Page 4 of The Headmistress

“Ah, good morning, dear colleagues. Apologies for my tardiness. Been unavoidably delayed, I was. Where’s Ruth? Ah, there you are, sweetheart, good to see you, missed you yesterday at the bash, but we had fun, didn’t we all, my dears?”

Joanne’s eyes narrowed further, and Sam just bit her lip when they landed on her. She was just as dumbfounded by what was happening. It was surreal. The normally put-together, on-time, serious-to-a-fault when it came to school business Orla Fenway was rambling. Moreover, she was doing so while looking disheveled, carrying a bottle of whiskey, and wearing yesterday’s clothes. And, by the look on her stressed-out and anxious face, she hadn’t even had any fun in or out of them. Something was seriously wrong.

Sam darted a quick look around the room that was now rife with tension. The crowd was collectively holding its breath. Even Ruth was now awake and staring at their uncharacteristically flustered leader with wide, bleary eyes. Only Willoughby’s soft, unbothered snoring could be heard.

After it seemed like the Headmistress had taken forever to doctor up her mug at the buffet that was set up on the side, Orla sat down and took a long slurp of her coffee, spreading a big stack of documents in front of her.

“Right, I guess one can only avoid the news for so long before it catches up with you anyway?” She gave Sam a reassuring smile and turned back to the papers in front of her. “It seems like it was just yesterday that I started at Dragons, and yet it’s been twenty years. Where did the time go? I know, I know, it’s all very cliche, but I can’t help but be a touch nostalgic. The majority of you have been here for years, and life at the school is often hectic and messy, and days fly by so quickly. I just hope you all know how important you are to this institution. From our oldest resident and my Deputy, Ruth, who has been in her position for twenty-five years to Sam, who has held the Math Chair only for three years.” Orla’s smile was so fond, so full of absolute affection, that Sam found her heart clenching. “Though with Sam also having studied at Dragons, she might be the elder statesman here yet.”

Orla laughed, but it sounded hollow to Sam’s ears, so she didn’t join in.

“I mention you all being seasoned Dragons and Dragonettes, my dears, because what I’m about to tell you will not be a major surprise to anyone. This place, once a proud overachiever, has fallen on some rather desperate times. The last time Three Dragons topped any chart of private schools in any discipline or sport was over ten years ago, and I believe that was entirely a fluke. The Academy has been battling for its soul, for its sheer existence, for longer than my tenure here. God knows, I took over in hopes of turning its fortunes around. Three Dragons has stood on these rocks for over two hundred years, the crises, economic downturns, and world cataclysms aside, it has weathered storm after storm, depression, war, pandemics, and more war. You all know I have tried, especially in the last five years, with the reforms proposed by the Board of Trustees and some of the changes to the Board itself …”

Orla took a long look around the table, as all the faculty members now sat straighter, worry etched on their faces. Her red, tired eyes were somber as she lowered them to leaf through some of the papers in front of her.

“These are the resolutions taken by the Board in the past year since Fredrick Tullinger passed away and his son Joel became a trustee. They are either to cut funds, to change and radicalize our curriculum further in the attempt ‘to return to our Christian roots’ and to steer the school farther from its secular present, back towards its religious past. By hook or crook, I either ignored them, fought them, or obfuscated my way around them.”

She smiled cheekily and winked at Sam, who found herself smiling back this time, remembering their late-night sessions and brainstorms on how to circumvent some of the directives in question. They’d done all right, all things considered.

“However, two weeks ago I received a sternly-worded summons to Boston. It seems the trustees, some of them more esteemed than others, have finally taken a longer, more sober look at the situation at Three Dragons. And according to them, it is beyond dire. We spent days in consultations—I guess you could call some of them screaming matches—but in the end, they made some rather drastic decisions regarding the school.”

If the massive Mess Hall was silent before, now one could hear the proverbial pin drop and the mouse scratch in the corner. Though Sam figured that, while the pin was indeed proverbial, the mice were very real. Willoughby’s snoring continued to be an indicator of how he felt about the crisis at hand, in general, and the critters, in particular.

“What sort of decisions, Orla?” Joanne was the first to find her voice.

“I don’t know much. We went over the budget, which they were considering shrinking further. The admittance, the attendance, the faculty. We looked into everything. What could be cut, what could be saved.”

“They’re looking to cut faculty?” Joanne, while the Art Chair, was also responsible for half a dozen photography and other art-related classes. Everyone in the room knew that the arts were usually the first thing to be cut when funding was scarce. One look at the older woman’s drawn face told Sam what she was thinking. All of Sam’s protective instincts kicked into gear. Her fear, her anxiety about her home, her family all bubbled up.

“But they can’t! Dragons already has seven students per staff member, and we aren’t even considering that not all of them are teaching, we are always counting resident faculty in that number!”

“Ah, here’s my fire-breathing Fourth Dragon right when I need her!” Orla laughed at Sam’s outburst and made the same joke she’d been making ever since they’d met years ago, when Sam herself was a quiet nine-year-old wallflower, hiding from her classmates in the basement of Sky Blue house or on Amber Dragon Cliff.

“Before you deafen me with more questions, I really have no clue what their plans are. They will be here tomorrow though, so you may as well ask them yourselves. However, I rather expect that there will be no need for questions at all since they’re coming specifically to present the new changes or whatever it is they’re planning for the school.”

“They’ll be here?” All heads swiveled towards the hearth, where Ruth Trufault’s usually squeaky voice sounded with surprising clarity. “Why, those rascals have avoided the island like the plague for years.”

“I think you mean some of the previous trustees, Ruth. You all know that there has been some turnover on the Board, with Roswell and Tullinger passing away recently.”

“Roswell was a good one, he was. Irreplaceable,” Ruth wheezed, and Sam could see her eyes fill with tears.

“Well, they did replace him, dearest. And no, unlike Tullinger, whose good-for-nothing son took over from the old curmudgeon, Roswell’s heirs declined the position. Much to my chagrin, as Roswell Junior is a great friend of mine.” As Orla’s hands rustled through the pages in front of her, Sam was fairly certain Roswell Junior was one of Orla’s special friends, kind of in the same vein as the man from last night. Which, all things considered, would’ve worked perfectly for the school, to have one of the trustees on their side like that. Except it appeared that Orla’s luck was running out.

“Ah, here it is.” The Headmistress pulled out a sheet from the stack. “Sir Timothy Bowbridge Rodante Nox graciously accepted the position.” Orla cleared her throat and read, “‘I hereby welcome the undertaking and the enormous responsibility of turning around the dire fortunes of the storied New England Three Dragons Academy for Girls, and communicate my commitment to lifting the school from the doldrums it has hit in the past half a century.’” She put the paper down. “His Lordship issued this press release yesterday.”

“Tell me you were not quoting just then.” Jen Rovington, standing tall in her rather amazing leather pants, laughed. Sam agreed with the sentiment, the wording was so pompous and ridiculous. But since Orla just lifted an eyebrow in the PE teacher’s direction, her laughter died down.

“I was quoting.”

“Who talks like that? ‘Doldrums? Dire fortune?’ I mean, who in the world?” Not willing to give up without at least a final dig, Rovington pressed on.

“Nox? Lord Timothy Nox of the New York Noxes? They’re some kind of British nobility, I think his father is an Earl or something or other, I guess hence his title.” Joanne reached across Orla to look at the press release herself.

“Any relation to Magdalene Nox?” David Uttley’s voice rang clear among the cacophony of others, and suddenly not even the mouse in the corner could be heard anymore.

They all knew of Magdalene Nox. Most people in their line of work knew her by name. Others knew her by reputation. Precious few were blessed with having never heard of her at all. The venerable and esteemed-in-some-circles—and much accursed in others—Magdalene Nox had a whole system of reforming boarding schools named for her. TheNox Method, which Sam thought was just a lazy way of naming things. It really should have been theEfficient, Effective and Deadly Method. Sam supposed people who named things just didn’t have her imagination.

With Sam’s major in Math and her Ph.D. in Educational Theory, she’d had the dubious pleasure of studying the Nox Method. Squeeze the institution until it bleeds dry, destroy the foundation, dismantle everything the school lives and breathes for, and leave a cookie-cutter, a spit-and-polish, lifeless monstrosity in its wake. Sam had to admit she didn’t remember much about the Education Management curriculum since she knew she wasn’t terribly interested in running an institution. But her professor was a particular opponent of the Nox Method, and so Sam remembered the hatred with which he had taught the class.

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