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Bells Long Silent

by J. A. Prentice

All this happened long ago and even then, things were coming to an end. The great days of smuggling were behind us and the Revenue was tightening its noose. All tongues spoke of their new man, Captain Bray, who had hacked off a smuggler’s head with a single swing of his sword.

I lived with my mother and uncle in a white house with small glass windows that bent the light. I had of my father no memories and no inheritance save my features, which my mother said were the very model of his. Mother told me he was a fisherman, but often I suspected she lied, and he had been a smuggler.

My mother was a good woman, tall and plain, with silver in her hair. She raised me well, though I did not thank her for it at the time. It was torture to a small boy to be forced to sit upon a church pew when I would sooner be out in fresh sea air, seeking what adventures I might find.

Often the sermons were against smugglers. In his day, my uncle said, the vicar had been happy to take his share of the brandy and not preach about what did not concern him.

“Which is the greater evil,” he asked, “that a man is pressed near to starving by taxmen to pay for far-off wars, or that he seeks to provide for himself and his kin?”

My uncle was a large man, though not especially tall nor especially fat. His largeness was in how he carried himself and the boom of his voice. He’d sit at a table and fill the whole room. His temper was black and wild as his beard, yet I loved him still. My mother wouldn’t tell me he was a smuggler and neither would he, but one look and I knew.

Besides, there were the things he got—the good tea, boots that didn’t leak, spices—and the money he kept us with. There was little money in Cornwall those days that wasn’t ill-gotten, seeing as how the Revenue men bled us dry with taxes and tariffs and other injustices.

All day long my uncle would rant about the Revenue men, when he was drunk and when he was sober and when he was hungover also. Only at night would he be quiet. At night, there was a silent danger in him, and a knife’s gleaming in his eyes.

Some nights he would go out and I would lie abed, listening to boots beating against the old roads and watching shadows pass. Down to the sea they were going, on smugglers’ business.

I’d close my eyes, and dream of pirate ships, and swelling waves, and treasure.

---

It was on a wet morning that I first heard the rumblings, like stray clouds before the storm, when the winds start a-stirring. Down the pub, they talked of it, though did not say what it was. I listened in, trying to look as though I wasn’t.

“Tonight,” said Old Nick, who was named not for his oldness but his wickedness, which showed in each gleam of his teeth and each wink of his eye. “That’s when it’s coming in.”

“Tonight.” Joseph Tanner—who was only a few years older than I, though more than a few inches taller—took a long sip of his ale. “That’s soon.”

“Tonight is soon.” Old Nick cackled. “The brains on you, my boy. Ought to send you up to university. Make use of that fine intellect.”

“Just saying, is all.” Joseph flushed. “Not long to put things together.”

“All’s put. Just bring yourself and your good waders.”

Joseph hesitated. “It’s them, ain’t it? The foreigners.”

“Foreigners. They ain’t from France.”

“I know.” Joseph took another swig of his ale. “That’s what bothers me.”

Old Nick snarled at him. Oh, he had a face for snarling, did Old Nick. Like a bull terrier. “Don’t be taking fright now, boy. This is men’s work. No place for softness in it.”

Joseph swallowed. “Aye. Of course.”

What they said after that, I don’t know, for it was then that the barmaid saw me. If I didn’t scurry, she said, she’d tell my mother.

As threats went, it was a good one. My mother, when in one of her fits of religiousness, was more danger than a whole regiment. So I scarpered, with Old Nick’s laughter ringing in my ears.

That evening, after dinner, my uncle took out his wading boots. He met my eyes and I met his, though neither of us said a word.

When the hour came for me to go to bed, I bid my mother and uncle a good night and went to my attic. I made sure the stairs creaked under my feet, so they knew I had gone.

Then I waited, as the last light bled from the sky and the misty fingers of the sea fog reached up. Thick and grey they were, a pale grey that put me in mind of death.

It took an hour, maybe more, with my breath held for what felt damned close to all of it. The night’s cold crept through the walls, making me shiver.

Then I heard boots, crunching on gravel. Our door creaked open and I saw the vast shadow of my uncle, lumbering out. He called to Old Nick and Old Nick called back, his shape bent in the mists.

One-by-one, their lanterns lit, burning low and red. There was no moon and overhead all was black except the stars.

Hurriedly, I pulled on my best boots and crept out into the night. I followed the swaying lanterns from a distance, down onto the pebbled beach. The tide was low. Gentle, the swell came, and gentle it went, slow as a dying breath.

“Stand ready!” my uncle boomed. “Keep watch!”

They spread out along the shore, a line of men in wading boots, their lanterns burning. I crouched behind a rock and watched, looking for any sign of a ship: a flare of light, a glimpse of white sails, the paddling of the oars.

There was no ship. Only silence, mist, and sea.

A bell tolled. It was like a church bell, only grander and older, like a bell that might have sounded before the creation of the world. It filled the silence right up.

More bells joined in, strange and dolorous. Never had I heard so many bells, and never would I again, not even when I went to London.

I should have run then, but something stayed me.

The bells fell silent. On the shore, no one spoke, not even in a whisper.

Then I glimpsed them: barrels rising from the waters, dragged slowly to the shore as though they had a mind of their own.

The barrels were lifted from the sea. Carrying them were sailors, drenched and ragged, with white faces and strange eyes. The lantern light shone straight through them.

One walked ahead of the others, carrying no burden. He was tall, pale, and thin. His white cloth garments trailed about him. His eyes were two candle-flames, flickering against the black of the night. The fog curled about him, and he wore it as a cloak.

“Hail, Duke,” my uncle said. “We greet you, and the mistress you serve, Queen of Lyonesse the drowned.”

The Duke looked at my uncle. “You know our price.”

My uncle swallowed. “Aye. We do.”

Two men stepped forward. One was Old Nick, his wicked smile gleaming even without sun or moon. The other was young Kay, whose mother was the landlady of the inn. He puffed out his chest, but his lantern’s beam quivered. The lantern, at least, was honest.

“You,” the Duke hissed, his candle-flame eyes upon Old Nick. “You would sign yourself to the service of Her Majesty Beneath the Waves?”

“What can I say?” Old Nick cackled. “I’ve cheated, and I’ve stolen, and I’ve killed. Enough for one lifetime. But in Lyonesse, I reckon, I’ll get a chance to do it all over again.”

“And you?” The Duke looked at Kay. “You are willing to serve with us?”

Kay stuttered as he answered. “We drew lots, my lord. And mine was the short straw.”

“Yes.” The Duke’s voice grew softer. “So was mine.”

He snapped his fingers and one of the ragged folk came scuttling up with parchment and dripping quill. The Duke offered them to Old Nick. “Sign and be ours.”

Old Nick snatched the quill with one of his gnarled hands and made his mark, bold and black, all dripping and gleaming in the lantern-light.

The Duke took back the quill and offered it to Kay. “Sign.”

Kay reached out his hand, then drew back. “No. I—I can’t! Not be like them!”

“Now, lad,” said my uncle, his hand heavy upon Kay’s shoulder. “Yours was the short straw. And there is a debt to be paid.”

Kay trembled, looking in fear from my uncle to the pale Duke. Which he feared most, I could not tell. Neither, I supposed, could he.

With the speed of a coney that’s heard the hounds baying, he shook off my uncle’s grip and raced up the beach, stumbling and skipping through sand and stone.

“Coward!” my uncle howled. “Bring him down! He’ll be the Queen’s even if we have to shove him under!”

But the Duke shook his head. “No. She shall not take the unwilling.” He rolled up his parchment. “Another must be found.”

His candle-flicker gaze fixed upon my uncle. The look on my uncle’s face so chilled me that I stumbled and sent pebbles tumbling underfoot.

As one, smugglers and strange sea-folk turned their heads to fix upon my hiding place. I held my breath tight and kept my head down.

“Revenue men!” Old Nick hissed.

“If it’s Revenue,” my uncle boomed, “they’ll taste our lead tonight. Joseph, go see.”

“Why me?” Joseph whined. “Why not them? Revenue steel won’t hurt them, will it?”

“Revenue’s not their concern,” my uncle snapped.

“No,” the Duke said. “I will go.”

I wasn’t a fearful boy, but those words turned my guts to ice and stone.

I heard his footsteps as he came. They were soft sounds, like raindrops landing on the earth. With each step he took, I felt colder, like mist was creeping round me.

At last, I could take it no more. I leapt up, holding my arms wide. “Don’t fire! Please don’t hurt me! Uncle! It’s me!”

The Duke stood right before me. His expression softened, as much as a face like that could, and he turned to my uncle. “Do you know this child?”

“Aye.” My uncle scratched the back of his neck. “He’s my brother’s boy.”

The Duke nodded. “Put your weapons away. He shall be no danger.”

He brought me down to the others. My uncle whacked me, hard on the cheek, and I stumbled back. Now, he was often drunk and often angry, but he’d never struck me before. I was more shocked than hurt, though my cheek was reddening and ached something terrible.

“What’re you doing here, boy? Your mother’d tan my hide if she knew.”

“I’m sorry. I just thought—”

“Don’t seem to me you thought much of anything.” He put his hand upon my shoulder and I remembered Kay, running with fear in his eyes. “But now you’ve seen us. And them.”

“I won’t tell,” I pleaded. “Honest!”

“I’ll have to think. Meanwhile, come along.” He grabbed my arm and tugged hard. “I don’t want you out of my sight.”

“There is no need to hurt the boy,” the Duke said. “I am sure he will come willingly.”

I nodded fiercely. My uncle loosed his grip and looked from me to the Duke.

“Well… see that you do,” he said, “and make yourself useful. Get hauling!”

We dragged the goods out of the sea and up the shore, salt-slick barrels and chests. My arm was near wrenched from my shoulder afore we reached the yawning cave mouth and my uncle directed me in.

It was pitch dark in the caves. I had thought it dark out on the cove, but this was the dark of the deep, where neither sun nor stars had ever touched. Our way lit by dim lantern light, we walked the strange, worming tunnels for what seemed like forever, until we reached a rounded cave and my uncle signaled for us to halt.

What a noise the barrels made as we dragged them in, wood and stone screaming. The Duke and my uncle moved away from the others, into some shadowed side-passage, to speak alone. I made to follow, but the Duke shook his head so I stayed put.

I hardly looked at the barrels as the men opened them, though they were glistening with jewels and gold and ill-gotten goods. No, I was looking instead at the stone man carved into the wall above.

The years had worn him smooth, almost shapeless, but I could still make him out. Long arms, long legs, a strange face. Almost ape-like, only that didn’t do it justice. This wasn’t a beast’s face. It was a face like the devil’s own: smooth and long with a gaping mouth and empty eyes.
There was a feeling to it. I can’t put it into words, not being a writer, but mayhaps even a writer would find his ink dried up at trying to tell of it. It reminded me of the bells, only the bells had beauty, and this held only dread.

“Saint Cuthbert,” said the Duke.

He was standing beside me. I hadn’t heard him come back, on account of him being so quiet on his feet. His eyes were also fixed on the stone man.

“Pardon, sir?” I asked.

“The locals say it is a carving of Cuthbert. An English missionary. A man of Christ.”

“Oh,” I said.

“They are wrong.” Oh, how those candle-fires flickered. “It is no Saint. It is older than Saints. Older than England. Older than Christ.”

“What is it, then?”

He smiled. It was a queer smile. There were secrets in it, if you catch my drift, but sorrow also, and other things I can’t name. “There are none now above the waves who could tell you.”

“And below?” I asked.

“What know you of Lyonesse?”

I frowned. “A girl lion, you mean?”

He laughed. One would have thought it’d be a cold laugh, but it wasn’t at all. “It was a kingdom once, long ago. Before Arthur. Before the Romans. Before the great wave came, when Britannia and Europe were one…” His eyes grew dark. “But it was drowned. Our bells still ring, in the dark of night. If you know how to hear them.”

“I heard them, I think. When you came ashore.”

He nodded. “Yes. You seem like you have the ears for it.”

“What’s it like, down there?”

“Silver fish swim among the branches of leafless trees. Atop the highest hill, the great cathedral towers. A cathedral older and larger than any that yet stand in England. Older than any in the world. All who walk upon the land have forgotten the names of the God it was built to reach. When the waters are low, the gleaming of its topmost spire can be seen from shore, reaching above the waves…”

“It sounds beautiful.”

“It is.” He looked at me. “You could see it, if you wish.”

“The spire, you mean?”

“Lyonesse. You can come with us.”

“With you?”

“Kay has forsaken his place. It remains open, to any who would take it.”

I did not know how to answer. My heart was full of longing for adventure, and for wonder, and for mystery. The thought of that drowned land and that moonlight ship sailing upon the mists seemed a dream come true.

But…

“No, sir,” I said. “Begging your pardon and thanking you for your kindness, but I have my mother to think about. She’d be worried, and I wouldn’t want to leave her alone.”

My uncle sidled up and smiled. “Oh, I’m sure she’d see the wisdom in it. I could talk to her, tell her where you’ve gone, tell her that—”

I pulled away, backing up till I was brushing the feet of the carved stone man. “You want me to go! You’re selling me, in place of that coward Kay! Because you don’t want me to tell anyone about the folk from the sea!”

His face turned ugly then. It was anger, but there was a possessiveness mixed in with it, like I was his and wasn’t allowed to defy him.
“It’s for the best, boy,” he said, and reached for me again.

I ran, just as Kay had, past all of my uncle’s men. They were so taken with their gold they did not see me. I ran, out into the dark, winding tunnels between the caves.

“After him!” my uncle shouted.

“Not unwilling!” the Duke snarled. “I will not take him unwilling!”

“Oh, he’ll be willing!” my uncle barked. “Just needs some persuading, that’s all!”

I ran on. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go to Lyonesse or not, but I was sure I didn’t want to be traded by my uncle, nor to be silenced about what I’d seen.

I wove through the black labyrinth, with my uncle’s men chasing me, their voices calling in the shadows. Sometimes they promised; sometimes they threatened; sometimes they called my name; sometimes they simply swore. All sounded the same to me, with my heart thundering and my legs pounding and the caves pressing in.

Then I heard the whistle of the night wind and smelled the sea upon it. Rounding a corner, I saw the light. First it was a pinprick, then a circle, then a yawning mouth.

“Boy!” I heard Old Nick calling. “It won’t be so bad, down below. You and me, eh! You and me!”

On I raced, though my lungs burned, until I shot out into misted starlight. There was the slightest hint of daylight, a splotch of growing red staining the waters. My fear and relief were so great that when I tripped and fell face-first onto the stones I hardly noticed the hurt.

Then came a click-click-click of pistols, and a crunching of leather boots on pebbled sand. When I looked up, I saw the boots first, then their smart coats. Before they spoke, I knew what they were.

Revenue Men.

“Here’s one,” a gruff-voiced man said, snatching my arm and hauling me to my feet. “A pitiful little fish. I’d toss him back, were he dangling from my hook.”

The man had a face full of cruelty. He trembled with it, like a dog straining upon its leash.

“Please,” I begged, “please don’t send me back.”

“That’s enough, Templeton.” The voice was calm. An educated man’s voice, though I hadn’t heard many educated men speak. He sounded like our preacher wanted to sound.

“Aye, sir, Captain Bray,” said Templeton, and set me down.

Bray had a soft face and long, delicate hands. They didn’t seem like a killer’s hands, yet he’d cleaved a head clean from its shoulders. The sword hanging by his side was a testament to that. He wore his hair neatly combed back from his pale face.

“Tell me, boy,” he asked, “how many are in there?”

“I—” I swallowed. “You should run.”

Bray sighed. “Hold him. We want the killing ground clear.”

Templeton nodded and hauled me back, away from the cave mouth and from the line of Revenue men holding pistols and swords. I tried to call out, to warn them, but Templeton grabbed my mouth hard and held my jaw shut.

Joseph came first, stumbling into the mist. He looked around for me, and cupped his hands about his mouth to cry out.

The musket ball tore through him. He fell, quiet, upon the stones, and lay bleeding and silent, his eyes staring out.

Others came running after. Shots rang like thunder, and the smoke drifted in storm clouds over the dead and wounded.

Now the smugglers were screaming and shouting, the dying and the wounded and those still in the caves. Bray called out over the cacophony.
“You are surrounded! Come out with your hands raised, surrender to me, and the crown may show mercy!”

There was no mercy in his eyes. They were a strange sight in that soft face, for they were sharp as a sword’s edge.

“King’s mercy be damned!” my uncle’s voice boomed. “Better to die with a pistol in my hand than a rope about my neck!”

He came charging out, and some of his company with him. They came firing musket balls and swinging blades, though they knew they had no chance of winning. It was about dying as they’d lived: free men, kings of their own little world.

The first musket ball struck my uncle in the shoulder. The pistol fell from his hand, but he did not fall, not yet. He kept charging, even as his fellows toppled about him. Another shot struck square in the middle of his chest, and another in his leg, and still he did not fall.

He was almost in Captain Bray’s face when the last shot hit his gut. Blood blossomed over his shirt, and he fell, first to his knees, then sideways onto the pebbled beach.

“Uncle!” I screamed, and tried to run to him, but Templeton held me tight.

A quiet hung then in the air, and a stillness. Gunsmoke drifted over the wounded and the dead, swaying in the wind, mingling with the grey-fingered sea-mist.

Bray and his men relaxed, lowering their weapons. I saw them begin to move in, to tie up the wounded and rout those still cowering in the depths of the caves.

But it was not over.

The Duke came slow, and silent. The air turned chill as he stepped out into the night, his candle eyes burning pale.

I heard the gasps of the Revenue men, their quiet prayers and curses. Bray alone stood uncowed, but even in him fear was blooming.

“Fire!” Bray ordered. “For God and King, fire!”

They fired, their shots ringing and thundering. The Duke stood and let their musket balls pass through him. It was as though he had no more substance than moonlight in mist.

When the firing was done, and the Revenue men scrambled to reload, he strode forward, as though nothing had happened at all. Bray brandished his sword, standing in the Duke’s way. The Duke looked at it, then at Bray.

“Do you think,” he asked, “you can do anything to stop me?”

“I am an officer of His Majesty,” Bray said, “and I am taking you into custody for conspiring with smugglers.”

The Duke’s eyes flickered. “I, too, serve a monarch, Captain. Our nations are not yet at war. We are content, in Lyonesse, to rule beneath the waves. But should you hinder my crew or I, I promise that your infant Empire shall find itself at war with a kingdom far older.”

For a moment, they looked at each other. To me, it stretched forever.

Bray stood aside and nodded to his men. “Let them pass.”

So the Duke walked on, with the Revenue men splitting to let him through. From the dark of the caves came the rest of his pale crew. They said naught as they passed by the Revenue men—save for one, ruddier and more crooked than the rest, a nasty look on his face.

“Good day to you, Captain Bray,” jeered Old Nick. “And may all your nooses hang empty!”

“That one,” Captain Bray called, pointing to Old Nick, “is not one of yours. He is a subject of the king and mine to take.”

“He is my Queen’s now,” the Duke said. “And should you disagree, you may take it up with her.”

An eager young Revenue man, his fumblings with powder, pistol, and rod done, took aim at Old Nick. Neither Old Nick nor Bray saw him, not until it was too late.

The musket ball hit Old Nick square between his crooked shoulders, a straight shot in and out. The twisted man clutched at the wound, his eyes wide—

And then he laughed. There was no blood, no pain, only a ragged hole in his shirt. Bray stared in disbelief.

“Ha!” Old Nick cried. “I’ll live forever! Forever!” He looked down at my uncle. “More fool you. If you’d taken the deal yourself, you’d never have taken a musket ball.”

Dancing a jig he carried on, towards the surf. There, with the others, he marched onwards and downwards, till they vanished beneath the tide.

All but one. The Duke stood alone upon the shore, with the rising sun lancing redly through him, as if he were naught but thin silk. He looked at me.

“It is not too late. The way lies open still.”

I shook my head. He nodded.

“Still,” he said, “it is open.”

He followed his crew, down into the brine, to meet their queen in long-drowned Lyonesse, to walk grey forests where silver fish swam, and to see dappled light dance above.

The Revenue man released me and I ran among the dead, to where my uncle lay. He was not dead, not yet. Still he breathed, like some beached whale slowly dying.

If this were a story, he would have spoken to me. He would have told me he was wrong to have tried to sell me. He would have told me the truth of my father. He would have told me to be a better man than he was.

But it was not a story. He lay there, gasping, with blood bubbling upon his lips, and half-lidded eyes staring at nothing.

Then he died, and I knelt on the cold beach, my cheeks wet with tears.

---

Captain Bray and his men took me with them to an inn in a nearby village, where they had set up a temporary headquarters. The locals regarded them with looks of quiet poison, but dutifully served ale, and guided them to their rooms. I was given one to myself, and told to rest, but I could not sleep, not with the night’s happenings echoing in my mind.

A few hours later, one of Bray’s men came, saying the Captain wished to speak with me. I nodded, and followed him downstairs. I was for prison, I thought, if not the gallows or the colonies. I was a smuggler, or a smuggler’s nephew at least. They could hang you for being a smuggler’s nephew, probably.

Bray was sketching when I was brought to him: a pencil drawing of the shore and the waves. There was skill in his markings, though I knew little about art. He had an eye for beauty.

“Ah. Young William. Sit down,” he said, gesturing to a chair. “Will you take tea with me?” I hesitated, but he turned to the man who had brought me in anyway. “Bring us tea.”

The man nodded and he was away. Bray turned to me, his long fingers pressed together. “What happened on the beach… I am not a man unexperienced in the ways of the world, yet I am at a loss to explain it. If you could shed any light… His Majesty would owe you a great debt.”

He seemed a decent man, and clever also. There was nothing of the brute I had expected in him. Moreover, I knew what I had seen the night before was unnatural, and there may have been devilry in it, what with the signing of contracts and the talk of souls bound in service. I may not have been the most God-fearing of children, but I still felt a shudder at the thought of Hell and damnation.

Yet I looked him in the eyes, and said, “I saw nothing, sir.”

Whatever else he was, he was a Revenue man. No smuggler was ever convicted by a Cornish jury, they say, and I reckon that is true, for were it a choice between the Devil himself and the Revenue, I would align myself with Lucifer.

Bray sighed. “Of course.”

The man returned with the tea. We drank in silence, though I did not care for the taste, and then Bray told the man to take me home.

“You won’t hang me, then?” I asked.

Bray looked at me with baffled amusement over the brim of his teacup. “Good Lord, no. You’re only a child. And after last night, I hardly think you need any more frightening.”

---

When I returned home, my mother embraced me, weeping as she wrapped her arms about me. “Thank the Lord, thank the Lord,” she cried again and again. “He has not been taken.”

After that day, I never did go down to the sea again to spy upon the smugglers. I never asked after their doings. I attended church each Sunday with my mother. As I grew older, I became a fisherman, as she said my father was, and I did not question whether this was true. I got married and had three children, all daughters.

It is an ordinary sort of life, but I have found adventure even in the most ordinary of things. I have held my children in my arms when they were new and small. I have felt the thrill of a good catch, the pilchards heaped in my nets, black and wriggling. I have seen the sun setting red upon the waters and all the sky aflame.

But some nights, when all else is quiet and still, I lie awake and listen for the bells tolling beneath the sea.

I almost never hear them.