The Willow King

by Meelis Friedenthal

  “That’s enough now,” Laurentius said, hoping she would calm down.

  The woman jumped up and started tugging him again. They walked along the riverbank and Laurentius looked up at the dark clouds, noticing how they collided and intertwined with each other as they rolled past.

  “Wait,” he said. “Stop. I’m not coming any further. I don’t know why I came with you in the first place, but this is far enough now.”

  The woman looked straight at him, ran her hands through her hair, and burst out crying again. She may have been beautiful once, but now she was ravaged by hunger, her cheeks sunken and her skin cracked from the cold and damp. Laurentius helped her up from the ground, and her bony frame turned out to be unexpectedly light, even for him.

  “Child,” the woman started wailing. “My child. She is ill.”

  Laurentius started looking in his pocket for another coin, but he couldn’t help thinking that if the other beggars found out then he would have no respite from their scrounging. Although there wasn’t actually anything unusual about the situation. A woman had a baby and was sent packing. Most likely no one even knew who the father was, or he had refused to recognize the child as his own. In times of famine there wasn’t much left for those sorts of women other than a whore’s life. But that was probably not enough to keep body and soul together, and winter was fast approaching.

  “Take it,” Laurentius said. “Take it, and lead me to your child.”

  He remembered the times he had been ill, how he had waited for someone to come and care for him, but in vain. He broke into a fit of coughing, and the woman looked in his direction, seeming slightly alarmed. It was the first time her face had expressed anything other than emptiness and despondency.

  “I have fever,” Laurentius whispered by way of explanation.

  They walked on a little further and eventually came to a large barn, which, judging by the groaning, sniffling and hawking sounds coming from it, was quite full of people. It appeared to be some sort of temporary dwelling place, and Laurentius recalled how Magnus and the hay trader had told him that the city had established a refuge for the starving women and children arriving from the countryside. There were initially more of them than men, since the men who were fit could always put themselves to use in return for something to eat.

  Laurentius peeped in across the threshold. There was a rancid stench coming from the cold, damp interior, the kind of smell one would normally encounter at a cesspit.

  At first he couldn’t see anything at all, but then clearer outlines gradually started to take shape from the darkness. He guessed that the small humps by the walls must be children. Women were sitting on the bare earth; just a couple of them had bundles of mouldy straw underneath them, probably scraped together from some barn floor or sodden haystack, the kind which was no longer fit for fodder. Laurentius knew very well how difficult it was to get hold of decent straw in Dorpat—he had paid an arm and a leg for the straw for his mattress.

  He cautiously stepped through the doorway, but no one paid him any attention: they were weak and listless from hunger and the chill damp, and they kept themselves to themselves. One old crone looked up and glared at him ill-naturedly.

  “Good evening,” Laurentius said, addressing no one in particular.

  The woman he had come with squatted down by a small figure covered with an old cape. A head covered in blonde hair could just be seen poking above the grimy collar. Laurentius bent down next to them and touched his palm onto the child’s forehead. Even with his fever he could feel the heat against his hand.

  “She needs plenty to drink,” he told the woman, glancing in her direction. It was not clear if she had understood him, but she nodded and said something to the cross-looking old woman in their language. The old woman groaned, pushed herself upright, and went outside.

  Laurentius looked at the child. He could hear her breathing, hurried and husky. Her fever must have already been very high; maybe it was close to the stage when the blood became viscous and stopped circulating. Looking concerned, he reached into his breast pocket and took out a small package containing the pieces of silver willow bark which he had gathered the previous morning. Despite Dimberg’s advice about corpuscular medicine, he had held on to them. They hadn’t yet dried properly, which meant that their effect would be very weak, but it might still be enough for the child.

  “We need some water. Boiled water,” Laurentius said without looking up.

  The woman nodded.

  Laurentius gave her the package and tried to explain what to do with the strips of bark. The woman’s knowledge of German was clearly limited to one or two words, and she didn’t understand much of what he said. But Laurentius eventually managed to explain with gestures how many times a day and for how long she should administer the powdered bark, and a smile appeared on her face.

  Laurentius tried to smile as well, but he only managed to raise one corner of his mouth. He couldn’t be at all sure that the child’s fever would not rise again later: there was too little bark to treat her properly. But he felt it would be unchristian of him not to give his last medicine to the little girl.

  He pushed the sleeping child’s hair off her face, and he touched her forehead again. At that she woke with a start, opened her eyes, and looked up in surprise. Her cheeks were gaunt, and her eyes seemed abnormally large in her narrow face.

  “Kuningas,” the child said, clearly and audibly.

  “What?” said Laurentius, failing to understand the Estonian word.

  “The king,” the woman repeated in German.

  He laughed and shook his head. “I’m no king. I’m just a university student.”

  He gestured to the woman. “Tell her.”

  The woman said something but the child continued looking about with wide, staring eyes, and then she pointed with one finger towards the open door, somewhere into the distance, and repeated.

  “The king.”

  Laurentius looked in the direction she was pointing, but he couldn’t see much through the darkness and fine mist of rain other than some distant trees swaying in the wind.

  THURSDAY, LATE EVENING

  BY THE TIME HE ARRIVED back at the city gates the damp of the muddy road had already started seeping in through the tough leather of his boots. The rain had become more violent, and he wrapped his coat tightly around himself and tried to position his hat so that it would protect his face from the raindrops which the wind was hurling at him. That was the moment when he heard the rumble of drums and the yells of the sentry. This was swiftly followed by the sight of a storm lantern dangling on the end of a halberd, and then the uniformed guardsmen appeared from around the corner. The tiny lantern cast a weak yellow light, and the sentries had to lower it towards Laurentius, until it almost touched his face. They inspected him curiously.

  “Are you a stranger in town?” one of them asked.

  “No, I’m a student; I have just arrived,” Laurentius replied.

  “Well, Mr Student should get himself to his lodgings right away. It’s already nine o’clock. You must have heard the drums just now? That’s to let everyone know to stop loitering in the streets. Or are you hard of hearing?” one of the soldiers said in a tone of voice which would have suited a fairground brawler. He stood there looking straight at Laurentius, waiting for an answer.

  Laurentius turned his head to one side and made a vague gesture with his hand. He didn’t feel the need to get offended; he was anyway too tired by now.

  “I’m already going,” Laurentius said.

  “And that’s the law!” another guard added in a slightly disappointed-sounding voice before turning to leave. They may indeed have been disappointed that they hadn’t managed to wound Laurentius’ pride and start an argument. It was safe to assume that evening sentry duty wasn’t the most pleasant of activities, and taking a student to the detention cells would at least have provided a bit of variety.

  “Be sure to mind your step!” another guard shouted by way o
f farewell.

  Trying hard to force a smile, Laurentius walked on. Before he was swallowed up by the darkness again he managed to spot the sentries peeking in through a door and rattling their ancient halberd around inside. Given how wet the weather was there was no point in them carrying their blunderbusses. Laurentius wasn’t anyway sure whether there were enough firearms in those parts for all the sentries to carry one. The soldiers in Dorpat were mostly Swedish peasants who had already lived there for years, and they constantly got into rows with the students. The trouble had apparently started because the town dwellers, who were mostly of German origin, and those students who came from the local nobility treated the newcomer Swedes with suspicion and disdain, leading to much mutual offence, brawling and rancour. The city’s inhabitants accused the garrisoned soldiers of picking fights, thieving and drunkenness, and normally with good cause. The conflict had originally come about on national grounds, but over the course of time it had spread from the students of German origin to include all members of the academy. By now this class divide was firmly entrenched and seemed impossible to resolve—there was no will on either side to do so. In this context the soldiers took particular pleasure in enforcing the law which required all students to be in their lodgings by nine. The belligerent zeal with which they performed their duties could be quite amusing to behold.

  Laurentius shrugged his shoulders and hurried off in the direction of home. His legs were damp and cold; his forearm ached where he had cut himself with the scalpel the previous night, and his veins felt as brittle as glass. But hopefully he had expelled all the bad blood from them now.

  Now he just needed to walk a little further down Broad Street, and then just before he got to the university’s main building he would have to turn off down the narrow Cloister Street. There, a little before the Gustav I bastion came into view stood a house which had recently been repaired and painted with white limestone, where his lodgings were. He hoped the maid had already lit the fire for the evening, so that his room would be warm. Maybe the straw had been delivered by now as well. Then, for the first time in ages, he would be able to sleep in a warm, soft bed. He hadn’t enjoyed such comfort for longer than he could remember. The long journey, the uncivilized guest houses and the constant rain had left him exhausted. On top of that he had spent the first night at his lodgings feverishly tossing and turning on the hard wooden bed boards, and the whole of the following night was passed sitting in his chair with his arm resting in a bowl of blood. He felt cramp in his stomach as he thought about it. By now he was very tired.

  “Like a living corpse,” he couldn’t help thinking.

  He turned the corner and entered the muddy yard at the back of his lodgings, placing his hand against the wall for support as he tried to avoid the larger puddles. That was when he noticed someone standing there, under the awning by the back door. He felt a hot flush of alarm slowly rise up his body, and he groped instinctively for his sword. But then he just shook his head and smiled ruefully to himself. He was feverish and worn out. Too tired to be properly shocked, too feeble to be capable of any vigorous movements.

  “Hello,” he said wearily.

  He was so exhausted from going to visit the sick child that nothing could surprise him now. Somehow he had even been expecting to see the young woman there again. After the events of the morning the encounter seemed almost inevitable. Laurentius walked up to the steps and leant against the handrail. His boots left muddy prints on the wooden boards, and water was dripping from his hat. But the girl was standing there barefoot, clad in only a thin white blouse, just like the day before.

  “I...” Laurentius started to say.

  It was clear that the combination of seeing the delirious child and his own fever had caused the levels of black bile in his body to rise. It seemed that the bloodletting had not helped at all. All these unexpected encounters, the damp climate and being out at this late hour could only make things worse. He tried to smile, and awkwardly tried to find the right words. But what could he possibly say to her?

  He had felt a similar disquiet and unease back at the barn, and in the end he had just silently put on his hat and left. He hadn’t been able to think what to say then either—the sick child’s mother had turned her back on him and started whispering something in a soothing voice to the girl, who had still been talking deliriously about seeing a king.

  “Do you...” Laurentius started to say, but he failed to start a conversation once again.

  Laurentius was a foreigner in that town, and he felt like an outsider standing in that doorway, just as he had at the barn. By now his fever was running high again, and the hot blood circulating round his veins made him sleepy. As often happened when he was ill, he felt as if half of him were situated in some other place. Somewhere where waking and sober people never went. That was why the sight of the trees had made him so anxious and frightened as he left the barn. He was afraid that he might see something amid them, some movement aside from the rustling and swaying branches and the dripping rain. The child had pointed towards the trees, after all. It was true that children would often rave when they were sick, but they could also be much more receptive to phantasms and spirits than adults. Sick people could often look beyond everyday objects and see things which healthy people could not. Laurentius always turned his gaze from such things, out of fear.

  Healthy souls were often jaded and dulled, but sick and dying people’s souls were fixed weakly to their bodies and could be as responsive as a lute string. They could see demons, sometimes even angels. As he had walked along the riverside path, through the scrubland, Laurentius had looked anxiously about, afraid that his sickness and his melancholy might cause him to glimpse a crown and cape somewhere between the trees. Or there above the sluggish dark river, edged with silver willows, he might see a darker patch of mist, clothes and a face... As he passed the trees where he had cut the bark he almost broke into a run, stumbling on smooth branches and slipping on long, arrow-shaped leaves. He had kept his eyes fixed rigidly on the puddles, watching the soiled toes of his boots as they hurried homewards, feeling a deep sense of unease writhing in his stomach like a snake. What would he do if he too were beckoned? If a hand appeared from the shadows and gestured for him to come? Now that he had looked the woman in the eyes, did that mean that the king and his entourage had already arrived?

  He shook his head.

  When he heard the clanging and prattling of the guards at the gate he had felt some semblance of courage return. But as soon as he set eyes on the young woman standing in the dim light on the steps, his first thought was that the king might be lurking in the shadows behind her. That was what he was expecting to see, and he was afraid.

  “Did you do anything to treat your illness, as I advised you?” the girl eventually asked, clearly deciding that she would have to get the conversation started herself.

  “It appears that I did not. I went to the banquet instead. In the circumstances I couldn’t refuse the invitation,” Laurentius said, finding himself giving a surprisingly logical answer. But he could not ignore the strange feeling that he was standing behind someone’s back, and that that person was speaking on his behalf. As if he had no influence on what he said. “It was a magnificent event.”

  “Was it a pleasant repast?” the young woman enquired.

  Laurentius tried to work out whether he could detect a note of irony in her voice.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Indeed it was. But I have had no appetite recently. I couldn’t eat a thing.”

  “No appetite?” Now he was sure he could hear a ring of irony in her surprised tone. “These days that really is an uncommon complaint.”

  Laurentius smiled despondently. “I know. But everything I eat tastes like mud; it just clogs up my mouth and makes me feel sick.”

  “Maybe my bread and wine won’t make you nauseous? Perhaps you would like to eat something right now?” the girl said, looking at him coyly.

  Laurentius turned his gaze downwards. H
e felt extremely weak, and had to support himself on the stair rail. The day had been too much of a strain for him. He was tired, and still intoxicated from the fever and beer. He gazed down at the wooden boards dejectedly, remembering the basket of fruit and honeycomb he had seen the previous night. But no... he had to try and be rational.

  “I’m sorry...” he mumbled, and sat down on the steps. “I have a fever.”

  “Oh, no need to apologize to me. I’ll see you to your room,” the girl said sympathetically, and gave a friendly nod.

  At first Laurentius thought he should turn down her offer and explain that he could manage on his own, that there was no need for her to help, but he felt so tired. So he supported himself on the girl’s outstretched forearm and tried to smile.

  “You are very kind,” he said.

  They walked up the dark staircase, and in his feverous state the young woman’s arm felt stone cold against his.

  “So do you live here as well?” Laurentius asked, for the sake of conversation.

  “I sometimes come here, yes...” the girl answered somehow absent-mindedly, leaving the sentence tailing off. They walked on, accompanied by the creaking of the wooden staircase. Laurentius could feel a shooting pain in his legs, and he was grateful he had the young woman to support him. Arriving upstairs at the door of his room they came to a standstill, and Laurentius took a deep breath, trying to think of something to say. The situation felt awkward, and he needed to find a polite resolution.

  “If there is anything you need, then let me know. I can make you something to eat as well,” the girl said, filling the silence before Laurentius could say anything.

  “Goodnight,” Laurentius said with a smile, relieved that he had at least said something.

  “Goodnight,” said the girl, and she handed him a small bread roll.

  Laurentius took it without thinking. The bread was warm, as if it were fresh out of the oven. Hot like his fever, he thought. The girl turned to leave, and Laurentius watched her silently descend the stairs.