“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. “Wealth,” she saw, and “men,” perhaps even “marriageable men.” At that point in her tedious life, she would have wedded the Pirate King himself just to get away from Aislinn House and her dissolute father.
And as they watched, they were watched.
“Gwyneth!” Aunt Phoebe called from the bottom of the attic stairs. “Are you coming?”
Gwyneth jumped, having forgotten, for the moment, which world she inhabited: her aunt’s voice boomed incongruously across the yardarm of the mysterious ship.
“Coming!” she answered, wondering where, and then remembered: she had promised to accompany Phoebe for various errands along Water Street. She left her page to dry, wiped her pen nib, and capped the ink, all while getting to her feet and dodging, out of habit, the sharply sloping roof.
She opened the door, peered down; her aunt had already bustled away, calling to the twins. Gwyneth, still feeling the tidal pull of her story, closed the door firmly and regretfully upon it, and went down to join Phoebe.
The young maid Ivy was with her, looking flurried, her arms full of Dulcie. “I can’t find them, ma’am.”
Phoebe put her fingers delicately to her eyes while her voice gathered power enough to be heard behind couches in the parlor, potted palms in the library, and whatever books the twins might have vanished into.