Patricia McKillip - The Bell at Sealey Head

Candles sputtered, died, were replaced. Papers piled up amid the coins. The men of Sealey Head spoke very little; their words were heavy, toneless. Mr. Cauley made his final bet first: all he had.

“The Inn at Sealey Head.”

It was duly written down. He signed the paper.

Cards were dealt.

Mr. Cauley staggered up from his chair, went into the shadows, and, in the way of dreams, nothing more was heard from him.

Mr. Blair, his face waxen in the candlelight, wagered his entire line of ships.

They went the way of Mr. Cauley’s inn; Mr. Blair followed Mr. Cauley into the dark.

Sir Magnus Sproule, his own broad, rustic face defiant to the end, bet Sproule Manor and his lands upon his final hand.

When he rose, letting his cards flutter to the table, only Lord Aislinn was left.

He offered what, ostensibly, he still had. But the smiling visitors shook their heads. They seemed to know, in the way of dreams, that every field, every tree, every dusty book and bottle, every stone of Aislinn House belonged to his creditors.

“My lord?” Eloise heard. “My lord Aislinn?”

She opened her eyes.

Her father looked across the table at her.

“My daughter, Eloise, my heir,” he wrote as his final wager, and the smiling mariners nodded briskly. Yes, yes, indeed . . . Their handsome faces turned toward her, their fine eyes, their lean, predatory jaws. She smiled back.

The cards were dealt.

Lord Aislinn sagged back in his chair, his eyes closed, his face bloodless. Eloise felt the only moment of pure happiness she would have in her brief life.

Someone opened a hatch above them. She felt the wild surge of water, heard the masts straining against the wind and realized, astounded, that they had sailed out of the harbor into open sea.

Then she saw the water bubbling up from underneath, around the unconcerned mariner’s boots as they pocketed their gold, and the ladies around her stirred and gasped.

The water surged around them. Eloise screamed. As the ship sagged on its side and she slid across the room on a wave, she had one final glimpse, through the hatch, of the most beautiful sunset, ragged clouds of gold, purple, and rose engulfing the dying sun. They had played through the night and the entire day. And now the day was done.

The ship’s bell tolled a final, solitary knell as the wild waves dragged it down into the sea.

Gwyneth heard from Judd sooner than she expected, even as she was puzzling over her ending and wondering why, tidy as it was, it did not satisfy. Perhaps she felt guilty about the unfortunate Eloise. She could see Pandora bouncing up from the sofa with a cry of indignation over that; she could see, above a palm frond, her father’s raised eyebrow.

Well, she couldn’t please everyone. And Crispin would certainly like the feast. It would be best, however, she thought a moment later, twirling her pen moodily in her hair, if she could manage to please herself.

“Miss Gwyneth!” It was Ivy, just outside the door. “You have a visitor.” She gave a little grin as Gwyneth opened the door; she must have heard the discussion in the hallway, earlier. “Mr. Cauley.”

Gwyneth took a step across the threshold and hesitated. “Tell him I’ll only be a moment.”

“Yes, miss.”

She went back to her desk, gathered up her story, shook the papers straight, rolled them, and bound them with the ribbon from Judd’s bundle. She paused for one more second, to touch the lovely iris in its truly hideous vase of tiny sea-snail shells fastened with pitch onto teak. She felt the sudden lightness in her heart.

Judd, pacing the carpet in the hallway downstairs, wasn’t smiling at all until he turned and saw her. Then his set expression softened; for just that moment, he looked as though he forgot why it was on his face at all.

“Gwyneth. You look so charming with that little scribble of ink on your cheek.”

She sniffed. “And you smell like the sea. All windy and briny—have you been at the fish market?”

He nodded, frowning again. “I’ve been running errands all over town. Mrs. Quinn is back in the kitchen, and I’m hoping she’ll drive all the guests away. I got your note. I wanted you to know that before—” He hesitated.

“Before what, Judd?”

“Well. Before I go to Aislinn House. To look for Ridley Dow. I have no idea how far I’ll get. Or where—I just don’t know. When I’ll be back. I wanted to see you. To tell you that before I go.”

“Indeed.” Their faces were very close, she realized, both searching for something, maybe, memorizing lines, colors, the hollow of a throat, the slant of bone. She reached out, still gazing into his eyes, and slipped her story onto the hall table beside the door key and the mail. “To find the true secrets of Aislinn House, challenge the wicked sorcerer, and rescue Ridley Dow?”

“Something like that. If I can persuade Miss Beryl to let me in the door.”

“Oh, good. I’m coming with you. There’s something wrong with my version of the story.”

He felt obliged to argue, despite the relief on his face. “But Gwyneth, it may be—What story?”

She slid her fingers under his elbow, tugged him toward the door. “Quickly, before the twins or Aunt Phoebe come down. I’ll help you with the awkward parts, like getting us into the house; you can have the heroics. The ones I don’t want, that is.”

“We’ll let Ridley have them.”

“Good idea.”

She opened the door. In the last hour of morning, with the sun pouring cheerfully into the streets, glinting and breaking on the wind-rippled harbor, they heard the single, unmistakable toll of the bell.

Emma heard the bell down in the kitchen, where she was picking up the first of the breakfast trays for the guests. Granted, their hours were topsy-turvy; they turned night into day, morning into night, and noon into dawn, when they finally began to open their eyes and call for tea. But so far in her life, neither the sun nor the bell had ever deviated from schedule. They were inextricably bound, had been every day’s end of her life. But she knew the sound of that bell, distant and melancholy, like she knew her mother’s voice. She nearly dropped the tray when it spoke.

Something was wrong, she knew instantly. Very wrong, horribly wrong. Nobody else noticed; it meant nothing in their lives. She could only stand there with the tray in her hands, while Mrs. Haw fussed with the cloth over the toast, and muttered, “What I wouldn’t give for a quiet house again. But we can’t go backward in our lives, can we, any more than we can turn a ripe tomato green again, and Lady E will be the only one at peace around here when she goes, for no telling where the rest of us will end up then. There. Run up now, before the toast gets cold; they always send it back then.”

Emma escaped. She went upstairs as quickly as she could, tapped at a bedroom door. She thrust the tray at the haughty young lady’s maid who opened it and ran down the hall to Lady Eglantyne’s bedchamber. The door opened to the bedchamber, not, as she had hoped, to Ysabo’s world.

Miranda Beryl was still there, another thing Emma had hoped. She turned her head quickly; their eyes met, and Emma knew that she, too, had heard.

So had Lady Eglantyne, apparently. She was shifting under her bedclothes, and actually spoke.

“Did you hear that?” Her voice was thin, spun so fine words drifted like cobweb. “Miranda?”

“Yes,” she said. “I heard it.”

“Why now? I just had my breakfast.”

She knows, Emma thought with wonder. Lady Eglantyne knows, too.