The Bell at Sealey Head

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Do you remember,” Aveline said, “those long, long summer days, just before the leaves began to turn? I ran barefoot across the meadow grass while you dallied in the pavilion among the courtiers with Queen Hydria and the wizard Blagdon, watching knights ride in all their colors through the distant wood . . .”

  They were tales, Ysabo had decided long ago. Stories Maeve and Aveline put themselves into in order to pass the time, worlds full of trees, seasons, sky, castles, worlds where hearts were pierced by a glance or a sword, where magic wove like bindweed through past and present, where people fought and loved and died without regard to ritual. Places they could visit whenever they wanted, for they had found the only door out of Aislinn House: the door into tales and dreams.

  “And one turned aside from his company,” Maeve murmured, “rode across the meadow to me.”

  “Did you know him before I did?” Aveline asked.

  “Who?”

  “Nemos. Before I was born.”

  “I always knew him. Always, all my life...”

  Ysabo threaded a needle with the color of foam and began to fill in the wing of a swan gliding across a pool full of flowers like cups of light. She had only seen such a pool in someone else’s tapestry. I borrow worlds, too, she thought. I pretend I have been in them.

  “When we rode with him down that long road in the rain? Do you remember? Dark it was, so dark, even at noon that day. Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where were we going?”

  “We rode in Queen Hydria’s entourage, home from visiting some enchanted place that Blagdon wanted her to see, to honor.”

  “Old ruins. I remember now.”

  “They were, yes. They were ancient stones, trees so twisted and tangled by age they crawled along the ground as white as old bones. But the place was still alive. I could feel it, the memories it held. The compelling magic of it.”

  The sun had shifted its light beyond the stone frame of the window, too high overhead to be seen. Ysabo put her needlework down and rose quietly, to change into her white gown for the midday ritual. Aveline gave her an approving smile. She put her own work aside, but lingered for one more memory, one more sweetmeat. Ysabo, crossing to the door, heard it.

  “When we walked into the wood in the soft spring rain? Just the three of us? I was very small. All the white violets at the stream’s edge seemed like lovely, astonishing bits of treasure. And everything around us a mist of new green. Nemos picked a violet, put it in your hair. But it refused to stay, kept falling down again, and disappearing in the weeds...”

  Ysabo’s hand, closing on the door latch, jerked away from it as though it had pricked her. Aveline glanced around at the rattle. A servant came forward swiftly to open the door, bowed Ysabo through. She kept her shoulders back, her pace even, until she turned a corner.

  Then she slumped against the wall, blinking, her eyes gritty, swollen with memory.

  Nemos, the stranger had said as he came into her world. Nemos Moore.

  And then Ridley Dow was gone. Aislinn House had closed over him like water, and he had drowned in nothing.

  Again she found the strength to move: nothing else to do. She followed the ritual path of her day as mindlessly as the sun, holding the goblets with Aveline and Maeve in the great hall for the knights, watching the doors close behind them. Opening this window, lighting that candle, locking the door at this end of the house, unlocking the door at that. Lighting the lantern, carrying it into the dark, leaving it on the boat to cast its frail light across the black water.

  Someone spoke then, and she nearly reeled into the water with shock.

  “Princess Ysabo.”

  Ridley Dow was sitting on a ledge of stone, an outgrowth along the cavern wall. She could barely see his face, but she recognized the flash of his lenses.

  “I thought—” Her voice had gone somewhere; she could only whisper. “I thought you were dead.”

  “No.” He rose, came closer to her, but only as close as the edge of shadow around the light. He spoke very softly. “I’m sorry I startled you. I made myself disappear. I take after my ancestor in that I can learn to do such things. I thought it would be safer for both of us. I’ve been following you.”

  “You should not—” Her voice, gaining strength, shook with urgency. “You should not be here, Ridley Dow. This house is no place for you.”

  “I know.”

  “If anyone sees you—If even the crows see you—You are not part of the ritual. The knights don’t understand anything that is not ritual. They punish it.”

  “I understand.” He touched his spectacles with a forefinger, studying her. “I’ll be very careful.”

  “But what is it you want?” she asked him desperately. “Why have you come at all? There is nothing for you here but trouble.”

  “I know,” he said. “Exactly what I’ve come to find. How much trouble my ancestor caused through the centuries he’s been alive. How much I can cause him.”

  She stared at him, wordless again. He shifted shape in front of her eyes, then, from the reckless innocent as unarmed as a maiden come to tweak the eyelid of the ancient sleeping monster, to a man with hidden powers who might possibly understand more about her life than she did.

  “Nemos,” she whispered. “Maeve and Aveline talk about him. They make up tales with him in them. They ride with him to impossible places, to meadows and ancient ruins, to the court of a Queen Hydria, who seems to hold her court here in Aislinn House as well, because everyone says her name at supper. But no one ever sees her there. So how could Maeve and Aveline know her? How could they know Nemos Moore? They’ve been in Aislinn House all their lives.”

  “And Nemos Moore,” Ridley said grimly, “has been in and out of this house at will. I don’t understand everything he did here, but he is very powerful and seems capable of any mischief, including riding into someone else’s tale.” He was silent a little, as though contemplating his wicked relation in the dark water. Then he seemed to see the water again. “I don’t suppose,” he added, “you know if there is any meaning whatsoever to this boat. The lantern.”

  “Don’t ask.” The words came out with unexpected fierceness. “That is all I understand. All anyone has ever told me.”

  “I see,” he breathed.

  “I must go. The ritual doesn’t like to wait.” She turned her back to him, told him as she moved away, “If you follow me, don’t let me know.”

  When she looked back before she left the underground chamber, he was nowhere to be seen.

  He appeared again sometime later, when she unlocked the door to the east tower and went up the winding stairs to the top to turn the page in the book on its stand in the empty room. He was there suddenly, at her elbow, peering at the empty page.

  “How very strange ... Is it simply cruelty, or some extreme subtlety of magic?”

  “Ridley!” she exclaimed, her hands closing tightly onto the edges of the stand.

  “Sorry,” he said penitently. “It’s a book. I have no common sense around them.” He reached out, to her horror, riffled through the blank pages. “I’ll have to study it more closely later.”

  She stared at him again, this creature from some world beyond her comprehension. He bore her scrutiny with composure. No knight would ever have allowed her to study him like this, she thought. Their eyes would grow angry, warning her, as though her gaze had challenged them.

  “Who are you?” she asked with wonder, and he smiled.

  No knight would ever have smiled at a question from her.

  “Ridley Dow,” he said. “I like to read, to lead a scholarly and eccentric life, to learn peculiar things. Why, for instance, a bell no one has ever seen has rung the sun down at Sealey Head every day for centuries.”

  She drew back from him a little, puzzled. “The bell.”

  “Do you ring it?” he asked, watching her steadily, the smile gone now.

  “No.”

  “Who does?”

  “I don�
�t know. Maeve, maybe. One of the other ladies. It’s someone’s ritual; I don’t know whose.”

  “What do you do when it rings? Where are you at that moment?”

  “In my chambers waiting to be called for supper.”

  He blinked. “It’s a dinner bell?”

  “It’s the bell that rings when the sun disappears.”

  He looked a little bewildered. “But you go to eat, then.”

  “I continue my ritual,” she explained. “I go down to the great hall where the knights are gathered after their return. I light some candles but not others, place this chair here, fill this cup but not that. When I have finished everything, I sit where I am escorted by one or another of the knights. They usually speak only to one another unless it’s part of their ritual. For instance when the knight asked me to marry him.” She shook her head slightly, her eyes widening, stunned and bright with pain at the memory. “I didn’t know him. They change constantly, it seems. But it didn’t matter, since they barely see us. Any more than you would see a candle, which always changes and always looks the same until it dies and you replace it with another just like it. He spoke to me. Asked me that question. And I asked why? Why should I? I was just another candle in his eyes.” Her hand slid to her cheek. “So he hit me.”

  “He—”

  “It was ritual, Aveline told me later. It was ritual and I had stopped everything to ask why. He had no other answer. And then, two nights ago, he escorted me to the chair beside him, and told me we would marry when the moon is full.”

  Ridley opened his mouth, found no words, either, for a moment. “What will you do?” he asked finally.

  “Marry him. Have his child. That much is ritual. But not even he can tell me not to wonder, not to look for answers. He won’t ever care what I’m thinking, only that I continue the ritual. What I do outside of the ritual he will never ask.”

  She heard his breath, softly loosed, as he gazed at her. “Emma’s mother told me something about this. But hearing it from you makes it so much more complex.”

  “Why?” she asked curiously. “It is what it is, no matter how you hear it.”

  “Yes.” He hesitated again. “But then I didn’t know you. Before I met you, you were just a princess. Just another candle. Now you are Ysabo, braver, I would bet my small but comfortable fortune, than any knight in that great hall. And,” he added, gazing at her, “you have the most amazing face.”

  She smiled. “I know. Aveline says I’m a goblin.”

  “If goblin you are, with that great mass of curly hair, those eyes speckled like birds’ eggs, that smile that illumines your entire face, then goblins must be of such beauty that only the rarest of beings can recognize it.”

  She felt that smile in her again, even as she shook the words away, like a bird flicking rain from its wings. “The knights never, ever, ever, say such things.”

  “Then they are—well. They are spellbound. Unfortunately, not by you.”

  “Spellbound,” she repeated, a word she had never spoken before. Then she started, stepping away from the book. “I must go. You are spellbinding me, making me forget the ritual.”

  He nodded, taking her place at the stand; she left him in silent contemplation of the empty book.

  She thought about him as she cleaned the crows’ tower, picked up feathers and scrubbed the stones. As usual, the crows gathered around her while she worked, watched her, croaking softly, their coarse, thick feathers rustling. Their crow noises mingled with the sough of trees, other birds, the distant sounds from the sea. She didn’t notice at first when they grew silent, stopped picking at their feathers and commenting to one another. She looked up finally, saw them ringed on the wall around her, as still as though they had been turned to stone.

  Spellbound.

  Abruptly they all fluttered up into the air, still silent as smoke, in a great spiral, turning and turning until the highest flier broke their pattern and made a straight line for the sea.

  The rest followed.

  Ysabo sat back on her heels, wet from the scrub water, and watched them with wonder. She heard the breathing beside her finally and started. Ridley was crouched beside her, watching as well.

  “Not part of the ritual?” he guessed.

  She shook her head. “They’ve never done that before. They have always stayed with me until I’m finished.” She put her hand to her mouth suddenly, wet cloth dangling from her fingers. “I wonder,” she whispered, “if they saw you.”

  He blinked. “Not ordinary crows, then.”

  “I’ve never known any but those. I don’t know what’s ordinary,” she answered, watching again as they streamed over the wood toward the craggy headland. “They seem to know things. The way they look at me. They seem to understand things. And I’ve seen what they do to other birds. They are ruthless.”

  “Ah.”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t follow me.”

  “Not today,” he agreed, following their flight to the sea. “I’ll find some other ritual to watch. And I want, above all, to find that bell.” His eyes loosed the birds, looked at her again, smiling. “So. If you don’t see me for a while, don’t worry. I’ll be very careful.”

  She nodded, unable to summon an answering smile. “I’ll know,” she warned him, “if you’re not.”

  But supper that night was uninterrupted by any break in the ritual, any challenge to the knights, anything at all out of the ordinary, not even so much as an unexpected word, an interested glance from the knight who had escorted her to the chair beside him, and whose name, by the end of the evening, she still did not know.

  Fourteen

  Gwyneth rode up the weedy road through the wood to Aislinn House with Raven and Daria, half-listening as they argued about propriety. The rest of her mind was on the elegant ship she had left anchored among the fishing boats in Sealey Head harbor. Exactly who were those fascinating strangers in their rich garb who could lower a sail by lifting an eyebrow? She knew what she wanted them to do. But how to explain who they were, where they came from, and what had lured them to the shabby little sea town that was growing poorer and more desperate by the day?

  “Well, of course we won’t call it a ball,” Daria said. “Not under the circumstances. However, Miss Beryl must be used to a constant round of amusements—parties, dinners, dances, concerts, riding, picnicking—in Landringham society. She might be grateful for any entertainment here. And the sooner the better, as Mother says. Anything could happen at any moment, and then they must all be plunged into mourning clothes.”

  “Still, a small, intimate supper might be more suitable first,” Raven mused. “Just our closest family—”

  “And Gwyneth.”

  “Of course Gwyneth.” He turned his head to bestow his most intimate smile upon her. “I scarcely remember anymore that she is not part of the family, we are all together so often.”

  “Perhaps you should make a greater effort to remember that she is not, as yet,” Daria said so pointedly that Gwyneth brought her thoughts away from her handsome, dangerous adventurers with something akin to panic.

  “I think you could call it a supper,” she said quickly, “and still invite a few neighbors as well.”

  “And have a little music,” Daria added.

  Raven rolled his eyes and sighed expansively. “Then we might as well invite half of Sealey Head, and have dancing, and call it a ball.”

  “What do you think, Gwyneth?” Daria appealed. “We can have music and dancing in a tasteful way that wouldn’t be disrespectful to Miss Beryl’s sentiments, couldn’t we? It would be perfectly proper, wouldn’t it? Your aunt seemed to think so yesterday, at tea.”

  “Aunt Phoebe thinks everything you do is proper.”

  “An amiable woman,” Raven said, looking gratified. “How fortunate we were to have her come and live with you after—” He paused, cleared his throat. “After your misfortune. She seems extraordinarily fond of you and very concerned about your future happiness. So she gave me t
o understand yesterday.”

  “Did she?” Gwyneth said, dismayed. He gave her another meaningful smile.

  “Very much so. In fact—Well.” He checked himself again. “This is hardly the time—and we are in the midst of deciding what to do about Miss Beryl. It’s difficult to know what might be proper according to Landringham standards: society is so much more complex there.”

  “They can’t be that different from us,” Daria objected. “Anyway, we set the standards in Sealey Head. And it’s not as though we would be dancing in Aislinn House itself, with poor Lady Eglantyne upstairs in her bed. A ball might be exactly what’s needed to alleviate the dreariness of the occasion. And soon. If she dies before our party, we certainly can’t have it after the funeral. I know!” She bounced a little, excitedly, in her saddle. “Let’s go and ask Ridley Dow. He’d know what’s proper in the city.”

  “Surely not this minute,” Raven protested. “He’s the opposite direction.”

  “Oh, why couldn’t he have come to tea at the Blairs’ last night! What more interesting or important could he have been doing instead?” She turned to Gwyneth. “What can he do with himself all day in Sealey Head?”

  “He reads a good deal, I think.”

  “He must rest his eyes sometimes.”

  “The inn might be full of people he knows from Landringham,” Raven suggested. “Perhaps he was unable to detach himself.”

  “Let’s go there and find out,” Daria said firmly. “After we’ve paid our call on Miss Beryl.”

  “Then we wait to consult with Mr. Dow before we invite Miss Beryl to Sproule Manor?”

  “No, there’s no time to wait,” Daria said, contradicting herself. “Besides, what if he’s not there to ask?”

  Raven exhaled noisily again, turning his eyes toward the sky, where a squirrel on a branch above his head testily chided the interlopers. “Then what do you want to do? Invite her to a small dinner party, a full-blown ball—Which?”

  “Why don’t you ask Miss Beryl?” Gwyneth suggested, inspired. Both Sproules gazed at her wordlessly. “Just ask her if she would feel comfortable at such a gathering, and with or without music.”