Salacious
ASTA HEDSTROM
The Adamsen farm, the largest in the village, extended from the main road all the way out past the forest and to the coastline. Fresh yellow paint covered their enormous doors, and orange woodwork framed their large windows. If the Fourniers made their home the tallest of all the houses in town, the Adamsens made theirs the widest.
An old barn slouched near the edge of the property, almost hidden in the trees. Its red had faded and a little cottage stood next to it where their stable-hand lived. Tanned and bony, the old groom—Jørgen—limped as he opened the breezeway.
Finally, I understood why Fred told me he couldn’t win the Christmas Race.
Inside the barn were rows upon rows of lean, muscular thoroughbreds. Each jigged and snorted as we led them out of their stalls. Huffing, they danced around on tiny hooves seemingly made of springs.
Fred picked up a halter. “The Adamsens bought these thirty thoroughbred racehorses from England. Jørgen is conditioning them. Afterward, the Adamsens will choose the fastest team, and they’ll loan the others to any families in Muskox Hollow who want to race.”
“Any families except for the Fuglestads,” I clarified.
Fred fiddled with the buckle. “That goes without saying.”
“So about fifteen of the sleighs will have thoroughbreds pulling them—”
“And I’ll have my fjord ponies.”
I heaved the anvil onto the stand with a bit too much force. “Yet they’re still hiring you to do their shoeing.”
“It’s not as though there’s anyone else who can do it.”
Crimson embers burned deep in my belly. “Can’t we forget a nail or two? Trim their toes a little too short?”
He looked up. “They know I’d never do that.”
This was all so ridiculous. The Adamsens bought thirty racehorses, shipped them from England . . . all for what? The two-thousand-kroner prize money was hardly adequate compensation. “All of this to—”
“To keep the Fuglestads from winning the prize money. To make sure we’ll lose our farm. To end Mama’s legacy.”
“He told you?”
“We had a whole conversation about it. My first day shoeing by myself, Adamsen happened to pass me on the road. He didn’t give his condolences or offer to help my brother like the Fourniers did. He just wanted to know if the Fuglestads were still racing this year. I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d been struggling to see straight and get through the day. But after he asked, I thought, ‘To hell with Adamsen.’
“I told him, ‘Yes. Yes, we’ll race this year and we’ll keep Mama’s legacy going, not only for this year but for every year from now on until there are no more Fuglestads left.’”
Fred swallowed hard, surely thinking about his dead Mama, Adamsen’s nerve, and the struggle of being a fifteen-year-old burdened with a jostled brain and the future of his family’s farm on his tiny shoulders.
“That’s when Adamsen handed me a catalog,” Fred continued, “and pointed out the horses he planned to buy. Then he turned his cariole right around and headed for the telegraph office, as if he had decided—at that moment—to put in his order.”
Adamsen. What would make a person feel so threatened by a little woman and her small son?
Jørgen led another steed over. “The Adamsens have more kroner than horse sense. You, Fred, have seen how the folks around here get whenever one of their ponies becomes unruly. What’ll happen when they hitch their sleigh to a pair of fresh, charging racehorses?”
“Have they been introduced to harness and sleighs yet?” Fred asked.
“I’m doing my best, but there’s only so much I can accomplish by myself.”
I reached up to pet a bay gelding’s neck, but hesitated when he tensed his shoulder. “The other families should start coming here and working them.”
“The Adamsens won’t allow it”—Jørgen wiped a sleeve across his forehead—“not until they know for sure which ones are the fastest.”
But the race was next month!
“How are they handling the harness training?” Fred asked.
“As you would expect,” Jørgen said. “They’re all so touchy. They kick at the traces. They spook at the sound of harness bells, and they don’t like to be paired up. That gray over there is a nasty one. He bites and strikes any horse coming near.”
“I always thought they had a rule against using other people’s horses?” I asked. “Just like you can only have someone in your family drive the sleigh, you can’t hire a professional driver.”
“We have the rulebook at home,” Fred said. “We’ll have to look it over.”
“I’ll tell you this . . .” Jørgen sighed. “If they decide to run these beasts, I won’t be anywhere near the churchyard on race day. It’s going to be a calamity.”
As if on cue, the gray reared and fell over in the cross ties. After scrambling to right himself, he pulled back against his lead rope and kept rearing when Jørgen offered to hold him.
To fix the situation, Fred asked me to bring him one of the driving bridles. When I did, he took the blinkers off the cheekpiece and attached them to the browband.
“He won’t rear if he can’t see what’s over his head,” Fred explained.
Even though the horse behaved himself afterward, Fred continued dropping his tools and had to sit down for a few minutes after finishing each hoof.
This was terrible.
Leaving the Adamsens’, Fred deteriorated even more. He handed me the reins for the drive home, slumping beside me with his eyes closed.
“Fred.” I linked my arm through his to keep him from toppling sideways off the smithy. “We should see Herr Doktor Engen.”
“The last thing I need is Engen telling everyone in town I’m still suffering from concussion of the brain.”
Knowing there’d be nothing fixed for us at home, I used a portion of what Fred had been paid to buy us a meal at the groggery and then assured him I’d take care of feeding his animals their supper.
The sun had set by the time I went up to the barn to take care of the pigs and horses. Even though Fred was miserable, I couldn’t pass up an evening alone at the forge. The way he aimed his blows on the steel didn’t look too difficult—perhaps I could at least make a less-than-ten-heat shoe by now. Also, I needed to ponder these new developments. Fred thought Adamsen’s thoroughbreds meant we no longer stood a chance. I wasn’t so sure. Though fast, the horses were untrained and unaccustomed to our climate. With the race nearly six weeks away, they wouldn’t have time to get enough experience running up and down hills, over snow, and through forests.
We still had a chance. If only I could convince Fred to not give up hope just yet.
I scooped some coal and marked the barstock when a cramp, low and stinging, twinged at my abdomen. My monthly courses were always exceptionally bothersome and I’d need to find time to sew up something thick for my drawers because the next day, surely, my burgundy would be ready for corking.
Over my shoulder, a flash caught my eye. Leaning away from the smithy, I spied an orange glint down on the frozen meadow below the barn. It was that flaxen-haired boy from the Mikkelsens’ farm—Angel Eyes Mikkelsen. He rode a dark red fjord pony, carried a lantern, and wore an expression like he was in a romantic tragedy.
Damn. If only he could’ve given me one more week.
I took a nip from my flask. “What’s your plan, Mikkelsen? Knock on the door? Beg Herr Fuglestad to see the farrier girl so you might have your way with her?”
He climbed down from his pony. “I saw you pass by on your way up the road. Asta, I had to see you.”
He’d remembered my name.
At once, I became very aware of the hours of sweat and soot accumulated upon my clothing, my scent likely a mixture of horse sole and burning hair.
“You fancy girls who wear trousers?” I asked.
Shyly, he brought his toes together. “I know you saw me watching you.”
He glanced up, a look in his eyes—lust, I realized. But it wasn’t terrifying and overwhelming like the lust that came from Nils.
A mischievous notion stirred within me.
He wore a new-looking blue coat, an orange vest, and a starched white collar. It all ended up on the dirt floor of the barn, as did the white scarf tucked neatly around his freshly shaved neck.
I never thought I’d get the chance to have a beautiful young gentleman; I took what was for the taking. Curiosity more than passion fueled my desire, and with so much practice kissing and receiving kisses from Gunnar in rehearsal, lack of experience didn’t impede my progress.
Upon a horse blanket not terribly grimy, I demonstrated the variety of ways lips, tongue, and teeth could work together, all the while feeling Angel Eyes stir beneath me, his legs coiling, his hands grasping. The forge kept this closed-off corner of the barn satisfyingly warm and now he only wore a linen undershirt and trousers.
“You’ve done this before,” he said, catching his breath.
I guided his fingers beneath my layers of flannel. “Just kissing. What about you?”
Nervously, he shook his head. “Nothing. Never.”
“I’d like to keep going if you’re all right with that.”
He nodded and I hurried to get out of my many buttons and sleeves. There’d been so much talk in the theater about this sort of thing. One afternoon, I listened to Anne Meland provide a number of tedious details about her last three intimate encounters. Afterward, Gunnar took me aside and asked if the girls knew about Fru Halvorsen—a friend of his mama who had a concern for health and an ample supply of sheaths and pessaries that she’d bring to the rural villages from the city. Later, I came to learn virtually everyone in the theater knew the name Fru Halvorsen, and more than one young theatrical instructed me on the use of these requisites should I ever find myself in need of them.
Realizing Sigrid Fuglestad was surely as broad minded as Fru Halvorsen, I got up from Angel Eyes’s lap and crossed to the smithy.
“Where are you going?” His chest was heaving.
In no time, I found the securely wrapped boxes amongst Sigrid’s compartments. She’d conceived an ingenious way of supplying these necessities—discreetly from the back of a farrier’s wagon. I wondered if Fred planned on ever telling me they were here.
When I returned to Angel Eyes with the imperative items, he heeded my instructions, obliged my curiosities, and nothing hurt as I’d been warned it might.
“I’d happily indulge you again,” he said, his fingers pressing where I directed them, his mouth hovering near my bosom. He’d been delighted when I informed him young ladies might be repeatedly satisfied, but I found myself reaching for my discarded trousers after the thrill of the second one had subsided.
Undeterred by my re-dressing, Angel Eyes continued kissing around my impaired ear. Kissing and whispering. The words love and adore may have been uttered. I couldn’t decipher them, precisely.
“Why do you not respond when I say these things to you?” he asked.
“I have a deaf ear,” I explained. “And I don’t think I heard what you said.”
“I said you’re lovely and I adore you.”
Indeed I found him adorable as well. Lovely to look at, he’d brought me a thoroughly enjoyable evening, but, still, I wasn’t certain what he expected me to say next.
“I plead my devotion,” he said, rising up onto his elbows. “Yet you say nothing.”
I tugged my suspenders over my shoulders. “What would you like me to say?”
“Do you love me?” He wasn’t angry, just sweetly confused.
I faced him. “I don’t precisely know you.”
“What do you need to know? Ask me. I’ll tell you anything.”
“What’s your name?”
He told me while I was pulling on my sweater, but his voice wasn’t quite loud enough over the rustle of my clothing, so it sounded something like Rawr-rawr. It’d be too cumbersome to ask him to repeat it, so I smiled and nodded.
“Is your heart still occupied by your former betrothed? By Nils Tennfjord?”
“Nils?” I scoffed. “He never occupied my heart.”
As I grasped for my coat, Angel Eyes clutched my hand. He had clean, square nails, angular knuckles, and the right amount of coarseness. Bringing my fingers to his lips, he let his curls fall over his eyes. I took a moment to admire again his golden hair and glowing complexion.
“Do you love me?” he repeated.
I’d learned earlier that autumn the consequences of telling young men what they wanted to hear instead of the truth.
“No,” I said.
He gave a wounded pout that made me feel dreadful.
This whole thing reminded me of knitting. When I was eight, I wanted to learn how to knit, but after finishing my first shawl, I had no urge to pick up those needles nor make something else. Lovemaking was like that. After trying it out, I knew it wouldn’t hold my interest.
“I’m sorry.” I really was. I didn’t like being the cause of a beautiful young man’s melancholy. I knew I had love in me. My love, though, wasn’t the conjugal kind.
He sank against the wall as though he were a prisoner of young manhood. “I could take you away from all of this, you know. You wouldn’t have to toil away at the forge, nor spend your days bent over a horse’s leg. I’d take care of you.”
Tragic, sweet Angel Eyes. It became clear what he wanted and why he’d so idealistically pursued this not-so-pretty maiden—maiden no longer!
“So, you wanted to be a savior,” I said. “You saw me working for Fred and you thought me without a home.”
“I heard what they were saying about you and those boys at the theater.”
I smiled wickedly. “It’s all true.”
“You’ve gone to bed with them?”
“Not in the manner you’re thinking.”
“You were thrown out?”
“I left willingly.”
“You are such a strange creature,” he said. “But I still love you. What do you want? I shall give you anything.”
“I just want”—I knotted my scarf—“two things. One is this little spotted piglet. I love him more than anything in all the world.”
I had to explain the whole story. It took nearly until the moon had set and we had put our clothing back upon our shivering bodies. This pig was spectacular and Angel Eyes needed to know that.
“Two is for the Fuglestads’ place to be saved.” It wouldn’t be right to tell him that particular situation, so I closed my mouth.
“You want to be working for the Fuglestads?” he asked.
“I adore them.”
The rest of our conversation consisted of looks, sighs, and my urging that he take care to appropriately dispose of the sullied implements. In the blue, moonlit icescape he went to his horse, his lantern illuminating the snowflakes.
“Have you considered such lack of sentiment might be a curse?” His dulcet words were almost playful.
“Mikkelsen, I’m the most sentimental person in this blasted town. And, truthfully, that’s my curse.”
After Angel Eyes left, I re-lit the forge and plunged my marked barstock into it, spending twenty more minutes pounding away at the steel and vowing to spend a few solid hours the next night. This was more satisfying than lovemaking—less tiresome as well—but the thought of my virtue lost (never to be restored!) brought a smile to my lips. I imagined Gunnar as I smiled, grinning over the picture of him and I alike in wickedness.
But it wasn’t so simple. There were so many things Gunnar wouldn’t have to worry about since he wasn’t a girl.
Before bed, I considered praying—asking God to understand what my heart wanted—to be freed from motherhood, to make things with my hands, not with my womb, to help me save the Fuglestads’ farm. But I didn’t pray.
Instead, I dug around the smithy for Sigrid’s book and brought it with me into the house. She had a page on remedies she’d attempted in treating her own monthly discomfort. Hers was especially painful like my own. In Sigrid’s old room, I found a sewing kit and some birdseye. By lantern light, I prepared myself for the bothersome deluge I desperately hoped would come tomorrow.
After my drawers were thoroughly fortified, I fell onto the bed and flipped through more pages. Lovemaking may not have held my interest, but the art of farriery certainly did.
Waking the next morning, I found a scarlet stain in my birdseye and went to the kitchen to mix the ingredients listed in Sigrid’s monthly tonic. Meanwhile, a terrible stink wafted from the pile of unwashed clothing and dirty pots.
I fumed.
Fred looked on from his bowl of porridge. He probably still thought keeping the farm was an impossibility and had given up caring whether the place stayed clean or not.
“We need your papa’s help,” I said. “After a fourteen-hour working day, we need a decent meal, a clean house, and something to wear that doesn’t smell like three-day-old perspiration.”
“You’re not knocking on his door, are you?” Fred asked.
“Yes. I am. And I’ll tell him how hard we work, and how we need assistance with the housekeeping.”
Fred’s eyes went wide with fright. “Do what you must, but I’ll be up in the barn.”
He scurried out, while I rapped on Herr Fuglestad’s door.
“Herr Fuglestad?” I tapped lightly. “Herr Fuglestad, may I have a word?”
I put my good ear to the carved oak. A low groan and then silence. My fist went to the wood again and I smacked my knuckles harder. “Herr Fuglestad? Sir, may I speak with you?”
An ambiguous murmuring.
I knocked once more. “Herr Fuglestad!”
Shuffling. Groaning. The wood of the floorboards creaked. When the door opened, the smell reminded me of opening night at the theater—an astringent tang mixed with the sour stink of bile and vomit.
Fred’s tattooed papa was taller than I remembered. The skin under his eyes hung bloated and greasy, his swollen pores red with flush. He blinked as he encountered the morning light, his unfocused eyes meeting mine.
“Everythin’ all right, girl? A . . . Asta?”
“Yes, it’s Asta.” I brought my fingertips together in a pleading gesture. “I’m currently working for Fred as his apprentice and I hoped you might help me with something.”
His smile heartened me. It would take perfectly scripted words and a performance that navigated the fine line between suggesting and begging, but I’d convince him to help out. Afterward, it’d be a matter of convincing Fred to not give up on the race.