A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell #4)(23)

She looked like a Delphic prophetess then, warning of doom, and I wondered how much of the effect was put on for visitors. “Thank you for the warning,” I told her sincerely. “Shall I cross your palm with silver?”

She flapped a hand. “I am no Gypsy fortune-teller, miss. Save your silver for the traveling fair. The second sight has come down in our family through the centuries, a gift it were, from the first lady of this island.”

“The giant’s lady?” I hazarded.

“Bless me, no! The giant laid himself down to sleep before history was a thing that was known. And long after, when his story had passed into legend, the first fishermen of Pencarron began to sail these waters. One night, when the moon was full upon the water, and the silver light shone down, one of the fishermen, a comely lad with hair as black as night, trapped a mermaid within his net. She promised him anything if he would free her, and he was a poor lad, so he asked her for a purse of gold. But the mermaid had taken a liking to the boy, handsome as he was, so she told him if he would free her and take her to wife, for half the year she would swim with her own kind and be free as the wind itself upon the waves. But for the other half, she would live with him, bringing with her all the wealth under the sea.”

I interrupted her at this point. “There is wealth under the sea?”

“Of course there is!” she cried. “Pearls and coral made by the fishes, and gold and silver from ships sunk in tempests. All the treasures of the kings of earth are nothing as compared to the wealth that lies beneath.” She leant a trifle nearer, pitching her voice low. “And there is ivory as well, from the bones of those who have gone down to their deaths.”

I gave an involuntary shudder, and she seemed pleased. “Aye, miss. All the wealth you can imagine, as much as all the lords of creation and more again, this the mermaid promised her comely lad. And he agreed, taking her to wife but always minding that he must let her go free for half the year to swim the seas with her sisters.”

“Were they happy?” I wondered.

“Happy as a mortal can be when wedded to merfolk,” she said sagely. “The little mermaid gave him a son in due course, and wealth, just as she promised. And with the wealth, the poor fisherman built a castle upon this island, which he gave in time to his boy, the mermaid’s son, and so it was that the Romillys came to live upon this island, with the blood of the merfolk in their veins. They want to be better than they are, but we who have lived here for all the centuries in between and share their blood, we know the truth. The castle folk are sprung from a fisherman’s son and his mermaid mother.”

“Share their blood? Then you are related to the Romillys?” I asked.

“Why, everyone on this island is related to the Romillys,” she told me. “Most from the wrong side of the blanket. But we are all bound by the pellar blood of the mermaid who began it all, and it is from her that the sight comes.”

“Does everyone on the island have the sight?” I asked, goggling at the idea of an entire island full of clairvoyants.

She gave a comfortable chuckle. “That would be a fair thing, would it not? No, miss. The sight used to be a common gift, but it is not so anymore. In my mother’s time, only she and my auntie had it, and I am the last pellar witch on the island.”

“Has no one else in your family the sight?”

Her expression turned faintly disgusted. “Not a single one of my children has it. They take after their father, and him a fisherman from over Pencarron way. I ought to have known better than to marry an outcomer, but I loved him and who can argue when love will have its way?”

“Who indeed?” I mused. I finished my cider and rose. “Thank you for a most interesting visit.”

She put aside her tatting and gathered herself slowly to her feet. “It was good of you to come, miss. Mind you come again. And mind you mark my warning,” she said, coming so close I could see the faint flecks of black in the grey of her eyes. “Rosamund Romilly does not rest easy. Take a care for yourself and any you love.”

“I will,” I assured her. I emerged from the little inn into a patch of sketchy sunlight, my head fairly swimming with stories of mermaids and ghosts and pellar witches. The boy Peter was sitting outside, pitching conkers, but he scrambled to his feet when he saw me.

“Are you going back to the castle, miss?” he asked.

“I am. It must be getting on time for luncheon, and I should hate to miss it.”

“Indeed,” he said longingly. “Mrs. Trengrouse runs a proper kitchen, she does. Sometimes she gives me a bit of apple tart when I’ve done a job or two for her. Did you have a nice chat with Gran?” he asked politely.

“I did, thank you. She is a most interesting woman. She was telling me about the mermaid who founded the families on this island.”

“Oh, aye? That’s fine for girls, I reckon,” he said soberly. “But mermaids are not a thing for boys.”

“How frightfully limited you are in imagination if you think so,” I told him with a smile. “A boy might properly love a mermaid story.”

“I don’t think so,” he replied. “You see, a boy wants a sort of heroic story, and mermaids are fine if all you want to do is loll about in the sea, but I want stories about people who do things.”

“Ah, like the Spanish conquistadors who washed ashore?”