Chapter Four
Any island kingdom will have great reverence for the sea. It is from the sea that we gather food and riches and by the whims of the sea that we live. We are blessed or cursed by the waves, and the tide steals or gifts as it wills.
And so, on the Crocus Isles, anything we do of significance, we do in the sea.
We start our lives born into its salt, no matter what the cost is to arrange it.
I’ve seen pregnant women in the middle of a gale laboring against a standing rock, bidding their child come before the winds sweep them away, friends and neighbors encircling them, wet and wind-whipped, holding thick ropes so that they will not be washed away, and once the infant arrives it may find refuge in a floating tar-painted basket.
My own birth was to calm seas, and yet even I taste my name in the brine, for each mother speaks the child’s name as the babe is dipped beneath the waters so that the ocean may know them and understand we belong to it. We are the people of the sea.
And when we die, we are released to the sea once more, our names released with us, in thanks for the gift of our lives upon the waves, just as I gave Lieve to the sea yesterday.
When the time came for me to ascend to the crown, I was raised to the throne within the waters, the Pearl Crown set on my head as it had been set on each head before mine.
The crowd gathered there with me, their clothing wet and heavy, the swell of the tide rocking them back and forth and knocking all the small, clustered boats against one another with hollow wooden thunks.
Our wind that day was strong, and flower petals—torn from their stems by snatching winds—drifted down around me and my subjects.
The Crocus Throne is what we call the natural bench that rises just up out of the surf, great towering rocks soaring upward on either side.
It’s formed in such a way that you can sit on it, and when you sit, the waves will crash hard all around you in a swell of white foam and violent power.
And so, I was baptized a second time when I sat as monarch.
The people of the Crocus Isles also marry in the sea, both parties going down into what started as a natural tide pool but was carved by our ancestors into a perpetual greenish-blue pool with a mosaic floor.
It represents the birth of both parties into a new life and it tells the sea we are now one.
I walked into the pool with Lieve on our wedding day.
I remember yet his abashed joy as we entered it together, hands clasped tightly.
Weddings, just like those other events, are conducted naked.
Naked we are born into the sea, naked we return to it, and naked we marry to embrace our new lives together without secrets.
That seems ironic today. I know nothing about the man I am marrying and naked flesh will not change that. It will only be a stark reminder of what I have lost and what I am losing.
My grim council arrives at dawn with Delarte in tow.
My cousin has been drinking and he offers me a wobbling smile and a bow that isn’t mocking only because of the misery in his eyes.
Mayhap he sees his future here in me—ruler but a decade and now desolate, soon to be stripped of even her royal clothing.
I smile at him. It’s nice to see that someone understands the full weight of today’s events.
We make our way silently from the pier to the tide pool. I hear the fisherman making that terrible coughing choke that I think is one of his laughs. Perhaps Delarte and I are not the only ones who see the grim humor in this.
“I’ve always thought the marriage pool was beautiful,” Turbote says stoutly when we arrive.
So have I. Although today, it’s just a worn mosaic of the face of the God of the Sea flooded over by bluish-green water. I am too heavy with grief to see the beauty of it.
The fisherman leans over to look and again his face twists with grim humor. The line of his neck is very masculine and I wonder idly if the jaw under all that beard is equally defined and firm.
I shoot him a sidelong glance, but I say nothing.
The council arranges themselves around the pool in the required places and with great ceremony they draw out and affix the ceremonial blindfolds.
It’s a mercy I’m grateful for. As much as my mind and heart are elsewhere, it would still make me blush for my cousin and council to see me stripped naked before them.
The fisherman is a different matter. He hasn’t known me all my life, questioning my rulings or bowing before my throne.
I am nothing more than an inconvenient stranger to him.
I begin to strip off my raiments. I am still wearing some finery that I hadn’t thought to discard in the madness of the last few days. A pearl belt that Lieve gave me is particularly hard to part with. I place it directly into Delarte’s hands and he flinches from behind his blindfold.
“Yours now,” I murmur.
One of the counselors, Maevelys, blindly helps me to unweave my hair from the circlet of pearls around my head—the Pearl Crown, that is to be Delarte’s today as well. Maevelys stands with it in her hands afterward, her back straight and her eyes blindfolded.
“I always found this a strange tradition,” the fisherman says as he shrugs off a pair of leather sandals. “But fear not, Queen Coralys. You were made for this day.”
“This day?” I ask him, not bothering to hide my disbelief. “I was made for this day when I remove my crown and wed a stranger only one dawn after I buried the husband I loved?”
“This day exactly,” he says, and he sounds very old suddenly.
I look sharply at him. In full sun and up close, his eyes are very green.
They’ve changed from last night. Now they are the sea at noon, bright and beguiling.
His beard remains scraggly, his hair sun-bleached in streaks but mostly a brown that nearly matches his brown skin.
I do not think he is old. His shoulders are broad, though he hunches them forward, and his bare arms are attractively muscled.
When they move and flex, they have a vitality to them that draws my eye. But he doesn’t seem young, either.
He’s slow to undress. I’m down to my skin and feeling the cut of the morning breeze while he is still removing his belt and pouch.
I stand with a straight back and crossed arms. I miss Lieve. I wish he were here. It’s a silly thought, for were he here there would be no wedding at all.
It is only when my intended grunts in a way familiar to me—the sound of one of my guards taking a hit on the practice field or my husband when he cut his thumb with a scaling knife—that I realize something is wrong.
I turn sharply and bite back my gasp. Naked men are not unfamiliar to me. I knew Lieve’s strong male body as I know my own. This man is close in size to Lieve, I think. Although still his height is hard to gauge. And no wonder.
The fisherman is a mass of bruises, one layered over another across his broad chest and sleek abdomen.
He stands hunched around his middle, one arm drawn in as if protecting damaged ribs.
But it is when he loosens the cord of his trousers and they drop to the side that I feel the blood rush from my face and for a moment I must breathe very carefully.
I’ve never been good with bloody wounds.
And this one… it’s a wonder he didn’t bleed out last night if he was nursing that.
There is a gouge in his thigh. It’s nearly large enough to put my balled-up fist within the ragged flesh.
And that seems impossible, for is not the femoral artery there?
“A healer,” I gasp. “We need a healer.”
There’s a ripple of wordless murmurs from the blindfolded assembly. They must not be peeking, or they’d see as easily as I do what a mess the poor man is.
“No need.” He grunts and waves a hand in denial as if he does not note that my hands are trembling, suddenly reaching out as if I might steady him.
I try not to dwell on the details of the fisherman’s injury, for every glance makes me feel more ill.
The wound is gory and open. It has barely missed destroying his manhood, gouging into the meat high up his thigh.
Either he was impaled on wreckage quite brutally or someone has stabbed him several times with a spear.
The council whispers together and I hear Turbote loudly quelling them and the words, “The sooner it’s over with, the better.”
Finally, the fisherman meets my eye, and to my surprise there is no pain, no shame, no misery at all in his eyes.
There is only steadiness. I know my eyes are wide with shock, but he shakes his head minutely as if bidding me keep this secret between the two of us, and with great effort I pull myself together and seal my lips shut.
I am taking his freedom from him today. The least I can do is maintain his secret that he is grievously wounded, perhaps even dying.
I almost gasp when he takes my hand in his, brushing his thumb over my knuckles. I find I am gripping his hand back, longing for a little of that equanimity.
“This day was made for us, Lady of the Sea. Are you ready for it?”
Such an odd pronouncement. “Lady of the Sea” is officially one of my titles. Or it will be until I step into the water.
With a regal lift of my head, I squeeze the hand not cradling his ribs—noting the thick calluses of a life at sea—and I look to my council.
“Let it begin.” My voice doesn’t even shake. I am doing very well.
“Are you truly certain—?” one of the counselors begins to say, but I cut off any other objections.
“We will be wed this day. I will fulfill my bargain with the gods.”
And then they will get a lot more than they bargained for.
There are no more hollow objections.
We make our way down the steps and into the water together. I see now why the fisherman looked drunk. His legs barely support him. I’m not sure he’ll live the week out. I may be a widow twice in a seven-day stretch. He doesn’t lean on me, though.