Before she’d made up her mind about the visit, something occurred to necessitate it. Jenny was taken with several of the other children to Layman’s German castle on Telegraph Hill, as a treat for learning her Bible verses. The middle school children were reading Ivanhoe, and there was to be a special exhibition of armor and swordfighting. Mrs. Lake, a postman’s widow who taught the middles, had been assured that the thrusts and parries would be accurately medieval. There were rumors of actual tilting, and she assumed this meant horses. Tilting afoot would be a sad spectacle even for orphans.
The children were sorted into pairs, an older child with each younger. Jenny Ijub was partnered with Minna Graham, a pretty ten-year-old with fat black braids, and front teeth that folded toward each other like an opened book. The two girls held hands on the cable car. Mrs. Lake was getting a cold, and she sneezed until her nose swelled.
A large crowd had gathered at the castle, whose Gothic turrets and parapets had been decked from top to bottom with banners. At noon the copper time-ball fell through its glass shaft. A group of strolling musicians sang madrigals. Minna Graham was not musical, but she was entranced by the women’s costumes. She wished that she, too, wore dunce caps with feathers and veils, velvet bodices with brocade inserts, high waistlines and yards of skirt. She followed the singers a few steps only, fell behind the other children. When the first combat began, people pressed forward to see it.
Mrs. Lake complained to Lizzie later that little chivalry was shown to her and her pupils. There were several moments of confusion in the crush. But they all heard Jenny scream.
By the time Mrs. Lake got there, Jenny was being held and petted by a fat, handsome man in a yellow waistcoat. He said that Jenny had been frightened by the appearance of the black knight. The black knight wore a facemask that looked like the back of a shovel, with a row of stiff bristles over the top of his head. The bristles appeared to Mrs. Lake to be cut by machine and therefore not something that would have been available to Ivanhoe, although the metal part might well have been old enough.
In any case, Jenny denied being frightened of the knight. She said instead that a man had tried to snatch her, a man in green trousers. It was the only description they were able to get. He had clutched her by the neck, one hand over her mouth. She bit him and screamed as he dropped her. Then he’d disappeared into the crowd. Mrs. Lake could find no one who had seen any of this.
She lost control of the children. The older boys abandoned their partners and dashed off to look for green trousers. Mrs. Lake was unable to stop them. She used her energies to keep the little ones huddled together. This was not hard; many of them were frightened. Others, especially Minna Graham, were clearly envious. Minna was one of those children who liked to turn attention to herself whenever possible. She did so on this occasion by fainting.
Minna’s head hit the pavement with a crack they could all hear. Blood seeped into her hair, and Mrs. Lake found a large lump on the scalp. The lump was as soft as a cooked carrot and gave slightly when poked. Minna was too dizzy to walk. Mrs. Lake, who was planning on confronting Minna with her failure to watch over Jenny, instead saw her carried from the castle to the cable car on the back of the black knight’s horse, the crowd cheering as she passed. “She actually waved to everyone,” Mrs. Lake told Lizzie and Nell, “as if she were Queen of the May.”
All in all, the children were judged to be overexcited, and when Mrs. Lake collected them again, she brought them straight back. As a result, she couldn’t know about the tilting.
She gave Lizzie and Nell an aggrieved report, blowing her nose into her handkerchief frequently but silently. She then went home to rest. Nell stayed with Lizzie a few moments more, to give her own version of events, events to which she was not a witness. Nell had no time for knights; it amazed her that anyone did. And she had three particular points to make. The first was that Mrs. Lake was the kind of woman who lived a life of high drama in which nothing ever actually happened. The second was that Ivanhoe was likely to overexcite, even when it wasn’t combined with unnecessary outings. It was a swoony sort of book, and she wondered at Mrs. Lake for encouraging the children to read it. The third was that it was time to know more about Jenny Ijub. Where had she come from? Had they put themselves and the other children in danger by taking her in? Someone needed to go to Mammy Pleasant and ask some hard questions.
Lizzie guessed that Nell was right on all counts.
Ivanhoe: Swoony indeed—why, Lizzie had only to think in the most glancing way about the licentiousness of Norman nobles to feel a flush coming up her neck and into her cheeks. How many nights she’d drifted to sleep imagining herself struggling futilely, imprisoned for love by the swarthy, ardent Bois-Gilbert!
Mrs. Lake: Mrs. Lake was a neat, pretty, red-haired woman of thirty and could still carry on about knights and steeds and beheaded queens (how that woman loved the Stuarts!) without looking the fool, but her day was coming. Since Lizzie secretly shared all of Mrs. Lake’s shortcomings, she was quick to find Mrs. Lake silly and sentimental. It was a form of protective coloration. Nell’s veins ran with a heavier ore.
Questions about Jenny: The staff was busy and Lizzie was the only member of the board at hand, so these were bound to fall to her. She fixed her hair with combs, fixed her hat with pins, fixed her face in a smile, and walked to Octavia Street. By the time she reached the Bells’ front porch, she had worked herself into such a state over occult rituals and blood sacrifices she could hardly knock on the door.