Blythewood (8 page)

ALTHOUGH THE RAIN had stopped, the fog had not. It
had moved from the river to envelop the road—River Road, a
sign looming out of the fog informed me. It seemed, indeed, a
road turned into river, one of thick curdled murk out of which
stray objects bobbed like driftwood floating on the incoming tide: stolid, wide-eyed cows, tumbled stone walls, gnarled
branches, and once, startlingly, a crow, cawing as it briefly alit
on Gillie’s shoulder and then flew away without eliciting any
reaction from the man.

We rode in silence, the only sound the clap of the horses’
hooves and water dripping from the invisible trees on either
side of the road and from the brim of Gillie’s hat. He hunched
over the reins, his face impassive, still as a stone.

Maybe he wasn’t supposed to talk to students, I thought, or
maybe he didn’t
like
to talk to them. But then I remembered that
reassuring squeeze and his refusal to let me stay at the station,
and I remembered something Tillie once said. “Sometimes
people are so shy they wall themselves up in their silence. A
kind word can open up a chink in those walls.” I didn’t know
if Gilles Duffy needed his walls unchinked, but I knew that I
did. I was approaching an unknown place that would be my

home for the next three years. I felt cold and alone and scared.
If I didn’t talk to someone the cold would settle in my bones and
stay there forever.

“Thank you for not leaving me at the station,” I said, breaking a silence that felt like ice.
“Aarrghh.” He made a garbled sound like he was clearing
his throat and spit into the road. “ ’ Twouldn’t have been right,
to leave a girl alone in this fog. It’s my job to make sure you girls
are safe.”
“Oh, so you don’t just watch over the animals, then?”
“I watch over Blythewood, the house, and the woods and
all that dwell in ’em,” he said with a firm nod and a cluck to the
horses, who picked up their ears and walked more briskly at the
sound of their master’s voice.
“That must be a big responsibility,” I said.
“Aye,” he grunted.
“Er . . . how long have you worked at Blythewood, then?”
“Since they brought ’er over.”
“Brought who over?” I asked, confused.
His green-black eyes slid warily toward me. “Y’mean you
don’t know the history of the place? Your mother never told
you?” He sounded almost angry.
“No,” I admitted. “My mother talked about Blythewood,
but it often made her sad and she would stop suddenly. And
sometimes if I asked her a question . . .” I paused, remembering
my mother’s lapses into silence and melancholy. I’d always assumed that she grew sad talking about Blythewood because she
missed it, but perhaps she had been thinking of something bad
that had happened here. “Well, you know how it is,” I croaked.
“Sometimes it’s hard to talk about a place—or a person—
you’ve lost.”
He turned and looked at me, his eyes level with mine so that
I could really see them for the first time. They
were
green—a
deep moss green, the color of a forest at night.
So
that’s
where he
goes,
I thought, looking into Gilles Duffy’s eyes.
He has a forest
inside him
.
“Aye,” he said, “I know well what that’s like. I know about
lost things—and it happens I’m fair good at finding them.
Would you like me to tell you the story of how Blythewood
found itself here on the banks of the Hudson and the legend of
the seven bells?”
“The seven bells?” I asked warily, feeling a chill travel up
my spine as I thought of the bell I had been hearing in my head.
But I didn’t hear the bell now and “the legend of the seven bells”
sounded like one of the stories I’d read in Mrs. Moore’s books,
the sort of tale my new schoolmates might tell around the fire at
night over cocoa and biscuits. Perhaps a little bit scary, but basically harmless. “I would love to hear a story,” I said finally. “Is
it one of the Blythewood mysteries? Agnes told me there were
lots of them.”
“Aye, it’s the
first
Blythewood mystery. The one at the root
of all the rest and the oldest of ’em.
“It started back in the old times, in a village in the Borders,
that is, the lands near the border between England and Scotland—on the edge of a dark forest. There was a bell maker in
this village who was famous all over the world for the bells
he made. All the grandest cathedrals wanted him to make the
bells for their towers because it was said his bells had the purest chime. Some said he added the blood of falcons to carry the
sound far and wide. Some whispered he used the blood of fallen angels. But that was nonsense, of course, because . . .” Gillie snorted. “Everybody knows angels—fallen or otherwise—
have no blood.”
I shivered, recalling the dream I’d had of the winged boy
who had looked, it occurred to me now, rather like a fallen angel.
Perhaps my mother
had
told me this story after all.
“But
I
think,” Gillie went on, warming to the story, his shyness ebbing away, “that the rumor of angel blood arose afterward on account of what happened to the bell maker’s seven
daughters.”
Gillie chose this moment to bend over to untangle a knot
in the reins and I cried out impatiently, “What happened to the
bell maker’s daughters?”
He straightened up and adjusted his hat before continuing,
as if he were addressing an audience more impressive than one
wet schoolgirl and the backs of two horses. He looked straight
ahead as he told the story, his eyes on the road as if on the lookout for something that might come suddenly out of the fog.
“The bell maker’s wife had had a dream that she would have
seven daughters, each as beautiful as a star, and so when she did
she named them after them seven sisters who became stars.”
“The Pleiades?” I asked.
“Aye, a strange choice if you ask me, but no one ever asks
old Gillie. When the youngest girl was born her mother named
her Merope, and then died. The girls all grew up to be beautiful
as their namesakes, but also hardworking. They helped their father by gathering wood in the forest for the foundry fires, and
when they were old enough they helped pour the molten bronze
into the molds for the bells. They could all ring changes on the
bells and it was said their voices were as sweet and clear as their
father’s bells.”
Lulled by the sway of the coach, I relaxed into the rhythm of
the story—a fairy tale, I thought—wondering what fate waited
for the bell maker’s daughters. Would there be princes vying
for their hands or magical balls in underwater kingdoms or
might they all turn into swans?
“One autumn a wealthy prince . . .”
Ah
, I thought,
so there
was
a prince!
“. . . commissioned the bell maker to forge seven bells for
the bell tower of his castle that lay beyond the forest. The bells
had to be ready in time for Hogmanay—that’s what they call
New Year’s Eve in the auld country. There was hardly enough
time, but the pay was so generous that the bell maker would
be able to give each of his daughters a handsome dowry. All of
the girls were happy at this prospect, except for the youngest
daughter, Merope, who worried that her father was working
too hard.”
Of course it was the youngest daughter,
I thought.
It always is.
She’ll be the one who marries the prince at the end.
“When she could not convince her father to give up the
commission, she worked extra hard to help him, learning to
work the forge and pour the molds. Her father let her help mold
the last and smallest bell herself, the treble bell, and named the
bell after her—and then so his other daughters wouldn’t be
jealous he named each bell for one of his daughters and that’s
how the bells came to be named for them stars. Each one is
stamped with its name, which you can see on the bells to this
day. There’s Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope,
and Merope. Only Merope’s no longer in the tower, but I’ll get
to that in time.
“Despite the girl’s help the bell maker worked himself so
hard that when the bells were finished, he fell ill—too sick to
bring the bells himself to the prince’s castle. The girls would
not risk losing their dowries, though, so they agreed to take the
bells themselves. Merope begged to stay home to nurse her father, but the oldest sister, Maia, thought that the appearance of
seven sisters delivering seven bells would make a pretty picture,
and she hoped to gain the prince’s admiration by the show. She
even composed a seven-part peal for the sisters to play on the
bells when they were installed in the bell tower.
“When the bells were packed in straw and loaded on the
cart the sisters dressed in their best dresses and cloaks and set
out for the prince’s castle. Merope urged her sisters to take the
longer route around the forest because not only were the woods
full of wolves and wild boars but also it was whispered that they
were the abode of the fairies and that many a traveler had gone
missing in the fog never to be seen again.”
Gillie turned to me and looked me in the eye. “Only a foolish girl goes wandering in the woods by herself.”
“But the oldest sister insisted they go through the woods,” I
said, sure I saw where the story was going now, but also to distract myself from the thought of those creatures that came out
of the fog . . . which might even now be lurking in the fog that
surrounded us.
“Aye,” Gillie agreed. “Because she wanted to be there by
nightfall when the prince would attend mass. And they would
have been if they hadn’t been caught in a fog bank that swept
down out of the mountains and swallowed up the whole forest.
The girls couldn’t see where they were going . . .” Gillie turned
to me again, black-green eyes flashing like sparks off a forge.
“No more than we can now, Miss. Who can tell if we’re still
on River Road heading toward Blythewood School, or if we
haven’t slipped off our path and gone astray. There’s them that
believe a fog like this is sent by the fairies to trick the unwary
traveler into fairyland, where she may wander for a hundred
years without finding her way out. There are places a girl can
wander where even auld Gillie won’t be able to find her.”
I knew Gillie was only warning me to keep me out of the
woods, but still I looked anxiously around for any sign that we
were still on River Road. But the fog was so thick I couldn’t
even see the stone walls that edged the road. We might already
be traveling through fairyland, a place I knew about from my
mother’s stories. I felt in my pocket to stroke the black feather
for reassurance. It seemed to curl around my hand like a cat
seeking warmth.
“Is that what happened to the bell maker’s daughters?” I
asked. “They wandered into fairyland?”
“No,” he answered. “Far better for them if it had. Instead
they heard a rustling from the woods on either side of them.
At first they tried to convince themselves it was only deer or
foxes, but the creatures making these sounds were larger, and
soon they heard the yip and bay of wolves calling one to t’other.
They were surrounded by a pack of wolves. And not just any
wolves—
shadow wolves
.” Gillie gave me a look that made my
blood run cold.
“What are those?” I asked, my mouth dry.
“They’re not natural animals made out of blood and fur.
Natural animals can be dangerous, Miss, but they’ve got no
evil in them. Shadow creatures are made up of pure evil. “The
horses knew what they were. They bolted and the reins fell out
of the oldest sister’s hands and the horses ran wild—right into a
ditch. The wagon pitched sideways and dumped the sisters and
the seven bells out into the snow. As they broke free from their
straw packing, the bells made a huge and terrible clamor. When
it ended the forest was silent around them.
“‘ The bells have scared the wolves off,’ Merope whispered.
They could hear the baying of the wolves in the distance. Then
they heard it coming closer.
“‘ But not for long,’ another sister said.
“‘ We should run,’ another suggested.
“‘ Where to?’ another asked. ‘We’ll only get lost in the
woods and the wolves will pick us off one by one.’
“They could hear the wolves coming closer  .  .  . and then
they heard a terrible scream that they knew was one of their
horses, who’d broken free of his traces, brought down by the
wolves. Some of the sisters began to cry. Merope looked at her
sisters and the seven bells that lay scattered in the snow. She ran
to one that lay on its side—which was the treble bell, the one
that had been named for her—and reached inside to grab the
clapper. Then, with all her might, she struck the clapper against
the inner rim of the bell. A clear chime rang through the forest,
so pure that it silenced the wolves . . . for a moment, at least.
“‘ Find a bell,’ Merope called to her sisters. ‘We’ll ring to
keep the wolves at bay until the prince hears it and sends help.’
“‘ How will he know it is us?’ the oldest sister asked. ‘If I
heard bells coming from this forest I would think it was the
fairies and run as far away as I could.’
“‘ We’ll ring the changes we practiced for the prince. Who
else but the bell maker’s daughters know how to do that? They
will know it is us and come.’
“Before the oldest sister could argue, Merope began to call
out the orders for the peal.” Gillie shifted his weight on the
perch and looked at me. “Have ye ever rung changes, girl?” I
shook my head. “Aye, well your arms are a mite skinny now to
pull the bells, but a few months of good exercise and you’ll be
up to it. ’Tis a wonderful thing to be part of. The music of the
bells takes you over and your blood thrums with the vibrations
and it’s like you’re a part of the sound. You feel hollow, but also
full. You feel part of something bigger’n yourself. To tell the
truth, I don’t know if Merope thought the bells would keep off
the wolves or if the prince would come, but she did know that if
her sisters were ringing the changes they wouldn’t be afraid any
longer. And so it was. They rang the bells through the night,
Merope calling out the changes.
“In the castle the prince heard the bells. At first he thought
it were the fairies playing their tricks, but the prince listened
and counted the bells to seven and said to his knights, ‘Those
are the bell maker’s daughters ringing my bells. Whoever will
come with me to save them shall have one of these brave girls
for a bride.’
“And so the prince and six of his knights rode into the forest, following the sound of the bells through the deep fog. As
they grew closer, though, they noticed that one of the bells
dropped out of the peal. One of the sisters must have grown
too tired to strike her bell. The prince spurred his horse on
and urged his comrades to ride faster. Another of the bells fell
out as they rode, and then another and another, until only one
bell—the treble bell—rang. It rang clear and steady. The prince
pledged to his knights that whichever sister rang that bell, she
would be his bride.
“They reached the sisters just as dawn was breaking. As
they entered the clearing their horses scattered the ring of
wolves and the fog with them. Over each of the bells lay one of
the sisters, their arms too weak to ring anymore, but still alive.
The seventh bell, the treble, which lay farthest from the overturned wagon and hidden in the last scrap of fog, still rang. But
as the prince dismounted and walked toward it the bell tolled
its last chime. The air was still ringing with the sound when the
prince reached it, but there was no one there. He looked around
the woods, which were full of sunlight now, but there was no
sign of the youngest sister. No sign but a single black feather lying on the ground where she had knelt beside the bell.”