The Mermaid's Daughter

by Ann Claycomb

  Her penmanship was appalling, no better than an untutored child’s. It was a flaw that Andersen found unaccountably endearing even as it maddened him when he had to puzzle over her notes long enough to lose track of his own train of thought. His own penmanship was a source of pride, and how ironic that he did not need to use it with her, this one skill he might have wielded to win her over. If they had been lovers writing letters, his would have been masterful, both the language and the flow of the letters inked onto the page calculated to seduce her, woo her. Hers would have been only poor supplicants in reply. But he had no excuse to write to her. Instead, they fumbled together, she with her little gold pencils worn quickly to nubs and he with his clumsy tongue, always afraid he would say the wrong thing, ask the unforgivable question, or reveal his lust too nakedly.

  At first he had restrained himself from even the most delicate of romantic overtures out of concern for her widowhood. As time passed and their intimacy grew, however, he found himself occasionally furious with her, as if she deliberately tempted him. He was a man, after all, and hale—so what if he was ugly! Ugly men enjoyed the pleasures of women all the time. Ugly men married, sired children. Why should he shudder with mingled longing and terror at the sight of her ungloved hands curling around a mug of tea? Why did the sight of her uncovered hair as she sat back in her seat at the opera and loosened her veils, unpinned her hat, leave him panting—panting like a dog, his mouth open and his face averted from her until he could control his response to the scent and sight of that hair, the scent like water and the color like fire, hair that promised to both inflame and quench desire. Her customary chignon was low and heavy at her nape. Unbound, her hair would fall halfway down her back, crimped and wavy from being confined, and intolerably bright against her white skin. Picturing it, Andersen dug his fingernails into his thighs and waited for the spasms of desire to pass. In these moments he hated her.

  Then one night as they were leaving the opera, they were caught up in a crush of people avoiding an overturned coach. Swept down a cross street, they made a wrong turn, then another. Fand gripped Andersen’s arm and he strode desperately ahead, seeking a way out of the sudden maze of reeking, unlit alleys. At last, he glimpsed a familiar street corner up ahead, but they were only halfway through the narrow corridor that would take them there when a man sprang from the shadows. Fand gave a little choked scream and shied against Andersen, and the strangeness of hearing her voice made Andersen himself jump backward. The man took the advantage to move into the light. He was not armed, did not seem intent on robbery. Instead he fixed his eyes on Fand’s face and, with so little fumbling that he must have been waiting for just this opportunity, he exposed his member and waggled it at her, grinning obscenely.

  Andersen felt faint. He pulled at Fand, trying to steer her away without manhandling her himself, but she resisted. Appalled—did she not understand what was happening?—Andersen looked at her face. She was staring at the man. Very slowly, she allowed her eyes to drift from his leering face down his body and then her expression changed, from vague interest to total disdain and incredulity. She lifted one delicate winged eyebrow and raised her eyes again to the man’s face, and such was the curl of her lip, the arch of her brow, that Andersen felt almost a moment’s pity for the fellow. There was no mistaking her implication.

  The man’s grip slackened, his mouth fell open. Fand picked up her skirts with her free hand and pressed Andersen’s arm. As they walked the last few yards back to the main thoroughfare Andersen felt the first stirrings of the panic. This was not the fragile, sheltered woman he had imagined her to be. She was something other, something more. He had been consoled by a belief in his own noble intentions. How much worse it was to have seen that look of imperious disdain, to imagine himself fumbling before her, sweating, no better than a wretch in an alley.

  SUMMER BROUGHT HEAT that made the air shimmer in the afternoons and coaxed fetid smells from every alley—horse manure and sweat and rotten food. Andersen longed to leave Naples for someplace cooler, fresher, but he had given his publisher this address. That was what he told himself. When the letter arrived—The Improvisatore was marvelous, they would begin printing immediately—Andersen dropped it onto his writing table. It was just as it had been when he’d sent the manuscript off: he knew he should feel proud, excited, but he felt only yawning dread, because there was still no new project. His desk was littered with only the debris of correspondence, to which this latest letter could be added without offering any inspiration. He should sit down immediately and map out a new project. It needn’t be a novel. It could be an essay or series of essays. He laughed humorlessly. He’d settle for writing nursery tales now if he could do so with that flaring of excitement that assured him they would be worth writing.

  Instead, Andersen pulled out his watch and glared at it. Four hours until he was due to meet Fand. He would need to bathe before he did so, and by the time he’d walked to their favorite teahouse he’d likely be soaked in sweat again. He threw himself onto the bed despairingly. He should leave Naples. He could go to the Alps, up to one of the mountain lakes, up into the Pyrenees—anywhere at a higher elevation would bring relief from this weather. He could even return in the fall if he wished to do so, pay extra to ensure that these same lodgings would be waiting for him.

  But then he’d have to leave Fand and face his fear—more palpable than ever since that night in the alley—that while she enjoyed his company, she would not miss him, did not need him, for anything. He lay back and let himself slip into a languorous doze, keeping his hands off his body but dreaming restlessly, feverishly, all the same. When he woke, thirsty and with a headache as if he’d had too much wine, he felt almost unable to get up.

  This cannot go on. I cannot go on like this, he thought. I wanted a muse and instead I’ve found an enchantress—or a succubus.

  He would go then. And he would tell her today. Andersen pushed himself up and rang for water, knowing even as he planned what he would say to her that what he was truly hoping for was not a severing of ties but a revelation from her—for tears to spill from her silver eyes and a plea from her gold pencil, that he take her with him wherever he went.

  FAND WAS OCCASIONALLY late for tea, already pulling her little notebook from her reticule as she slipped into her chair, snatching up the pencil to jot down a fervent excuse: they’d kept her late in the opera’s costume room, where she did fine needlework sewing embellishments onto hems and necklines, and she’d sneaked into a rehearsal for Turandot and lost track of time. But she’d never failed to arrive, until today. After an hour of waiting, sweating miserably in his coat but unwilling to sit in public in just his shirtsleeves, Andersen stalked from the restaurant and turned toward his rooms, then wheeled abruptly and headed to the boardinghouse where Fand lived. He did not hesitate until he stood in the tiny, sweltering vestibule, the house oppressively silent but for the ticking of the grandfather clock. On previous occasions when Andersen had called here, a maid had appeared after a few minutes, once even the landlady herself. Today he stood long minutes and no one came, but the anger that had carried him all the way to the front hallway of her lodging could carry him no farther. He didn’t even know which room was hers.

  “Signor?”

  It was the maid who usually answered the door, a plump girl with blond hair and startlingly dark eyes under thin, fair brows. Her coloring made her look sly and artificial, like a doll in a shop window. She stood at the back of the vestibule, her shawl still over her head. She must have run some household errand and only just returned.

  “You like me to tell the signorina you are here?”

  “Is she in her rooms?”

  The girl shrugged. “I will knock, signor.” She climbed the stairs, straightening her shawl across her shoulders and smoothing her hair. The clock on the landing struck six, nearly an hour and a half past their scheduled tea. Then the maid screamed on a rising note.

  “Signor! Signor! Dio mio!” And then even louder,
her voice hoarse and urgent, “Signor!”

  Andersen took the stairs two at a time, swinging himself around the landings with a hand on the newel posts at each turn. At the third floor he stumbled toward an open door. The maid stood with her back to the wall. She had flung her apron over her face and was sobbing into the folds, her shawl a black heap on the floor. Andersen leapt past her into the room, registering that it was even hotter in there—there was a fire in the hearth, of all things—and saw Fand with her back to him, shoving something into the flames.

  “Fand!”

  She swung around to face him, and the knife in her hand caught the firelight in a swift dizzying arc. She had cut off all her hair. The fire smoked under the mound of blackening strands, and her face, framed by the ragged remnants, was alien in its beauty, the sockets of her eyes too large, her slender neck too long.

  “My dear,” Andersen whispered, “oh, my dear, what have you done?” He took a step toward her and his boot heel skidded. He looked down. The floor was smeared with a dark, wet stain all around the fireplace, streaks of it on the hem of Fand’s dress. Not water—blood—she’d cut herself badly or she was bleeding from under her dress.

  “What have you done?” he said again, his voice raised and roughened this time.

  She jerked her head back and put the knife to her throat. Her eyes shone silver in the light of the guttering fire. Her hand on the knife was covered in blood; it trembled as she tried to press the blade closer. Andersen leapt for her, his height an advantage, one hand tight around her upper arm, jerking it down, the other plucking the knife from her fingers. It was shockingly cold to the touch. He flung it behind him and immediately had to support Fand as she wavered, as though the knife had been the only thing keeping her erect. He caught her around the waist when she would have sunk to the floor, put his other arm under her knees, and lifted her—she weighed nothing at all—onto the bed. Here was agony he could not comprehend, and yet it was a thing of grace, like the sound of the music he could no longer sing, because he could save her from this, he could refuse to let her go. She lay with her eyes closed, her face colorless within the coppery frame of her shorn hair. There was a red line across her neck and a trickle of blood sliding sideways, extending it. Andersen walked backward to the door, not taking his eyes off Fand until he had reached the hallway and found the maid still there, hiccupping as her tears ended. The landlady stood beside her, arms folded over her broad bosom, her face impassive.

  “Fetch the doctor at once!” Andersen snapped. The maid fled down the stairs.

  The landlady waited for him to meet her eyes before she spoke.

  “She cannot stay here. You tell her. Not in this house. I keep a good house, a clean house. She must go now. No sickness here.”

  “She is not sick,” he said impatiently. “She is injured and distraught. There can be no concern about contagion.”

  The woman narrowed her eyes as though he were simpleminded.

  “Sick,” she said. “That is not what I mean. She cut herself! You see what she did? My girl told me. You see?”

  She pushed past him into the room, bringing with her the heavy smells of wood oil and onions, and though Andersen tried to intercept her—went so far as to grip her shoulder to hold her back—she reached the bed before he did and twitched Fand’s skirts up above the knee.

  He could not restrain his gasp. He had feared, obscurely, some kind of female trouble, but there was no blood seeping down her skirts or petticoats. Instead, her slender feet were bare and sliced to ribbons, both the soles and across the tops, and the deep cuts continued up her legs, encircling her ankles and her calves, joined ladderlike by the blood that had dripped down her legs as she stood by the fire. Andersen fought back a wave of dizziness at the sight. He shuddered to think how sharp that knife was.

  “You see,” the landlady said. She herself seemed unaffected by the sight of so much blood. “She cannot stay here.”

  Andersen wrenched his gaze from Fand’s legs. He could taste bile in his throat, feel sweat sealing his shirt to his back. He shook the landlady with the hand that still lay upon her shoulder.

  “Towels,” he said. “Bring towels and hot water.”

  She jerked her chin toward the washstand in the corner. “There,” she said. “Use those.” Andersen dropped his hand and hurried around the bed. The landlady hesitated a moment in the doorway.

  “I will send the doctor up,” she said. Then she turned away, her tread heavy and condemning on the stairs.

  Fand shrank into the pillow as Andersen wiped away the trail of blood on her throat, his hand shaking.

  “You must lie quietly, Fand,” he said. “The doctor will be here soon. You must rest.”

  He fumbled for the hem of her dress without looking, felt his fingers brush her waist, then her hand, limp at her side. He restored her skirts and drew a breath of relief when the bloody sight was hidden once more. He watched her face as he pressed the cloth to her neck, hoping to see her returned to herself. Her eyes were open now but she looked through him as if into some dream world that lay just over his shoulder.

  “I wish you could tell me what you see,” he murmured. Her eyes regained their focus and a look of such vivid rage and despair filled her face that his hands faltered.

  “Fand—”

  She opened her mouth as she had not done since the night they met, opened it obscenely wide to expose her severed tongue. Then she shut her lips again and turned her head away.

  Andersen stood frozen a moment, the wet cloth in his hand dripping into his shirt cuff. He felt slapped, brutally reminded of what she had endured. Here he stood dabbing at the least of her wounds, unable even to minister to her for fear of the sight of a little blood, while she had tasted her own blood, choked on it. He shut his eyes against the image and then forced himself to look down the bed. Her feet were still visible, bleeding onto the white sheet. He dipped the towel into the basin beside him, turned her skirt back a few inches to expose her ankles. His hand trembled as he pressed the towel to one of the deeper cuts. He had seen women’s legs before, but never like this, limp and exposed on a bed with him bending over her. The watery scent of her was potent even under the stench of burned hair, even under the smell of her blood, like wet iron on his hands.

  He leaned in closer, wiping ineffectually at the blood covering her fine-boned feet. The sweep of the clean towel exposed her skin for a moment before blood seeped out again. Andersen stared in horror, wiped again and saw what he thought he had seen—a network of thin, silvery lines on her skin, old scars.

  THE DOCTOR WAS a plump man with fine mustaches and an appreciative eye for Fand’s profile even as he opened his bag and laid out suturing supplies. He was dismissive of the landlady, assuring Andersen that a few well-chosen words from him would secure Fand her rooms at least until she recovered. Having introduced himself as Fand’s brother—impossible to believe, if the doctor’s swift look was any indication, but at least they both had red hair—Andersen waited in the sitting room. He felt dangerously faint from the heat, such that he shed his damp coat and tossed it over a chair. He rolled his shoulders a bit under his wet shirt and felt that he could breathe at least. When the doctor called him back, Fand was tucked into fresh sheets, so still she hardly seemed to be breathing. There was a bottle of laudanum on the table by her head. Andersen grimaced; he hated the stuff, the too-sweet odor that clung to lips and teeth, the heavy feel of it in the mouth.

  The doctor was washing his hands, looking thoughtful. Andersen realized suddenly that the man expected payment, likely considerable. He opened his mouth to beg forbearance on the bill; he could pay part of it today, but certainly not all. But the doctor forestalled him with a wave of a damp hand. He understood such things. No one could be prepared for a medical emergency such as this, a crisis. There was no need for alarm. He himself had been paid before in kind many times and he was quite happy with such a transaction. He had been given fine jewelry, foodstuffs, several times—and her
e he raised his eyebrows humorously, as he looked over his shoulder—offered less tangible favors by the grateful wives and daughters of patients he had saved. He knew his worth, the gentleman must be in no doubt of that. He would be returning, certainly, to look in on the young lady, change her bandages, make sure she was comfortable. In the meantime it might resolve the question of payment if the gentleman knew that he, the doctor, was an expert in blades of all kinds: swords, knives, ornamental daggers. He had quite a collection, in fact, in his study at home.

  The doctor dried his hands fastidiously while Andersen stared, his mind at first blank as to the fellow’s implication. The doctor flicked his eyes to the table where the laudanum sat and Andersen, following his gaze, saw the knife. It had been wiped clean and shone softly in the dim room, the gleam at its core muted by the exquisite carvings along the hilt, a curling pattern like the crests of surging waves. It appeared to be all of a piece, the blade emerging from the hilt without any visible seam in the metal. Andersen could not think how it could have been made. He remembered how cold it had been in his hand.

  It was not his to give, but he gave it anyway. He did not want her near that knife, did not want to see it ever again. But only three days passed before it returned.

  ANDERSEN CAME TO the boardinghouse every afternoon. Whatever the doctor had said had been persuasive enough that Fand’s sheets were changed, her doses of laudanum administered, and her fever cooled by the fresh water sponged on her face by some member of the household, most likely the young maid. One day, Andersen arrived to find the maid gathering up sheets from Fand’s room to wash. Warmed and grateful, he pulled a coin from his pocket and offered it to the girl as she passed him. To his surprise, she shook her head, blushing and murmuring something he could not make out.

  He caught her arm. “You won’t take money? You have been very kind to her, but surely you must allow me to compensate you. I know you have other work.”