Gallant

Olivia Prior, a girl who does not speak, lives at the Merilance School for Independent Girls. She flees to a garden shed on school grounds after being mocked by her classmates for her disability. The shed is feared by the other girls who sense the presence of a ghost-like figure—a “ghoul”—that is visible only to Olivia. In the shed, Olivia fantasizes about having a home that isn’t Merilance: perhaps the home that belonged to her dead mother, whom Olivia is only connected to through the rambling journal she left behind. Olivia is found in the shed by a matron who punishes her for running away by denying her dinner. Olivia sneaks into the matrons’ quarters while the other girls eat and steals some of the desserts they keep there.

Olivia brings her stolen dinner back to bed and re-reads her mother’s journal. The journal is addressed to “you,” who Olivia assumes to be her dead father. The journal describes, in riddle-like language, the courtship of Olivia’s parents and the days leading to Olivia’s birth. Olivia’s father dies before she is born, though, and from there Olivia’s mother’s writing becomes fractured. Olivia assumes that this shift in her writing reflects her growing detachment from reality.

This chapter opens with an excerpt from Olivia’s mother’s journal, in which she implores Olivia to stay away from Gallant.

Olivia is summoned to the head matron’s office where she’s informed that she has received a letter from family. The letter, from an uncle named Arthur Prior, informs Olivia that she’s getting the one thing she and every other girl at Merilance has always craved—the opportunity to leave the school and rejoin her mother’s family at their estate. Arthur says that her mother was unwell when Olivia was born and took her from the family home. The matrons tell Olivia a car is already coming to pick her up.

The chapter opens with an excerpt from Olivia’s mother’s diary in which she describes being both happy and frightened.

Olivia packs her suitcase and is driven north. In the car, she reflects on the odd illustrations in her mother’s journal that seem out of place with her mother’s words. She eventually arrives at a massive, Gothic estate—Gallant—and is left at the door. The house is surrounded by gardens that include a fountain. The woman who answers the door, Hannah, seems surprised to find Olivia there. She fetches a man named Edgar and the two, confounded, read the letter Olivia received. They reluctantly bring Olivia in.

The master of the house, surrounded by his three shadows, moves through the house. He sings and, because he is the only one who can make noise, it’s the only sound heard through the house.

Hannah exclaims that Olivia looks just like Grace—who Olivia learns was her mother. Hannah and Edgar seem to believe that it’s impossible for Olivia to have the letter from Arthur. Olivia explains to Edgar, who is proficient in sign language, that she received it earlier in the day but knows nothing about it. Hannah and Edgar are joined by Matthew, Arthur’s son, who is furious that Olivia has come. Matthew reveals that his father has been dead for over a year, so it’s impossible that he sent the letter. Matthew, apparently horrified by the existence of other Priors, asks Olivia to leave immediately but Hannah counsels Olivia to sleep at Gallant because the outdoors can be dangerous at night. Edgar takes Olivia to a room upstairs and tells her that he doesn’t know if her mother is dead or alive. Olivia, upset but tired, takes a long bath and relaxes in the luxury of the room. Hannah brings her dinner, and Olivia wonders as she eats about who sent the letter if Arthur didn’t.

The chapter opens with an excerpt from Grace’s journal in which she worries that, when she touches and watches Olivia, she’s not really the one controlling her actions.

In the middle of the night, Olivia steals out of her room to explore Gallant. She sees a ghoul-woman on her way downstairs, for the estate is haunted just as Merilance was. She goes to the study where she finds a mechanical object, “half clock and half sculpture” (66), on the desk. The object contains two miniature houses, mirror images of each other. Olivia hears someone moving behind her and startles. When she goes to investigate, she doesn’t see anyone there but instead finds a door that seems to lead to an outside garden. She uses a key Hannah gave her to open the lock and, just as she cracks the door open, a ghoul with half his face missing rushes toward her. Frightened, Olivia rushes back to her room, leaving the key in the lock.

Olivia wakes and begins to snoop through the contents of the room, picking locks on the cabinets and looking for clues about her mother. Hannah comes in with tea and with the key Olivia left in the door, warning her not to go out at night. Hannah, upon seeing the picked locks, says that Grace was curious just as Olivia is, and that Olivia closely resembles her mother. Hannah goes on to tell Olivia that Grace and Arthur lived alone in Gallant, but Grace was more restless, always looking to get away from the house. One day, Grace disappeared with Olivia, and Hannah spent the years since worrying about them both. Hannah gives Olivia a picture of her mother, and Olivia realizes that her mother is dead because her mother is the ghoul she saw as she went downstairs the night before.

The chapter opens with an excerpt of the journal in which Grace is begging someone to stay with her.

Olivia goes downstairs and overhears a conversation between Hannah and Edgar in which Edgar insists that Hannah tell Olivia “what it means, to be a Prior. To be here” (81). Olivia studies the family portraits on the walls and discovers that the ghoul with the half missing face is actually Arthur Prior. She heads through a room with a piano in it to a bay window, through which she sees the garden she tried to access last night. Matthew is working with roses there. Olivia heads outside.

While trying to sketch the garden wall—a task that proves difficult, since the wall doesn’t seem to want to be drawn correctly—Olivia is confronted by Matthew, who wants to know why she’s still at Gallant. He explains that the house is cursed, and that life as a Prior at Gallant means questioning one’s perception of reality because of the ghosts that inhabit it. Olivia, assuming he’s talking about the ghouls, wants to explain that she’s learned to live with ghouls and that they’re nothing to be afraid of, but Matthew is unwilling to try to communicate with her. Olivia starts to help Matthew with his work of pulling out the roses. She sees a gray stem pushing through the soil and, when she tries to pull it, the stem moves, cutting her. When she tries to show Matthew why she’s bleeding, she finds the stem has disappeared. Matthew, infuriated, sends her back inside.

The chapter opens with a journal excerpt in which Grace discusses a voice telling her “to come back, to come home” (97).

Edgar tends to Olivia’s hand and then gives her bread with jam. He begins to mention how someone named “Tom” used to like the jam, but he stops himself. When she’s done eating, Olivia goes back to the study. She realizes that the houses in the metal sculpture are actually Gallant, and that when she spins the sculpture it looks like a wall appears between the houses. Oliva rifles through a drawer and finds a notebook that lists various boarding schools and orphanages—one of which is Merilance.

At dinner, Hannah, sensing Olivia’s desire to stay at Gallant, lies to Matthew and tells him that the nearest car that could take Olivia away is in the shop.