Blythewood

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  I couldn’t imagine what I could do to scare the enormous workhorses yoked to the coach, but I eagerly nodded. “I’ll be very still and quiet,” I promised.

  Gillie grunted again. “That’ll do, then,” he said, offering me his hand to help me up onto the box. Though he didn’t smile, he squeezed my hand as he helped me up—probably just to keep me from falling, but it made me feel better. When I took my seat on the hard, uncushioned “box” (really just a plank of wood) I noticed that the rain and wind had stopped. And that, I decided, was at least a good omen.

  8

  ALTHOUGH THE RAIN had stopped, the fog had not. It had moved from the river to envelop the road—River Road, a sign looming out of the fog informed me. It seemed, indeed, a road turned into river, one of thick curdled murk out of which stray objects bobbed like driftwood floating on the incoming tide: stolid, wide-eyed cows, tumbled stone walls, gnarled branches, and once, startlingly, a crow, cawing as it briefly alit on Gillie’s shoulder and then flew away without eliciting any reaction from the man.

  We rode in silence, the only sound the clap of the horses’ hooves and water dripping from the invisible trees on either side of the road and from the brim of Gillie’s hat. He hunched over the reins, his face impassive, still as a stone.

  Maybe he wasn’t supposed to talk to students, I thought, or maybe he didn’t like to talk to them. But then I remembered that reassuring squeeze and his refusal to let me stay at the station, and I remembered something Tillie once said. “Sometimes people are so shy they wall themselves up in their silence. A kind word can open up a chink in those walls.” I didn’t know if Gilles Duffy needed his walls unchinked, but I knew that I did. I was approaching an unknown place that would be my

  84 Blythewood home for the next three years. I felt cold and alone and scared. If I didn’t talk to someone the cold would settle in my bones and stay there forever.

  “Thank you for not leaving me at the station,” I said, breaking a silence that felt like ice.

  “Aarrghh.” He made a garbled sound like he was clearing his throat and spit into the road. “ ’ Twouldn’t have been right, to leave a girl alone in this fog. It’s my job to make sure you girls are safe.”

  “Oh, so you don’t just watch over the animals, then?”

  “I watch over Blythewood, the house, and the woods and all that dwell in ’em,” he said with a firm nod and a cluck to the horses, who picked up their ears and walked more briskly at the sound of their master’s voice.

  “That must be a big responsibility,” I said.

  “Aye,” he grunted.

  “Er . . . how long have you worked at Blythewood, then?”

  “Since they brought ’er over.”

  “Brought who over?” I asked, confused.

  His green-black eyes slid warily toward me. “Y’mean you don’t know the history of the place? Your mother never told you?” He sounded almost angry.

  “No,” I admitted. “My mother talked about Blythewood, but it often made her sad and she would stop suddenly. And sometimes if I asked her a question . . .” I paused, remembering my mother’s lapses into silence and melancholy. I’d always assumed that she grew sad talking about Blythewood because she missed it, but perhaps she had been thinking of something bad that had happened here. “Well, you know how it is,” I croaked. “Sometimes it’s hard to talk about a place—or a person— you’ve lost.”

  He turned and looked at me, his eyes level with mine so that I could really see them for the first time. They were green—a deep moss green, the color of a forest at night. So that’s where he goes, I thought, looking into Gilles Duffy’s eyes. He has a forest inside him.

  “Aye,” he said, “I know well what that’s like. I know about lost things—and it happens I’m fair good at finding them. Would you like me to tell you the story of how Blythewood found itself here on the banks of the Hudson and the legend of the seven bells?”

  “The seven bells?” I asked warily, feeling a chill travel up my spine as I thought of the bell I had been hearing in my head. But I didn’t hear the bell now and “the legend of the seven bells” sounded like one of the stories I’d read in Mrs. Moore’s books, the sort of tale my new schoolmates might tell around the fire at night over cocoa and biscuits. Perhaps a little bit scary, but basically harmless. “I would love to hear a story,” I said finally. “Is it one of the Blythewood mysteries? Agnes told me there were lots of them.”

  “Aye, it’s the first Blythewood mystery. The one at the root of all the rest and the oldest of ’em.

  “It started back in the old times, in a village in the Borders, that is, the lands near the border between England and Scotland—on the edge of a dark forest. There was a bell maker in this village who was famous all over the world for the bells he made. All the grandest cathedrals wanted him to make the bells for their towers because it was said his bells had the purest chime. Some said he added the blood of falcons to carry the sound far and wide. Some whispered he used the blood of fallen angels. But that was nonsense, of course, because . . .” Gillie snorted. “Everybody knows angels—fallen or otherwise— have no blood.”

  I shivered, recalling the dream I’d had of the winged boy who had looked, it occurred to me now, rather like a fallen angel. Perhaps my mother had told me this story after all.

  “But I think,” Gillie went on, warming to the story, his shyness ebbing away, “that the rumor of angel blood arose afterward on account of what happened to the bell maker’s seven daughters.”

  Gillie chose this moment to bend over to untangle a knot in the reins and I cried out impatiently, “What happened to the bell maker’s daughters?”

  He straightened up and adjusted his hat before continuing, as if he were addressing an audience more impressive than one wet schoolgirl and the backs of two horses. He looked straight ahead as he told the story, his eyes on the road as if on the lookout for something that might come suddenly out of the fog. “The bell maker’s wife had had a dream that she would have seven daughters, each as beautiful as a star, and so when she did she named them after them seven sisters who became stars.” “The Pleiades?” I asked.

  “Aye, a strange choice if you ask me, but no one ever asks old Gillie. When the youngest girl was born her mother named her Merope, and then died. The girls all grew up to be beautiful as their namesakes, but also hardworking. They helped their father by gathering wood in the forest for the foundry fires, and when they were old enough they helped pour the molten bronze into the molds for the bells. They could all ring changes on the bells and it was said their voices were as sweet and clear as their father’s bells.”

  Lulled by the sway of the coach, I relaxed into the rhythm of the story—a fairy tale, I thought—wondering what fate waited for the bell maker’s daughters. Would there be princes vying for their hands or magical balls in underwater kingdoms or might they all turn into swans?

  “One autumn a wealthy prince . . .”

  Ah, I thought, so there was a prince!

  “. . . commissioned the bell maker to forge seven bells for the bell tower of his castle that lay beyond the forest. The bells had to be ready in time for Hogmanay—that’s what they call New Year’s Eve in the auld country. There was hardly enough time, but the pay was so generous that the bell maker would be able to give each of his daughters a handsome dowry. All of the girls were happy at this prospect, except for the youngest daughter, Merope, who worried that her father was working too hard.”

  Of course it was the youngest daughter, I thought. It always is. She’ll be the one who marries the prince at the end.

  “When she could not convince her father to give up the commission, she worked extra hard to help him, learning to work the forge and pour the molds. Her father let her help mold the last and smallest bell herself, the treble bell, and named the bell after her—and then so his other daughters wouldn’t be jealous he named each bell for one of his daughters and that’s how the bells came to be named for them stars. Each on
e is stamped with its name, which you can see on the bells to this day. There’s Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope. Only Merope’s no longer in the tower, but I’ll get to that in time.

  “Despite the girl’s help the bell maker worked himself so hard that when the bells were finished, he fell ill—too sick to bring the bells himself to the prince’s castle. The girls would not risk losing their dowries, though, so they agreed to take the bells themselves. Merope begged to stay home to nurse her father, but the oldest sister, Maia, thought that the appearance of seven sisters delivering seven bells would make a pretty picture, and she hoped to gain the prince’s admiration by the show. She even composed a seven-part peal for the sisters to play on the bells when they were installed in the bell tower.

  “When the bells were packed in straw and loaded on the cart the sisters dressed in their best dresses and cloaks and set out for the prince’s castle. Merope urged her sisters to take the longer route around the forest because not only were the woods full of wolves and wild boars but also it was whispered that they were the abode of the fairies and that many a traveler had gone missing in the fog never to be seen again.”

  Gillie turned to me and looked me in the eye. “Only a foolish girl goes wandering in the woods by herself.”

  “But the oldest sister insisted they go through the woods,” I said, sure I saw where the story was going now, but also to distract myself from the thought of those creatures that came out of the fog . . . which might even now be lurking in the fog that surrounded us.

  “Aye,” Gillie agreed. “Because she wanted to be there by nightfall when the prince would attend mass. And they would have been if they hadn’t been caught in a fog bank that swept down out of the mountains and swallowed up the whole forest. The girls couldn’t see where they were going . . .” Gillie turned to me again, black-green eyes flashing like sparks off a forge. “No more than we can now, Miss. Who can tell if we’re still on River Road heading toward Blythewood School, or if we haven’t slipped off our path and gone astray. There’s them that believe a fog like this is sent by the fairies to trick the unwary traveler into fairyland, where she may wander for a hundred years without finding her way out. There are places a girl can wander where even auld Gillie won’t be able to find her.”

  I knew Gillie was only warning me to keep me out of the woods, but still I looked anxiously around for any sign that we were still on River Road. But the fog was so thick I couldn’t even see the stone walls that edged the road. We might already be traveling through fairyland, a place I knew about from my mother’s stories. I felt in my pocket to stroke the black feather for reassurance. It seemed to curl around my hand like a cat seeking warmth.

  “Is that what happened to the bell maker’s daughters?” I asked. “They wandered into fairyland?”

  “No,” he answered. “Far better for them if it had. Instead they heard a rustling from the woods on either side of them. At first they tried to convince themselves it was only deer or foxes, but the creatures making these sounds were larger, and soon they heard the yip and bay of wolves calling one to t’other. They were surrounded by a pack of wolves. And not just any wolves—shadow wolves.” Gillie gave me a look that made my blood run cold.

  “What are those?” I asked, my mouth dry.

  “They’re not natural animals made out of blood and fur. Natural animals can be dangerous, Miss, but they’ve got no evil in them. Shadow creatures are made up of pure evil. “The horses knew what they were. They bolted and the reins fell out of the oldest sister’s hands and the horses ran wild—right into a ditch. The wagon pitched sideways and dumped the sisters and the seven bells out into the snow. As they broke free from their straw packing, the bells made a huge and terrible clamor. When it ended the forest was silent around them.

  “‘ The bells have scared the wolves off,’ Merope whispered. They could hear the baying of the wolves in the distance. Then they heard it coming closer.

  “‘ But not for long,’ another sister said.

  “‘ We should run,’ another suggested.

  “‘ Where to?’ another asked. ‘We’ll only get lost in the woods and the wolves will pick us off one by one.’

  “They could hear the wolves coming closer . . . and then they heard a terrible scream that they knew was one of their horses, who’d broken free of his traces, brought down by the wolves. Some of the sisters began to cry. Merope looked at her sisters and the seven bells that lay scattered in the snow. She ran to one that lay on its side—which was the treble bell, the one that had been named for her—and reached inside to grab the clapper. Then, with all her might, she struck the clapper against the inner rim of the bell. A clear chime rang through the forest, so pure that it silenced the wolves . . . for a moment, at least.

  “‘ Find a bell,’ Merope called to her sisters. ‘We’ll ring to keep the wolves at bay until the prince hears it and sends help.’

  “‘ How will he know it is us?’ the oldest sister asked. ‘If I heard bells coming from this forest I would think it was the fairies and run as far away as I could.’

  “‘ We’ll ring the changes we practiced for the prince. Who else but the bell maker’s daughters know how to do that? They will know it is us and come.’

  “Before the oldest sister could argue, Merope began to call out the orders for the peal.” Gillie shifted his weight on the perch and looked at me. “Have ye ever rung changes, girl?” I shook my head. “Aye, well your arms are a mite skinny now to pull the bells, but a few months of good exercise and you’ll be up to it. ’Tis a wonderful thing to be part of. The music of the bells takes you over and your blood thrums with the vibrations and it’s like you’re a part of the sound. You feel hollow, but also full. You feel part of something bigger’n yourself. To tell the truth, I don’t know if Merope thought the bells would keep off the wolves or if the prince would come, but she did know that if her sisters were ringing the changes they wouldn’t be afraid any longer. And so it was. They rang the bells through the night, Merope calling out the changes.

  “In the castle the prince heard the bells. At first he thought it were the fairies playing their tricks, but the prince listened and counted the bells to seven and said to his knights, ‘Those are the bell maker’s daughters ringing my bells. Whoever will come with me to save them shall have one of these brave girls for a bride.’

  “And so the prince and six of his knights rode into the forest, following the sound of the bells through the deep fog. As they grew closer, though, they noticed that one of the bells dropped out of the peal. One of the sisters must have grown too tired to strike her bell. The prince spurred his horse on and urged his comrades to ride faster. Another of the bells fell out as they rode, and then another and another, until only one bell—the treble bell—rang. It rang clear and steady. The prince pledged to his knights that whichever sister rang that bell, she would be his bride.

  “They reached the sisters just as dawn was breaking. As they entered the clearing their horses scattered the ring of wolves and the fog with them. Over each of the bells lay one of the sisters, their arms too weak to ring anymore, but still alive. The seventh bell, the treble, which lay farthest from the overturned wagon and hidden in the last scrap of fog, still rang. But as the prince dismounted and walked toward it the bell tolled its last chime. The air was still ringing with the sound when the prince reached it, but there was no one there. He looked around the woods, which were full of sunlight now, but there was no sign of the youngest sister. No sign but a single black feather lying on the ground where she had knelt beside the bell.”

  “What happened to her?” I cried, my hand clenched around the feather in my pocket—a single black feather that had lain beside my mother’s body. Is that why my mother had kept a black feather? Because of the story? Gillie held up his hand and brought the horses to a stop.

  “Listen,” he said.

  At first all I heard was the drip of water from the trees on either side of the ro
ad, but then I heard it: bells. First one and then another . . . and then a chorus of them.

  “They’re ringing us home, Miss. Showing us the way through the fog. See, the horses know.”

  The horses’ ears were indeed twitching toward the sound. Gillie snapped the reins and we veered left, off the road, toward the sound of the bells.

  A black iron arch loomed out of the fog. I could just make out the words “Blythewood School” and below “Tintinna Vere, Specta Alte” as we passed below the gate. The road went steeply up, the fog lightening as we climbed and the sound of the bells growing louder. Even from this distance I could feel what Gillie had meant. The bells seemed to make my blood thrum. They seemed to be inside me, the way the bass bell rang inside me, but these bells didn’t make me afraid. They made me feel as I had when I’d slowed the bell inside me to calm Etta. Safe.

  When we reached the top of the hill I looked down and saw that below us the fog still clung to the ground, but rising up out of the white mist, as if floating in midair, was a square tower hewn out of honey-colored stone. As the bells stopped ringing, the mist scattered, revealing first the outlines of a turreted castle—the same castle as the one in the engraving my mother had kept by her bed. It looked like a castle in a fairy tale, and I wondered if Gillie’s story had somehow transported me into a fairy-tale land. Then, listening to the bells as they, one by one, ceased to ring, I noticed something.

  “There’s only six,” I said to Gillie.

  “Aye. For hundreds of years the seven bells rang in the prince’s bell tower. The knights and the six bellmaker’s daughters installed the seven bells in the tower and turned the prince’s castle into an abbey, with a monastery for the knights, and a convent for the sisters, who together founded the Order of the Bells. Young men and women from all over the world flocked to the abbey drawn by the sound of the bells. They believed that the tolling kept the wild creatures and fairies of the woods at bay and that so long as the seven bells rang from the tower the demons would stay in their own land. The Order of the Bells became a great abbey, famous for the learning of its sisters and monks. Some of the men and women who were educated there chose a monastic life, but others went out into the world and became great leaders. The Order spread throughout Europe, founding schools wherever there was evil to fight. “But eventually the Order did its job so well that folk no longer saw a need for them. The Order’s power faded, and the abbeys fell into ruin or were destroyed in wars. Even the original abbey in Scotland, Hawthorn Abbey, was ransacked during the Reformation. The last remnants of the Order came together from all over Europe and decided to bring the original bell tower and the convent over here and found Blythewood. “Three barges it took to bring her up the river. The last barge held the tower and the bells packed within it on account of the legend that the bells must always stay in the tower, but as the barge came around that bend there”—Gillie pointed to the river where a high cliff protruded from the western shore—“a storm came up. They say you could hear the bells ringing out in the storm, even though they were packed in straw, and that they could be heard as far away as Albany. The ship listed hard to port and the tower began to slide into the water, but at the last minute the ship righted itself and only one bell from the tower was lost.”