Peer and Hilde began to hear noises ahead: bangs, crashes and whoops. The passage ended in some steps, and they found themselves looking into the splendid Hall under Troll Fell.
It was a huge cavern. The roof was an arch of darkness, patrolled by many floating lights, golden and blue. Their own ball whirled aloft to join the others.
Opposite them, a waterfall found its way in white threads down between rocks. At the foot of the waterfall was a stone chair. The water divided around it and flowed away in a channel under an archway.
The Hall was filling with trolls. Some tumbled from dark chimneys in the roof and dropped to the floor like bouncing balls. Others scrambled out from underneath boulders. Gangs rushed in with tables and benches, dragging them here and there, setting them in order. Over by the river a group of dripping water spirits, or nixies, scoured a pile of golden plates with handfuls of fine white sand. Everyone was shouting at once:
“Fetch a high-seat for the King of the Dovre!”
“A special table for his son and daughter!”
“How many tubs of water for the merrows?”
“We need to have just as many for the nixies!”
“Couldn’t they sit on wet stones…?”
Peer scanned the crowd for a sight of Sigurd or Sigrid. He saw trolls with pigs’ snouts, trolls with owls’ eyes, trolls with birds’ beaks. There was not a human face among them – except for the nixies whose beautiful faces were narrow and sly with curious slanting eyes.
Then he saw them – slouching on rocks at the bottom of the waterfall – not the children, but the burly, black-haired figures of the Grimsson twins. He winced.
“Don’t worry, Peer,” whispered Hilde beside him.
“I’m not,” he lied. The Gaffer set off across the uneven stone floor. They followed. The trolls fell back for them, muttering.
Cold with fright, Peer threw his head back and stared at his two uncles. They hadn’t seen him yet, and he wasn’t looking forward to the moment when they did. Baldur noticed the Gaffer and got to his feet, jogging his brother’s elbow – and then he spotted Peer. His jaw dropped. So did Grim’s. Their faces registered blank astonishment changing to pop-eyed fury. Scared though he was, Peer had to giggle.
The Gaffer walked past the Grimsson brothers, ignoring them, and climbed on to his throne. He swept his tail out of the way and settled himself. But as Peer and Hilde drew near, the two men came out of their trance. Baldur shot out a thick arm. He caught Peer by the scruff and shook him like a puppet.
“Let him go!” Hilde shrieked, trying to pull him free. Grim kicked her, and there was a hiss of delight from the assembled trolls: “Bite them and tear them! Pull them to pieces!”
“QUIET!” bellowed the Gaffer. He folded his arms. “Huuuu! If we’re not ready by midnight for the King of the Dovre, I’ll look at you all with my other eye and shrivel you into earthworms! Get on with your work.” The trolls began to bustle about very busily.
Baldur dropped Peer and turned blustering to the Gaffer. “Whatever the boy’s said to you, don’t listen to him! We’ve done what you asked, haven’t we? We’ve got you those children – just what you wanted!”
“S’right!” added Grim. “Give us our gold – as much as we can carry!”
“I’ll do as I please,” said the Gaffer, growling.
With a discordant blast, horns sounded in a corner of the Hall. The little troll came hurrying in and bowed several times, out of breath. “The princess!” it gasped. “And the prince!”
Into the Hall came the Gaffer’s eldest daughter. She was in a bad temper, for the occasion was so great: she had never been married before! She was pretty; her mother had been a nixie. Her eyes were large, slanted like birch leaves, and her tail was as delicate as a cat’s.
“The spiders haven’t finished my wedding dress,” she complained. “And look at all the dust! You should have raised the hill yesterday and aired the place. Then North Wind could have swept in here. We shall never be ready in time, and the King of the Dovre will think I’m a bad housewife.”
“He won’t think that as long as there’s enough beer,” chuckled the Gaffer. “Besides, my dear, look what I have for you! The Bride Cup you so foolishly lost, long ago.”
The troll princess looked at it carelessly. “That old thing? You’ve got it back? So at last you’ll stop fussing?”
“It’s an heirloom, my dear!”
Up came her brother the troll prince, a sulky expression on his piggish face. “Those two children you’ve got for us are terrible,” he burst out. “They won’t fetch or carry or dance or sing. They won’t do anything but scream and cry. I can’t possibly give the girl to my bride.”
“I can’t possibly give the boy to my husband!” agreed the troll princess.
They glared at their father who in turn scowled at the Grimssons.
“‘Just what I wanted,’ eh?” he growled, and the eye in the middle of his forehead flickered in a red blink. The two big men shuffled their feet.
“How can they sing when they’re unhappy? Where are they?” cried Hilde, imagining the children locked in some dark cave. But Peer pulled her arm and there, creeping into the Hall, holding hands tightly, were Sigurd and Sigrid. Their dirty tear-streaked faces brightened as they saw Hilde, and they raced to meet her. She grabbed one in each arm and hugged them close. “This’ll teach you to go running off,” she choked. “I told you to stay with Grandpa!”
Sigrid sobbed. Peer tousled her hair, a brotherly lump in his throat. “Don’t scold, Hilde,” he whispered.
“I’m not,” sniffed Hilde. “Don’t cry any more, Siggy. We’re taking you home.”
“Are you, now?” asked the Gaffer drily.
Hilde turned on him. “I brought you the cup!”
“And the prince and princess don’t want the children,” Peer added.
“It’s what I want that counts!” the Gaffer snarled. “And it boils down to this. I want a pair of you for the Dovreking’s son and daughter. So two of you may go – but two must stay.
“I’m feeling generous,” he added genially, “so I’ll let you choose.”
“You don’t mean it,” said Hilde in horror.
The Gaffer looked at her.
“But —” She stopped, gasping. “How can we choose?”
“Take your time,” the Gaffer advised merrily. “Think hard. Don’t decide in a hurry!”
“Can’t we go home?” Sigrid wept, her mouth turned down. “I want to go home!”
“So do I!” cried Sigurd. They buried themselves in Hilde’s clothes. She looked down at them and bit her lip.
“I – I suppose I had better stay,” she whispered.
Sick with shock, Peer opened his mouth, and closed it again, unable to say the words that would condemn him to a life of slavery. He imagined living here, trapped – never seeing Loki again, never seeing anyone but trolls – and choked. He looked at Hilde and she turned away. Peer thought it was scorn. He gritted his teeth. It was easy for her to be brave. The twins were her family!
He stole another glance. Hilde’s head was bowed, her fists clenched. Peer was ashamed of himself. Of course it wasn’t easy.
He stared dizzily around the Hall – the scurrying trolls, the white strands of the waterfall, the moving lights in the dark roof. It all seemed horribly strange and meaningless. I’ve got to get out! Out, where the sun shines and the wind blows!
Again he looked at Hilde, who still would not look at him. And then his eyes came to rest on the stupid, brutal, calculating faces of Baldur and Grim. A cold thought penetrated. What sort of life would it be, to go back to the mill with those two? How could he live, knowing he had abandoned Hilde?
I’d be as bad as they are, he thought in revulsion.
He pressed his hands over his eyes. It was the same choice he had made on the mountain, but this time it was much harder. Who would have thought you had to keep on choosing and choosing? I can’t keep running away, Father, he said silently in th
e blackness behind his closed lids. It doesn’t work. It’s time to stand up to them. And he opened his eyes.
“I’ll stay here too.”
Hilde shot him a look of amazed and shining gratitude. Peer turned to the Gaffer. “I’ll stay,” he repeated, bleak but firm. “So don’t give my uncles any treasure. They haven’t earned it. Sigurd and Sigrid are no good to you, and we’re staying of our own free will.”
The Gaffer howled with laughter, opening his mouth so wide he showed every jagged tooth. “Good boy – excellent!”
“Our reward – our gold!” Baldur squeaked in horror. “Besides, that boy’s my own nephew. You have to pay me for him.”
“Not – a – penny!” said the Gaffer, and his mouth snapped shut. The Grimssons looked completely confounded, Peer saw. It was some consolation.
“When can the children go home?” Hilde demanded.
“After the wedding,” said the Gaffer. “We’re busy till then.”
“And keep them quiet,” ordered the troll princess. “Or I’ll bite them!” She cast a critical eye over Hilde and Peer. “Come here!” She looked them up and down. “Humph! These two are bigger and stronger. I suppose that’s better. Oh! Look at her boots! Why, they’re better than mine!”
Hilde looked down. It was true she was wearing a good pair, made by her father and embroidered round the tops in blue and red thread.
The princess hoisted her skirts and showed a foot shod in a clumsy wooden clog.
“Let her have ’em,” Peer advised from the corner of his mouth.
“Take them,” said Hilde quietly. She pulled them off and gave them to the princess, who kicked off her clogs. Hilde slipped her own feet into them with a slight shudder.
The princess tugged the boots on. She stuck out her feet. “Now I shall be finer than the Dovreking’s daughter. They pinch, it’s true – but that’s the price of elegance!”
“Now there’s plenty to do!” the Gaffer shouted. “Has the beer come in yet?”
“Not yet. The bog wife has been brewing for us all week. I ordered twelve barrels of strong black beer. When the steam rises from her vats, the humans say, ‘Oh, there’s mist on the marshes!’” laughed his son.
The Gaffer licked his lips with a long red tongue and turned to his daughter. “Take the girl away. She can help you to dress. As for you, boy —” he waved at Peer, “roll barrels or move tables. Make yourself useful.”
They were being separated! As Hilde was led reluctantly away, Peer startled at a touch on his shoulder. He looked round into the face of a small troll with huge eyes and a long thin beak like a curlew. “Come to the kitchens!” it piped. “Help the cooks!”
It rushed him over to a dark crack in the floor. Hot air rose from it, and the strangest smells. Peer teetered on the edge; the troll pushed him, and with a cry he shot into the darkness, whipping down a natural slide, and was spat out into a lower cavern filled with a red mist of steam and smoke. The troll popped out beside him.
Peer got up, rubbing his bruised knees. “Whatever are they cooking?” he coughed. The troll piped something hard to hear – had it really said, “Frog soup, eel pie, spittle cakes – bone bread?”
Hot fires blazed. Frenzied trolls rushed about with ladles, spoons, colanders and platters. From one corner came a rhythmic thumping where a couple of trolls were working a huge pestle and mortar, pounding a pile of bones into smaller and smaller fragments. Nearby was a stone quern for grinding them into flour, and a series of wooden troughs where several small trolls danced up and down on the dough. Batches of gritty bread were being lifted out of ovens.
Great pots hung over the fires. Peer glanced into one. It held a bubbling mess that looked like frogspawn. And a greasy little troll turned the handle of a spit on which a whole pig was roasting. Or was it a —?
“Dog!” squeaked the troll. That wasn’t – Grendel, by any chance, he wondered? It looked big enough. He backed away, feeling ill. How would he and Hilde live? Never, never could they eat such food.
We’ll escape, he swore to himself. They can’t guard us for ever. Perhaps we can follow the stream. It must find its way out somewhere!
Through streaming eyes he spotted a flight of steps. His troll had forgotten him, and he darted across and ran up the twisting spiral. Emerging into the cool Hall he blinked. He must have been in the kitchens longer than he’d thought, for the tables were all prepared and the guests were arriving and being shown to their places. Everywhere, gold gleamed and silver shone. Jewels winked in the crowns of the Gaffer of Troll Fell and his son and daughter, who stood in front of the throne, welcoming the arrivals.
Where was Hilde? Over there, sitting forlornly on the rocks by the waterfall with Sigurd beside her and Sigrid on her lap. And there were Baldur and Grim, seated at a table, heads together, deep in some grumbling conversation. They wouldn’t go without their gold. Peer smiled grimly. He thought they would have to wait for a very long time. A group of pig-snouted musicians struck up. One blew a twisted ram’s horn; another sawed notes from a one-stringed fiddle. The third rattled a stick up and down a sheep’s jawbone. There was a shout.
“The King of the Dovrefell! He’s arriving, he’s here!”
“Raise up the hill!” shouted the Gaffer of Troll Fell. “Time for some fun!”
Chapter 17
Raising the Hill
WITH A RUMBLING and a rattling of all the dishes on the table, the roof began to rise. All around the Hall a gap appeared, a widening strip of night sky fringed with trailing roots and ragged earth. Clods rained from the edges, and a draught of cold air rushed into the Hall, smelling of snow, fresh earth and freedom. Hoisted up on four strong red pillars, the hill stood open to the midwinter night, spilling light to all sides.
As the musicians launched into a lively jig, the King of the Dovrefell and his party swept down into the Hall on the night wind. They landed in a chattering group, collecting themselves and adjusting their clothes. The King of the Dovrefell was tall and dignified. He threw back the hood of his white bearskin cloak and strode forward with his son behind him and his daughter clutching his arm. Peer couldn’t see her face. Hadn’t the Nis said she was beautiful? She lifted her veil, and a murmur of admiration ran around the Hall. The Troll Fell princess was looking as cross as two sticks. Peer edged around curiously.
The princess had three tails. Two were draped elegantly over her elbows; the third sprouted from the middle of her forehead and was tied up in a bow to keep it out of her eyes. The Troll Fell prince greeted her eagerly, looking smitten already. Peer closed his eyes and shook his head.
The Gaffer and the Dovreking clasped hands. “Welcome!” boomed the Gaffer. He slapped the Dovreking on the back. “A drink to warm you after your journey! And we’ll let the young people get to know each other, hey?” He laughed loudly.
The two princesses bristled at each other like a couple of cats.
“What a funny little place you have here,” observed the Dovre princess. “Quite rustic. I see you have a sod roof. At home in the Dovrefell, our hall is so high that the roof is carved from ice.”
“That must be very chilly,” the Troll Fell princess smiled. “Here we enjoy simple comfort, and despise ostentation.”
“I imagine you have to,” replied the Dovre princess.
“Will you dance?” asked the Troll Fell prince hastily. But his bride said she was tired and would rather sit. The couples sat stiffly down together, and the Troll Fell princess yawned.
“Now then! Brighten up!” shouted the Gaffer. He and the Dovreking were laughing and drinking, and seemed to be getting along famously. “You’re not allowed to quarrel till after you’re married, remember. You boys, give your brides a hug and a kiss. Don’t be shy!”
“Vulgar old fellow,” muttered the Dovre princess.
“Let’s exchange gifts,” boomed the King of the Dovrefell. “That’ll cheer them all up. We brought a few small things from the Dovrefell.”
He snapped his fingers. Two
stout trolls stepped forward with a heavy sack. The untied the neck and poured out a stream of jewels. Diamonds, rubies, amethysts, emeralds, rattled out like peas and lay on the floor in a shimmering drift – or bounced and rolled under the tables. Baldur and Grim crashed heads as they lunged to pick up a skipping diamond.
“Very pretty,” said the Gaffer. He beckoned to various servants who came staggering out with piles of gold: necklaces, rings, bracelets, chains and crowns. “Part of a dragon’s hoard,” said the Gaffer, waving a casual hand. Peer glanced at his uncles. Their mouths were wet with excitement.
The Dovreking frowned and snapped his fingers again. This time his trolls laid out heaps of beautifully woven and embroidered clothes, each one of which would have taken a human seamstress a year to make. But these were not made by mortals. There were scarves snipped from the trailing ends of the Northern Lights; petticoats trimmed with the most delicate frost; seven-league boots lined in ermine. The Troll Fell princess got a cloak of moonshine that pleased her so much she threw her arms around the Dovreking and gave him a kiss.
“Aha!” said the Dovreking, pinching her cheek. But the Gaffer grinned triumphantly and signalled to Peer and Hilde.
“Now for a little extra – a special present,” he gloated. “You won’t have brought anything like this from the Dovrefell!”
Peer caught Hilde’s eye. Together they stepped forward. Better make a good job of it, thought Peer gloomily, and he bowed low. Hilde curtsied. The three-tailed princess screamed in mock terror and clutched her bridegroom’s arm. “Oooh! What is it? What are they for?”
“Something you don’t see every day,” the Gaffer boasted. “Your new servants!”
“Humans!”
“Yes, of course,” broke in the Troll Fell princess. She pushed the pile of jewels with a contemptuous toe. “We see so much of this kind of thing. We wanted to be original!”
The two free tails of the Dovre princess swished angrily; the one knotted up above her face could only twitch. “What a strange idea. They’re very pale. All that unhealthy daylight, I suppose. Is this the girl? Turn around. I thought so! This ugly creature has no tail at all. Take her away at once and fix one on!”
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