Chime

by Franny Billingsley

  “Please excuse me.” Leanne turned to the window. She didn’t want to miss a single thrilling moment. I understood now why she’d chosen a table by the window, despite the chill. I understood why every table next to a window was taken. A hanging is a good bit of fun, but not in the rain. Best get yourself a pint and watch from inside.

  Two pints, rather. Don’t forget, it’s Two-Pint Friday.

  I rose. “I’ll help Eldric with the food.” But he was already on his way back, loaded with hot pies and pickled eggs and bees-wine and ale. “And lemon tart for after.”

  I pretended to be busy. I pretended I might need something at the bar. Let’s see, what was it? Oh, yes: I needed not to watch Nelly hang.

  The spectators roared. I jumped. If we were in Spain, they’d have shouted Olé! That’s right, think about Spain, not Swanton.

  You’ve a lot not to think about, Briony. You mustn’t think about the delay of the London-Swanton line. You mustn’t think about what’s happening in the square, not about the crash of the trapdoor, the jerk of the noose, the twitching of—

  Don’t think about it!

  But you can’t ignore a hanging when you’re surrounded by the beating of fists and the stomping of feet and the cries of general good humor that accompany an execution.

  The first chime. The Alehouse fell silent. The second chime, the third. A chime for every year of Nelly’s life.

  The fifth chime—the seventh—twelfth—

  Would Rose mind my hearing twelve chimes of a person’s life?

  The eighteenth—the nineteenth—

  Silence now. Nelly’s life had been counted out to its end.

  Leanne swung back to her food. “Pity,” she said.

  Pity?

  “Father will be cross,” said Cecil. “He so dislikes making a mistake.”

  A mistake. Nelly hadn’t turned to dust. She’d been no more than a girl with red hair.

  “Here’s an idea,” said Eldric. “Let’s play that game where you ask the questions—you know the one, Briony.”

  I could slap him—punch him! Didn’t he care that they’d hanged the wrong girl? “Most every game asks questions.”

  My fingers arranged themselves into a terrifically nonstupidibus sort of fist.

  “Questions such as, ‘Which Old One would you be?’ ” said Eldric. “Or, ‘Which Old One would attack you?’ ”

  “Old Ones!” said Leanne, with a double-barreled sort of exclamation mark, perhaps to fill the world with all the exclamation marks Rose never used. Conservation of matter, and all that.

  “The metaphor game.” I’d punch him on that squarish corner of his boy-man jaw.

  “What invention would Leanne be?” I said, thinking of the rack and the skull crusher.

  “The very thing!” said Eldric. “To which I have just the answer. If Leanne were an invention, she’d be a motorcar.”

  “I adore motorcars!” said the fine horsewoman, raising her tinkling eyes and laughing her twinkling laugh.

  “But not the careful, boxy sort of motorcar,” said Eldric. “The lower, longer sort. Black, I think. Calf-leather interior.”

  “What a lovely game!” said Leanne, clapping her sultry hands. “Let me think of an invention for Eldric.”

  The electric light, of course. But Leanne had her own idea.

  “The telephone, I think.”

  Because he talks too much?

  “You’re ever so good at bringing far-flung people together.”

  She was right. I hated her.

  “What would I be?” said Cecil.

  The X-ray, of course. Cecil likes to look through girls’ clothes.

  The barkeep lit the lanterns. They flared blue with a stink of the Hot Place, then paled when Father walked in. He tends to have that effect.

  Father headed straight for our table. What would Father be if he were an invention?

  “Will you sing with us, Briony?”

  I had to look up.

  Father can’t be an invention. He’s only old, nothing new.

  “Please do!” said Cecil. “You have a lovely voice. I haven’t heard you in ages.”

  “Another time, perhaps,” I said. But there’d be no other time. When Father stopped singing, so did I. I stopped so thoroughly I can’t sing anymore.

  “Please?” said Father. “Please, Briony Vieny?”

  Briony Vieny? He hadn’t called me that in ages. Rosy Posy. Briony Vieny. Give it up, Father. There’s no Briony Vieny anymore, or Rosy Posy. We grew out of those girls while you were away. They died.

  “Will you choose a song?” said Father.

  How does love die? In the first year, Father touches Stepmother’s hair and sings Black is the color of my true love’s hair. In the fourth year, he buries her and says, as usual, nothing.

  “ ‘Black Is the Color.’ ” I turned away before Father’s face began to disappear, before his eyes went pale, his lips white.

  Sorry, Father. You were the one who asked.

  I grasped the fork with my right hand, just as all non-witchy girls must do. I stabbed into the pie. Steam burst from the crust, smelling of cinnamon and wine.

  I set down my fork. One reason to cook with cinnamon and wine is to disguise the taste of eel. But you can’t fool me.

  “Shall I get you something else?” said Eldric.

  I shook my head. The very thought of eel brought up the taste of sick. I sipped at the bees-wine. It buzzed about my mouth but didn’t buzz away the taste. Why hadn’t he brought fish and chips as he had the three Fridays past? Did he think Leanne a touch above Two-Pint Friday fare?

  Quiet again in the Alehouse as the Hangman slid back through the door. Rain dripped from his hat brim, flicked off his jacket as he hung it up. Everyone looked at him; he looked at no one. He took his old seat, he looked at no one.

  “What a nasty job,” said Leanne, proponent of ridding the earth of witches. She smiled, exposing her heart-shaped teeth. “I wonder that he can bear to eat.”

  Cecil said he wondered too, but I didn’t. Let’s say you do something wicked, such as smash your sister’s wits. Does that mean you shall have no more cakes and ale?

  No. Your heart must go on ticking, and your mouth must go on eating, and your brain must go on sleeping; and if you enjoy the occasional pint, what of it? You may as well enjoy the pint. If someone makes a joke, you may as well laugh.

  Your heart ticks on, that’s all there is to it. Life goes on, that’s all there is to it.

  Black is the color of my true love’s hair.

  Her lips are like some rosy fair.

  “I like girls with golden hair,” said Cecil to no one in particular, and he snatched at a bit of my hair.

  He was tipsy. “Leave me be, Cecil.” How could Fitz have stood his company, Fitz, my tutor genius.

  But look at Eldric. Was he also tipsy? Look at him, slipping off his chair, onto his knees. Look at him, kneeling at Leanne’s feet. Look at him, strumming an imaginary guitar.

  The sweetest face and the gentlest hands.

  I love the ground whereon she stands.

  I stood up. What was I doing here? I hated other people my age. How stupid they were. I should hate to be a regular girl with a sugar-plum voice. I should hate to have swan-like lashes, and a thick, sooty neck. I sound as though I’m joking, I know, but I should truly hate to be like Leanne, so charming and ordinary and stuffed with clichéd feelings. I’m glad I’m the ice maiden. Who wants to be crying over every stray dog?

  Not I. Scratch my surface and what do you see? More surface.

  I excused myself. I said I mustn’t neglect Rose, which Eldric would have known was a lie, if he’d been attending properly, which he wasn’t. He knew perfectly well that Pearl looked after Rose on Fridays—on quite a lot of other days, as well.

  The square ran with water. Light spilt outside the window, dripped off Mad Tom’s umbrella.

  “You be going out in this weather, miss?” said Tiddy Rex.

  “What
other weather could I go out in?”

  The Alehouse door slammed behind me. Mad Tom crouched beneath broken umbrella fingers. Hangman’s Square was a witch’s brew of mud and sewage and drowned rats. I stepped into the square, where everything was oozing and bubbling and churning. The wind wound itself through the gallows. It danced with Nelly Daws. Nelly danced with the wind, danced on her poor, dead, dancing feet.

  Nelly was no witch. She was a nineteen-year-old girl who, once, had danced round a Maypole. Judge Trumpington had been wrong; the Chime Child had been wrong. Couldn’t they have listened to Rose about the different colors of red hair, Nelly’s and the witch’s?

  Don’t think about it, Briony. There’s no point. Remember: You’re the girl with nothing below the surface. Scratch it and what do you find?

  More surface.

  15

  Communion

  I’d left Eldric behind in the Alehouse. I’d left Nelly behind in the square. But I couldn’t leave Rose behind, I could never leave Rose. I stood outside the bedroom we shared. I listened to her cough.

  Rose had been feeling poorly, Pearl had said. Rose had gone early to bed.

  I was glad to hear it. I needn’t tell Rose at once. I needn’t tell her she’d been right, that Nelly had been no witch, that the witch’s hair didn’t match Nelly’s, that the judge and the Chime Child ought to have heeded Rose. But the judge and the Chime Child had dwelt mostly on the fact that Nelly could not account for her whereabouts on the night of the flying snags.

  Rose coughed as I trudged up the stairs. Rose coughed as I set my hand on the doorknob. Rose coughed. She had a wet, skin-scraping cough. She had the swamp cough.

  I let my hand drop. There was nothing for me in that room. If I went in, I’d just lay myself in our bed, in the hollow I’d left of myself.

  Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow.

  In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty. One sister continues lonely and unloved; the other coughs behind the door. I sat in the hall. I waited. Father returned from the Alehouse. I waited. He sat before the fire in the parlor. I waited.

  Sometimes, of course, the sister’s the wicked one, not the stepmother.

  I’d lived in a hollow all the past year. A Fitz hollow, a Brownie hollow, a Stepmother hollow. When you live in a hollow, your life is small. It’s all paper snips, and dust, and cold wax drippings, and the scab on leftover gravy.

  I waited. Father went to bed. No more waiting. Time to go, little witch. Your sister has the swamp cough.

  Wind had replaced the rain. It slammed sticks and scum and willow peels against the far bank, it slammed me across the bridge. The fishermen have a name for the northeast wind. Don’t tell Father I know it. They call her the Bitch.

  The Bitch thwacked the Flats with the side of her hand. She thwacked the breath from my lungs.

  The Bitch could easily push a seven-year-old girl from a swing. Was it the Bitch I’d called that day? Was it the Bitch who’d smacked Rose to the ground?

  Probably.

  If Briony Larkin, age seven, wanted to call up a wind, she’d have called up the most powerful wind she could. She might not have been quite aware of what she was doing, but I know enough about that younger Briony to know that when she did a thing, she did it thoroughly.

  So did the Bitch. She had the water on the run. Gone were the stagnant pools, the creeping trickles. She turned the ooze to slither, which whipped along on its belly, smacking its lips.

  The Bitch kept me on the run too. She pushed at me, she tugged at me. She made me long to turn back. She made me yearn to lie in the warm hollow of myself and hate myself in comfort, but I had to keep on.

  Try to care about someone other than yourself, Briony. Think about Rose, lying at home, coughing her lungs into bits. Remember Rose, as the Bitch snickers round you, whistling beneath her breath. As you slog through burble and splat, as you sloggle through slurple and smack.

  I had no other choice. I’d once thought I could turn myself in and save Rose. But I knew better now. Remember what the constable said at the trial? A fellow can’t trust nothing what might be said by a witch.

  What would have happened if I had turned myself in as I’d planned? If, after having trounced Petey, I revealed everything to the constable. I’d have been hanged and the draining would have continued.

  The pumping station rose just ahead, even more red brickibus and stuck-upimus than before. None of the Old Ones was out. Not tonight, not with the Bitch on the prowl. They were staying snug in the jellyfish earth.

  I clawed through the Bitch, leaned against the pumping station wall.

  I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down! screamed the Bitch. She pelted me with leftover rain and sea salt and grit and twigs and venom.

  She didn’t have a chance. The bricks might be stuck up, but they were stuck up tight. I edged along the wall, toward the door. Just a few yards more and I’d round the corner into that lovely little nook, where the Bitch couldn’t reach.

  Round I went. The lantern flew from my grasp. “Nabbed!” said a great voice. There came a crash of darkness, a crunch of collar. I couldn’t breathe. I swatted at a jacket, at a sleeve.

  “Well, I’ll be,” said the voice. “A girl!”

  Light again, pressing into my Bitch-squinted eyes.

  “Miss Briony!”

  The hand let go. I tumbled onto brick. Air leapt into my lungs like silver fish.

  Robert? I tried to speak, but my voice was folded flat.

  “Sorry you taked such a tumble, miss.” Yes, it was Robert, Rose’s firefighter. He drew me to my feet. “But I never been so—what I means to say, well, it be you, miss? You what be the—?”

  Robert paused, swallowed, and into the silence came Eldric’s voice.

  “It’s all right, Robert. You may leave Miss Briony to me.”

  Robert’s light bobbed about, shone on Eldric. Why was I surprised that he looked so utterly like himself, a greatcoat, a tease of a tie?

  “Begging your pardon,” said Robert, “but it be your pa what setted me to watch this place come the darklings. He telled me to seize the culprit an’ fetch him to his own particular self.”

  “Culprit?” said Eldric. “You don’t mean to say you suspect Miss Briony!”

  Robert looked at me for a good while. “I can’t say how sorry I be, miss,” he said at last. “Sorry to treat you so roughlike.”

  “It was your job, Robert.” I wheezed through my accordion throat. “You had to do your job.”

  Robert left, still apologizing and protesting. Eldric and I were alone, in the quiet. I looked at Eldric. Could I come up with a plausible excuse? I’d never get lost in the swamp; Eldric knows that. Eldric looked at me. Each of us was waiting for the other.

  “I’ll start,” said Eldric. “I saw your lantern through the window, and being the nosy parkerius that I am, decided to come along.”

  I refrained from correcting his Latin. “Did you know your father had posted a guard?”

  “Yes,” said Eldric.

  “Did you suspect me?”

  Eldric paused. “I didn’t not suspect you.”

  “Now you know,” I said.

  “Now I know.”

  A little silence. Good thing Eldric started. He saw me leave—he’d have known any story I might have invented to be a lie.

  “Shall I ask why you did it?”

  I slid down the wall, sat.

  “Good idea,” said Eldric. “Let’s make ourselves comfortable and wait for the wind to die down.”

  I slumped against the wall.

  “Why did you do it?” said Eldric.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Perhaps I can find out this way.” He brought the lantern to my face. “Don’t they say the eyes are the windows to the soul?”

>   I closed my eyes.

  “But now, the only thing I can discern is the vivid blueness of your lips.”

  He heaped his greatcoat around me. I protested, as one must do; I even opened my eyes for extra politeness. But he insisted he was warm in his slouchy tweeds. He defied me to find a trace of blue in his lips.

  This is what I want. I want people to take care of me. I want them to force comfort upon me. I want the soft-pillow feeling that I associate with memories of being ill when I was younger, soft pillows and fresh linens and satin-edged blankets and hot chocolate. It’s not so much the comfort itself as knowing there’s someone who wants to take care of you.

  “What are you thinking?” said Eldric.

  “I’m thinking of what will happen when you tell your father, and he tells my father.” I’d been thinking of exactly that, but in an inside out sort of way. I’d receive the very opposite, the opposite of satin edges and hot chocolate.

  “And finally the constable will show up to fetch me.”

  “And you’ll spend your life in jail?”

  I closed my eyes again. Eldric thought I was joking.

  “Father’s a righteous man,” I said.

  “You’re mad!” said Eldric. “Of course he’s not going to call the law on you.”

  “Not if your father does it first,” I said.

  “Do you really believe your father would turn you in, or mine?”

  I did believe it. Stepmother had believed it too. That’s why she promised again and again never to tell Father. She knew what would happen were he ever to find out.

  I thought of the constable, of his droopy eyes and sloppy lips. Would he have to touch me to arrest me?

  “I won’t tell anyone,” said Eldric. “My father, your father, no one.”

  “But that’s not fair!”

  “How is that?” said Eldric.

  “I destroyed a very expensive pumping station, and haven’t paid anyone back, and besides, it wouldn’t be fair to Robert. He’s supposed to tell your father.”

  “Let me take care of my father,” said Eldric. “I’ll lie if I have to. And if you need to pay me back, here’s what you can do. I’ve been wanting to have a garden party, at the Parsonage, but I’m a visitor and don’t like asking your father.”