“What happened to her?” I cried, my hand clenched around the feather in my pocket—a single black feather that had lain beside my mother’s body. Is that why my mother had kept a black feather? Because of the story? Gillie held up his hand and brought the horses to a stop.
“Listen,” he said.
At first all I heard was the drip of water from the trees on either side of the road, but then I heard it: bells. First one and then another . . . and then a chorus of them.
“They’re ringing us home, Miss. Showing us the way through the fog. See, the horses know.”
The horses’ ears were indeed twitching toward the sound. Gillie snapped the reins and we veered left, off the road, toward the sound of the bells.
A black iron arch loomed out of the fog. I could just make out the words “Blythewood School” and below “Tintinna Vere, Specta Alte” as we passed below the gate. The road went steeply up, the fog lightening as we climbed and the sound of the bells growing louder. Even from this distance I could feel what Gillie had meant. The bells seemed to make my blood thrum. They seemed to be inside me, the way the bass bell rang inside me, but these bells didn’t make me afraid. They made me feel as I had when I’d slowed the bell inside me to calm Etta. Safe.
When we reached the top of the hill I looked down and saw that below us the fog still clung to the ground, but rising up out of the white mist, as if floating in midair, was a square tower hewn out of honey-colored stone. As the bells stopped ringing, the mist scattered, revealing first the outlines of a turreted castle—the same castle as the one in the engraving my mother had kept by her bed. It looked like a castle in a fairy tale, and I wondered if Gillie’s story had somehow transported me into a fairy-tale land. Then, listening to the bells as they, one by one, ceased to ring, I noticed something.
“There’s only six,” I said to Gillie.
“Aye. For hundreds of years the seven bells rang in the prince’s bell tower. The knights and the six bellmaker’s daughters installed the seven bells in the tower and turned the prince’s castle into an abbey, with a monastery for the knights, and a convent for the sisters, who together founded the Order of the Bells. Young men and women from all over the world flocked to the abbey drawn by the sound of the bells. They believed that the tolling kept the wild creatures and fairies of the woods at bay and that so long as the seven bells rang from the tower the demons would stay in their own land. The Order of the Bells became a great abbey, famous for the learning of its sisters and monks. Some of the men and women who were educated there chose a monastic life, but others went out into the world and became great leaders. The Order spread throughout Europe, founding schools wherever there was evil to fight.
“But eventually the Order did its job so well that folk no longer saw a need for them. The Order’s power faded, and the abbeys fell into ruin or were destroyed in wars. Even the original abbey in Scotland, Hawthorn Abbey, was ransacked during the Reformation. The last remnants of the Order came together from all over Europe and decided to bring the original bell tower and the convent over here and found Blythewood.
“Three barges it took to bring her up the river. The last barge held the tower and the bells packed within it on account of the legend that the bells must always stay in the tower, but as the barge came around that bend there”—Gillie pointed to the river where a high cliff protruded from the western shore—“a storm came up. They say you could hear the bells ringing out in the storm, even though they were packed in straw, and that they could be heard as far away as Albany. The ship listed hard to port and the tower began to slide into the water, but at the last minute the ship righted itself and only one bell from the tower was lost.”
“The smallest bell?” I asked. “The treble?”
“Aye, the one named Merope. She fell to the bottom of the river, where she remains today. But some say that when her sister bells ring out you can still hear her. Listen.”
The last of the bells had finished chiming now. There was a silence and then, faint, but clear, the chime of another bell. It seemed to come from the river. Perhaps it was just an echo, I told myself, but would an echo pierce my heart as this bell did? I could feel it vibrating through my blood and the marrow of my bones. I’d heard this bell before. It was the treble bell I’d heard when the dark-eyed boy had touched my hand.
9
WE CLIMBED THE hill and came into a circular driveway crammed with vehicles, trunks, shrieking girls, and muttering moving men. I saw right away that most girls had arrived at Blythewood in their own conveyance, either horse-drawn carriages gilded with old family crests or long, sleek automobiles, their prows adorned by silver figures like the mastheads of ocean-going vessels. One such leviathan barreled past us on the drive, horn blaring like the call of a sea monster, nearly sending us careening over onto the lawn. Gillie muttered under his breath in Scots, his face darkening under lowered brows.
“The Montmorencys still act like they own the place even though the house was made over to the Order years ago.”
The long black vehicle plowed through the crowd like the Lusitania coming into port. When it reached the front door a figure emerged, a girl swathed in a velvet coat like a cocoon, topped by a cloud of rose-gold hair that caught the sunlight as if the sun had come out especially to alight on it. Two other girls standing at the doorway dropped their bags into the arms of their servants and screamed “George!” in one shrill voice.
George?
A small crowd quickly surrounded George, moths to the flame of her Gibson pouf, blocking the entranceway. Liveried servants stood weighted down by trunks while the girls called to one another.
“Fred!”
“Wallie!”
The names—did all the girls have boys’ names here?—fluttered through the air like brightly colored birds. Of course, I realized, they would all know each other. Even the new girls must have grown up together and gone to the same dances and teas. With a pang I remembered spotting Tillie’s bright red head across the park and hearing her voice calling my name, or looking across the rows of sewing machines and catching a smile from her. I remembered what it felt like to have a friend. Would I ever find that here among these bright, carefree girls?
“Och, you’d think it had been a year they haven’t seen each other, not just the summer,” Gillie muttered as he helped me down from the box. And then, in a lower voice, he added, “Don’t worry, Miss, they only sound like the hounds of hell. Most of them are all right . . . though some . . .” He broke off to stride over to the knot of girls blocking the entrance, scattering them like geese. They did sound like geese—which, come to think of it, was what the hounds of hell were supposed to sound like. I was bracing myself to plunge into the melee when a rapping from inside the carriage brought me up short.
“It is only polite to assist your elders when disembarking from an elevated vehicle,” Miss Frost drawled.
“Oh . . . here.” I opened the door and held out my hand to help Miss Frost. She clutched my hand with a pincer-like grip. Her skirts rustled as she stepped down. I started to withdraw my hand, but she tightened her hold and drew me toward her, so close I could smell her tea-rose perfume and, beneath it, a bitter smell that was somehow familiar.
“Congratulations on getting Mr. Duffy to unburden himself,” she hissed between yellowed teeth. “I haven’t heard him string that many words together in the twenty years I’ve taught here. But he left something out.”
The thought of Miss Frost crouched inside the carriage like a black spider, listening to our conversation, was unnerving.
“When the knights found the seventh bell,” she went on, “there was an impression in the snow of the girl’s body. It had filled with blood. But there were no signs of her body being dragged away.”
She reared her head back like a snake about to strike and tapped her lorgnette case against my forehead. “What do you suppose that signified?”
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“That she wasn’t dragged away by wolves?” I suggested tentatively, the image of a girl’s body drawn in blood in the snow making me feel slightly faint.
“Exactly!” Miss Frost rewarded me with another tap of her lorgnette case. Then she leaned forward, releasing a whiff of the bittersweet smell again, and whispered, “She was taken from above. Never forget, ‘Tintinna vere,’ but most of all . . .” She tapped the lorgnette case against the underside of my jaw, jerking my head up so abruptly that I heard my teeth click. ‘Specta alte! Girls who keep their eyes on the ground have a habit of disappearing,” she hissed. Then she whirled around and swept past the servants with their trunks and a covey of giggling girls whom Miss Frost glared into silence.
My own trunk lay on the bottom step. A thin girl in a black skirt, white shirtwaist, and plaid sash stood next to it, a marbled notebook folded against her flat chest. Her brown hair was parted severely on the side and pulled back into a tight bun. She reminded me of one of Tillie’s socialist friends.
“Don’t worry about Miss Frost,” she said, walking toward me. As she moved I heard a faint chiming sound coming from her, as if she had been belled like a cat. “Our theory is that she was a naturalist’s experiment gone terribly wrong—an attempt to preserve a specimen of genus Old Biddy circa 1893. Hence the aroma.”
“She did smell as if she’d been . . . pickled.”
The girl smiled, revealing a dimple in her left cheek and lessening the severity of her expression.
“It’s to do with her specimens. Lucky me, I’m to be her assistant this term. I’ll probably end up smelling like her.” She made a face, and then seeing my confusion, said, “Sorry, your head must be positively spinning and I’m supposed to be your orientation. Everything’s in a bit of a kerfuffle this last week because . . . well, never mind. I’m Sarah Lehman.” She held out her bare hand. I took off my glove to shake hers. “But everybody calls me—”
“Lemon!”
The summons came from the rose-gold girl with the unlikely name of George. She had moved slightly to the side of the doorway at Gillie’s command, but she was still taking up a lot of space on the stairway, surrounded by her suite of matching oxblood leather trunks, half a dozen pale blue hatboxes, and her admiring throng of friends. I could tell by the dilation of her nostrils and a stiffening in her shoulders that Sarah had heard her, but she remained facing me.
“Sour Lemon!” George said more loudly. “I’m talking to you.”
“As I was saying,” Sarah said to me, ignoring the girl named George, “everyone calls me Lemon. But only one girl is rude enough to call me Sour.” Sarah turned on her heel to face George, who had taken a step forward at the same time and so was forced to take a step back, backing into her trunks and toppling over the hatboxes on top.
The two girls who had greeted her first—Fred and Wallie?—went running after the hats that tumbled out of the boxes in a flurry of feathers. They looked like they were chasing after a brood of wild turkeys—a sight so comical I burst out laughing.
“Do you think it’s funny?” George rounded on me, violet eyes flashing, rose-gold hair smoldering like a just-lit fuse. Those violet eyes were roving over my rain-drenched hat, damp waterproof, soaked skirt hem, and muddy boots, all of which screamed out the fact that I’d traveled here on a public train and not in a private car. But it was my hand her eyes fastened on—bare because I’d just removed my glove to shake Sarah’s hand.
“Oh,” she said. “Don’t you have the wrong door? I believe the servants’ door is around back.”
Blood rushed to my cheeks and I heard the bass bell tolling in my head. Ridiculous, I scolded myself, this ninny is no danger! Tillie would knock her down with a right hook.
Suddenly George doubled over and pressed her hands over her ears as if she were in pain. The moment I saw her cringing my anger faded—and with it the bell. She looked up, her violet eyes wide with disbelief. Her friends fluttered around her, but she kept her eyes on me.
I forced a smile on my face. “No, this is my door, but . . .” I cast a glance down at the trampled assortment of hats. “I believe hat deliveries are made at the rear.”
Then before she could reply Sarah was pushing me past her and through the front door. “Oh my!” Sarah cried. “Georgiana will be in shock until teatime. Alfreda and Wallis will have their hands full.”
“Why do they all go by boys’ names?” I asked as Sarah steered me past another clutch of reunited best friends crowding the foyer.
“They were named for their fathers—George Montmorency, Alfred Driscoll, and Wallace Rutherford, the three richest men in America and benefactors of Blythewood—”
She was interrupted by a blur of feathers hurtling through the air followed by a high-pitched shriek. I ducked under the missile, which nearly knocked my hat off. A breathless girl, skirts hiked up, followed in pursuit. She wore a single heavy leather glove with leather straps hanging from it.
“Did you see a peregrine falcon go by here?” she cried.
“It went into the hall, Charlotte. You’re supposed to have him tethered, you know.”
“Of course I know that, but he slipped his jesses, the confounded creature! Swift will have my head.” The girl turned and ran into the hall in pursuit of her falcon.
“That’s Charlotte Falconrath. The Bells know she only got picked as a Diana because the Falconraths are an old family. Their name even means ‘keeper of the falcon’! The Dianas have to train their falcons before school starts by staying awake with them for three days and nights. By now falcon and girl should be bonded, but it doesn’t look as though Charlotte’s bird wants to bond. Not that I can blame it.”
“So only Dianas get to have falcons?” I asked, feeling a sudden stab of desire. Even though I’d only caught a glimpse of the peregrine, it had given me a curious feeling of elation to see it streaking by me.
“Yes,” she said with a wistful sigh, “and somehow the Dianas are always girls from the oldest and richest families. . . . Oh, but that won’t be a problem for you, will it?”
I blinked at her, more confused than ever, until I realized that she was including me among the ranks of the privileged. I noticed now the telltale marks of darning around Sarah Lehman’s shirt cuffs and the worn spot on her belt where she’d had to pull it one notch tighter. To her, I must look like a rich girl in my new clothes.
“Oh, I’m not rich!” I blurted. “I used to work in a factory!” I didn’t add that I’d spent the last five months in the Bellevue Pavilion for the Insane.
“Really?” Sarah’s eyes narrowed as she looked down at her notebook. “But you’re not listed as a scholarship student here.”
“My grandmother is sending me to Blythewood. So there are still scholarships?” Why hadn’t my mother ever mentioned that?
“One for every class, ‘for young ladies who show exceptional talent despite their unfortunate circumstances.’ By unfortunate circumstances they mean quite literally being born without a fortune. In my case, to poor Polish immigrants . . . but you don’t need to hear my hard-luck story. We’re encouraged not to dwell on our familial circumstances once we have been lifted out of them and elevated to the role of Blythewood girl—even if we have to do half a dozen jobs to supplement our scholarships while we’re here. We’re supposed to be all united in our grand mission here at Blythewood, but you’ll find girls like Georgiana Montmorency are rather unforgiving when it comes to social status. I suggest you leave out the factory in your background.”
“I think the secret’s out,” I said, holding up my callused palm.
Sarah took my work-worn hand in hers. “Then you and I will stick together,” she said, squeezing it. “It’s good to know there’s another girl like me here.”
I nodded gratefully. I’d been so worried about fitting in with the carefree girls in their white dresses that I’d seen in my mother’s picture
s that it hadn’t occurred to me I might look like one of those girls to someone from my own background. It was a relief to know there was at least one girl at Blythewood I could be myself with, even if she had just confirmed my suspicion that I would have to hide that self from my other classmates.
“Come along,” Sarah said, leading me out of the narrow foyer and into a huge vaulted space. My head tilted back so far my hat nearly fell off once more. The only place I’d ever seen approaching this in grandeur was Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York City, where my mother had sometimes taken me to sit and rest between delivering hats to the mansions north of the cathedral.
But this wasn’t a church. The long room ended not in an altar but in a raised podium on which stood a long table upon which sat seven hand bells. Nor were the stained-glass windows that lined the west wall overtly religious. In each one a graceful female figure stood, armed with bow and arrows and holding aloft a hand bell.
“The Great Hall,” Sarah said from behind me. “Don’t worry, you’ll be seeing plenty of it. Dinner will be in here tonight.”
I noticed now that a flock of girls, their black skirts covered by white starched aprons, were covering the long tables that filled the hall with white tablecloths.
“Come along, we’ve got four flights to go up. The nestlings—first-year students like yourself—room on the fourth floor of the South Wing. Second years, or fledglings, on the third floor, third years—or falcons—on the second floor. In other words,” Sarah added as we reached the first landing and she paused to let me catch my breath, “you have to earn a room closer to the dining hall and classrooms. That is, all except the Dianas, who room in the North Tower Room. By the time you’re in your third year like me you’re used to climbing stairs. Frankly, I miss the views from the upper floors. I think they should reverse the order of floors, only I suppose they’re afraid—”