“Indeed,” Gwyneth breathed dazedly, and followed her aunt into the shop, where they found Judd Cauley placing a very large order for the inn.
“I hope, Mr. Cauley, you will spare a few for us,” Aunt Phoebe said affably.
He looked even more harried than usual, Gwyneth saw as he turned to greet them. But, meeting his eyes, she found the pleased smile in them, and then felt her own. As simple as that, she thought, then wondered what that meant.
“Are you ready for your onslaught of company?” she asked.
“I’m dreading it,” he confessed. “The inn is in complete confusion; I still don’t have a cook, and we seem to have driven away our sole lodger with our noise and disorder and my cooking. I haven’t seen Mr. Dow since yesterday.”
“If he reappears, please send him to us for his tea,” Aunt Phoebe said with bewildering inconsistency.
“Thank you, Miss Blair; I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.”
“We’ll send word immediately if we find a cook for you,” Gwyneth promised.
“Just send the cook,” he pleaded. “I can make do as long as we have to feed only ourselves and rumor. But the truth of the matter will appear under our inn sign tomorrow, and if I must send them all into town to eat, I doubt they’ll be with us long.”
“There’s my cousin,” Ross Carbery, the chandler, said abruptly. “You might talk to her. She cooks nicely, and since her husband was laid up with a fever and is too weak yet to go out in his boat, she’s had to take in mending and laundry.”
“Of course I know Hazel,” Judd said gratefully. “I’d be happy to give her a try.”
“She’s just a door or two down on Mackerel Street. I don’t know how she’d feel about cooking for a crowd. But she’s got a cool head and busy hands; she might just do.”
“Good. I’ll go there immediately. Thank you, Ross.” He nodded farewell, backing toward the door; his eyes returned to Gwyneth. “Next time you ask me for tea, I might just have it for you, Miss Blair.”
“I’ll hold you to your challenge, Mr. Cauley.”
“Whatever did he mean?” Aunt Phoebe asked with mystification of the closing door.
“Pandora and I got tired walking up Sealey Head yesterday,” Gwyneth explained, and found herself smiling at the memory. “We begged Mr. Cauley for tea, but he wouldn’t give it to us.”
Phoebe pulled the door open; the cowbell rattled alarmingly. She pronounced judgment tartly as they stepped into the street.
“How very peculiar of you both.”
After a night and a morning of waiting for some sign of intention from the silent ship in Sealey Head harbor, the townspeople discussed the matter and decided to send a boat out to visit the ship. Mr. Blair would go, of course; he had traveled farther than anyone, and might recognize at least the origins of the mystery. Sir Magnus Sproule, who needed to take his mind out of his dying fields, and who was handy with a sword if the occasion warranted, volunteered. Mr. Cauley and Lord Aislinn, along with several other merchants, would be among the party onshore to welcome the visitors. Another party would be hidden away in Mr. Blair’s warehouse, watching for any signs of violence. These were hardy fishermen and field-workers, whose weapons of choice were the gaff, the shovel, and the poacher’s pistol. Lord Aislinn carried an ornate pistol as well, but since it hadn’t been fired in a century, he was persuaded to leave it unloaded. Another pair of fishermen rowed the boat across the harbor, where Mr. Blair hailed the still figures watching them from the deck of the ship.
They replied quite readily; their words were oddly accented but understandable. A rope ladder was run down over the side. Mr. Blair and Sir Magnus, strong men impelled by curiosity, hauled themselves up without incident, and stood on the shining deck, blinking in wonder.
Those who surrounded them were all tall, lean, and astonishingly elegant for the rigors of a life at sea. They wore their hair long, unbound, and unencumbered by anything resembling a hat. A dark-haired man spoke first. He wore a pale blue silk coat and breeches, and what looked like a spray of pearls set in gold pinned at his throat. He was quite handsome. They all were, Mr. Blair saw with amazement; they might have been the members of the same sprawling family.
“Welcome,” he said in a pleasant, easy voice, his words colored by the music of an unknown language, “to the Chimera.”
Eleven
Judd trudged back to the inn after a pleasant but futile interview with the chandler’s cousin Hazel. She was aware of his problem with Mrs. Quinn, she had said. As was the entire town, he thought glumly. But the young woman looked quite apprehensive at the thought of cooking for such a punctilious crowd. And who could blame her? Besides, she had confided shyly. What with one thing or another, while she took care of her ailing husband and made ends meet, she hadn’t really noticed her own condition. Until now. And he wouldn’t want a cook who turned green in the mornings and got queasy looking at an egg dribbling out of its shell and lolloping into the frying pan, now, would he?
No amount of money would tempt her.
Just as well, he thought as he left her. There wouldn’t be much once the guests had been driven away because he couldn’t feed them. Even Ridley had found another place to eat, and Judd could hardly blame him for that.
Odd, though, that he’d stayed around for Mrs. Quinn’s lumpy porridge and rubbery fish, only to vanish at the prospect of Judd’s cooking. He, at least, could follow his mother’s recipes. Judd scratched his brow bemusedly, wondering. More likely it had been the tumult he’d fled. Mr. Quinn and Judd pounding on the stable roof, while Mrs. Quinn and Lily shoved things around in every room, chattering non-stop as they cleaned everything in sight. What was it Ridley had gone off to do? Something about looking around Aislinn House for the bell? It sounded a great deal more peaceful than trying to study at the inn. At least until someone noticed the stranger flitting about the house.
Judd made a few more stops, at the butcher’s and the grocer’s to place orders, at the tailor’s to have himself measured for a new coat. Mrs. Quinn had practically demanded he do that, and his father, sight of Judd’s present coat unseen, had backed her. That tedious chore done, he spent a moment at the stationer’s shop, inquiring of Osric Trent if he had seen anything of Mr. Dow.
“No, I haven’t,” the bookseller said. “Not since you were here with him last. When you see him, tell him I found a couple of books on local history that might interest him.”
“I will,” Judd said, wondering if Ridley had finally fallen over a cliff.
At the inn, he took a quick look at the Quinns’ handiwork before he started supper. The taproom was amazingly burnished; tabletops, bottles, copper taps, even the windows gleamed. There were a few startling touches: mugs of wildflowers on every table, some exceedingly lacy curtains framing pristine views of the sea and the flowing green slope of the headlands that had been nearly invisible, what with layers of soot and salt air, for years. Decades. In fact, Judd realized, since before he was born. He felt the fierce tidal flow of worry in his heart begin to turn. The floors, both oak plank and flagstone, looked freshly scrubbed; he marveled at them as he walked down the hallway to see his father. The candles had arrived before him; the glowing brass sconces along the walls each held a fresh wax taper. With, for some reason, a ribbon tied around it. He blinked, and refrained from glancing into the sitting room, guessing that, in their zeal, Mrs. Quinn and Lily had swagged and beribboned the entire room.
Dugold, listening to the sea in his rocker at the window, recognized his son’s step. “Well?” he asked a trifle fretfully. He must be getting hungry, Judd thought. “Did you find us a cook?”
“I asked around. Nobody yet.” He dropped his hands on his father’s shoulders. “You’ll have to bear with me tonight.”
“That’s easy to do,” Dugold said, turning in the chair as though he might see Judd’s face if he looked hard enough. “With you in the kitchen, I can at least recognize what I’m eating. But they’ll be here tomorrow! What then?”
Judd shrugged. “I’ll keep looking. And cooking.”
“You’re good,” Dugold said glumly, “but you’re not good enough. Not for rich folk out of Landringham.”
“I know. But not much else I can do, is there? I’ll feed them until they leave, and then we’ll only be back where we were before, except a lot tidier. Don’t worry. I let the townspeople know what we need. As if they didn’t already know,” he added ruefully.
“Everyone in town knows about Mrs. Quinn’s cooking except Mrs. Quinn, is that it?”
Judd nodded, then remembered and spoke. “That’s it.”
“Funny about that.”
“One day it will be,” Judd promised, and gave Dugold’s shoulders a final pat. “I’d best get cooking.”
“Where’s that Ridley Dow?” his father asked. “I remembered a thing or two I wanted to tell him about Sealey Head.”
“I’ll let him know when I see him.”
In the kitchen he chopped leeks and potatoes to fry together, and put the loaves he had left in their pans to rise into the oven. Then he stood leafing through his mother’s cookbook, trying to work his way through her stained, hurried writing for what to do with the slab of mutton on the table that wouldn’t take all night.
Someone rang the bell outside the door.
He froze. Can’t be them, he thought desperately. Can’t be. Not today. Not in time for mutton.
He listened, heard Mr. Quinn’s footsteps in the hallway, then the front door opening. Breath stopped, he listened for a gabble of voices, a wave of footsteps clicking and clomping, spilling across the floorboards.
He heard only Mr. Quinn’s again, coming toward the kitchen stairs and then down. “A Mr. Pilchard, sir.” He seemed extraordinarily excited by the stranger, his thick mustache working with emotion. “Says he cooks.”
“Oh,” Judd said soundlessly. He slammed the book shut and recovered his voice. “Send him down, Mr. Quinn, at once, and tell him to hurry.”
Mr. Pilchard, too bulky to hurry, looked more like a frogfish, with his plump, lumpy face, than the sleek fish whose name he shared. He descended with concentration, breathing noisily, a rather shabbily dressed man somewhere between youth and age, with most of his fair, thinning hair still on his head, and one ash-colored eye disconcertingly larger than the other. He weighed anchor at the bottom of the stairs and nodded amiably at Judd.
“Hieronymous Pilchard,” he said. “I hear you’re looking for a cook, Mr. Cauley.”
“Where?” Judd asked curiously.
“Where? Ah—where did I hear. I’ve been staying at the tavern in town; that’s where I heard. Some were laying bets on whether you’d find a cook or not before the gentry came to town.”
“Did you bet?” Judd asked dryly.
“I?” Mr. Pilchard smiled slightly. “Oh, I should have, I suppose. Didn’t think of it. I just wanted a job. I’ve been a ship’s cook for twenty years, cooking for as many as a hundred on the Mother Carey, and for as few as six on the Merry Eel. I washed ashore up the coast at Petrel, and made my way down, looking. It came to me, a few weeks ago, that if I ever wanted to marry and settle, now was the time. I’d somehow forgotten to get around to it before. Sealey Head is a pretty town, and friendly. I took to it right away and hoped I’d find a way to stay. Will you give me a try, Mr. Cauley?”
“Mr. Pilchard,” Judd answered fervently, “if you can persuade my father with that piece of mutton, nothing would make me happier.” He untied his apron, tossed it to Hieronymous Pilchard. “We will be five for supper—six, if our only lodger shows up. Tomorrow we may well be twenty-five. There’s bread in the oven, potatoes and leeks on the table, and anything else you can find in the pantry. Have at it, Mr. Pilchard.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cauley. I’m grateful.”
“Not,” Judd breathed to the air at the top of the stairs, “more than I am.”
An hour or two later, he ate supper with his father, since Mrs. Quinn, designated housekeeper, refused to let anyone but guests sully the taproom, and Ridley didn’t appear. Just the smells of the food set in front of him made Dugold sigh with pleasure.
“Just like your mother’s.”
Sharing a little table in front of the darkened window, the two made their way quickly, methodically, and with reverent silence through a soup of leeks and cream, peppered mutton chops as tender as they could be gotten, fried among chopped onions and potatoes, accompanied by warm, crusty, crumbly bread that didn’t fight back between the teeth.
Dugold dropped his fork after the last bite, sat back in his chair, and stared at his son so intently that Judd wondered if the cooking had cured his sight. But no: he had to grope a little for his beer.
“That was incredible,” he said after a gulp. “That was—what’s that word Ridley uses? Magical.” Judd, still chewing, could only nod. “Keep him,” Dugold ordered. “Give him whatever it takes. I haven’t tasted the like of that since your mother died. What was his name again? Halibut?”
“Pilchard.”
“Whatever you do, keep an eye on him. Don’t let anyone else make off with him.”
Judd smiled. “What would you do with yourself if you didn’t find something to worry about?”
“I’m looking after you, boy. I’m still your father.”
“Right you are. But just for tonight, revel in your well-cooked mutton and pretend we’ve solved the last of our problems.”
He took the dirty plates to the kitchen, found Mr. Quinn there, drawn inexorably down below stairs to bask in the company of the paragon who had cooked his supper. Hieronymous Pilchard, his arms in the suds, cocked a bushy brow over his oversized eye at Judd.
“Well?” he said. “Does he approve?”
“Mr. Pilchard, you have no idea. If you leave, he’ll probably go with you.” He put his dishes down, surveyed the kitchen. It was unexpectedly tidy, so soon after Mr. Pilchard’s culinary labors.
“At sea, you get into the habit of cleaning up as you go along,” the cook explained, reading his thoughts. “There’s not much working space on a boat.”
“Still, I should get someone in to help you,” Judd said. “You may need it, when there’s a crowd.”
“Lily,” Mr. Quinn suggested.
“No. She’ll be busy enough as it is. Maybe one or two of the baker’s dozen; they all must know their way around a kitchen. Where did you put Mr. Pilchard’s things?”
“What things?”
“They’re back at the tavern,” Mr. Pilchard said. “I came up here just on the off-chance . . . I’ll go down for them when I’ve finished here.”
“Mr. Quinn will show you a room when you’re ready.”
“An entire room,” Mr. Pilchard marveled. “I’ve barely gotten used to half a mattress.”
“The best,” Mr. Quinn promised, “of the servants’ quarters. Too bad Mr. Dow missed that supper tonight.”
“Mr. Dow?”
“Ridley Dow, our only lodger,” Judd explained. “Until tomorrow. Well. I think he is, at any rate.” Mr. Pilchard, groping under the suds for the sponge, cocked his brow again. “Still lodging with us, that is.”
“Still hasn’t been sighted?” Mr. Quinn asked. “Must have been all our hammering. Couldn’t hear himself think.”
“I hope that’s all it is,” Judd said slowly, wondering suddenly if he should add their lodger to the list of his worries. But, he reminded himself, Ridley was an intelligent and resourceful man on a quest for some beast called Magic; he couldn’t be expected to behave like ordinary people. He felt eyes on him, looked up to find Mr. Pilchard studying him, hands moving rhythmically underwater, his mismatched eyes as unreadable as oysters. As Judd met them, the cook looked down at the water, pulled a plate out of it, and dipped it into a pot of cold water to rinse it.
“I’ll keep his supper on the coals for a while, in case he comes in later,” he offered, and Judd nodded.
“You might keep an eye out for him in the tavern when you go back for your baggage
,” Mr. Quinn suggested. “Tell him it’s safe to return.”
“What would I be looking for?”
“A dark-haired young man wearing fine clothes and a pair of spectacles. Most likely with a book in his hands,” Judd said.
“Spectacles,” Mr. Pilchard murmured. “Book. I shall certainly do that, Mr. Cauley.”
Mr. Quinn left to find Mrs. Quinn to dust and air a room for the cook. Judd lingered to discuss his terms of engagement, which, owing to Mr. Pilchard’s years at sea and his ignorance, at the moment, of his own worth, were arrived at easily and with mutual satisfaction. That done, Mr. Pilchard walked down Sealey Head by moonlight to fetch his things, and Judd went to read his father to sleep with the improbable adventures of one Nemos Moore, who had apparently more magical powers than he knew what to do with, and, more astonishingly, had once made his way to the rugged and isolated coastal town of Sealey Head to use them.
Twelve
Emma was pulling great swaths of muslin off card tables and gun racks and the billiards table in the game room when she heard the creaky boot room door open. She froze, muslin swirling around her like ghosts. Nobody but she ever used that door now. Had Miss Beryl’s staff descended already upon the house, to explore, compare, criticize, and complain? She heard a comment in a deep, unfamiliar voice, as another door opened across the hallway: the stillroom.
She heard her mother’s voice in answer.
Surprised, she dropped the dustsheets on the floor and waded across them.
She found Hesper in the stillroom with a stranger, a dark-eyed, bespectacled young man. He dressed as though he might have been part of Miranda Beryl’s rich and indolent entourage, with those pale, golden butterflies all over his black waist-coat, and the satin piping on his cuffs. But he wore a vivid, attentive expression upon his face as he listened to Hesper, which, Emma suspected, was unnatural among the delicately brought-up city folk, especially when they were spoken to by wood witches with naked shins and twigs in their hair. He had, Emma realized, a fair sprinkling of bracken in his own long hair. His fine clothing was rumpled and stained. His eyes, like her mother’s, seemed heavy, red-rimmed with sleeplessness. They both looked, to put it plain as a pot, as though they had spent the night together under a bush.
The Bell at Sealey Head Page 10