Blythewood (23 page)

The confusion wasn’t just in my head—it seemed to be in
my body. Alternating waves of hot and cold broke over me as I
remembered in turn the icy grip of the crows’ talons and then
the heat of the Darkling’s touch. But there was no time to sort
through my warring feelings. We were summoned to Dame
Beckwith’s study.

I’d passed the tall oak double doors to the headmistress’s
study in the north wing a number of times on my way to classes
and noticed that there always seemed to be a few girls fidgeting
nervously on a long narrow bench waiting for the summons to
enter. I had hoped I might never be one of them.

lingering light of the sunset. Glass doors led onto a balcony
overlooking the river. The sun had sunk below the mountains on the other side of the river, turning the ridges deep
blue and purple. Wisps of cloud flared pink and lilac above
them. Glancing at them reminded me of the Darkling’s darkened face and the flash of his wings behind him. Those wings
weren’t entirely black—they held the iridescent colors of the
sunset in them.

I was startled out of my reverie by a touch of a hand—cooler than the Darkling’s hand and smaller, but no less firm in its
grip. It was Dame Beckwith, who had risen from her desk and
grasped my hand, her steady gray eyes gazing deeply into mine.

“Are you all right?” she asked me. “Are you sure you’ve
come to no harm? I saw that monster hovering over you. I
thought . . .” Her voice cracked. I was shocked to see her strong,
firm jaw tremble as she fought back tears. “I thought we were
going to lose you.”

Sharp said, stepping forward, “and attacked the Darkling.”
“It was just lucky I grabbed that poker,” Nathan said. “I ran
down to fight the crows. I didn’t know the Darkling was there
until I reached the lawn.”
“He wasn’t at first,” Miss Sharp said. “It was just the crows.
But then he showed up.”
“It was when the crows attacked Ava,” Daisy said, her voice
small in the presence of Dame Beckwith. “I saw that beastly
crow sink its claws into Ava’s neck. I tried to get it off . . .” Daisy’s voice cracked.
I let go of Dame Beckwith’s hand and reached for Daisy.
“You were so brave!” I said. “I saw you swing your reticule at
the crows. And I know how much you love that bag!”
“It has all of Mr. Appleby’s letters in it!” she blurted out.
I stared at her for a moment, then felt something bubbling
up inside of me. I wasn’t sure if I were going to laugh or cry until
I heard Helen giggle, and then I began to laugh, too, helplessly
and a little bit hysterically. The adults all stood around staring
at us, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, until the door opened and
the housekeeper came in carrying a heavy silver tray loaded
with teacups, teapot, creamer, and sugar bowl.
“Oh thank goodness, Bertie,” Dame Beckwith said, “that’s
just the thing. I’m afraid these girls have had a terrible shock
and are now having an attack of nerves. They need hot tea with
plenty of sugar.”
Helen, Daisy, and I were made to sit down. Shawls were
draped over our shoulders and we were each given a cup of hot
sweet tea as if we were invalids. Although I would have thought
I’d had enough tea for one day I gulped the hot liquid gratefully.
I could feel the chill in my bones dissipating with each mouthful, but laughing with Helen and Daisy had chased the cold
away even more effectively than the tea.
“Now,” Dame Beckwith said briskly, “let me have the whole
story from the beginning, one at a time. Why don’t you go first,
Miss Sharp, as I believe you saw the shadow crows first?”
Shadow crows?
Was that what they were? I wondered as
Miss Sharp explained how she had realized right away that
the crows were a “malevolent manifestation.” She described
in some detail the mesmerism spell she had employed to divert
them. “I had to use shadow runes,” she said in a low whisper.
Shadow runes?
Hadn’t Mr. Jager said that shadow magic
was strictly forbidden?
“Perfectly acceptable under the circumstances,” Dame
Beckwith said briskly.
Mr. Bellows, when it was his turn, lavished praise on Miss
Sharp’s brilliant deployment of the spell and added that all but
three of the crows were effectively mesmerized.
“But those three broke away?” Dame Beckwith asked.
“Yes, they flew up the hill and attacked Daisy and Avaline.
Thank goodness the bells rang.”
Nathan was then asked to describe what he had seen from
the roof. He explained how he had recognized the crows as
shadow demons because we’d read about them in Mr. Bellows’s
class, and remembered that they could only be banished by the
tolling of the bells. He’d run to the belfry and alerted the bell
ringers on duty to ring a shadow-dispersing peal; then he’d run
down, grabbing a fire poker from the fireplace in the Great
Hall, and dashed out to see if he could help out on the ground,
which was when he saw the Darkling standing over me.
“The Darkling must have summoned the crows,” Mr. Bellows said. “The birds must be their minions. I’m afraid we may
have to call out the Hunt.”
“Wait,” I said, interrupting Mr. Bellows. “The Darkling
wasn’t trying to abduct me. He
saved
me!”
Dame Beckwith’s eyes narrowed. “And what makes you say
that, Miss Hall?”
I stared back at her, desperately trying to think of some
way of explaining how I felt about the Darkling without giving away how we’d first met. But if I didn’t say something,
Dame Beckwith would call out the Hunt to destroy him.
“Because he did it once before,” I said, trying to keep my
voice from shaking. “He saved me from the fire at the Triangle
Waist factory.”
I saw Helen and Daisy staring at me and then exchanging
a look.
“I’m sorry I never told you,” I told them. “But since I’ve come
here, I’ve tried to forget about it. At the hospital, they tried to
convince me that I’d imagined the boy with the wings who’d
saved me, but I recognized him the first night when I saw him
in the woods, and today I recognized the man in the Inverness
cape who I saw at the Triangle factory.”
I told them everything then: about seeing the man in the Inverness cape at the factory, and how the fire had burst through
the airshaft windows and raged across the factory floor—the
flames like burning rats and the smoke like the crows we’d
seen today. I found myself telling them about the girls pinned
between the flames and the glass windows—how they’d been
forced to jump or be burned alive. I told them about how the
boy had helped me and Etta and Tillie up to the roof, but the
crows had swooped down on us and the man in the Inverness
cape had pushed Tillie off the roof and the boy had saved my
life. I even told them about the months in the hospital and how
I’d seen the man in the Inverness cape there, and again below
my window at my grandmothers, and then today inside the
Wing & Clover.
As soon as I mentioned the Wing & Clover, Nate blanched. I
caught his eye and shook my head to let him know that I wouldn’t
give away that he’d been there, too, but he spoke up anyway.
“I saw him there—a man in a dark cloak and hat. His face
was shadowed and somehow strange.” Nate frowned and shook
his head. “I can’t somehow recall what he looked like.”
“Did he speak to you?” Dame Beckwith asked, her eyes
looking truly frightened.
“Yes . . .” Nate answered haltingly, as if trying to remember
something in a dream. He scratched his head, looking puzzled.
“Funny thing, I can’t seem to recall what we talked about.”
“He mesmerized you,” Dame Beckwith said, her voice
trembling. “That
monster
!”
“You know who he is?” I asked.
“I know
what
he is,” she said. Her face looked
stricken
, the
firm smooth flesh sagging around her jaw and making her look,
for the first time since I’d been here,
old
. “I-I can’t . . .
explain
,”
she stuttered, the first time I’d ever heard her voice falter. “But I
can
show
you. Come.”

We followed Dame Beckwith through the winding halls of the
North Wing to the library, barely able to keep up with her. Was
she going to show us something in a book? She swept past the
floor-to-ceiling shelves with the same intensity of purpose until she reached the enormous fireplace at the end of the room.
I’d spent many a class staring at the intricate carving on the
stone mantelpiece, following the pattern of interlocking spirals
and strange creatures. Did the identity of the man in the Inverness cape lie in the pattern’s labyrinthine maze? But Dame
Beckwith didn’t pause to examine the design. She placed her
index and middle fingers in the eyes of a particularly frightful
gargoyle and her thumb in its mouth. A horrible groan emanated from the stone, as if the gargoyle had indeed just had his eyes
poked out, and the floor beneath my feet trembled. The great
hearthstone in the fireplace was sinking as if the foundations
of Blythewood were crumbling. A cloud of soot and ash rose
into the rom. When it settled, a great gaping hole had opened
up inside the fireplace. Dame Beckwith took a lantern from the
mantel and held it above the hole, lighting up a curve of spiral
steps carved out of stone. Miss Corey was handing out lanterns
to each of us.

Poe’s stories.”
“Yes, the one in which the madman walls up his enemy in a
dungeon,” Helen said, shaking soot off her skirt, only the tremble in her voice giving away that she was afraid.
“Is that we’re going?” Daisy asked. “To the dungeons?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Miss Sharp explained. “We’re
going to see something in the Special Collections, which happen
to be in the dungeons. Watch your step. It’s a long way down.”

We descended single file down the narrow, spiraling steps. I
had the feeling that we were drilling our way into the ground.
The walls on either side of the stairs were damp and in the flickering lantern light mottled with mold and crawling things. It
felt like the well in my vision when the crow had dug its claws
into me. Perhaps I was still in the well. The Darkling had never
come to save me. My friends had never come to save me. Perhaps this was a punishment for asking who the man in the Inverness cape was. I wanted to shout that I didn’t need to know
anymore. Whatever it was that Dame Beckwith was going to
show us down here in the bowels of the earth, I didn’t need to
see it. Daisy and Helen were behind me on the stairs, but I could
push past them and run back up. I stopped, ready to turn, but
before I could, Nathan looked over his shoulder at me, his eyes
flashing silver in the lantern light.

“It’s all right,” he said, as if he knew what I was planning.
And suddenly it was—not because of his reassuring tone, but
because of the look in his eyes. He was afraid, too—maybe
more afraid than I was—but he was ready to brave his fears to
see what lay below. If he could do it, his look told me, so could I.

I nodded and followed him, wondering, as he turned, what
he was so afraid of.
At the bottom of the stairs we passed through a corridor
lined with filing cabinets and glass cases. Holding my lantern
up, I saw that some of the shelves contained books while others held mysterious objects—shells, bones with runic inscriptions on them, clay figurines, bronze bells coated with a green
crust-like algae, and long tattered tapestries embroidered with
enigmatic figures. The Special Collections wasn’t just a library; it was a museum of the Order’s history. Dame Beckwith
must want to show us some object from the collection. But she
passed by the cases without a glance to either side. At the end
of the corridor she asked Miss Corey to hold her lantern so she
could remove a ring of keys from her pocket and unlock a door.
“Leave your lanterns in the hall,” she told us. “You won’t
need them in here.”
One by one we left our lanterns on a ledge beside the door
and passed into a room so dark it was as if we’d been swallowed
by the earth. Then a light flared, a blinding pinpoint like an
exploding star. It ignited other stars—a galaxy. When my eyes
adjusted to the glare I saw that Dame Beckwith was lighting
the candles of an enormous crystal chandelier hanging from
a high domed ceiling. I’d seen chandeliers in the houses where
my mother and I delivered hats, but I’d never seen one like this.
It was crafted of concentric brass rings of candles and crystal
bells, each bell carved with intricate designs that sprung to life
as the candlelight touched them and cast shimmering patterns
over the walls and domed ceiling. By the candlelight I could
now see we were in a circular room, empty save for a round
table directly beneath the chandelier.
“How beautiful!” Daisy cried.
“Yes,” Helen agreed. “It’s bigger than the chandelier in the
Vanderbilt’s Hyde Park mansion.”
“It’s a candelabellum,” Miss Sharp told us, her voice hushed
in awe. “One of only three that the six bell maker’s daughters
made. This is the only one that’s survived.”
“And even this one is missing some of the original bells,”
Dame Beckwith said. “But it’s intact enough to tell its story.”
“Its story?” I asked, staring at the glittering crystal. It was
dazzling to look at, but the patterns carved into the crystal bells
were abstract and enigmatic. I couldn’t see how anyone could
read a story in those patterns.
“Yes, a story!” Mr. Bellows cried, leaning so close to the
candles that I thought he was going to singe his eyebrows. “The
candelabellum was designed so that the vibrations of the bells
would move the rings in such a way that the light refracting
through the crystal bells would cast a picture on a darkened
wall. That’s why the candelabella were always kept in underground vaults like this chamber. The room must be completely
dark except for the candles, and have exactly the correct acoustics to control the vibrations of the bells. But one must know
which bell to strike first.”
“I know which bell to strike first, Mr. Bellows,” Dame
Beckwith said. “If you will all sit down I will proceed.”
Cowed by Dame Beckwith’s command, we all pulled out
the heavy chairs and sat at the round table. I noticed that the
chair back was shaped like a long bell—and was not particularly comfortable. When we were all seated Dame Beckwith lifted
a slender metal rod and held it poised over the candelabellum.
“Before I begin, I must ask that none of you speak of what
you see here. I only show this to you so that you know what evil
you brushed against today and you do everything in your power to fight it.”
As she spoke she looked at each of us in turn as was her
wont while giving speeches, but her gaze came to rest on Nathan the longest. We all nodded our heads in agreement, even
Nathan, and then Dame Beckwith raised the metal rod and
struck one of the crystal bells.
The sound was pure and sweet and reverberated through
the domed cavern, which was itself, I noticed now, shaped like
an enormous bell. I could feel the vibrations in the floor traveling up my legs and spine to the top of my scalp. The bells in the
candelabellum began to vibrate, and the rings began to spin.
The bells played a mournful tune, and the crystal cast shards of
light on the wall that grew into images of birds flitting across
the walls like a great wheeling flock of starlings. Then they were
swooping through a snowy woods and more images evolved:
a wagon and horses and then, slipping out of the shadows as
if they had been lurking all along in the recesses of the room,
wolves running beside the wagon, which went faster and faster,
around and around the room, until, in a great jangle of bells,
it crashed, throwing into our startled faces sprays of snow so
lifelike that I could have sworn I felt their icy kiss on my cheeks.
As one lone figure picked herself up from the broken wagon
I understood that we were watching the story of the bell maker’s daughters. Seven figures rang seven bells to scare off the
shadow wolves that seemed so real I could swear I smelled the
musk of them in the air. And why not? The wolves that stalked
the girls were made up of shadows, and what were we watching
but a shadow play like the shadow puppet shows I’d seen in Chinatown? Only in reverse—we were watching shapes made out
of light moving on a ground of shadow. The more I watched,
though, the more the shadows seemed to encroach on the figures carved out of light. The prince and his brave knights who
rode to the girls’ rescue, their horses’ bridles jangling with the
song of the crystal bells, seemed thin and insubstantial against
the shadowy woods that surrounded them. Out of that blackness came an enormous winged creature that swooped over the
youngest bell maker’s daughter and plucked her up. Her flickering light was absorbed into the blackness. Then the blackness
spread and formed into a gruesome shapes—goblins and trolls
stalked the margins of the room, their high-pitched chittering
echoing in the high bell-shaped dome.
It’s just a shadow play
, I told myself, but I knew that the combination of reflected light and chiming bells could not produce
the images I was seeing and the sounds I was hearing. As it
spun, the candelabellum used some magic to recreate the story
that the bell maker’s daughters had wanted to tell. Of their sister’s abduction. Of their rescue. Of the flight back to the castle
pursued by the shadow creatures. Of the knights’ desperate attempts to fight back the shadow creatures.
When they drove their swords into the shadow wolves, the
creatures exploded into black shards that floated up to the ceiling like the flakes of ash that rose from the fire at the Triangle
factory. But these ash flakes grew as they rose. They sprouted
wings and dove back down to attack the knights, who fought
them off with shield and sword, keeping the bell maker’s daughters safe until they reached the castle.
As the castle’s gates opened to let them in the mass of shadow crows swarmed toward it. The prince turned to keep them
back while the others rode through. He stood on the drawbridge, battling each crow as it swooped toward him, swinging his sword in a pattern that looked familiar to me. It was
the same pattern that Miss Sharp had used to mesmerize the
crows, and the runic inscriptions on the sword were the same
ones I had seen on the sword that Mr. Bellows had brandished.
And just as Miss Sharp had been able to mesmerize the crows
while we ran to Blythewood, so the prince saved his brother
knights and the bell maker’s daughters. But when he turned to
join them, a terrible thing happened. A great winged creature
appeared in the sky. A man with wings. A Darkling.
At the sight of him I felt my heart contract. Even in this
shadow play I felt that this creature was
real
. And I didn’t want
to see what came next. I wanted to close my eyes. But when I
did, I discovered the power of the candelabellum. Even with my
eyes closed I saw the story unfold. The Darkling did not attack
the prince. Instead it broke into a million pieces and each piece
became a shrieking crow. They swarmed over the prince, sharp
beaks pecking at the soft places between the seams of his armor,
picking at each chain-mail link, rending flesh, shredding skin.
The prince went down in a clamor of armor that rang so loud I
thought the crystal bells of the candelabellum would shatter. I
thought my own eardrums would shatter. It felt like the sound
was inside me, as the ravening crows were inside the prince.
Because that’s where they were. As the prince fell to the
snowy ground the crows picked his body apart, opening it up
and climbing inside. They burrowed into sinew and soul, eating what was left of him until he was a hollow carcass filled
with the shadow carrion. And then, when they’d eaten their fill,
the prince rose to his feet. Bristling with feathers, his movements jerky as if pulled by a puppeteer’s hand. . . . I’d seen that
jerky motion before when Tillie snagged the coat of the man in
the Inverness cape and he juddered to a halt like a piece of machinery poorly oiled. That was how this creature moved until
he shook himself once, feathers rustling and then smoothing
into a familiar shape. A man with a cape where arms should be
and a bowl shaped helmet where a head should be. The man in
the Inverness cape. Only he wasn’t a man at all. He was a bit of
that darkness that grew and grew until darkness swept over everything in its path as the darkness swallowed us now, leaving
us in an empty black pit.