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“I don’t need warnings; I need a friend,” she says. “If you wish to scold me like a schoolmarm, you might as well sit with Nightwing.”
She flounces away, joining arms with Elizabeth, and the sun, which felt so warm, is no longer a comfort.
I eschew Nightwing for Ann. The morning sun illuminates the musty chapel’s stained-glass windows. It shows the coating of grime on the angels and lends a fierce brightness to the bizarre panel of a lone warrior angel beside a severed gorgon’s head.
We bow our heads for prayer. We sing a hymn. And in the end, our French teacher, Mademoiselle LeFarge, reads a poem from William Blake.
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
Will this be my life forevermore? Careful tea parties and the quiet fear that I don’t belong, that I’m a fraud? I held magic in my hands! I tasted freedom in a land where summer doesn’t end. I outsmarted the Rakshana with a boy whose kiss I still feel somehow. Was it all for naught? I’d rather not have known any of it than have it snatched away after a taste.
With tears threatening, I fix my attention upon the stained glass and the odd mixture of dangerous angels and uncertain warriors to keep my composure. Mademoiselle LeFarge fills the chapel with Mr. Blake’s lofty words.
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Several of the younger girls titter at desire and LeFarge must wait for silence before continuing.
Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
LeFarge leaves the pulpit and Mrs. Nightwing takes her place there. “Thank you, Miss LeFarge, for that. Most stirring. The poem reminds us that greatness lies even in the smallest of moments, in the humblest of hearts, and we shall, each of us, be called to greatness. Whether we shall rise to meet it or let it slip away is the challenge put before us all.”
Her eyes sweep the room and seem to rest on every girl, bequeathing each of us with an unseen mantle. My earlier urge to giggle vanishes, and a heaviness settles over me like a late spring snow.
“April is nearly upon us; May beckons. And for some of our girls, the time will soon come to leave us.”
Beside me, Ann rubs absently at the scars on her arm. I put my hands in hers.
“Every year, we host a small tea to honor our graduates. This year, we shall not.”
A low rumble of shock reverberates in the small chapel. The girls lose their grins. Elizabeth looks as if she might cry. “Oh. Oh, no.”
“She wouldn’t dare,” Cecily whispers, horrified. “Would she?”
