“Is he staying somewhere else?” Gwyneth suggested, though it hardly seemed likely. “He wouldn’t do that without telling you.”
“All his things are still here. All his books. He hasn’t even been back for a change of clothes, so far as I know. And you know how he likes to dress. Mr. Trent hasn’t seen him, either.”
“Aunt Phoebe asked after him; he hasn’t come to tea again.”
“He seems to have vanished ... What trouble could he possibly have gotten into between here and Aislinn House?”
Gwyneth looked back at him silently, equally mystified. Daria, her eyes flickering between their faces, filled her lungs abruptly and bellowed across the yard in a voice not even her brother recognized, “Raven! Stop dawdling among the horses and come here! We are riding back to Aislinn House.”
She had mounted and turned her horse onto the road before her bewildered brother extricated himself from the carriage harness. Gwyneth sighed, moved reluctantly to her horse.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Judd. “We are never able to talk.”
“No,” he agreed somberly. “Let me know if you find him?” She nodded; he added quickly, “Let me know if you don’t.”
“Yes,” she said, and followed the impulsive Daria. Midway down the headland, Raven, raising a formidable army of arguments, including rudeness, inconvenience, and the prospect of disturbing Lady Eglantyne, finally persuaded his sister not to gallop back to Aislinn House and announce her intention to search for the missing Mr. Dow in the closets or under the beds.
“Miss Beryl would surely have mentioned it if he were staying there,” he said at least half a dozen times. “She seemed quite surprised that he might be in Sealey Head at all. He probably left town suddenly on business, and of course he will be back. He would have told us otherwise.”
Gwyneth stopped with relief in front of her house, let them return to Sproule Manor without her.
Daria, leaning from her saddle, whispered fiercely, “Keep looking for him; so shall I. Let me know if you hear anything at all.”
“I will. I promise.”
Gwyneth watched them ride sedately down the street, Raven leading the horse she had ridden, and no doubt thinking of Miranda Beryl, his sister riding silently beside him, her thoughts no doubt in a turmoil over Mr. Ridley Dow.
Sproules in love, she thought with wonder, and went upstairs quickly, before Aunt Phoebe noticed she was back, to continue her story.
She wrote:
You could recognize them for what they weren’t by looking deeply into their eyes. Unfortunately neither of the humans standing on the deck of the Chimera was in the habit of looking deeply into anyone’s eyes; they hadn’t looked so at their wives in years. But had Sir Magnus Sproule or Mr. Blair done so, they would have seen the restless wilderness within, the vast expanse of an unknown kingdom the strangers viewed daily; it left its imprint on their pupils, in their very thoughts. They saw to the depths of what mortals, with their little lines and hooks and nets, barely penetrated.
Princes of the sea, they were, lords of the watery realm beneath the waves. And following the same impulse the sea has had toward land since tides began, they longed to conquer it, to claim and to possess it, beginning with the rugged rocky shore and crag of stone that was Sealey Head. That humans already claimed and possessed it was a fact to which they were entirely indifferent. The wave, after all, does not consider the lives it feeds, the dead it washes away, when it overwhelms a village of barnacles on a rock. Its sole concern is its own power.
So, too, with the visitors on their pretty ship. It was not armed because they had all the power they needed within themselves to take Sealey Head.
All they needed was permission.
“Gwyneth!”
Gwyneth sighed and put down her pen.
Fifteen
Miranda Beryl’s entourage of friends and their servants lodged at the inn showed no signs, after several days, of leaving for more convenient quarters. Indeed, they had already given a predictable shape to their days. Just after noon, never before, they began to appear in the taproom, one by one, like a gaudy and ruffled flock of birds homing in on their favorite watering hole. Mr. Pilchard ran errands early to be back in time to cook for them. He sent up their breakfasts as the orders came down: hot, crisp rolls, butter and strawberry jam, baked eggs flavored with herbs and cheese, sausages, a hash of finely chopped onion, smoked salmon, and potato, hot slabs of clove-scented ham, plenty of tea and coffee and ale. All of this was delivered to the taproom by two of Colin Baker’s boys, who were used to kitchen chores, dodging choppers and elbows, and remembering the sudden, urgent whims of the guests.
When the guests finished breakfast, they wandered outside, where their servants, for whom Mr. Pilchard had cooked much earlier, had horses saddled, carriages ready and waiting. By noon, the guests had rattled away to Aislinn House. The inn was quiet all afternoon. Mrs. Quinn and Lily tidied the rooms. Mr. Pilchard cleaned the kitchen and began to prepare for the next meal. Judd walked into town, placed orders for the evening meal at the fish market, the butcher, the grocer, as Mr. Pilchard suggested. He kept an eye open for Ridley Dow, whom he did not see, and for Gwyneth, whom he did once or twice, at a distance and accompanied by a Sproule.
Finished with his errands, he made a brief appearance at the stationer’s. He would poke his head in the door, catch Mr. Trent’s eye. Mr. Trent would shake his head, then raise a brow. Judd would shake his own head. They would both shrug. Judd would return to the inn.
The guests would wander back in the evenings sometime between sundown and midnight. Those who came back earlier usually began earnest and quite ruthless card games in the taproom. Mr. Pilchard made them sandwiches or entire suppers, whatever they requested. Judd stayed in the taproom, serving them, relaying orders to Mr. Pilchard, who seemed tireless and constantly inventive. By midnight the guests retired with their cards, bottles of brandy, and late-night repasts to their rooms. Judd and a yawning Mr. Quinn cleaned the taproom. Judd checked the kitchen before he went to bed, found it empty, the cook in bed, he assumed, and the spotless pots ready for the morning. As always, he read himself to sleep.
In the late afternoon, before the guests began appearing and duty called Judd back to the taproom, he visited his father.
Dugold took an innkeeper’s interest in the daily business. After Judd described the most exotic of the outfits their guests wore that day—a cloak lined with lemon satin, a pair of gold shoe buckles shaped like spaniels—he would produce whatever vexations had plagued him during the day. Dugold always had some advice to share, whether or not Judd had already solved the problem with the leaky pipe, the broken beer tap handle, or Mrs. Quinn wanting to tie bows on all the doorknobs.
Then Judd would fetch a mug of beer for his father, and, in that idle hour before sundown, continue reading The Secret Education of Nemos Moore. Dugold, after offering the opinion that magic he couldn’t see wasn’t of much use to him, usually napped through much of the book. But he woke up when Nemos Moore found his way to Sealey Head.
“Must have gotten lost,” he muttered. “All that magical power he says he has, and he winds up in a town full of dead fish.”
“No, no; he was following the sound of the bell.”
“The bell.” His father’s eyes sought his, came close. “Our bell? The one in the water?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
Judd skimmed the page silently. “A source of great power, he calls it. An ancient, labyrinthine mystery.”