Chapter Five - Endurance
That night, Lennox slept badly. For too long she was both cold and uneasy. When she finally slept, she was back in the tower, surrounded by the Masters. They stood in a semi-circle in long dark cloaks which fell to the floor. They did not speak, instead advanced towards her, threateningly. She screamed, and tried to escape. But as she tried to run, a strange thing happened. She tripped; and as her hands went out to halt her fall, she fell onto all fours. She ran as she was, on all fours, towards the tower door, but when she reached it, she passed not into the narrow stairway, but into the forests where she ran on and on, mindlessly.
She was woken in the morning by tapping on her door. She could hear through her walls that the Feliformia boys next door were already awake and up.
'Ok' she yelled. 'I'm getting up.'
The tapping continued.
Reluctantly, for the floor was ice cold, she dragged herself out of bed, and poked a head round the door.
Mannik was there, a neatly folded pile of uniform in his arms.
'I've been told to give these to you,' he said, pushing the clothes at Lennox.
'Do I have to?' she complained, eyeing the pile with distaste.
'Kearns’ orders.' Mannik explained.
When he was safely gone, and the door shut, she inspected the pile of clothes. There was a dark green fleece top, belt, and dark all weather trousers; it was just what the others wore. She tried everything on, and found it fitted well. She briefly considered tying back her long, turbulent hair, dyed black as a panther. But she had been withdrawing into its shadow for too long; it had become her shell. She would stay as she was. She suspected the Masters were not going to be the only people at Calgacos to disagree with Torkil's decision to offer her a place.
She emerged from her room to find Mannik waiting. He took one look at her and said nothing.
'What?' asked Lennox suspiciously, looking down at herself. 'What have I done wrong?'
Mannik shook his head, and hurried off towards breakfast. Uneasily, Lennox followed. She was still not sure about Mannik. She’d never had a guide before, and she still couldn’t quite decide if he was more a help or a hindrance.
She found herself queueing for breakfast between Mannik and Jonas who she had not seen since her first evening at Calgacos.
He looked at her uniform appraisingly.
'So they're really letting you stay,' he said in disbelief.
'Yes.' she said. 'And?'
'I'm saying nothing.' he said.
But he didn't need to say anymore. He'd already said it. She wasn't welcome.
The next person to comment on her uniform was Gram when she and Mannik walked past his crowded breakfast table.
'Pity,' he announced to the whole table. Now I can’t see her pussy.'
Lennox stopped short. She knew what she was supposed to do. Keep her head down, count the white lines on the road, and find herself somewhere different. But there was always a problem. Somewhere inside, there was a voice that would not be silenced. Her instincts were always to fight back.
'I'd prefer it if you spoke to me, rather than about me,' she told him acidly.
'What? And be the only one?' Gram sneered. 'Other than your little lap dog.'
Lennox opened her mouth to bite back, but Mannik pushed his tray into her back, and jostled her forwards.
'Leave it,' he said, pushing her on to the table with the rest of the Feliformia boys. 'Besides, it’s true.’
‘That no one will talk to me?’
‘No, that everyone’s talking about you. Its common knowledge you impressed Gnarle in your med test and that you've been offered a place.’
Lennox moaned and tightened her grip on her tray unconsciously.
'Isn't there anything better to talk about?'
Mannik’s reply was a shrug. The answer, it seemed, was no.
The next comment came on the way to Maths as Lennox tried to thread her way through a crowd of queueing Perissodactyla juniors.
'Are you still here?' asked a tall boy leaning casually against the wall. He had dark, slicked back hair, an arrogant aura, and was eyeing Lennox as he might an uninvited guest.
'Your Dad's either very rich, or very desperate.'
Lennox narrowed her eyes. Her father wasn't a topic she wished to discuss.
'No, that's just your Dad, Shergar,' Connel retaliated from behind Lennox's shoulder. 'He bribes the Masters on a monthly basis just to keep you here.'
'Or he could be very dumb,' said another peculiar looking boy called Aston with huge egg shaped eyes, hair the colour of dying leaves, and a nose as bent as a broomstick. 'And got confused when he read the part that said Calgacos has never accepted girls since its very beginning.'
'So how did you manage to fool them into letting you stay,' demanded Shergar, frowning.
'I didn't,' she said, and forced her way on through the crowd.
Maths turned out to be almost as boring as every other Maths lesson Lennox had ever sat through. Mannik, as ever, took them both to sit at the front, and he appeared to know more than the teacher, a woman called Mrs Bells who lived in the village and seemed as old as the castle. Mrs Bells also struggled with hearing anyone further back than the first row, and so concentrated on teaching Mannik, and Rick who appeared to have a gift for mathematics. Mrs Bells did not notice Lennox at the start, or in the middle, or at the end of the lesson, which suited Lennox perfectly.
However once Maths was over, she walked out into the corridor and straight into trouble again. Gram was just passing.
'Endurance this afternoon,' he hissed. 'Sorts out the men from the body bags!'
'So who'll be carrying you back?' asked Lennox, before she had time to think about what she was doing.
Gram's face turned purple.
'I hear you impressed Gnarle, prancing around in your knickers in his room. Well, I'd like a little show as well. How much do you charge?'
Lennox swallowed her retort. She had already said too much. She just needed to walk away. But Mannik, she realised, had disappeared into thin air. She was going to have to find her own way to History.
She walked in the direction the others were going and found Connel, waiting outside class, trying to put off the inevitable boredom of double history.
'How did you lose Mannik?' he asked when he saw her.
'I didn't,' she explained. 'He lost me. I stopped to talk to Gram and when I looked around Mannik was gone.'
'That's what he does best,' laughed Connel.
Lennox shook her head. She hated being in the spotlight, and would do anything to avoid it. But seeing how Gram picked on Mannik with impunity made something inside her explode.
'He's letting Gram bully him,' she said.
'I don’t think he’s got much say in the matter.'
'It shouldn't be happening. Someone should stop Gram.'
The smile slipped from Connel's face.
'No they shouldn’t. That's what this school is about. Survival of the fittest, yeah? You don't come here to get looked after. You come here to prove you can look after yourself. Unless you're Mannik, that is. He's a bit of a fish out of water. I have no idea why he's here, neither does he.'
'You don't learn how to look after yourself by getting bullied,' Lennox pointed out.
'No, but neither do you learn by having someone else fight your battles for you.' Connel argued back. ‘Look, there's nothing you or I can do for him. Mannik is different. You can see that! They say he failed his medical with Gnarle and yet they still let him stay. I don't know why. It makes no sense. But the point is the only person who can help Mannik is Mannik.'
The History teacher, Mr Sharp, called for class to start, and they hurried inside. Mannik, predictably, was sat at the very front, with an empty seat beside him. He looked up at Lennox with relief, and nodded at the empty chair. An unfortunate side effect of being Mannik's companion meant sitting in the front row for every lesson.
History was both slightly d
ull, and very traditionally taught. It passed slowly and uneventfully, for which Lennox was thankful. Mr Sharp, a tall, thin, grey man, who only became colourful when he was living in the past, became so engrossed in retelling the history of Mary Queen of Scots that he forgot to let anyone else talk. At the end of the lesson, he had a few followers, as entranced as him, and many more students on the verge of sleep.
Fortunately lunch was next on the timetable. Mannik and Lennox followed on behind the crowd of Feliformia boys, suddenly very alert and noisy, heading down to the dining hall, loudly abusing any Caniformia, Perissodactyla or Aves juniors they passed on their way.
'What's next?' Lennox asked. Gram had said something about endurance. Whatever that was, it was going to be more eventful than history.
'Endurance,' Mannik told her, and the look on his face told her everything she needed to know. For Mannik, Endurance was an ordeal far worse than History.
'Is that the same as fitness?'
‘No at all,' Mannik explained as he held out his plate for a small helping of Shepherd's pie. Behind the boys serving, the Kitchen Master, Bull, monitored proceedings and the amounts with an eagle eye. 'Fitness we do on a daily basis, and always with Nighten. If you're not fit, you can't stay here. That's what Nighten always tells us. According to Kearns, Endurance is the real test. Endurance is about competition, survival and outperforming your enemies. Endurance is fitness, tactics, skills, and determination all in one. And we compete in our houses: Feliformia, Aves, Perissodactyla, and Caniformia.'
'So Gram's the enemy,' Connel said, spelling out what didn't need to be spelt out.
Mannik's face clouded over.
'And all the Masters take turns to teach it,' he said, ignoring her mention of Gram. 'At the moment, we've got Bambridge.'
'The Caniformia Master?'
Connel nodded grimly.
Lennox had heard enough. Bambridge was the giant of a man with black hair as thick as weeds, who had sat at Torkil’s table and looked at her throughout with lowered lids. He was the one who hated all students, even the ones in his own house. Endurance was going to be tough.