A country manor outside of Copenhagen, July 1767
Cowslip, almond flowers, cat’s foot, blue violets.”
She recited the names of the flowers she’d gathered on her way in. When she reached the house, she put all of them in a small vase and took it over to the desk. She had made up her mind. She would write to her father, Søren Engel, and tell him who her chosen one really was. It didn’t matter that her betrothed had forbidden her to reveal his identity. Or that he said he was happy with his life as Christian Wingmark, as a lutist and troubadour, and that he would never demand his rightful place.
Before she began to write the letter, she sat and daydreamed about the last time she’d seen him.
He had come to seek her out at Ringve, where her father had sent her before she was to continue on to Copenhagen. They slipped out into the meadow together and did the same thing they’d done when they’d met there in March. Then they lay still, and he told her. He was seven years old when he was aboard a ship that went down during a storm. They hadn’t been far from land, and he’d grabbed hold of a mast that was floating in the waves. After he drifted ashore somewhere along the Swedish coast, he’d simply started walking.
That may have been the greatest mistake of his life. If he’d stayed on the shore, someone would have found him and realized he’d come from the sunken ship. Instead he’d walked inland.
He remembered everything now. All the years in the hospital.
If only he’d remembered back then. Something had struck him on the head when the ship sank, and it took years before he could recall who he was, and by then he was no longer a rich man’s son from Trondheim, heir to the Ringve estate, son of her father’s best friend. He was the boy who didn’t know who he was. A fool. A solitary soul without hope.
He’d arrived in Stockholm as a poor young man. But he could play musical instruments and compose songs. It was his mother who had taught him to play the lute when he was a small boy. At the hospital, he had borrowed an instrument from the pastor who came every week to teach him his letters. Even though he may have forgotten everything else, he hadn’t forgotten the music. And it was how he was able to earn his living for years. Until at last fate had brought him back to Trondheim and the Ringve estate and to her. When he arrived at the estate in March, everything had come back to him.
And then he knew who he was.
But no one had recognized him. How could they? They had spent almost twenty years trying to reconcile themselves to his death.
I will tell them now, she thought to herself. If they know the truth, then we can get married. Her father couldn’t possibly imagine a better husband for her than the heir to Ringve, the estate they had visited so often. Then she wouldn’t have to stay here in Denmark, far away from him, and he could live the life that had been intended for him. Everything would be good. And besides, she was worried. She didn’t know what her father might do as long as he was ignorant of her sweetheart’s true origins. He had been so furious to learn about the child she was carrying, and about their first meeting in March. There was no alternative. They had to be told.
And so she began writing the letter.
Trondheim, July 1767
Søren Engel read the letter from his daughter in silence. Then he got up and gave orders for his horse to be saddled and brought from the stable. He rode at once to Ringve Manor, where the captain received him. Engel handed him the letter and watched as he read it.
“Can this be true?” asked Engel.
“I thought there was something familiar about his face,” said the captain, visibly shaken. “I thought there was something about his face when he fell.”
Engel stood there without uttering another word. He couldn’t help thinking about the last thing Nils Bayer had said to him: “There are many different ways to achieve justice.”
Had the police chief somehow known about this? His thoughts were abruptly cut short by the captain.
“What have we done?” he cried. “What have I done?”
“I think we have killed more than just the father of my daughter’s unborn child,” said Engel. “I fear that we have also killed your son.”
Before Søren Engel rode back to town, he allowed Wessel to keep the letter, as if it might offer him some consolation. The captain then summoned one of the carpenters who was working on the estate at that time. They were busy putting in new paneling in the drawing room. “Take this letter,” he said, “and put it inside the wall. I don’t want to see it ever again.”
“But if you don’t want to see it, wouldn’t it be better to burn it?” “It’s impossible for a person to burn away his sins,” said the captain. “He has to live with them, no matter how dreadful they might be.”
The carpenter cast a frightened look at the man, wondering whether the lord of the manor had gone mad. Then he took the letter and left.