The Stepdaughter

by Margit Sandemo

  Was she unable to love anyone except one impossible ghostly character? Was any man ever going to want her for who she was and not simply desire her body, her beauty?

  To her amazement, she heard a sob and she tried hard not to burst into tears. She fumbled impatiently in the bag hanging on her belt and found she still had the small box of ointment. Unused to the tears that misted her eyes, she left the path and ran straight into the forest until she came to a secret, secluded place that no other soul knew about. She took off her clothes and rubbed the ointment on herself. Then she lay down with an improvised stick pressed hard between her loins. Half an hour later she fell into the ‘abyss,’ into the depths of darkness on the special journey that always excited her and filled her with expectation. It had been such a long wait this time! She wanted it so much, so very much!

  Then she met him once more, the Prince of Darkness, the only one who really loved and understood her. Although their meetings were never more than episodes of passionate sex, she knew this was true. What was more, she knew that no earthly being could ever arouse her and satisfy her lust as he could. This was the only kind of love she desired.

  ***

  It was as Tengel had predicted – Sol was deeply restless and couldn’t bear being at home any longer. Everyone else seemed to be satisfied with life on the farms, though. Are and some of the other peasants and lumberjacks had begun to bring some organisation to their forestry, so Are was often out in the vast forests for days on end. For her part, Charlotte was enjoying her new love, but for safety’s sake she had drawn up a special will in which Dag would receive almost everything if – and only if – she should happen to marry at any time. It had never crossed her mind that she, Charlotte Meiden, would ever have such thoughts again! Life was so confusing at times! But at the moment, it was delightful.

  The colour had also returned to Liv’s cheeks. She and Dag often disappeared on long thoughtful walks over the farm, although they never strayed out of sight of the house. As she was only recently widowed, Liv wanted everything to be done correctly and still panicked like a startled deer at the slightest touch of Dag’s hand. But she was clearly on the mend. It was amazing how much calmer her eyes had become and how easy it was for her to laugh once again.

  Little Meta also settled down well to her new life and every day she’d run endlessly between the barn and the house. She loved the work and the people that she lived with. In all her short, wretched life, she’d never been so happy as she was now.

  With all these things falling neatly into place, Sol soon felt she was no longer needed.

  Autumn arrived and began to turn the leaves on the trees into yellow, red and brown. Seeing this, Sol asked to be allowed to stay in the house in Oslo for a while just to help Liv with the decorating, as she put it.

  Tengel and Silje thought about this for a long time, but they both knew their unruly stepdaughter only too well, and in the end they agreed to let her go to Oslo. As Tengel said, they couldn’t hold onto her all her life. If they did she’d be impossible to live with.

  Strangely enough, they didn’t think of marrying her off. It would have been a simple task to find an unsuspecting man because Sol had many admirers. But to be quite honest, Tengel and Silje had never dared – and Sol had never raised the subject either.

  When the day of her departure arrived, Tengel was sad as he watched his beautiful niece ride away down the path from the farmyard under the growing autumn colours of the linden trees. He was sad and deeply anxious because she had refused any company on the journey. She preferred to travel at her own pace.

  Then, on the road to Oslo, something extraordinary occurred – and it changed her life in a heartbeat. She had stopped at a roadside inn where she knew they served good food. As she sat down at a table and pulled off her gloves – it was cold riding this late in the autumn – she happened to look at a man at a nearby table. As she looked at him, her heart missed a beat. This just couldn’t be true. Her eyes were deceiving her! It was as if her blood had rushed through her with convulsive swiftness.

  There he is, she thought, sensing that she was completely out of her wits. The Prince of Darkness! The man from all my rides to Blakulla!

  But no, it surely couldn’t be him. That would be ...

  Yes, it’s him! He exists! He’s come to the world of humans just to meet me!

  It didn’t look quite like him. He was slightly older, about the same age as Jacob Skille, and he was fair-haired while Satan’s was, of course, as black as coal. Besides, he wasn’t so intensely demonic. In fact, he looked more human.

  Of course, Sol thought excitedly, the Prince of Darkness would have to disguise himself so that people wouldn’t realise who he was. Even so, there was something devil-may-care in his expression that betrayed him.

  He wore beautiful velvet and silk – obviously he was a rich man – and when he finally looked in her direction, he instantly returned her gaze and his eyes lit up with triumphal recognition. Sol stared straight back at him, and it was immediately clear to them both that they knew each other. She saw that he was accompanied by two men and seemed unable to free himself of them. Then, as they all got up to leave, he came across to where she sat.

  “We’ll meet again, my beauty,” he whispered and hurried out.

  Sol was bewitched. She’d never seen such an attractive man in all her life. He was the Lord of the Night, the only one she could ever love.

  Never had she felt so aroused.

  When at last her food arrived, she ate it in no time. She had to wait to pay for her meal and when she left a little while later, the three men were gone. But Sol was convinced that she’d see him again. After all, hadn’t he come all the way from Blakulla just to meet her?

  Chapter 12

  Sol rushed restlessly through the streets of Oslo in search of her lord and master from the underworld. She was spending long hours decorating and furnishing Liv’s new home, but found that she just couldn’t relax. Every day Sol went to look for her lord and master from the underworld, but she never caught as much as a glimpse of him. However, she’d only been in Oslo for three days when she got herself into serious trouble.

  She had been out to buy something for the house. She stood at one of Oslo’s market stalls, looking for things to put in Liv’s house. That particular day she stood at one of the stalls about to buy a beautifully tanned and decorated leather bedspread that would look perfect in the smallest bedroom. A lot of the furniture and household goods had been sent from the old home, but things were still needed. The tanner had just laid out the bedspread, and Sol turned to him to pay for it when a middle class lady pushed in front of her and grabbed it.

  “That’s mine! I’ll take it!”

  Sol protested vehemently. “No! Wait! Now look here ...!”

  The seller was a weak man who refused to choose sides and he simply let the woman have her way. He just did as he was asked by the one who shouted the loudest.

  Sol was absolutely enraged, so angry in fact that she forgot to use her common sense. She noticed that the woman wore a skirt that was tied around the waist.

  “May your skirt fall down, you old bitch,” hissed Sol between clenched teeth. “Then everybody can see that you’re just a roly-poly pudding!’

  Sol’s wish was so intense that the knot on the woman’s skirt came untied and the heavy skirt fell to the ground in front of all those around her. Needless to say, everybody laughed.

  While the lady was panicking and trying to regain her dignity, she screamed repeatedly: “Get her! Get the witch with the evil eyes!”

  Sol couldn’t give a damn. She was so embittered that she just hissed at the woman and let herself be taken prisoner. With a crowd of town people following, she was marched between two burly men to the mayor’s office in a nearby building.

  Sol felt that all this had nothing to do with her. People were just so small-minded and lou
sy. The one who protected her was a far more powerful guardian – he’d even adopted human form in order to come and find her!

  They took Sol to a hall where several very important-looking gentlemen were seated, engaged in conversation. The crowd of people was asked to stay outside while the two men led her in and bowed low.

  One of them announced in a loud voice: “This woman has practiced witchcraft in the street. There’s no doubt about it.”

  As far as Sol could see, the mayor himself wasn’t in the room. These men, who looked at her now with mild amusement, were the mayor’s closest associates. As she looked back at them, she heard one of them sigh loudly. “I’m so sick and tired of this never-ending fuss about witchcraft! This is something for the priests to deal with, not us!”

  “Now wait a minute,” said another, speaking slowly in Danish.

  “I’m pretty certain that we’ve seen this lady before! Good heavens, I do believe we’ve quite a catch here!”

  Sol looked at him questioningly, but didn’t recognise him.

  “It’s the woman with the yellow cat’s eyes,” he said. “She disappeared from the surface of the earth in Copenhagen after causing quite a scandal. I think we should hold on to this one! She knows a lot more than just her bedside prayers, so they say! After she’d left Copenhagen, it was rumoured that she’d made people wriggle across the floor like snakes – and much more besides.”

  One of the more prominent men shook his head decisively. “No, I don’t care what you say. I’ll have nothing to do with it. One of the count’s wagons is waiting outside. Let’s send this unfortunate woman to him. This is something that he should deal with and not us!”

  The decision was made and Sol was taken to the courtyard at the back of the building to the wagon. At last it was beginning to dawn on her what was about to happen, and she got a bit scared, not for her own sake but for her family. She decided there and then not to reveal her name to anyone.

  The wagon driver, who had prepared the wagon for the journey, turned round to see who he’d be taking with him on his return journey. He was a stocky, handsome-looking man with blonde hair but with a strange emptiness in his eyes.

  When Sol heard him gasp in surprise, she took a closer look – and to her amazement she recognised him at once.

  It was Klaus – her very first conquest and Charlotte’s former stable boy at home. She was about to shout a greeting but stopped herself at the very last minute.

  It had been seven years since they’d met – but she could see immediately from the expression on his face that he’d never forgotten her. Of course! She remembered now that Charlotte had found him a job in the count’s stables. He carried a letter for the count that would probably tell him everything about her.

  At that moment, Sol decided that she’d cut this journey short before they arrived at their destination – and Klaus was going to help her! The soldier would be no problem as long as she could find the right place ...

  Klaus, having obviously recognised her wish for him to stay silent, climbed onto the wagon without looking at her and they started out of the courtyard along a back street away from any crowds. Soon they’d left Oslo behind them and began heading west.

  Before long the soldier leaned forward over the driver’s seat. “We’ve got a real catch this time,” he told Klaus in an undertone. “They say that she’s the worst witch in all the Nordic countries!”

  “What, her?” asked Klaus with a quick, frightened glance back at Sol.

  “Oh, indeed! It’s straight to the rack and the wheel for this one, and then to the stake. I expect the bishop will be there to watch the fun when this one burns!”

  “But surely they won’t burn her, will they?” Sol could hear the despair in Klaus’ voice.

  “She’s remarkably beautiful to look at, I must admit. But they’re always the worst ones.”

  A muffled sound of distress came from Klaus and he seemed to shrink down into his seat.

  He continued to drive the wagon in silence, avoiding Sol’s eyes, and as they drove into the woods, the soldier rose from his seat and pushed past Sol with a vindictive grin to take up a position with his legs astride in the rear of the wagon.

  ‘This should be a pretty good place,’ thought Sol while still keeping outwardly calm.

  Then suddenly she let out a shrill piercing scream. It sounded exactly like the noise by a bird of prey as it dived for the kill. At that same moment she picked up a strap that had lain on the floor of the wagon and threw it at the horse’s rump. The sharp points of the buckle bit painfully into its flesh.

  The terrified horse whinnied and bolted, jumping forward and jolting the wagon. The soldier lost his balance and tumbled backward onto the road with a wild cry. The letter he’d been holding fell from his hand into the back of the wagon and he ended up sprawled face down on the road. He watched helplessly as the wagon careered faster and faster into the woods. The horse was running wild and it took all of Klaus and Sol’s combined efforts to restrain and regain control of it. This job was made even more difficult because Klaus had himself been flung off his seat into the back of the wagon as the horse sped off.

  “You’re crazy, Sol” he gasped as he took his seat again. “What do you think the count will say about this?”

  “What do you think he’ll say if I simply let you take me to him?” she replied doggedly, bracing her feet against the boards and grasping the reins. “He’ll burn me at the stake – after he’s tortured me.”

  “No, he mustn’t do that! I’ve seen what they did with one witch – it was horrible!”

  The horse was beginning to calm down now and the wagon was moving more slowly. They’d both regained their breath and Sol smiled suddenly at Klaus.

  “I think I’ll get off here and you can carry on back to your stables.” As she spoke, she reached into the back of the wagon and retrieved the letter that the soldier had dropped.

  “No, I can’t arrive home without my prisoner – you know that! I’m going to come with you.”

  “Then hurry before someone sees us.”

  “What about the horse and the wagon?” asked Klaus anxiously.

  “We can’t take the wagon and there’s no time to unhitch the horse. The soldier could be chasing after us.”

  “No, he won’t,” said Klaus glumly. “I don’t think he’ll ever be able to run again.”

  “Come on, let’s go,” said Sol impatiently, far less concerned about the fate of the soldier than he was.

  Klaus gave the horse a sound slap on its rear. “Home with you! Back to the farm!” he said in a kind voice.

  With the empty wagon rattling along behind it, the horse walked off through the forest. The sound of its progress could be heard for a long time after Sol and Klaus left the road and headed off across a tract of marshland and bare rocks. At first they ran as fast as they could, but eventually they had to slow down because of the rough ground.

  “Where are we?” asked Sol breathlessly. They were standing on a ridge and below them in every direction they saw only forest. Far off to the south they could catch a glimpse of water. It was the Oslo fjord.

  “I don’t know exactly where we are,” answered Klaus, breathing with difficulty. “North of Akershus fortress, at any rate.”

  I’d figured that out for myself, thought Sol, giving Klaus a shrewd glance. He was still simple and clumsy, but she could see why as a fourteen-year-old she’d been so attracted to him – then as now it had been his rough, strapping build, his innocent expression, and his very noticeable masculinity.

  Looking him up and down, she chuckled. “Well, Klaus, my old friend. This was certainly an unexpected meeting, eh?”

  He looked a little crestfallen. “You bring bad luck with you. You aren’t really a witch, are you?”

  “What would you like me to be?”

  Klaus stared down at the
mossy ground. “My girl,” he said shyly.

  “Then that is what I’ll be!” said Sol in an unexpectedly gentle voice.

  “But what are we to do now?”

  It wasn’t so easy for Klaus to follow more complicated thought processes and he dug absentmindedly at the moss with the toe of his boot and didn’t answer.

  “I can’t return to Linden Avenue again,” explained Sol. “The authorities don’t yet know my name and I want to protect my family. I can’t return to Oslo either because they’ll recognise me by my eyes and then I’ll be arrested again.”

  “And I can’t return to my stables,” said Klaus. “Anyway, I don’t want to. It wasn’t so good in the service of the count.”

  Sol had noticed a number of scars on his cheek that might have come from a whip, and he touched them distractedly as he continued. “The only place that was nice was at Graastensholm. If only I could go back there!”

  “I don’t think you can. I heard long afterwards that you were moved to another place to make sure that you and I were kept apart.”

  From its perch in one of the few tall pines high above, a kite screeched. The noise echoed eerily in the silence and Sol looked up at it thoughtfully.

  “They didn’t succeed though,” she muttered. “We found each other this time, you and I.”

  Klaus sighed as he thought back. “Ever since we were together, Sol, I’ve had one great wish – and that is to do it again!”

  “But surely, my dear friend, you’ve had other girls?”

  “Yes, but they were nothing. They were like dead cows!”

  Sol laughed out loud. She was flattered. “But where are we to go now?”

  Klaus looked up in the sky for inspiration. “I was just thinking ...”

  ‘Excellent,’ thought Sol, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I was just thinking we could go home to my place,” said Klaus.