“TELL ME another,” Jason said later, after they’d been on the road for hours—miles and miles of flat road that snaked through rich but unchanging farmland. It made a monotonous view that begged for a diversion. Lucky for him, Emerald had proved quite diverting indeed, regaling him with Scottish tales all morning.
“Can we not stop for a while?” She flexed her shoulders uncomfortably. “Is it far still to Grantham?”
“Not too far. One more story.” He tugged playfully on one of her plaits. Even more than the stories themselves, Jason was enjoying the way Emerald recounted them. She seemed swept away, her voice full of fun and adventure rather than hostility and mistrust. “In the sea fairytale you mentioned mermaids. Do you know a mermaid’s tale?”
She thought for a moment. “Aye. But it’s a sad one.”
“Tell me. By the time you finish we’ll be there and stop for dinner.”
“Very well.” She sighed and shifted on the saddle, a diversion in itself. “In the Land-under-Waves live the mermaids, which we call Maids-of-the-Wave. They are lovely to look at, and their voices are sweet and melodic. Their lower bodies are shaped like the fishes and glitter like salmon in the sun. They have long, coppery hair, and on beautiful days they sit on the rocks and comb it.” She paused. “Unlike me, they have combs.”
Jason laughed. “I’ll buy you a comb before the day is out, I promise. And a Chase promise is not given lightly.”
“I shall hold you to that.”
He didn’t doubt it.
“On moonlit nights,” she continued, “the Maids-of-the-Wave sometimes take off their tails and don pale blue gowns. They can walk on the land then, and they’re fairer than any land-dweller lass.”
“Not fairer than you,” Jason protested.
She shook her head. “If you’re attempting to flatter me, I warn it will get you nowhere.”
“You cannot fault me for trying,” he said smoothly. Was he flirting? He wasn’t ordinarily a flirt.
“Do you want to hear the story?”
“Did I interrupt?” Behind her back, he grinned. “Pray, do go on.”
She cleared her throat. “One moonlit night, a handsome young farmer was walking along the cliffs when he heard the most beautiful voices raised in song. He looked down to see a company of fair lasses, all dressed in pale blue, dancing in a circle around one who was the fairest of the fair. Then he noticed nearby a pile of scaled tails, still wet and glistening in the moonlight. He crept down the rocks, took one, and ran home with it.”
Absently, Jason trailed a finger along the part in Emerald’s hair.
She looked up and back, bumping her head on his chin in the process. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Did I do something?” His eyebrows snapped together. Whatever had possessed him to touch her? Aloud he asked, “What happened next?”
Sending one more puzzled look over her shoulder, she faced forward. “When the mermaids saw the man stealing away, they screamed and ran for their tails. Hurriedly they put them on and jumped into the sea. All except one, the fairest of the fair. Her tail was missing.”
“This is sad,” Jason remarked, failing to hide the smile in his voice.
“Hold your tongue,” she admonished. “Now, the young farmer locked the tail in a box and hid the key. Before long, someone came to his door and knocked on it. He opened it to find the most beautiful lass in the land. Tears were pouring from her big blue eyes—” Interrupting herself, she looked up. “That’s the tallest spire I’ve ever seen,” she said, sounding awed.
“St. Wulfram’s,” he told her.
A sight to see, the church seemed a combination of every period of Gothic architecture mixed with traces of Norman and possibly Saxon work. She gawked until he turned onto Grantham’s busy High Street, a distinguished row of modern gray stone buildings interspersed with the occasional old, half-timbered Tudor.
“Now, to find a place to eat,” Jason said. “In the meantime, please do continue your tale. You cannot leave me hanging on the precipice of such tragedy.”
“Very amusing. Now, where was I?” She fussed at her skirts. “Oooh, look at that angel.”
The carved stone angel was brightly gilded, giving it the look of solid gold. It perched over the gateway of an inn called—appropriately enough—The Angel.
“Whose heads are those?” she asked.
Jason halted and squinted up at the corbel above the winged cherub. “King Edward the third,” he decided. “So that must be his queen, Philippa of Hainault.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “I see you’re not completely uneducated.” Before he could protest that thinly disguised insult, she added, “Edward was brutal to the Scots.”
“Everyone was brutal in those days,” he pointed out. “Edward was after revenge for Bannockburn.”
“He got it,” she said dryly.
“So this is what comes of educating girls,” Jason quipped as he guided Chiron through the archway, earning himself a hard pinch on the knee.
He helped Emerald down and led her inside. The Angel’s taproom had a fine timbered ceiling and an enormous stone hearth, but no fire this summer day. Since the weather was warm, Jason opted for a cold dinner of bread, cheese, and small pickled onions. He carried it to where Emerald had seated herself by a stone vaulted window.
“There are so many people,” she marveled, watching them pass by on horses, in carriages, and on foot.
“Wait till you see London.” He sliced the thick slab of cheddar. “So, what happened after the woman showed up?”
“Pardon?” She dragged her gaze from the window.
He handed her a piece of bread topped with cheese. “The mermaid.”
“Oh. The Maid-of-the Wave.” She took a bite. “Well, when we left her she was standing there in her blue dress, greeting. I mean, crying.”
“Greet means to cry?”
“Aye. And she said, ‘Won’t you have pity and return my tail, so I can go home to the Land-under-Waves?’”
“Let me guess.” He popped an onion into his mouth. “He couldn’t stand to see the woman cry, so he returned her tail.”
“Nay.” Her eyes danced, looking turquoise today. “Maybe that’s what you would do. But not this young farmer. He thought she was so gentle and beautiful that he couldn’t bear to let her go. He told her, ‘What I have I will keep. But shed no tears, fairest of the fair, for you may stay with me and become my bride.’”
She paused for a sip of The Angel’s strong ale.
“Did she marry him?” Jason asked.
Cocking her head, she studied him. “Would you marry someone who kept you forcibly?”
He nearly choked on his own ale. An uneasy silence stretched between them until he wiped his mouth and said, “So, what happened?”
“She walked away and returned to the sea, but without her tail she couldn’t join her people. Instead of standing up for herself, in the morning she went back and agreed to be the man’s bride. She begged him to be kind and never tell anyone who she was or how she came to be there, and he promised.”
“And they lived happily ever after?”
“Nay. I told you it was a sad story.” A faraway look in her eyes, she touched her emerald. “All the people of the village loved the Maid-of-the-Wave, but the man kept his promise and didn’t tell them where she came from. They believed she was a princess, brought to them by the fairies.”
“Half-witted fools,” he said and ate another onion.
A frown appeared on her forehead. “You don’t believe in fairies, either?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, then, that makes two of us,” she said with a grin.
He laughed. “So, were they happy together?”
“Oh, aye, for a spell. They lived in peace for seven years and had two bairns, a lad and a lassie. The Maid-of-the-Wave loved them dearly. Then came a time the farmer went to town to trade. It was a long journey, and he was gone several days. The mermaid was lonely without him, so she wandered the seashore with her little ones. As she sang to her wee lass, she remembered her people who lived in the Land-under-Waves.”
“Very sad. Are you going to finish that?”
With a roll of her eyes, she handed him the rest of her bread. “One evening her son came to her and said, ‘I found a key. It opens Father’s box, and I looked inside. There’s a tail in there, a big, shiny, beautiful tail that looks like a salmon’s.’ She gasped with shock and excitement and asked for the key.”
“And he gave it to her?”
“Of course. She was his mother. After supper she put her children to bed and sang them to sleep. Then she opened the box and took out her tail. She sat by the fire for a long, long time, for she wanted so badly to go home to her people, but she didn’t want to leave her bairns.” She paused for a heavy sigh. “But then she heard the sound of singing coming from the sea. Her sister mermaids were calling to her. She kissed her two children and wept—”
“Greeted.”
She smiled, though her eyes looked sad. “—greeted over them until their precious faces were wet with her tears. And still she heard the songs from the sea. With a heavy heart, she took her tail and hurried to the Land-under-Waves.”
“Abandoning her children,” Jason put in with no small measure of disgust.
“Aye,” she said and nodded. “When the farmer returned the next morning, the sounds of joy and laughter floated to him from the sea. In his cottage, his children were fast asleep. But the box was open and empty. He sat down and wept, because he knew that the Maid-of-the-Wave had gone.”
She released a shaky breath. Without thinking, Jason leaned to cover her hand with his. “You must miss your own children.”
A puzzled look came over her face. “What do you mean?”
“Your children. Your…bairns. A lad and a lassie, like the mermaid’s, yes?”
“You think I have bairns?” She tugged back her hand. “Me? I’m only seventeen. I’ve never even—”
“Never mind.”
His face felt as warm as hers looked. He hated the feelings of doubt that had been niggling at him ever since he’d overheard the men at breakfast. But his gaze dropped to her amulet. A ray of sunshine through the window made the old stone glint green. Emerald green.
Of course she was Emerald. Emerald would deny this, like everything else.
He cursed the aggravating niggle and drained the rest of his ale. “Did the mermaid ever come back?”
One of her fingers traced her crisscrossing laces while she studied him a moment. He shifted uneasily. He didn’t like being studied.
“Nay,” she said at last. “But it’s told that she often returned in the night to peek through the cottage windows at her bairns as they slept. She left trout and salmon outside the door. The farmer told his children that their mother was far away but would never forget them. When her son grew up, he sailed the seas, and no harm ever came to him, even in the fiercest storms, for the Maid-of-the-Wave followed his ship and protected him.”
“That’s not quite so sad, then.”
A wan smile emerged. “Nay, I suppose it isn’t. She had to go back to her place, didn’t she? Her home, where she belonged.” A muddy green now, her eyes met his. “Even though they’d never see her again.”
Like Emerald would go back to Scotland. Her home, where she belonged. “Yes, she had to go,” he agreed, though hang it if the thought of never seeing her again didn’t seem somehow incomprehensible.