Torhild and her partner climbed the steps to the floor and joined the other dancers. He knew the figures well and they moved together effortlessly. She surrendered to the music, to the steps and figures, just as she always did. The music welled within her, taking her to a place without hunger, without worry, without grief.
She danced with several boys before, flushed and breathless, she declared the need for a break. Gjertrud had not appeared on the dance floor so Torhild searched the growing crowd. Finally she spotted her cousin sitting on a log near the bonfire. Torhild had drawn close before realizing that the man beside Gjertrud was Edvin Brekke. He held a small leather-bound journal on his lap, and was leaning toward the flames as if to illuminate whatever he’d written.
Torhild hesitated. It might be best to slip away.
But Edvin glanced up and saw her. “Please join us!” he exclaimed.
Gjertrud patted the log on her other side. “Yes, do. I’ve been telling Edvin about some of our dances.” She turned to the visitor. “Torhild is one of the best dancers in the region.”
“Wonderful!” Edvin scribbled something down. “What is the dance they’re doing now?”
“Why, that’s the Gammal Reinlendar.” Torhild was surprised that Edvin didn’t know such a popular dance.
His pencil scratched on the page. “I’ve never seen this Reinlendar variant before, although it’s based on a schottische step.”
Torhild couldn’t imagine what had motivated him to come here. “Why are you writing all this down?”
Edvin shoved an errant lock of sandy hair from his forehead. “I play the violin myself. I also teach music and dance in Bergen, but of course we have many foreign influences in the city. I am traveling to the corners of Norway, documenting your pure peasant traditions.”
“Isn’t that exciting?” Gjertrud asked. “He thinks what we do here is important!”
Edvin leaned forward to look directly at Torhild. “Tell me, do you like hardingfele music?”
She shifted uneasily on the log. “Well, yes—”
“Even though some call it ‘the devil’s instrument’?” His eyes gleamed with humor. “I understand you country people are quite superstitious.”
Torhild thought of the fiddle that had been destroyed on her parents’ wedding day, and of the heartache that had followed. The local whispers pairing fiddling with evil had only intensified after the tragedy. “I do not believe in that evil,” she said firmly. Any magic created by a talented fiddler came from his own skill, his own long hours of practice.
“Is that why you come to dances?”
Torhild twisted her fingers in her skirt. This man’s curiosity made her feel as if she were a specimen to be studied. Dancing and hardingfele music had always been part of life. They just were, and everyone else here understood that. Even now, away from the platform, the sound of the fiddle quivered inside her.
Gjertrud nudged her. “I enjoy it,” Torhild said finally.
“I’ll want to speak with the fiddler later as well,” Edvin added. “Some of these tunes … they are much more complex than I had expected. Say …” He straightened, looking expectant. “What can you tell me about the tune called ‘Fanitullen’?”
Torhild wished Edvin Brekke had never traveled to Hardanger.
She stood abruptly. “I’m going back to dance. Gjertrud, will you come?”
Looking perplexed, Gjertrud shook her head. “No, I’m going to stay here and help Edvin.”
Fine, Torhild thought, as she made her way back to the platform. Let Gjertrud waste her evening with the music teacher.
The fiddler ended his piece. “I need to re-tune,” he shouted, “so wet your throats, boys. And when the break is over we’ll have a Halling.”
Some of the young men whooped with approval—perhaps for the invitation to drink, perhaps in anticipation of the exhilarating dance that provided them a chance to impress admiring young women. Torhild thought of her parents, and wondered if her father had won her mother’s heart during a Halling dance. And when a boy with farmer’s hands shyly invited her to join him on the platform, she nodded. With a bit of luck, the fiddler would take her to a place where Edvin Brekke’s intrusive questions could be forgotten.
Ten
The rain stopped and shafts of sunlight pierced the clouds by the time Chloe and Roelke arrived in the grassy yard where the Hardanger Folkemuseum’s historic buildings had been restored. A few dozen people were settled on lawn chairs or blankets, but Chloe’s gaze went to Høiegård, the ancient log home where she’d experienced the overwhelming impression of complicated lives gone by. She put a hand on Roelke’s arm. “I’d like to—”
“Chloe!” Ellinor beckoned from the edge of the crowd. Next to her, curator Sonja Gullickson wore sunglasses in artsy frames and a shawl knit from some luxury yarn in gorgeous shades of blue. Her brown hair was pinned up loosely, allowing a few curling tendrils to escape. Once again the whole look suggested casual elegance.
“Sonja, hello!” Chloe said. “I thought you were still in Stockholm.”
“I’ve been trying to interview an elderly seamstress for months,” Sonja explained. “She’s one of the few people left who knows how to properly pleat and starch the traditional headscarf worn by married Hardanger women, but she has some health issues. Apparently she’s doing better, and her son invited me to visit tomorrow. By good fortune, all of the conference sessions I was involved in, or wanted to attend, were scheduled for yesterday or this morning. I was able to catch an afternoon flight.”
Ellinor slanted a smile at her colleague. “I could have covered for her, but Sonja didn’t trust me to do the interview alone.”
Chloe smiled. Any good curator was passionate about her specialty.
It was almost eight o’clock. Roelke and Chloe sat at a picnic table, and the performance began promptly. “Thank you for coming!” Torstein called. He introduced himself and the two other fiddlers—one a stocky man perhaps in his fifties, the other a younger woman with short spiky hair dyed garnet. They wore street clothes, but Torstein had donned a bunad of black knee breeches, white shirt, and red vest. “Yikes,” Chloe murmured. His attention to detail included a ceremonial dagger in a sheath, silver buckles on black shoes, and what looked like hand-knit socks. Impressive.
“Hardingfele tunes once measured everyday life,” Torstein continued. “Music was deeply rooted in rituals and traditions. There were specific tunes for every aspect of a Hardanger wedding. There were tunes for planting, for harvesting, for celebrating a good yield. Tonight we’re going to play some old music, tell some stories, and hopefully get you on your feet.”
The trio launched into a lively melody. “Oh, I wish Aunt Hilda could hear this,” Chloe lamented. “She would love it.”
“You’ll tell her all about it when we get home,” Roelke said, and the music was so uplifting that she couldn’t stay sad for long.
It was a fun evening. Torstein deferred to the other two fiddlers, giving each opportunities to shine. He excelled as dance master, urging people to give the Norwegian Mountain March or a Springar a try.
“Are these the kind of dances you did in high school?” Roelke asked during a brief intermission.
Chloe nodded.
“How did you get started?”
“When I was ten I got picked to perform with the high school dancers for a fundraiser. People thought it was cute, but Roelke, I loved it. Dancing made me feel something I’d never felt before. You can’t audition for the Stoughton Norwegian Dancers until you’re a freshman. I wanted it so badly, and I was so nervous, I’m surprised I didn’t fall flat on my face. I was accepted, though.” She left it at that, but being a member of the Stoughton Norwegian Dancers for three years was one of the best experiences of her life.
Once the fiddlers had re-tuned, Torstein announced a Reinlendar.
“Want to dance?”
Chloe asked Roelke.
“I do not,” he said calmly, surprising her not even a little bit. “But you go ahead.”
Chloe joined the willing and teamed up with an eager little girl who needed a partner. Chloe helped her practice the steps. Then Torstein had all the pairs form a double circle, and the fiddlers began to play. “Schottische step forward and back!” Torstein called. “Now step-hop!” The girl stumbled along, laughing with the fun of it all. Muscle memory led Chloe through the figures. She was sorry when the music ended.
Torstein was also a good storyteller. “Our next tune will be ‘Fanitullen,’” he announced. “Do you know the tale? Legend says that long ago, a wedding dance was disrupted by a bloody brawl. The young fiddler went to get a drink and discovered the devil himself sitting on the keg. The devil grabbed the man’s fiddle and began to play, beating time with one cloven hoof. As long as the devil worked the bow, people at the party couldn’t stop dancing. Even after they died from exhaustion, their bodies kept dancing.”
Roelke’s eyebrows raised. “That’s a bit extreme.”
“The fiddler was initially horrified, but the devil’s music was too compelling to resist,” Torstein continued. “‘Fanitullen’ is the tune that the fiddler learned from the devil himself that night. In order to play it for you, we’re switching to what’s known as ‘troll tuning.’”
The three musicians plunked their strings, adjusting the pegs until satisfied. Then they launched into a frenzied piece.
“That’s borderline discordant,” Roelke observed. “But it’s powerful.”
Chloe’s throat grew thick, and she blinked back unexpected tears. When she’d blithely decided to visit Norway, she hadn’t known what it would be like to experience this music and dance here. People had been fiddling and dancing right here for hundreds of years. It suddenly felt quite different from dancing in the high school gym in Stoughton, Wisconsin. Or even for the king in Oslo.
Had similar feelings pulled her mother back to Norway, time after time? Chloe so wished she had ignored Kari’s concerns and talked to Mom about the adoption. She wished Mom had told her about the trip she’d been planning for just the two of them. She wished they hadn’t disappointed each other so often.
Roelke, ever prepared, passed her a tissue.
“Thanks.” She sniffled. “I guess it all got to me.”
“It’s okay.” He patted her knee.
Torstein brought the concert to a close after that, and the three fiddlers received enthusiastic applause. Some people began making their way back down the hill.
Roelke stood and stretched. “Ready?”
“Not really,” Chloe admitted. The sky was smudged with cobalt, but the sun wouldn’t set until ten or so. She felt too emotional to simply walk away. “I’d like to visit Høiegård. If you want to head back down, I’ll meet you at the hotel.”
“No, I’ll wait.” He sat back down.
Chloe had no idea how she’d gotten so lucky. “We really need to figure out where and when to have our wedding,” she told him, “because I truly can hardly wait to marry you.” That made him smile.
Høiegård was close by. It faced away from the fjord, and she walked around the building. The door would be locked, of course, but maybe that was fine. Maybe pressing her palms against the door would be easier than actually going inside—
Except the door wasn’t locked. It was ajar.
A sense of foreboding prickled the back of Chloe’s neck. She pushed the door open with one finger. “Hello?” Silence. She leaned inside, and her senses were walloped again. Emotive impressions buzzed in her head, quivered in her chest, seemed to shimmer in the air.
But this time there was even more to take in: the crumpled body, the dark pool of blood, and the stink of death.
Roelke heard Chloe yell his name and was up and running before she even rounded the corner of Høiegård. Boyfriend instincts and cop instincts crackled with alarm. “What?” he demanded, grabbing her arm.
Her eyes were huge, her skin pale. “In the house. Someone’s hurt.” She licked her lips. “Um, dead. I think.”
Roelke glanced over the hillside. A few people lingered, laughing and chatting. “Go find Ellinor. Tell her to call for help, and to not let anyone else leave the grounds. The cops will want to know who was here. Can you do that?”
“Of course.” Chloe sounded steadier already. “I see her—” She took off.
Roelke ran in the other direction, around Høiegård to the door in its western wall. A body was sprawled inside, partly through the low interior door to the main room. Visible in the antechamber were slim legs in blue jeans and—and oh, damn.
Beneath the jeans were well-worn blue athletic shoes with white wing motifs on the sides.
Maybe it’s not her, he thought. The woman’s head, arms, and torso were beyond the doorway, in the main room. He carefully stepped to the door, knelt, peered through … and clenched his jaw. It was indeed Klara Evenstad.
He snaked one hand to her throat, searching for a pulse, but he knew she was dead. The fair hair on the back of her head was matted with blood. Her right cheek was against the floor, but her left eye was open, already hazy with death. Her mouth was open too. But … what was on her forehead? It looked like a smear of ash. He leaned closer, contorting himself to see without further contaminating the scene. It wasn’t a smear. It was a circle.
What the hell? Roelke glanced beyond her to the hearth-thing in the middle of the room. No way had Klara banged her head on that and landed back here, halfway through the door. It appeared that someone had drawn the circle with their finger. Why on earth would—
“Hva skjedde?”
Roelke jumped as someone behind him spoke in Norwegian. He got to his feet and stepped to the doorway before a concerned-looking bearded man could come inside. A few more guests, sensing trouble, were converging on the old house behind him.
“I’m a police officer,” Roelke announced. He had no authority here, of course. But until Norwegian cops arrived, he was the best bet for keeping the crime scene—and he was sure it was a crime scene—as pristine as possible.
“There’s been an accident,” he told the bearded guy, exuding every ounce of command presence he could summon. “I need you to go see if anyone on the hill is a doctor.” The man looked startled but nodded and turned away. “The rest of you, please, stay back from the house.”
Ellinor appeared with Chloe in her wake. He frowned. “I said to—”
“Sonja is stopping the guests.” Ellinor looked ready to charge inside. “I need to be here.” Chloe made a helpless gesture: I tried.
Roelke blocked the door. “Did you call the police?”
“Of course. Closest station is in Odda, though. That’s a forty-five-minute drive.”
He cursed. That was a long time to wrangle people who wanted to go home. A long time to withhold what little information he had.
“I need to see what happened,” Ellinor hissed. “Who is it?”
The bearded man returned, shaking his head. “No doctor.”
Roelke asked him to keep people away before turning back to the director. Best get right to it. “Someone has died,” he said. “I’m sorry to tell you that the victim is Klara Evenstad.”
The hand Ellinor pressed over her mouth didn’t stifle her shocked cry. She struggled visibly for composure. “What happened? How did she die?”
“The only thing that matters is what the Norwegian police conclude.” He tried not to flinch from Ellinor’s anguished face. “But unofficially, it looks as if someone struck her as she stooped to enter the main room.”
Chloe gasped. Klara’s earlier explanation for Høiegård’s architecture flashed in Roelke’s memory: That inner door was a safety feature. If someone attacked the family, they’d be forced to bend low coming through the door, and … Klara had pantomimed striking a vicious b
low to the back of an intruder’s head.
“But … but who would do something like that?” The director held his gaze, begging him to make sense of the insensible.
Roelke shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“Everyone liked Klara!” Ellinor protested. She looked stunned.
Chloe put an arm around the older woman’s shoulders. “I’m so very sorry. All we can do now is wait and let the police sort things out.”
“But—”
“Ellinor? Ellinor!”
They all turned as Torstein ran across the lawn. “What’s happened? Someone said …” He looked from one face to the next, wanting reassurances that no one could give.
Ellinor put a hand on his arm. “Oh, Torstein.”
He clearly found more than he wanted to know in her eyes, in her tone, in her touch. “Not …” he began but couldn’t complete the words. His face crumpled. Then his legs crumpled too. He fell to his knees, hands over his face, shoulders shaking with sobs.
Chloe felt bone-weary by the time she and Roelke got back to the Utne Hotel. She dropped onto the bed and stared up at him. “Dear God. Who would want to kill that girl?”
Roelke sat beside her and gathered her into his arms. Chloe nestled her head on his shoulder.
They sat in silence for a long time. She wished she knew how to turn off her brain. A movie flickered endlessly in her head: Klara smiling as she refilled their coffee cups that morning, Klara singing a centuries-old lullaby in Høiegård that afternoon, Klara glowing as Torstein kissed her in the gift shop, Klara lying dead in a pool of blood. It all felt like a bad dream … but it wasn’t.
The police had finally arrived from Odda and taken charge. Volvos marked Politi parked among the historic structures, the first of the harsh intrusions. A medical person pronounced the death, and a detective—or whatever the Norwegian equivalent was—began his examination. Fluorescent tape was strung. Phone calls were made. More officials arrived—crime scene specialists, Roelke had speculated. An earnest young officer interviewed the audience members still on the hill. Politi Førsteinspektør Naess, an older, grim-faced officer with a square jaw and piercing gray eyes, had interviewed Chloe, interviewed Roelke, interviewed Ellinor and Sonja and Torstein. His black uniform displayed a fancy coat of arms on the sleeve and three yellow insignia of rank on the shoulder.
Fiddling with Fate Page 10
