Behind the Opera Curtain
May 12th 1896
Spence Academy
Somewhere near London
Spence is beautiful this time of year. That is what's going through my mind at the moment, as I pad up the front stairs, all two hundred and twelve of them. The grass is green and soft like a carpet in my father's gentleman's club in London. The sky is well, blue. I guess that you're expecting me to say that there is not a cloud in the sky, but that would be lying, so I will be truthful and tell that there are a great many clouds in the sky, but it just made it more pleasant to be outside. My friends, Ann and Felicity, are just ahead of me. We have just been in the woods, in the spot where the caves used to be. I am not saying that the caves themselves aren't there, but they may as well not be, because they hold no more promise of adventure to us. No magic is left in them, but it used to be filled with it. After all, it had been the place where I had first found Mary Dowd's-my mother's- diary, the thing that had first shown us the magic of the realms.
"Girls! You must hurry! Mademoiselle LeFarge has already left for her final fitting!" Mrs. Nightwing is calling at us from the top of the stairs. Her voice is high with anxiousness. But why shouldn't she be worried about being late? After all, it is her own employee who is getting married this very fine day, and to miss it could mean losing yet another teacher. But the real reason that we hurried our strides was because there would be many a fine gentleman there, and we jolly well weren't going to miss that!
When we scurried past Mrs. Nightwing's scrutinizing gaze, she gave a cry of alarm.
"Where have you girls been? You all are filthy! And look what you have done to your dresses! Shameful! Tsk! Tsk! Now Mary will have to give you all baths! And only a couple of hours before the wedding! We shall be the scandal of London!" She was still muttering to herself as we climbed the stairs adorned with cherubs and devils alike.
"We aren't that dirty!" Ann says, taking offense at even the slightest remark on how she looked. Ann was a doughy, pale sort, with lank mousy brown hair that always looked oily and dull, unreadable eyes. All her clothing was extremely modest. Her excuse for her failing wardrobe is her doomed fate to be a governess for her aunt's little devils. But you would think that she was doomed to go to a convent!
I look down at our dark hunter green dresses, the school inform, and raise my eyebrows. For someone who says she likes to be truthful, Ann sure had made the understatement of the century, for we are dirty. I had a masterpiece of splattered mud worthy of Van Gogh's praise on the front of me, and the same, if not even more flattering, on my backside. I could probably take my dress and stretch it across a frame and sell it at an art jamboree and make quite a lot of money. I can just see it in the London Times, Gemma Doyle, Spence student makes hundreds on original piece of art titled The Mud Dance! I laugh at myself.
"Stop sniveling Ann, it's not becoming." Felicity has hit Ann right in the stomach with this one, and Ann just looks down at her dragging feet in shame. Ann is very self-conscious about what she says and what she wears, and holds Felicity in her highest regards for Felicity is stunningly beautiful and wealthy, though not as lovely as Pippa, and is her idol. Felicity knows this, and uses it against her. I am the neutral one. I take the side of whoever I feel is right. In this case, I side with Felicity.
"She's right Ann. And I have a headache so your whining just irritates it more." I always feel bad after lying to Ann, but in this case it is necessary.
We are at our room, Ann's and mine that is, and we say farewell to Felicity, who has her own room. Mary, my lady's maid, is waiting already with a half filled tub of water, and armed with a rough, painful looking scrub brush and a bottle of rosy smelling hair soap.
"Great," I moan. They're going to scrub me to death since they're
other attempts, like trying to teach me French, have failed miserably.
A long, painful bath and twenty hot rollers later, I am standing in a pew in a white church in the London countryside. Mademoiselle LaFarge is up at the podium with her new husband, and there are many a tears in people's eyes, but especially Mademoiselle LaFarge's. You would think that she had just married the King of England instead of Inspector Kent, who was a detective in Scotland Yard but I was glad that she was happy. Unfortunately though, I was not among the happy people. I was pinched into the ideal womanly shape thanks to my blasted corset. And my many, many, many petticoats were not exactly keeping me cool in the May heat. I was grateful when we were finally let out of the cramped little church. I was enjoying the breeze so much, in fact, that I didn't notice him at first, standing there in the trees not fifty feet from where I stood off by myself. But I did notice him when he threw a knife at me and it landed about an inch from my foot. Then I noticed.
I guess that any person with common sense would turn around and run screaming bloody murder until they reached their carriage, but my life had absolutely no common sense in it, so you could say that it was my own stupidity that made me walk toward the knife thrower. My excuse was that if someone wanted my attention so much that they threw a knife at me to get it, then what they wanted to do with me must be very important. So I walked over to the hooded figure…