Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 10 - Winter Storm

“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.