The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘One day after Evan had set the cleibh-giomach, the lobster creels, he went climbing on the cliff to look for seabirds’ eggs. He heard a sweet voice calling to him and when he went down he saw, sitting on a rocky shoal, a maiden of the benvarrey. Comely she was, so it is told, with nacreous skin, and eyes like sea anemones, and a slender waist tapering to a long fluked curve of overlapping scales. Evan was torn between fear and delight but he greeted her courteously. She asked after his father, and the youth told her about all the family’s troubles. When he came home Evan told his parents what had happened and his father was well-pleased with him.

  ‘“Next time you go fishing,” he said, “take a pile of apples with you.”

  ‘The white sea-daughter was delighted to get the “sweet land eggs” once more, and good fortune returned to the Sayles. But Evan was smitten, and he spent so much time out in his boat speaking with her when she appeared, and hoping that she might appear when she was absent, that people began to whisper that he had turned idle. When the youth heard these rumours he was so bothered by them that he decided to leave the island, but before he went he planted the apple tree on the cliff and told the sea-daughter that when the tree matured the sweet land eggs would ripen and drop down for her. Although he went, the good luck stayed, but the lovely wight grew weary of waiting for the apples to form and she went off looking for Evan Sayle. In the end the apples ripened, but neither Evan nor the benvarrey ever came back to look for them. Because the tree was planted there for a seawight, no mortal will touch the fruit.’

  When she had listened to this tale, Rohain said, ‘It seems I have much to learn. You say this sea-girl was a benvarrey, a seelie wight, and yet she had a fish’s tail just like a mermaid. How did Evan Sayle recognise she was a benvarrey? And how many kinds of merfolk exist?’

  ‘As to your first question,’ answered Avenel, ‘it takes an islander, or one who dwells all his life at the margins of the sea, to be able to discern between the different kinds of fishtailed wights, the half piscean and half mortal-seeming. As for your second question, there are five. There are mermaids with their mermen, there are the benvarreys, the sea-morgans, the merrows, and the maighdeanna na tuinne, the wave-maidens. The benvarreys do not fail to look kindly on the races of men but the others may be seelie or unseelie or both. Fear not—around the Royal Isle malignity cannot dwelt. Unseelie merfolk are repelled from its shores. Indeed, the mermaids of Tavaal aid us.’

  ‘In what manner?’

  ‘When the men are fishing off the island a mermaid will warn them of forthcoming storms, calling out “shiaull er thalloo”—“sail to land”. If they hear this cry, the boats run for shelter at once, or else lose their tackle or their lives. The fishermen fervently hope to never behold a mermaid at sea, for they only show themselves, rising suddenly among the boats, if the forthcoming storm is to be truly terrible, such as the Great Storm of 1079, in which many perished. As you know m’lady, sea-wights of all kinds dislike being viewed by mortals, and few folk have ever set eyes on any of them, excepting the silkies, who are less wary. Tales of actual sightings are part of island history.’

  As he finished speaking, Rohain detected a sudden evasiveness, as if he had just then recollected a fact that contradicted his last statement. I wonder, she thought, whether there might be seelie ocean-wights dwelling among us …

  ‘Well,’ said Rohain, ‘I have not seen a mermaid, but I have glimpsed a silkie, I think. I hope to see more of the eldritch sea-dwellers.’

  ‘Now,’ said the Seneschal with a change of tone, ‘I have a question for you, m’lady. Would it please you to come down to the shore towards evening? There is to be a party and a music-making. The seals will come near—the true seals, the animals that live on the skerries around the island. You shall see them, if not the merfolk.’

  ‘Why will they come?’

  ‘They are attracted by any kind of music, even whistling.’

  ‘I should be greatly amused by such a spectacle!’

  As the day waned, the islanders gathered great piles of driftwood and lit fires along the shoreside, then played their pipes and sang their songs. Out where the breakers arched their toss-maned horses’ necks, the seals assembled to listen, their soft fur glistening. Burly, wintry-haired Roland Avenel took his bagpipes and walked along the shore playing traditional airs, splashing his bare feet among bubbled crystal garlands of foam strewn like pear-blossom on the ribbed sand.

  This delighted the seals. Their heads stuck up out of the water, and they sat up, perpendicular. An enchanting sight it was for Rohain—eighteen to twenty-five seals gathered, all listening, facing different directions, and Avenel playing the pipes to them.

  Annie, a serving-girl from Tana, was among the congregated islanders. She touched Rohain lightly on the elbow, saying, ‘Most of those creatures out there are lorraly, my lady. Others are not.’

  ‘Not lorraly?’ Rohain glanced eagerly toward the seals. ‘Are silkies among them?’

  ‘Even so!’

  The silkies were the seal-folk, the gentlest of seawights. In their seal-form they swam, but in humanlike form they were able to walk on land before returning to the ocean. Despite that men were wont to do them great wrong, the silkies had always shown benevolence to mortalkind. They never did harm.

  On another day Roland Avenel, knowledgeable in the ways of silkies, took Rohain, Prince Edward, Thomas of Ercildoune, and Caitri down to the strand they called Ronmara. It was a long-light afternoon. The last rays were roseate, the wind temperate, and the tide at its nadir. Not far offshore, out of the sea rose numerous rocky islets formed from tall stacks of hexagonal stones jammed together like honeycomb, a remnant of some past volcanic action. The water was deep on their seaward side and crystalline in shallow bead-fringed pools on the shoreward side.

  There, the seal-folk played.

  The silkies appeared like a troupe, of lithe humans: women and men, youths and maidens and children. All were naked, ivory-skinned. Some lay sunning themselves, while others frolicked and gamboled. Beside them were strewn their downy pelts. Eventually, catching sight of the spies, they seized their sealskins and jumped into the sea in mad haste. Then they swam a little distance before turning, popping up their heads, and, as seals now, gazing at the invaders.

  ‘They are beauteous indeed,’ exclaimed the young Prince.

  ‘Indeed!’ Caitri echoed, boldly.

  ‘’Tis little wonder mortals sometimes fall in love with them,’ said the Bard.

  ‘Do they?’ said the little girl, turning to him in surprise.

  ‘But surely,’ said Rohain, ‘such love must be doomed from the outset! One dwells in the sea, the other on the land. When lovers belong to two different worlds, how shall they be happy together?’

  ‘They can not,’ said Edward, rather sharply. Avenel nodded, his mien somber.

  Rohain was about to ask, How can you know? when she thought of Rona Wade. She fell silent. Shallow, flat waves played about her feet, rippling with gold scales of sunlight, each delineated by the kohl-line of its own shadow, as she watched the seal-people swim away.

  Three times a week, a fisherman’s wife would come to the Hall of Tana with her eldest daughter, delivering fish for the tables. Her husband had a knack for catching the best. The woman’s name was Rona Wade, and there was a strangeness about her, like the sea, and as profound.

  Rohain liked to try broaching the reticence of this gentle wife by speaking with her on the occasions they met, but on subjects pithier than island gossip, she would not be drawn. Rohain could not help noticing the webbed fingers of the children of Hugh and Rona Wade. They bore an affinity with those of Ursilla’s progeny, however people wisely refrained from commenting on the likeness. The other island children, if they thought anything of these aberrations, envied them. Webbed fingers made for fine swimmers.

  It was obvious that Hugh’s love for his bonny wife Rona was unbounded, but she returned it only with cool cordiality. Like Ursilla, she had been seen s
tealing alone to a deserted shore where she would toss a shell or some other object into the water. Upon this signal a large seal would appear, and she spoke to it in an unknown tongue.

  But Rona was not really like Ursilla.

  After the conversation, the creature would slip back under the waves, its shape unchanged. Rohain guessed that Rona did not love Hugh, but she was fond of her husband and never betrayed him.

  There appeared to be much unreturned love on Tamhania, which the arrival of the visitors had served to increase. Within a few days of her arrival, Georgiana Griffin, Dianella’s erstwhile servant, had attracted the attention of one of the island’s most eligible young men.

  Sevran Shaw was a shipmaster and farmer. Island born, he had travelled far over the seas of Erith on his own sloop, trading profitably, before coming home to settle. Shrewd was he, sensible, good-humored, and comfortably well-off. Now in his thirtieth year, he had never married. Several of the island girls had hoped to snare him, but he had not fallen in love until he set eyes on Georgiana Griffin. This refined lady, bred in the rarefied atmosphere of the Court of Caermelor, refused to hear his suit or to accept him as a friend. Weeks passed and his, attachment grew only the stronger, although she avoided him and they hardly ever met. It looked as if his love was ill-fated.

  Thus proceeded the secrets and the passions of the isle.

  Yet there were other mysteries on Tamhania-Tavaal, not of the affective kind, and these seemed to be more easily solved.

  Through the island’s only village ran crumbling granite walls, and rows of tall wooden piles driven into the ground for no apparent reason. Some stood or leaned like branchless trees, others supported decrepit piers and condemned jetties that stalked toward the water but finished abruptly far short of it, in the middle of the air. Far above the high-tide line, the dried remains of mussels and barnacles encrusted these thick stems.

  When Rohain asked about the useless and ruined structures, Avenel told her the village had risen sixteen feet over the last ten years, and the harbour had had to be rebuilt lower down. Local legend asserted that the island had floated at times during the past centuries, traveling on the ocean currents before catching on some submarine reef or snag and taking root again in a new position.

  Market day in the uplifted village was a pleasant diversion for Rohain. At the time of full moon, makeshift stalls would be set up in the Old Village Square, and folk would arrive from all over the island to peddle their wares. Riding through the township one market day, with her nineteen ladies and her equerry, Rohain spied a woman dressed in the geranium-coloured houppelande commonly adopted by the middle classes. Her head was sheathed in a shawl. Walking among the stalls, she was bartering jars of honey, bunches of hyacinths and watercress, apple cider and apple cider vinegar in ceramic bottles.

  Her face drew Rohain’s attention. There was a look about this woman that stirred some vague memory. Hope sprang in her heart. Could it be she had at last found someone from her past? Dismounting, she gave the reins to her equerry and approached the woman, who curtsied.

  ‘Do you know me?’ asked Rohain.

  The woman’s eyes were two cups filled with reflections. Weather, years, and sorrow had engraved her face with their etchings, but she was not uncomely. ‘All on Tamhania know the Lady Rohain Tarrenys, who is to be Queen-Empress.’

  ‘But do you know me?’

  ‘No, my lady.’

  ‘Your face, to me, appears familiar. What is your name?’

  ‘Elasaid. Elasaid of the Groves.’

  ‘Are you certain you do not recognise me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What will you take in return for a bag of apples?’

  ‘Cloth. Good cloth for a new cloak.’

  ‘Mustardevlys? Rylet? Thick woollen frieze?’

  ‘Ratteen, if it please my lady.’

  ‘Give the apples to my equerry. The ratteen shall be sent to you tomorrow.’

  A bargain was struck. It was a way of being linked to this woman.

  At Tana, Rohain again drew Roland Avenel aside. She said, ‘Today I spoke with a woman in the marketplace. She is called Elasaid of the Groves.’

  Avenel frowned. ‘With respect, does my lady deem it seemly for the future Queen-Empress to associate with commoners in marketplaces?’

  Rohain arched her brows in surprise.

  ‘Why, sir, I shall speak with whomsoever pleases me!’ she responded. ‘There is nothing indecorous about conversing with an honest person in any place, be it public or private. You forget, sir, I am not as the courtiers of Caermelor, so rigid in their hierarchies that they cannot recognise a fellow human creature.’

  Avenel bowed, murmuring an apology.

  ‘I wish to know,’ said Rohain, ‘where she dwells, this Elasaid. I shall visit her.’

  ‘She abides low on the eastern slopes above Topaz Bay,’ answered the Seneschal. ‘To it, there is a path only fit for donkeys or foot traffic. ’Tis very narrow, and an old stone wall runs all along one side. Those who pass that way must beware of Vinegar Tom. He is not unseelie as wights go—haters of mankind cannot abide here. He is a kind of guardian of the path, that’s all. There is a rhyme that you must recite if you want to get by him. If it is not said, Vinegar Tom takes you away and leaves you somewhere on the other side of the island where ’tis remote and prickly, and it can take a fistful of days to get back. When I first came here, they taught me the chant:

  “Vinegar Tom, Vinegar Tom,

  Where by the Powers do you come from?”

  ‘I learned this ditty and went, cocksure, along that path. Vinegar Tom came out and he was like a long-legged greyhound with the head of an ox, a long tail and huge eyes. When I saw him, I found myself so flummoxed that I said:

  “Vinegar Tom, Vinegar Tom,

  Where in the world do you come from?”

  ‘I said it wrong, but the words rhymed, so Vinegar Tom only tossed me over the wall!’

  Rohain gathered a bolt of ratteen and her retinue and went to visit the lady of the apple groves. The narrow track climbed away from the main road and wound over wooded slopes. To the right, the hillsides dropped sharply to the plane of the sea. To the left they escalated to pathless gullies. There, fern sprays prinked the cracks that ran through spills of ropy, wrinkled rock like the sagging hide of some enormous beast, and mist hovered in ravines walled with strange formations in stone, like frozen waterfalls. Ascending, the party passed spindly towers and pinnacles and needles. They went by a rift in a hillside, which emitted occasional plumes of white steam to augment the ambient brume. In deep gullies, water tumbled noisily over pebbles. A light mist rose from the still surfaces of gray rainpools, and from the puddles lying like shattered pieces of the sky clasped between tree-roots.

  They passed Vinegar Tom with no difficulty. When they had repeated the rhyme he turned into the likeness of a four-year-old child without a head, and vanished.

  The path led them to a level apron where they beheld a vegetable plot, beehives, and a little freshwater runnel skirted by white-flowered cresses. Here nestled a slate-roofed cot, lapped in gnarled-knuckled trees. Purple hyacinths bloomed among their roots. Small birds twittered, and bees gathered in the foaming pink-and-white confectionery of blossom. From behind fissured, sprouting boles, a waif of a child with green-gold hair spied upon the newcomers, then ran away.

  Elasaid welcomed her visitors into her cottage.

  ‘There is more cloth here than the worth of the apples,’ she said, unfolding a length of ratteen the colour of stormwrack.

  ‘Then pay me the balance in histories,’ said Rohain.

  ‘What would my lady wish to know?’

  ‘The roads you have trod. If it pleases you to tell of them.’

  ‘Well, I have trod high roads and low and I don’t mind telling at all.’

  ‘Tell me first about yon child with the green-gold hair.’

  ‘Willingly,’ said Elasaid of the Groves, ‘for I love her well. On an evening seven year
s ago, when the last afterglow of sunset was still reflecting in the sky and the owls were abroad, I heard beautiful singing coming from among the shadows gathering in Topaz Bay. I thought it might be the sea-morgans, and I was eager to see if I could catch a glimpse, so I made my way down to the bay as quietly as I could. However, I was not careful enough—my foot dislodged a pebble, and all I caught was a flash and a glimmer as the sea-morgans dived off the rocks into the tide.

  ‘In their haste and fright, they inadvertently left one of their babies wriggling and laughing beneath the waterfall that splashes from the cliffs above the bay. When I saw the baby I could not do otherwise than love her. I still grieved deeply for my own daughter, so, rightly or wrongly, I took this child created from foam and seaweed and pearls.

  ‘I took her, and I raised her as my own. I called her Liban. She is like any mortal child in most ways, but I can never get her hair completely dry, not even in the sunshine and the breeze, and the tang of the ocean is always in it. She loves to wade and play in my spring-fed pond, and among the wavelets down at the shore. She is a loving daughter, but there are those among the island-dwellers who, recalling their lives outside Tamhania where unseelie mermaids cause shipwrecks, deem it terribly unlucky even to speak of her kind.

  ‘I have tried to make them forget her origin. I have endeavoured to put it in their minds that she was born of me, but some do not forget and they wish her ill. Minna Scales is the worst. She has never forgiven me since the colt-pixie chased her son when he tried to steal my Gilgandrias, those apples which are said to be seeded from the land of Faêrie. The wight gave him “cramp and crooking and fault in his footing”—it made him the laughingstock of the village. But I’m not to blame for the colt-pixie chasing him. The colt-pixie is a guardian of apple trees. ’Tis a wight. I have no command over such.