The Witches of Vardo, page 17
Ingeborg nodded, a little awed by the Sámi woman, unable to take her eyes away from her gnarled hands.
‘What is it you wish to ask me, girl?’ Elli said.
‘Your hands,’ Ingeborg whispered. ‘What happened to your hands?’
Ingeborg immediately regretted her question, for there was no answer forthcoming. When she looked up, Elli’s expression was clouded, and her lips had narrowed into a tight line. ‘It is better for you if you do not know,’ she replied. ‘Especially because of where you are going.’ Elli wrapped her shawl tight about her.
‘Did it happen there – on Vardø?’
Rather than answering Ingeborg’s question, Elli lifted her twisted hands to her face and gazed upon them. ‘My dear friend, Marette Andersdatter, was denied a proper burial and she may never find her way to the sáivu.’
‘Who are the sáivu?’ Ingeborg asked in a whisper.
‘They are the huldrefolk, our ancestors in the next world. They live among us though we can’t see them, but they have their own herds of reindeer. They never go hungry or suffer as do we. And where they live, the governor can never touch them.’
Ingeborg wondered if this was where her father and Axell now resided, although Reverend Jacobsen’s description of Heaven was high above and far away. A realm a girl such as she could only hope to get to.
‘My battered hands are my remembering for Maren’s mother, for I never forget. They ache, they pain me often. When Maren asked for my help yesterday, they throbbed until I complied.’ Elli paused, licked her lips, and pulled Ingeborg in with a fierce glare. ‘I know my son, Zare, is as wily as a wolf, and he can slip any snare, but Maren . . .’ She paused. ‘Don’t let her be caught, Ingeborg Iversdatter, because the governor’s feelings for her mother run deep. He loved Marette Andersdatter, and then he hated her. How this man hated a woman so. He will not suffer her only daughter to live, even though she is not yet fully a woman.’
Chapter 19
Anna
The key, nestled between my breasts, was cold, hard metal upon my warm skin. But I liked to feel it. To possess a key that unlocked a door! It was just one, granted, and to a place none would wish to reside, but still, the trust the governor had placed in me by putting the key upon my person, and the task he had given to me, made me swell with pride. I was worthy of being a keyholder to the witches’ hole.
As soon as I was returned to my prison longhouse, I fished the key out from between my breasts and slipped it into the pocket beneath my petticoats. I walked around the chamber feeling its pleasing knock against my thigh. Every now and again, I stopped, pulled the key out and admired it upon my palm.
When Helwig saw me taking out the key, she looked quite put out. This pleased me, as she would constantly remind me that she was my gaoler, and not my maid.
‘Who gave you this key?’ she asked me.
‘The governor himself.’
‘Where is it for?’ she asked. ‘It doesn’t look big enough for the castle gates.’
‘The witches’ hole.’ I slid the key back into my pocket. ‘The governor has instructed me to come and go as I please. I am to interrogate the accused witch.’
Helwig’s expression fell further into dismay. ‘Fru Rhodius, this is a matter you might not wish to be involved in.’
I was annoyed at her presumptive manner and put my back to her. But no matter what, I could see her downcast expression and hear her words of warning. She had taken the joy out of my small triumph, and I was furious with her. ‘Do you see how filthy the floor of this house is?’ I snapped at her. ‘I would remind you to perform your duties and keep your thoughts to yourself.’
I collected my Bible, doused my handkerchief with more lavender water, and prepared to question the accused witch.
All the while Helwig was shaking her head at me, as she swept the floor with little enthusiasm.
I had not expected it to be so dark, but of course there was no window in the witches’ hole. The smallest and darkest of all cells in the fortress was, in fact, more a hut than a hole. From the outside I had seen a tiny opening beneath the sagging turf roof, but this belonged to the ammunition store, which was above the witches’ hole separated by a ceiling of rotting beams. The soldier by my side, Captain Hans, held a blazing torch for me, and it flickered in the draughts coming from all directions. The light the torch cast revealed a bleak, coffin-shaped space, much the same size as my pantry back in Bergen. There were no items of domestic comfort within it: no candles, not a stool, nor a fire, not even a smoke hole. I had stepped into a black box, an icy, rough-floored chamber filled with the stench of rotting fish, unwashed bodies and defecation.
I took out my handkerchief and pressed it against my nose. ‘Where is the witch?’ I whispered to Captain Hans, for though I could smell her I could not see her.
He lifted the torch before him, and in the far corner of this tiny hovel I saw a curled-up figure, the white of a face lifted up, devoid of distinctive features in the dark.
‘Pass me the torch,’ I requested Captain Hans as my eyes began to adjust. ‘Wait outside.’
‘Should I not stay by your side?’ he said. ‘She’s a witch.’
‘I will be perfectly fine,’ I assured the young man.
He held his gaze away from the accused woman, clearly fearful of bewitchment, but I was a woman too, and I firmly believed she could not cast this spell upon me.
As I approached the accused witch, Zigri Sigvaldsdatter, I discerned big eyes in the moon face, which emerged as huge discs of sorrow. It was hard to make out her shape and form as she was huddled under a pile of reindeer skins. I was pleased to see that these skins had been provided for her, although it was only a small act of kindness since I imagined the governor did not wish her to perish from the cold in the witches’ hole before she could confess all she knew about the witches of the north.
‘My name is Fru Anna Rhodius,’ I informed Zigri. ‘The governor has sent me to care for you.’
‘Care for me?’ she asked in a cracked voice.
‘Yes,’ I said, softly. ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty?’
Witches must be tamed, my king, for it doesn’t work to push hard against them.
‘I am,’ she whispered shakily.
‘I will make arrangements for victuals to be brought,’ I said, turning towards the door again, my beautiful key all the while in its secret pocket banging against my thigh.
‘Don’t leave me here,’ she cried out, ‘in the dark!’
‘I will return with sustenance,’ I assured her. ‘Have faith.’
As Zigri Sigvaldsdatter gulped down the ale and gobbled up the flatbrød with a slab of brown cheese, I had the opportunity to examine her. She was a striking beauty, which did not seem possible for one from such common circumstances. Her lustrous hair rolled in waves down each side of her dirty face, and a straggle of blue ribbon hung twisted around one of her tresses. I was relieved to see she was relatively free of bruising apart from where her wrists had been cuffed.
‘Tell me, my dear.’ I spoke gently as I crouched down beside her. ‘Why are you here?’
She swallowed down the last of her ale and I could see it gave her some vigour. ‘It’s a misunderstanding,’ she said. ‘I have been slandered, and falsely accused.’
‘Who accuses you?’
‘Fru Brasche,’ Zigri said, her voice laced with hatred. ‘She is a shrew!’
‘But on what grounds does she accuse you?’
Zigri Sigvaldsdatter pulled forward the lock of hair twisted with the blue ribbon and began to rub its length. ‘It is a delicate matter,’ she said, looking at me furtively. ‘She claims she saw me in the cowshed with the Devil but that is not the case.’ She sighed deeply. ‘I was in the cowshed with her husband. This is why she attacks me!’
‘Fornicating with a married man is a terrible sin,’ I said.
I had to say these words to her, although as you know I do not believe it so when true love occurs among the special few. Why, then this love unlaces all moral strictures.
Zigri Sigvaldsdatter bowed her head. ‘I know, Fru Rhodius,’ she said in a meek voice. ‘But it doesn’t make me a witch.’
I paused, then licked my lips, remembering the governor’s instructions that I was to extract a confession, not sympathise with the accused.
‘Fru Brasche swears on the Holy Bible she saw you with the Devil, Zigri Sigvaldsdatter, and that her husband was with his father at the time.’
‘But what does Heinrich say? Where is he?’ She stopped rubbing the ribbon and reached forward, grabbing my arm with her grubby hands. ‘Where is Heinrich? He promised me no harm would come to me.’
With her proximity to me the stench of her unwashed body became even stronger; and there was another smell beneath it – the scent of terror: vomit and urine. I pressed my handkerchief to my face again and inhaled deeply upon its lavender scent.
‘Where is Heinrich?’ she repeated.
I lowered my handkerchief to speak. ‘He is not in Vardøhus, Zigri Sigvaldsdatter. That is all I can tell you.’
She clutched her belly beneath the piles of skins, and her eyes widened in disbelief.
‘But he promised me,’ she said, in a hoarse whisper.
‘I will enquire for you,’ I said, rising from my crouched position. My legs were aching, and I was feeling overcome from the smell in the place. I dabbed my face with my scented handkerchief again. ‘In the meantime, Zigri, you must think back. Was it truly Heinrich Brasche in the cowshed, for his father, Merchant Brasche, claims he was elsewhere? Could the Devil have tricked you?’
‘No, no.’ She shook her head. ‘No, it was Heinrich, and he loves me!’
Ah, my king, was she not a very simple woman indeed? For you know well that a man’s love is not enough to protect a fallen woman. Passion shrivels in the face of duty, no matter however grand a one it may be. Heinrich Brasche would not come to her aid for the wanton wretch had been seduced by the dream of a grand life to which she did not belong.
Weighing on my mind was the need to question her about the claims made by Merchant Brasche about the weather magic she and other witches had performed to wreck his ship, but I could face the broken creature no longer.
Clutching the key, I held the torch out in front of me and stumbled back to the entrance of the witches’ hole.
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Please find out where Heinrich is. He will speak for me.’
Her pleas were still ringing in my head as I walked briskly back to my longhouse. The ache that laced those pleas echoed inside my body, the deep longing she possessed for her lover.
My king, I felt her abandonment as keenly as my own.
Chapter 20
Ingeborg
They skied through the sparse forest, Zare leading the way as the two girls followed, the silence of their solitude unchallenged apart from the creaking of scraggy branches laden with snow, and the swishing of their skis.
They emerged upon yet another frozen lake. The thick dark clouds of night had dropped away, and although the moon still burned silver above, the sky was lifting to a deep spirit blue. Ingeborg spied a wolverine running across the lake. It did not see them for they moved as part of nature themselves.
What they were doing was pure madness: two girls and one Sámi boy on a quest to save an imprisoned witch in Vardø fortress. But Ingeborg had lost all reason. She needed to get to Vardø before it was too late.
They skied for two days, most times in the dark; brief dusky respites folding back into winter darkness. Ingeborg was exhausted from the exertion of it; Maren and Zare never tired but allowed her some rest.
The Sámi boy would seek out a place to build a fire. Then he and Ingeborg would go in search of wood or dig up some peat protected from damp beneath the snow-covered moss to feed it. Meanwhile, Maren would disappear and return with the sweet nutty roots of alpine bistort, young tender leaf stalks of angelica, among other plants she had foraged.
‘Why don’t we snare a hare?’ Zare asked Maren.
‘We have no need of its flesh,’ she said.
‘You are a strange one,’ Zare said, producing some dried reindeer meat from his pocket and offering some to Ingeborg.
Ingeborg liked gathering fuel for the fire with Zare. They worked in silence most times, but his presence was a comfort.
As they sat huddled around the fire, sharing the same skins to keep warm and alive in the frozen wilds, the three of them would go over the plan together. Ingeborg had so many questions, so many what ifs. But she was afraid to utter them. It was impossible to consider their failure.
On the second night, swathes of swirling, iridescent lights appeared – shimmering curtains of violet and green dancing across the night sky. Maren rose from beside the fire, lifting her head and her arms to the luminescence as if receiving a gift the colours were bestowing upon her.
‘Lower your head,’ Zare hissed at her. ‘You must always show humility to Guovssahas, the lights of the north.’
Ingeborg’s father had told her how the Sámi revered the northern lights, whereas in the Christian world their sight was something to be dreaded, a prophecy from Hell itself, and of dark magic brewing.
They were beyond all the grey colours of her everyday world.
Maren spun to face them, her eyes gleaming. ‘My mother is up there, dancing in the lights. She told me I would always find her there.’
Zare shook his head and poked the fire with a stick.
‘Her magic still pumps through my body, Ingeborg,’ she said, sitting down. ‘She will protect us.’
‘Your talk of magic will send you to the stake,’ Zare warned.
A wolf howled, joined by the rest of its pack. Ingeborg looked nervously into the dark woods.
‘They will stay away from the fire,’ Zare reassured her.
‘These wolves will not bother us,’ Maren added confidently.
But Ingeborg was too afraid to sleep in case the fire went out. She lay down like the others but kept her eyes open, listening to the howling wolves and wondering if they were coming closer.
‘I will watch the fire,’ Zare called across to her. ‘You need to sleep, Ingeborg.’
She looked into his eyes blue as the flames of their fire, and they made her feel safe. Slowly she closed her own.
It was the third morning of their journey. The moon lit a silver path upon the thick snow as twists of hazy green and violet light pranced above them. The northern lights had glimmered for all the hours of her anxious rest and now she was at the foot of Domen, the Devil’s kingdom. With sealskin sleeves upon them to give them more grip, they dug their skis into the snowy sides of the hill and began to pace their way upwards. It was not a steep mountain, but it was broad, and the snow thick. Ingeborg kept sinking in up to her knees.
She and Maren had tucked their skirts up under the waistband and the tail of the reed staffs of their bodices. Beneath, they wore old breeches once belonging to Maren’s uncle which Ingeborg had been wearing since she had moved in with Maren’s aunt. They were huge on Ingeborg, and hindered her further, becoming saggy, wet and heavy on her legs. She was envious of Zare in his belted Sámi gákti and reindeer skin gálssohat leggings as he climbed upward with ease.
They reached the summit. Through the swirling mist wide white land spread in three directions – north, south and west – as far as they could see. There were no wolves following them, nor ahead. To the east was the edge of the mountain. The ethereal lights of the northern skies had faded away and darkness transformed to a brief spell of azure tinged as golden pink as cloudberries high above the mist. Ingeborg staggered over to the edge of the cliff. Below was the Murman sea, hissing upon the shores of the mountain. If she peered over to her right, she could see the curve of the mountain and a dark opening to one of the caves.
‘Imagine,’ Maren said in a low voice, ‘beneath our feet are a labyrinth of caves they say leads to the one entranceway to Hell!’
Ingeborg didn’t want to imagine it at all. But Maren’s words had amused Zare. He laughed at her. ‘Christian superstitions!’
‘What is Domen to you, Zare?’ Maren challenged him.
‘It is a hill. Merely this.’
‘Don’t you believe in magic? What kind of Sámi are you, anyway?’
‘There is magic, Maren, but not the way you say it is.’
‘You’re wrong!’ she declared, pushing off on her skis again and flying as if the wind itself across the top of the mountain. A small dark figure in the vast emptiness gliding upon the Domen’s empty back.
‘We should catch up with her,’ Ingeborg said, anxious for Maren being so alone.
‘She will be fine,’ Zare said. ‘Maren has spent enough time alone in the wilderness to fend for herself.’ He pointed to the edge of the cliff. ‘Do you wish to see our destination?’
The mist had begun to lift from the top of the mountain, and she could discern shadows of land out to sea.
Vardø. The winged island. A lump of rock with a ragged coastline and a treeless hump of hill. Not one tree grew upon the savage-looking island. She could see the tiny harbour, with a cluster of cottages around it, the kirk, and the silhouette of the white fortress.
She stared at that fortress. Inside was her mother.
Zare gazed at Vardøhus, and then he raised his eyes to the sky. ‘A storm is coming. We should cross before it arrives.’
Ingeborg didn’t know how he could tell this, because it felt so still there on the mountain. All she could hear was the distant rocking of the water, and the gulls crying. She was about to continue after Maren when Zare placed a hand on her arm in warning.
‘Move very slowly,’ he whispered.
Her skin crawled with alarm, her spine prickling. She looked into his eyes to read more in his words. His gaze was reassuring as if to say, Do not worry, I will protect you, but she could also see his alarm beneath it.
As they both pivoted very slowly away from the cliff, Ingeborg saw what Zare had spotted.
