Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep

by Elizabeth Bear

  And they ain’t all beautiful—stop a clock, some of them would.

  Now, what you didn’t see much of in the old times, and don’t hardly be seeing at all these days, was mermen. Merrows, some folk call them. Ugly as sin, the lot: not a one but’s got a runny red nose, nasty straggly hair—red too, mostly, I don’t know why—stumpy green teeth sticking up and out every which way, skin like a crocodile’s arse. You get a look at one of those, it don’t take much to figure why your mermaid takes to hanging around sailors. Put me up against a merrow, happen even I start looking decent enough, by and by.

  Any road, like I told you, Henry Lee and I was pretty well down to eating our boots—or we would have been if we’d had any. We was stumbling along the beach one morning, guts too empty to growl, looking for someone to beg or borrow from—or maybe just chew up on the spot, either way—when there’s a sudden commotion out in the water, and someone screaming for help. Well, I knew it were a merrow straightaway, and so did Henry Lee—you can’t ever mistake a merrow’s creaky, squawky voice, once you’ve heard it—and when we ran to look, we saw he had a real reason to scream. Big hammerhead had him cornered against the reef, circling and circling him, the way they do when they’re working up to a strike. No, I tell a lie, I misremember—it were a tiger shark, not a hammerhead. Hammer, he swims in big packs, he’ll stay out in the deep water, but your tiger, they’ll come right in close, right into the shallows. And they’ll leave salmon or tuna to go after a merrow. Just how they are.

  Now merrows are tough as they’re unsightly, you don’t never want to be disputing a fish or a female with a merrow. But to a tiger shark, a merrow’s a nice bit of Cornish pasty. This one were flapping his arms at the tiger, hitting out with his tail—worst thing he could have done; they’ll go for the tail first thing, that’s the good part. I says to Henry Lee, I says, “Look sharp, mate—might be summat over for us.” Sharks is real slapdash about their meals, and we was hungry.

  But Henry Lee, he gives me just the one look, with his eyes all big and strange—and then rot me if he ain’t off like a pistol shot, diving into the surf and heading straight for the reef and that screaming merrow. Ain’t too many sailors can really swim, you know, but Henry Lee, he were a Devon man, and he used to say he swam before he could walk. He had a knife in his belt—won it playing euchre with a Malay pirate—and I could see it glinting between his teeth as he slipped through them waves like a dolphin, which is a shark’s mortal enemy, you know. Butt ’em in the side, what they do, in the belly, knock ’em right out of the water. I’ve seen it done.

  That tiger shark never knew Henry Lee were coming till he were on its back, hanging on like a jockey and stabbing everywhere he could reach. Blood enough in the water, I couldn’t hardly see anything—I could just hear that merrow, still screeching his ugly head off. Time I caught sight of Henry Lee again, he were halfway back to shore, grinning at me around that bloody knife, and a few fins already slicing in to finish off their mate, ta ever so. I practically dragged Henry Lee out of the water, ’acos of he were bleeding too—shark’s hide’ll take your own skin off, and his thighs looked like he’d been buggering a hedgehog.

  “Barking mad,” I told him. “Barking, roaring, howling mad! God’s frigging teeth, you ought to be put somewhere you can’t hurt yourself—aye, nor nobody else. What in frigging Jesus’ frigging name possessed you, you louse-ridden get?”

  See, it weren’t that we was all such mates back then, me and Henry Lee, it were more that I thought I knew him—knew what he’d do when, and what he wouldn’t; knew what I could trust him for, and what I’d better see to meself. There’s times your life can depend on that kind of knowing—weren’t for that, I wouldn’t be here, telling this. I says it again, “What the Christ possessed you, Henry bleeding Lee?”

  But he’d already got his back to me, looking out toward the reef, water still roiling with the sharks fighting for leftovers. “Where’s that merrow gone?” he wanted to know. “He was just there—where’s he got to?” He was set to swim right back out there, if I hadn’t grabbed him again.

  “Panama by now, if he’s got the sense of a weevil,” says I. “More sense than you, anyway. What kind of bloody idiot risks his life for a bloody merrow?”

  “An idiot who knows how a merrow can reward you!” Henry Lee turned back around to face me, and I swear his blue eyes had gone black and wild as the sea off Halifax. “Didn’t you never hear about that? You save a merrow’s life, he’s bound to give you all his treasure, all the plunder he’s ever gathered from shipwrecks, sea fights—everything he’s got in his cave, it’s the rule. He don’t have no choice, it’s the rule!”

  I couldn’t help it, I were laughing before he got halfway through. “Aye, Henry Lee,” I says. “Aye, I’ve heard that story, and you know where I heard it? At me mam’s tit, that’s where, and at every tit since, and every mess where I ever put me feet under the table. Pull the other one, chum, that tale’s got long white whiskers on it.” Wouldn’t laugh at him so today, but there you are. I were younger then.

  Well, Henry Lee just gave me that look, one more time, and after that he didn’t speak no more about merrows and treasures. But he were up all that night—we slept on the beach, y’see, and every time I roused, the fool were pacing the water’s edge, this way and that, gaping out into the bloody black, plain waiting for that grateful merrow to show up with his arms full of gold and jewels and I don’t know what, all for him, along of being saved from the sharks. “Rule,” thinks I. “Rule, me royal pink bum,” and went back to sleep.

  But there’s treasure and there’s treasure—depends how you look at it, I reckon. Very next day, Henry Lee found himself a berth aboard a whaler bound home for Boston and short a foremast hand. He tried to get me signed on too, but . . . well, I knew the captain, and the captain remembered me, so that were the end of that. You’d not believe the grudges some of them hold.

  Me, I lucked onto a Spanish ship, a week or ten days later—she’d stopped to take on water, and I got talking with the cook, who needed another messboy. I’ve had better berths, but it got me to Málaga—and after that, one thing led to another, and I didn’t see Henry Lee again for six or seven years, must have been, the way it happens with seamen. I thought about him often enough, riding that tiger shark to rescue that merrow who were going to make him rich, and I asked after him any time I met an English hand, or a Yankee, but never a word could anyone tell me—not until I rounded a fruit stall in the marketplace at Velha Goa, and almost ran over him!

  How I got there’s no great matter—I were a cook meself by then, on a wallowing scow of an East Indiaman, and trying to get some greens and fresh fruit into the crew’s hardtack diet, if just to sweeten the farts in the fo’c’sle. As for why I were running, with a box of mangoes in me arms . . . well, that don’t figure in this story neither, so never you mind.

  Henry Lee looked the same as I remembered him—still not shaving more than every three days, I’d warrant, still as blue-eyed an innocent as ever cracked a bos’un’s head with a beer bottle. Only change in him I could see, he didn’t look like a sailor no more. Hard to explain; he were dressing just the same as ever—singlet, blue canvas pants, same rope-sole shoes, even the very same dirty white cap he always wore—but summat was different about him. Might have been the way he walked—he’d lost that little roll we all have, walked like he’d not been to sea in his life. Aye, might have been that.

  Well, he give a great whoop to see me, and he grabbed hold of me, mangoes and all, and dragged me off into a dark little Portygee tavern—smelled of dried fish and fried onions, I remember, and cloves under it all. They knew him there—landlord patted his back, kissed him on the cheek, brought us some kind of mulled ale, and left us alone. And Henry Lee sat there with his arms folded and grinned at me, not saying a word, until I finally told him he looked like a blasted old hen, squatting over one solitary egg, and it likely rotten at that. “Talk or be damned to you,” I says. “The drink’s not
good enough to keep me from walking out of this fleapit.”

  Henry Lee burst out laughing then, and he grabbed both me hands across the table, saying, “Ah, it’s just so grand to see you, old Ben, I don’t know what to say first, I swear I don’t.”

  “Tell about the money, mate,” I says, and didn’t he stare then? I says, “Your clothes are for shite, right enough, but you’re walking like a man with money in every pocket—you talk like your mouth’s full of money, and you’re scared it’ll all spill out if you open your lips too wide. Now, last time I saw you, you hadn’t a farthing to bless yourself with, so let’s talk about that, hey? That merrow turn up with his life savings, after all?” And I laughed, because I’d meant it as a joke. I did.

  Henry Lee didn’t laugh. He looked startled, and then he leaned so close I could see where he’d lost a side tooth and picked up a scar right by his left eyebrow—made him look younger, somehow, those things did—and he dropped his voice almost to a whisper, no matter there wasn’t a soul near us. “No,” says he, “no, Ben, he did better than that, a deal better than that. He taught me the making of salt wine.”

  Aye, that’s how I looked at him—exactly the way you’re eyeing me now. Like I’m barking mad, and Jesus and the saints wouldn’t have me. And the way you mumbled, “Salt wine?”—I said it just the same as you, tucking me head down like that, getting me legs under me, in case things turned ugly. I did it true. But Henry Lee only sat back and grinned again. “You heard me, Ben,” he says. “You heard me clear enough.”

  “Salt wine,” I says, and different this time, slowly. “Salt wine . . . that’d be like pickled beer? Oysters in honey, that kind of thing, is it? How about bloody fried marmalade, then?” Takes me a bit of time to get properly worked up, mind, but foolery will do it. “Whale blubber curry,” I says. “Boiled nor’easter.”

  For answer, Henry Lee reaches into those dirty canvas pants and comes up with a cheap pewter flask, two for sixpence in any chandlery. Doesn’t say one word—just hands it to me, folds his hands on the table and waits. I take me time, study the flask—got a naked lady and a six-point buck on one side, and somebody in a flying chariot looks like it’s caught fire on the other. I start to say how I don’t drink much wine—never did, not Spanish sherry, nor even port, nor none of that Frenchy slop—but Henry Lee flicks one finger to tell me I’m to shut me gob and taste. So that’s what I did.

  All right, this is the hard part to explain. Nor about merrows, nor neither the part about some bloody fool jumping on the back of a tiger shark—the part about the wine. Because it were wine in that flask, and it were salty, and right there’s where I run aground on a lee shore, trying to make you taste and see summat you never will, if your luck holds. Salt wine—not red nor neither white, but gray-green, like the deep sea, and smelling like the sea, filling your head with the sea, but wine all the same. Salt wine. . . .

  First swallow, I lost meself. I didn’t think I were ever coming back.

  Weren’t nothing like being drunk. I’ve downed enough rum, enough brandy, dropped off to sleep in enough jolly company and wakened in enough stinking alleys behind enough shebeens to know the difference. This were more . . . this were like I’d fallen overboard from me, from meself, and not a single boat lowered to find me. But it didn’t matter none, because summat were bearing me up, summat were surging under me, big and fast and wild, as it might have been a dolphin between me legs, tearing along through the sea—or the air, might be we were flying, I’d not have known—carrying somebody off to somewhere, and who it was I can’t tell you now no more than I could have then. But it weren’t me, I’ll take me affydavy on that. I weren’t there. I weren’t anywhere or anybody, and just then that were just where I wanted to be.

  Just then . . . Aye, you give me a choice just then, happen I might have chosen . . . But I’d just had that one swallow, after all, so in a bit there I were, me as ever was, back at that tavern table with Henry Lee, and him still grinning like a dog with two tails, and he says to me, “Well, Ben?”

  When I can talk, I ask him, “You can make this swill yourself?” and when he nods, “Then I’d say your merrow earned his keep. Not half bad.”

  “Best you ever turned into piss,” Henry says. I don’t say nowt back, and after a bit, he leans forward, drops his voice way down again, and says, “It’s our fortune, Ben. Yours and mine. I’m swearing on my mother’s grave.”

  “If the dollymop’s even got one,” I says, because of course he don’t know who his mam was, no more than I know mine. They just dropped us both and went their mortal ways, good luck to us all. I tell him, “Never mind the swearing, just lay out what you mean by our fortune. I didn’t save no merrow—fact, I halfway tried to save you from trying to save him. He don’t owe me nowt, and nor do you.” And I’m on me feet and ready to scarper—just grab up those mangoes and walk. Ain’t a living soul thinks I’ve got no pride, but I bloody do.

  But Henry Lee’s up with me, catching ahold of me arm like an octopus, and he’s saying, “No, no, Ben, you don’t understand. I need you, you have to help me, sit down and listen.” And he pulls and pushes me back down, and leans right over me, so close I can see the scar as cuts into his hairline, where the third mate of the Boston Annie got him with a marlinspike, happened off the Azores. He says, “I can make it, the salt wine, but I need a partner to market it for me. I’ve got no head for business—I don’t know the first thing about selling. You’ve got to ship it, travel with it, be my factor. Because I can’t do this without you, d’you see, Ben?”

  “No, I don’t see a frigging thing,” I says in his face. “I’m no more a factor than you’re a bloody nun. What I am’s a seacook, and it’s past time I was back aboard me ship, so by your leave—”

  Henry Lee’s still gripping me arm so it hurts, and I can’t pry his fingers loose. “Ben, listen!” he fair bellows again. “This is Goa, not the City of London—the Indians won’t ever deal honestly with a Britisher who doesn’t have an army behind him—why should they?—and the Portuguese bankers don’t trust me any more than I’d trust a single one of them not to steal the spots off a leopard and come back later for the whiskers. There’s a few British financiers, but they don’t trust anyone who didn’t go to Eton or Harrow. Now you’re a lot more fly than you ever let on, I’ve always known that—”

  “Too kind,” I says, but he don’t hear. He goes on, “You’re the one who always knew when we were being cheated—by the captain, by the company, by the lady of the house, didn’t matter. Any souk in the world, any marketplace, I always let you do the bargaining—always. You’d haggle forever over a penny, a peseta, a single anna—and you’d get your price every time. Remember? I surely remember.”

  “Ain’t nothing like running a business,” I tell him. “What you’re talking about is responsibility, and I never been responsible for nowt but the job I were paid to do right. I like it that way, Henry Lee, it suits me. What you’re talking about—”

  “I’m talking about a future, Ben. Spend your whole life going from berth to berth, ship to ship—where are you at the end of it? Another rotting hulk, like all the rest, careened on the beach, and no tide ever coming again to float you off. I’m offering you the security of a decent roof over your head, good meals on your table, and a few teeth left in your mouth to chew them with.” He lets go of me then, but his blue eyes don’t. He says, “I’d outfit you, I’d pay your way, and I’d give you one-third of the profits—ah, hell, make it forty, forty percent, what do you say? It’ll be worth it to me to sleep snug a’nights, knowing my old shipmate’s minding the shop and putting the cat out. What do you say, Ben? Will you do it for me?”

  I look at him for a good while, not saying nowt. I remember him one time, talking a drunken gang of Yankee sailors out of dropping us into New York harbor for British spies—wound up buying us drinks, they did, which bloody near killed us anyway. And Piraeus—God’s teeth, Piraeus—when the fool put the comehither on the right woman at the wrong time, an
d there we was, locked in a cellar for two days and nights, while her husband and his mates went on and on, just upstairs, about how to slaughter us so we’d remember it. Henry Lee, he finally got them persuaded that I were carrying some sort of horrible disease, rot your cods off, you leave it long enough, make your nose fall into your soup. They pushed the cellar key under the door and was likely in Istanbul, time we got out of that house. Me, I didn’t stop feeling me nose for another two days.

  So I know what Henry Lee can do, talking, and I sniff all around his words, like a fox who smells the bait and knows the trap’s there, somewhere, underneath. I keep telling him, over and over, “Henry Lee, I never been no better than you with figures—I’d likely run you bankrupt inside of a month.” Never stops him—he just grins and answers back, “I’m bankrupt already, Ben. I’m not swimming in boodle, like you thought—I’ve gone and sunk all I own into a thousand cases of salt wine. Nothing more to lose, you see—there’s no way you can make anything any the worse. So what do you say now?”

  I don’t answer, but I up with that naked-lady flask, and I take another swallow. This time I know what’s coming, and I set meself for it, but the salt wine catches me up again, lifts me and tosses me like before, same as if I was a ship with me mainmast gone, and the waves doing what they like with me. No, it’s not like before—I don’t lose Ben Hazeltine, nor I don’t forget who I am. What happens, I find summat. I find everything. I can’t rightly stand up proper, ’acos I don’t know which way up is, and I feel the eyes rocking in me head, and I’m dribbling wine like I’ve not done since I were a babby . . . but for a minute, two minutes—no more, I couldn’t have stood no more—everything in the world makes sense to me. For one minute, I’m the flyest cove in the whole world.