Chapter 5: My Real Education Begins

January, 1985

Contrary to my growing fears, my new teacher didn't think there was anything wrong with my brain. I started school that Monday. I was happy to learn that Joel, Janet's little brother, was in my class. He smiled at me when I walked in with the secretary that showed me where my class was when I got there early that morning. My teacher was a tall, handsome man with wavy brown hair and bright blue eyes named Mr. Braun (pronounced "brown" with a light German accent). He gave the class an assignment while he got my books out of a cabinet and tried to see where I was academically. During that first week he seemed shocked at how far behind I was compared to the rest of the class. Given that I had to take more than a month off school for the move and the trial and that the school I came from was in Misery and was not very challenging, I was not surprised and neither was daddy when I told him how much trouble I was having in school.

I think I managed to surprise Mr. Braun, however, and by the end of April I was caught up with the smartest kids in the class. With a little extra help from Mr. Braun and a lot of help from daddy, I was able to fly through my reading books and by the end of May I was almost back to snoozing my way through school and able to concentrate most of my energy on soccer.

My arm had not healed enough to start karate, but soccer season was on and I was loving it. My team was one of the best for miles around and it looked as if we were going to win the league that year. I was finally having fun for the first time in a long while. When school ended in June, I was forced to revise my opinion of moving to Ft. Belvoir. I had good friends in Janet and Joel and they in turn introduced me to several other kids that they hung around. I was soon inserted with their clique in school, though I was still stubbornly independent of thought and peer pressure rarely affected me.

When soccer season ended that July, daddy got a letter from Aunt Sabrine inviting him and me to vacation with them in England for two weeks before school started up again as a late birthday present. Daddy couldn't get any more leave that year but he talked to Aunt Sabrine for a while on the phone and then sat me down to talk after dinner one night.

"Listen, pumpkin," he said, sitting down in his recliner, as I sat down on the end of the couch, "I have been talking to your aunt about her offer to go with them on vacation to England. I told her that I couldn't get leave until the end of the year. So ... she has invited you to go along with them by yourself. What do you think?"

He seemed to be having a hard time telling me this and I was having a hard time seeing how my answer could be anything other than, "I would love to go, daddy!"

His worried look sprang into being as the words left my mouth. "I thought that was what you would say so I told your aunt you could go. You should call her tomorrow and thank her for inviting you," he said with a strained smile. He got up and squatted in front of me, holding my tiny hands in his large, slender hands. "Since I can't be with you, I am going to show you how to defend yourself between now and August 15. Karate is something you have to study over time and you are too young to get a gun permit, even if they allowed guns on airplanes and in England. Starting tomorrow, I will teach you how to use a knife." I am sure my eyes glowed at the thought because he sort of frowned down at me. "And I want you to promise that you will not carry a knife unless I tell you it is all right. Do you hear me? Promise me that you will follow my orders on this, Alexandra."

"I promise," was my sullen reply, visions of walking around with a knife like Rambo floating away in the harsh glare of my dad's eyes.

For the next three weeks, for three hours every weekday and five hours on the weekend days, daddy showed me how to hold, throw, thrust, parry, slice, and quick-draw knives of various description. I worked very hard and he seemed surprised at how fast I learned the things he was trying to teach me. By the time August 14 arrived, he had gotten to showing me how to use a knife that looked like a small sword when he put it in my hands.

That night he came to my room as I was packing and handed me a large box wrapped in fancy red and gold paper. "These are for you," he said, handing me the heavy box and sitting on my bed to watch me open it. I tore through the wrapping like a hurricane to find a beautifully carved wooden box inside. I put it on the bed and opened it. Inside were eight shiny knives strapped into spongy material, each with a comfortable and simply carven hilt. Two were obviously dueling knives like he taught me to use, four were well-balanced throwing knives (more like handleless blades), and the last two were complete opposites of each other. One was small, thin, and light, easy to conceal and more a last resort weapon than anything else. The other was a long dagger that looked threatening even in daddy's large hands.

Daddy took the box and lifted the smallest and largest knives out. "This one I want you to keep in this," he said holding up the smallest one and taking a tiny sheath out of the box that was hidden under the largest knife, "until you are through the airport security in London. It is lined with a kind of lead and the man I went to for these assures me that it will conceal its true nature as it goes through the x-ray machine in your bag. It is small enough that the screeners will overlook it.

"This one," he said, holding up the longest blade, "is to stay in its box unless you are going to a concert or some other place where you will be in a large group of people without decent security. It is only a killing weapon and it is well over the legal length of six inches. The throwing knives you can carry in their little sheaths anywhere after you get through airport security and the dueling knives are a little longer than are legal so I want you to wear this."

With that he handed me another wrapped present. I opened it and found what looked like a shoulder holster but instead of holsters there were two sheaths. The whole thing was made of leather and plastic, so it wouldn't set off any alarms. Daddy took the two dueling knives out of the box and slipped them into the sheaths. He then motioned for me to try the harness on. He adjusted the straps until it was snug.

"England is cool enough, even in the summer, that you can wear one of your long- or short-sleeved, button-down shirts over your t-shirts. You are to leave the knives in their box and in your suitcase until you get to your hotel. Don't show the knives to anyone unless you absolutely have to. And don't play with them, they are not toys. I am putting your own life in your own hands, Alexandra. You are only nine and I shouldn't have to do this, but Christmas and the airport have shown me that for whatever reason, you need to know how to take care of yourself in the face of anything. I am trusting you to see how serious this is. Please don't make me regret it," he said, his hands on my shoulders and his blue eyes gazing steadily into mine.

I nodded my head and placed my hands on his cheeks. "I promise to be good, daddy. You won't be sorry," I said in a tone far older than my age, trying to put my whole heart and soul into my gaze. Then I noticed something on the harness that was dangling from the sheaths. "What are those for, daddy?" He smiled and showed me how to slip my belt through the loops to stabilize the harness.

Daddy took me to the airport early the next morning. Dulles, this time. He saw me all the way to the gate and made sure the stewardesses knew I was traveling alone to New York's JFK where someone would be meeting me for my connecting flight. The flight was fairly short, though it seemed much longer to me because I was so anxious to see Anika. She had written me over the spring and summer that Aunt Sabrine was planning to take them on vacation before school, but she never let on that I was going to be invited. She knew lots of stuff about England from Janine and Mickey, especially about London, since Janine's father has a house in London.

As the pilot announced that they were getting ready to land, a stewardess stopped by my seat to tell me to stay in my seat when everybody else got up and she would escort me to the next gate herself. She smiled at me, patted my shoulder, and went to strap herself in. It was a smooth landing and everybody jostled and shuffled up to the front of the plane while I just stood up and hefted my bag waiting for the stewardess.

"Are you waiting for someone, little girl?" a kindly older lady asked. She was dressed in a stewardess uniform but she had extra stuff on her shirt and an i. d. tag that said "Helen Wiesnieski" with "Senior Stewardess" underneath it. She had a large purse and a small suitcase on wheels behind her.

I looked around the plane and shrugged. "I was told by one of the other stewardesses that she would take me to my connecting flight's gate," I told her, still looking around.

Helen frowned, then smiled. "Oh, you are the little girl flying by herself! Well, come with me. I can get you where you are going."

I shrugged again and hefted my bag. As soon as we stepped out into the concourse I heard my name shouted. "Anika?" I whirled trying to find the voice.

"I take it that was somebody you know," the stewardess said looking around with me. "Over there! The girl in the pretty dress with the little boy and the well-dressed woman."

I looked where she was pointing and saw Aunt Sabrine walking towards me with Anika and Jake. Anika was, indeed, in a gorgeous dress of pink silk and red velvet. Her walk was drawing nearly as many eyes as Aunt Sabrine in her sleek business suit and high heels. Jake looked grubby in his faded jeans and t-shirt next to them. I looked down at my outfit, closer to that of Jake's, and frowned. At least Jake and I looked related. Nobody would believe we were with the older girls, however.

Anika swept me up in a hug. "We thought you might have missed your plane when no more people came out of the plane. Our next plane is almost boarding."

Aunt Sabrine was thanking the stewardess when Anika dragged me over to them. "We thought she might have gotten lost," my aunt was saying.

"Oh, no. I think one of my girls promised to take her on to the next plane and forgot about her. She's a good kid. She was waiting by her seat patiently. Have a nice flight. Bye, dear!" The stewardess waved to me, heading in the opposite direction as we were walking.

Aunt Sabrine hugged me. "I am glad your dad let you come, Alexandra. We are going to have a lot of fun," she said, settling her carry-on bag on her shoulder and walking briskly towards our connecting flight's gate. "They are starting boarding already so we need to hurry, dear."

We were all breathless by the time we reached our gate and started down the tunnel to the plane. It was about eleven in the morning and I was starting to fade. Jake curled up beneath a blanket as soon as he found a stewardess to get him a blanket and pillow. Aunt Sabrine seemed to try to do a little paperwork she had brought with her but was asleep soon after the plane got airborne. Anika and I, however, sat and talked for an hour or so before we both began yawning in each other's face. We ate the lunch they brought us a little after twelve, talked a little as we tried to get comfortable under the blankets we asked for, and were soon asleep.

The flight was seven hours long and it was well after midnight when we touched down at Heathrow Airport in London. As we walked into the terminal I stopped stock still as I saw a huge sign with mine and my aunt's and cousins' names on it being carried by a tall, thin, handsome man with brown eyes and black hair frosted at the temples with white. Next to him, grinning widely, were an unknown woman, Mickey, and Janine. Janine walked forward sedately to kiss Anika on the cheeks. She was wearing a dress even more splendid than Anika's and was acting even more prissy than the last time I saw her. I looked over at Mickey, who was also in a dress, with a raised brow. She blushed and shrugged apologetically. Aunt Sabrine walked forward and kissed cheeks with the man and the woman, who turned out to be Mickey's and Janine's mom dropping her daughters off on her way to a business meeting of her own in France.

Aunt Sabrine ushered me forward to greet the finely dressed English people and introduce me. She muttered to me that it was Janine's dad who had extended the invitation to join his daughter and her half-sister in London for the last two weeks of the summer vacation. We would be staying in his townhouse. When he said it, it was with a somewhat self-deprecatory manner. I was shocked to see a huge stone building that was more like an apartment complex in size than a townhouse.

Mr. Spencer, or Eoin as he told us to call him, was a minor noble and a major diplomat when the right person asked. He was fairly wealthy and he enjoyed Americans immensely. He was single and had a young son, who was living with his ex-wife, but he adored his daughter and spoiled her outrageously when she visited. His mother loved taking Janine out to the shops around the city when she was there. He informed Mickey and me that there was a shopping excursion planned tomorrow afternoon for all of the ladies but that he was planning to take Jake to his fencing club. Mickey's eyes lit up and I smiled eagerly. I did not know this man enough to ask to go with them but apparently he had been warned about our inclinations and he said we could decide what we wanted to do in the morning.

As the two limousines rolled around the drive on the house, servants came out to gather bags and guests and take them up to their rooms. By the standards of American mansions, Eoin's townhouse was modest, but that did not stop me and Mickey from gawking. Mickey had been to England with her sister before, but that had only been to the family's country estate during a couple of winter visits. She told me later while we were trying to get to sleep that the country manor house was a huge, sprawling castle surrounded by wooded hills and a placid lake that was so still it reflected the sky like a mirror. She liked the country estate because she got to ride horses and swim and run around the hills with Eoin's son who was only a year or two older than she.

The room the servant carrying our bags left us in was almost bigger than mine and daddy's quarters back in Virginia. There were two huge canopied, four-poster beds, two antique vanities, four massive wooden wardrobes, and two large desks placed facing each other as if there was a mirror in the center of the room. The only differences between the two halves of the room were the old paintings of people hanging from the walls facing each other. Each painting had a different man or woman or family shown in antique clothing posed like portraits usually are posed. There was one painting, opposite the double doors, of a fox hunt and it covered the wall where the doors would have been had the doors been on that wall.

I stood gaping in awe at the room as Mickey went straight for the bed. The servant placed our bags by the wardrobes and asked if we needed anything. Not being able to think, I shook my head no and Mickey thanked him as he left, closing the doors behind him.

"I can't believe this place!" I whispered. "I feel like I've fallen into a fairy tale. This bed looks like something out of Cinderella or one of those gushy romance books that Anika reads before bed."

A giggle echoed around the room. "Janine reads the same trash. Let's get changed for bed. I am exhausted. We got up at five this morning."

I opened my suitcase and got out two of my knives and a t-shirt and boxers for bed. I stripped and dressed and was in bed before Mickey had undressed. I pulled back the covers slithered under them, slipping the two knives under my pillow. I was trying to think of how I was going to get my knife harness on in the morning when Mickey sighed loudly from the other side of the room.