Blythewood

by Carol Goodman

  “But,” he said, getting to his feet, “I’m afraid I must go. I have to stop by a house on the River Road to attend to a clock that needs fixing. Perhaps if Miss Hall is ready to go back to school I might accompany her.”

  “Oh yes, that would be best,” Miss Emmy said. “Ava met a most disagreeable man at the post office. We wouldn’t want her to encounter him again. But first she must come in the . . . er . . . library with me for that . . . er . . . book I promised to send back to Vionetta.” She turned to me and screwed up one eye in such a peculiar fashion I thought she must have something stuck in it, but then I realized she was winking at me.

  “Oh yes, the book! Miss Sharp will be disappointed if I forget it!”

  As I got up to follow Miss Emmy into the library, Raven bowed formally and asked Miss Emmy if she needed any help retrieving the book. “I’m very good at getting into high places,” he added mischievously.

  “Oh no, no!” Miss Emmy chirped, her hands fluttering like agitated birds. “You wait here. We’ll only be a moment.”

  As soon as we were in the library—a snug octagonal room with more violet pots, antique clocks, and figurines than books—Miss Emmy confessed there was no book. “It was a ruse I made up to get a moment alone with you. I feel quite awful tricking that sweet young man.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t have done it unless it was important. Did you have something that will help me focus the bells?” I looked around the bookshelves, wondering if A Darkness of Angels could possibly be here amongst the aspidistras and china shepherdesses. But instead of a book, Miss Emmy produced a pocket watch from her pocket.

  “My father made this for me,” she said, cradling it in her plump palm. Its gold case was etched with a design surrounding a small enamel watch face. At the top of the watch face were two bells. Two figures flanked the bells—a woman and a man with wings. They were each holding a small hammer poised above the bells. When Emmaline pressed the stem at the top of the watch, the two figures struck the bells, producing a faint, tinkling tune. A familiar tune. It was the same tune that the Blythewood bells rang when I first heard them.

  “It’s an automaton repeater,” Emmaline said. “My father programmed it to play certain protective tunes and also to repeat whatever tune was in my head so that I could learn how to make the bells in my head ring to my command.”

  “And have you learned how to do that?” I asked.

  Miss Emmy smiled. “I’ve learned to slow the bass bell—the one that signals danger—to calm myself and others. It works wonders with Taddie when he gets agitated. But I’ve never been able to hear more than one other bell. Papa said there was a book somewhere that explained how.”

  “A Darkness of Angels?”

  “Yes, that was the one. He looked for it everywhere but never found it.”

  “I may have found a copy.” I told her about Mr. Farnsworth.

  “Oh, Papa was good friends with Mr. Farnsworth. They looked together for the book. Perhaps he has found it. But in the meantime you hold on to this.” She pressed the watch into my hand.

  “But it was from your father!” I cried. “I couldn’t.”

  “He would want you to have it.”

  “But don’t you need it?”

  She shook her head, her curls trembling. “Oh no, I have that tune memorized and all the clocks in the house are here to remind me now that Raymond has fixed them.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “You need it more than I do.” She squeezed my hand closed around the smooth gold watch. I could feel it ticking, like the beat of a bird’s heart.

  “Thank you,” I told Miss Emmy. “I promise to take good care of it.”

  “Just take good care of yourself . . . oh, and here . . .” She plucked a book off the shelf. It was a guide for the cultivation of violets.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Why, it’s our alibi!” she said, attempting another wink. “So Mr. Corbin doesn’t think we lied to him.”

  “How clever of you,” I said, smiling at the thought of Miss Emmy thinking she was fooling Raven. She turned to leave, but I thought of one other question.

  “You said you learned to summon one other bell. Which one?”

  “Oh, Merope’s bell,” she replied, blushing. “But I didn’t summon it. It summoned me.” Lowering her voice, she whispered, “It’s the one that rings when you fall in love.”

  Raven escorted me down Livingston Street, my arm tucked firmly under his elbow, as if he were my suitor walking me home from the Sunday church picnic, smiling and tipping his hat at the good townspeople of Rhinebeck. My heart fluttered in my chest like a trapped bird. What if Raven’s wings suddenly burst free of his tweed jacket? What would those good townspeople think of me then?

  “How do you do it?” I asked quietly.

  “Do what?”

  “Play a part so . . . convincingly. You’ve got the Sharps completely bamboozled.”

  He laughed. “They’re sweet, trusting people. Why shouldn’t they believe I am what I say I am?”

  “But Emmaline is a chime child. Shouldn’t she . . . sense there’s something wrong with you?”

  His arm muscles tensed under my hand. “Wrong?” he echoed, an edge of anger in his voice.

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant different.”

  “A chime child senses danger. If I meant the Sharps any harm—which I don’t—Emmy would sense it. What about you? What do you feel with me now?”

  Lightheaded? Giddy? Airborne? All occurred to me as possible answers, but instead I replied primly, “Confused. I mean,” I added when he cocked one eyebrow at me, “I don’t understand what you’re doing at the Sharps pretending to be a clockmaker’s apprentice.”

  “I am a clockmaker’s apprentice,” he snapped. “I’ve signed papers with Mr. Humphreys for a year’s apprenticeship after I demonstrated my expertise. I’ve been practicing, you see, for some time. I like fiddling with clocks and I’m good at it. So why shouldn’t I have a job like anyone else? Do you think I want to live in a tree the rest of my life?”

  I stared at him, open-mouthed. We’d reached the corner of Main Street and had to pause to let a streetcar go by. Raven was staring at the traffic as though he’d like to vault over it. “But you’re a . . .” I lowered my voice at his warning glance. “A Darkling. You can carry souls across the worlds. You can fly! Why would you want to live an ordinary life?”

  He stared at me for a long moment, those dark eyes resting on me with a touch soft as velvet. His arm, though, was rigid as steel beneath my fingertips and I could see the cords in his neck tensing and his jaw clenching. I felt the ripple of muscles from arm to back. He was holding himself tight to keep his wings from unfurling and breaking through his jacket. There was so much pent-up energy inside him that I could see it, rising off him like heat waves on a sultry day. Then the ripple passed and he let out a soft sigh.

  “You’re right,” he said through tight lips. “Why would anyone want to live an ordinary life with a monster like me—?”

  “Wait,” I said, “that’s not what I meant.”

  But Raven ignored my interruption as he steered me across the street and headed us north on Main Street. “I have other reasons to be at Violet House. Thaddeus Sharp was quite the inventor—and he was a friend to the Darklings. He understood that the Darklings weren’t the enemy, but that the tenebrae were. I believe the clocks in the Violet House were designed to repel tenebrae. I’m studying them to see if I can understand how they work.”

  “I think you’re right that Thaddeus Sharp was trying to find a way to repel the shadows with his gadgets. Emmy gave me this.”

  I took out the pocket watch and opened it up. Raven stopped dead in the street and cupped my hand in his as the watch played its tune. The touch of his bare hand made me feel warm all over. I heard the treble bell in my head and thought of what Emmy had said it meant
—but who knew if she knew what she was talking about. And besides, when had she been in love?

  When the tune had played out Raven folded my hand over the watch to close it and then abruptly dropped my hand. “An automaton repeater. Interesting. Yes, I think that will help protect you—and you’ll need it if you’re going to take on the Shadow Master on the streets of Rhinebeck. What did you do to draw him out, by the way?”

  Ignoring the sharpness of his tone—and glad that he had looked away so he wouldn’t see the blush that had risen to my face—I told him how I’d found A Darkness of Angels listed in the catalogue, written to the librarian at Hawthorn, and decided to post the letter in town.

  “He was waiting for me. He knew that I’d found something in the Special Collections and come to town to post a letter. I would have told him who the letter was to if the bells hadn’t rung! When he touched me I felt this burning ice creep through me.”

  “Tenebrae.” Raven hissed the word. “I’ve heard that’s how they feel when they get inside you—first cold, then burning, and then, after they burn through you, a dead numbness. If you hadn’t gotten away you would have become his slave.”

  “I was able to break his hold on me,” I said. “But I can see how he does it. Perhaps his spy is someone he took over . . . someone weak. I think it might be our deportment teacher, Miss Frost.” As if saying her name had summoned her, the lady herself emerged from the door of the Wing & Clover just as we passed.

  “There she is!” I hissed, pulling Raven into the doorway of the greenhouse next door.

  We needn’t have been so secretive. Miss Frost did not look as if she would notice an elephant parading down the main street of Rhinebeck. She stood blinking in the sunlight, swaying unsteadily on her feet, her face as flaccid as blancmange. I felt an unexpected pang of pity for her in her confused, helpless state, but that sympathy vanished when she was joined on the sidewalk by Judicus van Drood.

  Raven pulled me deeper into the doorway, shielding my body with his. I felt the rustle of his wings beneath his jacket straining to break free. I placed my hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, and willed the bell—which had begun tolling inside my head as soon as van Drood appeared—to slow and its vibrations to travel from my body to Raven’s, just as I had done with little Etta at the factory. I held Emmy’s pocket watch in my other hand. The bell slowed in my head, but Raven’s wings still beat, tearing at the heavy tweed of his jacket. Then I remembered that with Etta I had held her bare hand in mine.

  I slipped my hand under the collar of his jacket and touched his bare neck. His skin was hot and he was trembling. I stroked his back, listening to the bells in my head and felt the taut cords in his neck slowly relax. His wings subsided beneath his jacket. I took a deep breath and craned my neck around Raven to see what was happening.

  Van Drood was standing next to Miss Frost, whispering in her ear, his unnaturally red lips nearly touching her skin. I shuddered at the sight . . . and then saw something worse. His lips parted and he spit out a writhing stream of black smoke that snaked into Miss Frost’s ear. I felt my knees buckle and I gasped.

  Van Drood must have heard the sound. He lifted his head away from Miss Frost’s ear and swiveled his neck like Blodeuwedd when she heard a mouse squeak—only his eyes were colder than any owl’s. I felt the chill of them move over our hiding place, saw the blood-red lips pull back over blackened teeth. My hands turned slick at the sight. I nearly dropped the pocket watch . . . and somehow hit the stem, releasing a tinkling chime. Now he’d be sure to find us! But instead of pouncing on us, the black eyes fogged over as though a mist had risen in them—a mist that had also risen around Raven and me. In my hand the watch continued playing its tune—a different one, I noticed now, from what it played before. I wondered if the mist would continue to conceal us when the tune was over. But before it finished I heard a familiar voice calling Miss Frost’s name. Van Drood snapped his head toward it. Sarah Lehman, in her threadbare black coat, a thin scarf wrapped around her face, was crossing the street.

  “Miss Frost, do you need me to find you a cab?” she called, making straight for van Drood.

  I wanted to call out and stop her, but Raven held me back. Van Drood tipped his hat to Sarah. “You are just in time, Miss . . .” Sarah stopped a few feet away and stared at van Drood. “You must be one of Miss Frost’s students whom she was just praising so highly. I am afraid she has overexerted herself and suffered an attack of . . . um . . .”

  “Neurasthenia,” Miss Frost blurted out as if she were one of the automaton figures on the repeater come to life. “It’s my neurasthenia. Yes, I had better return.” She looked around her as if unsure of where she was.

  “To Blythewood,” van Drood supplied. “Please allow me.” He raised his cane to summon a passing hansom cab. It stopped with a screech of breaks and van Drood opened the door, guiding—nearly pushing—Miss Frost inside. He pressed something into Sarah’s hands—cab fare, I imagined—then, bowing low, strode briskly north on Main Street, swinging his cane. Sarah stood at the cab door staring after him.

  “Come on,” Raven said, pulling me out of the doorway, “this is your ride.”

  “But why?” I began to object, but Raven ignored me and marched straight up to Sarah Lehman.

  “Excuse me,” he said, tipping his hat to Sarah. “But are you going back to Blythewood? Would you mind taking Miss Hall with you? She’s feeling a bit faint.”

  Sarah stared at Raven—and then me. “Ava?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  Raven answered for me. “She was having tea at Violet House, where I am a boarder. Raymond Corbin, clockmaker’s apprentice.” He held out his hand.

  Sarah placed her hand in his. “Sarah Lehman,” she said.

  “Oh yes, Miss Hall has often spoken of you.”

  Had I? I wondered. But Raven was speaking so quickly I didn’t have time to remember. He was chattering on, explaining to Sarah how I’d nearly fainted in the street and he’d helped me into the greenhouse for a rest, when I’d recognized Sarah and Miss Frost and he had suggested I share their cab back to the school. Within minutes it had been settled and Raven was bustling me into the cab, his eyes already scanning the street, with only a hurried whisper in my ear to “keep an eye on this one.”

  Of course, I realized, he wanted to go after van Drood and needed to get rid of me first. I felt like a parcel that has been delivered as I squeezed up against Miss Frost’s bulky—and inert—form. She had fallen heavily asleep and was already snoring. Sarah perched on the jump seat across from me and looked out the back window as the cab drove away. I craned my neck around and saw that she was following Raven’s progress down the street.

  “What a charming young man,” she said when I turned back. “Have you known him long?”

  “Oh no!” I nearly shrieked. “I only just met him at the Sharps.”

  Sarah tilted her head and looked at me quizzically. “But he said you’d spoken of me often and you two seemed . . .” She wrinkled her brow. “As though you’d known each other longer somehow. Almost intimate.”

  Blood rushed to my face. Had Sarah seen us in the greenhouse doorway, pressed close together, Raven’s arm around my waist, my hand on his bare neck? My blush deepened as I recalled the moment. A slow smile dawned on Sarah’s face.

  “Ava! You’re blushing! Is he a secret beau?”

  There was something so gleeful in Sarah’s expression that I hated to disappoint her. Of course I couldn’t tell her the real story, but I could tell her something close to it.

  “I met him in the city,” I said. “In Washington Square Park while walking to work. His . . . um . . . the clock shop where he worked was nearby . . . on Waverly Place,” I added, recalling that there was a clock shop on Waverly. “We passed each other often and one day he spoke to me. . . .”

  As I embroidered the details a picture began to take shape i
n my head—a moving picture like the ones that played in the Automatic Vaudeville House in Union Square. It was my old life of working in the factory overlaid by a gauzy construction—walking through the park with Tillie, who might have urged me to talk to the handsome clockmaker’s apprentice we saw each morning. He likes you, Tillie would have whispered in my ear. With her encouragement, perhaps I would have been so bold as to let him walk me home from work one day. He’d have brought me flowers. Perhaps he would have bought me an ice from one of the Italian stands on Mulberry Street. Eventually I might have agreed to accompany him to Coney Island one Sunday. . . .

  “How romantic!” Sarah cried, her voice breaking into my little daydream. I’d barely realized I was saying it all out loud. “And now he’s followed you up here to Rhinebeck!”

  “Oh,” I said, “I’m not sure. I suppose it was the opportunity to work with Mr. Humphreys.”

  “Nonsense!” Sarah leaned forward and lowered her voice, even though Miss Frost’s snores assured us of her comatose state. “He’s come for you. Why else would he be staying at the Sharps, where it will be easy for you to find excuses to meet?”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said, suddenly nervous at the turn Sarah’s imaginings—or rather my imaginings—had taken. If it got around that I was seeing a strange boy in town, how long would it be before Raven’s true identity came to light?

  Sarah’s eyes widened at my obvious discomfort. “Don’t worry,” she said, grabbing my hand and squeezing hard. “I’ll keep your secret. I could even carry messages for you if you ever need me to. I’m always going into town on errands for her.” She slid her eyes over to the recumbent Miss Frost.

  I looked into Sarah’s wide brown eyes, as trusting and hopeful as a spaniel’s, and realized how happy I’d made her by taking her in my confidence. Perhaps few other girls, if any, shared gossip with “Lemon.” And I might need to get in touch with Raven. He had told me to keep an eye on Miss Frost. I would do that—and report back to him.

  “And you won’t tell anyone else?”