Павел Хюлле - Cold Sea Stories

‘With a sheepdog,’ he said, ‘it’ll be easier for you. And he’ll always warn you of outsiders!’

This last remark made Bjorn feel extremely anxious. Could Jansen have guessed something? Strictly speaking, it was impossible. The chief herdsman only visited the shepherds in particular instances, and at the time when the stranger had landed at the foot of the cliff he must surely have been occupied elsewhere. On the other hand, what if he had come that way by chance and seen the unusual sailing ship that day? Jansen had uttered the word ‘outsider’ so specifically, as if he knew everything. Perhaps he was trying to test Bjorn? In any case, the dog really was helpful. On the way back from Ventlinge he remained so alert that Bjorn took to him at once. Every time he rounded up the flock, the year-old, fully-grown sheepdog ran up to Bjorn wagging his tail and barked merrily: ‘All in order, we can carry on!’

That evening, once he had shut the flock in the sheepfold and lit a fire in the hearth, Bjorn realised that the dog should have a name.

‘All right,’ he said, patting him on the nose, ‘you’re going to be called Harald. Just like our proud squire.’

Harald licked his new master’s hand and stretched out before the fire, while Bjorn scooped the remains of the millet porridge from a clay bowl, which, boiled without a single speck of fat, he and the dog had eaten earlier. There was nothing in the house to eat now, but the summer – with its lush pastureland – was only just setting in. Bjorn closed his eyelids, and brought all its wonderful abundance to mind: rabbit meat roasted on a bonfire, sheep’s milk and curds, the scent of juniper in the sunshine, the aroma of honey from wild hives, and also the unusual taste of the water from one particular spring on Alvaret plain, to a mug of which he liked to add a few mint leaves.

‘If such is the will of God,’ he sighed, laying down to sleep, ‘we shall live to see it all.’

For the first time in years he had used the plural. Perhaps the dog could sense it somehow, because as soon as Bjorn was lying on the bench with his sheepskin coat covering him, Harald jumped onto his master’s legs, rolled into a ball and went off to sleep with him.

A few days later they caught sight of the stranger. He was coming up from Alvaret plain along the gravel road, straight towards the farmyard. He looked exactly the same as the other time, after landing on shore. When he was only three paces away, instead of barking at him, Harald began to whine and fled into a corner of the yard. Bjorn felt a strange, piercing chill in his heart. Wherever this man had spent the last few days, his clothing, saddlebag and boots were not at all dirty.

‘Are you alone here, shepherd?’ he asked in a deep voice.

‘Yes,’ replied Bjorn, ‘I am always alone.’

‘Can you find room for me?’

‘I have no bed for myself, let alone for such a gentleman.’

The stranger nodded politely, as he was not expecting any other answer. He pointed his cane at the old forge building, and without looking at Bjorn, headed towards it, adding: ‘This will do for me, shepherd.’

In the dark interior, abandoned for years, golden pillars of dust went spinning like the beams of a lighthouse as the stranger reached up on tiptoes to open a tiny window.

‘I have no blanket, jug, candles or food. In a few days I’ll be off with my flock to Alvaret. I’ll be back when the grasses turn yellow. You should not stay here alone, sir.’

Bjorn was not sure if the man was listening to him.

‘I do not need a servant,’ said the stranger, examining the anvil and a tattered pair of bellows with interest, ‘but for these four walls I will give you a piece of gold.’

Bjorn quickly withdrew his hand as the man took a shining metal disc from his bag.

‘You must get out of here when I leave for the pasturage, Sir. Unless you ask the steward. Everything here belongs to the squire. Everything,’ Bjorn repeated emphatically, ‘do you understand?’

‘Including the stars and the sea? And your soul? Does that belong to the squire too?’

It was a strange remark. Bjorn shrugged his shoulders and left the forge, pushing away Harald, who was now fawning on him.

‘Next time you’re to bark at him, not tuck your tail under, got that?’

The dog’s good, wise eyes showed understanding. But for the next few days the stranger gave the sheepdog no cause to bark. Until noon he never came out of the forge at all. Then he spent long hours on the cliff top, as if waiting for a ship or watching the seal herds. At night he came out in front of the forge and gazed at the stars: now with the naked eye, and now through his telescope. But if there really was something unsettling about his behaviour, it was his silence. Not once did he ask Bjorn a question. He never lit a fire or took water from the spring. He must have slept on the dirt floor covered by his coat. But what did he eat? How did he quench his thirst? Maybe he had some provisions in his bag, but how long could they last him for? Bjorn noticed that the stranger never once went down to the foot of the cliff. Yet there, under the pine trees, his empty chest was buried. So he was waiting for something, not guarding it. This obvious fact suggested an idea to Bjorn, and suddenly all the strange elements came together into such a striking whole that the very thought of it took his breath away.

At the end of each spring, a ship sailed in to the island from Kalmar, carrying the King and a small number of his courtiers. Small, because the hunting lodge at Ottenby could not have housed so many idlers and servants. Apparently that was the very reason why the King liked this place: he could gallop across the sprawling grasslands of Alvaret on his own, hunting deer. And as the island was narrow, but also extremely long, several miles from Ottenby the King had had it bisected by a wall, from shore to shore – since when no deer could escape him the King. One time Bjorn had seen His Majesty on the other, royal side of the stone wall. He looked like an ordinary reiter riding up to the stag, but when the animal fell and a horn sounded for the end of the hunt, the royal game warden from Ottenby, who had finally galloped up from behind a hill, kneeled before his master and bowed his head. What if the stranger were waiting for just such a moment? To kidnap the King here, on the open plain, would be easy. His accomplices from the sailing ship were sure to appear at a given signal. Bjorn was afraid to think who these audacious men might be. One thing was without doubt: such people do not leave witnesses behind. Yet if at the terrible moment he were already at the pasturage, deep inside the island, could he then see, know or hear anything? Suddenly, however, he imagined this scene too: the reiters with their hunting dogs in the forge, where they find a clue – a lock of the King’s hair, a strip of lace, or the buckle from a shoe. Oh, and this too – two pieces of gold deliberately placed in an obvious spot by the stranger. How long would he withstand the torture? In fact there was not much, absolutely nothing he could have explained. So after several days of anguish, Bjorn adopted a clear plan. Before going to the pasturage, before heading to Alvaret with the sheep, he would make his way to Ventlinge and tell the steward everything, in Jansen’s presence. That was in case the angry man tried to lay charges against him afterwards.

That night he could not sleep. He thought the stranger was coming out of the forge and walking around the house. He got up, went to the window and stared at the farmyard. But there was nothing going on. In the soft, diffused light of the stars the dark walls of the building looked the same as ever. The sea was roaring and the wind was whistling in the plant stalks. Finally, when he fell asleep, he saw great shoals of salmon glittering in the sunlight. He was one of them. He was a silver-scaled, iridescent fish, travelling thousands of miles in the deep with millions of other creatures like him. He was torn from this journey with no goal or beginning by the dog’s hollow growling. His coat was bristling; he was quivering as if in a fever. The room was flooded with white, unnatural light, the source of which was outside. Bjorn went up to the window and squinted. Only in the first instant did he think the forge was in flames. But it was not a fire. A bright glow such as he had never seen before was coming from inside the forge, pouring through its tiny window, illuminating the yard, the walls of the sheepfold, the pigsty, the pine trees, juniper bushes and individual stones, and beaming into the sky; at times it looked just as if the column of light were falling into the stone building from up there, radiating onto the entire vicinity as it did so. Harald crawled up to the window behind his master, licking his feet and whimpering.