‘Ah, but he should have taken the apple from the Goddess of Wisdom, shouldn’t he?’
‘Perhaps,’ William said. ‘But some things are cast in the stars and love is one of them. It will have its way, no matter what tragedy it calls in its wake.’
Torvald’s smile faded properly for the first time then. Perhaps that was the moment he realised this was no game to William. His eyes shifted to Ragnar questioningly, and she forced herself to meet his gaze with no expression, because to show what she felt would be to betray William, and to act as if she believed what William believed would be to betray herself. Also if she started talking, this golden-haired young man would begin to ask questions.
Torvald’s expression of puzzlement grew more intense. ‘So … you are both in exile?’ he said at last.
‘Truly your name fits you,’ William said.
Torvald looked confused until he remembered the name he had announced himself with. ‘I am afraid I am curious to the point of rudeness. My father said I will never make a politician unless I learn to tell lies sweetly.’
‘No,’ William said. ‘You will not be a politician.’
Torvald frowned at him. ‘You think not?’
William shook his head. ‘Politicians cannot afford to be curious. You will always be a seeker of the only true beauty which is truth.’
Torvald blinked, much as Ragnar thought she must have done the first time she encountered William the Sage. That, he told her, had been his role before he was sent to her. He had been a seer of things to come. A Merlin.
‘You are a strange boy,’ Torvald said. ‘Do you live here?’
Ragnar plunged in hurriedly. ‘No. We just came down for the day. We live over in Calway.’ That ought to put him off since it was a Housing Commission area.
‘That is a long way. Did you walk?’
‘We came around the beach.’ She pointed vaguely to the route she walked after catching the train from town on school days.
‘Past Ridhurst?’
She nodded. ‘You go there, don’t you?’ Better to turn the talk back on him. She found that a useful way of dealing with curiosity.
But he just nodded and said, ‘You are brother and sister?’
‘I am the servant and protector of Princess Ragnar,’ William said calmly.
Ragnar wanted to strangle him. ‘We’re friends,’ she said.
‘I have that honour also,’ William agreed.
Torvald looked from one of them to the other.
‘Your father is a politician?’ Ragnar asked, somewhat desperately.
‘He is a politician of sorts. A diplomat.’ His eyes crinkled deliciously into a smile again. ‘He lies for his country rather than for a political party.’ Now his eyes were on William and they were serious. ‘But why did you say I will not be a politician? It is what my father wishes and I am not averse to the idea. He sent me here so that I will make important connections for the future. The sons and daughters of many influential people come to Ridhurst but it seems to me they worry about cricket and parties and the right clothes more than important matters. But perhaps I misjudge them as trivial and shallow because I arrived only last week. When I know them better, things might be different.’
‘Maybe,’ Ragnar said, thinking of the young women in their pale uniforms lifting their brows at her high school uniform when she got off the bus at their stop. The trouble was it was the closest stop to home, and even then it took a good half hour to walk round the beach to Cheetham Point.
Somehow, she had managed to get him talking about his father the diplomat and his appointment to Australia. His father was in Canberra but he had decided to send Torvald to the highly recommended Ridhurst as a boarder, at least until his mother, a doctor, followed a year later.
Ragnar was relieved when William announced suddenly that they must go back out or the Ridhurst boat would float free of the sandbank without him.
The trip back was conducted in relative silence, but as Torvald climbed out of the boat, he smiled at them both. ‘I thank you again for saving me from sitting like a fool in the boat until now. No doubt that is what was intended by the students who suggested I might enjoy a boat ride across to Cheetham Point.’
‘It was our pleasure to help you thwart your tormentors, Lord Torvald. Farewell.’
‘Perhaps we will meet again?’ Torvald’s eyes shifted to Ragnar and she felt the blood surge in her cheeks.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Come on, William.’
‘As you will, my princess.’
Ragnar cringed.
She thought that would be the end of that, but Torvald proved true to his name. He waited on the path a number of days and even wandered around Calway in the hope of bumping into his two off-beat rescuers. She, having some inkling perhaps, had gone a roundabout way through the wetlands to avoid the walk by the school, but one afternoon came home to see Torvald and William deep in conversation in the dunes near the boathouses.
Her heart lurched in sick fear.
‘Princess Ragnar,’ Torvald said, getting to his feet.
Ragnar’s fright was swamped with rage at the thought he was mocking William.
‘What are you doing here?’ she snarled.
William looked worried. ‘It is well, Princess. Truly. He will bring you no harm. He is your …’
‘What do you want?’ Ragnar demanded, cutting off whatever William would have said for fear he would start talking about future weddings.
‘I am Torvald the Curious.’
Ragnar did not know what to say in the face of that, especially with William sitting there beside her looking stricken. She calmed herself because maybe he had not said anything to this Ridhurst student about where they lived. Though it must look queer for them to come down here again like this.
‘My father owns a boathouse and we were planning to camp out for the night, but it’s not allowed. I’m sorry if I snapped at you.’
‘William is right. I mean no harm to you, Princess Ragnar.’
‘Don’t call me that!’
‘Being noble-born you may address the princess by her name if she is willing,’ William interpreted.
Ragnar sat down, speechless.
‘Then I shall call you Ragnar and you will call me Torvald, or Tor. I prefer the latter.’
‘Thor …’ William muttered.
Oh great, Ragnar thought. She glared at Torvald and asked William to leave them alone for a moment.
He rose at once, saying he would look for Thorn.
‘Thorn?’ Torvald asked.
‘A crippled seagull that William thinks is a reincarnated hawk. Just like he thinks I’m a princess and you’re some sort of lord,’ she said angrily. ‘What are you doing here sucking up to him and pretending to believe what he says? Are you going to write a paper for Ridhurst on the local feral kid?’
‘William is a very interesting boy. I think he can see into the future sometimes. It’s often the way with those society deems to be mad or simple. They see what most people do not. You are angry because you fear I will harm him, but I am not a student with a motorcycle and no brains or compassion.’ Torvald’s voice was mild and serious.
‘He told you about that?’
‘He told me many things, and he was right when he said I will not harm either of you.’
Ragnar was frightened again. ‘What did he tell you about me?’
‘Nothing that I would ever use to harm you. I swear it on the honour of Torvald the Curious.’
‘Don’t mock him!’
‘I do not mock. You mistake me. I have honour and I have sworn by it. And who is to say that William is not right?’
‘What?’
‘He says we are destined for one another, and that my soul was the soul of a god who loved you, and has followed you into exile.’
Ragnar’s face was burning. ‘You don’t love me.’
He did not answer for a long moment, but only let his eyes hold hers. Then he said, ‘How do you know
I did not fall in love with you the first moment I saw you coming towards me in that little boat, your red hair gleaming like molten copper and your face as fair as any goddess’s? How do you know that the moment I saw you all the hungers and longings of my life were not answered?’
Oh, his words were as beautiful as his face, and they had gone through her defences like a hot knife through butter. And in those months that followed she had come to love him body and soul; she had come to believe that William saw a different reality and in it, she was truly a princess and Tor her destined love.
And then two nights past, she was on the train dozing, catching the late train home from school because she was rehearsing for a school play in which she was one of the King of Siam’s lesser wives. She woke out of a deep sleep to hear Tor’s beloved voice, and for a moment she revelled in the sweetness of it, until she realised she was not dreaming and his words were anything but sweet.
‘I am telling you, Rosco, you or any of your friends mess this up for me and I will throttle you. I have a sweet set-up for myself and that red-haired peach is ripe and ready to drop into my hands. I gave her romance with a capital R and she ate it up along with her ferrety little friend.’
‘Should’ve run right over the gruesome little creep, cursing us, and two days later I broke my arm and Tristam fell over and slipped a disc.’
‘Yes, well, I think William the Wacko loves me enough to kill for me. He thinks I am some sort of king which means he has class even if his brains are scrambled.’
‘Just so long as you’re not getting soft on them. If it wasn’t for you playing the girl out, I would’ve reported the soak of a father for living in the sheds weeks back.’
‘Idiot.’ Tor’s voice held a serrated edge of scorn Ragnar had never heard before. ‘I said the girl pleased me. I did not say I would introduce her to my parents or bring her to a school dance. She is a pig, but I prefer her in her shack where I can get at her—until I am bored. After that you may have what revenge you want on the boy.’
‘After you finish shacking up with the Pig Princess, eh? Ha ha ha.’
Torvald had laughed too. Hard cruel laughter from a Torvald she had been too blind to see. Ragnar sat there in her corner as the train pulled up, praying they would not spot her. She stayed on until the East Potter stop, and then walked the seven kilometres back along the highway to the Cheetham Point turn-off, driven by the viciousness of her self reproaches and taunting echoes of William’s words.
‘I loved you the first moment I saw you …’
‘She is a pig but I prefer her in her shack where I can get at her …’
‘I will never harm you …’
‘I would not introduce her to my parents …’
She might not have told William, but he was waiting for her in a T-shirt that said ‘Shit Happens’. It does, she thought, savage and half-mad with despair. She let William encircle her with his thin hard arms, and told him everything. And when there were no more tears, and the ice had begun to form over her emotions, she looked up into his face and found his pale eyes curiously blank.
‘He proved too weak to withstand the darkness of this world and we should leave him to it. That would be the greatest torment for such as he,’ William said distantly. ‘Yet he is one of us and he must be punished for a betrayal that must make the gods weep when they learn of it. As they will when we return.’
‘Return?’
William nodded. ‘It is time. Two nights from now when the sun sets, a way will open to the realm of the old gods by their grace. This once and once only. I have dreamed it and I have read the signs. If we turn from it, we will be trapped here forever in this land of cruelty and darkness.’
Ragnar had been too distraught to really listen. All she understood was that William had a plan that would punish Torvald for his seduction and betrayal.
‘What do you want me to do?’
William asked her to send Torvald a message to come over the water to them on Sunday afternoon. It was Friday and normally he would not come on weekends for fear he would be spotted and followed by Ridhurst students who might discover the truth. Or so he had told her, she thought bitterly. William told her to write that the tide would be high enough for him to negotiate the sandbar in the Ridhurst dinghy.
Coldly Ragnar wrote the note and slipped it into the internal mail box in Ridhurst after dark while her father snored in his bed. She had not known what William planned then or now. She didn’t care as long as Torvald suffered.
‘He comes,’ William breathed.
Ragnar squinted through a rising sea-mist and saw Torvald launch the heavy school boat. She sat, stiff-backed and still as a statue as the boat came over the water and William ran to meet him and bring him back to where a picnic feast was laid out.
‘Ragnar, my love,’ Tor said and bowed as he always did. But now Ragnar saw the gallant gesture for the mockery it had always been and her hatred weighed in her stomach, heavy as a stone.
‘Tor.’ She forced her lips to shape a smile but there must have been something wrong in it, because instead of smiling back, Torvald frowned questioningly at her. He would not ask aloud what was wrong though, because of William. He would wait as always until William withdrew and they could speak freely.
Ragnar bent her head to hide the rage bubbling within her and stroked Greedy with fingers that trembled. He would not settle—no doubt he sensed the turmoil in her.
‘Now we shall drink a toast, my lord, for this very night the way opens to the realm of the gods from whence we all came,’ William said, and passed a chipped enamel mug to Torvald.
‘What?’ Torvald asked.
‘Drink,’ William said and handed a plastic mug to Ragnar, who was staring at Torvald with such longing and loathing that her soul felt as if it were curdling in her breast.
‘Tonight we drink to the joy of William the Sage, who returns to the realm of the gods where he is an honoured Merlin.’ William drank and, like an automaton, so did Ragnar. Torvald shrugged and drank.
William spoke again with an almost hypnotic solemnity, holding up his own jam jar as if it were a jewelled goblet. ‘Tonight we drink to Thorn the mighty hunter as he returns to his airy realms …’ He drank again and so did Ragnar and Torvald.
‘Tonight the Princess in Exile returns to claim her kingdom …’
Ragnar drank her father’s cheap red wine, and found her head spinning because she had barely eaten for the last two days. But Torvald had not taken another drink.
‘You are leaving?’ he asked worriedly. ‘Would you go without me?’
‘I am not finished, my lord,’ William said sternly. ‘We drink the bitter dregs to you for a betrayal that will sunder you forever from the princess. We might have let that be torment enough, were you a creature of this dark world. But you are of the golden realms and so your treachery is too deep for us to let you live—even here in this shadow world.’
‘What?’ Torvald asked, but his words slurred so badly they could barely understand. ‘Princess Ragnar?’
Ragnar’s confusion over William’s words dissolved in a boiling lava of bitter despair. ‘Don’t you mean Pig, Tor? Don’t you mean Ragnar the Pig whom you would never introduce to your parents or bring to a dance?’
His eyes widened in shock. ‘But, Ragnar …’ His eyes clouded and he fell forward, catching himself on one hand. He stared at the spilled wine seeping into the pale sand. ‘The … drink?’
‘Not poison but enough tranquilliser from the Goodhaven store to kill a horse, or a lord who betrayed his true land and his deepest love,’ William said sadly.
Fear flowed over the handsome features, then acceptance. ‘William … I do not blame you for this.’ He looked at Ragnar. ‘I was trying to divert Roscoe and his friends from reporting your father when I spoke … as I did on the train. They would … never be held back by compassion or … honour, so there was no point in speaking of such things to them … had … had to … to play their game.’ He coughed and fe
ll forward onto his elbow, twisting his head so that he could look into Ragnar’s horrified eyes.
‘Had to play … a cruel game they could understand and sympathise with. Even admire. I … did not want to tell you the truth until I had thought of a … solution. You see, in a way, I did betray you. They … they followed me, you see …’
‘Torvald!’ Ragnar screamed and gathered him into her arms, her terror too deep for words. Surely William had been joking. Surely he had only been trying to frighten Torvald.
‘I should have told you the truth sooner … my love. Shouldn’t have tried … being a hero …’
His eyes fell closed. Ragnar shook him and knelt to press her head to his chest. She could find no heartbeat nor breath in him. She tried mouth to mouth resuscitation, letting herself think of nothing but the rhythm of breathing and pushing on his chest. How long she tried she could not have said but when William’s hand fell on her shoulder and she sat up, her head spun.
‘Bring him to the boat, Princess. They will be able to revive him perhaps in the sunlit realm of the old gods where all things are possible.’
Ragnar stared at him hopelessly, thinking that she had let one of the two people she loved in all the world kill the other. It was not poor battered William’s fault, for he had never known any sort of normality. It was her fault Tor was dead, her fault William was a murderer.
‘I have made you a murderer …’ she whispered, stricken.
But William’s eyes met hers steadily. ‘Tor’s is not the first death at my hand in this dark world.’
‘What?’ Ragnar whispered.
‘I killed my father. He was trying to scalp my mother when I woke. So I took the gun he had thrown down and I killed him.’
All the horror of the night coalesced around the bleak dreadful image of a small boy forced to shoot his father, and Ragnar’s heart swelled with pity.
‘Ah, William …’ she whispered, blinded by tears. ‘What are we going to do?’
He reached out and took her hand in a surprisingly strong grip. ‘I have never lied to you, Princess. We belong to a world where there is hope and this is a world where there is none. Only come now, and help me get Lord Torvald’s body into the longboat.’
Forever Shores Page 3