The Swedish Cavalier

by Leo Perutz

St Michael shook his head. “Much has been said,” he observed, “but none of it may be true.” He rose and turned to the angel. “Accuser, where are your witnesses?”

  “Yes indeed, where are they, your witnesses?” whispered the Swedish cavalier, torn between fear and hope. “Where do you propose to find them, accuser, since no one else was present?”

  “My witnesses are ready and waiting to be examined,” replied the angel with the sword. “Make way for them. They are many.”

  The heavenly host drew back at his signal, forming a wider circle. The angel called down into the depths:

  Heath and meadow, marsh and sand,

  highways, byways, fallow land,

  wind and snow and reed and sedge,

  fire and water, gate and hedge,

  wayside stone and cottage too,

  come before us and speak true!

  At that the mute witnesses, the earthly things, ascended from below with a deal of rumbling and creaking, grating and grinding, hissing and roaring, and the celestial judges understood their language.

  “The witnesses have been examined,” the angel cried above the din, “and have testified. The accused stands indicted of iniquitous conduct.”

  “He is guilty,” the Supreme Judge thundered from on high. “Accordingly, I sentence him as follows: he shall bear the burden of his sins alone for as long as he lives, never acknowledging or confessing them to another soul, only to air and earth.”

  The Swedish cavalier was seized with fear and trembling. He knuckled his temples in despair, and terror transfixed his limbs. The heavenly host lamented and wept all around him–indeed, even the angel with the sword was moved to pity.

  “Almighty Lord,” he cried, “that is too harsh a punishment. Can he hope for no pardon?”

  “For him there can be no pardon,” the thunderous voice replied from on high. “I entrust him to you upon your oath and honour. You are commanded to execute my sentence.”

  The angelic swordbearer obediently inclined his head.

  “Then I will take this man,” he said, “and set him down once more on the grassy heath . . .”

  The Swedish cavalier stretched and rose. He stretched again, rubbed his eyes, and untethered his horse.

  “If it wasn’t a dream,” he told himself as he rode down the hill, “I need no longer fear the wrath of God. He wished my previous existence to remain a secret, what else? Well, so do I, for it would be foolish of me to tell folk who I was and what I used to do! The Last Judgement is another matter altogether. There’s such a blaring of trumpets on Judgement Day, so it’s said, that a person’s ears are deafened, but I never heard so much as a single wail from a bagpipe. No, it was nothing but a phantasmagoria, a dream.”

  All that struck him as odd and inexplicable was that he should have been so horrified in his dream when forbidden to tell anyone about his past life. This puzzled him, but he had no time to ponder the question because another source of concern was preying on his mind.

  The grain in the fields on either side of him, as he rode along, was gloriously ripe and golden. The soil had been well manured and the seed-corn sown at the proper time, the ears were heavy and the farmhands working with a will wherever he looked. Behind the reaper came the sheafer, behind the sheafer the binder, and behind the binder the sheaf-carrier.

  “This landowner rules his workfolk with a rod of iron,” the Swedish cavalier told himself with an aching heart. “Things aren’t as they used to be–I’ve come too late. The young lady has married, and her husband, the new lord of the manor, knows how land should be managed. My luck has deserted me even before it changed for the better.”

  Further on, however, when he came in sight of the thatched village and, beyond the maple trees, the slate roof of the manor house, the fields all around were in their old sorry state. Weeds of every kind–brome-grass, vetch, cranesbill, and fieldmadder–were growing up between the stalks, and the ears were coated with a black, powdery substance which showed that the seed-corn had been unripe, the time of sowing ill-chosen, and the soil poorly dressed.

  The Swedish cavalier straightened in the saddle and spurred his horse into a trot.

  “No!” he thought exultantly. “The estate has no new master she’s still unwed. She fell on such hard times that she was forced to sell off fields and meadows to her neighbours, that’s the answer. All she has left is the land around the manor house itself I’m in time, thank heaven.”

  Now that he was to see her again, his heart leapt like a wild stallion. He stood waiting in the garden, and all the flowery phrases he had rehearsed fled his mind when he saw her tripping along the gravelled path in her dainty red morocco shoes. His one thought was that all his dreams and daydreams had come true, and that this moment had decided his fate. For the first time, he trembled with fear at the thought that she might recognise him. Her erstwhile greeting rang in his ears: “Where do you hail from, you poor man? Quickly, go down to the kitchen and have the maid crumble you some bread in a bowl of soup . . .”

  Summoning up all his courage, he went to meet her with his hat beneath his arm, bowed, and simply stood there. Now was the time for him to speak, but he could not utter a single word, and it was she that spoke first.

  “You must pardon me for having kept you waiting, sir. They told me only just now that a stranger wished to call on me. I was not in the house, you see. I had to shoo the fowls from the garden, they do it so much harm.”

  Yes, that was the voice that had once pleaded for his life. The Swedish cavalier stood there entranced, all eyes and ears. She was as lovely as a summer’s day–the Devil himself would have called down a blessing on such beauty.

  “Custom prescribes that a third party should introduce you to me, I suppose, mais je ne tiens pas à l’étiquette, monsieur.”

  “Would you repeat that, mademoiselle?” he said, awaking from a kind of dream. “My knowledge of French is only passable. I had no competent tutor in my boyhood, so the language leaves my lips more readily than it enters my ears.”

  The girl stared with a touch of surprise at this nobleman who so freely admitted that his French was not of the best and made no effort to pose as a fashionable gallant.

  “You are an officer, sir?” she asked.

  “Indeed I am,” he said, slapping his scabbard, “an officer of the Swedish Crown at the service of God and all good folk.”

  “Have you come far?”

  “I’m fresh from the ranks of His Majesty’s cavalry. I took part in sundry battles, too, without meaning to boast of it. Now, however, I’ve renounced a soldier’s life.”

  “And what brings you here?” asked the girl, unable to account for the stranger’s presence.

  “Since my journey brought me this way, I could not forbear to pay my respects.”

  “I’m truly reconnaissante, sir,” she said, looking down at her red shoes in some confusion.

  For a while they stood there, at loss for something more to say. The garden exhaled a scent of tuberoses, carnations and jasmine. Nothing broke the silence but the distant creak of a draw-well.

  “This is not my first visit to your estate,” the Swedish cavalier said at length in a hesitant voice.

  “Ah, yes,” the girl replied after a moment’s thought. “In my father’s time we received guests here every day, many officers among them. Now, however, we live more modestly.”

  “I was distressed to learn that your ladyship’s father had departed this world,” said the Swedish cavalier. “He was often in my thoughts, being my godfather.”

  “My father was your godfather?” she exclaimed in surprise.

  “Yes, and I have a little ring given me by yourself I treasure it.”

  The girl had gone deathly pale. She clasped her breast and drew a deep breath.

  “I implore you, sir,” she said in a whisper so soft as to be scarcely audible, “tell me who you are.”

  “I had hoped that you would know me again,” he replied haltingly, huskily, his throat constric
ted with fear. “If you could but recall the day we drove down the hill and the sleigh overturned because the horses bolted . . .”

  A cry transfixed the air. An instant later, racked with sobs and trembling in every limb, she flung herself into his arms.

  “Christian!” she cried exultantly.

  “None other,” he said, and at that moment he truly became the Christian von Tornefeld whom he had banished to the bishop’s inferno. His hand stroked her hair with infinite tenderness, and his lips shaped the name he had heard only once before and never before uttered.

  “Maria Agneta,” he said, and she raised her blissful, tearstained face to his.

  As they strolled hand in hand along the gravelled paths and grassy walks, intimately conversing with many a “Do you still remember?”, the Swedish cavalier felt an urge to embrace the very sky. It was as if he had abandoned the gloomy wilderness of his past and emerged into a sunlit meadow.

  They came to a mossy bench overlooked by a nymph of weather-worn sandstone with a timid, melancholy smile on her face. Here he paused, pensively surveying the fragments of a cloven-hoofed faun lying strewn across the grass. Maria Agneta rested her head on his shoulder and pressed his hand.

  “Yes,” she whispered, “you haven’t forgotten. It was here beside the little heathen god that it happened.”

  “It was indeed,” he said, not knowing what she meant. His uncertain gaze roamed from the faun’s horned head to the bench and the nymph and back again.

  “We swore that the love in our hearts would never fade,” she went on, “and you, Christian, told me, ‘I’ll never forget you any more than I can forget my Maker.’”

  “Those were my very words,” he assured her firmly.

  “In the dark days that succeeded my father’s death,” she said as they walked on, “those words were my only source of hope and consolation. I thank God with clasped hands that you’re here at last. You kept me waiting a long time, Christian.”

  “I too have known dark days,” he told her. “I’ve tramped the dusty highroads and slept under many a hedge in rain and snow, but that’s all behind me now.”

  “You would soon have found me gone. I must leave here and earn my bread by laundering clothes and tending children.”

  “Laundering clothes and tending children–a high-born lady like yourself?” he exclaimed in surprise and dismay.

  “Yes, or I must spin and weave. I cannot remain here on the estate.”

  “And why,” he demanded, “can ma cousine not remain here on her estate?”

  “I’m poor now,” she replied. “My means are exhausted. Herr von Saltza, my godfather, owns everything: the roof over my head, the bed in which I sleep. He has my notes of hand, and he keeps urging me to marry him.” She broke off. “Christian, your freckles! Where have they gone? Now I know why I didn’t recognise you at first.”

  “I believe I remember this Herr von Saltza,” he said quickly. A vision of the fork-bearded man took shape in his mind and then faded. “Do I take it that ma cousine has no wish to marry him?”

  “How can you ask me such a thing, Christian!” she replied in a faintly reproachful tone. “I’d rather sleep on oaten straw like a peasant girl than share a swansdown bed with my noble godfather.”

  “My dearest,” he cried, exultantly, taking both her hands in his, “have no fear of Herr von Saltza and your notes of hand. Send for them, I’ll redeem them. How much do they amount to in all?”

  “I cannot say,” she replied. “My bailiff has them recorded in his ledgers. I was forced to sell fields, pastureland and the fish pond, though I don’t know how it came about. There was never any money in the house.”

  “How could it have been otherwise!” he exclaimed with such a wild peal of laughter that she recoiled in alarm. “There’s not one honest man on your estate, did you know that, ma cousine? The bailiff, the clerk, the shepherd–they’re a band of unhung thieves, ma cousine, and that’s why they fail to keep order among the workfolk. Everyone here does as he pleases, didn’t you know?”

  “But how do you know it, Christian?” she asked.

  “I inspected the fields yesterday, chemin faisant, and they’re a pitiful sight. I also came here at dawn today, while ma cousine was still asleep. There was much to see. The clerk keeps four cows of his own and feeds them on your after-grass, did you know? The stableman and the cowman breakfast on omelettes and fried bacon washed down with buttermilk, when their rightful fare is pea, turnip or cabbage soup. The reapers go off to work in the fields with a whole cheese or three dozen eggs or a duck and sell them in the village over yonder, and the bailiff has perforce to turn a blind eye because everyone on the estate knows of his own dishonest dealings. And that’s the fellow whom ma cousine appoints her overseer and pays through the nose to boot!”

  “All this is new to me,” Maria Agneta said humbly. “My guardian, Herr von Tschirnhaus, who has known the bailiff since his childhood, says he’s honest.”

  “Sans doute,” the Swedish cavalier declared with a scornful laugh. “He was honest while he lay in his cradle, never since. But that’s not all. The barns and stables . . . Those holes in the roof! The rain gets in, the fodder rots, and the consequence is cattle-fever. This is the season of the year to sow millet and plant cabbages, mow grass and make hay, yet none of those things has been done, ma cousine, did you know?”

  “You must speak to the workfolk, Christian. You must show them you’re resolved to change things.”

  He dismissed her suggestion with a wave of the hand.

  “Talk does no good, it only parches the throat. I shall have to thrash them into obedience and honesty–I’ll restore order with a rattan cane in my fist.” He swung round abruptly. “You there, fellow! Haven’t you learned to salute your betters?”

  Startled by this rebuke from an unknown gentleman, a passing farmhand whipped off his greasy cap and bowed low.

  “Go find the bailiff,” the Swedish cavalier commanded, “and, when you’ve found him, tell him that her ladyship requires him to bring his books to me and render an account of his dealings. He may await me upstairs in her ladyship’s dining-room.”

  *

  It was two hours before the Swedish cavalier returned to the garden. Maria Agneta ran to meet him.

  “I’ve never in my life worked harder,” he told her, drawing a hand across his brow. “I’d rather brave rough roads for a week in wind and snow then endure all that again. The bailiff’s scribblings have spoiled paper enough to keep every cheesemonger in the Holy Roman Empire supplied for two years, but his ledgers make no mention of his having taken a fifth part of your wool and every fourth churn of your milk, day in day out. With ma cousines permission, I sent him packing. He’s gone.”

  “You must do as you think fit,” she said. “Your wishes are mine.”

  “When every debt has been settled,” he went on, “I shall still have enough to pay for the priest’s ministrations at our wedding, and the musicians, and your wedding dress, and a wedding breakfast for the neighbours–provided, of course, that my wishes and yours are alike in this respect too.”

  “Christian,” she said softly, “I’ve waited so long for you and for this moment. Now that the time has come, I give myself to you gladly. I’ve loved you, you alone, all my life.”

  He bowed his head, and for an instant, despite himself, his thoughts returned to that other man, that lost soul whose name, freedom and honour he had taken for love’s sake.

  “Nowhere on God’s earth,” he went on, “will ma cousine find a man who loves her as dearly as I, and that’s the truth, so help me God.”

  “I know it, Christian,” she said with a smile.

  “But there’s another thing I must tell my dearest bride-to-be,” he said. “I shall have to work like a Trojan, and we shall both have to share our peasants’ black oaten bread for a long time to come.”

  “I’ll eat black oaten bread with you, Christian,” said Maria Agneta, “and I’ll thank God for showering me
with such happiness.”

  *

  One night two months before her confinement, when it was already past midnight, Maria Agneta awoke and lay musing, unable to sleep. She could feel the child stir within her–the child that would be named Maria Christine if it was a girl, and it was a girl she wanted most. In her dreams she could already see her little daughter running across the farmyard in a white taffeta gown and a black and white bonnet, and when she became entangled in her gown and fell the peasants laughed and ran to help her up, and even the geese and goats in the farmyard laughed too. Lying there with her eyes closed and a smile on her lips, Maria Agneta surrendered to the thoughts that ran through her head. A year ago the presses had been empty of linen and napery, but now all was as it should be, for the house had a master once more. Thanks to God, the giver of all good things, her fortunes now reposed on firm foundations. She loved her husband beyond measure and could hardly wait for him to return from his long hours in the fields. At eventide, when she heard his step upon the stair, joyous expectancy made the blood pound in her temples. Now he lay sleeping at her side. She raised herself a little and listened. He was breathing peacefully, but there were nights when he led so turbulent a life in his dreams that he groaned and flung his arms about and cried aloud. On such occasions, or so she surmised, he was back with his king in the Swedish army.

  Everyone, villagers and neighbouring gentlefolk alike, called him “the Swedish cavalier,” for he never wore any coat other than the blue Swedish officer’s tunic in which he had first arrived at the manor–indeed, there were some who ridiculed him for shunning the sunlight because it showed up the darns and patches in that threadbare garment. He was for ever scrimping and saving on the grounds that there must be money enough in the house for the christening feast, but she, Maria Agneta, had secretly purchased a length of blue velvet–at a half-guilder the ell–from a Polish Jew bound for the fair at Leipzig. Though determined that people should see him in a new coat, she was afraid to tell him so. Once, when she had said that a nobleman should look the part, he retorted, “Every cooper and carpenter struts about these days in silk and velvet, so the true nobleman should spite them by wearing a peasant smock.”