The Bell at Sealey Head

by McKillip, Patricia

  She tussled it open finally, saw that the young master Sproule had dismounted, and was helping his sister down. The other woman had not waited for him; she slid a bit awkwardly to the ground, flashing a length of pretty mauve stocking to the watching trees.

  Emma recognized her flighty golden hair, her spectacles. Miss Gwyneth Blair, the merchant’s daughter, out riding with Raven and Daria Sproule. She started a curtsy, caught sight of the dust cloth still in her hand, and pushed it into her pocket. Daria Sproule gave her bright laugh again, an unexpected sound around the house those days.

  “Good morning,” Raven Sproule said affably. “Fine morning it is, too.” He surveyed it a moment, complacently, as if he owned it, and then took a closer look at her face. “Emma, isn’t it? Your mother lives up a tree or something.”

  Emma nodded stolidly. “Emma Wood, sir.”

  Daria rolled her eyes reproachfully at her brother, then swooped her lashes toward Emma. “Our mother sent a little gift or two for Lady Eglantyne. Trifles, really. A couple of light novels, a scented cushion. Is there any chance we might give them to her ourselves?”

  “I’ll—”

  “Oh.” She tugged her tall friend forward. “This is Miss Blair.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  Miss Blair was puzzling something out between her brows as she gazed at Emma. They sprang apart abruptly, as she smiled. “That’s where I’ve seen you. You come to my father’s warehouses sometimes, for odd things. Plants, rare herbs and teas, dried—” She checked herself, her eyes widening, and ended tactfully, “oddments.”

  Emma, remembering the monkey paw, swallowed a sudden bubble of laughter. “Things for my mother, miss. Please come in. I’m sorry there’s no one to take the horses.”

  “No matter; we’ll just tie them here,” Raven said, fixing their reins to some iron rings embedded in the step railing. “We won’t be long.”

  “I can bring you tea in the library. It’s a bit dark in there, but the furniture is covered in the parlor and the drawing room; they’ve gone unused for so long. Then I’ll ask upstairs if Lady Eglantyne is receiving.”

  Their faces sobered at that, the reminders of silence and sadness within. Daria gave an inarticulate coo, and Raven a sort of a reassuring bleat. Gwyneth said more clearly, “Thank you,” her spectacles flashing curiously back at the ancient, random assortment of upstairs windows.

  Emma got them settled in the library, where Daria began immediately to chatter and Raven sat stunned wordless by all the books. She hurried down to the kitchen, found Fitch sitting in his shirtsleeves, polishing silverware and trading memories with Mrs. Haw.

  “There’s Sproules in the library, asking to see Lady Eglantyne,” she told them. “And Miss Blair. Tea for three, please, Mrs. Haw, while I go up to look in on her ladyship.”

  “Visitors!” Mrs. Haw exclaimed, astonished. Fitch got up hastily, wrestling himself into his jacket.

  “I’ll take the tea,” he told Emma firmly; no reason she should have all the excitement.

  She left it to him and went upstairs, where the shadows clung to the walls like tapestries, and the old boards creaked underfoot as though wind were shaking the house. Most of the upper rooms were locked; only Lady Eglantyne slept there, lived there now in her great canopied bed festooned with lace, and her maid Sophie ensconced in the elegant room adjoining hers.

  Emma tapped gently on the door with her fingertips. Perhaps Sophie was in the next room, and Lady Eglantyne asleep, for no one answered. She turned the latch soundlessly and peered in.

  The princess stood on top of the highest tower in Aislinn House. Trees, sea, sky sloped dizzyingly around her. Emma could feel the wind blowing the morning scents of salt and earth, wrasse and wrack, newly opened flowers. Ysabo was surrounded by crows, a gathering so thick they covered the tower floor, a living, rustling, muttering pool of dark, consuming what looked like last night’s leftovers, the remains of a great feast, crusts and bloody bones, withering greens, the drying seeds and bright torn peels of exotic fruits.

  The princess, her bright hair unbound, flying on the wind, turned her head; a dozen crows raised their heads here and there among the crush, cast black glances at the interloper. Emma put a finger to her lips quickly as the speckled amber eyes met hers. The princess nodded, but without her usual answering smile, only a swift, silent acknowledgment of Emma, as more bird heads turned, eyes catching light, dark-bright, little bones cracking in their beaks. Emma started to close the door. Then the wind pounced into the tower and away, sending Ysabo’s hair streaming in its wake, and Emma saw the red blaze on her pale cheek, like a brand, of four thick, blunt fingers.

  Emma almost made a sound. But the princess only gazed at her steadily, not moving, while at her feet beaks began to clack. Emma, trembling a little, shut the door.

  She stared at the dark, heavy wood a moment, then drew a breath, blinking, and opened it again.

  Sophie sat beside Lady Eglantyne’s bed. She was dressed as usual in the loose, flowing pastels Lady Eglantyne liked to see, gowns that were decades out of fashion. Her ivory hair was parted and combed with doll-like precision into an hourglass shape on the back of her head, topped with a little pancake of lace the light blue of her dress.

  Beside her, the neatly folded lace-edged sheets and the silken counterpane rose minutely and fell on the breast of the slight figure in the bed. Lady Eglantyne dreamed. The stuff of her dreams, silence, shadows, diffused light, indeterminate shapes behind thin curtains, within mirrors, seemed to crowd the air, fill what could be mistaken for space.

  Emma came softly to the bedside; Sophie, who had little enough company besides the sleeper, smiled behind the finger at her lips.

  “Good morning, Hesper,” she whispered.

  “Good morning, Sophie,” Emma said, resigned to answering to either name she heard. “Has she been awake this morning?”

  “Only long enough to drink a little milk and to allow me to change her nightdress. Then she fell back to sleep.”

  Emma looked at the thin, distant face, almost lost in the floppy white bed cap.

  “She seems peaceful.”

  “Doesn’t she? Perhaps she’s getting better. Must I wake her? Is the doctor here?”

  “No. Raven and Daria Sproule have come to pay their respects. And Miss Blair.”

  “Visitors,” Sophie murmured, awed. They both studied the dreamer, who was far away in some other world, having unimaginable adventures, or maybe just sitting on a rock and tatting.

  “Well,” Emma said finally. “We shouldn’t wake her.”

  “No. Dr. Grantham will do that soon enough. He makes her talk if he can.”

  “Does she?”

  “Not if she can help it,” Sophie sighed. “She only wants to be left alone.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  Sophie shook her head. “I have all I want. My needle and my novel and my lady.” She smiled again at Emma, letting her see the bleakness dwelling beside the hope in her tired blue eyes.

  Emma went downstairs again, suggested that the visitors return another time, and went back to work. While she worked, she opened every door she could find: closets, coat cupboards, attics, wine rooms and coal rooms; she even took the household keys from Mrs. Blakeley to unlock the rooms in hibernation. But she didn’t find the princess again that day.

  Four

  The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more. Judd knew that about himself: just the sight of Ridley Dow’s books unpacked and stacked in corners, on the desk and dresser, made him discontent and greedy. Here he was; there they were. Why were he and they not together somewhere private, they falling gently open under his fingers, he exploring their mysteries, they luring him, enthralling him, captivating him with every turn of phrase, every revealing page?

  “Is there a bookseller in town?” Ridley asked, shifting a pile or two so that Judd could put down his breakfast. It was a peculiar affair of boiled fish, boiled potatoes, bread, jam,
and porridge, Mrs. Quinn being uncertain exactly what meal to aim toward at that hour of the afternoon. Judd maneuvered the tray among the books on the table, unsurprised by the question.

  “Yes. O. Trent Stationers, on Water Street. It’s been there for over a century.”

  “O?”

  “Osric. The family came from Tyndale, I think. City people. There was a rumor at the time that some domestic scandal forced them to seek a new home.”

  “Quite a reverberating scandal,” Ridley commented, eyeing his meal. “Halfway across Rurex and down an entire century.”

  Judd smiled. “We in Sealey Head like to keep track of our history. It passes the time.”

  Ridley poked at the fish, which was strangely bowed down the middle. “What is this?”

  “Who knows? Mrs. Quinn is of the opinion that if you can recognize it, it must be underdone.” He paused, added tactfully, “I can take your board off your bill if you prefer to eat elsewhere.”

  “No.” Ridley squared his shoulders, poked his fork firmly at the fish. “Let us see if we can get along.”

  “Mrs. Quinn isn’t accustomed to feeding guests a midday meal. Most leave as soon as possible after breakfast.”

  “I see.” Ridley ate a bite of fish, then of porridge. He paused to salt the porridge liberally, added pepper and butter for good measure. “Well, anyway, it’s hot. I tend to keep quite irregular hours. Sometimes I’m up all night, sleep half the day.”

  Judd shrugged. “We can let Mrs. Quinn know what you prefer when.”

  “Thank you. Will you have time to take me there?”

  “To—”

  “O. Trent Stationers. I would like to peruse his books.”

  Judd gave the matter half a thought, then nodded. “I was going to send Mrs. Quinn to see what the fishers brought in yesterday, but I can go myself instead.”

  “Good!” Ridley said, with his quick, engaging smile. “We might have half a chance of knowing what we’re eating.”

  “I’ll just get my father settled first. I told him about you this morning. He was very pleased and would like to meet you at your convenience.”

  Ridley nodded. “Of course. And I him. He must have some odd tales tucked away of life in Sealey Head.”

  “He does,” Judd said, surprised. “And he loves to tell them, so be warned. He stays pretty close to his rocker now. He can hear the sea from his window, and it comforts him since he lost his sight.”

  “Ah,” Ridley said with sympathy. “An accident?”

  “No. Just a slow passing. An ebb tide, he said, that never turned, just faded into black. He enjoys company.” He glanced at a pile of books threatened by Ridley’s elbow and a pot of coffee. “I’ll see what I can find for bookshelves and bring them up. I believe there is one gathering dust in the kitchen.”

  In the kitchen, he found the wiry, angular Lily taking a scrub brush to the wooden table where Mrs. Quinn had been kneading bread. Judd could smell it baking. He longed to rescue it before it turned into something that could double as a doorknocker. But the damage had been done long before it reached the oven, he suspected, though the nature of the violence eluded him. Lily bobbed her head at him, an intense, serious girl who was growing much like her mother.

  “Lily,” he said, inspired. “Has your mother begun to teach you to cook?”

  She came very close to screwing up her pretty, freckled face, then remembered her dignity. “No, sir. I don’t take to cooking at all. Too many things to think about. Pots boiling, how long this, how many that, water or oil, how to chop, what goes in what—You made one bed, you know how to make them all. Or mop one floor. Or clean the ashes out of one fireplace—”

  “Yes. I see.”

  “You don’t have to fret about it, just do it. But bread. Well. It never seems to rise the same way twice, does it? Or take an egg. You never know what it’s going to come out looking like, and that’s even before you start cooking it.”

  “Yes.”

  “But cleaning a pot, or beating a carpet—you do, it’s done. There. You see, sir?”

  “With absolute clarity. Do you think your mother would miss this shelf if I take it away and put the cookbook over here instead?”

  “Oh, no, sir. She never uses that old thing. She says the recipes are all out of fashion. And it’s filthy with stains.”

  “With good reason,” Judd breathed, putting his mother’s cookbook safely on top of a cupboard. He unhooked the shelf from the wall, tucked it under his arm, and continued his ruthless pursuit. He found two more hanging shelves in the taproom, moved the beer mugs off them, and pushed them under his elbow. He came across an entire empty bookcase in the quiet sitting room. He gazed at it, perplexed, then realized what must have happened to the books: he had taken them all upstairs to his room.

  Mrs. Quinn came at him talking as she walked down the hallway into the sitting room. Her freckled face was leaner, more lined than Lily’s, but their neat attire, severe buns, and their expressions were amazingly similar.

  “I’ll have Lily mop these flagstones regularly now that we have guests, sir. And he might want to sit in here in the evenings among the cushions and the seashells.”

  “Maybe,” Judd said dubiously. “Makes me want to sneeze. Mrs. Quinn—”

  “I was at my wit’s end as to which to serve him, sir, breakfast or what—I hope it was satisfactory.”

  “As what it was adequate.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, looking pleased. “I do try.”

  “But I think next time—” He paused, gave up. “I’ll have him talk to you about his erratic hours.”

  “His what, sir?”

  “His—his meals.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, nodding. “Best to begin as we intend to continue, that way we don’t forget what we’re doing, do we?”

  “Yes. No. Mrs. Quinn—”

  “Now, sir, about supper—”

  “I’m going into town to see to it,” he said, seizing the bookcase bodily with his other hand and staggering off with his loot. “I promise you’ll be the first to know.”

  He looked in on his father after adding the shelves to the clutter in Ridley’s room. Dugold was napping peacefully in his rocker, a shaft of light along with one of the old stable cats warming his knees. Judd found Ridley outside, talking to Mr. Quinn about his horses. The boisterous and capricious weather had blown itself inland; the sea wallowed lazily against the cliffs, glittered in the distance, where the fishing boats clustered around whatever in the deep was flinging themselves at their bait.

  “Mr. Quinn tells me there’s a path down to the sand,” Ridley said, as Mr. Quinn turned away. “He’ll exercise the horses there on days I don’t ride. Today, for instance. Do you mind a walk into town?”

  “Not at all,” Judd said, watching a coin above Mr. Quinn’s head spark silver in the light before it fell back into his hand. Ridley had left his cloak behind, but even in sedate black he struck the eye, something sleek and unexpected in the familiar world of Sealey Head, like a red-winged blackbird among a flock of sparrows.

  They walked the pleasant mile down the headland, across the steep channel bridge where they watched a ship follow the ebbing tide through the stony narrows safely out to open sea.

  “One of Blair’s,” Judd said, recognizing the figurehead, a dolphin leaping upward out of the wood. “Wonder where it’s going . . .”

  “Blair?”

  “Toland Blair. His family sent the first merchant ship out of Sealey Head harbor. It was gone for three years, during which some fantastic bets were laid. Fortunes were lost when it finally returned. So the tales say. Like fish, the size of a fortune grows in the telling. The Blairs made a genuine fortune from the wares that came in—spices, fabrics, exotic wood, glassware, painted porcelain, jewelry.”

  “Even then the bell was ringing.”

  “The bell.” Judd paused to pick up that mislaid thread in his head. “Yes,” he said slowly. “It must have been. Two hundred years, it has
rung, I’ve heard. Or three hundred. Or a thousand. Every tale changes as it gets passed down. So how are you supposed to know what’s true?”

  “Ah. That’s the question,” Ridley said with a great deal of enthusiasm and no answer whatsoever.

  Judd pointed out the stationer’s shop along Water Street, which curved around the harbor and held all the best shops, the grocers, the bakeries, Blair’s Exotica and Other Fine Goods. Ridley went into the expansive shop with its gull-colored walls and its front glass panes neatly framed in black. Judd turned past it and onto the docks.

  There on a wooden slab under an awning, he found Stiven Dale’s catch of the day before, under the eye of his wife Hazel and their four-year-old daughter, who was dropping a crab net over the dockside. The slosh of water against the pilings, the smell of fish, barnacles in brine, guano, the barking of harbor seals and cries of the gulls diving at the dead fish, filled Judd like words did, left him always wanting more, though these smells, these sounds, he had known all his life.