Caught

“Didn’t even make it one night.”

Mrs.Sinclair stared at Connie from across her desk, her eyes boring into the dirt and cut covered girl, waiting for the younger woman to break. Yet when she didn’t she looked down, shuffling the papers before her and letting out a long sigh.

“I know that this school has a fearsome reputation but we are no needlessly cruel,” she went on as Connie stared daggers into her, her nightclothes still caked in mud from where she had fled from the night guards through the woods.

“We expect that new arrivals may try to run away, which is why we post the extra guards on such nights.” The older woman let out a long sigh. “We do like to give people a chance to make amends for there actions before we turn to...punishment.”

“Make amends?” Connie asked, slightly thrown off by this unexpected turn, all the way back to the manor she had been mentally preparing herself for the shouting and the caning. This was...new.

“In this case a simple acknowledgement that you were wrong to try and run away and we can put this all behind us.”

Connie scoffed, “why shouldn’t I try to flee this place? I’m not a child anymore, I don’t need to stay here if I don’t wish.”

“I think you will find that since you have no young man lined up to marry that you are still under the care of your parents and they have decided that this is the best place for you to be.”

Connie took a deep breath as Mrs.Sinclair went on.

“Trying to run away is a serious infraction and one that we would normally punish with a day on Punishment Detail.” For a moment the older woman’s expression seemed to soften before it once again set into its rock hard state. “But you can avoid that simply by promising me that you will not try to flee again.”

“I was brought up never to lie,” Connie replied. Her chin tilted upwards and chest puffed up with pride. “So I can’t promise that.”

She had expected anger from that, all of her previous schoolmasters had shouted and threatened and beaten, yet this woman simply sighed and shook her head.

“Very well, Matthew!” The door to the office swung open and the same burly groundsman who had brought Connie in stepped inside. “Take Miss Bell to the punishment quarters please.”

And with that Connie was led away, down another hall in the school, deeper inside that she had seen so far, through well-appointed classrooms and chambers that gave way to bare stone and finally a small room that she was pushed, gently but firmly.

“Get cleaned up and dressed,” was the only thing the man called Matthew said to her before he slammed the door closed, s deadbolt sliding into place as she took in the room.

A small high window let in a weak beam of light whilst the room was mostly lit by a fireplace, in front of which sat a tin bath full of ice-cold water. At two of the corners sat the same beds as in the barracks and beside them chairs on which sat clean uniforms, the only thing that marked them out was the letters “PD” inscribed on the chest.

As she took in the room something in Connie’s stomach twisted, this wasn’t like any of the places she had been before when punished and something about the way Mrs.Sinclair had acted set her nerves on edge.

Still, she was filthy and so she set about getting herself cleaned up.