‘I do not consider a fire to be suitable for a schoolroom,’ Miss Crichton said, looking at the cheery blaze in the grate as she sat down at her high desk. ‘It’s too luxurious for serious study; it distracts from the task in hand. I’ll have to make it clear in future that there is to be no fire in this room. But for today we must make do with it. Feet on the floor, eyes forward, and be quiet!’

There was no disobeying that tone of voice; Sergeant Majors in the army would have sounded mild and polite compared to Miss Crichton when she was aggrieved.

‘Stand up and show me what you have been reading. You first, boy.’

‘Boy?’ Colin trembled with anger. ‘My name is Master Colin Craven and I’ll thank you to –’ 

She picked up a ruler and rapped it three times on the desk, a sharp noise that seemed to echo around the room. ‘My motto is spare the rod and spoil the child. It’s clear to me that too much spoiling has gone on in this household. You will treat me with respect, or I will not spare the rod – or in this case, the ruler.’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’ Colin spluttered, but one look from those cold, grey eyes told him that she could, and she would.

‘Show me your book,’ she insisted. He held out his much-loved copy of Treasure Island which had been a Christmas gift from his father last year.

‘Deary me. This is hardly educational! Whatever can you hope to learn from this?’

‘About honour and bravery,’ Colin said, ‘which I think are important, don’t you?’

She sniffed. ‘I shall confiscate this rubbish, and return it to you only when you have learned your first Latin lesson.’ She stalked over to him and took the book from his hand. He thought about refusing to give it to her, but then looked again at the coldness in her eyes, and the ruler in her hand. 

‘Here is your Latin primer.’ She placed a small, grey schoolbook open in front of him. ‘Sit down and begin. When you know the first chapter by heart, you shall have this trashy novel back again – but only to be read out of the schoolroom. It is never to be brought into my presence again.’ She opened the drawer of her desk, put the book inside and shut it with a bang, locking it with a key that hung from a belt around her waist. Colin sat back down at his desk.

She turned her attention to Mary. ‘You girl. Stand and show me your book.’

Mary knew better than Colin when argument was useless, so she got to her feet and held out the book to Miss Crichton. She looked at the book as if Mary had dug it up from a particularly muddy part of the Secret Garden.

‘Botany? This is not a subject for a girl. Needlework, deportment and fine manners are all that a young lady needs to learn. You’ll never get a husband grubbing about in the dirt!’

Mary looked down and said nothing, but her eyes burned with anger.  Miss Crichton took the book from her, and it followed Colin’s into the drawer. 

‘Here is some thread and some canvas. You can begin sewing a sampler today.’ Miss Crichton placed the materials in front of her.

Mary sat down and looked at Colin, whose cheeks were a hectic red, and whose eyes were brimming with tears. He hated to be ordered about, and he loved the book that Miss Crichton had taken. Mary knew it was wrong to lie – but she also knew that she had to help Colin. He was so much stronger than he had been, but still he was delicate. It was easy to make him ill if he got upset or over-wrought. She couldn’t let Miss Crichton do that to him. Mary had to find a way to get rid of her. 

Well, at least they had already come up with one idea to try, and the winter wind was wailing around the chimney pots right now.

‘Miss Crichton?’ she said, with a deep breath, ‘I wonder, can you hear that noise? It sounds like a child, crying. I think it might be the ghost …’

By Liz Taylorson

Mary and Colin returned to the schoolroom and waited there. It was like a smaller version of Mr. Craven’s study. Two small teak desks faced a larger one belonging to their governess, and the walls were lined with books. A chalkboard stood at one end of the room, and a large globe, where Colin was inclined to plot his future adventures, stood in the far corner. Miss Crichton would be there in due course, Mary reminded Colin.

Due course seemed to be taking a very long time. After quarter of an hour, Miss Crichton had not appeared, and so they occupied themselves, as they had been instructed, with books of their own choosing. Colin liked to read outrageous stories of bravery and daring deeds; Treasure Island was his current favourite, and he longed to sail the seven seas for himself, fighting pirates and finding treasure. Mary was occupied by A Collection of Moorland Plants by C.A. Haworth. She didn’t know who C. A. Haworth was, but she did know he had a fine eye for the purple blooms of the heather and the sky-blue of the harebells. She read out loud the Latin names of the plants, which had an exotic sound which she rather liked.

‘Calluna vulgaris of the genus Ericaceae,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘Do you know what that means, Colin?’

‘Not yet, but I will when I begin to learn Latin,’ he said grandly. ‘You won’t learn Latin, will you? Because you are a girl and they aren’t as clever as boys. A girl would never have written a book like this one …’ he waved Treasure Island at her, ‘… let alone that boring thing you’re reading.’

‘How dare you!’ She loved her cousin very much, but she didn’t feel that the affection she had for him prevented her from disagreeing with him when he was wrong, and today he was very, very, wrong. ‘Women and girls are just as clever as men and boys.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mary. How could they be?’

She’d show him, she vowed. One day she’d show him that she was just as clever as any mere boy could be. She picked up her book, so that she didn’t have to talk to him again right now, but it no longer held her attention.  They sat in their desks and waited, but there was still no sign of the governess.

‘What do you think about ghosts, Mary?’ Colin asked, suddenly.

‘Ghosts?’ Mary asked. She didn’t believe in any such things.

‘If we’re going to get rid this governess I don’t think she’ll be scared of mice – more likely the mice will be scared of her – so what about ghosts?’

‘Oh, I see what you mean. But there aren’t any ghosts,’ Mary said, reluctant to put her book down and talk to her cousin.

‘But we don’t have to tell her that, do we? You’re good at stories, Mary. You make something up that we can tell her.’ Colin closed his book and looked expectantly at his cousin. 

She sighed and reluctantly shut her own book. ‘We could tell her about the sound of crying in the night. It sounds like a child weeping. That wouldn’t exactly be lying, because there is sometimes a sound like crying in the night when the wind howls down the chimney.’

‘It’s the ghost of a child tortured to death by an evil governess!’ Colin added with relish.

‘No, that’s too obvious. I don’t want to lie to her, not exactly. That would be wrong.’

‘I want you to lie to her,’ Colin said, standing up so that he could address her like a master speaking to servants, ‘if it frightens her away. I don’t like her.’

‘You hardly know her. I didn’t like you when I first met you – and I don’t think you liked me, either.’ She looked up at him, watching his face to see if his expression changed. It didn’t. If anything it became more rigid. 

‘She talked as if this was her house. Ordering us about like that! At least all the other governesses asked us nicely – they didn’t command us as if we were their servants, not the other way around. She is nothing but a servant, and I shall make sure she knows it. It’s not her house, it’s my father’s house and one day it will be mine, and no woman will ever talk to me like that when I am grown.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ Mary said, springing to her feet. ‘For one day I’ll be a woman, and I’ll still talk to you exactly how I wish, Colin Craven!’

The schoolroom door opened, and Miss Crichton stood in the doorway. 

‘Do I hear raised voices? Ladies and Gentlemen should never need to raise their voices. Now sit down, both of you, at once.’

Colin thew a mutinous glance towards his cousin, but he sat down as quickly as she did, and they waited for the new governess to take her seat at the high desk, and for lessons to begin.

By Liz Taylorson

When they arrived outside the schoolroom door at the time designated for them to meet their new governess, Miss Crichton, no one answered the door when they knocked, and when they looked round the door, the room was empty. 

‘Perhaps,’ said Mary, ‘Miss Crichton is lost in the house. Perhaps we should go and find her.’

‘Or perhaps,’ said Colin, mimicking her tone, ‘we should wait here for her like we’ve been told to?’

‘Well I think the sensible thing is to look for her,’ Mary said. ‘I’m going, whether or not you are. I think it will be a fine adventure to save her from being lost in the corridors. You can stay here on your own if you prefer.’

‘Oh, very well then. I suppose I’ll come with you,’ he said, grudgingly.

They didn’t have to go very far before they found her. They had set off towards the housekeeper’s room to see if Mrs. Medlock might know where she was, and as they approached the door, they could hear voices inside. Mary held up a hand to stop Colin from bursting into the room. They weren’t exactly trying to listen, but the voices were so loud that it was difficult not to overhear what was being said in the housekeeper’s room.

‘… obvious that the children have been thoroughly spoilt.’ A voice which made Mary shudder, like the sound of nails on a chalkboard. Miss Crichton, no doubt.

‘They have not been spoilt, not one jot!’ That was Mrs. Medlock speaking bluntly, her Yorkshire accent stronger than usual, which meant that she was agitated. ‘They’ve both had more than their fair share of troubles. He never left his bed for nearly ten years. And she was found alone in a house of cholera. I’d say they were to be pitied, not spoilt.’

‘But you have not been employed to teach them, I have. From everything Mr. Craven told me, I determine that they have been most thoroughly spoilt, allowed to run riot, and I shall put a stop to all that. A little discipline, that’s what is needed.’

‘Is that what the master said?’ Mrs. Medlock sounded sceptical.

‘It is not what he said but what he meant that is important.’

Mary and Colin looked at each other. Mary felt that perhaps they should go back to the schoolroom right now, and she motioned Colin to follow her.

‘I’m sure father said no such thing,’ he whispered to her as they started to creep away down the corridor. However, his whisper had been rather louder than he intended and the door to Mrs. Medlock’s room was flung open.

‘Well, well, well. What have we here?’ Miss Crichton looked them up and down, as Mary and Colin stood poised between fight and flight. ‘Mary and Colin, I presume? Not a good start – a pair of nasty little eavesdroppers!’

‘They’re not nasty!’ Mrs. Medlock protested, appearing in the doorway behind her, but unable to pass the governess.

‘May I remind you, Medlock,’ said Miss Crichton, as if she was the lady of the house speaking to a housemaid, ‘that according to Mr. Craven’s wishes, you report to me from now on.’

‘I … I …’ Mrs. Medlock stuttered in surprise. Nobody ever spoke to Mrs. Medlock like that!

‘And we weren’t eavesdropping,’ Mary protested. ‘We came to look for you. We were worried you might have got lost.’

‘Got lost? Why would I get lost?’

‘It’s a big house, and if you’re not used to it –’ Mary began, remembering times when she had got lost in the maze of doors and passages.

‘Are you trying to imply that I am not used to big houses? I, who have been a governess to the greatest families in the land, and lived in castles and palaces?’

‘She only meant that you’re not used to this one!’ Colin stood up for Mary.

‘Be that as it may, I do not get lost. I have a perfect memory and a perfect sense of direction. And now perhaps you two will stop wasting time and get yourselves back to your schoolroom? You will wait for me there, as you were told to, and find yourselves some educational reading while I organise everything I need for your first lesson.’

By Liz Taylorson

‘The wind is fairly wuthering out there today!’ said Mary as she looked out of the window. She was glad to be inside on a day like this, when the cold wind rushed over the moors and beat against the windows of the house like a wild thing trying to get inside. She hoped that the robin was snug in his nest, and not out hunting for worms today.

‘Wuthering?’ Colin asked. 

‘It’s a Yorkshire word, and I think it’s a fine one. What else would describe half so well that lost, eerie sound that the wind makes?’ Mary said.

‘Wuthering,’ Colin repeated, meditatively. ‘Yes, I like that word too.’

They were ensconced in a window seat on the long landing that ran from one end of the East Wing of Misselthwaite Manor to the other. They both liked this particular window as it commanded a fine view of the moors – and of the road from Thwaite Station that crossed them, bringing travellers to the Manor. They were waiting for a glimpse of their new governess. Mary remembered her own first journey across those moors, and how she had thought them bleak and barren. She knew differently now, for she understood all the creatures and plants that lived there, if one looked closely enough to spot them. Dickon had taught her to see them, and she hoped that the new governess might be able to teach her more.

‘Look!’ cried Colin, pointing to the spot where the road crested the brow of the hill. ‘The carriage!’

Slowly, slowly, the carriage wound its way down towards the imposing stone gates, and then through them and up the long gravel drive. They watched closely for the first glimpse of their new governess. 

‘There she is,’ said Mary, as a figure stepped down from the carriage, looking about her with a sharp eye. She was older than any of the other governesses had been – perhaps older than Mrs. Medlock, though it was hard to tell from where they sat peeping through the window. She was tall, thin and dressed in charcoal grey, which seemed appropriate – she looked as if all the fire had burnt out of her long ago. Though the wind howled about her and the trees were waving frantically in the breeze, she seemed impervious to the storm. Her bonnet was bound securely to her head, her shawl pulled in close and pinned tightly, and her skirts seemed stiff and starched, as if they were frozen solid. She looked cold and hard, as if winter had arrived with her in the carriage.

For a moment neither Mary nor Colin spoke. They knew, without speaking, what the other was thinking. This was not the governess that they had been hoping for.

‘I don’t think we’re going to be introducing her to Bob Strong,’ Colin whispered, as if he was afraid, even from this far away, that she would be able to hear him.

‘No, indeed. She’s nothing like Miss Lightfoot, is she?’ Mary whispered back. ‘And perhaps it’s for the best. I think Martha might be sad if we introduced somebody else to Bob Strong.’

‘At least Miss Lightfoot was kind, even if she didn’t teach us much,’ Colin said.

The new governess had taken in her surroundings, and now began to walk towards the front door of the Manor. She moved like some kind of long-legged bird, Mary thought. A heron, perhaps, picking, poking and pecking as she stalked along.

‘She’s not using the servant’s entrance!’ Colin said, horrified. 

Governesses, in his experience, were servants and did not take it upon themselves to use the main door, the one for visitors of some importance. Nevertheless, this woman walked straight up to the huge oak doors, and they parted to admit her. Just as she was about to step into the house she paused, and looked up straight towards the window where they were sitting as if she had known they were there. The children froze. A long, chilly stare passed between them, before she turned, almost disdainfully, and stepped inside.

‘Well!’ said Colin, trying to sound affronted and grand, but actually sounding rather shaken. ‘Well, bless my soul. Did you ever see the like? A governess who thinks she’s a guest!’

‘I’ve seen women like her before. Plenty of them,’ Mary said. ‘But none of them were governesses.’ 

They had been friends of her mother’s in India. Smooth, elegant young women whose diamonds sparkled but whose eyes did not. Unhappy women who looked at her with contempt, and told her mother scornfully that they could never endure to have such a child about the house. But they were all dead now, she supposed, dead with the cholera like her mother, and she was more alive than they had ever been. 

‘Come on, Colin. I don’t want to stay here any longer. Let’s go to the library and find some books.’

By Liz Taylorson