Blythewood

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  “Yes, Miss Frost, and a visitor. Avaline Hall has come to say hello.”

  “Ah,” Miss Frost said, struggling to sit upright and find her lorgnette on her nightstand. “Is she still here? I’d have thought she would have vanished like her mother by now.”

  “I’m still here,” I said, my nose prickling at the rank odor of the bedclothes as I stepped closer. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  She regarded me through her lorgnette, her eyes magnified into grotesque bloodshot orbs, and sniffed. “Well then, you might as well make yourself useful. I’m afraid your friend Miss Muffat—”

  “Moffat,” I corrected.

  Miss Frost waived her hand dismissively at my correction. “I’m afraid she’s making a mess of my specimens while I’m indisposed. Go down and check for me—”

  “I can do that, Miss Frost,” Sarah interrupted, giving me an apologetic smile.

  Miss Frost shifted her gaze from me to Sarah. As her eyes moved I noticed that there was a film over them and that a vein twitched at her temple. She stared at Sarah as if she didn’t recognize her. Was she going blind? I wondered. But then she blinked and the film cleared. “You do too much,” she rasped hoarsely. “You . . .” A coughing fit kept her from finishing.

  “Not at all, Miss Frost,” Sarah said, pouring a teaspoonful of the medicine she’d brought. “I’m happy to be of service. Here. Drink this. It will help your cough.”

  Sarah leaned over and deftly inserted the spoon into Miss Frost’s mouth. The coughing slowly subsided, leaving Miss Frost exhausted. “There, that’s better,” Sarah said soothingly, pulling up the counterpane. Then to me she mouthed, “We’d better go.”

  We tiptoed out of the room. Before we left, though, I heard Miss Frost murmuring something. It sounded like “Miles.”

  z o Z I wrote a message to Raven that evening. “E.F. looks too ill to do anything dangerous, but I plan to keep an eye on her tonight.” I sealed the note, borrowing a bit of Helen’s sealing wax because that was something the girls in Mrs. Moore’s books did when they sent secret notes. I smiled to myself at the memory of the girl who used to read girls’-school adventures at the Seward Park library. She seemed a much more innocent person than the girl who was spying on her teacher.

  While I was putting back the sealing wax a slip of paper fell out of one of the desk’s pigeonholes. Putting it back, I couldn’t help notice that it was a bill from a dress shop. I tucked it back in with several other bills. I recognized Miss Janeway’s letterhead and the trademarks of several of the stores I’d gone to on Ladies’ Mile. As I’d suspected, Helen’s correspondence was mainly to do with clothing orders. Nothing as weighty as my note to Raven.

  I slipped the note to Sarah at dinner. I needn’t have worried about being so secretive. Cam had left early for her clandestine archery practice, Bea and Dolores had their heads together over a textbook, Helen was reading a letter, and Daisy was intent on cutting up her beefsteak into tiny pieces.

  “I’m going in the morning to pick up a new physic for Miss Frost,” Sarah whispered. “I’ll deliver it then.”

  After dinner I waited until everyone had gone off to their separate hideouts and then crept up the back stairs in the North Wing to the third floor. I didn’t have much hope of catching Miss Frost doing any spying, but I wanted to be able to tell Raven that I’d at least tried, and if I did see anything important I’d go myself to Violet House to tell him. I’d wear the new dress my grandmother had sent me from Paris. It was a lovely forest green that brought out the red in my hair, which I thought would remind Raven of his treetop nest.

  I was so engrossed imagining myself in the dress—and Raven’s reaction to it—that I didn’t notice the two people coming down the stairs until they were almost upon me. I ducked behind a tall highboy on the third-floor landing just before Miss Corey and Miss Sharp reached it. Luckily they were too deeply engaged in an argument to overhear my hurried retreat.

  “I don’t know what you’re so upset about, Lil,” Miss Sharp was saying as they walked by. “I was merely agreeing with Rupert that there needed to be certain changes. I know you think so, too. I’ve seen how you look at Miss Frost’s specimens.”

  “Of course it’s horrible what she does to those poor sprites,” Miss Corey cried out, “but the question is how best to bring about change. I just don’t see where Rupert Bellows comes off storming in and demanding that we make changes.”

  “Because he’s a man?” Miss Sharp inquired archly.

  “Well, yes, since you mention it. Why can’t the men run Hawthorn and let us run Blythewood?”

  “You know that’s not how it works, Lil. We must all work together as the knight and sisters did.”

  “In the old ways? Really, Vi, not you, too! And what if they tell you to marry some decrepit old man?”

  “They won’t,” Miss Sharp answered, her voice bitter.

  Miss Corey lowered her voice and whispered something, her voice warbling, as though she were fighting some deep emotion, but they were too far below me on the stairs for me to hear them. I thought I knew where this argument was going anyway. It sounded like the one that Agnes had had with Miss Janeway. At the time, I’d thought it was to do with the women’s vote, but now I realized it was about the Order. It seemed as if everyone wanted to change the way things were done but they were afraid of making things worse—the way the girls at the factory were afraid that if they spoke out against the bosses they would lose their jobs. And look what happened to them. I felt a great pang then, missing Tillie. She would put the Order to rights if she were here.

  A floorboard creaked. I pushed myself deeper into the space between the highboy and the wall and waited. I heard the sound again, coming from the third-floor hall. Someone was approaching, perhaps Sarah coming from Miss Frost’s room . . . but these footsteps were softer and more erratic than Sarah’s purposeful, boot-heeled stride. An odor of gin and camphor soon announced who it was. I peeked out and saw Miss Frost, barefoot in her nightgown, her long gray hair hanging loose and tangled down her back, careen onto the landing.

  “Must check on my specimens,” she muttered as she passed me. “Can’t trust that girl.”

  She stumbled on the stairs going down and I thought she was going to plunge headlong to her death, but she grasped the banister and righted herself and kept going, muttering as she went.

  I followed her, staying far enough back so she wouldn’t hear me, although I don’t think she would have noticed a scurry of goblins or a berg of ice giants thundering down the steps in her condition—nor did I have much trouble following her. Even without Miss Swift’s tracking classes I could have tracked her by her scent.

  On the ground floor, she veered down the hallway into her classroom. I crept carefully to the doorway and peered in. She was standing in a patch of moonlight, in front of the glass specimen cases, looking down at a square of glass.

  “I will never forget what they did to you, never!” I thought she was talking to one of the specimen trays until she hung the object back on the wall and I saw it was the silver-framed photograph of Sir Miles Malmsbury. She touched her fingertips to her lips and then pressed them to the photograph. Sighing heavily, she turned back to the specimen case, lifted her hand to a brass handle, and turned it. Instead of the glass door opening, the whole bookcase swung inward on silent, well-oiled hinges and Miss Frost disappeared inside it, leaving the case slightly ajar.

  A secret passageway! The answer of what she was doing for van Drood—and proof of her duplicity—might lie inside. I crept into the classroom and looked through the secret doorway. Moonlight illuminated stone steps leading steeply down into the dark. Pitch dark. Looking into it was like looking into the well I’d fallen into during the crow attack. What if van Drood was down there? I didn’t know if I could face him and summon the bells in the dark. I stood uncertain on the threshold, remembering the eerie feeling of being down in the dungeon near the candelabellum. I could wait until tomorrow, tell Raven about the
passageway, and ask him to come with me— but what if tonight’s meeting was important? What if they were making plans to do something awful to Blythewood—or to the Darklings? I had to know what Miss Frost was doing down there.

  I turned back to the room and snatched up one of the spirit lamps. Lighting it with the matches she kept in her desk and shielding the flame with my hand, I followed her into the dark.

  31

  EVEN WITH MY little lamp, I felt as though I were being swallowed by the dark. It had a texture like the heavy crepe my mother used to trim mourning hats and a smell like cold ashes. I could taste it in my throat, growing thicker as I went farther into the bowels of the castle. I wanted desperately to flee back up into the light, but I kept going, determined to find out what Miss Frost was doing.

  At the bottom of the stairs a stone-paved corridor sloped even farther down. Water dripped down the walls and splashed under my feet. The more I walked, the more I wondered if the corridor was really a tunnel that led down to the river. A squeaking sound made me fear it was a passageway for rats—or worse. Miss Swift had said that the lampsprites tunneled through the snow and into the castle. Might other creatures from the Blythe Wood also use this underground passage?

  A loud creaking noise startled me so badly I nearly dropped my lamp. I pressed myself into a niche in the stone wall and listened. It sounded like metal grating on metal, rusted hinges groaning, a gate being opened . . . and then a low murmurous voice like ghosts whispering. I inched closer, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end, skin prickling. The only reason I wasn’t running back in the other direction was that I didn’t hear the bell in my head. So there must not be any real danger. Besides, I had Miss Emmy’s repeater. I could use it to raise a concealing mist to hide from Miss Frost if I had to.

  The murmurous voice came from behind the door. I carefully peered around it.

  I was more surprised than if I’d come upon a room full of ghosts. The low-ceilinged chamber was paneled in dark wood and lined with glass-fronted bookcases. A small leather-upholstered campaign desk was fitted into one corner, a cast-iron stove into the other. Miss Frost had opened one of the cases and was moving small white objects around on a shelf, dusting them with the hem of her nightgown. At first I thought they were seashells, but then she held one up to the light and I saw that it was a tiny skull. A human-looking skull.

  I let out an involuntary gasp. Miss Frost wheeled on me, her eyes wide and glassy in the lamplight.

  “There you are!” she cried, holding out the tiny skull. She had spied me before I had a chance to conceal myself. “You’ve let them get dusty! I told you they have to be kept in order for Sir Malmsbury when he returns. This is his life’s work!”

  I looked around the room at the thick ledgers, wicker baskets, butterfly nets, glass bell jars, microscopes, paraffin lamps, hanging diagrams of skeletons, brass microscopes, shelves of skulls and other bone fragments—and one embroidered reticule. It was a naturalist’s study perfectly preserved as a shrine to Miss Frost’s lost mentor, Sir Miles Malmsbury. But what did it have to do with van Drood?

  “Well, don’t stand there gawking, girl! There’s cataloguing

  CAROL GOODMAN [ 383 to be done!” She pointed to the desk on which lay a large leather-bound ledger, next to a lit gas lamp and a box of matches. Clearly Miss Frost thought in her confusion that I was Sarah. Since I didn’t want to disabuse her of the notion, I sat down and took up the fountain pen beside the ledger. As I pulled up my chair I felt something stir against my feet beneath the desk and heard the squeaking I’d noticed before.

  I looked up to see if Miss Frost had noticed it, but she only handed me a tray of bone fragments, each one labeled with a small Roman numeral. “You can start with these,” she said. Then, with a wistful glance around the study—as loving as if the grisly assortment of bones had been love tokens—she left. I sat for a moment wondering if I should go after her, but another squeak from beneath the desk decided me. I crouched down, lamp in hand. Two pairs of frightened eyes stared back at me.

  “She’s gone now, Daisy,” I said. “You can come out.” “How did you know it was me?” Daisy asked, crawling awkwardly out of her hiding spot and cradling something in the crook of her elbow.

  “Your reticule,” I said, helping Daisy to her feet and staring at the creature nestled in the crook of her elbow. It was a lampsprite, with white wings tipped with silver, covered in a fine white down that formed a sort of dress on her slim body. As she shook her wings free of the dust, I saw that one of her wings was broken.

  “It’s the sprite Blodeuwedd caught in Miss Swift’s class,” I said. “The one you were supposed to bring to the specimen room.”

  “I told Miss Frost she escaped. I couldn’t let her be killed . . . she’s a person.”

  The little sprite hopped onto Daisy’s shoulder and brushed her wings over Daisy’s cheeks, leaving a light silvery powder, then trilled at Daisy in a high, squeaky voice.

  “And you’re keeping her here? Weren’t you afraid Miss Frost would find her?”

  “Featherbell wanted to be close to her departed sisters.”

  “Featherbell?” I asked.

  The sprite whistled a long fluty tune and Daisy giggled. “Well, actually that tune you just heard is her real name. In her language it means ‘feathered-one-whose-voice-rings-like-abell,’ but I can’t pronounce that, so we agreed on Featherbell as the closest translation.”

  “You can understand her?” The sprite’s whistles and trills sounded like the sounds the hawks made in their mews.

  “Oh yes, you can, too, if you let her brush her wings on your face. The sprites communicate with a combination of the powder on their wings and sound waves directly to your brain. They call it powdering—or actually ‘the-speech-which-usespowder-instead-of-voice,’ but I—”

  “Couldn’t pronounce that. Got it. Okay, I’ll try it.”

  The sprite looked from Daisy to me, tilting her head and blinking her large blue eyes. She chirped uncertainly. “She’s really okay,” Daisy assured her.

  The sprite still looked uncertain but she hopped from Daisy’s shoulder to mine, landing light as a butterfly. Her wings brushing against my cheek felt like cobwebs. When she sang I felt a vibration inside my brain that resolved into words.

  “Greetings, friend of She-whose-name-means-a-flowerand-brings-food. Please do not blame your friend for hiding me and keeping secrets from you. I would not like any harm to come to her for rescuing me. She has been kind and good.”

  I looked at Daisy, who was smiling proudly at the little sprite, and felt as though I hadn’t really looked at her properly for months. She’d subjected herself to Miss Frost’s temper and forced herself to handle specimens that were repugnant to her so she could take care of this wounded creature—which wasn’t a creature at all, but a person with thoughts and feelings. I had been as blind about their nature as I had been about Daisy’s.

  “I know,” I said to the sprite, but smiling at Daisy. “She is kind and good. I won’t let any harm come to either of you. In fact . . .” I held out my hand for her to hop on and studied her wing. “I think I know someone who can fix your wing.”

  z o Z The lamp I’d brought with me was nearly out of oil, but we didn’t need it. With a flick of her unbroken wing, Featherbell emitted a strong steady glow that lit up the stone corridor in more detail than I cared to see. The walls were covered with a slimy green mold, the floors running with black oily water from which rose noxious vapors that twined around our ankles. When the vapors touched me I heard the bass bell toll in my head. I clasped the repeater in my pocket and pressed its stem. A tinkling chime played and the vapors retreated.

  “How can you stand to be down here?” I asked Daisy. “It wasn’t this bad at first. I think it’s been worse since the snow’s been melting and seeping down through the stones. The vapors started a couple of weeks ago—and it always seems worse after Miss Frost has been down here.”

  “A couple of weeks
ago?” That would have been when I’d seen Judicus van Drood breathe smoke into Miss Frost’s ear. Could these noxious vapors be tenebrae? The thought made my skin crawl. With Featherbell’s light I saw now that there were other passages that turned off this main one. From one of them I thought I heard the tinkling of bells. The candelabellum must be that way, I thought, recalling that Miss Frost had come out of the candelabellum chamber the night Nathan and I saw her in the Special Collections Room. She must have used the candelabellum chamber as a shortcut to get into the Special Collections.

  I hurried past the passage, the thought of the shadows moving in the bell-shaped chamber somehow even more unnerving than the creeping vapors, and sprinted up the stairs. I checked to make sure that Miss Frost’s classroom was empty and then signaled Daisy and Featherbell to come through. Daisy closed the bookcase behind us. As it swung shut I thought I saw a wisp of smoke creep through the gap at the bottom, but then it seemed to evaporate. I was relieved until Featherbell hopped on my shoulder and swept her wings across my face.

  Tenebrae . The word rang in my head. I didn’t say anything out loud, though, because I didn’t want to alarm Daisy, who was nervous enough as it was.

  “Are you sure we can trust Gillie?” she asked as we crept along the corridor, Featherbell tucked in her reticule. “Remember how sorry he looked when he gave Featherbell over to you? I’m sure he’ll help us.”

  I wasn’t really as sure as I sounded, but I didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t healthy for Daisy to be spending so much time down in the dungeons with the tenebrae, and she wouldn’t abandon the sprite until she was well enough to fly back to the woods on her own. I couldn’t be sure that Gillie wouldn’t turn us all in, but I was hoping that his compassion for wounded creatures would overcome his loyalty to Blythewood regulations. I just hoped we could find him. I’d never gone looking for him at night.

  I knew that Gillie had a room in the south tower, near the mews. To get there we had to go across the Great Hall, up to the fourth-floor landing of the South Wing, climb out onto the catwalk, up a ladder to the roof, past the mews, and into the tower. As we passed the mews I heard an excited fluttering from the hawks inside and an answering thump from inside Daisy’s reticule.