Mermaid_ A Twist on the Classic Tale - Carolyn Turgeon [79]
Margrethe shook her head. “If he does not marry me … I can’t even think of it. None of this will work if the marriage does not take place. We are in this enemy stronghold, alone, and the king will have no reason to protect us.”
“We have many allies here, and the king, he is friendly to us. Please, my lady. My dear friend. Do not despair.”
Margrethe could not help having them, these feelings of doom and foreboding. Nothing was as she’d envisioned. The reality of being here, in this enemy castle, the way things had gone last night. The feeling had been so strong before, that sense of purpose and knowing. Never in her life had she felt so confident, and it had all been because of that mermaid. But now that mermaid was just a dream, slowly vanishing.
It hit her then: how much this Astrid woman had reminded her of Lenia.
Exasperated, Margrethe stood and walked to the window, and then her heart sank even more in her chest. “Look,” she said.
Edele looked out to where Margrethe was pointing. “What?”
“Here, move closer to me. Look. Down there.”
It was the prince, walking by the water. Walking arm in arm with Astrid.
Silent, they pressed against the window and watched.
“They look happy, don’t they?” Margrethe asked.
“Yes,” Edele whispered, putting her arm around Margrethe’s shoulders. “But just give it time. He is a man, after all.”
Margrethe hadn’t seen such radiance between a man and woman since that day at the beach, since it had been the mermaid looking at Christopher like that. She shook the memory away. This was a real woman now—no matter how much she resembled a creature from myth—and the prince, whole and healthy again, was looking back at her with the same devotion.
“I feel sick.”
“Shhh,” Edele comforted.
“I don’t know what this means. I thought … those moments with him, between us … I thought they were special, that they would sustain us, I thought they might be the seeds of love. Now I’m not so sure. Is he so fickle that he’s forgotten me completely?”
“It doesn’t matter, Margrethe. It only matters that you marry, and bring our two kingdoms together.”
Margrethe took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. That’s true.”
Below them, the prince wrapped the woman in his arms.
THE NEXT MORNING, Margrethe and Edele attended Mass in the queen’s chapel. Quietly, with bowed heads, they entered and sat together in the last pew. Margrethe tried to focus on the priest’s words, but she found herself watching as Astrid took communion with her eyes closed, her mouth gaping open. When she and Edele moved to the communion rail, Margrethe felt the eyes of the queen, the Southern princess, and the prince’s lover burning into her back.
She shook her head, forced herself not to think of them, to focus on the communion and her prayers as she returned to the back pew, but inside she burned with shame. No one, not even her future husband, wanted her there. She had risked everything to come here, to marry a man who did not want her.
Margrethe asked for her lunch and dinner in her room for the next several days, claiming she was still exhausted by the journey.
“Let them get used to the idea of us, without the pressure of our constant presence,” she told Edele, who did not argue.
THEY HAD BEEN there just over a week when they were invited to visit the queen’s apartment, and Margrethe felt they had little choice but to go.
They walked into a large, richly decorated room, where the walls were hung with bright tapestries threaded through with a lacy gold. Margrethe could not help but think of the place where her own mother had hosted her friends, how much warmer it was in comparison. This queen was austere and grand, and her rooms reflected that coldness.
The queen wore a red dress, and her black hair was pulled back. She was as striking as her son, Margrethe thought, with the same golden green eyes. Combined with her dramatic coloring, those eyes gave her an animal look. She was playing cards with one of her ladies, and she looked up and nodded when Margrethe and Edele