“She hides . . . her liquor . . . in the dungeons!” Nathan managed through bursts of hilarity. “All the most valuable secrets in the world—the location of the fountain of youth for all we know!—and she uses it for her liquor stash.”
“Well,” I said, “I suppose for her it is the fountain of youth. She’s certainly well . . . pickled.”
Nathan collapsed against me giggling. It was so good to hear him laugh like his old self that I added, “Perhaps she stores the stuff here to age it like fine wine.”
“I sincerely doubt she leaves it long enough to age it,” Nathan replied, wiping his eyes. “Imagine what we could do with this knowledge. We could switch her liquor for one of Jager’s potions. Turn her hair lavender . . .”
“Or give her a shape-shifting potion that makes her grow horns,” I spluttered.
But Nathan had stopped listening. He had spotted a book on a shelf that interested him. As soon as he plucked it off the shelf the hunch came back to his shoulders and all the merriment drained out of his face.
“Yes, that would be droll,” he replied absently. “Well, if you’ve got what you want, then, I’m going upstairs to do some reading. You can let yourself out.” He drifted up the stairs, leaving me alone in the dark.
I went to the shelf from which Miss Frost had removed her bottle and saw that there was an empty space between the books. I’d just dusted this shelf so I knew that it held forbidden books on contacting evil spirits. What would Miss Frost want with those?
Unless she was the spy Raven had warned me about.
28
I WROTE A letter to the head librarian of the Hawthorn School in Scotland, whose name, I learned from Miss Corey’s files, was Herbert Farnsworth. I considered pretending to be one of my teachers, but in the end I told him that my mother had been looking for the book A Darkness of Angels before she died. Generally all the girls posted their letters by leaving them in a basket in the front hall, where they were collected by Gillie and then taken to the town post office. I’d seen Miss Frost idly rifling through these letters, though, tsking over bad penmanship and improper modes of address. If she were the spy, I couldn’t take the chance of her seeing that I was writing to the librarian at Hawthorn, so I decided to walk into town and post it myself, even though it was against the rules to leave the grounds without permission. I waited for a morning when Daisy had vanished again (to wherever it was she went) and Helen was busy writing a letter to her mother, and then snuck out and walked the mile into town myself.
It felt good to get out of the castle and into the crisp, clean air away from all the whispers and secrets lurking around the halls of Blythewood. It was cold, but I was wearing my Christmas present from my grandmother, an oxblood-red wool coat with black passementerie embroidery on the sleeves and hem and plush black fur at the collar and the cuffs. It had come with a matching fur hat and muff that Agnes had said in a separate note were just like the ones the youngest tsarina wore. I did feel like a Russian princess in the ensemble.
But I still didn’t feel like I fit in at Blythewood. If the girls at school knew what I was really like they would turn away in horror—even Sarah, who’d been so kind to me these last few months, would never understand my feelings about one of the creatures she blamed for abducting her best friend. I would be expelled, as my mother had been. And then where would I go? My grandmother wouldn’t take me in after a second humiliation to the family name. Even Caroline Janeway might not be able to employ me if I’d embarrassed myself at Blythewood when she depended so much on the school for her trade.
No wonder my mother had drifted from place to place. When you didn’t fit in anywhere, you had to keep moving.
By the time I reached the post office I’d worked myself into a tizzy. The salutary effects of the fresh air wore off as I stood on line in the snug, low-ceilinged building. I was sweating under my Russian princess coat, my shoulders and back itching against the wool. When the postal clerk looked up from my letter and said, “All the way to Scotland, eh? Have you family there?” I almost burst into tears.
“No,” I managed hoarsely, “no family.”
Outside on the street the cold air snaked under my loosened collar and spread its icy touch down my damp shoulder blades. It felt as if someone had laid his hands on my back. And then I heard a bell tolling inside my head. I whirled around. A shadow moved on the front porch of the inn next door to the post office. I squinted at it, the bright winter sun glancing off the glass windows of the inn momentarily blinding me. I shaded my eyes and saw him—the man in the Inverness cape. He was standing beside a column, facing me, his face shadowed by his Homburg hat.
Then he tipped his hat and smiled at me. A wisp of smoke curled out of his mouth.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. But suddenly I was tired of running. My mother had spent her whole life running, and look where it had gotten her.
I straightened my back and felt the ice along my shoulder blades turn to steel. I strode up the flagstone path, straight toward the man in the Inverness cape. Two women whisked their skirts out of my way and whispered behind their fur muffs. Let the great Shadow Master take me on here in front of the good people of Rhinebeck. Let him loose his crows at me and turn into a writhing smoke monster. Let him . . .
He bowed low in front of me, sweeping his hat out in an arc. I stopped abruptly, my boot heels screeching on the bluestone flags. I held my breath as he lifted his head, steeling myself for a monster.
Instead, a handsome gentleman of perhaps forty-odd years with refined features smiled at me. He had a long narrow face, an aquiline nose, and dark hair brushed back from a high forehead with two silver streaks at his temples that looked like wings. His eyes were dark—almost as black as Raven’s, but flatter and colder. One eyebrow was raised archly in query.
“I do not believe I’ve had the pleasure of your acquaintance, Miss. Was there some way I could be of assistance to you?”
Did I have the wrong man? Had I imagined that wisp of smoke?
“I . . . er . . . I thought you were someone else,” I stammered.
“Ah, I am relieved. You approached me as if you had a vendetta against me. I would not like to be the man who crossed you so. Allow me to introduce myself.”
He held out his hand. As if lifted by a string, my own hand floated up and found itself in his. It was like dropping my hand into ice water. The iciness spread from my hand, up my arm, and into my chest—a cold so intense it burned. I looked down, expecting either a block of ice or a charred lump where my hand had been. My gloved hand lay lightly in his gloved hand, but I could no more have removed it than if it had been trapped inside a metal vise. I lifted my eyes back to his.
“Judicus van Drood,” he said.
“Avaline Hall,” I replied, feeling as if someone else was speaking. The numbness had reached my lips. I had a horrified feeling that anything might come out of them—shocking improprieties, bawdy songs, gibberish.
“Ah, I believe I knew your mother,” he said. “You have her eyes. My condolences for her untimely demise.”
“Thank you,” I said through frozen lips, “for your sympathy.” Inside I was screaming. I would rather have shouted obscenities than trade polite niceties with the man who had hounded my mother to her death.
“Such a shame,” he continued, clucking his tongue as though my mother’s death was a broken vase. “For such a lovely woman to die so young. I’m afraid that her constitution was weakened by too much intellectual stimulation. Education can have that unfortunate effect on the frailer sex. Even after she left Blythewood she wasted her time reading foolish books, didn’t she? In fact, those last few years she was engaged in a search for a particular book, was she not?”
I tried to clamp my lips shut, but the words came bubbling up. “Y-yes . . . she sent me to the library for s-s-some books . . .”
Hot tears sprung to my eyes, but the
y froze before they could fall. The burning ice had risen to my eyes. Soon it would be inside my brain and then I would be his entirely.
“I just hope you’re not following in your mother’s footsteps, Ava. I was very concerned to hear that you’ve been looking through the Blythewood special collections.”
I wanted to ask how he knew that, but the words would not come out of my mouth. He smiled, parting his lips, and a puff of smoke slipped out of his mouth. Before my horrified eyes, I watched it form into the shape of a crow that flapped its wings and settled on his shoulders. I wanted to turn my head and see if anyone else could see it, but I couldn’t move.
“Never mind who told me that you’ve been looking through the special collections. I know you haven’t found it there. But I am intrigued about this little trip to the post office. Have you located a copy of the book? If so, I’d very much like to know where.”
Mr. Farnsworth’s name and address were on the tip of my tongue. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep them from spilling out. The taste of blood momentarily melted the ice in my mouth. Iron and blood, Mr. Jager had once told us, were our best defenses against other magic. But it wasn’t enough. The name was still coming . . .
The church bells began to ring the noon hour. Van Drood swiveled his neck toward the sound. The minute his eyes were off mine I felt a loosening of the ice. I wrenched my hand out of his, but I still couldn’t move my legs. He snapped his head back toward me.
The ninth bell rang. If I didn’t get away before the toll ended I would give him Mr. Farnsworth’s name and something terrible would happen to him. The bells tolled ten and I heard it echo within me, the iron of the bell reverberating in the iron of my blood. The bells tolled eleven. The sound was inside me, a part of me. I was a chime child. The bells belonged to me.
The bells tolled twelve.
Judicus van Drood lifted his hand and reached for me.
The bells tolled thirteen.
His eyes widened, black pupils swelling over the whites.
The bells tolled fourteen.
His hand was frozen midair. The shadow crow on his shoulder shattered into shards and the ice that held me shattered with it.
The bells tolled fifteen. How many more chimes did I have? I should bolt.
I looked into van Drood’s eyes. The black pupils had totally overrun the white. That darkness seethed like smoke. A vein throbbed at his temple so angrily it looked as though it was going to explode.
I smiled. “My mother always said that men who oppose women’s education are afraid of women becoming too strong because they themselves are too weak. You have a weakness, Mr. van Drood. I will find it and destroy you for what you did to my mother. Good day.”
I turned and walked back down the bluestone path. Pins and needles stabbed my legs as my limbs slowly came back to life. I had to concentrate on not falling and strive very hard not to break into a run. The bells were still tolling. Men and women stood on the street staring up at the church’s bell tower, some walking toward the church.
I didn’t know why the bells were still ringing, but I knew I had to get as far away from van Drood as I could before they stopped. The streets were crowded now, full of townspeople wondering why their church bells were tolling as if for a funeral or a fire. I crossed the street to get farther away from van Drood and picked up my pace as my legs warmed up. At the corner of Livingston Street I bumped into a short plump woman.
“Pardon me,” I said, trying to get around her, but she grabbed hold of my hand. I let out a yelp and pulled away, frightened of being touched so soon after van Drood’s hands had been on me.
“It is you!” The little woman cried. “I knew it! I told Hattie that only a chime child could do this.”
I looked down into Emmaline Sharp’s kind plump face.
“Are you in danger?” she asked.
I nodded and began to shake.
“You poor child, your hands are like ice. Come along to Violet House with me.”
“But the bells,” I said, looking back down Main Street. Van Drood was no longer standing in front of the inn. “If I started them mustn’t I stop them?”
“They’ll stop when you feel safe again. Come. We’ll sit you by the fire and get some hot tea into you.” She steered me down Livingston Street, past houses where people stood on their porches and in their yards, talking about why the bells were ringing. Harriet Sharp stood in front of Violet House with her brother Thaddeus. She was stroking his arm, murmuring something to him. His sparse hair was standing up in disordered clumps and he was rocking on his heels, clearly agitated. When he saw me with Emmaline he began to hop in place.
“Be gone, say the Bells of Rhinebeck,” he yelled out at the top of his voice. “Shadows fly back to Hell’s Gate!”
Hell’s Gate? Where was that? Could Uncle Taddie know what had happened from the sound of the bells?
“Yes, yes, Taddie,” Aunt Harriet said soothingly. “The shadows are all gone. And here’s Ava come to have tea. Why don’t you go to the greenhouse and pick her a posy?”
Taddie grinned at me. “A posy for the chime child who banished the shadows. Yes, yes!” He turned and zigzagged across the lawn to the greenhouse. Aunt Harriet turned to her sister.
“I see you were right, Emmy, it was Ava! She must have been in terrible danger. But,” she turned to me, “you’re safe now. Come on in. Emmy said there’d be company for tea, so Doris baked a Victoria sponge cake.”
I was ushered up the porch steps and through the front door by both aunts. The house was warm and smelled of violets, tea, and cake. I breathed in the comforting warm aroma and willed my heart to stop racing. You’re safe, you’re safe, I told myself, but still the church bells rang. Would I ever feel really safe again?
Hattie and Emmy bustled me into the conservatory, where a fire crackled on the hearth. They sat me down in an overstuffed chintz chair and draped a cashmere shawl around my shoulders as I falteringly told them about my encounter with the Shadow Master, whose name, I now knew, was Judicus van Drood. I thought I saw the aunts exchange a meaningful look when I mentioned his name, but then Hattie quickly poured another cup of tea and Emmy threw another log on the fire. Still the bells rang.
Doris brought in a silver tray laden with hot buttery scones and golden sponge cake. Taddie came in from the greenhouse with a bouquet of violets and laid them on the tea tray. The entire household bustled around me, but still the bells rang.
A floorboard creaked behind me and the aunts and Taddie looked up. “Oh,” Emmy said, “I’d almost forgotten. You haven’t met our new boarder . . .”
The last thing I wanted was to meet a stranger. I looked up at the tall dark man entering the room, wondering how on earth I was going to manage polite conversation . . . and my mouth fell open.
“Avaline Hall, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Corbin,” Harriet said.
The dark-haired young man bowed his head in greeting. His hair was slicked back and he wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses, a bulky tweed jacket, and a barely-suppressed grin. Despite his urbane appearance I had no trouble recognizing Raven.
There was an awkward silence as I stared up at him open-mouthed. Then Taddie broke the silence by turning to his sisters.
“Listen,” he cried, “the bells have stopped!”
29
MY SECOND AFTERNOON tea at Violet House was a stifled affair compared to the first one. I could barely string two words together after the shock of finding Raven in the Misses Sharps’ conservatory dressed as an ordinary mortal—and a rather fussy one at that. He even had on spats and braces! I wondered if the latter might have something to do with keeping his wings in place. I found myself peering at his back every time he leaned over to pour out the tea.
Thankfully, the Sharp sisters attributed my muteness and jumpiness to the shock I’d had. It was soon clear to me that they had no idea that thei
r boarder was a Darkling—and that they were entirely enamored of him.
“Imagine our luck!” Hattie enthused, accepting a cup of tea from Raven, “to find such a suitable boarder. Mr. Corbin is an apprentice clockmaker. He’s helping Taddie fix all of Father’s clocks.”
“Raymond says I have a sharp eye for working with mechanical things,” Taddie said with an adoring look at Raven.
“Raymond?” I repeated, lifting an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Raven said, “but all my friends call me Ray. If it isn’t too impertinent, I’d be happy if you did, too, Miss Hall. Even though we’ve just met I feel as if we’ve known each other for ages.”
I saw the aunts exchange pleased smiles. “Oh, we’re so glad you’re getting on,” Aunt Emmy said. “I had a feeling”—she winked at me—“that you would. Mr. Corbin . . . Ray,” she corrected herself after a mock stern look from Raven, “is interested in all the things you are, Ava—books, poetry, bird-watching—why, he’s even made a study of bells!”
“You’re too kind, Miss Emmaline. My study of bells is only a component of my interest in clocks. After all, what good’s a clock that doesn’t chime the—”
As if on cue, all the clocks in the house began to chime the half hour. They each played a different tune, but those tunes somehow added to each other to create a lovely symphony, just as Mr. Sharp must have originally planned. The two sisters listened with their hands clasped and eyes closed. When the chiming ended, Miss Emmaline wiped a tear from her eye. “We haven’t heard them all chime together like that since Father died. We are so very grateful, Mr. . . . Raymond.”
“And I am so grateful for the hospitality all three of you have shown me,” Raven said, looking down at his teacup. “It means so much to me to be made to feel so . . . at home.” He looked up and I saw a genuine look of gratitude on his face.