapped her head about and looked at Señora Fourneau. Over the Principal's shoulder she saw Toupain arch her eyebrow.

'Nothing,' Hélène returned in response to Señora Fourneau's query, but her lie was hardly convincing, and the headmistress seemed somehow to suspect the contrary. The girl quickly fleshed out her untruth. 'I was just taking a break from sewing.'

Señora Fourneau glanced to Hélène's needle work where it rested on her chair, the swallow's slender, streamlined body and long pointed wings had begun to gleam with ultramarine and bice and sapphire. The Principal smiled in admiration then returned to her own stitching. The bloom that she was sewing had begun to glow like a warm fire and its coloured cotton petals were silky to the touch. There was a fractured moment in which all the girls seemed to pause in their embroidery or cutting, as if each pin or needle or scissor were poised ready to slice into a moment of bizarre tension.

When Suzanne reached the shed she cast a quick glance over her shoulder to check that nobody had seen her flight and quickly pulled the door open. It creaked on its hinges and she skipped inside, pulling the door shut again and cutting off the stream of sunlight, plunging the barn into haze and dimness. She let her eyes adjust to the suffused light and looked about, but she could not see Henry. For a little moment, she panicked, and her heart tripped rapidly, and then she heard a rustle in the hay in the loft above and she knew that the young man had not forsaken her. She looked up. Henry's image shimmered in silver halo up there among the hayricks. Suzanne visualised that for one idyllic moment Henry was an angel come to deliver her, a glowing seraph who took out his sword and cut away her dress and her corset and possessed her worldly flesh. That sword was hard and fast and true, and it slid hot and fiery into her core. The thought made her quake with an involuntary frisson and she knew her skin tingling in anticipation. If she envisaged arduously enough, Henry could be anyone, Don Juan, Cyrano, Prince Charming, Eros, all she had to do was rearrange the lines in his face and he was a dream come true, strong and lithe and masculine. He was already partially undressed. In silhouette, his chest and shoulders were wide and wonderfully strong, his biceps flexed, and his stomach was flat. Suzanne wished the trousers were gone too so that she could see his hips, his thighs and his rearing manhood, and she could not forestall another step but climbed the ladder without further ado. They stood face to face in the shadows and Suzanne smiled.

'Me again,' she apologised. 'I hope you don't mind?'

Henry did not speak, not one word, but he smiled his radiant, killing smile and he reached up and stroked her cheek. With a long and lingering caress, the young man toyed with Suzanne's hair, and then his touch fell upon her breasts. He began to fumble at the buttons of her bodice. Impatiently she laughed at his incompetence and she flicked his hands away and undid them herself. When all the clips were undone and her blouse open, Henry abruptly grabbed Suzanne about the waist and flung her down into the straw. The hay fell over her face and into her cleavage, and in surprise she laughed aloud and then Henry lay upon her young and supple body.

Catalina found she could not sew, not one stitch and she held the sewing hoop tightly, but her hands wavered, and she could not pass the needle through the material. Her body ached from the smarting pain across her shoulders, but the fires were deeper than that, deeper than the crimson welts and whip marks. The fires leapt and were restless within, stirring up her insides with live coals. She pursed her mouth and took a breath and licked her lips, but they remained parched and rough. From her perspective, she could only resent Suzanne even more for having drawn her lucky tile a second time. This resentment created a mental picture of the girl, one in which Catalina beheld Henry's strong hands inside Suzanne's dress, inside her bodice and his fingers were tracing about the white softness of her breasts, gently pinching at the carmine stained nipples. Catalina anticipated the fantasy of Henry's fingers indenting that girl's bone china skin, like Daphne in Apollo's grasp, and she hoped that Suzanne would pay dearly for her crime of pride and voluptuousness and be likewise turned into a tree. Or beaten as she had been beaten, whipped to a bloody rag in the punishment room. Regardless, a tree was hard and resilient, just like the wood that Henry chopped and piled in the shed. In the shed, back and forth and across Suzanne's lovely bosoms Henry's touch played, fondling and cupping and squeezing and teasing. His was the divine touch, a stroke that swept you beyond morality and caused moistness and deliquation, a measure that readied you for connexion that excited and took you to the edge of death, and yet still left you unsatisfied. Catalina forced her needle down through the fabric and then thrust it back up again; it emerged glinting like a diamond tip and its point was sharp and ready and lethal. She fancied that Suzanne in her responses would be gasping and tossing back her head, boasting, pleading, and promising everything. That girl would put her lips to Henry, she would glide her wet mouth up and down. The vision made Catalina jealous and angry too, and at that moment she despised Suzanne in her reckless behaviour, for her wants and her pleasures and that she should thirst and go without. Catalina looked to Hélène as she stood trembling by the window, and she saw that the other girl was biting her lip and that her hands and fingers were locked together. The girl's knuckles were turning white.

Hélène found it so difficult to suppress her agitation. To her the escapade in the barn only made things worse, because it had never been her turn to go to the shed and to meet with the young and virile woodcutter. She wondered if Henry would appreciate the curves of her body if he were to see her in that lovely whalebone corset that Señorita Gravaine had given her, that lovely, silky, viridescent fabric. Once peeled away by his tough fingers she would open her body up to him like a flower opening its petals to the sun. In her head Hélène heard Suzanne moaning, and she envisioned the girl's lips parting and glistening, her teeth like pearls and her breath mint scented. In the fantasy Suzanne's petticoats were being pushed up her satin white thighs, all the way up to her belly, and her drawers were exposed. Uncontrollable was he, tempestuous in his lusts, thrusting his hand between her thighs and under those drawers and inserting two fingers into her burning cleft. Henry's lips descended then upon the girl's skin, his fingers wet with female juices hooking under her drawers and pulling them roughly down, his tongue sliding in between her legs. The dark triangle of the girl's sex was damp and sultry and fervid under his caress. Suzanne's flesh in its carnality responded to Henry's vigour, to the instrument of obscenity that throbbed hard between his thighs. Hélène shuddered and turned away so that no one beheld her look of concupiscence, of lust and longing. She returned to her seat and took up her sewing, but her hands shook, and the swallow became a blur before her eyes and the thread short, shorter. Hélène tried to pass a blue thread through the eye of a needle, but every time and with every stab the thread went aside. Vainly Hélène whetted the cotton, pulling at its tip, but instead of the needle's eye she saw only Henry's sex, and she was touching its supple head and tracing her finger along its flexing shaft. This swallow found that she could not sup on the wing, and the cotton snarled and knotted and tangled and angrily Hélène pulled at the slender thread.

Fragonar was seated facing Cécile, she had her hands spread before her and between her fingers she held apart a skein of red wool. Connected to Fragonar by this single thread, Cécile was spinning the coil of scarlet into a ball. She wound slowly, turning and spinning and rolling the loops until the ball began to swell, and Fragonar watched, moving her arms back and forth in response to the rhythm so that the line did not snag. The strand looped over and over itself, the thread accreting and doubling in size, the movements of the two girls synchronised and hypnotic. Winding and whirling the sphere grew larger, into a fiery red star that emanated pure heat, compressed tighter and tighter into a burning, larval ball in Cécile's hands. As Fragonar stared, the ball became Suzanne's breast, so supple and round, cherry tipped and warm, warmer, and Henry's hand encircled that bosom firm, hard, harder and the girl bucked and writhed beneath his tempered flesh. How he squeezed the nipple until it stood high and so sensitive. She was breathing his scent, the smell of his sweat, his essence, his pungent fragrance, feeling the soft bristle of the hairs on his chest brushing against her nipples, the unyielding strength of his embrace and the taste of his lips and tongue. Fragonar squirmed in her seat, agitated and her body felt hot as if it had been raked over with live coals, as if her skin sizzled. Running her tongue over her own lips in response to the fantasy, Fragonar clamped her teeth together to keep from screaming out aloud. It was impossible, but yes, she could hear Suzanne moaning as Henry's fingers moulded that ivory bosom and sculpted the flesh. That mound of exquisite, pliable, smooth and electrifying bosom in his hands, in his coarse grip!

Suzanne's moans seemed to penetrate beyond the loft, beyond the hayrick. The sound battered at the shed door, made it reverberate like a pulsing, throbbing heartbeat. The yard, the park, the stifling atmosphere and the house screamed, the cry reaching the velocity of light with the speed of an arrow, fired directly into Cécile's heart. Spinning the fibres faster now and faster yet still, Cécile's hands were moving with a trembling life of their own, moving outside the reality of her cognizance. Her fingers were sliding down the length of Henry's sex, retracting the velvety foreskin, and as she imagined this Cécile stared off into space, beyond Fragonar, beyond Catalina and Hélène, beyond Thérèse Gravaine and Señora Fourneau and looked somewhere outside of the awful vacuum in which she now sat. She was in a torrid place where the only flesh was the flesh of other teenage girls and she hated that place. She pretended that it was she in the shed entangled and entwined in Henry's coil, her body spread out in the hay, her breasts bared and her legs apart, her cleft glistening with the sweet nectars of passion, her ichors igniting to incinerate and obliterate this perpetual hunger within. She felt for the young man, took the heaviness of his testicles in her palm and squeezed, and he pointed his spear at her opening and probed between her thighs. A groan escaped Cécile's lips, a sigh that she could not suppress as she imagined Henry's solid yet smooth penis entering with a stab, going straight into her seeping, cloying, honeyed depths. The red thread started to smoulder and to smoke with friction as she whipped it into the ball, and the ball grew in her vision, scintillating with kindling sparks as it expanded like a dying star, until with every turn of the wheel the girl was riven with acute and yet sensuous pain, burning her every nerve to a cinder. Soon Cécile could take little more of the pressure, and look! Fragonar was leaning closer, closer to her, pitching forward in her seat, holding up her hands, holding the skein wide as if she were holding apart the red lips of her vulva, ready to clasp, to embrace and to engulf the other girl with her sex. Fragonar groaned and her mouth wanted to utter words, words of profanity, of filth and of humiliation, of sacrifice and immolation, of need and pleasure. Fragonar wanted Henry to fuck her in every orifice, and as she thought this obscenity her veins almost burst, and the lava that flowed in their length neared the point of igniting as if her skin were sprinkled with black powder. The girl imagined that Henry lay on her too, she imagined the rough yet sleek texture of his unwashed skin, the tactile weave of his hairs, the redolence of his sweat, the exhalation of his breath, the firmness of his thrusting buttocks, the evocative fragrance of his copious emission as it leaked from her opening, the groans of his pleasure. The aria of her own joys.

In her wide eye Fragonar beheld Henry's hips, and in her imagination, she grasped them with furtive fingers, her vulva thrust up to meet the piercing length of his stabbing sex, pushing him deeper into the defiled temple of her body, and those hips were a battering ram that smashed through her Sapphic fortifications, blasting away with demented ferocity all and every shred of feigned decency. She would willingly exchange her skein of red twine and the strange love of Irènée for the touch of his hands, for the pleasures and the sensations that he gave Suzanne right now, and spin for him a weave that would bind his body to hers in an unbreakable vice. Cécile groaned too and her hands moved swifter, faster, turning, revolving, tumultuous, her body seething with an essence diabolical, the demon of lust, of debauchery, of hetaerism that could only find its epoch in the delirious ecstasy of seductions disintegration. If Señora Fourneau had looked about she might have noticed that the attitude of her students had subtly changed, that they merely held the needle and the pin and the cloth and the scissor, that they had paused, frozen like statuary, like the unfinished clay busts on their fluted plinths in the room in which they learned to sculpt and paint. The Señora did not see, but she was not so ignorant of all the pent-up desires in these girls, the desires she wanted so much to destroy, to obliterate, to punish. She chose not to see, but only for the moment, because part of her was just like them, brim full of repression and frustration and hatred. She continued to sew her flaming dahlia. With every draw of the Principal's needle thread Henry thrust into Suzanne, and with every pull of the tension Henry withdrew and thrust again.

Suzanne was gasping and convulsing in the hay, shrieking out to all her fellow prisoners that she was triumphant, and that Henry was hers, his flesh, his blood and his seed. Closer and closer and closer he came to his climax, his naked buttocks rising and descending, propelled faster, grinding, his lust an inch from gratification but a whole universe removed from love. The girls, Catalina, Hélène, Cécile, Fragonar, all of them had become glassy eyed; they licked at their mouths as if their lips were dry and they trembled as if they were quivering leaves about to come loose in a hot wind, brittle, crumbling, turning to ashes. They closed their eyes and dreamed in that fervid moment the ravishment of their own young and willing flesh. Henry took turns at them all, and he was gratified in their willingness to please him in every way they could, with every conceivable perversion, with every pulsing heresy, and none cared about penance or punishment. He placed his sex in their mouths, he put his fingers into every opening, the furrow in the planter box, the homage, the fertilizing of the wanting seed, the prostration, the wet, the heat, the humidity, the thrusting, the glorification, the groaning, the penultimate oblation. The needle was sharp, and it penetrated the cloth and the stitch was long and then it was short and then it was tangled and then it was knotted and then it snapped, and then it was nothing.

'Señoritas!' the Principal called, breaking the frustrated tableaux into a thousand shattered fragments and the girls all snapped to abrupt attention. 'Finished for today.'

Putting aside her needlepoint and standing up, Señora Fourneau noted that Suzanne had not returned. Irènée placed her stitch work on the sewing table and rose, and her eyes were locked on Thérèse. The new girl moved towards the door and Toupain continued to watch until Thérèse had turned and fallen in line with the others, walked into the passage and headed for the stairs.

Catalina was still in her seat. She looked down to see that her needle had run into her thumb. Again, she bled. A floret of blood bloomed at her thumb tip. The crimson swelled then began to pour a thin rose-tinted stream down the girl's thumb, staining the cloth and tainting its white purity.

15

A Girl Like Me

Sunlight gleams in the blocks of salmon pink sandstone of the Residence. Erected in a forgotten era by some bygone royal lineage, the palace is now a fortress for these wayward girls. High above, in the ether, if you strain your eyes upward you can see the buttresses atop the massive stone walls, and the architecture is riven with mouldings and rows of arches, and galleries and many chambers. Most of the rooms are empty. All have shadows and secrets. Although the house is rectangular, and is as high as the clouds, it oddly has no towers at any compass point, but aesthetically it is a consummate success of style and engineering and as imposing a building as any of the picturesque castles that dot the Spanish countryside. Its aspect, of course, speaks of the feudal bond between the lord and the land and the peasant, and thus an ecclesiastical discipline might be noted in all its precise geometry. Look and you can guess quite easily at the stately rooms where the prince and his lady might have eaten, danced and copulated and slept, and from which window they could have viewed their principality. Take another glance and you might see a grimy contrast, glimpse where the churl and the vassal were quartered, and where they ate their stale provender and copulated and slept. Your eye might even fall upon the sullied barn and its sullied loft. The Residence thus, is a time capsule, the past and the present interlocked, nonetheless, its haughty attitude has not changed even if its opulence is crumbling. Even now it is impossible to disassociate the ruling class from the pauper, the strict Head Mistress from the wayward pupil. In there, among those many rooms and the shadows there still exists a hierarchy, a pecking order if you wish. It is an order that dictates with an iron will, demarcates its territorial boundaries and strains the internal, almost judiciously female dominion under its rule with a discipline that knows no equivalent. From one of those rooms, right now, the vassal is attempting a piano lesson, her fingers clumsily thumping away at the keys but to no harmonious effect. How tedious it is to hear the same thing day after day. In frustrated boredom, the jagged notes are played falteringly by a wench without any musical talent whatsoever.

The noise drives me from my rooms and forces me to attempt to walk in the park. That chaotic discord is maddening, pulverising my thoughts into brittle fragments so that I find I can scarce think a single rational thought. To find a moment of peace I leave my quarters and clamber up the slope towards the great oak tree. It is with a degree of effort that I hobble, because it becomes uncomfortable and the irons of my braces rub against my skin. When I reach the great spreading oak I decide to rest, to sit on the close-cropped emerald lawn, under the extending arms of the tree and let the awful music dissipate into the ether. With a wary eye, I look upon the ivy-covered wall, running the perimeter of the Residence, and I cannot have realised a more profound metaphor, that I too, like all the unhappy Señoritas, is trapped and a prisoner behind that wall. The thought makes me feel somewhat ill, a lot angry, and more than depressed.

I carry with me a book, not one I wished to study but one mother had decided I needed to study, to take my mind off thoughts of the girls no less, thoughts of their pink skins and their swelling breasts. 'Sentimiento de los miembros católicos del imperio, 1530,' does not engage me, rather, I find it is a dry tract alluding to alleged Roman Concord, to the pursuit of political peace and harmony. The thing reads like propaganda, and all I know is that there is no such thing as concord, peace and harmony inside the Residence. Especially not at this moment when that splintering musical disharmony is so distracting. I fail to read another word and confess to uttermost boredom with the history in that book. Truly, I swear I cannot even recall who the author might have been. Distractedly, perhaps I toil over the page as it cradles open upon my knees. Cracked open like a rotten fruit the book does not invite me into its realm, and I find that I can but skim those fragmentary sentences. I do not care for the dull religious accounts of…Bishops, running around like rabbits, circumventing testimonials…the activities of the governing ecclesiastical bodies in an epoch of remarkable correctness…the invasion of barbarians...political power, material possessions, privileged position and ancient historical rights, earthly interests, abuses in the lives of the clergy and the people, and...

Well, it is all so tedious, and I cannot concentrate. Worse, the crippled notes from the piano are a disconcerting repetition, the same ghastly scales over and over again, filtering through the quiet of the park and dying like murdered groans in the air. The girl playing is getting no better with her music lessons. I might only imagine that the other girls are being tortured at the bar and the mirror by Señorita Desprez, thumping away with her stick, pounding out the tempo in her jaded, unhappy and sexless apathy. To that hideous, broken melody those girls will be stretching their aching calves, poised upon tip-toe, trying so desperately to imitate the elegance and grace of the swan. Alas, as mother so often comments, they are but hopeless mallards, every last one of them. Fleshpots, shameless grisettes, that's what she calls them, as notorious in their perversity as to be utterly without virtue.

Looking about the park, I see that the leaves on the trees have begun to turn sere, that the cerulean sky is a shade less bright and that the shadows under the wide branches are perhaps somewhat cooler upon the jade lawns. High up I glimpse a sparrow hawk plunging to the earth, sharp as an arrow after the needle-tailed swift, and I hear the song of the thrush and the blackcap singing in the woods. In the distance, I hear the tapping of the middle-spotted woodpecker hammering away upon a sturdy trunk. Half of the world seems peaceful and beautiful, but the other half shudders in a jagged frisson, rent by that dreadful and monotonous piano. In distraction, I glance to the edge of my page and there in the grass I behold a hole, a black spot in the green, an opening that resembles the entrance to the domain of love, darkly mysterious, brim full of fear. It is a hole that is crawling with a myriad formicidae, scurrying in a frenzied dance about the lips of the abyss. I take up a stick and I poked at the ants, make them mad, make them agitated until their accumulation becomes a dissipation so circumfuse as to reckon their colony phrenetic and ridiculous in its distress. Ha! I am that force, the striking male into a nest of shrieking females! However, they are the ugly and the nasty, the biting, stinging wingless wasps of female abstraction. From the furrow is emitted a peculiar stink, pungent and acidic, while in derangement their frenzy is a thousand times strengthened. Oh, they are so much like the women that live within that house, teeming around the queen, obeying resentfully, toiling, sexless and frustrated, their clefts pungent, eventually attacking each other and dying in desperation for their worthless efforts to escape.

The thought amuses me and I let one solitary insect crawl up the stick and I shake it onto the book laid open upon my knees. The ant scuttles over the text. This one is the lone ant, bereft now of all sapience, divided from the collective, dashing to the edge of the page in her mad panic to escape. It gives me a weird glee to torture the ant, to redirect its course by poking my finger before its jutting mandibles, to let it try to nip and to bite, then give it a nudge to send it running away. A cloud passes over the high bright disk of the sun, throwing a shadow over my body, over my face, and the shade spills across the lawn and bleeds towards the building. In a blink, the shadow engulfs the Residence. Shaking my head, I realise that the class is still only half way through, and though I want to remove myself completely I know that finding a quiet corner is probably an impossibility. As I can walk for no distance without extreme discomfort, and it pains me to think that there is nowhere in the house that is tranquil, that is halcyon, that is still, I give a defeated sigh. Nowhere in the heart of the nest is there peace, nowhere to escape from that gaggle of vicious, turbulent females where a young man might know and find calm.

Looking at that Residence I look at my own prison. That is where I was incarcerated, behind the locked gates and the threatening walls, every bit as much a prisoner as any one of those wretched girls whose families have abandoned them. Inside of my heart I feel a strange resentment that laughs at me because it knows that I might never participate in the true pleasures of the world. Grotesquely, I am bound to this place, to my mother, and to do whatever she would demand of me, for now and for always. Consigned to my dungeon I shall never envisage the soft smile, the touch of a girl's hands, or the scent of their skins or the joys of their supple bodies. The ant becomes confused, trapped on the plane of turgid, expository text with its leather-bound demarcated boundaries beyond which I forbid it to pass. It is a game and I am angry. Which way will it run, and to where can it run? Why, nowhere of course, because I abruptly shut the book, shut it hard, squash the insect into the typescript, flatten it, kill it dead. Although the ant's life has abruptly been terminated, that irritating music lesson continues, and after a moment I struggle to my feet and I stumble shakily back to the house.

Watching me from a ground floor window, from her office, I see mother, just behind the heavy drape, spying. Wearily I slow my faulty step, deliberately as mother hovers in the glass. As I advance I avert my gaze from her direction, feigning ignorance, and I try to act as if she is not there. Perhaps it is a game we are playing, and she thinks she is the leader. I suspect she truly imagines that her game is the only game and that she maintains a firm command over everything I do, everything I say, every space I inhabit. Mother stacks too much weight upon this silly idea, for although she believes her word is the law, and she obsesses, and moralizes about the dirt that besmirches these young female bodies, she cannot eradicate from my body the attractions for them that I dare not verbalize, knowing these girls are taboo. It is in my isolation that mother thinks she draws her power. However, the power of rebellion multiplies day by day, becomes excitingly manifest not only in the ivory bodies of these girls but in myself in a way that she would not have liked. Her dictates encroach upon my forbidden desires, for she reprimands all the time that pleasure causes vice. It is mother's pejorative to erect the high barriers around sex, to place these soiled girls on one tile and to place me on another. The girls on the black and she on the white and no real place for myself. Nonetheless, she is failing in her role as regulator, both puritan and hypocrite, and she is losing the battle of control over my body and over theirs, no matter the iron lock or the sting of the lash.

Perhaps she truly believes that she is protecting me by keeping me in ignorance of the things she prohibits, but all it does is cultivate resentment in my heart and resentment in the simmering flesh of these young women. How she likens these unfortunate creatures to obscenity, as if every breath they take, every movement of their hips is a crime to be punished. They are beyond the precocious, lust drips from their pores, mother terms them an aberration, a moral folly, and they are dangerous and driven by bizarre impulses. If she does not keep a close supervision on these girls then the school will degenerate into moral infraction and scandal. I see her grimace with anger and drop the curtain, and her face disappears from the window. A few moments pass before I enter the house through the main doors, and when I do mother is standing at the ingress to her office, waiting for me, a pillar of storm cloud, roiling and seething and pervading the atmosphere with resentment.

'Luis,' she says with measured anger, 'what were you doing in the garden?'

I meet her eye and feign a smile and acknowledge her presence. With a lame motion, I indicate the book I carry that she has told me to read. Perhaps I feel like being supercilious and telling her that I have been pursuing the botanical diatribes of the incomparable Margueritte Selgren, but I check myself, sensing that she is wound tight like a spring. Slowly I move towards her, to stand close.

'I needed some fresh air.' I know that she will hardly buy that as an excuse. 'Well, as the girls were taking their music lesson, I thought it would be all right.'

'What, now?' she retorts in amazement. 'It is only after breakfast. It's much too damp for you!'

How ridiculous I think, too damp.

'Mother, the sun is warm. It's a clear day outside…'

Mother cuts me off with a sweep of her hand, ushering me into her office, her demeanour stern and uncompromising. Obediently I follow, and she closes the door.

'You know you have to be careful,' she tells me with a repressed anger putting a hard edge to her words. If she wants to sound truly concerned for my welfare she is not at all convincing. There is no concealing the look of disgust that flickers over her beautiful face as she glances to my legs and the rigid braces that encase them.

'I am careful, mother.'

'No, you are not!'

She turns her back to me and moves away, and I mouth a profanity that she fails to hear. Yet, as if driven by pure malice, she spins about.

'I ask you to study and you will not, but then you read silly adventures and scribble ridiculous drawings until all hours of the night! You don't sleep,' she accuses. 'You don't even eat enough.'

Hearing all of this is like hearing that awful, plodding piano repeatedly. It is always the same thing, the same rubbish about my health, the same excuses to keep me locked away from the world.

'Mother,' I protest, 'I am not hungry.'

The woman throws out her hands dramatically, white lightning shoots out of the tenebrous cloud.

'How am I going to run this establishment if I must look after you all the time?' she reproaches, and she folds her arms across her breast as if to emphasise her quandary. Resentment flashes through my body, quick and vehement, like a knife and I vow I hate her because all I seem to be is a terrible inconvenience. Perhaps she perceives my anger, and perhaps she reads my thoughts, and for one tiny second, I imagine that her face softens.

'You know you are not like other boys.' Mother's words are delivered as if they were an explanation of a most unfortunate fact. Her umbrage at my condition is awful, unjustified, for she is after all my mother. Does she harbour only antipathy for my miserable existence, and is she just too busy running this school to attend to any of my needs at all? 'You have always been sick,' she continues, and she will not look me in the eye. Always there is the suggestion that the girls in her care are trouble enough but having to deal with a male problem is too demanding and hardly worth the sacrifice. 'Remember your legs. You can't even walk far without pain and then you must take laudanum, and that's expensive. Consider your asthma. Why, the other afternoon you were gasping so much I thought you might lose your breath completely!'

Perhaps it would have been better that I had, I thought, but I bite my tongue and hold in the jibe and remember the vision of Catalina's unclothed, soapy body. Mother uncrosses her arms and moves closer again, and there is a rare moment of sympathy in her face.

'I know it is hard to always have to be indoors,' she says, 'but it's absolutely necessary.'

Indoors I am contained, confined like an animal, and no one will ever see me… keep me locked up…

'The doctor said so, didn't he? It's either that or the hospital. Which would you rather choose?'

'Yes, mother,' I breathe obediently, knowing that I cannot ever express my feelings of outrage and emerge victorious in the argument. Yes, indeed the doctor in Madrid had suggested that it was best for my health if I did not exert myself, that I must keep out of the damp, that I watch my diet and that I should keep my mind pure. He was also at a loss as to why my legs and my back pained.

'Oh,' she sighs, 'I would love to send you away to college to be with boys of your own age.'

Such false words for she really means out of sight and out of mind.

Mother comes up behind me and stands at my back, and she looks off to the window and beyond that, into the sky, and her tone takes on a strangely exhausted and dissipated note, like a song with a broken melody. 'At this time, it is absolutely impossible.'

Watching her reflection in a mirror, watching as she raises her hands to her breast and clasps them over her heart, shrugging, and shaking her head as if she truly does not know what to do or where she has gone wrong, I give in to her bullying. Yet that's all it is, bullying, and she is but a reflection, and her actions have no actual substance at all.

'Yes, mother,' I reply quietly, for there is no point making dispute. 'I know, I know.' I have heard it all before.

'More than anything in the world, Luis, I would love for you to live a normal life,' she goes on, and I do not for a moment really believe that she even understands what it is to live a normal life. Is this normal, this place, and this finishing school where the girls are made to take their showers in full length sack cloths? Is anything here normal for anybody? 'You must help me,' mother coaxes. How she is so clever to absolve all her responsibilities and make the meek feel guilty. 'Above all…'

Mother moves by inches, comes about to stand before me, face to face, and she pauses in her speech as if to weigh down her words with the utmost gravity. 'I would like to trust you.' She raises a finger and pushes lightly against my chest and I am offended at the reprimand.

'Why do you say that, mother?'

She just looks at me, long and hard and she remains silent.

'You know I always do whatever you ask me to do,' I protest, but she scoffs and laughs with incredulity.

'Do you?' she says unbelieving. She straightens her back, rigid as a plank, throws back her head and again crosses her arms. Mother pre-empts my protestations, and her look of disapproval is a challenge. To her all men are liars. 'I know you have been meeting one of the girls. You were seen with her yesterday afternoon, and the afternoon before that.' I was going to deny her accusation, but I clamp the words down, for no matter what I say I am damned if I speak and damned if I do not.

'Regardless, you have been seen.'

'By whom?' I query, knowing that she will never tell me who it was who has informed, but I know that the spy is Irènée, or one of her cronies, Regina or Andrée.

'Never mind,' she retorts, 'I don't even know which girl it is that you see. I will find out.' Abruptly she grasps my arm, clutching at me and tries to shake me and render any further protests censored.

'Oh!' she exclaims in exasperation, 'I really should send you away. These girls are only a distraction and they make things worse for both of us.'

'Worse, mother?'

She ignores me and fidgets with my lapel, straightening it out and pretending to wipe away a smear of dust. Her sudden doting only makes me feel like a child. Then she moves in closer, so close that her bosom presses against me and she cups her palms about my face.

'Sadly, there isn't a school anywhere that will take you in your present state of health,' and she shifts against my body so that I am stifled by her warmth, by her perfumes, by her cloying and forbiddingly sensuous subjugation of my flesh. 'Which is why I am having to keep you here.' She strokes my hair and I repress a shiver. Perhaps her lingering caress is meant as regulatory, to keep me in check, calculated according to the exigency of the moment, to demarcate the boundaries that I must not cross. Regardless, she is being monstrous in her authoritarian manner by asserting her power over my constraint. There is no space for movement in her web. 'Luis, I've told you a hundred times if I have told you once,' she appeals, 'none of these girls are any good!'

She shakes her head and walks away, flailing her arms about as if she might sooner be talking to a wall for all the good her advice holds in my head. After a short lapse, she returns and stands again at my back. She places her hands on my shoulders.

'You need a woman like me,' she whispers earnestly, and I watch her reflection in the mirror again, but the sunlight through the window has flared and the looking glass is awash with an argent luminance making her image appear transparent. 'A woman who will love you and take care of you…' She begins to massage my shoulders, her fingers digging into my skin. I am so knotted up with tension that her touch only makes me wish to recoil.

'Now promise me,' she half sings, 'that you will never see that girl again… ever!' What can I do but promise like a good little chastised boy?

'I promise,' I reply, but my voice is barely a whisper as the sunlight brightens with hot intensity in my vision and her image is blotted from the mirror. All I can see is a pillar of tenebrous vapour.

'Thank you,' mother says, and she stoops and her lips brush my cheek. A cold thrill sends ripples through my veins. 'You will see that I am right, and the day will come, not long now, when you will meet the right girl.' Oh, how nonsensical she sounds. Whoever am I ever going to meet, locked up as I am in this prison? It is a fantasy, her fantasy, and a crazy one.

'You will fall in love,' she drones on, until I can no longer make sense of her words, and they become a buzz, a whine, like a hot wind, melding with the plodding sounds of the wretched piano. A column of dusky mist begins to swirl in a vortice, round and round my body, round and round in my head where visions of Catalina and the other girls collide with the fractured notes of the piano. Mother's words became all discordant, a cacophony of jangled noise that echoes somewhere far and away. 'You will see,' mother tells me, 'that I am right. You will fall in love with the kind of girl I used to be. Strong and capable, and she will live for you… the way I live for you. This girl, she will love you… the way I love you!'

Upon these last words, her lips settle upon my lips, twitching on my skin like the buzzing wings of a fly, and the light from the sun bursts like a wheeling Roman candle in the silver face of the looking glass. I catch a flash in her eye, see a spark from the pearl tips of her hairpins and a viridescent gleam of mixed up colour in the opal of her tie pin. Gold shimmers and radiates from the circle of her polished watch. Therein the reflecting glass I glimpse the vagary of her features amid the spinning vortex of blackness. How the flesh has dissolved from her face and her lips are toothy and wriggled with the maggot and her hands have turned to claws.

16

History

Secrets are a manacle about the heart, a shackle because no one ever keeps them, and when they are revealed the price to pay is emotional imprisonment. Mother has a secret, so she thinks, and yet I know. Regardless, there can be no abrogation, no repeal that the world of the past be forgotten and buried, and so I will tell you about mother's most guarded conundrums. It is the mystery that lies at the core of her trenchant austerity, and although she should lay it to rest, as people do with their dead, she keeps it festering in a hateful little tumour under her skin and never, ever speaks of its determinant. That I know is no boastful rodomontade on my behalf, yet how it is that I came to know? Well, that is simple, for all her need to expunge the past Mother keeps letters and cards in her room, in a little hidden box in a secret little drawer, and a vellum-bound diary that betrays her with every sentence written in her own beautiful copperplate hand. Foolishly she must think that the lock that seals that journal fast keeps her mysteries private, but she is wrong. Mother forgets that I like to tinker, and that a tiny brass fastening is no different to the little whirring wheels and cogs of the clock on the wall, nothing that a sure and neatly placed pin cannot undo. Click, and the lock is sprung, and her skeletons come jangling out of the cupboard in their raving dance of death! So much for her hole-and-corner, and as I have already intimated, it is a compulsion of human nature, a need that dictates we must tell, even if we are only telling ourselves lies.

Mother, condemned me by her own hand, and she has disclosed her tale, her angst, and her innermost enigmas, her furtive needs, and her desires, all there in her diary. Though, if confronted she will deny the truth, deny the past, deny everything. Yet listen, for here is the truth of her thirtieth year. That year two things happened, two events that reshaped her life. Both events were to have an ongoing effect, one that demanded her constant attention, and the second, although it seems melodramatic, is something from which she found she was glad to be free. Both events were tied up with the same rope that had bound her for many years, and that rope, if not a physical bondage, became knotted and tangled and in dire need of cutting. The rope, of course, was marriage. As I understand it, from her recordings, that she had married in the first place was only to provide a means to an end, but the man chosen to be her husband was a singularly ungallant individual, and I understand wholly her position as victim, and that the whole world is the judge of women but does not castigate men, for men are privileged in their outrageous behaviours. Nonetheless, that her marriage was a failed affair, was a cause for concern and its direction scrawled upon a signpost leading towards darker things. Let the world think what it would, it had never acquired a benevolent tongue for any woman, and if the truth is to be stated, probably never will. Señor Ibañez Fourneau's family knew all too well exactly what kind of creature he was, but they cared little. If he were married and out of the way, expunged and forgotten, his uncouth behaviours would no longer be a reflection upon them or their family honour. What stupidity is honour's reward when the family name becomes a byword for violence and bigotry? A young man in the world is often free to explore whatever base inclinations give him gratification, but women on the other hand are not. Mother does not like to be judged and so she has cultivated her hard-as-iron cladding, but iron becomes rusted and can be melted, and it does not take long when it is exposed to the elements. Despite rumours pertaining to his debauching, the Señora found herself tied to a union that was arranged; her own family turning against her in the belief that such a marriage was the only way any security was to be hers. Ever pragmatic is mother, consenting although incensed, for although the marriage had its collateral guarantees, she most certainly she did not love Señor Ibañez Fourneau, but neither did he love her. Still, even for the surety of money, marrying the man proved a singular and inexcusable act of folly and for the duration of five years that imprudence had made a constant joke out of virtue and honesty and the family name.

The Señora had ensured a wise thing though, she had profited from her own education, for she was quite intelligent with numbers, physically adaptable despite her slender frame, and smart with leadership. She had learned to be wise in a world dominated by men and had vowed that no man would truly dominate her life, ever. When she combined her intellectual prowess with her physical capabilities she had speculated upon an adventure to ensure her ongoing financial stability. Mother might have appeared mercenary regarding a monetary safeguard, and been guilty of some foolish oversights, but that did not delineate that she was a in any way a fool. Understanding quite profoundly that should her marriage progress to the point where it became a non-viable option, and there was no doubt that it must, she needed to have secured her way in the world. There are not too many options for women, none that do not demand selling yourself into prostitution in one way or another, and she was not going to have that happen, not if she could help things with prudence. Her companion of many years, Señorita Desprez had always maintained that men were beasts and had often wondered why a woman needed a man at all, why it was so important that any woman be married. Señorita Desprez had never entertained the bizarre thought of wedlock, for to her the contract was always about power, and that was continually to the detriment of the woman involved. Whoever supposed, that coupling with a man was anything other than a degrading and unsatisfying waste of the female, was a fool indeed. They rolled their hairy, heavy bodies on top of you and put their dirty little grub inside of you and grunted and shuddered and spent and stank. It was all such a revolting quirk of nature that played the ultimate trick upon women. Mother, it seemed had come to believe that her matron was probably right in that respect, for her libertine husband was rapidly dispersing their savings on roulette wheels, dancers and alcohol. Soon there would be little left in the coffers to secure any sort of future at all if something were not done to rectify the situation immediately.

Within the chains of marriage, the Señor no longer felt it necessary to disguise his Bacchanalian indecencies. He would be gone for days on end only to return home debauched and unclean, and then he would let loose an angry reign of violent and cruel conduct. As sexual connexion between mother and her husband had become an occasion of rarity, the man had made truly vile insinuations, his equivoque blasphemies quite openly pornographic, and they intimated the carnal depredations performed by Sapphic bitches that either satisfied themselves with garden vegetables or sat on each other's faces and moaned about how they hated men. Señor Fourneau derided the matron, Señorita Desprez, accusing her of infidelities with his wife, and in his spitting fury had declared that the female body was meant to excite men, not women, and that the carnal indulgence of two women together was an abomination. The whole thought of women's bodies pressed together, stroking each other's breasts and inserting their fingers and tongues where a man's member should be, was disgusting in its unholy perverseness. Señorita Desprez had been grieved and revolted by his filthy mouth and he in retaliation had justified his profanities as being a reprimand for her interfering in their lives.

In his liquor-fuelled agitation the Señor had struck Señorita Desprez a blow to her face. He had broken her nose. Blood had spurted and dripped upon the floor, but the woman had not cried out. That she held her tongue infuriated him the more, and incensed, he had struck her a second blow. As she reeled from the strike she had almost fallen, but she was strong and strong willed and had managed to stay her ground, dripping great spots of crimson down her chin and upon her clothes, the blood streaming between her fingers as she clasped her wounded face. The consequences of that action were to be to the detriment of the Señor. His wife had railed against the oaf and gone to the aid of her friend, and she had called him a wretch and declared that he had no privilege to righteous indignation. Who, no rather, what was he but a monster who indulged in many amorous relations with harlots outside of the marital bed and too, what gave him redress to chastise the innocent? Mother called him a rogue and she was hardly astonished when the man had raised his hand against her. A terrible fight had ensued, one in which Señor Fourneau beat Señorita Desprez with unbridled savagery and then attacked his wife and violently took his carnal delights, those he had been denied for some time, in an act of raping both women, sodomising Señorita Desprez so that she should never forget her true place in the world.

When the terrible episode had played out and Señor Fourneau's depraved lusts satisfied, Señorita Desprez, though the blood splashed from her wounds, had cursed the vile creature and vowed that he would never put his putrid hands upon her or her mistress again. One day soon after her beating, she outlined a proposition with the Señora. Together, mother and Señorita Desprez had decided that if they pooled their monies they could purchase an old property near Comillas and convert the Residence into a finishing school. Señor Fourneau, in his cups, was not consulted as to the finer details of this scheme, and his wife vowed that he would be gone, sooner rather than later, but the venture was to proceed immediately so that the property was not lost. That meant Señor Ibañez Fourneau had to die.

It is almost amusing reading mother's diary, for she agonises over his demise, thinking of ways that would not appear suspicious to be rid of him. Each night she would lock her door and retire to her bed, but the night never brought with it an actionable solution to her problem. She had thought of poisoning the man, of putting arsenic in his liquor, but that seemed too simple, and if it were that easy then she figured she would quickly be exposed. An accident was also difficult to engineer, perhaps convincingly, and as he could not swim getting him into the lake and drowning him was also out of the question, for it too would have aroused suspicions of foul play. In her mind mother dispatched her husband by knife and rope, in a dream she confesses that she even put a pillow over his face. With a scissor, she cut off his genitals and stuffed them down his throat, but the reality of it all was that he still lived and he still abused.

In sworn secrecy, the purchase of the Residence went ahead, and without Señor Fourneau's involvement in the procurement. It is not recorded in mother's papers anywhere how this feat of deception was achieved, considering women generally have few rights, let alone those involving owning real estate, but she does mention vaguely that two months before the purchase, Señorita Desprez engaged a man new to the village, a man named Bréchard. She had discovered that he had come north, intending to travel over the Cantabrian Mountains, to Santander, having arrived from the Provinces of León and Castile, although nobody really knew his intent or his story. They conjectured that he might have been attached to that infamous bandit Plumitas, on the run from the law all these past twenty years, but he maintained disinterest in their talk and held to circumspection, and this had ultimately laid the village tongues fallow. Yet, since he was without employment or money or a permanent place of abode, he attracted the attention of Señorita Desprez and life suddenly and inexplicably got better for the two women.

About their unattractive handyman no questions were ever asked. Mother and her friend could purchase their old and antiquated Residence and set up the finishing school for wayward young women. Bréchard was to work at the Residence, to look after the grounds and to maintain the fittings, and if any complained that he was distinctly uneasy on the eye or that he moved too slowly about his business, well, that was his privilege. Nonetheless, seven months later I arrived, suckling and sickly, dependent upon my mother then as now, and henceforth for the whole of my life. As for Señor Fourneau, well, it seems he simply disappeared one day before I was born and was never seen by anybody ever again.

17

The Cave of the Sibyl

Her afternoon tryst with Luis was brief, and Thérèse slipped back into the house, closing the great door upon the late sunlight and headed straight for the dining hall. There Rigeaux was waiting for her. The young woman unceremoniously closed the volume she had been reading with an emphatic thud and stood up.

'Right,' said Rigeaux, acknowledging Thérèse with an indisposed curl of her lip. She swept around the dining table and past the great ornate fireplace, not telling Thérèse that she should follow. With a hurried step, the new student did not question for she already understood the underlying threats posed by her summons. As she caught up to the other girl, and as they walked into the dim corridor, they left behind the ticking off the clock and the emptiness of argument. They wove in and out of the shadows, in the general direction of the scullery, but then they began to descend a narrow flight of iron railed steps, down towards what must be the cellar, and Thérèse began to feel nervous.

'Are we going to the kitchen?'

'No,' replied Rigeaux flatly, plunging ahead of Thérèse into the darkness of a secret realm further below.

'Well, where are we going then?' Thérèse insisted, her confusion growing along with her mounting dread. When Irènée had declared that Thérèse should meet with them this afternoon and that she would brook no rebuttal, the quivering knot of fear that Thérèse already had for the older girl had already tightened significantly. She had thought that perhaps she had better not meet with Luis in the boiler room, but her compulsion to do so made her temporarily forget her precarious position and the awful threat that loomed over her head. Luis seemed like a bright, nice young man, and she had no other friend in this dreadful abode of the damned, so she trusted him. If his mother was so harsh and if she did find out that they met, well… Well it had not happened yet and despite Irènée's threats the Principal still did not know. Perhaps her secret was safe, she just had to keep it that way, but still she was anxious and uncertain as to what Irènée can do, for something evil and perverse simmered under that girl's skin. What might she have to do to keep that secret safe? These other two, Fragonar and Rigeaux, they seemed to enjoy the benefits of falsity and the female kiss, but for Thérèse that kiss was an act that united lust with terror. Luis had told Thérèse about these girls, for he knew that their personal knowledge of each other was not merely the stuff of gossip and rumour, and he recognised their depravity. Thérèse agreed that she found the Sapphic impulse morally wrong and that she had felt the threat on her first day, at the supper table, and she recalled the way Irènée had bitten into the apple, the way that she had looked at her. For Thérèse there was no sweetness in the kiss that Irènée inferred, no joy in tasting that fruit. The threat of it terrified Thérèse and she vowed that she would not be forced to endure such strange, erotic desires. Nonetheless, what would happen when she did resist her new opponents, for she certainly must? She began to feel sick to her stomach.

Together they navigated another warren of dark passages, and twice Thérèse stumbled but Rigeaux did not falter. When Thérèse again asked where she was being led, Rigeaux simply replied 'You'll see,' and her lips said not another word. They entered a musty, dank and unused room where a few pieces of antiquated furniture hulked under dusty canvas, and Rigeaux stepped aside and let the other girl pass. When Thérèse stopped and looked back Rigeaux had produced a key from her skirt pocket and quickly locked the door.

'Why lock the door?' Thérèse asked apprehensively, and once again Rigeaux remained mute. There was something horrible in the way Rigeaux failed to register any emotion whatsoever, for her face was a blank parchment and her posture disdainful. She walked up to a door, the panel of which was almost as dark as the shadows that engulfed it, and she rapped three times with her knuckles. From under the door and through the walls Thérèse could hear the muffled sounds of female voices, of giggling and even low moans. She could only conjecture what might be going on beyond that panel, only guess at the solicitudes, the abstract and uncivilised acts taking place, and she shivered in repulsion at the thought that she was being groomed as Irènée's intended dioning love. Thérèse gave Rigeaux a pained glance, but the other girl did not even respond, her face expressionless, as featureless as a stone washed smooth in a rippling stream. They waited expectantly, and after a few moments, when no response came, Rigeaux rapped again.

'Who is in there?' Thérèse asked, and she could not keep her voice from wavering and climbing into a slightly higher pitch. Yet again her stony companion made no reply and her look did not betray one word or one allusion. Perhaps Rigeaux thought that she was only playing dumb in that she did not know with whom she was meeting, and Thérèse felt the contempt literally flowing out of the girl. Abruptly the suppressed female voices ceased and a few more moments passed before Thérèse heard footsteps approaching the door. With a muted click the latch sprang back and the door opened and Fragonar stood peering out from a well of shadows, holding a candle. Her eyes were like circles of glass and they sparked in the light from the candle flame, her hair was in disarray, as was her blouse, and she was straightening her clothing with her free hand. A lewd smile was pasted upon her lips, and her cheeks were ruddy.

'Come in,' she invited through that insidious smile, and she stepped aside and waved Thérèse within. Rigeaux followed. As Thérèse's eyes adjusted to the faint glow of candle light she hesitated and tried to look about, but the cellar was an oubliette of darknesses. Rigeaux closed the door.

'Go on then,' said Fragonar, indicating that Thérèse should go forth into the cave of the Sibyl, into the dark where her doom had already been prophesied. A voice sang in the shadows, called a question, but Thérèse could not see the face to whom it be-longed. She knew it was Irènée.

'Was she late?'

'No, 'said Rigeaux, 'she came to the dining room not long after the lesson was finished.'

The girls navigated the shadows in the flickering candle light, moving between wooden struts and bric-a-brac, their heels sounding hollowly on the dusty, bare floorboards. They walked into a pool of golden light that danced from several candlesticks placed about a table. A few paces away there was a sofa bestrewn with tasselled cushions, and there was also a throne-like chair, a beautiful centrepiece in claret velvet. It was hewn of rosewood, ornamented with carvings and moulded aprons and there was even a most delicate flower-head cresting on the cabriole legs. A queen might have sat in that chair. A queen of the damned.

'That's good, Thérèse,' said Irènée, and her face at last loomed up out of the darkness, her hair pulled back and roped into a thick jet plait, secured with a red ribbon, her lips were likewise red, drawn bold and crimson and glistening. There was a flash in her eyes, like little volts of lightning. She looked cruel and hard, like Stheno in her cavern, the slayer of all male virility, seething full of venom and hatred, bloated in her livid power. Irènée stood facing Thérèse, but the victim hovered at the edge of the abyss, her slim body awash with gloaming and shadows. 'I like punctuality and order,' she said coldly, and those red lips curled into a sneer. When Thérèse found that her legs were frozen, rooted to the spot and that she could not step closer, Irènée leered even wider in the awful acknowledgment of her power, and she motioned with her hand that the girl must approach. 'Come in,' she said, and her voice was almost melodic and deceptively calm. Thérèse took a tentative step forward, and then hesitated before taking another, she could not force herself to meet with her foe.

'This afternoon,' said Irènée, after a slight deliberation, 'after needlework… I spoke with Señora Fourneau.' Thérèse felt her guts lurch and her skin become cold. Her arms crawled all over goose flesh under the fabric of her blouse. 'I told her,' continued the adversary, 'that her son had been going to the boiler room… to meet someone.' Irènée paused for dramatic effect and she looked in duplicitous and exaggerated awe at her cronies. Feeling like a captive Thérèse gave a quick glance about the room. The panic growing within made her scan for a quick exit, but the only way out was going to be through the door in which they had entered, and that was a portal hidden back there, behind them, in the shadows. On the other side of the room, bathed in the dancing light of several candles, Thérèse saw a raised dais over which was hung loops of draped purple velvet, and there was a small table nearby with a setting for tea. Behind Irènée's shoulder, Thérèse noted a sheet of drawing paper pinned to a tripod easel. Depicted in charcoal thereon were two women, one was naked, her breasts plainly visible, supplicant and kneeling, and she was reaching out and unveiling the other's spectacularly curved and voluptuous body. On another stand was another female nude, sitting with her back to the observer, but with her hand placed between her thighs. The images were crude and provocative and they made Thérèse imagine acts of love that must be challenged by nature. Irènée, Rigeaux and Fragonar might have been those three women, the Sapphic cabal, and the unholy trinity. Fragonar and Rigeaux were no doubt bound to Irènée, the tyrannical and governing urning mistress. It was not a relationship that Thérèse desired, for she had no wish to be part of this erotomaniacal collusion, but she was trapped and it was not likely that she was going to escape unscathed. Irènée walked slowly away and stood before the easel. Reaching out she traced a long and lingering stroke upon the drawn flesh of the nude, her back turned to Thérèse. Rigeaux fell off to the left and Fragonar fell off to the right. All three took a seat, Irènée in her throne, and Fragonar began to comb out her tousled hair.

'Oh, don't worry,' insisted Irènée falsely, turning as she sat to size up her victim. 'I didn't tell Señora Fourneau that it was you who was meeting with her son, however I did warn you- remember? Señora Fourneau does not appreciate anyone who is lacking in discipline.' She was eliciting a disturbing pleasure in Thérèse's distress. 'I just said that it was one of the girls, but I hadn't found out which one.' Thérèse looked at her feet because she did not want to look into Irènée's eyes. That girl was possessed of something cruel that could quite easily lash out and hurt you. She recalled the threatening conversation of the morning Rigeaux had fetched her from gardening. 'Of course, it will depend on you whether or not I do tell her.' The words were a slow and malicious threat and Irènée only glared while her accomplices simpered. The girl smiled at the power she was exerting, taunting, terrifying this silly little fool who thought she could just walk right into this place and do whatever she so wished. No, that was not possible, for everything had rules, everybody had rules and woe be to those who defied authority. Has this silly little fool not learned that already? Did she not remember Catalina? 'Come closer,' Irènée demanded of Thérèse but the other girl found that she could not propel herself in their direction, for they sat there, like hungry lions awaiting the flesh of a condemned Christian. 'Come in,' Irènée demanded, her voice taking on a tonic note, pitching just above the subdominant, and then she turned toward Rigeaux and exclaimed with false awe that it was a shame both she and Fragonar had not been there to witness Señora Fourneau's reaction to the news. 'She said she is going to expel the foul odalisque after she writes to the father!'

Irènée smirked, for she knew the inference in her words would make her victim squirm even more, but something inside Thérèse awoke, something akin to resentment and injustice, and she forced her step forward out of the shadows and into the ring of fire. Pausing melodramatically in her dialogue, Irènée swung abruptly about and spat her next words out as a vile accusation.

'By the way, Thérèse, you haven't got a father, have you?' The girl stood in the light but did not speak a reply. Irènée waited like a poised viper. 'Thérèse, dear,' she reiterated, 'I asked you a question.'

Still Thérèse found her vocal chords frozen. How could she answer that question when she really did not know the answer? This was humiliating and reprehensible, and Irènée was spinning her threads faster and faster so that soon, condemned by her own tongue, Thérèse knew she would be trapped and bound and helpless.

'Have you a father or not?'

'No…' Thérèse stammered, but then she coloured the admission with a fabrication that, even as it left her lips she knew Irènée was not going to believe. 'My father is dead.' It was the feeblest lie but there, it was said and the girl could not take it back.

'Are you sure?' probed Irènée, for that sounded like a lie to her, and she did not like liars. Liars had to be punished for their arrogance.

'Yes,' Thérèse insisted, but she knew that she did not sound at all convincing. What was the point of this awful interrogation?

'You're lying!' Irènée accused blatantly, and she stared directly at her victim and challenged her to make up another untruth, and she was not disappointed. The spider threw out another sticky thread.

'My mother has a photograph,' said Thérèse, and her mind raced, as if the timeline of her life were being relayed in a jagged sequence of frames in a gallery and great chunks of those frames were missing or omitted. She saw herself in her mother's room, she saw the piano, she saw the sepia toned photographs along the piano shelf, none of them were of her father, and she heard the sound of whispers and moans, and she walked slowly towards her mother's bed chamber… 'Yes, she has a photo-graph, an old one,' Thérèse insisted, and her heart had begun thumping inside her breast.

'That could be anyone's photograph!' Irènée scoffed and both Fragonar and Rigeaux chuckled at the flagrant attitude of this little French trull. 'You've got your mother's name, haven't you?' Thérèse had begun to feel dizzy, and her internal agonies were now boiling up to the surface. There was a nasty heat kindling in the ring of fire, and the scorching was only just beginning. She blinked her eyes and tried to clear her head, but she became a hapless spectator of her own life, and she was fourteen years old again…'Well?' interrogated Irènée.

'Yes,' Thérèse replied, but she uttered the admission in barely a whisper.

'I'll tell you something, Thérèse, dear,' Irènée hissed condescendingly. 'In Señora Fourneau's office there is a register of all the girls in this school, and as I am in charge of the correspondence I get to know a lot of things.' For a moment, there was a contemptuous spark in her eyes. 'Now, don't try to deceive me.' She held her victim in a crucible of terror. 'Make us some tea,' Irènée commanded, motioning to the table and its cauldron of hot water and teapot. Crossing to that table seemed to take Thérèse a hundred years; time had slowed to something indescribably formidable. As her hand reached for the saucepan bubbling with hot water she saw herself reaching out her hand at her mother's chamber door and turning the handle and pushing it open…

'What does your mother do?' asked Irènée, although Thérèse found the other's voice had become indistinct. She picked up a cloth and wrapped it about the handle of the saucepan, taking the lid from the teapot with trembling fingers. The saucepan quivered in her grasp, the pouring water made a vapour cloud in the musty air. She heard the sound of gasping, and groaning, of what she imagined were a volley of protests of displeasure and of suffering. Someone, a man, was cursing, venting the most spurious words.

'Ah! Vous salope sale. Vous aimez ce quehein, vous aimez coq?'

Amid these awful words, and the others that followed, there was laughter, and protestations of love!

'Thérèse, we want to get to know you, and get to know all about your family.'

Fragonar made an unsuppressed sound of derision. The lid chinked upon the teapot and Thérèse began pouring a cup of the brew, but it was tepid and pale.

'Do you understand me?' Irènée asked, and Thérèse stammered that she did, but it was so difficult to focus when your head was reeling. 'Your mother works?'

'She's a singer,' Thérèse blurted, and the cup quaked upon its saucer.

'Oh, a singer!' Irènée faked surprise, and Fragonar and Rigeaux enjoyed a good chortle. 'Opera?'

The quarry flinched at the remonstrance of her tormentors, grinning as they were with all the arrogances of detestation. 'No,' Thérèse managed to mumble, but Irènée was unwavering in her interrogation.

'Where does she sing?'

'In Avignon.'

'Oh, how interesting.' Irènée pretended to mull over the response, but she was cruel and heartless and continued in her verbal battering. 'Bring us some tea!' Upon the command Thérèse picked up the teapot and poured another cup and then she brought them forward, her hands extended as if to proffer from a distance. She gave one to Fragonar and one to Rigeaux.

'I see, your mother works in Avignon. I'm a little confused because that's a town. In which theatre or concert hall does she sing?' Turning her back so that she did not have to face the three harpies, Thérèse walked away and did not answer. Irènée erupted in fury. 'I said in which theatre!'

Thérèse snapped her head about. 'In the Tivoli,' she answered, but calm had fled her voice, and the words broke over Irènée's triumphant sneer.

'That's a music hall,' Irènée said aghast, 'or something worse!' She stood up and her face clouded over with thunder, her long braid whipped about like a lash. 'What is the Tivoli, Thérèse, dear?' Her target had begun wringing her hands together, her lips trembling. 'What is the Tivoli? I demand to know!'

'It's a cabaret.'

'A cabaret! Those places are for prostitutes!' Irènée stalked slowly up to Thérèse. 'Is your mother one? Is your mother a prostitute?' The accusation was too much to bear and Thérèse crumbled under the diatribe. The ring of flames stung her flesh.

In Avignon, she was standing in the open doorway of her mother's bedroom, and she saw the woman naked on her bed, her legs were open and drawn up and she was convulsing, her back arching and her lips were mouthing obscenities. There was a man there too, the handsome man with the cerulean blue eyes and the jet slick hair who played the piano, and he too was nude, and his fingers were working the woman's vulva, and his sex was rigid and hard as a spear. As Thérèse looked on he with-drew his fingers and slid them over the length of his member and then he stretched his weight upon the woman, guiding his sex into her, and they coupled in a fit of lust. With her hand still upon the doorknob, Thérèse had stumbled back in confused shock, and then a hand had curled about her own, and looking about she was face to face with Señor Baldie.

'Your mother's a prostitute!' Irènée denounced, and Thérèse began to shout out that her mother was no such thing, and that she was a singer, that's all, a singer, a cabaret singer! Nonetheless, she was shamed, and she saw herself from some hideous point outside of her own life, like one observing a reflection. There were men, faceless men, a constant tide of black-coated and nameless men, all flowing like ink up and down the stairs of the Place des Artes. Thérèse saw Señor Baldie pass a card to the man in the coach, Señor Clavileno, and she knew the true meaning behind the lascivious lick of his lips and his laugh.

'Yes,' Irènée insisted vehemently, 'your mother is a whore, a filthy, godforsaken whore who is inclined to do every degrading thing possible in exchange for a few miserable francs! Why, I daresay she services in the Greek fashion too!'

Both Fragonar and Rigeaux half-leapt from the sofa, their eyes gleaming with anticipation, giggling.

'No, no!' Thérèse screamed. 'That isn't true. You are cruel!' The girl made a mad dash in the direction of the door, but Irènée clawed at her arm and held her fast. They grappled together as if they were performing a broken and uncoordinated tarantella, sliding against each other and stumbling. It seemed easy for Irènée to overpower her victim, for she had already broken her down with all those vile accusations. The older girl thrust the other hard against the wall.

'Don't lie to me you little bitch!' Irènée spat contemptuously. 'Admit it; your mother is a prostitute, a debauched fornicator!'

Thérèse struggled and reached up her hands to claw at her assailant, but Irènée batted her hands back as if she were swatting a fly.

'Unfortunately, it's really rather obvious, because I know all too well what your mother would have us believe, that she was an honest woman! That friend of hers, that rather ridiculous Señor Pedro Baldie, in his foolish gallantry, wasn't a good liar. How silly does he think we all are that he simply brought you here because of a friend's recommendation in a newspaper? How utterly ridiculous! It's true, isn't it? You are the obscene result of one of your mother's gross improprieties! You've no idea who your father is at all!'

Thérèse screamed aloud, and she shook violently, fending off the assault, but with little effect, for Irènée grasped at her hair with one hand and fastened upon her throat with the other. The little cameo that Thérèse wore at her neck popped off and fell to the floor, and Irènée's hand grew tighter and tighter, her eyes flaming with anger, her whole frame shuddering.

'That's what she does then, after she sings, no doubt!' The dark-haired girl spat sarcastically. 'Sing for all of the gentlemen who come to see her…' Irènée was vicious in her brutality. 'When she sings she wears clothes like this…' Rigeaux jumped out of her chair and held forth a bright scarlet under bust, and Irènée snatched it up and thrust it into Thérèse's face.

'No!' Thérèse choked and Toupain relaxed her grip slightly, and Thérèse turned her face away and bawled, tears streaming from her eyes.

'Yes, I think this is your mother's, isn't it?' Irènée taunted. 'Of course, it is! I found it in your trunk. It's just like the one you gave Hélène! It's scarcely a theatrical costume, more suitable for the boudoir, but then she gave it to you because she hardly needs to wear it, but you might!'

The two cohorts began to laugh aloud.

'Now put it on!' Irènée demanded. 'Put it on!' Toupain released her victim's throat and slapped her across the face, hard, leaving a red welt upon a tear splashed cheek. 'Put the fucking corset on you bitch and do it now! You wouldn't want Senora Fourneau to find out that it is you who has been seeing her son in the boiler room, now would you? You wouldn't want all of the nice girls in this school to know your mother is a whore for a degenerate roué; and that she lies on her back or kneels like a dog and puts men's cocks in her mouth and swallows their emissions!'

'No!' screamed Thérèse in defeat, sick at the imputations and quaking from the arraignment. She was sobbing, and she could not stem the flow of tears, and she could see Señor Baldie again, his hand moving from hers at the doorknob and reaching up to her bosom. She was frozen in horror, like a terrified rabbit, and she could not even recoil from him in her fear. Yet he stayed his hand in mid grasp, and then dropped it with a groan and closed his eyes as if he were battling some terrible, lustful inner demon, and then he stepped aside. When Thérèse uttered the word 'no' he had already turned away, and she forced her trembling legs to move, and she was fleeing from a man who arranged clients for her mother. On the periphery of this awful recollection, Toupain heard only Thérèse's refusal, as if the girl had disavowed her merciless commands, and she slapped her prey again.

'Put it on, now!' Toupain demanded, and Rigeaux and Fragonar leapt forward like wolves and each grasped Thérèse arms while Irènée began the indignity of stripping the blouse from the unfortunate sufferer. The strike smarted and Thérèse howled, her skin stinging, but Irènée only laughed and poured forth a new stream of invective. 'You will put it on! Then we'll take turns at tearing it off again!'

'Whore!' hissed Rigeaux as she pulled at her captor's body, wrenching the beautiful girl's arms back painfully and hooking her own thigh about Thérèse's so to make cessation of the girl's struggles.

'It's true, your mother sings in Avignon…' rebutted Fragonar, and with one hand she pulled out the ribbon that tied back Thérèse's hair. 'However, it's more likely she hawks it in Gropecunte carril!' All three laughed in derision. Irènée began to tug mercilessly at the clips of her victim's chemise. Thérèse heard herself screaming, but she could not flee.

She backed away from Señor Baldie and he merely shrugged, and then she had run, run down the stairs and into the street, into the Place de Artes and the Rue de la Chappelle, where the sun was bright upon the white iron lace and where the flower stalls burst with a myriad spectrum of colour. Sobbing all the way to where? Thérèse, merely fourteen years old, did not know, for she had nowhere to go, and the shame of her mother's profession made it impossible to tell of Señor Baldie's misdemeanour, and she stopped running and collapsed into a street bench. How could she have been so naive all this time? How could she not have known? Yet that was it, the horrible truth- she had always known! The world changed hues and realigned itself darkly, right there and then, reds drained into mulberry and then to grape, blues became purples and faded into black, and Thérèse blinked once more and the world had spun into a blur.

'Leave me alone,' Thérèse begged, sagging in her tormentor's grasps, her right bosom spilling from her undergarment. Irènée made a little gasping sound and her eyes widened. When the girl's blouse was at last off, Irènée began to dress her victim in the garish corset, but Thérèse was exhausted from the struggle and hardly responded.

'We've never been to a cabaret,' said Irènée, excitement in her voice, for her breathing had become faster and her breast was pulsing tumultuously. 'We'd like to know what goes on in one.'

'No,' Thérèse protested, 'I don't know either. Why are you doing this to me?'

'You're going to sing for us now, sing a song from your mother's repertoire. Do you know any?' Toupain asked acerbically to the merriment of her cronies.

'No,' Thérèse mumbled flatly, for how could she sing, distressed like this?

'Your mother never rehearsed her songs at home? I'm sure she did.'

'No.' The handsome man with the blue eyes, how his fingers danced over the piano keys as her mother trilled.

'You are a terrible liar, Thérèse, and I told you not to lie to me. Don't you listen?'

Sobbing and convulsing in her castigation and humiliation, Thérèse faced her antagonists and wondered when the torture would ever come to an end.

'I'm sure you remember some of them,' Irènée taunted. 'Or some of the words at least. We don't want to be disappointed.' Both Fragonar and Rigeaux shook their heads in the negative. 'Come, sing a little, and then we'll leave.'

Roughly Irènée began to steer Thérèse past the charcoal nudes and towards the makeshift stage with its loops of tawdry velvet. The three women thrust their victim up onto the raised dais, in the direct light of the candles, and Thérèse looked dishevelled and half naked and battered and was sobbing. She tried to hide her exposed skin beneath the corset, but only seemed to make matters worse, for the other girls howled and clapped and jeered.

'Sing,' Toupain commanded. 'Sing…sing!' From somewhere deep inside herself, from a dark place, Thérèse managed to dredge up the tune the man on the piano had played, and she tried to remember how her mother had sung the melody, but the lyrics were scrambled in her head and they were breaking through her sobs in an inarticulate jumble.

'This is the moon, amour…' The chorus, yes, but the melody... Thérèse shook her head and struggled to sing again, but there was no concinnity in her tone, only harsh and dislocated syllables that broke in the stale airs as a faltering and pained falsetto. 'This is the moon, amour…'

'Louder,' Toupain demanded, 'We can't hear you!'

'This is the moon, amour…' The shadows at the periphery of the cellar began to spin and the dais beneath her shoes to turn to bend and buckle. She would soon be upon the brink of collapse and Thérèse begged for it all to be finished. Yet Irènée continued to coerce her captive to sing and to subject her to humiliation, cajoling with vile language and prohibiting her liberty. 'Louder… and smile.' From side to side the girl began to sway, the half-remembered tune coming from her lips like a tide of vomit, burning and acrid, and nasty and sour with condemnation.

'Now come on, Thérèse, sing. Sing.' Thérèse opened her mouth and tried to obey, tried to pitch her notes to the melody, and as her lips faltered she glimpsed the leering faces of her captors as they reeled in the blurring candle light. 'That isn't singing!' Through her sobs Thérèse delivered her broken vocal.

'That's better,' called Irènée with a hard edge of sarcasm, 'but you need to smile more. Sing louder so all of us can hear! Smile like your mother!'

They laughed aloud, all three of the venomous snakes, leering at the subjugated creature in their vassalage, the broken girl from Avignon who must now forever be in their control. Pointing at her they derided her performance, amateur they called her, and quipped that her mother must have been an amateur too, that was why she was lapse in her connextions, that she allowed herself the foolishness of pregnancy. That was the cost one paid for secrecy unfortunately, someone always finds out in the end, and then the price to pay is high indeed. The discourse of Thérèse's truth devolved with dark images, and she encountered a moment of madness in her head wherein a dissemination of pleasures became all mixed up with confessions and scandals and extortion.

Over the space of three intervening years, Señor Baldie and her mother had argued, fought with vile language for a long time. He believed that as the mother grew older the daughter now eclipsed the star, and to protect her daughter Violette had struck a deal with the man. She would sing beyond the cabaret, do whatever it took, and give in to the realm of hard core misery if Señor Baldie kept his hands off her daughter. Señor Baldie seized this consent, and over those years the smarmy gent kept his promise, but Violette was subjected to the vilest indignations. The woman became an instrument to the most abominable lusts, threatened with violence, beaten, made to perform debauched acts with men, women and animals. Enslaved, Violette, amid this brutal tyranny became ill, broken under the strain and the filth, insisted that Thérèse was better off at boarding school. Yet, even though the man at length conceded to her wishes, she was blind in her naïveté, for she was condemned to be punished and refused salvation in the loathsome disease of syphilis.

'Sing you ill-favoured bitch!' Irènée shouted, striking at Thérèse, and clawing at her, pulling at the girl's hair and shaking her like a rag doll.

'I can't, I can't!'

'No one can hear you, so sing, and smile as you fucking sing, or I swear I shall whip you like the dog that you are!' Irènée's hand came up again, tense and hard, ready to deliver a thunderous blow, when abruptly the bell resounded to summon the girls to supper, the bell Thérèse had childishly pulled on her first day in the school. Looking up sharply at the clanging noise, Irènée ceased her strike, and stepped away from her quarry. She was breathing hard and there was a damp film of sweat upon her brow. Fragonar and Rigeaux also looked upward in the direction of the sound. With one last exhausted scream Thérèse col-lapsed onto the floor.

'We'd better be going,' said Rigeaux, and she glanced at the sobbing wreckage of their victim convulsing at their feet, and she smiled.

'Get up and get dressed,' Irènée told Thérèse. 'If you're lucky, tomorrow we'll go on again.'

Thérèse gasped with horror and pulled her clothing about herself, and Irènée, in one last and final act of humiliation, spat in the girl's face. She pointed her finger at Thérèse and sneered, and then she motioned for Rigeaux and Fragonar to follow her. The ugliness of it all engulfed Thérèse, and the three women strode away, stepping from the candle light into the darkness. Thérèse did not move for a moment, not until their footfalls had receded and the cellar was silent, and then she began to painfully gather herself together and to right her clothes. She tossed the corset away and fumbled in the shadows for her cameo, and she wiped away her tears and the spittle and stood up. Inside her heart she had now made a grim resolve.

Andrée stood at the lectern, and a heavy tome was open before her. She was reading a script about Christ's passion and his passage from the underworld unto resurrection, but the tale was bestrewn with multiple characters that seemed obtuse, so she was trying to inject something of drama into her reading. Still, nobody cared. All the girls had earlier sat down to supper and were being forced now to eat a most tasteless meal. Señora Fourneau had taken one mouthful and had instantly rejected the notion of eating the rest. In disgust, she was attempting to wash the awful flavour of the pie away with a mouthful of water. There was no way that she was going to taste the Migas. Señorita Desprez sat at her side, tinkering with her cutlery and moving the vile food aimlessly about her plate. It wasn't the first time the students had cooked up something abominable, but this was a step beyond disgusting. The meat tasted like no other she had ever eaten, and she hoped she would never taste it again. Its flavour had even polluted the vegetables, the carrots and the suedes uprooted from Julie's garden.

'So, they gave away, piece by piece everything they owned to the people,' recited Andrée with enthusiasm, her eyes racing to the next paragraph. 'Hearing about this, Lucia's betrothed was furious, and complained to the Consul, Pascasio, saying that Lucia was a Christian and was not obeying the Imperial law. Pascasio, having sent for the young girl to appear... reproached her for having wasted away her dowry...'

A murmur of ingratitude had rippled through the lines of young women. The repast was too foul to ingest. Thérèse had not lift-ed fork or spoon to her lips, for although she had recovered her senses she felt utterly unable to eat. It proved impossible to think about anything save for the enormity of Irènée and her sidekicks. There they sat, sweetly and hypocritically, blackmailers, rapists, torturers, all of them, and Thérèse despised them with vehement hatred. Irènée's lusts contaminated everything she touched, and her power was wrought through the machinery of repression, no better, if not worse than the tyranny of Señora Fourneau, but Thérèse's need for survival was strong too, fundamental in its intensity and overriding reason. Never was she going to endure such treatment again! Thérèse watched across the table and stared at her tormentor, Irènée Toupain. The older girl sat up straight in her chair, jesting in whispers to her comrade Fragonar, and returning Thérèse's look with a supercilious smile and a casual toss of her long, dark, plaited hair. Thérèse caught a thin snatch of Andrée's enthusiastic recital, a fragment about submitting to the Royal Law and the consequences of folly. The thought of ever obeying Irènée again made Thérèse as angry as she was sick, and she seethed within, and swore that such offensive treatment would never happen to her a second time. If it had been misfortune that had brought her to this dreadful place then it would her own resolve that took her away. She had time to recover a little, and perhaps to find a shred of comfort knowing that she would find a way to leave, she would ask Luis, surely, he could help her, and the sooner she escaped the better, with or without Señor Baldie's consent. To save her-self from her fear she held Irènée's face in her vision like one who has turned to stone, but her heart beat strongly and the blood pounded through her veins. It was Suzanne, sitting beside Thérèse who noticed the girl's strange demeanour.

'Is something wrong?' Suzanne asked, and when Thérèse replied that there was nothing the matter Suzanne followed the line of her stare. Irènée and Fragonar and Rigeaux were sneering and smirking and nudging each other, and Suzanne knew that something awful had transpired. Irènée had upset Thérèse, that much was obvious, and the girl was now beaten into submission, a plaything for the devil. Thérèse looked beyond her tormentor then, looked about the room until her gaze fell upon the china and cutlery dresser and then beside that the great leaded windows at her back. Perhaps there might be a way to get out of here, through that window, she thought, and her heart tripped like a hammer, but she realised it was still a fair drop to the ground. To get out of this place was going to require some iron fortitude, and she must not whisper one word, not to Suzanne, who talked a lot and could not keep secrets, not to anyone.

A girl called out that she was going to be ill and Señora Fourneau rolled her eyes and stared coldly about the dining room. Just as Almuna had dreaded, supper was not a particularly satisfying meal. The meat had been over salted and there had been mutterings and complaints, and everyone had refills in their water glasses. Almuna had not brushed the top of the pies with melted butter, so the crusts had emerged from the heat quite pale. The pies were hot, but that was all that could be said in their favour, for ultimately the art of cookery had suffered a vile abuse at the hands of Almuna Almaraz. Even the sweet apple sauce had failed to make the dish any better because Suzanne had been otherwise occupied and the fruit had slightly burned. Why, she couldn't be responsible for everything, thought Almuna, and maybe when it was their turn in the kitchen the other girls might find some understanding. Forks were lifted to mouths that twisted up in revulsion, for the aroma that assailed their nostrils was thoroughly unappealing. Señora Fourneau had declared that Señorita Almaraz needed to pay more attention to the recipe and Regine had cried out in disgust when her teeth had bitten into something hard and stony and metallic. Reviled she had pulled a short linkage of gold from between her teeth and knotted up in the chain was a dull little cross made of yellow stone. Regine had begun blubbering and had been dismissed in tears, a chip in her tooth, and Señora Fourneau had taken Marthe aside and told her to keep a better eye on the girls when they were in the kitchen. Perhaps it would be to everyone's benefit if Marthe took the time to give another class in pastry making.

The girls did not want to partake further in the meal after Regine's experience, for they all wondered at the trinket and to whom it belonged, and how it had become baked into the pie. When they could not eat they were berated for being ungrateful. The girls wanted to accuse Almuna of a jest, but she protested indignantly that she did not wear any decorative baubles and that it was not she who had lost it in the pie. Julie had commented that it looked much like the tiny confirmation cross that Isabelle Delorme wore, and everyone had fallen silent at the mention of the name of their missing friend. With the threat of not eating anything at all that night the pupils resentfully lifted their knives and forks and cut and swallowed their ill repast. As they forced themselves to eat, Andrée continued unperturbed, '…and demanded that he should offer sacrifices to the gods...'

When the vile supper was at last finished and the final revolting mouthful swallowed, the pupils were granted respite and dis-missed to the dormitory, but few could digest the detestable meal. The consumption of all that thirsty, bilious flesh; and it was possessed of a flavour that was like but unlike pork, had made their stomachs rebel. Indeed, Señorita Desprez had commented that it had to have been the singularly most revolting meal that any student had cooked in the kitchens of la Residencia in all the years of her service. Several girls had complained of stomach upsets, and Julie had indeed vomited.

Thérèse, who had not eaten one morsel, waited now in the dormitory, sitting on her bed, and in that isolated space between disgust and ridicule it was so difficult a task to be patient. As she lingered upon her hopes she heard a storm gathering in the night sky.

18

Parapet

Day ended, and the night seeped into the sky, covering the forest and the park with a cerecloth of shadows. The gloaming crawled between the Malaga trees and over the white azaleas, and with it came a cold wind that caressed the great oak and sieved loose sered leaves. There was no moon to light the dark, and no stars pinned at the edge of eternity, but a storm was gathering for the clouds were scudding across the firmament, whorls of black on black and threatening. As the nothingness slithered over the lawn and pooled momentarily before wall and gate it wove like a shroud over the entire side of the building, and the shadows undulated and heaved, as if breathing fuliginous air. The darkness shifted and moved by slow and by rapid degrees, and in the intermittent and flickering sheets of lightning the shade passed over the tangled screen of creepers and up to the façade of the Residence. High up in the eaves an owl watched in the darkness, its ear cocked to the faintest rustle in the wind. No crickets made sound, no dog howled, and the night stained the sandstone blocks of the building with an atrementous cloak. The darkness was a pool of black that spread upward to the roof and spilled down again, over the greenhouse and the woodshed, over every window and every door.

In her bedchamber Señora Fourneau stood at an open window. She had been looking out into the night, watching the dark approach. The clock on the wall, one of the few that Luis had not dismantled, chimed the hour of ten, and although she was tired she was too restless to sleep. She had not retired because she knew that sleep would not come, but she had contemplated a few drops of laudanum, though she had elected for a hot chocolate instead. As she was sipping the cup of chocolate, hoping that its medicinal and soothing warmth might calm her and lull her off to slumbers, her nerves were on edge and she resented the night. A sudden gust of wind blew through the open leaded panes and the curtains lifted into a billowing sail, making the light from the candles dip and flutter. With the wind came a moth that reeled about the candelabra. Tugging at the ruffled lace of the Señora's nightdress, the wind tousled her hair. After her ablutions, the woman had let her hair out of its bun, put aside the pearl-tipped pins and let the thick brown locks fall upon her shoulders. Señora Fourneau caught a glimpse of her figure in the dressing table mirror, an image that shimmered in the yellow hued light. The ghost of a smile flickered over her lips, and the moth danced dangerously close to the flames. There was a woman standing in the glass, in this room, someone who looked like the woman she used to be, but this one, the reflection of the flesh, was fading like a flower.

It was the truth, she had to concede that much, that the bloom of her youth was wilting. With disinterest, she put down the cup of chocolate and picked up a comb, and with a firm downward stroke she attempted to smooth out the tangle that the wind had made of her hair. That hair was still silky, still vibrant, there were no stray grey hairs on her crown, and yet there was no one to see how russet brown it was, no one to appreciate its length and lustre. No man to run his fingers through its veil. There was a galvanic resistance in the air, for the comb's gilt copper teeth snagged in the gossamer tresses. What was the use of it, she asked herself? Soon she would need a garish splash of rouge to blush those cheeks, and those cheeks would collapse like pancakes, and her lips would lose their carmine gloss. She would end her days looking like a skull with a horrible, dry parchment-like skin stretched over grinning teeth. That's what she hated most, the loss of youth, for it made the girls who lived under her roof so much more desirable than she, even though their cores were as black as the night. None of them were any good and it made her angry to think that Luis should waste his time in pursuit of one of those sullied strumpets. For a few short moments, she ruminated about her own youth, but it seemed like a half-made up fantasy, and the reality was that for these bad girls too, youth was over before it had even begun. Rather hypocritically she deliberated how cruel life was to young women; cruel in that it either bound them to monstrous men who satiated their vile sex and pleasures with the female flesh or abandoned them and turned them into sterile spinsters or repugnant whores. After which the female flesh had to be purged- by other women! Nonetheless, who needed men anyway? Bored into apathy the Señora almost flung the comb onto the dresser. As the moth died an incendiary death, from somewhere far off she heard thunder, low and distal, and the owl screeched, and lightning danced in the refracted oval of the mirror.

In the hall upstairs Señorita Desprez turned the key in the bedroom door and tried the handle to make sure that the door was locked. To complete her nightly ritual she extinguished the lamp, and when she was confident that all the students had settled into darkness she went downstairs. On the other side of the door panel the girls were reconciled to the night, some moved about, trying to gain comfort from their unforgiving mattresses, others welcomed Hypnos with immediate enthusiasm. The curtains had not been drawn, and Thérèse Gravaine lay awake in her bed, staring at the blackened window. Her white and lovely face was illumed in the glow of sporadic lightning. The girl had not dozed off, but instead she was quiet, breathing lowly, counting her expectant heartbeats as the clock ticked onward towards the hour of eleven, waiting.

Closer to midnight, as the wind picked up and the thunder grew louder, Thérèse sat up in her bed and quickly pulled away the bedclothes. The bed springs creaked in protest at her shifting weight, making her freeze as she rose, but when she did muster the courage to stand up there was only silence, only the other girls breathing and the faint whisper of snoring. From above the park Thérèse heard the discontinuous rumbling of thunder and the song of the wind. Thérèse glanced about as best she could in the darkness, straining to see if any eyes were open, but all the girls were sleeping. It was time to go, time to escape from the Residence and its hierarchy of twisted antagonists, time to flee the awful and suffocating regime of power and abuse. Thérèse knew that she could never be subordinate to Toupain, nor could she continue to suffer the rectitude of Señora Fourneau, and in absconding from this horrible environment she had not a moment to spare. Somehow, she must return to Avignon before her mother died- before she suffered a similar fate. In the dark, she stripped a sheet from the bed and folded it across the middle, and in it she wrapped a set of clothes and a few personal items. Gathering the corners together she knotted the sheet into a satchel. After this she stripped out of her nightdress. There was no need to get dressed for she had cunningly not disrobed earlier, but she put on her coat, the fabric rustling softly as she slid her arms through the sleeves. It was then that the clock in the hall downstairs chimed midnight, and Thérèse's bones almost leapt from their ivory skin. Startled, she hurried on tip-toe towards the window.

Pulling down the handle the girl pushed the window open. For one brief intermission the wind lulled, and Thérèse peered out into the dark. It was a long and vertiginous drop to the ground from here, but she had thought about her escape route all evening, and she had decided that the only way out was to creep along the ledge until she arrived at another aperture. When the window in the dormitory was open wide enough, Thérèse lifted and tossed her satchel through the gap, and a moment later it met the ground with a quiet blow, one of the knots she had tied coming undone. Up into the window frame and out onto the ledge she then climbed, and she was thankful that it had not yet begun to rain, for the stone was narrow and slippery with moss. Holding tightly to the rough masonry, with slim fingers gripping the mortars, Thérèse stood up upon the parapet. The wind picked up again at that moment and clawed at her skirt and stung her eyes, and the girl pressed her face to the stone in terror and froze for a second, buffeted by the gale. It was almost the duration of a long, long minute before she had the courage to inch forward in the dark, and the wind tangled her hair before her eyes and made it difficult for her to see.

Night's obtenebration also made it difficult to discern where the stones met, but Thérèse knew that she was positioned above the pointed Gothic arches and decorative traceries of the first level. This narrow bulwark, barely wide enough for her boots, followed the dark bands of mortar and sandstone about the entire symmetry of the building. Terrified and without respite, Thérèse gripped the stone crenulations and slid one foot along and then she slid the other, and deliberate and slow, step by step, she crept along the tightrope of fear. A streak of lightning saw her pinned to the wall, high up, like a fly, and the lightning was a herald for the clarion call of thunder that brought with it the first heavy spots of rain. Averting her eyes, she told herself that she must not look down, for in that darkness where her footing was so precarious she felt sick and giddy. Instead Thérèse concentrated on the wall of stone against which she huddled, so close that the block was cold and rough and unforgiving against her cheek. After a few steps, she had to stop for a second, for the wind when it gusted and buffeted took away her breath and threatened to throw her off balance and reeling into the void below. Visibility was vastly diminished, and her perception of depth was becoming distorted, and a cold film of sweat broke upon her forehead, yet Thérèse inched onward. The damp smarted in her eyes, and it caused a lippitude into which the fat drops of rain began mingling. Thérèse clawed the wet filaments of her tresses out of her face and she almost wept, thinking that she could never reach the sanctuary of another room, through another window. From the inky heights of the roof and the eaves, Thérèse heard an owl hooting, but she dared not look up.

There was a window looming close; she could see it when she squinted against the dark, see the dentil moulded architraves and entablatures, and the lightning flickering silver in the glass. Thérèse stepped forward again, forcing her feet to slide along the slippery ledge, needing to reach the window before the rain began pouring in torrents and filled the gutters and overflowed the spouts. With an exhausted breath, she finally reached the other window and that window opened upon another room in another quarter of la Residencia. For one dreadful second Thérèse thought that the window was locked, and she pulled hard against it but it was stuck. With her terror mounting she scratched at the casement until it finally fell open and she slid awkwardly inside.

Irènée awoke at the sound of thunder and looked up. For a moment she was startled, thinking that she imagined a shape at the window glass, but the darkness in the dormitory was so dense that she was scarcely able to see anything with certainty. It appeared that a silhouetted shadow had slipped through the window pane and disappeared into the night. Abruptly Irènée threw back her bed covers and stood up and crossed to the window, but the shape she had glimpsed was gone and outside there was only darkness and the wind blowing hard. She closed and locked the latch and turned about, and then she saw that Thérèse's bed was empty. Quickly she donned her dressing gown and let herself out of the dormitory with her key. In the dark in the corridor she moved by instinct towards the sweeping main stairs and descended with assured step until she reached the main hall with its shadowy sea of monochromatic flooring. Lit by the lightning flashing through the windows, with one foot in darkness and one foot in watery light, Irènée moved to the great heavy door of the main entrance. When she reached the door, her hand flew up to the bolt, drawing it aside, and she cast a glance over her shoulder to check that she had not been followed, but could not make out anything tangible in the dark. She used her key and as the door eased ajar the wind gusted inside and Irènée slipped out into the night, closing the heavy portal behind her. Outside the wind gathered up her hair and the rain saturated her nightdress. She ran up the grassy knoll, beyond the hedgerows and the manicured lawn and positioned herself under the great and ancient oak. Beneath its spreading umbra she looked to the wall and could just make out the tall spears of the wrought iron gate, padlocked against the outside world, and there she waited and watched.

Thérèse found herself in a dark gallery. The walls were hung with the portraits of forgotten nobles and the long-ago gentry, but pique clouded those stern faces and wrath hardened their eyes. The faces watched the girl as she trod softly along the bare boards. At the end of the gallery the way led to a narrow hall and about half way down this corridor Thérèse came upon a door upon which she rapped lightly. She waited hesitantly, but there came no reply. She tapped again. Soon enough she heard a shuffling sound from behind the door and the latch clicked, the handle turned, and the door came ajar.

19

Courage and Coins

Thérèse stands in the dark beyond the door, and she is wet with the rain and she is trembling. How the devil has she escaped from the locked dormitory?

'What's the matter,' I ask, not realising that I stand there before her dressed only in my nightshirt and have only half strapped up my leg irons.

'I'm leaving,' she whimpers, and she is visibly shaken, and her hands are scratched.

'What have you done? Have you been hurt?' I say, and I reach out and lightly touch the scrapes and bruises on her knuckles.

'No… no,' Thérèse tells me as she sways there shivering. 'Just a wild adventure in the dark,' she half-laughs, but I can see she is close to tears.

Realising suddenly that I am being less than chivalrous, interrogating her as she stands in the dark at my door, I motion her to enter. 'Come in,' I tell her and I step aside, scanning the corridor to make certain that it is empty.

'I'm leaving,' she whispers brokenly as she comes into my room, 'I must get away from here. I came to say goodbye.'

'You're going?' I question incredulously, for no one ever has left here, and if they did manage to get away not one person ever saw them again. I begin to feel afraid for Thérèse, afraid not simply because I might never see her again, but because four other girls have vanished, and I don't want her to be the fifth. Why was my new friend being driven to flee into the night, driven out into the storm?

'Where are you going to? Where can you go? 'I ask bluntly. 'You can't go home. It's way too far.'

'I shall go anywhere that I can think of that isn't this place!' Thérèse declares almost vehemently, and she wipes her hands over her face as she suppresses a sob. It didn't matter at this point, not one little bit where she went, and I could read the defeat in her beautiful face. Even though she knew in her heart that if she might not make it back to France and to Avignon and the quaint apartment in the Rue de la Chappelle, her mother was probably dead, so what did it really matter anyway? She could not go back to Señor Baldie, for the man who had brought her to this place was not to be trusted, and the fear of a life worse than death, sold into prostitution was unthinkable. Sadly, there was no one else to turn to for help. At eighteen years of age, Thérèse has realised that she is no longer an innocent, and if she is going to survive this hell she must be strong. 'I'll go anywhere but here… anywhere!'

Closing the door, I shuffle about and she stands before me in my shadowy bedroom, and she looks away from me, as if in embarrassment for her appearance, for her wet and tragic countenance. Thérèse stares about the room like one who is lost. There are no spaces within here that she can crawl into and hide, in truth every corner, every shadow, every room will only find her tormented and persecuted should she stay. The clocks are quietly ticking away on the wall, counting out the precious minutes to her escape, running into a future that might find her discovered and punished. On the table, she notes the wheels and cogs of a gutted timepiece and she forces a wan smile, musing that I have been tinkering.

'Why are you going?' I ask, and my concern is that she will be found out and locked up and whipped just like Catalina. It has only been a few days ago that Thérèse rescued me from the vent, only a few days in which to become friends, not long enough to know each other intimately. I do not share my mother's point of view, that these girls are bad. Some of them might be excused for having resorted to desperate measures for attention. Most are the victims of circumstance. If I should ask the question who loves them, who cares about them, then I know the answer is of course nobody. Perhaps the bad things that they have done, if they had not acted correctly, like a girl should act, but lain down with a mountebank without common resistance and been deceived and abandoned, then that hardly made them evil. Rather, I thought, it made these girls, just like Thérèse, into souls searching for affection and thus they were sufferers. Sullied by men's lusts and rejected by their families they were delivered to my mother for correctional behaviour, and then they were tortured into denying their breasts and their thighs and disallowed the biological purpose of their young, fresh bodies. In this morbid finishing school, their desires were suffocated, and their animation destroyed, turned into submissive creatures whose only purpose is to clean and to cook and to sew, to be locked up, all slaves to pain.

There is anguish in Thérèse's lovely face and she bites down on her lower lip as if she is finding it difficult to answer my question, and she shifts her glance away in frustration and despair. It would be a terrible crime if this divine girl were to endure such awful misery, to have her beauty lacerated and her spirit crushed into oblivion. She has told me, in one of our brief meetings in the boiler room, that she would have loved to sing, like her mother was a singer, but according the truth of that, she did not see herself ever lifted to the lofty heights of what is a fantasy. How I reassure her that beyond the walls of this prison anything can be possible, and she smiles and lowers her eyes, but I know that she does not believe a word that I had say.

'It's not important,' she says eventually, turning about and walking away so that we are briefly separated. Outside, above the Gothic architecture, in the blackest of skies, thunder rumbles. Thérèse looks upon her reflection in the window glass. How long can she stay young and pretty, how long can her character remain stainless, how long can she go on living in the harsh world of reality?

'Did my mother do something?' I probe for a true answer, for I must know. If she has been responsible for this girl's flight, then perhaps there might be something I can do to stem my mother's twisted need to punish. Thérèse need not suffer the bite of the lash. I would not see her pretty skin marked, not her lovely white flesh. Thérèse does not answer, but she continues to silently gaze upon herself. From a drawer, I find a book of matches and I strike one and tilt up the glass dome of the oil lamp. The orange flame sputters at the wick but eventually it spurts into light and the room is bathed in a soft and comforting illumination. In that suffused glow, Thérèse looks like the most celestial creature that ever walked upon the earth, almost the image of the Madonna, her hair auburn and wetly shining, her eyes cobalt and her lips the colour of pomegranate seeds. I find that I am fighting the impulse to hold her close and caress her face, to comfort her and tell her that everything is going to be all right. Thérèse would have probably thought me a liar. In truth we both know that nothing is ever going to be all right, for how can it be? Truly, there is nothing I can really do to help, and I can't go with her because I cannot walk far. I feel guiltily sick as if I am somehow abandoning the girl and complicit in my mother's tyranny. I feel my heart quake just a little with insecurity.

'No, your mother didn't do anything,' Thérèse says weakly, and I can sense that she wants so much for the truth to be that simple. 'She knows we see each other.'

'She knows I see one of the girls,' I reply matter-of-factly, 'but she doesn't know which one!'

Thérèse shrugs, her body language speaking volumes about the inevitable. 'She'll know soon enough.' A flash of lightning bursting through the window throws a fleeting silver veil over her lovely face and she flinches at the sound of thunder. Soon she will have to brave the rain and the storm again. Anyway,' she continues, 'that's not the only reason I'm running away.'

'Why then?'

'Because today…' and here Thérèse stalls as she speaks and checks herself and stops as the thunder punctuates her sentence. I have the impression it is as if in the continuation of her words she shall reveal a terrible truth that she does not want anyone to know. Yet surely nothing can be so bad as to drive you out alone and frightened into the night, can it? 'It's nothing,' she says, dropping her eyes, and her pitch falls into a whisper.

'I don't want to see you leave,' I tell her in earnest, and I try so hard not to sound desperate and clinging. 'You're my only friend, you know this, don't you?'

The girl nods and I see her wipe away a tear. 'I will miss you,' she cries softly, but she is resolved to go. I have a thought then, a little gesture that might be of help, and I hobble across the room and take my piggy bank from a shelf. The coins are few and they rattle inside of the porcelain, and I smile as I kneel upon the floor and pull up the corner of the rug. With one hand, I cover the money box with the edge of the carpet and with the other I strike it a blow with the heel of my boot. It shatters into jagged pieces, revealing a few pesetas glowing like copper in the lamplight. Flicking aside the broken china I separate the coins and scoop them into my palm and standing up I hand my friend the money.

'Here,' I proffer, 'it isn't much, but you may need it.'

'Thank you,' she says, genuinely moved by my generosity, taking the coins and clenching them tightly in her hand before slipping them into a pocket in her short coat. 'I promise I'll return it someday.' Thus, saying she turns away and steps towards the door. 'It's going to be difficult for me to get out of here,' she continues thoughtfully, 'and I'm not sure where to even start.'

'Yes,' I confirm, and the thought is disparaging. 'It is going to be tough, but you must summon courage. As several other girls have already escaped mother ordered that all of the doors be double locked.'

Thérèse looks solemnly into my face. 'Yes, I know that, but if I can open one of the dining room windows I can get into the garden and head towards the back of the shed, and then up to the wall…' She pauses, immersed in her thoughts, planning her trajectory. 'Perhaps then I can climb over the wall and disappear into the forest.'

'You won't be able to, the wall is high and Señor Bréchard cut down all of the creepers on purpose.' Quickly I plan an alternative route, one which I believe might be the safest path for Thérèse's escape, and I am certain that it will be her best option. 'Try to climb the wrought iron gate,' I tell her, 'it might be the only way.'

'Yes,' she agrees, considering my advice thoughtfully, 'I'll try.' Thérèse leans close and gently she strokes my cheek and a little thrill, both of excitement and of remorse sweeps through my body. I hate what my mother is doing to these girls, and yet I have not the power to make the abuse cease. 'Goodbye, Luis,' Thérèse says, 'and thank you. I know we had little time together, but I am so happy that you are my friend.'

'I will always be your friend,' I reassure her, and Thérèse smiles weakly and a tear spills from her eye.

Leaning over she kisses me on the cheek and then she slips through my door and I want so much to follow, but I know that such a thing is impossible. After Thérèse's footsteps have receded into the dark I snuff the tongue of fire in the lamp into extinction and I plunge my world into a blackness more impenetrable than the depths of the everlasting and infernal pit.

20

Assassin

Irènée clung to the trunk of the oak tree, her face stung by the wind and the pelting rain, her clothes saturated. Through the storm she strained her vision, shielding her eyes against the fury and the torrent and looked toward the main gate, but she could observe nothing in the darkness in that direction. She had expected that Thérèse would try to escape by first attempting egress by the great iron gate, but her wait was futile because the girl did not emerge from the shadow-locked house or the black folds of the rain-swept night. The rain fell heavily and the wind's perflation through the branches of the oak tree caused leaf and twig to winnow free and tumble and whirl, but Irènée held fast as the squally gale stung her cheeks. A strip of fulgent lightning lit up the indigo sky dome, and soon there followed the clamorous ire of thunder. Toupain could feel the thunder reverberate inside of her body, echoing tremulously in the chamber of her ribs, heightening her tension, and she turned and looked to the house again, to the front door. It was so difficult to see anything through the driving rain. Perhaps she had been mistaken in thinking that her quarry would pass this way, but it only made sense since the doors had been double locked and the windows on the ground floor nailed down. For a moment, she deliberated that perhaps she should return to the building, and as she decided to do just that, Irènée looked up and saw the faint glimmer of a light waver in the black and argent frame of the dining room window, and then it went out.

In the dim corridor Thérèse navigated her way with tentative steps to the great staircase. Reaching out for the cold timber of the banister so that she might be guided by its curving thread through the dark, like Theseus and his clew in the Labyrinth, she shuddered in horror, reminded of the Minotaur, the beast of that horrible and twisting maze in the story recited on her first night, at dinner, by Señorita Perriere. Regardless, the maze must have an exit, and by this logic Thérèse descended the staircase to the main hall, and off the main hall was the blackness of the tunnel that led to the dining room. When she reached the spread of black and white tiles in the main hall she hesitantly moved forward, for it was difficult to see anything, the darkness was almost absolute. Those black tiles taunted her again, large inky diamonds deeper and slimier than quicksand, deceptive and dangerous. Nonetheless, this escape shall not be ruined by childish fear, thought Thérèse, as she shrank away from the open hall and moved to the wall, step by step and inch by inch, her heart beating wildly, her ears listening for the sound of pursuing footsteps. Still, in a superstitious agony, she tried as she might to only tread upon the white tiles. Along the wall the girl stretched out her right hand and her fingers met the cold stone. Across its occluded width she felt the runnels of cracks and fissures and with each step she drew closer to the room at the far end. It was then that she felt the thing as it slithered over her arm. In a sudden terror Thérèse snapped up her hand and grabbed the chain to still the bell from ringing. It was too late, for the bell gave one low and treacherous clang that resounded in the dark and chased its echoes among the corridors and through the gloaming shadows.

A serendipitous clap of thunder followed immediately to mask the sound of the bell, and Thérèse felt her heart skip a beat, and then it skipped another beat and another in rapid succession, and she wanted to be sick upon the spot. Her thoughts consumed by the foolishness of black and white tiles, she had forgotten about that chain, the one she had so nonchalantly tugged upon her first day in front of the stern and icily cold Señora Fourneau. Such a silly and unwise, immature thing to do, and now that history might catch her and betray her. The beautiful French girl shivered, for she was terrified should she be caught, and she understood what tortures awaited her ripe young flesh if she were to be apprehended. Irènée would wield the whip and she would not cease her blows until Thérèse's skin was crimson and her screaming mind driven beyond pain to insanity. When no response to the abrupt sound followed, Thérèse let out a tiny gasp for her reprieve, and she scanned the dark as best she could and then continued to move on towards the dining hall. Inside the dining room the clock observed that the hour was after midnight, its pendulum swinging back and forth eternally ticking. Thérèse ran to the first window, and with a brisk tug she pulled the curtains aside and tried to lift it, but it did not slide upwards. The girl rattled against it but nothing budged. With no hesitation, because there was so little time to make her escape, she ran by the cutlery bureau and pulled the curtains aside from the next window. It too refused to open. Rain was beating against the window and Thérèse glimpsed her own panicked reflection distorted in the streaming rivulets running down the glass. How she wanted to scream, for the panic was rising under her skin, fraying her nerves and in that rising state of fear she almost lost her nerve.

There had to be a way to get out of this terrible building and she must think fast, she must not lose her head now, not after coming this far. In need of illumination, Thérèse went to the cupboard and fumbled in the dark, inside of a drawer in the bureau. As her fingers felt within the space she grew even more panicked, not finding immediately that which she sought. She knew that in that drawer she should find the box of flint matchsticks that were used to light the great candle trees on the dining tables. At the back of the drawer her fingertips at last found the box, and with a trembling hand she struck a match and she crossed back to the window to see if there were any nails driven into the timber casing. The light from the match flickered and wavered in the dark, but it afforded enough time to note that there were no obstructions keeping the window down. Bréchard must have missed this one. It must simply be jammed, thought Thérèse before the match went out, and then she ran back to the cupboard and scrabbling inside another drawer she found a large metal spoon. The spoon looked sturdy enough that it would not bend, but the girl did not have the time to test its strength. At the casement Thérèse tried to force the handle of the spoon in between the transom and the window pane. The spoon handle was thick and difficult to push into the crack, and the girl struggled desperately, trying to prise and shove, but the timber only creaked and protested yet it did not give. The strain and the terror of discovery made Thérèse weak, and she felt her resolve giving in to panic. She was beginning to believe that her chances of escape were futile. All the while the clock on the wall continued ticking out the long and dreadful seconds and the thunder outside rumbled, and in the garden from under her station by the oak tree, Irènée looked up to the window but her vision was blinded in the storm. All she now glimpsed were the shadows of the trees and their clawing branches shivering in hallucinatory silhouettes against the sandstone walls of the Residence.

A great boom of thunder shook the house and a vivid splash of galvanic lightning did a staccato dance in the occluded dining hall. Startled by the din and the light, Thérèse stopped for a moment and gripped her spoon, and she peered out into the rain-swept night in the direction of the main gate, but it was impossible to see much. In desperation, she tried the spoon handle again under the frame, one more time; for she knew she must not give up hope. This time the creaking of the wood was not the sound of the window sash being forced, for the sound came from behind. Thérèse turned her head in the direction of the noise. In a lull between the thunder and the deafening roar of the coursing blood in her veins, the sound had emanated from the door, over near the wall clock and the fireplace. From that dim gulf, the creak entered the dark, from that spot on an afternoon not long ago, and seated at that same dining table, swatting at a cockroach, Thérèse had also heard a mysterious creaking noise. In a terrified panic, she wrenched the drapes about her body and squeezed in behind their shield and held her breath, gripping the spoon tightly to her bosom. There her heart thudded wildly in its ivory cage and she froze into rigidity, but she heard no further creaking and no footsteps, only the rumble as the thunder recommenced and the mournful, eerie song of the wind. When she at length risked looking from behind the hanging drape she saw that the door had not opened. In terrified but thankful relief, Thérèse let out her breath and once more took to the window casement with the spoon.

In the flashes of lightning the dining room lit up blue and black and threatening. The tables were bare and devoid of even napkins, plates and cutlery, and all the chairs were hard and empty receptacles whose frames threw wild shadows up the walls and over the ceiling. The pair of life-like and bearded caryatids in the jambs of the fireplace watched Thérèse with polished eyes. They were the only witness to the door opening, just a fraction, and theirs were the only eyes that saw the hand protrude from the well of darkness beyond, and the fingers curl about the door panel. A windy ripple from the corridor stirred the drapes, but Thérèse did not see, and silent footsteps raced amid the frenzied tango of tenebrous shades. The footsteps moved rapidly over the floor and quickly skirted the tables and chairs. In that moment, when the window frame seemed to finally give under the handle of the spoon, a hand erupted from the black behind Thérèse and clamped about her mouth. The girl attempted to scream, but the hand pressed so hard and firmly that her lips were cut upon her teeth, and as she flailed the spoon smashed against the glass, breaking the pane.

Rain poured in and drenched the sill and the curtains lifted in the wind. Another crack of thunder boomed in the firmament and Thérèse dropped the spoon and tried to prise away the clamping fingers, but her struggles proved futile. Whoever restrained her was strong, and their grip was as hard as steel. With a gasp of terror Thérèse urinated, and shame and guilt assailed her as the hand pulled her back, pulled her hair and her head down, exposing her lily-white neck, and then came the lacinate torment, the cold and yet burning hot pain. The girl felt the strange suffering agony as her throat was cut, as the kiss of the sharp blade raked across her neck from ear to ear. The hand let go and recoiled into the black, and Thérèse heard her assailant step back and away to avoid the squirting blood. With a drowning moan Thérèse gagged on the tide of thick scarlet that spurted in a fountain from her severed carotid, boiling up in a red tide over her already bleeding lips. In the darkness of the dining hall Thérèse fell to the floor, the coins spilling from her coat pocket and bouncing in pool of water and urine, rolling, spinning, to be forever lost under the bureau, and her last thought was a strange one.

She was in Avignon again and she was sitting with her mother's handsome stranger and they were before the piano, Violette's photograph on the piano case was smiling radiantly at them both. Whoever he was, he was so beautiful, and his eyes, they were blue gems and glorious. She wanted to be lost in those eyes. How her heart thudded at his closeness. Thérèse imagined that there was no one else in the entire world when this man was close. Into his skin she could have leapt and dissolved and melt she almost did when his strong thigh brushed against hers. How her soul caught fire when he took her hand in the chalice of his own, and his touch was so soft and yet firm as he guided her hand and placed it upon the piano keys. Yet the sound from the keys was only a jangled noise as Thérèse tried to play them, and to understand the music on the sheet paper was impossible. With this man so near, sitting right there on the stool beside her, reality became distorted and all mixed up with the timpani of her own expectant heartbeat. In a parallel existence, somewhere in the boiling shadows of a future that was happening but had not yet realised, Thérèse heard the thunder of the storm as it rolled in the skies above the Residence. Her dreams were in tatters, her thoughts unravelling like whorls and threads across the weird panoply of her young life, and she knew that in her memory her heart had suffered the pangs of infatuation, of first love and that love had foretold and ultimately pronounced her death. If she wiped away the shadows she might only know the glow of this man's cerulean eyes and the silken touch of his skin as he played the piano, played her own body like an instrument. Under his touch her hopes sparked, and her flesh burned, and she was envious that her mother was the one who knew her passions with Adonis sated.

Thérèse's eyes filled with tears because she knew her love for the handsome man a foolish love, and that she was doomed, like she had been doomed from the first moment that she had left Avignon in the coach. Every moment spent with Luis in the boiler room, thinking that she was perhaps in love again, was a presage to doom, for she seemed to find herself alas, sick with unrequited and impossible adoration and fancy. No matter what, dream or reality, it always spelled only doom. Ill-fated from the beginning, from long before her departure to Cantabria, the sharpness of the knife was now salvation. It saved her from further pain and torture, it redeemed her from lust, it preserved her from the horrors of her mother's syphilis and Señor Baldie's intentions. For it was odd that despite her throat having been cut, despite her blood pouring down her bosom, Thérèse could remember, quite proudly, her Solfège, and she smiled.

Lightning danced a wild staccato over Irènée's face. Her hair was plastered to her face and hung from her head in long black rags, and she strained her vision in the direction of the house. The glint of yellow light in the window, blinking rapidly and then flickering out had perplexed her, and she supposed that it might have been Thérèse, but how could she be sure? Pulling her rain saturated dressing gown close over her breast she left the oak tree and sprinted towards the house. Irènée was about to unlock the main entrance when a thought entered her head. Perhaps she should go around the building to the window where the light had shone, and that way she would know exactly which room it was that she should investigate. In the driving rain, pursued by the crack of thunder, Irènée darted along the perimeter of the Residence. When she arrived beneath the dining room window she imagined she beheld a fissure in the glass, a jagged crack lit in the silver volt of the lightning. On the ground was a tied-up sheet, wet through, knotted into a day sack and partly undone. Irènée picked it up and carried it back to the main entrance where she fumbled with her key and opened the great Gothic door.

Inside the house and out of the stormy weather, Irènée dropped the bundle onto a table and wiped the wetness from her face. She was beginning to get cold and needed to change her clothes, but not yet, not while the mystery of the light in the dining room and Thérèse's empty bed wanted solving. On the table were a candlestick and a box of matches. Extracting a matchstick Irènée struck it against the flint and the flame leapt into life. She lit the candle and her visage was bathed in orange shadows. With tentative step, she walked towards the dining room. Warily she pricked an ear and listened intently to the dark. The corridor that led to the dining area was dark and silent, and the only sounds Irènée could hear were the howl of the stormy wind and the thunder as they muted the eternally ticking clock nailed to the wall. She emerged through the door in a pool of limpid light and in the vast dining room she lit yet another candle and looked about. There, over there by the window, that's where the wind was billowing in the drapes, and the rain was pattering in and splashing on the floor. Irènée crossed to the window and looked out into the night. She saw the stencilled outline of the big old tree that she had been standing beneath and she knew for certain that she was in the right room. Her attention was then taken by a thin stream of water pouring through the broken window pane, and on the floor, there was a large metal spoon and wet patches that seemed like the imprints of footsteps leading off into the shadows. A tarnished peseta lay upon the floor beneath the window.

Placing the candlestick on the floor, Irènée went down on her knees and retrieved the stray coin, and then she traced her fingers in the wet puddles on the bare boards. Hesitantly she rubbed the wet between her fingers and lightly sniffed at the stickiness. How peculiar that the wet was thinly red, and when she looked down again, Irènée noted that those patches of redly wet were spreading like ink splashes on blotting paper. She wiped the black-red stains from her fingers on her saturated robe and she shook her head. Confused, Irènée had no explanation for the things that she had found, and Thérèse Gravaine was nowhere. Irènée stood up again, clutching the coin, and she felt a tremor of doom shudder all the way along her spine. As her skin pimpled into gooseflesh, she looked beyond the open door. There she glimpsed a faint light in the hall, an anaemic luminance radiating in the occlusion. Perhaps that was the escapee; perhaps Thérèse had not found her way out after all. Goaded into motion Irènée abruptly bolted toward the light, her heart tripping with expectation, but instead of apprehending the runaway she found herself upon a partially opened door. In terror, she threw the portal aside with a violent thrust, and Irènée burst into Señora Fourneau's office. The headmistress was seated in her chair, at her desk, and she was fully dressed and no longer in her nightclothes. Her hair was pinned up and her tie pin sparkled. The woman looked up in surprise, and she was holding the bone-handled letter opener with its gleaming silver blade. The woman pointed the glinting point of the blade at the intruder.

'What are you doing here?' she asked Toupain in irritated disbelief, but Irènée was rendered speechless and the only reply was a loud crack of thunder.

21

Insurrection

'When I retired last night, I know for certain that all the girls were in their beds,' said Señorita Desprez, and her tone was cold and absolute. She had checked every single bed and every single girl had been asleep.

'Well, one of them was not!' returned Señora Fourneau in a sharp and irritated outburst. 'Thérèse Gravaine must have crawled through the dining room window to escape, and then she must have gotten over the wall!'

'To climb the wall without a ladder,' remarked Señor Bréchard, 'that would be impossible!'

The Principal had gathered Bréchard and Desprez and Toupain into her study, hoping to get to the root of Thérèse Gravaine's disappearance. It was a tiresome and irksome affair, this repetition of absconding girls. What did she have to do, what measures did it take to teach these young women that straying from the path would not be tolerated? Why, she had ordered that the locks on the doors be changed and the ground floor windows nailed down, and Bréchard had cropped back the thick creepers that grew over the walls and… Enough! It was all beginning to aggravate and to get too much and if the situation continued it would be the ruin of her school and her professional reputation. Thérèse Gravaine was as ungrateful and willful as those other four girls, who had disappeared, and she would be discovered, and she would be appropriately dealt with. The headmistress found that her palm had begun itching and to distract her whipping hand she began to toy with the little golden watch pinned at her lapel.

'Well,' she reprimanded Bréchard in irritation, 'perhaps there were some loose bricks or some cracks in the wall that gave her a grip. You can't tell me, that after all of our precautions, another girl is still able to slip away into the night!'

'I'm afraid, Señora,' Bréchard apologised, 'there is no exit from this house except over the main gate. That's the only way, and it's locked and high.'

'Don't tell me what I already know!' snapped Señora Fourneau.

'She did not leave by the main gate,' Irènée attested, for she had been out in the storm watching and waiting to apprehend the escapee.

'Very well,' Señora Fourneau spoke with bitter exasperation. 'This is silly, and it makes no sense. Can I not rely on anybody?'

Señorita Desprez pursed her lips and arched her eyebrow and Bréchard gave her a strange look. While the Principal chastised he twirled his cap in his callused hands. All four people fell silent for a moment and this only riled Señora Fourneau to a sharper edge of anger. Surely one of them had to know something? She threw up her hands in utter frustration and rose from her chair.

'Bréchard,' she said, pointing at him. 'I thought that I had told you to nail down all of the windows on the ground floor? What about the dining room, isn't it on the ground floor? I do not want a repetition of this ridiculous incident!'

Señorita Desprez interjected. 'Bréchard has done what you have asked. What more can he do?'

The words stung the headmistress. A wrinkle of concern creased her brow. There was something clandestine in her matron's defence of Bréchard that made her stop. What was Desprez's interest in Bréchard?

'Yes, Señora, I will check all the windows again' he shrugged, his strange unaligned eyes gleaming like agate, and he stepped back to stand beside Señorita Desprez.

'Go,' Señora Fourneau commanded in frustration. 'All of you. I have trouble enough.'

Bowing slightly as if he were in the presence of a noble, Señor Bréchard turned about and Desprez accompanied him to the door. The matron gave a slight flutter of her eyes and glared at her mistress for a brief but hard moment, and then she reached up her hand and her fingers curled about the man's forearm and they looked at each other. The woman then shut the door. Señora Fourneau saw but she did not know what to think. It couldn't be that Desprez and Bréchard were…? No, no, that was surely an overreaction, for everything in this damned Residence was becoming far too complicated! Irènée gathered her long skirts together and crossed the room to stand before Señora Fourneau's desk. Her face was wrought with consternation and fear. The young woman knew that a challenge was coming, for she had sensed the subtle changes and the beginnings of emotional chaos in her mistress. For some months now the façade of granite had been crumbling and cracking and when the wall eventually fell Irènée did not want to be caught under its weight.

'Thérèse Gravaine never left this house,' Irènée addressed the Principal sharply and her eye traced over the desk and she saw the shining letter opener discarded where Señora Fourneau had dropped it among the opened correspondence.

'Don't be so absurd,' the Señora returned, admonishing her subordinate, and she absently lifted the little gold watch and ran the cool mental of the chain along the length of her carmine lips.

'Last night,' Irènée protested, 'I was constantly at the gate, in the driving rain, and I was watching the house all of that time. Thérèse never left it.'

Señora Fourneau cast her underling a bored look and stood up. For all that she knew Irènée was overreacting and misconstruing the evidence. It was plain and simple that a student had found her way out of the Residence last night and if she could not be found then the house needed to be made even more secure. This conversation was becoming tiresome. 'Perhaps she left before you even reached the gate.'

Irènée blanched and she could not fathom the underlying accusation in the Señora's words. Was the Principal thinking perhaps that Irènée herself had participated in Thérèse Gravaine's absconding? Why, the thought was preposterous. 'I don't think so because I never left my post!' said Irènée with indignation.

The mistress walked to the window and opened the drapes and looked out. Wan sunlight pooled in through the leaded panes and the park was damp and leaden green, the graded carriageway was dotted with muddy puddles. The sky was still cloudy, and it appeared that another storm might be in the eaves.

'Everything seems strange, Señora, don't you think?'

Señora Fourneau turned sharply from the window to face Irènée.

'What do you mean by strange?'

'I'm thinking about the broken window and the light in the dining room and the wet patches on the floor... and this...' Irènée proffered the coin she had found. 'Since when do any of these girls have money?'

'A peseta? That proves nothing! One of them could have hidden it, or stolen it, and who knows when? What will one peseta buy any of these escapees?'

Señora Fourneau gave an unconcerned look and flipped the coin onto her desk.

'I swear Thérèse Gravaine never left this house!' Irènée's voice was becoming shrill and the headmistress took due note of the fact. 'Four girls have disappeared in the last three months! Thérèse Gravaine is the fifth!' For all the wrested power that she held behind the locked doors of the Residence, and for all the subservient women that it brought under her control, she had no wish to turn a blind eye to the disappearances or to threaten her position. Irènée was, after all, still only another student and behind these suffocating walls, if five had disappeared, who might be the sixth? She did not want that person to be herself. Señora Fourneau strode forward and swished passed Irènée.

'In every reformatory or boarding school girls are always running away. They can't control their urges, you know that. They crave the touch of a man, and it becomes a madness that drives them to elope. I have seen it all before.' She clasped her hands together as if to emphasise that in this she was powerless, for she had done all that she could do to guide these tainted girls along the right path to womanhood and away from the sinful cesspits of their bodies.

'I understand that,' Toupain interjected, but all of that was beside the point. 'In time, one hears from them or their families. Their parents write or bring them back here. Don't forget that I am in charge of the correspondence and we have never heard from any of these girls again!' She pointed dramatically to the letters littered on the desk.

Bored with Toupain's complaining Señora Fourneau checked the time of her watch against the clock chiming on the wall. 'Well…' she began with disinterest, 'perhaps they got home and…' Her words trailed away as if she had lost all care for the subject.

'What?' demanded Irènée.

'Perhaps the parents never bothered to write, that's all,' Señora Fourneau snapped in irritation. 'Perhaps there is no mysterious construction for you to put upon it either.'

'Well, why didn't you write to them and let them know what has happened?'

Señora Fourneau did not reply but moved away from Irènée and took a bottle with a little stopper from a shelf. She selected a crystal glass and turned to face the younger woman. It was a bottle of laudanum that she kept for Luis' pains, but at this moment she felt the need to calm her own rising tension. Everything in this house had become a strain on the nerves and the last thing she needed was Irènée challenging her authority.

'Are you telling me what I am supposed to do?' she asked Toupain, her words laced with offence and with threat.

'I am telling you that strange things have been happening here. You can't be blind to it all… you and I both know about them, about the disappearances, about…'

Although she stared straight into Irènée's face, Señora Fourneau began to pour the laudanum out of the philtre into her glass, counting off the drops as they fell.

'One...two...three…'

Something awful hung in the air, fate perhaps, but the tide was turning, Irènée could feel it, a ghastly and inevitable uncertainty, and she was beginning to be afraid that her past and harsh actions might now catch up with her.

'We are not so foolish, are we?' Irènée asked bluntly. 'Remember that it was you who taught me.' The young woman waited while the drops of the drug dripped like shining mercury.

'Four… five… six…'

'There are other things that I cannot and shall not tolerate.' Those words were Irènée's reckless mistake and they sealed her fate. Anger flashed in the older woman's cold eye.

'What are you talking about?'

The last four drops splashed into the crystal.

'I don't know,' Irènée stammered, thrown off guard, frustrated and frightened. 'I really don't know.'

'Of course, you don't know because you are being an idiot!' The headmistress retorted disparagingly, and she sipped her potion slowly, but her eyes stayed fixed upon Irènée. 'You are too preoccupied with morbid fantasies and emotional foolishness.'

'All I can say,' Irènée stood tall and threw out her ultimatum, 'is that I am leaving.'

'You are staying,' returned Señora Fourneau decisively, her face hardening into a mask of stone.

'How will you stop me?'

'You'll find out… and you will be sorry!'

The older woman spun on her heel and paced away, drinking the remainder of her draught quickly and placing the glass on a table.

'I don't think it's too wise to try and keep me here,' Irènée threatened in return, certain that she knew too much about the Principal and the secrets of the school to play the victim or the scapegoat. 'You can't force me to stay.'

The corners of the Señora's mouth gave an almost imperceptible twitch.

'Remember that I know many things,' Irènée touted, even though her confidence was wavering. She had never challenged Señora Fourneau before, 'things about you and your teaching methods. I am sure that the authorities would be interested to know all about the preoccupations of this place.'

Senora Fourneau walked slowly and deliberately up to Toupain and stood but inches away from her face. 'The preoccupations of this place,' she reiterated bitterly, 'as you so elegantly put it, are really none of your concern. Whatever I do here is no different from what is done in any other school.' The Señora laughed scornfully. 'Are you so stainless, my willing accomplice?'

They both saw the whip flying through air and the scarlet welts that it left in white flesh. They both heard the echoing screams of chastised girls. A long and strained and awkward silence followed the Señora's words and the only noise was the sound of the clock ticking on the wall and the thunderous pummelling of Irènée's anxious heartbeat. Señora Fourneau extended her hand and turned it palm upwards.

'Your keys!' she demanded with quiet and final authority and all that Irènée could do was to comply with her demand.

With shaking hand, she obediently unclipped the key ring from her girdle and she passed them to her superior. The atmosphere in the room had now changed, and Irènée understood that she had been reduced to a foolish dupe, a tool in the machinery of cruelty and that she had willingly bought into the awful regime. The elation that power had created had flattered the baser and blackest part of her psyche. That power had caused physical pain and suffering in others, it had been the scorpion that had stung and harrowed innocents. Festering in that control had been the scorpion's venom, the strength in knowing that the victim was vulnerable and could not retaliate. For one sickening moment Irènée thought of Thérèse Gravaine and the torture she had wrought upon the girl. Despite that girl's disappearance there was nothing she could do to right the wrong and now was not the time for lamentation. Irènée had been weak, and she had exploited the weak, and her fear was now exposed. Hating Señora Fourneau, Irènée now realised that she had to be strong and find courage for the challenge. Nonetheless, in the moment that those keys were relinquished so was Irènée aware that something terrible was about to come to a crescendo in this house. Although, as a resident inside a Citadel of Iniquity she had wronged others, self-preservation screamed at her now that she must not become a casualty as well, and she looked at Señora Fourneau in hatred, but as the Principal was devoid compassion and Irènée was expendable too.

All day a storm was brewing, a cinereous shroud that paled the sunshine and turned thoughts grey. The wind caressed the decaying walls of the Residence, sang a disquieted song about the cornerstones, clawing at the ivy and blowing through the trees. Within those forbidding battlements, inside the Stygian microcosm of rule and control, Señora Fourneau found her mind straying. She had arrived at dictation class and sensed a palpable aura of hostility in the air, and it wasn't emanating just from Toupain. There was dissent breeding here, dissent festering under the noisome skins of these subordinates. It was becoming plainly evident that she was losing her control to a greater degree, and she did not want these young women to see that, but she was already on the downward slope and this placed her teetering upon the brink of the fluctuating edge of suffrage. Señora Fourneau already knew that within her heart she could no longer keep up the pretence of governance, no longer wrest the subjugation of these young girls out of the well of her failing control. She did not know what to do.

There sat the ring leader at the front of the class, but even robbed of her keys and her access to all personal correspondence, Irènée Toupain had hardly relinquished with them the last shred of her tenuous prerogative over the other girls in the school. There could be no feat of revindication, Irènée understood that much, but now that the drama was being enacted for everyone to see, there were no lines remaining for respect, and Toupain had nothing but scorn for her imperator's directorship. The woman's authority was failing, her absolutism unworkable and her dictums impossible. Irènée had suspected that Señora Fourneau had been on the fast slide into oblivion for some time now, and it had only been a matter of that cycle reaching its passé. Toupain was not about to succumb to the ignorantly reactionary compulsions of a tyrant. At the back of the class, under the stuffed falcon, that unstable coryphaeus appeared distracted, as if her concentration was wandering. The younger woman found resolve in knowing this, and she was determined to be strong, and she watched Señora Fourneau pace up the class room from the corner of her eye, the woman's dictation book open in her slim white hands. Irènée could see that those hands were slightly trembling and that the Principal's eyes avoided her own. There was a thin perspiration beading on her smooth forehead.

'Virgil shows an exquisite sensitivity…' Señora Fourneau's voice did not carry today with its usual authority. It wavered and broke and beneath it all her confidence was dissipating. Outside, above the tall oak and the Malaga trees the storm was gathering a phalanx of dark cloud, louring the sky to a shade of slate and frosting the atmosphere with a chill blast of doomsday. The light through the great pointed window cast a drab luminance into the classroom and as it fell upon Señora Fourneau's severe and sere form it presented not a woman of authority but rather a sickly and ashen faced Emeritus. There was no glint in the pearl hairpins and no gleam in the opal tie pin either, just unrelieved shadow. Step by slow step she advanced to the front row, and there Irènée was seated, her pen recording the words the teacher spoke, her lips set in a tight grimace. In that grimace there was a promise that the tale was not completely told yet and that the Señora was wise to be nervous.

'Virgil shows an exquisite sensitivity…' the Señora repeated, 'in portraying his characters…' She paused momentarily as she reached the head of the class room. 'Characters who are profoundly human...who are profoundly human…'

Yet it was the lack of humanity that rankled in the heart of this blackened and invidious place, and because of that fact the tide had now turned. Señora Fourneau looked up and her eyes fell upon Catalina Lacienne. That headstrong and intractable girl was sitting there, again openly defiant, picking at her fingernails instead of writing her lines. Had the wretched creature not learned a thing from her former misbehaviour? A repeat offender must know the consequences of a repeated punishment. A wash of heat coursed through the headmistress's body, her hands gripped the covers of her book as she conjured the strident tongue of the lash and the pain it delivered to soft, ivory skin. This time she would use the whip herself and this girl would know once and for all who was in control here. She placed a thumb at the bottom of the sentence she had been reading to mark her place and met the young woman's eyes. There was a deliberate defiance in them, and Catalina smiled the most obnoxious and flippant smile and turned and looked toward Toupain.

'Señorita Lacienne?' Señora Fourneau spoke aloud, but her voice failed to deliver any sense of conviction and the disobedient student ignored the headmistress. The girl's insolent reaction made the fire in the Señora's veins ignite.

'Yes?' Catalina inquired, but it was evident that she no longer cared for the Principal's authority. She simply sat and smirked and continued to idly pick at her nails.

'If…' Señora Fourneau began to threaten, but her words were subdued by a low rumble of thunder, and the thunder only emphasised the turmoil now boiling up in the class room. That turmoil became incarnate in the face of Irènée Toupain, who put down her pen and turned about, her face stern and unforgiving. The visage of the Sibyl flashed a cold look that might have withered the strongest resolve, and Señora Fourneau saw that look and caught her breath in her throat and stumbled over her words. Catalina waited for her reprimand, but none came. With her thumb twitching on the page, Señora Fourneau tried to recommence her dictation.

'Profoundly…' Her mind suddenly turned blank. This was ridiculous. 'The Romans… the Romans considered…' Señora Fourneau imagined for one fleeting moment that the girls were whispering about her failings. In an escalating anxiety, she imagined that the girls were muttering in muted voices and that she would ultimately yield and fall. They talked behind their palms, artful, sly and insidious, and they whispered through their fingers, and they mocked and derided and they called her weak. They called her vain in her sophistry, a pervert in denial and in the twisted darkness of her heart was reflected an aberration. She was mad, that's what they were implying, insinuating that Señora Fourneau was spent like an old trollop, blackened and finished like an ember tossed out of the fire, faded like a star in its death throes, rotting like a carcass in the sun. Why, she had not had a man for so long her sex had become dessicated, a desert, dried up and fallow. Even Señorita Desprez was bedding Bréchard, everyone knew about that betrayal! How ridiculous and insignificant was the headmistress in that she did not even know such things went on behind her back? The old black crow was having her feathers stroked every night...

As Señora Fourneau imagined the growing explicitness of the whispered discourse she felt a pain begin stabbing at her chest and her breath becoming laboured. The woman began to quake, and she placed her hand over her breast. A few drops of laudanum would not go astray at this moment. 'The Romans considered that the… that the…' Where once she stood as ruler Señora Fourneau now stood as fool. In her hesitation, she looked about the room, and all the girls, every one of them had put down their pens, had folded their hands upon their open exercise books and all were staring at her defiantly.

22

Finishing School

Marthe was not looking forward to giving the morning cooking class. After the last gastronomic disaster perpetrated by Almuna Almaraz, it was felt that cook had fallen in her instructing the culinary art. Marthe resented the suggestion that she was failing in her role, for it was up to the aptitude of the student to learn the rudimentary recipes of food preparation. Rightly she believed that if the individual did not improve it was because they were either dunces or their sullied little minds were on other things, foul and obscene things. Suzanne was the worst of them all, always simpering about whenever she sniffed the merest waft of a man's cock in the air. How then was she, Marthe, at fault? It was impossible to be with the girls as they cooked for every moment of the day, why, if that were to be the case then no one in the house would eat anything at all. In a disgruntled huff Marthe had assembled her class for another bout of pastry making. When the girls had trooped into the kitchen and washed their hands and donned their aprons Marthe had looked them over and guessed at once who the students were who might be needing extra help. Most certainly Suzanne was one of those pupils, for she hardly ever paid attention to any of her lessons, whether they were sewing, music or cooking, and then there was Cocinera, almost a carbon copy of Suzanne but not quite as useless. Of course, to round the class off and to make Marthe's day a particularly gruelling trial, there was the talented Almuna, still smarting from her disastrous earlier culinary adventure. Marthe told the girls that a good pie was all about the crust, and she looked at Almuna as she spoke, knowing full well that the crust that the girl had previously produced had been utterly abominable.

'Pies and cakes need lots of strength and patience,' said Marthe, 'just like children.' Almuna merely simpered. They were going to use butter today instead of lard, because Marthe had decided that this time she wanted to produce the best taste possible and win back Señora Fourneau's approval. Most certainly, lard made for a tender, flaky crust, but it could not compete with the creamy flavour of butter. Besides, the dairy cows had been milked and the fresh butter churned and stored in the frigorifica to keep it cold. Butter, she told the girls as they spread flour onto their bench surfaces, was especially good because it was a tastier ingredient with which to work.

'I remember my mother used to say that you need cold fingers to make the pastry, that's what counts before you put the pie in the oven,' Marthe espoused, 'the softer it would be in the end. A butter crust can be just as flaky as one made with lard, but we must work it by hand. You must rub the cold pieces of butter between your fingertips and then into the flour until it crumbles, but you must work fast. It is important to keep the butter cool, and you'll know the moment because the alchemy happens quickly, the butter and the flour make flakes in the dough. Then you can roll it out. Of course, as the crust bakes in the oven, the butter will melt, and this we are told, generates pockets of steam that make the lovely flaky texture we want.' Marthe demonstrated as she lectured, and she combined her ingredients in a large bowl and then inverted the dough onto the floured bench top; she began kneading and pushing and flexing her shoulders, the pastry sticky between her fingers. Presently she let Cocinera take over and then Marthe walked slowly to another group of her students.

'Soon we will roll out the dough and then we will spread it over a greased pie plate, and then we must bake it for a short while before we choose a filling. Today we are going to use more apples, so there's plenty of work ahead of you, so let's get into it now!'

Irènée stood beside Hélène, but unlike that girl she was not struggling with her cooking, but rather she attacked it quickly and wordlessly, her fingers dancing through the pastry so fast that her actions did not go unnoticed by Suzanne. The cook moved slowly amid her toiling students, observing as they kneaded, and she told Almuna openly that the girl had so much more work to do before her pastry would be acceptable and that she needed to work her shoulders and arms harder. Almuna cringed and kneaded and then groaned some more, and then Marthe approached Irènée.

'How about yours?' she asked, peering over Irènée's shoulder. With a smug smile that curled up the corners of her lips Marthe directed her question to Irènée. Pleased with Irènée's masterly skills the cook was elated. She was going to use this work as an example of cooking expertise. As a reward for her fine effort Marthe told Irènée that she could finish and go upstairs. 'See!' Marthe pointed to Irènée's pastry, already rolled out and in its case and ready for the oven. 'That's how it should be done. You lot can keep on going.' Almuna cringed with embarrassment under Marthe's accusation. Suzanne reached up with sticky fingers and pushed aside an errant lock of hair that was dangling in her eyes. A white smudge of flour trailed over her cheek. Something was going on, Suzanne knew this, for although she gave the impression of being vapid she was no fool and she had picked up on Irènée's tense signals when the cooking class had begun. Irènée had earlier in the day, before dictation class, come from Señora Fourneau's office and she was visibly unhappy. Gossip had spread quickly among the girls about Thérèse Gravaine's disappearance. Suzanne suspected that words of conflict had passed between the Principal and her crony and as she glanced up from her toil she watched Irènée wash her hands at the pump and then cross to the sink to wipe them on a towel. It was then, when she was certain that none of the other girls or the cook were watching that she unlocked the latch to the window above the sink and slid it ajar. Irènée looked back over her shoulder to see if anyone had observed and she caught Suzanne staring. A challenge unspoken hung in the air, warning Suzanne to keep silent about anything that she saw, and indeed the younger girl dropped her gaze and bit down on her lip, but Irènée's countenance seemed to confirm to Suzanne that things were amiss. It was obvious that some sort of power shift had occurred, for the older girl could not completely conceal the fact that she was uncharacteristically tense and quiet and now less dominant, less sure of her position within the Residence.

'Once the pie is in the oven,' Marthe droned on, 'it is important to keep the heat inside at a constant temperature.' Of course, that meant ensuring a good supply of wood and a lot of perspiration. 'You mustn't open the over door, otherwise,' the cook warned sternly, 'the pastry will be heavy.' She gave Almuna a disapproving glare, but the girl played ignorant. Turning quickly on her heel Irènée undid the strings of her apron, removed it and hung it on a wooden peg. Without another glance at the pastry making class she sprinted briskly for the narrow staircase that led up to the dining room. She heard cook's voice drifting away as she droned on about the baking time and how that could only be learned by experience since no one was able to see what was happening inside of the oven. Marthe went on, and she had begun to sound boringly repetitive, stating that if one could see within the oven, life would be so much easier. Her students were beginning to tire, their backs and shoulders aching from the dough making, and their thoughts began drifting into disinterest. Most were failing in their task. Soon it would be time to cook more apples for the filling, another excruciating and tedious exercise that would culminate in little reward.

When Irènée opened the door, and came into the dining room, Rigeaux had come up from the cellar and was waiting for her, reticence written all over her face.

'Everything is packed away,' she told Irènée, 'including the drapes and the cushions. What do you want me to do with the drawings?'

'Burn them!' Irènée said vehemently, not caring anymore about such aberrant things and wanting to destroy ant of the foul evidence that might remain in the cave of the Sibyl. She now wanted nothing but to escape from this house and to leave its filthy secrets behind her, to obliterate them. The memory of the cruelty it had sparked made her shiver. What had she become? Nothing, that's what she had become, nothing that mattered, nothing but a fool who had used and abused her position to bully and to destroy. Irènée found that she hated the monster within herself, hated the fact that it had now been exposed. Stripped of her power she now faced a nasty reality and she did not know any other way to react but to run away.

'How about the kitchen window?' Rigeaux asked, for to keep it as a secret corridor to liberty she would surreptitiously go to the kitchen in the morning and once again pull it closed. Marthe would never know, in fact no one would ever know.

'It's easy to open,' Irènée returned, but she was torn with a need for haste, for the night would come soon, and her skin itched to be gone.

The two girls strode quickly through the dining room and across the entry hall and then crossed up the corridor and into the dining room.

'Do you remember if this door has a key?' Irènée asked Rigeaux, closing the door as they entered. The only eyes that observed and the only ears that heard were the caryatids standing sentinel in the fireplace. The two women shivered in the deserted dining room, sharing a tightly drawn and complicit secrecy.

'No,' Rigeaux replied. 'I've never seen one. I think it's lost.'

'What about the kitchen?'

'No, never.'

'Good.' Irènée's look clouded darkly as she calculated what would best serve as her escape route. She knew that she would have to descend the main stairs, pass this way through the dining hall and then down to the kitchen. She would crawl through the window that she had secretly opened and once outside in the yard, in the dark she would have to try for the main gate, however, since Bréchard had the only key to the lock and chain, escape that way was going to be difficult.

'Are you going to escape tonight?' asked Rigeaux, worried that her companion would fail, or worse, disappear like all the other five girls.

'If I can,' Irènée replied coldly, but she had little faith that liberty was truly possible. Nevertheless, she was now driven to the point of mounting hysteria. If she did not try to escape tonight her life at the Residence would become hellish, for the other girls would likely rise against her for the punishments she had meted out, and there would be no further protection from Señora Fourneau. There could be no extolling the deeds she had perpetrated in this horrible and lascivious place, a place where frustration and lust had made its home. Her back would feel the sting of the whip and her body the caress of the crawling insect as she huddled trapped in the darkness of the punishment room. The halcyon days of her lauding power and pain over the other girls, and her unquenchable contempt for their agony had abruptly come to an end. How the tables had turned. Irènée's undisguised preference for her own sex and her reputation as the Principal's crony would ultimately see her undone; there could be no doubt as to that. No matter what happened though, she vowed that she was leaving this house of torture tonight.

As the afternoon progressed another storm was brewing. Grey clouds began piling up above the tree tops, a rumble of thunder precipitated a few spots of rain that splashed against the windows. Inside the house, in the sewing room, the mannequin standing by the window was now half-dressed in patches of dull material stabbed through with sharply glinting pins. Suzanne held a few of those pins between her lips and was darting another into the fabric. With a wary eye, she watched Señora Fourneau as she strode slowly through the class, trying to act as if all were normal, trying to keep a grip on her rattled composure. Fragonar was sewing a thread, pulling it through a folded piece of linen, her thumb encased in a thimble. She stitched the thread slowly, pushing the needle through and then back again, and as she stitched Señora Fourneau came up to her side.

'Let's see,' said the teacher, stooping to observe and to critique the girl's work. 'Very nice,' she commented as Fragonar handed the sewing to the headmistress. After she had handed it back she moved on to Hélène. Hélène had paused in her work; the blue thread of her swallow's tail had become snagged. The girl broke the thread in frustration and Senora Fourneau shook her head from side to side.

'You can do better than that,' she commented, running her fingertip over the broken and mediocre stitching. 'You need to pay more attention.' Leaving Hélène to fix her sewing, the Señora moved on to the next student.

'Not bad,' she told the girl, stretching out her slim, lily-white hand to examine the student's work, but the student did not smile at the appraisal. Instead she looked past the Señora and directly at Irènée. Irènée was looking down, her eyes set upon her needlework, but she jerked up her head and her mouth was set in a hard and tightly closed line. Her expression was one of pure malice and she glared at the headmistress. Señora Fourneau froze under the other's withering stare, and her hand trembled. From that look alone, she might have been struck dead upon the spot, chilled by its lack of warmth and disturbed by its anger. The Principal retracted her shaking hand and turned her face away from Toupain, for she did not want the girl to see her confused. Above their heads, above the house the clouds dimmed a shade darker and the gods played at dice in the firmament.

Evening descended upon the Residence, cloaking the ivy-covered façade with inky shadows, a hazy sheet of rain dampened the walls and depressed the spirits of all within. The students had dutifully assembled for supper when Señorita Desprez had rung the bell in the hall, filed one by one over the vast sea of black and white tiles into the dining room and lined up behind their uncomfortable chairs. At her table at the top of the room Señora Fourneau led them in a prayer of thanksgiving.

'In the name of the father,' she intoned, 'the son and the holy ghost.'

Her companion Señorita Desprez clasped her hands and closed her eyes.' She was imagining that she was somewhere far, far away from these girls, somewhere that she did not see them, hear them or smell them, somewhere that she did not have to teach music and dance to broken dolls.

'For what we are about to receive,' the Principal continued. 'May the lord make us truly thankful...'

'Amen,' said Señorita Desprez.

'Amen,' chorused all the girls.

They pulled out their seats, scraping the chair legs noisily upon the floorboards, and sat down. Lucie walked between the tables with a bowl of soup and a ladle, dishing out the thin Sopa de Ajo Blanco into similarly white china bowls. Silently the girls began their vinegary repast. Señora Fourneau watched the meal from her post, and she found herself without appetite. Not even a sip of water passed between her lips, even though her mouth was as dry as a desert. She found that she could not look anywhere else but at Toupain, but the girl was deliberately ignoring her and that only made things worse. Toupain's alliance had now gone and the sadistic relationship of power that they had shared had now turned impotent and perilous. Both had ruled in a domain wherein violent and physical restraints had celebrated the perverted and the repressed and erased the elision of the word love from everyone's lives. Señora Fourneau knew that Irènée would not remain chastised for long and that her behaviour all day, since the rescinding of her keys, only blatantly pointed to the threshold of a nasty and dangerous insurrection. It was strange seeing another empty seat in the dining hall, this time the seat had been Thérèse Gravaine's. As her eyes fell upon the vacant chair, Irènée heard a clap of thunder and the flash of a lightning volt spilled through the window and set the solitary seat ablaze with silver blue. Several of the girls flinched at the abrupt intonation, thinking for one ghastly moment that they had glimpsed the phantasm of Thérèse in her seat, but Irènée did not bat so much as an eyelash. Ghosts did not frighten her. Nevertheless, inside her skin, she was being assailed by guilt. She questioned herself harshly, but even in admonition there was no absolution for what she had done to the French girl. Nothing could excuse the torture, and now there was only regret and with that regret came fear and anger. Irènée's stormy reflections were dangerously neurasthenic, for the storm building outside was finding its hysterical equal building to crescendo within her body. The wind had not yet picked up to a frenzied blast, for there was still an alarming lull before the tempest, but reconciliation between Señora Fourneau and Irènée Toupain was now impossible.

23

House of Dark Shadows

In the dormitory, the girls stood in their regimented lines at the foot of their beds, their hands clasped together in prayer. They were once again, like every other hopeless night before, beseeching the lord to keep the spirits in their hearts in a state of purity and peace. Yet the lord had forsaken them all. Regardless, the spirit in Irènée's heart was as squally as the billowing clouds in the night sky and as volatile as the storm that was coming. Irènée's lips moved in prayer too, but she uttered no words.

'So that when the time comes,' the girls chanted, 'we may be there to join you in the kingdom of heaven.'

Toupain had no intention of joining anyone, neither in the kingdom of heaven, nor in the depths of hell for that matter; because this house was hell enough and the only way out was to stay alive. The light from the lamp spilled over the two rows of agonised faces and when the lightning flickered through the window and danced upon the walls, the girls genuflected and climbed obediently into the lonely islands of their cots. Thérèse's bed lay starkly empty, and Irènée stared at that space as if she were observing from the shores of a distant sea. The lightning made the sheets into a tumultuous wave and the thought of how quickly one could disappear without trace made Irènée's heart beat with a tremulous thumping pain. Señorita Desprez herself genuflected and then she watched the girls until they had settled under the covers. For a moment, she listened to the muted squeaking of the bed springs as the young women settled in for a night of bad dreams, and then she perfunctorily lowered the lamp and extinguished it and walked softly to the door.

'Goodnight Señoritas,' she told them and all replied a like blessing but none of them meant what they said. When the dormitory door was closed and locked Desprez put out the lamp on the stand and turned down the corridor and headed for the main stairs. At the top of the staircase she looked to the ground floor, and for the first time in all her seventeen years in this building she looked upon a wide and unknowable expanse that had both welcomed and said goodbye to uncounted desperate young women. She saw a myriad of faces and the sad thing was that none of them were smiling. With a shrug, she pushed the thought to the back of her mind and espying the weak candlelight that leaked from the Señora's study, went down the steps and across the black and white tiles. She knocked lightly upon the door.

'Come in,' returned Señora Fourneau in response to the soft rap upon her door, and Desprez glided through the portal like the ruffled old crow that she was, all clad in her black frock, her face by contrast as white as her dress was black, her beak as misaligned as was Bréchard's eyes. To Señora Fourneau the older woman looked like a haunt, a revenant. Perhaps her death pall visage signalled the beginning of the end for this house of dark shadows.

'They're all in bed now,' Señorita Desprez reported dutifully, but without any change flickering in the impassive mask of her face.

'Is there anything more?' the Principal asked, looking up from her desk, her own face drawn and gaunt and worried. There was something about her matron's personal life that had been kept secret and clandestine, something that needed explaining, but Señora Fourneau did not know how to force the woman to tell. Had the old bird been spending her nights with Bréchard? The idea seemed preposterous, and yet tenable. Long ago there had been a contract between the two of them, no, a compact between them all, even as Bréchard had blown in on a strange wind from the nothing and the nowhere. Who was he really? The question had been asked but was unanswerable, and although he seemed to be ancillary, it was indeed not his name on the deeds to this property? Señora Fourneau shivered slightly, not knowing if all those years ago she had done the right thing... Yet had there been any other way? With a sigh of regret, she rubbed her temple. There were other things to worry about, for she had been reading correspondences from three families who were having difficulty with their annual payments. The bind in her chest was growing tighter and tighter and the laudanum seemed to do nothing whatsoever to alleviate the pain. Señorita Desprez approached the desk and replied that all appeared well.

'Good.' The Señora put down the letter and rubbed her eyes. She looked tired and world weary and she clasped her hands together as if she were praying. 'Did you lock all of the doors?'

'Yes, Señora,' Señorita Desprez responded as if she were an automaton.

'Well then, perhaps you should go to bed too,' the Señora returned almost bitterly, sensing her matron's apathy and feeling abandoned in her hour of need and estranged by her one friend. Señorita Desprez simply nodded in acquiescence and turned again to the door.

'Sofie?' Señora Fourneau called out, and her voice wavered. The sound of the appellation surprised Señorita Desprez a little, just enough to register a flicker in her stony face and to halt her footstep. She had not been addressed by her Christian name for so long that she had almost forgotten she had one. The older matron swung back to face her mistress.

'Señora?'

'I would like to talk to Toupain,' the Señora stammered, knowing the humiliation implied in begging would incur disgust and the loathing in her old friend, a disgust that she would hardly care to conceal. 'Is she asleep yet?'

'I don't think so. I have only just turned out the lights.'

The Principal placed her hands on either side of her gaunt face, and she could not stop herself from pleading. 'Please…' she asked of Desprez, 'tell her to come down and talk to me.'

'Of course,' Desprez replied. 'If that is what you wish.'

'Sofie…' Señora Fourneau began, but she checked herself and did not finish her sentence. She had already given away her feelings and to her own detriment. Desprez would grow to despise this as more weakness and the pillars of strength would eventually crumble, like the Tower of Babel. It had to happen. 'You go to bed. I will see you in the morning.'

'Yes, Señora.'

'You can put out the lights in the hall, please,' the Señora spoke to the older woman's back, but Sofie only responded with a perfunctory affirmation. She walked through but did not close the door, and as her black frame disappeared into the shadows of the hall she told the Señora to sleep well, although it was a redundant and mordant blessing. In the blink of an eye she had passed across the sea of black and white diamond tiles, leaving the Señora to sit and wait in the musty orange glow and the thickening shadows of her office. 'Goodnight,' Señora Fourneau said to the wooden panels of the walls, and she sat waiting in the quiet isolation of her lonely room. Señora Fourneau placed her hand upon her forehead. A headache was spiking in her brain, and if she became more anxious the pain in her breast would get worse. If she were to take more laudanum there was always the hope that the whole world would be temporarily forgotten, but that would not fix her problems. To deflect the approach of melancholic yearning she reached out and picked up another correspondence. As she sliced through the envelope with her bone-handled letter opener she pondered what bad news would be contained within its missal, and she gave another silent groan.

Upstairs the dormitory door opened and Señorita Desprez entered among the sleeping beauties. With an unhurried step, she went up to Toupain and gently shook the young woman by the shoulder.

'Señorita Toupain,' said Desprez, 'are you awake?' Irènée stirred and looked about, rising from her pillow.

'What's the matter?'

'Go downstairs for a moment. Señora Fourneau wants to talk to you.'

Immediately Irènée threw back her covers and stood up. Reaching for her clothing she began to dress herself.

'Why are you getting dressed?' Señorita Desprez asked, curious and suspicious, for she was no fool.

'I'm feeling cold,' Irènée replied, pulling on her blouse and hastily doing up the buttons.

'Well, don't be long.' Desprez stood by, watching as Irènée finished dressing. When the younger woman was done putting on her clothes, both went to the dormitory door and passed through into the corridor. 'You have your keys?'

Irènée realised then that Señorita Desprez did not know that her privileges had been rescinded, and of course the truth was she no longer possessed the keys to any door and that she would have to be crafty in her deceit.

'Yes, of course,' Irènée lied, and Señorita Desprez locked the dormitory door.

'All right,' said the matron almost dismissively, for she liked Irènée as much as she liked all the other girls, and that was not at all. 'Until tomorrow then,' she added as an addendum, but that too was a redundancy and meant nothing.

'Goodnight,' said Irènée, trying so desperately to quiet the tumultuous beating of her heart. This was the opportunity to get out, to escape, and it had to be now, or it may not occur, ever. The house was dark and full of shadows, reeking with black torment, but she had left the kitchen window ajar and if she could somehow manage to sneak downstairs without arousing a pursuit then it might be possible to make a bid for freedom. The women stood facing each other in the dark for one moment, and there was a crease of suspicion in the matron's face, as if she had picked the lock of Toupain's mind. Quickly Irènée turned away and headed for the staircase. She did not look back. At the head of the stairs Irènée looked down into a deep well of inky black. This darkness was only relieved by the soft glow of the candle light that leaked from under the Principal's door and by the intermittent staccato of argent lightning as it flashed through the great Gothic windows. The young woman put her hand out to the carved rail and gripped it as she descended from the gallery. Each step needed to be swift, but she did not want to fall in the dark, and Irènée counted the steps as she went down. On the ground floor, in the dancing dark, Irènée paused and strained her vision in the direction of Señora Fourneau's office. She crept along the hall, her face moving from darkness into blue-tinged light and back into darkness again. Deliberately stepping softly so that her boot heels did not click on the tiles, Irènée paused but a few metres from the office door and she glanced into the candlelit interior. Irènée saw the Principal immersed in the contents of a letter, and the woman did not look about, but how pale she seemed in the hellish glow of her candelabra, her features tight and grey, a living skull, and the bony hand holding the paper was trembling.

Irènée inhaled deeply and began to retrace her steps. She needed to move quickly now in case either the Señora or Señorita Desprez came looking for her and discovered her missing. Worse they might rouse Bréchard from his slumbers and form a posse comitatūs to track her down. She had to put enough distance between herself and them to make good her liberty. The girl gathered up her long skirts and ran back into the darkness, through the enclosed tunnel that would take her to the main door. She would try that first in the hope that it had been overlooked, and if it were closed then she would head towards the passage that led down into the kitchen. In the enclosure the darkness was absolute, so Irènée put out her hand to touch the wall and be guided by its familiar partition. One tentative step before the other, Irènée advanced, feeling her way, the stone cold and cracked and unforgiving under her fingertips, and then she felt the chain of the traitorous bell. Irènée froze into a statue, her fingers touching the dripping steel chain as it dangled in the dark, but she stilled her movement just in time. The bell remained silent. It took everything within her soul to stifle the scream that wanted to erupt from her lips, and she snatched back her hand. When she had recovered herself and again mustered up the courage to move, Irènée ran to the main entrance. Panic was setting in, and the door was of course locked and bolted. She tried the handle, but it only rattled in her grasp. Irènée tried it again, this time a little more vigorously, half-hoping that it was merely stuck, but it did not give. Terror was growing now, running through her veins, the fear of discovery and of what might happen to her if she were caught. Irènée knew all too well the horrors of the punishment room and she dreaded even more the retaliation of the other girls. Though they sided with her momentarily in retaliation, at the drop of a hat they would turn like savages and strip her and defile her, as she had done to many of them, and nothing would stay their revenge. In hopeless desperation Irènée pulled at the door again. Lightning glinted in the leaded glass that filled the pointed arches and in that sudden illumination Irènée bolted for another exit.

Señora Fourneau thought that she had heard a muffled rattling noise coming from somewhere in the main hall and she poised the tip of her letter opener at the edge of the envelope that she held. The flicker of the candle flame gambolled in the silver blade, giving it the likeness of a lethal weapon, a sharp and killing knife. The woman dropped the letter opener onto her desk and it fell with a soft thud among the discarded and rent papers, and she dropped the envelope too and pushed back her chair. Amid the papers a dull coin glinted in the orange light, and as she stood, the Señora picked up that peseta and regarded it intently. In the suffused light the coin was indeed perplexing, for who, in this establishment possessed such trifles? In her mind, she began re-navigating a path under four Swiss clocks upon a wall, weaving through a musty room like a pillar of black silk, listening to the sound of a tinkling automata. Señora Fourneau can again see what a wonder is the music box, a tiny thing that makes an aerial and soothing resonance, angelic it summons pleasant dreams, reminding one of floating airs and fragile, happy memories, of dew-soaked mornings, lying in a drifting punt on the river under painted skies... Instead, in the blink of an eye, dreamy idyll is replaced by fury, and her eyes became blackly shining moons, her slim figure stormy, wrapped in sable, shuddering in a paroxysm, unable to contain its wrath. In a fragment of fear, she sees her hand flash out and she slaps the music box into the air, and it flies and strikes against a piggy bank that sits upon a shelf. Gold dipped metal chinks against pale pink porcelain.

With a gasp of horror, Señora Fourneau understood the conundrum of the coin, and she slipped it into a pocket, and in consternation she peered through the open portal of her door into the gloaming.

'Señorita Toupain?' the Principal called out, but there came no reply, only the dull and far off rumble of thunder. Señora Fourneau could make out little in the cold blue streaks of lightning. She felt her heartbeat step up a notch for she had become unaccountably afraid. Surely it was just paranoia that was stealing into her head, an apprehension that had been growing steadily ever stronger of late and had plagued her so that her usual calm and coldly intellectual reserve was stripped away into morbid fantasy. The shadows worried her because she had never really been able to put them aside, not since that day when Bréchard had beaten her husband before her and Señorita Desprez, beaten him until his face had become pulp and every tooth had been smashed out of his mouth. Perhaps, as her companion Señorita Desprez had said, the vulgar brute deserved all he got, and that included the knife that had severed his throat and pierced his black and brutal heart. She closed her eyes for a moment, not understanding why she was recalling that melodrama, and with a timorous hand Señora Fourneau reached out and picked up the candlestick. The flame dipped and sputtered, and the shadows vacillated in an ebullition of disembodied darknesses. With a faint heart, she stepped towards the door and into the hall. Señora Fourneau looked up to the second-floor gallery. The landing was awash with the adumbration of the shadows, and she heard the rattling of a door, as if someone were trying to breach an entry.

Irènée froze at the door when she heard the call of her name. A shadow fell across her mouth and rendered her mute and petrified. It was as if that strip of umbra were obliterating articulation, tearing off her lips and cutting out her voice. In the stifling darkness, there was a clock ticking away somewhere, counting out the minutes, the seconds to her capture, and Irènée backed away from the door and instead of running for the dining room and to the kitchen below, she bolted upstairs. Her footsteps betrayed her flight, ringing hollowly through the darkness of the Residence as loudly as the traitorous clang of the hall bell. It was a moment of confusion, a moment in which logic completely deserted the terrified girl's mind. Perhaps there was still time to make it to the dormitory and to get back into bed and be undiscovered. It did not occur to Irènée that all she really needed to do was to go to Señora Fourneau's office because the Principal was expecting her there to talk. If she had not been possessed of this fear she might have walked away from that office with her keys again, but logic had fled, and terror had taken its place. At the dormitory door, she grabbed the handle and wrenched at it as hard as she could.

'Regina…Regina!' Irènée called out as loudly as she dared, because Fragonar was the one who slept beside her own bed, closest to the door. Yet even if Regina had answered Irènée's panic, and she did not, she would have proven useless, for the door was locked and only the headmistress and Señorita Desprez had the key. Irènée banged on the door. 'Andrée...Andrée!' she almost screamed, but Rigeaux too did not answer, no girl stirred, and the oaken barrier did not open. On the staircase below Irènée heard Señora Fourneau's first footfall. 'Andrée, please!' she begged, but Irènée knew that it was all so hopeless. A pearlescent glow had begun seeping into the pitchy realm at the bottom of the staircase and to float upward to the gallery. It was far too late to retreat and Irènée knew this, too late to get back into the dormitory and to pretend that everything was going to be all right. There was nothing else left to do but to run or be discovered. She knew that there was no chance of heading to the lower floor and the kitchen where the window was open, so she must head upward, and in the pulsing stillness of the dark wherein her heart pounded and thumped, Irènée experienced so much horror that she was nearly sick. She felt the bile as it burned its acrid way up her throat and she gagged and sobbed and staggered along in the long, deep purple passages trying doors at every side. Room after room, chamber after chamber refused to let her ingress, and as despair of gaining her liberty befell the girl a horrible doom consumed her.

Señora Fourneau listened to the whispered summons as she navigated the stairs. She was certain that it was Irènée who was calling out, but what was the girl up to at this hour, and why had she not come to her office? Accompanied by the sound of thunder the Principal arrived on the landing and moved cautiously to the dormitory door. She could see nobody in the dark and the door was still locked. When Señora Fourneau opened the dormitory door, she stood at the portal and raised her candle to look within, and she saw that Irènée's bed was empty and unmade, the blankets and sheets awry. Looking about in the murky gloom she noted that the other girls were sleeping, or at least pretending to be asleep. Hastily she closed the door and locked it again. If one had gotten out tonight, then she would be sure that no more would.

On the floor above Irènée at last found a room that opened, and therein was a window that exposed the billowing darkness without. When she flung back the glass a gust of wind blustered through the casement, entangling her dark hair and bringing with it fat drops of rain that wet her cheek. In trepidation, she rose on the tips of her toes and leaned through the transom. The rain splashed in her face, saturating her hair and stinging her eyes. The storm outside was now blowing a high wind and it would have proven stupid and fatal to attempt Thérèse Gravaine's feat and walk the parapet to another window. Another window might of course open into another room, and there were many rooms that were unused in this great old house, but then that room more than likely would only present another locked door. Terrified of the height of the bulwark, Irènée shrunk back from the window and looked about wildly, for she could hear the approach of footsteps in the darkness. In a strip of lightning she saw another exit in the room, another door that must lead to where she did not know. By some miracle of providence, it opened, and she ran through into another warren of close darknesses, wiping the rain from her eyes and navigating the nightmare.

For some strange reason, Irènée could hear Julie as she stood at the lectern reading aloud the adventures of Aeneas the True who had made his way to the fortress of Apollo… and Theseus and Icarus and the Minotaur and the labyrinth. The labyrinth was bestrewn with horror and led only to certain death. In this maze, the monster that approached was the damned and bedevilled Señora Fourneau. Irènée shuddered and could not repress the terror that swept through her body. Nevertheless, beyond that was another door that would not budge, even when she placed her shoulder against it, and then there was another door and another in the maze, all locked and shut and bolted. Held in the terrors of the darkness Irènée hoped for an insecure door, her head spinning with some thousand-fold evils that assailed her distressed mind. Trapped, Irènée grew frantic. She could see the light of Señora Fourneau's candle blossoming in the well of darkness and she backed away into the concealing shadows, feeling at the door handles with gripping fingers. In the occlusion, she stumbled upon another flight of stairs, narrow and winding aloft. The steps could only lead to the top of the house, to the attic, and Irènée had never ventured up there before. With a quick but faltering step, she lurched upwards towards the dark at the top of the stairs.

Señora Fourneau followed the sounds that were coming to her ear. Under the rumble of the thunder and the pounding trepidation of her own heartbeat, she had heard the wind and felt a cold riffle as it filtered into the corridor. She also heard a door open and then that door bang shut. She moved towards the sound. There was a door off to the left that was slightly ajar and a stream of cold, damp air was pouring through the crack. When the Señora entered the wind from the window blew out her candle and plunged her into darkness. Awkwardly she stooped and placed her candlestick on the floor. The boards were wet from the rain, and she fumbled at the casement and pulled the window closed. Now there was only the light from the atmosphere to guide her, and in a flash of galvanic luminance Señora Fourneau found the other exit and crept into the maze. An echo of thunder rumbled over the top of the house and the wind whipped about the eaves, and as she moved along the darkling corridor Señora Fourneau, through the boards of the ceiling above her head, heard a sound of thudding and scraping, as if something had been struck, had fallen and was being dragged along. She listened in an exhausting suspense.

'Irènée!' the Señora called out, and her voice had escalated to a shrill tone, for she was now incapable in her own terrors of concealing her fear. The corridor was bestrewn with cobwebs, and the silk clung to the Señora's clothing as she inched her way through the dark. There was dust and there was mould and there was damp and wood rot up here, water leaked in from the roof and dripped down the walls. At length Señora Fourneau found herself at the base of a narrow flight of steps that she knew led up to the trap door that was never opened, that would admit her to the attic, to the highest place where the sun never shone in the haunted realm of la Residencia.

24

The House that Screamed

At last, here I am, precariously poised upon this final moment of revelation, and perhaps you will be both moved and horrified at what I shall now disclose. Yet the act of telling may prove no catharsis for either you or me, for what I must unburden might not guard against your future bad dreams. I wait here in the dark at the top of the stairs as mother throws back the trapdoor and it crashes open, stirring up a cloud of billowing dust and thundering echoes throughout the hollow, high-domed attic. She pulls herself through the opening and stands up tall and straight in the gloom. How skeletal she looks, her face a white and hollow mask, her slim figure in stencil, in silhouette, all dressed in her inky folds and with a face so white and with lips so thin that I swear her visage is really a toothy skull. Risings above her head the carved Gothic corbels and oak ribs meet to hold up the roof, the sturdy timbers reinforcing the cathedral-like dome, all festooned with a century of webs and dust. The Señora pauses in the dark, her heart racing wildly, her ears listening and her eyes straining to penetrate the gloom. She has heard the rolling thump of something scraping on the timber flooring, but she cannot see what makes the noise, so she moves a step closer in the direction of the sound. Her tentative step takes her about the rotting furniture, the dust imprinted with the soles of her boots. No longer used the attic stores tables and broken chairs, an antique sofa and a buffet with a cracked mirror, hulking, half-exposed under rotting canvas shrouds. There, to her right, are two great baskets made from wicker, and boxes and trunks and picture frames with blemished gilt stacked in a pile against the wall. The scraping sound is being made by a painted wooden horse with tarnished brass stirrups, a faint light catches the gleam as it reflects upon the dull metal. The horse is rolling back and forth lethargically on its rockers, its mouth drawn into a hideous grin, its painted teeth gone ivory. A frayed leather bridle dangles from its thin, carved lips. As if to counterpoint the scraping of the rocking horse and the stifled atmosphere in the attic, a clap of thunder sounds like cannon fire overhead. Mother jolts in shock, but soon she must move again, and she walks cautiously towards the wooden horse, guided by the weak glint of the light and the repetitive sound of the pendulum sway of the rockers, and when she stands before it she extends a hand and stops its motion. Silence falls absolute in the vast, cathedral-like attic. Watch...she looks down! Although it is difficult to see in the gloom she makes out the shape and form of someone slumped in the dark, fallen between a pine packing crate and a large raffia basket. I hear the Señora speak in a cracked gasp.

'Irènée!' she ejaculates, falling abruptly to her knees, propelled by horror, and flailing out to grasp the girl's arm. The young woman's face is turned away, facing towards the wall and swathed in shadows, and her hair is wetly plastered over her features, and she does not respond. 'What has happened?' Surprised at finding Irènée in the attic, mother shakes the young woman, but Irènée does not acknowledge or turn to face her Principal, in fact she does not move at all. Mother begins babbling and perhaps the girl, Irènée, has passed out, fainted senseless.

'Irènée, child! What's happened to you?' A few metres away in the darkness a pale glimmer of light sparks, but mother fails to notice. Fearing that her worst expectations are about to be fulfilled, and as mother leans forward and holds the prostrate girl close in an embrace, she taps Irènée on the cheek. Irènée's head swings about and falls limply upon mother's shoulder. Pulling back her hand mother glimpses a dribble of black run from the girl's forehead and down her cheek, and mother rubs her fingertips together and they are sticky with a liquid as thick and viscous as oil. She thinks perhaps that in the dark the young woman might have fallen and sustained a blow to the head, for in the pale glimmer of light she now sees a brutal cloven indentation in the girl's skull. A sticky spatter of brain matter is clinging in the tangled hair. With a gasp of horror, the Señora recoils.

'Oh my god!' mother cries out, pushing Irènée's head back, almost fainting herself and the young woman's body tumbles aside. In the dark Mother convulses and is almost sick with terror. Trembling with fear she tries to stand up, but in the attempt her hand grips Irènée's arm and as it slides along that cold fleshy length mother discovers that the girl's hand had been severed at the wrist. Blood is pooling on the floor, and mother is kneeling in that red and ropey fluid. With her black skirt irrevocably stained, she drops Irènée's gory stump and is upon the brink of screaming. I can see her mouth opening wide upon the point of shrieking, but she uses her fist as a stopper, smearing Irènée's coagulating blood all over her carmine lips. Thunder shudders about the roof of the Residence, echoes through a house that drips blood, and the wind moans, and mother struggles in the red slippage to stand up, alone and isolated in her horror, looking about in wild confusion. It is then that she finally notices the light that I have kindled, the lamp that will guide her to me, to the door and the room in the attic where fate and revelation and unnamable horror await every nerve in her flesh, every bone in her body, from now until forevermore. I hear her hesitant footsteps approaching the light and I deliberately pass before the lamp like a fluttering moth passes before the lure of the flame, like the moon passes before the sun in eclipse, to throw a momentary shadow before her terrified vision. She is following a trail of blood, blood that has dripped from severed hands, following the dotted line just like the children in the fairy-tale have followed the crumbs, and she comes up to the door, and in horror she looks in and she sees me.

Another clap of thunder sounds overhead, and I behold her jump in fright. Confused and wary she pauses at the portal, unable to take the final step across the threshold. As mother so often says, emotions always fester on the other side of doors, and it is better when the door is closed, because then you did not expose your vulnerability. I see the warring entities of compassion and revulsion as they shine madly in her dark brown eyes, and I see too her regal, though skull-like face all knotted up with incomprehension. She gulps and gasps at the foulness of the stagnant air and she convulses, tasting its sickly and polluted fetor, buzzing with swarms of flies.

'Mother,' I cry happily, greeting her at the door and taking her hand and pulling her inside. 'Come in.' I lock and bolt the portal and she looks around the room aghast. 'I was just about to call you to come up and see me. I am so glad you've come. Welcome to my little workshop,' I tell her, proudly waving my hand through the veils of hellish lamplight, indicating a wide bench over by the far wall and the instruments that are placed thereon. We walk side by side and she does not notice at all the alacrity of my step. Merrily, I could have waltzed with her there and then, but she is alarmed and afraid.

'Workshop?' Aghast, she mouths the word in confusion, but it did not sound upon her blood-smeared lips, but instead she retches.

'Well, yes… so to speak,' I go on. The lamplight glows orange and red and saffron and it makes the dark shadows dance. The room is somewhat humid and close, and she puts her hand over her blood-stained mouth, gagging at the dreadful stench in the air. I reply that she is imagining the smell, for how could anything in here smell bad? 'Look,' I indicate, and she sees that the room is littered with flowers, strewn with Julie's beloved azaleas. 'How could it smell anything other than sweetly?'

I look on as she approaches the bench and her eyes widen as she stares at the things she sees.

'Yes!' I proclaim proudly, 'such beautiful things!'

Enthusiastically I point to a sparking Voltatic Pile, and my hand sweeps over lengths of brass and copper piping and the cogs and wheels and nuts and screws that I have gutted from the clocks or stolen from the scrofulous Bréchard. 'Do you remember those 'scribblings' in my room, mother, the drawings upon which you so dismissively said I wasted my time?' I show her diagrams, spread out upon a bench. 'From these I have built wonders, mother. Look at these struts and the buckles and the levers, things that will prove animation, that will support weight.' Her shriek is an over-reaction, and I propel her to view the hammer and the anvil and the lever and the wrench. Happily, I inform her that I have even taught myself the art of fusing rivets into metal, just like Hades has done in the depths of the abyss. She shrinks back as I show her my new braces, the new legs that I had fashioned for myself. The Stygian light glances off the polished copper and the mouldings as I raise my trouser leg and reveal the sleek new braces concealed thereunder. The gears whir and chink as I move about, but she shakes her head with dumb incomprehension and squirms in revulsion. 'Look, mother!' I exclaim in pride, and I watch her turn pale. 'These are my new legs! When I wind up the springs I can walk, and the tighter I wind them the faster I can run, faster than any other boy too. They are strong, especially about the hips, and they cause me no pain at all. Eventually I hope to power them by galvanism, with the Voltatic battery and its magnetic stimulations.'

Mother gasps in horror, unbelieving and unable to recognise the genius spark of inspiration that lives within my head. In her world, there is no room for the concept of anatomy, or for anything approaching science for that matter. All that she knows is her misfired attempts to 'educate' against lust, to correct the wards in her charge, but her establishment, as you now know, is not like any normal educational institution, for it had been built upon lies and violence. Mother calls me a blasphemer and swears that I am an alchemist and a sorcerer, and she accuses me in her ignorance for having distilled the scheme for my new legs in the Devil's art. The fires that have burned to twist and heat the soft metal pipes have been made to blaze in hell. Those things, she screams, those mechanical braces are but an apparatus that allows me to strut about faster than I might have walked or run with normal, human legs. They are stilts and rods that allow me the freedom to circumvent muscular strength and to indulge in nothing but the basest carnality.

'This is how you have deceived me, how you met with those poisonous whores! Sneaking out and seeing them when my back was turned. Walking like there was never anything wrong with your legs! You are the Devil, not my son!'

'I thought you'd be happy.' I reply, my feelings wounded and hurt. Yet despite her tirade I am smiling with elation. In this she has lost control over me and that is what she hates the most. 'I made these legs by myself,' I continue proudly, talking as if she had not spoken at all. 'Fashioned them in Bréchard's furnace, and you are quite right, they are not normal braces, not like those ugly, painful irons that you put me in all of those years ago and expected me to hobble about like a cripple. When I wind the key up tight and the springs become taut, these are not merely toys in which to play, mother, they are my new legs!' Mother backs away from the bench and her eyes glint wildly over the rest of the instruments. In the dull light, amid the vapours, she sees an amputating saw, a catling, a bone nipper, a tenaclum among others, but she does not comprehend how I have employed these things. She sees the curved needle and the thread, she beholds the knife and the toothy saw, and she is paralysed with fear. Mother is shaking like a leaf. In horror, she flails about and looks frantically towards the door, but I am blocking the way, preventing her exit. In any case this time it is me who has the only key. How was it, she admonishes, that I have come upon the unholy power to transmute the elements of earth and air and fire and water and to twist them into something by which I have initiated evil, and to do it all so secretively? Incredulously, I reply that she should know, for was she not always moaning that I read strange books until all hours of the night and that I hardly slept? That I stole money and I secretly purchased equipment from obscure medical and scientific catalogues. She declares that when she first glimpsed my scribbling geometric lines and schemes she should have torn them up, destroyed them and sent me away, to an asylum. All I can do is laugh because I would only have drawn the plans up again.

'Now, mother, there is something else that you must do.' With my new legs clicking and whirring as I stride, I feel that I am tall and invincible, like the mutant Minotaur, strong and ferocious. I cross to the centre of the room and I stand before a raised plinth. The table is covered with a dirty grey shroud. Here, I motion for her to approach, but mother only cowers back further and shouts, declaring that I have gone insane.

'So now mother, you must be my witness, for all lovers must consummate their passions...' With one swift movement, I am at her side and I grasp her arm and propel her to the altar. She almost goes limp, but then begins to struggle against me. In the madness she batters at me, and a copper coin slips from her skirt pocket and falls flat upon the floor, and she watches on awestruck as I stoop and retrieve the peseta. 'Ha!' I exclaim, even as I stand before the grey pall. 'Payment for Charon!' The attic room has become a Grande Theatre and the play being performed is the claiming of the Sleeping Beauty. Even as mother squirms in horror and flees to the door, I slowly begin to unbutton my shirt and pull it from my shoulders.

'Look now, mother, here she is.' Mother turns away and begins pounding at the door in a maddened frenzy. 'Only the hands were missing,' I keep talking and I am calm and elated, even as the wind is a tempest that shrieks about the house. 'Irènée had the same hands as yours. Thérèse had almost the same hair as you, and Isabelle's eyes were much like yours.' In my mind's eye, I replay with joyous elation the moment when the tip of my knife slides beneath Isabelle's eyelids and slices the gelatinous balls from their socket. I recall in rapture the blood jetting out of the gouged sockets and spraying over the white azaleas in the greenhouse. In ecstasy, I remember my exultation as I drag the sharp edge of my blade over Thérèse's scalp, and how I have expertly reflected the skin to keep the hair intact. My shirt flutters to the floor, white falling into black, devoured by the dancing shadows. Now the tears that mother weeps must be the tears of joy in a sea filled with misery. Without I hear the thunder raging against the sky dome, reverberating against the ancient stones of the Residence. The thunder shivers through my body, filling the chamber with the sound of timpani. Reaching down I loosen my belt and unbutton my trousers, remove them so that they join my discarded shirt, and in the lamplight my new braces glint and sparkle and curve and I pirouette to show them off in all their mechanised perfection.

'Her hands were just like yours,' I remark, 'slim but strong. Look.' Still mother refuses to look. 'I took the dress some time ago…when I decided to make a girl as well. A girl like you…a girl for me, since none of the girls in the Residence is any good.' Naked and strapped into my brightly gleaming mechanical legs, in the surreal half-light of the lamp, I climb up upon the table. Phantoms shimmer in the duskiness of the chamber and I stretch out beside the bower and its occupant.

'Now she's got everything.'

The canvas is strewn with flowers; all the perfumed loveliness of Julie's greenhouse, all her white azaleas wreathed about with the ivy vine. I cannot imagine how Julie will react when she sees that someone has ravaged her wonderful garden, but look, mother, look! See the white azalea is here to scent her skin and compliment the shapely contours of her body. She is the vision splendid, my own beauty, my own girl. I hear mother's anguished cry.

'You always said that I'd have a girl like you when you were young,' I admonish, and then my countenance changes abruptly and I smile broadly, and I think only of paradise and not of her startled face and the stream of tears that pour forth from her eyes. 'At last I've got her. Do you see? Look upon the Goddess, mother, look and bow homage!'

With one assertive wrench, I pull away the pall, and I hear mother scream shrilly and the scream echoes about the high, vaulted chamber. Beneath that cover and now exposed to the waxen light mother beholds the girl I will love. Somehow, she fails to see what I see, and she screams and screams again that there on the table lies a corpse, a horrible and insanely grotesque carcass with its rotting mouth agape, with its breasts besmeared in slime and vile liquescence. The hands are not attached as I have not yet had the time to sew them to the blackened stumps of the wrists.

'Feast your eyes,' I declare, 'for hers is not a body ill-composed like mine!'

With a blessing to the Ferryman I place the coin upon my love's right eye, and she lies all illumed in midnight flame and darksome, and I am poised at the gulf between the sublime and the divine. This girl, my girl is the most beautiful of all the young women in this finishing school, incomparable, unearthly, celestial and radiant. I stroke her hair and it is more gloriously lovely than the hair of any woman that has ever lived. Mother gasps and cries out that amid its silken auburn tresses the maggot is crawling, squirming, writhing. The worm is indeed thick amid those tangled filaments, spongy and translucent, bulging and twitching and pulsing moistly. Gently I touch my love, to pay homage to her serenity, and I know that this is my moment and she is my one true amour. With trembling fingers, I unbind those fiery locks, and they cascade and spill amid the flowers. The maggots tumble wetly, the tresses chestnut amid the ivory and splashed with the red of blood. Gently, reverently I reach out and I stroke pale breasts. How their hue is now mauve, but still pliant, and I place a tender kiss on those blue tinged nipples; my kisses burn there, leaving a flaming trail of fire along the sutured line of the coarse stitching that holds her parts together. She is the flower in full bloom and her uncovered eye flickers in the lamplight, and her lips are drawn back over the gaping hole of her suppurating mouth. I smile passionately and put my lips to hers.

'No! Luis!' I hear my mother screaming in revolted protest, and then I hear her vomiting.

My love's fluids spill like nectar into my mouth. Yielding to my kiss, to my hands, her secrets unfold before my raptured embrace. Hesitant, at first, I hold her close in ardent passion and then I let my tongue slide over her cheek. Her skin peels away as if it were made of damp grey tissue paper and shifting about I trace my tongue along the dip and the curve of her body, beyond her marbling torso, there to arrive wanting in that dark thatch of fascination, the forbidden place where to enter is to know all female pleasures and enigmas. My pulse quickens, and I am instantly erect and hard, my sex throbbing and more rigid than it has ever been before, even in my own vice. My braces hold me firmly in position, ready to spear and to thrust home and to know the wonder of all those carnal desires that mother has constantly warned me about. Parting my amour's thighs, I tighten the springs of my left brace and then I wind up the springs of the right, and I grip my moist shaft and I enter her body, and I hear my mother gagging violently. From the corner of my eye I see her buckle like a reed in the wind, almost falling to her knees in wretchedness and mortification. Kissing my new girl again, I stroke her putrefying cheek and I murmur endearments and devotions and tell her that soon mother will talk to her and teach her all there is to know about becoming the proper woman. She will learn music and needlepoint and culinary art, she will learn how to reciprocate love. In my thrust I am most powerful, for my new braces make me steady and straight as an arrow, and my drive is deep. Immersed in the silken texture of my perfect woman's insides, I embrace her body so tightly that I drown in an ocean of absolute desire. In the back of my mind there is a muffled thudding and pounding on the door, a scuffling and whimpering sound, and then there is the rhythmic beating of my heart as it pounds to the frenzied stab of my member. The pounding is my mother beating weakly on the panel, screaming, but I am almost in paradise and I cannot fail. Above the crash of thunder mother is shrieking repeatedly, and my love is wet and receptive, and the worm is spilling from the insides of her slippery skin.

'When I am done, mother,' I groan in ecstasy, 'you must teach her to take care of me, and to love me the way that you love me.' My hips moved faster and faster in a hedonistic fury, the mechanism pumping and stabbing my prick to the point of release. With a cry that brings me close to my own death, I shudder and spend, collapsing into the splayed flesh of my lover and all I can hear are the vibrations made by my mother's fists as she pounds against the locked door. With a whirring click the springs in my braces relax. For a little moment I close my eyes, shut them tight and I hold my breath, my member throbbing, aching.

'Luis!' My mother shrieks, although her cry sounds muffled through the viscous strands of vomit that drool from her lips. 'You are obscene!'

Another clap of thunder detonates in the atmospheres, splitting the dark night into shattered insanity, shaking the Residence again to its ribs and strumming in synchronisation to the ferocity of my own heartbeat. I do not flinch in the repletion of my lust nor do I respond to my mother screaming my name again. 'Luis!' In that name is conjured an accusation that is something worse than horror. Of course, she is trapped in the dark with a decomposing doll, a girl rendered from the stitched together anatomies of several mutilated young women. The stink of rotting flesh has filled up her throat, but to me it is perfume. She gags at the plump maggots now erupting over the bench top and wriggling upon the floor, crawling obscenely towards her quivering, buckled-up form. Mother falls to her knees, like a penitent in church, like a lunatic in a cell.

'Talk to her, mother,' I whisper, although I know that my mother cannot not possibly hear me over the cacophonous voice of nature. 'Talk to her!'

'Luis!' she screams one last and final time, and I roll from my love, my thighs crawling with the twitching, squirming worm, my spent sex going flaccid. Whispering to my perfect woman, I tell her how much I love my new legs too, and how they will be the making of my life and our joy. Soon everything will be wonderful, l and life will be a fairy tale. My princess shall know all there is to know about pleasing a man, about becoming the perfect woman, and she will understand that mother is the best teacher in the whole wide world. Yet that dreadful sound, that scream, that awful, tortured, agonised cry of sheer horror that I hear- that isn't mother at all. Mother is happy, mother is consenting, and mother has not screamed; it is the Residence in its jealousy, in its envy, voicing its useless malcontent at my elation and happiness. How could that be my sweet, loving mother shrieking in terror? No, it is not mother, but the house that screamed!