"Well, the rest can wait,” he said. “We must find that child. And find her soon. —What is her name?”
The midwife said, “The same as mine. Maria Attanasia. I baptized her. Yes. Find her.” She thought a moment, then nodded. “A boat, to begin with.”
It was not as hard as one might have thought, nor did it take very long, either. He had one more question, and asked it as they went towards the boat-mooring. “As to the child’s father. ...” He paused. Maria the midwife stopped, swung about. Again the pale blue eyes gazed at him.
“You do not know, then,” she said. “I never knew if Helena ever told him. Evidently she did not. —This, too, must wait.”
She would not let him in the boat. The child, she said, must not be frightened further. She had food with her, and drink, and she had clothing, too. But most of all, he thought, as he saw her get calmly into the flat-bottomed boat and take the oars in her own deft hands, most of all she had her own calm heart and her own unfearing soul.
“At FIRST, she said,” Maria the midwife told him later, “she had intended to drown herself. She took off her dress, there, where she had crawled up on the bank, and she threw herself in. But by the sure mercy of God, she did not sink, she must have floated, I think, for at least as long as it took her to discover that she could swim. I have known that to happen with children, sometimes the older boys will throw a young one in, and the scream and kick and before they quite know it: there they are, swimming.” This newfound way of motion, perhaps even more than the shock of the water, brought her to another way of thinking. And the young woman did not think again of dying. What had hindered her upon the land was no hindrance in the water. She was formed after the manner of a seal, and in that manner she found her way with ever-increasing confidence upon the river. She ate the mussels and left the shells, had it been only coincidence that the secluded cove was named Lurley’s Bend? She had not known it. And there were berries, windfallen fruit, and then, for a while, at least, the milk which the River Tartar lad had so innocently and so honestly left “for pay for shell.”
But someone had to be told, of course. And Eszterhazy told the natural person to tell.
"Helena?” said Prince Roldrando Von Vlox. “Helena— Oh, God. I do remember now. I wondered what had happened. For a while. And then I forgot. Helena. ...”
He took the rest of it very well indeed. “After all,” he said, “it is in the blood. She is descended from King Baldwin and his undine wife on the one line, and on the other we are out of the body of Charlemagne himself, the great- grandson of the Webfooted Queen. Yes, yes,” he said—almost to himself, almost, one might have thought, almost proudly, “the blood will tell. ...” After a while he agreed that the younger Maria should go back to Bella and be examined by the Medical Faculty. “If she wishes to try what they can do, she is free to do so. And if not, not. She will lack for nothing which I can provide, of course.”
The story which soon spread all around the fens and farmlands was that the Lord Prince’s friend had caught the lurley-girl and had taken her up to Bella to show her to the Emperor, whom God preserve for many years. . . For a moment, as the news spread, each one who heard it reflected what a fine thing it was to be the tenant of a prince whose friend could capture a lurley and take her up to the capital city and show her to the Emperor.
And then, without exception, after a moment of such reflection, the same thought would occur to each and every of them. “Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” they cried. “The buckwheat!”
Fortunately, the days were long, the weather stayed clear, they toiled like serfs. . . . but they saved the crop.