Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 08 - Under Suspicion

“You?” asked a surprised Are.

Liv smiled sadly. “You must remember that I’ve seen seven generations of the unfortunate afflicted among the Ice People.”

“Seven? But that’s impossible!” exclaimed Mattias.

“It’s true. I met Hanna, the witch. I was only three years old but I remember her. She’s someone you never forget. There was also another witch in the Valley of the Ice People of the same generation as Hanna – so there can be more than one who’s afflicted in each generation – but I never met her. My mother, Silje, was the only one who saw her. Then I met Grimar, Hanna’s helper, who was one generation younger than her. That makes two. Then there’s my dear, late Dad, Tengel the Good. In my generation there was our cousin, Sol, who was like a sister to us. Trond I only knew as a lovely, happy boy. I had no idea that he was struck, not until afterwards.”

Liv’s voiced was filled with sadness. “Kolgrim we all knew. In the tragic history of the Ice People, nothing gives me so much pain as thinking of poor Kolgrim’s fate. And Are and I were the only ones to see Gabriella’s little, accursed daughter.”

She held her breath for a moment and continued: “My Dad taught me about our clan’s power bit by bit, but I learned most from dear Sol. She was wild and unhappy but also full of joy and zest. She liked to illustrate what she was capable of. Although I’d never dream of practicing witchcraft, I still know a lot about it.”

“What about the knots?” asked Yrja.

“Well,” smiled Liv, “they have nothing to do with death or violence. It’s is just something you make when you don’t want the neighbour’s cow to produce so much milk. I insist that it has no effect whatsoever when it comes to witchcraft. Sol thought it was useless, and so do I.”

“Well, then, why did that woman have the string in her hand?” asked Tarald.

“I have no idea. Maybe it’s a sign that she practised magic. Or was at least interested. You must remember that witchcraft depends entirely on the person who practises it. If I tried, nothing would happen at all. But Sol was simply born with that talent. She could do the most incredible things just with telepathy. Are and I saw it for ourselves.”

“Do all of the Ice People who are struck have this ability?” asked Kaleb.

“More or less. Sometimes the legacy manifests as pure evil, and sometimes it’s dormant, as with Trond ... Hanna and Sol had supernatural powers and so did my Dad, but he didn’t want to use them.”

“Wait a minute,” said Gabriella. “Grandma says that it can be dormant ...”

Liv nodded. Are began to speak: “Precisely. You hit the nail on the head. This is what I now fear: that one of us possesses this evil power and the rest of us know nothing about it.”

“I don’t think so,” said Yrja spontaneously.

“Well, it’s very unlikely,” said Are. “But it’s why I’ve summoned you here, to discuss the possibilities.”

“First of all,” said Tarald impatiently, “Mum and Uncle Are have lived for seventy years without anybody noticing something! So we can count them out.”

The others agreed.

“Thank you,” smiled Are. “That leaves Brand, Tarald, Mattias and Gabriella.”

“You can rule out Gabriella,” said Kaleb immediately. “She’s slogging away at our small orphanage from morning till night, then tumbles into bed. As far as I know she hasn’t been out of the house on her own in the past year.”

“Not even to visit Linden Avenue or Graastensholm in the evening?”

“Gabriella? Nobody’s as afraid of the dark as she is! I even have to follow her to the bathroom!”

“And I know of someone who drops asleep in his chair every evening,” said Yrja. “I almost have to blow the horn so that he can wake up and waddle to bed.”

The others smiled. Everybody knew that Tarald liked a dram every evening – without indulging in drinking sprees. Tarald had always been the weakest among the descendants of the Ice People. Most of them were great personalities for better or for worse, but Tarald had a weakness of character and was fairly nondescript. He had only kept his dignity thanks to Yrja.

Nobody could deny he was the epitome of kindness, though. He was also a clever landowner, but his life was marked by fickleness and a tendency to choose the simplest way out without considering the consequences.

Liv gazed at her only son with concern. Could Tarald be capable of such atrocities? Surely not. Besides, Yrja supported him, and you couldn’t find a more honest person than her. If she had suspected her husband, she would have made him understand the evil he had done, made him explain why and stand by his actions. Then she would fight like a lioness to have him acquitted.

Despite Tarald’s weak character, Liv just couldn’t imagine him as a murderer of women. And all the others were above suspicion by virtue of their character. And what about Tarald as a werewolf? No, that was even more absurd!

Liv had often pondered the character of her two children. Cecilie was so strong, a true descendant of the Ice People... but Tarald probably took after his grandfather, the useless Jeppe Marsvin, who had seduced the young Charlotte Meiden and then just disappeared.

“And I can vouch for Brand,” said Matilda with a nervous smile. “I’m the type who always knows where my loved ones are, so I can’t see how he’d have the time to walk about and murder women.”

“No,” added Andreas. “He’d have to get to know them first, wouldn’t he? I mean: surely four unknown women wouldn’t accidentally come to this remote spot just to be killed, would they?”

“Unless they were witches that would meet here,” said Kaleb.

“No, you have got to stop,” exclaimed Mattias. “You’ve excluded just about everybody and who’s left? Me! What sort of a conspiracy is this?”

They all laughed. Mattias as a criminal? That was quite impossible. Such sweet and harmless werewolves didn’t exist.

A maid entered the room. “The bailiff’s here,” she said, looking frightened.

He was shown in.

“I see that the clan is gathered,” he began. “That’s good because then I won’t have to drive around so much.”

“Do you have any news?” asked Are.

“Magic is at the heart of it.”

“I doubt that,” said Liv matter-of-factly.

“Why would the women have those knots on them otherwise?”

“I asked myself that same question,”said Liv. “It seems so unmotivated. If they had been real witches, they would have had a string with three knots plaited into their hair. That’s the sort of method such women would use. They would assert that Satan himself had tied the string when they were at the Brocken.”

The bailiff stared at her. After a long pause, he was able to speak again.

“Well, that’s what they had, each and every one of them. And here I was believing that this was a kind of fashion for women!”

Liv held her breath. “Then they were witches after all! This changes the whole matter!”

Everybody knew what she meant: that one of the Ice People could well have been involved. Apart from Tengel the Good, the relatives who had inherited the gift had never been able to resist the temptation of using their witchcraft.

Liv looked around the room. Are? No, he was not the least bit interested in supernatural things. What about those who had married into the family then? Eli, poor little thing, who had a loving home with Kaleb and Gabriella? No, she was scared of her own shadow. Yrja? Oh, no. Liv knew her daughter-in-law just as well as she knew herself.

She hardly knew Matilda, but the stout farmer’s wife was even more down-to-earth than her husband, Brand.

The bailiff gave them all a stern glance. “Of course, everybody knows that there’s always been something peculiar about your clan. So I for one am in no doubt – one of you is behind these atrocities. And I’ll find out which of you it is!”