A Great and Terrible Beauty

I had expected some sweet little cottage estate, the kind written about in halfpenny papers where rosy-cheeked young girls play lawn tennis on tidy green fields. There is nothing cozy about Spence. The place is enormous, a madman's forgotten castle with great, fat turrets and thin, pointy spires. It would take a girl a year just to visit every room inside, no doubt.

"Whoa!" The driver stops short. There's someone in the road.

"Who goes there?" A woman comes around to my side of the carriage and peers in. An old Gypsy woman. A richly embroidered scarf is wrapped tightly about her head and her jewelry is pure gold, but otherwise, she is disheveled.

"What now?" Tom sighs.

I poke my head out. When the moonlight catches my face, the Gypsy woman's face softens. "Oh, but it's you. You've come back to me."

"I'm sorry, madam. You must have mistaken me for someone else."

"Oh, but where is Carolina? Where is she? Did you take her?" She starts to moan softly.

"Come on now, missus, let us by," the driver calls. "There's a good lady."

With a snap of the reins, the carriage jostles forward again as the old woman calls after us.

"Mother Elena sees everything. She knows your heart! She knows!"

"Good lord, they've got their own hermit," Tom sneers. "How very fashionable."

Tom may laugh but I can't wait to get out of the carriage and the dark.

The horse draws us under the stone archway and through gates that open onto lovely grounds. I can just make out a wonderful green field, perfect for playing lawn tennis or croquet, and what looks like lush, overgrown gardens. A little farther out lies a grove of great trees, thick as a forest. Beyond the trees sits a chapel perched on a hill. The whole picture looks as if it's been standing this way for centuries, untouched.

The carriage bounces up the hill that leads to Spence's front doors. I arch my neck out the window to take in the full, massive scope of the building. There's something jutting up from the roof. It's hard to make it out in the fading light. The moon shifts from under a bank of clouds and I see them clearly: gargoyles. Moonlight ripples over the roof, illuminating bits and piecesa sliver of sharp tooth, a leering mouth, snarling eyes.

Welcome to finishing school, Gemma. Learn to embroider, serve tea, curtsy. Oh, and by the way, you might be demolished in the night by a hideous winged creature from the roof.

The carriage jangles to a stop. My trunk is placed on the great stone steps outside the large wooden doors. Tom raps with the great brass knocker, which is roughly the size of my head. While we wait, he can't resist giving his last bit of brotherly advice.

"Now, it is very important that you conduct yourself in a manner befitting your station while at Spence. It's fine to be kind to the lesser girls, but remember that they are not your equals."

Station. Lesser girls. Not your equals . It's a laugh, really. After all, I'm the unnatural one responsible for her mother's murder, the one who sees visions. I pretend to freshen my hat in the brass reflection of the knocker. Any sense of foreboding I feel will probably disappear the minute the door opens and some kindly housekeeper takes me in with a warm embrace and an open smile.

Right. Give the door another good, solid bang to show I'm a good, solid girl, the kind every eerie boarding school would love to claim as its own. The heavy oak doors open, revealing a craggy-faced, thick-waisted bulwark of a housekeeper with all the warmth of Wales in January. She glares at me, wiping her hands on her starched white apron.

"You must be Miss Doyle. We expected you a half hour ago. You've kept the headmistress waiting. Come on. Follow me."

The housekeeper bids us wait for a moment in a large, poorly lit parlor filled with dusty books and withering ferns. There is a fire going. It spits and hisses as it devours the dry wood. Laughter floats in through the open double doors and in a moment, I see several younger girls in white pinafores shuffling through the hall. One peeks in, sees me, and goes on as if I'm nothing more than a piece of furniture. But in a moment she's back with some of the others. They swoon over Tom, who preens for them, bowing, which sets them to blushing and giggling.

God help us all.

I'm afraid I may have to take the fireplace poker to my brother to silence this spectacle. Fortunately, I'm spared from any murderous impulses. The humorless housekeeper is back. It's time for Tom and me to make our goodbyes, which consist mainly of the two of us staring at the carpet.

" Well, then. I believe I'll see you next month on Assembly Day with the other families."