Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 10 - Winter Storm

In Denmark, Villemo’s maternal grandmother, Cecilie, was a widow since her dear Alexander had passed away. She didn’t visit so frequently anymore. She was more than seventy years old and her mother, Lis, was gone. So Gabriella would journey to Denmark instead to visit her mother. Gabriella was in Denmark right now together with her husband, Kaleb, in order to find some corn for Elistrand, so Villemo was responsible for the farm all on her own. Well, actually the farm bailiff was mostly the one who was in charge, but she was there, which was the main thing.

The new generation had taken over the farms. Apart from Cecilie, Brand was the only one left of the old generation. At Linden Avenue, there were plenty of younger family members. There was Brand, his son and his wife, Eli and their son, Niklas. Things were worse at Graastensholm. Everybody could see that the family name, Meiden, was dying out. Mattias and Hilde wouldn’t have any more children than their one daughter, Irmelin. She would be the last Baroness Meiden because all the other relations in Norway and Denmark had passed away a long time ago. In a few years’ time, a Baron lineage would no longer exist.

Villemo turned towards Linden Avenue. All the linden trees which Tengel had planted were gone now. All that was left now were some new, innocent trees.

An epoch disappeared with Liv. An epoch that had begun in a quiet, remote mountain valley in Trondelag. But Villemo felt that the legacy went on. She carried it herself. Threads that had been spun from the unfortunate mountain valley now spread far and wide. Right up to the village, to Gabrielshus in Denmark and to the Swedish court in Stockholm. The family had travelled far, by strange routes. And in them all, the seed of the evil legacy grew. Villemo had given the same promise as Tengel had done a long time ago not to marry, and not to carry the evil legacy any further.

She knew it was wrong of her to think like that. She had another legacy to continue. Silje, whom everybody considered to be the ancestral mother of all the kin, had only had one daughter, Liv. Liv also had one daughter only, Cecilie, and she in turn had her only daughter, Gabriella, who was Villemo’s mother. So it was Villemo’s duty to try to have a daughter. Silje’s granddaughter’s granddaughter’s daughter.

But she didn’t want to. Firstly because of the curse and secondly because she was too childish to care about the thought of having children herself. It sounded horrible, ugly and disgusting. No, she didn’t want that at all!

And what about the yellow eyes which confused everybody in the family? It would soon be revealed precisely why these three – Niklas, Dominic and Villemo – had such eyes.

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.