Chime

by Franny Billingsley

  “Who else knows?” he said.

  “Only you. And Stepmother knew. She fretted about it a great deal and made me promise to keep it a secret.”

  “Do you know why—?” He ran out of words.

  “Why I can see the Old Ones?”

  He nodded.

  To lie or not to lie, that was the question. I’d never tell him the truth, of course, but I could pretend not to know. But the pretending would be a lie, and the lie would be a betrayal, and Eldric was my best friend.

  “I do know, but Stepmother asked me to keep that a secret too. I promised her not to tell, I promised over and over. Would you mind very much if I didn’t tell you?”

  “I would mind.” When people go pale, they usually get rosy again. But not Eldric, not yet. “I do mind.”

  Too bad for him. “You don’t look very well.”

  “You’ve given me a shock,” he said.

  Serves him right. “Perhaps you should put your head down.” I knew this was the thing to do, although I’ve never fainted and I don’t intend to.

  He managed a smile, shook his head. “I’ll just sit for a few minutes.”

  Now that we sat silent, I noticed the music that came leaking from the Alehouse. “Lord Randal.” Lord Randal, whose sweetheart poisons his eel broth for no particular reason, which is not unlike me, if you think about it. I don’t need much of a reason to kill.

  O I fear ye are poisoned, Lord Randal, my son!

  O I fear ye are poisoned, my bonny young man!

  How I hate that song with its queer, ancient intervals. But wine is cheering. Drink Briony, drink!

  I may be wicked, but I’m not proud of it. And I’m not proud of being a betraying friend and of letting Eldric sit there, all pale and shocked, without doing anything—even though he’d been acting horrid. Yes, horrid!

  “I have some questions about betrayal,” I said. “Think about this: A person who calls you his best friend, and says he has dinner plans with you, goes off with a beautiful woman, saying he’ll be back directly, then makes you wait half an hour because he’s kissing the woman in the alley. Is that betrayal?”

  “Oh, Lord.” Eldric tossed back his wine.

  “You were such a long time,” I said. “I came looking for you.”

  “I’m mortified,” said Eldric. “Mortified that you saw us. But—well—I’d fancied myself over her. When she and I are apart, I get to thinking she’s not terribly interesting.”

  “But then she appears,” I said.

  “Then she appears,” said Eldric, “and I no longer care if she’s uninteresting.”

  I get to thinking she’s not terribly interesting . . . I no longer care if she’s uninteresting. It was peculiar—more than peculiar—the way the presence of Leanne pulled Eldric’s emotions about, like taffy. It wouldn’t be so peculiar if the memory of Leanne also affected him. But no. When she and I are apart, I get to thinking she’s not terribly interesting. A lover is expected to moon over the girl of his dreams when they’re apart, writing love poems and the like. How else do such things get written? A proper lover wouldn’t have time to write and sing when his love appears. He’d be busy doing other things.

  “Have you a pencil and paper?”

  “My coat,” said Eldric. “Breast pocket.”

  I fished them out. “I know this sounds queer,” I said. “But will you tell me about Leanne? And if you don’t mind, I’ll write it down.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I don’t know.” That was not quite true. In the days when I used to write, I was sometimes able to write myself into knowing something. Or, rather, uncovering something I already knew. “But will you indulge me?”

  Fine, he said.

  He didn’t care, he said.

  I took scattered notes, at first, as Eldric described meeting her at the courthouse, being struck that she’d ridden all that way from the Sands, what a marvelous horsewoman she was, and more of the same. But when he started describing how she adored his ability to fidget something out of nothing, I wrote everything, best I could.

  The following is not at all what I wrote, but it describes what Eldric meant better than anything he said.

  This is the boy-man called Eldric.

  Let’s just skip to the last one, shall we?

  This is the boy-man called Eldric; who fell in love with a woman called Leanne; who was terribly interested in his fidgets, the making of which she encouraged and facilitated; and once she got Eldric to making the fidgets day and night, he fell ill; but when Leanne was barred from his sickroom, he recovered immediately and, in fact, rather despised her; but when he saw her again, he could not resist her spell; and Mad Tom took an unusual interest in her; and Eldric’s friend Briony was there and it may have been that Leanne felt Briony threatened her relationship with Eldric, for why otherwise would Mucky Face have appeared right then with orders to kill her, Mucky Face, who, we must remember, can be controlled by an Old One whose element is water, and—

  “Don’t you see!” I heard my own fish-gasp of surprise. “She’s a Dark Muse!”

  “It was stupid to have fallen for her so,” said Eldric. “I freely admit it. But please give me credit for some brains.”

  “It’s not about brains. She cast a spell upon you; you said so yourself.”

  “I only said I felt as though I’d been under a spell,” said Eldric. “I wasn’t being literal. You of all people should understand that. You’re rarely ever literal. You’re too—”

  “Abstruse?”

  “If you say so,” he said. But I didn’t say so. That wasn’t the right word at all.

  “You fell ill once you started fidgeting night and day. She encouraged you. She was drinking down your energy.”

  “I’ll never believe it,” said Eldric.

  “You recovered the moment your father cut off her visits. She was worried I was distracting you from her; she tried to have me killed.”

  “Leanne, worried about you?” Eldric punched at the you as though he were boxing with it.

  The punch came like a kick to the breastbone. I shrugged as though to say, Believe what you like. But I had no breath to speak.

  Wine is cheering. Drink up, Briony!

  Slower than slow, Eldric’s fingers curled themselves into a fist. Or perhaps it was my mind that went slow. I had plenty of time to see his knuckles go white, plenty of time to say, “Smash the table, why don’t you? Kick things about. It’s ever so nice to see you embrace the true spirit of the Fraternitus.”

  Slowly, slowly, Eldric set his fist upon the table. Slowly, slowly, he stretched his fingers. “It’s one thing to keep secrets. It’s quite another to lie.”

  “I only lie about important things,” I said. “Not about Leanne.”

  Wine is most certainly cheering.

  We fell to eating cold soup and drinking warm wine and eating tepid bread and listening to the music.

  “No one had any idea about Mad Tom,” I said. “No one imagined he’d be worthy prey for the Dark Muse, not a mere stone carver. Cecil will be ever so put out.”

  “Blast Cecil!” said Eldric.

  “You have my permission,” I said.

  The canal agent was singing now. He had a fine tenor voice. There was blood in the kitchen, there was blood in the hall. When you grow up with these songs, hearing them over and over, you might reach the age of seventeen before you realize how bloody they are.

  At some point, Eldric must have fetched more wine. Wine is cheering. Have I said that before?

  Thoughts are strange creatures. They lead you from one thing to another. Sometimes you don’t know how you got from one to the next. I went from the Dark Muse, to Lord Randal, to Stepmother. I wished I didn’t know that she must have suffered when she died. I wished I didn’t know about arsenic poisoning, but I’d asked and I’d found out.

  I jumped as Eldric tapped my shoulder. “You’re far away.” He set down a plate of chocolate biscuits.

  But I was no farther
than Stepmother’s grave, just outside the cemetery gates, all in the raggle-taggle grasses-o.

  “I want to apologize,” said Eldric. “I’ve been an ass.”

  Sorry? I would never be sorry! But then I couldn’t remember what there was to be sorry about. Leanne, Leanne—it had to do with Leanne.

  “Cecil, by the way, is staring at you,” said Eldric. “From the shadows.”

  “He’s lurking,” I said. “It’s so romantic to lurk in the shadows with a broken heart. Is he wearing a long, black cloak?”

  Eldric smiled and shook his head.

  I’d been thinking about Leanne, hadn’t I? Not Cecil. Yes, I had some thoughts about Leanne. “May I ask you something?”

  “It depends on what it is.” Eldric handed me a biscuit in a delicate, tentative way, as though he were handing me a flower.

  I was going to ask him, yes I was. “You remember Blackberry Night?”

  The torches were alive with yellow butterfly-flames. “I can’t forget it.” His eyes were whiter than white.

  “You remember the thing we might have done that night, but it turned out to be a thing we didn’t do?” It was late and my tongue had gone bleary. “The thing you stopped us from doing?”

  “I especially can’t forget that.”

  I was asking about lust, wasn’t I? I was fairly certain of it. But isn’t love supposed to come before lust? It does in the dictionary.

  “Did you do that with Leanne?”

  He flung out a hand. It’s silent London language. I believe it’s meant to hail a cab. Which also means the cab must stop. “What do you think I am?” His lion’s eyes matched the candlelight. “I don’t go about preying upon young and virtuous ladies.”

  “Leanne’s not a virtuous lady.”

  “Let’s not get into that again.”

  “She’s not even that young.”

  “Just wait until you’re twenty-two—”

  I interrupted him. “She’s twenty-three.” But when one is cheerful, one doesn’t mind interrupting. “Do you remember what she said to Rose? Leanne said she was very old indeed.”

  “I do remember.” Again, I couldn’t read his expression.

  My tongue thought of a cleverer thing to say. “Never mind Leanne. Have you done it with ladies who lack virtue? They’re often rather old, aren’t they?”

  Eldric laughed quick and loud, as though he’d been startled. “You’ve had too much wine.” His eyes were golder than gold.

  But I liked wine. Wine was cheerful.

  “You’re making me squirm,” he said. “Let’s hope you don’t remember this tomorrow.”

  “I have an excellent memory.”

  “I know,” said Eldric. “It’s quite a problem.”

  I’d forgotten about the chocolate flower-biscuit. I’d eat it, although one doesn’t usually eat a flower. “Just answer me, and we’ll pretend I’ll have forgotten by tomorrow.”

  This time Eldric flung up both hands, which I knew wasn’t to stop a cab but to surrender. See how quickly I’m learning this silent language?

  “How can I put it—without blushing, at least!”

  “You’re already blushing,” I said.

  “Not much like a bad boy, am I?” said Eldric. “I could perhaps start by mentioning that I’m a man—”

  “A boy-man,” I said.

  “A boy-man? How am I to take that? Shall I thank you or challenge you to a boxing match?”

  “A boxing match,” I said. “But no more of those silly butterfly punches!”

  Eldric smiled. “Very well. I’m a boy-man, then, and a boy-man who’s twenty-two years old—”

  I saw where he was going. “What a terrible way to put it!”

  “How so?”

  “If I were to give you the same answer, it would have no meaning, would it? Isn’t it assumed that a young lady of seventeen, or twenty-two, even, has refrained from acting upon, well—”

  Here my tongue, until now so merry, failed to find a non-squirmy word.

  “Impulses?” said Eldric.

  “Impulses.” Actually, it would be assumed that the young lady had no such impulses at all, but I’ll tell you something: Chocolate melts on my tongue too.

  “It’s unfair, I suppose,” he said. “But it’s true. It’s simply true that a twenty-two-year-old man has more liberty than a girl.”

  “If she’s a girl of virtue.”

  “Just so.”

  “Am I pretty again?” I said.

  “You’re always pretty!”

  “I wasn’t when I was ill. You told Rose!”

  “Rose told you that! It was just by way of explaining to her—yes, you’re pretty again.”

  “Am I beautiful?” I said.

  “Beautiful,” said Eldric.

  “Leanne is beautiful,” I said.

  “No more wine for you,” said Eldric.

  It is possible that at this point I slipped from my chair. Eldric said we must be getting home. “I have a surprise for tomorrow. I want you to feel well enough to enjoy it.”

  I said I was fond of wine and chocolate biscuits. But Eldric said I mustn’t have any more. I kicked him under the table.

  “Time to go,” said Eldric. “I hope we can keep this from your father.”

  “I hate my father.”

  “Do you really?” said Eldric. “That’s probably the wine talking.”

  I said wine couldn’t talk, and leaned against him, making him drag me along. Then the tune of “Lord Randal” popped into my head, and it seemed a pity not to sing along, so I did for quite a long while, until Eldric said to hush because we were home and Father would hear me.

  “The wine hates Father and I hate Father too.” My feet were surprised to find themselves on the garden steps. I turned round to make sure. There was the garden, and there was Eldric, and it was funny that I was almost as tall as he.

  “Your lips are blue again.”

  “I’m not the least bit cold,” I said.

  “That’s also the wine talking.”

  I slopped forward.

  “Steady!” Eldric caught my shoulders.

  But I wanted to slop forward. “Give us a kiss, then, love!”

  I leaned into him; he pushed me away. “Please don’t do that,” he said. “It’s too hard.” And there was something so sad about it, I wanted to cry. Except of course that I couldn’t.

  He kept hushing me as we made our way through the dark to the staircase. “Up you go, quick now. You’re on the third floor, remember?”

  “I have an excellent memory.”

  “Right!” said Eldric. “Go straight to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow. You might not feel very well, I’m afraid.”

  “Up I go!” I held tight to the banister.

  “I’ll watch you go up,” said Eldric.

  “Watching people isn’t polite,” I said. “Up I go!”

  And finally, up I went. Rose was asleep. “Shh! Mustn’t wake Rose!” I believe I nursed some unkind thoughts about the do-not-cross line; and then, like a good girl, I went straight to bed.

  I awoke in the dark with a cotton-wool mouth and a hammering in my head. I turned my head; the hammering sloshed to the other side. I grew gradually aware of my surroundings. I lay beside Rose, but on top of the bedclothes. Eldric’s coat hung all about me.

  Bits of the night came back. Snippets of “Lord Randal.” I sang it—yes, I’m sure I did. I staggered through the square, singing, just like any drunken fisherman. How could I show my face in the village again? I should have to stay at home for the rest of my life. It could be done, I knew. I’d heard of an American poetess who never left her house. But I hated poetry.

  Eldric had helped me home, hadn’t he? Had he held me upright, or might I have dreamt it?

  A thought about Eldric sloshed through my head, passed out the other side.

  How thirsty I was. I swung my legs over the side of the bed. The hammering sloshed all about; I felt vilely unwell. You might not feel very well. That was
Eldric’s voice in my head. I hadn’t dreamt it; he’d been there. Did I make a fool of myself?

  The thought sloshed back, daring me to remember. Whatever it was, it was worse than weaving and singing through the square. I didn’t want to remember, but I kept picking at the memory—Eldric, Eldric and Leanne. Leanne was dangerous—she was consuming him alive. But Eldric could not—or would not—believe.

  I swallowed hard, but the sick still rose, and all at once I was scrambling across the floor. I was wretchedly sick in the ewer.

  The smell of sick jumped out at me, the fishy, gritty smell of eel. Eels boiled in eel broth. With the smell came the memory of Stepmother. Sick, and eel-smell, and Stepmother. They belonged together.

  I didn’t want to remember Mucky Face bearing down upon Stepmother. But I couldn’t help it, couldn’t help remembering that livid belly rounding over her, curling, cresting, crashing. I’ll never know if Stepmother screamed. I heard nothing but the smack and smash of water.

  Stepmother vanished beneath Mucky Face, but he hadn’t finished. On he surged, into the Parsonage, and only in the Parsonage. He preferred it to any other house. He surged through doors and windows, and nooks and crannies, and holes too small for an ant. And there he stayed for weeks, loitering in the dining room and the parlor and the study and the library, where he turned the books into bloated corpses to fester and rot on the shelves.

  I sagged to the floor, leaned against the bed. Images of last night slid behind my eyes in a mad kaleidoscope. Prying into Eldric’s past with Leanne. Prying into his past in bars and bedrooms and brothels. Kicking him beneath the table. Standing on the garden steps. The charm of finding myself eye to eye with Eldric, of leaning into his lips. Give us a kiss, then, love!

  And the horridly urgent question of making Eldric understand the danger he was in.

  It was almost a relief to be sick again in the ewer.

  25

  Jaunting

  That afternoon, Tiddy Rex knocked at the garden door. “Miss, oh miss!” He’d gone pale with excitement; his freckles stood out in livery spatters. “Come see, miss!”

  “What is it, Tiddy Rex?”

  “Sorry, miss. I were supposed to say it with them other words: Mister Eldric would take it very kindly if you might look into the square.”