by Karen Swan
‘It looks like this is going to settle in for the night,’ Margit sighed, standing by the open double doors and scanning the sky for signs of respite or light. But it was darker now than at midnight.
‘Well we can’t stay in here then,’ Sofie said. ‘We need to get into dry clothes and eat something. We’ll have to make a run for it. Last one out locks the doors!’
She sprinted out before the others could respond, but they were only a half-second behind her, flying through the door in a scurry of shrieks, their arms wrapped over their heads.
The haybarn was situated above and behind the cabins on the opposite side to the stream; getting back to their huts should only take ten, fifteen seconds at most but the rain was driving down, puddles already pooling on the hard ground. They would all be soaked.
‘What? No! . . . Wait!’ Signy cried, reacting too late, distracted as she was by the splitting sky. But she had already lost. The others were sprinting down the path, their heels kicking up, splashing through the puddles as they hurled themselves towards the shelter of their cabins.
Signy ran out and freed one of the pinned-back doors, swinging it shut and refastening it internally. The rain pounded at her back like fists, the cold a sting against her skin. She ran around to get the other door and was pushing it shut, eyes squeezed to slits against the rain, when she suddenly screamed.
It was a scream that carried over the storm, making the animals startle and the girls stick their heads back out of their cabins.
‘Signy?’ Margit cried, running back out into the rain. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she asked worriedly.
But Signy couldn’t reply. She could only point at an area in the corner where the haybales were stacked in a tower. And beside it, a pair of feet.
The man stood in the haybarn, his cap held in his hands as the six girls fanned around him, eyes casting up and down as though scanning him for knives. Signy couldn’t take her eyes off him. If this man did mean them harm, could they – six teenage girls – defeat him? He didn’t look to be much older than them. He was neither tall nor strong-looking like Nils, but he had a polite mouth and clear hazel-brown eyes that burned from beneath a thick dark fringe.
‘Who are you?’ Margit asked, her voice hard, but a tiny tremor betrayed her nerves as her hand gripped tighter around the primitive hay knife – it was the first thing she had grabbed upon hearing Signy scream.
Sofie was standing behind her right shoulder, appraising the man with open curiosity, her chin jerked high in her usual air of superiority; in spite of this, she seemed to have decided Margit could be the lead on this matter.
The man’s gaze didn’t deviate from Margit’s. ‘My name is Mons Bjorstad. I am a clockmaker from Trondheim.’
‘Trondheim is a long way from here,’ Margit said evenly.
‘Yes, it is,’ he agreed. ‘I have travelled for a long time to get here.’
‘You are alone?’
He nodded.
Signy narrowed her eyes, watching him, remembering the particular sensation of having been watched a week earlier. She had felt it on several occasions since then – had it been him? Or were there others? Was he lying? The man’s face was lightly streaked with dirt and his eyes drooped slightly at the outer edges. He looked fatigued but he didn’t have the colour of a man who worked outdoors, nor the same coarse accent; his hands had long, tapered fingers and were neither calloused nor rough. If a clockmaker was to have a ‘look’, perhaps his was it.
‘Where are you travelling to?’ Margit continued.
‘Loen. Down in the valley yonder.’ He jerked his chin towards the village out of sight from here.
No one said anything. Loen was their home. They knew every person who lived there, and they also knew that almost no one ever came to visit. The village was remote with no through path and clustered around the inland lake Lovatnet.
Margit’s grip tightened slightly around the neck of the knife. ‘And what is waiting for you in Loen?’
‘A commission from the lensmann, Martin Omenas.’
‘Omenas?’ Sofie echoed sharply, side-stepping forwards to stand in front of Margit now. ‘What does he want you for?’ she asked, walking past him a little too closely. It was something she often did to put men, quite literally, on the back foot.
But Mons didn’t step back; he merely leant a little instead, watching her as she walked, and Signy could see him tracing her beautiful face, as though it was a book that could be read and understood. ‘He heard about my work with astronomical clocks.’
‘Astronomical clocks?’ Sofie scoffed. ‘What on earth are they?’
‘They represent the solar system using the geocentric model,’ he said calmly. He had a steady gaze and his voice when he spoke, although quiet, was certain and self-assured. To Signy’s eye, he seemed intelligent and educated; noble in action, if not high born.
Kari and Ashild tittered, as Sofie scowled at him. It was quite apparent that none of them had ever heard of a geocentric model, much less understood how that might be shown on a clock.
The stranger – Mons – looked back at Margit again, their leader. ‘I am sorry if I caused alarm. That was not my intention. I had hoped to reach the village tonight but was caught by the storm. I only wanted to take shelter through the worst of it before carrying on. I did not mean for you to ever know I’d been here.’
Margit stared at him for a moment longer, her grip on the knife lessening; Signy could see her sister was of the same mind that he posed no apparent threat. ‘No,’ she said finally. ‘It is fine.’
‘I will leave immediately and trouble you no further,’ he said, bowing his head, before replacing his cap and making to move past them.
Signy looked up at her sister; she could hear the storm at their backs, the rain pelting against the roof and window and walls, the thunder rumbling in rhythmic rolls across the sky.
‘Absolutely not.’ Margit’s voice was clear as a bell. He stopped. ‘You can’t possibly go out in this. You must stay for the duration of the storm – we insist.’
Relief brightened his face as he smiled. ‘Well, thank you. That is very kind.’ He nodded his thanks to each and every one of them. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’m Margit Reiten,’ she said. ‘And this is my sister Signy. Our father owns the summer pastures up here. Brit, Ashild and Kari Jemtegard,’ she said, pointing out each of them. ‘Their family’s farm abuts ours in Loen, and Sofie . . .’ Margit caught herself, remembering her friend’s sensitivity on the issue. ‘Sofie Doving is our dear friend and neighbour.’
‘It is a pleasure to meet you all,’ he said, his attention coming quickly back to Margit, as their unofficial representative; it was both politic and polite, but as Margit smiled back, her gaze seemed to catch with his, tangling in it.
Signy looked between them both.
‘Well, you must be tired and hungry,’ Margit said finally. ‘Come with us. The cabins are over here. You can rest whilst we prepare dinner. We were about to eat anyway.’
It was raining harder now – if that was even possible – but though they all threw their arms protectively over their heads as they ran down to the huts again, this time there were no girlish squeals or shouts; Signy looked back to see Mons fastening the haybarn door for them before he followed.
‘Please, do take a seat by the window,’ Margit said, setting the hay knife in the corner and pointing to the small table with bench chairs. Signy knew they had been planning kokeost cheese and rolls for dinner, but she said nothing as her sister reached for the smoked ham hock hanging from a hook in the far corner of the cabin. Sent as a treat by their mother, they had been saving it for Midsummer’s Eve but with a guest to feed – albeit an unexpected one – there were standards to uphold.
Sofie and the Jemtegard girls had retreated to their respective cabins to change into dry clothes and retrieve their small luxuries too, and when they returned fifteen minutes later, Brit had put on a slick of lipstick, Ashi had tied a blue ribbon in
her hair and Kari was wearing her favourite embroidered neckscarf. They came bearing the side of salmon they had had curing for the past three days; Ashi was a superb fisherwoman and every Sunday she’d taken to hiking to the lake in the next valley where – in exchange for a day’s respite from duties – she would return with a new catch. It had become their weekly fresh treat.
‘Please, do not go to any trouble on my account,’ Mons said, seeing how they draped a lace cloth over the table and Margit fetched a red candle from the drawer.
‘No trouble,’ Margit smiled, her eyes flashing to him like darting fish before she turned and began slicing the ham.
With the five girls working in the small cabin kitchen, it was cramped and felt to Signy like they were the goats in the pen, all bustling against each other. But it wasn’t just space that was tight; the air suddenly felt compressed too, like it was stoppered inside a champagne bottle, fizzing with some alchemic change. Amongst all the jostling elbows, Signy glimpsed the furtive glances back at the handsome stranger sitting by the window, and she felt the urge to give in to hysterical laughter. Apart from Nils’ visit the first week, they had been deprived of the company of any male under the age of fifty for almost a month now (and given that Nils was their brother, the Jemtegard girls hadn’t been thrilled by his presence anyway). This Mons man could have had two heads and trotters for feet and they would still have flirted with him.
‘Do you play?’ Mons asked Margit as she brought a stack of blue plates to the table. He was pointing to the small guitar on the wall; it was their father’s, reserved for the special occasions when he and the rest of the village came up here.
‘No,’ Margit demurred. ‘That’s my father’s.’
‘That is a shame. I suspect music played up here sounds sweeter than in the valleys.’ Margit had straightened up but he kept her on the spot with a direct gaze that seemed to exclude the rest of them. Signy saw two pink spots colour her sister’s cheeks and she was amazed – she had never seen her blush before.
Margit went to turn away—
‘Margit sings,’ Signy said hurriedly. ‘Mamma says she has a better voice than the nightjars.’
‘Is that true?’ Mons asked her, looking grateful for the opportunity to keep her there, keep her talking.
‘Oh no,’ Margit said bashfully, with a shake of her head.
‘Yes, it—’
But before Signy could protest it, Margit added, ‘How about you? Do you play any instruments?’
‘Only this.’ He reached into the pocket of his woollen coat and pulled out a slide harmonica.
‘Well, perhaps you could play a little for us whilst we prepare dinner?’ she asked.
‘I would be glad to, if you would sing in return?’ He smiled, his gaze capturing hers again, and Signy saw how it scooped her sister off the ground, cradling her in the air.
The others looked at each other and Signy knew they could see it too, this thing, whatever it was between Margit and the stranger.
The sound of the latch made them all turn round as Sofie walked in, looking sensational in the pale lemon cotton dress she had made her father take in at the waist three times. Her dark hair was slicked back as though she had been caught in the rain – even though it was less than ten steps from her cabin to here – and she had lightly stained her lips.
Signy saw how Margit’s face fell at the sight of her friend; Sofie looked ravishing, as she well knew. ‘Have I missed much?’ she asked the staring crowd.
Signy felt a flash of anger arrow through her at Sofie’s game. She was toying with the man, determined to make him fall in love with her in revenge for how he had refused to bend the knee earlier, making her look foolish as her scornful words were thrown back in her face.
But Mons simply smiled. ‘Not at all. Margit and I were just making a pact. I will play after dinner, if she will sing,’ he said in his quiet voice, looking back at Margit and wrapping her up once more in a soft gaze. ‘What do you say, Margit Reiten? Will you sing for me?’
Chapter Twelve
Her cheek against the cushion, Bo listened to the sound of the boat pulling away, the deep gurgle of the propellers underwater as the rib slowly reversed in a half circle and glided into the frame of the windows. From her position on the sofa, she could just see Anders checking behind them, one hand on the throttle; he was kitted out in his orange waterproofs again, his hood up as snowflakes dotted the air between them. He looked like a teacher on a school trip: stern, cautious and steady as Zac and Lenny and Anna – having taken up positions on the seats and holding on to the handrails – joked and larked about, their hooded heads moving animatedly as they laughed and talked, excited about the day’s forthcoming adventure. Anders was taking them round to a precipitous gorge. It was a long way further up the fjord and involved another long hike when they got there – and Bo felt nothing but relief that she didn’t have to go out there with them too.
She hugged the hot-water bottle closer and watched as Anders eased the boat into gear and led them away, the wake behind them a startlingly bright scar against the dark water. She tracked them for as long as she could but in under a minute they were out of sight, the signature frozen silence of the fjord settling again like a smothering blanket.
For several minutes she didn’t move, except to breathe and blink. She felt tucked into a fog and far, far away from anywhere. She had little sense of being here, in Anders’ house, alone – not that it mattered where she actually was. She was a stranger wherever she might be – none of these places were home. Not the cosy shelf farm a mile up the water, not the beach hut in Samoa.
From her bundle of blankets on the chair, she looked around at the place where she had been left; things had moved quickly once the arrangement had been decided – her unforeseen convalescence was throwing out an already tight timetable and Lenny (uneasy though he was with the plan) was also adamant they couldn’t lose the light of another day to getting her sorted out. In the week since they had arrived in Norway, they had lost a day to travelling, another to settling in and welcoming Anna, there had been the disastrous trip to the waterfall, and then of course yesterday, when she had slept constantly and Zac had kept watch. Lenny had had to pad out yesterday’s posts with yet more throwback fillers, but their fans wanted an adventure to feed on, they needed fresh material and her ‘chill’ was holding them all up.
So while Zac, Lenny and Anna had hiked and kayaked their way back down to town with lunch supplies and climbing equipment in the rucksacks, Anders had packed a bag for her and brought her back to town in the helicopter. It had taken less than five minutes to get to the village by air – they were no sooner up than they were going down again – and the same again in his orange Defender from the heliport to the house. He had guided her, sneezing and shivering, into the sitting room where she was lying now and piled her up with cushions and blankets, then got a fire going; he’d made her coffee and toast and pulled a tub of frozen soup from the freezer to defrost in time for lunch, so that by the time the others had arrived, pulling up at his jetty beyond the window, she was as comfortably ensconced as if she’d been there for days. The house had all the creature comforts of a village home – a TV, hot running water, a fully working kitchen, integral toilets . . . and after such an embattled week at the shelf farm, these pedestrian details felt luxurious beyond measure.
Dropping her head back in the pillows, succumbing to a coughing fit, she switched on the TV, letting her gaze roam over the room. She was vaguely surprised to find she liked it; it was masculine but not brutally so: bookshelves stuffed with paperbacks covered the opposite wall; a pair of old leather chairs – the seats cracked with age – were positioned in front of it and a vast mottled mocha-and-ivory shaggy sheepskin rug was spread on the wooden floor, in front of the wooden fireplace to her left. Her perch, a contemporary three-seater cream wool Ikea sofa, was positioned in front of the large square-paned windows that gave onto the water, with an industrial-style floor lamp arching over her li
ke a solicitous butler.
It was a more stylish room than she might have predicted; to date, she had only ever seen him in rugged outdoor survival clothes and so had assumed he was someone who invariably rated substance over style – certainly the bafflement-bordering-on-scorn on his face as he watched her and Zac doing their Instagram ‘thing’ had suggested he didn’t buy into aspirational lifestyle culture.
Yet the room still revealed something of who he was – and what he cared about – in the details: in spite of his ultra-controlled personal demeanour, he wasn’t meticulous at home according to the grey-marl sock rolled up and peeking out from under the corner of one of the chairs; a well-thumbed copy of a rib-boats brochure on the side-table was no surprise. The still-white wicks on the candles on the fireplace told her he’d never lit them and didn’t entertain. There was a Swiss army knife opened to the bottle opener on another table. Stacks of curling-paged climbing and skiing magazines. A mountain bike wheel was propped against the side wall.
She channel-hopped for a while; there was a lot of biathlon coverage and slalom racing, which although in Norwegian didn’t need translating, but she eventually found an English-speaking channel playing old episodes of Columbo. She watched without taking any of it in. The room was almost oppressively warm but she couldn’t stop shivering and she hugged the hot-water bottle harder, just as the sound of a door clicking echoed in the hall.
She stiffened, suddenly alert. ‘Hello?’ she called, lifting her head an inch off the cushion.
‘Hei?’ A voice called out, footsteps coming closer.
A woman peered around the door – silver short hair, pale green eyes and wearing jeans, a turquoise ski jacket, damson-coloured hand-knitted jumper and hiking boots. She nodded and came further into the room; she was carrying a small leather Gladstone bag and moved with brisk authority. ‘You must be Bo?’
Bo nodded, feeling too alarmed-slash-exhausted to speak.
‘I am Annika, Anders’ neighbour. He asked me to look in on you.’
