by John Gardner
Lars-Goren and his sons had finished eating now. Fruitflies and garbage-bees hovered over the remains, which Lars-Goren had placed on a stone for the priest to clear away. Lars-Goren said, “Thank you for your company and advice, Father Karl. I’ll think about these things, you may be sure.” He moved, with Erik and Gunnar behind him, toward the stone archway that opened onto the street.
“The pleasure’s all mine,” said Father Karl, hurrying up beside him. “You mustn’t take these things too much to heart,” he added. “I may exaggerate the danger. Needless to say—”
“I understand,” Lars-Goren said, and nodded.
At their approach, Lady jumped up from the shade where she’d been lying, awaiting their return, and came trotting to push her head into Lars-Goren’s hand, then turned away again, wagging her tail and urging them to hurry. Villagers on the street stopped walking to look at Lars-Goren and his sons. They smiled, silent as stones, but what they were thinking not even the Devil could have said.
Behind them on the cobblestones, Father Karl said, making Lars-Goren pause, “I understand you’ve become good friends with Bishop Brask.”
Lars-Goren turned, his lips slightly puckered. “I’ve met him,” he said at last.
The priest nodded, avoiding Lars-Goren’s eyes. “It’s a dilemma,” he said, and nodded. “One would have thought he’d have gotten some high office in the government, after all his help.”
Lars-Goren waited.
“But of course he’s a difficult man, that’s true too. I met him once myself. Who can say which way he’d be more dangerous to the king—as an official or as a man embittered by the king’s ingratitude.”
Lars-Goren smiled half to himself. “You hear a good deal, here at the edge of the world,” he said.
“Well, yes. He’s a churchman, of course. We have mutual concerns, although naturally—”
Lars-Goren nodded. Erik was giving his brother a leg up, Gunnar smiling grimly, as if waiting for the horse to shy or maybe rear up and strike at him.
“Thank you again,” Lars-Goren said, dismissing Father Karl with a nod and getting up on the horse. It was mid-afternoon and he had three more villages he was hoping to visit before nightfall.
As soon as he saw that his sons were ready, he set off at a canter, his horse’s hooves striking sparks from the stones. When he looked back, Father Karl was on the steps of the church, waving after him with both arms, in the style of a peasant. A few villagers had come out into the street to watch Lars-Goren ride off. They too raised their arms. Gunnar was riding with one hand clenched tight on the pommel, his head too far forward, close to the horse’s flying mane. Erik rode beside him, watching him. Lars-Goren reined in a little, surprised at himself, trying to make sense of the anger that was flaming in his chest.
5.
IT WAS DUSK WHEN THEY CAME to where the witch had been burned. They could see the smoke and bright embers from a mile away. From a half mile away they could smell the charred flesh and bone. Neither of his sons said anything. The horses became skittish, and the dog, catching the uneasiness of the horses, kept closer to Lars-Goren’s side. In the west, the clouded sky had become brighter but no redder. It glowed like the blade of a knife in a strong, clear light. Black specks—vultures—floated around the smoke. There were no longer any people, though as Lars-Goren and his sons approached nearer they found the hoofprints and ruts left by a large crowd. He slowed his horse to a walk as they went past. Drake moved carefully, with his gray ears cocked toward the embers, his muscles tensed, prepared to shy off to the left at the first sign of life from the neighborhood of the smoke. One ember fell from the beams that supported the sagging black remains; it struck lengthwise and broke, shooting sparks, but the horses only flinched a little, waiting for worse.
When they were almost past the place, Erik reined up his horse and sat looking. Gunnar rode a few steps more, then stopped his. Lars-Goren continued—stubborn as one of his own peasants, he thought—then abruptly changed his mind and stopped. He refrained from looking back. At last he heard his sons’ horses coming up behind him, and with his knees he edged Drake forward again.
As he came even with Lars-Goren, Erik said, “When I become lord here, there’ll be no more burning of witches.”
Lars-Goren said nothing.
“Did you hear me, Father?” Erik asked.
“In that case,” said Lars-Goren, “I must see that you never become lord here.”
The rest of the way home, they rode in silence.
6.
LARS-GOREN KNEW IT WAS his imagination—there had been nothing visibly human in the black remains—but he carried with him all that night, both awake and asleep, an unsettling image of the witch’s face, for some reason the face of the old peasant woman he’d seen that morning in the field of rye, though he knew it had not been the same old woman. She stared straight ahead of her, with an expression he could not fathom, as if she were looking at something no one else could see, perhaps a steel-bright light like the light he’d seen in the clouds as he rode home, but a light that came not from the clouds but from everywhere at once, as if the whole physical world had vanished, consumed by that terrible brightness. In his dreams he saw the burning they’d been too late to witness, saw how the long gray hair sparked and smoked and ignited, how the heavy black peasant clothes smoldered, then flamed like burning leaves. Sweat broke out on the face, and the flesh became puffy and dark, then burst open, dripping blood and fat. Even as he dreamed, he understood why it was that her expression never changed—showed no pain, no rage, no fear of the Lord, only that terrible, mystical blankness like indifference: he was seeing not the burning of a living witch but his memory of those burning corpses on Södermalm hill.
When he awakened in the morning he was weak and heavy-limbed, as if he hadn’t slept at all. The bed beside him was empty, and he somehow knew at once that Liv had risen hours ago and gone down to help with breakfast and start her day. From somewhere outside, beyond the windowless stone walls, came the sharp sound of iron striking iron—someone shoeing a horse, perhaps, or clumsily hammering the iron band on a cartwheel. He sat up and put his legs over the side of the bed, his flesh still numb, shivers running up and down his back as if he’d caught an ague. For a long time he sat staring at the wall, hardly knowing what he was thinking, rubbing his hands and his arms against the cold all around him, though his breath sent out no steam; then, awakening again, he got up and began to get dressed.
Downstairs only his daughters were still indoors. His elder daughter, Pia, just turned seven, fixed him breakfast, while the younger, four, sat at the table beside him, watching him with tightly folded hands.
“You slept late,” Pia said, bringing him eggs and bread, buttermilk and honey. She had her mother’s face except that her hair was dark brown and her smile was more furtive. She walked already like the over-tall girl she was becoming, her head slightly ducked, eyelids lowered, apologetic.
“Your mother should have gotten me up,” he said.
Pia nodded, nervously smiling. “She said you had bad dreams.”
Little Andrea’s eyes winced narrower, shooting him a look. Lars-Goren turned to study her. More than the others she was a stranger to him, self-sufficient and mysterious, watching like an enemy spy. He smiled as if hoping to soften her judgment of him. Her expression did not change.
Lars-Goren looked back at Pia and said, “I hope my tossing and turning didn’t keep her awake?”
Pia shrugged, drew back the chair across from him and sat down. Like Andrea, she folded her hands.
Abruptly, Andrea asked, “Are you going to take us to see the dragon?”
Chewing, Lars-Goren looked at Pia for an explanation.
“King Gustav’s sent the statue of St. George to Hudiksvall,” she said. She glanced at him, then down again, and busied herself tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “He’s sending it to every great city in the kingdom, so they say. It’s to celebrate our victory and independence.”
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Lars-Goren considered. “Do you know what that means—‘independence’?” he asked.
Again she shrugged, ducking her head. There were moments when, at seven, she seemed as wise as a woman, but just now she looked embarrassed and frightened, like the child she was. “It means everyone’s happy,” she said.
Lars-Goren nodded. “So we hope,” he said. He remembered his son Erik sullenly riding from the place where they’d burned the witch.
“Will you take us?” Andrea asked again. She tipped her head to one side, not so much pleading as scrutinizing, reserved.
“Whatever your mother says,” he said, and raised the bread to his mouth.
“That’s what she said you’d say,” said Andrea whether with scorn or satisfaction he couldn’t make out.
“Tell her we’ll go then,” said Lars-Goren, “if she hasn’t changed her mind.”
Outside someone was again banging metal against metal. The sound was too irregular to be the work of a hammer, and the sound was sometimes loud sometimes lighter, a mere clink. Abruptly, it broke off. He scowled, still trying to guess what it was, but no answer would come to him, and at last he put it from his mind and finished eating. Then, just as he was rising from the table, it began again. He hurried to the door and down the hallway, Andrea coming after him, keeping her distance.
When he emerged into the castle yard he discovered that the day was bright and hot, the sky so blue one could hardly have believed that yesterday there had been heavy leaden clouds. Chickens scattered in front of him, cackling in indignation, startled by the suddenness of his coming through the door. Lady leaped up from her nap in the sunlight and trotted over to him, looking up at him for instructions. A bent old man looked up from the corner of the bailey where he was working, poking mortar into the stones, and he smiled, slightly raising both arms, like a fighting-cock proffering for attack. Again the sound that had been puzzling Lars-Goren stopped. He looked around. Andrea stood a few yards behind him, on the castle steps, the thumbs of both hands in her mouth. He held out his hand to her, inviting her to walk with him. Solemnly, she shook her head. He smiled and shrugged, then turned away, casting in his mind for the direction from which the sound had come. Now the sound began again, and Lars-Goren, with the dog at his heel, went striding toward the castles northwest corner. As soon as he’d rounded the corner he stopped and stood motionless, instinctively raising one hand to Andrea behind him, commanding her to silence.
Two men, helmeted and muffled from head to foot in protective ropecloth, stood slashing at one another with blunted two-hand swords. They struck with such ferocity, such murderous solemnity, without yells or grunts, it seemed that even muffled as they were they must certainly kill one another with their unwieldy, archaic swords. Now Lars-Goren saw what he had missed at first: his son Gunnar crouched just out of range of the flying swords, watching with eyes full of fury and fear. “To the leg!” Gunnar screamed, and the smaller of the swordsmen, seeing the opening at the same instant, came down with so violent a flat-sided blow to the flank of his opponent that the leg went flying out from under the man, turned in grotesquely, as if broken at the knee. “Break!” screamed Gunnar.
“Break! Break!” The smaller of the swordsmen broke and stepped back, dropped the sword, threw off the helmet, and ran to the man who lay rolling on the ground and moaning. Lars-Goren’s dog rushed in, barking officiously. When the victor pulled down his mask, Lars-Goren saw what he’d by now suspected: it was Erik.
Erik reached down to help the man on the ground, who seized the muffled arm and clung to it, wailing “Good hit! Never mind!” then at once went back to moaning and clutching at his leg.
Lars-Goren moved closer, Andrea beside him, taking his hand as if unaware that she was doing it. “Hush, Lady!” he said. The dog barked once more, then controlled herself. When Erik looked up, his face showed nothing, no shame, no pride, no fear—nothing whatsoever. Gunnar moved back a little, as if expecting a blow. The man on the ground was tearing at his mask now, no longer moaning. “It was the boy’s idea, sir,” he said, eyes bulging, full of tears. Lars-Goren recognized his groundskeeper.
Lars-Goren nodded. “Let me help you inside,” he said. He let go of his daughter’s hand and bent down to his groundskeeper, feeling for the break in the bone. So far as he could tell, there was none, but he’d be able to tell for certain when he got him stretched out inside. He put his hands inside the groundskeeper’s armpits, helping him to his feet.
“I told him nobody fights with these old-fashioned swords anymore,” said the groundskeeper. He bit his lips and winced. “But you know these boys!” he said. “Violent! Violent!”
Lars-Goren put his arm around the man’s thick waist and steadied him as he hopped on one leg toward the door, the dog coming carefully beside them, eager to be of use. The groundskeeper’s face was ashen.
Erik hung back, picking up the groundskeeper’s sword, then his own. Gunnar and Andrea came a little behind Lars-Goren, watching him and staying out of reach.
At the steps, Lars-Goren half turned and looked back at his children. Erik, loaded down with the two swords and helmets, met his eyes, as expressionless as before. “Get cleaned up,” said Lars-Goren coldly, as if wearily. “This afternoon we start for Hudiksvall, to see the dragon.” He gazed a moment longer at his son Erik, then turned his attention once more to the wounded groundskeeper.
“They have their own ideas, these young lords,” said the man. His smile was half fearful, half cunning. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “They’re the Devil’s own henchmen—no lie, sir!” Quickly, as if afraid he’d offended, he added, “But he’s brave as the day is long, that Erik! Brave and good-hearted as a saint, sir, that’s no lie!”
7.
AT NOON ON THE FOLLOWING DAY they arrived at Hudiksvall. There was no stable anywhere, as they learned from visitors pushing back from the heart of the city, and at last, full of misgivings, Lars-Goren left his animals with a rabbit-toothed old peasant who’d roped off a field at the outskirts of the city, a field so crowded there seemed no room for the horses to lie down. The city too was crowded, so packed with visitors there was hardly a place to stand, and the crowd was so noisy Lars-Goren and his family had to shout into one another’s ears to be heard. Andrea rode on Lars-Goren’s shoulders, solemn as a viking on watch. Lars-Goren’s wife came just behind, pressing close to Lars-Goren, her hands clamped tightly around the hands of Pia, on her right, and, on her left side, Erik, who held tightly to Gunnar’s right arm. “Do you see it?” yelled Gunnar, as if furiously angry, “do you see it?”
Then at last Andrea cried out, “There it is!” and a moment later Lars-Goren saw it too, a huge, shabby canopy that bore the arms of King Gustav.
“We’re almost there!” he called out and twisted around to make sure that his wife was still behind him.
The closer they came to the statue, the quieter the crowd became, as if somewhere in the vicinity of the dragon and saint some accident had happened, some trampling or stabbing so terrible that a hush of dismay went out around it. But as they pressed still nearer, they discovered that the cause of the silence was not what they’d imagined; it was the statue itself that made the crowd forget its voice.
Lars-Goren for one had seen the statue before, but never with people all around it like this, looking up as if entranced. It was as if, without the people, the statue was incomplete, unreal as a miracle in a grotto where there is no human eye to witness it. Gustav’s soldiers stood every six feet around the statue, but no one gave them reason to raise a finger. For all the pressure of the crowd farther back, it was as still and calm here by the statue as the eye of a tornado. Peasants, burghers, knights in fine dress stood motionless gazing up, some of them weeping, hardly bothering to dab away the tears. Lars-Goren looked at them and felt a ringing in his heart that he could hardly put a name to, whether pain or awe or love or something else—though certainly part of it was love, he knew, love for Sweden and all her bright, wind-bitten faces lo
ng or short, fat or thin, light or dark—and love for faces he would never see again, the faces of those who’d died in Sten Sture’s rebellion, on frozen Lake Åsunden, in Execution Square in Stockholm, and later, in Gustav’s revolution. Lars-Goren too was now weeping, hardly noticing, unashamed.
For a long time he hardly glanced at the statue itself, but looked instead at the people—first at strangers, then at his wife, then at his children. When he did turn at last to the statue, the sight struck him like a fist. Where Bernt Notke got the massive blocks of wood—to say nothing of the skill at carving, to say nothing of the vision—God only knew. Every notch and curl sang and glowed. The dragon impaled on St. George’s lance seemed to writhe in agony, eyes violently rolling, tail slashing, gleaming talons slicing at the belly of the trembling horse. But none of these did Lars-Goren see that instant.
What he saw was the blank, staring face of the knight, gazing straight forward, motionless, as if indifferent to the monster gazing as if mad or entranced or blind, infinitely gentle, infinitely sorrowful, beyond all human pain. I am Sweden, he seemed to say—or something more than Sweden. I am humanity, living and dead. For it did not seem to Lars-Goren that the monster below the belly of the violently trembling horse could be described as, simply, “foreigners,” as the common interpretation maintained. It was evil itself; death, oblivion, every conceivable form of human loss. The knight, killing the dragon, showed no faintest trace of pleasure, much less pride—not even interest.
He saw again the face of the witch above the churning flames in his dream, the dead swelling faces on the pyres of Stockholm, his son’s cold stare. “When I become lord here, there’ll be no more burning of witches.”
Though it seemed to make no sense, Lars-Goren heard himself saying—his hand on his son Erik’s shoulder—“Very well, you shall be lord here.”