The Snow Queen (5 page)
A bronze bell, green with verdigris, hung in a kind of wooden cage atop a post. The coachman pulled the bell-rope, and presently the gates creaked open.
“There's no one here,” said the gatekeeper, peering out.
Gerda thrust her head through the window of the coach. The wind snatched at her bonnet; rain stung her cheeks. The horses whickered and stamped their feet.
“What do you mean, no one,” she shrieked over the rising wind. “Isn't this the house of the Baroness Aurore?”
“Indeed it is, Miss. But the Baroness has already left, this week past, to summer in the north.”
“And her assistant? Is he not here?”
The gatekeeper had already begun to close the gates. “You mean the young man?” he called out through the gap that remained.
“Yes, yes,” cried Gerda. Her throat was tight with panic. “Please, where has he gone?”
“North with the Baroness,” said the gatekeeper, and the gates swung shut.
The coachman's boy got down from his seat and opened the carriage door. “My master says, where to now, Miss?”
Gerda stared at him. Her heart rattled against her ribs.
The Baroness was gone, and Kai with her, the house abandoned. What would become of her now? She had not thought past this moment.
“Miss?”
She tried to answer him, and choked on a sob.
“Don't you have anywhere else to stay?” He was a pleasant-faced boy, about her own age, and seemed concerned.
Wretchedly, she shook her head.
“Should we take you back to the city?”
“I haven't enough money left,” she whispered, ashamed.
“Well, we can't leave you here,” said the boy, and he called up to the coachman, “What shall we do with this young lady, sir? It seems she has nowhere else to go.”
Now the coachman himself was looking in at her. “What, no family in these parts? No one who will take you in?”
Gerda bit down on her lower lip to stop it quivering. Her eyes were blurred with tears, and her nose was starting to run.
“Well, this is a fine how do you do,” said the coachman. He was rotund, red-cheeked, fatherly looking. “But I'll tell you what. My old auntie lives round here, and she'll put you up for the night.”
“How kind you are,” said Gerda, remembering her manners.
“Well now, we can't leave a young lady like you on the side of the road, can we?” He patted her awkwardly on the hand. “My auntie will give you a good supper and a warm bed. Things will look cheerier in the morning. They always do.”
The coachman's aunt lived in a pleasant thatch-roofed cottage. A river ran near her front door: behind were open fields and an apple orchard. The windows were made of stained glass, glowing squares of cherry-red and cobalt blue. A fire blazed in an open hearth. There was smell of coffee brewing, and fresh-baked bread.
The aunt was tall and broad, with mild grey eyes behind thick spectacles, and grey-blonde hair braided round her head.
She peered down at Gerda, benignly disapproving.
“Well, Miss, I can't imagine what your parents were thinking of, sending you off alone into these Godforsaken parts, with no money and no one waiting at the other end. Don't they know that these high-born folk change their houses the way they change their Sunday hats?”
“I believe,” said Gerda, fighting back fresh tears, “there must have been some misunderstanding about the dates.”
“So it would seem,” said the coachman's aunt. “Are they always as absent-minded as this, your parents?”
“Certainly not,” said Gerda. “They are sensible, churchgoing folk, and I'm sure if my mother were not so busy with all my younger brothers and sisters, she would never have got the dates mixed up.”
“Is she a relation of yours, the Baroness?” asked the coachman's aunt.
“A second cousin,” said Gerda. “On my mother's side.”
How easily the lies came, thought Gerda, once the first one is told.
“Well, perhaps I shouldn't be saying this, since she's a connection of yours â but I've always been one to speak my mind. That Baroness of yours seemed to me a proud, unfriendly kind of woman, with a cold look in her eye. I don't know that she'd have made good company for a lively young girl like yourself.”
“You've seen her, then?”
“Oh many a time, when she's driven by my cottage, or passed me on the road.”
Gerda dared not ask the one question she desperately wanted answered:
Was she alone? Was there a young man with her
?
Instead she said, without much conviction, “My mother has always spoken well of the Baroness.”
“I have no doubt. Folks always speak well of their relatives, if they have a title in front of their name. Well, that's neither here nor there, is it? We must think what to do next.”
“I will write my family a letter,” said Gerda, “and they will send me money to pay for my keep, and for my journey home.”
“They needn't trouble themselves about paying me,” said the coachman's aunt. “I”m glad of a bit of company, if you want the truth. But yes, you must write them for ticket money, straight away. I'll see that my nephew posts it.” And she bustled off to her parlour to look for paper and ink.
T
he old woman came to Ritva in the dead of night, wearing a shaman's robe and carrying a painted drum. Her face was scored and furrowed, burned by the sun and the arctic wind to the colour of dead leaves. Her long hair was grey as ash. She grinned, showing toothless gums, and Ritva cried out, not in fear, but in sudden recognition. This was her grandmother Maija, her mother's mother, who had died when Ritva was three.
Ritva knew the old woman's story. It was Ritva's story too. When Maija's only daughter became pregnant by a blonde outsider, a bandit-chief, Maija left the tents of her Saami people and followed her daughter to the bandit's camp. The women of the camp remembered old Maija, still, with admiration. Like all the women of her line, she possessed the shaman's gift. But in the soul of Ritva's mother there was too much passion, too much heat, and her power had curdled like spoiled milk. The power in Maija was like the northern lights â clear and beautiful and without heat.
“Do not be afraid,” said Ritva's grandmother, who had been dead these fifteen years. “I have come to teach you a song.”
And she began to beat on her drum, and chant in a cracked and quavering old woman's voice.
Who is the hero who will do battle with the Woman of the North?
Who is the shaman who will break the spell
of the Terrible Enchantress,
Drowner of Heroes and Devourer of Men,
she who is mistress of the Dark Land
beyond the Cave of the North Wind
where earth and day end.
Storm and fog and ice
and the cold of eternal darkness
are her weapons.
She has torn the sun and the moon from the sky
and has hidden them away
in the heart of the stone mountain.
Who is the hero who will journey to her kingdom?
Who is the shaman who can overcome her power?
The drum fell silent, the words of the song trailed away like wisps of smoke. Ritva was alone. But a faint, half-remembered odour lingered in the darkness near her bed â a smell of bog myrtle and reindeer moss and healing herbs.
My dearest Kat,
I know you will be relieved to hear that I am safely arrived in
Sweden. I have taken lodgings with a most respectable
woman, and you need have no fears on my behalf â but I
pray you, do not tell my family, for of course they believe that
I am with you in Copenhagen!
Forgive me, dear Kat, I must ask you for yet another great
favour. I have enclosed a letter to my family, to be sent from
Copenhagen â will you be so kind as to post it for me? My
mother frets when I am an hour out of her sight. I wish to
reassure her, as I hope I am reassuring you. I know you will
understand that until I find Kai, and bring him safely home
with me, I must resort to these schemes and subterfuges.
There will (I hope) be a reply from my family, sent to your
address. I will write to you again, and tell you where it may
be forwarded.
I trust you are having a splendid time, dear Kat. I'm sure that
all your dance cards are full, and that you have won the heart
of every eligible young man in Copenhagen.
With fondest love,
Your Gerda
Dearest mother and father,
I have quite fallen in love with Copenhagen! I have seen all
the notable sights, and visited more parks and museums than
I can count on two hands. You will be surprised, on my
return, at how knowledgeable I have become! The shops are
quite splendid, and we have been to . . . imagine it! . . . two
balls already! I am so grateful that you allowed me to visit here
with Kat. I should not have wished to miss such an opportunity!
I wonder, though, if you might be able to send me a little more
spending money? I cannot believe how expensive things are in
the city, and how quickly boots and slippers wear out when
you are walking all day, and dancing half the night! Also, Kat
and I have been invited (such excitement!) to a very grand
affair, hosted, I gather, by people of the highest Copenhagen
society. My best gown, which seemed quite suitable at home,
appears â I have to confess it â just a jot provincial amongst
all these Paris frocks.
Gerda read what she had just written with shame, and dismay, and a terrible foreboding. To so wickedly deceive her parents, to abuse the trust of her dearest friend . . . and worst of all, to discover how easily these lies slipped from her pen! Could any end justify such unforgivable means? And yet what choice did she have? Having come so far, she could not turn back. Kai must be found.
“Here is my letter.” She sealed it, and wrote the address of Katrine's Copenhagen relatives in a careful hand. Then she gave it to the coachman's aunt. “Will you see that it is sent as soon as possible?”
“Of course,” the woman said. “But it will be some time before you have your reply. You must make yourself at home, my dear. Why don't you go out into the garden and enjoy the sunshine? I love this time of year, when the pear tree is in bloom, and all the daffodils out.”
Gerda sat with her morning coffee in the little walled garden. Drifts of grape hyacinths and narcissi made bright patches of blue and yellow among the mossy paving stones. In a sun-drenched corner the first rosebuds were beginning to swell.
The sight of them brought a lump into Gerda's throat. Would she ever again sit with Kai among the rose bushes on their sunny roof?
She wandered back into the kitchen, where the coachman's aunt, arms floured up to the elbows, was kneading bread.
“The Baroness Aurore . . . ” Gerda said hesitantly. “Do you know where she has her summer home?”
The coachman's aunt looked round at her. She swiped her perspiring brow with the back of a floury hand.
“Oh, hundred of miles to the north, they say, beyond the pine forests, in the land of the reindeer herders. Though why anyone would choose to live in such a cold, inhospitable place I can't imagine.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Why ever do you ask, child? Surely you're not thinking of going there?”
“Of course not,” said Gerda. “I only wondered where she had gone.”
“Best to get yourself home as quick as you can, child,” said the coachman's aunt, giving the dough an emphatic punch. “Much as I enjoy the company, your family must be missing you sorely.”
“Yes,” Gerda murmured. “Yes, I suppose they must.” She felt a sudden spasm of guilt, sharp as a cramp in the belly.