Mermaid

  Lenia could not imagine anything more bright, and she laughed. “How strange,” she said. She pointed to the building on the cliff. “And what is that building, where you are hiding?”

  “A convent. I’m staying there until it’s safe to go home. That is why I’m dressed this way, like a novice.” Margrethe opened her furs, gestured to her white dress. “Normally … well. I’m much more elaborately attired. Gowns in every color, with beads and lace and corsets. There are women who spend all day every day sewing gowns for me.”

  Lenia breathed in. “What is a convent?”

  “A convent is a house for women devoted to God.” When she saw Lenia’s confused look, Margrethe continued. “It is a place for constant prayer and devotion. The women inside do not live lives like other people in the world. They are married to God, not men.”

  “Oh yes, how wonderful!” Lenia said, excitement rushing through her. It was all true, what her grandmother had told her. “I know about God, and souls, and heaven. Are you also … married to God?” She thought of it: not just two webs of light joining together but all the light in the world strung together, shining at once. She blinked. She could not imagine it. It must be the exact opposite of the world at the bottom of the sea, where everything was dark and muted.

  “No,” the girl said. “I pray and worship, but I will marry and have a life in the world.”

  Lenia was overcome, by the beauty of the girl’s words, the white sky that was shifting to silver above them, the ice-covered rocks surrounding her, the air hitting her skin and causing the girl’s hair to blow about her face, the idea that there were human women who could spend their life in prayer, speaking to a being they could not see or touch. She was so beautiful, this human girl. The man must have loved her. Could he have? Even with the memory of her own voice in his ear?

  “Did you love him?” Lenia asked suddenly. “Do you love him?”

  “Do I love God?”

  “No. The man I carried through the sea. Do you love him?”

  The girl’s face shifted entirely. She looked behind her, as if they weren’t there alone, on the most desolate stretch of rock in the world, as if she had not just revealed many other secrets to her, this creature from the bottom of the sea. “I don’t know if I love him, but there is … something.”

  “What? Tell me.” Lenia realized she was holding her breath. “Tell me about him.”

  The girl looked at her nervously, and Lenia focused her mind. Tell me. Please. Again, the girl visibly relaxed. “He is … an adventurer. Like Odysseus. Do you know who that is?” When Lenia shook her head, she continued. “He tells stories, stories I have read in ancient texts. Most men do not have time for such things anymore, but he is learned, I can tell he has a curiosity for everything. The way he sees things makes everything seem different. There is something magical about him. And his eyes, the color of weeds, or stone. And he has … I mean, you touched him. His skin, where you touched him, it shimmers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where you touched him, where I saw you touch him, it’s like there are jewels on his skin.”

  Lenia looked down at her own skin, and then at the girl’s. They were so different. Hers thick and shining, almost hard, the girl’s so soft and thin and flat. Delicate. Like petals.

  “I don’t know if anyone else can see,” the girl said. “I don’t understand it …”

  Lenia lifted her hands in front of her. They both watched the light reflect off of them.

  “Your skin is beautiful,” the girl breathed.

  Suddenly, the girl’s eyes turned to water. It was the strangest thing Lenia had ever seen. Water, running from her eyes, down her cheeks.

  Lenia reached out her hand, held it above the girl’s hand. “He’s the only human I’ve ever touched,” she said. “May I?”

  Trembling, the girl pushed up her sleeve, revealing the pale skin of her forearm. “Yes,” she whispered. “Please.”

  Softly, Lenia placed her palm on the girl’s skin. She saw her flinch as their skin touched, but the girl remained still as Lenia moved her palm up and then down, the heat of the girl’s arm moving into her. Even in this cold, Lenia could feel the girl’s blood pulsing underneath her skin.

  “You’re so cold,” the girl said.

  “I can feel your heart beating beneath your skin,” Lenia said.

  The moment seemed to stretch out. When she lifted her hand away then, it was unmistakable: the trail of diamonds on the girl’s skin.

  “There,” Lenia said. “Is that what you saw on him?”

  “Yes,” the girl whispered.

  A sound clanged through the air, and Lenia was quick to cover her ears. Still, the sound seared through them, through her body. “What is that?”

  “Those are the bells,” the girl said. “It is time to pray.”

  The girl did not notice Lenia’s discomfort. She was mesmerized by her own skin, where Lenia had touched it. Lenia studied her again: the dark eyes, soft, pale skin, the shimmer on her arm. The furs wrapped around her, the white cloth that hung down to her slippers. Her hair, which blew in the wind, in front of that silver, darkening sky.

  Margrethe looked up then, her eyes still full of water. “I have to go, or they will come searching for me in my cell. But I want to stay. I fear I will wonder if I dreamt all of this.”

  “I am real,” Lenia said. “I promise you. All of us are. It was our ancestors, not us, that made our worlds separate and created the land you live on, that separated you from the sea.”

  “Thank you,” the girl said. But she did not move, just sat and stared at Lenia, her eyes tracing Lenia’s hair, her glimmering tail. “I …”

  Lenia nodded. “I know.” She could see that the girl would freeze to death if she stayed outside any longer, could sense that the air was getting even colder as the sky went from white to silver, to black.

  Go, Lenia thought. Go, and warm yourself.

  “Good-bye,” Margrethe said. “I hope we will meet again.”

  “As do I.”

  And then Lenia watched the girl pick her way back over the rocks, to the staircase that wound up the cliff, to the world above, under the stars.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Princess

  DURING THE LONG AFTERNOONS, EVERY WOMAN IN THE convent was at work. Some swept and cleaned, some cooked in the massive kitchen. Some bundled themselves in furs and tended the garden or the sheep. The sisters from better backgrounds worked in the scriptorium, or sang in the choir, or spun or wove wool into blankets to distribute, along with furs, to the villagers below.

  Margrethe sat at her loom, lost in thought. She performed her work rhythmically, steadily throwing the shuttle and moving her feet on the treadle, watching the shafts go up and down. The clacking of the looms, the hum of the spinning wheels, the dank odors—hours could pass this way, quite easily. Overflowing baskets of raw wool were gathered by the door, giving off an earthy, animal scent that penetrated the room. Margrethe was not used to the odor of wool, but she found it not unpleasant. Edele and a young novice were working at looms alongside her—Edele only barely masking her impatience with the work, occasionally muttering under her breath as the fabric knotted beneath her fingers—while another group of nuns spun raw wool into yarn on the far side of the room.

  One of the sisters sat by the door, reading a passage from scripture, and the sound of her voice was lulling, soothing, but Margrethe did not hear any of what she was saying. It had been more than two weeks since Christopher had left. A week since she’d met Lenia. Ever since she’d sat with the mermaid, she’d felt unwell, like something was off-kilter, and she’d stopped waiting by the stone wall, looking for her. She couldn’t close her eyes without hearing the crash of waves. Over and over again she saw the mermaid swimming to shore, with the man in her arms, delivering him to her …

  I called to you, she’d said.

  Suddenly, there was a terrible commotion from outside. Voices shouting down the corridor.
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  The nun who’d been reading to them trailed off in midsentence, and the room went silent as the rest of them stopped their work to listen.

  There was one moment, two moments of silence, and then they heard a voice calling: “The barbarians are here!”

  At that, they all jumped, and one of the nuns cried out as a spinning needle pierced her finger. All but Margrethe and Edele rushed out of the room, crossing themselves, their work forgotten as they headed down to the main cloisters. Wool unspooling on the floor.

  Margrethe sat petrified, her heart pounding. Automatically, she reached up, made sure the wimple was covering her dark hair.

  Edele ran to Margrethe’s side, her eyes wide with horror. “What should we do? What if he has returned?”

  Margrethe took a breath, remembered herself. Surely, if there was any threat, her guards would be close by. No one could approach the convent without them knowing. “Let us follow the others,” she said calmly, reverting to her royal demeanor.

  Edele nodded, and they walked slowly down the corridor, their slippered feet padding on the cold stone. Listening.

  Could he have come back? Realized who she was?

  “If anything should happen to you here …,” Edele whispered. Margrethe squeezed her hand. Though Edele could annoy her like a sister, Margrethe knew that her old friend loved her ferociously, would die for her in an instant.

  “Let us stay calm and find out what is happening,” Margrethe said.

  They slipped down a set of stone stairs into the main cloisters. The whole convent was in disarray. Nun and novice alike were racing about, gathering outside the abbess’s office. The abbess, wrapped in furs, her face flushed and worried, was striding in from the courtyard, followed by the novice mistress. It was in such sharp contrast to the usual silence and calm inside the convent’s walls.

  “The king!” someone cried. “The king is here!”

  Margrethe and Edele exchanged looks. “Which king?” Edele whispered.

  Almost as soon as the words were spoken, a host of soldiers swept through the front doors. Margrethe recognized them immediately. Pieter, her father’s main military adviser, and a handful of the royal guard, including Henri and Lens dressed in the telltale blue and white of the Northern king. They all seemed so huge and menacing in the hushed space of the convent.

  And then, to Margrethe’s astonishment, the king himself stormed into the room in a sweep of pomp and fury. His presence filled every crack and crevice, like an assault, like a hand around her throat.

  King Erik was a tall, bearded man, with gray hair and weathered, battle-hardened skin. He seemed always on alert, aware of every movement around him. His eyes were deep set and the color of coal. Once, he had been renowned throughout the kingdom for his good looks. Her mother had told her stories about him from their courtship, when he was a dashing young prince who’d won her hand in a jousting match, but there was little left now of that long-ago charmer.

  “Margrethe!” he called.

  Edele breathed in next to her as Margrethe stepped forward from the stairwell, terror coursing through her. Hiding had become second nature to her, and now here was her father and his men, revealing her to everyone in one fell swoop. The person she’d been all these weeks dismantled in an instant.

  What was he doing here?

  Trying to remain calm, she walked toward him. “I am here,” she said, feeling the others’ eyes burning into her.

  The king saw her then, focusing in, clearly surprised by her appearance as she stood before him unadorned, in her novice’s habit, her rich, dark hair out of view. His relief was palpable, but then he immediately turned his attention away from her and to the abbess.

  “What have you done?” the king yelled, before the woman even had a chance to kneel at his feet. “I send my daughter to you for protection and you take in the son of my enemy?”

  Margrethe looked from her father to Lens and Henri, confused, and saw them drop their eyes. She turned to her father. “I do not understand. I have been safe here—”

  “The man that these women took in and housed in the infirmary was Prince Christopher, of the South. We’re taking you from this place immediately. Our enemies know you’re here. It’s only through the grace of God that you’re alive now.”

  “My liege …,” the abbess began, clearly as shocked as Margrethe was.

  Margrethe just stared at her father, his fury like a wall in front of her. “How do you …?” she began, stumbling over her words. For once she could not call on her royal training and was at a loss.

  “We’ve received reports that he returned to his father’s castle,” the king said, “some days ago, on a horse given to him by this convent.” He nearly spat the last words.

  Margrethe’s head spun. Prince Christopher. She’d heard stories about the Southern king’s son, already legendary though he’d come of age only a few years before. At her father’s court they’d spoken of his temper, his passion, his facility with words—though always as a warning. They said he was a sensualist who surrounded himself with women and food, and she’d heard all the stories about life in the South: the feverish dancing and lovemaking that lasted late into the night, the great feasts that went on for days, the tables overloaded with salmon and pheasants and capons and veal, candied figs and oranges and dates and lemons, cakes and tarts and spices coated in sugar, the endless vats of wine. She’d heard about the fountains scattered through the castle in which naked slave girls bathed, the flowers that were shipped in from the east and that burst from every room, the elaborate art that hung throughout the castle and lined all the roads leading to it, full of unholy scenes from myth and folklore. Her father’s religious adviser preached such things as examples of all that they had been fighting against in the war.

  Her mind filled with him, the image of him—this prince, this son of her father’s enemy—spread out on the beach, under the mermaid, him lying in the infirmary, that shimmer on his skin, him standing in the snow in the garden, waiting. No wonder he had been in such a hurry to leave.

  “Go search for any sign of him, anything he left behind,” the king instructed his men, who obeyed immediately, scattering from the room.

  The abbess stepped forward, clearly brimming with emotion. “My liege, please,” she said, kneeling now. “We knew only that the man was dying and needed our help. This is a house of God.”

  “You housed the son of my enemy. Of all our enemies. There is no room for such a man in the kingdom of God.”

  The abbess looked up at him, and her expression was strong, despite her submissive posture. She spoke calmly. “It is our code, Your Royal Highness. We must take care of the ill, the wounded. He was not armed. He was almost dead when we found him.”

  The king stepped forward. “We do not care for the enemies of God. Do you dare to think you know better than I, your king? I sent my daughter to you for safekeeping.”

  Margrethe cringed. It was excruciating to watch. The others stood around, wide-eyed, shocked at the display before them. Margrethe prayed that no one would reveal how close she’d been to the Southern prince. She had no idea what her father would do if he knew that she’d been in his room alone with him, in the garden alone with him, that he’d kissed her hand by the ancient wall.

  Margrethe looked to the others, who dropped their gazes when their eyes met hers. Of course. No one else would look at her. They would all feel betrayed by her, nervous about what they had said in her presence.

  “Forgive me,” the abbess said. “But, Your Highness, in the eyes of God we are all equal …”

  Her words made the king angrier, and his guardsmen stood, waiting for his instructions. But Margrethe could see their discomfort: they did not know what the king would have them do here, in a house of women and God. Even she, his own daughter, no longer knew what he might be capable of.

  He responded to the abbess slowly, doing nothing to hide his contempt. “You are fortunate, Reverend Mother,” he said, “that my mother thou
ght so highly of you.”

  “We have loved your daughter as one of our own. Broken bread with her, knelt with her in prayer.”

  “She is not one of you,” he said, his voice booming against the stone walls. “The prophets said at her birth that it would be she who would bring forth the next heir to the kingdom.”

  Many of the nuns visibly started to hear such blatant heresy from the mouth of the king.

  He looked around, indifferent to their shock. “Did any of you collaborate with the enemy, or have knowledge of him?”

  Panic moved through the room, a sense that something horrible was about to happen. Margrethe did not know what to think. She’d never paid much attention to the stories about her father: what he’d done in battle, the ferocity for which he’d been praised and rewarded. The rumors about how he had come to the throne. She realized now that he was capable of anything.

  “Father, please!” Margrethe said. It was unbearable, watching this. These were holy women. She was shocked to see the abbess spoken to this way. It was she who oversaw these women who spent their life in devotion and prayer, for the whole kingdom, for all of them.

  He turned to her, his face red and eyes bulging, his cape whirling behind him, and she willed herself not to shrink from him. No matter that he was her father: he was the king, appointed by God to rule over His favored land.

  But she was his heir. Her child would one day be a great ruler, greater than he.

  “Father,” she repeated, “I am the one who found him nearly drowned, on the shore. Do not blame these women!”

  “What?” He stared at her in disbelief.

  It was like the whole world was crumbling apart and it was up to her, her words, to stop it.

  “He was not here to hurt me,” she said. “He did not know who I was. I found him on the shore, and I ran to the abbess for help. I begged her to help him.”

  “You were alone, unguarded?” he asked. His rage like a physical presence in the room.