Mermaid_ A Twist on the Classic Tale - Carolyn Turgeon [57]
“Can you write?”
Lenia shook her head again.
Katrina’s eyes dropped to Lenia’s neck. She visibly started. “How—” Katrina reached out her hand and touched Lenia’s necklace, her fingertips grazing Lenia’s skin, tickling her. “Where did you get this necklace? I know it.”
Lenia willed her thoughts into the air. Because I was meant to be here, with him. Because I found your treasures at the bottom of the sea.
Katrina looked back up at Lenia, and they stood like that, watching each other. For a moment, Lenia wondered if the girl had understood her.
“Do you know my family?” Katrina asked, finally. “Are you some relation? You look familiar somehow.”
“She was not here with the other guests?” one of the soldiers asked.
“I have not seen her before,” Katrina said. “Not here, anyway. I wonder if I have met her at another court, though. Does she not seem familiar?” She turned, asking the question of her three ladies standing behind her. At that cue, they streamed onto the steps, surrounding her.
“Oh yes, she does,” one of them said. “I might have met her once. I’m quite sure I have, actually, when I was traveling in the East.” She smiled at Katrina, blinking her long lashes.
Katrina reached out again to Lenia, running her fingertip along the gold of her necklace.
“Does she need help?” another lady asked.
“Yes,” Katrina said, with a nod of her head. She turned and signaled to the servant. “Put her in the room next to mine. Pauline, you will need to take one of the outer apartments for now.” The long-lashed girl sighed loudly as Katrina turned back to Lenia. “Now let’s get you dressed properly, and maybe someone can figure out where you came from.”
The old woman who’d found Lenia slipped away, bowing all the while.
“How interesting,” Katrina said then, not acknowledging the old woman in any way but turning back to the door, “to have someone new here. Everything lately has been so boring.”
ONE OF THE ladies took Lenia’s arm, steadying her, and they led her back to the princess’s rooms, at the west end of the castle. As they walked, Lenia looked around in amazement: at the massive tapestries hanging from the stone walls, at the silver statues of gods and goddesses, the flickering torches. She recognized some of the objects from similar items in shipwrecks, though she’d seen such things only covered in the murk of sea and decay, and here everything was immaculate, almost unreal-seeming. And in each hallway and room she looked for the prince. They walked by men and women of all types, some smartly dressed and at leisure, others hard at work, cleaning or cooking or hauling in supplies, all of them eyeing Lenia and bowing to the princess, who had a habit of tilting her head and raising her thin red brows at the handsome men and ignoring almost everyone else. The other ladies followed suit.
Outside one room, Lenia stopped, almost gasped out loud when she saw the figure of a beautiful, bleeding man hanging from a cross on the wall. The same cross shape she’d seen above the building by the icy sea, where she’d met Margrethe. Who was this man?
“Did you want to see the priest?” Katrina asked, watching Lenia.
Lenia shook her head, embarrassed, and they continued through the corridors, up a set of winding stairs that led to a hallway with a series of rooms in it, and stopped in what was clearly the grandest of them all, a large room filled with feminine ephemera—long golden necklaces and rich powders and perfumes and headpieces scattered across the top of a bureau, jewel-studded dresses hanging in an open wardrobe with designs carved along its edges. In the center of the room was a large bed with dark silk curtains hanging down on all sides. Lenia had seen something like it before, though broken and rotted and cradling two decayed corpses.
“Sit here,” Katrina said, leading Lenia to the bed, pulling back the shining curtain. She set down her instrument and bow on the mattress.
Lenia sank down onto the bed. She had never felt anything so supple and shivered with delight despite herself.