The Pearls

The people of the shore knew at first glance that the ship in the cove was foreign. She was made of a fair wood that gave her a light step upon the water, lean-breasted and long-necked, ribboned with white and gold sails. At twilight as the wind began to rise, a longboat issued forth with men. They quickly erected a pavilion of blue on the flat above the high tide mark, and by moonlight, thirteen girls, no more than vapors of white veiling caught in the fog, were put ashore. The ship sailed with the dawn.

Before the local people could agree whether it was a matter for the priest or the magistrate, six of the girls appeared at the blacksmith's shop to hire horses. They paid with unstamped gold. Two took the coast road to the south; two took the coast road north; the final pair rode inland, east.

The gold somewhat altered the tone of the discussion in the village. "Wait and see -- it's only girls, after all," became the consensus. Then after a fortnight, the girls from the south and north returned with a great following. Color spilt over every bend in the road as the processions came winding down through the hills into the cove. The blues of the banners grew impudent in their challenges to the sky; silver and brass bangles clashed on the reins of black horses; more greens than grass could imagine grew on men's cloaks; the reds of wine and cherry and heart-of-coal shouted and motioned to one another from glove to plume to boot-toe. And then came the purples, purple beyond all belief... For there were kings in these processions, and king's sons with ivory spurs, and their households behind: ladies whose damask trains covered their horse's tails, children in ponycarts with nurses and puppies and tame ravens in little harlequin coats, maiden sisters in religious habits. Further behind marched lines of mules with live chickens hung on their sides and asses draped with panniers of mushrooms covered with oilcloth against the sun. Wagons carried rolls of tapestry, cords of kindling, tins of crystallized fruit, porcelain conveniences, rosewood writing desks, cheerful pigs and sunburned dancers. It was from one of the latter that the gaping fisherfolk learned the cause of the invasion: a princess from the sea held court in the blue pavilion to choose a husband from among the princes of the land.

For all the glory that these shoreline kings had amassed to greet their cousin, (who appeared as a dark curly-headed maid of middle stature), a certain caution prevailed upon the ceremony of introduction. True, they had heard no evil of the pelagic royal house whose dominions stretched so wide and deep, but it was equally true that they had never heard any good of it -- they had, in short, never heard of it at all. The gracious girl with her crown of pearls might look as earthly a maiden as any, but prudence demanded inquiry. The hand she proffered in greeting was warm and bore no savor of salt or scale when a man put his lips to it, and the sweetmeats that she offered savored more of citron than of brine. The women who inspected her body in private declared there to be no gills, fins or other piscatory appendages secreted anywhere upon her person. (One or two of the more bookish suitors looked downcast at this.) She listened to the village priest mumble through the prayer against unclean spirits in an easy and courtly manner, though she did not seem to know what he was and asked if they had not fairer actors to recite speeches.

Some might even have ventured to call her imposter, so of their own kind did she appear. Yet her walk held something of a lilt, and when her eyes moved west and met the sea, there was a convergence between them that no man could fathom, though each of the assembly lived within sight of the strand. She laughed when she saw a cow and shouted with delight at the sight of a horse trimmed up boldly for a joust.

The kings were soon satisfied that the sea princess, with her beauty, good temper and elegant bearing, would ornament any throne that their sons could offer her. The sons themselves were head over ears in love with the idea of such a bride. They chafed like greyhounds to be let slip for the wooing. But first the envoys must come to her wearing all the chains and seals of state they might muster and beg to know to whom they should address petitions for her hand.

"To me," she said.

Aye, but who spoke for her?

"I speak."

Aye, but what man stood in her father's stead?

"No man stands in my father's stead."

But who should administer her dowry?

"Dowry?"

The afternoon that followed was lengthy and unprofitable. The envoys emerged from the pavilion feeling many years older. They mopped themselves and snapped at their catamites as they trudged back, each to their individual sovereigns. The diplomatic pouches of kid and chamois bulged almost lewdly with copies of the documents that her amanuensis produced, testifying to the property that the sea princess held in her own right, without guardian or trustee, and with no provisions of any sort for matrimonial settlements. The breadth of wealth that lay under the slim brown hand that idled among the starfish and urchins in the tidepools was truly enough to make any man, even a king, sweat. The rulers of the shore palpitated between greed and fear as councils sat over the deed copies late into the evening -- so many hectares of oysterbeds, so many tons of kelp and salt and coral per annum, tolls on these vital waterways, the fishing grounds delineated so and so and so... Had anyone ever known how much gold could be filtered out of the polar waters? Why, the whalebone alone that fell to her fee could buy a city and corset up every inhabitant.

Dispatches were sent for the finest legal scholars in the coastal kingdoms to see if there was no flaw within the documents to loosen the iron grip that the sea king had thought fit to give his daughter over her estates. In the meanwhile, they determined to stand back and examine her closely, seeking to discover cracks in her judgment and discretion that must prove ruinous in a woman of such boundless, vexatiously independent means.

Irked by the parleying that swam slow as theology, a prince from the north took the bit between his teeth and galloped off a gift to the princess -- an armlet that mimicked the shape of a serpent, with glittering eyes of garnet. How the blood rushed to his head when he saw it clasped on her arm at the next morning's audience! Yet it puzzled him when he saw it closer -- why did the serpent now stare with eyes of pearl? He mentioned this to a friend, a fair boy who was heir to an island kingdom, who instantly made this boldness known among the pack of suppliants, unleashing a flood of bijouterie. The fair boy himself begged the princess to accept fine black carbuncle earrings.

The next day there were oval pearls in her ears the size of carbuncles. A diadem of rubies was placed on her pillow anonymously; soon she wore a diadem of pearls. A heavy golden girdle worked with nine hundred pieces of lapis lazuli was the lordly gift of the highest prince among them -- how cleverly the new little pearls nestled around her waist when she presided at the next feast! It was enough to drive the princes mad. Amethyst, sapphire, topaz, chrysolite, even diamond -- not one gem that is mined out of the earth could escape being swallowed up with nacre once hung on the fine young body of the sea princess.

To cool the swelling passions of their sons while they continued their examination of the prospective bride, the kings decreed a tourney. Not even her scarf was hinted as a reward, but the activity served well enough to deflect the frustrations that the regal youths discovered in this enigmatic, crablike courtship. Through summer afternoons horses crashed, bright armor clanged, and the princess whooped with pleasure and begged to be taught the sport herself. The makeshift court assumed a more genial aspect; even the weather was warm and clear to the point of monotony. Gold previously undreamt of sauntered into the pockets of the local tradespeople. Mothers watched their daughters narrowly and indeed discovered one or two who minced through their day's work "like a cat squiffy with cream" and sought quarrels with the boys they were plighted to. More royal households shimmered down the coastal highway daily, to flatten the vincas and anemones on the hills above the cove under the finest and fairest carpets in the world.

And what of the core of this great oyster of wooing -- the heart of the young princess? Each day she examined it and found that it was still as cool and dry as her looking glass. Oh, she enjoyed the adventure -- for that was what she had craved when she asked leave to go forth from her father's domains to seek her mate -- and she was not averse to the attention and admiration that swirled around her. But she was a clever girl and knew that the novelty of the festival was teaching her nothing real of the world she knew so wide, and that when the bustle and boister were done, any of the princes before her would carry her no farther than to their own castles, where she would bear their heirs within sight of where she had begun. Shoals of new candidates appeared at every morning audience, but they were alike as grunion to her eye. It was not for this that she had set aside the musty grottoes mottled with reflected light, where a thousand generations of her mothers had loved and wed. Yet she knew not how to retreat with honor.

Fortunately, before murder was done (for though the princess was deft and kind, it was clear that her heart was as much her own as her riches, and at least two dozen ambitious or amorous princes were prepared to battle the seasons round till the double prize be won), the scales were tipped by the arrival of the final two handmaidens, dusty, thin, and marked by the sun, who had rode east to herald the princess' coming to the lands whose borders touch not the waters. Here, they had not been lent so ready an ear, for the land-bound sovereigns either disbelieved or discounted the importance of their tidings. The sea seemed not to be a real thing to them, and the maids were treated like storytellers or wandering minstrels. They had not liked to return with this sting of mortification in their hearts, but one began to grow ill from the long hours on horseback. Only one prince came with them, the second son from a poor but pleasant country, whose king did not believe a word of it but was content to let his child follow his desire.

The lapidary art having proved a broken reed in this courtship, the princess' expressed delight in spectacle had led the suitors to vie in offering cunning entertainments for her favor. Privately the princess found much of it vulgar and jarring, but could not bear to have them disappointed again in their generosity. Indeed it was doubtful that she could have stopped it had she tried, so hot did the rivalries of divertisement rage. On the morning that the inland prince came to pay his first devoirs, no less than six jesters elbowed at one another by the foot of her dais, and three fire-eaters at every moment imperilled the delicate fabric of the pavilion. You could not have swung a cat without smacking a mummer. The princess felt thoroughly jaded today; her dizzy eye could settle on no particular object, and she was really considering entering a convent or marrying a hod-carrier rather than be faced with one more morning of laudatory acrostics.

Then she saw a young man, brown, not very tall, stepping uncertainly over the balls that the jugglers had abandoned to better jostle one another. He caught sight of her and stopped as if suspended on a marionette wire. Her eyes settled on his, and she was wiped clean of her troublous thoughts. His eyes were blue, very blue... but no, not as blue as the sea. There was nothing of the sea in them. They held no restless reflections of wave or complicated indecision of tide, no rippling shallows or treacherous currents to pull her under or make her thrash with frustration. His eyes were wide open and as blue as a man's eyes can be when he has never set sight upon the sea until that very morning, and is still a little drunk with it. She extended her hand to him across the plain of mountebanks that separated them. The inland prince, who had been suffering terrible stomach cramps in anticipation of this meeting, stumbled toward the dais. When he reached her safely, she took his hand and beckoned him up to sit beside her.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she said and sat smiling until the performers and their patrons quieted. "Thank you all very much. I have made my choice."

The inland prince's bowels leaped.

The shoreline princes were, on the whole, philosophical. The fair boy from the northern islands made an incompetent gesture with arsenic, it is true, but was quickly revived with a mixture of mustard and chalk. The kings were more than philosophical, they were frankly relieved. It had never sat well with them, the idea of a daughter-in-law who could buy up their realms as a trinket (though they had never found a chink in her respectfulness or perspicacity), and who might be kin to a bivalve to boot. For a day or two the inland prince wandered from fête to congratulatory fête like a dog that has recently taken a strong boot to the ear, before assuming an air remarkable for nothing but boundlessness of bliss; and surely nothing can be as odious as bliss. From a pewter trunk at the foot of her couch, the sea princess' chamberwoman reverently disinterred the gleaming smocked peau de soie that had waited in the dark among myrtle leaves, and steamed the creases from its heavy folds. The bride's ornaments, of course, would be pearls.

The princess had taken it into her head to be married at the village church by the village priest, though bishops aplenty were offered. There came a valedictory vying in the wreathes sent to decorate the simple plaster and ship-timber church, till the air within was glutinous with jasmine and heliotrope. Surrounded by all the pomp and majesty of costume that the shore's royalty could carry without actually staggering, the sea princess and the inland prince pledged their faith with the only piece of jewelry he had to give her - - a plain gold band that had been his grandmother's. The blessings buzzed on above their heads, but the couple kneeling at the altar were as set apart from the assembly by love as if they stood captured in a fairy ring. Then with kisses as courteous and ceremonial as those that angels exchange on cathedral glass, the company dispersed once and for all.

The bride and bridegroom walked back down to the beach, her skirts beating like unlashed sails in the wind that rose at the hour of dusk. They stopped to look at the last light on the surface of the bay and watched the rooks gather in the firs at the end of the cove, until the first lamp kindled within the pavilion on the shore. When she turned to smile at him, some strands of her black hair sticking a little on her teeth, his blood sang so swift and sweet that he laid her upon the brier there and took her.

To leap before looking has its own rewards. Its perils are better documented, for they are more dramatic, but the newly coupled pair were not actors but lovers, and never for a moment did the princess regret her impetuosity, nor the prince reproach her for it.

Eight of her handmaidens parted from her here. The princess kissed away their tears with smiles, promising they would meet again soon. One of the remaining maids had fallen for a fisherboy and already walked round-bellied through the town at his side. Knowing the sweetness of the seed, the princess did not rebuke the harvest, and settled a noble fee on the girl. The sea king and the rest of her family would expect the couple in three weeks. In the meanwhile, they bought a little vessel that one or two might manage if skillful, and she taught him all she knew of sailing, which was nearly everything to be known. Any fishermen that happened across them stood agog to see the princess shinny up ropes with bare feet and skirts swinging like bells, as fast and neat as the best of them. And when the sea was glassy and empty for miles about, the prince delighted to watch her vacate garment after garment, and cleave the water as naked as a porpoise (an animal he only knew from bathhouse friezes). When she surfaced, he leaned across the bow to sample her salty mouth.

In the cool mornings they saddled two grey ponies of the sharp-footed cliffdwelling breed that were cheap as birds in those parts. He found it difficult to keep to the schedule of horsemanship he wished to teach, step by common sense step, for she wanted to pelt through the waves straight off, and the ponies were as willing and tireless as wooden nursery dobbins. But the princess balanced well, and the water was soft for falling when she didn't, so the prince found no tragedies when he pulled her spluttering and hooting from the surf.

And more delicious than any other science they could share or teach, they learned each other's flesh. What had started so urgent and strange between them grew by degrees more subtle and supple, though no less wondrous. She found the callouses on his hands, almost as regular as stepping stones from joint to joint, a source of curiosity and delight. "Little hooves!" He told her how his brother and he had been sent to work on farms every summer, to learn how the lives they would govern were led. "I suppose my brother is knee deep in barley as we speak."

"Your brother was jealous when you left?" she asked with a pillow tucked severely under her chin.

"No one believed in you, sweet. And in any case, he shall be a king later. My family is poor, but I am the poorest."

"Poor in what?" she demanded, laughing, smacking, pulling his hair.

"Poor in nothing," he said, and kicked back the sheets to grasp her arms and torso together like a wrestler. The young bodies strained strength against strength without words, with much joy. The princess' body bent like a bow above her husband, anchored only to earth by a single tendril of flesh. Without her willing it, the fruit of her pleasure fell from her like a cloak, and she cried oh, to feel its silky folds drip off.

"A bit longer here will hurt no one," said the princess as they walked alone along the rim of limestone above the cove. "Our families have had us all our lives."

"It will be cold soon," he reminded her.

"We can build a house, by the firs there, and then we can stop here again and again, every time we pass between your kingdom and mine."

So the carpenters and quarrymen raised up a little chapel of a dwelling, with a pier close enough that the sails could be seen from the balcony of their bedroom. The princess loved windows, so there were miniature panes of glass let in at any angle that would admit of them, and floors of good smooth slate, and an inner herb garden that could have stocked an apothecary quite respectably. Every tint of weather that came over the shore lent its color to the house in shield of shadow and sword of light passing through the halls and casements like dreams, or in the hushed flailing of the palms in the courtyard against the laundry shed in the wind. Fog sealed up the house in solid shrouds at night, but the fireplaces were large and plentiful, and in each other's arms there was no cold.

She picked up a stone on the garden path and held it to him on her open palm. "If I keep this in my pocket all day, it will be a pearl in the evening," she told him. "It is something all the women in my family can do. Did you never notice it before?" He shook his head. Everything she did was a marvel to him -- what was one wonder more or less?

So the days mellowed one by one like grapes. They sailed and rode, as three weeks became six, became twelve. Sometimes he tried to ask her if she thought her father would be worried or anxious, but she quickly stopped up his mouth with kisses. One morning she felt unwell; they did not speak of what this might mean, but he went sailing that afternoon alone. The princess lay balled up on their bed and tried to imagine what it would be like to be with other people again. The faces of her sisters and aunts and father roiled in her mind like the faces you try to imagine from the descriptions in a book. Though the sun was out, the afternoon was cold and damp, and she found herself wandering up and down the halls in a dressing gown lined with marmot. She wished he would come home and drink with her before the fire. To make the time seem more advanced, she dressed herself as for dinner, in a frock of heavy green that made her look pale and slim. The shadow of a squall upon the sea passed through the house, stalking swiftly through the leaded panes, across the flagstones, and out into the hills above the cove. Resolving to banish her own shadows as quickly, she had her chamberwoman arrange her hair as high and elaborate as a coloratura's voice, enlisted her pearls to service, and even splashed a sifting of rice powder across her face. Still there was time to wait for his return.

It was the girl who had been her handmaiden and was now a fisher wife who brought the news, for it was her husband who first spotted the hump of the sailing boat's keel lolling in the bay. They were bringing the body to the pier as the girl held her mistress' tomb-cold hands and gave her the tidings.

The princess went down to the pier in her gown and her jewels and her operatic hair. She looked at what was in the net, glistening and serene as if newly pulled from its mother's womb. She had never thought to teach him to swim.

She turned away then, with salt water biting in her eyes. She turned from his body, and gathering up her skirts, ran towards the wood, tearing the string of pearls from her neck. The firs swallowed her without a single rook rising; the pearls fell to earth sullen lumps of stone.

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