seven

Seven: The Non-Mystery Related Mysterious Figure in the Woods Takes Up Residence in the Non-Mysterious Abandoned Cottage in the Woods

October 6, 1902
Wednesday

A week had passed since Virginia’s spat with Charlotte. During the day, Charlotte was never in the room, always in the Common Room or on the second floor with Regina and Beatrice. At nine p.m. Charlotte would return to the room, silently change into her flannel nightdress, climb into bed, and close the heavy green curtains without saying so much as how do you do.
Virginia thought she was being incredibly rude.

That morning during Mathematics, Charlotte sat in the back, as far away as possible from
Virginia and Josephine’s table in the front. During the lecture, Virginia would twist around in her seat and take a quick glance at Charlotte, pencil moving furiously across the page and showing no visible signs of anger or unhappiness at the souring of their young friendship.

A heavy book dropped on the table.

Virginia nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Unless you are quite enamored by Miss Penn," Fowles said, directly in front of her desk, "I suggest to stay seated in a forward position. Thank you." The class broke out into quiet giggling. Fowles did not bother to silence the class with a scowl but let Virginia suffer the humiliation, her cheeks burning bright red and trying to sink into the chair and become invisible.

The rest of the class passed with Virginia remaining as still as possible in her chair and resisting every urge to turn around and see the expression on Charlotte’s face.

"You’re being incredibly stupid about this," Josephine said, walking to class from the Great Hall, satchel tossed over her shoulder.

"I am not. I apologized and she did not accept. How am I being stupid about this?"

"She wants you to apologize, not me forcing you to apologize. There’s a difference."

"There is not. I would not apologized if I didn’t want to."

"You made her cry, Virginia."

"Maybe she should have thicker skin."

Josephine said nothing. She paused in front of one of the gruesome tapestries, this one depicting a man with what appeared to be scarlet wings on his back. "Have you ever really looked at these tapestries?"

"No, not really."

The tapestries were not woven in bright and colorful threads but were composed of hundreds of thousands of tiny stitches on ivory colored broadcloth. The images moved in a linear fashion, from left to right and were divided into six large panels. At the top ran a narration in Latin, the lettering uneven and fluctuating in size. The entire project was done freehanded, embroidered on the bare cloth.

"They’re interesting. They depict the story of Saint Edmund." The satchel landed on the floor by her feet.

"Don’t know him. There are too many saints for me to keep tract of."

"Well, this saint was a very worldly Anglo-Saxon king before he was martyred by Viking invaders."

"Nice story."

"See, here Edmund is in glorious battle."

"That’s not him with the arrow in his eye?"

"No, that was his father. Now Edmund becomes the king. And in this one he pays the danegeld so the Vikings will stop attacking. But in this panel the Vikings break their word and attack any way."

"And he is captured?"

"And tortured. This," Josephine said, pointing to the scarlet wings on Edmund’s back, "was a favorite technique the Vikings employed called Blood Eagle. Those are his lungs."

"Oh my god. That’s disgusting."

"And then he was chopped into bits."

"And they keep this here for children to see?"

"But a miracle happened. A wolf guarded Edmund’s head and would not let the Vikings take it to display the head on a pike."

"And the wolf was a miracle?"

"The wolf was the symbol for the kingdom of East Anglia, Edmund’s kingdom. So what was left of the righteous Anglo-Saxons buried the head and built an abbey on top of it, Bury-St-Edmund."

"And what is the point of this little story?"

Josephine fixed Virginia with her gaze. "The point is, sometimes when a person gets their butt kicked, they clean up and revise the story to make themselves look better."

Josephine picked up the satchel by the strap and walked away.

"This is not relevant to the situation at hand!" Virginia yelled.


* * * * *

Virginia arrived to World History and took a seat. Fowles was absent, his prescience not glowering at the front of the room and demanding that the girls cease their endless prattle.

Regina was talking loudly about being cast as the lead in Pirates of Pennzance. "Of course, to prepare for my role as Mable I will have to keep myself on a strict regime. No excessive talking to save my voice. Only tea with honey, it’s better for the vocal chords you know."

Auditions were still on going for that term’s dramatic production but Regina had seized the staring role on the first day. Virginia had thought about trying out but back down when she saw on the notice board that Charlotte had been cast as the Major General.

Regina fixed her cold gaze on Virginia. "You should audition," she said. She tossed her head and sausage curls bounced. "I believe there’s still an opening for a pirate or a crewman."

The girls around Regina laughed as if her words were the height of wit. She didn’t see what was so funny; girls were being cast in the male roles because there were no men in the school.

The door to the classroom opened. A woman wearing a large brimmed straw hat with a dark green velvet ribbon entered. She wore a light green dress with an hour glass shape and long white gloves.

"A fine looking class," she said and took off the hat, revealing a head of reddish blonde hair neatly coiffure. The hat rested on the desk. The gloves came off next. "I am Miss JuliaaHolz, pleased to make your acquaintance. As you may have so sharply deduced, I am the new history teacher. I apologize for my traveling costume. I have only just arrived this morning and have not had the chance to unpack."

She sat behind the desk. Stacks of papers were waiting, neatly arranged. She flipped through them idly. "I see Mr. Fowles has left me notes of your progress. I must thank him for his effort.
Now, please, will you tell me where you were at in the book."

A timid hand raised, Susan Finney. "Please, miss, you were starting to the subject of ancient Egypt."

"Where you? How exciting." Miss Holz moved from behind the desk to the front of the classroom. She had a pretty face with wide cornflower blue eyes "Ancient Egypt and the mysteries of the pharaohs has long been one of my favorite subjects and real passions. I have always wanted to travel the world with Egypt being the first stop on my tour. The pyramids are the last remaining wonder of the famed Seven Wonders of the World, you know. Tell me, has anyone actually been to Egypt?"

No one in the class moved. Virginia slowly raised her hand.

"And you are?"

"Virginia Smithson."

Recognition flashed in her cornflower blue eyes before being suppressed and replaced with smiling warmth. "You must be related to the archeologist, Dr. Jack Smithson."

"He is my uncle, miss."

"And you were in Cairo?" Virginia nodded. "Can you tell us about your travels"

Virginia thought back to the way the pyramids revealed these on the horizon, Jack’s endless lists of things they were not allowed to do, being picked up and carted away by unknown persons, her escape and subsequent return, and the week of Jack no letting either Virginia or Nessa out of the hotel room for fear of a repeat of certain unsavory events. She said, "We were not allowed to eat or drink or touch anything at the suk, which is Arabic for the market, and we saw the Great Pyramid from the window of the hotel."

"Is that all?" Miss Holz looked disappointed.

Virginia nodded. "Yes, we were not allowed to leave the hotel."

"Well, me dear, I guess we all do not have the spirit of adventure!" The class laughed.

Virginia instinctively curled one hand around her amulet; the cool metal calmed her nerves.

"What do you have there?" Miss Holz asked, leaning in close. She smelled like warm lavender in the summer.

Virginia uncurled her hand and revealed the golden disk with the blue stone.

"That’s very pretty. Where did you get this?"

"In Cairo."

"Oh, so you did not spend the entire time in the hotel?" The class laughed again. Virginia was growing rather sick of being the butt of every joke that day.

* * * * * * *

As the class let out, student voiced their opinions about the new teachers.

"Oh, I liked her very much," Susan Finney said. "She didn’t make the subject seem boring at all!"

She didn’t talk about the subject, Virginia thought. Miss Holz spent the entire class talking about everything but Ancient Egypt, mostly about fashion. She did discuss the wigs Egyptians wore, charcoal being used as eye makeup, bathing in milk and honey baths to keep the skin young, almost anything but actual history.

"What do you think, Regina?" a girl walking next to the queen bee asked.

"I thought it was a very interesting class. And the dress she wore was quite becoming. Perhaps I will wear a similar ensemble for my play."

The girls in the crowd instantly agreed that they enjoyed the class, it was very interesting, and

Regina would look gorgeous in such a costume.

Disgusted, Virginia packed up her books and left the room.

Walking quickly, Virginia exited the hallway, crossed the courtyard and then the drawbridge and was over all three bridges and on the grassy banks surrounding the lake.

The sudden quite surprised her. Constantly surrounded by the chatter and nonstop noises of one hundred adolescent girls dulled her senses when it came finding calm and quite. Even in the common room, reading by the fire, late in the evening when all the students were relaxing and growing sleepy, the atmosphere was still noisy.

Outside the castle there were only the noises of swans gliding on the water, the distant sighing of horses, chewing of sheep, and the wind rustling the treetops. Absolutely quiet.

Virginia used the opportunity to explore the Hedge Maze. A number of different maze type existed, Virginia knew. Unicursal, or a maze without branches, often a circuit to be completed from walking from end to end. Multicursal was a maze with branches and dea ends, perhaps the most common when one thought of mazes. Theta, a type of maze composed of concentric circles. Braid Mazes were a type of maze with branches but lacked dead ends. All the branches looped back to other branches. Perfect Maze, a maze with only one solution. Delta Maze, which was interlocking triangles. And finally, a Plainair Maze, a maze on something other than a flat surface.

Virginia quite enjoyed mazes. One day she would discover the location of the labyrinth of Knossos, of the fame minnotar legend. There were even rumors of an Ancient Egyptian labyrinth at the City of Crocodiles. Greek historians wrote about the wonders of the temple by the lake with a great labyrinth. Of course, no such evidence existed today, but Virginia knew she would find it.

The hedge maze at Mauldy was a unicursal. One path wound slowly from end to end, unfurling with each step. In the center of the maze was a fountain. Statues and benches dotted the journey.

The maze was constructed of vivid green hedges grown at least seven feet tall, too tall to peer over. Smooth green lawn carpeted the path.

Virginia came to the center of the maze, a wide-open area with a white marble fountain in the center, framed by thick growths of foxglove, milkweed and hollyhocks.

A man was leaning over the edge of the fountain, neck and shoulders completely submerged below the rim. A toolbox rested on the ground neck to his feet. Must be the groundskeeper.

"I say, what are you doing?"

"Minor repairs. Got to be perfect for the Ball." The man remained in the fountain.

"What ball?"

"The Halloween Ball."

The man righted, adjusting the scarf around his neck, obscuring his face.

"Are you cold?" Virginia asked. The scarf wearing man was the groundskeeper?

"What?" he asked in a muffled voice. The accent was undeniably American.

"I said, are you cold? It’s too lovely a day to be bundled up." Actually, today wasn’t. The sky was a bright blue but it was cold and the wind unforgiving.

A laugh came from behind the scarf. "You know what they say, better safe than sorry."

Virginia’s ears twitched. That sounded familiar. Unease grew in her stomach and quickly flourished into panic. She knew she was not safe.

"Right-o," Virginia said in forced cheer and rushed her way through the rest of the maze.

* * * * * * *

Back inside the castle, Virginia found Josephine in the library.

"Where have you been?" Josephine asked. "You look like you had your wits frightened out of you."

"Just went for a quick walk about the lake. I’m probably pink in the cheeks from exertion."
Virginia felt reluctant to share her experience with Jonas Broadfoot. She felt shamed that the man in the ridiculous red and white striped scarf unnerved her so.

Josephine looked at her with skepticism. "That must be it. You do look peeked."

"There’s nip in the air." Which was mostly true, there was a nip in the air. Autumn arrived quickly that year.

"Uh-huh."

Virginia smiled and pulled out her mathematics book. They worked in silence, conferring on difficult problems.

"So," Josephine said, "I discovered where the school keeps the mimeograph machine."

"It’s a bad idea," Virginia said. "You’ll get ink all over your hands and that ink does not wash off."

"I wasn’t suggesting we slip in surreptitiously and make illicit copies of socialist literature to distribute to our sisters."

"That ink does not wash off," Virginia repeated. "They’ll catch us indigo handed."

"You are no fun."

"Can we just get Fowles’ assignment done? I swear, he walks by and glowers and I feel guilty, for no reason at all. I’d rather not have an actually reason to feel guilty."

"You enjoy his class, don’t you?"

"I do, surprisingly," Virginia said.

"Why? He’s so…mean and goofy looking! I mean, that carnation, seriously."

"Perhaps he is mean because he has suffered a lifetime of torments at the hands of others who are cruel and unforgiving when it comes to his goofy appearance?"

"You are very over dramatic, do you know that?" Josephine asked.

"And yet I am no fun, you say."

"Surprisingly, you are no fun. Very few people can pull off the no fun drama queen."

"It’s a gift. Now, what did you get for number twenty-one?" Pencil was posed on paper, waiting a valid answer.

"The question we should be answering is what was Fowles doing in the woods by the cabin?"

Not a valid answer. The pencil fell to the page in disgust.

"He said he was searching for missing students," Virginia said.

"Was he really searching for missing students like he said?" Josephine asked. "Or is that a convenient excuse he invented because we stumble into his path while he was on his way to a meeting? Interrupt him? " Josephine countered.

"Maybe he was taking a walk?"

"A walk?"

"People take walks," Virginia reasoned. Her argument was weak. Imagining Fowles taking a leisurely stroll through the lush green landscape of Mauldy was ludicrous with his big ears, red cheeks, and sour disposition. No, he was not the type to take strolls.

"Look," Virginia said, "we saw someone in the woods at night. There’s not much of a mystery there. Maybe the groundskeeper has a girlfriend and they were meeting for a late night tryst?"

"Secret moonlight meetings?"

"I suppose someone must find the man attractive. Besides, the second time we saw the figure, it had a light. Only someone who had nothing to hide would be so bold as to use a light." Or had a reason so believable for being out in the middle of the night that no one would question it.

Josephine stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes. "Fine, spoil my fun. There’s no mystery. Moonlight meetings between lovers, abandoned cottages in the woods, and the most unpleasant man in the world caught in the rain for no apparent reason. No mystery here."

"Exactly," Virginia said. "No mystery what so ever."

* * * * * * *

The shared bedroom had exploded with cluttered with the residency of Virginia, Charlotte, and Josephine.

Virginia was never the best housekeeper in her own room, but the mess of one thirteen-year-old girl was multiplied by three, the result was the room before her. Shoes that were meant to line neatly under the bed were kicked off immediately and under various pieces of furniture. Skirts and blouses draped the backs of chairs. Socks causally littered the floor. Desks were piled with books and papers and little jars of cosmetics. A fine layer of face powder covered every surface. The bed was not made. The room was a disgrace. Already it was beginning to feel like home.

Housekeeping only visited once a week to sweep the rug, change the bed linens and polish the furniture.

Charlotte had already sequestered herself on her bed, closing the heavy green curtains. Charlotte’s icy silence was one minor little flaw in the otherwise comfortable and homey atmosphere of the room.

Josephine read a week old newspaper at her desk, clipping articles she found interesting. The articles were then pasted into an album.

Josephine presented the album to Virginia with a fair amount of pride. Josephine called it her Revolution Handbook, saving articles relating to protests and rallies. Virginia recognized some the clippings, suffragette protestors, the occasional arrest made at a rally, and editorial comments regarding the merits of such suffragette behavior and the down right shamefulness of such unwomanly action. Josephine was clearly not only studying the methods employed by activists but also the mind set and thought process of the enemy.

Virginia had flipped through the book and stopped at the photo of Mrs. Pankhurst being lifted off the ground by a police office. Her face was flushed and livid, even in the poor quality black and white copy, and she was still shouting for her rights even when under arrest. Virginia had the feeling that Josephine was really preparing for her own scrap book for the time when it would be her photo of being arrested and carted off by the police in the newspapers.

"Do you mind shutting the curtains on the window," Virginia asked, undoing the long plait of hair and attempting to tame the softly curling mess with a brush.

No response from Charlotte. A slight twitch in the bed curtains, as if they were about to part.

"Charlotte? The curtains?"

No response.

Virginia went to close the draperies over the window. "You are the one who asked to be near the windows," Virginia muttered under her breath. "You might be mature enough to at least acknowledge that I was speaking, non-window closing, pro-drafty…"

Across the lake she could see the glow of a fire. Despite the darkness of the night, it was possible to see the outline of the old groundskeeper’s cottage and thick smoke curling from the chimney in the wind.

"I thought Fowles told us the groundskeeper’s cottage was abandoned," Virginia said.

"He did," Josephine said, looking up from the newspaper. Heavy silver scissors rested on the desk. "The groundskeeper know lives in the old mill."

"Then why is there a fire burning in the cottage?"

Josephine looked out the window. "It’s like something’s burning in the fireplace."

"How can that be?"

"Maybe our non-mystery related mysterious figure in the woods has taken up residence in the non-mysterious abandoned cottage."