Andromache Between Worlds, page 1
Contents
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Praise
Also by Gabriel Bergmoser
Copyright
Epigraph
Andromache
(Ancient Greece)
say: an-drom-a-key
NOUN
The wife of Prince Hector in the story of the Trojan War.
A deadly Amazonian warrior referred to as the ‘Battler of Men’.
A victim sacrificed to the Minotaur in the myth of Theseus.
A really annoying name that parents should think twice about before giving their child.
Courage.
Chapter One
It was past midnight when I first heard the knocking. I’d been trying to get to sleep for a couple of hours and my thoughts had just started to get foggy when it came from outside my door.
My eyes snapped open. A rat in the walls, maybe? I almost laughed at that. The principal would probably lock down the whole school if she thought there was a rat. But no, there it was again, like knuckles on wood – three clear strikes. It wasn’t coming from the door to this dormitory, or from any of the other beds. I guessed it was a little further down the hall. Probably just someone sneaking into another dorm. I rolled over and closed my eyes.
It came again, just two knocks this time, followed by another long pause.
Three more knocks.
I sat up, listening. I counted in my head, then—
Three knocks. Another pause. Two knocks. Pause. Three knocks.
Either somebody wasn’t opening the door, or . . .
I went to slide out of bed. Before my feet touched the floor, I hesitated, remembering what my mother had said.
No trouble this time, Andromache.
Then the principal’s words on my first day here.
We’re giving this a chance because of who you are, but a high-profile student means high-profile attention if anything goes wrong. Understood?
She’d said the word ‘anything’ in a way that sounded a lot like ‘Andromache’.
The knocking was continuing, with the same strange rhythm. I bit my lip, slid back under the covers and tried to fall asleep. The knocking didn’t stop.
I got up early, as usual, slipping out of the dorm before the others woke up.
As usual, there was only one other person in the cavernous, shadowy breakfast hall. Rylee sat eating a bowl of cereal, furiously scribbling something in a notebook, her untamed mess of black hair hanging in her face. I joined her with my own breakfast but didn’t say anything. With Rylee, you never knew if saying anything was a good idea.
She muttered something, drew a line through whatever she was writing, then peered up at me through her cracked, askew glasses and said, ‘Stop that.’
I blinked at her, spoon halfway to my mouth.
She nodded at my hand. Without realising it, I’d been tapping the rhythm of the knocks.
I stopped. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Do I have a choice?’ Rylee had a thick Irish accent. She was only fourteen, like me, but she sounded older.
‘Well, yeah. That’s why I asked.’
‘Then you’ve already asked me something without permission.’
That’s another thing about Rylee. You could never quite tell if she was joking. Still, I took the risk.
‘If you heard this,’ I tapped out the knocks, ‘again and again down the hall all night, what would you assume?’
‘That somebody was starting the world’s most boring percussion band.’
‘But really, though.’
‘I wouldn’t assume anything,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t care. People can knock if they want to.’
‘In the middle of the night? In this exact rhythm?’ I tapped it out again.
Rylee paused, frowning a little. ‘Well, I might be annoyed, sure.’
‘Not curious?’
‘No.’ She went back to her writing.
I didn’t push it. I finished my breakfast and headed back upstairs.
There were no sounds of movement when I arrived in the common room. I was moving towards the dorm to grab my uniform when something caught my attention. Or rather, didn’t. I looked around the common room. The walls were covered in a mix of old school photos and paintings. The couches were in their usual spots around the embers of last night’s fire. The bookshelves looked untouched, as did the tables.
Except.
In one corner of the room was an old stone plinth. I never paid it that much attention, except for taking note on the first day – a bust of a scowling woman with a monobrow sat on it. I’d figured she was somebody important to the school and hadn’t thought about it again.
Until now. Because on this morning, the sculpture was gone.
It didn’t matter, I told myself as I got ready for school. Who cared about an ugly old statue? It had probably been removed for cleaning or polishing or something. There was no reason to think it had anything to do with the knocking. In fact, there was no reason to think the knocking was anything important at all.
No trouble this time, Andromache.
Alone in the bathroom, I faced the mirror. I certainly didn’t look like a troublemaker. I wore my uniform perfectly: no holes in my stockings, skirt straight, tie tight enough to make me uncomfortable. My shoulder-length brown hair was neat. Nothing about me stood out. But it often seemed like the more effort I put into ensuring nobody noticed me, the more people did.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped out into the hall.
I was used to it by now, of course. The way conversations died when I walked past. The way eyes followed me everywhere. I told myself that was better than my first days here. People bombarding me with questions and asking for autographs. They’d stopped after I asked them exactly why they wanted my autograph.
‘Well, I mean . . .’ The response was usually the same, looking at me like I was an idiot. ‘You’re . . . you know.’
I’d watch them expectantly until they realised there was no non-awkward way to tell me who I was. I had to repeat that interaction a few hundred times until everyone got the hint. Not that it stopped the stares or the whispers.
At least the knocking gave me something else to think about. Heading into history class that morning, I tapped out the rhythm, wondering what it could mean. And if I would hear it again tonight.
A loud, dramatic gasp. I looked up. Camilla had flown to her feet, quivering hand over her mouth, wide blue eyes locked on me.
My shoulders slumped. I made for the back of the room, where Rylee sat alone fiddling with something.
‘There she is,’ Camilla whispered loudly. ‘Could it really be her?’
I wasn’t convinced this routine had ever been funny, but Camilla clearly disagreed. Then again, it wasn’t like Camilla and I had ever agreed on anything.
My first day at Alabaster’s Academy for Ladies, I’d been sitting in the back row of the ornate old auditorium, with all its pillars and arches, trying to sink as low as I could, while every head repeatedly swivelled back to look at me. Which might have been fine if not for the fact that Camilla Calder, Year Level Captain and very proud of it, had been trying to give a start-of-term speech. Her big, fake smile had slipped slowly away as she clocked how many eyes were not on her, and where those eyes were instead.
Later, I’d been reading in a shadowed corner of the yard when Camilla had approached me, a giggling gang behind her.
‘Hi!’ she’d trilled. ‘It’s Andromache, right?’
She’d pronounced my name ‘Andro-match’.
Doing my best to smile back, I’d corrected her. ‘Yeah, except it’s pronounced, um, An-drom-a-key. Andromache.’
‘Sorry, how’s it pronounced?’ she’d asked.
I’d repeated it.
‘Come again?’
I’d tried a little slower and louder.
‘Andro . . . sorry, you’ve lost me. Once more?’
Cheeks burning and feeling very resentful that my parents hadn’t just given me a normal name, I’d repeated it.
‘Whoa, okay, relax,’ Camilla had said. ‘No big deal. So, Andromache Peters, huh? Wow. It must be amazing.’
Still aware of how horribly flushed I was, I’d asked, ‘What must be?’
‘Being you.’ She’d gestured up and down. ‘Andromache Peters. Famous without ever having to do anything.’
I’d said nothing.
Camilla had winked. ‘See you round, Andro-match.’
At least she had never asked for an autograph.
Now, as Camilla made her usual big show of stunned awe at me crossing the classroom, I kept my mouth shut and sank into my seat next to Rylee, who was playing with a mousetrap.
‘It could be a code,’ Rylee said.
‘Huh?’
‘Your knocking sound. Like, a Morse thing.’
‘What kind of—’
I was interrupted by Rylee’s mousetrap snapping shut with a far-too-loud bang that made half the class jump and sent the still-standing Camilla backwards over her table.
There was a stunned silence, followed a moment later by Rylee’s thrilled cackle.
‘What was that?’ I hissed.
‘Gunpowder!’ Rylee was bouncing up and down in her seat. ‘I wanted to see what would happen if I stuck some in a mousetrap.’
‘Where did you get—’
‘What is wrong with you!’ Camilla flew to her feet, glaring at Rylee.
‘You’re right, you’re right,’ Rylee said. ‘Next time, I’ll put it in your bed.’
Camilla raised an accusing finger as the door flew open and Mrs Wimpole, short, stocky and with a pile of books under her arm, entered.
‘Camilla, sit down,’ she snapped. ‘What’s with you lot? History shouldn’t have anyone this alert.’
‘Mrs Wimpole, Rylee—’
‘Good Lord, Camilla, if it doesn’t have anything to do with Ancient Egypt, then I don’t care.’
I grinned. The Camilla of it all aside, history was easily my favourite subject. Largely because of Mrs Wimpole.
‘Alright, then,’ she said, as Camilla, scowling, sat. ‘Where were we? Pharaohs. Andromache, where did a Pharaoh’s power come from?’
‘The belief that they were gods,’ I said. ‘That they were more than human, somehow above their subjects.’
‘And their deaths, then, were seen as . . . ?’
‘Them going back home.’
‘Even though they were rotting in the ground with the best of us,’ Mrs Wimpole said. ‘Turns out, no amount of wealth and power makes any difference in the end. Which is oddly comforting when you think about it.’
Based on the confused and disturbed looks the other girls were giving each other, not everyone was on the same page there.
‘Do you know Morse code?’ I whispered to Rylee.
‘Obviously.’
I raised an eyebrow.
‘But if your knocking was Morse code,’ she said, ‘it would be saying S-I-S. Which makes no sense.’
‘Unless that itself is a code.’
‘Or somebody is getting S-O-S wrong.’
I leaned back, considering that. Without meaning to, I was tapping out the beat on the desk again.
At lunchtime, I snuck into the library with a chattering clump of other students before hurrying towards the back corner. I scanned the shelves, heading deeper into the thick silence, until I found a section marked ‘codes’. I was running my finger along the spines of books, looking for a title that might seem helpful, when a voice made me jump.
‘My gosh, here you are!’
Ms Astley was tall and thin, half-obscured by the pile of books she was carrying.
‘Um, here I am.’
‘Would you do me a favour? I’ve been hoping to ask for a while, but . . . I mean, I know you didn’t write them, but your mother won’t sign books anymore, and your father, well, you know.’
It was then that I recognised the books in her arms.
‘It would mean so much to the library,’ she pushed on. ‘I’ve got a pen, so . . .’
I wondered if she’d considered for one second how I felt about having these books shoved in my face. Or whether anyone should ever sign a book they didn’t write. But then, I wasn’t surprised. People got stupid when it came to my parents.
She put the books down in front of me. I tried to think of an excuse, but the pen was already in my hand. I kneeled, reached out to open the first book, then hesitated.
Adventures in Modern Journalism.
Under the title was the most famous picture of my parents. It was an old photo; both were in their twenties. My mother, tall and blonde, sat on a small gyrocopter, a pair of goggles high on her forehead, arms crossed and wearing a leather jacket. Grinning, confident, cool.
But it was the picture of my father that hit harder. His smile was more reserved, his clothes less showy. Hands in his trouser pockets, sleeves rolled up, wearing a vest and tie. He had large glasses. His hair was brown and messy, like mine had been before this school. He looked straight down the camera. Straight at me. Something caught in my throat. My hand shook.
‘You must be so proud,’ Ms Astley said. ‘I bet you want to be just like them when you grow up.’
I opened the book and signed it.
*
Just after midnight, the knocking came again.
I’d told myself to go to sleep. I’d told myself to forget about it. But I’d lain there wide awake regardless and there it was again. Three. Pause. Two. Pause. Three. Repeat.
I rolled over, covering my head with a pillow. It didn’t mean anything. I was being stupid.
I bet you want to be just like them.
How many times had people said that to me? And how many times had I wanted to yell back at them, Why would anyone want that?
The knocks came again.
I whispered to nothing and no-one to make them stop. I was not my parents. I would be happy to go my entire life with nobody ever knowing my name. I didn’t have to go snooping around in the middle of the night because somebody was knocking in a strange way.
Or somebody is getting SOS wrong.
I removed the pillow. The knocking continued.
My hands opened and closed. I gritted my teeth.
Slipping out of bed, I stood and scanned the room. Everyone was asleep. At the door, I took the handle and listened, hoping it had stopped.
It hadn’t.
As quietly as I could, I opened the door and stepped out into the dark, empty hall. I waited. The knocking came again, from down the stairs. The common room. I followed it.
Nothing looked out of place down there, but it was hard to tell in the dark. The bust was still missing. At the bottom of the stairs, I paused.
The knocks came from outside.
As I crossed the room, something caught my attention. A slight outline on the wall, where a painting had been just that morning.
First a bust, now a painting. Both times the knocking.
I hurried to the common-room door and opened it, stepping out into the chilly, empty halls of the school. I was ready to shrink back if I heard footsteps or caught a glimpse of a torch. Nobody was allowed to wander the corridors at night. But clearly, somebody was.
The knocking again, from down the hall.
I moved fast and light. And then, ahead of me, I saw something in the middle of the stone floor.
The bust.
I crept forward. It lay on its side. There was no sign of anyone. The knocking had stopped.
Picking up the bust, I stood still, listening. And as I did, I saw something else. A door just ahead, slightly open, a light glowing from inside.
I moved towards it. No voices. No knocking. I paused outside the door. The crack was too narrow to see through.
I opened the door.
It was a maintenance cupboard, lit by a single dangling lightbulb. But piled on the floor . . .
Paintings. Statues. Golden candleholders. Little embossed boxes. All from around the school. All valuable. All gathered here.
Why?
Still carrying the bust, I crouched.
And suddenly heard heavy footsteps from behind me. Standing, I spun around, only for strong torchlight to glare in my face as a pack of grinning maintenance men came to a halt.
‘Well, well, well,’ the lead one said. ‘I reckon we’ve found our thief.’
Chapter Two
‘So, in the interests of being entirely clear, let’s go over this again.’ The principal leaned back in her large leather chair, considering me over her half-moon glasses. ‘You heard a unique knocking sound the other night, a sound nobody else appears to have heard, then decided it was a code, followed it, and just happened to stumble upon the stolen bust of our school’s founder along with various other valuables taken since your arrival, all hidden in a maintenance cupboard that has not been used in years. Is that about right?’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘when you put it like that, it sounds—’
‘Implausible?’
‘A bit strange, yes. But I promise you, I didn’t steal anything.’
Silence hung over the office. Silence that sounded a lot like disbelief.
‘Andromache,’ the principal began.
