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.”
Tauno shook his head. His eyelids squinched together. “No. . . she bears the same blood as I... it’s not a restful blood. . . she’s shy and gentle, but she was born to the freedom of the world’s wide seas. . . if holiness curdles in her, during a lifetime among whisker-chinned crones, what of her chances at Heaven?”
“I know not, I know not..”
“An unforced choice, at least. To buy it, a boatload of gold. A couple of wretched tons, to buy Yria’s welfare.”
“Tons! Why—I hadn’t thought-less than that, surely. A few hundred pounds ought to be ample.” Eagerness touched Ingeborg. “Do you suppose you could find that much?”
“Hm. . . wait. Wait. Let me hark back—” Tauno sat bolt upright. “Yes!” he shouted. “I do know!”
“Where? How?”
With the mercury quickness of Faerie, he became a planner. “Long ago was a city of men on an island in midocean,” he said, not loud but shiveringly, while he stared into the shadows. “Great it was, and gorged with riches. Its god was a kraken. They cast down weighted offerings to him-treasure, that he cared not about, but with it kine, horses, condemned evildoers; and these the kraken could eat. He need not snatch aught else than a whale now and then—or a ship, to devour its crew, and over the centuries he and his priests had learned the signals which told him that such-andsuch vessels were unwanted at Averorn. . . . So the kraken grew sluggish, and appeared not for generations of men; nor was there any need, since outsiders dared no longer attack.
“In time the islanders themselves came to doubt he was more than a fable. Meanwhile a new folk had arisen on the mainland. Their traders came, bearing not goods alone, but gods who didn’t want costly sacrifices. The people of Averorn flocked to these new gods. The temple of the kraken stood empty, its fires burned out, its priests died and were not replaced. Finally the king of the city ordered an end to the rites that kept him fed.
“After one year, dreadful in his hunger, the kraken rose from the sea bottom; and he sank the harbored ships, and his arms reached inland to knock down toers and pluck forth prey. Belike he also had power over quake and volcano-for the island was whelmed, it foundered and is forgotten by all humankind.”