by John Gardner
9.
PLOTS, COUNTERPLOTS; one would have thought even the Devil would eventually have tired of them, but he did not. For this he had one main reason: something was afoot, he could feel it in his bones. He brooded; he travelled far and wide, spying; even at the houses of the very poor he would sometimes crouch at the window, listening; but all to no avail. Of one thing the Devil grew increasingly sure: the trouble was in Sweden.
Once, in the trivial, insignificant city of Härnösand, close to the southern border of Angermanland, he saw, just at sunset, a crowd gathered around a tent which bore the shield of King Gustav. He compressed himself into a pigeon and walked inside. Slowly, carefully, avoiding people’s feet, he made his way to the exhibit at the center of the tent. No one was saying a word; everyone was looking in the same direction. He followed the people’s gaze and saw a large wooden statue—a knight with his lance through a dragons neck. The Devil felt suddenly hot all over, he had no idea why.
“Very well,” he thought, “say the dragon refers to myself, and the knight has vanquished me.” He blinked, then flew up onto a crossbeam to think the matter through. “Why should this hopeful little fantasy alarm me? Am I dead because a silly piece of wood is dead?” He cocked his head thoughtfully. “No.” He began to concentrate on reading the minds of the people. To his astonishment, nothing came. Was it possible? he wondered. Was everyone in the crowd thinking nothing? Nothing whatsoever? Now the crowd began to shift, and he began to get things. A child had wet its pants and was worrying, thinking it might be spanked. An old man had an itch on a part of his back that he could not reach. A man with his arm around his wife was looking at a woman not far off, his mistress.
In disgust, the Devil flapped his wings and flew away through the opening in the tent, changed at once to his own form, and, on his huge, dark wings, soared high into the night. It crossed his mind that the way to be safe was perhaps to kill everyone in Sweden. It was an interesting idea, but it immediately slipped his mind.
He flew to Stockholm, to watch the mock triumphal entry of Sunnanväder and Master Knut. Perhaps he would speak to them, he thought—give them a little false encouragement. Or perhaps he might whisper to the crowd, pass out leaflets, start a riot, and set them free.
Sunnanväder and Mickilsson had fared no better than Norby and von Melen. “Fly to Trondheim!” the Devil had whispered in their ears when the army of Dalarna had surrendered. Little did they know—though the Devil knew—that the archbishop of Trondheim was one of the silliest men who ever lived. They took the Devil’s advice, crossed the Norwegian frontier, and found shelter with the archbishop, who was pursuing political objectives of his own and thought the fugitives might perhaps prove useful. He met them at his door, a candle in his hand, his white hair flowing nearly to the hem of his nightgown, and kissed each of them on both cheeks. All that winter the archbishop treated his guests like princes, sitting up half the night with them, arguing fine points of theology and politics, giving them great feasts on holy days, introducing them proudly to every stranger who landed at that frozen outpost on the edge of the Arctic Ocean. When summer came, he imprudently delivered up Master Knut on the rash supposition that he would be tried in Sweden by an ecclesiastical court. He was tried by the råd—the king himself served as prosecuting counsel—and was speedily condemned to death. In September what had happened to Master Knut somehow slipped the archbishop’s mind and he delivered up his second guest to Gustav. Sunnanväder, too, was at once condemned to death.
So now they entered Stockholm on the backs of asses, Sunnanväder wearing a floppy straw crown and carrying a battered wooden sword such as children might play with, Master Knut in an archiepiscopal mitre made of birch-bark. The crowd laughed and shouted, for here in the capital, the people were all solidly on the side of the king. A mangy dog ran up to bark at the animal on which Sunnanväder rode. Suddenly what came out of its mouth was not barking but speech. “Never mind!” yelled the dog. “They laugh now, these morons. Let us see who does the laughing tomorrow!”
Sunnanväder, weeping, did not bother to look down. Mickilsson, riding beside him, opened his mouth in astonishment. When he could speak, he said, “Peder, am I dreaming?”
Sunnanväder wept and said nothing.
When the parade of humiliation was over, they were shipped unceremoniously, like animals, to Uppsala for beheading.
“So much for my human enemies,” said Gustav when the second head fell.
Lars-Goren said nothing, and the king turned to look at him in a way that commanded speech. “There are always more,” Lars-Goren said. At the last moment, a strange, rapt expression had come over Knut Mickilsson’s face. Lars-Goren’s mind would not let loose of it.
“Nevertheless,” King Gustav said, “the time has come to seek out the Devil.”
Lars-Goren looked down at the severed head in the sawdust. “Surely he’s here,” he said.
Gustav’s look became sharper. “In me, you mean? Speak plainly, old friend and kinsman!”
Around the steeple of the church, sparrows flew crazily, unwilling to rest. Lars-Goren pointed up at them. “In the birds—in you—in the cobblestones under our feet, perhaps. Who knows where the Devil ends and the rest begins?”
King Gustav’s frown was dangerous. “You have your orders,” he said, “you, my best friend, and Bishop Brask, my best enemy. You’ll manage. I think so.”
Quickly, for fear that he might begin to make threats, King Gustav turned on his heel and hurried away.
PART FIVE
1.
BECAUSE IT WOULD BE USELESS to try to flee to Europe, especially for Lars-Goren, who had no friends there, Lars-Goren and the bishop fled north, on the pretext that there, where his home was reputed to be, they were most likely to find the Devil.
It was a bitter trip for Lars-Goren. They followed the same route he had taken in happier times, when King Gustav was newly crowned and full of high hopes and idealistic plans for Sweden. It was almost the same season as when he’d ridden north before, to be united again, for a little, with his family; the summer was just a little farther along—there was fog in the valleys, mornings and evenings, and sometimes, as they passed through open farmland, a sharp smell of autumn. Sometimes tears filled his eyes as he rode, his thoughts dwelling on his wife and children, his household servants, and his peasants. Even the foolish flattering priest whom he’d visited on his last trip and whom he’d known since childhood, Father Karl, who was always trying to advance himself by making up stories of what others had said—even that man Lars-Goren remembered fondly now. “I’ll miss him,” he was saying to himself. For he knew he could hide only so long at his own home castle. Gustav, in his present tyrannical mood, would be sure to hound them. Gustav’s plan might be mad—so Lars-Goren believed it—but the king was perfectly serious about it. After a time, their failure to report success in their struggle with the Devil would turn the king against them, and all the force of his frustration would come down on their heads. It was a strange thing that a king should have such a power—that the people should voluntarily grant him such power—but it was a fact of life, clearly, and had been so for centuries, all over the world. Thus in time Lars-Goren would become a danger to his household by being there; to save them, he would have no choice but to press on, God knew where. His responsibilities would fall to Erik. “God bless him,” Lars-Goren thought. Bishop Brask glanced at him, then tactfully looked away. They rode on, moving toward Uppsala, in silence.
In this cloud of gloomy thoughts, Bishop Brask was something like a lightshaft of relief. He was not a man Lars-Goren greatly liked or even admired, though he was clearly no fool; but he was at least a distraction, a point of interest. For hours at a time he would ride without a word, lost, perhaps, in his own gloomy thoughts. He rode with his back very straight, like a man in pain, or like a prisoner riding with a rope around his neck. He seemed to look neither to left nor right nor off into the distance, but only at his horses ears. His attire was elegan
t, like a rich lord’s, yet when one looked more closely, as Lars-Goren had ample occasion to do, it was not all it might be: the collars and cuffs had been shrewdly repaired, the cloth stretching over his knees was thin, no more substantial than a fine lady’s hankie. He rode the same horse he’d been riding when Lars-Goren had first met him beside the high mountain lake in Dalarna, the splendid black stallion he called Crusader; but the horse was old now, and though he still habitually fought the bit and sometimes rolled back his eyes, recalcitrant, there was no longer spirit in the horses rebellion; it seemed more crotchety, like the fussing of an old man no longer aware that he’s fussing. He snatched leaves from the branches of trees as he passed, and Bishop Brask, each time, would give a perfunctory little jerk at the reins; but neither of them was any longer interested in the struggle. When they cantered, even for short distances, the bishops horse breathed harshly and took crafty advantages, favoring his forelegs as he came out of jumps, breaking stride for swamp-ground, throwing his head for leverage as they climbed steep hills. As if respectfully, Lars-Goren’s horse Drake held in a little, though Drake, at ten, was at the height of his powers. Crusader was perhaps sixteen. The bishop found excuses, perhaps without knowing it, for moving his horse no faster than he had to, and Lars-Goren, half-unconsciously fell in with this. It was only when he realized that they wouldn’t reach Uppsala until the middle of the night that he saw clearly how slowly they’d been moving, and the reasons. But no matter, he told himself. There might come a time when speed would make a difference, but except for Lars-Goren’s strong wish to see his family, there was no great hurry just yet. At times, as if to distract Lars-Goren from the slowness of the pace, the bishop would look over at him with his milky old eyes and speak. Once he said, “I’ve been interested, watching this hobby of the king’s—breeding livestock. I visited one of the farms, outside Vadstena. He’s a fascinating man, King Gustav. One wonders how much he understands, how much he merely acts.”
Lars-Goren raised his eyebrows, waiting, inviting more. The bishop for a moment sucked his lips inside his teeth, looking down at Crusader’s mane; then he continued: “It may be more important than people think, this business of breeding livestock. It’s been a favorite occupation of kings for centuries, clear back to the Greeks, and as I once mentioned in one of my books—perhaps you’ve read it—‘what kings do for sport will in the end stand the world on its ears.’ Heaven knows what I meant, exactly, but in this case it may well apply.” He nodded thoughtfully, smiling a little, as if the conversation were ended.
“I’m not sure I follow,” Lars-Goren said.
For a moment Brask said nothing, musing in private. “Just this,” he said at last, as if reluctantly, already slipping toward boredom. “If you look at it philosophically—not just at how breeding can produce a particularly meaty strain of pigs or an extra-large bull, not just at how, in the short run, a wolf can be transformed in just a few generations to a domestic hunter … if you look, instead, at the long-term implications. …” He compressed his lips and looked suddenly cross. “The Church, if it were paying attention—which it never does, of course—would be shocked to the soles of its boots by this breeding of livestock.”
They rode awhile in silence, Lars-Goren, for his part, pondering why it was that the bishop had such difficulty bringing himself to put his thoughts into words. It was not for lack of thoughts, Lars-Goren had known that since the first day he’d met him. But words seemed to come from the bishop’s heart as if weighted by field-stones. Even to say, “Good morning,” it seemed the old man had to take a deep breath, overcome inertia.
There was a whir in the grass to the right of them and a flock of partridges flew up, wings roaring. As if the noise and sight had renewed his strength, the bishop asked rhetorically, “What does it suggest, this stock-breeding? It suggests that, given enough time, we could transform the world, change every tree, every flower and insect. Mate the dogs with long noses, generation on generation, and in time you have a species of long-nosed dogs. Is it that that draws kings to the sport of breeding stock? Have they seen to the heart of the mystery? Have they noticed that they’re on to the fundamental secret of God? You look at me in alarm, Lars-Goren, as if you think I’ve gone mad. I haven’t. Nothing like that. But think: suppose it’s the same with ideas, governments, even virtues. Surely it’s that these Kings have guessed, though if you asked them they might not understand it.”
“You’ve lost me,” Lars-Goren said.
“No matter, just an old man’s nonsense,” said the bishop. After a time he said, “Put it this way: We hear the expression ‘Might makes right.’ Suppose it’s true—I mean profoundly true. Suppose there is in fact no good in the world except that which survives. We create a horse stronger than other horses, put him in a field with those lesser horses, and he kills them. They’re dead forever then, unable to throw their line. Suppose it’s the same with governments. Create a form of government more effective than all others, in due time it will destroy or at any rate outlive all the others. What more could any king ask when he dies than to be remembered as the man who created such a government as that?”
“Yes, interesting,” said Lars-Goren.
Bishop Brask nodded, his face slightly glowing, as if even he were for a moment interested. “And ideas,” he said. “What of ideas?” His face took on an apologetic look, as if not by his will but by its own accord. “I’ve been working, as you know—” He gave a little shrug, then forced himself to continue, “I’ve been working on Gustav’s translation of the Bible into Swedish. One encounters some rather peculiar problems. It’s nothing new, you understand—nothing I’m the first man in the world to discern. Alcuin, Grosseteste, Bacon—they were all on to it, though their conclusions were perhaps not exactly the same as mine. The Hebrew’s not all of a piece, that’s the heart of it. The language and ideas change not by decades but by centuries. In a single sentence the language may jump hundreds of years. You follow my drift?”
Lars-Goren considered, then shook his head.
“What I’m saying is, Holy Scripture grew. Like a plant. Like a horse. It changed, sometimes drastically. There seem to be startling cuts, shifts of opinion, as if God’s spirit, dictating, kept changing its mind.”
“Possibly you’ve made some mistake,” said Lars-Goren.
Bishop Brask looked at him. “No,” he said. “It’s no mistake.”
“And what do you make of it?” Lars-Goren asked.
Bishop Brask stared hard at his horse’s ears. “I think the whole book is a record of trials and errors,” he said.
“You sound like a Lutheran,” said Lars-Goren.
For a time Bishop Brask said nothing. Then: “No, worse.”
Darkness was falling. They were still a good twenty miles from Uppsala. Lars-Goren urged his horse to a brisker pace. As if without noticing, the bishop did the same.
2.
THEY SLEPT THAT NIGHT in one of the elegant stone houses in the garden of the cathedral, a walled-in park with trees and headstones, some of them old arrow-shaped Viking stones. The night air was heavy with the scent of horses. It crossed Lars-Goren’s mind—an idle thought, but one not a little distressing to him—that here in the walled cathedral garden they were “in sanctuary.” Theoretically at least, no sheriff or general from Gustav’s government could touch them. It wouldn’t be a bad place to live out one’s life, all things considered—heavy-beamed old trees, a creek with clean-swept bridges, statues here and there, lit by flickering torchlight, some of them finer than anything at the palace in Stockholm, if Lars-Goren was any judge.
An old serving man opened the door for them and bid them come in. Behind him in the darkness, people were moving about, lighting candles, stoking the fire, softly calling to one another. It was queer, all this fuss for two more or less unimportant travellers, Lars-Goren thought. He soon discovered they were not as unimportant as he’d imagined.
Four priests came forward and greeted Bishop Brask with great respect
, almost fear, as if to the clerics of Uppsala he was of a rank with the Pope himself. Some knew him, it seemed, for the force and cunning of his political activities, some for his scholarship. The young priest who was placed in attendance on them, rousted out of bed, puffy-eyed with sleep, was, it turned out, one of those involved with the bishop on the Uppsala translation project. He could not seem to do enough for his master, and though he was solicitous, too, about the welfare of the king’s advisor Lars-Goren, one could see at a glance that in the priest’s eyes—in all the priests’ eyes—Lars-Goren was a humble commoner in comparison with the bishop.
Bishop Brask was gray with weariness and walked slightly tilted, as if his back were hurting him. He seemed to want nothing more than sleep; yet at the priests’ urging he seated himself compliantly and drank a glass of brandy, then another and another, and talked at length, mainly with the young man involved with translation, sometimes heatedly—whether from an old man’s weary exasperation or from frustration at the complexity of the problems involved—about the book of First Corinthians. Lars-Goren sat forgotten in a corner of the candlelit room, listening, with his hands on his knees. The text they were discussing was one he had never heard before and would have considered at any other time, not worth haggling over, since it was a text never used in sermons. But today’s context charged it with meaning in Lars-Goren’s mind, though the meaning was nothing he had words for. The text read, roughly, “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which works in all.” Like the priests, Lars-Goren sat forward, hanging on the specialists’ words, his brandy glass on the table beside him, forgotten.