avenge-“
Vanimen put a tine through an eye, straight into the brain, and the watchman grew still. Mermen were swarming up the ladder. They paid scant heed; none but their king knew German. He stood for a moment, heartsick at what he had done, before he pitched the corpse out and took command of the ship.
That was no easy task, when his followers were quite ignorant of he! use. Surely their awkwardness and gropings about reached ears on land. They were ready to fight if they must. But no more humans appeared. It was unwise for a common person to seek after a racket heard in the night, and whatever burgher guard was in Stavanger doubtless decided that nothing untoward was likely going on-a brawl, maybe, or a drunken revel.
The mooring lines were slipped. The sail, unfurled, caught the land breeze for which Vanimen had waited until this late hour. There was ample light for Faerie vision to steer by. The hulk stole down the bay. As she passed an island, the mermaids and children started coming aboard.
By dawn she had left Norway well behind her.
VI
NGEBORG Hjalmarsdatter was an Alswoman of about thirty win-ters. She had been orphaned early and married off to the first younger son who would have her. When she proved barren and he went down with the boat whereon he worked, leaving her nothing, no other man made an offer. The parish cared for its paupers by binding them over for a year at a time to whoever would take them. Such householders knew well how to squeeze out their money’s worth in toil, without spending unduly on food or clothes for their charges. lngeborg, instead, got Red lens to give her passage on his craft to the herring run. She plied what trade she could among the booths on shore, and came back with some shillings. Thereafter she made the trip yearly. Otherwise she stayed horne, save when she walked the woodland road to Hadsund for market days.
Father Knud implored her to mend her life. “Can you find me better work than this?” she laughed. He must needs ban her from Communion, if not the Mass; and she seldom went to the latter, since women hissed her in the street and might throw a fishhead or a bone at her. The men, easier-going on the whole, did agree she could not be allowed to dwell among them, if only because of their goodwives’ tongues.
She had a cabin built, a shack on the strand several furlongs north of Als. Most of the unwed young men came to her, and the crews of vessels that stopped in, and the rare chapman, and hus-bands after dark. Had they no coppers, she would take pay in kind, wherefore she got the name Cod-Ingeborg. Between whiles she was alone, and often strolled far along the shore or into the woods. She had no fear of rovers-they would not likely kill her, and what else mattered?-and little of trolls.
On a winter evening some five years past, when Tauno was just beginning to explore the land, he knocked on her door. After she let him in, he explained who he was. He had been watching from afar, seen men slink in and swagger out; he was trying to learn the ways of his lost mother’s folk; would she tell him what this was about? He ended with spending the night. Since, he had many times done so. She was different from the mermaids, warmer somehow in heart as well as flesh; her trade meant naught to him, whose undersea fellows knew no more of marriage than of any other sacrament; he could learn much from her, and tell her much, murmured lip to lip as they lay beneath the coverlet; he liked her for her kindliness and toughness and wry mirth.
For her part, she would take no pay from him, and few gifts. “I do not think ill of most men,” she said. “Some, yes, like that cruel old miser Kristoffer into whose hands I would have fallen had I not chosen this way. My skin crawls when he comes smirk-ing.” She spat on the clay floor, then sighed. “He has the coin, though. . . .. No, mainly they are not bad, those rough-bearded men; and sometimes a lad gives me joy.” She rumpled his hair. “You give me more, without fail, Tauno. Can you not see, that’s why it would be wrong for you to hire me?”
“No, I cannot,” he answered in honesty. “I have things you say men reckon precious, amber, pearls, pieces of gold. If they will help you, why should you not have them?”
“Well,” she said, “among other reasons, word would come to the lords around Hadsund, that Cod-lngeborg was peddling such wares. They’d want to know how I got them. I do not wish my last man to wear a hood.” She kissed him. “Oh, let us say what’s better, that your tales of your undersea wonderland give me more than any hand-graspable wealth may buy.”
She dropped a number of hints that she longed to be taken away as was fair Agnete. He was deaf to them, and she gave up. Why should he want a barren burden?
When Provost Magnus exorcised the merfolk, Ingeborg would see no person for a week. Her eyes were red for a long time afterward.
Finally Tauno sought her again. He came from the water, naked save for the headband that caught his locks and the sharp flint dagger belted at his hip. In his right hand he carried a barbed spear. It was II cold, misty twilight, fog asmoke until the lap-lapping wavelets were blurred and the stars withheld. There was a scent of kelp, fish, and from inland of damp earth. The sand gritted beneath his feet, the dune grass scratched his ankles.
A pair of fisher youths were nearing the hut, with a flaming link to show the way. Tauno saw farther in the dark than they could. Under the wadmal sameness of cowl, smock, and hose, he knew who they were. He trod into their path. “No,” he said. “Not this night.”
“Why. . . why, Tauno,” said one with a foolish grin. “You’d not bar your chums from their bit of fun, would you, or her from this fine big flounder? We won’t be long, if you’re so eager.” “Go home. Stay there.”
“Tauno, you know me, we’ve talked, played ball, you’ve come
aboard when I was out by myself in the jollyboat, I’m Stig-“
“Must I kill you?” asked Tauno without raising his voice.
“They looked at him by the guttering link-flare, towering over
them, hugely thewed, armed, hair wet as a strand-washer’s and
faintly green under its fairness, the mer-face and the yellow eyes
chill as northlights. They turned and walked hastily back. Through
the fog drifted Stig’s shout: “They were right about you, you’re
soulless, you damned thing-“
Tauno smote the door of the shack. It was a sagging box of logs weathered gray, peat-roofed, windowless, though a glow straggled outward and air inward where the chinking moss had shriveled. Ingeborg opened for him and closed behind them both. Besides a blubber lamp, she had a low fire going. Monstrous shadows crawled on the double-width sleeping dais, the stool and table, the few cooking and sewing tools, clothes chest, sausage and stockfish hung from the rafters, and those poles across the rafters which skewered rounds of hardtack. On a night like this, smoke hardly rose from hearthstone to roofhole. Tauno’s lungs always burned for a minute after he had come ashore and emptied them in that single heave which merfolk used. The air was so thin, so dry (and he felt half deafened among its muffled noises, though to be sure he saw better). The reek here was worse. He must cough ere he could speak.
Ingeborg held him, wordlessly. She was short and buxom, snub-nosed, freckled, with a big gentle mouth. Her hair and eyes were dark brown, her voice high but sweet. There have been princesses less well-favored than Cod-Ingeborg. He did not like the smell of old sweat in her gown, any more than he liked any of the stenches of humankind; but underneath it he caught a sunny odor of woman, :
“I hoped . .” she breathed at last,,”I hoped. . “
He shoved her arms away, stood back, glared, and hefted the
spear, “Where is my sister?” he snapped,
“Oh. She is—is well, Tauno. None will harm her. None would
dare,” Ingeborg tried to draw him from the door. “Come, my
unhappy dear, sit, have a stoup, be at ease with me,”
“First they reaved from her everything that was her life-“
Tauno must stop anew to cough, Ingeborg took the word. “It
had to be,” she said, “Christian folk could not let her dwell un-christened am
ong them, You can’t blame them, not even the priests. A higher might than theirs has been in this,” She shrugged, with her oft-seen one-sided grin. “For the price of her past, and of growing old, ugly, dead in less than a hundred years, she gains eternity in Paradise. You may live a long while, but when you die you’ll be done, a blown-out candle flame. Myself, I’ll live beyond my body, most likely in Hell. Which of us three is the luckiest?”
Still grim but somewhat calmed, Tauno leaned his weapon and sat down on the dais. The straw ticking rustled beneath him. The peat fire sputtered with small blue and yellow dancers; its smoke would have been pleasant if less thick. Shadows crouched in cor-Ilers and under the roof, and leaped about, misshapen, on the log walls. The cold and dankness did not trouble him, unclad though he was. Ingeborg shivered where she stood.
He peered at her through the murk, “I know that much,” he said. “There’s a young fellow in the hamlet that they hope to make a priest of, So he could tell my sister Eyjan about it when she Found him alone,” His chuckle rattled. “She says he’s not bad to lie with, save that the open air gives him sneezing fits,” Harshly igain: “Well, if that’s the way the world swims, naught can we jo but give room. However”. yestre’en Kennin and I went in search of Yria, to make sure she wasn’t being mistreated. Ugh, the mud and filth in those wallows you call streets! Up and down we went, to every house, yes, to church and graveyard. We had IlOt spied her from afar, do you see, not for days, And we’d have known were she inside anything, be it cabin or coffin, She may be mortal now, our little Yria, but her body is still half her father’s, and that last night on the strand it had not lost its smell like daylit waves.” Fist thudded on knee. “Kennin and Eyjan raged, would have stonned shore and asked at harpoon point. I told them we’d only risk death, and how can the dead help Yria? Yet it was hard to wait till sunset, when I knew you’d be here, Ingeborg.”
She sat down against him, an arm around his waist, a hand on his thigh, cheek on shoulder. “I know,” she said most softly.
He remained unbending. “Well? What’s happened, then?”
“Why, the provost took her off with him to Viborg town-
Wait! No harm is meant. How could they dare harm a chalice of Heavenly grace?” Ingeborg said that matter-of-factly, and after-ward she fleered. “You’ve come to the right place, Tauno. The provost had a scribe with him, and that one was here and I asked him about any plans for keeping our miracle fed. They’re not unkindly in Als, I told him, but neither are they rich. She has no more yarns to spin from undersea for their pleasure. Who wants a girl that must be taught afresh like a babe? Who wants a foster-daughter to find a dowry for? Oh, she could get something-pauper’s work, marriage to a deckhand, or that which I chose— but was this right for a miracle? The cleric said no, nor was it intended. They would bring her back with them and put her in Asmild Cloister near Viborg.”
“What’s that?” Tauno inquired.
Ingeborg did her best to explain. In the end she could say:
“They’ll house Margrete and teach her. When she’s of the right age, she’ll take her vows. Then she’ll live there in purity, no doubt widely reverenced, till she dies, no doubt in an odor of sanctity. Or do you believe that the corpse of a saint does not stink as yours and mine will?”
Aghast, Tauno exclaimed, “But this is frightful!”
“Oh? Many would count it glorious good fortune.”
His eyes stabbed at hers. “Would you?”
“Well...no.”
“Locked among walls for all her days; shorn, heavily clad, ill-
fed, droning through her nose at God while letting wither what
God put between her legs; never to know love, children about her,
the growth of home and kin, or even wanderings under apple trees
in blossom time—“
“Tauno, it is the way to eternal bliss.”
“Hm. Rather would I have my bliss now, and then the dark.
You too-in your heart-not so?-whether or not you’ve said you mean to repent on your deathbed. Your Christian Heaven seems to me a shabby place to spend forever.”
“Margrete may think otherwise.”
“Mar-aah. Yria.” He brooded a while, chin on fist, lips taut,
breathing noisily in the smoke. “Well,” he said, “if that is what she truly wants, so be it. Yet how can we know? How can she know? Will they let her imagine anything is real and right beyond their gloomy cloi-cloister? I would not see my little sister cheated, Ingeborg.”
“You sent her ashore because you would not see her eaten by eels. Now what choice is there?”
“None?”
The despair of him who had always been strong was like a knife to her. “My dear, my dear.” She held him close. But instead of tears, the old fisher hardheadedness rose in her.
“One thing among men opens every road save to Heaven,” she said, “and that it does not necessarily bar. Money.”
A word in the mer-tongue burst from him. “Go on!” he said in Danish, and clutched her arm with bruising fingers. “To put it simplest: gold,” Ingeborg told him, not trying to break free. “Or whatever can be exchanged for gold, though the metal itself is best. See you, if she had a fortune, she could live where she wished-given enough, at the King’s court, or in some foreign land richer than Denmark. She’d command servants, men-at-arms, warehouses, broad acres. She could take her pick among suitors. Then, if she chose to leave this and return to the nuns, that would be a free choice.”
“My folk had gold! We can dig it out of the ruins!”
“How much?”
There was more talk. The sea people had never thought to
weigh up what was only a metal to them, too soft for most uses however handsome and unrusting it might be.
At the end, Ingeborg shook her head. “Too scant, I fear,” she
sighed. “In the ordinary course of things, plenty. This is different.
Here Asmild Cloister and Viborg Cathedral have a living miracle. She’ll draw pilgrims from everywhere. The Church is her guardian in law, and won’t let her go to a lay family for your few cups and plates.”
“What’s needed, then?”
“A whopping sum. Thousands of marks. See you, some must
be bribed. Others, who can’t be bought, must be won over by grand gifts to the Church. And then enough must be left for Margrete to be wealthy. . . . Thousands of marks.”
“What weight?” Tauno fairly yelled, with a merman’s curse.
“I-I-how shall I, fisherman’s otphan and widow, who never
held one mark at a time in this fist, how shall I guess?.. A boatful? Yes, I think a boatload would do.”
“A boatload!” Tauno sagged back. “And we have not even a boat.”
Ingeborg smiled sadly and ran fingers along his arm. “No man wins every game,” she murmured. “You’ve done what you could. Let your sister spend threescore years in denying her flesh, and afterward forever in unfolding her soul. She may remember us, when you are dust and I am burning.”
Tauno shook his head. His eyelids squinched together. “No. . . she bears the same blood as I... it’s not a rest-ful blood. . . she’s shy and gentle, but she was born to the free-dom of the world’s wide seas. . . if holiness curdles in her, during a lifetime among whisker-chinned crones, what of her chances at Heaven?”
“I know not, I know not..”
“An unforced choice, at least. To buy it, a boatload of gold.
A couple of wretched tons, to buy Yria’s welfare.”
“Tons! Why-I hadn’t thought-less than that, surely. A few hundred pounds ought to be ample.” Eagerness touched Ingeborg. “Do you suppose you could find that much?”
“Hm. . . wait. Wait. Let me hark back-“ Tauno sat bolt upright. “Yes!” he shouted. “I do know!”
“Where? How?”
With the mercury quickness of Faerie, he became a planner.
“Long ago was a city of men on an island in midocean,” he sai
d, not loud but shiveringly, while he stared into the shadows. “Great it was, and gorged with riches. Its god was a kraken. They cast down weighted offerings to him-treasure, that he cared not about, but with it kine, horses, condemned evildoers; and these the kraken could eat. He need not snatch aught else than a whale now and then-or a ship, to devour its crew, and over the centuries he and his priests had learned the signals which told him that such-and-such vessels were unwanted at Averorn. . . . So the kraken grew sluggi.sh, and appeared not for generations of men; nor was there any need, since outsiders dared no longer attack.
“In time the islanders themselves came to doubt he was more than a fable. Meanwhile a new folk had arisen on the mainland. Their traders came, bearing not goods alone, but gods who didn’t want costly sacrifices. The people of Averorn flocked to these new gods. The temple of the kraken stood empty, its fires burned out, its priests died and were not replaced. Finally the king of the city ordered an end to the rites that kept him fed.
“After one year, dreadful in his hunger, the kraken rose from the sea bottom; and he sank the harbored ships, and his arms reached inland to knock down toers and pluck forth prey. Belike he also had power over quake and volcano-for the island was whelmed, it foundered and is forgotten by all humankind.”
“Why, that is wonderful!” Ingeborg clapped her hands, not thinking at once of the small children who had gone down with the city. “Oh, I’m so glad!”
“It’s not that wonderful,” Tauno said. “The merfolk remember Averorn because the kraken lairs there yet. They give it a wide berth.”
“I-I see. You must, though, bear some hope if you-“
“Yes. Worth trying. Look you, woman: Men cannot go un-
dersea. Merfolk have no ships, nor metal weapons that don’t soon
corrode away. Never have the races worked together. If they did-
maybe—“
Ingeborg was a long time quiet before she said, almost not to be heard, “And maybe you’d be slain.”
“Yes, yes. What is that? Everybody’s born fey. My people stand close-they must-and a single life is of no high account among us. How could I range off to the ends of the world, knowing I had not done what I might for my little sister Yria who looks like my mother?” Tauno gnawed his lip. “But the ship, how to get the ship and crew?”
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