The Bell at Sealey Head Read online

  He chose a stout salmon to smoke, half a dozen perch for supper, some crab and eel for pie, which Mrs. Quinn usually managed without making a total disaster of it. Hazel set them aside for her older son to run up to the inn. That done, he stopped at the grocer’s to order a delivery of cheese and coffee, then at the window of Blair’s Exotica, hoping for a glimpse of Gwyneth Blair.

  He didn’t see her. A certain shyness kept him hovering outside. Growing up, they had talked easily and eagerly about everything, above all about books. He would duck into the shop on his way home from school, find her deep in some ornate chair covered with animal skins, stroking the head of a huge, snarling, glass-eyed beast while she ignored the books her governess gave her and devoured the latest novel from the stationer’s instead.

  Then she went away for a few years to get educated in Landringham. Judd nursed his dying grandfather, then his mother, while his father’s sight began to fail and the inn grew quieter and emptier. When Gwyneth finally came home to stay, after her own mother died, she had grown into a tall, fair, willowy young lady whose spectacles hid her expressions. She was suddenly the eligible daughter of a very prosperous merchant. Judd had become the proprietor of the failing inn up the hill who couldn’t afford to replace his own lamentable cook.

  They rarely met.

  He crossed the street, went into the stationer’s to find Ridley. And there she was, bracketed by the Sproule siblings, talking to Osric Trent, whose plump face with silky chestnut sideburns framing his intelligent expression Judd could see over Gwyneth’s shoulder. Ridley, a book open in his hands, completed the congenial little circle.

  Judd almost backed out, closed the door on the elegant company. But Ridley saw him, waved him eagerly over; he was obliged to sidle, redolent with the fish market, through the smartly dressed browsers around the book tables. Seeing him, Gwyneth smiled, but Judd couldn’t tell if her eyes, behind the lenses, had added to the welcome.

  “Judd!” the bookseller exclaimed. “We see so little of you these days. How is your father?”

  “He’s well. Happiest when I’m reading to him in the evenings.” He paused, nodding diffidently to the others. “Raven, Miss Sproule. Miss Blair. I see you’ve met my guest.”

  “So fascinating,” Daria breathed. She gripped Gwyneth’s wrist in a tremor of emotion. “He’s been explaining what brought him here, riding alone all the way across Rurex from his cozy house in Landringham.”

  “That bell,” Raven said, his brows pinched in perplexity. “I haven’t really heard it since I was a child. It’s fairly meaningless, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” Ridley queried encouragingly, his own lenses glinting, full of light.

  “I mean, isn’t it?” He appealed to Judd. “Do you hear it? Surely you’ve got more important matters on your mind up at that inn than the ghostly bell on a ship that sank centuries ago.” Judd opened his mouth to answer; Raven didn’t listen to that, either. He appealed again to Ridley. “Unless it marks a sunken treasure or something, why bother with it?”

  “A pirate ship,” Daria guessed, blinking with rapture at Ridley. “Is that what you think it is? Weighted with gold and stolen jewels, foundering just off Sealey Head—Oh, Gwyneth, you must write that story! Promise me you will.”

  “Pirates,” Gwyneth answered dubiously, as Judd’s voice bumped against hers.

  “You write?”

  She colored a little as they all gazed at her. “Silly things,” she said finally, touching her spectacles. “Scribbles.”

  “Not all of them,” Osric Trent said firmly. “Some of your pieces have a great deal of energy and wonderful detail. Especially,” he added with a chuckle, “when you set your tales in Sealey Head.”

  Daria drew breath audibly. “You write about us?”

  “Well, those mostly go under my bed.” Her eyes met Judd’s, with an odd, wordless appeal.

  He foundered a moment, heard himself say, “Yes, I do remember. You talked about writing when we were children. You were so in love with reading that you imagined going that step farther—writing your own story—must be the pinnacle of bliss.”

  “Did I?” She had flushed again, deeply, but her smile was quick and generous, warming her face. “I suppose I did think of it that way, then.”

  “And now?” he said, feeling his own smile suddenly.

  “Bliss,” Daria interjected firmly. “I think it must be.”

  “Now, it’s a hundred fits and starts, sputtering ink nibs, stray ends going nowhere—like being a spider, most likely, on a windy day, tendrils always sailing off. Mr. Trent is kind enough to make suggestions. I only bring him what I think is my best. And you—”

  “Like riding horses,” Raven interrupted, illumined. “I see. When you dream about riding, you never fall off. But you can’t really learn to ride without actually clambering up a horse’s back, which is a completely different kettle of stew.”

  Gwyneth clung to her question stubbornly. “Do you still read?” she asked Judd. “Or is Raven right? You have more important things to do?”

  “Every chance I get,” he assured her, and saw again the smile she gave him when they were young: a bit secretive, a bit mischievous, eager to be amused by the world.

  He felt his own heart, which he hadn’t, he realized then, for some time. It crested to froth like a wave, rode the wind into spindrift. And then fell abruptly, scattering into nothing as Raven, talking again about horses, about continuing their ride back to Sproule Manor, gave a proprietary touch to Gwyneth’s arm. Daria still had hold of the other; together they turned her, gracefully and imperceptibly, toward the door. As Judd watched wordlessly, she continued the circling without them, slipping free to look back at him, the little wry smile still on her face, while they stepped forward without her, then stopped, surprised.

  “Come to tea,” she suggested. “You can tell me what you’re reading. And you, Mr. Dow. I still hear that bell at every sunset, and I’m eager to know what you make of it.”

  “Yes,” Judd stammered. “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

  She turned again, as the Sproules spun back to fetch her, and made her own way to the door.

  Judd felt himself under the bright, momentary scrutiny of Ridley’s spectacles. Then they flashed elsewhere. The door closed behind the Sproules; they hurried a step or two to catch up with Gwyneth as she moved past the window, breasting the wind as gracefully as a figurehead above the waves.

  Then she was gone. Judd blinked, heard voices again.

  “Everything,” Ridley said passionately. “Everything you have on the history of Sealey Head.”

  The bookseller scratched the tide line on his balding head. “I can give you a couple now. One is mostly anecdotal, local history; the other is a rather imaginative history of the Sproule family. Written by a Sproule, of course, who tried to link the family to a defunct line of nobility, rather than to the hardworking and very shrewd farmers who made their fortune and achieved their title by turning the rough, rocky Sealey River valley into a large, very fine farm.”

  “I’ll take them,” Ridley said promptly.

  “I’ll have to search my storage room for older works consigned there for lack of interest.” He paused, meditatively scratching an eyebrow now. “Except,” he pronounced finally, “for Hesper Wood.”

  “Hesper,” Ridley repeated blankly, but with enthusiasm.

  “Known locally as a wood witch. She’s an herbalist; people come to her with random problems. Even Dr. Grantham consults her sometimes. She lives in a sort of tree house near Aislinn House. For some reason, she collects any kind of family history, memoir, journal, even old letters that have to do with Sealey Head. She takes them in trade, or buys them outright, if she has to. I’ve been putting such works aside for her for years.”

  “Interesting,” Ridley murmured. His eyes had grown very dark behind his lenses. “Does she say why?”

  “Why such an obsession with a rather commonplace coastal town?”

  “Yes.”
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  “No. I pressed her about it once; she only looked vague and talked about ancient herbal remedies passed down through generations.” Mr. Trent shrugged. “Maybe that’s her interest. But I think there’s something else . . .” He gestured toward the window, where a line of wooded hills rose above warehouses, shops, dwellings, and the back lanes of Sealey Head. “She lives up there. She might talk to you about Sealey Head. If you can’t find the tree house, ask the young maid at Aislinn House; that’s her daughter, Emma.”

  “Do you know this wood witch?” Ridley asked Judd, after he had paid for the books and they had returned again to the street.

  “Of course,” Judd said, amused. “I know everyone.”

  “What’s she like? Would she talk to me?”

  “She’s very kind . . . I went to her about my father’s failing eyes. She tried everything she knew and wouldn’t take any form of payment when nothing worked.”

  “Why did she take to living in a tree?”

  “No one knows. She was the stillroom maid at Aislinn House for many years.”

  “Was she,” Ridley breathed. “Was she now.”

  Judd looked at him, hearing mysteries in his voice, secrets. He knew something about that sad, ancient house that Judd didn’t. Something about the bell?

  “It was on a ship,” he heard himself protest incoherently, he thought, but somehow Ridley knew exactly what he meant.

  “Was it?” he only said, and the town that Judd had known all his life changed in his head, transformed by the words of a stranger. Who had also, in that moment, transformed himself under Judd’s nose.

  A word sprang alive in his head; recognizing it, he began to understand what it meant.

  Magic.

  Five

  Ysabo was on top of the tower, feeding crows again. It was only bread from last night’s supper, and a few scraps of meat; the knights had eaten everything else. As always, gulls circled and wove among the crows, crying in their piercing, tormented voices as though they had eaten every fish in the sea, every plump morsel in its shell on the shore, and were on their last breaths with hunger. But they were wary of the crows and rarely snatched a mouthful. Ysabo had seen why the first time she had fed them, when she was a little girl. The gull that had caught a crust out of her bowl had been transformed instantly into a raging tumble of black feathers and beaks. The midair brawl had quickly flown itself over the sea, where, as the black knot had untangled itself into birds again, something ragged, limp, and bloody had dropped into the waves. The crows flew back to the tower, landed peacefully at Ysabo’s small, slippered feet. She had stared at them; they had looked back at her, beaks clacking, something knowing, mocking, in their black eyes. She had dumped the rest of the scraps over their heads and fled.

  But Maeve had made her go back. “It’s your duty,” her grandmother said, “from this day. We all have our duties. They must never, ever, ever be neglected. Not one. Don’t be afraid of the crows. They are wise and powerful, like the knights. Like the knights, they kill their enemies. But they would die to protect us. All they need is that we never fail our solemn responsibilities.”

  “Why?” the very small Ysabo asked. “What would happen?”

  “We are sworn,” Aveline had said in her rich, husky voice, shaking her bright head, her great gray eyes seeming to see, in that moment, all the sorrows of the world in the sunny morning. “That is enough for you to know. Never ask again.”

  Ysabo had looked to Maeve, who had long hair like cobweb and pale green eyes. Her voice was wavery and frail, no contest for Aveline when she was in a mood, but the right word from her, fragile though it might be, was usually the last word in any argument between them. Then, Ysabo had no concept of age. Maeve looked the way she did because she was Maeve. As years passed, she finally saw Maeve in Aveline’s face, and Aveline’s in Maeve: the regal bones, certain expressions. But though she searched every mirror in the castle, Ysabo couldn’t find her mother’s face in hers.

  That was one thing she understood now, after more than a decade and a half of growing up Ysabo. She had lost her fear of the crows; they truly needed her, she understood. And she knew why she didn’t resemble Aveline. She took after her father, instead. And if she had questions about the rigorous and exacting ritual of their lives, she had learned to keep them to herself.

  Three rules were simple, and made very clear to her, very early.

  Never leave the house.

  She had no idea how. It was enormous, so many halls and stairs and doors, she could get lost for hours just turning a corner. The idea of a door that actually opened to trees, earth, the lairs and paths of animals seemed wildly improbable. Anyway, Maeve explained, everything they needed or might want could be found within the walls.

  Never neglect your duties.

  If you have to write them down with your own blood to remember them, do it, Aveline had told her passionately. Never forget them. At first, there were only candles to be lit, doors to be locked or unlocked, certain goblets to set at certain places for the nightly feast. Gradually her duties multiplied, became more complex, their exact timing governed by the ringing of the bell. These things must be done, in this order, before it rings; these after. Nothing must be forgotten; the proper order must be rigorously maintained. She did write them down eventually, in ink rather than in blood. She carried the paper with her for years until she realized nothing had been added for a very long time. She had come to the end of learning the ritual, and it was written in her heart.

  Don’t ask why.

  That was the hardest rule. But when she forgot and broke it, punishment was swift: a heart-freezing stare from Aveline, some tedious, endless task from Maeve. Sometimes a blow. So she stopped asking, early, except in her head.

  Except two nights ago, on her birthday.

  “But why?” she had asked the knight. “Why must I marry anyone? Why must I marry you?”

  The bruise his fingers left burned on her cheek like a brand.

  Little had been said about it during the feast. Afterwards, in their chambers, Aveline had wept, of course, but not over the knight’s behavior.

  “How could you?” she stormed at Ysabo. “After all you have been taught?”

  “But, Mother—”

  “The knights have their rituals, as we do; they dare not deviate. It is immensely dangerous.”

  “He didn’t have to hit me.”

  “You questioned him. He had no proper recourse but that. No other words.”

  But why? Ysabo wanted to shout, to weep, to kindle her own storm, set it raging against Aveline. But why but why but why why why?

  Maeve, sitting beside the fire, listening, raised her white head as though she felt the silent storm. Or sensed something of it in Ysabo’s wide, glittering eyes, her tense face, livid but for the burning shadow of the knight’s hand.

  “Come here,” she said.

  For a breath Ysabo stood motionless, staring at her grandmother, fearing another blow. Then she forced herself to move, her mouth tightening so that her thin lips all but disappeared, left a snake’s mouth, a toad’s mouth in her face.

  Maeve only tugged at her wrist gently, until Ysabo sank to her knees on the soft skins under Maeve’s chair. Maeve patted her shoulder; Ysabo’s brow came to rest finally against her grandmother. Behind them, Aveline opened a casement, let in the wind. Ysabo heard the distant thunder of the sea, a gull’s lonely piping in the dark.

  “Our world will not come to an end because you asked a question,” Maeve said. “But it will, without the ritual. Think of the ritual as something powerful enough to call up the sun, to set the waves in motion, bring down the moon. If you forget, or willfully abandon any part of it, imagine that the sun will not rise out of the sea; the sea itself will stop, lie silent and idle as a puddle in the perpetual black. Imagine that your blood will stop flowing, lie as stagnant in your veins.”

  “But he does not love me,” Ysabo whispered. She heard a sharp sound, very like a snort, from Aveline.
But Maeve only stroked her hair a moment, quietly.

  “Then look to us for love. Look to the knight for your child. What you do not expect, you won’t miss.”

  Ysabo felt a sudden flash of cold throughout her body, as though she had drunk moonlight or swallowed the icy prick of light that was a star. “My child.”

  “If it is male, he will become a knight. If female, you will teach her the ritual, as Aveline has taught you.”

  Ysabo closed her eyes. She felt hot tears well behind her lids, the first she had cried all evening. Poor poppet, she thought numbly. Poor unborn thing.