Wild Wind Westward Page 6

  So it was with their love that night. Neither of them wanting to end the anticipation of pleasure to come, and yet, as they wrapped themselves around and about each other’s body, neither wanted to possess the final pleasure that would mean the end of the lovemaking.

  He is me now, thought Kristin, I have drunk him with my body and my mouth, tasted him with my heart, held him and made him mine forever with my arms and all of me.

  Eric moved upon her for a long time with deep gentle strokes, she wrapped all about him, giving her own stroking body to him, until it seemed that nothing would ever end and that everything would end in the next instant. Once, when it seemed almost too much to bear, she cried, “Stop, Eric, stop,” and dug her fingers into the soft flesh of his arm, a distraction for him and for her that held the pleasure at bay, and yet somehow increased the ecstasy, too. Ah, pleasure is a strange thing, and love stranger. Night comes, spread by a blanket of wafered moon, but in the darkness, in the small, far places, there is as much love as God has ever dreamed. She felt his kiss upon her breasts, once when he withdrew from her to hold the final pleasure back again. She felt his kiss, and every nerve in her being trembled and exulted, as his lips and tongue found what they were seeking, what she was seeking, what it had all been willed by God for them to seek, even since the beginning of time. That which slow creatures had ferreted in the undersea trees, that gasping apparitions had come out of those seas to seek on the land, that beings had once for the first time stood upright Upon African savannahs: Those things had happened only so that upon this sacred night Eric and Kristin could love one another, flesh and blood and being, this once, perfectly, for all time, and enough to last all time.

  She reached for him, when he was in her and slowly thrusting again, reached for him, found and held the strange twin throbbing vessels that made him a man, felt their swelling and the swelling throbbing of the great length inside her as delicious as the feeling he sorcered in her, sorcered and ever enhanced in her until she prayed for it to end and never to end. Then, because God also knows time, and time has end to it, the moment came that was the end of this world, a world created in this bed this night by love and their two bodies. Slowly through her fingertips Kristin felt the first throb of him, her body, mind, both leaping to join him in delight. If they were shaken and the earth trembled with them, or if it was the earth that first spun away into abyss, carrying them along with it, who could say? But the moment was coming and finally it was there.

  And then it was over, except in memory. So it was never over. All was a mystery. Kristin could not help but puzzle it, even as they kissed long and slowly in the afterglow. New to love, she knew nonetheless that she would never be able to know with clear mind exactly what ecstasy felt like. Because while one waited for piercing delight, there was room in the mind neither for imagination nor reflection, there was room only for anticipation and the blood-riven exultation of the flesh. And when delight was done, mind and body were still in shock, and so were incapable of recapitulating the exact feeling when love was at its flaming height. Even the ultimate moment was, in essence, lost, because to possess it was to be lost oneself at the precise moment of possession. So it was a mystery, and one could only, in memory, recapture a shadow of what it had been.

  Kristin sighed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Is it always this way?”

  “Is it always what way?”

  She hesitated a moment, as if undecided about speaking.

  “Tell me. There is nothing you cannot tell me.”

  “It is…it is as it was at the fjord,” she said. “I feel this…”

  “Yes?” Eric propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at her. She was gold and ivory in the moonlight.

  “I feel this terrible hunger,” she said. “Is it always that way? After?”

  He could not help but laugh with relief. “For everyone, it is different after,” he said.

  Immediately, she sat up beside him, breasts firm and flushed and glowing. “And how would you know?” she demanded, actually jealous, even though, moments before, he had been utterly hers. She knew he had had other girls, women. But never until now had they seemed to threaten her. That was another part of the mystery of love: there is more potential pain attached to something you possess than to something you do not, or have never, or could never, call your own.

  “Kristin,” he was saying, “Kristin, darling. Do not think of these things. I am yours and will aways be.”

  “Whatever happens?”

  “Whatever happens. Forever.”

  The word hung there above the bed, powerful but disturbing. Forever was a long, long time.

  “You had better eat something,” he suggested then. “I do not wish to be the cause of your wasting away.”

  Kristin got out of bed, cut a slab of bread and a piece of cheese, folding the bread around the cheese. She asked if he wanted any, but he said no. She came back to the bed, got in, and snuggled beside him, eating happily.

  “What happens afterward, to you?” she asked.

  “I become hungry again myself,” he admitted.

  “Why,” she exclaimed, “I just asked if you wanted some bread and cheese! Here, let me get you some.”

  She made as if to leave the bed again, but felt his powerful arm around her.

  “I did not say that my hunger was for food,” he said.

  IV

  Gustav Rolfson had tossed restlessly most of the night, soothed little even by solicitor Thorsen’s luxurious feather beds. So when dawn came, he did not so much awaken as simply decide to put an end to the sporadic dozing that had passed for sleep. He tossed the coverlet away, and swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed and onto the bearskin rug. The bedroom, like all the rooms in Thorsen’s magnificent house, was large and spacious. Gustav glanced toward the bed on the far side of the room, beneath the French windows he admired so much, but it was empty. As always, his father was up and at work. Gustav stepped into his fine leather slippers, sheepskin lined, and pulled on a robe of magenta-colored silk. One must dress always to be noticed: that was a lesson. Let the poor wear black and brown and gray.

  Gustav trudged downstairs, into the dining room. His father and Thorsen were drinking coffee from steaming bowls, and eating fresh-baked white bread with butter and strawberry jam. Two maids scurried from the kitchen to the dining room and back again, bringing in more food: piles of spicy sausages, eggs fried in butter, fragrant sweet rolls, and bowls of fruit. Old Adolphus was eating with relish, and helped himself to half a dozen sausages and three eggs. Gustav heard his stomach rumble with anticipation, and his mouth turned to water. He gave the two men a short greeting, pulled up a chair, and started to load his plate with three or four of everything. A maid poured him a big bowl of coffee.

  Then he noticed Thorsen was just picking at his eggs, shoving a sausage around on his plate.

  “You don’t eat breakfast?” he asked, his mouth full of egg and bread and jelly.

  “The solicitor finds his heart a little faint this morning.” Adolphus chuckled. “After handling the foreclosure business for us he knows the people of Lesja will never stomach him again. If, indeed, they do not, some dark night, put an actual dirk in his stomach.” Adolphus stopped chewing to guffaw at his own wit. “And, on the other hand, our poor host is not yet sure we will be forthcoming with that job he expects in Oslo.”

  Gustav smiled. The Rolfsons had old Thorsen right where they wanted him. “You’ve got some yolk on your beard there, solicitor,” said Gustav, enjoying the sight of the man rubbing yellow juice into his red whiskers.

  “Now, to business,” declared Adolphus, still eating. “Son, are you sure you want to persist in this matter with the girl?”

  “Yes, father.”

  “What girl?” asked Thorsen, seemingly alarmed.

  “That blond one with the violet eyes. You know, Thorsen, the one you sent a spy after?” Adolphus was enjoying this; he knew Thorsen had wanted Kristin
Arnesdatter. “I had expected merely that my boy here might give her a roll in the haymow. In fact, I had seen her on an earlier trip and picked her for just such an eventuality. But now he says he wants to take her to wife.”

  “Wife?” croaked Thorsen.

  “That’s right,” Gustav spoke up. “She is more lovely than any woman I have ever seen in Oslo. A little training, some clothes, the right setting, and her mere presence beside me will gain us acceptance into the highest circles.”

  “What does she say to this?”

  “And what care I about that? Her father has agreed. She has no choice. If she does not accede to my wishes, her family loses everything.”

  Thorsen had always realized that, in their operations and schemes, the Rolfsons always strove to place their victims in a dilemma that was intricately, exquisitely cruel. But not until now did he grasp that, to them, matters of the heart, of emotion, even family, were no more than chips in a game of skill. His own personal feelings were mixed. He divined that Gustav Rolfson would have his way, and that was good because it meant Eric Starbane would not be able to marry Kristin. But it also meant he would never have a chance with her, either. So it became of crucial importance that he please the Rolfsons, that they, indeed, take him with them to Oslo, where Kristin would be.

  “The judge is due here quite early this morning,” he noted eagerly. “We can hold the hearings, have his decision, and get on with the foreclosures before noon.”

  “You do not think there is any chance Amundsen will rule against us, do you?” asked Adolphus with a broad wink. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger back and forth, a broad parody of someone counting money for a bribe. The three men laughed loudly.

  “There is only one possibility…” Thorsen began.

  “What is it?” snapped Gustav, immediately alert for danger. His eyes narrowed, slitty and wolflike, over that vulpine nose.

  “Judge Amundsen may, nay, will find for us. But if the matter goes to the supreme judiciary in Oslo…”

  Adolphus snorted, and spoke with great emphasis, jamming a finger down onto the tabletop with each word. “Then…you…see…that…it…doesn’t…get…to…Oslo,” he commanded.

  “And tell your cook to fry some more eggs,” suggested Gustav. “I only had five.”

  Gustav dressed carefully in his swallow-tailed morning coat, striped trousers, white silk shirt, and white cravat affixed with a gold pin. Glossy black boots of kid leather and a top hat in the English mode completed his costume. When he went out of Thorsen’s house to admire the day and await the judge, everyone who saw him—children, stablehands, women scurrying about the village on errands—just stopped in their tracks and stared and stared.

  Exactly as they would stare at a crown prince, thought Gustav, pleased. He called for his horse, having decided to ride over to the Vendahl farm and inspect his woman.

  “I want to see Kristin,” he demanded, pushing into the poor little house without even a knock.

  Arne and his children were huddled around the table, taking a breakfast of bread crusts and boiled pigeon eggs. Good, they were even poorer than Gustav had surmised. He would have no problems with them. But where was Kristin?

  Arne got up from the table, but seemed to have difficulty answering the question. “She has…gone out,” he finally managed to stammer.

  Something about the man’s eyes ignited Gustav’s always-flammable suspicion. Where had he seen Kristin last? At that farmer Gunnarson’s house! Was it possible that she had spent the night there?

  In an instant he was on his horse again, pounding down the country lane. Then he was in Eric’s yard, off the horse, vaulting up the same stone steps Eric had forced him from last evening. He threw himself against the wooden door of the house, felt it give way to his shoulder, and then he fairly flew into the house.

  Eric, naked, was half out of bed. Kristin, beside him, was just awakening, the dreamy, content, pleasure-filled look on her face beginning to give way to an expression of shock and violation.

  A current, hot and red, flashed through Gustav’s already febrile brain. This farmer! He had slept with the girl of Gustav’s choice even after Gustav had picked her, had arranged everything with her father. On the very night Gustav had sealed the bargain with pathetic old Arne, this benighted son of Gunnar had humiliated a Rolfson! As for the woman, he would teach her her place later, but the humiliation must now be expunged. Gustav wished mightily that Norway shared the Russian practice of punishing peasants by tying and beating them. But Eric, who was putting on his trousers, did not look as if he would permit himself to be tied too readily, so—as Kristin sat up in bed, pulled a sheet over her breasts, and cried out to warn Eric—Gustav lifted his mean little braided riding quirt and prepared to bring it down on Eric’s flesh.

  He never did.

  Eric, bending to pull on his boots, heard Kristin’s cry, and spun away from the blow. Recovering, he grabbed Gustav’s white-cuffed wrist while the other was still off balance, and, using Gustav’s momentum for added leverage, sent him sprawling on the soot-covered stone slab in front of the fireplace. Gustav cursed then howled with rage when he discovered the black soot on the palms of his hands, on his cuffs, on his fine striped trousers. His top hat had gone spinning away beneath the bed.

  And Eric Starbane stood before him with the riding quirt.

  ‘“You have made a major mistake,” Eric was telling him, coldly, clearly, slowly. “You have entered without invitation the home of a freeman.”

  “Not for long,” hissed Gustav, getting to his feet. What would be best? A kick? A rush? A feint and dive? Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kristin pulling on her clothes beneath the bedcovers. Oh, my God, but she was a luscious piece…

  “Get out now and you won’t be hurt,” offered Eric.

  Gustav didn’t even bother to think it over. He had to punish, he had to destroy, he had to eradicate utterly this big blond country boy. He could do it, too. No fair fights. No frontal assaults. He remembered the snowy day in Oslo, lying in wait for Lars Sondheim, who thought he was so great because his father had once served as minister to the King. Pieces of glass in an ice-crusted snowball. Lars Sondheim would have to go through life with one eye, always suspecting, but never quite knowing for sure, just who had done it to him.

  Gustav came out of a crouch, feinted with a rash, twisted sideways, kicking as he did so. He felt the toe of his boot connect solidly and satisfyingly with Eric’s belly. Too solid. Eric doubled up for a moment, gulping for air, but he recovered! He didn’t go down! This farmer must be made of iron! thought Gustav, and way down deep inside his gut he felt a little liquid quiver of fear. Off balance from the kick, he regained his footing and turned to send a blow to Eric’s jaw.

  Then his face was on fire, a burning hot streak of flame from his left cheekbone, down across his mouth, and ending at his right jawbone. He screamed. He felt as if the pain would make him faint, and it probably would have had he not been so intent upon getting out the door, into the yard, and back onto his horse. The river of fire flowed across his face, a pain such as he had never imagined, and then he tasted his own blood.

  Eric stood there in front of him, holding the riding whip. There was blood on it, too.

  Gustav was out the door before he realized what had happened to him. That mean little whip, which he used to break horses and discipline dogs, had cut a bloody, ragged trail across his face. He traced his tattered lips with his tongue. His face! His looks!

  “Now I shall destroy you utterly, Gunnarson,” he muttered bloodily, when he was safely mounted on his horse. “Now you are a walking dead man!”

  Eric was standing in the doorway. Kristin stood behind him, one arm upon his shoulder.

  Gustav, dabbing at his bloody face with a white silk pocket scarf, wheeled his horse and galloped away in the direction of the village.

  “Eric, I’m afraid for you,” Kristin said, as they watched the younger Rolfson disappear down the trail. “Let’s go away now. Ri
ght now.”

  But Eric shook his head. “I don’t run,” he said.

  From the village, borne upon the pure bright morning air, they heard the sound of the bell in the stavkirche steeple, summoning the townsmen.

  “That means the judge from Dovre has arrived. We had best get over to the church.”

  Judge Amundsen wore a long black robe and a crafty, sour look. He sat upon a peerlessly bred Arabian stallion, waited until the citizens of Lesja had gathered in front of the church, and then rode with Thorsen to the village inn, the only place large enough to accommodate the crowd. To hold legal hearings in the church itself would have been unseemly. Amundsen had looked quite striking up on his fine horse, but when he dismounted, Kristin saw that he was very short, almost runty, with ugly twisted legs. Perhaps his lack of stature explained the apparent dour malevolence of his nature.

  Thorsen had arranged with the innkeeper that the dining room and the spacious beer garden adjacent to it be used for the hearing. Wide doors gave on to the garden from the dining room, and these, flung wide open, would permit those unable to find a seat inside the inn to hear the proceedings, even if some of them might not be able to see everything. Eric managed to find seats for himself and Kristin near the table at which the judge was to preside.

  Arne Vendahl entered, saw them, and came quickly through the crowd. He was red faced with anger, and his eyes were wide with fear.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded, grabbing his daughter by the wrist. “You’ll ruin everything for us!”

  Before either Eric or Kristin could answer, the judge pounded the table.

  “I declare these proceedings open,” he called, in a grating, rasping voice, which sounded as unpleasant as he looked. “All must be seated. You,” he shouted, selecting Arne as an example. “Be seated or it’s contempt of court, and ten days in the county workhouse!”