Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 26 - The Secret

It was 1817 when Eskil, now aged twenty, left Tula on her own in Christiania instead of accompanying her to Sweden. He said goodbye to her with the aim of finding his Eldafjord. It was now or never! He had brought plenty of money with him. He intended to be away from home long enough for his parents not to become suspicious. However, he was to be away for much, much longer than he had thought ...

He got off to a good start. He rode to Western Norway, where he reckoned that Eldafjord must be. However, the western region turned out to be far bigger and more complex than he had expected. Another thing that complicated matters was the fact that young Eskil Lind of the Ice People was quite a talkative chap. He found it easy to get to know people and he loved to chat. It didn’t matter what the topic was, so long as the conversation moved at full speed.

But he should never have discussed politics, because it was far too sensitive a topic at the time. People were beginning to be vigilant and suspicious. Just like Eskil, King Karl Johan's spies expressed strong opinions. They would put on an act in order to discover who the public really sympathised with.

Eskil knew nothing about this. His heart was white as snow as far as politics was concerned. He only wanted to talk because he thought it was fun to express his opinions intelligently and show off his oratory.

For the most part, things went well. The men in inns and on the road took him for what he was – a young greenhorn who knew nothing about the country’s situation.

Then everything went wrong.

He had come to a large town, almost a city, in Western Norway. The inhabitants were already pretty annoyed with King Karl Johan’s spies because there had been many of them. And this was clearly another one: Eskil. Surely people ought to be able to hold their own opinions without the king interfering in everything? But naturally he wanted to know who did, or did not, support him. Now he had sent a bleary-eyed young lad, still wet behind the ears!

The message was passed from mouth to mouth, and in the end, a totally baffled Eskil was sent to prison for vagrancy – because this was the only thing they could come up with.

There he sat, shaking the bars of the cell, shouting out his innocence to all and sundry, but nobody listened to him. He didn’t even know why he had been arrested, because nobody had the courage to admit openly that they suspected him of being a spy. What would the king have to say about that?

Eskil wrote letters asking for help, which were never sent because the gaolers tore them up as soon as they left his cell. In the end, he began to lose heart. He thought he would have to stay there forever, languishing in that miserable prison. Forgotten by the world, his only company was fleas, lice and rats, plus the occasional boozer turning up for a day or two. He would catch glimpses of thieves and other scoundrels as they were moved from one cell to another. The food was miserable and Eskil grew skinny. His clothes were in tatters and he was often ill. But worst of all was the sorrow that was eating away at him. Why? What had he done? Why didn’t anybody come to his assistance?

One day when he had lost track of the days and months, a random prisoner was put in his cell. Eskil never heard what he had done because he wouldn’t talk about it. Eskil, who had become taciturn and bitter about his lot in life, began to loosen up a bit in the company of his new cellmate. Within a few hours he had told him that he had been on his way to Eldafjord but had been arrested for some unknown reason. “I no longer believe that Eldafjord exists,” he went on. “Before I was locked up in here I’d travelled all over Western Norway, but nobody had heard of the place.”

“Why do you want to go to Eldafjord?”

Eskil jumped up. “What? Do you know Eldafjord?”

“Yes, of course. It’s not far from here. But there’s nobody there. The only way to get to Eldafjord is by boat and I don’t think anybody in this town would want to get into a boat. They only know places that they can reach on foot. So forget Eldafjord – it’s not a place you’d want to settle in.”

But Eskil made careful enquiries about how to reach it. To be honest, he was no longer drawn to the house and the treasure in Eldafjord. All he wanted was to get out of this prison.

He just couldn’t understand why his parents didn’t come to his rescue. It wasn’t at all like them.

A month later, when the icicles were dripping outside his tiny window, Eskil received unexpected assistance. One of King Karl Johan’s men came to the town. This man, who was a kindly soul, heard from an open-mouthed civil servant that people were unhappy with all the spies infesting the valley and about the one they had been forced to arrest for “vagrancy”.

The king’s man wrinkled his brow. No young man had been sent out, certainly not to this district. It had been investigated a long time ago and found to be of no interest.

It was an embarrassing conversation.

No, it was true: the boy had never admitted anything. He had just been so curious! He wanted to discuss everything.

This made the king’s man really cross. The local authorities couldn’t just arrest his majesty’s spies, no matter how talkative they were. He insisted on meeting this Eskil. The open-mouthed civil servant got nervous and promised to arrange it straight away. This was how Eskil came to be released. The showdown between the town council and the king’s loyal man was another, very unfortunate, story, which won’t be retold here.

Eskil was free! The bigwig saw to it that he got his horse, his money and his clothes back.

Then he left the town.

What was he to do now? His first impulse was, of course, to return to Graastensholm and his parents, worn out and exhausted as he was from his long and tough isolation. But after an excellent man-sized lunch with wine at the inn, Eskil began to have second thoughts.

He hadn’t heard a word from his parents during all these months. He felt hurt, even if he suspected that there must be something else behind it, other than just anger or indifference.

He was twenty-one now.

And he was very close to Eldafjord ...

Should he?

It wouldn’t have to take very long ...

Now that he had emptied the decanter, he felt strong and confident once more.

He wrote another letter, just to be on the safe side.

Dear Mother and Father,

If it’s of any interest to you, this is to tell you that I’ve been released from hell. Why did you never drop me a line or answer my letters? Wouldn’t you accept my plea for forgiveness?

I’ll be back sooner or later. But now I’m close to the objective of my journey, so I’m going there first.

In spite of everything,

Your affectionate son, Eskil

He spent several days at the inn to rest and recuperate. Then he rode towards the coast, because he wanted to find a boat that could take him to Eldafjord.

All through the winter, Eskil’s parents, Heike and Vinga back home in Graastensholm, had been trying to track down their vanished son. They hadn’t heard a word from him. They had written many letters, and Tula had been unable to help them. She was distressed, blaming herself for not trying to make Eskil tell her more about his clandestine journey. But he had been so secretive about Eldafjord. She had gathered that there was some sort of a house there, with some kind of promise or legend attached to it. When she and Eskil parted company in Christiania, he had been going northwest, heading towards something really exciting. He had hinted that he would be testing his talents as a sorcerer, which he believed he had inherited from the Ice People. He had told her that he might be one of the chosen or stricken ones of the clan. Tula regretted bitterly that she hadn’t relieved him of this delusion. She was the one who was stricken, but she had been too scared to tell him so. Much might have gone very differently if she had revealed herself.