Wolf Winter

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  The door squeaked open. Wind swept in and blew out the candles. Frederika stopped sharp. There was panting, the patter of wet paws on stone. She turned around.

  The wolves’ eyes were yellow in the dark. One shape moved toward her and then waited as the others trotted down the aisles, circled her.

  “Go away!” she shouted.

  The lead wolf seemed to be laughing.

  “Go away,” she said again. This time it was a plea.

  A whimper. From her? From deep inside.

  And then: a swell growing in that same place, building like the breakers of the sea, mounting.

  Frederika put her knuckles to her temples and screamed the thought over the roof ridges, pushed it down past the houses on the streets of Settler Town. Shoved it through the timber of their cottage:

  Mamma!

  The wolf in the nave was thrust backward and landed on its side. One of the others fell too, claws rasping against stone floor as it clambered and whined.

  Her mother turned around, forehead creased, ladle still in her hand. Soup dripping on the floor. Drip. Drip.

  Mamma!

  The lead wolf lifted its head and staggered onto all fours.

  Leave me alone.

  She threw the thought at the wolf, pushing it toward the animal and through. It shrank back and growled. There was a shine in its eyes. Not excitement. Fear?

  Leave me alone.

  She was weakening now. She didn’t have much left. The wolf sprinted down the nave and leapt at her. She landed on the stone floor, animal on top.

  She tried to throw it off, to roll away, but it was too heavy. There was a sound of teeth tearing cloth. Frederika flailed, found the beast’s throat, and pushed. Her arms buckled.

  Above, God’s son watched in silence.

  She felt its nose on her cheek, then by her ear. Her last thought was of Dorotea hobbling down a street alone. No one to protect her. No one to make sure she was safe.

  Her mother was touching her shoulder. “What on earth are you doing sleeping in the church?” she said.

  Frederika sat up with a jolt. Her hands flew to her neck. She gasped. There was no one but her, her mother, and Jesus on the cross.

  “It wasn’t a reproach,” her mother said and squatted beside her. “At least, not much of one. Anyone can fall asleep.”

  Frederika grabbed her mother and hugged her. She wept. Her mother patted her on the back. “There, there,” she said.

  “They tried to kill me,” she choked out.

  Her mother moved back, held her at arm’s length. “What? Who?”

  “Oh, Mamma. It was spirits.”

  Even in the darkness she could tell that her mother’s eyes blackened. Her mother still held her away from her.

  “Frederika,” she said, “listen to me. People go mad from these kinds of fantasies. I have seen it happen. The fears take hold. They don’t ever let go.”

  “But look at my neck.” Frederika said.

  Her mother put the lantern down and gathered Frederika’s hair to lift it.

  “There is nothing there,” she said.

  That was impossible. Frederika didn’t let go of her. Her mother bent again, not to wrap her arms around her but to help her stand. She put her arm around Frederika’s waist.

  “I sent for you,” Frederika said as they walked through the nave. “With my thoughts. And you came. You must have scared them off before they were done.”

  “You dreamt,” her mother said and opened the door.

  “I sent for you,” Frederika said, “and I knew you would come …”

  “Frederika.” It came out as a shout. They both stopped. In the darkness her mother’s breath was a white haze.

  “Blackåsen’s parish meeting is tonight,” her mother said. “I came to tell you to go home and stay with Dorotea while I was out. That was all.”

  If only Frederika had still been a child, Maija thought as she hastened down the streets in Settler Town, young enough to trust her mother to tell her what was and what was not. Then it would have been easy. But Frederika was a young woman, and to young adults, the experience of others appeared archaic and redundant. Then, too late, as proper adults, they would lament, “My mother knew what she was talking about,” or, “My father used to say …”

  Stupid.

  Maija half-ran across the church green. Calm down, she told herself. There will be plenty of time to talk to Frederika. She ran up the steps to the vicarage, paused to brush the snow off the hem of her skirt with her hand, and opened the door.

  She was late. The hallway was empty, the large door at its end, closed. She opened it and stepped inside. The room was warm and dim. At the far end was a blazing log fire. Nils was standing beside it, the flames lighting half of his face. He was talking as she entered. She tried to calm her breathing.

  “The settlers on Dagsele Mountain have also had problems—not as bad as ours, but they too are worried.”

  Maija unbuttoned her coat. She shrugged her shoulder to glide it down her arm. The priest was sitting on a chair on the other side of the fire, his head bent, chin supported by his hand. Daniel and Anna were standing beside Nils, and, further away, Henrik, Lisbet, Gustav. They were looking at Nils.

  “That’s why the settlers on Blackåsen ask the Church to be unyielding when confronting the Lapps,” Nils continued.

  Confronting the Lapps? But what was Nils talking about?

  The priest looked up. His eyes met Maija’s and widened. He might have been shaking his head, but the movement was so small, she wasn’t certain.

  Maija thought of the antlers in the snow. Of what Fearless had said his people might do if they found out. Of Frederika raving about spirits. Of people acting under the banner of fear.

  “I assume you are talking of this year’s events on Blackåsen,” she said, “and that you say the Lapps might have something to do with them.”

  The priest lowered his head. The others turned toward her.

  “I don’t think the Lapps are responsible,” she said.

  They were silent now, looking at her.

  “How would you know?” Nils asked, and added before she could answer, “Had you been here, you would have heard that the request was for a village to be built on our mountain. Disappearances, killings, misfortune. … We have the right to protect ourselves. I was merely suggesting it might be worth the Church ensuring the Lapps are still on the right path.”

  “How do you know the Lapps, Maija?” Lisbet asked.

  Nils’s voice gained edge. “Maija doesn’t want a village. As her husband is away, she must be allowed to speak and have her concerns heard, but I caution her to speak with wisdom and restraint so as not to raise any alarm.”

  “It is not me who spreads fear,” she said.

  “This is a community. We help each other. If we begin to suspect one another, then where will it end?”

  Daniel nodded. Anna too. Maija thought about secrets. Bad secrets.

  “Spoken by the one who’ll go to any length to ensure his sins remain unknown,” she said.

  “Maija?” The priest’s voice, shocked.

  Nils shook his head. “You are accusing me,” he said. Something in his voice troubled her, “—a nobleman. In front of all these people. May I ask what I stand accused of?”

  “I think you killed Eriksson,” she said.

  Someone inhaled.

  “Maija?” The priest said again.

  A block of a man emerged from his place by the wall. Purple cloth swept the floor and filled up the room. A bishop? He raised his hand. They all stared as if spellbound.

  “Speak,” he said to Maija.

  Maija swallowed. She hadn’t seen him. The others were avoiding her gaze. All but one.

  “Eriksson knew things about them. Secrets.” She met Nils’s gaze. “But whatever he had found out about you was really bad.”

  “Rubbish,” Nils said.

  “Bad enough for you to kill him.”

  Nils shook his
head. “This is senseless,” he said.

  “In your home, on the wall, there is a carpet worth a fortune. You don’t need tax exemption. Was that what Eriksson knew about you and your past? Did he blackmail you? Why did you leave the south, Nils?”

  “You want to know about Eriksson. About which secret of ours he knew?” Kristina’s voice was calm. Maija swirled around. She searched for her in the dark, found her by one of the tall windows.

  “As it seems that women are speaking out now, so shall I,” Kristina said and took a step forward. “Naturally, Eriksson knew why we left Stockholm. He did his homework about us, like he did with everybody else. My husband had many, shall I say, acquaintances among the foreign emissaries. The King decided my husband’s allegiances were in question and forced us away.”

  Kristina shrugged. “Me, I don’t know what the King imagines will happen when he doesn’t recompense his men. And I don’t know what you think it will do to us if people know.”

  Maija’s mind was buzzing. Secrets—the glade where they found the body—the body itself.

  “There was a piece of blue glass where Eriksson was killed. The Lapps said they had given it to Nils.”

  “I’ve already explained that to you,” Nils said.

  “There were herbs on Eriksson’s sleeve,” Maija said, “Marjoram. It cleans wounds, removes pain. Nils had toothache.”

  Kristina studied Maija.

  Maija remembered giving her word to Fearless that she would not tell anyone, but still she continued, blazing straight forward on the path she had begun.

  “And so, last night, someone killed one of Fearless’s reindeer. Whoever did it, took only the skull. They placed it on Eriksson’s grave. There was blood.”

  “But that just proves the Lapps are up to something.” Lisbet’s voice.

  “Maija, I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nils said.

  The village. Think, she told herself. How does the village link to Eriksson’s death? She couldn’t see it. Nils had grown to like the idea of the village after Eriksson’s death, not before. What was she missing? There was something she was missing.

  “Nils couldn’t have killed Eriksson,” the bishop said. “I know this for a fact. He and Kristina were my guests at the time I understand the murder occurred.”

  Impossible. The air left her lungs.

  The priest said nothing. Anna was staring down at the floor. Nils and Kristina were both looking at the bishop. The pores on the bishop’s skin were large. In the light of the fire they looked like black spots. Maija focused on those on the left side of his nose.

  “The reindeer skull on Eriksson’s grave,” she said, “it was done to frighten us so that we would accuse the Lapps.”

  “I would be worried, indeed, if I didn’t know this was a lie,” the bishop said.

  “Why Maija,” the priest said, hesitantly, “I took the bishop to Eriksson’s grave this morning. There was nothing amiss.”

  Maija sat in the darkness, by the window. The moon rang on snow and echoed along the streets of Settler Town. Daniel and Anna had returned. Not a word was said, and now they were asleep, thick sighs in the air.

  Someone had once said to her that the able noble wife should know to speak Latin to the cultivated and talk like a peasant to the peasants. Maija thought of Kristina’s square chin, how the corners of her mouth were downturned, and the wrinkles between her eyes, deep enough to bring the brows almost together. Kristina was Nils’s equal. Or more. She thought of the story Henrik had told about the merchant who came home to find his load packed with vermin and felt certain it wasn’t Nils who had been behind that but his wife.

  The priest’s face when he looked at Maija. Pity? He was right: she was pitiful.

  Jutta was standing beside her, arms crossed. The stain that was their kin’s past colored them both.

  “Nils needs to be stopped,” Maija said. “It’s people like him who start the hunts for sorceresses.”

  Jutta didn’t say a word.

  Maija sat straight, without allowing her spine to touch the wood of the chair. If she relaxed now, she would surely die.

  “How could you have allowed this to happen?”

  The priest and Fearless stood at the center of the room while the bishop paced before them, back and forth, his coat slithering behind him, purple flashes as he turned. By the wall Sofia had lowered her head.

  “And in the vicarage. God have mercy on you.”

  He turned again. “A peasant accusing nobles. A woman accusing a man. Do you not see what … what …” The bishop’s face was red. He grasped for words. “This is blasphemy—a questioning of God’s order, a challenge of God Almighty Himself …”

  He took out a kerchief and wiped his forehead, then his eyes fixed on the priest.

  “I ordered you,” he said, “to find out the truth. I told you to close this subject down. Discreetly, I said. Instead, we have parishioners running amok. Control your flock, in the name of God.”

  He raised his hand to stop the priest from speaking and moved on to Fearless. Fearless was motionless, no reaction showing on his face.

  “You are part of this Church,” the bishop said. “Do not think this does not concern you.” He remained standing, staring at the Lapp as if to imprint on him his words. “And if I find that your people have begun to root in their past again, you shall be made to pay, and pay dearly.

  “I shall tell you what will happen,” the bishop said then. “If there is no clarity in the matter of Eriksson’s death by the time of the Lady Day sermon, I myself shall lead the investigation. And if I cannot find the answers, then, as the law has it, you, as Eriksson’s fellow-beings, will be forced to share the burden of the penalty.

  “This … this Maija …” The bishop wiped his forehead again. “She has to be punished, of course.”

  The priest’s eyes caught on Sofia. There was an expression on her face as she looked at the bishop—not a smile, but contentedness. A cat in sunshine licking its paw.

  Let it run, the priest’s father would have said. Bend your head, let it run. Welcome the castigation of those wiser than you. The priest had seen it a hundred times—how things ran and ran across his father.

  “Is it really necessary?” the priest said. “Her husband is absent for winter. She is frightened. It can be weeks before settlers see anyone, and that is not a good environment for anyone. People can get confused.”

  “She falsely accused a nobleman, and this in public.”

  “She is a simple peasant.”

  “Thus more reason to lay down the law to her.”

  “Maija may be impetuous, but she means well.”

  The bishop’s eyes narrowed, evaluating, perhaps, whether here was some other sin for him to discover. “She may no longer attend Mass,” he said.

  Leniency with a potential sorceress, mercy for a whore, but exclusion of a frightened settler woman?

  “That is a severe punishment,” the priest said slowly. “None of us is entirely without sin. I am certain God takes the motivations behind our actions into consideration.”

  Careful, the bishop’s face told him. I am but waiting to find faults with you. “Tell her,” he said, “that I shall personally pronounce the rest of her sentence at the sermon on Lady Day.”

  It was his duty to tell her, but he would not do it in front of the other parishioners. The priest hoped the bishop’s final penalty would be one of shaming her as opposed to doing her bodily harm—though he guessed Maija might favor it the other way.

  When he entered, Maija was putting on her kerchief. She paused in her movement.

  “Leave us,” she said to her daughters without looking at them.

  She stood up straighter, waited for him to speak.

  “You may no longer come to Church,” he said, “and the remainder of your penance will be declared at the Lady Day sermon. By the bishop.”

  She barely opened her lips as she slowly let her breath out.

  “And my d
aughters?” she asked.

  “They are welcome to attend sermons. Should they so want.”

  People were cruel. The parishioners would make them suffer on behalf of their errant mother.

  “I promise you, I’ll do my best to keep the peace if they come,” he said.

  Maija nodded a few times to herself.

  “What will you do?” he asked.

  She was squeezing her fingers into her palms, as if to drive strength into herself. She stood up taller and inhaled. “We shall pack up and leave.”

  Still he remained standing.

  “Accusing Nils was rash, Maija …” He shook his head. “But something is wrong.”

  She made a small movement of her head.

  “It’s just that …” she started, but then it was she who fell silent. “Good-bye,” she said instead and avoided his gaze.

  Candlemas too was a miserable affair.

  It was their first night back home on Blackåsen Mountain. Maija sat up, her nightdress pasted to her breasts and lower back. She waited until her breathing returned to normal, then she rose, pulled the sweaty gown over her head, wiped her neck and stomach, and dropped it on the floor.

  Just a dream. She felt in the dark for her trousers and her shirt, found them, and pulled them on. She stood for a moment beside the bed. From beneath her came the sound of Dorotea’s snuffles. Maija wanted to lie down beside her daughter, put her arm around her, and inhale her dreams. She’d never been able to do that with Frederika, she thought then; not once had the girl relaxed and given herself over to her mother’s cuddles. And the thought was back, unwelcome, but there nevertheless: I don’t know her.

  Maija shivered. It was just the nightmare, holding her bones. She’d had this one before, but not since they left Finland. The events in town had left their mark. She had the right to be frightened. She’d seen people broken in both body and mind. Never the same again after a Church penance, and now she would have to wait six weeks to hear hers.

  On the table there was a small covered plate containing leftovers from their evening meal. The fish was for the girls to have in the morning. Maija lifted the cloth. Her mouth watered. She’d had nothing today but tea. She wrapped the cloth around the plate again. She thought she had known hunger before this winter, but she had not. Real hunger did not just make you irritated and weak or make your stomach grumble. Real hunger was pain.