Chime (8 page)

And still thinner.

“They oughtn’t to have took no water.”

“Tell the grown folks to fetch it back.”

Until Mr. Clayborne called a halt to the draining of the swamp, the Boggy Mun would strike with the swamp cough, and strike and strike again.

Strike and strike again—oh, you idiot Briony: Ask the ghost-children, quick! “My sister—does she have the swamp cough?”

“Them London men oughtn’t to have took—”

“Don’t go—does she have the swamp cough? Please tell me!”

Please tell me
no!

“Them London men—”

The children’s voices skimmed themselves into extinction. Gravity turned itself right side out. The world bounced up to chase her ball, which was sick making, although it would soon be over. But I’d wish myself sick again if I could do it over. I’d asked the question too late.

“I don’t have the swamp cough.” Rose came into focus. She smiled her anxious-monkey smile, which is the only smile she knows how to make.

“Of course you don’t,” I said, just as Rose hunched herself into her chest for a comfortable paroxysm of coughing. What exquisite timing. If she weren’t Rose, you might think she was indulging herself in a paradox. In a paroxysm of paradoxysm.

But she is Rose.

“It’s time for the funeral-baked meats,” said Rose, squeezing her words past the last crumbs of coughing.

“Right you are, Rose.” We were alone in the graveyard. Even Eldric, the newcomer, knew that every good mourner makes merry in the Alehouse with roast pork, and pies, and funeral biscuits, and sherry and ale. Especially the sherry and ale. A funeral is a thirsty piece of business.

I was dizzy and seasick. “Give me a minute.”

“People can’t give minutes,” said Rose.

Rose, literal Rose. “It’s just one of those things people say. We talked about that, remember, when Father tried to catch the barkeep’s eye?”

“Quick!” said Rose, all in a rush. “Cover your ears!”

I clapped my hands to my ears, pretending I couldn’t hear the church bells chime twelve o’clock. Rose has a peculiar relationship to the notion of time: She won’t let me listen to the clock strike twelve. I can’t say why—I’ve told her often enough that I like the hour of noon—but there’s no understanding Rose.

“It’s time for the funeral-baked meats.”

“Off we go, then.”
Us be asking you for help, girl what can hear ghosts.

“I want you to read to me,” said Rose. “I want a story where I’m a hero.”

Oh, Rose! I launched into my litany of the library fire and the books burning, and then she said what she always said:

“I wish my book had burnt in the fire.”

That blasted book again! Just tell me about it, Rosy dear. I’ll see that it burns. But Rose never tells her secrets. That would be breaking the rules.

Us be asking you for help.
Don’t think about that, Briony!

Rose never breaks the rules.

But reminders of the ghost-children were everywhere. In the cemetery, the ground puckered with death. Outside the cemetery, the gravestones pointing every way but up, like bad teeth.

Stepmother lay beneath one of those careless gravestones, in the unconsecrated ground set aside for murderers and witches and suicides. How could Father have been married to Stepmother and not known she’d never kill herself?

The cemetery lay on Gallows Hill, the highest bit of the village. In the distance, the swamp stretched out in a crinkle of gray crepe. Below sat Hangman’s Square, anchored on the south end with the Siamese church-and-Parsonage twins. The other sides of the square offered everything one might need in life: the Alehouse, the jail, and the gallows. Sometimes, when a person visits the Alehouse, he goes right on to visit the others.

The present occupant of the gallows was Sam Collins, of the upriver Collinses, each of whom was born with an extra finger, the better to steal from you, my dear.

The ghost-children wanted me to tell the villagers how to stop the swamp cough. Let’s pretend I do. Here’s how it would go.

It would turn into a
House That Jack Built.

That
was the girl called Briony.

I’m not really the sacrificing type.

“It’s time for the funeral-baked meats,” said Rose.

We descended Gallows Hill, each in our own way. I’m no longer a wolfgirl, but still, I’m fast and Rose is slow. She’s slow and clumsy and afraid of heights and speed and danger.

This is the girl called Briony.

“I don’t like that man.” Rose spoke loud enough for Mad Tom to hear.

“Where be my wits?” shouted Mad Tom, who, aside from being irritatingly mad, stood between us and the funeral-baked meats. “They be lost, O my stars an’ strumpets. Lost forever an’ aye.”

“I don’t like that man.”

He rattled his umbrella. “It be you lovelies what taked my wits. I seen you when you done it. I spied you with my little eye.”

He’s harmless, poor thing.
That’s what everyone said. It was true, but who cares? Lots of people are harmless, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them.

“Two hundred twenty-six steps until the Alehouse,” said Rose. “But we have to pass that man.”

“And pass him we shall,” I said, for Tiddy Rex was sure to be in the Alehouse, and I needed to listen to his cough. Just let it be different from Rose’s. Please let it be different!

“I want the funeral biscuits,” said Rose.

“Come along, then.”

“Doesn’t I spy two black-eyed lovelies!” Mad Tom flapped his umbrella at us as we passed. “Has you such a thing as a pair o’ wits about you?”

“I want the funeral biscuits,” said Rose. But we’d already pushed through the Alehouse door, into the smells of tobacco and lantern oil and the ghosts of fried sausages. A hand snuck into the crook of my arm.

“I was afraid you weren’t coming.”

I looked up, into Eldric’s switch-on eyes.

“You came just in time,” he said. “I was about to auction off your seats. They’re going for a fortune.”

There weren’t many fortunes to be made in the Swampsea, but neither were there many chairs. Mourners crammed windowsills, leaned against walls, talking, laughing, drinking, as all good mourners do. But there, at a table occupied by Mr. Clayborne and Father, were two seats, tipped onto their front legs to show they were taken.

How would a regular girl feel if an Eldric boy-man saved her a seat? Eldric, from exotic, faraway London.

Would a regular girl be happy? I don’t know much about certain feelings, like happiness. I have thoughts, of course, but thoughts stay in one’s head. Thoughts don’t feel.

“Introduce me to the new fellow, won’t you?” said Cecil Trumpington.

Cecil was Judge Trumpington’s son, but he didn’t mind sharing the next-but-one table with the ratcatcher and a fellow from the willow yard. Cecil was democratic when it came to drinking.

Cecil and Eldric shook hands. Two lovely boys, face-toface: Cecil, all dark ringlets; Eldric, all tawny mane. Cecil a bit the taller; Eldric a bit the broader. Cecil, all pale and dead-poet-ish; Eldric all electric and alive.

Cecil leaned over me; he smelled of money. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen milady!”

Milady.
Such an old-fashioned word makes him feel clever. “Only five days,” I said.

“You count the days too!”

How would a regular girl feel if a Cecil boy-man stood looking at her with his pale fish-eyes, pressing a hand to his chest? Cecil, whose house has stained-glass windows and curved stairs, and a porch fixed securely to the front.

Would a regular girl want to smack him?

“I’m hungry for funeral biscuits,” said Rose.

“Funeral biscuits?” said Eldric. “Shall I hunt them down? Are they dangerous?”

“You’re mad!” said Cecil, but he rose to accompany Eldric. Two boy-men, stalking the wild funeral biscuit.

I let my mind go wandering. I pretended I was a regular person. I breathed in greasy air and sour ale, just like a regular person. I listened in on the conversation behind me, just like a regular person.

Eavesdropping is such a regular-person activity.

“Hark to my words,” said the constable. “The witch is like to be that Nelly Daws. She got that wicked red hair.”

Nelly Daws, from the Coracles, the smallest-but-one village in the Swampsea. She had red hair and dancing feet.

“Nelly Daws,” said Davy Wallace, a fisherman known principally for having caught a hundred-pound sturgeon with his one hand. “I always knowed her for a witch.” But you can’t trust what Davy knows: He’s not a knowing sort of person. He’s the sort to accept a wager to spend the night in the swamp without a Bible Ball. He’s the sort to meet up with the Dead Hand and come home minus one of his own.

Could Nelly have been that red-haired witch, screaming with laughter and swooping through the trees? It was hard to imagine.

“She got them sharp witch eyes,” said the Swamp Reeve. “I marked it well last time I seen her.”

Now I wished I weren’t eavesdropping. I didn’t want to hear about catching witches, and hanging witches. But you can’t just stop eavesdropping. Too bad a person can’t close her ears.

“Us mustn’t go by eyes,” said the Chime Child. “Too many people what doesn’t be witches been hanged as witches.” I pictured her, wind-roughened face, thinning hair. She was utterly unremarkable in appearance. You’d never guess she had a foot in the world of the Old Ones. You’d never guess she had the second sight.

“Witchcraft be a sin,” said the Chime Child, “but hanging an innocent, that be a sin too.”

“The Chime Child,” said the constable, “she be in the right o’ it. There can’t be no hanging o’ Nelly, not ’til us matches up the evidence.”

“An’ I doesn’t like hanging nobody,” said the Hangman, “without I be sure as sure. I doesn’t like hanging no girl what be said to be a witch, an’ she don’t turn to dust.”

The Hangman was a great ox of a fellow. I pictured him watching the hanged girl, waiting for her to turn to dust. The Hangman need only wait a quarter hour, and if the body continues to swing, he can be sure she wasn’t an Old One.

He can be sure that Judge Trumpington and the Chime Child made a mistake.

It works the other way too. Imagine Briony struck dead by a runaway horse. Imagine Father looking on, fretting about the cost of coffins these days, when of a sudden, his daughter’s body turns to dust. He’d made a mistake too. He’d never really known her at all.

“I got you some evidence,” said the coastguard chief. “I seen Nelly one midnight, dancing widdershins ’neath a horned moon.”

“Did you see her close-like?” said the Chime Child, as though she knew the answer would be
no,
which it was. “I be getting on in years. My mind, it don’t be clear like ’twere. I be scareful to judge
yes
when the truth, it be
no
. A person can’t just be thinking it be Nelly Daws dancing. He needs must know it be Nelly Daws.”

Now came Eldric and Cecil, laden with pies and pork and biscuits and ale and sherry, and now Rose had something to say, which put a blessed end to my eavesdropping. When Rose speaks, you can’t hear anything else.

“I knew it!”

“Knew what?” said Father.

“I knew the food would be brown. I don’t like brown.”

It was true, everything was brown: the pie, the sherry, the gravy, the biscuits, the caraway seeds on the biscuits.