Without roots, p.1
Without Roots, page 1
Without Roots
The Legend of The Ice People 9 - Without Roots
© Margit Sandemo 1982
© eBook in English: Jentas A/S, 2017
Series: The Legend of The Ice People
Title: Without Roots
Title number: 9
Original title: Den ensamme
Translator: Anna Halager
© Translation: Jentas A/S
ISBN: 978-87-7107-357-7
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.
All contracts and agreements regarding the work, translation, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas A/S.
Acknowledgement
The legend of the Ice People is dedicated with love and gratitude to the memory of my dear late husband Asbjorn Sandemo, who made my life a fairy tale.
Margit Sandemo
The Ice People - Reviews
‘Margit Sandemo is, simply, quite wonderful.’
- The Guardian
‘Full of convincing characters, well estabished in time and place, and enlightening ... will get your eyes popping, and quite possibly groins twitching ... these are graphic novels without pictures ... I want to know what happens next.’
- The Times
‘A mixure of myth and legend interwoven with historical events, this is imaginative creation that involves the reader from the first page to the last.’
- Historical Novels Review
‘Loved by the masses, the prolific Margit Sandemo has written over 172 novels to date and is Scandinavia's most widely read author...’
- Scanorama magazine
The Legend of the Ice People
The legend of the Ice People begins many centuries ago with Tengel the Evil. He was ruthless and greedy, and there was only one way to get everything that he wanted: he had to make a pact with the devil. He travelled far into the wilderness and summoned the devil with a magic potion that he had brewed in a pot. Tengel the Evil gained unlimited wealth and power but in exchange, he cursed his own family. One of his descendants in every generation would serve the Devil with evil deeds. When it was done, Tengel buried the pot. If anyone found it, the curse would be broken.
So the curse was passed down through Tengel’s descendants, the Ice People. One person in every generation was born with yellow cat’s eyes, a sign of the curse, and magical powers which they used to serve the Devil. One day the most powerful of all the cursed Ice People would be born.
This is what the legend says. Nobody knows whether it is true, but in the 16th century, a cursed child of the Ice People was born. He tried to turn evil into good, which is why they called him Tengel the Good. This legend is about his family. Actually, it is mostly about the women in his family – the women who held the fate of the Ice People in their hands.
Chapter 1
The fate of the Ice People was spun from many threads. One thread began in the south of France, in Béarn by the foot of the Pyrenees, far from Graastensholm Parish.
The bells rang out in the empty church and far beyond. A carriage turned out of the church square and drove up to the castle that rose above the town, which was bathed in golden sunlight. Inside the carriage, a mother and her fifteen-year old daughter sat next to each other. People they saw along the road greeted them humbly.
“Anette,” said the mother without turning her head. “Don’t look at the mob! Remember how things turned out the last time you waved to them.”
“Yes, Mum.”
Although it had happened several days ago, Anette could still feel her cheek stinging after her mother had boxed her ears.
“Remember that they are our subjects,” continued her mother, almost without moving her lips. “People are only here because of us. Don’t ever forget that. I noticed that you smiled... At a boy! Haven’t I taught you-”
“Yes, Mum.”
If Anette had hoped to ward off a lecture, she was disappointed. Her mother rattled on in an expressionless voice:
“You’re nearly grown-up and of course you’ll be married off. Anything else would be unsuitable. And you know what we women must suffer in marriage. I’ve told you what I had to endure while my poor husband was alive. We women must endure men’s carnal pleasures for as long as we want them to give us children. But after that you have no further duties to him on that score. Remember that! You can always escape by saying you have a headache or, better yet, a migraine. You can also pray to the Virgin Mary that your husband loses his carnal desires once he’s provided you with the children you want.”
“But Mum!” exclaimed Anette, shocked.
“Just you wait. You’ll wish for the same as me, because men are either pigs or lechers. If they don’t get what they want at home, they visit prostitutes, which you’ll have to conceal, and that’s exhausting.”
“But Dad wasn’t like that, he was so nice.”
Her mother sneered. “You know so very little about men’s nature! They can think of the ugliest things. See to it that you’re never alone with a young man until you’re married, Anette! Don’t let them lead you astray with beautiful words - men know perfectly well how to charm and lure a woman. Pray to the Virgin Mary for the power to resist, or you’ll soon feel their lecherous hands on your body. And remember that God sees everything you do! You mustn’t give in to unsuitable and shameful emotions. Never! You must work to please God. Only prostitutes and fallen women allow themselves to be flattered and intoxicated by men. And you don’t want to be one of those, do you?”
Anette bowed her head. “No, Mum. I’ll bear it all in mind.”
She hoped that the lecture was over for now. It always gave her the shivers and a vague discomfort in the body, making her almost feel sick.
Fortunately, the lecture was over for now. Her mother had caught sight of a little old woman sitting by the palace gate with her basket of vegetables. Her mother ordered the driver to bring the horse to a halt. She leaned out of the carriage window and grabbed the whip from its holder on the side of the carriage. With a hard lash, she drove the woman away from the gate.
She then leaned back with a satisfied smile on her face. “When you go on your six-month journey with your relative, Jacob de la Gardie, to his new homeland, please bear in mind what I’ve just told you. Jacob is a Rigsmarsk so you’ll be moving in the finest circles – otherwise I would never have let you travel to that pagan country. But Jacob will see to it that nothing improper happens to you and besides I’ve brought you up properly. I’m sure you’ll avoid all dangers.”
“Yes, Mum,” said Anette. “From what I’ve heard of men, I can promise you that nobody will get close to me!”
“Good,” said her mother, relieved. “I want you out of the way for a while, you see, because fortune hunters have discovered that Castle Loupiac has an heir who is now of age. We don’t want to have anything to do with fortune hunters, do we, Anette?”
“No, Mum.”
But human beings are not masters of the whims of fortune. Anette had not been away from home for more than two months when a message came to tell her that her mother had passed away. So the girl stayed with her family in pagan Sweden. She was still far too young to manage on her own.
But her strong-willed mother’s words had sunk into Anette’s mind. She had been taught how a real lady was to behave.
At Linden Avenue, the years passed by more and more quickly for Are Lind of the Ice People. A little too quickly in his opinion, because there was something he still had not managed to accomplish.
Mikael, Tarjei’s son, had vanished in the fog from which he had emerged when Tancred met him on the banks of the Elbe. So now he was searching for his grandchild with all the means at his disposal, which wasn’t much because the war between Denmark-Norway and Sweden put many obstacles in his way.
Nevertheless, one day in 1658, he heard about a landowner in Christiania, whose sister was living in Stockholm.
Are immediately rode to the landowner. The head of the Ice People was now seventy-two years old, a true patriarch who was indomitable and had a white beard and straight back.
The landowner greeted the elderly man kindly, but there wasn’t much he could do. He hadn’t heard from his sister for quite a long time – the postal service had just about ceased because of the war.
“Anyway, please tell me what you’d like to hear,” said the landowner. “My sister has told me a lot about her life in Stockholm, and I’ve been there several times myself.”
Without much hope, Are laid out the little information he had about Mikael. He had kept the letter from Tancred as if it were made of pure gold, and now he read aloud the four things they knew about Tancred’s son:
“Well, the first point doesn’t tell us very much,” explained Are. “It mentions that the lad travelled with the Swedish army from Bremen to Ingria in 1654. But the second point is interesting: He followed his foster sister, Marca Christiana, to Sweden when she married the son of their unknown guardian. We know that the guardian was Johan Banér’s brother-in-law. I’m afraid that’s all. Mikael stayed with her also after she got married.”
The landowner lifted his head. “Marca Christiana? That’s an unusual name, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve heard it. Only I can’t remember in what context. She’s bound to be a prominent woman.”
Are nodded. “That’s also what I believe. Because in the third point of the letter, it says: Her husband is a very prominent person, both as an officer and as a civil servant. And then point 4 says: His first name is Gabriel. Here Tancred tells us that in the family of this Gabriel, all first-born sons are given this name because the grandmother of his paternal grandfather had lost twelve newborn sons. She dreamed that an angel told her to baptise her next son Gabriel, and she was allowed to keep this son.”
Now the landowner’s face lit up. “That’s a well-known story! My sister told me about it. It’s the Oxenstierna Family! Let me see ... It’s not Axel Oxenstierna’s lineage. No, it’s not a member of Count Oxenstierna of Korsholm and Wasa’s lineage. You see, there are several lineages.”
Are saw light at the end of the tunnel. Finally, he had some facts to go by. He hoped that the seemingly endless war would finally be over, before it was too late. He felt so uneasy, so restless. There was so much he wanted to tell his grandchild, and he was sitting, powerless, as time passed by.
Mikael Lind of the Ice People was, in fact, doing quite well. After the confusing family circumstances of his childhood, his life was now settled thanks to Marca Christiana, who had been the only fixed point in his life. It was a long string of events that had left Mikael rootless. It began when his parents passed away the year he was born. His mother’s aunt, Juliana, took care of him, and he grew up with his mother’s cousin, Marca Christiana.
Juliana later married Johan Banér, a Swedish nobleman. Then Juliana passed away. Johan Banér, who had three children by his first marriage, married a high-ranking German lady.
On Johan Banér’s deathbed, he handed over the responsibility for his own and Juliana’s children, including, of course, Mikael, to his sister, Anna Banér, whose husband was Reich Admiral Gabriel Oxenstierna of Korsholm and Wasa.
In 1624, Marca Christiana married the son of this house: Gabriel, Count of Korsholm and Wasa, Baron of Mörby and Lindholm, Lord of Rosersberg, Edsberg and Korporie. He had a meteoric career and in 1644 – at the age of twenty-five – he was made a judge in Lappvesi in Finland. The following year he became a Colonel in the Uppland regiment and that same year he was appointed Lord Chamberlain. And that was how he rose to the upper echelons of society.
Gabriel Oxenstierna took care of Mikael as well as he could. He wanted the boy to become an officer, which wasn’t in the nature of the Ice People. Trond was the only one who, while he lived, yearned to win honour on the battlefield by killing as many enemies as possible, but then, he was one of the accursed Ice People. Mikael did not suffer the curse but was blessed with the family’s gentler characteristics. Marca Christiana understood him and tried to curb her husband’s dreams of an officer’s career for his foster son.
Mikael was gifted and quiet: a serious young man, often an outsider, with a vague restlessness and dreams nobody knew anything about.
Marca Christiana didn’t understand how the instability of Mikael’s childhood had affected him. She was lively and extroverted and hadn’t been damaged by the many times they had moved and their succession of foster parents.
Since her husband was Lord Chamberlain, they would often stay in a small apartment at the Palace in Stockholm. Queen Christina was usually away on her travels and Mikael would roam the empty halls. When the Queen was at the Palace, her cousin, Carl Gustav, Duke of Pfalz, would also be there. She had appointed him as her successor, something that not everybody was happy about. They didn’t want a duke of Pfalz on the Swedish throne.
When Mikael was seventeen, a series of events occurred that were to change the course of his life. The great field marshals Pontus and Jacob de la Gardie had brought a great many French relatives with them to Sweden. Some of them were there only on a temporary visit, while others had stayed on. Among the guests who stayed was a young woman, mademoiselle Anette de Saint-Colombe, who, at Jacob de Gardie’s death in 1652, found herself on her own at Court. Her parents had passed away and her current guardian, a distant relative in the south of France, wanted her back home again. He had plans to marry the young girl and get his hands on her big inheritance, including Castle Loupiac, and maybe have a few heirs. But Anette would have none of it! She cried her eyes out in Marca Christiana’s arms. The two of them stuck together: They were both foreigners at the formal Swedish Court.
“What are we to do, Gabriel?” Marca Christiana said to her husband. “They say that the guardian is a horrible old drunkard riddled with venereal disease. Surely we can’t send little Anette home with such a fate awaiting her.”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to,” answered Count Oxenstierna. “Her guardian has the law on his side while she’s unmarried. Once she marries, his authority becomes void.”
“Okay, so we’ll marry her off,” said the impulsive Marca Christiana. “We don’t have to mention that we received his letter ordering her back to France.”
Gabriel Oxenstierna shook his head at his lively wife. “And who do you have in mind for her to marry?”
“I really don’t know.”
She was silent while she pondered which of the young men at Court would be a suitable match. She walked back and forth in the small drawing room, eager and excited at the thought of being a guardian angel.
The count, who had since been made Master of the Royal Hunt, had also been pondering. “Why not Mikael? The girl’s a good match for him.”
“Oh, no. He’s far too young!” protested Marca Christiana indignantly. “He’s only turning seventeen next week. That won’t do!”
“Why not? Mikael is conscientious and reliable, and you know he’s special. He’s not a nobleman, but he’s not without noble blood in his veins. He can have the small hunting lodge at Mörby. It’s empty most of the year. And I won’t give up my wish that he becomes a soldier...“
Marca Christiana was no longer listening to what her husband was saying. She was giving serious thought to what he had suggested. Anette de Saint-Colombe was actually a very good match. She was admittedly a pious Catholic and might seem a bit virtuous, but surely all she needed was to have her corners rubbed off. Mikael couldn’t count on finding a bride of noble birth in Sweden and the daughters of merchants tended to be badly brought up. But a French damsel in distress was a different matter.
“But surely she’s older than Mikael, isn’t she?” asked Marca Christiana.
“It can’t be much. Maybe one year.”
Marca Christiana was no longer so much against the idea. “Her guardian will be furious,” she said cautiously. “We can’t expose the boy to that.”
“This is precisely where his career as a soldier enters the picture, you see. They’ll get married very quickly and then we’ll send him to the Swedish territory. There’s always a need for young, strong soldiers and especially officers. Don’t worry, I’ll see to it.”
“But surely she needs to have her guardian’s permission to marry?”
“My dear Marca, that’s exactly what I’m trying to explain to you. He’ll be called to the field of honour and there will be no time to ask for permission. In the hour of need it is permissible to break all the rules!”
“What a horrible trade-off, Gabriel. However, I believe you’ve found the only way to rescue the girl. We’d better ask Mikael first thing.”
“And Anette too.”
Mikael wandered aimlessly about the palace halls. He was normally studying at the University in Uppsala, but it was closed for the summer. If Queen Christina was at home, Mikael was her page, but she was away and he had nothing to do. Time dragged on endlessly. He yearned, with all his irrepressible youthful desire, to use his body and brain – even though he was a dreamer at heart.
He stopped by a window and looked out over the Strömmen where fishermen in small boats drifted about. Mikael Lind of the Ice People felt so alone, so lost in the world. He was weighed down with sadness, and it showed in his face. He didn’t even know why he felt such an intense melancholy. It wasn’t often that such thoughts came over him because he was enjoying his time with Marca Christiana and her husband. But when he was on his own, he felt despondent.
