19

The next morning Ingeborg watched as Ivar walked with Gunlaug up the track toward home, leading his horse, followed by the packhorse, now loaded with rolled and bundled fleeces. She’d just turned away when something caught her attention. They had stopped to say good-bye, but instead of kissing her, which is what she knew Gunlaug was hoping, Ivar shook his head and mounted his horse.

Was Gunlaug crying? Was she that sad to see him go? Ingeborg had a hard time believing that. Had he said something to her? Yes, Gunlaug was weeping, not just crying the way you express sadness at a loved one’s departure, but sobbing lustily.

Ingeborg charged out to meet her. “What’s the matter?” What had that weaselly mamma’s boy said to her best friend, the one who loved him, or at least thought she did?

Gunlaug collapsed in her arms. Her great gulping sobs made it impossible to understand her.

Ingeborg patted her back and made loving shushing sounds to help calm her.

“He . . . he said . . .” The onslaught ripped onward again.

“All right. I know something is terribly wrong, but I don’t know what it is. Gunlaug, tell me before I have to go in and get the gun and shoot him.”

That put a pause in the storm. “He . . . he said his mor . . .”

I knew it had to be something to do with his mor, that grasping old tyrant. “His mor what?”

“Has found a woman with two children for him to marry—” sobs and a hiccup—“and they will all live with his mor.” More sobs and hiccups.

“Oh.” Ingeborg hugged her cousin close, although she felt more like stamping her feet and screaming. How could a grown man . . . ? Of course. That was part of the problem. That woman wanted her son to remain a boy all his life and take care of his mor. Gunlaug, Gunlaug, if only I could convince you that Ivar is not worth your tears. “What else?”

“They are to be married before the end of August.”

Ingeborg nodded, tonguing her lower lip and then catching it between her teeth. Swallowing words was never easy for her, and right now she was about to choke on them. She could not say what she was thinking, that was for sure.

Gunlaug shuddered in her arms. “I know you always said he is not good enough for me, that he’s a mamma’s boy, but Ingeborg, I love him.”

“I know. Hush now. All is going to be all right. We will talk about this, and then we will go bushwhack him, knock him off his horse, and roll him down the hill to land on an anthill and get bitten so bad he dies.”

“We do not have anthills like that.” Sob. “Those are in Africa.”

“Oh, humph, that’s right. I know, a bee tree instead. He will bump against a bee tree, and the bees will chase him all the way down the mountain.”

“We do not have wild bees and bee trees here either.” Shudder. Despite Gunlaug’s sorrow, a smile tried to break through the clouds. She sniffed and used the corner of her apron to wipe her eyes.

“Then you and I will stand at the road and throw pinecones at him and laugh when he tries to dodge them.”

Gunlaug mopped her face. “Is that before or after the bee tree that we do not have? But it sounds like a good idea.”

“Both.” Ingeborg hugged her friend. “Please listen to me.”

Her voice was low, sad, defeated. “I am.”

“You are better off without him. Just think. Would you like to live with his mor for the rest of your life? And you would, serving her.”

Gunlaug shuddered. “No, not at all. Eee-ew.”

“We should pray for that poor young woman and think of her children.”

“Ivar’s mor likes children. That’s what he said.”

“Do you know what her name is?”

“Whose? His mor or the woman?”

“His mor.”

Gunlaug wrinkled her forehead, trying to think. “Mor must know but I . . . I guess I do not. I just know she never liked me.”

“Ja, well, may she someday rest in peace.” Without you around, my dear friend, to wait on her. Ingeborg locked her arm through Gunlaug’s, the way they used to when they were little girls and went skipping down the path to school. “Come. He might be worthless, but he brought us some licorice. I think right now is a good time to open that.” And it’s a good thing he did, since he forgot the letters, leaving them all feeling bereft.

They ignored the questioning looks from all the others and went into the house to the cupboard, where Ingeborg had hidden the tin of candy, keeping it for a special occasion. She unwrapped the tin and finally pried the cover off. Together they inhaled the intoxicating fragrance of licorice.

“Since you need consoling, you get the first piece, and then you can share the rest with the others.”

“You take one too, and we will pop a piece into our mouths.” She did. “Oh, I do love licorice.” Her eyes grew dreamy, like when she talked of Ivar. “Someday there will be just the right man for me, and he will be a real man, not a permanent boy.”

Thank you, Lord. Ingeborg figured this was not the end of Gunlaug’s sadness, but it was sure a good start.

“Come and have licorice!” Gunlaug hollered from the doorstep. “If you do not come quick, I will eat your piece.”

When she brought the tin to Nils, he nodded and thanked her gravely. “If licorice is so important to all of you, I will have to send you some from my favorite place in Oslo. When I get home, that is.”

Gunlaug nodded. “We would all like that. So that means we have to work extra hard to get you well enough to walk again and soon.”

He surely saw her puffy red eyes, but he said nothing about it. “We do. Anders said he is working on a crutch for me. I would make one, but I have no idea how to do such a thing, and we don’t need lopped off fingers or portions thereof in the bargain.” He put his piece into his mouth and smiled wide. “Have you ever had horehound drops?”

“That is a cough medicine.”

“But a candy too. Along with lemon drops.”

“And peppermint.” Gunlaug smiled in spite of herself.

That evening, when the rest of the family was still at the supper table, Anders brought the two pieces of wood he had been smoothing and forming and showed them to Nils. “I need to carve a hole here to put them together, but I wanted to make sure this is all right before I go any further.”

“Do you have an awl?” Ingeborg asked.

“Not that I know of. It is not in the tool chest. Saws and hammers mostly.”

She thought a moment. “Any glue?”

“Nei.”

“Well, you dig out a hole or a notch, whatever will work, and we’ll wrap it tight with thongs. I saw something that said wrap the things together with strips of rawhide and soak it in water. When it dries, the rawhide shrinks down and the bond will be solid hard.”

Anders looked at her. “Where did you learn that?”

Hjelmer grinned at his sister. “From a book she read. Ingeborg learns all kinds of good stuff from the books and newspapers she reads. She is always looking for more stuff to read.”

Ingeborg felt a smile wrap around her heart. What a compliment from a boy who observed far more than he spoke! She ruffled his hair. “Takk.”

Tor reached for the wood. “I have strips from the gloves I am making. I know how to weave the shorter strips together to make a long one without knots, so it can be smooth. If we use some of that sheepskin that has the wool on, that should make good padding for the underarm part.”

Ingeborg felt her mouth drop open and snapped it shut. She exchanged looks of delight with Gunlaug, who was now grinning from ear to ear. It wasn’t even the end of July yet, and look at the way these children were learning to work together. God be praised.

“This will save my life—again. I’ll be able to walk.” Nils reached out to shake each of the boys’ hands.

Ingeborg watched the boys run merrily outside, then offered, “You’ve been amazingly patient.”

“You have no idea, since you didn’t know me in my other life.”

My other life. Ingeborg thought on that. He was right. And not just about his life. Their lives here at the Strandseter were set apart from all their other lives. The time here did far more than just produce a lot of cheese and spin wool and feed the livestock so that the lowland pastures could be hayed for winter fodder. Both children and adults learned to work together and grow up in so many ways. Surely there was someplace in the Bible where it said, God is in this place. Never before had she seen this so clearly. When she got home she would have to look that up. Someplace in Genesis perhaps. If only she had a Bible along. She knew it wasn’t in her copied sheets, because so much of those were the Psalms and parts of the New Testament.

Hjelmer waved a hand in front of her face. “Ingeborg, come back.”

“Uh, sorry.” Back to work.

All of them. Anders set to carving out an indentation to take the top of Nils’s crutch. Mari went to mixing something in the kitchen, Ingeborg to spinning along with Kari on the other spinning wheel, while Gunlaug and Hamme took to the looms. Tor worked on his gloves, leaving Jon and Hjelmer to card wool.

“If you showed me how, I could probably learn to help with that,” Nils said to Hjelmer. “Then we could perhaps play a game of chess.”

“This doesn’t go fast.”

“I’m aware of that.”

So Hjelmer showed him how to stroke the wool straight through the fine wire teeth of the tools that looked like large, flat, shallow wire hairbrushes. Then he handed Nils two cards. “Now you slide one against the other, like this. It combs the hairs—the fibers—out straight so they’ll spin into a smooth yarn.”

Nils made a couple of passes. “This isn’t as easy as it looks.”

“Most things are not.”

Ingeborg forced herself to pay strict attention to her spinning. Otherwise she might burst into laughter. Hjelmer was doing a fair job of teaching, rather coaching. Leave them be. When she caught herself wishing it were her hands on the backs of the carding combs guiding Nils’s hands, she nearly broke the spinning thread. Ingeborg Strand, what are you thinking?! She knew she didn’t say that out loud but . . . She heaved a sigh and reached into the basket beside her for another handful of the fine belly wool. This stuff took more skill to spin than did the coarser wool. She spun a fine thread to knit into stockings. Once she had several skeins, they would need to find materials for the dyes. Some they’d already brought up from the farms: onion skins that made yellow, walnut husks a nice brown, and of course, the indigo plant. Everyone used indigo.

The only bad thing about spinning was it allowed her mind free rein. And she felt uncomfortable about where it kept wandering. “Gunlaug, what is that psalm you wanted us to memorize?” That would help keep her mind in check.

Gunlaug recited it. “I have it written down.”

“I know, but—”

Gunlaug’s chuckle set the evening air that floated in the windows to dancing. She stopped the gentle thuds of the heddle and batten working in rhythm and rose, stretching as she did. “I need to move around. We can all work on it together.”

Mari brought in some dough flattened into a round on the griddle to set into the coals of the fire. “We will have a treat tonight.”

“What is it?”

“You will see.”

Ingeborg heard a grunt or a groan of disgust from Nils when Hjelmer stopped his carding and showed him how to pull in long sweeps so that the wool strands lay straight and even. Nils took them back with a sigh.

“Why is it that I can discuss ancient Roman and Greek philosophers and speak four languages but I cannot master wool carding?”

“You will get it. Hjelmer is not telling you the hours it took for him to learn.” Ingeborg did not say that Hjelmer picked up the skill years earlier from watching Ingeborg. He took right to it. All she was doing was stretching the truth a bit. After all, how many hours had he spent watching her?

Hjelmer gave her a sideways grin and a raised eyebrow. He knew exactly what she was doing. She wondered sometimes at the perceptions of this younger brother of hers. Someone had said one time he was an old soul when he was born. She believed it. His was the first birth she was ever in the room to observe. She had stolen in and hidden in a corner because she wanted to know more so desperately. Even then, all things to do with birthing and healing and the way life worked fascinated her.

Perhaps that was why she felt such a connection with him. Her mother had lost two more babies that Ingeborg knew of, both of them early on. Had she not been instructed to run for the midwife, she would probably not have known then. Her mother, like all women, kept womanly things intensely private.

“That certainly smells good. Are you sure it is not done?” Hjelmer asked, staring at the baking griddle in the coals. “You wouldn’t want to burn it, you know.”

“I will not let it burn, but no matter how good it smells, it would still be doughy in the middle. You need to learn patience.”

Gunlaug laughed. “Your little sister has you there.”

“My little sister thinks she is the boss in the kitchen. Just because she is almost eleven.”

“That is just because she is. Who does much of the cooking around here? I do not see anyone else volunteering.”

“I think I got it!” Anders waved the shorter piece in the air. “Tor, what do you think?” The two worked the two pieces together. “Tight fit, I know, but that is important.”

“I have some thong done here. You hold it and I will wrap it.”

“How about if I try it out first?” Nils suggested.

“Good idea. If we need to we can shave some off the end.”

Nils started to push himself up when Tor stepped closer and provided a leaning post. “Takk. Even that good leg has gone weak on me.” Anders settled the crutch under Nils’s arm and stepped back, but not far. Both boys were making sure the man did not fall.

Ingeborg let out the breath she did not realize she had been holding. Nils stood upright, on his own, the crutch beside him. He moved the crutch forward, thought the better of it, and planted the crutch beside the splinted leg. He moved the other leg and, balancing on that, moved crutch and mending leg together as one. “It works!”

Everyone clapped and Tor cheered.

Ingeborg felt like leaping to her feet and twirling around the room. Thank you, Lord, she repeated over and over. What a monumental accomplishment! Maybe they could soon remove the splint too.

She could hear Mor’s sage advice. “Do not rush in a birthing or in getting well. Running ahead of the good Lord is never wise. He will tell when the time is right.”

Mari disappeared out the door and returned with a jug of buttermilk to set on the table. With everyone staring at her, she lifted the griddle out of the coals and set it on the table with wooden trivets underneath. “We have something to celebrate and something good to celebrate it with. Come on, so we eat it while it is hot.”

Cautiously, deliberately, Nils used a step-and-thump action to get across the room to sit down at the table with the others. His grin told Ingeborg how pleased he was.

And hot the food was, but the oohs and ahhs around the table said more than words.

“Mari, what is this?”

“Not biscuits and not bread or cake but something in between.”

“It is my secret,” Mari told them. “But I am glad you like it.”

Nils sat with eyes closed, a contented look on his face as he worked his mouth. “It may be a secret, but you need to tell the cook at our house how to make it.”

Ingeborg could see the color rise over the cheeks of her baby sister. What a fine man to think to say something so perfect to a young girl who so seldom heard words of praise. Something fluttered in her chest. Whatever it was, it made her feel deeply pleased.