The Bell at Sealey Head

by Patricia A. Mckillip

“It’s about time.”

  The guests staggered out of bed at midday; the baker’s children careened through the hallways with trays as the cook directed them. Judd, noticing one of the boys tapping at Ridley Dow’s door, was surprised but relieved that the scholar was still alive and requesting further nourishment. The outer doorbell jangled, announcing company. He hastened downstairs to greet them himself, knowing that Mr. Quinn was busy in the stable. It was not Gwyneth, as he had unreasonably hoped. It was a couple of visitors from Aislinn House, looking bleary and a trifle ragged around the edges but ready to start yet another merciless card game in the taproom with anyone who might be up.

  They came and went, the butterflies of Miss Beryl’s entourage, keeping both Judd and Mr. Quinn busy. He didn’t see Ridley or his father all afternoon. Answering the bell in the late afternoon, he found the languid Miss Beryl herself at his doorstep, on horseback, with a mounted Sproule on either side of her.

  He stared. He had seen her the evening before, but from a distance. That close, just above his head, she was even more incomprehensibly beautiful. Except, he thought, pulling himself out of his undignified stupor, for the thoroughly bored expression on her exquisite face.

  “Afternoon, Judd,” Raven said affably. “Miss Beryl expressed a desire to visit the inn where so many of her friends find themselves in the afternoon.”

  “Miss Beryl,” Judd said. “Please, come in. And Miss Sproule. How delightful to see you again so soon.”

  “Thank you,” Miss Beryl said, dismounting with such graceful efficiency that the hovering Raven was left with nothing to do but hand his sister down.

  Daria looked far from bored. Anxious, apprehensive, and determined, Judd thought, and felt a twinge of pity for Mr. Dow. However, if he had any of his ancestor’s gifts, he might be able to magic himself invisible to her myopic intentions.

  “I brought my grandmother’s conserve of roses for Mr. Dow,” she told Judd immediately upon landing. “Excellent for distresses in the throat and lungs. I do hope he is here,” she added fretfully. “Tell me he is, Mr. Cauley.”

  “I saw him in his room this morning,” Judd said, ushering them in. “I can say only that much with certainty.” He opened the door to the sitting room, the sight of which caused even the jaded Miss Beryl to hesitate for a quarter of a second before she entered. Mrs. Quinn had attacked again; there were raspberry-colored doilies underneath everything, even the table legs. “Please sit down. I’ll order tea for you and see if Mr. Dow is in.”

  He resisted a desire to check the yard again, see if Gwyneth had somehow appeared, pulled inexorably into the wake of Sproules. One of the baker’s children crossed his path; he sent the boy to the kitchen to request tea in the sitting room immediately for Miss Beryl and friends. Then he went upstairs to tap on Ridley’s door.

  He got no answer but what sounded like a book crashing to the floor. He opened the door, puzzled. Ridley was on his bed with a book over his face; a History of Sealey Head with Anecdotes and Recipes lay askew on the floor. Ridley still hadn’t changed his clothes from the previous evening. A tray with a half-eaten bowl of chowder and some drying bread sat on his desk. More books had been added since morning to the general clutter, randomly strewn like driftwood on a beach.

  Judd said softly, “Ridley?”

  A hand rose after a moment, pushed at the book on Ridley’s face until an eye became visible, partially open and not entirely aware. Then Ridley grunted a question, shoved the book away, and sat up.

  His face had the sort of greenish pallor of someone lurching endlessly from wave to wave in a boat without a rudder. It disappeared for a moment behind Ridley’s hands.

  “You look terrible,” Judd said. Ridley murmured something incomprehensible. Judd added, “I am sorry to have to tell you that the Sproules and Miss Miranda Beryl request your company in the sitting room.”

  Ridley’s hands parted; he looked incredulously at Judd. “She came here?”

  He nodded. “With her grandmother’s cure for a chest cold.”

  “Her grandmother’s—Oh.”

  “Do you want me to extend your apologies?”

  “No.” Ridley stood up after a moment. He swayed, but managed to stay on his feet. “Just tell them I’ll be a moment.”

  “All right,” Judd answered dubiously. “Don’t fall down the stairs.”

  He checked on his father along the way, apologizing for missing their afternoon reading and promising to send some cheese and ale to keep him company. A thump on the stairs cut short his visit; he found Ridley, in clean clothes at least, clinging to the newel post.

  He said apologetically to Judd, “If you could just help me to the sitting room.”

  “I am at a loss,” Judd told him, as they limped down the hall, “to fully appreciate the attractions of Miss Sproule, but love, they say, only the lover understands. Do you want me to send for Dr. Grantham?”

  “No,” Ridley murmured, as Judd opened the sitting room door. “I have a better idea.”

  His appearance brought cries of sympathy and distress from Daria Sproule, and a wide-eyed glance of astonishment from Miss Beryl, who looked as though he had dropped a jam tart on her kidskin boot.

  “Mr. Dow, you are quite unwell,” she told him accurately.

  “Oh, poor Mr. Dow, this will help you,” Daria cried, pushing the rosy concoction in its glass jar into his hands. “A tea of wintergreen leaves and juniper berries will cure most ailments; my aunt Florida swears by it. I’ll bring you some tomorrow.”

  “Daria, Miss Beryl,” Raven said hastily, “I think we must leave Mr. Dow to rest, especially since we have no idea of the nature of the illness.”

  “Wisely spoken, Mr. Sproule,” Ridley said. “The ladies should indeed stay away from me. I do have a favor to ask of Miss Beryl if you will be so good.”

  “What?” Miss Sproule and Miss Beryl demanded together.

  “Would you be so kind as to ask Lady Eglantyne’s housemaid Emma to ask her mother to pay a visit to me? I think she will find a remedy as quickly as Dr. Grantham, who has far better things to do.”

  “What a peculiar request,” Miss Beryl remarked to the air. “Well, I suppose I might remember if I do it immediately upon returning.”

  “I would be so grateful.”

  Ebon Baker entered, staggering under a tea tray laden with delicacies; Judd caught it as it slid toward a table.

  “Tea?”

  “I’m afraid I must decline,” Ridley said, backing a step and growing greener at the sight.

  “I think we must be going,” Raven said with alacrity. “But another time, certainly, thank you, Judd. I’m sure I can persuade Miss Beryl to ride up again; she said there is nothing like such a view in Landringham.”

  “I’ll come with them,” Daria said stubbornly, “and bring my aunt’s medicinal tea.”

  “I’m sure I will be grateful,” Ridley managed, and backed quickly out the door, nodding at them wordlessly. The Sproules and Miss Beryl followed shortly after, Miranda Beryl wondering absently, as they walked out, why they had even bothered to dismount.

  Judd took the tray back to the kitchen, where Mr. Pilchard was stirring a great stew of spring vegetables to go with the lamb on the spit.

  “They didn’t stay?” he asked Judd with surprise. “My walnut cake put them off?”

  “No.” Judd broke off a piece, tasted it with pleasure. “Your cake is wonderful. Mr. Dow, unfortunately, is feeling no better, and it was he whom they came to see.”

  “Ah. And here I just made up a tray for him, thinking he was recovering. Some hot roast chicken, a salad dressed in herbs and oil, leeks braised in sherry.”

  “Is that it?” Judd asked, eyeing dishes covered by a cloth on a tray. “I’ll add a mug of ale to it and take it up to my father.”

  “Most likely he’d be disappointed by something so delicate,” Mr. Pilchard objected, moving the tray off the table and out of reach. “I have some peppered chops cooking for him, and the roast po
tatoes he likes. I’ll bring his supper up to him as soon as it’s ready.”

  “You’re probably right, Mr. Pilchard. And Mr. Dow might like the chicken later,” he added, but dubiously, “after Hesper tends to him.”

  “Hesper?” Mr. Pilchard queried, flipping a chop.

  “Hesper Wood. He asked to see her. Our local version of a wood witch. She knows everything there is to know about both the dangerous and the healing properties of anything that grows out of the ground.”

  “Ah.”

  “Even Dr. Grantham consults her.” He took another bite of cake, then paid heed to the shouts and laughter rolling down the kitchen stairs. “I’d better go and help Mr. Quinn in the taproom.”

  He spent the evening ensconced behind the bar, except to escort Hesper Wood upstairs when she came, and back out again, when Mrs. Quinn said she was leaving.

  He met her at the door; she told him, “I think he’ll sleep peacefully now.”

  “What was it?”

  “He said it was a kind of family ailment,” she said only. “Something he inherited.” She shook her head when Judd offered payment. “He’ll pay me when he’s well, I’m sure. Don’t fret, Judd. He’ll be all right now, as long as he is careful about what he eats.”

  “All right. Thank you, Hesper.”

  The long evening finally drew to a close. Visitors called for their horses to ride back to Aislinn House by lantern light; guests drifted to their rooms, or were carried by their friends. Judd left the mess for Mrs. Quinn in the morning and locked the taproom, feeling the weight of the long day and the brief previous night. He went upstairs, berating himself for not having sent a note to Gwyneth, a wildflower, a book, anything to tell her he had thought about her. Tomorrow, he told himself. Without fail.

  He saw the light under his father’s door and opened it, surprised. His father, put to bed by Mr. Quinn, rolled sleepily toward him.

  “Judd?”

  “Me. Your lamp is still burning. Mr. Quinn must have forgotten about it.”

  Dugold grunted. He lifted his face off his pillow then, an odd expression on it, maybe left by a dispersing dream. “Who was that, then?”

  “Who?”

  “Who brought my supper?”

  “The cook, I suppose.”

  Dugold grunted again, dropped his face back onto his pillow. But his eyes stayed open, as though he saw something puzzling in the dark. “I couldn’t tell. He sounded human enough. But when the door opened, I couldn’t tell what was coming through. Something felt bright, burning maybe, and roiling like a wave, glittering yet full of shadows . . . Just beyond eyesight, so I could almost see it . . .”

  “You were dreaming,” Judd said gently, and turned down the lamp. “It was only Mr. Pilchard.”

  He remembered Dugold’s odd description early the next morning, when he found Mrs. Quinn in the kitchen, crossly scorching porridge for her hungry family, and discovered with stark horror that his cook had vanished.

  So, he found later that morning, had Ridley Dow.

  Nineteen

  When Ysabo went to feed the crows that morning, she found the tower door locked.

  She stared at the unmovable iron latch in her hand. She wrenched at it frantically a few times; the door, thick wood bound in iron, did not even rattle in its frame. She could hear the crows gathering on top of the tower behind the door, their faint, harsh cries, as though they were calling for her.

  Terror weltered through her, turning her fingers icy; she nearly lost her grip on the scrap bowl. In all her life, the door to the tower stairs had never been locked. She had no idea where to find a key.

  She had no idea whom to tell.

  Maeve? Aveline? They were sitting tranquilly in Maeve’s chambers, shortening the dress for Ysabo’s wedding. When the moon was full. Whenever that was. To a man whose name she was not exactly sure she knew. Who barely spoke to her. With whom she was expected to beget a child.

  Who could feed the crows every morning for the rest of her life.

  A cold tear rolled down her cheek, dropped into the scrap bowl. She looked down at it, the shreds and bones of last night’s supper, bloody bits of meat, wilting salads, torn bread smeared with drippings and butter, fruit with the mark of someone’s teeth in it. She was trembling, frightened nearly witless by the broken ritual, the disastrous unknown looming in her life if she did not feed the crows.

  Deep in her, a thought surfaced, colder than the terror riming her bones.

  Somebody had locked the door. So she couldn’t feed the crows the unappealing leftovers of people’s suppers. They probably wouldn’t drop dead, if she didn’t feed them. They probably wouldn’t eat her instead. And even if they did, it was likely better than to be married to a knight whose heart, from what she could tell, was colder than her terror, and so tangled in the web of ritual he didn’t have a thought in his head that hadn’t been shaped by it.

  Still shaking, she put the bowl down very quietly on the floor. The crows could find an open window if they were truly hungry. Anyway, they were birds. There was a great wood all around them. They wouldn’t starve.

  They’d think of something.

  She turned stiffly, her steps as nearly soundless as she could make them as she walked away from the scrap bowl into the unknown.

  The door didn’t slam suddenly open behind her; the crows didn’t pursue her. She went down and around, down and around, making her way through empty walkways and inner halls, past the great hall with its noisy, clamoring, thoughtless knights. She couldn’t go back to Maeve and Aveline, not sit there quietly and embroider, not hiding such a monstrous deed from them while they hemmed her wedding dress.

  Why should she marry this knight? She didn’t want to. Why not be condemned for two failed deeds as well as one? Or for three? Or five?

  What if she didn’t lock this door, unlock that, light this candle, leave the sword across the chair? What if she did everything backward, and at the wrong time?

  So what if the roof fell in?

  She felt another tear roll down her face, warmer this time. Grief was mingling with fear now, kindled by the loss of the only life she knew. It burned her throat, her heart. What if she destroyed her world?

  What if she didn’t?

  She ignored the doors, the candles. She would leave the ancient sword in its scabbard. Let someone else take it out if it were truly needed. If not, let it gather dust. She went down, hours too early, as deeply as she could go, to the subterranean chambers where the water, if nothing else in the entire place, could at least find its way in and out of the house.

  And so will I, she thought suddenly, fiercely. So will I.

  She yielded to one point of the ritual: lighting a taper before she went underground. It was not the one she was accustomed to lighting. But it looked no different and burned just as equably; the lantern hanging beside the entrance to the rock-hewn steps accepted its fire.

  The little boat with its mast and furled sail was moored as always in the dark, slow water beneath Aislinn House. She studied it a moment. The water that welled up among the stones and ran down to the sea would carry it, but only as far as the grate running across the passage into the wood. But, she thought stubbornly. You are a boat. You are meant to follow water, not sit on it in perpetual gloom. Someone made you to go out into the world. You cannot pass beyond the grate unless it opens for you. So. It must open somehow. How?

  On the boat a little flick just on the edge of the lantern light, quick and soundless as an eye blink, made her breath catch. She lifted the lantern higher, trying to see what had startled her. There was a very human murmur from the air. Then a figure took shape, sitting in the boat, darkly cloaked from hood to heel, holding a book open. A page had turned, she realized. And then she recognized the book.

  She raised the lantern abruptly, recognized the face within the hood.

  “Ridley,” she whispered.

  He looked astonished. “How did you see me when I was invisible?”

  �
�I didn’t. I saw the book.”

  He grunted, murmured puzzledly, “I thought it was invisible as well. Perhaps it has a mind of its own. What are you doing down here? It’s not time—”

  “For what?” she asked evenly. “Time for me to leave the lantern on the prow of the boat and go away again so that someone else can come and put out the light and hang the lantern back on its hook by the entrance so that I can come back again tomorrow and light it and leave it on the prow of the boat so that someone—Did you lock the door to the crows’ tower?”

  He thought about that; his face, stubbled and smudged with shadows, grew suddenly rueful. “I did. When I passed it earlier to get this book. I didn’t want them attacking me again. I was going to return the book and unlock the door before you got there. But I lost myself in this book...” Something in her still, blanched face made his voice trail away. He rose quickly. “I’ll unlock it now. It’s a simple spell. There’s time.”

  “Is there?” She shook her head, her eyes glazed with unshed tears. “Is there, Ridley Dow? You made me step beyond the ritual. I can’t go backward. I can’t stop thinking what I think, or wanting what I want. I think the crows are something more than crows, and what they want most is not their breakfast. I think the boat goes nowhere after I put the lantern in it. How can it? It is chained. Trapped by the grate. I want to know why. I want to know what you see in the book.”

  Gazing at her, he tried to say something, gave it up. He held out his hand. “Come and see.”

  She took it, stepped into the gently rocking boat and sat down beside him. The thick, heavy book, whose blank pages she had turned, one after another, every day since she could walk, had, in Ridley’s hands, finally begun to speak.

  It said colors; it said wonders, marvels drawn with ink and painted with such hues that melted into life, spilling across every page like a tide of ancient, forgotten treasure. There were words among the images, each letter a tiny work of art, each word, extravagantly decorated and totally incomprehensible.

  “I think it’s a spell book of some kind,” Ridley said. “Maybe poetry as well. I’m not sure. It’s all in a secret, or perhaps an ancient, language. But the book itself was spellbound, probably by Nemos Moore. That’s why you saw only blank pages.”