I looked up at the ceiling where, a few feet above, Fleming’s wife was in the throes of childbirth.
He followed my gaze, and shook his head.
“But I was wrong. Only God can will who will be and who will not. Ha! It is the lesson of Abraham – from aging loins new life may still come. And so it did. So it has … Against all my hopes, Malene became pregnant. A boy, the doctors tell us. Yet all these months, while she has been filled with hope and joy for our child, I have been dying inside. Suffocating under this terrible dread, like a drowning man.”
“But surely … surely it may turn out all right. Your child may live and you can enjoy your family.”
“Listen,” he began grimly. “There is more that is known of this. More than is told just in the names in the Bible, but which has also been passed down from generation to generation. You will not believe me when I tell you. Yet here I am, an old man of eighty. I have seen much in the world, more than most, more even than I care to know, and I believe this to be true.
“It is not known how each line died out in every case, but for every known line it was the same. Mother and child died in childbirth. And in every case known, the story records that it happened on a night just like this one – a cold snap, ice winds from the north, feet of new snow, and one circumstance in particular. On every tragic night, the Kattegat – the sea between here and the northern lands of Sweden and Norway – has been frozen.”
I could say nothing, only listen to my pulse thumping in my ear and the whistle of the wind that seemed to crescendo in the chimneystack.
“There is more to old Arve’s story,” he continued. “He did not kill the Troll King. No. He fought him only. Wounded him, yes. Beat him, surely … but he did not kill him. He escaped with a trophy. In one blow, he cut off the Troll King’s tail, seized it and fled.
“The legend says that the Troll King raged and cursed and sent his most cruel minions to pursue the young warrior and bring back what he had stolen. Arve rode like fury, down from the Nordic mountains, across frozen rivers and through dense woodland with the trolls hunting him in pursuit. His dog was with him – a wolfhound that never left his side. When he reached the northern shores of the Kattegat, his cheeks and nose turning black with the cold, the thick cord of the Troll King’s tail grasped in his hand, he found the sea-foam frozen solid.
“Hearing that his pursuers were nearly upon him, he chanced the ice and set off for Jutland across the frozen waves, his wolfhound bounding along beside his horse’s pounding hooves. The trolls never broke stride and plunged onto the ice after him. Further and further south they went, closer and closer to his home of Jutland and safety. Yet all the while the trolls closed in on their prey.
“At last, Arve could see lights and fires and shadows that he knew must be the Jutland shore, but the farther south he rode, the warmer the air became. The solid ice began to melt and he was forced to leap his horse from flow to flow, the thick black waters of the Kattegat breaking them apart. The swiftest troll was now upon him, and he slashed back left and right with his sword, holding the creature at bay. Until, up ahead, he saw a widening gap opening in the sea. He spurred his horse to make the leap at the moment the troll made to seize his beast from behind. Arve gathered the reins and held his breath, just as he heard his faithful wolfhound let out a rasping howl. He turned to see the dog flying at the troll, even as the monster was reaching out to catch the horse with its claw. He saw the dog’s savage jaws lock down on the troll’s arm, and as the horse flew through the air, he watched the two tumble headlong into the murky sea.
“Landing safely on the other side, he pulled up his horse and turned in time to glimpse the black waves thrash white for a moment, till dog and troll were gone. Ever after, to honour this dog, Trolleskjolds have always kept wolfhounds as companions.
“Arve rode back to Jutland, and his story became legend. But no one knows what became of the Troll King’s tail. And the Trolleskjolds have always believed that, until the tail is returned, the curse will stand, and when the Kattegat freezes over the trolls will come across the ice and take from us what is their due.”
Fleming fell silent. The fire crackled in the grate.
“What an astonishing story,” I whispered. “But you can’t really connect the missing tail of some mythic creature with your other fears, can you? How can you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to know. I only know that the woman I love is struggling upstairs to bring our child into this world. And this very afternoon, I heard on the radio that the authorities have suspended all shipping around the point of Jutland, through the Skagerrak and the Kattegat, and why? Because the sudden drop in temperature has created heavy ice flows. Even now is one of those nights when the seas freeze over.”
“What can you do?”
“What can I do?” he repeated. “Nothing. I am powerless. A man cannot chase these … these shadows.” His massive head dropped.
The room fell into gloomy silence again. Outside I heard the wind blow stronger, like wolves howling to one another across the frozen landscape – or so I began to imagine. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. Which is not to say my mind was inactive. On the contrary, I was turning over a hundred things that the old Count had said, sifting my own thoughts between what I believed and what I could not from the fragments of his story. A story that I had somehow stumbled into by a silly mistake – or else by chance.
Or was it fate?
I was getting desperate. The silence was crushing me; the malignant presence of that boss hanging over me like the sword of old Damocles himself. I was so desperate I was about to suggest another shot of that awful Gammel Dansk simply in order to break the silence, when the great white-crowned block of bone tilted in my direction.
“Did you hear that?” His voice was like two rocks grinding together.
“What?” I said dumbly. It happens that my hearing is poor, so it was little surprise to me that a man of eighty could hear something that I had not.
He pulled his massive weight out of his chair. “A noise out there.” He gestured back towards the door. “Beyond the hall?”
“No, I … I heard nothing.”
“Come.”
We left the dogs dozing by the still-blazing fire, left them to their snuffles and shuffles and scratches and sighs, and the soft whistle of the wind down the chimney. All of them except the black retriever which rose with Fleming and at once fell in obediently beside him as he went out. I followed his hulking shadow back into the cruciform hallway, feeling half-idiot, half-fraud, since I had no clue what we were seeking. We stopped by the table. Two or three times, his old grey eyes flicked between the dark entrance hall with its tall oak doors to the courtyard and the tower above our heads.
“There!” he suddenly barked. “You hear that now?”
That time, I did hear something. Though what I couldn’t tell you. If he hadn’t jumped upon it, I would have said it was just another sound of the storm outside battering at the walls of his castle, which had intensified even more, if that were possible. He seized me by the shoulder, his pincer grip strong as iron tongs, and dragged me across the hallway, flinging open a weighty oak door into another unlit room, and pulled me inside. Then we stopped again, still as statues, a thick finger pressed against his lips.
We listened again. What else could we do? And this time I felt every muscle in my weary body tense. Because now I did hear noises. Two of them. At least I thought I distinguished two. And even as I listened, it seemed as though the storm had abated. Abruptly. Unnaturally. As if God himself had called, “Rest.” Or else the storm had paused to take a breath, exhausted from its assault. And for a few seconds, maybe half a minute, everything outside was still. Only the sounds continued. And then I was sure of what I heard. A thin, whining cry, or a whistle perhaps? Yes. Though not like the whine of the wind, but of some … thing … Higher, wavering, sick with despair almost. And the other was the sound of barking. Two barks, now that I rea
lly listened. One nearer, the other so faint it must have been far, far off in the distance. The retriever heard it too, whining in its throat, but too well trained to bark in response. Then the winds picked up again and the sounds were lost.
“ Odens jakt ,” said Fleming.
“Huh?”
“Have you heard of Odin’s Hunt, young man?”
“No. I …” Without knowing why, when he said the words the skin down the back of my neck prickled. “I can’t say I have.”
“The Wild Hunt. Another legend.” His face was half lit from the light spilling in from the hallway, half swathed in darkness. The image sparked a sudden recollection from childhood storybooks – the twin-face of Hel, the Norse Queen of the Dead. It unnerved me, I have to admit – this human–ogre face towering over me. Instead, I tried to focus on what he was saying. In his gruff, gravelly style, he was telling me of yet more stories from the Old Times – vestiges, he said, from the pagan age of shadow. That Odin, the Lord of the Slain, was said sometimes to ride on the waves of the storm at the head of a terrible host, and among their number rode his dead heroes, or his pitiless Valkyries some said, or fell creatures from hidden worlds or other foul races of men lost in the mists of the past. Even the Devil himself, in some of the stories. “They say whoever sees the hunt pass overhead drops stone dead. That his soul is swept up and onward into Odin’s train never to return, never to rest.”
“What has this to do with those noises?” I whispered.
He seemed about to answer, but then thought better of it and merely snorted. “Wait here.”
I stood in the darkness. My left hand was shaking, which sometimes it is wont to do. I clenched my fist tight to stop it, telling myself it wasn’t because I was afraid. Just the cold still, playing tricks on my body.
I heard something rattle in the hallway and after that Fleming soon returned. He had my coat in his hand. “Put it on.” I did so without question. “Take this.” He handed me a stick. Well, it was more than a stick. A club of sorts, from the weight of it.
“Follow me.”
I obliged him, shadowing him further into the room and noticing that he too had some brutish-looking implement in his hand. We reached the heavy curtain, which he flicked aside as if it were light as gossamer. Then he took from his jacket pocket a single key and turned it in the lock, undid the latches and flung the double-doors open to the storm.
A blast of cold air ripped into the room, billowing the weighty curtains, whistling past my ears. “There’s something out there,” he said.
“You think so? Like what?”
He looked down at me like I was soft in the head. “That’s what we’re bloody going to find out,” he snarled. He shoved me out on to the terrace. I practically fell over into the drifting snow, but just managed to catch my balance. He followed right after me.
“See the steps?” He waved his stick vaguely towards the seeping shadow beyond a pair of stone urns I could make out through the flurrying snow at the far end of the terrace. “There’s the garden and a small wood down there at the bottom. Beyond that there’s a moat. Go take a look. I’ll circle round the house. Then we meet back here.” I nodded with an enthusiasm I didn’t feel. “Hey, don’t you go falling in that bloody moat. I don’t want to have to tell your grandfather I broke his grandson’s ankle or something stupid like that.” I nodded again, dumb as an ox. He started to turn away, but then remembered something else. “Oh,” he added, “and if you hear above you a sound like horses—”
“Horses?”
“Yah. Galloping horses,” he snapped impatiently. “Then don’t look up. Whatever you do. Lie on the ground if necessary. But don’t – look – up.”
With that, he gave me an encouraging prod towards the end of the terrace and then set off around the side of the house in the other direction, his dog dutifully padding along in step beside him.
Well, I didn’t know what to make of all this. Noises and Norse gods and a troll’s tail and ancient curses and hunts charging through the sky. And now here I was, supposed to be tracking down God knows what in the middle of an arctic snowstorm, armed with a bloody cudgel. I mean this was the wrong side of enough, as far as I was concerned. I was supposed to be tucked up in bed in some other Danish castle, with a bellyfull of warm food after an evening of pleasant chat with Camilla, my intended host’s eldest daughter. (And the real reason I suspect my father had sent me here in the first place.)
Still, what could I do? I couldn’t fail the old man. He must have figured me for a coward as it is – and he wouldn’t be far wrong. But I was damned if a few stories would give me the jitters enough that I couldn’t wander down to the end of his garden, knock about his wood in the dark for a few minutes and then re-group with the old Viking and tell him it was all in that monolithic brain-box he called a head.
So off I set, slewing and slipping my way down the steps until I felt the soft, even slope of the lawn underfoot. The crunch, crunch of my boots in the snow was hardly audible over the gusts of the galing wind. Snowflakes flurried in my face, fairly blinding me, and the club seemed more use as a staff to steady me than as a deadly weapon to fend off any lurking foes – of this world or another.
Yet for all my inner monologue of complaint, as I stumbled through the blizzard, I couldn’t quite shake the sense of being watched. Of some … thing out there, looking on.
I don’t know if you’ve ever stood outside an old house in the middle of a storm. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you’d stay inside it on a night like this one. But on that hundredth time, you’d discover they’re noisy things. Windows rattling, roof-slates shifting, gutters juddering in old iron brackets with each lash of the wind. You can amplify that by ten times with a house that has stood for nine hundred years. It was more than disconcerting; it felt somehow as if the house itself was under attack. As if something were trying to break into it.
I walked in an arc around the perimeter of the garden – or the grounds, I should say, since the garden on that side of the house must have been an acre of land at least. I had to fight every step of the way against the swirling wind, finding momentary shelter in the lee of a scattering of large rhododendron bushes, or the sad silhouettes of ornamental statues, or the cedar trees whose branches bowed under their wintry cladding.
I don’t know how long it took me but at last I had circled round until I could once again make out the shadow of the terrace from where I was at the foot of the garden, carefully picking my way along the edge of a drop that was full of drifting snow (the moat, I supposed). My hands were freezing for the second time that night, and I couldn’t feel my feet at all in my boots, which were hopelessly ill-matched to the task Fleming had set them. There was only the wood now to check.
I approached the thicker shadow unsure exactly how to tackle it, short of plunging right in and hoping for the best. But as I clambered awkwardly over the first of the undergrowth, half entombed in the snow like some wretched corpse on the Eastern Front, my hand inadvertently tightened around my club.
By and large, the wood was made up of fir trees – spruces and pines at a guess – which blotted out whatever light had reflected off the expanse of snow in the garden. Thus, I was plunged into near-total darkness. The pine branches sweeping past my face as I wafted my cudgel to part them, spilling ice crystals and lumps of snow on my shoulders and head.
But the wood was thick, the tree trunks close set, and there were brambles grown up among the branches too, dragging at my coat, scraping the skin off my knuckles. I started to get angry. There’s nothing out here, for God’s sake , I scowled to myself. What the hell were we up to? I don’t know how long Fleming expected me to stay out here before I could call the all clear. But that began to become a moot point when I realised I had completely lost my sense of direction.
I tried to orientate myself, looking for any pinprick of light from the house, but I soon remembered that the only lights were shining on the other side. My heart was yammering away – from my e
xertions, I told myself – but I felt a rising sense of panic, too. I just wanted to get back now. Whatever befell this night, I wanted to be inside.
The storm was rising. Even in the shelter of the wood, I could feel that. With the snow came the distant roll of thunder – or at least some great clamour in the sky. It was far off, though.
Thunder? And snow?
I couldn’t remember ever experiencing those two together. And suddenly a horrible thought slipped in behind that one. Hoofbeats – the drumming of hundreds of hooves – the thunder of the cloud. My brain started blurring the two.
Another rumble of thunder, nearer this time.
I swore, picking a direction and blundering on, ignoring the whip and scratch of the branches on my face. The wind, it seemed, had picked up above my head, crashing through the treetops like physical bodies, sending the snow tumbling down all around me.
Suddenly I heard another sound. The barking again. A single bark? Or two of them? I couldn’t tell. Terror was beginning to seep into my mind, sending my thoughts awry. My head started filling with visions of hounds of hell, or colossal long-clawed creatures, towering trolls or ogres or giants or fell fiends or pitiless gods riding on the storm towards me.
Me? It wasn’t me that they wanted, was it? It was that pitiful child up there, that infant blighted by his ancestor’s heroics, who even now was struggling to enter this world somewhere in all that pile of stone. It was the curse, damn it – and somehow I had stumbled into it all. I tried to run now, beating at the branches with my club, railing at them to let me pass; and then, I swear, I heard it clear as I’ve ever heard anything. The sound of horses, storming through the sky, blowing like bellows through their flared nostrils, shaking the very air with their beating hooves above my head. The temptation to look up pierced me, sharp as an arrow through the heart. But I remembered Fleming’s warning and instead I flung myself face down into the snow, while the crash and rumble rolled on overhead. I cried out in my terror.
A Winter's Night Page 3
