God's Crusade

Part Fourteen

"OMG Dad, not first class tickets!" Hermione squealed in delight as her father produced his final surprise.

"Oh...I had a little bonus...this is the trip of your lifetime." He shrugged as she hugged him tight, her excitement making him glow with pride. "I know this isn't Rio...or the south of France...or even Hawaii...but taking you home to see Mum and Dad...after all this time...it means so much to me, Hermione...and to them, of course. So...we might as well do it in style, don't you think?"

"Oh I think, I definitely think...so, I guess we should dress up?"

"British Airways has a fairly strict dress code, even for tourists, and first class is clearly the most exclusive. But I checked with Gran and she says you showed her a dark blue dress with a nice hat and a simple mantle? She thinks that will be more than suitable." Chris Slade told her, all smiles. "I just have to wear a suit and tie...but when in Rome, right?"

So Hermione wore the dark blue dress. It felt weird in New York, as they left the apartment and hailed a cab, and she noticed quite a lot of people staring at her, but she felt like Kate Winslet in Titanic, arriving at the dock looking a million dollars. She felt so graceful and elegant as her skirts swirled around her, and when she fixed the mantle across her face she thought it made her look mysterious and that it was all part of the adventure. Her father said all the right things, telling her she looked grownup and sophisticated, and kept her laughing all the way to the terminal, through all the endless passport control queues and finally onto the plane. First class really was something else. Each seat was huge, like a sofa, and there seemed to be a steward for each and every passenger. No stewardesses though, Hermione noticed, reminding herself that British women were simply not allowed to work, apart from a short list of suitable occupations and rare authorised exceptions. They were the first onto the plane, more or less, and she settled herself in her huge seat and watched the other passengers filing though in amazement and awe. She had not really seen anyone else waiting in the lounge. First class passengers seemed to be kept apart from each other let alone the hoi polloi in the terminal, and they were early anyway so probably missed a lot of later arrivals, but soon a series of heavily veiled women were streaming past her, all accompanied by what she took to be their maids, or some sort of servants, and smartly dressed gentlemen who seemed to take almost no interest in their companions at all. Hermione could not compare her outfit to these fine ladies. Her mantle was thin and light, and served merely to hide her face. She actually thought it accentuated her eyes, but she realised it was not the genuine article. Her father reminded her that she was a tourist, and that the rules were different for her. In her case, all she had to do was respect the British laws, not follow them religiously, which in the case of Britain was a very appropriate word to use. He was sitting on her right, and there was one last seat in first class, on her left, which remained empty until almost the last minute.

It was filled by what Hermione could only assume was a woman, because she was hidden beneath at least two layers of the most luxurious, perfect velvet, a sumptuous gown covered by a voluminous cloak, that rendered the person and the body beneath it all but invisible. Two stewards helped her to her seat, and carefully strapped her in, and it was only whilst they were doing so that Hermione realised that the poor person could not see. She had a layer of matching velvet, actually a blinding mantle, the first one Hermione had ever seen, draped down across where her ordinary mantle and veils ought to be. Hermione then noticed her hands, except they were not hands. All she could see were little velvet covered lumps.

۩

Madison Nixon could hardly move. Her father had asked his dear friends, Kieran Radcliffe and Alistair Forbes, to have a suitable outfit sent out to Virginia for his daughter to travel to London in, so that she would fit in with her generous hosts from the moment she actually arrived, and hopefully learn from the experience. Radcliffe had done so, and offered to send a guardian to escort Miss Nixon as well, but Shapleigh Nixon III, or Shap as he was to his close friends and voters, decided that she could travel as an unaccompanied minor in the care of the airline. It was a popular British Airways service and Alistair Forbes told him that his own dear wife still found it a particularly unpleasant experience on the rare occasions that he sent her home. But in the end, a traditional maiden ought to be kept blind and mute on a public aircraft, so there was little point in going to the expense of sending a guardian with her. It was just a question of changing her feeding tubes once or twice and the flight stewards would do that for a fee. Radcliffe's people would collect her right from the aircraft, and it was far less trouble for everyone. Madison had already caused more than enough trouble.