Chapter 1 - Changing Grades
Louisa Sophia and A Legion of Sisters
Like a once-caged bird on its first flight, Louisa luxuriated in the liberation of perching so high above the rest of the world. From the ridgeline of the Basilica, she looked out over the twinkling lights of Paris. Fantasies sparkled like the skyline before her, the distant lights calling her to adventure.
A handful of times during the last five years, the Mères had allowed her to visit the city’s menagerie. With each experience, now seventeen-year-old Louisa added new goals. While she longed for her coming emancipation, she reached out to touch the city of dreams.
A strong spring breeze pierced her thin cotton school uniform, and gooseflesh sprouted in the cold’s wake. She shivered, not wanting this moment to end. When her feet touched the ground again, this feeling would dissipate like the smoke wafting from nearby chimneys.
Most of the buildings in the suburban commune of St. Denis glowed with warmth, but a few were dark and showed damage from the siege. Several had missing walls and cannon-disfigured facades, testimonials of a war whose loss still scarred the psyche of the French nation and its people.
Not my people.
Louisa had arrived at the St. Denis branch of Les maisons d’éducation de la Légion d’honneur a month before the Prussians surrounded the capital. Napoleon had created the schools some sixty years earlier to educate the daughters of those who earned the nation’s highest award for merit, the Légion d’honneur. They separated the girls attending the three schools according to their family’s status, with St. Denis being the topmost strata of social standing.
The first addition to Louisa’s limited French vocabulary was the the name the other girls gave her when the Mères were out of earshot. Even now, she wore “the Greek Bastard” as a badge of honor. For the first time in her life, she claimed her mother’s heritage, something denied to her by the children back home in Corfu. There, they referred to her as “the English Girl,” the words dripping with disdain.
As the wind whipped her raven-colored hair behind her, the building known only by its address of Cent Quatre captured her attention in the distance. Built during her tenure at La Maison de Saint-Denis, the monumental building’s slanted glass roof sent a large beam of light into the heavens. It amused her that anyone would build a funeral home on such a grand scale. Given the building’s purpose as life’s last waystation, she imagined the light as a beacon guiding departed souls to their desired destination.
Louisa turned to her task and padded along the roofline toward the flying buttress at the side of the church and the squatting gargoyle that guarded it. After patting the creature’s head, she slid down the pitched metal roof to the edge of the church with one hand on the arched buttress.
St. Denis’s massive school, built during the 17th and 18th centuries, stretched away from the Basilica. France’s oldest state-sponsored boarding school for girls was laid out like a giant “H,” but the somewhat skinnier administration building created a cap at the top of the letter to form a boxy capital “A.” Two beautiful courtyards containing giant, fleur-de-lis-shaped hedges were in the middle, while extensive park-like grounds surrounded the school and the Basilica.
Closest to the Basilica, the administration portion of the building rose from the darkness, its outer wall and highest window separated from the church by a mere meter. Louisa only needed to climb ten meters down the column at the end of the flying buttress to gain entry.
Using the tips of her fingers, Louisa found the sloping beam and scooted hand over hand downward toward the edge. She hung free at the bottom of the flyer, thirty meters above the ground. She swung half her body around the column, then clamped her feet onto the flat end of the buttress. With her back to the administration building, she spidered down.
Her mind drifted to a time before St. Denis. In the dead of night, she had shimmied up a similar column on the side of the Holy Church of Saint Spyridon in Corfu City. Her uncle had waited below, acting as a lookout. It would be the second burglary for nine-year-old Louisa.
Six months earlier, Louisa’s mother had sent the little girl’s uncle to find her absentee daughter. That late afternoon, the young outcast had sought refuge by doing the one thing that made her feel in control in a life full of obstacles. Her uncle found her hanging by her fingernails on the side of a white limestone cliff with her feet dangling a hundred meters above the Ionian Sea.
A thief by trade, her uncle seized upon the idea of using the little girl’s unique skill to make some easy drachmas. Louisa’s training began the next day and didn’t stop until their last job. As soon as her private studies in languages and mathematics ended each day, her uncle drilled her on picking locks and pockets, hiding in the shadows, cataloging a room with a quick look, and escaping confinement.
At nine years old, she knew right from wrong. But from harsh lessons learned, she also knew the world would never make life easy for a bastard. Her decision to do as her uncle said came with no remorse. Louisa vowed she would take from the world more than the world would take from her.
The now teenage burglar used her free hand to pull a long metal file from her pocket. She leaned across the space between buildings and jabbed the sharp tip under the lip of the darkened window, then wiggled the file under the wood to use it as a fulcrum. She shoved the lever down, and the window popped open a few centimeters.
She returned the file to her pocket and strained against the window, working it upward a centimeter at a time. A lifetime of climbing had given her hands, fingers, and wrists incredible strength, so, less than thirty seconds later, the opening was a half-meter tall.
More than enough.
Louisa pushed off with a twist. Her body arched up and into the open portal across the gap. She landed on her stomach, half in and half out of the window. Her eyes adjusted to the near-total darkness after a long pause.
The outline of the secretary’s desk appeared in the small office. Each of the other three walls had a door. The one behind the small spartan table led to the headmistress’s office. A place Louisa had visited too often and never on good terms.
There were no sounds but her heartbeat as she wormed into the room. She landed on all fours. Louisa rose, then turned from the desk and headed for the door to the records room. A lock stood between her and the grade report she needed to change.
She pulled several special pins from her hair and, with deft fingers, clicked open the lock. The scent of pine cleaner and aged, musty paper met her as she slithered inside. Louisa left a small gap in the doorway and repinned her hair.
She retrieved a small candle and a match from her pocket. As she struck the match, its light bathed the small room in a soft glow. She touched the flame to the wick, which revealed floor-to-ceiling shelves piled with large record-keeping notebooks.
Louisa stretched the candle high to illuminate the spines of the notebooks. She tip-toed around the room, searching for the recently transferred Mère Marie-Catherine’s Latin class grades and notes.
Dieu merci, she thought as she pulled the book from the lowest shelf. The book opened near the middle to the leather-corded bookmark. She examined the format of several entries so that her forgery would match. After balancing the candle on the shelf, she produced a sterling silver fountain pen that she had purloined from someone’s wealthy parent who had visited the school.
The sight of the writing instrument reminded Louisa how alone she was except for the handful of friends she had made at St. Denis. Her mother and uncle were gone, and she never considered her absent father to be family. He had dropped her at the school and promised to return when she graduated.
With a shake of her head, Louisa refocused on the task. Due to her status as a social pariah, Louisa, along with St. Denis’s other rejects, was slated to participate in the school’s most despicable tradition, the Last Chance Tour. She could think of nothing worse than to be dragged across the continent and paraded before eligible bachelors from minor nobility or the wealthy merchant class.
Louisa sneered as she put pen to paper. With penmanship matching that of the nun now living in Florence, she detailed how Louisa, the best Latin student in class, had called Mère Marie-Catherine a horse-faced spinster. With a flourish, Louisa added the nun’s recommendation to punish Louisa by depriving her of the privilege of taking part in the Last Chance Tour.
Satisfied, she returned the book to its shelf and blew out the candle. Muffled words and the distinctive clacking of the headmistress’s button boots, followed by the softer tap-tap of a student’s shoes, echoed in the hallway outside the office.
Skatá.
Louisa pulled the door closed.
The hallway door opened, and Headmistress Madame Veuve Le Ray said, “Mademoiselle Chanzy, I don’t have much time. Please be brief.”
“Yes, Headmistress.”
The door behind the secretary’s desk opened, and the footsteps faded after it closed.
What the hell is Gabrielle up to?
Louisa cracked the door open. Lamplight peeked from under the door leading to the headmistress’s office. After closing the records room door, Louisa crossed the secretary’s office and stuck her ear to the keyhole.
“As I was saying, Headmistress, my father, the General, has given me permission to accompany this summer’s tour,” Gabrielle said.
“But why would you want to go? You have countless suiters waiting on you.”
“I would just like one last adventure, and since Joséphine has to go, Julie and I would like to go to advise her. I’m sure Mère de la Nativité would welcome some help keeping an eye on the Greek girl and her friends.”
That witch wants to go so she can torture us.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“My father will cover our expenses and a little extra to help offset the costs of replacing the old kitchen stoves.”
“Well, that would be welcome.”
The sounds of someone running came from the hallway outside the secretary’s office. Louisa dove to the side and slid behind the secretary’s desk. The door burst open, and Joséphine Maneval, Jeton Deux, rushed to the headmistress’s door. She knocked twice and bounced from toe to toe.
Light spilled into the office as the door opened. Louisa became a shadow.
“Yes, Mademoiselle Maneval?”
The girl curtsied. “Headmistress, Mère de la Nativité sent me to tell you that the Greek girl was not at bedtime roll call.”
Louisa stayed a statue as she winced inside.
“Very well.” The headmistress sighed. “Let’s see what she’s up to this time.”
The two girls trailed behind her as the headmistress marched out of the office.
Merde.
If you haven’t yet read Louisa’s adventures in the Lamentations and Magic Series be sure to pick up Book 1 Ancient Civilizations.