Mermaid of Penperro

by Cach, Lisa

  But she’d been only a child then, and was a woman full-grown now. She would do fine handling both.

  “Keep me on course,” she directed Tom, and dug in.

  Her muscles strained, pulling against the oars, and she braced her feet for leverage. The left oar moved unevenly, that arm weaker, but she corrected it, endeavoring to keep the force even on each side. She completed the stroke and lifted the oars out of the water, and was rewarded with a little noise of surprise from Tom.

  “Sorry,” she said. She must have splattered him with water.

  She dug in again. It wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t as hard as she’d feared, either. A few more strokes and she thought she had the hang of it.

  “A bit to port,” Tom directed.

  She corrected course, silently proud that she had not had to ask which way was port. She was no landlubber, not she!

  Five minutes later she was wondering if she had perhaps been a bit precipitous in claiming she could row them to wherever they were going. She was sweating, the chill from earlier long forgotten, and her entire upper body was beginning to feel heavy and drained of strength. Her strokes became progressively shorter and slower, the oars dipping less deeply each time.

  “A little to starboard,” Tom said.

  She took a breath and bent back to the task. She wasn’t so proud that she wouldn’t give the oars back to him, but she’d be damned if she’d do so after five minutes, especially after arguing to get them.

  She rowed on despite the growing pain in her muscles, pausing briefly between each stroke and settling into a rhythm. In her mind the tiny rowboat became a Mediterranean galley and herself but one of many workers upon the oars. She closed her eyes and imagined the burning sun overhead, beating down on her bare shoulders as she rowed, rowed, rowed. Tom became a foreign prince, reclining on a pile of pillows as she and the others slaved away.

  The girl in the third row back, she imagined him saying to one of his officers. Where did she come from? I have never seen a female so fair, and yet with such strength in her arms.

  We bought her in Algiers, the officer said. Does she interest you?

  Bring her here! I would see her up close.

  The officer approached her in her fantasy, and she looked up, taking a hand from her oar long enough to wipe the sweat from her brow.

  The real Tom spoke then. “Easy, Konstanze. We should be hitting the rocks at any moment.”

  She opened her eyes for real and saw that much of the fog had dissipated. The coastline was dimly visible, the black bulk of the nearest headland blocking out the stars.

  “Trade places with me,” Tom directed.

  She obeyed, knowing he could much more easily guide them to the hiding place than she could. She didn’t know if she had ever been so happy to be back in the stern as she was at that moment, arms hanging limply.

  The boat bumped against rocks, Tom pushing them off with a well-directed oar. They inched along the side of the headland for several more minutes; then all at once they were at the opening and Tom moved the boat inside to the utter blackness. The small sounds of water against the boat and the rocks were magnified in the cave, reverberating strangely. She felt Tom moving around, the boat rocking.

  “There,” he said, settling down. “Now we sit and wait.”

  “In the boat?”

  He laughed. “Would you prefer in the water?”

  “I thought there’d be a beach in here, like in the other cave.”

  “No such luck. I’ve tied us off as well as I could to a rock.”

  “Oh. How long until dawn, and the Preventive crew goes home?”

  “I should imagine another three hours or so. I know it’s longer than you had counted on, but I’m afraid there’s no avoiding it.”

  “At least I will feel that I’ve earned my three pounds,” she said, and wrapped her arms over her chest. The heat of exertion was already passing, and now she had weariness to add to the discomfort of the cold. She was glad she’d had the foresight to use the chamber pot before going out.

  “What happened with the goods in that cave where I found you?” she asked, hoping to distract herself from her discomfort.

  “They were hauled out and sold. It’s not a good hiding place, though. Too difficult to bring things in and take them out, and in very high tides there’s a danger of it all floating away.”

  “Ah.” They both fell silent, and she searched her mind for something else to say. “That choir at Talland Church. They’re very good. Have they been singing long?”

  “They would be flattered to hear a mermaid praise them. They haven’t been singing so long with regular practice—only a year or so. It was a good way to bring a wide group of men together without arousing suspicion.”

  “You mean—”

  “Bloodthirsty, thieving smugglers, all,” he said cheerfully.

  “But they sing so well!”

  “I don’t know that the two are mutually exclusive. They sing at festivals in town, and at the church on Sundays. We even sent them over to Fowey once, to show those rusty-throated fakers what real singing sounds like.”

  “Does the vicar of the church know they are smugglers?”

  “Matt? I should say so.”

  “Good gracious.” If even the vicar was in on it, then who wasn’t? Just Foweather and his crew, apparently.

  Knowing Tom, he’d probably manage to turn even the crew to his purpose, given half a chance.

  “Your Hilde seems to have taken an interest in the vicar, Matt Jobson. Is she looking for a husband?”

  “Hilde? Not that I know of. What do you mean she’s ‘taken an interest’ in him?”

  “She gave him the eye.”

  “What eye?”

  “You know, the one you women give a man when you’re interested.”

  “I assure you, I have no idea of what you’re speaking. Giving ‘the eye,’ indeed.”

  “Oh, come now, Konstanze,” he chided. “Even convent-bred virgins are not that innocent.”

  “I may know of what you speak,” she admitted grudgingly, “but my mother warned me about that sort of thing, and she said that men mistake even a casual meeting of the eyes as an invitation. I’m certain that is all that has happened between Hilde and your Mr. Jobson. For all that she thought you yourself were a fine specimen, Hilde does not flirt.”

  “She said I was a fine specimen, did she?”

  “Not in those exact words,” Konstanze said, grimacing. She had not meant to let that slip out.

  “The woman has admirable taste.”

  Konstanze rolled her eyes in the dark. “I suppose that now you’ll be adding Adonis to the list of legendary men you resemble.”

  “You said it, not I.”

  She could not help it; she laughed.

  “Now you’re offending me,” he said. “I think it fits quite well.”

  “So, Adonis, if you’re so wonderful, why is it that you have not married?” she asked.

  “How do you know I don’t have a wife waiting for me at home at this very moment, fretting over my absence?”

  She shrugged, the gesture invisible in the dark. “It’s just a sense I get,” she said. “Something about you says you are a bachelor still.” As she said it, she wondered how she did know. Perhaps it was his subtle flirtation that made her think that way, but she would be a fool to count on that alone to guide her. As Mama had said, marriage bonds tied the wife more firmly than ever they tied the husband.

  “No woman who can sense that can be innocent of using ‘the eye.’ ”

  She decided to let that pass. She admitted she was perhaps not so pure of thought as she would like to pretend. “I can still disbelieve that Hilde used it on the vicar. But you are changing the subject. Why is it, O Great One, that you have never married?” She was grateful for the dark that hid her face from him, for she was certain she was casting a bit of “the eye” in his direction at that very moment. She only hoped he had no sense of how very interested she was
in the answer to her question.

  “I thought to, once,” he said, “but it ended badly.”

  “That is not much of a story.”

  “I never claimed it was worthy of an opera.”

  “Tell me anyway,” she said, “if you’re willing. I don’t want to pry.” That was a lie, but he didn’t need to know it. Besides, hearing about his past romances would help keep her mind off her wet feet and damp clothes. Surely he owed her that?

  He sighed. “I don’t suppose it makes much difference if you do know,” he said, making her wonder exactly at his meaning. Had he worried over the impression he made on her? “I was a young idiot, head over heels in love with a girl who had no particular interest in me. I pined for her. I wrote atrocious poetry. I planned out my day to increase the chances of meeting her ‘accidentally.’ I even ingratiated myself to her parents.

  “I had had an education, and with a former school chum was trying to start a school in Marazion. It was going well until I fell in love with Eustice, at which point I became so obsessed that I let my duties fall by the wayside.”

  Eustice? He’d been madly in love with a woman named Eustice? It sounded so… unromantic. How did one write poetry to a Eustice? It didn’t rhyme with anything romantic. Eustice, avarice, artifice, prejudice… Clearly not a romantic name.

  “Then Eustice fell in love with my old school chum, and he with her. I didn’t handle it well, I’m afraid. The school was already folding due to my neglect, and then when Herbert told me that he and Eustice were to wed, I lost what little sense I had left. I got drunk, there was an awful fight, and in the end poor Herbert had a broken arm and I had worn out my welcome in Marazion. I left and came here.”

  “Gracious, I don’t know why you don’t think that has the makings for an opera. Jealousy, passion, violence, disgrace—you have everything.”

  “But I’d be the villain. It’s a role I’ve since sought to avoid.”

  “And very commendable of you, Adonis, although it does seem you have your own ideas of what constitutes villainy. Breaking the law apparently does not qualify.”

  “That is getting to be a tired refrain.”

  That stung a bit. She didn’t like to think she was sounding like an annoying old prig, and a hypocritical prig at that, considering that she had put herself in league with the smugglers for the promise of three pounds. “Surely all that drama must have happened some time ago. Why have you not married since?”

  “No time, I suppose. I have too much to do to waste my time on such things.”

  “But don’t you hope to have children of your own someday?”

  “Perhaps. I am in no hurry. It has been my observation that such a relaxed attitude is largely incomprehensible to women, however, and so I’ll beg you now not to continue digging for an explanation.”

  “Are you still pining for Eustice?”

  He barked out what might be called a laugh. “Enough, Konstanze. Eustice is part of the past. I can’t even recall what it felt like to be in love with her. I look back on that time and can hardly believe that I was the person who did and felt those things.”

  She liked the idea that he had forgotten all his feelings for the unknown Eustice. The little green demon of jealousy that had been stirring in her chest settled back down, reassured.

  “If you feel so free to pry into my personal life,” he said, “perhaps it is only fair that you tell me something more of yours. Why exactly did you leave your husband? Was it that he beat you?”

  “I—” she started, and then stopped, trying to find words to explain without having to explain absolutely everything. She wanted him to know she had had just cause to run away, and that she had not taken her decision lightly. “I did not like the way he treated me,” she said, and felt how inadequate that was. “He allowed me no freedom. I spent all my time cooped up indoors alone, with no chance to make friends of my own. We never went out, and only rarely had guests, and when we did they were his friends, and all his own age. I felt like my life was draining away while I sat by and watched it go.”

  “You were bored?” he asked, his incredulity apparent even in the dark.

  “It was more than that. He frightened me,” she explained. “On occasion he would drink, and when both angry and drunk he threatened me. I thought he might do me harm.”

  “Might? You mean he didn’t?”

  “He never broke my arm,” she said.

  He was silent for long enough that she wondered if she had gone too far, referring to his past like that. “Fair enough,” he said at last.

  “I know when I describe my life with Bugg, it doesn’t sound so terrible. I had clothes and food and a big house, and servants to wait upon me. I know there are many women who would have happily traded their lives for mine, but I couldn’t stay. I simply could not. I might as well have been dead, for all the living I was doing in that marriage.”

  “Why did you wed him in the first place? No one forced you into it, did they?”

  She heard the hint of accusation in his tone, and imagined that as a man he was sympathizing with Bugg. “My mother had asked me to, on her deathbed. For all that he has forty-five years on me, Bugg seemed to her—and to me at the time—a good enough match. He had been kind to us, and paid our rent those last two months. I thought he would treat me well. Whatever doubts I had I forgot about when Mama died. I didn’t want to have to think about anything, or worry about taking care of myself.” She shrugged, remembering the alternating grief and numbness of that time. “Bugg was there to take care of me, and I let him. I suppose I should feel grateful to him for that.”

  “He took advantage of your vulnerability to get what he wanted, and I don’t know that that particularly deserves gratitude. On the other hand, you got what you wanted as well. It sounds like you both bought yourselves a boatload of misery, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Why should I mind?” she said faintly. Instead of painting herself in a sympathetic light, she’d apparently managed to come across as self-serving.

  “Marriages of convenience seem invariably to turn out inconvenient,” he said.

  “I shouldn’t have thought there would be so many in Penperro to observe,” she said, glad to turn the conversation to a more general discussion.

  “The lives of the few big landowners are forever a topic of gossip, but marriages of convenience occur regularly enough on a small scale. The girl who gets pregnant, the boy who seeks a bride with a dowry, the fathers who want to combine their businesses, small though they are—there are a dozen reasons it happens even in poor Penperro.”

  “So you think that couples should marry only for love?”

  “I have yet to meet the man who could think straight while in love. They’re damn fools, and I can tell you that from personal experience. They make terrible choices.”

  “Then who should get married? Who’s left?” she asked, genuinely curious as to his answer.

  “I suppose it could be decided by committee.”

  She made a disgusted noise. “I cannot see agreeing to wed someone a committee had chosen for me. The very idea is repellent.”

  “I doubt you would have ended up any worse than where you are now.”

  “At least it was my mistake to make, and I won’t be making another like it. Would you marry someone chosen for you by others?”

  “I might do so if Matt was the one who did the choosing. I don’t think I’d trust anyone else to do it.”

  “I don’t think I’d trust Hilde. She’d pair me with Napoleon if she could. She likes commanding types.”

  “I’ll have to tell Matt that,” he said, and the boat rocked as he moved around. “It’s getting light. The Preventive men will have returned to the harbor by now.”

  She turned and looked out the cave entrance, and indeed the blackness had lightened to a dark grayish blue. She was surprised that they had been talking for so long. “Does no one smuggle during the day?” she asked.

  “Of course not,” he
said, in a voice that said she should know better.

  “I wasn’t trying to sound stupid,” she said, resenting the tone of his answer. She realized she was getting tired, and bad-tempered as well. “It just occurred to me that if no one expects smuggling during the day, it might make it possible to do so once or twice without getting caught.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, irritated that she had said anything at all. It did sound stupid, now that she thought about it. “You’re the master smuggler. You figure it out.”

  “I thought I was Adonis and Hercules,” he said, using an oar to push off the walls and send them drifting toward the entrance.

  She rolled her eyes. “Just take me home.”

  They were both quiet as Tom rowed them back to her little cove. The dawn air was no warmer than the night’s had been, and was made chill by a freshening wind that kicked up small waves. Konstanze huddled on her seat in the stern, shivering and thinking of warm fires and hot cups of tea. She was surprised when the rowboat finally nudged up against the sandy shore; her attention had been so securely focused inward on her discomfort.

  Tom leaped out and pulled the boat farther up the beach. She stood and, stiff and hunched over, stepped through the bilgewater up to the bow of the boat, her balance uncertain. Tom was waiting to take her hand as she climbed over the gunwale.

  “Good Lord!” he exclaimed as she put her hand in his. “Your hand is like ice. Is your blood even moving?”

  As soon as she was standing on solid ground he took both her hands and held them between his own, pressing the warmth of his palms against her fingers. “I’ve never known anyone whose hands get as cold as yours.”

  “Thank you,” she muttered. “That makes me feel so much better.” She refrained from mentioning the equally frozen state of her buttocks. A long, shuddering shiver racked her body, and her teeth began to chatter audibly. His hands felt hot against her skin, the simple pleasure of a bit of warmth outweighing any more licentious thrill she might have gotten from his touch. She’d welcome those hot hands on her chilled buttocks for the same reason, except he’d likely be repulsed by the feel of them. They probably felt like two dead fish.