“I think she’s afraid of the falcons,” Daisy said.
We continued on past the mews to the tower. There was a low door barely high as my head, with a brass knocker shaped like a stag’s head. Daisy and I exchanged a worried look, and I lifted my hand to the knocker. Before I could lower it the door opened. Gillie stood, framed in lamplight, in a long-sleeved red wool undershirt, loose corduroy trousers, black hair standing on end. He gripped either side of the door with his hands, barring both our entry and view of the room beyond. In the low doorway Gillie suddenly looked taller than he was—and more imposing.
“What are ye girls doing here?” he growled. “Haven’t I said often enough that my quarters are off limits?”
“Y-yes,” Daisy stammered, already backing away. I grabbed her arm to keep her from fleeing.
“We’re very sorry to bother you, Gillie, but someone’s hurt who needs your help.”
“Who’s hurt ye, lass?” he demanded. “I’ll have the bastard’s head—”
“It’s not me,” I said quickly, surprised at the fervor of Gillie’s response. “It’s . . . well . . . a smaller someone. You might as well show him, Daisy.”
Daisy stuck her hand in her reticule and lifted Featherbell into the light. She sat cross-legged on her hand, arms crossed over her tiny chest, glaring up at Gillie.
“We know it’s against the rules . . . ” I began.
“But I couldn’t let Miss Frost kill her,” Daisy broke in. “She’s a person with thoughts and feelings and a family back in the woods. And she doesn’t mean us any harm.”
Gillie reached for the sprite. Daisy started to pull back her hand, afraid, as I was, that Gillie meant to capture Featherbell. But he only held his hand out palm up, the way you’d hold an apple out to a nervous horse. Featherbell sniffed cautiously, stood up, swept her uninjured wing over Gillie’s hand, and trilled off a long musical tune that I only half understood—my powder must have been wearing off. It seemed to be some complicated formal greeting involving bloodlines, clan obligations, and an ancient treaty. At the end of it, Gillie bowed his head. When he lifted it his eyes were shining.
“Aye, little one, I havena forgotten. You are welcome here. You two as well.” He looked at us. “Ye might as well come in, but ye have to promise not to breathe a word of what ye see here. Keep my secrets and I’ll keep yours.”
“We promise,” Daisy and I said at the same time.
Gillie stepped aside to let us in. As we stepped into the small, low-ceilinged room I thought we’d entered an aviary. A dozen brightly colored winged creatures fluttered around the room or perched on roof beams over our head.
But they weren’t birds. They were lampsprites.
Featherbell let out an excited trill and hopped from Daisy’s hand to the back of a tufted chintz settee where a young male sprite covered in brown feathers embraced her. All the other sprites in the room were soon crowding around her, trilling and brushing their wings together until a cloud of multihued glitter rose around them—or at least I thought it was glitter until it floated back down and burned tiny holes in the upholstery and rugs. Gillie quickly beat out the sparks with his bare hands and let loose a stream of Scottish that I suspected included expletives, from the way he blushed when he saw us staring at him.
“The wee things have near set my house on fire a dozen times,” he complained. “They don’t call them a conflagration of sprites for naught.”
“Does Dame Beckwith know about this?” Daisy asked, goggle-eyed as three sprites landed on her shoulders and brushed their wings along her cheeks.
“Are ye daft, lass? The mistress would boot me out on my ar—articles if she knew. She and I dinna see eye to eye on the wee sprites. They’re harmless, as long as ye keep them from setting the place on fire. And the puir things are having a hard winter, what with the Jotuns in the woods. I try to leave out food for them, but I found this whole conflagration near starved to death, so I brought them here. It’s only until next week when spring begins. Now, let’s see what we can do for your wee friend . . .”
“Featherbell.” Daisy gave her name as the sprite jumped into Gillie’s hand.
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Featherbell,” Gillie said, his lips twitching into a crooked smile. “Let’s see what ye’ve done to your wing.”
He gently stretched out Featherbell’s injured wing and inspected the broken feathers. “Ah, this won’t be hard to imp, but I’ll need replacement feathers.”
“Could we use ones from Miss Frost’s specimens?” Daisy asked.
At Miss Frost’s name the sprites trilled and fluttered agitatedly, raising a cloud of angry sparks. The sparks landed in my hair and I made out—while extinguishing them—the word murderer.
“Can ye do it without attracting Miss . . . er . . . the lady’s attention?” Gillie asked.
“She’s staying mostly to her room,” I said. “Except for wandering down to the dungeons at night. I could keep an eye on her while Daisy steals the spec—I mean, the departed sprite.”
“I’d have to watch for Sarah, too,” Daisy said. “She tells everything to Miss . . . her.”
“She’s just afraid of losing her job,” I explained to Daisy. “But I have an idea to distract her as well. We’ll do it first thing in the morning, just after breakfast when Sarah brings up her tray. I’ll go with Sarah and you can get the feathers for Gillie.”
“I’ll have Miss Featherbell fixed in a trice, then,” Gillie said. “She should be able to fly back to the woods with her conflagration on the first day of spring . . . which can’t come soon enough,” Gillie added in a gruff voice. “I’ll be glad to have the nuisances out of my hair.”
One of the sprites flew past me, grazing my cheeks with her wingtips, and landed on Gillie’s shoulder. “We nuisances are grateful for your shelter, Ghillie Dhu, protector of all the injured and lost,” she trilled. “You have cared for the creatures of the woods and all who stray into it from time immemorial. If you ever tire of serving your human mistress, you will have an honored place among us.”
Gillie’s moss-green eyes grew wide and bright, then he scowled, wiped the fairy dust off his face, and nodded curtly to the sprite. Looking up he caught my eye. He must have seen the streak of dust on my cheek and realized I’d heard what the sprite had said.
Gillie wasn’t human. He was a Ghillie Dhu, an ancient guardian of the woods and all who got lost in it. But how had he managed to come to live within the walls of Blythewood? And who of the Order knew what he was? It was a mystery I couldn’t unravel, but if I tried I knew I might bring harm to Gillie—and as I watched him tending to the sprites I knew that I would never be able to do that.
32
AFTER BREAKFAST THE next day it was easy enough to make sure Sarah and Miss Frost were out of the way while Daisy stole a specimen. I merely offered to help carry the tray, silently mouthing that I had a message for her to deliver.
“Another one so soon!” she remarked when I gave her the sealed note I’d written last night to Raven. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll seem . . . overly eager?”
I blushed at the thought, but answered, “He won’t mind. I have important news for him.”
“Really?” Sarah asked. “Have you come up with a plan to meet?”
“Y-yes,” I stammered, though I hated to lie to Sarah. I had written to tell Raven that the tenebrae were in the dungeons. I had no idea how to smuggle Raven into Blythewood. After all, he was quite a bit bigger than a lampsprite.
But it turned out that Raven made my lie true. He wrote back that very day (Sarah passing me the note at dinner) that he had a plan to come to Blythewood the next week on the first day of spring.
“Hold on until then,” he wrote. “The tenebrae bring out the
392 Blythewood
worst in people. Keep a careful eye on your friends for strange behavior.” Strange behavior? Like Helen becoming increasingly secretive about her letters from home and Nathan walling himself into his library window sea
t like the victim in Mr. Poe’s “Casque of Amontillado”? There seemed to be nothing but strange behavior at Blythewood the last week of winter—during which an icy rain fell, turning the snow to slush—as if the promise of release made the captivity of winter seem even more unbearable.
“Aye,” Gillie said when I mentioned it to him. “This is the most dangerous time of the winter, when the scent of greening stirs the blood. Even the sprites are tearing each other’s hair out.”
I witnessed Miss Sharp snapping at Mr. Bellows for bringing her violets, Beatrice reprimanding Dolores for being a “chatterbox,” and Alfreda Driscoll refusing to fetch Georgiana a cup of tea and telling her she was “not her maidservant.” Georgiana retaliated by starting a whispering campaign that Alfreda’s mother was the daughter of a tradesman and not one of the One Hundred at all. I caught myself spitefully thinking that at least someone else was getting a taste of Georgiana’s medicine and then felt guilty when I found Alfreda crying in the same closet I’d found Charlotte in a few weeks ago.
As for the Dianas, they seemed oddly distant and fierce. One night at dinner old Bertie went to remove a plate from the Dianas’ table and Andalusia Beaumont snatched it away from her, sinking her nails so deeply into Bertie’s arm that Gillie had to be called to make her release her grip.
“They’ve gone into ‘Hunt training,’” Sarah told me on the eve of the equinox. “Best stay away from them. If I was you, I’d go into town and visit your fellow,” she added wistfully. I often thought Sarah wished she had her own “fellow” to visit, and that she was taking a little vicarious pleasure in my fictitious relationship.
“He says he’s coming tomorrow,” I confided to her, weary of the secretive atmosphere. I’d begun to fear that Raven wouldn’t come and that I’d be stuck in this stultifying mausoleum forever.
But when I woke up the next morning, I felt a change in the air coming in through the window beside my bed. It smelled . . . green. Like living things. I sat up in bed and looked out the window. Overnight all the slush had melted from the lawn. The river had broken free of its ice and shimmered in the morning sun. Even the dark menace of the Blythe Wood was lightened by a sprinkling of tender green amidst the darker green of the pines.
“Look!” I called to Daisy and Helen. “It’s spring!” Daisy and Helen crowded into bed with me and pressed their faces against the window. “Isn’t that funny,” Daisy said, her breath steaming up the windowpanes. “Today is the first day of spring. It’s as if the woods knew.”
I shivered at the idea of the woods knowing anything. “High time,” Helen said, dismissing Daisy’s fancy with a flip of her braid. “Daddy sent me a new spring dress from Paris.”
At breakfast there was a posy of violets at each table, with a handwritten note that read “Happy Spring! From the Sharps of Violet House.” While the girls exclaimed over how kind it was of Miss Sharp’s aunts to send us flowers, I stared at my place setting. Lying on my plate was a letter postmarked from Scotland. I picked it up with shaking hands and nearly cut myself with the butter knife I used to open it.
“Ava’s gotten a love letter,” Helen remarked drily.
But this was even better than a love letter.
Dear Miss Hall, the letter read,
I was most interested to receive your enquiry about the book A Darkness of Angels, especially coming from Evangeline Hall’s daughter. I knew your mother well and I was most terribly grieved to hear of her death. I thought of her recently when I found a copy of A Darkness of Angels here at Hawthorn. I believe she would have wanted me to bring it to you personally. As luck would have it, I am planning a voyage to the colonies in April. I think it is best that I bring the book with me. I will wire to you when I have embarked and make arrangements for our meeting. In the meantime, I urge you to tell no one about our correspondence. For reasons I will explain later I prefer that no one know I am travelling with the book. I look forward to meeting you in April.
Yours,
Herbert Farnsworth
Archivist, The Hawthorn School
“Ava!” Sarah’s voice at my ear penetrated my daze as I was reading the letter over a second time. “Dame Beckwith is making an announcement.”
I looked up to see Dame Beckwith standing on the dais commanding the room to attention with her penetrating gaze. I caught her eye guiltily and stuffed the letter into my pocket. She nodded as if she’d been waiting expressly for my attention to begin.
“I would like to wish you all a happy first day of spring,” she said. “The weather has certainly cooperated with the calendar. In honor of the day I have decided to suspend normal classes.”
A great shout went up in the hall, a spontaneous release of all the tension that had built up during the cold months. Even Dolores Jager let out a little yip of excitement. Dame Beckwith waited for the noise to die down before adding, “I’ve asked for our teachers to hold a class on the signs of spring in the gardens instead.”
There was a perfunctory moan, but it wasn’t heartfelt. One class wasn’t much and at least it was outside. Dame Beckwith looked around the room with that way she had of seeming to meet each girl’s eyes and see into each girl’s heart.
“I understand that it’s been a difficult winter for some of you, perhaps especially for those of you who are new here or have suffered losses.” Her gaze had paused on Nathan. “But I hope you will take these early signs of spring as a token that the darkest days are past us. We have survived another winter. As Cicero tells us, Dum spiro spero. While there is life there is hope of a new beginning.”
She moved her eyes away from Nathan, and I saw that they were shining with unshed tears. Perhaps she was telling Nathan that even though she had lost a daughter she was able to go on because she still had him.
“There’s a little ritual we enact here at Blythewood on the first day of spring to mark that new beginning. We reset and wind all the clocks . . . ah, here is our clockmaker now.” She lifted her chin and waved her hand to the back of the Great Hall. I turned with everyone else, my heart thudding. Could it be . . . ?
At first my heart sank with disappointment. A stooped old man tottered into the hall, his back bowed under the weight of a heavy toolbox.
“Mr. Humphreys will be making his way around the place all day. Please stay out of his way, girls, and make him and his assistant feel welcome.”
Assistant?
Coming in behind old Mr. Humphreys, carrying two more toolboxes, a tweed cap pulled low over his eyes, was a tall strapping young man in a canvas smock. He glanced around the room, sunlight reflecting off the round lenses of his spectacles, until he found me. The smile he gave me felt like sunlight piercing the drear fog of the last few weeks.
“Do you know that workman?” Helen asked, her lip curling on the word workman. I looked at her to see if she really didn’t recognize him. But all Helen saw was a lowly servant sent to fix something. She would never look past the worker’s smock and recognize the Darkling we’d met in the woods. I glanced at Daisy, but she was busy pilfering food for the sprites. Only Sarah guessed that the clockmaker’s assistant was my “beau,” but that was all right. She didn’t know that he was a Darkling.
Relieved, I turned back to catch Raven’s eye again and somehow convey that I’d find him—but I saw that someone else had recognized him. It was Nathan, who was glaring at the clockmaker’s assistant with a look of pure hatred. Nathan glanced from Raven to me, his lip curled in a cruel grimace. Then he fled the hall into the North Wing.
Raven stood watching him go while Mr. Humphreys talked with Dame Beckwith. My tablemates were cheerfully discussing what changes of wardrobe they needed to make for the outdoor class.
“Come along, Ava,” Helen was saying to me. “I know your grandmother sent you a new dress from Paris because my mother said they went shopping together. We might as well make ourselves look pretty even if the only males to see us are an ancient workman and his assistant. Nathan seems to have disappeared as usual.”
“Someone should go after him,” I said, getting to my feet. I saw Raven bend down and whisper in old Mr. Humphreys’ ear. Then with a sharp glance toward me, Raven followed Nathan into the North Wing. Was he trying to tell me to follow him? Or had he gone after Nathan to keep him from revealing his identity? Either way, I had to go find them.
“I don’t need to change,” I told Helen. “I’ll meet you in the garden later.”
“If you’re going after Nathan perhaps I should go, too,” Helen remarked querulously. “I’ve known him longer.”
Mercifully, Sarah restrained her. “I think it’s better if Ava goes alone,” Sarah said, giving me a knowing look over Helen’s head. Clearly she thought I had an assignation with my beau. “Why don’t I help you unpack that dress? You might need help pressing its ruffles.”
I shot Sarah a grateful look and hurried from the hall into the North Wing. With classes cancelled for the day it was deserted. I started down the hall but halfway down I heard a noise coming from Miss Frost’s classroom. Miss Frost hadn’t budged from her room since the night I’d followed her into the dungeons, so I doubted it was her. I peered cautiously around the door frame and found Raven standing in front of the specimen cases, his face drained of color.
“I know,” I said, coming quietly into the room. “It’s awful . . .”
He turned to me, his eyes wide and glassy. “It’s an abomination. What kind of monster would do this to poor innocent creatures?”
I shook my head. “Miss Frost seems to think that she’s somehow honoring the memory of her mentor—”
“Honoring?” Raven spit the word out of his mouth as if it were a piece of rotten meat. “Do you honestly think this has anything to do with honor?”
“No!” I cried, stung by the way he was looking at me. “My roommate saved one of the sprites and we brought her to Gillie last week to have her wing fixed. Gillie has been tending a whole conflagration in his quarters. And a lot of people in the Order think this is wrong.”
Blythewood Page 33
