The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘Minna Scales will not let up her niggling,’ Elasaid continued. ‘“Odds fish!” she says to Liban. “Look how your hair drips water. Go and dry it like a lorraly lass!” Liban just laughs at her. We keep to ourselves mostly, on this side of the island. The child is happy. I have learned to treasure every moment of her happiness. I think of the other daughter I had …’

  Elasaid’s hands trembled.

  ‘I have not always lived this simple life,’ she said. ‘I voyaged here, to Tavaal, several years ago. Long before I came here, my childhood was spent in a tall and stately house with many servants. I married—perhaps unwisely, but for love. Eight is the number of the children I bore.’ Her blanks of eyes sank into weary hollows. She rested her still-handsome head on her hand.

  ‘Evil forces took the first seven from me. I took myself away from the last one. To my eternal regret. For, when I tried to return, I could not. My child, my husband, had gone away in their turn, leaving no trace. I was alone. I searched up and down the Known Lands, to no avail. Finally, sick of the world and its heartbreak, I applied to come here, to live out the rest of my days in seclusion. I found Liban. Abiding with her and my freshet of water, and the apples, I open the doors from one day into the next and close them one by one behind me.’

  It was easy to strike up friendships with the good-natured islanders. Elasaid of the rain-eyes was one of many with whom Rohain liked to pass the time in conversation. Another was Rona Wade, the wife of Hugh, whose children had webbed fingers. Rona could never be persuaded to reveal her thoughts and desires, but she knew all that went on around the island, and was happy to share her knowledge.

  On a hazy afternoon, Rona Wade and her web-fingered eldest daughter tarried with Rohain by the kitchen door at the Hall of Tana. Outside waited the surly donkey with the empty fish-baskets, while its mistress discussed island lore.

  ‘Why do the children so often dive near the crescent beach beneath the eastern cliffs?’ Rohain wanted to know.

  That is where Urchen Conch threw the chest full of money into the water,’ said Rona. ‘They are looking for gold coins. Ah, but I suspect you have not heard that tale, my lady!’

  ‘I have not, and I burn to understand why anyone would throw treasure into the brine! Who is this Conch?’

  ‘Urchen Conch was a somewhat simpleminded fellow,’ said Rona. ‘He lived and died a long time ago. Eighty years ago he saved a stranded benvarrey, carrying her back to the sea. He was entitled to three wishes, but did not know to ask, so she rewarded him with information about how to find a treasure. Doing as she bid, he found a chest of antique gold in a great sea-cavern, but he did not know how to dispose of the ancient cash, and at last he threw the coins back into the sea. It is said he threw them from the eastern cliffs.’

  ‘What a strange tale!’ said Rohain.

  She was about to ask further questions when Rona’s two younger children came scrambling up the path, apple-cheeked and breathless.

  ‘Mama!’ they cried. ‘Luik what we hae fand under a corn-stack! Ain’t it pretty!’ Delighted with their prize, they held it high. It shimmered with a downy silverescence—a banner long and wide, rippling in the wind off the slopes. A meadow of moon-grass.

  A sealskin.

  Gazing at the hide, Rona’s dark eyes glistened with rapture. She grasped it, shouting aloud in an ecstasy of joy. The children stood gape-mouthed to see their mother put on such an uncharacteristic display, but she turned to them, her happiness suddenly dimming.

  ‘I love you, my darlings,’ she said, embracing each one hastily, ‘I will always love you.’

  The words hung in memory, long after they had been spoken, as if nailed on emptiness. As soon as she had uttered them, Rona fled down the road toward the sea.

  The children began to sob. The eldest daughter jumped on the donkey’s back. ‘I’m gaun tae find Da’!’

  She whipped the petulant beast into a headlong run, and the younger ones went wailing after. But they never saw their mama again.

  Rohain wept for the family, and brought them food and gifts.

  Next morning, in the breakfast room at Tana, the residents sat down to dine.

  The table-setting was a lavish seascape, dominated by a nef centrepiece filled with rock-salt. This nef had been crafted from a nautilus-shell, which rested beneath the superstructure of a full-rigged sailing galleon, modelled in gold and studded with precious gems. Shell-shapes decorated the gold and mother-of-pearl serviette rings. Over their hands, the ewerer poured phlox-scented water from a dolphin-shaped aquamanile. Meanwhile, a page cranked a serinette in a shellwork case; the miniature barrel-organ tinkled prettily, not with a tune but with the song-notes of the sea-curlew.

  The sideboard, whose panels were framed by a graceful relief of crayfish and conger eels carved in apple-wood, had been arranged with figurines of water-serpents and merfolk carved from narwhal tusks. The ornaments were inlaid with nacre and the mottled shell of the sea-turtle. Dome-covered chafing-dishes sat atop charcoal braziers. A silver egg-boiler rested over its small spirit lamp. A sand timer was mounted on the lid, showing that the minutes had almost run out.

  The Bard sprinkled allspice from a set of lighthouse-shaped porcelain muffineers. The Prince drank from a nautilus-shell beaker mounted in gold. Someone had left a snuff-box lying on the table alongside a miniature ship carved from bone—the box had been made, not unexpectedly, from a deep-bowled, voluted shell, with an engraved silver lid and silver mounts.

  Tana’s decor tended to be thematic.

  ‘You have heard the news, my lady?’ Master Avenel sipped from a polished driftwood mazer reinforced with a silver foot-rim incised with a pattern of scales.

  Rohain nodded assent. ‘Rona Wade has gone.’

  ‘Aye, gone back,’ said the Seneschal, ‘to her first husband. As Hugh returned from the day’s fishing, he saw her greet him in the waves. She called a farewell to him. Hugh is a broken man.’

  ‘Well, he was a thief,’ said Rohain, stirring medlure in a cup whose bowl was embraced by the claws of two coralline crabs.

  ‘Do not judge too harshly, my lady,’ Avenel reproached gently. ‘It was love that drove him to the taking of the sealskin.’

  ‘I beg to differ, sir. Love never steals. It does not subjugate.’

  In the pause that ensued, a housemaid limped past the doorway carrying a dustpan and broom, on her way upstairs to sweep and clean the bedchambers. At first, Rohain had taken pains to avoid this young woman, because her uneven gait reminded her of Pod and his unpleasantries. On further acquaintance, she discovered Molly Chove to be an amiable and cheerful lass, who took it in good part when the other servants teasingly called her ‘Limpet’.

  ‘Master Avenel,’ she now said to the Seneschal, ‘is there no help for that lame servant?’

  ‘Molly got her lameness through her own fault,’ he replied, dabbing at his mouth with a linen serviette. ‘A couple of lesser wights inhabit the Hall of Tana—whether they benefit it or not there’s no telling, but they’ve become a habit of a few centuries.’

  ‘Do they help with household duties?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said the Seneschal, ‘but I think not. They are pixies or bruneys, I believe. So I am told; I have not seen them. Howsoever, our housemaids Mollusc and Ann Chove tell me they were kind to these imps, showing them hospitality and so forth, and in return the wights used to drop a silver coin into a pail of clear water that the wenches would place for them in the chimney-corner of the kitchen every night.’

  ‘Surely there is water enough for wights in the streams and wells?’

  ‘Domestic wights are loath to budge from their chosen dwelling. They like to have clean water put out for their drinking and washing. Once, several years ago, the maids forgot to fill the pail, so the pixies, or whatever they are, went upstairs to their room and shrilly protested about the omission. Annie woke up. She nudged Molly’s elbow and recommended that they should both go down to the kitchen to set things aright, but Molly, who
likes her sleep, said, “Leave me be! Would it indulge all the wights on Tavaal, I will not get up.” Annie went down to the yard and pumped clean water into the pail. Incidentally, next morning she found seven silver threepences in it. Meanwhile, as she was going back to bed that night she overheard the wights discussing ways of penalizing lazy Molly. They decided to cripple her in one leg. At the end of seven years, she heard them say, the lameness might be cured by a certain herb that grew on Windy Spur.’

  Did they mention the name of this wonderful herb?’

  ‘They did, but ’twas such a lengthy and complicated name, Annie could not grasp it. When Molly got up in the morning she was limping, and she has been perpetually lame to this day.’

  Prince Edward said, ‘The island’s wizard, Master Lutey, has a reputation as an excellent healer.’

  ‘He has not been able to help Molly, sir,’ replied the Seneschal.

  ‘Then perhaps his reputation is ill-deserved!’

  ‘Do not, I pray you sir, despise the talent of old Robin Lutey,’ said Avenel, ‘for he is skilled—I can vouch for it. Do you know how Lutey came by his powers?’

  ‘Prithee, remind me.’

  ‘As a young man he was a fisherman near Lizard Point, farming a little, combing along the beaches after the storms. One evening when the tide was far out he went wandering along the shore seeking for some wreckage-find among the seaweed and rocks. As he turned, empty-handed, to go home, he heard a low moan from among some boulders, and there he discovered a stranded mermaid.’

  ‘For a shy race, they are seen surprisingly often,’ Rohain interjected.

  ‘Only on Tamhania, my lady,’ said Avenel. ‘This is a special place.’

  ‘I was given to understand that they only showed themselves before storms.’

  ‘They only allow themselves to be seen when they warn of foul weather. This one was stranded. She could not get back to the sea and had no choice but to be seen, despite the fact that no storm was on the way.’

  ‘Next her strange beauty allured him, no doubt?’ Rohain was learning the ways of sea-wights.

  ‘Yes, my lady, and he spoke to her, for the sea-folk understand all tongues. She told him that while she combed her long green hair and gazed at herself in the rockpools the tide had gone out without her seeing it. She begged Lutey to carry her over the strip of dry sand, and, giving him her gold-and-pearl Comb as a token, promised him three wishes. She told him that if he was in any trouble, to pass the Comb three times through the sea and call her name, Morvena, and she would come.’

  ‘Now you have me puzzled,’ said Rohain. ‘How is it that she could not walk, and yet I have heard that some of the sea-damsels when on land have limbs and walk about as well as you or I?’

  ‘That is one of the differences between mermaids and sea-morgans, m’lady.’

  ‘So.’ She nodded. ‘I continue to learn. And what were Lutey’s wishes?’

  ‘The power to break the spells of malign gramarye, to discover thefts, and to cure illness. These she granted, but only to the degree of her own power.’

  ‘He was fortunate.’

  ‘Indeed, but that was not the end of this fish’s tale,’ said the Seneschal, permitting himself a faint smile at his pun. ‘As he walked with her over the sands, she clinging to his neck, she told him of all the wonders of her home under the sea and implored him to go with her and share them all. Robin Lutey was fascinated and would undoubtedly have yielded had not a sharp bark of terror from his dog, which had followed him unnoticed, roused him to look back. At the sight of the faithful hound his wits returned to him. Already the clasp of the mermaid was becoming stronger as she touched the waves, and she might have dragged him under into the deep realms of the great kelp-forests, except that this is Tamhania, the isle of kings, and wickedness thrives not here. She relented. But as she swam away she sang to Lutey—and that, he never forgot. It is said that the song of the mermaid sounds forever in his heart, and that one day she will come for him and he will follow her.’

  ‘A future not unkind awaits him, then,’ said the Bard, who had been silent while eating.

  ‘But nay, sir!’ said Avenel. ‘Master Lutey possesses a terrible gift. He has somewhat of prescience, which allows him to garner an inkling of his own doom. I have gathered, although he has never said as much, that although he shall indeed go with the mermaid he shall not live long thereafter, for the dreaded Marool shall come upon him in its domain, the sea, and shall put an end to his life.’

  Rohain pondered on this. Her eyes were wet. Presently she said, ‘A mighty wizard is he.’

  ‘Officially he may not carry the title of wizard since he never studied at the College of the Nine Arts, but meanwhile the island benefits from his powers, which are far greater than those of any ordinary wizard.’

  ‘Small praise, in sooth,’ said the Bard drily. ‘What became of the mermaid’s Comb?’

  The Seneschal replied, ‘It is said that whenever he strokes the sea with it she comes to him and teaches him many things. The old sea-mage still has the Comb.’

  ‘But he could not cure Molly’s lameness?’ Rohain persisted.

  ‘It takes wondrous power to cure anyone who has been wight-struck.’

  Rohain’s hand strayed to her throat. How true, she thought. In sudden fear she glanced at her reflection in the mirror-backed sideboard. The face that met her gaze reassured her. The past is gone. It need not trouble me anymore.

  Days and nights brightened and darkened the shores of Tamhania. They brought a few alterations in life at Tana. On the strand below, the waves washed back and forth, giving and taking. Translucent to the point of transparency were they, only betraying their existence by shadows on the ribbed sand—shadows of floating foam-flecks, the long undulating shadows of ripples, little darknesses made by the water bending the sunlight, robbing the sand of it, throwing it joyously up in brilliant flashes.

  One evening Rohain and Viviana entered the kitchens of the Hall of Tana to find Annie and Molly Chove dancing with the cook, while the spit-boy played the fiddle.

  ‘O strange!’ cried Rohain, steadying herself against a corner of the well-scrubbed table. ‘Molly, how do you caper so well? For I see that you dance better than most, and you limping like a henkie only yesterday! It is beyond all belief!’

  ‘I went mushrooming,’ said Molly, panting and red-cheeked.

  Uncertainly, Rohain said, ‘So you went mushrooming, and that cured you?’

  ‘Nay, mistress! As I were picking a mushroom for me basket an odd-looking boy sprang up out o’ the grass, and would not be prevented from smiting me upon the thigh with a sprig of leaves. After that, the pain went right out of me leg and I could walk straight. Now I does the gallopede!’

  ‘Her seven years is over, you see, mistress,’ explained Annie, as Molly and the cook hoofed it around the kitchen in another mad frenzy. ‘Wights always keeps their promises.’

  A new month came in, bringing the Beldane Festival, symbolised by flowers and baskets of eggs and butterchurns. At the Whiteflower’s Day Dance, Molly Chove outfooted them all.

  After breakfast one morning, Rohain walked beneath the castle walls amid a crowd of attendants. The sea was apple-juice green. White feathers ran down the spine of the sky and a peculiar greenish tinge stained the northwest horizon. Something intangible about the island began to disturb her. She could not identify it, could not quite label it a wrongness, but there was something.

  ‘Jewel-toads are on the move, my lady,’ said young Caitri, ‘and the goats on the hillsides seek the caves. Master Avenel says these are signs that a bad storm is on the way.’

  ‘Storms frighten me,’ stated Viviana. Nervously she toyed with a silver thimble attached to the well-furnished chatelaine at her waist.

  ‘I had a dream last night,’ said Georgiana Griffin, ‘a strange dream. About that islander.’

  ‘What islander?’ asked Rohain, feigning ignorance.

  ‘Master Shaw.’

  ‘I th
ought you said he was nothing to you.’

  ‘He is. But this dream. I thought I was gathering the primroses and sea-pinks that grow among the salt-bushes on the slope to the west of the Hanging Cave, when I heard a singing on the rocks below. I looked down and saw Sevran Shaw lying asleep on the beach and a fair lady watching beside him. Then he was standing beside me and when he shook the saltbushes, showers of drops fell with a tinkling sound and turned as they fell into pure gold, and I caught sight of the lady floating on the water, far out at sea. I woke then, but just now as we passed that same flowery slope I could swear I heard the strange singing coming up from the rocks, as in the dream.’

  ‘I have more than heard it,’ said a male voice. Sevran Shaw himself was advancing up the path. ‘I have seen and conversed with the singer, the eldritch lady of your dream.’ A ripple of amazement ran through the assembly of courtiers. ‘Greetings and hail, Lady Rohain, Lady Georgiana, ladies!’ Shaw addressed them with a gallant bow, his plumed hat in his hand.

  ‘Greetings, Master Shaw. You say you have seen a mermaid,’ Rohain said.

  ‘Aye, my lady, and it has been long between such sightings. The last time a mermaid appeared near the Hanging Cave was just before the terrible storm in which my father was lost.’

  ‘La!’ exclaimed Georgiana. ‘Take care not to repeat the mermaid’s words, sir, for I have heard that they thrive ill who carry tales from their world to ours.’

  Shaw returned, ‘There is no need for fear on my account, for I am the master of this sea-girl.’ He recounted how he had risen before dawn on the previous day—having not closed his eyes all night, for reasons he would not divulge—and walked to the beach to watch the sun rise across the skerries beyond Seacliffe Head. He had gone down to the Hanging Cave, a place renowned for its strange occurrences. As he stood, he heard a low song coming from a stack of rocks nearby. Moving toward the sound, he saw the singer, a damsel with long green-gold hair falling over her white shoulders, her face turned toward the cave. He knew without a doubt that although for years he had travelled far on the high seas, he was seeing a mermaid for the first time in his life.