Читать книгу The Ice People 10 - Winter Storm - Margit Sandemo - Страница 7

Chapter 2

Winter was approaching and the old people in the village were terrified. They had experienced severe winters before and knew what it involved. The Ice People and the Meidens did everything they could, but their reserves would soon be exhausted as well, and what would be left then?

The famine was one of many that took place in this region of Norway. There had been no nationwide famine since the early 1650s, but crops could suddenly fail in smaller districts where the villages were relatively isolated. Since Graastensholm Parish and the neighbouring parishes had experienced a poor harvest several years in succession, the coming winter loomed like a ghost of anxiety for all.

A few weeks after Irmelin, Niklas and Villemo had been up in the Black Forest, Kaleb returned back home from Denmark on a ship loaded with, among other things, corn from Gabrielshus. Gabriella had stayed behind. Her mother often suffered from colds nowadays and the latest cold had affected her badly, so Gabriella would stay with her through the worst of the winter.

Instead, Kaleb had brought back young Tristan, his brother-in-law, Tancred’s son, to help him during the crossing.

Tristan was fifteen years old with all the worries of a fifteen-year-old. He had grown to become a lanky boy with lots of nut-brown curls, which he loathed. “How sweet,” said the ladies at the Danish court. “Like a cherub!” Otherwise there wasn’t anything very cherubic about Tristan. He was in the midst of puberty so he was bothered by pimples and involuntary blushing. He had sweaty palms and he gazed curiously and longingly at all girls, right from the scruffy girl tending to the pigs, who was only twelve years old, to the perfumed, mature women at court. At night he would have arousing dreams from which he would nearly die of shame. He made his own bed so that the chambermaids wouldn’t discover the spots on the sheet, and he cursed his voice, which would always rise to a falsetto when he wanted to contribute something mature and well thought out to a conversation.

As the ship from Denmark approached the shore, Kaleb knew they couldn’t dock in the port of Christiania with so much secret corn on board, because they wouldn’t be allowed to keep the cargo for very long. So they docked in a bay as close to Graastensholm as possible. In a twist of fate – or for natural reasons – it was the same place where Kolgrim had once tricked young Mattias on board a boat, though Kaleb and Tristan didn’t know that. They got horsepower from Graastensholm, Linden Avenue and Elistrand and they brought the cargo home sheltered by the darkness.

Then the ship set its course towards Christiania to unload the rest of the cargo. They didn’t feel bad about the way they had cheated their way past the crowd of famished people in parts of Akershus. They had an entire parish to feed, and what they had would only just cover that.

Villemo was on one of the wagons with the cargo. Kaleb simply smiled at that. As a matter of fact, his unruly daughter should have been a boy, he thought, since she was so frank and outspoken. On the other hand, she was growing to become a very charming young woman so that would have been a shame. He had noticed that she had begun to eat food again, and he wondered what had made her change her mind. At any rate, he was grateful for the change.

Villemo sat with Tristan in the driver’s seat. The stars shone high in the firmament in the night sky. Villemo talked like a waterfall, proudly and eagerly. “You see, we’ve been up at the Black Forest. You remember the Black Forest, don’t you?”

“Of course,” answered Tristan, his voice breaking. “That was those awful people where there had been incest and where everything had been covered up.”

“Well, it’s not all of them who are terrible,” Villemo said quickly. “It‘s awful for them because they were close to dying, you see, because they didn’t want to ask for help when we arrived, which was when they really became angry but they accepted the food. So we saved them.”

“I suppose they were grateful?”

“I don’t think so,” laughed Villemo a bit too loudly. “I heard in the village that they called us ‘those horrible young people who bestowed us with sickening mercy just so that they could feel better themselves’. False Samaritans was what they called us. Of course it always feels good to help others, but we wanted only the best for them and weren’t just thinking of ourselves as they now claim. I just don’t like that kind of talk.”

Villemo fell quiet and Tristan cast a glance at her. For a moment she was lost for words. But it didn’t last long.

“By the way,” she began again, “we’re on the way up there now to see how they’ve managed and give them some of the cargo. Will you come along as well?”

A wave of anxiety and secret excitement made his cheeks blush. “To the Black Forest ... I don’t really know.”

As a matter of fact, he’d already made up his mind. His desire for adventure was stronger than his horror and disapproval.

“Why didn’t your sister, Lene, come with you to Norway this time?” asked Villemo, who had a tendency to quickly change topics.

“Lene?” giggled Tristan, no longer so scared of saying something. He usually felt that his words just fell to the ground. But the darkness and Villemo’s frankness brought him courage. “Lene is oblivious to the world. She’s in love and will probably get married.”

“My word, what are you saying? But then I suppose it’s not strange after all. She’s twenty-one. Who will she be marrying?”

Tristan twisted one of the locks of hair which he so despised around his index finger. This was one of his nervous habits. “You see, when Mum and Dad were young, Mum was employed in some capacity by Corfitz Ulfeldt and Christian IV’s daughter, Leonora Christina.”

“Yes, I remember hearing about that. How did things turn out for those two?”

“Mum and Dad?”

“No, the other two.”

“Corfitz Ulfeldt ended in dire straits, which was only what he deserved because he was a defector and traitor. Besides, he was so arrogant and unpleasant. Everybody agrees on that.”

The whole time he was talking, Tristan had his fingers on his face or in his hair. Villemo was surprised that he didn’t also stammer, which you would expect of a young boy who was so insecure. Apart from that, she very much liked her youngest cousin. He’d probably been coddled a bit too much since he was the youngest and only male shoot on the Paladin family tree. He probably didn’t know much about life outside of the Danish court.

He continued, “Ulfeldt was persona non grata in Denmark and Sweden, and he fled to Germany. But he was also persecuted there and never had a quiet moment. He died lonely and deserted on a small ferry sailing down a river in Germany. The Rhine, I believe it’s called.”

“Lord Chamberlain and then – bang, dead! His fall was certainly great,” Villemo said pensively. “But, then again, he brought it on himself. What about the King’s daughter?”

“Leonora Christina? Mum and Dad say that she was proud and haughty towards most people but unswervingly loyal to the villain she was married to. King Frederik III’s wife, Sofie Amalie, hated her so intensely that she had her imprisoned in The Blue Tower where she’s spent ten years now.”

A raw autumn fog enveloped them as they passed a swampy valley. Villemo loved fog. It created a unique, transfixed mood, and the moon and the stars turned pale and mystical. If her great-grandmother, Liv, had known just how thrilled the sight of it made her, she would have been horrified because it would have reminded her too much of Sol’s attraction to the occult.

“But I’m sorry for changing the topic,” said Villemo. “You were telling me about Lene’s great love.”

“Yes, well, in her young days our mum, Jessica, worked for the Ulfeldt household,” Tristan began nervously. “She was nanny to one of the little girls, Eleonora Sofia. This little girl is now grown up, but she never forgot my mum, so they’ve been friends and confidantes throughout the years. Eleonora Sofia is engaged to somebody by the name of Lave Beck. And she invited Lene to visit them at Beck’s large estate in Scania this past summer, which was where my sister met a young man, a good friend of Lave Beck, who is also King Charles XI’s knight. Örjan Stege is his name. He’s all Lene ever talks about.”

Tristan spoke so fast and confusedly that Villemo found it difficult to follow the conversation. Nevertheless, she believed she had understood the essence of what he was saying.

“Do your parents, Uncle Tancred and Aunt Jessica, approve of this match?”

“Yes, and so does Grandma Cecilie. The only thing they don’t like is that Lene will then move to Sweden if she marries this Örjan Stege. Scania is Swedish now, as you know.”

“Yes, we have to accept that state of affairs. But I’m pleased that Norway got Trondelag and Romsdal back. Our roots are in Trondelag, as you undoubtedly know. I felt somewhat without roots when Trondelag was situated on the wrong side of the border.”

“Without roots,” laughed Tristan. “By the way, is it true what they say about the Valley of the Ice People? That our ancestors lived in the wilderness in distress, in the cold and darkness? And even great-grandma was born there?”

“Of course it’s true! My dad, Kaleb, was there. Seeing the deserted valley was such an awful sight that he never got over it, he said. They had to bury Kolgrim up there in the wilderness. He was Irmelin’s uncle. And they had to carry the dying Tarjei all the way home.”

“Tarjei ... he was Dominic’s granddad,” Tristan said thoughtfully. “Would you like to visit that valley, Villemo?”

“I don’t know. Now and then, I suppose. When it’s summer and the days are bright and the sun is warm and everything’s beautiful, then I’d like to go there, because that particular valley for me stands as something mystical and exciting. But when I lie in bed at night and hear the winter storm rage outside ... my heart tightens with sorrow and despair at all those who lie dead and lonely up there. It makes me wonder how they could live like that. Then I bury myself deep under my duvet and thank the Lord that Tengel and Silje managed to get out and down here. Otherwise we might still be living there. Do you want to go there, Tristan?”

“No!” Tristan said emphatically. “I wasn’t made for the wilderness.”

“You and your refined upper-class traits!” smiled Villemo good-naturedly.

“Oh, come on,” Tristan said sternly but then he laughed.

The stars were fading into the morning light as the carriage reached the sleeping village. Only a few stars were still visible in the heavens. Villemo called them the Evening Star and the Morning Star because she knew no other names for them.

She looked up to the ridge and the Black Forest. She wondered what they might be doing up there. Were they getting ready for revenge after the murder of the man that had tried to steal from Graastensholm? They had been so quiet of late. None of them had been down in the village. There was an ominous silence ...

Kaleb was worried.

“Villemo, do you honestly want to come along to the Black Forest? It’s not a nice place, surely you know that.”

“I’ve been there before,” she said passionately. “It’s not dangerous and all four of us will be going up there. Niklas and Tristan and Irmelin and I.”

“But surely the farmhands can do that?”

“No, they’re angry with the farmhands for the shooting. It’s better that those of us who know them go up there.”

“Then I’ll join you.”

“That’s not necessary, Dad. We’ve already loaded barley and seed corn on the carriage.

“Surely that dress you’re wearing is too nice for you to be sitting on a loaded cart?”

“I had no other clean dress to put on. I’ll be careful with it,” Villemo said hastily. “We’ll soon be back.”

And then she was gone before he could come up with anything else.

She sat on the carriage with the other three while they rolled along the miserable forest road. Two oxen were pulling the load and the carriage creaked dreadfully. Her eyes searched for signs that they would soon be there. She was hardly able to sit still. Wouldn’t the Black Forest people be happy! They could get through the winter now. And she had brought a number of extra treats with her in a bundle ...

There was the Black Forest with its low, dark houses, darker than most in the village because the tar lasted longer here thanks to the protection of the forest. Smoke rose from the houses. She realised that they were up and at work.

The Black Forest people received them with stern faces and silence. Villemo knew them all now. She had asked the farmhands at Graastensholm about their names and how they were related. There was Eldar and Gudrun’s dad, a bitter, wizened man with few joys in life, who often made life unbearable for himself by being constantly irritated. By the oven stood their mother, who had a shapeless body after having borne too many children. She was surrounded by a couple of half-grown children who were obviously waiting for some food. Then two men were sitting on the long bench by the table. They were brothers of the father’s, both bachelors. She knew that the neighbouring house was where the condemned and ostracised lived. They were descendants of their ancestor’s sins. There were two families with a number of grown-up sons. People said that they were slightly abnormal. But then she told herself that she would be, too, if something so sick and repulsive had been running in her family.

Filled with an unfathomable sense of emptiness, she went out once more to help unload the carriage. Why had she come to the forest anyway? She could no longer remember.

Gudrun and Eldar stood on the ridge above the houses, each with a bundle of dried twigs for lighting the fire.

“There are those damned Ice People brats,” Gudrun said with narrow, hateful eyes. “Do they need to feel noble and important again?”

Eldar didn’t say anything. He had a frozen expression on his face. “They make me so mad,” continued Gudrun. “I really feel the urge to show them a thing or two. It would serve them right.”

“Serve them right for what?” Eldar said sharply.

“You know very well what for. All the humiliation, all their sickening benevolence.”

“It’s thanks to them that you’re alive.”

“Now listen, Eldar! What’s the matter with you?”

“Maybe I have a different view of the world because I’ve been away for so long.”

“I’ve been away for several years too. But I haven’t changed my opinion!”

“No, you haven’t ...” said Eldar.

Gudrun had been in Christiania. Her life there hadn’t exactly been anything to write home about. Now she was back because the male customers no longer desired her. She was sick and haggard, and suffered with scabies and worse. Her state of health was clear for anyone who saw her without any clothes on. But otherwise she was an exceptionally striking woman to look at, with her wild eyes and her curly hair, which reached all the way down to her knees. Before she had become ill, she was eating well and was voluptuous. She had lived a pleasant life in Christiania for as long as it lasted. In her opinion, the Black Forest was a hole, but now it was her only option.

Her eyes glimmered with an idea, which made Eldar uneasy.

“Maybe I should ...”

“Should what?” he asked hastily.

“Maybe I should test them a bit.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That lout down there!” She laughed coldly. “What do you think that posh family would say if he came home with the marks of shame?”

“Gudrun! Are you crazy? You can’t do that!”

“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” she cooed.

“Niklas from Linden Avenue? He’d never fall for you. Never!”

“No, I realise that. He wasn’t the one I had in mind.”

“Who then?”

Eldar looked down at the crowd of young men who walked back and forth between the carriage and the barn. None of the people in the houses helped them.

“Do you mean that young one down there? Who’s he?”

“I know who he is. My sisters recognised him. He’s one of the Danes. Paladin.”

“But for heaven’s sake. You can’t do that! I – I forbid it!”

She looked at him coldly. “My word, you’re really complaining, aren’t you! Maybe you’ve got a particular interest in him?”

“Don’t be so stupid! Don’t you realise what you’re getting yourself into? Haven’t we erred enough already?”

“Do you mean Woller? What’s that got to do with this? Come on, let’s go down.”

“No, I don’t want to go down while they’re here.”

“Then I’ll go on my own.”

“Gudrun, you leave the boy alone! Nothing good will come of it.”

“Not for them, no. That’s the idea.”

“No good will come of it for us either. I won’t allow it! I’ll kill you!”

She moved closer, in a threatening way. “Listen, Eldar. Why this sudden weakness?”

“It’s not weakness. I hate them just as much as you do. It just makes sense, Gudrun!”

The expression on her face alternated between fervent revenge and slyness. “Alright then, I won’t. I’ll leave now. Care to come with me?”

“No, I can’t stand them. I’ll wait till they’ve left.”

Gudrun walked down the trail and entered the courtyard.

“Oh, I see,” she said mockingly. “Have shopkeepers come to the farm?”

Villemo’s eyes, which for a second had radiated hope, now looked sad. All she had done was explain the reason why they had come as kindly as she could.

“How noble,” said Gudrun as her eyes sparkled at young Tristan. “Is he a relative of yours?”

“Yes, he’s my cousin, Tristan Paladin.”

“Is that so? The last time I saw him he was only seven or eight years old. Hello,” she said as she stretched out her hand. “I’m Gudrun. Welcome!”

Tristan blushed like a beetroot. He didn’t make a point of saying that a girl from a farm does not normally shake hands with a Paladin. She should have dropped him a deep and submissive curtsy. Even so, he took her hand and bowed courteously the way he had been taught at court.

Gudrun’s smile was promising. Villemo wondered where this sudden expression of kindness came from, but she had no time to talk. She filled the sack with the last of the corn and carried it over to the barn.

Gudrun stayed behind, talking to the extremely shy Tristan. He squirmed with embarrassment – never in his life had he seen anything so beautiful. Then she disappeared indoors because Niklas came back from the barn.

“Well, that’s it,” said Niklas.

The farmer appeared. “We’ll pay for all this,” he said aggressively. “We won’t accept handouts.”

Niklas regarded him pensively and then he nodded.

“Of course. We’re not talking about handouts. It’s our duty to pay our farmers their wages. Will you come down on Tuesday in fourteen days’ time and you can work for a few days in the stable at Linden Avenue? The one wall looks as if it’s about to give in and the winter storms can be harsh. It needs repairing before then.”

“We’ll come,” said the farmer grumpily.

Villemo climbed reluctantly and slowly up into the carriage. Now she no longer had any reason to go up to the Black Forest. She sat quietly on the way home through the forest. So did Tristan, but she didn’t notice that. The two others talked eagerly with each other.

Suddenly she looked up, gave a start and felt herself blush. A figure blocked the road. Niklas brought the oxen to a halt.

“Where have you been?” said Eldar sternly, although he knew this perfectly well.

Niklas replied calmly: “We’ve sold some barley and seed corn to your dad.”

“Sold?”

“In return, you’ll come and work on Linden Avenue for a few days. Building work. Will you be coming?”

Eldar looked as if he was about to blow up in protest but he managed to compose himself. “We’ll see.”

Then he let them pass. He had only cast a quick glance at Villemo. But when she turned back, she saw him standing on the forest road. Their eyes met and Villemo wasn’t one to look away. She felt a dizzying abyss in front of her as she looked into the narrow, hostile eyes that glided farther and farther away as the carriage moved on. A curve in the road broke their eye contact faster than she would have wanted.

The rest of the way she sat quietly, full of inner joy, all the way to the gate at Graastensholm. Then her bubbling joie de vivre forced her to stretch out her arms towards the sky with a violent jerk and a shout of joy.

“Is it so wonderful to be back home?” Niklas asked wryly. “It’s true those people are truly awful.”

Villemo didn’t answer. She felt she was invincible.