The Mer- Lion (15 page)

When on the following day Seaforth was laid to rest, Lady Islean's message was ready; it was succinct: Come home. It set the place and the time for his arrival: a cave on the Firth of Forth, no later than the last day of May. That the message arrived and was received, they knew. Whether it would be obeyed remained to be seen.

For seven days now, since their arrival on May 22, 1532, Seamus and his band of Scots kept vigil for Jamie in the dank cave on the craggy coast of the German Sea, just north of the Firth of Forth. At first, Seamus had proclaimed that the cave was ideal for their purpose. It was vast, gouged a full eighty feet deep into the rocks. And before it, on the sea's side, rose a marker easily visible from far out at sea: a mass of basalt emerging from the foam sixty feet high and shaped by nature into the likeness of a woman's spindle.

Beyond it, out where the estuary opened wide onto the German Sea, Bass Rock rose sheer nearly 300 feet out of the water. And beyond the white precipices of Bass Rock stood the towers and turrets and battlements of Tantallon that so dominated this portion of the firth. Tantalizing Tantallon. Scene of many an unsuccessful siege, with its three sides of wall-like rock and one of rocklike wall. And Tantallon was the stronghold of Archibald, the Marrying Douglas, the man with most to gain by preventing James Mackenzie from coming home.

To make certain no Douglas on Tantallon's battlements spotted their campfire, Seamus and his men maintained a cold, fireless camp the first night in the cave. Fortunately, the nights were growing shorter this season, and the sun did not dip below the water until long after the men's stomachs told them the evening meal hour had come and gone.

Eventually the multicolored sky stopped reflecting off the water, and darkness settled like a black velvet bag over the bay and the cave. With darkness came an increased watch for a signal from a French ship standing out to sea.

"There!"

"No, there!"

"Over there!"

Three sightings in as many seconds. But the signal light refused to stay in one place. Shining first here
...
then there
...
it danced about just beyond the reef.

"A ghost ship!" someone bleated.

Even in the darkness, Seamus recognized the last voice. It was John the Small, a good man in a fight, but too much given to fanciful ideas.

"No ship—ghost or no—could cover that much distance that fast," Fionn, Seamus's son, replied almost as soon as the frightening words were spoken. His youngest had a head on his shoulders that functioned like one more than double his nineteen years, Seamus realized with pride. '

"Then what is it?" came the question from several puzzled and wary Scots.

I'd best squelch this talk, Seamus thought, or these lads will be a pack of jellyfish. Before he could speak, the light moved faster and became several lights. Now, it was not just beyond the reef. It had moved in closer. Then, to the watchers' bemused horror, the lights darted toward shore
...
just as swiftly moved back. The effect was hypnotic. No man spoke, no man moved. A loud crack, like the slap of an object upon the water, broke the spell. Then, the lights went out, one at a time, like candles being snuffed.
^s
"Fireflies!" said Seamus. His voice brooked no opposition, allowed for no contradiction, invited no discussion. The talk, at least that within earshot, ceased.

A little later, he heard the scraping of sand behind where he sat. Then, a large familiar shape hunkered down beside him.

"Da'," Fionn said, "fireflies are land creatures."

When Seamus did not answer, Fionn continued, "The noise was made by a tail. I saw it, and I was not the only one." Getting no response, eventually Fionn moved on.

There were no more strange lights that night, but few men slept; they had already slept a goodly part of the day away. Although Seamus made work as best he could, not even he could keep a hundred pairs of hands busy. When hands are idle, mouths are not. The talk ceased when Seamus approached, springing up anew the moment he passed.

Seamus didn't have to be told of what they spoke. Mermaids and the diamonds and sapphires they wore. Jewels the size of a man's fist. Devil stones from the depths of the sea whose flashing facets were always just out of reach. Seamus knew all about it. Every Irishman had grown up to tales of men who, tempted and taunted by those elusive riches, followed the flickering lights farther and farther out to sea, there to be set upon by jealous mermen and sent to a watery grave.

Just as sure as he was bom in a proper Irish home with two doors opposite to allow a proper fairy path through, he knew fear would keep most men ashore. The others would be planning a closer look at those jewels. Fingering the stone with a hole in the middle that he carried to protect horses from fairy harm, he prayed mat the mermaids would not come back.

. That evening as the men choked down their cold rations with big draughts of ale, Seamus ate separately. One by one, his three sons separated themselves from the rest and came to sit or sprawl within arm's length of their father. Although born of different mothers, they were three of a kind and all of an age. Dugan, the oldest, was named for black baby hair, since fallen out and come in straw-colored like Seamus's; Derry, the middle one, for his once-red now fair head. Only Fionn, the youngest, was named fair and stayed fair. The names stuck, but no one teased the boys about their misnaming, for they, like their father, were big, brawny, giants of men. Seamus was proud indeed of these three boys, and he took them with him whenever he could.

Fionn broached the subject first. "Da', about the mermaids. Is it true if you catch one and take it home to wife, you will become rich and powerful?"

"Richer than the Earl of Seaforth?" Derry wanted to know.

"More powerful than the king?" asked Dugan, the oldest.

"Is that what they say?" Seamus mused. "I never met anyone who caught one."

There was another long, companionable silence while the three digested that. Again, Fionn reopened the subject: "Was there no' a French lord who married one?"

"Ah, yes, Raymond of Poitou. It was quite a story. Judge you for yourselves. It seems, a century or so ago, the count met this beautiful woman in the woods. Immediately he fell in love with her. And she with him. So, he proposed. She accepted on one condition: that he never attempt to see her on Saturday. The count agreed and they were married. Over the years, she gave him three sons and made him rich beyond his dreams. He grew old, but she did no'. He suspected the secret of her youthfulness lay in what she did on Saturday in her room. Overcome by curiosity and consumed by jealousy, he bored a hole in her door so that he might see what she did on this day. He was half pleased, half disappointed to discover she spent her time innocently enough taking a bath. He was about to leave his peephole when he saw this tail go flip-flop in the bathwater.

Thinking only to protect his wife, he drew his sword and charged through the door. There in the tub was a naked woman from the navel up
...
but from the navel down, she had a long, scaly fish tail. Since the count had broken his word, Melusine kept hers. She flew out o' the window and was ne'er seen again."

Fionn it was, with the mind as quick as his mother's lovetap, who put his finger on the fallacy. "Da' you say they had three boys?"

"Aye."

"And the count did no' know his wife was a fish from the waist down?"

Dugan, once he was pointed in the right direction, was no simpleton either. "Can you imagine sharin' your bed with a slippery fish and no' knowin' it?"

"Those nobles," guffawed Deny, "must do it different from you and me."

Seamus kept a straight face and continued drawing shapes in the sand. The other three picked their teeth—Bonn's mother had supplied the smoked meat and it was a bit stringy—or they scratched, since they shared the cave with sand fleas.

Again it was Fionn, who, like a terrier with a rat, refused to let go but must play with the subject till satisfied it was dead. "They say the Seaforths could tell us a lot about mermaids if they wished."

Seamus's head snapped upright. "Who says?"

"Many, no' just one or two."

"And what do they say?" Seamus's eyes narrowed; he sensed real trouble.

Dugan, the oldest by three months, came to his younger brother's rescue. "That long ago, a Seaforth found a mermaid stranded high up on the beach. Instead of killing her, he carried her down to the sea and let her go. She would have married him but he was already wed. So she told him the whereabouts of a treasure chest. To this day, whenever they need money, they just go dip in that chest."

"That's no' all," Deny added. "They say she gave him a ring carved with the figure of a Mer-Lion on it and told him, if ever he were in trouble, to turn the ring on his finger and a real Mer-Lion would come to the rescue."

"You believe this?" Seamus asked incredulously.

"I've seen the ring,'' Deny said, the other two
nodding
agreement.

Seamus, in the face of stupidity, turned sarcastic. "And if a Mer-Lion could come to the Seaforth's rescue, why did the beastie no' come to the mermaid's?"

Logical Fionn knew the answer to that. "Maybe she didn't have the ring with her."

Now, Seamus knew he was losing his temper, "But if the ring could have rescued him, why did he no' use it two months ago to escape his assassins?"

"Yes," Dugan agreed, "why didn't he?"

"Ninny," Fionn answered, "this Seaforth lost one arm, how could he turn the ring on his only hand?"

That did it. Seamus saw red. He wouldn't stand for his sons' making his lord's honorable wound a source for such speculation. He surged to his feet like a bear at bay, and his boys, who had felt the heavy weight of his ham-like hands before, scrambled for safety. Lowering his head purposefully, he stalked back into the cave. At the sight of his glowering face, all of his men retreated. On he came, until he had his whole troop backed up in the depths of the cave.

Then his men felt the full weight of Seamus's tongue:

"You make me sick, you and your talk! Mermaids, you say. And what would mermaids want with the likes o' you, you weasel-beaked sons of harlots. Faced with a middenhill full of drabs with their skirts around their waists, you would no' ha' the sense to untie your codpiece. As for a mermaid, dizards! Dodkins! Dolts! You would no' know one if you saw one. I'll be shit if I think you even know which end to make love to. If there be any but bairns among you, we'll find out the truth of this mermaid story. Here and now. Tonight. If the lights dare come back. Now get out of my sight."

The men scattered as best they might. For the rest of the evening they gave Seamus a wide berth.

The night came and went without event, as did the next and the next. It was only toward the end of the week that the men began to step less fearfully and talk more freely. It was not that tongue-lashings were new to them. In fact, it was almost a matter of pride with them that their Irish captain was the tongue-lashingest, evil-speakingest, most foul-mouthed fulminator in all of Scotland. Like a storm, they knew his anger would eventually pass. What they didn't know was when. Besides, by the end of the week they had another subject to keep minds and mouths busy. Would the new Lord Seaforth really come home? Would he, after eight years' absence and eight years' silence, answer his mother's summons?

Seamus didn't want to admit, even to himself, that their wait here might be in vain. Only a dullard, however, would deny that the young master was taking his good sweet time. If he did, indeed, arrive this night, it would not be one day early.

One way or another, with the young master or without, Seamus decided, he and his men would be gone before daybreak; their saddlebags were already packed. He couldn't wait to be gone. Then, one week to the night of their first sighting, the mermaids returned.

Passing among his men as they stared wide-eyed, fearful yet fascinated, out at the flickering, shimmering lights dancing so lightly over the reef and waving enticingly from deep within each breaking wave, Seamus did what came naturally to him in extremity. He swore. At the mermaids. At Frenchmen in general. At French seamen in specific. At young lords who keep their men waiting. At Douglases in Tantallon. At assassins of good, honest men. At anything and everything. Gradually, he could see the men relax and shift their attention away from the sea to their captain. His swearing they could deal with. It was the unknown that terrified them. Once he had completely loosened the hypnotic grasp of those lights, he would make his move; for he knew it would take more than words to quell their fear. It was time to challenge their manhood. Without pause, he raised his voice and called to the lights:

"Come ashore, you blinkin' scaly lasses. C'mon in here and meet up with some o' Scotland's finest. They're so hard up they'll be good for the whole night. You can steal the heart of every mother-lovin' son of them. Wink an eye and you can tow 'em out to sea like speared whales. C'mon in, I say, they're waitin' for you. Well, what's keepin' you? You fickle, slimy-tailed harlots o' the sea. Shake your tails and get on in here where we can get a look at you."

The men waited in silence as Seamus stood motioning the glimmering lights in toward the rocky shore.