The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict Read online

  Nicholas saluted, turned on his heel, and with a private roll of his eyes (he had only been about to say “Yes, sir”), he strode from the office and headed for the kitchen. Just as he was about to push through the swinging doors, though, he heard what sounded like a scuffle on the other side. A banging, a whimper, and then the unmistakable sound of Moray’s sneering voice, followed by snorts and chuckles.

  Nicholas glanced about the passage. The door to the butler’s pantry was ajar, and he quickly ducked through it. (Just in time, too, for even as he eased the door closed behind him, he heard the Spiders burst out of the kitchen and hurry away down the passage.) He could not easily duck out again, though. To his dismay, he had unwittingly barged in upon a crew of boys and girls sweeping and dusting the cavernous pantry—a crew being supervised by Miss Candace, whose face positively lit up at the sight of him.

  “Nicholas!” she exclaimed. All the children stopped working to stare.

  Miss Candace teetered over to him, laying her hands on many a child’s shoulder as she walked (whether from affection or a need for balance, it was impossible to say). She had a bland, flat-looking face with a mottled complexion, and she wore a great quantity of sweet perfume. Patting Nicholas hard on top of the head—he could both feel and hear the painful rapping of her rings against his skull—she bent over him and said, “We haven’t properly met! I’m Miss Candace! Now let me have a look at you. I’m a nurse, you know, so you needn’t be frightened.”

  On the contrary, Nicholas was very frightened indeed, for Miss Candace, forcibly turning his head to the side, had thrust her face so close to his that her nose pressed into his cheekbone. Her almond-shaped, searching blue eyes loomed in his peripheral vision as she spread his left eyelids uncomfortably wide with her fingers. Nicholas felt his eyeball drying out. Then Miss Candace wrenched his head the other way to examine his other eye. At length she made a worried, clucking sound.

  “I believe you may need drops,” she murmured, straightening, and Nicholas heard the other children suck in their breath. “How is your appetite? Are you eating well?”

  “Oh, very well!” Nicholas replied hastily, and with a little jump he moved out of her reach. “Thank you so much, Miss Candace! I actually feel terrific! And it really is swell to meet you, but I have to run and help Mr. Griese in the kitchen right away—Mr. Collum said so!” And he dashed out the door again before she could call him back.

  In the kitchen, Nicholas found that Mr. Griese had also just arrived and was in the process of removing young Buford from a trash can. The poor boy was covered in potato peels and bits of wilted lettuce, but his tearstained face bore a stubborn expression, and no matter how much the cook pressed him to reveal who had stuffed him into the trash can, Buford stuck to his claim that he had fallen in by accident. He would not look at Nicholas.

  “Well, you can’t help me like this,” Mr. Griese said in disgust. “You’ll need to go change and wash up. And you,” he said, turning to Nicholas, “put on an apron. We’re going to have to work double-quick now, so pay attention. I was counting on Buford to help me until you learned the ropes.”

  Nicholas hurriedly donned an apron.

  “You might have warned me they were going to do that,” Buford whispered resentfully to Nicholas as he left. “You and your crystal ball.” He stuck his tongue out and pushed through the swinging doors before Nicholas could reply.

  Nicholas set to work. He was quite comfortable in the kitchen, actually—he must have peeled a thousand potatoes in his days at Littleview, to say nothing of the vegetables he’d chopped and the bread dough he’d rolled—and he threw himself into his tasks with gusto. He performed so skillfully, in fact, that Mr. Griese soon stopped prompting him, and they worked together in silence. Nicholas enjoyed figuring out the cook’s system of organization and manner of doing things. Through observation and guesswork, he quickly learned where all the implements were stored, and what sort of menu was planned, and how Mr. Griese was going about preparing it. In no time he was handing pepper to Mr. Griese just before he asked for it, and cubing the potatoes even though Mr. Griese hadn’t said he wanted them cubed. (He did want them cubed, though, and he grunted in surprised approval when he saw Nicholas doing it.)

  When Buford returned, scrubbed and sullen, Mr. Griese said gruffly, “You take the pitchers and bread baskets out to the tables. We’ve got it covered in here.”

  Indeed, they had it so well covered that Nicholas found time to peruse the kitchen-duty schedule, tacked to the inside of a cabinet door. It was divided up by names and age-groups, for when the five-year-olds and six-year-olds were on duty, they had to be accompanied by an older child. Nicholas detected this pattern without thinking about it, just as he memorized all the children’s names without trying. His real goal was to make note of when the Spiders were scheduled to be on duty. He wanted to be extra careful on those days, as it was easy to imagine them putting bugs in his hash, or soap on his spoon, if they got the opportunity.

  When everything was ready, all the orphanage children began filing in through one set of swinging doors to have their plates filled, then filing out through the other doors into the dining hall. Nicholas had to help Mr. Griese ladle the food onto the plates, and he was dreading the appearance of the Spiders. But then the children filed through so rapidly, and he was pressed so hard to keep up, that he could scarcely make eye contact with anyone. It was simply plate after plate after plate, a constant stream of plates. He did recognize the Spiders’ oversized hands (Moray’s right hand had swollen knuckles); and when he saw John’s hands (he could not say how he recognized them), he quickly looked up, but John was already moving on. That was all right—he could talk with John when he’d finished in the kitchen.

  The doors into the dining hall were constantly swinging open and closed, and the laughter and conversation from the tables was loud one moment and muffled the next. The throbbing mob, Nicholas thought. Most of the children had been served now; he would soon be joining that mob in the dining hall. A whole roomful of strangers and already a few enemies. Nicholas felt another pang of nervousness, which annoyed him, but there was no help for it. He had changed orphanages often enough to know that, for a while at least, he would keep getting nervous in these situations. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but exist and persist.

  When the last child went out into the dining hall, Nicholas noticed that the tables out there had fallen completely silent. He heard a familiar voice—Moray’s again—beginning to speak in a raised, forceful tone, as if he were making an announcement. Then the doors swung closed, muffling the words so that Nicholas couldn’t make them out. What was that about? Were the Spiders making all the others hand over their corn bread? And where was Mrs. Brindle? According to the schedule, she was supposed to be the lunchtime chaperone today.

  Just then, as if Nicholas had conjured her with his thoughts, Mrs. Brindle entered the kitchen smelling strongly of perfume. Mr. Griese flushed a slightly deeper red than he already was. “Oh!” he said, glancing at Mrs. Brindle’s shoes, then at the spoon in his hand, and then at the ceiling. “Are you on lunch duty today, Mrs. Brindle?”

  The housekeeper seemed uncertain whether to smile or frown. Her face settled into a fixed expression of unease. “Why, yes, Mr. Griese. Or have I misread the schedule?”

  “No, no!” Mr. Griese protested. “I’m sure you haven’t! I only—” He coughed. “Forgive me, I’m a bit disoriented. New help today, you know.” He gestured vaguely at Nicholas, who took this as a cue to speak.

  “May I be excused to eat lunch, sir?” he asked, already filling his own plate.

  “By all means, young—Nicholas, is it? By all means, do,” Mr. Griese said, nervously wiping his hands on his apron.

  Nicholas backed out the swinging door, leaving the two flustered grownups alone with their confusion.

  The instant he entered the dining hall, he knew something was wrong. A perfect silence hung in the room. Two long tables of faces stared at him. W
hat was going on? He spotted John in the back of the room, sitting in the same place as this morning, and Nicholas was about to make a beeline for the chair across from him when he realized, with a terrible plummeting in his belly, that there were no empty chairs anywhere near John. In fact, there were no empty chairs anywhere except at the very front of the leftmost table. Nicholas saw at once that this had been planned. The seating had been arranged so that the only place for him to sit was with the five-year-olds and six-year-olds, all of whom were staring up at him with huge, frightened eyes.

  Nicholas cast another quick glance toward John—he was looking back at Nicholas with a somber, unreadable expression—and then looked for the Spiders. They were sitting, as before, near the middle of the leftmost table, all three sneering at him with enormous satisfaction.

  They didn’t have to touch him to torture him, after all.

  Nicholas felt his face burning; his heart was skipping double-time. He knew he was dangerously close to becoming too upset. He took a slow, deep breath and drew himself up. In the most superior tone he could manage, he said, “You’re all being so quiet! I hope it isn’t on my account! I assure you, I don’t require silence in my presence. Please, everyone, feel free to continue eating—as you were, as you were.” He grinned, made a little bow, and dropped into the nearest chair just as Mrs. Brindle remembered her duties and came out through the swinging doors.

  The sounds of conversation started up again, with murmurs and snickers up and down both tables. Nicholas winked at the younger children sitting by him. The two seated nearest him were watching him with fearful eyes, their mouths hanging open to reveal the half-chewed contents. They looked as though they thought themselves the two unluckiest children in the world.

  “Thanks for saving my seat!” Nicholas said, startling their mouths closed. He leaned toward them and whispered, “You don’t have to be afraid of me, you know.”

  One of the two children, a red-haired girl with pigtails, cut her eyes down the table and back to Nicholas. “Oh, but it isn’t you we’re afraid of!” she whispered. Then she clapped her hands over her mouth and stared at her plate in distress.

  “I’m very glad to hear it,” Nicholas said. “I suppose you’re afraid of the Spiders, is that it? Because of the announcement Moray made before I came into the room? I don’t blame you. Those Spiders can be very scary if you don’t know how to handle them.”

  The children were looking at one another, clearly shocked that Nicholas knew about the announcement. Farther down, a few children who had overheard him whispered to their neighbors, who then whispered to their other neighbors, and so on down the table. But the children next to Nicholas were speechless.

  “Don’t worry,” Nicholas said. “I understand you can’t speak to me without getting into trouble with Moray. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends. We’ll just be the kind of friends who don’t speak to each other.” He waited until this strange pronouncement got whispered down the table, then said, “What do you say to that, Caroline?”

  A skinny girl sitting two chairs down from him nearly dropped her spoon. She goggled her eyes at Nicholas as the other children looked back and forth between her and Nicholas in astonishment. So that’s Caroline, Nicholas thought, and looking straight at the girl, he said, “Don’t answer, Caroline! I was only joking. Of course you can’t say anything. Isn’t that right, Bobby?”

  This time it was a moon-eyed boy whose mouth fell open, and looking directly at him, Nicholas said, “You realize I’m just teasing you, don’t you, Bobby? I know that none of you can answer me.”

  In this way, and by process of elimination, Nicholas had soon identified every one of the younger children by name. The whispers spread like wildfire throughout the dining hall. “Settle down,” he said to his neighbors, who were growing agitated and trying to speak to each other without appearing to speak to Nicholas. At his word, they instantly fell silent.

  “I can answer your question,” Nicholas said. “Oh yes, I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering how I knew your names. It’s simple. I can see things. Ask Buford. Ask the Spiders. They’ll tell you. It’s part of my special condition.”

  This announcement was repeated in whispers down the table, until it reached the Spiders, who looked angry (Nicholas noticed with a sidelong glance) but also gratifyingly disconcerted.

  As the report of Nicholas Benedict’s gift made its way to every set of ears, the gifted boy in question dug in to his food, chewing with obvious relish, as if he’d never had a better meal in his life.

  The truth was that it was one of his worst. Nicholas had never felt so lonely. But nobody in this wretched orphanage was going to know that. Not if he could help it. And as soon as he possibly could, he would be leaving them all behind forever.

  Starting tonight.

  After lunch, Nicholas washed the pots and pans—and the seemingly endless dishes—as if his life depended on finishing. Free time had already begun for the other children (with the exception of Buford, who was likewise doomed to kitchen work), and Nicholas was almost in agony as the seconds slipped away. He wanted to go to the library and read a book. Several books, in fact, if time allowed—and perhaps it would, for free time after lunch lasted a whole two hours, and he was a blazingly fast reader. Right now nothing sounded better to him than forgetting his miseries and burying himself in words.

  And so Nicholas scrubbed like a fiend. He washed so fast that Buford, drying, struggled to keep up and complained to Mr. Griese. (No doubt he still resented Nicholas for having made him deliver that message.) But his complaints only got him scolded, and he went back to flailing with his towel, glaring all the while.

  When at last the sparkling dishes were dried, stacked, and put away, Nicholas flew from the kitchen like a bird from its cage. He still had over an hour of free time left! But just as he was darting across the entranceway, Mr. Collum appeared in his office doorway and called out to him.

  Nicholas cringed. He looked at Mr. Collum with a feeling of doom.

  Mr. Collum beckoned him over. “It’s time for you to receive your haircut, Nicholas. No, do not argue,” he warned when he saw Nicholas’s look of distress. “Every boy receives a crew cut on his first day. Now run over to the farm and introduce yourself to Mr. Furrow. He’ll cut your hair and explain the basic larder duties to you.”

  Nicholas glanced achingly toward the library door. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled, and turned and hurried back the way he had come. Perhaps it wouldn’t take long at the farm. He might yet have a few minutes to read.

  He took the shortcut John had shown him, cutting through the butler’s pantry, the little anteroom beyond it, and out the back door into a hot and hazy afternoon. His eyes swept the park, alert to any dangers. (He also half hoped that John would change his mind and approach him, wanting to be friends again. But John was nowhere to be seen.) Most of the boys were reluctantly involved in a game of Simon Says, led by Iggy, who was making them roll around on the ground and bark like dogs as Moray and Breaker looked on and snickered. The few boys who had managed to escape this miserable game were playing marbles in a patch of hardpacked dirt where flowers once had grown. Perhaps, Nicholas thought, they had won the Spiders’ favor by giving over their lunches. The girls, meanwhile, had all sought shady places near the gazebo to doze. Standing on duty inside the gazebo was Miss Candace, carefully watching the boys to ensure no one was injured. She seemed to be under the impression that they were all having fun.

  Nicholas hurried off toward the farm.

  The short path through the hickory trees was pleasantly serene, its shade offering some relief from the glare and the heat, and at the end of it lay an equally serene little farm: a modest farmhouse, a well-built old barn, a few acres of food crops (with appealingly tidy rows of beans, corn, potatoes, lettuces, squashes, and other vegetables), and an expanse of deep green pasture. Shading his eyes, Nicholas spotted a group of cows grazing at the foot of some wooded hills to the west. There was not a per
son in sight. A heavy, acrid scent of cigar smoke hung in the air, however, and Nicholas (a very keen smeller) followed its invisible trail into the barn.

  Sure enough, inside the barn he found Mr. Furrow tending to some sheep and goats in a pen. Chickens strutted about, wandering in and out of their coop and pecking in the dirt and straw. They were all taking care not to draw too near a huge black mule that stood dozing in the back. It was as if the mule were surrounded by invisible chicken wire. Nicholas felt instinctively wary of the animal.

  Mr. Furrow noticed Nicholas and waved him over. He was a wiry, aged man with few teeth and a deep reddish tan, his bristly white hair clipped as short as Nicholas’s hair was about to be. His cigar had been extinguished, but the stump of it protruded from his lips like a swollen black tongue.

  “You the new boy?” Mr. Furrow asked. “The sleeper? Come for your haircut?” Rubbing his gray-stubbled chin in a considering manner, he studied Nicholas’s hair as if he intended to take the utmost care with it, to shape it according to the latest fashion. He had Nicholas turn this way and that. Then, with a grunt and a nod, he reached into a bin and took out a pair of sheep shears.

  Nicholas drew back in alarm, but Mr. Furrow had already caught him by the wrist.

  “Won’t hurt much,” Mr. Furrow said, as if this would be reassuring.

  The farmer was telling the truth. The shearing didn’t hurt much. But it did hurt, and Nicholas thought it would go on forever. Eventually, however, he found himself standing in a circle of his own hair, thinking ruefully, There’s my fair hair, so I daresay I’m bare. And Mr. Furrow pulled back and stood with his arms akimbo, surveying his work with evident satisfaction.

  “Um, thank you, Mr. Furrow,” Nicholas said without conviction. He rubbed a hand over his bristly head, suddenly conscious of a draft in the barn that he had not noticed before. He could feel it on his scalp.

  Mr. Furrow tossed his cigar stub into a pail of water, where a dozen other stubs floated like a tiny armada. “Now, here’s the rules, son. When you’re on larder duty, you come to my house first thing in the morning. I check the barn before you go in, make sure Rabbit’s finished his carrot, and then you can come in for your chores. Got that?”