The Merman's Children (20 page)

“I'll speak of it later with your father. Let me not shadow your pleasure.”

“No, I pray you, tell me. Maybe I can do something.”

“Well——” Vanimen decided. Meiiva, who spoke no Hrvatskan as yet, slipped quietly into the background. “Well, since you'll have it so, Luka. Have you heard that we met a rousalka by the lake?”

The stripling blinked. “What said you?”

“Rousalka. The revenant of a maiden that haunts the water where she drowned.”

“Oh.” Luka's eyes widened; he caught his breath. “The vilja. You saw her?” He paused. “No, I've not heard. It's a thing that men would avoid talk of.”

“Is ‘vilja' your word?” Vanimen spoke stiffly. “I had to do with one of the kind once, afar in the North. Thus I recognized this for what it was. Terror overwhelmed me and I fled. The shame of that is a gnawing in my breast: Your father drove it off, but when afterward I sought to explain why courage had left me, he said he'd liefer not hear.”

Luka nodded. “Yes, he has his reasons. However, I think he'll yield if you press him. The matter's no secret—woeful, but not disgraceful.”

“Such a…vilja…mocks our triumph,” Vanimen said. “I hear men bleat about fishing, my tribe for helpers. Are they witless? The vodianoi could merely devour them. How can they fail to dread what the vilja will do?”

“Why, what might that be?” Luka asked in surprise. “Minor mischief, as the Leshy inflict—a wind to blow somebody's washing off the grass, a nursling taken from its mother when she isn't looking, but always soon given back—and a sprig of wormwood will keep her at a distance. No doubt a man who let her beguile him would be in mortal sin. But surely none will, nor does it seem she's even tried. After all, a ghost is terrifying in itself. I know that, sir, I know it better than I wish I did.”

The merman gave the lad a close look. “How?”

Luka shivered in the sunlight, the noise and music and smoke. “I was with my brother on that hunt where she found him, two years agone. I too saw her face, the face of Nada who drowned herself the year before——”

A hand grabbed him by the neck, flung him to the ground. “You lie!” Father Tomislav screamed. He had wandered up, unnoticed, and overheard. “Like the rest of them, you lie!”

Standing over the sprawled boy, amidst a stillness that spread outward, amidst eyes that stared inward, the priest mastered his fit. “No, you don't, I'll believe you don't,” he said thickly. “A chance likeness or a sleight of Satan deceived you. I'm sorry, Luka. Forgive my foul temper.” He looked from person to person. The tears broke out of him. “My daughter was not a suicide,” he croaked. “She is not a condemned shade. She rests in Shibenik, in holy earth. Her, her soul…in…Paradise——” He stumbled off. The gathering parted to let him go.

Rain dashed against castle walls, in a night that howled. Cold crept out of the stone, past the tapestries, and darkness laid siege to lamps. Ivan Subitj sat across a board from Vanimen of Liri. He had dismissed his servants, keeping his wife awake. She sat in a corner, warming herself as best she could at a brazier, till he signaled for more wine.

“Yes,” he said, “I'd better give you the whole tale. Else you might shun the lake; and I do have hopes of your settling down amongst us, enriching us by your fisher skills. Besides, there's no shame for my family in what happened—not really. Grief———” He gusted a sigh. “No, disappointment; and I'm well aware I do wrong to feel thus.”

He stroked the scar that puckered his countenance. “No shame to you either, Vanimen, that you recoiled from her: not if such beings are as fearsome in the North as you've related. I could tell you of horrors I'll bear inside me to the grave, and I reckon myself a brave man. But—I know not why; maybe we're different from the Rus in some way that endures after death itself—whatever the cause, a vilja is not the grisly sort of thing that you say a rousalka is. Oh, a man would be unwise to follow her...but he'd have a soul to lose. You——” Ivan chopped his words off short.

Vanimen flashed a hard smile.

Ivan drank. Thereafter he said hastily: “My grudge against Nada is just that she caused my older son to forsake the world. Well, I think she did. I could be wrong. Who knows the well-springs of the heart, save God? But Mihajlo was such a lively youth; in him, I saw myself reborn. And now he's in a monastery. I should not regret that, should I? It makes his salvation likelier. Luka seems more cut out for a monk than ever Mihajlo was; and it's become Luka who inherits——No, he won't, for a zhupan is elected by the peers of his clan, or appointed out of it by the Crown, and they'll see he's not a fighter.”

Goblets went to mouths for a time in which the storm alone had voice. Finally Vanimen asked low, “Was the vilja indeed once the daughter of Tomislav?”

“He cannot endure that thought,” Ivan replied, “and those who care for him do not bespeak it in his hearing. I forgive what he did to my son this day. No real harm, and Luka should have been more alert.

“Nevertheless—well, let me share with you what everybody hereabouts knows. Maybe you, who are of Faerie, can judge better than we've done, we humans.

“You must understand that Sena, Tomislav's wife, was a woman born to sorrow. Her father was a bastard of the zhupan before me, by a serf girl, whom they say was of rare beauty. He manumitted his son, who became a guslar—a wandering musician, a ne'er-do-well—and at last shocked people by bringing home a bride from the Tzigani, those landless pagans who've lately been drifting in. She herself was Christian, of course, though it's unsure how deep the conversion went.

“Both died young, of sickness. Their daughter Sena was raised by kinfolk who—I must say—blamed every childish wrong she did on her heritage. I've often wondered if it was pity as much as her loveliness that made Tomislav seek her hand.

“You've heard of their afflictions. A while after Nada was born, Sena sank into dumb, helpless mourning, and lay thus until she died. What memories of her mother did the girl afterward carry around? In haphazard fashion, Nada learned from neighbor women what she was supposed to know, more or less. Her father spent his whole love upon her, who was all he had left, but what good can a man do? He may have confided in her more than he should—a priest does carry the woes of many others—he may have made her see too early that this world is full of weeping. I know not. I'm only a soldier, Vanimen.”

Ivan drank, summoned fresh wine, sat again mute before he went on:

“I remember Nada well, myself. As zhupan, I travel much about in the hinterland, to keep abreast of what the knezi—judges over villages—and pastors and such are doing. Besides, Tomislav brought his family here whenever he could, as on market days. We've no proper marketplace here, but folk do meet to trade back and forth. I suppose in part he hoped to ease the restlessness of his older children.

“Oh, Nada became fair! I heard, too, that she was quick-witted, and kinder-hearted, even toward animals, than is best for a peasant. Certainly I saw her laughterful and frolicsome. Yet already then, and seldom though we did meet, I would also see her withdrawn, silent, sad, for no clear cause.

“I suppose that's a reason she had no suitors, however gladly the young men would dance and jest with her when she was in the mood. Besides, her dowry would be very small. And she was overly slender; how well could she bear babe after babe, to keep a household alive? Fathers must have weighed these things on behalf of their sons.”

Ivan swallowed, put his goblet down, stared at a shuttered window as if to look beyond and lose himself in the rain. “Well,” he said, “here comes the part that's hard for me to tell. Let me go fast.

“She had broken into bloom when Mihajlo, my older son, came visiting and saw her here in Skradin. At once he began paying her court. He'd ride through the woods to her zadruga, and how could Tomislav refuse hospitality? He'd arrange that she come to Skradin for this or that celebration—oh, everything quite proper, but he wanted her and meant to have her.

“Mihajlo was…is…a charming fellow. Nada's two brothers and her sister had flown the nest, and doubtless she'd heard somewhat herself of a wider realm outside, a realm where maybe her choices were not merely to become a drudge or a nun…I know not. I know only that her father, Tomislav, sought me and asked if Mihajlo intended marriage.

“What could I say? I knew my boy. When he wedded, it would be for gain; meanwhile he'd have his sport, also afterward. Tomislav thanked me for my frankness, and said those two must stop seeing each other. Because I think well of him, I agreed. Mihajlo wrangled with me, but in the end gave his promise. She was not that much to him.”

“But he to her——” the merman said, half under his breath. “And her father—she must have loved him too. The melancholy caught her when she was torn asunder——”

“She was found floating in the lake,” Ivan interrupted roughly. “Since then, it seems, she haunts it. You've naught to fear from her, though, you merfolk. Need we carry this sad little story onward?” He lifted his vessel. “Come, let's get drunk together.”

Tomislav went home in the morning. First he met with Vanimen to bid farewell.

That was in a dawn which the rain had washed pure. The two of them stood at the edge of woods. Above, the sky was white in the east, blue overhead, violet enough in the west to hold a planet which trailed the sunken moon. Trees had come all bronze and brass and blood, while fallen leaves crunched underfoot. Stubblefields lay misty. Cocks crowed afar, the single sound in the chill.

Tomislav leaned his staff against a bole and clasped Vanimen's right hand in both of his. “We'll meet again, often,” he vowed.

“I would like that,” the merman answered. “Be sure, at least, I will not leave these parts without calling on you.”

The man raised brows. “Why should you ever go? Here you are loved, you and your whole tribe.”

“As a dog is loved. We were free in Liri. Should we become tame animals, no matter how kindly our owners?”

“Oh, you'd never be serfs, if that's what troubles you. Your skills are too valuable.” Tomislav paused. “True, you'd better become Christians.” It kindled in him; suddenly his face was not homely. “Vanimen, take baptism! Then God will give you a soul that outlives the stars, in the glory of His presence.”

The merman shook his head. “No, good friend. Over the centuries, I've witnessed, thrice, the fate of those folk of mine who did that.”

“And——?” the priest asked after a silence.

“I daresay they gained what they yearned for, immortality in Heaven. But here on earth, they forgot the lives they had had. Everything they were went a-glimmering, as if it had never been—dreams, joys, tarings, everything that was them. There remained meek lowlings whose feet were deformed.” The sea king sighed. “Tomislav, I do not hate oblivion that much. My kindred feel likewise.”

The man stood undaunted; his beard bristled gray at the earliest whisper of a breeze. “Vanimen,” he urged, “I've thought about such things, thought hard”—for an instant, his mouth twisted—“and it seems to me that God makes nothing in vain. Nothing that is from Him shall perish for aye. Yes, this may be heresy of mine. Nonetheless, I can hope that on the Last Day, whatever you forsake will be restored to you.”

“You may or may not be right,” Vanimen said. “If you are, I still disdain it, I who've hunted narwhals under the boreal ice and had lemans that were like northlights”—his voice sank—“I who lived with Agnete——He took his hand free. “No, I'll not trade that for your thin eternity.”

“But you don't understand,” Father Tomislav responded. “Oh, I've read legends; I know what commonly happens when Faerie folk are received into Christendom. But this needen't always be. It's simply for their own protection, I believe. Chronicles tell of a few halfworld beings that got baptism and kept full memory.” He cast his arms around the merman. “I'll pray for a sign that you will be given this grace.”

IV

J
OHAN
Kvag, bishop of Roskilde, often had business in Copenhagen, for he was its liege. In a private room of the house he kept there, he sat long silent while he considered, from his seat whereon were carved the Apostles, the young man in a plain chair before him. Ordinary clothes and Jutish brogue hardly accorded with the gold, given to Mother Church, that had persuaded his major-domo to arrange this audience.

“You have told me less than you could, my son,” he finally said.

Niels Jonsen nodded. His self-possession, at his age and station in life, was remarkable too. “Aye, my lord,” he admitted. “Some might suffer, did the whole tale come out. But I swear before God that I've spoken no lie to you, and won the treasure in no wrongful way.”

“And now you would share it with my see. If your reckoning of its worth is correct, that would be a donation an emperor could scarcely match.”

“I'll leave the dividing to you, and trust in your fairness.”

“You've small choice,” the bishop said dryly. “You'll not stay alive, let alone grow wealthy, without protection.”

“I know it well, reverend excellency.”

Johan cupped his chin. “And still you bargain,” he murmured. “You forget the danger to your spirit that lies in worldly riches.”

“My priest can steer me clear of that, I hope,” said Niels.

“You are a cocky one, aren't you?”

“No disrespect, sir. But if naught else, I've people I'd like to help, beginning with my mother and her brood. Besides, the way the Hansa's pushing in, meseems the kindgom should be glad of a big shipowner who's Danish.”

The bishop's gravity broke in a laugh. “Well spoken!”

Niels' countenance lightened. “Then you'll take me on?”