The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict Read online

  “You slippery devil!” Mrs. Brindle snarled. (Over the years she had come to think of this traveling pain as an impish spirit, like a poltergeist that haunted muscles and bones rather than cupboards and closets.) “Can you not sit still for one morning? Why not move along to someone else entirely? A larger body! Wouldn’t that be nice? You’d have more room to work your mischief, you wicked little beast!” And she said more things along this line, which had long been her habit, as she unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  Nicholas, however, being unfamiliar with Mrs. Brindle’s angry speeches, had retreated to the far side of the pitch-black room and was in a fair state of alarm. He’d been fully dressed for hours, just in case, but had been awake for only a minute. It had been a long night, and what little sleep he had gotten had been haunted, as it so frequently was, by hideous nightmares, terrible visions so powerful and vivid they seemed not just real but more than real, the way things often do when a person is frightened. Sometimes, in fact, they were even worse than nightmares—sometimes they were hallucinations. And the worst of these, which had visited Nicholas many a night, was a horrifying female creature who threatened to smother him.

  “Why, whatever is the matter with you?” Mrs. Brindle demanded when she saw Nicholas cowering in the corner. She turned up the flame in her lamp and held it forward, the better to see him.

  The increased light made Mrs. Brindle easier to see as well, and Nicholas quickly regained his composure. She was not the awful creature from his hallucination but a stooped woman with wiry gray hair and a runny eye. Through the door she had sounded furious, but in person she seemed merely exasperated. And at any rate, Nicholas could tell now that he was truly awake. It was morning. The horrors had passed.

  “Nothing at all is the matter, ma’am!” Nicholas exclaimed, and he offered Mrs. Brindle a sweeping bow. “I was only startled by your sudden entrance. Nicholas Benedict, ma’am. Very pleased to meet you.”

  “What?” said Mrs. Brindle, rubbing her eye. “How old are you? I was told you were nine.”

  “Indeed I am, ma’am!” Nicholas said. “I apologize if I’m speaking too quickly. I suppose I’m excited.”

  Mrs. Brindle stared at him. “Well, you shall have to do your best to hold it in. I’m too weary this morning. Run along to the bathroom now and wash up. I’m to show you around before breakfast.”

  Nicholas grabbed a few things from beneath his cot and hurried into the passage, which was gloomy but navigable in the gray light filtering through the window. It was just after dawn. He made his way to the bathroom, took the lightbulb from under his shirt, and screwed it back into the lamp. Then he braced himself and set to work scrubbing his hands in the sink.

  The harsh soap and cold water stung Nicholas’s raw fingertips like nettles. He had no choice but to scrub them, though, for he had worked feverishly last night to scrape out all the damp mortar in his wall, and some of it had dried on his fingers. That was all right. He might be wincing and grimacing now, but the success of his project made up for it. The knowledge that he could remove the stones from his “window” if he pleased—that he could breathe fresh air and look up at the stars—was worth far more to Nicholas than a few skinned knuckles and a few lost hours of sleep. He hadn’t wanted to sleep, anyway. He never did.

  Once his hands were clean and he had changed out of his pajamas, Nicholas dampened his comb and parted his hair, perhaps for the last time. All the other boys had been given crew cuts, and he presumed the same fate lay in store for him. He took a moment to gaze into the mirror. “Well, Nicholas, it’s going to be another tricky morning,” he said to his reflection. “Best be on your toes.” He stood on his tiptoes and offered himself an encouraging smile.

  Turning to the lamp, Nicholas unscrewed the good lightbulb and replaced it with a dead one he had found among the boxes in his room. If the Spiders were going to wait for him here, they might as well do so in darkness. Later Nicholas would report the dead lightbulb to Mr. Collum and request a new one. Then he could keep the extra bulb hidden away, to use whenever he wished.

  This dead lightbulb was one of several useful items Nicholas had found in his room. His other nighttime project had been to go through all the boxes and make a mental list of their contents. (He had no need of writing the list down, for he had a prodigious memory—perhaps even a perfect one. As far as he knew, anyway, he’d never forgotten a thing.) Most of the boxes contained threadbare, moth-eaten bedsheets and other linens, but there was also a broken lantern, a broken alarm clock, a half-empty matchbox, a bundle of flour sacks, and a pair of dilapidated old work boots. With the exception of the matchbox, which was a prize find by any standard, all these things might have seemed useless to someone else. But Nicholas could find a purpose for almost anything, including the boxes themselves (that scraped-out mortar needed to be hidden somewhere, after all), and he had been pleased with his discoveries.

  When Nicholas returned to his room, he found Mrs. Brindle holding up her lamp and peering at the discolored patch of gray wall over his cot. “Used to be a window here,” she said as he put his things away. “Mr. Pileus filled it in yesterday.” She gave a little cluck of disapproval. “But it looks cockeyed, somehow. Saggy. Not his best work, I should say. I suppose he felt rushed. Did you feel a draft at all?”

  “Not a bit,” Nicholas said. “I couldn’t have been more comfortable.”

  Mrs. Brindle shrugged. “Then I suppose it’s well enough. Oh!” she cried suddenly. “You beast! You wicked, wicked beast! It’s the wrist now, is it?” She sucked in her breath and changed the lamp to the other hand.

  “Is anything the matter, ma’am?” asked Nicholas.

  “What do you think?” said Mrs. Brindle, shuffling slowly from the room. “Please don’t plague me with your questions. I shall tell you all you need to know. Now come along, I have to lock this door.”

  “Certainly,” said Nicholas, darting into the passage ahead of her. “I can’t wait to look around. I haven’t even been downstairs yet!”

  Mrs. Brindle gave him a weary look. “You needn’t plague me with your comments, either.”

  “Oh, of course, of course,” Nicholas said. “I shall do my best not to plague you by any means.” And he pretended to lock his mouth with an invisible key.

  Mrs. Brindle sighed. Then she locked his door (wincing and muttering as she did so), dropped her key ring into the pocket of her work apron, and instructed Nicholas to keep beside her as she “took him down to where it’s civilized” and told him “what’s what and what isn’t.”

  Nicholas obliged, walking at a fraction of his normal pace so as not to leave Mrs. Brindle far behind, and was rewarded with a most informative tour. Indeed, because the old housekeeper moved so slowly and talked so incessantly, Nicholas learned quite a lot before they had even made it downstairs. Some things he learned directly, from her occasional plain statements; others he learned by filling in the large gaps in her rambling speech. Mrs. Brindle was clearly interested more in recounting her many burdensome tasks and duties than in telling Nicholas about the history of the Manor, or about any of its practices that did not pertain to cleaning. But there was so much to clean in the Manor, and so many systems and routines dedicated to its upkeep, that Nicholas gleaned a great deal of information simply from her descriptions of chores.

  In no time, for instance, he had ascertained that the Manor was composed of three main parts, which Mrs. Brindle referred to as the West Wing, the East Wing, and the Middle Wing. (By “Middle Wing,” Nicholas realized that she must have meant the central part of the mansion, since really there could be no such thing as a “middle wing.”) He also deduced that the boys’ dormitory, which once upon a time had been a sort of parlor, was situated in the East Wing, as were his own room and the rooms of all the male staff. The girls’ much larger dormitory, formerly a ballroom, lay in the West Wing. (Mrs. Brindle had referred to it simply as “the ballroom,” but Nicholas had gathered that the place was full of cots and that, bein
g a boy, he was forbidden to enter it.) Nor was it hard for Nicholas to determine that the rooms of Mrs. Brindle and the nurse, whom Mrs. Brindle sneeringly called “Miss Pretty Pills,” were likewise located in the West Wing.

  All this Nicholas learned before they had reached the bathroom, where Mrs. Brindle paused to dampen a cloth and pat her brow while Nicholas held her lamp. During these few minutes she said nothing—only gasped and panted—and the sudden, relative silence was almost unnerving, like the eye of a storm. But then she took back the lamp, groaned, and resumed her endless speech about the endless chores.

  Having covered laundry, windows, and floors, Mrs. Brindle moved on to larder and kitchen duties. From her breathless recitations, Nicholas came to understand not only that there was a small farm on the property from which the Manor received much of its food, but that she and the Manor’s cook, a widower named Mr. Griese, were very likely in love and didn’t know it. Nicholas arrived at this last conclusion because he had once read a novel in which the situation was exactly like that of Mrs. Brindle and Mr. Griese. Admittedly, it had been a very dull novel—he’d finished it only because it was one of the few books available to him, and because it took him only ten minutes—but he found the similarities too strong to ignore, especially the way Mrs. Brindle grew more lively as she spoke about the cook, and went on at length about him without seeming to realize it.

  She was still speaking of Mr. Griese when they reached the gallery—the broad, open area at the top of the Manor’s grand staircase. Nicholas took in the faded tapestries on the walls, the beautiful, old wooden chairs in the corners, the enormous chandelier that hung over the entranceway below—and still Mrs. Brindle went on about Mr. Griese. “That poor man,” she was saying, “in among the pots and the heat all day, yet always so polite, always a gentleman, never a cross word even for those who deserve it….”

  Nicholas went to the railing and looked down into the entranceway, hoping to catch a glimpse of another person. It was simple curiosity—naturally, he wondered about the Manor’s other inhabitants—but no one appeared.

  Mrs. Brindle, meanwhile, had stopped walking, as if she meant to tell him something about the gallery, and yet her speech gave no sign of changing course. Finally Nicholas couldn’t help himself. His real life, he thought, was becoming as dull as that novel. “What a chandelier!” he interjected as if he’d only just noticed it, and the better to engage Mrs. Brindle’s interest he added, “It must be ever so hard to clean!”

  Mrs. Brindle flinched at the sound of his voice. She had become so distracted that she seemed surprised to find herself standing there with him. Putting a hand to her neck (which had begun hurting when she flinched), she snapped, “What’s that? The chandelier? Well, yes, of course it’s hard to clean! What do you expect? Everything here is difficult to keep clean, isn’t it? Sure, it might not have been when the Rothschilds lived here, but their housekeeper would’ve had a proper staff, wouldn’t she?”

  “The Rothschilds?” said Nicholas to keep her going. “Who were they, exactly?”

  Mrs. Brindle scowled. “Why, the Rothschilds! The Rothschilds!” she repeated in a louder voice. “Is it your brain or your ear that’s not working, child? Do you not know where you are? Rothschild’s End! Who did you think the place was named for—the Birminghams?”

  Nicholas mildly explained that no one had told him anything about the Rothschilds. He assumed they were connected to the famously rich Rothschild family, but beyond that he knew nothing.

  “Nothing at all?” Mrs. Brindle asked suspiciously, as if Nicholas was trying to trick her. “How can you know nothing about the Rothschilds? They were so rich! Why, look around you! They had everything a person could want!” Here she paused, with a thoughtful look, and then in a softer tone continued: “Well, everything except a family, mind you—they never had that. And people say the lady wanted one ever so much, poor soul. Sure, she was a grand old lady when she died, but she had no children, no children at all. They say it was in her honor Mr. Rothschild had the place turned into an orphanage after he died, which I believe wasn’t even a month later, or perhaps two. They say he had it all nicely written out in his will. What would be changed, and who the director and staff would be, and how things should be run just as smart and fine as ever they had been when he and the lady had lived here.

  “Oh yes,” said Mrs. Brindle, shaking her head admiringly, “things were done right then. A full housekeeping staff! Can you imagine? Why, everything must have gleamed and beamed! And that’s not to mention the other sorts of help they had—the cook’s helpers and the extra groundskeepers and, oh, who knows what else? But you know it was grand!”

  The old housekeeper had grown more and more wistful as she spoke. She was gazing over the railing, down into the gloomy entranceway, as if the Manor’s glorious past could be seen quite clearly there if only there were better lighting. After a silence, though, her face grew peevish again. “No such luck for me, of course. Where’s my staff? I am the staff. No one to help me but a lot of children—and most of them can hardly wipe their own noses, much less handle a mop bucket. You remember that,” she said, casting a stern look at Nicholas. “If things don’t exactly shine around here, it’s because you didn’t shine them.”

  With that, Mrs. Brindle turned and, with great caution and even greater slowness, began to descend the wide, curving staircase. She took each step with one hand gripping the banister and the other held out for balance, and she had Nicholas hold the lamp low to the steps so that she could be sure of her footing. After a few steps they had established a rhythm, and Mrs. Brindle once again took up her monologue about chores and duties, interrupting herself only to cry out with the occasional pain and then scold it for not sitting still.

  By the time they had reached the bottom step, Nicholas felt that he’d received quite a decent education. Though he’d seen almost nothing, he had a knowledge of the Manor’s rooms and general layout that would later prove remarkably accurate. Indeed, on the mental map he’d been drawing, only a very few spaces had yet to be accounted for.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Brindle,” he said, extending the lamp toward a closed door on the left of the entranceway, “but where does that door lead? Is it an extra parlor, perhaps? I know those double oak doors lead out onto the porch, and that door on the right is Mr. Collum’s office, but what about this one on the left?”

  But before Mrs. Brindle even had time to absorb his question, Nicholas began to pace and point, turning this way and that, for he was suddenly caught up in the pleasure of solving a problem, and rather forgot that he wasn’t alone. “I know it can’t be the drawing room. The drawing room lies on the side passage that crosses behind the staircase”—he gestured beyond the staircase, toward the rear of the Manor—the one that turns off that north-running passage that leads back to the kitchen.”

  Mrs. Brindle, carefully releasing her grip on the banister’s newel post, looked at him as though he’d insulted her. “The drawing room? The kitchen? How could you possibly know where those are? What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, you’re right, of course,” Nicholas said absently. “I don’t mean to say I know exactly where they are. But my point is, shouldn’t there be another room between here and the boys’ dormitory”—he pointed down a passage leading eastward from the bottom of the stairs—and if so”—turning again toward the door in question—doesn’t this door lead to it?”

  “I see,” said Mrs. Brindle in an icy tone. “You’re playing a prank. Mr. Collum’s already shown you around, has he? Last night, no doubt, while I was chaperoning the ballroom. Well, he might have left me a note. You might have told me. But no! You think it’s great fun dragging my bones out of bed half an hour early. You like to pretend—well, I don’t know what, that somehow you’ve had a vision of the Manor? Is that it? That you’re a little prophet who likes to point out your poor old housekeeper’s lapses before she can even commit them?”

  Nicholas realized he had made a mistake. He tri
ed to say something to defuse Mrs. Brindle’s anger, but Mrs. Brindle would not be interrupted. She silenced him with an irritated flapping of her hand, which caused her to wince and cry, “Oh! You beast! It’s back to the shoulder, is it? Homesick, were you?” Then she fixed her furious gaze on Nicholas again. “If you truly wanted to rattle my cage, you rude boy, you ought to have just said, ‘What about the library, Mrs. Brindle? Don’t you ever clean the library? Don’t you like shifting book after book after book—on and on with the books and the books—so you can dust those interminable shelves?’ ”

  Nicholas gasped. Could it be true? He sprang to the door and tried the knob. It was unlocked. Ignoring Mrs. Brindle’s sputtering protests, he swung the door open and barged into the darkness beyond. He held up the lamp—and gasped again.

  Three walls of books. Floor-to-ceiling books. Books in the thousands.

  Nicholas felt his heart flutter, and looked quickly about for a soft place to fall. Oh no, he thought, and with the lamp, too!

  Luckily, when Mrs. Brindle came storming in after him a minute later (she was an extremely slow-moving storm), she found Nicholas not collapsed on the floor amid shattered glass and a burning rug, but instead sitting in an overstuffed armchair, with the lamp held firmly in both hands. By some miracle (and several deep breaths) he had not fallen asleep, despite witnessing the most exciting spectacle of his life. He did look strangely affected, however, with his wide-open mouth and his wildly roving eyes, and at the sight of him Mrs. Brindle lost her anger and grew concerned.

  “Boy!” she cried, in her alarm quite forgetting his name. She tried to hurry over to him without tripping on the rug. “Are you not well? Can you hear me? Oh, heavens!”