The Stockholm Octavo

by Karen Engelmann

  “So she will stoop to conquer,” I said.

  “She will do anything to conquer.” He placed his hands inside his pockets, and we continued along the deserted street. “May I speak candidly?” I nodded. “Madame had grafted her fan onto the branch of politics, an interest she relinquished after her husband Henrik died—to the great relief of many, I might add. It was hoped that she would concentrate on more . . . appropriate diversions. But she has been consumed again by politics since summer. Letters go between Gullenborg and Duke Karl’s home at Rosersberg twice a day, and a coach travels between their houses at least two nights a week. There is a miniature of Duke Karl on her desk.”

  “This seems an appropriate diversion.”

  “This is not the simple game of hearts you suspect. I am called to Gullenborg almost daily since I returned to the Town in August. The company there is made up of rabid Patriots all. The conversations are . . . alarming in their vitriol against King Gustav. She composes seditious pamphlets and pays for their distribution. She is obsessed with the spread of the revolution from France and has the latest news brought daily. She has engaged spies to attend the Parliament in Gefle, disguised as voting members of the clergy. She corresponds with the Russian ambassador, pleading for Empress Catherine’s armed intervention.”

  I stopped in the deep shadows between the streetlamps of the post office block and checked to make sure we were alone. “This is treason. How do you know these things?”

  “I am her hand,” he whispered. “I write for her.”

  “And why are you telling me?” I asked.

  “We are friends, Mr. Larsson, and I am unfamiliar with these high-stakes games.”

  We walked on in silence. “In cards,” I said, “every player has something they feel they can win. If not hearts, then what does she want? Diamonds?”

  “Clubs, I think, of a most violent nature,” he said. “Madame is dealing a treacherous game, and putting the cards in place. Woe to those who will not lie flat.”

  “Who will feel the first blow?” I asked.

  “I will.” He leaned toward me, his face pale and sweaty. “When I suggested you might not be inclined to perform the services of a common thief and bully, Madame threatened me. Threatened me, Master Fredrik Lind, who has served her with all my heart and soul these many years, become her very essence in ink! She has threatened to dismiss me if I fail to commandeer your services. Word of her disfavor will spread, and cripple my enterprise.” Master Fredrik’s eyes were full of pleading. “I have a wife and two sons.”

  I saw the fear and the hurt, and confess that I felt almost sorry to see the chink in his normally glittering armor. But were we friends? So far, we had only an uncomfortable allegiance that was based on personal gain. But if I wanted to push my event into place, I needed every card in the Octavo. “So the trump card is a folding fan? It seems a trifle in the larger game you describe.”

  “Madame sees Cassiopeia as an aristocratic prisoner of the mob, and the nobility itself threatened with extinction. She sees her restoration as necessary to the nation’s future well-being.”

  “So, The Uzanne sees the fan as something . . . magical?”

  “Oh no, Mr. Larsson. She sees the fan as herself,” he said, pulling his collar up around his ears.

  And I had her in my rooms.

  I felt the surge of energy that comes before a high-stakes hazard. If the end were coming, I might as well be present. I clapped Master Fredrik on the shoulder. “I cannot resist a good game. Tell your Madame that I am at her service.”

  Master Fredrik grasped my free hand in both of his. “Wonderful, wonderful. This is brotherhood, truly!” He exhaled loudly and, deflated with relief, sank down onto a stone bench that overlooked the Knight’s Island canal, a path of black ice marked with the cuts of blades and runners.

  I sat beside him, the backs of my thighs flexed against the cold, the back of my throat burning like the lit fuse on a Roman candle. “I can’t promise you I will lay flat for her, Master Fredrik, but I am a player and can promise that I may lie,” I said.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Patient

  Sources: E. L., Mrs. Murbeck, M. Murbeck, Mr. Pilo, various apothicaires and doctors of the Town

  “THIS IS A STHENIC PESTILENCE for the Brunonian encyclopaedia,” Pilo proclaimed, squinting in the light from the oil lamp he held up, the magnifying glass smooth and strangely cool against my burning cheek. “A fearsome, pustulated infection that might well, might easily, travel up into the ear canal, take hold, and eventually rupture into the brain.”

  Mrs. Murbeck gasped behind her hankie and stepped away, averting her eyes as if the very sight of me carried contagion. Mr. Pilo (I cannot possibly call him Doctor) had a very long and bulbous nose that resembled a red, veiny reptile, and it writhed before my eyes as he pressed closer, adjusting the magnifier inside my oral cavity. I could smell the alcohol under the peppermint on his breath, for he was constantly sucking on English pastilles that he popped one by one from a tin. “We must act at once,” he said to me, “and procure my rare tonsular elixir.”

  “Yes,” I croaked, for my voice had nearly disappeared, “I am expected at Gullenborg in three days and must recover.” I was sweating, feverish, and miserable and only wished for some soothing balm to coat my burning throat and cool my fever. I seldom had need for medical attention, but my appearance, my voice, and my falling in a faint at Mrs. Murbeck’s door had caused her alarm. She and her son, Mikael, had carried me up the stairs to my quarters. I told her to leave me alone, that she and her family would regret their kindness to me, but she scolded me soundly and sent the son for the family doctor.

  “No soirees for you, sir. Not in three days. Perhaps never again,” Pilo said cheerfully, and then asked for pen and paper upon which to write a recipe to be brought at once to the Lion. Mrs. Murbeck wrinkled her nose at the mention of this establishment, but she was not one to question this man of science, who also happened to be her brother-in-law. And despite the late hour and the fact that it was Sunday, the Lion would open the shop at the first tap of a solid coin on the window glass.

  “A miraculous elixir, this one,” Pilo said, signing the page with a flourish. “You will sleep a great deal but wake healed and refreshed, the corruption in your throat banished while the nightshade calms your humors and pains. It has the added benefit of shrinking any tumors present in the spleen.” He handed the recipe to Mrs. Murbeck and told her there was no time to spare. “In the meantime,” he said to me, “you must gargle every hour with the hottest salt water you can tolerate. Take tea laced with brandy and honey—as much as you can swallow. You must not be out of bed at all but to empty your bladder and bowels, and change the linens when they are soaked through. But it is this formula of mine that will do the real healing.” He winked as he handed me his exorbitant bill for services rendered and, had I not felt so ill, I would have made violent protest.

  Pilo packed his satchel and exited with Mrs. Murbeck. I could hear their voices echoing in the front room as he told her a gruesome tale of a recent patient with a similar malady pulled back from Death’s embrace by his tender ministrations. Soon sleep overtook me, a writhing sort of slumber with the bedclothes twisting like bonds and fearful waking moments in the dark, my throat afire, each hair on my head aching. I was grateful that Mrs. Murbeck had left a short stump of candle burning in a blue glass on my nightstand; it was both votive and beacon, lest I awaken and think that I had died and been consigned to a lonely hell decorated to resemble my bedchamber.

  Some time later, I heard the door creak open and saw the shadowy form of Mrs. Murbeck glide through, mumbling to herself about the price of medicine and the disingenuous courtesy of the Lion’s apothicaire. She carried a tray with a glass and a tall brown bottle, and she poured me a dram of dark syrup at my bedside. I could not hold the glass steady, so she held it for me. “Drink this down and sleep, Mr. Larsson. You cannot know Our Lord’s plan for you beyond today, and it seems His p
lan right now is for you to rest and pray. If it is to be the eternal rest, we will know within a day or two.” She lifted me up with one arm so the precious medicine would not be wasted in a spill. The smell of the ham she had fried for dinner clung to her dress and blended nicely with the brandy and anise scent of the elixir. Her gentle ministrations comforted me beyond my physical pains, and made me weepy.

  “Mrs. Murbeck, I thought you against me all these years. But you have tricked me. A benevolent Trickster. Do you know my Companion, The Uzanne?”

  “Now now, you are talking nonsense. Drink your medicine. There’s a good boy.”

  It was a sickly sweet draught, and painful to swallow, but I did my best. Mrs. Murbeck left me with a cold wet cloth across my forehead, and as she was leaving the room began her mutterings once more. “Poor fellow, all alone, so all alone,” she said over and over, until I could hear nothing but the hum of fever in my ears and then nothing at all.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Domination

  Sources: M. F. L., J. Bloom, M. Nordén, L. Nordén, Mother P., Louisa G., various gentlemen and officers, Gullenborg servants, anonymous young ladies of the Town.

  “I DO NOT UNDERSTAND . . . ,” she said. There was a long pause. Master Fredrik looked at his oiled black leather shoes, shining happily even in this moment of disgrace. “. . . Mister Lind,” The Uzanne concluded. This lowly honorific fell like the last gavel at the trial of a condemned man.

  Master Fredrik opted for a half-truth. “Madame, I assure you that I conversed with Mr. Larsson but three days past. He was rapturous at the opportunity to serve you, Madame, rapturous. Proclaimed it the highest honor of his meager—”

  “I thought to have Mr. Larsson participate in today’s demonstration with Miss Plomgren,” she interrupted.

  Master Fredrik suggested the second half of the truth. “Perhaps he is fallen ill.”

  “I made it clear that his presence here was your responsibility. You have ruined my plans.” She slid her fan through her right hand and moved around Master Fredrik as if he were a pile of excrement in her path, then paused. “Furthermore, I have gained knowledge of certain personal predilections of yours. I am afraid that these disgusting revelations may prevent me from recommending you to Duke Karl for a social promotion.”

  “What predilections? From whom did you receive such vile misinformation?”

  “From our Miss Bloom,” she said.

  “Miss Bloom does not know me, Madame,” he said, his voice shaking.

  “But you claimed to know her; you presented her to me. I trusted in that knowledge, too, Mister Lind.” Then without so much as a glance in his direction, The Uzanne went to welcome her guests.

  Master Fredrik scanned the room for Johanna, his hands clenching at the thought of her slender white neck, but he could not find her in the throng of voluptuous women. Tender blossoms in December, the young ladies had matured into tempting fruit. Their fans were now extensions of their hands and arms, which had taken on the grace of aristocratic training. The messages sent were swift and sure. The fabrics of their gowns were dark textured brocades and velvets, cut closer and lower, asking to be touched. Their perfumes were musky and mysterious, their lips and cheeks flush with anticipation and rouge. The gentlemen that stalked the room had the energy of caged beasts. The actors from the Bollhus Theater were absent this time, deemed to be “too French,” and their empty places taken by swarthy friends of the Russian consul. The invited Swedish officers had already begun drinking schnapps. Master Fredrik hurried to take a place among the gentlemen guests and sat just as the sharp snap of The Uzanne’s fan silenced the crowd and put them swiftly in their seats.

  The low winter sky visible through the windows was just several hues darker than the pearl gray walls of the salon. The chandelier was unlit. Servants hurried through the room, lowering the wicks on the oil sconces and pulling the drapes; the room shifted into night. All eyes focused on The Uzanne. She was a slender column of forest velvet, a cream silk kerchief at the bodice reflecting the light of the single taper she held. In this dim light, in the slight chill of the room, she might have been an angel that appeared at the bedside of the dying. “In our first formal lecture, we learned from a true artist of the geometry that lies behind the fan.” She inclined her head toward the blushing Christian. “We began learning her language of romance from a surprise guest with natural talents who has since become one of your favorite instructors.” She placed her fan near her heart and looked to Anna Maria, standing nearby at the ready. “And I closed the lecture with a demonstration of Engagement—the fan’s power to entice. Since that time you have been diligent students, and it is clear to me that your apprenticeship is well under way. But we cannot stop with Engagement. We must move on to Domination.”

  There were gasps and titters, and an officer lounging at the back of the room called out, “Is that not the natural progression, Madame? From engagement to marriage?” This brought a chorus of jeers and laughter.

  The Uzanne gave the officer an indulgent smile but made no reply. “Your goal is to go beyond captivation. Your goal is to take a captive and do with them as you wish. Today I will demonstrate a form of Domination that might capture a king.”

  The room fell silent. The Uzanne gave a nearly imperceptible nod. Johanna, who had been as still as if she were painted into the scenery, nervously came to life. She rose from her chair and walked quickly to a cabinet under a large mirror, catching her own reflection. Her pale face above the sea green dress was marred by a frown and furrowed brow. She willed the tension away. The drawer squeaked in the quiet when Johanna pulled it open. It was empty save for one object: a short fan with a double blade of chicken skin, prepared from the twin calves she had seen slaughtered in the barn the previous summer. The skin had been dyed to a dove gray and trimmed with silver bands. The sticks were black and plain, made of lacquered wood, and the gorge was only two fingers wide. The center pleat on the reverse side of the blade had been finished with a pocket, ultra-fine mesh netting at both ends, the bottom end closed with a flap and fastened with one looped ivory bead. Inside this pocket was the stripped and trimmed pinion feather of a swan, supplied by Master Fredrik. This one specific feather made the master calligrapher’s quill, and its hollow shaft was the perfect receptacle for ink. Now it would deliver a message with perfumed powder.

  Christian had built many fans with “refinements” in Paris and promised the fan’s operation would be flawless, the swan quill holding the contents safe until the angle of the blade and pressure from the breath was exactly right. The smell of jasmine escaped the pleats, as did a fine powder that dusted her fingers. Johanna’s hands had trembled when she filled the quill that morning. The Uzanne wanted this demonstration to be perfect: the sleeping powder must create an instant response of utter relaxation and repose. The False Blusher mushroom was a dangerous addition. For the first time Johanna was truly afraid.

  Johanna had tested the new powder four times. The first had been on Sylten, Old Cook’s cat. Old Cook could not be consoled when his stiff body was found under the low shelf in the pantry, and she gave Johanna the sign against the evil eye. Johanna adjusted the ingredients. The second and third tests had been on herself. One test she vomited, then passed out cold for three hours. The other she slept for twelve, plagued with nightmares and sweat. The fourth test was on a volunteer: Young Per, the stable boy, had moved into the manor and was eager to help Johanna. She was teaching him his letters, and he had asked about her medicines. Johanna was relieved to escape another ordeal, and even more relieved when Young Per slept like a newborn for seven hours, then woke ravenous and rested. But Johanna did not know today’s intended subject and could not gauge the dose.

  Johanna held her breath as she walked across the room, the heels of her new shoes clicking in the silence. She handed the fan to The Uzanne, then could not help brushing her hands against the dark fabric of her skirt. Johanna waited for the glare of reprimand, but none came; The Uzanne was
observing her audience, which leaned forward in their seats. “Duke Karl once told me that women are armed with fans as men are with swords. Do you remember, General Pechlin?” The old man’s expression was blank. “Perhaps your memory is fading,” she said. “But the duke is learning that this is true, and I would like to demonstrate a new method I have devised.

  “This is a test for many of us today. First, let us see if my fan maker has armed me well.” The Uzanne opened and shut the fan a half dozen times. “Ideal weight. Exquisite finish. Perfect action,” she said to Christian. His relief was visible in the slope of his shoulders. “Is she sharpened, Miss Bloom?” Johanna, eyes downcast, nodded. “Then to arms. Miss Plomgren. We will test the extent of your skills as well. To you will belong victory . . . or infamy.”

  The Uzanne handed Anna Maria the gray fan and waited until the room once again was hushed. “Engagement is the dance of attraction,” The Uzanne said. “From there, we move to Domination.” One of the girls allowed a nervous giggle to escape, but she was hushed with stern glances from her companions. “Unfortunately Sekretaire Larsson is missing today,” she said, peering around the dim room, as if he might appear from the sheer force of her will. “But Nordén the younger, you seem to be more than willing to place yourself under the power of Miss Plomgren. Are you prepared?” Lars stood eagerly. “You might need to tarry after the lesson. You might even need to spend the night.” This created stifled laughter and whispers. “We need a comfortable place for Mr. Nordén to sit.” Pechlin stood and led several officers to an adjacent room, and the men lugged an upholstered chair back into the salon. Pechlin remained standing in the hall.

  The Uzanne indicated Lars should sit. Anna Maria took the cue, opening the fan with almost painful slowness. “Imagine that you have engaged a person who kindles your deepest passions—those of love or even hatred.” The Uzanne held in her mind the image of Gustav’s doughy face. “Once they are engaged, you must seize control. You might fan the fire, or send a cooling breeze that will extinguish it. Today we will observe the latter.” She nodded, and Anna Maria drew close to Lars. “It is easier with someone who desires subjugation.” Gustav was desperate for the attentions of his beloved aristocracy, especially the ladies of the court, whom he adored, and who had shunned him so. “Come as close to your intended as you are able.” The Uzanne would travel to the Parliament, where her very presence would be a sensation, an olive branch offered to her king. “Allow your fan a downward inclination, and reveal the intimate verso. Then slowly lower and raise her, maintaining eye contact, establishing trust.” She would come to Gustav on the arm of Duke Karl; Gustav believed his brother incapable of treason. “When you have his attentions fast, blow a soft and gentle kiss along the center stick to seal the promise of future fire.” The Uzanne imagined the scene: she would release the powder and watch Gustav fall. She would cry out in alarm, then Duke Karl’s men would bundle the sleeping monarch off into a large traveling coach. Gustav would not even feel the crown lifted from his head. “Hold his gaze until he disappears and Domination is complete.” The coach would take Gustav to a boat bound for Russia. Empress Catherine, his cousin and sworn enemy, would keep him there. Duke Karl would be named regent. The Uzanne would be First Mistress, and savior of her nation. “Now,” she said.