by Sarah Rayne
Behind her the plank slid from its position, and crashed all the way to the ground. The sound was an impossible, painful explosion within the enclosed space, and the old stones shuddered and sent out clouds of black grit and dust. Splintered stones flew upwards, and above them came another shiver of sound from the bell.
But Nell was standing on firm ground and Michael was holding her against him. She clung to him, half sobbing, never wanting to let go of him. But, eventually, she managed to say, ‘Sorry. Drama queen act. Very uncharacteristic.’ She found a tissue in her pocket and mopped her tears, angry to find her hands were shaking.
Michael took the tissue from her and completed the mopping up. His hands were not entirely steady either, but eventually, he said, ‘Are you all right to go on up? Because—’
‘Because the sea’s already got in,’ said Nell.
They could both see the dull green light on the stair wall, and hear the slapping sound of the waves below them.
‘Yes. Onwards and upwards,’ said Michael.
‘The plank falling made a terrific crash, didn’t it?’ said Nell, as they began cautiously to ascend. ‘In fact, the window …’
She stopped, staring towards the narrow window, which was almost level with them.
‘What’s wrong? Nell, we need to get up to the bell chamber …’
Nell said, ‘The stone figure. Can you see it?’
‘Yes. It’s a bit grisly, isn’t it?’
‘It’s moving,’ said Nell. ‘The head’s just turned round and it’s looking straight at us.’
For a dreadful moment, neither of them spoke. From where they stood they could see the stone figure outlined against the darkening sky, and they could see the carved face and the eyeless sockets. They could see that it was moving – that it was leaning forward as if wanting to peer in through the window.
Nell backed away against the stair wall, a clenched fist thrust into her mouth, her face white. Michael grabbed her hand, preparing to pull her up to the relative safety of the bell chamber – prepared to carry her if he had to.
But the stone face was still turning – surely in another few seconds the terrible figure would be inside the tower with them.
There was a massive tearing sound – the sound of something hard and old splintering: bones, thought Nell, with horror. Bones being cracked apart, human muscle and nails and nerves tearing …
The stone face was changing – great lumps of rock were falling from it and plunging hundreds of feet to the sea.
At her side, Michael said softly, ‘Dear God, look at that.’
Beneath the pitted stone face were human bones. They were old and yellowed with time, but they were intact. There was the brief impression of slanting cheekbones that would have caused the eyes above them to be narrow and mysterious, then the impression was gone, and there was only an empty skull from which all humanity had long since fled.
Michael’s arms were around Nell as the last piece of stone fell away, and there was a glimpse of sloping shoulders, and of hands with long fingers that might have been crossed on a breast, in the traditional position of final repose.
Then the stone figure and what it contained fell away from the tower, plummeting down through the thickening twilight to the sea. For several seconds there was only a rushing sound, then an immense crash reached their ears. The water on the stairs churned furiously, throwing up massive waves of spray. They both flinched and clung to one another, waiting for the seething waves to calm down.
‘It’s stoppped,’ said Michael, at last.
Nell was still shaking, but she said, ‘It was the plank falling that dislodged the stone figure, wasn’t it? It disturbed the bell, and there was a … a tremor of sound.’
‘That figure had probably been loosening for years. It might have broken away at any time.’
‘You saw … what was inside?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Nell was still staring at the window. There was a faint dark glint of the sea beyond. Was the briefly glimpsed figure out there now? She said, ‘What’s that line about people along the coast not being able to die except when the tide’s out? And that they can’t be born until it’s in?’
‘It’s David Copperfield,’ said Michael. He was looking towards the sea as well. ‘The line you probably mean is, “He’s a-going out with the tide”. Mr Peggotty said it.’
Whoever was inside that grisly stone tomb will do that later, won’t he? Or she? Go out with the tide?’
‘Yes.’ Michael frowned, and looked up at the stairs. ‘But for now we have to get up to the bell room. The water’s still rising.’
Nell half expected that more steps would have crumbled, or that stone rubble would block their way, but although there were the remnants of birds’ nests and an unpleasant sensation of crunching on tiny bird-bones, this part of the tower seemed to be intact.
They reached the head of the stairs and stood for a moment looking towards the bell chamber. Light streamed in from the side openings. It was a gentle half-light – not yet night but no longer full daylight – and there was something normal and comforting about it. It’s going to be all right, thought Nell. We’ll be safe up here and we’ll get out. She glanced at her watch and saw with a shock that it was still barely half past five.
‘Do we go in there? I mean – do we need to?’
‘I think we’d better. The open sections might mean we’ll get a phone signal. It’s bitterly cold, isn’t it? I should think the four winds of heaven whip through here.’ Half to himself, he said, ‘And all the winds with melody are ringing.’
So he had heard the strange singing earlier, as well. Nell thought they might discuss that sometime, and then she remembered the deep, lonely sadness in the singing and thought they might not.
As they stepped into the bell chamber, Nell caught her breath. The chamber was lined with the same stone as the rest of the tower, but up here it was somehow cleaner and more wholesome. There were four apertures through which the bell would have sounded; they were rectangular, with arches at the tops, and sills near the stone floor.
Along one side was the bell mechanism: much of it wood, some of it metal. It was dull and pitted with age, and patches of rust showed on the metal. Nell made out the wheel of the mechanism, with a few strands of rope attached to it.
But she accorded all this only a brief glance, because it was the bell itself that dominated. It was far bigger than she had been visualizing – or was it? Those sullen thrummings earlier on had certainly been made by something immense and powerful. The Rede Abbas bell – the bell installed centuries ago by the Glaum family, used by the long-ago monks until the tower became unsafe – still had an aura of immense power. It was about five feet in height and probably three feet across, and the bronze of its outer casing had long since been dulled by verdigris, which lay across it like a disease. But it hasn’t smothered it, thought Nell. It’s mute and it’s dimmed by age, but it’s not quite dead.
Because she was finding the sight of the bell disturbing, she said, a bit too loudly, ‘The mechanism looks in surprisingly good condition. They’d have operated it from below, wouldn’t they? There was probably a room off that bit of collapsed stair. And there’d have been a rope attached to those wheels on each side of the bell. When the wheels were rotated, the bell would tilt and the tongue would bang against the sides.’
‘I know it’s intimidating,’ said Michael. ‘In fact I think it’s one of the most intimidating things I’ve ever seen, but there’s still a kind of dark, powerful enchantment. This is an alchemist’s laboratory and a necromancer’s cave, and I don’t think I want to know what’s behind the scenery.’ He glanced uneasily at the bell and the shadows that clung to its base. ‘In fact I definitely don’t want to know what’s behind that particular piece of scenery,’ he said.
‘You cling on to the gothic trimmings,’ said Nell, slipping a hand through his arm. ‘I’ll focus on the realities, because if I start thinking about necromancers an
d whatnot I’ll descend into a gibbering panic.’
‘Before either of us starts gibbering, let’s check for a phone signal,’ said Michael, reaching for his mobile.
‘Anything?’ said Nell, watching him.
‘No.’
‘Me, neither.’ Nell had to fight hard against bitter disappointment. She stared angrily at the massive weight of the bell, and suddenly said, ‘There might not be a phone signal, but there could be another way we can send a signal.’
Michael turned to stare at her, then comprehension showed in his eyes and he looked back at the bell.
‘How do we do it?’ he asked. ‘Because I don’t think we’d actually manage to move it, do you? And, in any case, isn’t it mute or whatever the term is?’
‘If,’ said Nell, looking round the room, ‘we could find a long enough section of wood or steel or something, we might be able to bash it against the inside of the bell. What’s that beneath the headstock?’
‘It looks like a handle from one of the wheels. It probably rusted off years ago.’ Michael picked it up and weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. ‘It’s quite heavy.’
‘If we could fasten it inside the bell, it might act as a clapper. Would those wheels still rotate, I wonder?’
‘There’s a length of rope over there,’ said Michael, who was exploring. ‘We mightn’t get both to move, but we might get one. The handle from the other wheel’s here, as well.’
They managed to tie the two handles together with a frayed length of the rope, then Nell said, ‘Which of us is going to climb on top of the bell to push this down into it?’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Michael, in a tone firm enough to preclude argument. ‘It looks as if I’ll have to crawl along that section of wood directly over it.’
‘The headstock,’ said Nell.
‘I don’t care what it’s called, as long as it stays put.’
It did stay put, but when Michael started to edge along it, it shuddered and creaked, and at one point a section broke away and fell against the bell itself. A sullen hum filled the chamber, and Nell clenched her fists, and tried to think that even if Michael fell it would only be a couple of feet to the ground. But he reached the hunched shape of the bell without mishap.
‘And there’s a kind of funnel where the original clapper would have been,’ he said. ‘I think it’s wide enough to take these handles.’
Nell waited, not daring to speak; after several unsuccessful attempts, Michael said, ‘I think it’s in place. I’ve tied the end of the rope around the headstock section, and I think it’ll hold. I’ll have to crawl all the way back, though, because I suspect if I try jumping down I’ll twist an ankle or fall against the bell or something. Pray this length of wood doesn’t split halfway along.’
‘OK.’ Nell was looping the longest piece of rope around one of the wheels, so that they could pull on it and rotate the wheel, which would then tilt the bell. As Michael reached her, she said, ‘I think the rope’s long enough to stretch to the stairs. It would have been better if we could have got a rope down into the room below – assuming there is a room – and worked the wheels from there.’
‘If there was a room on that collapsed bit of stairs, it would have been below the water level, though.’
‘Oh, so it would. But even so, we should try to get as far out of hearing as possible,’ said Nell. ‘If this works, the chime could be at eardrum-splitting level.’
‘You’ve been reading The Nine Tailors,’ he said, smiling.
‘Dorothy L. Sayers knew her stuff.
They payed out the rope slowly, backing away to the stairs as they did so.
‘Four steps down,’ said Michael. ‘Five, six – this is as far as we can get it. We’re still well above the water level …’ He broke off, and Nell glanced down the stairs and saw with a shudder the slopping dark water on the stair. ‘Is this sufficiently out of ear-splitting range?’
‘It’ll have to be,’ said Nell.
‘Ready?’
‘Yes,’ said Nell, and Michael pulled on the rope.
At first nothing happened. The wheel remained stubbornly still, and Nell began to think the rope must have slipped off. Then Michael pulled more insistently, and this time there was a deep, slow creaking, as if something immensely old was struggling to move. The wheel moved gratingly, but only by a couple of inches.
‘And the bloody bell’s not moving at all,’ he said angrily.
‘Try again.’ Nell put her hand on the rope with his, and this time the wheel moved more surely. There was a shiver of movement and a scraping sound as if something was being torn from its roots. Then slowly, agonizingly, the bell began to tilt.
‘More!’ cried Nell, and they pulled the rope yet again. There was a faint brazen growling, then the huge old bell broke free of its moorings. As the pulley wheel jerked it unevenly up, the old metal handles began to rap against the insides.
At first the sound was small – almost hesitant – but when Michael and Nell plied the rope again, the wheel turned more steadily, and the bell swung more widely. The makeshift clappers hammered against the sides, and the immense bronze structure magnified the sounds a hundred times over. Discordant clangings began to fill the chamber – dreadful fractured sounds, as if something was being dragged from a deep, rusting darkness, screeching as its roots split. It was like being at the heart of a giant squealing nightmare.
But it had to be endured, and it had to be repeated if they were to attract attention. When Michael said, gaspingly, ‘Are you all right to go on?’ Nell nodded, and brushed a hand across her streaming eyes, before grasping the rope more firmly.
The dreadful clanging discordance streamed out of the bell tower and across the countryside.
TWENTY-TWO
The moment Maeve heard the clamour of the ancient bell, she knew it to be a death knell. She knew that somehow those two had managed to get up to the bell chamber and they had activated the bell. They would be heard and rescued – probably very soon – and they would tell what had happened. Miss Eynon imprisoned us in here, they would say. They would be believed – people would believe a man who was a doctor. Maeve would have no defence, no explanation for slamming the door on Nell West and Michael Flint and leaving them to drown. If she thought for a hundred years she would not find an excuse, and in the end they would take her to prison, and during the investigations they would find out all the other things she and Eifa Eynon had fought to hide.
Prison. Even the word was like a blow across her eyes. Fear scalded through her in a sick, sour flood, and within it was a bitter irony – the irony of knowing she had avoided prison all those years ago and of how clever and resourceful she had been.
No one had ever suspected what she had done that day. No, that was not true. This house knew what she had done. Andrew might know, too. He might have watched on that long-ago night – the night just before her eighteenth birthday. The night when Maeve had finally known she could not go on with the dreary, drudging half-existence. That she could no longer stand Aunt Eifa’s constant demands, her incessant banging of her stick, her endless complaining and criticizing. Aunt Eifa’s entire left-hand side was dead, encased in stone, but Eifa herself was not dead. She was not fully alive, though. Maeve sometimes thought that she, herself, was not fully alive, either. She would leave school in a few weeks, and what would her life be after that?
She was to wonder, later, if she might have been a little mad that day, because a sane person would surely have simply asked for help from a doctor. Also, eighteen was regarded as adult. People left home at eighteen; they worked and supported themselves. Maeve could get a job – earn money. But when she tried to think how she would get a job in Rede Abbas she had no idea. There was no industry, only a few shops, a couple of pubs, a handful of offices that employed girls. As for leaving Cliff House – she could not do it. She could not leave Andrew.
Aunt Eifa had been particularly troublesome and spiteful that day. She rapped on the wall with her stick
all the time, wanting a cup of tea because the breakfast bacon had been too salty, then a hot-water bottle because it was cold, wanting Maeve to read to her because she was bored. But when Maeve took in the tea, the hot-water bottle, the newspaper and the book they were reading, her aunt waved them fretfully aside.
In the notebook she kept to hand, in her laborious script, Aunt Eifa wrote that she was thankful Maeve would be leaving school in a few weeks. She would have more time to see to the running of the house, then, and perhaps it would be run properly. Maeve sat down in the kitchen, the old clock ticking maddeningly, and thought about being shut up in this house with Aunt Eifa for years – with no school each day, where at least there was some companionship and interest and where she could pretend that one day her life would be better.
It would never be better. Aunt Eifa could live like this for years and years. Or could she?
It was then that the idea came into Maeve’s mind.
She did not waste any time – if it was to be done at all, it might as well be done quickly. That was a line from somewhere, wasn’t it? Probably it was Shakespeare; it usually was.
She carried the cassette player with the recording of ‘Thaisa’s Song’ down to the music room. The music had terrified her aunt – Maeve was almost sure it had caused her stroke. If the door to Aunt Eifa’s room and the door to the music room were both propped wide open, and if the player’s volume was turned up to maximum …
It might not work, of course. If it did not, nothing had been lost.
She waited until the light was fading, and the strange twilit half-world that shrouded the coastline brought the sea mists clouding in. It was the hour when the ghost-faces looked out of the mirrors. Maeve generally ignored them, because she knew they were only her own reflection, fuzzy from the damp glass, but tonight they seemed different. Did Andrew look at her out of the mirrors? Was Theodora with him?
Maeve set down the cassette player, and pressed Play. The tape began to whirr, and the music and the voices – her mother’s voice and that out-of-time shadow voice – poured into the room. The sounds were chilling, even to Maeve who had been prepared; they held a cold sadness that twisted and writhed with the drifting sea mists beyond the windows.
