Wolf Winter

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  Nils turned to the marsh, vessel in one hand, the tar dripping from his other. “Time for a break,” he called. “Make a fire!”

  Far out, two figures lowered their scythes and began to walk. They were followed by others.

  Nils focused on Dorotea again. “Tie your kerchief lower. Cover your forehead.”

  He turned to Frederika, hand raised, then cleared his throat. “Your mother can help you,” he said and pushed the bowl into Maija’s hand.

  Maija dabbed the tar onto Frederika’s forehead and nose. Its smell was pungent and made her eyes water. Once Frederika was covered, she continued with Paavo, and then herself. She looked to the edge of the forest where the settlers had gathered and shrugged to Paavo.

  “We’d better join them,” she said.

  The fire was vigorous and its flames were a bright orange with sooty ends. It was unnecessarily large. Wasteful. Nils was standing beside it. The others had gathered in a loose circle around him. Gustav stood to one side and looked at the marsh rather than the people. His face was twitching. Maija looked from Gustav’s curved back over to Daniel with his protruding ears, on to blond Henrik, and back to nobleman Nils. If I am right and Eriksson was killed by someone he knew, then it was most likely one of you four, she thought.

  Why “if”? It had certainly not been evil powers.

  Nils turned to throw another log onto the fire.

  They have to talk about Eriksson’s death, she thought. A man has just been killed among them. They will have to have the words out.

  “What you need is a blacksmith,” Daniel said. “I know a good one. He comes to town at market time.”

  This was all too ordinary. But perhaps they had spoken about Eriksson before she and her family arrived?

  Maija tried to picture Eriksson here among them, sitting on one of the stones or standing beside Nils. Tall and muscular. The bald head. The features slackened in death, that must once have been sharp. It was hard. The problem was Nils. She couldn’t imagine Eriksson and Nils in the same place at the same time. She tried to imagine Elin with them, instead, and could almost see the air growing darker. They wouldn’t have had this break, she thought, if Elin had been at the marsh.

  Anna sat down on a rock. Her face was gray.

  “Still poorly?” Maija asked.

  Anna grimaced and spat at the ground.

  Maija moved the tar bowl over to the other hand and dug in her pocket. She handed Anna the leather pouch with fennel. “Put a few seeds in hot water and drink it as often as you like. It will calm the vomiting.”

  A blonde woman came toward them. Though tall and large, she moved with the agility and precision of someone small. Maija got an image in her head of the clock she’d seen once in Ostrobothnia, tick-tock, tick-tock, metering out her time. She had to bite her lip not to giggle.

  “I am Kristina,” she said. “Nils’s wife.”

  “Maija.” Maija gave her the bowl of tar, nodded a “thank you.”

  The bowl looked small in Kristina’s hand. “We make it out of birch bark,” she said.

  “It’s a useful tree, birch.”

  Kristina was not like Maija imagined noblewomen to be. There was nothing fragile about her. Her face was broad, her lips full. The tip of her nose was turned downward. She too looked at Maija, as if appraising her.

  “You’ve never harvested sedge before,” Kristina said.

  “No. My husband, Paavo, used to be a fisherman. I’m an earth-woman by training. If ever …”

  Kristina’s eyes glinted. “Oh, I am beyond childbearing days now. But I am pleased to hear it. It will be good for the younger women to have you here.”

  “How far away is the town?” Paavo’s voice cut through the air.

  “One day’s walk.” Nils indicated the direction with his hand.

  Paavo and Daniel had walked closer to him.

  Alongside Maija, Anna put her head between her knees. Poor woman. Some women were sick all their childbearing time, and meanwhile, inside, the child clawed at them for nourishment.

  “You’re lucky still to have a grown daughter with you.” Kristina was looking at Frederika.

  “I didn’t get any sons, and so I don’t want her to leave just yet.” Maija looked to the square boys who stood behind their father. “And you have three sons?”

  “I have daughters too, but I send them south as soon as they can walk.”

  “You send them away?”

  “It takes time to insert someone into a certain place in society. They’ll be growing up with my sister in Stockholm.”

  Maija imagined a row of blonde girls in white dresses and hats, holding parasols. She looked at her own daughters, with their faces smeared black, kerchiefs low, and in the thick dresses she herself had woven, standing on a land that smelled of the piss of mating elks. But you get a lot of love, she reminded her daughters in her mind.

  “Why would you stay here?” Maija asked. “I mean … with your options.”

  “Fifteen years of tax relief for settling here.”

  Maija was surprised. But perhaps in Sweden nobles too were in need of funds. Kristina’s nostrils flared. She didn’t like talking about it.

  “And you, why did you come?” she asked.

  “My husband traded the house with his uncle.” Maija was pretty certain that by now her nostrils were flaring too.

  “And what do you think, Maija? Are you here to stay?”

  As if they could move from one place to another on a whim.

  “Yes. Though I am not certain we would join you in any village if you decide to build it.”

  Kristina raised her brows.

  “I’m not against villages as such,” Maija said, “but I am against people allowing fear to make important decisions.”

  “A village?” Kristina asked.

  Didn’t she know?

  “That’s right,” Nils said, interrupting them. “The more I think about it, the more I believe it’s what we need to do. Come winter, we could start felling trees for houses. We’ll set ourselves up somewhere close to the lake. We wouldn’t have to be frightened any longer. We’d be safe.”

  Kristina was looking at her husband.

  “You don’t agree?” Maija asked.

  “Why? I think it’s an excellent idea,” Kristina said.

  Kristina had the kind of smile that didn’t grow onto a face but appeared already formed. But there was something else in her face too when she looked at her husband. Caution?

  “Did I hear right?” Nils asked. “You’re an earth-woman? Do you have any suggestions on how to rid yourself of toothache?” He grimaced and pointed.

  “I normally advise just to pull the tooth out,” Maija said.

  The former priest’s widow opened the door to the vicarage herself. The corners of her mouth rose, as if amused.

  The priest saw her in church every Sunday, but then she was sitting down—linen bonnet over bent head. Here at home her head was high, her hair light on her shoulders. Golden. Young. Her straight bearing, the merriment in her voice—she reminded him of the women you’d meet at court. For a moment he imagined the King behind her, winking at him.

  The widow pointed to one of the armchairs. As he took off his coat, she stood without talking. It made a nice change. Most people blathered when they met him—pattered through his mind with their dirty feet: stupid questions, petty quandaries.

  She poured both of them some liquid from a flask, handed one of the cups to him, and sat down opposite him. He noticed her eyes were blue. The drink in his hand smelled sweet and tart by turns. Elderflower?

  “I thought,” the priest said, “that it’s been a long time since we spoke.”

  When the widow smiled, dimples appeared at the sides of her mouth. The priest wasn’t sure they had ever spoken. Knowing well the practice of new priests marrying the widow of the former one, he had not hurried to make her acquaintance.

  “So … how are things?” the priest asked.

  “We are busy w
ith the preparations for winter.”

  The priest noted the “we.”

  “With any luck the harvest will come good this year,” he said.

  “Let’s pray.”

  Yes, let’s pray. The previous year the peasants were so famished when they came to the Lady Day sermon, their eyes were like craters in their skeletal faces. They had stared at him as if they were about to eat the words off his lips, or worse. He’d been told some among them had had to slaughter their cattle. The settlers he’d seen this summer looked better. He guessed they ate mushrooms and things. And now the crop was growing anew. The previous day, as he passed the field, he’d bent down and touched the emerging green hard sprouts—their promise rasping the flat of his hand.

  “The bishop’s visitation was a few days ago,” the priest said.

  “Yes. Karl-Erik called in to say hello.”

  Karl-Erik? It was difficult to think of the bishop as a man who had a first name.

  “He said there were things you wanted to ask me about Blackåsen.”

  “That’s right.”

  The widow put her cup down on the table and tilted her head. The priest crossed one leg over the other. This was stupid. He couldn’t know what he didn’t know.

  “Has something happened?” she asked instead.

  He didn’t see why he wouldn’t tell her. “One of the settlers on Blackåsen died.”

  “Died by what means?”

  “There is a difference of opinion about that.”

  “Then that’s why Karl-Erik is worried. My husband used to say that the settlers on Blackåsen were like wild dogs that ought to be kept chained.”

  This stunned him. He’d heard the former priest was lettered; firm, but mild.

  “The bishop seems to be concerned about some supposed curse,” he said.

  “Oh.” Her surprise seemed genuine. “Perhaps it worries him because it worries the peasants? They are prone to overreaction. Who died?”

  “Eriksson.”

  Her right hand flew up and tugged at her earlobe.

  “Well, you know about his wife, Elin, I’m certain,” she said.

  “I read about the hearing in the Books. What did your husband think about the outcome?”

  “He said that Karl-Erik … the bishop, had told him it was better to try to heal wounds rather than open them.” She shook her head. “Anvar didn’t like declaring her innocent without a trial. He felt it was trying to put a lid on a pot where the water already boiled. While in the beginning Karl-Erik seemed to share his view, once the hearing was under way, he changed his mind and closed it down.”

  The priest wondered about the relationship between the bishop and the former priest. One severe, the other mild-mannered. Yet when it came to Blackåsen, they both appeared to have behaved counter to nature.

  He wasn’t certain what the bishop wanted him to do. The widow changed position. The skin on her neck was a bluish white. Almost a year had passed since her husband’s death, and still she was here.

  “Anvar was an old man,” she said with a rapid smile. “His methods were sometimes … archaic. But in similar circumstances he would have worried about hysteria spreading. About people blaming the Devil, the curse, engaging in old superstitions to protect themselves.”

  “And he would have done …?”

  “He would have called for parish meetings. Or an extra sermon. He would have aimed to restore order.”

  The priest nodded. She was right. Calm was vital. God telling the subjects to fear Him, their ruler, and nothing else.

  They both lifted their cups to drink at the same time. The beverage tasted of summer blossoms.

  “I understand you were at the court?” the widow asked and sent the priest back to the battlefield at once. He put his cup down.

  “I was a priest there.”

  “Have you met the King?”

  “Of course.”

  “What is he like?”

  The priest pictured him now: the King galloping in the lead on a horse drenched with sweat, throwing himself off without warning—Was he all right?—rolling around, his rapier, still in its sheath, thrust forward. The horse next after his, stumbling. Falling. Breaking its neck. Total silence. Its rider rising from the dust. The King slapping his back a few times. “Now you attack me.”

  Later that evening their King, dancing with one of the many eager women—some princess or duchess or other—coolness so palpable that watching him chilled your heart.

  Vicarius Dei.

  “God. God’s representative on earth,” he said, and ached. “He has this habit. He twists your coat button around when he speaks with you until it comes off in his hand.”

  Then walks off with it like some prize, he thought.

  “How amusing,” she said.

  The priest rose.

  “There is another matter,” the widow said and made him sit down again. “It seems like Lena Rolfsdotter, the night man’s daughter, has started a relationship with my farm hand Joel.”

  He couldn’t help but sigh. She nodded.

  “But in this region the harsher you are seen to be, the better. Order,” she reminded him, and squeezed her lips into a decisive line.

  Yes, order.

  Before he left, the widow decided to tell him. “Just before he died, my husband visited Blackåsen. When he came back, he was unlike himself. He was …”

  She shook her head. “When I asked him, he said that he had never before come across such evil as on that journey. It was as if he were shocked.”

  The light in the vicarage flickered.

  “Did it have to do with the curse?” The priest surprised himself by asking.

  “No, I think he was talking about a person. Anvar told me most things, but he was perturbed. And the next day, as he was about to mend the barn roof, he fell off the ladder. I didn’t get another chance to ask him.”

  The priest walked from one window to the other in the temporary vicarage and looked out at the bright squares of other windows. He realized that to anyone else who did the same, he must appear like an animal pacing in its cage. He sat down.

  The first time he met the King had been in the field. The army was preparing for the next day’s battle. In the afternoon the priest had an inspiration. Together with the other priests, they made the men stand in formations—squares of thousands—and they sang a psalm. “Wår Gudh är oss en wäldig borg. Han är wår sköld och wärja.”

  Through the corner of his eye he saw the King arrive on his horse, the skirts of his blue jacket, flailing. With him were Stenbock and the Little Prince—legends in their own rights. And the priest stretched out his arms, bade the men sing louder. The King was watching him. That evening the call came for the priest to join the King at dinner.

  Vicarius Dei.

  The priest rubbed his hand on his heart in slow circles.

  He thought of the widow.

  A person evil enough to shock a priest? Eriksson would have known who—he knew everything about everyone. It might indeed have been Eriksson himself. The man had been vile. Though it wouldn’t have taken his predecessor that long to discover Eriksson’s nature. It had taken the priest that one meeting, and the man had revealed himself to him.

  The widow was right. He needed to close the matter down in a forceful manner. He would have the verger send out the call to sermon.

  And he would have to see Lena and Joel.

  “Does he realize what he is asking?” Maija said. “The barley will soon be ready for harvesting, and he is calling us to church.”

  The man who’d come to deliver the message had known to shrug as if apologetic. Even he had grasped the extent of the priest’s demand.

  Frederika and Dorotea looked at her, but her husband made as if he hadn’t heard her.

  Fog had descended during the night, and it still lingered. It was a fog without veils, a low sluggish paleness wrapping the trees and them in nothingness. Further away the clouds were frayed. Rain on its way. Maija wrapped he
r scarf tighter. It had been darker when she woke up this morning. Not much, a feeble amber tinge hanging in the air, vanished before the others woke up. She wouldn’t tell them. Let them think summer has not yet come and gone but that it is on its way: strong and bright.

  Below them on the plain, surrounded by a timber town, the church stood tall. Its lines were proud and white, broken by the roof displaying its dents for heaven to see. Despite herself, Maija was moved. The church had been there for over two hundred years, seen all that humans had to offer: births, deaths, laughter, tears, even wars—and remained there, silent, unmoved, its sanctuary facing the light of grace from the East. It wasn’t about religion. It was their past. The church held their past.

  Frederika puckered her nose.

  “You don’t find it beautiful?”

  “It’s too big,” her daughter said, and Maija felt a sudden urge to prove her daughter wrong. “Look at the rest of the houses,” her daughter said. “The church is too white. It doesn’t belong here with us.”

  People descended from all the hills. They came together in one stream flowing in the direction of the church. In town the windows gaped empty. Weeds sprouted along the house walls. There were no children playing in the streets, no dogs looking for scraps, no smells of food, of sewage—of habitation. Uncle Teppo had told them: during a few weeks each year they were to live in the area called Settler Town to give the Church and the State its dues, sharing a house with one or two other families. The rest of the year the town was empty but for the keepers of the church. On the green in front of the church the grass grew tall. There was one single tree, a large oak.

  Maija had to stop. It was one of the most beautiful trees she’d ever seen. It was old. Its branches reached so high it seemed to touch the sky, while the lowest ones stroked the ground. Its crown was broad, and the winding branches, thick. It was one of those trees that at some point would have to be cordoned off from fear of falling branches as, in age, it began to lose control of its limbs. Maija wondered who’d made the decision to let it remain. It gave you hope. That someone had seen beauty. In the bell tower the bell hung motionless. But perhaps they didn’t ring it because this was not an ordinary sermon.