Mermaid of Penperro Page 18

  It wasn’t the fourteen pounds she was thinking of, though, as she climbed down the rocky slope to the shore; it was Tom. She didn’t want to disappoint him. Preposterous a scheme as this was, and for as questionably moral a purpose, he was counting on her to play her part, and she would not let him down.

  Never mind that the water looked cold and choppy, or that she was having her period. She had heard that sharks could scent blood in the water, and she had a dark fear that one would come after her and take a bite out of her leg. Her grandfather had perhaps shared one too many sea stories of that kind with her, of castaway men being consumed one by one as they drifted in the currents.

  Stop it, she told herself. She mustn’t let her imagination run away with her, especially not now. For all she knew, sharks could smell fear as well as blood, and she’d have a whole swarm of them after her.

  She sat at the edge of the water and laced onto her feet the fish fins that Hilde had finally completed. They were light tan, made of oilskin ribbed with boning taken from an old pair of stays. They did look like the fins of a fish, extending nearly a foot beyond her toes.

  If fish could swim with such things, she supposed that she could as well.

  Of course, no one who had ever put on a pair of wings had been able to fly, but she’d be better off not thinking of that, either. She didn’t need to add a fear of drowning to her thoughts of blood-scenting sharks.

  She stood up and took a high step with the fins on her feet, nearly falling in the process. Instinct prompted her to turn around and walk backward, which was a little easier, but the uneven sand and stones under her feet made it a difficult endeavor. When she was ten inches deep in the chilly water she took a deep breath and plopped down.

  She bit back a shriek at the cold. She supposed it was no colder than that first day she had taken a swim, but attitude seemed to play an important role. She had actively wished to swim on that day.

  She tilted her head back, wetting all her hair, then turned onto her stomach, using only her arms to swim against the chop, not wanting to risk banging her knees on the rocky bottom. She felt the water seep through her costume, turning it heavy and rough against her skin, and making it cling uncomfortably. She thought she might almost rather swim naked. At least her own skin did not drag against the water like the wet fabric and padded breasts did.

  A hundred and fifty yards out from the low-tide line there was an outcropping of rock, a small island inaccessible by land. Tom had suggested she swim out to it and wait there for him to return with Foweather. The seaward side would also provide a hiding place for her when the show was over, and if worse came to worst and she could not swim to shore due to Foweather’s lingering presence, she could wait there until dark, and one of Tom’s allies would pick her up in a boat.

  Safely beyond the knee-banging shallows now, she gave an experimental kick with her finned feet. To her utter surprise she shot forward, getting a mouthful of salt water as she plowed into a wave.

  She coughed and spat, legs kicking as she treaded water and tried to regain her breath. With her movements her body rose several inches above the waves, as if she were a sea otter rising up to survey the ocean surface.

  She sank back down, feet slowing, mouth opening with amazement. She rolled onto her side and kicked, plowing smoothly through the water at incredible speed, the waves breaking around her head as if it were the prow of a ship. A wake formed from her passage. The fins were propelling her in a way her own bare feet never could.

  This time she did not try to contain the shout that rose in her throat, a shout of pure joy that resounded across the water. She laughed and whooped. She let herself sink underwater, then kicked fast and furious toward the surface, rising up out of the waves to waist height before falling back into the water. She arched her back and turned a backward somersault, then came up and swam on her stomach, letting her arms trail at her sides as she used the fins to propel her, her hair streaming behind.

  A wild, exuberant glee filled her. She hardly felt like a mortal human in the sea: she was a true sea siren, a mermaid, a creature born and bred in the briny deep.

  She was at the rock outcropping within a minute, and pulled herself up onto a low seat. She reached up behind her, found the buttons hidden in their placket, and undid her bodice, peeling off the garment and stuffing it in a crevice above the tide line. Modesty be damned. No one from shore could tell the difference anyway, just as she’d told Tom. She wanted to swim as fast as her fins would let her, and the bodice and fake breasts only slowed her down. She was a mermaid!

  “Where is she? Where?” Foweather asked, his breath hot on Tom’s ear as they rode double back to where he had left Konstanze.

  The man was as awkward on a horse as he was on the ground, and several times Tom had been certain Foweather would pull him off the draft horse’s broad back as they bounced along. Foweather had clung tightly to Tom’s waist the entire ride.

  “Shush,” Tom scolded, Foweather’s clumsiness and incessant questions only adding to his darkening mood. If the man would have stayed on his Preventive boat where he belonged, none of this would have been necessary, and Konstanze would be safely on shore. He drew the horse to a halt. “Dismount,” he ordered.

  “Is this where she is?” Foweather asked, sliding off behind him.

  “Almost,” Tom said, and dismounted himself, then tied the horse to a bush. The other members of the crew were following on foot. It had gone without question that Foweather should of course see the mermaid as quickly as possible, the belief having spread amongst the Preventive crew that their leader had a special bond with the creature. Which was not to say that the crew themselves were not more than eager to abandon their tiresome search of the caves in favor of spotting a frolicking half-naked mermaid. Their curiosity had been well fired by the night spent chasing Konstanze’s voice in the fog.

  “’Twould be best not to ride where she could see us, don’t you think?” Tom asked.

  “Oh, aye,” Foweather agreed. “I don’t want to frighten her away.”

  “You’re not worried that she will come for you?” Tom asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “Not with you here,” Foweather said. “And I can count on you not to let me go to her. You will restrain me, won’t you?”

  “Most assuredly, to the best of my ability,” Tom said in his best imitation of the Noble Friend. “You’re a strong man, though. It could be that I will be unable to hold you back. Remember, Ulysses had to be tied to the mast.”

  “I haven’t any rope,” Foweather said with some concern.

  “Nor a mast. I suppose I could crack you on the head with a rock, if the need arose,” Tom offered, cheering a bit at the prospect. “But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” He led Foweather along the path, privately worrying about Konstanze and how she was faring in the cold water. The water was a little rough today—she’d be careful of the rocks, wouldn’t she? She seemed confident of her swimming abilities, but there was so much that could go wrong, alone in the water.

  Within a few minutes he and Foweather were in sight of the curve of coastline with the rock outcropping, and Tom pulled Foweather down onto his knees. “We’ll crawl from here up to the edge.”

  “Right.”

  Like two dogs they hunched down and crept toward the edge, dropping down to their elbows as the water came in sight. An exuberant, warbling cry drifted up to them from the water, and they both dropped flat.

  “Good God,” Foweather said on a released breath.

  Tom could only second the sentiment, his own jaw dropping at the spectacle that met their eyes. Down below and a hundred yards away from shore, Konstanze was splashing about and frolicking like a demented dolphin. There was something weirdly unnatural about the speed with which she moved and the height she obtained when she propelled herself out of the water, splashing back down like a breaching whale.

  “Good God” was right. No one human could move like that. What a fool he had been to worry about he
r in the water! And he had to admit, she had been right about her bodice, as well. From this distance, her breasts looked perfectly natural. If he hadn’t known better, he himself would think she was a mermaid.

  “She is even more spectacular than the first time I saw her,” Foweather whispered. “I cannot believe I am witness to this.”

  “Nor can I,” Tom said, watching entranced as Konstanze turned a backward somersault, her fake breasts kissing the open air as she arched her back. Her torso went underwater and her fins came out, waving gaily in the air for a moment before disappearing after her. She came up again thirty feet away.

  He heard thudding footsteps behind him, and looked over his shoulder just as the rest of the Preventive crew came into sight. He gestured them down, and the men crawled up to join Tom and Foweather at the edge. The lot of them were sweaty and breathing hard, and Tom knew they’d run the entire mile to join them.

  Hushed exclamations flew with whispered vehemence as they sighted Konstanze cutting through the water. Disbelief and awe mingled, and Tom could feel their excitement vibrating in the air. The force of their emotion sent a ripple of discomfort through his own awe of Konstanze’s swimming, knowing as he did that at least half their wonder was due to a hoax. He hoped the men would never discover that they had been played for fools.

  Still, better this fraud than an armed encounter. The hidden cargo was worth enough that if not for this plan, a number of those involved in the smuggling— from fishermen to farmers to shopkeepers—would have been willing to use force to retrieve their goods from the Preventive men.

  Konstanze rolled onto her back and with seemingly no effort began gliding nearer the shoreline, then in a path parallel to the coast. Her finned feet appeared hardly to move, only the smallest splashes of water occasionally appearing. She came within twenty yards of where they lay hidden in the grasses and pink flowering thrift, no more than the tops of their heads visible should she choose to look up. They were, he thought, like a pack of wolves greedily observing their prey.

  As she swam by below, his eyes were drawn as always to her breasts, and he knew the others were looking there as well. He was unaccountably glad to know that those were false breasts Foweather and the others were seeing, and that Konstanze had not given in to his wrongheaded idea that—

  Wait a minute. That was the costume bodice he was looking at, wasn’t it? He narrowed his eyes, squinting at the light brownish pink nipples as Konstanze swam idly by. Brownish pink, not dark red. And they were a normal size.

  A flush of shock washed through him. Those were her own breasts!

  “Have you ever seen such a fine pair of bubbies?” one of the men asked on a sigh.

  “I’d give her my soul if she’d let me touch ’em,” another replied.

  Tom felt his blood heat, his face burning as jealous fury built within him. These men should not be gazing upon Konstanze’s unclothed body, should not be privy to such secrets of her flesh. They had no right to see her. She was not for the likes of them, she—

  She what? He pressed his forehead down onto his fisted hands on the ground, his nose pressing into the grass as he tried to gain control of himself. She was doing exactly what he had first asked of her.

  His muscles trembled with the need to act, to drag the men away from the cliff edge, to pluck out their staring eyes with his own fingers.

  He could do none of that. He had neatly made this bed with his own hands, and he shuddered as he forced himself to lie still in it. If he could do nothing else, at least he could keep his own eyes from spying upon her, stealing glimpses of what she must not know she so clearly revealed.

  He remained with his face averted until he heard her voice floating to him across the water, singing pure notes in an unknown tongue. He raised his head and found her perched out on the rock island, her wet hair trailing down her chest, concealing her lovely breasts.

  He didn’t recognize the song she sang and could not understand the words, but that did not matter either to him or, apparently, the other men. The melody was lyrical, lilting, and went straight to the soul. No one made a sound as they all strained to catch each and every note as they floated across the water. Tom wished there were some way to hush the sounds of waves and wind that stole tones from her voice.

  “I must go to her,” Foweather said, his voice raw.

  “What?” Tom said, the words breaking him out of Konstanze’s spell. He turned to the man, the others echoing his sentiment of surprise. Foweather was gazing intently out at Konstanze, tears seeping from his eyes.

  “I must go to her,” he repeated.

  “You cannot!”

  “I cannot bear it any longer,” Foweather said. “Do you hear how she sings to me, how she calls me to her?”

  “Get a hold of yourself, man!” Had the fool lost his mind? “You don’t want to live with a mermaid!”

  “How can I deny her?” Foweather asked, and made a move to get up as sounds of alarm came from his men.

  Tom grabbed his arm. “Stay down, for God’s sake. You cannot go to her. She was not meant for you— nor for any mortal man!” Had he really just said that? Perhaps Konstanze was not the only one who was meant to be on the stage.

  “She is my destiny!” Foweather cried, and, throwing off Tom’s hand, he struggled to his feet. Tom and the others rose as Foweather yelled out across the water, “I’m coming, my darling! Your bridegroom is coming!”

  The singing abruptly stopped, even as Tom and two of the others lay hold of Foweather, restraining him as he pulled against them. The man struggled madly, trying to shake them off. “Let me go!”

  “I swore I would not,” Tom said through gritted teeth. “I cannot let you do this.”

  “She is my destiny!” Foweather cried, trying to throw himself from their grip.

  “She would be your death!” Tom said, feeling a melodramatic fool for saying it. He suspected that Foweather would not have been half so eager to throw himself into the water if there had been no one present to restrain him.

  Out on the rock island, Konstanze slipped into the water. She bobbed for a moment, watching their struggles, then dove under, her fins flashing in the air. Foweather saw her go as well, and stopped his struggles, his attention all on the surface of the water. They all waited for her to reappear, holding their breath against her absence, their grips on Foweather loosening.

  A minute went by, and then two. She was not coming back.

  “She’s gone,” Tom said.

  “No!” Foweather cried, and lunged for the cliff’s edge.

  The move caught Tom and the others loosely holding him by surprise, and he threw himself after the man and barely snagged him by the back of his coat. They both crashed to the ground, mere inches from the edge and a very long and bumpy fall down to the rocks.

  “Let me go! Let me go! She needs me!” Foweather wept, tossing his head back and forth as the rest of his men piled on top of him, pinning arms and legs.

  “No, listen to me, Robert,” Tom said, grasping the man’s face between his hands, wondering if he had misinterpreted the depth of Foweather’s obsession. “You were under her spell. She’s gone now. You must regain your senses. You do not want to go to her. Can you even swim?”

  Foweather’s pale blue eyes met Tom’s. “Swim?”

  “Yes. Can you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you understand, then? If we had let you go, you would have drowned before you ever reached her.”

  “She would have come for me. She would have saved me. She loves me.”

  “How can she love? Can a turtle love, or a fish? It takes a human soul to love, Robert, a human soul. She does not have that.”

  Foweather tried to shake his head against the hands that held him. “She is my destiny. I feel it. She is the reason I came to Penperro.”

  “You came here because the coast around Penperro is rife with smuggling, with men who would cheat the king of his revenues,” Tom said, not believing he was reminding Foweath
er of that particular fact. He should be encouraging Foweather’s mania, not trying to bring him back to reason. “That is your purpose, to protect the coast against the pernicious influence of smugglers. You are a member of the Preventive Water Guard Service, by God!”

  “Hear, hear!” the men cheered.

  “But then, why me?” Foweather asked, plaintive. “Why did she choose me?”

  “I do not know,” Tom said, releasing him and gesturing to the others to do the same. “You will have to consider it your greatest challenge—to resist her unholy allure.” He helped the man get to his feet.

  “Her mother went to church,” Foweather said. “Her mother must have had a soul, else surely God would have struck her dead for crossing the threshold of his holy house.”

  “Without such evidence of your own, you had best beware. We none of us want to find you washing ashore with the seaweed. You’re too good a man for such a fate, Foweather,” Tom said, slapping him on the back and finding to his surprise that he actually meant it.

  Foweather turned and cast a longing look back out over the water.

  “She’s gone,” Tom said. “Go back to town; get some rest.” He sent a meaningful look to the men, one that said they should keep a close eye on their leader. They all of them looked little better off than Foweather himself, their expressions bewildered and uncertain, frightened, Tom was sure, of the momentary insanity that had come over their leader.

  “Will you come, too?”

  “I have to return the horse. I’m sorry now that I came to tell you of the mermaid being sighted. I can see it has done nothing but bring you grief.”

  “You mustn’t think that!” Foweather said. “Please. This has been the most wondrous day of my life. How many men ever see such marvels as we have today?”

  No men ever did, by Tom’s reckoning. He slapped Foweather’s shoulder again in an effort at manly camaraderie and understanding. “You get some rest—and don’t go alone to the shore.”

  “We won’t let him,” a crew member said, the sentiment seconded by others.

  Tom watched as the group headed back down the path toward Penperro, then went to fetch the horse. By the time he got back the group was out of sight, but he waited a good ten minutes more to be certain they were gone before he raised his arms above him, signaling to Konstanze that all was clear. Her head and a waving arm appeared at the side of the rock island, a few feet above the waterline.