Blythewood

by Carol Goodman

  “Well, don’t stand there gawking, girl! There’s cataloguing to be done!” She pointed to the desk on which lay a large leather-bound ledger, next to a lit gas lamp and a box of matches. Clearly Miss Frost thought in her confusion that I was Sarah. Since I didn’t want to disabuse her of the notion, I sat down and took up the fountain pen beside the ledger. As I pulled up my chair I felt something stir against my feet beneath the desk and heard the squeaking I’d noticed before.

  I looked up to see if Miss Frost had noticed it, but she only handed me a tray of bone fragments, each one labeled with a small Roman numeral. “You can start with these,” she said. Then, with a wistful glance around the study—as loving as if the grisly assortment of bones had been love tokens—she left. I sat for a moment wondering if I should go after her, but another squeak from beneath the desk decided me. I crouched down, lamp in hand. Two pairs of frightened eyes stared back at me.

  “She’s gone now, Daisy,” I said. “You can come out.”

  “How did you know it was me?” Daisy asked, crawling awkwardly out of her hiding spot and cradling something in the crook of her elbow.

  “Your reticule,” I said, helping Daisy to her feet and staring at the creature nestled in the crook of her elbow. It was a lampsprite, with white wings tipped with silver, covered in a fine white down that formed a sort of dress on her slim body. As she shook her wings free of the dust, I saw that one of her wings was broken.

  “It’s the sprite Blodeuwedd caught in Miss Swift’s class,” I said. “The one you were supposed to bring to the specimen room.”

  “I told Miss Frost she escaped. I couldn’t let her be killed . . . she’s a person.”

  The little sprite hopped onto Daisy’s shoulder and brushed her wings over Daisy’s cheeks, leaving a light silvery powder, then trilled at Daisy in a high, squeaky voice.

  “And you’re keeping her here? Weren’t you afraid Miss Frost would find her?”

  “Featherbell wanted to be close to her departed sisters.”

  “Featherbell?” I asked.

  The sprite whistled a long fluty tune and Daisy giggled. “Well, actually that tune you just heard is her real name. In her language it means ‘feathered-one-whose-voice-rings-like-a-bell,’ but I can’t pronounce that, so we agreed on Featherbell as the closest translation.”

  “You can understand her?” The sprite’s whistles and trills sounded like the sounds the hawks made in their mews.

  “Oh yes, you can, too, if you let her brush her wings on your face. The sprites communicate with a combination of the powder on their wings and sound waves directly to your brain. They call it powdering—or actually ‘the-speech-which-uses-powder-instead-of-voice,’ but I—”

  “Couldn’t pronounce that. Got it. Okay, I’ll try it.”

  The sprite looked from Daisy to me, tilting her head and blinking her large blue eyes. She chirped uncertainly. “She’s really okay,” Daisy assured her.

  The sprite still looked uncertain but she hopped from Daisy’s shoulder to mine, landing light as a butterfly. Her wings brushing against my cheek felt like cobwebs. When she sang I felt a vibration inside my brain that resolved into words.

  “Greetings, friend of She-whose-name-means-a-flower-and-brings-food. Please do not blame your friend for hiding me and keeping secrets from you. I would not like any harm to come to her for rescuing me. She has been kind and good.”

  I looked at Daisy, who was smiling proudly at the little sprite, and felt as though I hadn’t really looked at her properly for months. She’d subjected herself to Miss Frost’s temper and forced herself to handle specimens that were repugnant to her so she could take care of this wounded creature—which wasn’t a creature at all, but a person with thoughts and feelings. I had been as blind about their nature as I had been about Daisy’s.

  “I know,” I said to the sprite, but smiling at Daisy. “She is kind and good. I won’t let any harm come to either of you. In fact . . .” I held out my hand for her to hop on and studied her wing. “I think I know someone who can fix your wing.”

  The lamp I’d brought with me was nearly out of oil, but we didn’t need it. With a flick of her unbroken wing, Featherbell emitted a strong steady glow that lit up the stone corridor in more detail than I cared to see. The walls were covered with a slimy green mold, the floors running with black oily water from which rose noxious vapors that twined around our ankles. When the vapors touched me I heard the bass bell toll in my head. I clasped the repeater in my pocket and pressed its stem. A tinkling chime played and the vapors retreated.

  “How can you stand to be down here?” I asked Daisy.

  “It wasn’t this bad at first. I think it’s been worse since the snow’s been melting and seeping down through the stones. The vapors started a couple of weeks ago—and they always seem worse after Miss Frost has been down here.”

  “A couple of weeks ago?” That would have been when I’d seen Judicus van Drood breathe smoke into Miss Frost’s ear. Could these noxious vapors be tenebrae? The thought made my skin crawl. With Featherbell’s light I saw now that there were other passages that turned off this main one. From one of them I thought I heard the tinkling of bells. The candelabellum must be that way, I thought, recalling that Miss Frost had come out of the candelabellum chamber the night Nathan and I saw her in the Special Collections Room. She must have used the candelabellum chamber as a shortcut to get into the Special Collections.

  I hurried past the passage, the thought of the shadows moving in the bell-shaped chamber somehow even more unnerving than the creeping vapors, and sprinted up the stairs. I checked to make sure that Miss Frost’s classroom was empty and then signaled Daisy and Featherbell to come through. Daisy closed the bookcase behind us. As it swung shut I thought I saw a wisp of smoke creep through the gap at the bottom, but then it seemed to evaporate. I was relieved until Featherbell hopped on my shoulder and swept her wings across my face.

  Tenebrae. The word rang in my head. I didn’t say anything out loud, though, because I didn’t want to alarm Daisy, who was nervous enough as it was.

  “Are you sure we can trust Gillie?” she asked as we crept along the corridor, Featherbell tucked in her reticule.

  “Remember how sorry he looked when he gave Featherbell over to you? I’m sure he’ll help us.”

  I wasn’t really as sure as I sounded, but I didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t healthy for Daisy to be spending so much time down in the dungeons with the tenebrae, and she wouldn’t abandon the sprite until she was well enough to fly back to the woods on her own. I couldn’t be sure that Gillie wouldn’t turn us all in, but I was hoping that his compassion for wounded creatures would overcome his loyalty to Blythewood regulations. I just hoped we could find him. I’d never gone looking for him at night.

  I knew that Gillie had a room in the south tower, near the mews. To get there we had to go across the Great Hall, up to the fourth-floor landing of the South Wing, and climb out onto the catwalk, up a ladder to the roof, past the mews, and into the tower. As we passed the mews I heard an excited fluttering from the hawks inside and an answering thump from inside Daisy’s reticule.

  “I think she’s afraid of the falcons,” Daisy said.

  We continued on past the mews to the tower. There was a low door barely as high as my head, with a brass knocker shaped like a stag’s head. Daisy and I exchanged a worried look, and I lifted my hand to the knocker. Before I could lower it the door opened. Gillie stood, framed in lamplight, in a long-sleeved red wool undershirt and loose corduroy trousers, black hair standing on end. He gripped either side of the door with his hands, barring both our entry and view of the room beyond. In the low doorway Gillie suddenly looked taller than he was—and more imposing.

  “What are ye girls doing here?” he growled. “Haven’t I said often enough that my quarters are off limits?”

  “Y-yes,” Daisy stammer
ed, already backing away. I grabbed her arm to keep her from fleeing.

  “We’re very sorry to bother you, Gillie, but someone’s hurt who needs your help.”

  “Who’s hurt ye, lass?” he demanded. “I’ll have the bastard’s head—”

  “It’s not me,” I said quickly, surprised at the fervor of Gillie’s response. “It’s . . . well . . . a smaller someone. You might as well show him, Daisy.”

  Daisy stuck her hand in her reticule and lifted Featherbell into the light. She sat cross-legged on her hand, arms crossed over her tiny chest, glaring up at Gillie.

  “We know it’s against the rules . . . ” I began.

  “But I couldn’t let Miss Frost kill her,” Daisy broke in. “She’s a person with thoughts and feelings and a family back in the woods. And she doesn’t mean us any harm.”

  Gillie reached for the sprite. Daisy started to pull back her hand, afraid, as I was, that Gillie meant to capture Featherbell. But he only held his hand out palm up, the way you’d hold an apple out to a nervous horse. Featherbell sniffed cautiously, stood up, swept her uninjured wing over Gillie’s hand, and trilled off a long musical tune that I only half understood—my powder must have been wearing off. It seemed to be some complicated formal greeting involving bloodlines, clan obligations, and an ancient treaty. At the end of it, Gillie bowed his head. When he lifted it his eyes were shining.

  “Aye, little one, I havena forgotten. You are welcome here. You two as well.” He looked at us. “Ye might as well come in, but ye have to promise not to breathe a word of what ye see here. Keep my secrets and I’ll keep yours.”

  “We promise,” Daisy and I said at the same time.

  Gillie stepped aside to let us in. As we stepped into the small, low-ceilinged room I thought we’d entered an aviary. A dozen brightly colored winged creatures fluttered around the room or perched on roof beams over our head.

  But they weren’t birds. They were lampsprites.

  Featherbell let out an excited trill and hopped from Daisy’s hand to the back of a tufted chintz settee where a young male sprite covered in brown feathers embraced her. All the other sprites in the room were soon crowding around her, trilling and brushing their wings together until a cloud of multihued glitter rose around them—or at least I thought it was glitter until it floated back down and burned tiny holes in the upholstery and rugs. Gillie quickly beat out the sparks with his bare hands and let loose a stream of Scottish that I suspected included expletives, from the way he blushed when he saw us staring at him.

  “The wee things have near set my house on fire a dozen times,” he complained. “They don’t call them a conflagration of sprites for naught.”

  “Does Dame Beckwith know about this?” Daisy asked, goggle-eyed as three sprites landed on her shoulders and brushed their wings along her cheeks.

  “Are ye daft, lass? The mistress would boot me out on my ar— articles if she knew. She and I dinna see eye to eye on the wee sprites. They’re harmless, as long as ye keep them from setting the place on fire. And the puir things are having a hard winter, what with the Jotuns in the woods. I try to leave out food for them, but I found this whole conflagration near starved to death, so I brought them here. It’s only until next week when spring begins. Now, let’s see what we can do for your wee friend . . .”

  “Featherbell.” Daisy gave her name as the sprite jumped into Gillie’s hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Featherbell,” Gillie said, his lips twitching into a crooked smile. “Let’s see what ye’ve done to your wing.”

  He gently stretched out Featherbell’s injured wing and inspected the broken feathers. “Ah, this won’t be hard to imp, but I’ll need replacement feathers.”

  “Could we use ones from Miss Frost’s specimens?” Daisy asked.

  At Miss Frost’s name the sprites trilled and fluttered agitatedly, raising a cloud of angry sparks. The sparks landed in my hair and I made out—while extinguishing them—the word murderer.

  “Can ye do it without attracting Miss . . . er . . . the lady’s attention?” Gillie asked.

  “She’s staying mostly to her room,” I said. “Except for wandering down to the dungeons at night. I could keep an eye on her while Daisy steals the spec—I mean, the departed sprite.”

  “I’d have to watch for Sarah, too,” Daisy said. “She tells everything to Miss . . . her.”

  “She’s just afraid of losing her job,” I explained to Daisy. “But I have an idea to distract her as well. We’ll do it first thing in the morning, just after breakfast when Sarah brings up her tray. I’ll go with Sarah and you can get the feathers for Gillie.”

  “I’ll have Miss Featherbell fixed in a trice, then,” Gillie said. “She should be able to fly back to the woods with her conflagration on the first day of spring . . . which can’t come soon enough,” Gillie added in a gruff voice. “I’ll be glad to have the nuisances out of my hair.”

  One of the sprites flew past me, grazing my cheeks with her wingtips, and landed on Gillie’s shoulder. “We nuisances are grateful for your shelter, Ghillie Dhu, protector of all the injured and lost,” she trilled. “You have cared for the creatures of the woods and all who stray into it from time immemorial. If you ever tire of serving your human mistress, you will have an honored place among us.”

  Gillie’s moss-green eyes grew wide and bright, then he scowled, wiped the fairy dust off his face, and nodded curtly to the sprite. Looking up he caught my eye. He must have seen the streak of dust on my cheek and realized I’d heard what the sprite had said.

  Gillie wasn’t human. He was a Ghillie Dhu, an ancient guardian of the woods and all who got lost in it. But how had he managed to come to live within the walls of Blythewood? And who of the Order knew what he was? It was a mystery I couldn’t unravel, but if I tried I knew I might bring harm to Gillie—and as I watched him tending to the sprites I knew that I would never be able to do that.

  32

  AFTER BREAKFAST THE next day it was easy enough to make sure Sarah and Miss Frost were out of the way while Daisy stole a specimen. I merely offered to help carry the tray, silently mouthing that I had a message for her to deliver.

  “Another one so soon!” she remarked when I gave her the sealed note I’d written last night to Raven. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll seem . . . overly eager?”

  I blushed at the thought, but answered, “He won’t mind. I have important news for him.”

  “Really?” Sarah asked. “Have you come up with a plan to meet?”

  “Y-yes,” I stammered, though I hated to lie to Sarah. I had written to tell Raven that the tenebrae were in the dungeons. I had no idea how to smuggle Raven into Blythewood. After all, he was quite a bit bigger than a lampsprite.

  But it turned out that Raven made my lie true. He wrote back that very day (Sarah passing me the note at dinner) that he had a plan to come to Blythewood the next week on the first day of spring.

  “Hold on until then,” he wrote. “The tenebrae bring out the worst in people. Keep a careful eye on your friends for strange behavior.”

  Strange behavior? Like Helen becoming increasingly secretive about her letters from home and Nathan walling himself into his library window seat like the victim in Mr. Poe’s “Casque of Amontillado”? There seemed to be nothing but strange behavior at Blythewood the last week of winter—during which an icy rain fell, turning the snow to slush—as if the promise of release made the captivity of winter seem even more unbearable.

  “Aye,” Gillie said when I mentioned it to him. “This is the most dangerous time of the winter, when the scent of greening stirs the blood. Even the sprites are tearing each other’s hair out.”

  I witnessed Miss Sharp snapping at Mr. Bellows for bringing her violets, Beatrice reprimanding Dolores for being a “chatterbox,” and Alfreda Driscoll refusing to fetch Georgiana a cup of tea and telling her she was “not he
r maidservant.” Georgiana retaliated by starting a whispering campaign that Alfreda’s mother was the daughter of a tradesman and not one of the One Hundred at all. I caught myself spitefully thinking that at least someone else was getting a taste of Georgiana’s medicine and then felt guilty when I found Alfreda crying in the same closet I’d found Charlotte in a few weeks ago.

  As for the Dianas, they seemed oddly distant and fierce. One night at dinner old Bertie went to remove a plate from the Dianas’ table and Andalusia Beaumont snatched it away from her, sinking her nails so deeply into Bertie’s arm that Gillie had to be called to make her release her grip.

  “They’ve gone into ‘Hunt training,’” Sarah told me on the eve of the equinox. “Best stay away from them. If I was you, I’d go into town and visit your fellow,” she added wistfully. I often thought Sarah wished she had her own “fellow” to visit, and that she was taking a little vicarious pleasure in my fictitious relationship.

  “He says he’s coming tomorrow,” I confided to her, weary of the secretive atmosphere. I’d begun to fear that Raven wouldn’t come and that I’d be stuck in this stultifying mausoleum forever.

  But when I woke up the next morning, I felt a change in the air coming in through the window beside my bed. It smelled . . . green. Like living things. I sat up in bed and looked out the window. Overnight all the slush had melted from the lawn. The river had broken free of its ice and shimmered in the morning sun. Even the dark menace of the Blythe Wood was lightened by a sprinkling of tender green amidst the darker green of the pines.

  “Look!” I called to Daisy and Helen. “It’s spring!”

  Daisy and Helen crowded into bed with me and pressed their faces against the window. “Isn’t that funny,” Daisy said, her breath steaming up the windowpanes. “Today is the first day of spring. It’s as if the woods knew.”