The Snow Song

by Sally Gardner

  When Sorina was certain that her mother had gone home, she whispered to Edith, ‘Grandpa has your boots.’

  By mid-morning, a purpose of sorts had taken hold.

  ‘If your grandmother was here, Edith, she’d tell us a story,’ said Vanda.

  ‘If her grandmother was here none of this would be happening,’ said Flora.

  The women were surprised when the door opened and Georgeta, the mayor’s wife, stood there, tall and awkward. The room went quiet.

  ‘I’ve brought food and wine,’ she said to Edith who went to greet her. ‘A wedding gift.’ She clumsily put her basket on the table.

  Edith wondered what the mayor’s wife could possibly want. The basket of food struck her as an excuse rather than a present.

  ‘Your grandmother was a good friend to me,’ she said to Edith.

  Still, no one had said a word. Georgeta’s white face blushed, and Edith knew what she was thinking – that she shouldn’t have come, that she was too tall, she was out of place and the only woman there not wearing traditional clothes. Edith indicated the rocking chair by the fire. Georgeta perched on the edge of the seat, and everyone waited for her to speak.

  ‘Last night,’ she said, ‘I dreamed of Edith’s grandmother and a story she told, but I can’t remember the ending.’ Then, seeing all the faces staring at her, she stood. ‘This is most insensitive of me. I’ll go. I’m sorry to have interrupted your work. This is not the moment for stories… ridiculous, it was a…’ and more to herself, she said, ‘…a foolish, foolish…’

  ‘I was just saying that a story is what we’re missing,’ said Vanda.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Georgeta, ‘I’m no storyteller. I’m not even sure how to start it.’

  ‘Start it like Edith’s grandmother used to,’ said Lena. ‘It was what once took place…’ She paused.

  Georgeta took a deep breath. ‘…And if it had never been, it would not be told.’

  ‘Louder,’ Vanda said. ‘We all want to hear.’

  The snow badgered the windows as Georgeta started again, her words finding courage. ‘Once, when the bloodless were as common as blades of grass and the world of otherness was known to man, there lived a wizard, wise, wiser beyond the spinning of the world, who travelled great distances and called himself a shepherd of man.’ She stopped. ‘Do you remember this story, Edith?’

  Edith shook her head.

  ‘Go on,’ said Vanda. ‘We’re all listening.’

  ‘One day,’ Georgeta began to rock, the chair’s rhythm giving pace to her telling, ‘the wizard came to a village high up in the mountains, and there he saw a beautiful young girl. She had eyes as dark as his, and in her left eye he caught a reflection of his soul, and in her right eye he caught a reflection of hers.

  ‘He said to her, “Tell me, what should a man value the most?” And without the loss of a heartbeat, she said, “Love.”

  ‘Then she asked him, “What should a man fear the most?” And without the loss of a heartbeat, the wizard said, “Greed, because it leads to envy, it leads to war, it leads to all that the devil feasts upon.”

  ‘“Then love is the greater. Love has compassion, love heals.”

  ‘The wizard was a handsome young man. He called to the stars, and from them he gave her a ring and asked if she would marry him. The village elders disapproved. They said she couldn’t marry a man who wasn’t from their region unless he could show himself worthy of her hand. Only if he tamed the mountain dragon would she be his bride.

  ‘The wizard asked where the dragon was to be found. “In the lake, high up in the mountain,” they said. This dragon was the cause of all the thunderstorms, hail and snow that plagued their crops and damaged their houses.

  ‘The wizard said a sad farewell to his love and climbed the mountain, never to be seen again. The girl’s heart broke. Her father, seeing that the wizard wasn’t coming back, found her another suitor to marry her. He was grey and rich with a belly that a pig would be proud of.’

  ‘How does the story end?’ Sorina interrupted. ‘With a wedding to the suitor with a pig’s belly?’

  ‘That’s the problem, I’m not sure,’ said Georgeta. ‘I think it goes… on her wedding day…’

  ‘On her wedding day…’And it was her grandmother’s voice that Edith heard as Georgeta rocked in her chair. ‘…A small white bird perched on the girl’s windowsill and said to her, “Come away with me, and I will take you to the wizard. He is being held prisoner by the dragon, but once the beast sees what love is, its temper will be quelled.”

  ‘When the girl’s father came to take her to the church, he found her bedroom empty. Although the villagers searched high and low, she was never seen again. Shortly afterwards the thunder ceased, and it was said that the dragon disappeared to the bottom of the lake and there he sleeps to this day. But where the wizard and his bride are, nobody knows.’

  ‘There was no wedding, then?’ said Sorina.

  ‘Edith’s grandmother said some stories are neither sad nor happy. In the telling, they are just what they are.’

  That is so, thought Edith, and in this story, she saw more than a glimmer of hope. She saw it was her grandmother’s wedding gift to her, brought by the mayor’s wife.

  ‘I should be leaving,’ said Georgeta. ‘It will soon be dark.’

  The mayor was at home in his study, smoking his pipe. He had long been contemplating a letter from a merchant who was concerned about his son who he had last heard from in the spring when he’d written to tell his parents he was to marry a village girl called Edith. The mayor knew he should have done something when Demetrius didn’t return to the village but he hadn’t. The butcher had got the better of him.

  If the mayor was honest – a quality the merchant’s letter now demanded – he’d been frightened of the butcher ever since they were young. The son of a butcher, even as a boy he’d been stronger, bigger than other lads his age. He was a fighter and the mayor had been his punch bag.

  Since they’d become men, the mayor’s comfort had been that he was better educated, richer and more powerful than the butcher. But last summer his confidence had been shattered on the night of the hunting party. The innkeeper had sent for him when a troubling incident occurred. The mayor had been greeted at the inn door by the butcher.

  ‘Go home,’ he’d said. ‘This is none of your business.’

  ‘I’m here to enforce the law.’

  A smile had momentarily flickered across the butcher’s thin lips. The mayor shuddered to think of it.

  ‘By all means come in and rattle that chain of office,’ he’d said, ‘if you want me to tell the elders about your son.’

  ‘My son?’ said the mayor.

  ‘Yes, your son. What I know about him would ruin you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’d tell you but I don’t want to sully my mouth. You’ll receive a package of letters tomorrow.’

  ‘What letters?’ said the mayor. His stomach churned.

  ‘Letters I found when I helped dig out the bodies at the house of the miller’s son. So are you coming in?’

  ‘I was called here by the innkeeper,’ said the mayor.

  The butcher stepped back, opening the door wide. ‘Then you must do what you must do. And I’ll do what I must do.’

  The mayor didn’t move. The butcher went back inside the inn and closed the door.

  The mayor stood outside, shaking at his own impotence. He was trying to compose himself when from an open window of the inn he heard the butcher then the slurred voice of a drunken young man.

  ‘So you know where to find my brother?’ said the young man. ‘Can you take me there?’

  The mayor now regretted he hadn’t stayed to hear the butcher’s reply.

  Dazed, he had gone home.

  In the morning the package had been brought to him by his maid.

  ‘The butcher said to tell you there are more where those came from,’ she said. ‘He thought you
should know, sir.’ She’d bobbed a curtsy and left him to open the package.

  He’d seen that the three letters were clearly written in his son’s hand. Love letters – and for a moment he’d felt relief. No harm in a boy of his age having an affair. He’d read the second letter and turned to the third when he stopped. For the first time he saw who they were addressed to. It made no sense. The love letters were addressed to the miller’s son. At the end of each the mayor’s son begged that he burn it so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.

  The mayor had laughed mirthlessly at that. If this matter should ever come to light the consequences were too terrible to contemplate. His position, his reputation, the family name would be ruined. His son would not graduate, would not practise law. With every thought the mayor felt himself one step closer to the precipice. It would take only a careless word and he would fall.

  Since then he’d been unable to exert his authority over the butcher or, for that matter, the priest.

  Sons, he thought now, reading the merchant’s letter again. And again he felt powerless. He went to the window to close the curtains. This should be done for me, he thought, would be done, if all the women weren’t cooking for this farce of a wedding. He had his hands on the heavy fabric when he looked out. He couldn’t think what his wife was doing standing outside the house, staring up the road.

  Lena, who was dusting the cabinet maker’s parlour, had a good view of the street. Her cry brought all the women rushing to the window.

  The cobbler was mending the butcher’s cuckoo clock. He stepped out for some fresh air and thought he was seeing a ghost. Nevertheless, he ran towards it.

  Thin, bearded but defiantly alive, Misha was pulling a makeshift sleigh down the icy street.

  Vanda was the first out of the door. She ran to her son, blind to the sleigh and its cargo. Edith, close behind her, saw only the body of Demetrius lying on the sleigh, his violin on his chest. She fell to her knees. In his frozen fingers was her gold coin.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Dark Stain

  Edith heard herself cry out, a wordless sound that came from the depth of all that was broken in her. The absence of Demetrius, of his soul in the world, of his love for her, overwhelmed her. Snow, in all its forgetfulness, had buried him, flake by gentle flake. And only when the mountain gods roared had they remembered their buried treasure and reluctantly returned him. A wedding gift.

  A crowd of people had come out of their houses to stare. From behind his shuttered windows, the butcher was watching.

  ‘Misha will pay for this,’ he said under his breath. ‘Yes, he will pay.’

  Edith’s limbs had lost their strength. Flora, Lena and Sorina gathered round her. She couldn’t think why they were there. For a moment there was only the past, no future, the present a gaping wound.

  ‘I knew I would find him,’ said Misha. ‘We’ll take him to the blacksmith.’

  In the failing light, a small procession of women followed the sleigh as Misha pulled it to the forge. The news had already reached the blacksmith and he walked out to meet it. Together, he and Misha carried Demetrius’ body into the house and laid it on a wooden table.

  ‘He will be given his last rites later,’ said the blacksmith, taking the violin.

  ‘Do you want to be left alone with him?’ Misha asked Edith.

  Edith nodded.

  The door grated on the floor as the blacksmith pulled it to. A candle in a metal holder sat on the windowsill, a draught causing the light to flicker across Demetrius’ face. He looked peaceful, a smile on his lips. Edith rested her hand on his frozen fingers. She bent and kissed him.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  There was only the silence of the dead.

  Edith felt her soul shaking as if grief would loosen it from its earthly moorings. When she saw her reflection in the window, she realised it was dark. There were voices outside the room, and the blacksmith appeared at the door and showed in the mayor. Behind him were the doctor and the priest. The mayor shook his head, or so Edith thought. Edith longed for words.

  ‘It’s best that you leave now, Edith,’ said the mayor. ‘Go home. I’m sure there’s much to do for tomorrow.’

  Edith stared at him defiantly.

  ‘We must examine the body,’ said the doctor. ‘Without you here,’ he added sharply and summoned Vanda who had been waiting in another room.

  She took Edith’s arm, but Edith brushed it away and shook her head.

  ‘We’ll stay,’ said Vanda. ‘If it’s all the same to you.’

  ‘Women,’ the priest muttered under his breath.

  The doctor took off his jacket, hung it over a chair and rolled up his sleeves. Strange, thought Edith, how these details, these unimportant gestures take on such significance. She sensed that the three men were dreading what they might find.

  The doctor examined Demetrius – his face, his chest. ‘There’s no sign of a wound,’ he said, barely touching the shepherd’s clothes.

  ‘You should turn him over, Doctor,’ the blacksmith said, coming into the room. ‘You take his legs, and I the head… gently now.’

  Something clattered onto the stone floor and all the men jumped. Edith’s gold coin had come free from Demetrius’ fingers and rolled across the room.

  The mayor picked it up. ‘You should give this to the butcher tomorrow.’

  ‘How can you be so insensitive?’ said Vanda as Edith took the coin from him. They turned the shepherd like a log, face down, his arms frozen to his sides. There was a gasp of disbelief from the men, and for a moment Edith couldn’t understand what she was seeing. On Demetrius’ back was a dark stain.

  ‘My God,’ said the mayor. ‘He was shot – in the back.’

  Edith felt her knees weaken. The room spun, and she nearly fell.

  ‘Take her away,’ said the doctor, his voice harsh. ‘Get her out of here.’

  But Edith refused to move.

  ‘Quiet,’ said the blacksmith. ‘The dead deserve respect. Let’s turn him again.’

  Edith placed the coin where once Demetrius’ heart beat.

  She kept her hand there and stared with fury at the mayor, at the doctor, at the priest. All corrupt, she thought, and in the palm of the butcher’s hand. She thought of her grandmother’s story – what should a man fear the most? Greed, because it leads to envy, it leads to war, it leads to all that the devil feasts upon.

  ‘The gold coin belongs to Demetrius,’ said Vanda, ‘the man Edith was engaged to, whom she loved.’ She put her arm around Edith. ‘You, Mayor, should stop this wedding. ‘Or are you afraid of my father, too?’

  The mayor poured himself a brandy to steady his nerves.

  ‘Is there anything you need, sir?’ asked the maid.

  He shook his head and dismissed her.

  ‘Is there anything I need?’ he said to himself. Yes, to not have the shepherd’s body lying at the blacksmith’s house with a bullet in his back. He washed his hands in a basin, checked his beard in the mirror and thought himself well suited to the role he had been given. He sat behind his desk, knowing that it gave him more authority. He smelled the elders before they had entered his study, their clothes musty with a faint whiff of camphor. He reached in a drawer for a small bottle of cologne and dabbed it on his beard.

  The maid knocked and opened the door for the elders, the doctor, the priest and the cabinet maker. They made the mayor’s study seem small. And Misha was there. Why the cursed boy should have chosen this of all days to bring the body down from the mountain, he couldn’t imagine. He should have left it up there until after his grandfather’s wedding. But he was the village idiot. The mayor cleared his throat.

  ‘Before the avalanche, I received a letter from the shepherd’s father. He is a merchant in the town. He wrote because he’d had no word from his son who he knew was engaged to a girl called Edith who lives in this village.’

  The word ‘merchant’ surprised the cabinet maker.

  ‘Are yo
u sure?’ he said. ‘I thought the shepherd was a gypsy.’

  ‘As I said, he was a merchant’s son.’

  The cabinet maker, never able to keep his thoughts to himself, said aloud, ‘Wealthy?’

  ‘I would imagine so.’

  The cabinet maker felt the icy gaze of the butcher on him and said, quickly, but with a hint of regret, ‘It was a passing whim of Edith’s – just a girlish crush.’

  The mayor continued. ‘The merchant asked me to make enquiries.’

  ‘It seems that Misha made enquiries for you,’ said the butcher taking charge of the situation, ‘so the mystery is solved.’

  ‘Quite so,’ mumbled the other elders.

  ‘Not so hasty,’ said the mayor. ‘Let the doctor speak.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the doctor, ‘we should discuss this at a later date.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said the butcher. ‘Tomorrow is my wedding.’

  The mayor tried to regain control. ‘It’s precisely because of the wedding that this must be discussed now. There is a feeling among the womenfolk that the marriage should wait. Doctor, please continue.’

  ‘The young man was killed by a bullet in the back from what I believe was a hunting gun.’

  The men muttered to each other in shock and disbelief.

  The mayor interrupted them. ‘I’m sure you’ll all agree that in these circumstances, the wedding is… ah… inadvisable.’

  No one spoke. All eyes were on the butcher.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Let all the food go to waste? The pigs and the chickens, all butchered for nothing? Tomorrow I’m going to be married. It makes no difference if the blacksmith has two or three bodies unburied. The earth is hard, so the matter can wait.’

  The mayor felt the blood in him rise but, at the very same moment, a cooling thought came to him. He could not afford to be on the wrong side of this man.

  ‘Surely there is no doubt that the young man was murdered,’ he said.

  ‘Murdered?’ said the butcher. ‘Says who?’ He brought his fist down on the desk, causing the mayor’s papers to dance and his paperweight to rock. The nerve-shattering sound reminded the men of the avalanche and the power of the mountain they perched on. The butcher turned away from the mayor and spoke directly to the assembled company. ‘How many here have hunting guns?’