John Gardner - Freddy's Book

6.

THERE WAS THAT NIGHT, as there was almost every night in Dalarna, an open-air meeting, with beer drinking and speeches. It was run, though crudely, with all the stiff formality of the annual Ting. To Lars Goren’s vague distress there was still not a Danish soldier in sight — at least not one in uniform — but gradually, as the reason came clear to him, his distress gave way to amusement. For all the wooden politeness of the meeting, the concern for proper order — each man rising and speaking in his turn, and speaking with as much moderation as he could manage — the miners were a fearsome company, not to be trifled with. No Dane, once the miners had found him out, would have lasted a minute in the riot the discovery would have unleashed. On the other hand — as the Danish rulers were undoubtedly aware — whatever the pent-up fury of the miners, there was not much to hear at an ordinary meeting in Dalarna. A man stood up, black-bearded, big-bellied, and harangued his fellow miners about foreigners and Lutherans. He pounded his fist on an imaginary table, his eyes bulged with anger, spittle flew glittering from his mouth past the high, smoking torches. The Germans — there were many of them here in Dalarna, most of them owners, officials, or engineers — nodded solemnly, as if in complete agreement, though in all probability every one of them was Lutheran. Another man, a Swede with long blond hair and eyes sunken in like the sockets in a skull, raised his arms for recognition, to answer the big-bellied man with the beard. “Don’t be fooled!” he cried in his thin, woeful voice. “Whatever people say, there’s a lot we can learn from the Lutherans!” The Germans, as before, nodded solemn agreement. The Swede gave the old and familiar arguments, how the peasants on Church-owned land were for the most part tax-exempt, and the Church owned a fifth of Sweden; how a churchman or even the servant of a churchman, if he committed murder, could be tried only in the churchmen’s special court; how the bishops in the Riksdag and råd had been keeping the government weak at least since 1440, though they themselves dealt in land and trade, even fought wars against their neighbors, like any other nobleman; how the bishop of Skara could produce thirty armed horsemen for knightly service, while even the richest of the lay magnates could bring out only about thirteen. “The True Church,” cried the Swede, shaking his finger at the sky and almost weeping, “is not the bishops but the whole community of the faithful! Let the True Church — the people — get the wealth of the Church, not the bishops!” The men of Dalarna applauded him and shouted encouragement, raising their steins. A bald, nervous German with a rounded back and twitching, pink eyes was granted recognition and spoke against the Lutherans and, especially, against all Germans. “I am one of them!” he cried. “I look in my own filthy soul, and let me tell you, I am horrified!” He began to shake all over. “A German who has got no authority outside him is worse than a filthy beast!” He shook both fists.

Before he knew the reason — perhaps it was the smell, like the stink of a goat — Lars-Goren felt his heart turn to ice. When he swivelled his head around, he saw the Devil standing in the shape of a crow on Gustav Vasa’s shoulder, whispering in his ear. Gustav scowled, his hand on his bearded chin, then slowly raised his eyes to the platform.

The men of Dalarna knew at once, when Gustav began to speak, that this was no ordinary ranter and raver but a man who, if he survived, might change the world.

Lars-Goren could never remember later what it was, word for word, that his kinsman said in that famous speech. Whether it was the Devil’s inspiration or his native ability, never before tested, Gustav addressed them with force, not in grand phrases but like the commoner he was. He spoke of the bloodbath, how the axe had fallen smoothly, without clumsiness or hurry, indifferent as the knife of a Copenhagen housewife chopping mushrooms; how after each stroke, as the head fell away toward the sawdust, shooting out its spiral of blood, the headless body jerking, clutching at the air with its white, blind fingers, the axeman drew his axe back and wiped it with his cloth, looking out over the crowd as if wondering what time it was, then leaned the axe against the sawhorse beside him and crossed another name off, while his two assistants dragged the body away, pulling it by the shoes, and then led up another man, as polite and unhurried as assistants to a rich, fat Copenhagen tailor, and helped him kneel at the block; and how then the axeman dusted his hands, spit on the palms, and casually reached over for the axe.

“How can one reasonably hate such people?” Gustav Vasa asked. He held his arms out, innocent as morning. He was indeed, there on the platform — still and calm in the churning torchlight — the kind of man one could easily imagine one’s king. “Nothing,” he said, “could have been more logical, impersonal, and efficient than the Stockholm bloodbath. Supremely efficient! No question about it, they were much to be admired, these Danes! All their enemies in the party of the Stures they’d removed at one fell swoop, and without a trace of risk! No new leader in the party of the Stures could arise now to trouble them, because no Sture kinsman who’d ever shown the slightest sign of talent had been left among the living. Though the widow of Sten Sture had been spared, she would prove no exception: she would certainly be executed, quietly, in Denmark, for as everyone knows, and as history has shown repeatedly, no tyrant is safe until the last pretender to the throne he has stolen has been slaughtered. No Sture money could be turned to financing revenge for the bloodbath and the horror that attended it, because the estates of the dead — all the wealth of the Stures — had reverted to the Union crown, that is, to Kristian of Denmark. And the wealth of Kristian and his friends would increase. All bureaucratic positions once managed by Stures here in Sweden, from Kalmar to the Pole, would be managed, henceforth, by loyal Danes. Perhaps,” Gustav said — showing his large and perfect teeth in a smile—“perhaps some members of his audience might be imagining they could still look for help from the democratic Lutherans, especially those of the German port of Lübeck, Sweden’s main contact with the League. Alas, an empty dream! Though a Lutheran himself, for all practical purposes, Kristian of Denmark was switching his trade from the Hanseatic League to the Netherlands. Ask any merchant from Muscovy to Spain! Lübeck, for all her wealth and beauty — for all her seeming power — would soon be no better than a ghost town.” Gustav’s voice began to tremble with emotion. “Lübecks halls would soon be empty, her spires stripped of bells. For the overworked, overtaxed miners of Dalarna and for their German owners, officials, and engineers, the last reasonable hope lay in three great piles of blowing ashes on Södermalm hill. The victory of the Danes was complete and elegant. How,” he asked again — his voice trembling more—“could anyone reasonably hate a race of men so efficient?”

The men of Dalarna stared, hardly knowing what to think, stunned by his carefully marshalled, gloomy arguments. The rounded German with the twitching eyes sought recognition, but they ignored him. The Devil, now disguised as a half-wit peasant to Lars-Goren’s left, stood grinning, his bleary eyes glittering. He seemed to have forgotten his position in all this. He rubbed his hands, his head thrown forward, enjoying the suspense and the victory sure to come, grinning and eager as the humblest of mortal partisans. Lars-Goren’s wits reeled, and sweat ran down his face, but it struck him that, if only he could make himself think clearly, he had, there beside him, a clue to how the Devil might be beaten — possibly forever! He knew, even as the notion came to him, that of course it was absurd; yet the strange conviction persisted, scorn it as he might.