Mermaid

by Carolyn Turgeon

  She shook her head, forced herself not to think of them, to focus on the communion and her prayers as she returned to the back pew, but inside she burned with shame. No one, not even her future husband, wanted her there. She had risked everything to come here, to marry a man who did not want her.

  Margrethe asked for her lunch and dinner in her room for the next several days, claiming she was still exhausted by the journey.

  “Let them get used to the idea of us, without the pressure of our constant presence,” she told Edele, who did not argue.

  THEY HAD BEEN there just over a week when they were invited to visit the queen’s apartment, and Margrethe felt they had little choice but to go.

  They walked into a large, richly decorated room, where the walls were hung with bright tapestries threaded through with a lacy gold. Margrethe could not help but think of the place where her own mother had hosted her friends, how much warmer it was in comparison. This queen was austere and grand, and her rooms reflected that coldness.

  The queen wore a red dress, and her black hair was pulled back. She was as striking as her son, Margrethe thought, with the same golden green eyes. Combined with her dramatic coloring, those eyes gave her an animal look. She was playing cards with one of her ladies, and she looked up and nodded when Margrethe and Edele entered.

  A dozen other women sat playing games, reading, and sewing, scattered about the room like place settings for a feast.

  Margrethe met the eyes of Astrid and stared, despite herself. Up close, she was even more stunning. There was something mesmerizing about her, almost familiar. Like someone she’d met in a dream. Her mind flashed again to Lenia. The unbearable beauty of the mermaid glimmering on the beach, the prince dying beneath her. The thought came to her again: she was beautiful like that, and Margrethe’s heart ached with the most terrible loss. A sense that she would never find such beauty again, in all the world. This girl had a hint of that same beauty to her. How could she, Margrethe, compete with such a woman?

  “Welcome,” the queen said, and Margrethe tore her eyes away, hoping her face had not betrayed her.

  She bowed. “Thank you,” she said. “We appreciate your hospitality, and I hope to return it one day.”

  The queen nodded. “Join us, please.” She looked around at the women in the room. “We need to welcome my son’s betrothed.” She smiled at Margrethe then, but it was not the kind of smile that would make anyone feel warm inside.

  Margrethe and Edele sat, awkwardly, a little away from the others, on chairs by a large window hung with colored glass. They picked up a deck of cards nearby and began to play.

  The other women were talking, laughing. Margrethe noticed that Astrid did not say a word but seemed anxious. She was sewing, but fumblingly. Her hands were so perfectly formed and elegant, yet her movements were those of a child.

  Edele, under her breath, said, “She is watching you.”

  “Really?”

  She looked at Astrid, straight on, and their eyes met. The girl’s burning blue eyes on her own. Margrethe looked away immediately, nervously. There had been something strange and pained in the girl’s expression.

  “Well, I am here to marry her lover,” Margrethe said, surprised at the sense of triumph she felt saying the words. She had never had such a feeling before, tucked away in the study with Gregor, surrounded by books, in a castle where everyone adored her.

  A viciousness rose in her. She needed this, she realized. Not only for her kingdom but for herself. She wanted to walk with him by the sea, bend over him the way the mermaid had done, her lips on his forehead. She wanted his heart as well as his hand in marriage, and she knew that, if he remembered her, just thought about her and those moments by the sea, he would forget anyone else. People said that Astrid couldn’t even speak. Despite the girl’s beauty, how could the prince love a woman who could not speak, who couldn’t laugh with him or challenge him, who couldn’t sing lullabies to the children she’d bear him? There she was, sitting at the queen’s feet, not saying one word, as the others chattered around her.

  Margrethe hated the prince’s lover. The feeling flashed through her, nearly pushing her to her feet. She could have screamed with it.

  “Do not let her fluster you, my friend,” Edele whispered.

  Margrethe started, felt the color rise in her neck.

  “Don’t be absurd,” she whispered.

  Edele met her eyes. “Perhaps you should pay the prince a visit. That’s all he needs, you know. Go talk to him.”

  Margrethe nodded.

  A moment later, she stood. “I am feeling tired,” she said. “My lady and I will retire for the night.”

  “As you wish,” the queen said, nodding.

  To Margrethe’s annoyance, she thought she detected a smirk on the woman’s face, but she did not have time now to worry about the prince’s mother. Not until she had won him over.

  AS SOON AS they left the queen’s wing, Margrethe turned to Edele, bursting with feeling.

  “I’m going to him,” she said. “Now. You’re right. I will talk to him.”

  “Good,” Edele said, placing her hands on her friend’s shoulders. “Remember: you are a princess, the most beautiful woman in the Northern kingdom. And slightly intelligent, too, even.”

  Margrethe laughed, grateful at how Edele could always make her relax.

  “He loves you,” Edele said, lowering her voice as a guard turned the corner and entered the corridor. “Now go!”

  Margrethe turned, in her most regal manner, to the guard approaching them. “Where is the prince?” she asked. “I must speak to him at once.”

  “I believe he is with the king, madam.”

  “Take me to him.”

  “As you wish,” he said, nervous but unwilling to disobey a princess.

  She followed the guard down a corridor that led to the king’s chamber, thinking about what she would say to the prince. You know me, she wanted to shout. You kissed my hand at the end of the world! I saved your life, remember? You called me an angel. Don’t you remember? You would have died without me. She did not care if it was true. I carried you through the water!

  As they approached the king’s chamber, the door was suddenly flung open, and the prince himself stormed out.

  He brushed past them, his face flashing with anger.

  “Christopher,” she said.

  He turned, ferocious.

  “You,” he said.

  Her heart was pounding. “Yes.” She shrank back.

  He stalked toward her, and she watched him with wide, terrified eyes. “You. You made a fool of me. I thought you were a woman of God, and you were … You’re …” He gestured at her in frustration.

  “But I …,” she began. No one had ever spoken to her this way. Tears sprang to her eyes, to her horror. She wiped them away angrily. “I did not know who you were, either!”

  “You tricked me! You let me stand there and practically profess my love for you, Margrethe.” He emphasized her name angrily. “Like a fool.”

  “But I was in hiding,” she said. “Nobody knew who I was there. I was not supposed to tell anyone. I don’t understand what you think I should have done!”

  “You should have told me your name. Who you were. I was nearly dead, what do you think I would have done to you? We were in a house of God!”

  She gaped at him. The strength of his anger confused her. “What do you mean?” she said. “You … were my enemy!”

  “Exactly,” he said, quietly, and for the first time she saw the hurt in his eyes. He thought she had betrayed him. Had she? It made no sense to her. None of this did.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  For a moment, his face relaxed, and she saw a glimmer of the man she’d met by the sea.

  Just then, a guard appeared from the king’s chamber. “May I be of any assistance, Your Highness?” he asked, and Margrethe and Christopher both turned to him at once.

  He had been talking to the prince, who nodded
. “I am just going back to my rooms,” Christopher said.

  “You know me,” she whispered, trying to get the moment back.

  He looked at her coldly. “I knew a holy woman. I do not know the daughter of the Northern king.” He nearly spat the words before storming off, leaving her there alone with the guard, who was gentlemanly enough to pretend not to have seen anything that had just happened.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Mermaid

  WITHIN DAYS OF MARGRETHE’S ARRIVAL AT THE castle, the healer woman, Agnes, visited Lenia and confirmed that she was indeed pregnant with the prince’s baby, that he had filled her with his seed and that the seed would become a child. His child. Her child. Agnes had told Lenia that the baby was growing at an unusual rate, that she’d never seen anything like it.

  “I can feel its heart,” Agnes had told her, and Lenia had had to swallow to keep the sickness down. “I would’ve thought you’d arrived here already pregnant if I hadn’t seen for myself that you were a virgin. I don’t understand it, but you and the baby seem healthy enough.”

  Now, more than two months after drinking Sybil’s potion and coming to the upper world, Lenia stood by the sea, staring out at the water, remembering the witch’s words: If he marries someone else, the next morning at dawn your heart will break, and you will turn to foam.

  The waves crashed, rising and cascading down into foam, and then turned to nothing, as if they were never there at all. All her life, in the sea, she had dreamed of this, the world above. And now that she was here, she yearned instead for the sea and for all she’d left behind. Would it always be like this for her?

  She spoke to her child in her mind. This is the sea, where your aunts live, and your grandmother and grandfather, your cousins …

  She was sick, clutching her swollen stomach. Her body was changing, and she felt as if a fish were trapped inside her. Her stomach seized up right then, and she bent over and vomited into the sea.

  What was this inside of her? What would it become?

  She was terrified that she would give birth to some kind of mutant, part merperson and part human, a child who would not be accepted in either world. There was nothing she could do now but wait.

  All the grace she’d had in her old life, in her former body, seemed to be gone forever. She wanted only to eat, and sleep, and be with him. The prince visited or sent for her frequently still, but he seemed afraid to do anything but hold Lenia, as if she would break.

  “I will not do it,” he vowed, running his hands through her hair, feeling the slope of her belly. “You are my true wife, no matter what.”

  She spent more and more time in the chapel or by the sea when everyone else was out enjoying the seemingly endless amusements of the court. She knew that everything depended now on the Northern king. If the king allowed it, Christopher and Margrethe would marry, the North and South would make peace, and Lenia would die. If the king did not allow it, legally Christopher and Margrethe could not marry. And then, only then, would the prince be free to marry her. Despite what Katrina said, he would marry her if he could, Lenia was sure of it. The way he looked at her when they were alone … the way he touched her hair and whispered into her ear and her belly left her little doubt.

  It had been over a fortnight since the king had sent messengers to the North. Any day now they would receive King Erik’s response.

  She prayed to the human God, to Christ and to Mary. She stared up at the crucifix in the chapel, at the suffering man with blood dripping down his face and a crown of thorns on his head. Sent to earth by his father to die for the sins of humans. His beautiful face, turned to the side in suffering. His wracked body, which she longed to touch.

  Please let him marry me, she prayed, but she was not sure that the humans’ gods would listen to her. Help me and my child.

  Because even if her child was deformed and monstrous, as hideous a creature as the land and sea had ever seen, Lenia loved it. No matter what it was, it was her child, her child and the prince’s child, something they had made together. She would die a hundred times over so that their child might live.

  All Lenia could do was pray and wait, pray and wait, as word came trickling down from the North that the king was very likely to relent.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Princess

  MARGRETHE LAY IN BED, UNABLE TO SLEEP. SHE HAD never felt this way about someone before. Never hated anyone. But now she hated the prince’s lover. Astrid. Wanted desperately for her to just disappear. She was sure she could kill her with her bare hands if given the chance, and was tortured with dreams of her kissing the prince, of her bending over him on the rocks instead of the mermaid, her breasts against his bare skin.

  She learned about the prince’s lover from Princess Katrina’s handmaidens: how Astrid had shown up at the castle one day wearing nothing but an astonishing, priceless necklace, how she was unable to speak, how she spent most of her time in her own room or walking by the sea when she was not keeping company with the prince. How strange she was. She learned that Katrina was the one who’d initially shown her kindness, but that the prince had been immediately smitten and still was, to the surprise of all the ladies, who thought Astrid was actually quite boring.

  “It’s the baby,” one of the ladies said. “He is a good man, the prince, and that conniver managed to get herself pregnant the moment she arrived.”

  When she was alone, Margrethe stared at herself in the mirror, criticizing every flaw. Was she not beautiful enough? Did he not desire her? She stared at her long black hair and brown eyes, her pale skin and angular features. She had an intelligent look to her, people said, just like her mother. Before, Margrethe had always thought this was a compliment. Now she imagined herself as dull and dour, a woman suited more to convent life than to the love of a man. She didn’t have the lushness or curves of Astrid, and she began to hate herself for that.

  Of course, it was easier to believe that it was her dark hair or slenderness that was at fault, rather than the truth. Christopher felt she had betrayed him. And Christopher was in love with someone else.

  Edele tried to comfort her and remind her why she was there. But she spent too much time crying about Rainer, whom she missed terribly, to be of much actual comfort.

  The whole castle was on edge, all of them for their own reasons. Waiting to see what King Erik would do. Whether it was to launch a new attack or attend the marriage of his daughter, he would be coming to the Southern kingdom soon.

  Margrethe’s only consolation was reading, the way it had been since she was a child. Opening a manuscript and getting lost in the world inside of it. The clean precision of the Greek letters, like hands soothing her.

  One afternoon she sat reading an old manuscript when she heard someone entering the library. She looked up, startled, her mind still swimming in the world of the book, and found herself staring straight into the face of Prince Christopher.

  For a minute she thought he was going to turn around and leave. But his curiosity seemed to get the better of him.

  “What are you reading?” he asked.

  Her heart raced in her chest. The moment felt fragile, like a glass balanced on wire. She was almost afraid to breathe.

  “The Odyssey,” she said.

  “The Odyssey? You are able to read Greek?” He stepped forward and looked down at the page in front of her.

  “Yes. My mother insisted that I be educated. My father’s old tutor schooled me. I took to it.”

  He looked at her, impressed, trying to hide his surprise.

  “We have spoken of this book before, you and I,” she said. “The men with eyes in their foreheads, women with snakes for hair. The enchantress who put you under a spell.” She waited for his reaction, expecting the worst.

  He smiled. “We modern heroes can have adventures, too, you know.”

  “I do not doubt it,” she said.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “No,” she said, gesturing across the tab
le. “Please.”

  He sat down and faced her. She breathed in. He was so handsome. In this light, his eyes were more green than gold. His body seemed too big for the table. She was used to sitting in rooms like this with Gregor, who was tall and lanky, not the warrior in front of her. Christopher looked like he should be in the sun at all times, shooting arrows at towers, chasing stags with a spear poised above his head.

  He was the first one to speak. “I want to apologize to you, for how angry I’ve been. I have blamed you too much, Margrethe.” He smiled wryly. “It feels strange, calling you that.”

  “I am sorry, too,” she said. She lifted her hands. “For all of this. The position you are in now.”

  He nodded. “When I met you, it was wonderful.” His face filled with emotion. “It was … otherworldly there, and then you, like an angel. You carried me through the water. I remembered it. You stood by my bedside dressed all in white. It changed me. For the first time in my life, I felt pure. Untainted. I was near death, my men were all lost, and then this angel appeared to me.… Discovering that the woman I had met was Princess Margrethe …” He shook his head. “I feel like I’ve been cheated out of something. And now you coming here, my father arranging this marriage without my knowledge …”

  “And you have someone,” she said, her voice quavering.

  He nodded slowly, looking away. “I thought about you. You had been out of my reach entirely, a woman of God. I still hear your voice. I dream of it.”

  “My voice?”

  “When you carried me through the water. You sang to me.”

  Her smiled wavered. For a moment, she froze.

  But the mermaid was lost forever, deep in the mysterious, impossible sea.

  “Yes,” she said.

  His face shifted. “This marriage, Margrethe. It would bring much good to both of our kingdoms. We could be one kingdom again, as we were under the old king. I know what it means, that you came here. I would be fighting now if you had not. The North would be outside our doors now, and we’d be at war. Losing our friends and brothers. I am like my father. Tired of fighting. Yet not willing to hand over our land to your father and become his slaves.”