Lucy: Daughters of the Sea #3 (16 page)

A
CROSS THE SEA
on Barra Head, the scripture of the Laws of Salt began to stir in another’s veins. Avalonia went to the notch in the cave wall where she kept her half of the rock. She peered at the fragment and began to weep as a flood of joy mingled with profound sorrow swirled through her, spinning like the waters of the Gyre of Corry.

They have found one another.
She closed her eyes tight and thought of that day so many years ago when she and her sister, Laurentia, had each found the halves of the rock.

Then their mother had told them the story as she set the two rock fragments on the beach and fitted them together. “They call these sea lilies and sometimes feather stars. They are very ancient, from the time before time.”

The sweep of the feather star design, however, looked exactly like the course of the Avalaur current for which the two girls, Avalonia and Laurentia, had been named. Sailors were careful to give it a wide berth, for there were tales of how it lured the unwary into its deathly vortex. For mer folk, the Avalaur current did not spell death but life, a renewal with a mystical link to the secret threads of their origin and their destiny. And thus the Laws of Salt began to stream through their veins as salt through the ocean.

“Now you see,” said their mother as she held up the two rock fragments, “how special it is that these two pieces of the rock were found here by you two sisters.”

“What does it mean, Mum?” Laurentia asked.

“It means that through life you shall always be linked, but even in death you shall never be completely separated.”

Now all these years later, Avalonia clasped the rock in her hand. It was a clasp that seemed to stretch across the vastness of the ocean that separated her from her three nieces — Laurentia’s daughters.
When will they come? When will they come?
She took down the clàrsach and, plucking the strings, began to sing.

At this moment, as the girls swam into the cave, each one felt a sonorous thrum rising within her. It was as if a note had been struck and an ancient music began to flood through their beings. They looked at one another, their eyes bright with anticipation.

It was Lucy who spoke first. “I think our next long swim must be a very long one.”

“Why do you say that?” May asked.

“Because we must swim across the Atlantic Ocean.”

“But where to?” Hannah asked, her eyes widening.

“To the Hebrides, I think. For that is where our mother came from. It was what I was trying to remember when I first saw this rock.” She held out her hand and traced the sinuous curves of the sea lily.

“And now you remember?” Hannah asked.

“Yes.” So Lucy began to tell her sisters the story she had heard at the Museum of Natural History.

And when she had finished, May was the first to speak. “And though we are not seals but mer, we are all creatures of both land and sea, and over there, some of our kin wait for us?”

“Yes, I do believe it is so,” Lucy spoke quietly.

“I
JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND IT
.”
Marjorie Snow was reading the note that had just been delivered. “Elena Hazlitt asked us both two weeks ago if we were free for the opera. And now she writes that she has made a horrendous mistake and their box is full. Stephen, do you understand?”

“Perhaps, my dear, it was one of the more racy operas, and she felt it wasn’t appropriate for a clergyman to be seen in attendance.”

“True,” Marjorie replied. “What’s the one about those scandalous artists in Paris?”

“
La Bohème
?” Lucy offered.

“That’s the one!” Her mother put one finger to her temple and tapped it. It was almost as if she were trying to cram one more thought into her somewhat overcrowded brain.

Lucy often thought of her mother’s mind as a small tenement building, the kind one saw on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side where she often accompanied her father, for he had a favorite cobbler there, Jacob Hurwitz. Lucy was fascinated by all the little shadowy corridors and the bombardment of cooking odors that seeped out from every door. Children ran willy-nilly all over the place. Doors constantly slamming, babies screaming, people arguing. It was an incoherent little universe, chaotic and impenetrable, and she gasped in disbelief when she saw two men wrestling with a steamer trunk as another family newly arrived with half a dozen children trailed behind. She could not imagine how another human being could be stuffed into the building. This was the picture that came to mind as she saw her mother insistently tapping the side of her head.

“Yes,
La Bohème
. All those seedy artists living together without benefit of clergy, no doubt. But the main character, the girl — she died, right?”

“Yes, Mimi the seamstress. She died,” Lucy said.

“So there,” Marjorie said.

“What do you mean, ‘so there’?” Lucy asked.

“So she died. She was punished. So it is not a completely immoral opera.”

Lucy simply did not know how to respond. She had had too much on her mind since the swim to the wreck of the
Resolute
. She and her sisters were determined to make the much longer swim, across the Atlantic to the Outer Hebrides, which was almost a three-thousand-mile journey. Not one of the three sisters knew what kind of excuse they could come up with to cover such a long absence. And then there was the question that none dared to speak. Would it be a mere visit or would they be gone forever?

“Oh, and, Lucy, I do feel that the celadon mousse-line gown is the one you should wear to the tea dance this afternoon. You know, in Newport …”

But Lucy had wandered off to her bedroom.

Mrs. Sterling Van Wyck’s prominent nose cut across the tented lawn like a racing sloop through the waves. She appeared to be heading directly toward where Marjorie Snow and Lucy had just entered.

“Those lilies she sent for the altar last Sunday were so exquisite.” She leaned in toward Lucy. “Though her ringlets are a bit” — she hesitated — “
de trop
for a woman of her age. But she is so very handsome.”

Mrs. Van Wyck was a scant four or five feet away. “Oh, Mrs. Van Wyck, it was so generous of you to donate those simply beautiful astral lilies, particularly as they must be the prize of your late August bloom.”

But Cornelia Van Wyck suddenly vaporized. One second she had been feet from them, and the next gone. Marjorie Snow stood frozen as she felt a gathering cold pressing in upon her. The first loom of fog, like the swarthy gray mass that materialized on the horizon so many mornings. The fog would advance inexorably and, within minutes, swallow everything in a cold, damp impenetrable shroud.

What had just occurred was death. A kind of death she had heard of —
being cut
— in which one did not bleed, and yet she felt as though she were hemorrhaging. She had heard of people in society being cut, but never clergy.
Why?
The question shrieked in her brain. This bloodless act was the most lethal social injury one could suffer.

“Mother, is something wrong?” Lucy grew alarmed as her mother suddenly looked terribly pale.

Marjorie turned to her daughter. Had she not noticed the snub?
Impossible!

“I’m not feeling well. I think I’ll go home.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“You mustn’t. Your father will take me.”

“No, Mother, I can. Remember, Father isn’t here yet.”

“Oh, no, look who’s coming over to chat. The duke.” Thank goodness someone still wanted to speak with them. A spark of hope flickered within Marjorie Snow’s breast.

“Ah, just the girl I wanted to see. Miss Snow.”

“How lovely to see you,” Marjorie Snow said in a quavering voice. But the flicker grew dim.
Miss Snow?

“I believe this is yours?” He held out his hand. In it was a pale pink pearl button.

“Oh my God!” Lucy said hoarsely.

“Lucy, is that a button from your —” Marjorie Snow could not utter the word.

“Yes, I found it,” the duke said as a smirk like a fat worm crawled across his face.

“Where?” Lucy asked weakly, and felt her mother sway and clutch her arm.

“In the woods behind the Grantmore Hotel.”

“W-w-what …” Her mother’s lips seemed to wobble while it searched for the shape of the next word. “What was she doing there?”

“Perhaps you should ask your daughter,” the duke said, turned, and walked away quickly.

Lucy would never know how exactly she navigated her mother out of the tent. They had not gone far when Gus Bellamy rushed up to them.

“I’ll drive you back. I have our trap here.” It was not a question.

“Gus … Gus, what is happening?” Lucy asked.

“I’ll tell you” — he looked at Marjorie Snow — “I’ll tell you later.” He bent over and whispered quickly in her ear, “Not in front of your mother.”

“Yes, of course,” Lucy replied, and cast a nervous glance at her mother.

Lucy had just gotten her mother into bed with a cup of tea when she noticed a cable had been slipped under the front door. It was from Aunt Prissy.

It was signed Priscilla Bancroft Devries. That was perhaps the cruelest blow of all.