Villainess 3: Rosalie Strikes Back
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Red Pill 13: Perjuries, Infirmaries
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At first, Prince Blaise started with simple questions as a baseline for the more complex questions later on. Thus, keeping the crystal ball under her grasp, Janet answered the preliminary questions. When asked if Janet Fleming was her name, Janet answered, Yes, that is her name. When asked about her age and occupation, she answered that she is fifteen and that she is a student at Lassen Academy. When asked who her parents are, she answered that she is the daughter of Marquess Arnold Fleming and Marchioness Rowena Fleming. When asked if she had said or done anything hurtful to anyone else in her life, she answered, Yes, she had said and done such things.
With the baseline established, Prince Blaise said, “If that’s the case, then did you do anything to hurt Miss Edgeworth during this fall semester?”
Janet looked over at the oh-so-innocent vixen sitting on the other end of the table, looking back at her and curling up her lips into an evil smirk, so Janet turned back and said, “Yes, I have, your Highness.”
Which stirred the great hall with whispers.
“Then what did you do to Miss Edgeworth?” Prince Blaise said.
(“Okay, here’s what we’ll do,” DeeDee said, flipping through the pages of Janet’s memories with a pencil in her hand. “While I’m looking through your memories, I’ll check-mark all the ones involving Rosalie getting you into trouble, and you’ll confess to every one of them as your own doing.” Then DeeDee paused and added, “Look, I know it’s difficult for you, but please try to bear with it, okay?”
“Ugh, I hate this,” Janet said.
“Okayyy?” DeeDee said.
“Okay, okay,” Janet said. “I get it already.”)
So Janet closed her eyes and prepared herself to take all of the blame for Rosalie’s damnable ruses against her since Lassen Academy’s entrance ceremony and opened her eyes. When she felt DeeDee turn the first page of her mind and check-mark the first entry, Janet took a deep breath and said, “Before the entrance ceremony, I cornered Miss Edgeworth at the courtyard and told her that she didn’t belong here at the Academy.”
Which stirred another round of whispers, but the crystal did not heat up in Janet’s hand.
“What else?” Prince Blaise said.
(“Did anything happen?” DeeDee said in her mind.
“No, nothing,” Janet said, mindful of the crystal’s unchanged coolness in her grasp.
“Then Rosalie’s manipulating the crystal beyond the range of Father Robinson’s detection spell,” DeeDee said, turning a page and check-marking another entry in Janet’s memories. “Now keep it going.”)
“On the first day of class,” Janet added, “I cornered Miss Edgeworth during lunch and repeated what I said.”
Another round of whispers in the cafeteria.
“What did you say?” the Prince said.
“I said,” Janet said, eying that damnable vixen again, “that she didn’t belong here.”
Yet another round of whispers.
“What else?” he said.
(So DeeDee flipped through more pages and check-marked several entries and said, “Let’s speed things up, shall we? I don’t have all day, but just one more thing.”
“What is it?” Janet said.
“Rosalie might heat up that crystal,” DeeDee said, “if she feels threatened by your words. Bait her into doing it and use that to entrap her.”
“How do I do that?” Janet said.
“Figure it out,” she said. “It’s your turn.”)
Pondering on DeeDee’s suggestion, Janet took another deep breath and said, “Every day during the first week of class, I cornered Miss Edgeworth and told her that she didn’t belong here, and on the last day of class that week, when I saw Miss Edgeworth talking to your Highness, I told her to stop, or I’d take further actions against her. That was the first week, your Highness, yet when Miss Edgeworth came after you again, I took it to the next level. I started the second week by pushing her in the halls whenever you weren’t there, and later that week, I stole her book bag and hid it. Miss Edgeworth must’ve told you about it, because by the third week, your Highness rebuked me in front of Classroom 1-3C while Professor Palmer wasn’t there and demanded that I apologize to Miss Edgeworth, but I refused and escalated my actions against her, staining her dress with ink and splashing water on her face and threatening her to stay away from you or else.
“Yet by the fourth week,” she continued as an idea formed in her mind, “when Miss Edgeworth still clung to you, I had Lady Felton and Lady Childeron bully Miss Edgeworth on my behalf, yet your Highness caught them and had them spy on me instead. Even so, by the fifth week, I continued harassing Miss Edgeworth and called her names in the hallways, yet when Lady Felton and Lady Childeron stood up for her, I lost my temper and called them traitors and Miss Edgeworth a two-faced vixen,” and she glanced over at Rosalie giving her an icy glare, then turned back to the Prince giving her a glare of hellfire. “Those tattletales must have told you, because by the sixth week, your Highness rebuked me in front of Classroom 1-3C at the start of that week, then rebuked me again near the end of the week in the courtyard after I ripped Miss Edgeworth’s dress, and so we had an argument about all that stuff. But do you remember what you said after all that, your Highness?”
At her question, murmurs arose from some of the students about the Prince saying something awful to Janet in the courtyard last week, though the witnesses there refused to say anything about it at all as if they were scared. Perhaps, some whispered, the Prince had silenced them?
The Prince just stood there, beginning to sweat under the whispered speculations about him, so he fisted his hands and said, “I’m asking the questions, not you.”
“You don’t need to be kind,” Janet said. “Stop acting like you give a damn, your Highness, because I know full well you don’t. Tell everyone here what you said back then. Tell them, or I’ll tell them myself!”
Yet Prince Blaise remained silent.
Janet turned to Rosalie one more time to bait her into it, then turned back to the Prince and said, “Then you leave me no choice, your Highness: due to your reluctance, I’ll have Miss Edgeworth tell everyone here what you refuse to say, because she had been there with me!”
And as DeeDee had predicted, the crystal heated up in Janet’s hand, making her wince and drop it on the table with a thud like the thud of a guillotine echoing through the great hall, yet it was now Janet’s win. Their collective silence revealed a shared hypocrisy amongst them, who had witnessed last Friday’s quarrel between Janet and the Prince at the courtyard fountain, because what had happened between Janet and Rosalie that day had been on the lips of so many students this morning.
And in its echoing wake, the trap had sprung at the crux of a collective inconsistency, showing what a farce all of this had been, so Janet looked over at a glaring Rosalie and smirked at her reaction, saying, “Miss Edgeworth, catch,” and she tossed it to her nemesis—
Who caught it in her hands.
Then the whole cafeteria went silent, and Father Robinson was left staring and gaping at the turn of events.
“Miss Edgeworth,” Janet continued, “you were there with me, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What did his Highness say?”
“Rosy, don’t say anything!” the Prince said.
“I won’t lie, your Highness, not even for you,” Rosalie said, putting on a good show. “His Highness said truly unforgivable words against your mother, which I feel don’t bear repeating at this late date. For that, I apologize to you in his Highness’s stead. Is this enough, Lady Fleming?”
Nothing happened outside of the area-of-effect of the father’s spell, but it confirmed DeeDee’s reasoning that Rosalie had been tampering with the crystal.
“Thanks, but answer one more question.”
Rosalie let out a sigh and said, “Fine, what is it?”
“You and his Highness were here before I arrived,” Janet said, switching it up on her nemesis. “Did you have his Highness set all this up to ruin my reputation?”
Rosalie stared at Janet, eyes wide and mouth agape at how she had turned the tables on her.
“What’s the matter, Miss Edgeworth?” Janet said, knowing she had caught her nemesis between a confirmed lie and a confession of guilt. “It’s a yes-or-no question.”
Rosalie opened her mouth—
But the Prince said, “Rosy, don’t!”
“Your Highness, don’t interfere!” Janet said.
“Don’t turn this around, you fucking bitch!” the Prince said, then paused as if he just realized what he had said in front of everyone in the Student Commons Cafeteria and gritted his teeth. And in a rage, he stormed over to Rosalie’s location and grabbed the crystal from her hands and flung it on the floor at Janet’s feet, breaking it into scattering pieces and making Janet wince and collapse to one knee on the floor.
Then Farther Robinson and Kevin and Ridley stalked over to Janet, all three crouching and asking her if she was okay, but Janet shook her head.
And so, while the father and Ridley guided a hobbling Janet to a bench, Kevin Sydney stood up and got in the Prince’s face and shoved him, saying, “You’re a disgrace!”
“And you’re a third-rate knight!” the Prince said and shoved Kevin back and spat in his face.
Kevin swung a right fist at his jaw, yet the Prince countered him with a shoulder toss and threw Kevin onto his back with a heavy thud on the floor.
With Kevin groaning, Father Robinson stood up, yelling, “YOUR HIGHNESS, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?”
That outburst stopped the Prince on the spot.
“You not only broke school property,” Father Robinson said, “you assaulted one student and injured another. Don’t push it, your Highness!”
“I know already! Just lay off!” the Prince said, huffing and puffing, and wiped the sweat from his brow and looked over at Janet and approached her. Yet the Prince stopped in his tracks at the sight of Janet bending over and putting her hand over a line of blood trickling down her sock, and only then did he seem to gain a full picture of what he had done.
But before the Prince could say anything when he approached again, Ridley blocked his way, saying, “Don’t, your Highness. You’ve already done enough.”
“For God’s sake, man, I won’t hit her!” Prince Blaise said. “I promise you, I won’t.”
Lord Woodberry gave him a long and hard stare, then let the Prince approach, but he stood by a grimacing Janet and placed his hand over her shoulder, while Father Robinson had gone over and helped Kevin back to his feet.
So the Prince approached and crouched before Janet, meeting her eyes, and said, “You’re right, Lady Fleming; I shouldn’t have said such words about Marchioness Fleming last Friday, so I’m sorry for that. And make sure to get that checked out,” he added, “but stay away from Miss Edgeworth, or I’ll have you expelled.” After that, he stood back up and went over to an ashen-faced Rosalie and hooked his arm around hers and said, “Let’s get out of here, Rosy.”
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(Then Janet’s suicide clone ordered two teams of three clones each—one team watching Rosalie and another team watching Prince Blaise—to follow the pair and said, “Don’t let them out of your sight. I want you to cover them at all times.”
“We won’t lose them,” the clones said, “and we will.”
“And,” the suicide clone added, “keep me informed of what they say in two shifts every thirty minutes, got it?”
“We’ve got it,” the clones said.
And off they went out of the great hall, three pairs of eyes on the vixen and three other pairs of eyes on the Prince, while Janet’s suicide clone and the rest of her clones crowded around Janet at the long table, and her suicide clone crouched down and bit her lip at the sight of Janet’s injury.)
With the Prince escorting Rosalie through the crowd of silent students giving them a wide berth (and Janet’s clones following behind), everyone stared after them for a moment or two, till their footfalls echoed past the double doors and dissipated through the open-plan parlor area. Then all eyes turned to Janet wincing and crying over the pain in her ankle as Ridley told her to keep her foot still.
(“I’m so sorry, Janet,” her suicide clone said.
Janet looked up at her clone, tears in her eyes, and wiped them away and said, “Please, don’t—”)
“Ow!” Janet said when she moved her foot.
“Keep still, Lady Fleming,” Ridley said and crouched before her. “Can you move it?”
Janet nodded yes.
“Ridley, how is it?” Kevin said, coming over alongside Father Robinson.
“It’s painful for her,” Ridley said.
“Does it hurt when you move it?” Father Robinson said.
Again Janet nodded yes.
Then a pale-faced Father Giles Robinson crouched and pulled down Janet’s right sock and applied two fingers gently over the wound, making the girl fidget and wince in a grimace.
“Ow, owwww!” she said, crying again.
“Do you feel a tingling sensation?” Father Robinson said.
Janet nodded her head.
“Almost like it’s burning?” he added.
Janet nodded again and wiped the tears from her eyes.
With that, Father Robinson closed his eyes, still keeping his fingers over the cut, and said, “Ah, that’s why. The nerves are nicked, and it’s on the tendon, too. All right, Lady Fleming,” he added, “this is gonna hurt, but try to bear with it the best you can for me, okay?” And when Janet nodded, Father Robinson whispered a foreign incantation, and a soft light glowed beneath his fingers—
“Ow!” Janet yelped.
—that made Janet wince and grit her teeth. When he finished, Father Robinson said, “All right, that should do it, but you should keep off of that foot in order to give your nerves a chance to rest,” and he stood up and looked over at the double doors where Prince Blaise and Rosalie had gone off and shook his head in disgust. “I never thought his Highness would act like that if I hadn’t seen it myself,” then added, “I’ll report this to his Majesty after classes end, Lady Fleming.”
“Thank you, Father,” Janet said.
Father Robinson nodded and said to the two young men, “One of you should carry her to the infirmary. And don’t let her stand, mind you, till after four o’clock this afternoon, five o’clock to be safe. That should be enough time for the nerves on her tendon to settle down.”
Kevin and Ridley both nodded.
Then Father Robinson walked out of the great hall, passing the doors and through the open-plan parlor on his way up the stairs towards his homeroom or to the Professor Commons Office. Either way, despite Janet’s public confession to her so-called crimes, Father Robinson’s words set the students in the great hall murmuring about Prince Blaise’s outrageous conduct during lunch, going as far as breaking “school property” and disrespecting and thrashing one student and hurting another student, even if that student was the infamous Janet Fleming. And the Prince had done all of this in front of everyone, students and cooking staff and even a professor and clergyman. Prince Blaise’s actions were unbecoming of a prince, and if the Prince wasn’t a minor, Marquess Fleming would have challenged him to a duel for hurting his daughter like that. So went the murmurs that turned into rumors that turned into a hard-fought win for Janet, but only at the cost of her tears and a bit of her blood.
Meanwhile, Kevin and Ridley played ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ to decide who should take Janet to the infirmary. When Ridley’s ‘rock’ beat Kevin’s ‘scissors,’ he took up Janet in a bridal carry and said, “See you at the infirmary.”
“I’ll get lunch,” Kevin said. “Janet, what do you want?”
“Whatever’s there,” she said. “I’m not picky.”
With that, Kevin stalked towards the buffet area and grabbed a tray and picked out assortments of food from the serving trays, while Ridley carried Janet out.
And for the second time this week, but for the first time in person, Janet found herself in the arms of this gallant son of a duke and felt her cheeks burning, so she covered her face in her hands. And her clones, following close by and commenting on how good of a catch Lord Woodberry would make for Janet, were making it worse for her, like impressionable kids talking about the doings of their parents at night when their folks thought the coast was clear and everyone else had gone to bed and the night was theirs for some funny business, though Janet had never experienced walking in on her parents doing it. Yet when such doings surfaced through her thoughts in connection with the man carrying her—
(to the nuptial bed)
—to the infirmary, Janet blushed and prayed that he wouldn’t notice her embarrassment along the way. But then Janet’s blasted clones started singing a naughty nursery rhyme about Janet and Ridley sitting on some stupid tree and K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then there’s a baby in a Goddamned carriage! And in between the marriage part and the carriage part was the very action that left Janet’s cheeks rosy and her heart beating and her breath coming in short and fast like the rhythmic motions of a good . . .
(“Janet,” DeeDee said, “stop thinking about it!”
“I can’t help it,” Janet said.
“Then tell me who’s doing it,” she said, “so I can stop it at once, dear God!”
And Janet squeezed her eyes shut, thinking of anything else besides the naughty connotation of the phrase, ‘doing it,’ and said, “It’s my clones!”
“Oh, I see,” DeeDee said.
Then Janet heard her clones complaining (“Ow!”), one after another till they were all complaining, and she opened her eyes to Ridley carrying her into the infirmary and saw her grimacing and wincing clones with their heads tilted to one side and the tops of their left ears getting pulled from an invisible presence (unseen) by either nurse or Ridley.
“What’s going on?” Janet said.
“I’m punishing them like the naughty brats they are,” DeeDee said. “Honestly, such things shouldn’t cross impressionable minds like theirs. Or yours, for that matter.”
And Janet felt a tug at her own left ear, yanking upward with a sharp, almost motherly, jerk.)
“Ow!” Janet yelped.
“Oh, sorry about that,” Ridley said as he placed her on the infirmary bed, and the nurse on duty holding the curtain aside told him to be more mindful of her ankle. And that’s when Janet found herself back on the same bed she had woken up from yesterday afternoon after school hours had ended.
“It’s okay, Lord Woodberry,” Janet said. “It’s just a little sore, is all.”
When Janet’s clones stopped complaining, she glanced past Ridley’s arm and saw them with their hands against their left ears, and only then did she put her hand against her ear, where DeeDee had tugged it.
“Are you all right, Lady Fleming?” he said.
She nodded and placed her beret at the side table, but then looked for her book bag that had gone missing from her shoulder somehow and said, “Where’s my bag?”
“I have it, don’t worry,” Lord Woodberry said, placing it on the side table next to her beret. “Kevin should be coming here any minute now.” And when the door creaked open, he said, “Ah, speak of the devil,” and he waved the knight to Janet’s bed past two brunette girls sitting by the bedside of a green-haired girl with bandaged hands and calves, all three whispering amongst themselves and giving Janet momentary glances.
Janet sat up in bed and pulled the down pillow up against her lower back, while Kevin placed the tray of food on the bedside table and slid it in front of her and Janet’s clones crowded around her beside.
“Hope you’re hungry,” Kevin said.
The tray had a good selection: three egg rolls, a side of penne carbonara, a side of fried rice, a side of tilapia, a few mocha squares, and a sparkling glass of pink lemonade.
“Starving,” Janet said and grabbed an egg roll and bit off half of it and bolted it down in a few chews, then ate the other half and bolted it down.
“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Kevin said.
“You’ll choke, Lady Fleming,” Ridley added.
Janet looked over at the clock on the far wall above the entrance door, still chewing, and spied the nurse in her apron and nurse’s cap at the desk, writing down information in a log (date, time, patient’s name, ailment(s), duration of stay, etc.) that she knew pertained to her second ignominious stay at the Academy’s infirmary.
Kevin looked over his shoulder and said, “You have half an hour, Janet. Take your time,” and he headed back out of the infirmary. “Riddle, what do you want me to get?”
“Anything’s fine. We’ll share.”
“Suit yourself,” Kevin said and left, followed by three of Janet’s clones tailing him through the door.
As she continued eating, Janet thought of those logs and attendance sheets and incident reports and wondered if the Prince had them suppressed or changed at Rosalie’s behest, because a month had gone by without any witnesses showing up to challenge or even question any of Rosalie’s claims against Janet all this time. If she wanted to survive this godforsaken life, if she was to help DeeDee’s investigation into whoever broke into her private library and compromised her books, Janet needed access to information, and that meant that she needed allies she could trust besides her clones and DeeDee and the enchanted inventory of her quaint shop of curiosities.
“Lady Fleming,” Lord Woodberry said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, “did you really do all those things to Miss Edgeworth?”
“No, I didn’t,” Janet said.
“You’ve only committed a few of them?”
“I didn’t do any of the crimes I’ve said,” Janet said under her breath, putting her finger on Ridley’s lips before he said anything else. “In other words, Lord Woodberry, I lied under oath in front of everyone in the Cafeteria.”
Lord Woodberry gaped, eyes wide as if he had just witnessed a murder or another guy screwing around with his non-existent girlfriend, and said, “Why would you do that?”
“You were there, Lord Woodberry,” Janet said. “You and Sir Sydney and Father Robinson and everyone else in the great hall saw how the Prince reacted. He threw a crystal at me and hurt my leg, for God’s sake! I told him exactly what he wanted to hear, so he won’t have an excuse to have me expelled or banished or murdered or God knows what!”
“I . . .” Ridley said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Lady Fleming, but I can’t believe it.”
“The Prince called my fainting spell in the hallway yesterday a ‘sympathy card,’” Janet said. “A fucking ‘sympathy card,’ can you believe that? Can’t you see how he’s changed? His Highness never used to be like that! Also,” she added, “did you notice I only got burned when I came dangerously close to telling the truth?”
“Geez, I don’t know what’s a truth and what’s a lie,” he said. “Out of all of those lies you told, in what part of all that did you tell the truth?”
“When I used Miss Edgeworth against his Highness,” Janet said, “only then did I get burned.”
“Because you were telling the truth?” he said.
“Yep.”
Ridley Woodberry paused for a spell, then said, “Janet, who were you trying to get a reaction out of? Was it his Highness or Miss Edgeworth?”
“Miss Edgeworth,” Janet said, “and his Highness was telling her to keep her mouth shut.”
“You really think Miss Edgeworth is like that?”
“Of course, I do,” Janet said.
“On what evidence?”
“On my experiences with her!” Janet said. “You don’t believe me, but mark my words: she’s a two-face!”
Ridley was silent now.
Moments passed at a snail’s pace, so Janet was stress-eating the rest of her egg rolls and digging into her penne carbonara with ravenous abandon.
Then Ridley said, “What’s on your mind?”
When Janet finished eating her penne carbonara, she looked at him and put her fork down and said, “Can I trust you?”
“Of course, Lady Fleming,” he said.
“And can I trust Sir Sydney?” she said.
“Of course you can,” he said. “I’ve known him for almost as long as his Highness. What are you getting at?”
Janet was silent for a moment, wondering if she could let her friend in on her thoughts.
“Janet,” Ridley said, “do you suspect his Highness and Miss Edgeworth of anything unsavory between them?”
Janet was about to answer—
When the door opened to bring in Kevin Sydney carrying a stacked tray with a mound of finger food on it, followed by the trio of clones. “Hope you’re hungry, Riddle,” he said, “because I’ve got a lot.”
“Don’t leave a mess,” the nurse said.
“We won’t, ma’am,” he said.
Ridley stood up and gaped at the amount of food on the stacked tray, saying, “Letting your stomach decide, eh?”
“Hey, I’m a knight, remember?” Kevin said. “I need to eat more to keep up with my training.”
“Only to get thrashed,” he said.
“Come on, I was thrown, not thrashed,” Kevin said. “There’s a difference, you know. Janet,” he added, “do you want some more? I’ve got a bit too much here.”
“No, I’m fine,” Janet said, feeling her stomach lurch at the amount of finger food on their stacked tray, and looked on her own tray missing the three egg rolls, the sides of penne carbonara and most of the rice, two thirds of the tilapia, half of the pink lemonade, while the mocha squares were untouched. “I’m already getting full,” and she looked over at the three female students salivating at the mound of finger food and added, “Ladies, are you hungry?”
The trio of girls looked at Janet, and the pair of burettes (one wearing a scarf and one wearing glasses) asked the bedridden green-haired girl if she was hungry, and the bedridden green-haired girl said that she was starving. So the pair of brunettes stood up from their chairs, and the one wearing glasses and a braided pigtail said, “Are you sure?”
“It’s okay,” Kevin said and lifted the stacked tray, revealing another beneath it. “In fact, we have an extra tray.”
“Since there’s too much,” Ridley said, “he and I can share one tray between us. You can use the other tray and pick out what you want from ours. What do you say?”
With that, the pair of brunettes circled around the bedridden girl’s bed and approached the side table, and the bespectacled one took up the extra tray, while the one with the scarf clumped her hands around the top third of the mound of food, then lifted and shifted the mass over to the tray.
“Thank you,” both brunettes said, bowing their heads, and headed back to the adjacent bed where the bedridden green-haired girl sat up in bed.
The bespectacled girl pulled over another bedside table between the bed and the chairs, and once they were seated, the three girls started eating and whispering amongst themselves again. And as Janet finished off her tilapia and downed it with another gulp of lemonade, she thought she caught them stealing glances at Janet’s clones crowded around her bed, so she turned to look at them and thought they seemed familiar without knowing where to place them.
(With her clones all eyeing the trio, Janet’s suicide clone leaned over her shoulder and said, “They can see us.”
“You really think so?” Janet said.
“I’m sure of it,” her clone said, pointing out one of the brunettes and the bedridden girl. “The one in bed and the one with the scarf can see us just like you can.”
“What about the other girl?”
“Her glasses are enchanted,” her clone said. “I think she can only see us when she’s wearing them.”
“Can we trust them?” Janet said.
“I’m not sure yet,” her clone said.
So Janet said, “Are you still there, DeeDee?”
“I’m still here,” DeeDee said and yawned. “What is it?”
“Can you access these girls’ books?” Janet said.
“I’m sure I have them lying around,” DeeDee said and yawned again, “but I’ll find them later.”
“But can’t you—”
“I need to sleep, Janet,” DeeDee said.
“Okay, okay,” Janet said. “Go to sleep then.”
“I’ll have nine clones spy on them,” her suicide clone said.
“No need,” Janet said. “I’ll talk to them.”)
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To Be Continued