Poul Anderson - The Merman's Children

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 unchristened among 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 corners 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 afterward 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 fosterdaughter to find a dowry for? Oh, she could get somethingpauper’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, illfed, 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, menat-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.”