Mermaid_ A Twist on the Classic Tale - Carolyn Turgeon [54]
Now, steeled by her new sense of purpose, she found a torch and walked determinedly to the former queen’s apartments: through the great hall, past guardsmen who watched her and turned to whisper as she went by, past her father’s offices, into the south wing, quiet as a grave. She walked more slowly, remembering rumors that the south wing was haunted, and then she shook them away. These were the rooms of her beloved mother, that was all. But when she caught a glimpse of her reflection in some polished wood, she started and cried out. The tall, slim woman with long dark hair, her skin pale in the flickering light of her torch. It was herself, of course, but she had not realized how much she’d become the image of her mother.
She paused to calm her racing heart before pushing open the heavy door and entering the outer chamber of her mother’s rooms, the parlor where the queen’s friends used to spend hours talking together, listening to her stories, working on embroidery, playing games, and drinking wine. Now Margrethe walked the length of the parlor, smiling as she remembered all the time she’d spent here as a child, sitting at her mother’s side and watching her laughing face, her graceful hands punctuating her speech or deftly moving a needle through fabric. Her hands had seemed magical to Margrethe then, able to conjure whole scenes out of almost nothing at all.
As she walked through to her mother’s private bedroom, it was as if a veil of grief dropped down over Margrethe, and she remembered the morning her mother refused to wake up. She walked to that ancient bed now, touching the same linens her mother had slept on that last day, the same pillow her mother’s head had rested on. Remembering how, after hearing her own nurse whispering to another servant, she’d run through the castle and into the queen’s bedroom, where the king stood over her and the physician was packing up his bags and there was her mother, never more beautiful, her dark hair spread across the pillow, peacefully asleep in her bed. Margrethe had never before seen her father overcome by grief, and that had made everything even more terrible. The thought that this impermeable man could be brought down by a simple stroke of fate. No one had ever known the cause of death. And to this day Margrethe did not understand why everyone—her nurse, her father, the servants—had made her leave the room before she could reach her mother’s bed to say good-bye. She felt a fresh stab of grief as she remembered.
She stretched out on the bed, in the last place she’d seen her mother, imagining she could still feel the indent of her mother’s body. Closing her eyes, feeling an exhaustion move through her, she drifted to sleep and dreamed of her mother deep in the sea, her skin covered with diamonds and her legs curving together into one long silver tail. Waiting, like an angel, for Margrethe to join her.
“ARE YOU FEELING better, Margrethe?” her father asked as she entered the great hall that evening.
“Yes, Sire,” she said, curtsying to him.
The king stood and raised a glass to her. Her heart broke a bit as she sat next to him, and she prayed that her plan would work, that he would, in the end, agree with her and think she had been right.
She looked at Gregor, sitting next to another of her father’s close advisers, who was also watching her intently and talking quietly to her old tutor. Pieter was standing off to the side, looking from her to Gregor. She breathed in sharply. So much was going on, under the surface, that she’d never seen before.
After the meal, the court musicians played, and some of the men and women rose to dance. Gregor came and sat next to her as she watched.
“I have something for you,” she said, smiling over at him as if they were speaking of the day’s hunt.
“Already?”
She pulled a folded letter from her sleeve and casually