An Untamed Heart

by Lauraine Snelling

  Ingeborg thought they were even better but didn’t say so. While Mor was a good cook, she was also a good teacher, so she really hadn’t had much to do in the kitchen for a long time. Her well-trained daughters had taken over. But now with Katrina gone . . . Her mouth dropped open. “The wedding. We forgot all about the wedding.” She counted back the days. “It was last Saturday.” She stared at Gunlaug. “How could I forget such a thing?”

  “What could you have done?”

  “Uh . . .” She ducked her chin and huffed a sigh. “Nothing, I guess, but we could at least have prayed for her.” She glanced around the table. “Did none of the rest of you think of it either?” Heads shook all around.

  “I don’t even know what day it is when we are up here.” Hamme shook her head again. “I like that.”

  “Well, this Sunday we are going to have a church service of our own, and we will start shearing on Monday.”

  “Maybe Sunday some of us could go for a hike, maybe up to the lake to see if the trout are biting yet?” Hjelmer suggested, leaning forward hopefully.

  “I hope so. And this afternoon I need two or three volunteers to go over the pasture and pick dandelion leaves for supper. There are lots down by the thicket.”

  Most hands went up.

  “How about Jon, Hamme, and—”

  “Me. I want to be out in the sunshine for a change.” Mari gave Ingeborg a pleading smile.

  “Of course. So everyone knows what they are doing today?”

  “Gunlaug is starting me on the loom.” Kari smiled at Gunlaug.

  “Ja. And, Hamme, if you want to help, you can.”

  “I have to card wool.” Jon did not look pleased.

  “Quit complaining. I am too.” Mari joined in. “After we get back from picking dandelions I will card with you.” Mari made them all laugh at her dramatic flair.

  Ingeborg pushed back her chair. How nice it would be to sit carding out in the sunshine. She glanced over at their patient, who was listening and watching. It was a shame they couldn’t move him outside yet. “We need some kind of crutch for Nils pretty soon or at least a cane.” He was staying awake ever longer between naps and had fed himself last night and that morning.

  Still chuckling, she took a cup of coffee to Nils in the other room and held it out. “You sure look a lot better.”

  “I feel a lot better. In fact, if you would please hand me my pack, I think I can study for a while.”

  “No headache?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Reading might bring it back.”

  “Probably. I’ll try for a while and see. I have an exam coming up in the fall that I need to prepare for, and I am not used to doing nothing.” He smiled at her over the rim of his coffee cup. “Do you have time to visit, perhaps?”

  “Later. I’d take time, but right now I need to—”

  “Ingeborg!” Came from outside.

  She left in a swirl of skirts. Now what?

  “Look!” Mari pointed across the meadow to where three deer were grazing, a doe and two fawns.

  “Oooh.” Her sigh was drawn out. “They are beautiful. And so young.”

  “She knows we’re watching her.” Mari had lowered her voice.

  “Why?”

  “She raises her head and looks our way. Watch. I wish we could see them better. I almost didn’t see the fawns.” Mari’s smile grew wider.

  Ingeborg put her arm around her sister’s shoulder and squeezed. When Mari’s arm slipped around her waist, she squeezed again. The two and the others stood watching until the doe ambled away with her fawns.

  “And you want to shoot a deer?” Hamme shook her head at Hjelmer.

  “Only one with horns. You don’t shoot the does, or there soon won’t be any deer.” Hjelmer was standing close on Ingeborg’s other side.

  She wasn’t sure when he had moved there, but she wished she dared put her arm around him too, so she patted his shoulder instead. “Thanks for calling me. What a treat. Now that the wild animals are getting used to our intrusion, perhaps we will see more.” She looked up and shaded her eyes with a hand. Sure enough, the eagle they had seen other years was back too. His cry sang wild and free. Why did she feel as though they had just been welcomed home?

  “Come look at the sow, Ingeborg.” Hjelmer motioned toward the barn. Ingeborg nodded, glancing up again to see if she could find the eagle against the bright sun.

  Once in the barn, she waited for her eyes to adjust after being in the bright sun, then joined Hjelmer at the wooden pen. “That sow looks like she’s about to pop too.” Ingeborg leaned on the hogpen to watch the two sows make pigs of themselves in their trough. Hjelmer, who’d carted the full can of buttermilk from the churning to the barn, leaned beside her, his chin on his hands on the pen wall.

  “I know. I was going to tell you. Perhaps we’d better move her over to the other box stall.”

  “Get the boys and we’ll close the barn door so she can’t get out. She’ll follow you and a bucket of buttermilk anywhere, though.”

  The boys lined up to create a pathway to the open stall, and with Hjelmer and the bucket, she nearly raced him to the new trough and, putting both front feet in, started slurping.

  “I do not think she even looked at us.” Jon shook his head, smiling up at Ingeborg. “I tried to catch a little pig once and fell right in the mud.” He clamped two fingers over his nose. “Pee-ew. Mor made me wash outside. Clothes too.”

  “Even so, he stunk for a week.” Anders roughed his brother’s hair. “Pee-ew was right. He should have slept in the barn too.”

  Ingeborg made her way back to the house. Nils was sound asleep, his book in his lap. Sorry, but we’ve had a busy morning, she thought as she went back outside to skim the cream from the milk from the days before.

  “What are we having for dinner?” she asked Mari when she returned.

  “Corn cakes. The beans with those hocks we brought up should be done in an hour or so.” Mari pointed toward the table and a covered platter. “The corn cakes are already fried.”

  “Oh.” Ingeborg grinned at her baby sister. “You are doing a great job, Cook Mari.” How blessed she felt to know she had people around her who knew what they needed to do and went ahead and did it. And other than herself and Gunlaug, they were all children.

  When she passed by the pallet, Nils opened his eyes. “I guess I fell asleep.”

  “Guess you needed it.” She nodded to the book. “What are you studying?”

  “Medieval European history. I took a class in it last semester and found it fascinating. Did you know that the Chinese were way ahead of the Europeans in language, writing, math—all kinds of things?”

  “No, really?”

  He held up the book, one finger between the pages to mark his spot. “It just mentions that here. You’d think they would include more if it was that important.”

  Ingeborg shrugged. “You would think so. Did reading give you a headache?”

  “I think I fell asleep before that could happen.” He gazed toward the window. “I would so like to be outside. I came to the mountains so I would not have to spend the summer days in my father’s offices.” He gestured to his leg, shaking his head. “And here I am. Ironic, is it not?”

  “Can I get you something? Willow-bark tea for pain?”

  He made a face. “That tea could use some sugar.”

  “Sorry. I’m so used to it I forgot to put sugar in yours. I will next time.”

  “Is there anything about animals and farming and all this that you do not know?”

  “I have been coming up here for nine years. You learn a lot doing this. Besides, it all fascinates me. Anything having to do with growing things and animals and the mountains.” And being a midwife. But she kept that to herself. She’d already talked too much.

  “What do you want to do? Teach?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Nei. What gave you that idea?”

  She smiled. “You are still in schoo
l. Not many boys from our area go to college, you know.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “On a farm outside of Valdres. This is our family’s seter, Strandseter.”

  “You love it here.” He did not ask a question.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Your face lights up when you talk about the things around you.”

  She could feel a heat rising up her neck. “I doubt it.” He saw too much, even from his sickbed. Raised voices took her to the window.

  Outside, Tor and Anders were squared off, fisted and shouting.

  “Oh, now what?” Hands planted on her hips, she shook her head.

  “You deliberately pushed him!” Anders’s teeth clenched.

  “It was an accident!”

  “Anders, I am not hurt!” Jon yelled at his brother.

  “How can you have so many accidents? No one else does.”

  “Why do you always think I did everything that goes wrong? Just because I don’t know as much as you . . . you . . . !”

  Anders drew back one arm, heaved a sigh, and took a deep breath. “It better not happen again. You will be sorry if it does.”

  Ingeborg drew in a breath along with Anders. “Thank you, Lord.”

  At that point Tor made a big mistake. “Who is going to make me sorry? You?” When he turned his head slightly, he made a worse mistake. He did not see the punch coming. A solid thud to the jaw and a follow-up one to the diaphragm. He doubled over, gasping for air. When Anders started to step forward, a “No!” rang out.

  Ingeborg knew Hjelmer’s voice. She almost called the same but watched as Anders dropped his hands, still keeping a wary eye on Tor.

  “Did they settle it?” came from behind her.

  “I think so.”

  “Good for them.”

  Ingeborg had a feeling this wasn’t the last they’d heard of this but wisely kept from going out there. And to think just a few minutes ago she was thinking Tor was changing. Shame. A hand on her shoulder made her turn. Mari stood behind her, nodding.

  “Tor needed that.”

  “I know. He is a bit of a bully.”

  “Only a bit? Ingeborg, you always think the best of everybody, and they let you down.”

  “Better that than the worst and live angry all the time.” She glanced over to see Nils reading his book, a wrinkle in his forehead. If they turned his pallet, he would get more light from the window on the page. At the window she called Tor, Anders, and Hjelmer to help her.

  “What?” Nils asked as she nudged his pallet.

  “We’re going to turn you so you can read more easily.” She gave the instructions, and they each grabbed a corner of the pallet and turned it so the back of his head was toward the window.

  “That was much easier than trying to turn you.”

  “Tusen takk,” he said to everyone. “Is she always this careful with her patients?”

  “Unless they bite her.”

  “Or kick her.” The boys left, laughing, and Mari headed for the kitchen.

  Hjelmer paused at the door and said over his shoulder, “But that’s usually the four-footed kind.”

  Heat coming up her neck and blossoming in her face made Ingeborg want to follow the boys. Explain them? Explain herself? If Nils thought she had a lot of people patients, she didn’t want him to think differently. Dreams of his far screaming at her for not taking his son to a doctor had haunted her one night. “I’ve helped lots of injured animals.”

  “I have been thinking about getting into a chair. I could rest my leg on another. Those two strong boys could help me, I’m sure.”

  “Just please do not go trying to move on your own, and something else to keep in mind—”

  “I know. The ribs.” He patted his strapped-together chest. “When you can remove this . . . this rather interesting garment I am tied into, perhaps they can help me wash too.”

  “I am sure they can. And that interesting garment is a corset. We laced you pretty loosely, you know.”

  “And women wear these torture bands all the time?” He shook his head. “It makes no sense to me, but my sisters do the same.”

  Quick to change the subject, Ingeborg asked him to tell her about his family. “I’ll get you some water first . . .” She paused and rolled her lips together. With eyebrows raised she added, “Or would you rather have willow-bark tea?” Laughing inside, she fetched two cups of water from the drinking bucket that always had a dish towel covering it to keep the water clean. His laugh behind her set him to coughing.

  “I am sorry.” She hurried back.

  He raised a hand and coughed again, then reached for the water before he could talk. “Do not be sorry. Laughing to make me cough was probably a good thing, or so a certain person would tell me.”

  “Well, if you tell about your family, perhaps that certain person will not force willow-bark tea down your throat.”

  He smiled and raised his cup in salute as he drank. Setting it on the floor beside him, he leaned against his pillows. “I have two sisters. I am the oldest in the family. One year younger than I is Amalia. She tried very hard to take care of me after my first accident, but I was not a good patient. I am afraid I tried her patience, but you would never know that. She is the perfect lady, much like our mor. Katja is much younger than Amalia, and at twelve would rather be outside than anywhere in the house. She is much like me and likes the mountains and hiking and skiing in the winter. She is a fine ice skater too.

  “Far expects me to take over the family shipping business, but Amalia is the one who secretly would give the world if Far would allow her to work in his business. Instead, she is forced to use her skills in organizing various benefits. She is living up to Mor’s belief that helping the poor is one reason businesses make money. She does not just sip tea and gossip, as many of the wealthy ladies do. Amalia’s benefits make money to provide useful things like food and shelter for orphans and widows.”

  “You admire your sister.”

  “I do. She is doing something important with her life.”

  What a pleasure it was to talk with a man who had both a sense of humor and an interest in many things. What would it be like to attend a school again? To ask questions and exchange ideas?

  And would it ever be possible for her to do? Of course not. And yet, the hope remained.

  The next day Ingeborg and Gunlaug worked on the cheese together. Using the big jars made especially for this job, they poured all the saved cream to fill the jars and set them close enough to the fire to heat slowly. Then they poured the heated cream into the waiting pans and let them set until well curdled, looking more like a solid pudding than cheese.

  After taking a break to check on Nils, Ingeborg said, “Guess I better get the curd cut and hung. Gunlaug, do you want to help me with the cheesecloth?” Together they cut the pans of slightly yellow curd into about two-inch squares and scooped it into cheesecloth bags to hang from hooks above the pans. When they finally got all the curds dripping, they dumped the whey into milk cans to be hauled to the barn for feeding the pigs and chickens, all of which thrived on the liquid poured over their feed.

  “I think we need a cup of coffee, don’t you?” Gunlaug stacked the pans for washing. They already had the cream heating by the fire again. The process would continue all through the summer.

  “Out on the bench?” The bench on the other side of the house faced the mountains and had been Ingeborg’s favorite spot for years.

  “Of course. Then I’ll wash the pans and you can either weave or spin,” Gunlaug suggested.

  “During the day? How slothful.” Shock struck her. She sounded just like her mor. Even when she was teasing.

  “I will need yarn for the loom before long, you know. Who else knows how to spin?”

  “I know Mari can and Kari would like to learn weaving. Perhaps Hamme?”

  “She’s too young.”

  “One is never too young to learn to spin. You needn’t have a long reach to control
the shuttle.” They stopped in front of the fire, and Ingeborg used her apron to protect her hands as she pulled the pot free to pour. She glanced over at their guest, who was now sleeping again, this time his book on his chest. Perhaps soon he would be able to go outside. Having to stay inside was beginning to grate on him. She could tell by the way he stared out the window. What must it feel like to be so bound by injuries?

  Or social convention?

  16

  “Couldn’t we have church after we go up to the lake?”

  “Why can’t we have church up there?”

  Ingeborg listened to their pleas. Why not have church up at the lake? Worshiping on the banks of the lake sounded like a heavenly idea. She always felt closer to God out in His natural creation. She gave an emphatic nod. “Yes.” She had to raise her voice to be heard above the cheers. “So get your chores done, and we’ll pack the food.”

  “We might have fresh fish.” Anders grinned.

  “All depends on if they are biting yet. Remember, that’s a higher elevation than we are here. So we’ll take food.”

  “And coals to start a fire?”

  “You don’t want to just take flint and tinder?”

  Mari shook her head. “Coals are much faster. Do you think the fire ring is still in place?”

  “We’ll rebuild it if not.” The thought of fresh trout made her mouth water. Like the dandelion greens, fresh trout bespoke the change of seasons.

  The others scattered out the door, and she went to the springhouse to check on the curd they’d started the night before. Surely it could all wait until later today or even tomorrow, since working on Sunday was against God’s law. But taking care of animals never stopped.

  “We have baby pigs,” Hjelmer hollered from the barn.

  So much for checking the curd. Ingeborg headed for the barn to join Hjelmer and some of the others leaning on the gate. Hjelmer had checked on the sow in the middle of the night, but nothing had been going on. “How many?”

  “Nine alive. One dead.” Hjelmer pointed to the board nailed across two of the corners, just high enough off the floor for the babies to slip under, a safe place where there was less chance of the sow lying on them. However, this old girl, in pig years, was such a good mother that Ingeborg was sure she’d counted her babies before lying down.