Despite the weather, they could not afford to stay there for too long. They needed to reach more appropriate lodgings to spend the night. As they left Hjerkinn the snow turned to rain once more, but they did not encounter any real problems until they reached the staging inn south of the Dovre Mountains.
Weary and exhausted after the day’s hard long trek, they were well received by the innkeeper and made themselves comfortable. Gratefully they accepted the best meals the house could provide. Tengel kept his hood up to hide his features as much as possible, but there was a distinct twinkle in his eye, indicating to Silje that, in spite of himself he was enjoying the benefits of travelling with the aristocracy!
It was while they were eating that the innkeeper came and alerted them to two strangers who were sitting together at one side in the dining-room. He told them he felt they had been observing Charlotte’s finery with greedy eyes for too long. ‘I can’t throw them out, you understand,’ he said, ‘as long as they cause no trouble. But they are no better than highwaymen, and that’s a fact. So if you’ll take my advice, you’ll place a guard on your belongings this night. Aye, and bar the doors of your rooms properly too!’
Charlotte was finding the mixture of odours in the room from humans and food alike too much for her, but she thanked the innkeeper politely and promised to do as he suggested. Tengel offered to sit in the corridor and guard her door, but she refused, saying that it was a duty suited to a couple of her servants. Sol watched everything and everyone wide-eyed and listened so closely you could almost see her ears flapping.
It was customary for travellers to be given a place to sleep in the large hall adjoining the dining-room, but there were a few small rooms on the floor above that were reserved for more distinguished guests. Silje found it quite comical that she and her family were now treated as such – although naturally she knew these privileges were the result of Charlotte’s influence.
The Baroness would never have dreamt of sending her daughter away with just a few servants and Tengel’s family. Consequently there was one man accompanying them who, with propriety and authority, supervised Charlotte’s affairs. Silje had no idea what his real title was – he was probably a bursar – but she believed he was returning to Trondheim as soon as they had arrived at their destination.
This young noblewoman had been accustomed to more refined society and would never have chosen to share a table with people from the same class as Tengel and Silje. Now, in an unfamiliar world of which she knew nothing surrounded by disreputable travellers, she sought their company. This also brought her closer to Dag and with every hour that passed she became more attached to him. In her heart she longed for the day when she could look after him properly and openly as his mother.
‘You say you think he is intelligent?’ she asked Silje at one point.
‘Very!’ replied Silje. ‘I noticed it from his very early days.’
‘It would be a pity for such an intellect to be wasted,’ mused Charlotte. ‘I’ve been thinking something. Could I tutor him do you think? Just a few hours each week?’
Tengel and Silje looked at each other with broad grins. They both held the view that learning was the way to get the most out of life. ‘Nothing could please us more,’ said Silje. ‘But would it not seem odd if … I mean …’
‘Oh, I understand.’ Charlotte interrupted. ‘Of course, I meant all the children. Well, the two oldest for the moment anyway.’
‘In which case, you do us a great service. Mistress Charlotte,’ declared Tengel warmly. ‘And we shall be sure to repay you by giving you our undying loyalty.’
‘Then we are agreed,’ she said, smiling. She was astonished over how pleasant it could be to talk to the lower classes. But these people were different from others in so many ways, she told herself. Poor, dear Charlotte! She had so little experience of the world.
They were sitting apart from other travellers in a corner of the dining-room that had been reserved for the use of more distinguished company. They could not avoid the smells and hubbub, however, or escape the eyes of the other guests. But Tengel kept his back to them. When an opportunity arose, they questioned the innkeeper very discreetly about the Ice People. Did he know anything about them? Had he ever heard tell of them? Ice People? No, the name was completely unknown to him; and he had met most sorts – folk from the district as well as wayfarers passing through.
This was a great relief to them all. The notoriety of the Ice People had not crossed the Dovre Mountains. Even Tengel gave a satisfied sigh and eventually, as the realisation sank in, he felt himself relaxing from the pressures of the past weeks. He attracted people’s attention, that was true, and the innkeeper had been wary of him at first. Now he sat in the shadows disturbing nobody. Other guests had not spotted him and he intended to be seen by as few people as possible.
Tired by the trip, it was not late when they went up to their beds. They called to Sol and Liv who were skipping and jumping around the dining-room, chatting with the guests as they went. Both girls were scolded for their behaviour but, while Liv took it hard and began to cry. Sol was unconcerned and merely looked at them with glittering mysterious eyes. No one could ever know what that girl was thinking – those shimmering eyes concealed so much.
In the middle of the night Charlotte was awoken by a dull heavy noise. She tried to wake her chambermaid but found she was sound asleep. There was someone in the room – she knew it by instinct! But the door had been bolted and barred. The window! The man – or were there two? They must have crept along the roof and prised open the shutter. Had they used a ladder, perhaps?
Charlotte opened her mouth to scream, but before she could let out even a squeak, a rough hand was pressed over her mouth and the blade of a knife gleamed threateningly in the half-light. While one man held her down, the other rifled through her belongings. The maid stayed sleeping – she must have been exhausted.
Despite the danger, Charlotte was in a rage. She knew that her servants were asleep on the other side of the door while Tengel’s family was asleep at the other end of the corridor. And she was lying here, helpless. They probably intended to stick a knife into her …
But they didn’t. The chambermaid stirred and, after a whispered conversation, the men tied the two women up securely. Then they continued searching, swearing softly, until they discovered Charlotte’s most valuable casket. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the half-light and she could see them quite well. As she watched, one of them wiped the sweat from his brow.
‘What shall we do with these old women?’ whispered his companion. ‘They might have seen us – best if we – er …?’
‘Yes, you go. l must rest a little. Then I’ll take care of them. We’ll meet up at the usual place. Wait for me there. At the moment I’m not feeling too good.’
The first man climbed out through the window, carrying the casket with him. They had found nothing else – she had brought so few pieces of any value with her on this journey. The second man sat down heavily on the chambermaid’s bed. He wiped his hands across his face and then grabbed at his stomach, groaning heavily. A moment later he got to his feet, trying to find his balance, and Charlotte watched helplessly as he lurched towards her bed, still brandishing the knife. She lay there paralysed with fear, the gag muffling her attempts to scream and the ropes biting into her skin. The pitiful sounds that she managed to utter were too weak to be heard through the door.
The man stood motionless over her in the middle of the room looking down into her face. Then he swayed unexpectedly, fell forwards onto the floor with a crash and lay still with one arm resting on her bed. Charlotte pushed his arm off the bed with her knee and it hit the floor with another loud thud – and that was how they remained until daybreak, both women dreading that the man would wake up and kill them. But he never woke again!
Charlotte had barred the door from the inside. This meant that the innkeeper, Tengel, the bursar and a host of other people were now desperately trying to enter her room throug
h the window! Of them all, the only one to succeed in climbing the ladder they had discovered standing mysteriously beneath the window, was the ‘man of authority’. He then opened the door for the others, who had returned to the corridor, still upset and worried.
‘This man is dead,’ announced the innkeeper. ‘You were lucky there, Gracious Mistress! But where is his friend? They are not from these parts, you see. They only show themselves here now and then.’
‘He is not far away.’ said Sol calmly. She stood, wearing only her chemise, looking inquisitively at the dead man.
Tengel shot a worried glance in her direction. He ushered all the visitors, except Silje. from the room and he sat down on the chambermaid’s bed, holding Sol by the shoulders. Charlotte and the maid sat on the other bed rubbing life back into their wrists.
‘Sol,’ asked Tengel, his voice menacingly soft, ‘what is it you’ve done?’
She gazed at him innocently, ‘I didn’t want – they were going to be horrid to nice Mistress Charlotte. I heard what they said about her, down where they were eating.’ The room was silent as they listened to her, their fears growing. ‘So I put some stuff in their jug of ale – just a bit – when I was running around and talking to them. But I only took a little bit! From that tiny, tiny leather pouch Hanna gave me – you know! The black one.’
‘Oh, dear God,’ muttered Tengel.
At that moment the innkeeper put his head round the door. ‘They’ve found the other one,’ he told them. ‘Lying dead on the ground not far from here. We have all your valuables, Gracious Mistress. They were strewn all around him. Two dead ’uns! Who’d have thought? What an uncanny thing, eh!’
‘Thank you,’ Charlotte muttered, her lips barely moving. ‘Be sure to tell those worthy folk who found them of my gratitude.’
Tengel’s face had taken on a grey pallor. ‘Sol,’ he said, through clenched teeth, ‘you will give me Hanna’s bundle now – all of it – at once!’
‘But it’s mine!’ she yelled.
‘Yes, that it is. But until you are grown up enough to master the healing arts, you shall not have it. Do you understand?’ Although he had said ‘healing arts’, everyone in the room knew that he meant something entirely different.
For a brief moment Charlotte shivered violently. Nothing like this had ever happened in her life, which had been largely lacking in love and full of indifference. She could not deny the thrill she felt at being in the presence of two such extraordinarily forceful individuals as Tengel and Sol. Tengel was a good person through and through – but she was not so sure about Sol.
Charlotte did the only thing she could under the circumstances. She stretched out a hand to the girl whose eyes were brimming with tears of defiance and disappointment – but not of regret! ‘I am so grateful to you, Sol my dear,’ she said sincerely. ‘You saved my life and that of my maid. You did what you did with good intent, but your father is right – you weren’t able to measure the dose properly I am certain he will return all your things when you are older.’
‘Yes, I shall,’ affirmed Tengel. ‘Now we must leave these young ladies alone. Pardon the intrusion, Mistress Charlotte.’
‘Entirely forgivable,’ she replied with a condescending nod of the head. ‘Please inform everyone that we will be leaving directly we have eaten.’
‘Of course,’ said Tengel. He was still shaken by what had occurred, because he knew that Sol was perfectly capable of judging the correct doses of Hanna’s concoctions. ‘It would be wise for us to leave here before the bailiff arrives to investigate the deaths. And, Mistress Charlotte, perhaps you should try to dress more simply? We do not want to attract any more of their sort.’
Charlotte nodded, indicating that she understood completely.
****
Tengel and Silje stood in awe at the approach to their new home. To their right, about seven furlongs away, they could see Charlotte Meiden’s dowry, Grastensholm. It was a large imposing granite building, complete with clock tower and flags waving in the breeze. Charlotte had left them and was now making her way there. But their house...!
‘Tengel,’ said Silje, lost in amazement, ‘I thought her house would be a mansion and ours just a small cottage on the estate. But the Meiden house is a palace! This place of ours is itself a mansion! Are we truly going to live here?’
‘So it seems,’ he answered, his voice sounding tired.
In fact the house was not as extravagant as Silje, with her unpretentious view of life, had imagined. Grastensholm was a fortified mansion – a tall, square, compact building but not very attractive to look at. What Silje had called ‘a mansion’ was a much smaller, long narrow house with outbuildings at both ends. They formed three sides of a pretty, grass-covered yard and, judging from the height of the gables, there seemed to be rooms upstairs as well. So this was to be a new, exciting enterprise for them both.
‘Tengel!’ said Silje full of emotion and gripping his hand. ‘Oh, Tengel!’
‘We shall do everything we can to look after this house properly for her,’ he said solemnly.
The children stared at the house. ‘Shall we live in that house?’ asked Sol.
‘Yes, and if we carry out our duties well it could be our home for many years, perhaps.’
‘Then that’s what we’ll do, won’t we Dag and Liv?’ said Sol turning to the two little ones. A simple ‘yes’ was all they could say.
As soon as they reached the house, Silje wandered inquisitively from room to room. She was pleased to see some items of furniture were still there: beds, cupboards and one or two tables that were fixed against the walls.
‘I am a good carpenter,’ called Tengel, full of excitement. ‘Silje! That wall – can you see? It only has a wooden shutter, but isn’t it just big enough …?’
‘For Benedikt’s glass mosaic!’ squealed Silje. ‘Yes, Tengel, it’s perfect! How the colours in the mosaic will sparkle with the sun shining through it. We must ask if we may put it there! Pinch my arm, Tengel, in case this is all a dream!’
They had arrived during the middle of the day and all that afternoon was spent planning, admiring and investigating every nook and cranny as well as unpacking the few things they had brought with them. It would be some time before their other belongings arrived on the ship. Later, while Silje was preparing the first evening meal in their new home, Tengel went into their bedroom alone. He stood very still, deep in thought, listening to the children rushing happily about the house. It was far bigger than anything they had ever known before, so their voices echoed from the half-empty rooms and their footsteps clattered constantly across the wooden floors.
He opened his bag of ‘things’, as Silje preferred to call them. Searching amongst the small jars and leather pouches, he finally found a small box and for a long time let it weigh in his hand. Now, he told himself at the end of their journey, this would be the right time. He would just put the powder into her bowl. She would never suspect it was anything other than fatigue and the hardships of the trip that had cost the unborn child its life.
The very thought of what he was proposing made Ten gel feel as though cold steel had pierced his heart. He dearly wanted another child, but did not dare let it happen. The risk was too great. If he failed to do something now, then the most likely outcome would be that Silje would die and he would be left to raise a monster – one that would grow to be as wretched as he had been during all the years he had lived alone, or maybe even worse. He, Tengel, had at least been spared the most sinister traits of his evil inheritance.
Silje would never understand why he needed to do this; he knew that. She would mourn the loss of the child and, even if she never discovered that he was responsible for ... In mid-thought he paused and frowned. Without turning he sensed he was not alone in the room; somebody was watching him. And he was not overly surprised, when he swung round, to find Sol leaning against the door-frame watching him intently. There was a curious bond, a synergy, between him and his young niece, and he had never do
ubted that her powers were far greater than his own had ever been. Sol sensed so many things. All the secrets of the world lay hidden behind her eyes.
Without saying a word, she walked across and took the box from his hand. Just as calmly, she put it in her pocket. Tengel was left speechless. He had been caught red-handed!
The look in Sol’s eyes was impossible to endure. Her intense gaze bore into his very being and he sensed her words rather than heard them. ‘Like unto like. A life for a life. Would you really wish such suffering upon Silje?’
He let out a long, deep, quiet sigh and lay his hand on her head. He was tired, downcast and sorrowful. Nothing was said, but he walked across to his bed and, from the shelf above it, took down Sol’s bundle and held it out to her. Her gaze did not falter as she took hold of it and offered him the box in her other hand.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Keep it until the baby is born!’
She simply nodded, turned and left the room. Wearily, Tengel stood and watched her go. Now there could be no going back.
****
They had just finished their evening meal when a message arrived from the Lady of the Manor that she wished to speak with Tengel. He set off straight away, walking along a small path across the fields, and his spirits were lifted by the beautiful scenery all around him. Behind the house was woodland and forest while from the front one looked down on open countryside and the church. Far off in the distance he could see an expanse of water but whether it was a lake or the inlet of a fjord was impossible to tell. It was something to be explored in due course. An exciting life lay ahead of them, of that he was sure.
Charlotte Meiden and Tengel met in one of the smaller drawing-rooms and spent a long time talking about the running of the farms and estates. To him the room seemed vast. All the proportions and dimensions of this castle, which was how he thought of it, were so huge. This house was not completely furnished either, and was barely ready to live in. Charlotte’s household goods and furniture were needed and would be well suited here.
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