Mrs Bartholomew Cross

I do not like this. Barty has no good advice for me other than that “the Leffoys won’t be able to do whatever they please forever,” and “if she were really a collaborator, Goyle wouldn’t allow them to send her here.” I want her out of here. I hear she’s only taking a few subjects, and she isn’t actually taking any of the things she’s good at.

I have never seen such disgraceful behaviour in Avalon. Things like that didn’t happen here before she showed up. Not one of the Leffoys is really respectable. They don’t have to be, and they know it. Jeannot and Saint-Germain aren’t respectable either, but until she showed up here, they managed to maintain a façade of normality. There’s something about that girl that’s just a catalyst for everything we’ve been trying to keep under control around here since the start of the year. Whether or not she did what they say she did, she’s done something. Flint says she was in the resistance and it’s not to be further spoken of. But Valeria Malaspina isn’t any better. Don’t we already have enough slags in Avalon College? She and Forrester made that date to go ‘patrolling’ and then they turned up at last night’s drill stinking of sex, with their ties undone.

And Tirtzah Mendel said she was going to talk to Chattox about what happened yesterday, to help figure out a better solution for the rest of the term, because the underclassmen shouldn’t hear that sort of thing (which is true, darn it), and that if “Miss Warrington” and I cared to be present, we could. I can’t stand her, but I can’t ever come up with a good reason why—and she acts like she likes me. Of course she has a lot more influence over Dinah Zeller and Helena Goldstein than Celerity ever will, that’s just to be expected. But I didn’t expect Celerity to agree with everything she said. We could take that to Chattox ourselves, we don’t need Mendel to help!

Well, here we are at school, and we are sharing our dormitory with Pelby College, which means that there is no escape from Dylan and Mablin. It’s bad enough that Cordelia’s in Avalon, but she usually does me the favour of neglecting to mention that she is my cousin.

Dylan is sixteen today, and I am sitting here in the library with a durian in my book bag, which I have charmed not to stink up the place, and to be a quarter of its natural size. Because if Dylan eats that in the Common Room, we’ll never get rid of the smell, and everyone will blame me, even though my mother is the one who sent him the damned thing. Why couldn't his favourite thing have been something like jackfruit? Or mangoes? Mangoes are nice. I’ll give him his durian. If I don't, I'll never be able to come home again—our mother will kill me. But only after I have extracted his solemn word from him that he will not try to eat it in the Snake Pit.

Prue is going on and on and on about how she gave Caerleon twenty-five demerits but only five to Avalon. As if I care. Barty would probably say that I should, but I can’t, because it was Pendry and Chandra Lockhart and some lead-brain whose name she didn’t even bother to ask. Yawners.

Our party is tomorrow.

Our party is tomorrow, and Dylan knows that Mamma won’t let us do any work on it after the sun goes down. He knows that once the sun sets and the candles are lit and our family dinner’s on the table, that’s the end of anything productive ‘til sunset tomorrow, more or less.

And knowing this, he and Alastor Mablin disappear for the better part of the afternoon, first out of the house on some cryptic and unimaginable errand and then into his room for I know very well what, and it’s certainly not something they couldn’t get away with doing just as easily after sunset!

I really hate my brother sometimes.

I could die of embarrassment knowing that Kyteler’s mistress is our cousin. Lady Rosier makes perfect sense, but of course I have to hope that no-one listens to her since my father’s dependent on having the old reprobate sign his letters of marque and reprisal. I hope we won’t have to have them any time soon. Papai absolutely loves to sit around and tell him sea stories and the way Vovo talks about Lavinia you would think she was Queen Esther. (Luckily Mamma has no more use for that garbage than I have. It’s still adultery.)

Dylan has been invited to go up to the Leffoy estate and participate in some backward feudal rite of submission and he is ever so excited about it. I might throw up.

Today I get to go and visit Barty—without my parents. I can talk to Mrs Cross about her garden and we can go for a nice long walk on the estates and have some time to talk alone, so that Barty can really say what he thinks without having to worry about whether or not the people we’re with can follow him, and I can give my honest opinion even if it’s not the same. I don’t like to disagree with him in front of other people, because I don’t ever want him to lose face, and I do think he’s brilliant.

Dylan is being an utter pill. He always is, when Mablin isn’t here. He’s having a bad day and so he’s playing Prince of Counterpane again on the parlour couch. And yet he wants to go out and see Bella Malaspina, even though he knows very well what our mother thinks of us going to Lavinia Scalara’s house. She is our cousin, and we have to defend her from outsiders (and I rather wish we didn’t, because it’s going to make us look terrible when Kyteler’s wife finally gives him the boot), but that doesn’t mean we have to pretend to approve of what she’s doing. Which we don’t. Mamma and Vovo have been arguing about her a lot, lately.

I cannot believe he tricked Mamma into inviting Florian Leffoy, of all people, to our party. I missed that when the cards went out or I’d have said something. Thank God he sent regrets! I don’t care if he can read Machiavelli in Italian. It’s his first language, it’s not as though it’s a sign of incipient brilliance that he can read in it!

I really want a char siu bun, even though it’s horrible dirty food and it’s nothing but fat. Luckily if there are any in the country Ozzer Wilkes has already eaten them. Of course we’re having rabanadas for breakfast because Dylan always gets what he wants when he’s sick, but that’s all right. He’s got a letter from Mablin and I don’t want to know what it says, the faces he’s making say more than enough.

It was so nice to be able to get away from the house without having to put up with Dylan or Missy being in the way. Ethan at least goes out sometimes. Dylan was under house arrest the better part of the summer and couldn’t wait to get out of the house, but now, if Mablin’s not here, he just sits around and reads or talks to Mamma in the kitchen. I never thought I’d say this, but I really wish he’d go out with Trelawney or Foggington and Baddock or even Bella Malaspina’s stupid brother, just so he wouldn’t be here all the time! He never goes out with Olivia any more now that Ed-weirdo is out of trouble, and Arianwen is off being noble all the time with her boring Caerleoni friends, so the only person he ever sees any more is Colette Saint-Germain and I hate her. Once in a while he goes out to buy more books. Sometimes he goes to Mablin’s house for days at a time, and I wish he’d go now. I asked Mamma when we were going to get the engraved invitations for their wedding and she actually looked at me like it was a serious question. Surely she wouldn’t!

Anyhow, Jessica and I had a lot of fun. We got a lot of planning done (it’s amazing how much planning you can do when Prudence is not around—she really is much better at the execution of a plan than she is at planning things) and hopefully Dylan will not squawk too much as the only reason we are letting him invite his friends is that Mamma said we had to. Jessica is really having a time with that nasty little halfling sister of hers. Fortunately she and Missy have taken to one another, so it looks like we can do the same thing again, as Mamma will not make us take them along. I wasn’t very good today. I never am at Fortescue’s. But luckily ice cream doesn’t stick with me, anyway.

All I wanted was to have a little party to say good-bye to the summer. A little party for Barty and me and our closest friends. People of quality. Prudence. Jessica. Endymion. Celerity. James. Hadrian.

This is turning into a nightmare. Mamma told me that I had to let Dylan invite not just Alastor, but all of his friends. That was bad enough, but I figured it would just be that bunch of whores that let him sleep in their room: Kiryakova, Malaspina and Rosier, and possibly St-Germain and Ducas. Not one of them has slept with fewer than ten people. But Dylan and Alastor are making a list. Dylan’s inviting not just his friends—which is bad enough—but Alastor’s friends. Including half the boys in Pelby College.

At least they didn’t ask Lucy Dolloway.

Well, Mamma and Papai were a little annoyed with me for going out on Saturday without permission, but Barty apparently did an excellent job of explaining things to Papai—although Mamma told me that she doesn’t trust Prue very much any more, especially not after what Mr Bones told Papai about Barbara coming home at three in the morning, and that I’m not to go to her house again unless I’m with Barty and I’m sure that her parents are there. I told her I really didn’t think it was supposed to be a party—because it wasn’t, it was supposed to be a student government meeting—after all, her grandfather died in June under Very Suspicious Circumstances—but she said that this is the way he’d want to be remembered when she and the Fitch brothers started mixing the drinks.

I had to take Ethan and Cordelia shopping today, but that was all right, except when Cordelia insisted on going into Fortescue’s and eating all that ice cream. But Dylan was supposed to come back from Gresham’s party today and I thought he was going to get into trouble all over again, because he was running late, but then he used Mamma’s compact and they had a talk and he came home with MAD MABLIN.

And they were holding hands, and Mablin asked my parents if he could court Dylan, and they said yes, and they like Mad Mablin. Ugh. They don’t care that Dylan is a sodomite or that he’s going to go to Hell—they don’t believe he will—and they like Mad Mablin for his sweetheart. They pointed out to me that it’s always Mad Mablin who used to beat up his roommates, which they seem to think is a good sign. Who knew my parents always wanted him to marry a Cornish thug?

My older brother, Cory, is getting married next June to Samantha Loveday. He’s had a crush on her for years. I was all for it initially, but Sammy’s brother Leander is searching the house. For bandersnatches. With Missy. They came in my room and looked under my bed. I am worried about Cory and Samantha now. I don’t want my nieces and nephews to be as crazy as Leander is. We have Dylan. They have Leander. There is obviously congenital insanity on every side of this equation.

I need to write Barty and/or Prue. Only they can fully understand the utter soul-numbing, mind-crushing embarrassment I am currently feeling.