“Maybe you can guess how this clawed Sena’s heart, which she could never harden. A few years after she bore her last child, she withdrew into silence, and scarcely moved. . . only lay there in bed, empty-eyed. Though I wept when she died, ten years ago. I knew it was God’s mercy. And our little daughter was still alive then, still alive for her.”
Tornislav shook himself. He uttered a laugh. “You must think
me sodden with self-pity,” he said as he came back to awareness
of the evening. “Not at all, not at all. God gives me many con-
solations: Himself, the greenwood, music, merrymaking, fellow-
ship, the trust of my flock, and, yes, the love of their small
children-“
He stared into his bowl. “This is empty,” he announced. “Yours too. Let me go tap the keg. We’ve time before vespers.”
When he returned, Vanirnen said with care: “I also have lost children.” He did not add that he had lost them forever. “Tell me, you bespoke a girl who came late. Did she likewise die?”
“Yes,” Tomislav told him, plumping back onto the bench.
“She was a lovely maiden.”
“What happened?”
“No man knows. She drowned in the lake, where she had
wandered. Maybe she stumbled, hit her head on a root. For once,
it can’t have been the vodianoi’s doing, because after many days
of search we did find her body afloat-“
· bloated and stinking, Vanimen knew.
“I, 1 did not have her buried with her mother and the rest,” Tomislav said. “I carted the casket to Shibenik.”
“Why?”
“Oh, my thought was-oh, maybe she’d lie easier-I was
dazed, you understand. The zhupan helped me get permission.” As if springing to an attack, Tomislav leaned close and went on: “I warned you, mine would not be a very stirring tale. Besides, you’ve yet to outlive your own woes.”
While Vanimen had more steadiness of mind than n:t°st mer-folk, he could shift a topic or a mood as swiftly as seemed de-sirable. “Aye, for my whole tribe,” he said. “I meant to raise this matter with you.”
“You’ve done that”-Tomislav attempted a smile-“in words which got pungent.”
“Merely to complain that they’re still kept penned; and with females and young apart from males, I hear.”
“Well, their conduct was unseemly. Talk about it became a threat to public morals, Petar claimed.”
“How long must this go on?” Vanimen smote his thigh. “I see before me-how. sharply I see, feel, hear, smell, taste-their misery in unfreedom.”
“I’ve told you,” Tomislav said. “The Ban’s decision is that they be held, properly cared for, till he’s gotten full information about them. I think that time draws nigh. You and 1 between us, we’ve learned much. Now that you’ve got the Hrvatskan tongue, you can speak with him yourself. He desires that.”
The Liri king shook his head. “When? I gather he’s busy, fares up and down the realm, may be gone for weeks at a stretch. Meanwhile, I say, my people are in quiet torment. Your baron may think he feeds them well, but my own belly tells me there’s too much grain and milk, not enough fish. They’ll sicken-from lack of water, too. Doubtless they get ample to drink, but when were they last swimming, when were they last down below, as nature meant for them? You let me refresh myself in the brook here, but even so, I sense how my flesh is slowly parching.”
Tomislav nodded. “I know, Vanimen, friend. Or what I don’t know, I can guess. Yet what may be done?”
“I’ve thought on that,” the merman said with rising spirit. “A short ways hence is a lake. Set us free there. A part of us on any given day, no doubt; the rest will be hostages, abiding their turns. It won’t be as good as the sea, but it will sustain us, it will bring us back from what’s half death.
“Besides, I gather that nobody fishes the lake. We could and would. It must be aswarm. We’d fetch back plenty to share with you humans. It’ll more than pay the cost of keeping us. Would that appeal to your baron?”
Tomislav frowned. “It might, were the lake not accursed.”