The Bell at Sealey Head

“Once or twice. He gave me a book to read. It’s quite entertaining, a sort of romance about some sorcerer who came to Sealey Head long ago.”

“Really?” A little color fanned across her cheekbones; he recognized, in her eyes, the cupidity of another whose reason was lost to books. “May I read it when you’re finished?”

“It may be a while, if I actually have to stop reading and behave like an innkeeper.”

“Perhaps your guests won’t stay long,” she said fervently, then laughed at herself as he smiled. “I’m sorry. I can imagine a little of what all this means to the inn. First the wealthy Mr. Dow and now Miranda Beryl’s entourage. But what am I thinking, keeping you standing here when you must go hunting up a cook? I’d ask at the bakery, if I were you. And I’ll ask Aunt Phoebe. She might know someone who knows someone. Pandora!” she called abruptly to her sister, who was bent over and digging perilously at something down the side of the cliff. “Be careful! The wind will push you right over.”

Pandora straightened finally. “I’ve found a perfect fossil!”

“Good for you! Come over here before you become one at the bottom of the cliff.” She looked at Judd, seemed to read the thought in his eyes, to hear the words lined up in his impulsively opened mouth. “I promised to take her to the top of Sealey Head,” she said apologetically. “Otherwise, we would walk with you back into town. She wants to see if she can see the ghostly ship going under as the bell rings.”

“That’s a couple of hours from now, and a walk back in the twilight,” he reminded her gravely.

“I know. I doubt we’ll stay out that long today. Do you still?”

“Do I—”

“Still look for the ghost ship?”

“Of course. Always, if I’m watching the sunset.”

“Mr. Dow seems to think the bell has nothing to do with a ship,” she said puzzledly. “I wanted to ask him what he truly thinks. But we always seem surrounded by Sproules, when we meet, so it’s hard to talk coherently about ghosts.”

“I noticed.”

She threw him a sudden, mischievous smile. “That’s partly why I promised Pandora this excursion. And if we go back down too soon, they’ll most likely be there still in the parlor with Aunt Phoebe.”

“Ah,” he said, enlightened and relieved, at least on that score. He added, reluctant to bring the wealthy and charming Mr. Dow into the conversation again, but it seemed only fair to tell her, “Ridley Dow seems to think the bell has something to do with Aislinn House.”

“Really?” she said, astonished. “How could it? The house never had a bell tower, did it? And there’s no local lore suggesting a connection.”

“That’s where he is now, trying to find Hesper Wood and all her local lore. He thinks she must know something about the bell.”

“Why on earth?”

“I have no idea, beyond that she is obsessed with the history of the inhabitants of Sealey Head.”

“Tenuous,” she remarked after a moment.

“Perhaps. But sometimes strangers see something more clearly than those who have been looking at it all their lives.”

“Well. I’m working on my own theory about the bell. It does involve Aislinn House, but many other aspects of Sealey Head as well.”

“You’re writing this?”

She nodded, flushing again. “The twins like it.”

“I’ll trade you Ridley’s book for a glimpse of it,” he said promptly.

She laughed. “That’s unfair! How can I say no? But you’ll have to wait; I’m still working my theory out.”

“Maybe by then, there will be someone in the kitchen to make you tea. I hope you’ll come again,” he added. “I can promise you access to any number of odd books. And I’d love to read one of your tales.”

She studied him silently a moment, then gave a little nod. Her gray eyes, he saw, were the exact shade of the clouds gathering at the edge of the world, preparing to grapple the sun into the sea. “I remember we used to like the same books when we were young,” she said. “I’d like you to read what I’m writing.” She turned, shading her eyes. “Pan—Oh.”

Her sister was with them suddenly, a whirlwind of lavender skirts and dark, wild hair. She held out her hand, showed them the spiral shell caught in crumbling layers of stone. “Mr. Trent has a book of drawings of fossils. I’m going to see if this matches any of them. I’m sorry you didn’t have tea for us,” she told Judd. “I liked your Mr. Dow.”

“We’ll come again,” Gwyneth promised.

Smiling, Judd watched them pushing uphill against the wind, skirts billowing and twisting around their ankles, until he remembered, with a start and a sudden turn, the ruins of overcooked supper and the triumphant Mrs. Quinn who awaited him if he returned empty-handed from his quest.

Ten

They were not your ordinary merchant sailors, Gwyneth wrote the following morning in her tiny room under the eaves. Not hairy and hardworking, dressed in blue gabardine trousers and mostly barefoot. Nor were they in any kind of uniform. Nor, Mr. Blair hastened to assure himself through the end of his telescope, were they pirates, unless the wild marauders of the deep seas wore breeches and coats of silk all the hues of mother-of-pearl, and boots so brightly polished they reflected sunlight like metal. Like the ship, they carried no arms, no pistols or swords. At least, he amended grimly, none were visible. And, oddly enough, no hats. As the ship had turned from the channel into the harbor, he had noticed something even stranger. The vessel slowed as sail was taken in, but Mr. Blair could see no one at all—no bustling sailors, bellowing in answer to orders below, clambering among the rigging on the masts, loosening, taking in, taking up—no one tending to the sails at all. It seemed as though they cupped their windward hollows to a wish, like giant ears, luffed in answer, and rolled themselves up.

The ship glided to the center of the harbor, lowered an anchor, and sat there admiring its reflection. It seemed, with its colors and lovely grace in the limpid, blue-gray water, like some rare bird come to light upon the waters of Sealey Head.

Nothing happened.

Mr. Blair waited.

Nothing happened.

He heard steps pounding up the stairs to his office on the second floor of the warehouse along the docks. He kept the telescope trained on the ship, waiting for the splash of a longboat, a raised flag, even a blast on a hunting horn from that odd crew: any kind of a courtesy signal greeting Sealey Head and assuring the populace of friendly intentions.

Nothing.

The door opened; his son Jarret, lithe and dark-haired, stood panting, staring over Mr. Blair’s shoulder out the grimy mullioned window. “Did you see what—”

“Yes.”

“Who in the world—”

“I have no idea.”

They were not the only ones watching the ship. Sir Magnus Sproule, riding despondently back to his house after viewing his desiccated fields, and pleading vociferously with the cloudless sky, had reined in his horse along the cliff. He sat there staring in disbelief at the elegant vessel. “Lost,” he muttered finally, but made no move to ride away. On the other cusp of the town, on Sealey Head itself, the innkeeper, Anscom Cauley, crouched on his roof and hammering down patches over the leaks, had been transfixed as well by the unexpected sight. He felt his face trying to do something it had nearly forgotten how: to smile. “Guests,” he breathed. And in Aislinn House, becalmed and morose in its penniless state, Lord Aislinn’s daughter, Eloise, gazed down the hillside at the gleaming ship. Her small, mushroom brown eyes took on a gleam unaccounted for by the gloomy shadows.