John Gardner - Freddy's Book

“Well, I did,” said Gustav. Again he turned away, petulant now. “All in all, he’s proved a disappointment.”

“So we’ve all found,” said the bishop, taking, as he knew, a risk.

But Vasa was in no mood for subtle innuendoes.

“Very well,” he said, “I’m disappointed. Everything in life disappoints me, that’s the truth, but the Devil most of all, lording it over us, wasting our valuable time. I’m not a man to sit quietly and endure a thing like that!”

Lars-Goren glanced at him, perhaps in alarm.

“First I’ll kill Norby,” Gustav Vasa said, fixing his gaze on a spot high on the wall. Abruptly, he glanced at Brask. “You’ve heard, I suppose, that he’s escaped to Denmark?” He hurried on without waiting for a response. “To Denmark — where else? — where he’s collected another fleet. God knows how he does it! Well, I’ll sink him, that’s setded. I don’t know how yet, but sure as I’m standing here I’ll sink him! And I’ll get rid of von Melen and his high-minded friends, all these plotters and meddlers, silly-brained impediments, always crossing me, always bothering me, getting in my way for no good reason — I’ll wipe them off the slate! — and then, gentle-men—” He paused significantly, looking first at Brask, then at Lars-Goren, raising his fists slowly, his eyes like two shining steel rivets: “Then we drive the Devil under the ground!”

Lars-Goren’s hands clenched on the chair-arms, and his eyes opened wider. Bishop Brask faintly smiled, slightly blanching, and sadly shook his head.

Gustav Vasa brought one hand to his chin and looked soberly at Bishop Brask. “Lars-Goren doesn’t worry me,” he said, after a moment. “Lars-Goren is afraid of the Devil, as is right. He’ll be excellent. I think so. But what about you?”

Bishop Brask went on smiling, shaking his head, the spotty skin of his face sagging heavily. “Maybe you can do it,” he said at last. Just perceptibly, he sagged his narrow shoulders. “But tell me. Does it matter?”

8.

PLOTS, COUNTERPLOTS; THE DEVIL was so busy he could barely keep track. By means of agents, Norby’s trusted friends, he lured Sören Norby into secret alliance with the Netherlands and his former lord, Kristian, and managed to put Gotland back in Norbys hands. He persuaded the Lübeckers to try to seize Godand, since Norby had betrayed them and would certainly continue to do so, for love of King Kristian and hatred of Gustav, chief buyer of Lübecks goods. He persuaded King Fredrik to defend Norby’s stronghold and to grant him the town of Blekinge as a life-fief, a base in immediate proximity to the Swedish border and within striking-distance of Kalmar. At once, again at the Devils suggestion — and it seemed reasonable enough, for whatever the nobility of a man’s ambition, he can do nothing without wealth — Sören Norby resumed his indiscriminate attacks on shipping — German, Swedish, Russian, even Danish. Again and again, with elaborate apologies, he sent back to those he pretended were his friends, such as Fredrik and the Lübeckers, whatever booty he’d taken “by mistake”—but it was never all there. “The fools,” said the Devil gleefully, disguised as an old friend, “they’ll never know the difference — take my oath on it!” In August 1526, a combined Swedish-Danish fleet sent most of Norby’s squadron to the bottom: Norby himself escaped by the skin of his teeth to Russia, where at the Devil’s instigation he refused to take service with the tsar and was thrown into prison. There, one day when he was walking along a road in company with other prisoners, carrying his pick — for Norby’s punishment was work in the salt mines of the tsar — the Devil himself visited him in the form of a mule.

“Sören Norby,” the Devil whispered through the mouth of the mule, “don’t lose heart! All is well!”

Norby’s eyes widened and his knees went weak. “God in heaven!” he whispered, “do mules now speak Swedish?” All around him, prisoners moved away from him a little, supposing the man to have gone mad.

“I’m your faithful old helper,” said the Devil, and made the mule’s mouth smile. “I’ve been with you from the beginning, and I’m with you yet.”

“Then you’re the Devil!” said Norby, and this time he spoke aloud, so that the prisoners around him were more frightened than before. “Get away from me! Go!” He burst into tears and, without thinking, took a swing at the mule with the flat of his pick-axe.

“You there!” someone shouted in Russian. It was the guard, just a few feet behind him. “Leave that mule alone!” He brandished his long, narrow club as a warning.

“You see?” said the mule pitifully, pretending to be in pain. “You see what comes of senseless violence? Now use your head, and put your pick on your shoulder, and listen like a creature of reason.”

“Never!” whispered Sören and, balancing the pick in the bend of his arm, put one finger of each hand into his ears.

“What kind of fool are you, trying to block out the voice of the Devil with your fingers?” the mule scoffed. “Plug your ears with pebbles if it pleases you, and sing at the top of your voice to drown me out. I’ll still be heard!”

Norby saw it was true and only from stubbornness kept his fingers in his ears.

“Fredrik’s brother the Holy Roman Emperor will save you,” said the mule. “He’s begun negotiations already!”

“You’re a liar,” said Sören Norby. “What’s it to Fredrik whether I live or die?”

“It’s not for Fredrik that the Emperor’s doing it.” said the mule slyly. “It’s to annoy the tsar, and to gain your services for his Italian war, and also to please Kristina.”

“Kristina,” said Sören Norby, and began to weep again. “Would that I’d never laid eyes on her!”

“Maybe you’ll change your tune one day,” said the mule with a smile. Abruptly, the mule’s whole manner changed; he was merely a mule again, walking along the road with his burden.

“Monster! Unholy deceiver!” whispered Norby. But then he began to think that, all in all, what the mule had said was not unreasonable. He glanced around at his fellow prisoners — stupid idiots, hopeless from the day they were born, one no different from the other, none of them like himself. “The Emperor must know he could hardly find a better man,” he thought. “If I serve him well, and show the Pope I’m no Lutheran, who knows? I may one day be king of Sweden!” He walked with more spirit now, and the prisoners around him hung back farther.

As for von Melen, after various machinations in which the Devil was always his eager advisor, he at last escaped by guile to Germany, where he at once began to work for a new alliance with his former master King Kristian. To be on the safe side — for as a general he knew the wisdom of the groundhog, who always has two or more escape routes — he made himself also a servant of the Elector of Saxony, sworn enemy of King Kristian and the Dutch. He had misgivings, of course, for if either lord should learn of his attachment to the other, von Melen would be in trouble. His misgivings grew to fears and eventually to terrors, so that wherever he went he kept his hands clasped tightly together to prevent them from shaking. One night when he was lowering his knife to cut into the trout on his plate, the trout’s eye rolled to meet his and the trout’s mouth opened.

“Von Melen,” said the trout, “you’re a stupid man!”

Berend von Melen stared in horror and disbelief, but his anger was even greater than his alarm. “What?” he cried. “What did you just say?”

“You’re a stupid man,” said the trout again, as placid and indifferent as when it was swimming in the stream.

“Stupid trout,” hissed von Melen, glancing past his shoulder to be sure no one was watching. “If you think you’re so smart, how come you to be dead and cooked?”