The Mermaid's Call

by Katherine Stansfield

  And this new self? Who was he? I wondered. If I was Mrs Williams and Anna was my husband, then she must be Mr Williams. I had met one Mr Williams before, but this Mr Williams beside me in the cart looked little like the one I had met previous. Where the first Mr Williams was stiff and stern, a newspaper man, this new one was soft and lolling. He wore a stock at his throat but it was only tied loose. His coat was cream-coloured, cut short. His hair was thick about his neck and his whiskers were bushy. I hoped he would take them off before he kissed me.

  We came to a bend in the road and Clemmie stopped.

  Davey turned around. ‘She do need to pace herself.’ He had hardly a tooth left in his head and his eyes were all but lost in the crinkles of his face. A thick scar ran up his neck. A dog had had him as a child, I thought. Gave him a good shake too, by the look of it.

  ‘Fortunate we’re not paying by the hour for this journey,’ Anna muttered.

  ‘Hush!’ I said. ‘He’s a friend of Mrs Yeo.’

  ‘I think our landlady’s judgement has been skewed by charity. We might have been better walking but for my case.’

  She looked down at the village far below. I did likewise. From this distance, how near the harbour walls seemed to touching.

  ‘So what takes you to Morwenstow?’ Davey said.

  ‘A private matter,’ Anna said. ‘You’ll forgive me if I’m unable to be more specific.’

  ‘Oh, I will, sir. I will. It don’t surprise me, of course. The things you hear.’

  ‘About Morwenstow?’ I said.

  ‘About the parson. Are ’ee ready, Clemmie? Come on then, off we go.’ And the cart lurched forward once more.

  ‘You knew of Morwenstow,’ I said to Anna. ‘When Captain Ians talked of the place you had heard of it before. You said that funny word. Ek … Eke …’

  ‘Enquiry, Shilly. There was a public enquiry, two years now, in ’43. It’s an investigation, by the government.’

  I didn’t know any of these words. They would be hard to work out the spelling for they sounded as if they had many parts.

  Anna sighed. ‘Like a case.’

  ‘Oh! Was there another murder there?’

  She took her coat off for it was warm now. Her black bag was between us. ‘Quite probably. But the enquiry wasn’t just about Morwenstow. Much of the country’s coastline was investigated. Surely you heard about it? It was in all the papers.’

  ‘I didn’t have much to do with newspapers until I met you, Anna.’

  ‘Not so loud, my dear wife.’

  ‘Or met Mr Williams, rather,’ I said. ‘The first Mr Williams, that is.’

  As I said this, Anna’s hands folded up and she dropped her pipe. There was all hell-up then, for a stray spark caught the hem of my dress and I was a-smoke. Fearing the cloth would mark, I screamed, as any person with few clothes to their name would scream, and Clemmie leapt forward in terror, Davey near tumbling from his seat.

  It was all over soon enough. Anna patted out the little flame, Clemmie was allowed another rest, and Davey said his heart had started beating again, after shock had stopped it. We went on our way. But I wondered at Anna. Why me speaking of someone she had once laid claim to being had given her such a start. She was keen to speak of other things.

  ‘Shipwrecks, Shilly.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘The 1843 enquiry. It was looking at why so many ships had been lost.’

  ‘And what was the answer?’

  She waved away a fly. ‘Poorly fitted ships, poor captains at their helms. The need for lighthouses to guide vessels. Many things, really. But there was another side to the enquiry. A darker side, because there was a belief that in this part of the world, your part, Shilly—’

  ‘And yours now.’

  ‘—ships were deliberately wrecked.’ She glanced at Davey and when she spoke again her voice was low. ‘That people on the coast showed false lights to lure vessels onto the rocks. When the ships inevitably foundered, their cargos were taken. And any survivors, well …’

  ‘Well what?’ I said.

  ‘They were killed,’ she whispered. ‘Slaughtered as they tried to come ashore.’

  My stomach, which had been jouncing about as the cart jounced, dropped to my feet and slithered away. ‘And this was known to happen in Morwenstow, where we’re going this very morning to see about a man found dead beneath the cliffs?’

  ‘Well, it was never proved that people in Morwenstow were wreckers,’ Anna said. ‘But there have been so many wrecks there that the place has become known for it. That can’t be disputed. My own knowledge of Morwenstow is proof of its notoriety.’

  ‘But do you think that’s what killed him,’ I said, ‘the man Captain Ians thinks is his brother? That he was on board a ship that was wrecked?’

  ‘I wouldn’t wish to assume anything at this early stage, Shilly. And neither should you.’

  At last we came to the brow of the hill and the road flattened out. Clemmie gave another great sigh, likely of relief this time, and we went on a little quicker.

  ‘The most important thing,’ Anna said, ‘is for us to study the body. To examine the physical aspects of this case. The elements one can see and touch and smell. The knowable facts. If we get there in time.’ She tapped her pipe stem against the side of the cart.

  ‘But you have to own, there’s plenty about this case that you can’t learn from seeing or touching. It’s a kind of knowing. My kind.’

  After a pause she gave the briefest of nods, and I was run through with pleasure.

  I took her hand in mine. ‘I’ve been thinking of the woman Captain Ians told us about.’

  Anna laughed and shook her head. ‘Ah yes, the mermaid. Well, I look forward to casting that tall tale back into the sea.’

  ‘We’ll have to see about that,’ I said.

  I thought of the woman swimming off Boscastle. How she’d been safe in the storm’s waves. At home there. The way her legs had worked so strong together. Moving as one. As if they were fused. Her voice. I could almost hear it again, there in the cart. Was she calling from the harbour we had left behind? I felt my eyes close in the sun. It was easier to hear her that way. To give in, let go. To listen. The world fell away and I was falling too, sliding into the water. Into her arms.

  But there was pain there. A pinch, nails in my arm. Anna clawing me as she pitched forward.

  TEN

  The cart had tipped and we were in a heap on top of Davey who was crying, ‘Clemmie, Clemmie, whatever’s the matter with ’ee?’

  I clambered out and saw that the matter was the poor horse looked to have died in her traces. She had fallen on to her front knees and then sideways, dragging the cart over. Her wheezing had ended. No breath came from her. The only sound was Davey begging her to get up again.

  I went to his side and put my arm around him. He was so little he fit right under, into the crook of me. From what Mrs Yeo had said I guessed the man didn’t have much in the world other than the creature now lying dead at our feet, the flies already settling on her unblinking eyes.

  The road was under trees, flanked by trees, made green by trees. The mare had fallen on a straight stretch, but there were bends at either end that hid the way beyond. I don’t know how long I’d dozed before she’d fallen, couldn’t remember when we’d last passed a house. Anna walked a little way in each direction to see what was beyond, came back to say there was only more road, more trees.

  ‘Not a landmark in sight,’ she said, wiping the sweat from above her lip. ‘We seemed to have been travelling for some time. How far are we from Morwenstow?’ she called to Davey.

  He was sitting by poor Clemmie, had pulled her head into his lap. ‘A few miles, maybe. Not far.’ His hat had fallen to the ground beside him, his tobacco pouch nowhere to be seen.

  ‘We could walk,’ she said. ‘But our case …’

  Anna eyed her travelling case, which had fallen from the cart and now lay upended in the hedge. The leather bore marks it hadn’t
had before, and one corner wasn’t quite as square as it had been. Together we righted it and pushed it out of the way of the next traveller to come through. I hoped that would be soon, for the day was hot. Clemmie would soon begin to smell.

  ‘The Morwenstow man might be buried and on his way to St Peter by now,’ she said.

  ‘If it’s no use then we shouldn’t trouble ourselves to go on,’ I said. ‘We don’t need the fifty pounds that badly and Mathilda is poorly.’

  ‘This is a setback, that’s all. An important one, I’ll grant you, but there will be plenty of other lines of enquiry to pursue. No more than a few miles, our friend here says, and it’s a fine day for walking.’

  ‘Let’s give it up, Anna, and go home. Mathilda will—’

  ‘We’re going on!’ she snapped. ‘We’ve agreed terms with a client and we will complete the work.’ She saw the shock on my face at being spoken to so harsh, and she softened. ‘Look, Shilly, we’ll never get the agency established unless we have regular work. This case is our chance to make something lasting. Something that’s ours. That no one can take away from us. You see that, don’t you? You see how much we need this?’

  Her thin face was drawn with worry and I was afraid. The fifty pounds Captain Ians had agreed to pay was everything for her. And there was no sense to be made of that. No good sense. I had a dreadful foreboding that we should go back to Boscastle at once. I tried one last trick.

  ‘But what about the travelling case?’ I said. ‘We can’t carry it to Morwenstow.’

  She smiled. ‘That’s easily remedied.’ She took out her purse and counted coins into her hand. ‘Strange,’ she said, but soft, as if to herself. ‘I thought I had more.’

  I made sure not to turn away. Not to blink. I hoped I didn’t blush. Anna would say it was thieving. I said it was wages.

  She saw me watching and went quickly to Davey. She said his name but he didn’t seem to hear her, so she put the coins inside his hat, telling him some were for him driving us, some were for the loss of Clemmie, and the last were for him to make sure her case was sent on to Morwenstow, to the inn there – the Bush, where Captain Ians was staying.

  Mrs Yeo had given us some provisions and I gathered them up for we’d need them on the walk. As I chased after an apple that rolled away, I saw Anna drop something else into Davey’s hat. Her tobacco. She had some kindnesses in her.

  She opened the travelling case and took some things from it for her black bag, while I said goodbye to Davey, said how sorry I was about dear old Clemmie. He thanked me and said at least she passed over doing something she loved – a good walk. Given her wheezing up the hills I thought that unlikely but didn’t say, of course. He told us the way, said it shouldn’t take us more than a few hours. I hoped he was right. The afternoon was well into its stride by then and it was still only April, the days none too long.

  Anna locked the case with the key she kept on a chain round her neck. ‘On we go then, Shilly.’

  Was it that Davey’s directions were poor or that we were bad at following them? Either way we became lost. Lost the light too. We spied one or two bodies far off in the fields, but no one close enough to ask the way. This part of the coast was as lonely as Captain Ians had said. But then I remembered that that was how Anna had seen the moor when she first came there, and that was a place teeming with people, but people going about their lives, birthing, working, dying. They weren’t just standing around waiting to be seen by strangers, waiting to be helpful in other people’s detective cases.

  We were in bad spirits with each other by the time we came across the way-sign. It was painted on a board nailed to a tree. In the last of the daylight I read the black painted letters of ‘inn’, and Anna read the first words, which were ‘The Bush’.

  I looked about me. ‘We must be in the right place.’

  That place was a narrow lane flanked by gorse and thorn trees, fields beyond, all but lost to dusk. I could hear but not see the sea beyond them.

  ‘Well, it’s something, at least,’ Anna said, peering up at the sign. ‘Let’s hope this isn’t a popular name in these parts. Although anywhere with a bed would be welcome at this point.’

  The arrow pointing the way was hard to pick out, but we followed where we thought it pointed for it was the only guide we had. We went on down the lane and there were lights ahead. Windows. My step quickened at the thought of the inn that must be so close now.

  ‘Shilly, wait!’

  But I couldn’t wait. It had been a wretched day all told, leaving Mathilda, Clemmie dying. I knew what would make it better.

  The lighted windows were lower than the lane we were on. How to get down there? I pressed on. The windows vanished and the dusk gave way to something darker, but not night yet, surely? I found I was coughing – the air was bad. Something had rotted. Something large for the smell was enough to bring bile to my mouth.

  The sea was louder now, and then there was another sound – sudden and sharp and all through my ears. Birds cawing. The darkness was trees, and the rooks that clamoured from them. The trees were all around me and where was Anna?

  I called her name and heard her answer but she was far away, or the birds were too close. I stumbled, and when I put my hands out to save myself my wrist came down hard on a stone slab. There were many of them. I was in a churchyard.

  ‘Shilly?’ Her voice was nearly lost in the rooks’ noise. ‘Stay where you are. I’m nearly—Oh! Do you see it?’

  I looked up. A light was weaving through the trees, coming for me, and fast, and there were words in the rooks’ caw.

  ‘Get back, you Devil!’

  ELEVEN

  I dropped to the ground which was wet and all leaves, and hid behind a gravestone. The light was coming closer, dancing over the world as the creature ran towards me. I closed my eyes and tried to think if I knew anything to ward off devils. But then I thought, Shilly, this creature called you a devil, and surely devils don’t speak so of others? That would be a strange sort of tricksy. I stood up, and the creature gave a shrill gasp of fright, so I was sure then it wasn’t a devil, for it would not be so fearful if it was.

  The light was a lantern and it was held by a tall, stout man. A man of this earth, dressed in a long coat that glowed reddish in the lantern’s light. A handkerchief was tied across his nose and mouth, against the smell, I guessed. When he took it off, I saw he had no beard or whiskers. His eyes widened on seeing me, a shining blue.

  ‘Are you of God’s flesh?’ he cried.

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘Are you?’

  And then he hissed, so I thought he couldn’t be. Was more likely snake. I cowered behind the gravestone again.

  ‘You ask a man of the Church such a thing!’ he shouted. ‘You truly are a creature of the night!’

  He raised the lantern above his head and was going to bring it down upon me, me who thought him a devil, him who thought me one. I’d be brained and bleeding on someone else’s grave before we’d thrashed out our devilishness. But then Anna was there, and I thanked God for that, whether I was of His flesh or no.

  ‘Forgive us!’ she said, hurrying through the graves. ‘We’re looking for Morwenstow. Up you come, Shilly.’ And she hauled me to stand.

  ‘What is your business in my parish so late?’ said the man, peering at us. He held the light in our faces, as if to blind us. His smooth face now was carved with shadows. He was not so easy to get a purchase on.

  ‘The poor horse died,’ I said, ‘dear Clemmie, and we—’

  ‘We’re here on behalf of Captain Ians,’ Anna said.

  ‘Frederick?’ the man said. ‘This is about the poor sailor in the deadhouse. I have told Frederick – how many times now – that a soul denied rest will walk amongst us. We will be plagued by it, plagued!’ He thumped a gravestone with the lantern’s stick. ‘But Frederick will not listen, even though it is my work, given me by God, and I will be the one to face our unquiet brethren amongst these stones. Will I be granted no rest? Will I be f
orever tortured? Tell me!’

  His face was now red as his coat and he leant towards us most powerfully, with spittle on his lips, teeth bared as if to bite us. But at least we knew the dead man hadn’t yet been buried. For all our lateness, we weren’t too late for him.

  ‘And now Frederick sends strangers to compel me!’ the man shouted. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Williams,’ Anna said, her voice lacking conviction in the terror of his rage. ‘Forgive us for arriving so late, and without proper introduction. Am I right in presuming you to be the vicar in these parts?’

  ‘You are.’ He seemed to find Anna’s meekness proper, for he lowered the lantern so it wasn’t so blinding. ‘Parson Robert Stephen Hawker.’

  ‘Is this Morwenstow, then?’ I said.

  He pointed the lantern into the dark beyond. ‘Though you cannot see it now that night’s deep mantle is upon us, we are but a stone’s throw from fair Morwenna’s walls – the Lord’s sanctuary in this benighted place.’

  Such a changeable creature he was, blowing from shout to calm in a moment. I didn’t know what to make of him. But he was mumbling as if to himself.

  ‘They have reached safety in the dark, and I have found them, which is surely our Saviour’s will. I must take them to a place of rest. I must be His vessel in this matter. Yes.’ He looked at us, quite fierce, and said, ‘You must stay at the vicarage.’

  At this he turned on a sixpence and was striding away. Anna set off after him. I caught her arm.

  ‘He doesn’t seem a very … settled sort.’

  ‘True, but we need somewhere to lay our heads, Shilly. For tonight, at least. And we must keep the parson sweet if we’re to see the body. Once that’s been accomplished, we can shift ourselves if need be.’