“Who are you?” she asked with wonder, and he smiled.
No knight would ever have smiled at a question from her.
“Ridley Dow,” he said. “I like to read, to lead a scholarly and eccentric life, to learn peculiar things. Why, for instance, a bell no one has ever seen has rung the sun down at Sealey Head every day for centuries.”
She drew back from him a little, puzzled. “The bell.”
“Do you ring it?” he asked, watching her steadily, the smile gone now.
“No.”
“Who does?”
“I don’t know. Maeve, maybe. One of the other ladies. It’s someone’s ritual; I don’t know whose.”
“What do you do when it rings? Where are you at that moment?”
“In my chambers waiting to be called for supper.”
He blinked. “It’s a dinner bell?”
“It’s the bell that rings when the sun disappears.”
He looked a little bewildered. “But you go to eat, then.”
“I continue my ritual,” she explained. “I go down to the great hall where the knights are gathered after their return. I light some candles but not others, place this chair here, fill this cup but not that. When I have finished everything, I sit where I am escorted by one or another of the knights. They usually speak only to one another unless it’s part of their ritual. For instance when the knight asked me to marry him.” She shook her head slightly, her eyes widening, stunned and bright with pain at the memory. “I didn’t know him. They change constantly, it seems. But it didn’t matter, since they barely see us. Any more than you would see a candle, which always changes and always looks the same until it dies and you replace it with another just like it. He spoke to me. Asked me that question. And I asked why? Why should I? I was just another candle in his eyes.” Her hand slid to her cheek. “So he hit me.”
“He—”
“It was ritual, Aveline told me later. It was ritual and I had stopped everything to ask why. He had no other answer. And then, two nights ago, he escorted me to the chair beside him, and told me we would marry when the moon is full.”
Ridley opened his mouth, found no words, either, for a moment. “What will you do?” he asked finally.
“Marry him. Have his child. That much is ritual. But not even he can tell me not to wonder, not to look for answers. He won’t ever care what I’m thinking, only that I continue the ritual. What I do outside of the ritual he will never ask.”
She heard his breath, softly loosed, as he gazed at her. “Emma’s mother told me something about this. But hearing it from you makes it so much more complex.”
“Why?” she asked curiously. “It is what it is, no matter how you hear it.”
“Yes.” He hesitated again. “But then I didn’t know you. Before I met you, you were just a princess. Just another candle. Now you are Ysabo, braver, I would bet my small but comfortable fortune, than any knight in that great hall. And,” he added, gazing at her, “you have the most amazing face.”
She smiled. “I know. Aveline says I’m a goblin.”
“If goblin you are, with that great mass of curly hair, those eyes speckled like birds’ eggs, that smile that illumines your entire face, then goblins must be of such beauty that only the rarest of beings can recognize it.”
She felt that smile in her again, even as she shook the words away, like a bird flicking rain from its wings. “The knights never, ever, ever, say such things.”
“Then they are—well. They are spellbound. Unfortunately, not by you.”
“Spellbound,” she repeated, a word she had never spoken before. Then she started, stepping away from the book. “I must go. You are spellbinding me, making me forget the ritual.”
He nodded, taking her place at the stand; she left him in silent contemplation of the empty book.
She thought about him as she cleaned the crows’ tower, picked up feathers and scrubbed the stones. As usual, the crows gathered around her while she worked, watched her, croaking softly, their coarse, thick feathers rustling. Their crow noises mingled with the sough of trees, other birds, the distant sounds from the sea. She didn’t notice at first when they grew silent, stopped picking at their feathers and commenting to one another. She looked up finally, saw them ringed on the wall around her, as still as though they had been turned to stone.
Spellbound.
Abruptly they all fluttered up into the air, still silent as smoke, in a great spiral, turning and turning until the highest flier broke their pattern and made a straight line for the sea.
The rest followed.
Ysabo sat back on her heels, wet from the scrub water, and watched them with wonder. She heard the breathing beside her finally and started. Ridley was crouched beside her, watching as well.
“Not part of the ritual?” he guessed.
She shook her head. “They’ve never done that before. They have always stayed with me until I’m finished.” She put her hand to her mouth suddenly, wet cloth dangling from her fingers. “I wonder,” she whispered, “if they saw you.”
He blinked. “Not ordinary crows, then.”
“I’ve never known any but those. I don’t know what’s ordinary,” she answered, watching again as they streamed over the wood toward the craggy headland. “They seem to know things. The way they look at me. They seem to understand things. And I’ve seen what they do to other birds. They are ruthless.”
“Ah.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t follow me.”
“Not today,” he agreed, following their flight to the sea. “I’ll find some other ritual to watch. And I want, above all, to find that bell.” His eyes loosed the birds, looked at her again, smiling. “So. If you don’t see me for a while, don’t worry. I’ll be very careful.”
She nodded, unable to summon an answering smile. “I’ll know,” she warned him, “if you’re not.”
But supper that night was uninterrupted by any break in the ritual, any challenge to the knights, anything at all out of the ordinary, not even so much as an unexpected word, an interested glance from the knight who had escorted her to the chair beside him, and whose name, by the end of the evening, she still did not know.
Fourteen
Gwyneth rode up the weedy road through the wood to Aislinn House with Raven and Daria, half-listening as they argued about propriety. The rest of her mind was on the elegant ship she had left anchored among the fishing boats in Sealey Head harbor. Exactly who were those fascinating strangers in their rich garb who could lower a sail by lifting an eyebrow? She knew what she wanted them to do. But how to explain who they were, where they came from, and what had lured them to the shabby little sea town that was growing poorer and more desperate by the day?
“Well, of course we won’t call it a ball,” Daria said. “Not under the circumstances. However, Miss Beryl must be used to a constant round of amusements—parties, dinners, dances, concerts, riding, picnicking—in Landringham society. She might be grateful for any entertainment here. And the sooner the better, as Mother says. Anything could happen at any moment, and then they must all be plunged into mourning clothes.”
“Still, a small, intimate supper might be more suitable first,” Raven mused. “Just our closest family—”
“And Gwyneth.”
“Of course Gwyneth.” He turned his head to bestow his most intimate smile upon her. “I scarcely remember anymore that she is not part of the family, we are all together so often.”
“Perhaps you should make a greater effort to remember that she is not, as yet,” Daria said so pointedly that Gwyneth brought her thoughts away from her handsome, dangerous adventurers with something akin to panic.
“I think you could call it a supper,” she said quickly, “and still invite a few neighbors as well.”
“And have a little music,” Daria added.
Raven rolled his eyes and sighed expansively. “Then we might as well invite half of Sealey Head, and have dancing, and call it a ball.”
“What do you think, Gwyneth?” Daria appealed. “We can have music and dancing in a tasteful way that wouldn’t be disrespectful to Miss Beryl’s sentiments, couldn’t we? It would be perfectly proper, wouldn’t it? Your aunt seemed to think so yesterday, at tea.”
“Aunt Phoebe thinks everything you do is proper.”
“An amiable woman,” Raven said, looking gratified. “How fortunate we were to have her come and live with you after—” He paused, cleared his throat. “After your misfortune. She seems extraordinarily fond of you and very concerned about your future happiness. So she gave me to understand yesterday.”
“Did she?” Gwyneth said, dismayed. He gave her another meaningful smile.
“Very much so. In fact—Well.” He checked himself again. “This is hardly the time—and we are in the midst of deciding what to do about Miss Beryl. It’s difficult to know what might be proper according to Landringham standards: society is so much more complex there.”
“They can’t be that different from us,” Daria objected. “Anyway, we set the standards in Sealey Head. And it’s not as though we would be dancing in Aislinn House itself, with poor Lady Eglantyne upstairs in her bed. A ball might be exactly what’s needed to alleviate the dreariness of the occasion. And soon. If she dies before our party, we certainly can’t have it after the funeral. I know!” She bounced a little, excitedly, in her saddle. “Let’s go and ask Ridley Dow. He’d know what’s proper in the city.”
“Surely not this minute,” Raven protested. “He’s the opposite direction.”
“Oh, why couldn’t he have come to tea at the Blairs’ last night! What more interesting or important could he have been doing instead?” She turned to Gwyneth. “What can he do with himself all day in Sealey Head?”
“He reads a good deal, I think.”
“He must rest his eyes sometimes.”
“The inn might be full of people he knows from Landringham,” Raven suggested. “Perhaps he was unable to detach himself.”
“Let’s go there and find out,” Daria said firmly. “After we’ve paid our call on Miss Beryl.”
“Then we wait to consult with Mr. Dow before we invite Miss Beryl to Sproule Manor?”
“No, there’s no time to wait,” Daria said, contradicting herself. “Besides, what if he’s not there to ask?”
Raven exhaled noisily again, turning his eyes toward the sky, where a squirrel on a branch above his head testily chided the interlopers. “Then what do you want to do? Invite her to a small dinner party, a full-blown ball—Which?”
“Why don’t you ask Miss Beryl?” Gwyneth suggested, inspired. Both Sproules gazed at her wordlessly. “Just ask her if she would feel comfortable at such a gathering, and with or without music.”
The Sproules’ eyes left her face; they consulted one another, still silent, and came to an accord, apparently, for Raven said appreciatively to Gwyneth, “Very nice, very proper. How neatly you found our way out of that tangle. Worthy of your Aunt Phoebe.”
“Music,” Daria said, moving along to the next item of discussion. “Something more refined than country dancing? We can’t have people red-faced and stomping on the floorboards at such a delicate time.”
“Where,” Raven asked, “do you propose to find anything refined around here?”
“Well, I don’t know. Surely somebody knows somebody. We’ll ask Mr. Trent.” She was abruptly still again, her hand reaching across to grip Gwyneth’s, reins and all, at the sight of the half dozen carriages in front of the stables. “So many people,” she sighed contentedly. “It will be a grand party.”
Barely had they dismounted when stablers came to take their horses. Old Fitch opened the door for them. The changes in the house were immediately apparent as they crossed the threshold. Swathed ghosts looming in the rooms had become furniture again. Curtains were pulled back; windows opened; the house smelled of trees and wildflowers instead of polish and ancient soot. Even more unexpected was the faint, continuous tension in the air of people moving, breathing, rustling, doors swinging open, closing again on half-heard words. The house felt full, Gwyneth thought, vibrant with so many invisible people, and she wondered in sudden horror if they had come too early, at midmorning, interrupting, with their country ways, the leisurely habits of those who thought the sun rose at noon.
Fitch showed them into an aired and polished drawing room and went to inform Miss Beryl of their presence.
Miranda Beryl came to greet them almost immediately; no sign, at least from her, that she didn’t know when morning began. Her rather chilly beauty seemed a bit frayed, Gwyneth thought, after the initial, startling glimpse of it. The pale skin around her sea-green eyes was shadowy; she looked, as she crossed the threshold, as though she were trying to summon a smile and swallow a yawn at the same time.
“Good morning,” she said in her deep, sweet voice. “I am Miranda Beryl. How kind of you to take the trouble to come and call on me. Fitch, please tell Emma to bring us tea.”
A tall, thin man had accompanied her into the room. He had fair, lank hair as straight as straw, and remarkably bright eyes, vivid as mother-of-pearl, in a lightly lined, expressionless face. He cleared his throat very softly; Miss Beryl added indifferently, “Oh. And this is Mr. Moren, who was kind enough to ride up from the inn this morning to inquire after my great-aunt.”