Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 15 - The East Wind

“You deceived me!” Søren Grip shouted at her. “You lied to me! You said you were rich and that we would associate with the Becks as their equals!”

“I didn’t lie to you,” Christiana wearily answered as she sent their little son, Vendel, out of the room so that he wouldn’t have to hear his parents speak in such harsh tones. “I told you that I had worked as their housekeeper and my dowry wasn’t so bad.”

He snorted, “That may be, but I couldn’t have known that that was all you’d be getting. Well, thank God you’re an only child, at least there’s a chance that you’ll get a decent inheritance some day. I hope we won’t have to wait an eternity for that day to come.”

Christiana turned away. She hoped to have her parents for as long as possible. They were her only consolation in the world. They and her little Vendel.

The years passed. Christiana and Søren’s marriage continued to falter. To a certain extent they did have one thing in common. He could be tender and kind in intimate moments and then she would feel a kind of affection for him. He was her husband after all and she desperately wanted to have a happy marriage, just as her parents had had all these years.

But in 1707 all the bonds between them were broken. Sweden was at that point a more or less ungoverned country. The new young king, Karl XII, was a born military commander. He didn’t concern himself much with his country, and even less with women. For several years he had been away fighting campaigns across Europe, which many people couldn’t really see the point of. He had lost a lot of men along the way, but he stubbornly continued eastwards, determined to conquer the Russian giant.

He needed more men. So he sent word to Sweden, calling for another nine thousand recruits. He wanted them dispatched to East Prussia, where he was stationed, so they could accompany him on his journey east. There, in a small town called Slupca, he would await their arrival. Among those selected to go was the young Corfitz Beck, son of Eleonora Sofia and Lave.

Corfitz Beck was an officer and in addition he was of noble birth.

He needed a ... no, aide-de-camp would be much too fancy a word. What he needed was a servant. He wasn’t exactly a high-ranking officer, after all. It was Søren Grip who insisted that the servant should be Vendel.

Christiana was in complete despair. “We can’t do that! Vendel is still just a child and Mr Corfitz will be on the battlefield!”

“Mr Corfitz is no more than 22 himself. Having a young boy to go along with him will be perfect. And think of all the benefits Vendel will get. He’ll be able to rise through the ranks and be decorated for heroism.”

“Heaven forbid,” Christiana mumbled. She refused to send her son off to a crazy war that was only about prestige and that seemed to have no end. And under a king who had no respect for his own people. A people who were paying more and more for the high cost of the war in terms of money and human lives.

But Søren Grip didn’t perceive war in the same way she did. He merely saw the dizzying honour that Sweden would gain if it succeeded in conquering the Russians. And so he went off to the big estate by himself, without her knowledge, to speak in favour of his son to the young officer.

Corfitz Beck liked the idea, as did his ageing father, Lave Beck. They considered Lene and Örjan Stege and their daughter Christiana to be thoroughly reliable people. They also liked the young Vendel and would often talk about how lucky it was that he resembled his mother as opposed to his greedy father.

Christiana never forgave Søren Grip for this stab in the back. She couldn’t prevent Vendel from being sent to war. But each and every piece of clothing she prepared for him was stained with her tears. And the general mood in their home was never happy again after he left.

Three years after this, in the year 1710, the plague would reach Scania and claim the life of Lave Beck as well as that of Søren Grip. Christiana, who was one of the Ice People and therefore had a stronger immune system, stood looking down at her dying husband and tried to feel some sense of sorrow. But she could only feel that her face was frozen and expressionless, almost dead. She felt completely empty inside. She retained the same hard look during the funeral and she couldn’t get rid of it no matter how hard she tried.

But by that time Vendel was far away in Russia.

And it is his fate the following story is about.

Christiana received one letter from Vendel written from Slupca. It was a carefree, cheerful letter, in which he expressed an adventurous enthusiasm, and she could almost picture his sparkling eyes before her. But after that an alarmingly long time passed before she heard from him again. His next letter didn’t arrive until the end of 1708 and it was with great effort that Christiana finally forced herself to open it. But the letter was in his handwriting, which she assumed meant he was at least still alive. It had been sent from Grodno in Lithuania.

The letter did not show the same signs of optimism as his previous one had. He had seen the horrifying face of war grinning at him – she could clearly discern this between the lines. They had been on a death march through snow several metres deep in the Masurian Lakes. Many of the men had died from fatigue or had fallen into poachers’ traps ... It was a brief letter and there wasn’t much to be happy about in it. Apart from the fact that it had actually arrived, of course! And that she had heard from him, and that he was alive. At least, for the time being.

“Stupid King, come back home!” Christiana moaned; she didn’t care in the least about the lese-majesty she had just committed. “There is absolutely no point in crawling around in a swamp all winter, and so far away from Sweden! They’re our boys. All they’re doing is drowning in all that misery! How can that possibly benefit Sweden in any way? What would we do with a huge country like Russia, how would we feed all those starving wretches in that all too distant land? It would be better for you to take a moment and think of your own country instead and return home and do something about the misery here! And bring home our husbands and sons!”

She sighed deeply and sat for a little while with her eyes closed, then she got up and went to the Andrarum estate to start work.

As she reached the door she met Lave Beck.

“There’s a letter from Corfitz, Mrs Christiana! And he speaks so well of young Vendel. Would you like to hear it?”

“Yes, very much!”

She told him about her own letter, and then he read a segment from the letter he had received:

My young servant and friend from the estate, Vendel Grip, is a very capable boy. He was severely injured in the Masurian Lakes when he got stuck in the mud, but not a word of complaint came from his lips. There’s no doubt that he’ll make a brave soldier some day.

Christiana listened tight-lipped. Had Vendel been injured? “Did he recover?” was the only thing she could say.

“It would seem so,” old Beck answered. Then he read out another section of Corfitz’s letter that expressed his admiration for the ascetic king and a fighting spirit she hadn’t detected in Vendel’s letters.

My boy, she thought, completely beside herself. My boy!

After this, a long time passed before they heard anything more.

Then a long letter arrived, the last one they received from Vendel:

Poltava, June 1709

Dear Mum and Dad,

Oh, Mum, if you knew what I have seen! My heart aches for the men and the animals. Today we buried a soldier who had been in battle for more years than I have been alive. He has seen his sons die on the battlefield; his hair was white even though he was still young. And he’s not the only one. They are so tired, so weary from fighting for all these years in a strange country far from their loved ones. They have been away since the end of the last century. Without a moment’s rest or the chance to see anyone back home.