The Mermaid's Call

by Katherine Stansfield

  ‘You’ll tell the girl to leave my husband be while he searches? And tell anyone else in the house too. He must not be watched.’

  She called Sarah and told her this. Did the girl fear we were Gypsies, thieves? I would have thought such a thing, had I still been in service as she was, and had I cared about my mistress. But she could say nothing. Her mistress had told her what she must do. Anna nodded at me, then hurried from the room, leaving me and Mrs Grey alone.

  I might have lied about the signs Anna was meant to find in the house, and about having answers too. But I didn’t lie about what had happened to me. I told Mrs Grey of the first time I heard the voice, while still in Boscastle, and about the woman I had seen swimming there. I told her of the call that was on the wind, in the sea. I told her how my body was not my own after that, and she nodded at this.

  ‘At first, I wondered if it was the Lord,’ Mrs Grey said, ‘if the feeling was what it meant to be called home, for I was rising – up up up! I was glad. But then I found myself close to falling over the cliff and I knew it wasn’t the Lord’s work, for why would He wish me to drown myself? It was then I had the new locks put on.’

  ‘They’ve kept you safe?’

  ‘Yes, but not without pain.’

  She took off her gloves and her nails were as badly split as mine had been after I had tried to claw my way out of the bedroom at the vicarage. On her right hand, much of the skin across her knuckles was torn.

  The ceiling creaked. Anna, I thought, going room to room with the key. Anna, what have you found?

  ‘How is it that you hear her?’ I asked Mrs Grey.

  Her poor, hurt hands clutched one another. ‘When I am close to sleep, I find I can hear the sea, but the house isn’t close enough for that to be possible. The sea doesn’t sound here. You cannot hear it now, can you, Mrs Williams?’

  I shook my head. There was only the creak of boards above us.

  ‘But when my eyes grow heavy the sea creeps closer, and I hear the waves breaking. In the pause between each one, she is calling. She calls my own name!’

  She fell to weeping again, and there was salt water in the room, as if the sea really had come to Coombe.

  ‘That’s when my body rises from my bed,’ Mrs Grey said, ‘when I am not myself. My thoughts go dark, as if I am already in the water, and then my mind is empty until I wake. The terror of that moment – not knowing where I am, that is the worst of it.’

  ‘Made so much worse by the nearness of the cliff,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, but it’s not just the sea she calls me to. Sarah found me with my face pressed into a basin of water in the kitchen. Inches deep only, but she had a job pulling me free.’

  ‘Enough to drown in.’

  ‘Why does she wish that for us, Mrs Williams? I’ve tried to live a good life, a Christian life. To my knowledge I’ve never harmed anyone. Why is this happening?’

  Her poor ragged face was drawn with pleading, and what answers had I truly?

  ‘I don’t think it’s about sin, Mrs Grey. I think it’s something else, something … stranger. Older.’

  I told her of Captain Ians’ dream, of his certainty that a woman had been part of his brother’s death. I told her what I’d learnt from the barman at the Bush, too.

  ‘You believe we’re being plagued by a … a mermaid?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because this one is a beast. She’s full of rage for what the squire’s nephew did, leaving her. It’s only some of us wretches who can hear her, and fewer still driven to destroy themselves by her. It’s those of us who’ve lost someone, someone we loved very much. Who is it that you’ve lost, Mrs Grey?’ I asked gently.

  She closed her eyes and sucked in her breath all at once, sharp. ‘Jane – my daughter. Last year, it was. My only child. Just a little fall, they said – her horse took fright. But she hit her head and Thomas, her husband, he wrote that the sense was knocked clean out of her. Slurring she was, and she couldn’t move herself. When I got up there, to Plymouth …’ Mrs Grey wiped her eyes. ‘Well, when the end came it was a mercy.’

  I took her poor hurt hands in mine. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘And you, Mrs Williams? Who have you lost?’

  Mathilda said a voice loud in my head. A voice that was and wasn’t my own. Was the here and now and the then and the still-to-come. Was the dreams of me hanging on a meat hook in a butcher’s shop back in Boscastle, my poor girl weeping somewhere nearby.

  Now it was Mrs Grey’s turn to take my hands in hers.

  ‘Don’t upset yourself, my dear. There’s no need to say. We’re the same, you and I. We share a loss, and a curse too, it seems. Though I can’t believe it’s … well, a mermaid!’

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘I have a better notion,’ Mrs Grey said, her voice hardening. ‘I know why I can hear the voice.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘Because she’s ill-wished me.’

  ‘The mermaid?’ I said.

  ‘No, no. The one who works at the vicarage. The older of the two. I don’t know her name, but I see her there when I call on Charlotte.’

  ‘You mean Mrs Seldon?’

  ‘That’s her. She’s done this.’ Mrs Grey stood up, purposeful now. Her wailing uncertainty gone. ‘I’ll have her blood drawn. They say that’s how to do it, don’t they? How to end a curse.’

  ‘Mrs Grey, what are you talking about? Why do you think Mrs Seldon’s ill-wished you?’

  She looked at me as if I was mazed. ‘Because she was there that night. When I was on the cliff.’

  She was opening the door, calling to Sarah, and I had to get her to tell me. I rushed to her side.

  ‘When was this, Mrs Grey? It’s important.’

  ‘After I saw Inchin outside the church. I was going to go home. I wanted to, but—’

  ‘Start from the beginning.’

  ‘You’re right, dear Mrs Williams. I must. I’d fallen asleep, late afternoon it must have been. The voice drew me from my chair and set me walking, and the door wasn’t bolted so I went as far as the church stile before I woke properly. I felt so weary, I thought I’d go into the church for a little rest, but Inchin was there, and I couldn’t bear for him to see my face. I hid from him, and when I saw he’d started for Coombe I planned to do the same myself, letting him get far enough ahead of me before I set off. But she’d taken all my strength and I couldn’t walk.’ As if the weariness had returned now, Mrs Grey leant against the door jamb. ‘Then the weather turned.’

  ‘You were out in the storm?’

  ‘Dreadful it was, but I couldn’t get myself home. That’s when I saw her, near the parson’s hut in the dark. Mrs Seldon. Why else would she be out there if not for ill-wishing?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ Anna said, now in the hall.

  ‘Sarah found me, thank the Lord, and helped me home. I’ve not been out since.’

  At the sound of her name, the girl was back, hovering at her mistress’s elbow.

  ‘Ah, good girl,’ Mrs Grey said, and reached for her. ‘Help me now, up the stairs. I must rest.’

  ‘Mrs Grey – wait,’ I called. ‘When you saw Mrs Seldon at the hut, was there a light? Did she have a lantern?’

  ‘No, no light. That was how she crept up on me, for the ill-wishing. You’ll know someone who can help me put a stop to that, Sarah, won’t you? You’ll get her blood drawn for me.’ And then to us, over her shoulder she said, ‘Forgive me. Give dear Frederick my love, won’t you?’

  We saw ourselves out.

  ‘Well, well,’ Anna said, ‘it seems Mrs Seldon hasn’t been completely honest with us. Telling us she didn’t go out that night and yet now we have a witness who saw her, and at the parson’s hut!’

  ‘A witness we can trust?’ I said.

  ‘I think so, for all her recent … wanderings.’

  ‘I been wandering likewise, Anna, and you’re trusting me.’

  ‘I am, and I se
e no reason not to put the same faith in one who suffers alongside you. Added to which, Mrs Grey has no motive to kill Joseph Ians that I can see.’

  ‘And Mrs Seldon?’

  ‘Let’s see what she has to say for herself. Oh, and you’d better have this back.’ She handed me the key. ‘It had no home at Mrs Grey’s.’

  ‘The farm seems more likely now, doesn’t it?’

  And so we made our way back there. Mrs Seldon would have to let us in the door this time.

  FORTY-TWO

  Mrs Seldon was surprised to see us back so soon. All was changed since we’d last been there, for she showed no caution when she opened the front door and led us into a big downstairs room. There was no sign there had been a gathering earlier that day. No teapot on the table, no cups with dregs to speak of the drinkers, the singers. No piles of plates bearing crumbs. No sign that the fire had been lit, even. Nothing. But we knew.

  Anna and I took the settle by the hearth and I got straight to the matter at hand for it was time we were leaving Morwenstow. There was Mathilda to think of, and the woman standing before us, making out she was polishing a spotless milk jug, she’d led us a merry dance.

  ‘Why did you lie to us, Mrs Seldon?’

  The milk jug slipped but she caught it before it fell. ‘Lie to you, Mrs Williams? I don’t understand.’

  ‘You told us that on the night before Joseph Ians’ body was discovered, you didn’t go out to the cliff. The weather was too bad, you said. You were glad to be at home.’

  ‘And who’s been telling you otherwise?’

  ‘Mrs Sally Grey of Coombe,’ Anna said. ‘She saw you out there that night, at the parson’s hut. What were you doing, Mrs Seldon?’

  She set the jug down on the table, purposeful, like she wouldn’t be rushed. When she looked at Anna her chin was tucked in, her shoulders straight. She was the most certain woman in all of Cornwall as she stood in her farmhouse on that April day.

  ‘Who are you, truly?’ she said. We gave no answer. ‘You might have fooled the parson into taking you in, letting you poke about in other people’s business, but I don’t owe you anything.’

  ‘How funny that you should mention making a fool of your employer,’ Anna said. ‘Given that said employer is, after all, a minister of the established church.’

  ‘I don’t see what’s funny about that.’

  ‘No,’ Anna said, ‘I don’t suppose you would, given that your family are dissenters.’

  She didn’t move an inch, but she was shaken by this. Her gaze was not so haughty now.

  ‘You’ve made your home a meeting place, and in sight of the church!’ I said.

  Anna turned to me. ‘What was it that Parson Hawker called John Wesley, my dear, can you remember?’

  ‘The great for nick ay tor,’ I said, but slow, for the word was a tricksy one. Much like the parson thought Wesley, leader of Mrs Seldon and her singers.

  ‘Indeed.’ Anna turned back to Mrs Seldon. ‘Such a colourful turn of phrase. We have been minded to tell the parson of the outrage occurring on his doorstep. It seems only fair, given his position, that he should know of vipers in his nest. For that’s how he’ll see your family, Mrs Seldon. You know I’m right.’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ Mrs Seldon said, and leant against a chair. Her knuckles were white.

  ‘We would,’ Anna said. ‘Unless you tell us what you were doing out on the cliff that night. A small price to pay, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

  We let her sit down and sort her thoughts. There was no sense rushing her now that we were so close, for we were, weren’t we? Mrs Seldon was about to confess to killing Joseph Ians, then we could tell the captain, collect the pay and be gone, back to Boscastle and Mathilda by nightfall.

  ‘I was on the cliff that night,’ she said. ‘I’ll grant you that. I saw Mrs Grey out there too. Thought she’d lost her wits, the way she was shouting into the wind. Just being out there in that weather was madness.’

  ‘And yet you were out there,’ Anna said. ‘Did you see Joseph Ians?’

  Mrs Seldon shook her head.

  ‘What about a light near the hut?’

  Another shake.

  ‘Why were you out there?’

  ‘I was looking for Nancy,’ Mrs Seldon said quietly.

  Nancy?

  ‘But she was with the parson,’ I said, ‘helping him sort things for that poor family in Coombe. Wasn’t she?’

  ‘She was, but …’

  Anna drummed her fingers against the side of the settle.

  ‘But she was so late coming back,’ Mrs Seldon said, with a great sigh like a wave falling. ‘And with the weather so dirty I was fretting. My husband said perhaps she’d gone for one of her walks on the cliff, like she does sometimes, but I couldn’t believe that. The wind so bad. I couldn’t sleep for wondering if something had happened. So I went down there myself.’

  ‘To the vicarage?’ I said. ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Coming on to midnight. The parson was still awake. He said she’d left hours ago.’ There was fear in Mrs Seldon’s voice. Was it the memory of how frightened she must have been then, hearing that news from the parson? Fearing her daughter might have been hurt in the storm? Or fear now, as we sat together before her hearth, at what these words meant?

  ‘Then your daughter has lied to us too, Mrs Seldon,’ Anna said. ‘She told us she was at the vicarage until almost midnight. Just around the time you say you called there only to find she was hours gone. Now, why would she lie about her whereabouts on that night?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘I think you might have an idea, Mrs Seldon,’ Anna said. ‘Not at first, perhaps. Once she came home, did she tell you where she’d been? No, I see that she didn’t. But when news came of a man lying dead beneath the parson’s hut, I think you began to wonder if Nancy had seen him, done something that night involving him.’

  ‘She’s never said anything about him.’

  ‘But some of her clothes have gone missing, haven’t they?’ I said, thinking of the violence done to Joseph’s body. The blood there must have been.

  Mrs Seldon looked as if she’d lost a great deal of blood herself, so pale she was. ‘I … I won’t say no more. You asked me what I was doing on the cliff and I’ve told you.’

  ‘You still don’t know, do you?’ Anna said. ‘You don’t know if she did do something wicked that night.’

  ‘But you fear it,’ I added.

  Mrs Seldon covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

  Anna was asking Mrs Seldon where Nancy was, saying that we had to speak with her. I was up and looking for the stairs. If Nancy was in the house and had heard any of our talk, she might be thinking to run, for it looked bad for her now.

  There were only two rooms upstairs. The first I opened had a man’s clothes hanging on the back of a chair – Mr Seldon’s, I guessed – and the furrow of two bodies on the bed. I knew the other room had to be Nancy’s. The door was shut. I pushed it open gently, ready to bar her way if she was there, if she’d try to get past me.

  But the room was empty. A narrow bed, a narrow shelf above it. A narrow life – Nancy living in this corner of nowhere with her parents, emptying the Hawkers’ slops. Thank God for Anna saving me from such a fate. I sat on the bed and stroked the cover, which was coarse but clean. A pale blue, the colour of a gentle sea. The kind of sea not seen at Morwenstow. The colour likely deeper once but faded, now, from washing. Time had taken its toll.

  On the shelf was a worn Bible, some folded squares of linen, and a cup. The cup bore some letters. I picked it up to see better, for the lettering was faded as the bed cover. The first word was an easy one – The. But the second was harder. I mouthed the sounds. Bee oo duh. Bude. The next was made like Heaven was made, but missing something – Haven it read, which must be close to Heaven. And the last word I knew, for I’d seen it in Boscastle – Hotel. The Bude Haven Hotel said the cup.

  It had rings of dirt inside. The rest
of the room so clean and yet this cup stood proud unwashed on the shelf. There was a mystery, but then people were the most mysterious things in the world. Some could never be solved.

  Anna appeared in the doorway. ‘Mrs Seldon thinks Nancy is at the vicarage.’ She sat beside me on the bed and the mattress dipped, sending our shoulders crashing together.

  ‘I don’t think this is meant for a second body, Anna.’

  ‘No, only Nancy.’

  She stroked the bed cover, as I had done. We were more the same than we were different.

  ‘Mrs Seldon feared the worst when she couldn’t find her daughter,’ Anna said. ‘But next morning Nancy was here, sleeping the sleep of the saved.’

  ‘And she didn’t say where she’d been?’

  ‘Not according to Mrs Seldon.’

  ‘Who has lied to us once already,’ I said.

  ‘She seemed genuine this time. She’s very frightened, Shilly. I think we’re finally nearing the truth.’

  ‘We still don’t have a reason for Nancy to kill Joseph.’

  ‘Well, Nancy herself might be about to throw some light on that. Come on. We’d best get over to the vicarage.’ She struggled to her feet, having to fight the sag of the mattress.

  I did the same, shuffling forward, and felt a stab beneath my leg. There was something under the bed. Something pressing up through the mattress. I knelt on the floor and peered beneath the bed.

  ‘What are you doing, Shilly?’

  I reached under and my fingers met wood. I tried to pull it towards me but it was too heavy.

  ‘You’ll have to help me, Anna.’

  She glanced onto the landing, then did as I asked.

  Together we pulled it out, this heavy wooden thing. It was a box. And in the box was a lock. My hand was shaking as I took the key from my pocket. For the last time?

  The key we had found in Joseph Ians’ chest fit perfectly. I turned it, and the lock clicked open. Anna and I looked at one another.

  I drew back the lid.

  FORTY-THREE

  All the letters in the world were in that box. We tipped them onto the floor and sat in the paper nest we had made.