Lothar scoffs at this. “What are you talking about, Reverend? The woman looks exactly like my Goneril, gone these six years.”

Sligo, the oaf betrothed to my sister, dismisses both and declares that anyone with eyes can see that the mermaid bears an uncanny resemblance to his late wife. She was found face-down in this very fountain on the feast day of Saint Hathor. Gerda, as Sligo tells it, was fond of drink and merriment.

Are they all losing their eyesight, I wonder? Or their minds? Three widowers, all seeing the face of their dead wives in the countenance of the sea-woman. I tug at Father’s sleeve, urging him to come home. As with Bryndis, I have to use a little force before he relents.

And yet, just as I drag Father away, the mermaid turns to me. The moment is brief. Her lips part in almost a smile and there, between the two front teeth, is a significant gap. The same shape and space as Agnet’s. I shudder and tell Father to come away.

9

9

MY FATHER’S WORDS rankle me. Why had he thought that the woman in the pool resembled his dead wife? The mermaid looks nothing like Mama. And what of the other widowers; Lothar and Sligo? They too saw their lost brides reflected in the creature’s face. The implications of it do not sit well. What was it the midwife had said? Mermaids are the lost spirits of murdered brides? Does that mean the good Reverend Uriah murdered our mother? I am aware of the nasty gossip about mother’s fate, about how she had taken her own life because of her husband’s cruel treatment. Is this true? Or is the worst possibility the actual truth? That he murdered her and threw her into the sea to cover up his awful crime? Does this also mean that the blacksmith and the long-nosed fisherman had murdered their wives, as well?

I cannot puzzle it out. Did I not also see Agnet’s gap-toothed beauty reflected in the luremaid? Does this dispel my suspicion that Mother was murdered, or is it a portent of some tragedy yet to play out?

These terrible thoughts nibble at my brain the way the rat natters at a sack of winter grain. They distract me from my duties. I all but butcher the herring when I clean it and let a crockery plate slip from my clumsy hands to shatter on the floor. It had belonged to mother, an heirloom handed down through her family. Now it lies in pieces at my feet. Father scolds my clumsiness, asking if my brains have leaked out of my wide ears to render me a simpleton.

When the table is cleared, he asks me to brew the tea and orders Bryndis to prepare a plate of seedcakes. The village elders are meeting in the church at sundown. The matter of the mermaid is to be decided tonight.