Patricia McKillip - The Bell at Sealey Head

He gave up hoping, resigned himself to her watery chowders, her rubbery fish, her bread so dense he could have bricked a wall with it. When there were no guests, he ate with his father, hunched over a table, turning pages with one hand and shoveling in whatever it was Mrs. Quinn called supper that night. After Lily took their plates away, he continued reading aloud while Dugold rocked and drank ale. When he started snoring in his chair, Judd called in Mr. Quinn and went to read in his room under the eaves, where the books along the walls stoppered the chinks in the mortar. He read anything that came his way: histories, romances, speculations about the nature of things, journals of travels to far-flung places, folklore, even the odd book about an elusive, unwieldy, nine-legged, hundred-eyed beast that sang like a swan and burned words like paper when it spoke. Magic, it was called. Sorcery. Enchantment. It was everywhere just beyond eyesight; it was yours for the making of a wish. So he read, not quite believing, not knowing enough to disbelieve. Inevitably his thoughts would turn to the bell that tolled each day, exactly when the last burning shard of sunlight vanished beneath the waves.

As though someone in an invisible world watched, and in that precise, ephemeral moment, the dying sun and the single toll bridged one another’s worlds.

That night he fell asleep on his bed with a book someone had left at the inn: The Lives of Beetles in Their Habitats. Abandoned, mostly likely. Fled as from a tome of evil sorcery. The fussily detailed sketches of the Blue Wood Beetle and the Green-Winged Black Beetle fell over his face, a beetle on each eye. For a while the wind and tide, the passing squall, sighed and murmured about him; window ledges creaked; the fire burrowed noisily into itself; flames hissed and guttered into ash.

A tap on the window woke him. Another. Then a handful, as though bony fingers had drummed themselves on the glass. Judd sat up abruptly, the book sliding to the floor. Hail? he wondered. Then: Why am I dressed? Another sporadic run of taps hit the glass, and an improbable vision came into his head, that the merchant’s daughter, Gwyneth Blair, had wandered over the cliffs on a whim to stand under his window and throw pebbles at it.

“Right,” he grunted, and reached for the lamp.

It nearly lost its chimney when he swung a casement open and held the light into the wind to see what was going on. He pulled it in hastily, but not before it had revealed a face.

It was the colorful stranger, holding his hat on his head with both hands now, the cloak luffing against him like a sail. The lamp had produced an odd flash of fire coming from the stranger’s eyes. Magic, Judd thought, still befuddled. Then he amended that: spectacles.

“Good evening,” the man called politely. “Sorry to bother, but yours was the only window lit. I need a room. Do you know which window I should pitch pebbles at next?”

Judd blinked. His mouth was open and full of air, he realized; he forced it to move. “Welcome, sir. Of course I have a room for you. If you’ll meet me at the front door, I’ll be happy to show you in.”

“Thank you,” the stranger said, after Judd had taken his lamp downstairs and opened the door. Judd stepped back abruptly to dodge a voluminous sneeze. “I beg your pardon. I’ve been out on the cliffs since this afternoon.”

“I know. I saw you earlier.” Two horses stood patiently behind the man, one saddled, the other carrying a bulky assortment of baggage. Judd lifted his head, shouted up through the floorboards. “Mr. Quinn!” There was an answering thump: Mr. Quinn falling out of bed.

“My books,” the stranger explained. “I should get them inside.”

“Books.”

“I packed them very carefully, but they may have picked up some damp from the rain.”

“How?”

“How—”

“How could you leave your books out in this weather?” Judd demanded. “You should have come in earlier.”

The man gazed at him, then smiled suddenly, very pleased about something inexplicable. He looked slight but vigorous beneath his cloak. His lean face seemed colorless in the lamplight, perhaps from reading all the books he carried. Beneath the spectacles, his eyes were very dark; his long black hair was damp and tangled from the briny air.

“You like to read, then?” he guessed. “That’s rare among proprietors of wayside inns. I’ll let you borrow my books if you like.”

Judd’s eyes went to the bulging leather bags tied to the packhorse. “You’d leave them here?” he asked huskily.

“No. I’m staying here. I don’t know how long. If you can accommodate me. I’d prefer a room at the top of the inn for now, a corner room, if you have such, overlooking the harbor and the town.”

Mr. Quinn appeared in the lamplight, yawning, buttoning his vest with one hand and carrying a lantern with the other. He was an affable man, thin as an eel, with a great gray mustache and one eye swiveled outward, as though he were perpetually thinking of two things at once.

“Sorry, sir,” he said, for no discernible reason to Judd, and to the stranger: “Good evening, sir. You have horses to stable, I see.”

“Books first.”

“And then the horses. Yes, sir. Is the gentleman hungry? Should I wake Mrs. Quinn?”

“Yes,” said the gentleman.

“No,” Judd said hastily, remembering supper that night. “I’ll fix him something.”

“Some bread and cheese will do me,” the stranger suggested. Judd gazed at him worriedly. “Just cheese?” he amended tentatively.

“I’ll see what I can find,” Judd promised. “And I have the perfect room for you upstairs, very large and comfortable, with views of the town and the hills. I’ll show you.”

“This seems a quiet place,” the man said, stepping at last across the threshold. “I didn’t notice a great deal of activity this evening. Very little. In fact—”

“None at all,” Judd finished wryly.

“Is that unusual?”

“These days, no.” He paused, added despite feeling his father’s eyes pop open in the dark, “There is another inn on Sealey Head harbor. If you dislike the sound of the sea.”

“No, no. I don’t dislike it at all. In fact, I may need another view later, facing the cliffs, if there is room.”

“Good,” Judd said, bemused. “Follow me, then, Mr.—Ah?”

“Dow. Ridley Dow. Traveling scholar.” He held out his hand. “Mr. Dugold Cauley, I assume from your sign.”

“My father. Retired to his rocking chair. I’m Judd Cauley.”

“I’ll start on the baggage,” Mr. Quinn said, the waxed twists of his mustache beaming happily upon them.

They all staggered upstairs with the baggage. The wide room, with its bed and desk and wardrobe, looked suddenly a great deal smaller, with various cases and sacks littering the floor like debris washed ashore after a shipwreck. Ridley pronounced himself satisfied. Mr. Quinn left to see to the horses. Judd hesitated over the fee; Ridley proposed an amount so generous for room and board and stable that he took Judd’s astonished silence for reluctance.

“Being a scholar, a traveler, and a book collector is unkind to the income. Fortunately most of mine is inherited. Perhaps, though—”

“No, no—”

“Perhaps I will find some trifling way to repay you for putting up with my eccentricities.”

“If you can put up with our cook’s eccentricities, which most have to bear only one night, we can tolerate any number of yours.”

The dark eyes regarded him shrewdly behind the lenses. “I suppose she has been here for some time?”

“It seems like most of my life.”

Ridley nodded. He tossed his hat and cloak on the chair, unwound the blue scarf. Judd, accustomed to a schoolmaster’s rusty black, was surprised by Ridley’s variations: the tiny gray birds on his black vest, the satin collar on his jacket, the silk piping along seams and sleeves. The scholar indeed had money, he realized. He had come deliberately to the wild shores of west Rurex. To Sealey Head. To stay indefinitely.