Beneath Ceaseless Skies #109 Read online

  Issue #109 • Nov. 29, 2012

  “The Telling,” by Gregory Norman Bossert

  “The Scorn of the Peregrinator,” by John E. O. Stevens

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  THE TELLING

  by Gregory Norman Bossert

  Mel peered around Cook’s hip as the butler stepped out of the master bedroom and carefully shut the door. Pearse stood for a minute, one pale hand still on the glass knob, the other unconsciously stroking his neckcloth smooth. Mel thought the hallway seemed lighter, as if the butler had closed all the darkness in the house behind the heavy oak door. The entire staff of the House was there, lining the two long walls of the hall, even Ralph the gardener and Neff who turned the roast and would on any other occasion be beaten if found upstairs. Pearse looked up then, eyes worn to a pale sharpness under heavy white brows, and Mel leaned back into the cover of Cook’s wide flank, safety from the butler’s gaze, from the strangeness of the moment.

  “Lord Dellus has passed,” Pearse said; the staff gasped and sighed, as if they had not known already from the cries that had haunted the house since evening last and had stopped so suddenly this morning. “Stopped without an echo,” Cook had said with heavy significance, and added, “That’s that, then,” as she did when a loaf went flat or a bird slipped from the spit to the ashes.

  There had been no sighs then; the staff had exchanged weary nods and worried glances in the silence of a House without a head. And there had been a few curious glances toward Mel’s spot on the corner stool that had left Mel wondering what one was meant to feel, and if that dizzy burst of relief and fear was evident, was evil.

  “In these difficult moments, we take guidance from the wisdom of tradition,” Pearse continued now. “The upstairs staff will see to the shades, and to the curtains in the conservatory. Ralph, the shutters, closed and latched, and then the front walk swept with the yew brush. The shrouds for the portraits may be found in the cabinet of the still room. The clocks must all be muffled, and a poppy placed on each mantle.”

  The downstairs maid curtsied.

  “Cook, a hare’s head for the dogs, a fresh one, if you please.”

  Cook snorted—’as if I didn’t know,’ that meant—but quietly; Mel felt it more than heard it, a quaking of that vast thigh.

  Pearse scowled thoughtfully at the wall; the panelling there was lighter, where a painting had been taken down and not replaced. “I believe those are the most immediate duties that custom and propriety demand of us. We shall convene at noon in the kitchen to discuss the period of mourning.”

  Ralph the gardener cleared his throat. “The bees,” he prompted.

  “Ah, yes, the bees,” Pearse said. “Where is the child?”

  Ralph shuffled uncomfortably, and looked sideways at Neff. “It’s meant to be the youngest, ah, male in the household.”

  Pearse acted, as usual, as if Neff was beneath his notice. “The child will do. Where is it?”

  Cook rumbled with discontent, but placed her knuckles between Mel’s shoulder blades and pushed.

  “Here, sir,” Mel said and stood straight, suddenly eager for the brightness of the gardens.

  “You will come with me, boy.” Pearse glared from Ralph to Cook as if courting disagreement, and Mel’s expectation slumped to unease at that accustomed tension between the senior staff. “The Lord is dead. The bees will need telling.”

  * * *

  Mel followed Pearse down the promenade and around the fountain, which Ralph had already shut down, past the stables and into the kitchen gardens. The butler was a thin black line against the round clouds, the wide morning sky. Mel walked a pace or two behind, a stake in one hand like a staff, topped by a fluttering length of black crepe. Standard bearer for the house of the dead, Mel thought.

  “Step lively, child, the bees must be told such news promptly, less they take offense and swarm, or so tradition tells us. And there is much to do in the House.”

  The east end of the gardens lapped against a low bluff, a wall of glassy green flint. The hive was on a wide stone plinth set in a hollow in the rock; it was a great skep, an overturned basket fully twice Mel’s height, straw loops whipped with briarwood and bramble and plastered with ochre dung. A dark round entrance gaped at the bottom, bees clustered there like yellowed teeth. Ralph’s father, or perhaps his grandfather, had added frames to simplify the wax harvest, and the straw had been replaced over the years, but Mel thought the hive itself was as old as the flint, as old as the House itself.

  “Drive the wand there,” Pearse said, lifting his hand slightly, a finger extended. The ground was scattered with jagged shards, which Neff said were the teeth of creatures killed by the bees and Ralph said were the discards of ancient peoples working the flint. Mel looked from the ground to the butler, confused; Pearse huffed with impatience and said, “The wand, child, the stake in your hands, drive it in the ground there.”

  Mel worked the stake into the ground. With the cloth coiled limply around it, it looked like a Summerday effigy of Pearse. The butler frowned and tssked at the result; Mel set it a notch more deep and straight in hopes of avoiding a flick of the butler’s hand. Pearse just pointed, however, to the space before the hive. “The words, now, the words as we practiced.” That practice had been a few hurried moments at the kitchen door, Pearse and Cook arguing the lines, and Ralph adding his opinion when the sweeping took him near enough. Mel had a knack for catching words, if not for the speaking of them; they came surely but softly.

  Mistress sweet, Mistress sharp,

  the lord is dead and hence away.

  Away away, has flown away.

  Mistress black, Mistress gold,

  Your folk come hither, here to stay.

  O stay, O stay, I pray you stay.

  There was silence then, or so Mel thought at first and Pearse, never one for standing still, began to turn away. But under the distant chittering of the birds and the wayward breeze there was low rumble like a growling, and the hive quivered. Mel thought of Cook in the moments before her hand struck out at some failing, and flinched. Pearse stopped and turned a dry impatient eye to the hive.

  A bee flew from the dark mouth of the hive as if spat; a straight line toward the garden. A second one shot north toward the barley field, and then dozens, hundreds were fleeing the hive, spreading in all directions.

  “They swarm,” Pearse cried. “You’ve said it wrongly!”

  “They’re na’ swarming,” Ralph said, come up quietly to lean on the broom a few yards back. “Hive’s got two, three hundred hundred. And it’s no swarm without the queen. Try the words again, Mel.”

  Mel looked to Pearse, who gave a sharp nod, and a frown for Ralph. The gardener returned a look of eroded amusement; the grounds and above all the bees were his keeping, and he had little fear of the butler.

  “Mistress sweet, Mistress—”

  Mel was stopped by a buzzing, not from the hive but all around, thick and rising in pitch; it was as if they had stumbled into a fog of sound. Bees whizzed past ears and eyes, ruffled hair and sleeves, far more than had fled, all heading back to the hive. Some entered, but most landed on the straw or the surrounding stone in a swirling carpet.

  “They fetched the workers from the fields, is what,” Ralph said. “Third time’s charmed, Mel.”

  Pearse prodded Mel beck into place with sharp fingertips, a step or two closer than caution would advise. The bees slowed their writhing dance as if waiting, antennae aloft and quivering. The buzzing died down, the rumble once again audible. ‘Attentive’ was the word for it, Mel thought.
<
br />   “The words,” Pearse said, though quietly, as if he too felt the attention of the hive.

  The air was too clear, the sunlight flat and harsh against the flint. Mel glanced back at the House and its shuttered slowness, managed a small dizzying breath. “Mistress sweet, Mistress sharp, the lord is dead—”

  The bees exploded.

  * * *

  “It were like someone kicked a bonfire,” Ralph said over the noon meal in the kitchen. Mel nodded: bees like sparks flying outward gold and black, and where those sparks had landed they had stung. Mel had shrieked and leapt back, sending Pearse staggering; they had caught each other and run. Even in the midst of fright, Mel had marveled to see the butler stretch his skinny legs, leather soles slipping and scraping the gravel walk to the safety of the kitchen.

  Mel had not been stung badly, just a handful of pink welts that itched more than hurt. Ralph had arrived unscathed a minute later, bearing Pearse’s hat and news of the hive.

  “They’ve not swarmed,” he said, around a mouthful of cheese and pickle. “The queen bides yet. But they are surely riled.”

  Pearse frowned, and eyed Mel over his pince-nez.

  Ralph swallowed, and said, “T’weren’t the telling, now, nor the words. That was done proper, way it’s always been done.”

  Cook put a protective arms around Mel’s shoulders, and said, “Shouldn’t have made Mel here do it, is what. I’m not at all sure it was proper, with the child’s... condition.”

  And Ralph said, “Not sure the likes of us should be making Mel do anything, now that the lord’s dead.”

  Mel slid down under Cook’s arm, heart thumping in confusion. It was desperately tempting, the mystery of Mel’s place: responsibility of no one and everyone, without role or function in a House that was built upon those things. But the attention was unwelcome; Mel preferred the dark corners, which were many, and Cook’s reassuring “leave the child be”, not the staff’s curious glances, Ralph’s considering gaze, Pearse’s glare.

  The butler had flushed a splotchy red, like Cook’s port cheddar. “I think it hardly proper for the staff to discuss Lord Dellus’s business over the kitchen table,” he said. “And the child is no matter.” Cook quivered, and opened her mouth, but Pearse added, “No matter of the staff,” with such finality that Cook sat up and shut her mouth again. It matters, I matter, Mel thought, but said nothing.

  Pearse turned his glare on Ralph. “Nor are the bees any matter of significance.”

  Ralph snorted into his ale. “You’ll say different when the orchards bear no fruit and the candles run out. There’s something they want.”

  “You say they have not swarmed.” And when Ralph nodded, the butler sniffed dismissively. “Then what the bees want is no concern of ours.”

  The scullery maid leaned forward into view from her spot behind Ralph, “Should we be sending word to the townsfolk, sir?” She wilted back into her chair under Pearse’s glare.

  “Let the town swarm,” Pearse said. “By right and tradition, the House is its own interest, and any who might have claim otherwise are dead or....” His gaze grew vague and aimless, but Mel ducked from it nonetheless. “Or gone beyond our care.”

  After that, Pearse kept the conversation to the rituals and responsibilities of mourning, and the meal soon broke up into busy gossiping groups. Ralph stomped out the door, and Mel followed, ducking tasks and curious looks alike.

  “Ralph, what—” What are those things that you and Cook and Pearse leave unsaid, like the empty spots on the walls where paintings are missing? What do they have to do with me? What am I? But Mel stammered, and said instead, “What if the bees did swarm?”

  The gardener stopped and turned, with a wary eye over Mel’s head to the House. “Don’t you fret, child, or give Pearse more mind than he’s due. He thinks everything turns around the House and its traditions, and forgets it is of the land as much as any living thing. The bees don’t like change, is all, no more than any of us.”

  “But if they did swarm. Where would they go?”

  Ralph looked down at Mel and squinted. “You’re growing, child. Best ask Cook for some new clothes. Or... mayhaps I have something that’ll fit you.” He tapped his pipe out against the sole of his boot and shook his head. “Not a child much longer, eh, and goodness knows what we’ll do with you.”

  “But where would the bees go?” Mel persisted.

  Ralph turned to looked over the garden wall and across the long rows of barley. “Away and gone past our fields, to some other House, I reckon. Beyond our ken, for sure. No concern of ours, Pearse would say, and in that he’d be right for once. No more questions, now, I have things to do and so do you.”

  The gardner clumped down the path, but Mel stood, pondering the idea of another House beyond the fields, the meaning of away and gone.

  * * *

  The box of papers was in the old garden shed, under canvas, surrounded by tools rusted beyond repair. Mel had found it years ago, half buried in the ashes of the refuse pit, the black paint stained and scarred by flame and the silver fittings tarnished, had moved it to the safety of the abandoned shed after discovering the treasure inside. Words, and words about words, far more fascinating than the maid’s sayings or the hornbook Pearse insisted be read every Seventh-morn. “Some Thoughts on the Derivations of Meaning” the first page read, and under that, “As Discovered and Annotated by Caleb Dellus”.

  ‘Meaning’ had been the first word Mel searched for, turning carefully through the pages; they were unbound and unnumbered, their order obscure. ‘Meaning’ was hard to find in the dim corridors and hushed conversations of the House, and Mel had a craving for it that was sometimes as strong and sharp as hunger. But there was no entry for it; the expected page held this instead:

  Melisma, n. The prolongation of one syllable over many notes, peculiar to the performance of chants, the Mysteries, etc. From µ­»¹Ãµ± an air, or perhaps µ­»¹Ãñ as in a bee’s wandering path?

  Mel had to look up most of the words in the book’s definitions, tracing that same wandering path through the fields of entries, collecting grains of meaning to ponder through long wakeful nights on the cot in Cook’s room. Like the word that had come today at the hive:

  Attentive, a. Evincing heedfulness, perhaps from attende to serve, or to wait?

  Whom do you serve, bees? Mel thought. Why are you waiting? There was a buzzing against the window, a creeping shadow on the grimed pane; Mel traced a circle around it with a fingertip, and said, “What do you want?”

  * * *

  “I had a dream,” Cook said, as she rolled the crust for the second-day mourning pie. “A strange dream it was, seemed real as life, if it weren’t for the oddness of it. Mel was lying there in the cot by my window, same as usual. And there was a line of bees, crawling in under the shade, across pillow and cheek and into the child’s mouth. Each one carried a drop of something, that glittered like a pearl in the moonlight, and was gone when they flew out again.”

  The bees’ feet had pricked, Mel remembered, and their fur had tickled as they worked their way through lips, teeth, and tongue. They had smelled of barley and clover and a dark musk that made Mel think of Travelers’ wagons on market day.

  “Bees is mad at Mel for ruining the telling,” Neff said from the hearth. “That was venom, is what. They wants another death and another telling, so’s things can be done right.”

  The bees’ solemn procession had been silent, their wings folded and still; when they crept back out over the sash they had disappeared as if not flying but falling into the darkness. Cook had snorted and stirred in her bed, muttered a sleepy query that Mel dared not attempt to answer, and settled back into gentle snores.

  The downstairs maid looked up from her sewing—every hand not otherwise busy was stitching the black cloth—and shook her head. “‘Honey-tongues tell true,’” she quoted. “Some coming revelation, that’s what it means.”

  The drops had not been sweet, but fiercely sour,
and spicy like Cook’s Wintercakes. They had rolled one at a time down tongue and throat; Mel had taken small shallow breaths and clenched back the urge to gag, rigid in the cot, somewhere between terror and awe.

  Ralph coughed around his pipe. He was on his stool by the door; no sewing for him, fingers too rough for silk or linen, he said, though those same fingers could coax an aphid from a bloom without bruising a petal. “T’wasn’t honey,” he said. “T’was the royal jelly, that the bees use to make a new queen.” He pointed the pipe at Mel. “The dream means change, and good luck.”

  Cook dropped the crust into the pan with a decisive slap. “First good luck the child will have seen, then. But I reckon the change has come to all of us.”

  Everyone nodded or shook their head wisely, according to their wont. All but Mel, who sat still as always, heart quivering like wings blurred by speed, thinking of honey tongues and change, of another telling. Could the bees in their ceaseless mute searching, wanted the thing that Mel had searched for in the House and staff, the gardens and the far fields around, in the box of words in the shed? Could the bees want meaning?

  * * *

  Mel stood before the door to the library and ran a finger along the crease of jaw and neck where the skin always itched. For all the lure of words, the library had been a place of dread when Lord Dellus had been alive. Mel had been required to sit long evenings there, the comfort of the kitchen stool in its corner behind the ovens exchanged for a chair of cold leather set in the center of the rug and the acrid peat and ash fumes of the lord’s whiskey. Sometimes Dellus had worked in the ledgers that tracked accounts of the House and its estates. And sometimes he had spoken—not so much to Mel as to the House itself, it had seemed—of things that had happened long ago: wars and murders and deals with distant powers. And sometimes he had simply drunk. He had never looked at Mel, not directly. And as much as Mel hated to be the center of attention, the suspense of the lord’s not looking was worse. Mel had stared ahead at the faded gilt of the books and feared that if their eyes did meet, there would be some terrible recognition.