The Bell at Sealey Head

by Patricia McKillip

Cards were dealt.

  Mr. Cauley staggered up from his chair, went into the shadows, and, in the way of dreams, nothing more was heard from him.

  Mr. Blair, his face waxen in the candlelight, wagered his entire line of ships.

  They went the way of Mr. Cauley’s inn; Mr. Blair followed Mr. Cauley into the dark.

  Sir Magnus Sproule, his own broad, rustic face defiant to the end, bet Sproule Manor and his lands upon his final hand.

  When he rose, letting his cards flutter to the table, only Lord Aislinn was left.

  He offered what, ostensibly, he still had. But the smiling visitors shook their heads. They seemed to know, in the way of dreams, that every field, every tree, every dusty book and bottle, every stone of Aislinn House belonged to his creditors.

  “My lord?” Eloise heard. “My lord Aislinn?”

  She opened her eyes.

  Her father looked across the table at her.

  “My daughter, Eloise, my heir,” he wrote as his final wager, and the smiling mariners nodded briskly. Yes, yes, indeed . . . Their handsome faces turned toward her, their fine eyes, their lean, predatory jaws. She smiled back.

  The cards were dealt.

  Lord Aislinn sagged back in his chair, his eyes closed, his face bloodless. Eloise felt the only moment of pure happiness she would have in her brief life.

  Someone opened a hatch above them. She felt the wild surge of water, heard the masts straining against the wind and realized, astounded, that they had sailed out of the harbor into open sea.

  Then she saw the water bubbling up from underneath, around the unconcerned mariner’s boots as they pocketed their gold, and the ladies around her stirred and gasped.

  The water surged around them. Eloise screamed. As the ship sagged on its side and she slid across the room on a wave, she had one final glimpse, through the hatch, of the most beautiful sunset, ragged clouds of gold, purple, and rose engulfing the dying sun. They had played through the night and the entire day. And now the day was done.

  The ship’s bell tolled a final, solitary knell as the wild waves dragged it down into the sea.

  Gwyneth heard from Judd sooner than she expected, even as she was puzzling over her ending and wondering why, tidy as it was, it did not satisfy. Perhaps she felt guilty about the unfortunate Eloise. She could see Pandora bouncing up from the sofa with a cry of indignation over that; she could see, above a palm frond, her father’s raised eyebrow.

  Well, she couldn’t please everyone. And Crispin would certainly like the feast. It would be best, however, she thought a moment later, twirling her pen moodily in her hair, if she could manage to please herself.

  “Miss Gwyneth!” It was Ivy, just outside the door. “You have a visitor.” She gave a little grin as Gwyneth opened the door; she must have heard the discussion in the hallway, earlier. “Mr. Cauley.”

  Gwyneth took a step across the threshold and hesitated. “Tell him I’ll only be a moment.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  She went back to her desk, gathered up her story, shook the papers straight, rolled them, and bound them with the ribbon from Judd’s bundle. She paused for one more second, to touch the lovely iris in its truly hideous vase of tiny sea-snail shells fastened with pitch onto teak. She felt the sudden lightness in her heart.

  Judd, pacing the carpet in the hallway downstairs, wasn’t smiling at all until he turned and saw her. Then his set expression softened; for just that moment, he looked as though he forgot why it was on his face at all.

  “Gwyneth. You look so charming with that little scribble of ink on your cheek.”

  She sniffed. “And you smell like the sea. All windy and briny—have you been at the fish market?”

  He nodded, frowning again. “I’ve been running errands all over town. Mrs. Quinn is back in the kitchen, and I’m hoping she’ll drive all the guests away. I got your note. I wanted you to know that before—” He hesitated.

  “Before what, Judd?”

  “Well. Before I go to Aislinn House. To look for Ridley Dow. I have no idea how far I’ll get. Or where—I just don’t know. When I’ll be back. I wanted to see you. To tell you that before I go.”

  “Indeed.” Their faces were very close, she realized, both searching for something, maybe, memorizing lines, colors, the hollow of a throat, the slant of bone. She reached out, still gazing into his eyes, and slipped her story onto the hall table beside the door key and the mail. “To find the true secrets of Aislinn House, challenge the wicked sorcerer, and rescue Ridley Dow?”

  “Something like that. If I can persuade Miss Beryl to let me in the door.”

  “Oh, good. I’m coming with you. There’s something wrong with my version of the story.”

  He felt obliged to argue, despite the relief on his face. “But Gwyneth, it may be—What story?”

  She slid her fingers under his elbow, tugged him toward the door. “Quickly, before the twins or Aunt Phoebe come down. I’ll help you with the awkward parts, like getting us into the house; you can have the heroics. The ones I don’t want, that is.”

  “We’ll let Ridley have them.”

  “Good idea.”

  She opened the door. In the last hour of morning, with the sun pouring cheerfully into the streets, glinting and breaking on the wind-rippled harbor, they heard the single, unmistakable toll of the bell.

  Twenty-one

  Emma heard the bell down in the kitchen, where she was picking up the first of the breakfast trays for the guests. Granted, their hours were topsy-turvy; they turned night into day, morning into night, and noon into dawn, when they finally began to open their eyes and call for tea. But so far in her life, neither the sun nor the bell had ever deviated from schedule. They were inextricably bound, had been every day’s end of her life. But she knew the sound of that bell, distant and melancholy, like she knew her mother’s voice. She nearly dropped the tray when it spoke.

  Something was wrong, she knew instantly. Very wrong, horribly wrong. Nobody else noticed; it meant nothing in their lives. She could only stand there with the tray in her hands, while Mrs. Haw fussed with the cloth over the toast, and muttered, “What I wouldn’t give for a quiet house again. But we can’t go backward in our lives, can we, any more than we can turn a ripe tomato green again, and Lady E will be the only one at peace around here when she goes, for no telling where the rest of us will end up then. There. Run up now, before the toast gets cold; they always send it back then.”

  Emma escaped. She went upstairs as quickly as she could, tapped at a bedroom door. She thrust the tray at the haughty young lady’s maid who opened it and ran down the hall to Lady Eglantyne’s bedchamber. The door opened to the bedchamber, not, as she had hoped, to Ysabo’s world.

  Miranda Beryl was still there, another thing Emma had hoped. She turned her head quickly; their eyes met, and Emma knew that she, too, had heard.

  So had Lady Eglantyne, apparently. She was shifting under her bedclothes, and actually spoke.

  “Did you hear that?” Her voice was thin, spun so fine words drifted like cobweb. “Miranda?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I heard it.”

  “Why now? I just had my breakfast.”

  She knows, Emma thought with wonder. Lady Eglantyne knows, too.

  Miranda rose, stood over the slight, perturbed figure beneath the lacy coverlet. She let her fingers fall gently on her great-aunt’s wrist. “I’ll find out,” she promised. “Go to sleep.”

  “Be careful, my dear.”

  She watched Lady Eglantyne close her eyes, then gestured to Emma to follow her out.

  “Emma,” she said very softly. Behind the closed doors along the hallway, faint voices could be heard, laughter, complaints. “Did you open one of the doors for Ridley again?”

  “No, miss. If he’s in there, he found his own way. I never saw him come back into the house, either.”

  “Do you know where the bell is, in the other house? Did the princess ever talk about it?”

  “No. I
asked her about it; she only said it was part of the ritual. She never said where it is, or who rings it.”

  Miss Beryl stood silently, willowy and languid in her frothy morning gown. She gazed at something disturbing in a fall of light, a frown in her eyes. “If Ridley is there,” she said finally, “Nemos Moore must have found him. Ridley said he wanted to cause trouble. I can’t imagine what he did to change a pattern as inflexible as that bell. It’s like the moon rising on the wrong side of the world. Emma, what have you to do this morning?”

  “Feed your guests, miss,” Emma said, envisioning trays backed up on the kitchen table and Mrs. Haw threatening to walk straight into the woods if anyone complained of cold eggs.

  “Is that all? Never mind my guests. I need you to help me find Ridley.”

  “But, Mrs. Haw,” Emma protested. “She’ll have no one to take the breakfast trays up, and she’ll have all the maids and valets coming to the kitchen raising their brows at her and speaking down their noses.”

  “What about my kitchen staff?”

  “They only prepare, miss; they don’t deliver. So they gave me to understand.”

  “H’m,” was what Miss Beryl had to say, with particular emphasis, about that. “Find Mrs. Blakeley and send her to me. I’ll have her give them something else to understand.”

  “Yes, miss.” She hesitated. “Perhaps Mr. Dow is still at the inn.”

  “I doubt it,” Miss Beryl said briefly. “I’ve seen nothing of Mr. Moren, either, this morning. I’ll be in my room, changing into something with more authority and fewer frills. And a pair of boots in case I need to trample on Mr. Moren’s feet again.”

  “Yes, miss,” Emma said again, beginning to wonder, with some misgivings, what Miranda Beryl had in mind. But she turned away without explaining, and Emma went to the breakfast room, which nobody got up for, and where Mrs. Blakeley spent her mornings in the quiet, darning the moth holes in the table linens.

  Emma delivered Miss Beryl’s summons, reassured the housekeeper that it had nothing to do with Lady Eglantyne, and accompanied her at least as far as the staircase, when somebody banged the doorknocker. Mr. Fitch, who generally hovered in the library to pounce on the door, was nowhere in earshot. “You’d best answer it, Emma,” Mrs. Blakeley said, as she went up. “He must be at the silver again.”

  Emma veered from the stairs and went to wrench open the door. To her astonishment, she found unexpected yet familiar faces, and together at that, she noted, without a Sproule around anywhere.

  “Good morning, Miss Blair, Mr. Cauley,” she said a trifle breathlessly. Both their mouths had opened; at the sight of Emma nothing came out. They seemed to have also expected anyone but her.

  “Oh, Emma,” Gwyneth breathed finally. “I’m so glad to see you. We’ve come looking for Ridley Dow.”

  “Yes, please, come in. I’ll let Miss Beryl know you’re here. I’m afraid I can’t say about Mr. Dow. I suppose,” she added without hope, “he’s not at the inn?”

  “No. Neither is my cook,” Judd said tersely.

  “Oh, Mr. Cauley.” Emma put her fingers to her mouth. “I am sorry.”

  “That’s hardly the worst of it.”

  But Gwyneth interrupted before he could add anything more interesting. “Do you know, Emma, I don’t think we really need to trouble Miss Beryl at all. Perhaps you could just show us into the library, or some quiet place, where we could wait alone for Mr. Dow?”

  Emma eyed her, mute with surprise, and then with sudden, improbable conjecture. “I think you should have your word with Miss Beryl.”

  “But we don’t need to disturb—”

  “She is already disturbed, and she’ll want to see you. Come into the drawing room. Nobody will be down for another hour at least. She’ll want to see you.”

  They followed her silently. She hoped, hurrying upstairs after she left them alone, that they wouldn’t go wandering off on their own without her.

  “Miss Blair and Mr. Cauley,” she told Miranda Beryl, who appeared at her chamber door in sedate gray wool from throat to boot. She looked glacial at the idea of idle company. “I think,” Emma added, “they might have noticed the bell. They came to search for Mr. Dow.”

  Miss Beryl’s brows rose. She came out without a word, gesturing for Emma to follow her. She barely greeted her guests as they stood awkwardly at the cold fireplace; she asked abruptly, “Emma said she thinks you might have come because of the bell. Do you have any idea where Ridley Dow is?”

  They stared at her, wordless again. Judd cleared his throat.

  “No. And yes, we noticed the bell. I think—We’re afraid he might be in a great deal of danger.”

  Miss Beryl nodded so sharply she nearly dropped a curl. “Yes. I’m afraid of that as well. Can you open doors, too?”

  “Doors?” Gwyneth echoed faintly.

  Miss Beryl sighed, dropped so gracefully into a chair she seemed to melt into it. “Sit down. Please. You came here to look for Mr. Dow. What kind of danger would you expect him to be in, here where there’s nothing more threatening than boredom or an overboiled egg?”

  Mr. Cauley drew breath, held it before he spoke. “None here,” he said softly. “Not in this side of Aislinn House.” He paused; Miranda Beryl was nodding again. “Then you know,” he continued haltingly. “You know about the other Aislinn House?”

  “Ridley told me. Emma opened doors to it. That’s how Ridley found his way there the first time. This time, he might have found his own way in.”

  “Yes,” Judd said, his hands tightening on the arms of his chair. “Something extraordinary must have happened in that Aislinn House to startle the bell into ringing at the wrong time of day.”

  “Ridley. You think Ridley happened.”

  “Yes.” He added, seemingly at a tangent, “And my cook went missing from the inn this morning as well.”

  “Your cook,” Miss Beryl said blankly.

  “Mr. Pilchard.”

  “Mr. P—” She stopped, frowning at a dust mote. “Why do I know that name?”

  Emma felt her nape hairs prickle. “The stranger, miss,” she whispered. “He is the stranger in Sealey Head who would look to you like he belongs here.”

  “Mr. Pilchard,” Miranda Beryl echoed faintly. “Your cook is Nemos Moore?”

  “I think—I think so,” Judd answered, looking dazed. “I believe he tried to poison Ridley yesterday, which is why he was so sick when you came. Fortunately, you sent for Hesper in time. Miss Beryl, how do you know about the bell, about the other Aislinn House? Ridley Dow spoke of you as someone with whom he was scarcely acquainted in Landringham. Nor did he wish more, it seemed.”

  She smiled suddenly, revealing a lovely, startling glimpse of the secret Miss Beryl. “So did I, Mr. Cauley. Speak of him that way, I mean. To keep Nemos Moore’s eyes off him, and always on me. My friends here know Nemos Moore as the clever and wealthy Mr. Moren, who amuses himself in my company. To him, I’m the idle and fatuous heir of Aislinn House, which he regards quite possessively. To him, Mr. Dow has been only a rather earnest, scholarly young man who collects books and becomes excited about the most cobwebby topics, like ancient history and the habits of nightjars.”

  “And magic,” Gwyneth interjected.

  “And magic. Ridley learned years ago about the strange otherworld within Aislinn House. Of course he told me. We are—” She hesitated, while the faintest shade of rose warmed her skin. “We have always been close. And very secret. Nemos Moore is extremely jealous of his discovery of the world he found here, and is convinced that it rightly belongs to him. He has power over it; it is his perfect spell. I am heir only to its outward pillars and posts, a handful of sticks and floorboards. So he thinks: the rest belongs to him. He would marry me to keep it,” she added with unexpected tartness. “Failing that, I don’t know what he’d do. So far I’ve managed to persuade him that my total lack of interest is not in him but in the entire subject of marriage. I’m afraid that won’t satisfy him once Aislinn House is
truly mine.”

  “What a tale,” Miss Blair breathed. “You and Ridley are both in danger from Nemos Moore, it seems. We must find Ridley Dow as soon as possible, help him in any way we can. But how? What should we do?”

  “I could open a door,” Emma suggested. “It worked before, when he was in trouble.”

  “Open a door,” Gwyneth repeated, her brows peaked. “I don’t understand. There’s a special door into the other Aislinn House?”

  “Any door in the house might open to the other Aislinn House,” Emma explained, “to those who can see it. Most people never do. But I’ve found it behind nearly every door in this house, including the coal cellar and Lady Eglantyne’s dressing room.”