The Bell at Sealey Head

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “No. And yes, we noticed the bell. I think—We’re afraid he might be in a great deal of danger.”

  Miss Beryl nodded so sharply she nearly dropped a curl. “Yes. I’m afraid of that as well. Can you open doors, too?”

  “Doors?” Gwyneth echoed faintly.

  Miss Beryl sighed, dropped so gracefully into a chair she seemed to melt into it. “Sit down. Please. You came here to look for Mr. Dow. What kind of danger would you expect him to be in, here where there’s nothing more threatening than boredom or an overboiled egg?”

  Mr. Cauley drew breath, held it before he spoke. “None here,” he said softly. “Not in this side of Aislinn House.” He paused; Miranda Beryl was nodding again. “Then you know,” he continued haltingly. “You know about the other Aislinn House?”

  “Ridley told me. Emma opened doors to it. That’s how Ridley found his way there the first time. This time, he might have found his own way in.”

  “Yes,” Judd said, his hands tightening on the arms of his chair. “Something extraordinary must have happened in that Aislinn House to startle the bell into ringing at the wrong time of day.”

  “Ridley. You think Ridley happened.”

  “Yes.” He added, seemingly at a tangent, “And my cook went missing from the inn this morning as well.”

  “Your cook,” Miss Beryl said blankly.

  “Mr. Pilchard.”

  “Mr. P—” She stopped, frowning at a dust mote. “Why do I know that name?”

  Emma felt her nape hairs prickle. “The stranger, miss,” she whispered. “He is the stranger in Sealey Head who would look to you like he belongs here.”

  “Mr. Pilchard,” Miranda Beryl echoed faintly. “Your cook is Nemos Moore?”

  “I think—I think so,” Judd answered, looking dazed. “I believe he tried to poison Ridley yesterday, which is why he was so sick when you came. Fortunately, you sent for Hesper in time. Miss Beryl, how do you know about the bell, about the other Aislinn House? Ridley Dow spoke of you as someone with whom he was scarcely acquainted in Landringham. Nor did he wish more, it seemed.”

  She smiled suddenly, revealing a lovely, startling glimpse of the secret Miss Beryl. “So did I, Mr. Cauley. Speak of him that way, I mean. To keep Nemos Moore’s eyes off him, and always on me. My friends here know Nemos Moore as the clever and wealthy Mr. Moren, who amuses himself in my company. To him, I’m the idle and fatuous heir of Aislinn House, which he regards quite possessively. To him, Mr. Dow has been only a rather earnest, scholarly young man who collects books and becomes excited about the most cobwebby topics, like ancient history and the habits of nightjars.”

  “And magic,” Gwyneth interjected.

  “And magic. Ridley learned years ago about the strange otherworld within Aislinn House. Of course he told me. We are—” She hesitated, while the faintest shade of rose warmed her skin. “We have always been close. And very secret. Nemos Moore is extremely jealous of his discovery of the world he found here, and is convinced that it rightly belongs to him. He has power over it; it is his perfect spell. I am heir only to its outward pillars and posts, a handful of sticks and floorboards. So he thinks: the rest belongs to him. He would marry me to keep it,” she added with unexpected tartness. “Failing that, I don’t know what he’d do. So far I’ve managed to persuade him that my total lack of interest is not in him but in the entire subject of marriage. I’m afraid that won’t satisfy him once Aislinn House is truly mine.”

  “What a tale,” Miss Blair breathed. “You and Ridley are both in danger from Nemos Moore, it seems. We must find Ridley Dow as soon as possible, help him in any way we can. But how? What should we do?”

  “I could open a door,” Emma suggested. “It worked before, when he was in trouble.”

  “Open a door,” Gwyneth repeated, her brows peaked. “I don’t understand. There’s a special door into the other Aislinn House?”

  “Any door in the house might open to the other Aislinn House,” Emma explained, “to those who can see it. Most people never do. But I’ve found it behind nearly every door in this house, including the coal cellar and Lady Eglantyne’s dressing room.”

  “So we can get into it that way,” Gwyneth said, looking entranced. “Rescue Ridley, and—” She paused. “Well. Somehow. I wish I knew more about magic.”

  Judd glanced at her. “How much would it really help him, you mean, for us all to go blundering in armed with candlesticks and pokers?”

  “The other Aislinn House can be frightening,” Emma said. “I’ve never crossed into that world in my life, and I’ve been opening doors since I was tiny. I was never certain I’d find my way back. And there are things that you’d never think to be afraid of in this world. A great flock of crows nearly did Mr. Dow in, the first time. He barely made it back through the door. If I hadn’t opened it, no telling, between the crows and the bad-tempered knights, what might have become of him.”

  “Not to mention the wicked sorcerer,” Gwyneth murmured. “We can slam the door against birds, but would that work against Nemos Moore?”

  Judd shifted restively, causing his chair to creak. “One way to find out,” he reminded them. “We’re not doing much to help, sitting here and scaring ourselves with what-ifs. From what you’ve said, Emma, an open door might actually help him. We could at least do that.”

  “It’s a place to start,” Miss Beryl agreed, rising quickly. “I have no idea what we can do against Nemos Moore, but I don’t see why we should make things easier for him by doing nothing.” She looked at Emma. “Which door?”

  “The stillroom pantry,” Emma answered promptly. “It worked before, and none of your guests would likely wander down there and see us.”

  None of the guests seemed to have bothered to get out of bed yet; no one was around at all, staff or visitor, to make a comment or ask a question as the little group followed Emma through the silent house. She didn’t think to wonder if anyone might be already waiting in the stillroom itself. Opening the door, she realized that of course she should have known.

  “Hesper!” Miss Beryl exclaimed, as the flighty-haired, barefoot woman slid off the table to greet them.

  For once she had no smile for Emma, only a deepening of the worry in her eyes as she looked at her daughter.

  “I guessed that this is where you might come.” She cast a glance askew at Miranda Beryl, acknowledged her uncertainly, “Miss Beryl.”

  “We all heard the bell ring at the wrong time of day,” Miss Beryl explained, her eyes going to the closed pantry door.

  “Even Lady Eglantyne noticed,” Emma told her mother, who was still staring at Miranda Beryl.

  “Did she? I’ve been wondering lately how much she knew. If that’s why she is waiting.”

  “Waiting?” Miss Beryl queried, taking her eyes off the door.

  “For the end of the story,” Hesper explained. “I wondered if maybe she made a friend in the other Aislinn House, like Emma did, and she wants to see things put right before she dies.”

  “That could be part of it,” Miss Beryl mused, pacing now, back and forth in front of the pantry door. “I know she worries about me and Ridley.”

  “Mr. Dow? And you?” The missing smile illumined her face; she exclaimed, “Well, that explains that, doesn’t it, now?” Miranda Beryl looked at her without answering, except for the faint flush on her face, the wry smile. “That’s why you sent me over to the inn so quickly to help him. And what now? Is your Mr. Dow in trouble again?”

  “We thought we’d have Emma open a door and see,” Judd explained.

  “Good idea. Just seeing, that part, I mean.”

  “Well—”

  “Of course you’d all have the good sense not to cross a threshold laid down by sorcery. Or rush into a spellbound world without a word to defend yourselves with.”

  “Of course we’d never do that,” Judd said adamantly. “I mean, unless, of course, circumstances require.”

  “Are you going, too?” Gwyneth asked her shrewdly
.

  “I took a very strong dislike to Mr. Pilchard last night,” Hesper answered roundly, “misusing good, green, living treasures like that. When I heard the bell ring, I put this and that together and wound up here, waiting for Emma. Let’s see what you can do, girl.”

  Emma stepped forward, opened the stillroom pantry door.

  A solid wall of stone blocked it from threshold to lintel: a message from the other Aislinn House.

  “Keep Out,” Miranda Beryl whispered. She moved abruptly, tried it with her boot: a fierce shove that in another world might have shifted a lesser stone.

  Nothing budged. She turned finally, wordlessly, went to sit on the long wooden table, gazing at the door. One by one, they ranged themselves beside her and waited.

  Twenty-two

  Ysabo crouched on bare stone, staring at the bell.

  It hung from nothing in the middle of the tiny room she and Ridley Dow had fallen into. The room had no door; it was a perfect cube, with a window in each wall, little more than gaps in the stones and open to the weather. One looked out over the sea, the others over the endless wood.

  From the seaward side, she guessed, someone might watch the sun go down every evening, could ring the bell at exactly the moment the light vanished. If there had been a door to come and go by.

  As they had tumbled into the room, the bell had rung. Ridley had fallen against it, the princess guessed. The sudden, loud, hollow clang was startling; it reverberated in the air like a word that should not have been spoken. It was an unlovely thing, its worn metal pocked, a jagged crack across it, the paint that had once gilded it bubbled and chipped from centuries of windblown rain, hot summer light simmering within the stones, the daily pound of the heavy clapper over years, decades, centuries.

  “Where are we?” she had asked Ridley as they gathered themselves up. Even then, even before he had peeled himself off the floor, his eyes had been riveted on the bell.

  “We’re in the book,” he said, and left her to contemplate the peculiar circumstances that made his answer perfectly comprehensible.

  The next time she spoke, to wonder uneasily whether he might know how to get out of a doorless room, or, for that matter, a book, he didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to hear anything she said after that. He sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, staring up at the bell as though it spoke a secret, silent language only he could hear.

  He looked spellbound.

  I am trapped, she thought, in a stone cell with a man who can’t hear my voice, who seems to be conversing silently with a bell. Should I have let him unlock the tower door and gone up to feed the crows instead?

  It was past midday now; the sun was beginning its leisurely arc toward the sea, though no light spilled yet through any of the windows. What had Maeve and Aveline and the knights thought when no one came to hold the third cup at the noon-hour ritual? She couldn’t imagine. The knights weren’t used to thinking; perhaps they just made do without her. Or had they, already armed and suspicious, scattered through the house to find her, raging among barking dogs, shadowed by the crows?

  On the whole, she decided, thinking of their mindless, angry eyes, their sharp swords, she felt much safer in this doorless place that they could never find.

  The bell began to vibrate silently. A thumbnail of gilt flecked off of it. Ridley closed his eyes.

  That much happened, then nothing, except the bell shimmering in midair. Ysabo watched it for a while; then she turned her head and watched Ridley.

  Something was happening between the man and the bell.

  Ridley straightened, as though the bell had slowly pulled him away from the wall. His eyes never left it. The bell seemed to pulse, throwing a golden shadow around itself that faded, then grew bright again. Then faded. Then grew bright. Ysabo pushed closer to the wall, trying to make herself small, trying to watch both at once. The air itself seemed to vibrate, a tension in it that crawled over her skin and made her want to hide within the stones.

  Ridley caught his breath. Ysabo stared at him. He cried a word suddenly, his face illumined by the glow of the bell as light poured out of it in every direction. The bell cracked completely, metal torn from metal in an arc from rim to dome. The twin pieces thundered to the floor and re-formed in a dizzying swirl of shape and color. Ysabo flung her arms over her eyes but still saw it, glowing like the imprint of the sun behind her eyelids. Ridley made another sound, a garbled exclamation; whatever it was, he had gotten his voice back. Ysabo lifted one arm, peered at him. He was still staring raptly, so she lifted her other arm, cupped her hands above her eyes. The brilliant blur was slowing, sorting itself into long, long hair, a smoky mix of gray and black, a tall, leanlimbed body covered in gray silk and black wool, extraordinary eyes of blue-green teal, a pale, lined, fine-boned face somewhere between Aveline and ageless.

  She gazed down at Ridley as intently as he had stared at the bell, until he spoke the word again, and Ysabo realized it was her name.

  “Hydria.”

  Something snapped; the air sparked between them where a bond had broken.

  The woman spoke, a boom like the sound of the sea and the bell together, and Ysabo covered her ears again.

  “Where is he? I will tear his head from his shoulders and boil it for breakfast.” Her eyes loosed Ridley abruptly; he sagged back against the stones, drawing breath deeply, his face glistening with sweat. She looked at Ysabo. “Who are you?”

  “Ysabo,” she answered, the only word, under the queen’s fierce gaze, that she remembered.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came with Ridley Dow.”

  Queen Hydria moved suddenly, stepped forward to fold her long body down in front of Ysabo. “I know that face,” she breathed, tracing Ysabo’s jaw line with her forefinger. “It nearly broke my heart.” She turned her gaze to Ridley again. “How,” she asked with amazement, “did you find me?”

  “It wasn’t easy. I heard that bell ringing across the centuries and followed the sound of it. I had no idea what it was until I saw the magic in it. I looked into it, and saw you.”

  She closed her eyes, her face growing rigid, livid; Ysabo half expected the bell to sound again, Hydria’s voice for so many years, her only word.

  “No wonder it cracked,” she whispered, and the queen opened her eyes, stared at Ysabo again.

  “I felt such terrible sorrow, such loss, such fury, at that moment at the end of every day when the last light faded in the world. The bell was the sound of my heart, crying out to the world. Before Nemos Moore came, it was a joyous sound in my court. It summoned everyone to the evening feast, to music, laughter, companions. Before Nemos Moore came and broke our days into pieces, meaningless, joyless shards of tasks. Before he turned my knights into crows, before he replaced them with paper men from my wizard Blagdon’s book. Before he turned half my world into paintings from that book, so that we could see the world and long for it, but no doors led out of Aislinn House into it, only into the flat worlds of ink and paint—”

  “Why?” Ridley whispered. “Why did he do that?”

  “Because he wanted power over me, my realm, and I refused him. Because I saw what he was: a little man with great power, who would toy with lives just because he could. I invited him into my court out of courtesy and curiosity. He told me that he was a scholar of the road, traveling to learn what he could. I never thought to ask what road he had found that led him into the rich, secret heart of Aislinn House.”

  “Your wizard. Blagdon. He made the book?”

  She nodded. “He had great gifts himself, for magic, for painting and for poetry. All this Nemos Moore used—he trifled with those gifts, like a child tearing apart pages it doesn’t understand—to transform something bright and happy into a place of meaningless patterns, strictures, fears. A place without doors, without dreams. All because he knew he could never belong in my court. Blagdon was very old, almost as old as the house itself. He did what he could against Nemos Moore. But in the end, I was t
rapped within the bell. I don’t know what happened to Blagdon.”

  Ridley had grown silent, in a way that Ysabo recognized; he was gazing into the queen’s eyes but not seeing her, seeing inward, backward. “I wonder . . .” he murmured finally and stopped, then began again. “That boat...”

  “What boat?”

  His eyes came alive again; a smile rose and sank beneath the surface of his face. “Can you get us out of here?”

  “How?” she demanded. “There is no door. I have no idea where we are.”

  “You had the power to speak to the world when you were spellbound,” he reminded her. “Nemos Moore is in your house again. If you want him, I’ll help you.”

  “Oh, yes.” Ysabo saw the shimmering around the queen that had trembled around the bell. “I want him.”

  She turned abruptly, walked into the stones. They tore as though they were paper. Ysabo heard Ridley’s breath shake. He pushed himself to his feet, held out his hand to her.

  They stepped through stone into the wood beyond Aislinn House.

  Hydria had already left a black rip between the trees, which were oddly silent and smelled of nothing. They followed quickly, stepped into a great hall full of painted knights drinking from cups held by three women. The tear that Hydria had left was through the sunlight falling into the open doors of the hall. The next rip in the paper world was through a flock of crows.

  And then into shadow, walls of stone, dark water flowing silently through the underground cave. Ysabo could smell the water, the dusty, ancient air, feel the chill of a place that sunlight never found.

  They were out of the book and in the boat. It was still moored by its chain and the stake hammered into stone. The lantern on its prow was lit. Nemos Moore stood within the light.

  “Ah,” he said softly. “You found your way, Mr. Dow.” He nodded to Hydria. “My lady. Ladies. How does it feel to take a simple breath of air after so many years? Wonderful, I would think. Is it?”

  He was no longer the elegant, clever, middle-aged man Ysabo had seen before. He was now young and lithe, with long hair and a genial expression not unlike Ridley’s: the traveling scholar, she guessed, whom Hydria would remember welcoming so innocently into her house.