Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 10 - Winter Storm

He thought that he hadn’t been impetuous, but she’d still understood his yearning. She’d been so sweet and said that he hadn’t at all misused his superior position towards a poor subordinate. No, he had no reason to feel anxious. She wouldn’t say anything about who it was who had touched her. She hadn’t pulled back, merely whimpered a bit, asking him to consider a young, innocent girl. She knew so little. All she knew was that it was any farmer’s right to reap the fruits that were his due.

“But I don’t want to hurt you,” Tristan had stuttered.

“I know that,” she had sobbed. “You’re a fine gentleman and I’m a poor girl. I can’t help that my heart is moved by just looking at you.”

“I’m also moved,” he admitted with a trembling voice while a hitherto unknown fever rushed through his body, making his hands weak. What were the short, empty ecstasies of looking at girls compared to this? “I mean at seeing you. At feeling your beautiful hair between my fingers.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said with a shy whisper. “We know that all husbands have the right to be with the girls on the farm.”

“All?” said a surprised Tristan, thinking of his dad, Kaleb, Brand and Mattias. This just didn’t make sense to him.

Gudrun realised that her assurances could turn out to be counter-productive. She had learned a lot about men and their reactions during the years she had spent in Christiania. “Well, not all, of course but the majority by far. It’s their privilege and we subordinates have given in constantly. We believe that it is an honour to be chosen.”

She had a slight suspicion that she was contradicting herself, so she quickly added. “But nobody has yet taken an interest in me. Am I really so repulsive?”

“Of course not, Miss Gudrun. Of course not!”

Although Gudrun kept on pointing out that she was shy, somehow she had kept on moving closer. Tristan had been overwhelmed by a deafening, violent dizziness and hadn’t sensed anything except her delightful proximity, her hair against his cheek, her body against his, her passionate, moist lips. And now, in a moment of clarity, he found himself lying between the pig hides. She kept pulling at his clothes so that the lower part of his body was bare.

For a fraction of a second Tristan thought: ‘God, how can I violate that poor girl?’ But then he was unable to think any more. He felt like a wild bull that butted and forced its way forward. Afterwards, it was as if he was about to go unconscious because it had been so truly wonderful.

Gudrun pushed aside the unsure boy with a grimace. There was a smile of disgust and triumph on her face. Now it was done. Revenge for all the humiliation ...

But now it was best to leave Graastensholm for a while, before the scandal and rumours became a fact. And Eldar ...? She harboured a mixture of fright and respect for her brother. There was every reason to take his threat that he would kill her very seriously because he was capable of doing it.

Come to think of it, his reaction had been strange. As a child, he’d always been a willing collaborator for her hatred. He’d been easy to stir up. Nobody despised the Meidens and the Ice People more than he did.

He’d said that he’d been out and about in the world. Learned to see with different eyes. Nonsense! Wasn’t she worldly as well? She’d certainly learned something about life. And whose fault was it anyway? The Ice People’s. The Meidens, who had banished them from the family’s big farm and turned them into their slaves, those damned, arrogant boasters! She was of just as fine extraction as they were. Well, maybe she wasn’t nobility, but the nobility was highly overestimated anyway. Particularly Danish nobility.

Gudrun worked herself up into a dither as she lay there. She got to her feet with a jerk so that Tristan almost fell to the floor.

“Oh, God, what have we done?” she moaned. “Oh, poor me. Now I’ll have to throw up in the lake. No, we can’t meet any more, never again, and never again will I be able to look you in the eyes. What must you think of me since I was such easy prey for your art of seduction? Now I’ll forever be a dishonoured girl.”

Tristan was heartbroken. She had to calm and soothe him, and then they later parted in shame, promising each other to forget, never to mention anything to anybody, and never to see each other again. The whole adventure was a bitter experience for Tristan to swallow. And it would turn out to be even more bitter ...

Villemo met Irmelin by the church. Irmelin with her gentle, fine smile, always calm and unperturbed. Daughter of Mattias and Hilde, grandchild of Yrja. Irmelin had inherited her disposition from these three good-hearted people and from Hilde’s grandmother. She had none of the weaknesses of her maternal grandpa, Joel the Night Man, or her paternal grandpa, Tarald. She had turned into a strong and gentle girl. Although she was almost a head taller than Villemo, she appealed to men’s protective instinct. This was no doubt due to her warm, touching smile.

Nobody would ever dream of protecting Villemo! That little independent lady, who observed people on the church hill from the corner of her eye. But what about inside the church?

“Should we go in?” asked Villemo.

“Shouldn’t we wait for the others from Linden Avenue?”

“Of course.”

They turned up at last, almost all of them men. Eli was the only woman left at Linden Avenue. Brand was there, and so were Andreas and the two young men, Niklas and Dominic. When she was a child, she would call them “Dominiklas.” Villemo suddenly felt a strong urge to be a child again. They had had such fun together. But now everything was so different.

They went into the church together. Tristan seemed so strange today. One moment he would blush and the next moment turn pale, his eyes radiating joy and then suddenly revealing a guilty conscience. Villemo thought that he was probably at an awkward age.

She looked over the men’s pews, but very quickly so that nobody would think that she was interested. With a deep, resigned sigh she seated herself right at the front of the church. The vicar talked. And talked. But all his good words were lost on Villemo. What on earth was she doing in church?

After the service, the elderly members of the congregation tried to agree on who was to be in charge of the coffee today. They had agreed that it had to be at Graastensholm when Villemo noticed that Irmelin was talking to her and had mentioned a name ...

“What did you say?” asked Villemo. “Please say it again, I was listening to your mum.”

Irmelin smiled. “All I said was that I’d heard the servant girls chatting this morning. They were talking about last night’s ball in Eikeby.”

“Yes, but what was it you were saying about it?”

Irmelin raised her eyebrows, surprised at her interest. “Well, they said that Eldar from the Black Forest had been there.”

“Oh, was that all?” said Villemo in a totally indifferent voice. “Does he normally turn up?”

“The girls say that since he came home, he doesn’t normally turn up.”

“I suppose he’s angry with girls,” Villemo said, her heart beating violently.

“He left quickly, they said. They sounded slightly disappointed because they thought that he’s become extremely stylish. I find him a little strange. Wild and dangerous in a way.”

“Yes,” said Villemo, feeling like a traitor.

Eikeby? Of course, she had heard that there was to be a ball there. The landowners and their families tended not to go to such parties, but people in Eikeby were their relatives. Mattias’s Mum, Yrja, came from there.

‘Why hadn’t I gone there?’, thought Villemo. She was repentant and felt terribly disappointed. She could have thrown herself down and banged her fists on the ground out of bitterness. But she concealed her emotions.