The Bitterbynde Trilogy (107 page)

‘I was given to understand that they only showed themselves before storms.'

‘They only
allow
themselves to be seen when they warn of foul weather. This one was stranded. She could not get back to the sea and had no choice but to be seen, despite the fact that no storm was on the way.'

‘Next her strange beauty allured him, no doubt?' Rohain was learning the ways of sea-wights.

‘Yes, my lady, and he spoke to her, for the sea-folk understand all tongues. She told him that while she combed her long green hair and gazed at herself in the rockpools the tide had gone out without her seeing it. She begged Lutey to carry her over the strip of dry sand, and, giving him her gold-and-pearl Comb as a token, promised him three wishes. She told him that if he was in any trouble, to pass the Comb three times through the sea and call her name, Morvena, and she would come.'

‘Now you have me puzzled,' said Rohain. ‘How is it that she could not walk, and yet I have heard that some of the sea-damsels when on land have limbs and walk about as well as you or I?'

‘That is one of the differences between mermaids and sea-morgans, m'lady.'

‘So.' She nodded. ‘I continue to learn. And what were Lutey's wishes?'

‘The power to break the spells of malign gramarye, to discover thefts, and to cure illness. These she granted, but only to the degree of her own power.'

‘He was fortunate.'

‘Indeed, but that was not the end of this fish's tale,' said the Seneschal, permitting himself a faint smile at his pun. ‘As he walked with her over the sands, she clinging to his neck, she told him of all the wonders of her home under the sea and implored him to go with her and share them all. Robin Lutey was fascinated and would undoubtedly have yielded had not a sharp bark of terror from his dog, which had followed him unnoticed, roused him to look back. At the sight of the faithful hound his wits returned to him. Already the clasp of the mermaid was becoming stronger as she touched the waves, and she might have dragged him under into the deep realms of the great kelp-forests, except that this is Tamhania, the isle of kings, and wickedness thrives not here. She relented. But as she swam away she sang to Lutey—and that, he never forgot. It is said that the song of the mermaid sounds forever in his heart, and that one day she will come for him and he will follow her.'

‘A future not unkind awaits him, then,' said the Bard, who had been silent while eating.

‘But nay, sir!' said Avenel. ‘Master Lutey possesses a terrible gift. He has somewhat of prescience, which allows him to garner an inkling of his own doom. I have gathered, although he has never said as much, that although he shall indeed go with the mermaid he shall not live long thereafter, for the dreaded Marool shall come upon him in its domain, the sea, and shall put an end to his life.'

Rohain pondered on this. Her eyes were wet. Presently she said, ‘A mighty wizard is he.'

‘Officially he may not carry the title of wizard since he never studied at the College of the Nine Arts, but meanwhile the island benefits from his powers, which are far greater than those of any ordinary wizard.'

‘Small praise, in sooth,' said the Bard drily. ‘What became of the mermaid's Comb?'

The Seneschal replied, ‘It is said that whenever he strokes the sea with it she comes to him and teaches him many things. The old sea-mage still has the Comb.'

‘But he could not cure Molly's lameness?' Rohain persisted.

‘It takes wondrous power to cure anyone who has been wight-struck.'

Rohain's hand strayed to her throat.
How true
, she thought. In sudden fear she glanced at her reflection in the mirror-backed sideboard. The face that met her gaze reassured her.
The past is gone. It need not trouble me anymore
.

Days and nights brightened and darkened the shores of Tamhania. They brought a few alterations in life at Tana. On the strand below, the waves washed back and forth, giving and taking. Translucent to the point of transparency were they, only betraying their existence by shadows on the ribbed sand—shadows of floating foam-flecks, the long undulating shadows of ripples, little darknesses made by the water bending the sunlight, robbing the sand of it, throwing it joyously up in brilliant flashes.

One evening Rohain and Viviana entered the kitchens of the Hall of Tana to find Annie and Molly Chove dancing with the cook, while the spit-boy played the fiddle.

‘O strange!' cried Rohain, steadying herself against a corner of the well-scrubbed table. ‘Molly, how do you caper so well? For I see that you dance better than most, and you limping like a henkie only yesterday! It is beyond all belief!'

‘I went mushrooming,' said Molly, panting and red-cheeked.

Uncertainly, Rohain said, ‘So you went mushrooming, and that cured you?'

‘Nay, mistress! As I were picking a mushroom for me basket an odd-looking boy sprang up out o' the grass, and would not be prevented from smiting me upon the thigh with a sprig of leaves. After that, the pain went right out of me leg and I could walk straight. Now I does the gallopede!'

‘Her seven years is over, you see, mistress,' explained Annie, as Molly and the cook hoofed it around the kitchen in another mad frenzy. ‘Wights always keeps their promises.'

A new month came in, bringing the Beldane Festival, symbolised by flowers and baskets of eggs and butterchurns. At the Whiteflower's Day Dance, Molly Chove outfooted them all.

After breakfast one morning, Rohain walked beneath the castle walls amid a crowd of attendants. The sea was apple-juice green. White feathers ran down the spine of the sky and a peculiar greenish tinge stained the northwest horizon. Something intangible about the island began to disturb her. She could not identify it, could not quite label it a
wrongness
, but there was something.

‘Jewel-toads are on the move, my lady,' said young Caitri, ‘and the goats on the hillsides seek the caves. Master Avenel says these are signs that a bad storm is on the way.'

‘Storms frighten me,' stated Viviana. Nervously she toyed with a silver thimble attached to the well-furnished chatelaine at her waist.

‘I had a dream last night,' said Georgiana Griffin, ‘a strange dream. About that islander.'

‘What islander?' asked Rohain, feigning ignorance.

‘Master Shaw.'

‘I thought you said he was nothing to you.'

‘He is. But this dream. I thought I was gathering the primroses and sea-pinks that grow among the salt-bushes on the slope to the west of the Hanging Cave, when I heard a singing on the rocks below. I looked down and saw Sevran Shaw lying asleep on the beach and a fair lady watching beside him. Then he was standing beside me and when he shook the saltbushes, showers of drops fell with a tinkling sound and turned as they fell into pure gold, and I caught sight of the lady floating on the water, far out at sea. I woke then, but just now as we passed that same flowery slope I could swear I heard the strange singing coming up from the rocks, as in the dream.'

‘I have more than heard it,' said a male voice. Sevran Shaw himself was advancing up the path. ‘I have seen and conversed with the singer, the eldritch lady of your dream.' A ripple of amazement ran through the assembly of courtiers. ‘Greetings and hail, Lady Rohain, Lady Georgiana, ladies!' Shaw addressed them with a gallant bow, his plumed hat in his hand.

‘Greetings, Master Shaw. You say you have seen a mermaid,' Rohain said.

‘Aye, my lady, and it has been long between such sightings. The last time a mermaid appeared near the Hanging Cave was just before the terrible storm in which my father was lost.'

‘La!' exclaimed Georgiana. ‘Take care not to repeat the mermaid's words, sir, for I have heard that they thrive ill who carry tales from their world to ours.'

Shaw returned, ‘There is no need for fear on my account, for I am the master of this sea-girl.' He recounted how he had risen before dawn on the previous day—having not closed his eyes all night, for reasons he would not divulge—and walked to the beach to watch the sun rise across the skerries beyond Seacliffe Head. He had gone down to the Hanging Cave, a place renowned for its strange occurrences. As he stood, he heard a low song coming from a stack of rocks nearby. Moving toward the sound, he saw the singer, a damsel with long green-gold hair falling over her white shoulders, her face turned toward the cave. He knew without a doubt that although for years he had travelled far on the high seas, he was seeing a mermaid for the first time in his life.

Shaw crept toward the rock shelf on which sat this thrilling incarnation, taking cover all the way, but just as he reached it she turned around. Her song changed to a shriek of terror and she attempted to fling herself into the water, but he seized her in his arms. She strove with amazing strength to drag him into the waves with her, but he held her fast and at length bore her down by brute force. She still struggled but at last lay passive on the rock, and as he looked at her he knew he had never seen anything so wild and lovely in all his life.

‘Man, what with me?' she had said in a voice sweet and yet so strange that his blood ran cold at the sound.

‘Wishes three,' he had replied, aware of the traditional formula.

‘What did you wish?' breathed Georgiana.

‘I wished that neither myself nor any of my friends should perish by the sea, like my father did. Next, I wished that I should be fortunate in all my undertakings. As for the third wish, that is my own business, and I shall never tell anyone but the mermaid.'

No one present failed to guess it.

‘And she said?' Georgiana murmured.

‘“Quit and have,” was her reply. I slackened my hold then. Raising her hands, palms together, she dived into the sea.'

Georgiana scarcely spoke after the tale was done. As they climbed the hillside, returning to the
chastel
, Shaw offered his arm and she leaned on it.

But a mermaid had been seen, for the first time in twelve years. Every islander knew what that meant.

Soon, the elements would rise. A terrible storm was on the way.

That afternoon, Rohain went down to the village. Over the marketplace the greenish stain in the northern sky had darkened to heavy bruising, spreading across the sky, ominous and threatening. Gusts swatted the stalls in fits and starts, like a vexed housewife with a broom. Folk hurried to finish their market chores so that they could get home and begin battening down. The word was out: Master Shaw had seen a mermaid.

Spying Elasaid of the Groves and her child among the last of the trading crowd, Rohain approached them. Liban had plucked a posy of sea-pinks from crevices in the stone walls, and was making them into a chain.

‘Why do you not hurry home?' Rohain asked. ‘Everyone says a storm is on the way.'

Elasaid glanced skyward. ‘On the way, but not yet here,' she said. ‘Liban has told me it will not arrive before nightfall.'

As they stood in conversation, a weird song came down the wind. It seemed to approach, keening, from far out at sea.

‘Whatever is that?' exclaimed Rohain.

Elasaid fell silent, but the melody was heard again, from close by, and this time it was Liban who sang. ‘That song is mine,' said the green-eyed scrap of a child with sea-pinks in her hair. ‘Someone is calling me. The storm will come tonight.'

‘Wisht Liban!' said Elasaid urgently. ‘Hush now!' But a rope-faced old woman who had been loitering nearby turned and hurried away. ‘Alas, that was Minna Scales, and she heard what Liban said,' said Elasaid sorrowfully. ‘She'll be telling the men, those who fear the sea-morgans. What will happen now, I do not know.'

Since Rohain had arrived on Tamhania, shang storms had come with their jinking music like tiny disks of thinly beaten silver shaken in a breeze, and they had gone. But this was the first time a ‘natural' storm had menaced. And, by all the signs, what a storm it promised to be! It would bring the world's winds teeming, screaming forth in long, lean, scavenging fronts bearing tons of airborne water. Its brew of pressures would build up tension in powerful charges for sudden, white-hot release. And with all the ruthlessness of something mindless.

This storm was fast approaching, over the sea. And Rohain felt—she was certain …

… something
wicked
was coming with it.

As darkness crept across the island, objects rattled in the Hall of Tana. Gorgeously decorated pomanders, pounce boxes, and vinaigrettes were clustered on a small marquetry table. All exuded conflicting scents. To add to the sensory confusion, a porcelain pastille-burner discharged aromatic fumes through its pierced lid. Someone had absentmindedly placed this jumble of fragrant ornaments on the table—Molly perhaps, hastening about her business, distracted by the storm's approach. There they sat, abandoned, and clattered—enamel clunking against metal, wood on ceramic, ivory on bone.

Late in the evening the gale's first outriders hooted eerily in the chimneys and chivvied at the tiles of the chastel's pointed rooves. Thomas of Ercildoune, Roland Avenel, and the Bard's apprentice Toby played loudly on trumpet and bagpipes and drums for Rohain and the young Prince and Duchess Alys of Roxburgh, but although their melodies increased in volume so did the storm's music, until nature obtained precedence. Then they put away their musical instruments and sat in the main salon hearkening to the rising howl.

In a sudden burst of thunder, the castle shuddered. A gauntlet fell off a standing armour, startling the company. It was like a challenge from the elements:
Behold, I throw down the glove. Brave me if you dare
.

They knew, then, that the storm had reached the island.

‘If I retired to bed I would not sleep, with this cacophony ringing in my ears,' said the Bard, his tone over-jolly. ‘I shall bide here until the tempest abates. Wine, Toby! Have them bring more wine!'