The Mermaid's Call

by Katherine Stansfield

  ‘I wasn’t being undue in my praise for you finding the gobbet, Shilly. It really was fortunate that you saw it.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘But that’s why you walked into the shallows. Wasn’t it?’

  ‘I didn’t see anything,’ I stuttered through my chattery teeth.

  Anna’s hand stilled on my stocking. ‘You felt it, whatever it was? Your … way of feeling?’

  ‘It was a voice. She called me—’

  ‘She?’

  ‘I couldn’t fight her, Anna. She knows my name! The barman at the Bush told me all about her, how she was cast aside by—’

  Anna sat back on her heels. ‘Who knows your name?’

  ‘The mermaid.’ I said it in a whisper but she heard me, that creature, for the wind blew hard at that moment and made the window hmmmm in its frame. We both jumped.

  ‘That’s her,’ I said, ‘making ready to call me. To call me to my death!’

  ‘It does sound something like a voice, I’ll grant you,’ Anna said. ‘But it’s surely just the wind, Shilly.’

  I pressed my face into her breast and sobbed. She let me cry, and the warmth of her body eased the shakes. She helped me back to sitting and joined me on the bed. Her arm around me, but the best of it was she didn’t tell me no, Shilly, you’re a liar, you’re mad, you’re a drunk, or all three crimes together. She didn’t try to stop me talking. Instead she asked me to tell her what I had heard on the beach.

  ‘Will you take off Mr Williams?’ I said. ‘I would rather tell you than him.’

  ‘If it would help.’ She peeled off her whiskers, with some wincing for the glue made the whiskers cling. I helped her unpin her wig and she fluffed her yellow hair beneath so it stood at all angles, like a cornfield roughly shorn to stubble.

  ‘There now,’ she said, and put her arm around me again. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘It’s as if she speaks in the wind,’ I said. ‘That’s how her voice reaches me.’

  ‘And what does she say?’

  ‘That I should come down to the sea. That I should join her. And my name, Anna. My true name! The way she says it – it gets inside my head and thrums there. It dulls me. Takes away all my thoughts so all there is, is her.’

  Anna put her hand to my forehead and I leant into her touch.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ she said. ‘A headache?’

  ‘Bad, it is, but it’s worse what she does to my legs. Her voice is like a charm that sets me walking and I don’t even know I’m doing it until I’ve moved. If you hadn’t got hold of me today …’

  ‘And last night, when I woke to find you trying to open the door, it was the same – this voice, calling you?’

  I nodded. ‘And before that, too, in Boscastle, just before Captain Ians came. I saw one of them, Anna, from the cliff.’

  She leant away from me a little, as if to see me better. ‘You saw a mermaid at Boscastle?’

  ‘I think so, though I didn’t know it then. I couldn’t see her tail parts all that clear. But the rest of her looked the same as the carving at the church door. I’ll show that to you. It’s above—’

  ‘I saw it. I wondered if you had too.’

  ‘Why would there be a carving of a mermaid here if they didn’t have them in these waters? The parson says he’s seen them.’

  ‘Our host is somewhat highly strung. Here, wipe your face.’

  I took the handkerchief she offered but I smelt the deadhouse again for it was the handkerchief Mrs Seldon had given her, and that she had used to turn over the gobbet.

  ‘Wouldn’t your nerves be bad too if you had to live here,’ I said, ‘with mermaids calling all night and dead men carried to your shore in pieces?’

  ‘They might,’ Anna said. ‘But bad enough to murder someone? That’s the question we should put our minds to.’

  ‘You mean, did the parson murder his brother-in-law? What would be his reason, Anna? He’s never met Joseph Ians. His dislike might truly be because the memory of the man upsets his wife. That’s not enough to kill Joseph if he did return to Morwenstow.’

  ‘So who does that leave as a suspect – a mermaid?’

  There was no scorn in her voice, and that left me tongue-tied. I wasn’t used to this – what was the word? Faith.

  ‘I suppose it does,’ I said.

  As if to confirm our thinking, the wind came at the window again. All at once the shivers were upon me anew and I wanted to crawl into quiet and safety. To find a place no one would know my name.

  Anna seemed to understand this for she said, ‘I think it best you get into bed, Shilly.’ We truly were thinking the same way at last. ‘There’s nothing to be gained by you falling ill. The funeral is tomorrow and I need you with me. We need to keep an eye on those who attend, including our hosts.’

  I had time to think it was a shame I was too poorly to enjoy Anna taking off my clothes before she had swept me under the bedclothes and was putting Mr Williams’ whiskers back on. She was leaving me.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I said. The bedclothes felt heavier than they had previous. Mrs Seldon must have come and put more on.

  Anna opened the door. ‘To find something to help you rest.’

  My heart leapt at this for I thought she must mean drink but then I thought no, Shilly, don’t be a fool. You’ve promised you won’t touch it in return for Anna teaching you your reading and your writing. But then I thought, it’s been a day or two since Anna got the paper out and made me follow the words with my slow finger, so a little drop wouldn’t upset the bargain. It might only be fair. We would write to Mathilda and tell her of our doings in Morwenstow. Of the mermaid, of love. No, that might frighten the poor girl and I didn’t want that. Never that for her. I would write of the sea which was not the same sea here as at Boscastle for there are no boats here, Mathilda, are there boats where you are, is the Merry Maiden at rest, are you at rest now, after your fears for Anna, what were they, Mathilda, tell me, please—

  And then the door was opening and Anna was back with a bottle! But it was only a small one, green, and as she uncorked it the smell was dreadful bitter.

  She sat on the bed and poured a spoonful. ‘Fortunately, Mrs Hawker had a tincture. Here – open up. It’ll help your headache if nothing else.’

  Her voice worked as powerful on me as the woman who spoke in the wind for my mouth was opening and the bitter water was on its hateful way down my throat. I coughed but none left me.

  Anna looked at me, sadly, I thought, and sighed.

  ‘You mustn’t worry,’ I said, and patted her hand. ‘I’m only a little poorly from the cold. The rest of me is well.’

  She looked down at my hand on hers. ‘Yes,’ she said faintly. ‘But try to rest all the same.’

  ‘You’ll stay with me? If she calls, I might try—’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that, Shilly. The tincture will keep you abed.’

  My eyes were closing and I couldn’t open them. ‘What … What is it?’

  ‘Laudanum, Shilly. It’ll help you sleep. I hope that’s all you need. Heaven knows I’m not the one to …’

  Her voice quietened away in the darkness of the room. Perhaps it was time to sleep. A silent sleep.

  ‘You do believe me, Anna, don’t you?’

  The sound of the door opening, then closing. Between those sounds I thought I heard her speak but it might have been the voice in the wind. It might have been my own.

  I was cold. So cold I ached. The sea had got inside me. I had to get my blood moving or I’d turn into moor stone and never move again. And I had to do it at once for I had need to be somewhere, that was certain. I had already waited too long. Quick, Shilly, you must come home quick. I tried to run but my feet wouldn’t work. They were all pins and needles, for there was nothing beneath them. No floor. No ground. I was hanging in the air, and I was turning. Slowly. But turning still. A shriek of metal above me, and somewhere close by, someone sobbed.

  I could not move my neck. Wh
ere my neck should be was a burning place, but burning with cold. How could this be? My hands were still mine, for when I touched my neck I felt the deep cold of metal. I felt the metal of the hook that had pierced me.

  And when I screamed my voice was not my own and I knew where I was. Hanging on a meat hook in the butcher’s shop back in Boscastle.

  And the sobbing – it was Mathilda. Mathilda crying for me.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  When I woke I knew I hadn’t been called to the sea but I was wet all the same, and from salt water likewise. I had been scritching pools of it.

  ‘Anna?’

  I reached for her in the bed, in the darkness of the room. She wasn’t there. I dried my face on the pillow and sat up. There was no wind at the window, no thrum in my head. My shivers had gone. But the coldness was with me still, for the dream had been bad. Was it a sign of some bad thing to come? I had felt the need to hurry somewhere – back to Boscastle? But I had felt, too, that I was already too late.

  Voices outside the door. Anna’s voice in Mr Williams’ mouth, and the deep swell of the parson. They drew closer, then the door was opening and Mr Williams was wishing the parson goodnight. I tasted smoke, smelt drink, too. Anna was granted more fineries as a man than a woman.

  She closed the door and I said her name again, startled her – I felt a tremble in the bed frame as she knocked into it.

  ‘You’re awake,’ she said.

  ‘Will you light a candle? I’ve had enough of the dark.’

  More stumbling and then a flare and the room was furniture once more, the fireplace, the curtains. And Anna ridding herself of Mr Williams again.

  ‘What time is it?’ I asked.

  ‘A little after midnight. You’ve been asleep some time.’ She sat in the window to take off her boots but she was all a-sway. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Better than before. No shivers.’

  ‘And the woman – she didn’t call?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Thank heavens for that.’ Anna dropped her boots by the door and fell into bed beside me. ‘You can’t be having laudanum every night. No good replacing one vice with another. But if it helped ease your head that’s something.’

  ‘It did. Though …’

  She was on her back, Mr Williams’ hair still on her head. I lifted it off then squeezed myself close to her.

  ‘I haven’t done any writing for a day or two, Anna.’

  Her eyes were closed. ‘Hm?’

  ‘I want to practise tomorrow.’

  ‘If we have time.’ Her words were slurred. Tiredness, or something else, something the parson kept in a cabinet in his study?

  I pinched her cheek to keep her awake and she slapped my hand away, but no other part of her moved. She was turned to moor stone.

  ‘I want to write to Mathilda,’ I said. ‘Or to Mrs Yeo, at least, to see how Mathilda is. If she’s ready to join us.’

  ‘But we might not be here too much longer,’ Anna said. ‘Better to save Mathilda the journey.’

  ‘You mean we might be closer to the truth? Did you learn something tonight?’

  ‘I learnt the parson’s port is as fine as his tobacco.’ She laughed, her eyes still closed. ‘He is a strange creature. His wife too. They were sorry to hear you were indisposed.’

  ‘Because you made me so, Anna! I don’t want any more from that green bottle.’

  ‘It was for your own good.’ She put her hand on my thigh, and though my heart was glad I couldn’t keep from thinking of Mathilda. Of myself on the meat hook. I didn’t want to tell Anna of my dream. I couldn’t bring myself to put it into words, so I sought something else to say instead.

  ‘Does Mrs Hawker know of our discovery yet? Has the captain told her that the dead man is her brother?’

  ‘Not yet. He must be planning to tell her in the morning. Mrs Hawker might as well have one more peaceful night. Heaven knows, tomorrow will come soon enough for sadness. It gave me a chance to ask some further questions.’

  ‘Oh! And what did you find out?’

  She yawned. ‘That the Ians childhood was a happy one, until Joseph’s schemes with the copper and the crocuses got out of hand. Apparently, Mrs Hawker and Joseph used to go down to the beach where we were today, to swim. They weren’t supposed to – their mother had forbidden it on account of the current. They never invited Frederick. Mrs Seldon’s daughter – what’s her name?’

  ‘Nancy.’

  ‘Nancy, yes. Well, Nancy was invited to these secret swims, for she was very thick with the younger Ianses. Is that a word? Anyway, this carried on right up to the point Joseph left Morwenstow, and now Nancy is their servant.’

  ‘Did you make Mrs Hawker cry,’ I said, ‘asking her about her brother?’

  Anna let out a belch and I moved to be free of the smell.

  ‘I did, but I told her my asking was to learn more about Joseph, which would help stop Frederick’s delusions, as she believes them to be, and that seemed to give her courage. It stopped the parson roaring at me too. He was most genial once Mrs Hawker had left us to the port. Such fine port …’

  ‘And what did he tell you? Anna – are you listening?’

  She wasn’t. Her breath had stuttered to soft snores. I kissed her, to taste the port and her beneath it, then opened our door and darted for the landing, for more candles. Across from our room was the one that was always locked, the one Nancy said was the parson’s special room. Had Anna asked the parson about it tonight? I thought it unlikely. She didn’t think the locked room mattered. It was another key she was interested in, the one tucked beneath a dead man’s ribs.

  From the landing I took all the candles I could see back to our room and set them in the window. All this talk of fine port and tobacco, the parson could afford to keep the darkness from me. I searched for my shawl, then remembered it was likely with the gobbet in the deadhouse. Not that I wanted it back after it had been used for that purpose. Mr Williams’ short, cream coat would have to do to save me from the draughts tonight. Would that the travelling case would reach us soon. I made myself think very hard on it, thought of it atop a cart that was even now on its way to Morwenstow, bringing us fresh clothes.

  So settled in the window, I waited for morning. If the wind should blow tonight, and in its breath the woman who called me by my name, Anna would be no help keeping me from my own end. I thought of Captain Ians, likewise afraid to go to sleep. Was he even now sitting up in the Bush Inn, longing for dawn? I resolved to ask him for his wakefulness remedies when next we saw him. And I resolved two more things also.

  One, I would have no more of the tincture from Mrs Hawker’s green bottle. It had given me the same muddle as drink but with none of the warm forgetfulness that was pleasant.

  Two, I would make Anna write to Mathilda tomorrow. I would know that she was well. I could not rest easy until then.

  TWENTY-SIX

  But there was no time for letters in the morning, for Anna and I were both of us shilly-shallying, both of us sore – Anna sore-headed from the port, me sore-necked from sleeping crooked in the window seat. It was Nancy who woke me, knocking to see if we wanted breakfast. There was candle wax all over the window seat, and some on the floor below – what would she think of us! And Anna, abed still, as herself, Mr Williams’ hair on the end of the bed frame. I opened the door a crack to say to Nancy thank you, yes, we’d be down quick as you like.

  ‘Well then,’ she said, ‘I’ll leave the dishes. I was all for cleaning up, thinking you’d already gone to church, but Mother said she hadn’t seen you go.’

  Anna murmured from the bed.

  ‘Is your husband taken poorly?’ Nancy said.

  I put myself more in the way, so Nancy shouldn’t see there was a woman in my bed when she thought there should be a man there – the man she’d met, with whiskers and a cream coat.

  ‘He’s no good first thing,’ I said.

  ‘’Tis hardly early,’ she said, turning towards the stairs, ‘being
gone nine. But if you don’t keep as regular hours as some folk … I’ll leave the eggs and freshen the tea, given you’re not attending.’

  I leant out onto the landing to call after her. ‘Attending what?’

  ‘Why, the funeral. Parson said your husband was keen to pay his respects but if you’re not—’

  I shut the door at once and shook Anna awake.

  The noise of the rooks followed us into church and were only a little quietened by the door being shut. The parson was speaking of tongues, the pain of silence. He gave no sign he’d heard us come in late, so lost was he in his words, but some heads did turn. I recognised Mrs Seldon as one of those looking at us, her husband beside her, his bald head bent in prayer.

  The cats lolled by the font, with My Most Righteous Cat at the heart of them. He’d have to share the pulpit with the parson today, and I thought he wouldn’t like that. He pressed his holy cheek against my knee, and I scratched him behind the ear. A blessing for us both.

  ‘Shilly!’ Anna hissed, and I saw I was to follow her to a bench on the left side of the church.

  ‘For man walketh in a vain shadow,’ said the parson, ‘and disquieteth himself in vain. He heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them.’

  We were gathering our riches that morning at the funeral, going about our paying work. Though how it would help us, I didn’t know.

  I was glad of the straw to silence our boots. But not glad of the new smell that rose from it, a terrible sweetness. We took our seats then I fished from the straw a weed. Wormwood. If I hadn’t felt so sick from the smell I might have laughed at such efforts to keep the air fresh. I asked Anna what we should be doing at this funeral for someone we didn’t know.

  ‘Watch, and keenly so,’ she whispered. ‘Make a note of who is here, and who isn’t – is there anyone we might have expected to attend but who is absent?’