The Merman's Children (30 page)

She smiled and kissed him afresh. “Let's not speak thus as yet,” she said. “While we waited for you, with scant else to do——”

Ingeborg saw what happened on Tauno's face. She kissed him in her turn; he seized her to him; her hand wandered, and suddenly he laughed.

“——we built a hut on the far side of yonder headland, for your coming,” Eyjan said. “It can soon be warm and firelit. Wherever we may go afterward, glad memories make light freight.”

She and her brother walked behind as the four left the strand, that their bodies might shield the humans from the wind that streaked in off the sea.

V

A
LTHOUGH
much remained for him to learn, Niels was fast becoming worldly-wise. He was in partnership with an older man who supplied experience to match the money Niels could put into the shipping trade. When that merchant grew sufficiently aged to wish retirement, several years hence, and the younger took over entirely, their company should be as well off as any outside the Hansa, and able to hold its own in rivalry with the League. Meanwhile the business gave them connections to many kinds of people, as did also its curious alliance with the bishop of Roskilde. Moreover, Niels had found positions for his brothers and sisters, places chosen so that each might win contentment, prosperity, and the favor of powerful men. (His mother he simply gave a life of ease, which she was soon devoting to gardening and good works.)

Thus, what Niels did not know, he could find out; what he could not do himself, he could get done for him.

Of course, this was not always possible overnight, especially when the strange reason for an endeavor must be kept secret. His plan was that Tauno and Eyjan take ship for Dalmatia, with letters from Church and Crown to ease their way after they arrived. That required creating identities which would make plausible their hiring of a vessel. He must feel his way forward with utmost care, lest suspicion rouse in someone. This required weeks, and his presence in Copenhagen—theirs too, for consultation at need and for practice at behaving like proper mortals.

Besides, neither he nor Ingeborg could have borne their absence, now when they were again in Denmark.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the woman breathed. “That was wonderful. You are always wonderful.”

Warm, wet, musky, tousled, she brought herself as tightly as she was able against the merman's son. He embraced her with one arm, laid a thigh across hers, and toyed with what he could reach of her. A taper cast soft glow and monster shadows around the bedchamber.

“Love me more, as soon as you can,” she whispered.

“Will you not grow sore?” Tauno replied, for he had the strength of his father in his loins.

Ingeborg's chuckle held more wistfulness than mirth. “That's not the kind of soreness which hurts me.” Abruptly she caught her breath and he felt her jerk in his grasp.

“What's the matter?” he exclaimed.

She buried her contenance between his neck and shoulder. Her fingers dug into his flesh. “Your being gone,
that
hurts.” The tone shivered. “It's never less than an ache throughout me; often it's like a knife twisting around. Give me everything of you, beloved, while yet you may. Help me forget, this night, that soon you'll leave. Afterward there'll be time for remembering.”

Tauno frowned. “I thought you and Niels were happy together.”

Ingeborg raised her eyes. Candlelight trembled on the tears in them. “Oh, we're fond of each other. He's kind, mild, generous …and, yes, he has a gift for making love…but nothing like you, nothing! Nor is he you, in your beauty and brilliance. The difference is like—like the difference between lying in a summer meadow watching clouds pass by overhead—and being a-wing in the wind that drives them, the sun that makes them shine. I cannot understand how your mother could forsake your father.”

Tauno bit his lip. “Glad she was at first to go undersea with him, but as the years wore on, she came to know in her marrow that she was not of Faerie. Never has such a union failed to wreak harm, on one or on both. I fear I've already done you ill.”

“No!” She scrambled back, sat up, and gaped at him, appalled. “Darling, no!” Mastering herself: “Only look about you. See me here in a fine house, well fed, well clad, no longer a piece of sleazy merchandise; and this is your doing at root, yours, Tauno.”

“Hardly mine alone.” He remained stretched out, his gaze on the ceiling. “Besides, you spoke of hopeless hankering—which may, I suppose, imperil your soul——Aye, best I not linger here, much though I'll miss you in my turn.”

“You will?” she cried, and bent over him. Her hair tumbled down to give its own caress. “I've not been bad for you, then?”

“No, Ingeborg,” he said most gently, and looked straight at her. “You've bestowed more on me than you will ever know. Therefore I should leave, before I give you a wound that eternity cannot heal.”

“But we have tonight!”

“And tomorrow, yes, and morrows beyond.” He drew her to him.

Niels came home from church grim of appearance. Eyjan, attired like a lady, met him at the door, saw, and quietly led him to a side room where they could talk unheard. “What's wrong?” she murmured.

“Today Father Ebbe, my priest, asked me why my house guests are never at Mass,” he told her.

“Oh, has he heard about us?”

“How could he not? Servants and neighbors do gossip.” Niels scowled, hooked thumbs in belt, stared at the floor. “I, I explained …you've secret affairs in train which'd suffer were you recognized…and accordingly you go to a chapel elsewhere. He said no more, but his mien became graver than is his wont. No doubt he's aware I sleep with you, and Ingeborg with Tauno—and in Lent, in Lent—though we've neither of us confessed it to him. Yet before Easter, we must confess, that we may then take Communion.”

“Will that be dangerous? The two of you are openly unwed.”

He glanced up, with a crooked smile. “Such is naught uncommon. He sets us a few Aves for it, since he takes into account the good works we do with our money. But if we tell him we're again bedmates of you…you halflings…and not because it happened thus when we'd small choice about companions, and were in a worthy cause—but of our unforced will—I fear he'd command us to expel you at once. If we refused…aside from our souls, even our safety on earth, excommunication would ruin our chance of helping you.”

“Why, there's an easy answer,” said Eyjan blithely. “Admit the swiving, but not our nature. Also, Tauno said I can come along to his services—I doubt the images would turn from us—if you'll tell us what to do there.”

He shrank from her. “No!” he choked in horror. “You know not what you say!”

She shook her red head impatiently. “Belike not. Little about your Christendom makes any sense to me.” Plucking at her gown, she muttered a curse. “Could I but shed this stinking thing and bathe me in the waves——”

“My guilt is deep enough already.” Niels' voice shuddered. “To take the Sacrament with an unconfessed sin upon oneself—when Satan sees me thus, his fires lick their chops for me.”

Trouble came to Eyjan. She stepped forward and captured his hands in hers. “We can't let that happen to you, Tauno and I. We'll make our own way south—start at this very dawn——”

“No.” His words stumbled in their haste. “Forsake you two dearest friends that I have? Never. Stay.”

As if her presence had inspired him, he went on in sudden half-happiness: “See here. I can arrange that we be shriven just before Easter, and you depart just after. Then I don't think Father Ebbe will make the penance too harsh. He likes to preach about what a man owes his shipmates.”

She groped for comprehension. “Suppose you die before you carry out that rite—or suppose he wants you to renounce us forever, and you don't really intend to—are you not damned?”

He took a foursquare stance. “Maybe, maybe not. I'll risk it. And I'll try to repent later, but never will I regret having kissed you.” His look went over her tall fullness as an exile returned might walk step by step over his home-acre. “Instead I'll yearn for you, waking and dreaming, in every heartbeat left me; and I; I'll pray for death and burial at sea, Eyjan, your sea.”

“You mourn too soon.” She laid arms around his neck. “Don't. We've many kisses to give yet, Niels.”

Presently she said, laughing, “Well, dinner's not for a while, and here is a couch. Yes, let's grab what comes our way, before the ebb tide bears it out of reach.”

“Good news,” the young man informed Tauno. “At last we've Christian names for you twain.”

“But you've given us those,” his comrade responded, surprised.

They had ridden from Copenhagen to be alone and because it was a sweet spring day. The common which they were crossing was vivid with new grass; in the distance, leaves made a green mist across the top of a woodlot. Against overarching blue, storks were returning, harbingers of summer, bearers of luck. The breeze was fresh, loud, full of damp odors. Hoofs thudded on drenched soil with almost unhearable softness.

Niels ran fingers through his hair. “You'll recall those names were the best we could think of on short notice,” he said. “I've given out that they're false, used by you because you're on confidential business. Now we're ready to come out into the open”—he grinned—“for a proper disguise is on hand. Best you and I talk first, since you must needs play the man's part.”

Tauno's mount shied. He brought the beast under control, but Niels chided him for using the bridle too heavily. “Horsemanship is another art you'd better learn if you'd pass yourself off,” the human warned.

“Say on,” the other grunted.

“Aye. What took this long was, mainly, searching out what'd be possible for you. We want no hazard of somebody who meets you protesting that he knows your district well and has never heard of any such person. Certain documents were advisable too, but easier to arrange for; my amanuensis is a cunning rascal.

“Well, you shall be Herr Carolus Brede, a squire from a far corner of Scania—that's the Danish territory across the Sound, did you know? Some of it's thickly wooded and little traveled. Though you're not rich, you're well-born. A forefather of yours was a nobleman attending Queen Dagmar of beloved memory, when she came from Bohemia to wed Kind Valdemar the Victorious a hundred years ago. You've learned about ties of kinship reaching still further south, into Croatia, and decided to see if this is true and if aught can be made of it. You've been secretive lest agents of the Hansa grow alarmed at the chance of trade agreements outflanking them, overland through the Empire, and maybe even try to murder you. Though that chance is not great, as every sensible man will realize, still, it's enough for my company to take the gamble of providing you a ship and crew. Besides, I trust they can dicker for whatever cargo they bring. My plea in turn ought to get you royal and episcopal letters of recommendation, if only because the Danish lords will be curious to know more about the Croatian.”

Tauno crowed and shook his head. “Bones of my mother, but you've changed,” he exclaimed. “I can't hear at all, in those elegant words, the plain crewman of
Herning
. In fact, the torrent of them carries me off.”

Niels frowned. “You'll have to learn how to swim in them, and many more of the same kind. Else you'll betray yourself, likely to your death—yourself and, and Eyjan.”

Skin stood taut on the knuckles above the reins. “Yes, what of her? How'll she fare?”

“She'll be Lady Sigrid, your widowed sister, traveling along with the avowed purpose of making a pilgrimage and the unavowed one of making a better match than she could in Denmark.”

Tauno gave him a hard stare. “My sister? Why not my wife?”

Niels gave it back. Invisible sparks flew. “Do you truly want that, you two?”

The Liri prince whipped his horse into a gallop.

Rain sluiced from heaven, brawled across roofs, made rivers of city streets. Lightning flared, thunder went on huge wheels, wind whooped.

A tile stove heated the main room of Niels Jonsen's house; candles threw light on wainscot, hangings, carven furniture. Ingeborg had dismissed servants and had closed doors, that she might continue Eyjan's lessons in womanly deportment.

“I'm no proper dame myself, of course, but I've watched their kind, I've studied how to imitate them, and you walk too proudly.”

“Ha' done!” yelled the merman's daughter. “You've gorged me with your nonsense.” She paused, quieted, offered a smile. “Forgive me. You're doing what you can for us, I know. But it's so hot and close in here, this wool clings and itches and stifles my skin, I can't endure more.”

Ingeborg watched her for a while that was silent except for the storm battering at shutters. “You must endure,” she said finally. “It's the lot of women, and you're to be a woman while your journey lasts. Never forget that, or you could betray Tauno to his death.”

“Well, but can we stop for today?”

“Aye, perhaps best we do.”

“Let me draw a gasp or two ere we meet your world again,” said Eyjan. In motions which had become deft, she peeled the raiment off her and cast it violently down. Naked, she went to a sideboard and filled herself a goblet of mead. “Would you like some?”

Ingeborg hesitated before she said, “Yes, thank you. But beware of getting drunk. That's for whores and slatterns—and men.”

“Is everything for men in your Christendom?”

“No, not really.” Ingeborg took the drink handed her and found a chair. “We learn how to worm a great deal out of them.”

“Undersea, nobody had to play worm.” Eyjan well-nigh flung a seat into position opposite her hostess, and herself into it.

“But we on land bear the curse of Eve. How often I've heard told me the word of God—‘
in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee'
—” Ingeborg clutched her chair arms. She would never bring forth children.