But why? I thought later. Why would Miss Fawlthorne, as punishment, assign me such a happy task?
It was as if a sinner in the confession box, having admitted murder to the priest, were given the penance of devouring a chocolate cake. It simply made no sense.
Unless, of course, the priest was secretly a baker—or the son of a baker—who stood to profit from the transaction.
It may have been an uncharitable thought, or perhaps even a blasphemous one, but that’s the way my mind worked.
You can’t be hanged for thoughts, can you? I wondered.
Miss Fawlthorne was writing something in a black ledger, and I was turning to go, when she spoke again.
“You will also report to me here, personally, at this same hour, every Monday, from now on. Beginning next week.”
The air went out of my lungs as if I had been run over and crushed by a cartwheel.
Permanent punishment for such a small infraction? What kind of hellhole had I been tossed into? One minute the woman was a guardian angel soothing my fevered brow, and the next a slavering executioner measuring my neck. What was one to think? What was one to do?
“Yes, Miss Fawlthorne,” I said.
I flew up the stairs to Edith Cavell. I needed to be alone.
I needed room to think.
I sat huddled on my bed, knees under my chin and my back against the wall.
School was not turning out to be at all what I thought it would be.
Father—the very thought of him shot a bolt through my heart—had often lectured us on the pleasures of learning.
And—up until this moment—he had been right.
There had been no happier hours of my life than those spent alone in my chemical laboratory at Buckshaw, bundled against the cold in the ancient gray cardigan of Father’s I had rescued from the salvage bin, rummaging through the dusty notebooks in Uncle Tar’s library, teaching myself, little by little, atom by atom, the mysteries of organic chemistry.
The doors of Creation had been flung open to me, and I had been allowed to walk among its mysteries as if I were strolling in a summer garden. The universe had rolled over and let me rub its tummy.
But now—!
Pain.
With an abrupt shock, I realized I was slamming the back of my head monotonously against the wall. Bang!… bang!… bang!
I leapt off the bed and found myself marching, like an automaton, to the window.
Ever since the days of Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin, scientists have puzzled over inherited characteristics in everything from people to pea plants. It has been suggested that cell particles called “genes” or “gemmules” carry down, from one generation to the next, a set of maps or instructions, which determine, among other things, how we might behave in any given situation.
In that clockwork walk to the window, I realized even as I went that what I was doing was precisely what Father always did in times of trouble. And, now that I came to think of it, so did Feely. And Daffy.
The Code of the de Luces. It was a simple equation of action and reaction: Worry = window.
Just like that.
Simple as it was, it meant that in some complicated, and not entirely happy, chemical way—and far deeper than any other considerations—we de Luces were one.
Bound by blood and window glass.
As I stood there, and my eyes focused gradually on the outside world, I became aware that, down behind the stone gate, a small red-haired girl was thrashing wildly on the gravel. Two older girls were tickling her to the point of insanity. I recognized them at once as the pair I had seen at breakfast: the lip-reader, Druce, and her thrall, Trout.
Something clicked inside me. I could not stand idly by and watch. It was an all-too-familiar scene.
I unlocked the window and pushed up the sash.
The victim’s shrieks were now unbearable.
“Stop that!” I shouted, in the sternest voice I could manufacture. “Leave her alone!”
And, wonder of wonders, the two torturers stopped, staring up at me with open mouths. The sufferer, freed from their attentions, scrambled to her feet and bolted.
I slammed down the window before her tormentors could reply.
I would probably pay for it later in one way or another, but I didn’t care.
But try as I might, I could not get that little girl out of my mind.
How could tickling, even though it causes laughter, be at the same time such a vicious form of torture?
Sitting on the edge of my bed, I thought it through.
I came to the conclusion, at last, that it was like this: Tickling and learning were much the same thing. When you tickle yourself—ecstasy; but when anyone else tickles you—agony.
It was a useful insight, worthy of Plato or Confucius or Oscar Wilde, or one of those people who make a living by thinking up clever sayings.
Could I find a way of squeezing it into my report on William Palmer?
Had the Rugeley Poisoner tickled his victims?
I shouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that he had.