Mermaid

  The abbess gave her a sharp look. “You need to stay away from him,” she said.

  “Yes, Mother,” she said. “You are right.”

  The abbess stared at her, her face grave. “He is from the South, my child,” she said. “Do you realize that?”

  “Yes,” Margrethe whispered. “I spoke with him.”

  The abbess was looking at Margrethe more carefully now as she responded. “As did I. He claims he was on a journey to explore the Northern islands. But it is clear he is, or once was, a soldier, an enemy to your father.”

  “But we are not at war,” Margrethe said. “We are at peace.”

  “Child, you know as well as I that this can change at any moment. It’s why you were sent here.” The two women looked at each other, and then the abbess turned away, sighing. “I have already sent word to your father’s men that we are housing a wounded man. But that is all.” She looked back to Margrethe, as if she expected her to argue. “We have sworn to protect and care for the sick and the wounded. I do not want to break that vow, or make the cloisters a battleground for men who care for power more than they do for God.”

  Margrethe nodded. “Good,” she said. “I would not like to feel responsible for an innocent man’s death.” She felt relief move through her, as well as astonishment, and admiration. Also a tinge of fear—what if the man was there to kill her? The abbess was more cunning and defiant than she’d thought.

  “But for now,” the abbess said, “let us get out of the cold.” She turned to the door and knocked.

  A tired-looking young woman opened it. Her face changed when she saw them, and she immediately crossed herself and bowed.

  “Welcome, Reverend Mother,” she said, moving aside to let them in.

  “Good afternoon, my child,” the abbess said. “We’ve brought some treatments for your sick one, and some food to nourish you.”

  Margrethe followed quietly, stooping to pass through the front door. She nodded at the woman and watched as the abbess blessed her and began handing her loaves of bread and small packages of herbs from her basket. In the back of the room, three children sat huddled on the dirt floor. A fourth was lying on his side on a thin mattress, moaning. The sick boy’s eyes were closed, his hair damp, a sheen of sweat shining from his forehead.

  It was Margrethe’s first visit to a peasant home, and it was hard to hide the shock that she felt. She’d never seen conditions like it. There was one small room, with a low ceiling. A fire burned but did little to alleviate the cold. The boy’s pain was palpable, and seemed to color the walls of the house.

  She walked over to the children and knelt down next to them. Behind her, the abbess and the woman spoke in low tones.

  Margrethe saw then that one of the children, a young boy, was drawing with a stick in the dirt floor. When she saw the picture he’d created, she nearly gasped out loud. “What are you drawing?” she said. “What is that?”

  He put down the stick. “It is a fish lady, Sister,” he whispered. And it was: crude as the lines in the dirt were, the woman’s head and torso connected to the tail of a fish were unmistakable. Mermaid.

  She caught her breath and spoke in a whisper, matching his. “Why have you drawn it?”

  “The last time I went fishing with my father, we caught one in our net, Sister.”

  “You caught one in your net?”

  “Yes,” he said. “My father thought we’d caught a giant fish, and then we hauled it up, and there was a beautiful lady, like you. But she had a fish’s tail.”

  Looking down, Margrethe saw a faint dust of shimmer on the boy’s hand, even under the dirt that coated his skin and nails.

  “Did you touch her? You did, didn’t you?”

  “Forgive him,” the woman said, rushing over before the child could answer. “He is just a boy. The villagers tell these stories. My husband … He was a good man, but he encouraged these fantasies in the children … He is, was a fisherman. He went to sea some weeks ago and has not come home, and now we have to fend for ourselves.”

  “He disappeared the day after we saw the fish lady,” the boy said.

  “Philip!”

  The boy looked down, scared suddenly, and wiped out the drawing.

  The abbess was stern. “You must instruct these children that it is a sin to indulge these fantasies. Clinging to the old goddesses, you keep the world in darkness. It is only one way the devil works through them.”

  “It is so hard to keep watch over th—”

  “That is your duty,” the abbess said, cutting her off.

  The woman nodded her assent and knelt on the floor. “Forgive us, Reverend Mother.”

  Margrethe watched the boy. She smiled when he looked up at her, trying to comfort him. But the boy’s shame was clear, and she wished there was something she could say to reassure him.

  “Let us go,” the abbess said, but Margrethe hesitated. Without thinking, she took a fur from her basket, knelt down, and wrapped it around the boy. “God be with you, child,” she whispered and then set out all her furs and blankets in front of him.

  “Thank you, Sister,” the woman said, and Margrethe nodded. She would remember this family, she vowed, all of these families that suffered.

  As they left, Margrethe could feel the abbess’s disapproval.

  “I will pay for them,” Margrethe said. “For the furs and blankets. But they are so poor. I don’t … I don’t understand. How can they be that poor, when our kingdom is so rich?”

  The abbess looked at Margrethe, her passion evident. She hesitated, and then spoke clearly. “It’s the war,” she said. “I am sorry to be so plain, but I do not know how else to answer you. The king, your father, he’s ruined the people, left them penniless.”

  Margrethe felt herself stiffen. “What do you mean?” she asked, an edge creeping into her voice. “We have been at peace for three years.”

  The abbess answered in the same clear tone, defiant. “There have been years of fighting, with many losses. Even during this peacetime, your father has been steadily building ships, and amassing an army, filling it with new blood. How do you think he’s paid for this? He’s raised taxes on the people so much that they can barely live.”

  “But, I thought …” Margrethe stopped. She had not thought anything, she realized. Suddenly she was angry about having been kept so far from the world—angry at the abbess, at her father. At everyone.

  “I am sorry to speak ill against your father. But I only tell you the truth. Life is very hard right now, for many people,” the abbess went on. “I know that you meant well, to give so much. But there are many in need here.”

  She had been naïve, Margrethe realized, assuming that everyone lived … if not as well as she did, then at least almost as well. With enough to eat. With a warm place to sleep.

  She straightened her back and looked into the abbess’s wise, weathered face. She would do well to learn from this woman, she thought. “I understand,” she said, “and I appreciate your directness.” She paused, then spoke again. “But I am here because the South is planning to attack us again. If anything, my father is rebuilding his army to protect us.”

  The abbess hesitated. “Yes. It is only a matter of time before the fighting begins again. But it is … Many people doubt these reports about the South, and believe it is your father who is hungry for war. Your father who has never really been committed to peace. Understand that it is illegal to speak against the war. I tell you this only so you will understand what happened here, and why the people suffer as they do.”

  Margrethe nodded, swallowing hard.

  “Though, lest we forget, there is a Southern man lying in our abbey. We do not know if he was part of a planned attack that went wrong, even if he claims otherwise. On both sides, the resentment runs very deep.”

  “Yes,” Margrethe said. She could not deny it.

  They walked in silence to the next house, each lost in her own thoughts, past the main line of shops, near the fields and woods that o
pened behind the village, where many of the peasants lived. The abbess nodded to a house by the trees. It seemed just as dark and grim as the first. Ice dripped from the edges of the roof as they walked to the front door.

  They knocked, and a man appeared and bowed to the abbess. Margrethe almost didn’t recognize Lens, her father’s favorite guardsman. He was dirty, disguised as a village fisherman. When Margrethe had last seen him, the night they fled the castle, he’d been a strapping man with bright blond hair and the neat blue and white costume of the castle guard.

  “Your Highness!” he said, whispering and ushering her into the house. He smiled and bowed deeply. It was strange and wonderful to feel, for a moment, like herself again, back in the world as she’d known it before. They were joined by the other guardsman, Henri, who had been similarly transformed—his skin weathered, his clothes ragged and dirty.

  “We are worried for you,” Lens said, showing them to the kitchen table. “We want to know more about this man who washed up to shore. But you have assured us, Mother, that he is harmless, no matter who he is.”

  The abbess looked quickly to Margrethe and then back at Lens. “Yes,” she said. “He claims he was on an expedition to the islands up north. He has no weapons.”

  “What islands?” Henri asked.

  “There are rumors that land exists to the north, that no man has ever set foot on.”

  The two guardsmen nodded but looked unconvinced.

  “How long will he stay?” Lens asked. “How close is he to recovery?”

  “He has made an extraordinary recovery,” the abbess said, “and will soon leave. I have promised him the loan of a horse and provisions. He may leave as early as tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Margrethe repeated, unable to stop herself.

  The word sank into her like a stone, and an anxiety rose from it, sweeping through her entire being. The thought was irrational. She should be relieved, calmed. He was her enemy. And yet all she could think was: what if she never saw him again? If he was planning to leave tonight, he could be gone even before she and the abbess returned. The thought filled her with an inexplicable grief.

  But if he stayed any longer, these men—her friends, men whose only task was to protect her—could learn the truth and destroy him.

  “Your safety is all we care about,” Lens said. “We are sworn to the death to protect you.”

  “I know,” she said.

  That was what worried her.

  THEY BEGAN THEIR walk back to the convent in late afternoon. Margrethe tried to hide her anxiousness, but the abbess turned to her. “Let him go, child,” she said, softly. “No matter who he is, you must not dishonor your father.”

  “You do not need to tell me such things,” Margrethe said, her voice more haughty than she’d intended. The abbess seemed to want to say more but stopped herself.

  Margrethe kept her own words back, too. A mermaid. She wanted to tell the abbess that it was a mermaid who had brought the man to her. She wanted to turn and shake her, cry out, I need to see him again! Tell her that the mermaid had brought him to her, for a reason, and that she needed to understand what it was before he disappeared.

  Instead they walked in silence, Margrethe struggling to remain calm beside the abbess when her body was nearly shaking with the desire to run.

  The sky hung silver over the mountain, the convent just barely visible above them. The trail up to the locked gates seemed endless. Every sound was the sound of horses’ hooves clomping on wet ground, the sound of him leaving.

  Finally, they passed through the great gates and into the warmth of the convent.

  The novice mistress was waiting for the abbess with urgent news, it seemed, and Margrethe took the opportunity to slip away. She raced down the hall to the infirmary, to find him. She came to the door and stood outside it, pressed her forehead against it. Her heart was pounding. After a few moments, she knocked. Once, twice, then pushed the door open.

  He wasn’t there.

  It was Edele who came up to her as she was rushing back to the office of the abbess. “He is requesting you,” she said, taking Margrethe’s hand in hers. “He wants to see you. He is waiting for you in the garden.”

  “Is he leaving?”

  “Yes,” Edele said. “There is a horse ready for him.” Edele paused then, as if she wanted to say something more. “You know he is—”

  “I know,” Margrethe said, stopping her. Impulsively, she leaned forward and kissed Edele on her freckled cheek, smiling at her friend’s surprise.

  Our enemy.

  “Margrethe …”

  She took a deep breath, ignoring Edele, not even noticing that Edele had used her real name, and then pushed open the stone door and entered the garden. The cold air slammed against her. It was snowing. When had it started snowing? Big, fat white pieces of snow, drifting down.

  He was standing by the stone wall, looking over the water. His back was to her, and she stopped a minute, watching him. Massive in the snow-filled garden, wrapped in furs. She realized this was the only time she’d seen him standing.

  She was terrified, she realized. She was not behaving at all like the daughter of the Northern king. Standing in the garden with her heart racing, like a schoolgirl, as she prepared to meet her fate. She stopped and straightened her back, lifted her chin, before going to him.

  He turned as she approached, the sun catching his eyes, which seemed almost golden now, in the bright light. The shimmer on his skin was nearly blinding in the sunlight. Why had no one mentioned it? Didn’t they see? His skin, like jewels.

  “Hello, Sister,” he said.

  “I was afraid you had left,” she said, immediately embarrassed by the panic in her voice. She paused, composing herself.

  “No,” he said, looking at her. “Not before thanking you. For saving me.”

  He walked toward her, and instinctively she backed away. He was so present. His smell, his hands.

  He continued. “I felt you, you know. In the water. I saw you. You coming up under me and lifting me, carrying me to shore, and when I opened my eyes and saw you, I thought you were an angel. I thought I might have dreamed all of it, but I remember now. You carried me. You told me to look at the sky.”

  She stared at him, stunned. He did not remember the mermaid, only her. She didn’t know what to say. Part of her wanted to correct him, tell him the truth. But another part of her loved the words he was saying. The vision of herself, in the water.

  He knelt down then and looked up at her. She watched the snow fall into his hair and furs, then disappear. His eyes like weeds, those strange lips. “I owe my life to you,” he said. “I’ve seen many things in this world, Sister. But I never thought one day I’d be rescued from the sea by a creature like you, an angel.” He smiled then. “I was starting to think there was no holiness left in this world. There has been so much hatred, and war. It had begun to feel like there was no beauty left, no bit of God left.”

  “Please stand,” she said, her voice shaking. “If I did anything at all, it was only a stronger force working through me.”

  “I will always be indebted to you,” he said.

  “You’ve healed so quickly,” she said. “I will be sorry to see you go.” The words beat at her lips: Why were you brought to me?

  He took her hand then, and it shocked her, the feeling of his skin on hers. Before she knew what was happening, he was turning her hand and pressing his lips into her palm and wrist. The wind lashed around them, and the snow fell harder, blocking the sun and turning the world to white.

  And before she could react, he stood. At his full height, he was nearly a foot taller than she.

  She stepped closer. She had these few moments, and then he would disappear. Suddenly she didn’t care about his answer, why he was there. All she wanted in the world was to kiss him. Her first kiss, right here, and she a girl who’d never dreamed of such things the way other girls did. She was a princess after all. Her father’s sole heir. At her birth, a prop
het had announced that she would raise a great ruler, one who would bring glory to their kingdom. Yet without even thinking she lifted her face, and he bent his to meet hers. His eyes right next to hers, and she could not help but think that it was this, this was rapture, right now, and she felt like a mermaid lying on the beach, her body exposed to the sun and her tail gleaming.

  There was yelling suddenly, from inside, and Margrethe pulled quickly away from him, feeling her cheeks flush with shame. A moment later one of the senior nuns appeared at the door to the garden. Margrethe could see the abbess coming up behind her.

  “Your horse is ready,” the nun called out. And then, looking at Margrethe: “Perhaps you should come in now, Sister.”

  He tightened his grip on her hand. “I must go,” he said. “But I am eternally grateful for all you have done, all of you. I am forever in your debt. And I hope I may one day see you again, Mira, though I know your heart belongs only to Him.”

  “Mira!” the abbess called from the doorway, and Margrethe could hear the hint of panic in her voice.

  He paused, waiting, it seemed, for some sign from Margrethe, and the moment pressed down on her. She wanted to stop time, keep him there until she knew how to respond, what to feel, how to behave with him for this moment, this one moment she had left, but then he let go of her hand.

  “Good-bye,” he whispered. “I will not forget you.”

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  He was already moving away, the snow dropping all around.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Mermaid

  THE SHIP JUTTED UP FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR LIKE A strange, otherworldly creature tilted on its side, its masts and sails stretching in every direction, like misshapen limbs. Small sea animals had already attached themselves to the rotting wood on the prow. Schools of fish glimmered from the wreckage, streaming in and out of it, attracted by decaying flesh. All kinds of human ephemera lay scattered around the ship, twisted in seaweed and hanging from the coral already growing up the sides of the vessel: weapons, utensils, oars, coins, boots, bodies, bread. The whole mess of human life.