Adrift: A Little Mermaid Retelling

4: Daniel

I was warned about Mistress Allore, the lady of the house, long before I ever saw her. Long before everything happened.

I was only half-convinced she existed, at first. Master Allore had a wife, or at least had been married at some point in the past. That much I knew because I'd met Agnes, and I'd seen her two brothers about. But for the first several days we were there, I never saw the mistress of the house, not even at the window, where I could sometimes pick out Agnes's pale little face staring out and watching us work.

Then, on washing day, I saw chemises trimmed in lace on the clothesline. That much hinted at her existence, too. I wondered at first if Mistress Allore was an invalid. Or invisible.

By the talk of the field hands I gleaned only one detail: that she was beautiful. No one was coarse enough on Allore's plantation to say anything rough or crude about her, and I was too young then to read into the grins they exchanged whenever her name came up.

The first time I saw her was at the Week's Meet.

Once every span of days, we had a day of rest. On those mornings, the overseer Dervin would call us all together from our cottages in the field hands' camp and take us on up to the manor house. That first day, I was scared. I followed my father, surrounded by men twice my height and three times as broad, wondering what could be going on.

When we got up to the porch, the housekeeper Sybill was there, setting out tea, sandwiches and sweet rolls on a table. Dervin walked up, natural as you please, and helped himself to food and tea. He was followed closely by the other field hands, who served themselves and then went to stand against the rails of the porch or along the steps leading up, eating without shame.

My father and I exchanged a glance, hesitating on the lower step, before one of the men behind us clapped him on the shoulder and gestured that he should go up. "Go on. It's Week's Meet," he said.

It turned out to be a tradition. Dervin would open the proceedings with a brief prayer to Oran, the god most honored back in the homeland from which many of the men had come. Then, he would speak to us about the past week's work and what we had to do next. It gave the men time to raise issues and come up with ways to solve problems. My father thought it a grand idea. To me, well—I was too young to find much interest in talk of any sort, so to me it was a weekly bore.

Except for the food. The food more than made up for the rest of it. It was a light repast, but always of a higher caliber than what was served in the field hands' longhouse.

Every week, Agnes was there. So was her mother.

That first day, Dervin was just finishing up with some instructions on how we would deal with a broken-down fence in the sheep's pasture when the door swung open, and out came Master Allore.

"Good morning!" he boomed. "Go on, Dervin, don't let me hold you up." As the master settled himself, leaning up against the wall, Dervin continued with whatever he had been saying.

I didn't notice, because after Master Allore came Agnes, and after her came a woman unlike her in almost every way.

She had her hair up, of course, as any proper married woman would, but it was gold—a truer gold than I had ever seen on any head. It was all loosely twisted up in some kind of pretty knot, ornamented with combs that caught the light and sparkled. She was dressed in blue.

Seeing her that first time was like slipping and falling into the sea—only warm ... It's hard to describe it, even looking back on it now. All I know is that my breath went still.

I've said, I think, that I was only ten years old. Women were still just women to me then. It wasn't love. It certainly wasn't desire. It was awe.

In one careless glance she took in the rabble of us, as if she'd seen a thousand men like us and had never been impressed. I looked around, wondering how the men had failed so utterly in describing the master's wife. "Beautiful," they'd called her. That's all!

But the looks on their faces—slight smiles, soft eyes—told me that there was not a man among them with a word grand enough for her. I certainly didn't have one, either.

Master Allore placed a hand familiarly on the lady's shoulder, and she stood still at his side, her pale face turned with polite attention toward Dervin as he finished his talk.

I found my gaze lingering on Mistress Allore's face, still awe-struck. At last, I looked away, and my eyes caught another face: that of Agnes.

Agnes did not seem to feel what I had felt, being in her mother's presence. She smiled at me and tilted her head. I, still bewildered, smiled back. I was struck by how different she was from her mother. She looked, in that moment, very much her father's daughter.

Later, as we trekked back toward our cottage, my father mused, "I think she were the loveliest creature I ever saw."

We were the last ones going back on account of Father's limp. He made slow progress, even on the best of days, and getting back into working had him sore. Dervin had stayed behind for a moment to talk with Master Allore, and I don't think Father knew that he'd caught up. He was walking just a step behind us.

Father drew to a stop when he heard the overseer say, "Careful, Rog."

Father's face went red as he turned around to look at Dervin, taking off his hat and holding it to his chest. It was rare to see him blush. "I didn't mean any disrespect, sir. None at all."

Dervin stopped, too. He looked past Father at the other men, well ahead of us by now, and then back at Father's face. "Oh, I know it."

Father did not say anything. He stood there, looking awkward. Neither of them seemed to notice me.

"I didn't mean it that way, man. It's just that the lady ..." He hesitated, then spat. Started, I stared at the white, foamy glob where it stuck to a clump of grass.

It wasn't that I hadn't seen a man spit before. I was a professional spitter myself. But at the mention of the mistress of the house? I was still wet behind the ears, but even I knew it was terribly rude. Father looked just as surprised as I was.

"There's somethin' uncanny about her," Dervin said. "My woman Sorla works in the kitchen up at the house. I see the mistress sometimes, when I go up to visit. I try not to look. You'd do well not to look long, either."

"I'd—I'd never—" stammered Father.

"Aye, none of us would, unless we wanted to lose a hand. But she's got some kind of witchcraft in her, that much is sure, Rog. You might find yourself doin' somethin' you'd never."

With that, Dervin moved on. As he did, he clapped Father on the shoulder in the manner of a man who finds himself in the same straits as another.