The Bell at Sealey Head

Four

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more. Judd knew that about himself: just the sight of Ridley Dow’s books unpacked and stacked in corners, on the desk and dresser, made him discontent and greedy. Here he was; there they were. Why were he and they not together somewhere private, they falling gently open under his fingers, he exploring their mysteries, they luring him, enthralling him, captivating him with every turn of phrase, every revealing page?

“Is there a bookseller in town?” Ridley asked, shifting a pile or two so that Judd could put down his breakfast. It was a peculiar affair of boiled fish, boiled potatoes, bread, jam, and porridge, Mrs. Quinn being uncertain exactly what meal to aim toward at that hour of the afternoon. Judd maneuvered the tray among the books on the table, unsurprised by the question.

“Yes. O. Trent Stationers, on Water Street. It’s been there for over a century.”

“O?”

“Osric. The family came from Tyndale, I think. City people. There was a rumor at the time that some domestic scandal forced them to seek a new home.”

“Quite a reverberating scandal,” Ridley commented, eyeing his meal. “Halfway across Rurex and down an entire century.”

Judd smiled. “We in Sealey Head like to keep track of our history. It passes the time.”

Ridley poked at the fish, which was strangely bowed down the middle. “What is this?”

“Who knows? Mrs. Quinn is of the opinion that if you can recognize it, it must be underdone.” He paused, added tactfully, “I can take your board off your bill if you prefer to eat elsewhere.”

“No.” Ridley squared his shoulders, poked his fork firmly at the fish. “Let us see if we can get along.”

“Mrs. Quinn isn’t accustomed to feeding guests a midday meal. Most leave as soon as possible after breakfast.”

“I see.” Ridley ate a bite of fish, then of porridge. He paused to salt the porridge liberally, added pepper and butter for good measure. “Well, anyway, it’s hot. I tend to keep quite irregular hours. Sometimes I’m up all night, sleep half the day.”

Judd shrugged. “We can let Mrs. Quinn know what you prefer when.”

“Thank you. Will you have time to take me there?”

“To—”

“O. Trent Stationers. I would like to peruse his books.”

Judd gave the matter half a thought, then nodded. “I was going to send Mrs. Quinn to see what the fishers brought in yesterday, but I can go myself instead.”

“Good!” Ridley said, with his quick, engaging smile. “We might have half a chance of knowing what we’re eating.”

“I’ll just get my father settled first. I told him about you this morning. He was very pleased and would like to meet you at your convenience.”

Ridley nodded. “Of course. And I him. He must have some odd tales tucked away of life in Sealey Head.”

“He does,” Judd said, surprised. “And he loves to tell them, so be warned. He stays pretty close to his rocker now. He can hear the sea from his window, and it comforts him since he lost his sight.”

“Ah,” Ridley said with sympathy. “An accident?”

“No. Just a slow passing. An ebb tide, he said, that never turned, just faded into black. He enjoys company.” He glanced at a pile of books threatened by Ridley’s elbow and a pot of coffee. “I’ll see what I can find for bookshelves and bring them up. I believe there is one gathering dust in the kitchen.”

In the kitchen, he found the wiry, angular Lily taking a scrub brush to the wooden table where Mrs. Quinn had been kneading bread. Judd could smell it baking. He longed to rescue it before it turned into something that could double as a doorknocker. But the damage had been done long before it reached the oven, he suspected, though the nature of the violence eluded him. Lily bobbed her head at him, an intense, serious girl who was growing much like her mother.

“Lily,” he said, inspired. “Has your mother begun to teach you to cook?”

She came very close to screwing up her pretty, freckled face, then remembered her dignity. “No, sir. I don’t take to cooking at all. Too many things to think about. Pots boiling, how long this, how many that, water or oil, how to chop, what goes in what—You made one bed, you know how to make them all. Or mop one floor. Or clean the ashes out of one fireplace—”

“Yes. I see.”

“You don’t have to fret about it, just do it. But bread. Well. It never seems to rise the same way twice, does it? Or take an egg. You never know what it’s going to come out looking like, and that’s even before you start cooking it.”

“Yes.”

“But cleaning a pot, or beating a carpet—you do, it’s done. There. You see, sir?”

“With absolute clarity. Do you think your mother would miss this shelf if I take it away and put the cookbook over here instead?”

“Oh, no, sir. She never uses that old thing. She says the recipes are all out of fashion. And it’s filthy with stains.”

“With good reason,” Judd breathed, putting his mother’s cookbook safely on top of a cupboard. He unhooked the shelf from the wall, tucked it under his arm, and continued his ruthless pursuit. He found two more hanging shelves in the taproom, moved the beer mugs off them, and pushed them under his elbow. He came across an entire empty bookcase in the quiet sitting room. He gazed at it, perplexed, then realized what must have happened to the books: he had taken them all upstairs to his room.

Mrs. Quinn came at him talking as she walked down the hallway into the sitting room. Her freckled face was leaner, more lined than Lily’s, but their neat attire, severe buns, and their expressions were amazingly similar.

“I’ll have Lily mop these flagstones regularly now that we have guests, sir. And he might want to sit in here in the evenings among the cushions and the seashells.”

“Maybe,” Judd said dubiously. “Makes me want to sneeze. Mrs. Quinn—”

“I was at my wit’s end as to which to serve him, sir, breakfast or what—I hope it was satisfactory.”

“As what it was adequate.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, looking pleased. “I do try.”

“But I think next time—” He paused, gave up. “I’ll have him talk to you about his erratic hours.”

“His what, sir?”

“His—his meals.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, nodding. “Best to begin as we intend to continue, that way we don’t forget what we’re doing, do we?”

“Yes. No. Mrs. Quinn—”

“Now, sir, about supper—”

“I’m going into town to see to it,” he said, seizing the bookcase bodily with his other hand and staggering off with his loot. “I promise you’ll be the first to know.”

He looked in on his father after adding the shelves to the clutter in Ridley’s room. Dugold was napping peacefully in his rocker, a shaft of light along with one of the old stable cats warming his knees. Judd found Ridley outside, talking to Mr. Quinn about his horses. The boisterous and capricious weather had blown itself inland; the sea wallowed lazily against the cliffs, glittered in the distance, where the fishing boats clustered around whatever in the deep was flinging themselves at their bait.

“Mr. Quinn tells me there’s a path down to the sand,” Ridley said, as Mr. Quinn turned away. “He’ll exercise the horses there on days I don’t ride. Today, for instance. Do you mind a walk into town?”

“Not at all,” Judd said, watching a coin above Mr. Quinn’s head spark silver in the light before it fell back into his hand. Ridley had left his cloak behind, but even in sedate black he struck the eye, something sleek and unexpected in the familiar world of Sealey Head, like a red-winged blackbird among a flock of sparrows.

They walked the pleasant mile down the headland, across the steep channel bridge where they watched a ship follow the ebbing tide through the stony narrows safely out to open sea.

“One of Blair’s,” Judd said, recognizing the figurehead, a dolphin leaping upward out of the wood. “Wonder where it’s going . . .”

“Blair?”

“Toland Blair. His family sent the first merchant ship out of Sealey Head harbor. It was gone for three years, during which some fantastic bets were laid. Fortunes were lost when it finally returned. So the tales say. Like fish, the size of a fortune grows in the telling. The Blairs made a genuine fortune from the wares that came in—spices, fabrics, exotic wood, glassware, painted porcelain, jewelry.”

“Even then the bell was ringing.”

“The bell.” Judd paused to pick up that mislaid thread in his head. “Yes,” he said slowly. “It must have been. Two hundred years, it has rung, I’ve heard. Or three hundred. Or a thousand. Every tale changes as it gets passed down. So how are you supposed to know what’s true?”

“Ah. That’s the question,” Ridley said with a great deal of enthusiasm and no answer whatsoever.

Judd pointed out the stationer’s shop along Water Street, which curved around the harbor and held all the best shops, the grocers, the bakeries, Blair’s Exotica and Other Fine Goods. Ridley went into the expansive shop with its gull-colored walls and its front glass panes neatly framed in black. Judd turned past it and onto the docks.

There on a wooden slab under an awning, he found Stiven Dale’s catch of the day before, under the eye of his wife Hazel and their four-year-old daughter, who was dropping a crab net over the dockside. The slosh of water against the pilings, the smell of fish, barnacles in brine, guano, the barking of harbor seals and cries of the gulls diving at the dead fish, filled Judd like words did, left him always wanting more, though these smells, these sounds, he had known all his life.

He chose a stout salmon to smoke, half a dozen perch for supper, some crab and eel for pie, which Mrs. Quinn usually managed without making a total disaster of it. Hazel set them aside for her older son to run up to the inn. That done, he stopped at the grocer’s to order a delivery of cheese and coffee, then at the window of Blair’s Exotica, hoping for a glimpse of Gwyneth Blair.

He didn’t see her. A certain shyness kept him hovering outside. Growing up, they had talked easily and eagerly about everything, above all about books. He would duck into the shop on his way home from school, find her deep in some ornate chair covered with animal skins, stroking the head of a huge, snarling, glass-eyed beast while she ignored the books her governess gave her and devoured the latest novel from the stationer’s instead.

Then she went away for a few years to get educated in Landringham. Judd nursed his dying grandfather, then his mother, while his father’s sight began to fail and the inn grew quieter and emptier. When Gwyneth finally came home to stay, after her own mother died, she had grown into a tall, fair, willowy young lady whose spectacles hid her expressions. She was suddenly the eligible daughter of a very prosperous merchant. Judd had become the proprietor of the failing inn up the hill who couldn’t afford to replace his own lamentable cook.

They rarely met.

He crossed the street, went into the stationer’s to find Ridley. And there she was, bracketed by the Sproule siblings, talking to Osric Trent, whose plump face with silky chestnut sideburns framing his intelligent expression Judd could see over Gwyneth’s shoulder. Ridley, a book open in his hands, completed the congenial little circle.

Judd almost backed out, closed the door on the elegant company. But Ridley saw him, waved him eagerly over; he was obliged to sidle, redolent with the fish market, through the smartly dressed browsers around the book tables. Seeing him, Gwyneth smiled, but Judd couldn’t tell if her eyes, behind the lenses, had added to the welcome.

“Judd!” the bookseller exclaimed. “We see so little of you these days. How is your father?”

“He’s well. Happiest when I’m reading to him in the evenings.” He paused, nodding diffidently to the others. “Raven, Miss Sproule. Miss Blair. I see you’ve met my guest.”

“So fascinating,” Daria breathed. She gripped Gwyneth’s wrist in a tremor of emotion. “He’s been explaining what brought him here, riding alone all the way across Rurex from his cozy house in Landringham.”

“That bell,” Raven said, his brows pinched in perplexity. “I haven’t really heard it since I was a child. It’s fairly meaningless, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Ridley queried encouragingly, his own lenses glinting, full of light.

“I mean, isn’t it?” He appealed to Judd. “Do you hear it? Surely you’ve got more important matters on your mind up at that inn than the ghostly bell on a ship that sank centuries ago.” Judd opened his mouth to answer; Raven didn’t listen to that, either. He appealed again to Ridley. “Unless it marks a sunken treasure or something, why bother with it?”

“A pirate ship,” Daria guessed, blinking with rapture at Ridley. “Is that what you think it is? Weighted with gold and stolen jewels, foundering just off Sealey Head—Oh, Gwyneth, you must write that story! Promise me you will.”

“Pirates,” Gwyneth answered dubiously, as Judd’s voice bumped against hers.

“You write?”

She colored a little as they all gazed at her. “Silly things,” she said finally, touching her spectacles. “Scribbles.”

“Not all of them,” Osric Trent said firmly. “Some of your pieces have a great deal of energy and wonderful detail. Especially,” he added with a chuckle, “when you set your tales in Sealey Head.”

Daria drew breath audibly. “You write about us?”

“Well, those mostly go under my bed.” Her eyes met Judd’s, with an odd, wordless appeal.

He foundered a moment, heard himself say, “Yes, I do remember. You talked about writing when we were children. You were so in love with reading that you imagined going that step farther—writing your own story—must be the pinnacle of bliss.”

“Did I?” She had flushed again, deeply, but her smile was quick and generous, warming her face. “I suppose I did think of it that way, then.”

“And now?” he said, feeling his own smile suddenly.

“Bliss,” Daria interjected firmly. “I think it must be.”

“Now, it’s a hundred fits and starts, sputtering ink nibs, stray ends going nowhere—like being a spider, most likely, on a windy day, tendrils always sailing off. Mr. Trent is kind enough to make suggestions. I only bring him what I think is my best. And you—”

“Like riding horses,” Raven interrupted, illumined. “I see. When you dream about riding, you never fall off. But you can’t really learn to ride without actually clambering up a horse’s back, which is a completely different kettle of stew.”

Gwyneth clung to her question stubbornly. “Do you still read?” she asked Judd. “Or is Raven right? You have more important things to do?”

“Every chance I get,” he assured her, and saw again the smile she gave him when they were young: a bit secretive, a bit mischievous, eager to be amused by the world.

He felt his own heart, which he hadn’t, he realized then, for some time. It crested to froth like a wave, rode the wind into spindrift. And then fell abruptly, scattering into nothing as Raven, talking again about horses, about continuing their ride back to Sproule Manor, gave a proprietary touch to Gwyneth’s arm. Daria still had hold of the other; together they turned her, gracefully and imperceptibly, toward the door. As Judd watched wordlessly, she continued the circling without them, slipping free to look back at him, the little wry smile still on her face, while they stepped forward without her, then stopped, surprised.

“Come to tea,” she suggested. “You can tell me what you’re reading. And you, Mr. Dow. I still hear that bell at every sunset, and I’m eager to know what you make of it.”

“Yes,” Judd stammered. “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

She turned again, as the Sproules spun back to fetch her, and made her own way to the door.

Judd felt himself under the bright, momentary scrutiny of Ridley’s spectacles. Then they flashed elsewhere. The door closed behind the Sproules; they hurried a step or two to catch up with Gwyneth as she moved past the window, breasting the wind as gracefully as a figurehead above the waves.

Then she was gone. Judd blinked, heard voices again.

“Everything,” Ridley said passionately. “Everything you have on the history of Sealey Head.”

The bookseller scratched the tide line on his balding head. “I can give you a couple now. One is mostly anecdotal, local history; the other is a rather imaginative history of the Sproule family. Written by a Sproule, of course, who tried to link the family to a defunct line of nobility, rather than to the hardworking and very shrewd farmers who made their fortune and achieved their title by turning the rough, rocky Sealey River valley into a large, very fine farm.”

“I’ll take them,” Ridley said promptly.

“I’ll have to search my storage room for older works consigned there for lack of interest.” He paused, meditatively scratching an eyebrow now. “Except,” he pronounced finally, “for Hesper Wood.”

“Hesper,” Ridley repeated blankly, but with enthusiasm.

“Known locally as a wood witch. She’s an herbalist; people come to her with random problems. Even Dr. Grantham consults her sometimes. She lives in a sort of tree house near Aislinn House. For some reason, she collects any kind of family history, memoir, journal, even old letters that have to do with Sealey Head. She takes them in trade, or buys them outright, if she has to. I’ve been putting such works aside for her for years.”

“Interesting,” Ridley murmured. His eyes had grown very dark behind his lenses. “Does she say why?”

“Why such an obsession with a rather commonplace coastal town?”

“Yes.”

“No. I pressed her about it once; she only looked vague and talked about ancient herbal remedies passed down through generations.” Mr. Trent shrugged. “Maybe that’s her interest. But I think there’s something else . . .” He gestured toward the window, where a line of wooded hills rose above warehouses, shops, dwellings, and the back lanes of Sealey Head. “She lives up there. She might talk to you about Sealey Head. If you can’t find the tree house, ask the young maid at Aislinn House; that’s her daughter, Emma.”

“Do you know this wood witch?” Ridley asked Judd, after he had paid for the books and they had returned again to the street.

“Of course,” Judd said, amused. “I know everyone.”

“What’s she like? Would she talk to me?”

“She’s very kind . . . I went to her about my father’s failing eyes. She tried everything she knew and wouldn’t take any form of payment when nothing worked.”

“Why did she take to living in a tree?”

“No one knows. She was the stillroom maid at Aislinn House for many years.”

“Was she,” Ridley breathed. “Was she now.”

Judd looked at him, hearing mysteries in his voice, secrets. He knew something about that sad, ancient house that Judd didn’t. Something about the bell?

“It was on a ship,” he heard himself protest incoherently, he thought, but somehow Ridley knew exactly what he meant.

“Was it?” he only said, and the town that Judd had known all his life changed in his head, transformed by the words of a stranger. Who had also, in that moment, transformed himself under Judd’s nose.

A word sprang alive in his head; recognizing it, he began to understand what it meant.

Magic.