Gudrun was horrified. “Oh, I couldn’t, Bjørn. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Listen to Peer, Bjørn,” Ralf urged, “You’re a father now. You mustn’t take risks.”
“A fine father who can’t even give his child a home.” Bjørn stood. “I must go. You don’t mind me coming to see her – from time to time?”
“What a question!” Gudrun exclaimed.
Bjørn nodded. His blue gaze travelled slowly over all of them, seeming to burn each of them up. At Peer, he hesitated, silent appeal in his face. Peer stared back stonily. Bjørn turned away. The door closed behind him.
Chapter 23
The Quarrel
RALF ROSE. “I’ll go after him. We mustn’t leave him alone. Besides, I left Einar and Harald and old Thorkell searching the tide-line. They may have found poor Kersten by now.”
“But Pa!” Hilde cried. “What about Bjørn’s story? Don’t you believe it?”
“No, Hilde, I don’t.” Ralf looked down at her. “Even Bjørn’s not really sure, is he? Oh, I believe he found Kersten on the skerry. But he talks about sunstroke. That can do strange things to a man – make him see things that aren’t there. Most likely, what he told his brother was true, and she’d been stranded there after a wreck. Those waters are dangerous.”
Halfway out of the door he added, “And don’t go repeating that story of Bjørn’s. No good encouraging him to hope. It’s best to face up to things. Drowned men and women don’t come back.”
“Leave the door open,” Gudrun called after him, as the sunshine streamed in.
Hilde looked at Peer, sitting at the table with his head in his hands. She reached to touch his shoulder, but changed her mind and carried Eirik outside. She put him down to crawl about. “Look, Eirik! A dandelion! The first this year.” She snapped it off and gave it to him to play with. Eirik’s fingers closed deliberately around the stem and he sat inspecting it.
The sky was pale blue, with a high layer of fine-combed clouds. Hilde gazed around at the well-loved fields and skyline. Only one thing had changed since last year: the new mound on the rising ground above the farm, where old Grandfather Eirik had been laid to rest. “Where he can keep an eye on us all,” Ralf had said gruffly. “Where he can get a good view of everything that’s going on!”
Why did sad things have to happen? Why should old folk die and young folk mourn? On a sunny spring morning like this, old Eirik should have been sitting on the bench beside the door, his stick between his knees, composing one of his long poems, or nodding off into one of his many naps. Hilde brushed her eyes with the back of her hand.
Gudrun came out, the dogs trotting at her heels. “Well, if any work at all is to be done this morning, I suppose we women must do it. Goodness, we’re behind! Why haven’t the twins let the chickens out?”
“Where’s Ran?” asked Hilde, going to open the shed.
“Asleep again. Tired out still, I expect. What a nice fresh morning! But I must get on.”
Sigurd and Sigrid ran out together.
“Where are you two going?” cried Gudrun.
“Just playing,” Sigurd called back.
“All right, but don’t go too far.” She watched them, and shook her head at Hilde, who was chuckling. “I know, I know. They ought to do their chores. But they’re still little enough to have some time to play, especially after last night…”
“Ma,” said Hilde, suddenly serious.
“Yes, Hilde?”
“Do you really think Kersten was a seal woman?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” said Gudrun. “The poor girl’s gone, either way. But it matters what Bjørn thinks. It could be easier if he thought she was dead.”
“But Ma. If she really was a seal woman – and Bjørn caught her and kept her – well, how could he do that? It’s… it’s as bad as when Peer’s uncles stole the twins away from us. Isn’t it?”
Gudrun snorted. “You’ve got a lot to learn, my girl,” she said cryptically.
“And if it’s not true,” Hilde went on, “if Kersten was just ordinary, just like me or you, then it’s almost worse. How could she leave Bjørn and her own little baby, and go and drown herself?”
“You want to know which of them to blame, is that it?” asked Gudrun. “It’s none of our business, Hilde. There’ve been times in my life when I could cheerfully have walked out on the lot of you. Not for long, mind, and I’d draw the line at drowning myself. But having a baby upsets a woman. Sometimes it takes ’em oddly.”
Hilde leaned against the farmhouse wall, picking at the fringe of her apron. “But don’t you want to know the truth?”
“Hilde, I know enough to be going on with. I know Bjørn loved his wife, and I believe she loved him. I know he’s in trouble, and I know he’s our friend.” She paused. “And I also know that we haven’t enough flour for tomorrow’s bread, so you’d better begin grinding the barley.”
Hilde groaned. “As for Peer –” Gudrun lowered her voice. “He’s upset about this. I don’t want him going down to the shore. Imagine if they find her, drowned! Better if he has a different sort of day. Let him take the cows up the fell, and keep an eye on the twins if he can. And the sheepfold wall needs mending.”
“All right,” said Hilde. “I’ll go and tell him.”
In the dark farmhouse, Peer was still staring at the fire. She sat beside him.
“Ma wants you to take the cows up the fell, and look after the twins, and patch up the sheepfold.”
“I think I should go down to the shore,” said Peer gloomily.
Hilde hesitated. “Don’t you think there are enough people searching? In any case, if Bjørn’s story is true, they won’t find her.”
“I didn’t believe Bjørn could have done such a thing – but I was wrong. He did trap Kersten!”
“Yes,” said Hilde carefully, “but I’ve just been asking Ma, and she seems to think it’s more complicated than that.”
“I messed everything up last night.”
“No, you didn’t!” Hilde began to feel annoyed with him. “What more could you have done? Ma’s right, nobody could have found Kersten in the dark.”
“I should have grabbed her,” he said furiously. “I’m taller and stronger than Kersten. I could see she was upset. I should have grabbed her and hung on to her. But first I was holding that stupid fish. And then the baby. I should have put the baby down, and run after her…”
“That’s just silly,” said Hilde. “Nobody in their right mind would put a little baby down in the sand dunes.”
“And I dropped the fish,” he added. “It’s probably still there.”
“The gulls will have eaten it,” Hilde said without thinking. Peer winced, and she could see him imagining what else the gulls might be eating. Why does he have to torture himself so?
“Hilde!” Peer put a shy arm around her shoulders. Sighing, Hilde returned him a sisterly squeeze. Next moment, to her astonishment, Peer turned towards her, put both his arms around her, and dropped a damp, fumbled kiss somewhere near her right ear.
“Peer!” she shrieked, shoving him away.
He sprang up, scarlet in the face. “Don’t be angry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Oh, Hilde!”
Hilde didn’t know whether to laugh, or be furious. He stared at her dolefully, tall and thin and gangly, with hunched shoulders and drooping neck. She burst out laughing. “Oh, stop it, Peer. You look exactly like a heron!”
Peer’s head came up. “Fine, make fun of me! I suppose it’s true, then, what Sigrid says.”
“What does Sigrid say?”
“That you’re always thinking of Arne Egilsson!”
Hilde’s eyes narrowed. “For your information, Peer Ulfsson, I’m not always thinking of anyone, but if I were, it certainly wouldn’t be a little boy like you!”
Peer’s mouth straightened, and his face went pale. “I’m very sorry to have bothered you, Hilde! I won’t do it again. And now I’m going down to the shore.”
“But Mother said —” Hilde began rashly.
“I don’t care what she said!” Peer yelled. “I’m going where I’m needed!” He blundered past and stormed out into the yard.
Hilde put a hand over her eyes.
Gudrun looked round the door. “What’s the matter with Peer? Have you been teasing him?”
Hilde exploded. “Me, teasing him? He just tried to kiss me, and got all upset when I told him off. I said he looked like a heron. And he does!”
“That was rather unkind,” said Gudrun mildly.
“Mother!”
“Well, he’s a good boy, and he’s fond of you.”
“I know he is! I’m fond of him – I suppose – but not like that! And now I’ve hurt his feelings. Why can’t he be more – more sensible?”
“He’ll get over it,” Gudrun sighed.
Peer marched down the hill in huge strides.
So that was that. Hilde despised him.
He loved Hilde. If he knew anything, he knew that. He loved her fresh face and clear eyes, her ready laugh and sure step. He loved the way she flicked her long braids back over her shoulders when she came to a decision about anything. And now she seemed to have made up her mind about him!
Why did I do it? I shouldn’t have risked it. But she was being so sweet to me, trying to cheer me up.
He screwed his face up in agony. What a fool he was! Of course she wouldn’t think of him. Who was he, anyway? Just a homeless stray the family had taken in. Not much more than a herd-boy.
That’s not fair, he told himself. Gudrun and Ralf treat me like a son.
But I’m not their son. That’s the point, isn’t it? The farm will go to Sigurd one day. What future have I got?
“Why should she think anything of me, Loki? All I’ve got is you.” Loki wagged his tail, scampering to keep up.
How could he make Hilde take him seriously? You look like a heron. It had been the flash of real laughter in her face that had stung the worst.
Hardly aware of what he was doing, he came stumbling out of the wood and saw the path unfolding down the slope and into the dip by the mill. Between the branches of the wllows, the mill pond looked like Gudrun’s bronze mirror winking at the sun, brown with sediment from last night’s rain. He could hear the water roaring over the weir.
The mill! With everything else that had happened, he’d forgotten to tell anyone about seeing the waterwheel turning. Indeed, on this bright windy morning it seemed like some strange bad dream.
I’ll go and look. Grateful for something different to occupy his mind, he ran down the slope to the bridge and squinted across at the huge wheel.
The broad wooden vanes looked slimy and wet, but that wasn’t surprising after such a rainy night. Constellations of bright orange fungus grew on the wood. Maybe the wheel’s rotting… but it still looks fairly solid. Anyhow, it was turning last night. But it isn’t now. And that means…
He frowned. That meant that the sluice gate hadn’t burst. If it had, water would still be coursing along the mill race, and the mill would still be working – if the wheel hadn’t shaken itself to pieces first. So last night, while he’d been coming up the track in the wild dark, carrying the baby, someone had deliberately opened the sluice gate. And later, they had closed it again. There was no other explanation. But who would have done it, and why?
Frowning, he pushed along the overgrown path beside the dam. As he expected, the sluice gate at the head of the mill race was firmly lowered, shutting off the water. There was no way that the waterwheel could turn.
Peer scratched his head and looked at the swollen mill pond. The current had opened a brown channel down the middle, sweeping the green duckweed to the calm stretch at the far side. Somewhere underneath all that, he knew, lived Granny Greenteeth. What was her dwelling like, down in the cloudy water? He imagined a sort of dark hole, ringed with snags, and Granny Greenteeth lurking in it like an old eel. He remembered the dark figure he’d half seen, half imagined, creeping after him up the hill. Had it been Granny Greenteeth? Had she opened the sluice?
No wiser for what he’d seen, he wandered back to the wooden bridge and stopped halfway over. There was nowhere to go. If he joined the search party on the shore, Bjørn would be there, and Peer didn’t want to meet him. He couldn’t go back to the farm yet, either – he couldn’t face Hilde.
He stood, restlessly peeling long splinters from the wooden handrail and dropping them into the rushing water. Kersten ran away from Bjørn. She doesn’t want to be found.
The stream babbled away under the bridge, as if arguing with itself in different voices. Listening, he caught a few half-syllables in the rush. Gone. Lost, gone. Or maybe, long ago... And was someone sobbing?
It’s just the water, Peer thought. But he shivered. Could the mill be haunted by the people who had once lived here? None of them had been happy, including his own grandmother. “A thin little worn-out shadow of a woman,” Ralf had once described her. She’d come here after her first husband died, and married the old miller. And the miller had ill-treated her; and her young son Ulf, Peer’s own father, had run away and never come back. And then she’d had two more sons, who had grown up to become his violent, selfish, bullying half-uncles, Baldur and Grim.
Instinctively, Peer twisted the thin silver ring he always wore on his finger, the only thing of his father’s that he still owned. Ulf had been a thin, quiet man, whose slow rare smiles could warm you from top to toe. If only I could talk to him. He wouldn’t say much, but he’d put his arm around me. He’d…
I miss him. Why did he have to die?
Peer crashed his fist down on to the rail.
What’s wrong with me? he wondered, and suddenly realised. I’m angry!
He considered it, amazed. Peer never lost his temper. For three years now he’d lived with Gudrun and Ralf, grateful to the family, glad to live among decent kindly folk who treated him well. And he’d admired Bjørn. Bjørn was the sort of person Peer wanted to be – cheerful, self-reliant, always willing to help – but with a steely streak that meant nobody pushed him around.
And ruthless enough to keep Kersten against her will?
Peer swallowed a lump in his throat and trailed off the bridge towards the entrance to the mill. The mill and the barn faced each other across the narrow yard, with a line of rough sheds and a pigsty to the north, backing on to the millpond. A cluster of trees grew around the buildings; bare brown brooms just softening into green. Above the dilapidated thatch of the mill roof, the clean edge of Troll Fell rose against the sky.
Go on. Go in!
Peer hesitated. It was all so very quiet, and he was by himself.
Scared? In broad daylight? Faintheart!
He walked slowly into the yard, his feet sinking into soft, untrodden leaf-mould and moss. Underneath were cobblestones, buried by years of neglect. Peer padded warily towards the barn and looked inside. There was a smell of damp, mildewed straw, a litter of bird droppings, and a breathless, dusty silence. He backed out, trying to look over both shoulders at once.
Something bitter rose in his throat. A rush of memories swept over him. He was thirteen years old again, cringing half defensively, half defiantly under the harsh hand of Uncle Baldur.
He’d slept in that dusty barn, in the straw with the hens. Over there by the mill door, Uncle Baldur had knocked him down. Peer remembered every inch of the yard. One hot summer’s day, Baldur’s twin brother, Uncle Grim, had made him sweep it twice over, first with a broom, and then on his knees with a hand brush. He could still see his uncle’s red face, oozing little beads of sweat, gloating as he pointed out tiny bits of twig and chicken feathers that Peer had missed.
Clean it up, boy! No supper until you do…
Peer’s fists clenched, the nails digging into his palms.
Nobody, nobody, was going to treat him like that again!
Chapter 24
Exploring the Mill
NOBODY’S EVER GOING to treat me like that again! The word
s rang out in Peer’s mind. He straightened his shoulders, letting the anger drain away. A subdued Loki looked up at him, pressing closely to his legs.
They stood in front of the mossy mill door. It leaned on its hinges, half open. Peer pushed, and it scraped inwards over a rubble of earth and stones and decayed leaves. He stepped through.
With a shriek and a clatter of feathers, a frantic starling swept out over his head and disappeared over the barn roof, chattering hysterically. Loki rushed after it.
Peer sank against the doorpost, his heart thundering. “It’s all right, Loki!” he managed to say, as the dog returned at a stiff trot, hackles high. “Just a bird! What a couple of cowards we are. Come on!”
It was dark inside. The shutters were closed. Peer trod carefully. There was a strong damp smell, and his nose prickled. As his eyes got used to the gloom, he saw spectral weeds growing in the long-dead ashes of the central fireplace. Pale and unhealthy, they straggled upwards on hopeless spindly stalks, trying to reach the weak light filtering through the smoke-hole. Peer brushed past them, shuddering.
The place was smaller than he remembered. At the far end, a ladder led up into the shadowy grinding loft, and at its foot lay a worn old millstone, cracked in two, amongst a litter of splintered and broken wood. On either side of the hearth were the two bunks that his uncles had slept in, built into dark alcoves in the wall. A lump of some pale fungus was growing over the pillow end of the nearest. The ruckled blankets trailed in damp, dirty folds and looked as though they had been nibbled by mice. Peer bumped into a huge pair of scales, dangling from the rafters on a rusty chain. They squeaked and swung: there was a bird’s nest in one of the pans. Alarmed by the noise, Peer tried to steady them. They bobbed and ducked and seesawed into stillness.
He let out his breath, turning around. It didn’t look as if anyone had been here. Loki nosed about the spongy floor. He growled at the bedding, sniffed and sneezed.
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