John Gardner - Freddy's Book

He broke off abruptly, watching Lars-Goren’s face, waiting for some answer. Instead of speaking, Lars-Goren, with a look of faint distress, raised his long arm and pointed into the valley. When he turned to look, Bishop Brask saw, below them, a horseman approaching, galloping as if the Devil were at his tail. They urged their horses forward, cantering down the slope to meet the man — the dog leaped up to follow — and when they were fifty yards away Bishop Brask recognized the rider as Lars-Goren’s fat groundsman.

“My lord,” the man shouted when he was near enough to make himself heard, “you must flee at once! King Gustav has sent men—” He gasped for breath, and Lars-Goren, drawing close, reached out to touch the man’s arm and calm him.

“Take your time,” Lars-Goren said.

When he was able to speak, the groundsman said, “There’s been a massacre in Dalarna. King Gustav’s gone mad; it’s the only explanation. And now he’s sent men in armor after you and the bishop. They’re in Hälsingland already. Nobody knows what the charge is, but I think you’d better run.”

Lars-Goren nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Don’t worry yourself, old friend. We have everything ready.” He glanced at Bishop Brask, then up at the darkening sky. “Very well,” he said again, and together they started at a canter down toward the castle.

6.

IT WAS THE SADDEST OF PARTINGS. Lars-Goren’s wife and four children stood at the arch, silent, Bishop Brask crooked on his horse, favoring his back, smiling wanly, as if casting in his mind for a suitable parting line or gesture and finding nothing that would do.

“God be with you,” said Lars-Goren’s wife, her hand on the metal armor on Lars-Goren’s knee. Her nose was red and swollen like a peasant’s. As she’d helped him into his underdress and armor, then the heavy fur that made his final layer, she’d been weeping. The groundsman stood anxiously shifting from one leg to the other, again and again casting a look down the road toward the trees.

“Will it be cold in Lappland?” little Andrea asked.

“Hush,” her mother said, rather fiercely, as if the thought of the cold alarmed her.

“Don’t worry,” Lars-Goren said, smiling down at the child but speaking to put his wife at ease. “They’ll meet us at the border. They’ll know we’re coming.”

“I wish I could come with you, Father,” Erik said. “I’d be a help. You’d see!”

“Next time,” said Lars-Goren, and instantly shifted his eyes away.

“My lord, you must hurry,” said the groundsman, wringing his hands.

Lars-Goren looked sadly at his beautiful older daughter, then at Andrea, then at his sons. “Take care of things while I’m gone,” he said to Erik. “And you—” He glanced at Gunnar. “Keep your big brother out of trouble.”

Gunnar grinned, his dimple flashing into view among the freckles. “I will,” both boys said at once. “Don’t worry.”

“Bring me a reindeer-horn ring,” said Andrea. “Promise!”

“I will if I can,” Lars-Goren said and smiled. Then he bent down over the saddle and kissed his children, first Pia, then the others, finally his wife. Now all of them were weeping.

“God bless you, Bishop Brask,” said Lars-Goren’s wife to the bishop. “Take care of yourself”

“I’ll be fine,” said the bishop with a smile. “Remember me in your prayers.”

Abruptly, Lars-Goren spurred his horse. The bishop followed. Gunnar tugged at the leash, keeping Lady from following.

7.

IN NINE DAYS, MOVING FIRST through frost, then snow, they reached the border of Angermanland and Lappland. There, surrounded by blinding white, an old woman stood barring their way, her bare hands lifted in a peasant salute. Lars-Goren made a sign to Bishop Brask, who stared in amazement, and they stopped their horses, got down from them and approached the old woman on foot. Though there was wind, a steady, thin whine in their ears, her black shawl and dress, too thin for the weather, did not move. Her bare face and hands seemed indifferent to the cold, though it was fierce enough to freeze the nostrils.

Lars-Goren bowed formally and waited for her to speak. When she said nothing, he spoke himself. “I see that you have come from another world,” he said. “I am sure that you have some urgent business with us or you would never have made such a troublesome journey. My name, as perhaps you already know, is Lars-Goren Bergquist. This man beside me is Bishop Brask. If you have anything to say to us or ask of us, I hope you will say it or ask it.”

Snowdust whirled and snarled around the dead woman’s feet. The dead eyes stared as if with indifference at Lars-Goren, but seeing that she did not step aside or turn her eyes, Lars-Goren knew it was no ordinary human indifference. Perhaps, he thought, it was the indifference of a judge, or perhaps the indifference of a divine messenger, one who had no stake in this at all.

“If it seems to you proper,” he said cautiously, bowing like a servant, “may I ask your name?”

As if a feeble spark of life had come into her, the dead woman smiled. The lips moved stiffly, like old leather. After a moment, in a voice hoarse with disuse, she spoke.

“You would not remember my name, Lars-Goren, though you heard it once or twice. I was a peasant on your estate. You who should have been my protector were my murderer.”

Lars-Goren stared, a blush of anger rising into his cheeks. Even from the dead he was not a man to tolerate a slander. Yet something made him hesitate, and the dead woman spoke again.

“I was an excellent servant in my younger days,” she said. “I worked hard in my hut and in the fields, and I raised twelve children, nine strong boys and three girls. But evil times came. With your lordship’s blessing six of my sons moved south to join Sten Sture and his war, and there they lost their lives. Then the six that remained to me died one by one, four by the plague, two by accidents. My husband sickened with grief and hanged himself; you yourself signed the paper that refused him Christian burial. Suddenly I was alone in the world, avoided by all my former friends because they thought me bad luck, or possessed. Children tormented me, men and women avoided me; soon they would not let me into their fields. It was said I was a witch, and though at first it was not true, in time it became so: by curses and charms I kept myself safe from my Christian tormenters. I kept them afraid of me, and by my power to make them tremble — worse yet, by my power to do evil to and for them — I kept myself in clothing and food. No one was ever less evil at heart than I was, at least in the beginning; but I grew bitter, as one does. I learned to enjoy my malevolence, for it gave me revenge on those who tormented me, stronger than myself. But of course it could not last. They were many; I was alone. The strength was in the end all on their side. They spoke with your lordship. You ordered me burned — burned alive, the most painful and shameful of all deaths. An old woman, a faithful servant for years and years, and a miserable victim to whom a just man would have shown mercy! Did you ask me why it was that I behaved as I did? Did you think of my humanness and misery at all? No, you listened to my enemies and condemned me as you would some old dog that has turned to killing sheep. But a dog you would have killed with a gun — one flash of pain, then peace. A dog, you would have buried. Such is the justice of Lars-Goren, advisor to King Gustav, a lord with whom neither those above nor those below find fault, except for me. Lars-Goren, whose power comes from God himself, so we’re told. Vicegerent of angels! Then God damn the angels in heaven, says the witch!

“Now in rage and misery I roam the world’s edges, restless and unappeasable, for I refuse to go to the place appointed to the wicked, because I hate the injustice of my damnation, and refuse too to go to the place appointed for the just, though nothing but my anger prevents it. I have deigned to offer only one small prayer to heaven, that you and I might meet somewhere on common ground, at the edge of our two worlds, that I might strike at your devilish complacence with my tongue; and today that prayer is answered. Though it may not bring me to rest, I have been given the chance to say what I have to say to you: that if I am damned, then you are ten thousand times damned, Lars-Goren. You are called a great fighter and a wise counsellor, and you are praised as a man who is afraid of nothing in the world except the Devil. But I have come to tell you you are a coward and a fool, for you shiver at a Nothing — mere stench and black air, for that is what he is your wide-winged Devil — and in the presence of the greatest evil ever dreamt of, the fact that we exist in the world at all, helpless as babes against both evil and seeming good, you do not have the wit to blanch at all.”