A ride was found at the Customs House. For a couple of weeks, wagon wheels have been replaced by sleigh blades. The Stablemaster’s Inn, the last stop that separates Stockholm from the wilderness, sells bread, meat, and tobacco, as well as wine to wash it down. The road is in poor condition. The mild weather of the previous week has turned to cold and the blades rattle across frozen ice formations that are at times sharp and at times wavy. The horses have trouble finding purchase on the ground. Mile markers of wood, iron, or stone pass slowly by. Every ten miles or so there are slumbering roadside inns and rest stops, where time becomes drawn out as tired horses are changed and the driver fills the servants in on the latest gossip from the city.
Winge knows the road well. He has beaten this path often during his student years in Uppsala and the fact that certain portions of the way are ploughed more regularly than others is no surprise to him. A distant sun rises in the east and lights the dead landscape for a couple of hours. The light wanders from one shoulder to the other and pushes long shadows in the opposite direction. The forest, ancient and indifferent, lies quietly along both sides of the road. Winge’s pocket watch, his ticking Beurling, taken apart and put back together so many times, lies open on his lap until the light becomes too dim to read the position of the hands. When the stars begin to appear, Winge and Cardell pull the furs and blankets of the sled more closely around them, each lost in his own train of thought, interrupted only by the driver’s utterances to his horses. The moon is new and barely large enough to cast any light.
Cecil Winge finds himself returning to the confidences he shared with Cardell only a few hours ago. He remembers how it was his wife who became furious when he came upon them in the act. As for himself, he only felt an endless grief, and that seemed to irritate her even more. Should he have demonstrated his feelings with brute force, whipped the corporal from the bed and beaten him bloody? Violence has never appealed to Winge on his path of rationality. Now he wonders if there is a place where love allows itself to be translated into violence, a place out of reach of his own. Somewhere far away, a lone howl rises towards the moon. He recalls Joseph Thatcher’s words of farewell and shivers.
“You are indeed a wolf after all . . . One day your teeth will be stained red and then you’ll know with certainty how right I was.”
The sled continues through the evening. One after the other and the sixty miles are put behind them. At the outskirts of Sala, built on the edge of a mine, the driver directs them into a square yard between a house and stables, pulls on the reins, and turns towards his passengers.
“We won’t get closer than this to your destination. For my part it’s time to find a bed for the night and to feed my horses.”
Inside the warmth of the inn, guests are still up, eating their supper. A generously proportioned woman rules the establishment and snorts when asked about Birdsong.
“There is nothing for you there, much less at this time of night. No one’s found it worth the trouble to visit Birdsong for a long time.”
“If there is no ride to be had, perhaps we could borrow a horse each?”
“In this cold, and to guests whose names I haven’t heard before? Not for all the money in the land.”
Winge counts out some coins on the rough tabletop until the value of the horses is exceeded. The corners of the woman’s mouth climb higher in her lined face until she gives Cardell and Winge a shallow curtsy that is not without humor.
“Apparently there is more money in the land than I would have guessed.”
The two horses are broad work animals and speed is not among their virtues. The smaller roads have long since been buried in snow and will not see the light of day until spring. Cardell and Winge follow the directions that the collective wisdom of the inn has dispatched. They ride along in the moonlight, with a hill in the distance to their left and the North Star straight ahead, until after what must be an hour or more a line of linden trees appears in the snow. The horses plow their own path until they reach the trees, where the ground lies flat. At the far end of the pathway there are buildings, dark and quiet. The manor house looms on the other side of a courtyard with a fountain that is covered in a crust of ice. Winge pulls on the reins and forces his horse to a slow stop.
“Does this look familiar?”
Mickel Cardell, unused to the saddle and secretly happy that faster animals had not been possible to find, swings his leg across the horse’s back, lowers himself onto the ground, and ends up with one boot stuck in an uncooperative stirrup.
“From Blix’s letters? Yes, the poor bastard described the place well. But there can’t have been anyone here for a long time. It’s as silent as the grave, but no smoke is coming out of the chimneys, I can count at least a dozen broken windows, and no signs of light or footsteps are to be seen.”
“And yet here we are. Let us not turn back until we have made sure. The house is large. We have much ground to cover.”
The front door is slightly ajar. The snow has accumulated into drifts on both sides, and they have to apply their combined weight to force one of the door halves to yield enough for them to enter. The hall is enormous and deserted. Winge stands still, listening.
“As you say, it is difficult to perceive any human presence. Let us begin from below, Jean Michael. I will take the corridor to the left, you the right, and then we will work our way up. We will meet at the stairs before we ascend to the next floor. From the placement of the chimneys, you will soon encounter the kitchen. See if you can find any lanterns or anything else to make light.”
A door takes Cardell into the first room on the right. A drawing room, he guesses, once upon a time used by the family to greet their guests. Ice and, before that, rain and damp have run down the walls and onto the floor where the boards are swollen to the point that some of them are curved like bows. In the dim light, everything has the same gray color: the curtains that hang in rags around the windows, the furniture in which mice and rats have built their nests, the paintings with canvases buckled by the weather and wind. Farther into the house, gray turns to black. He feels his way along the wall and encounters book spines in a row on a shelf and to his joy also a small candlestick holder made of brass, cold enough to stick to his palm for a moment. The wax is fragile and frozen, and the sparks from Cardell’s many attempts to light the wick with his flint and steel illuminate the moldering shelves in frozen moments. Finally, the fire takes. A hesitant flame flutters upwards.
With his arm, he cradles the light to protect it from the draft and walks farther in. Everything is quiet, dead, cold. The frost has penetrated deep into the walls. The roof must leak like a sieve. Behind an empty pantry and all kinds of storage areas, there is a staircase that goes both up to the next floor and down into a cellar. He stands without being able to make up his mind, then decides to explore the cellar. The light conjures barrels and shelves from the dark and, to his delight, Cardell sees that they are groaning with bottles. Many of them are frozen solid but the deeper he goes, the more bottles there are that have survived the neglect. Cardell selects one, breaks the neck, and puts it gingerly to his lips, careful not to cut himself. Tokay! With a sigh of pleasure, he turns his back to the cellar and returns to the stairs.
A sound comes from above. A footstep on the creaking boards or a piece of furniture that has been knocked over. Cardell realizes that his adventure with the candle and bottle of wine has made him forget the time. Winge must have tired of waiting for him by the stairs after inspecting his half of the house and decided to meet him in the kitchen. He takes a few more sips and continues up. The small windows in the stairwell let in the moonlight, and together with the wine, they make him feel better about this hopeless undertaking. The light he carries in his hand has deprived him of whatever night vision he has had and blinds him just as much as it lights his way.
“Don’t move.”
It isn’t Cecil Winge’s voice. A quiet monotone, and something else as well: a difficulty in getting the words out, perhaps because of the cold.
“Blow out the candle and turn around.”
Cardell does as he is told. In the sudden darkness it is hard to see who has spoken. His figure is outlined against a window, behind which the world is divided in two between a dark sky and a radiant field of snow.
“You may not be able to see what I am holding in my hand. It is a carbine with the barrel pointed directly at your chest.”
Cardell squints in order to see better. The man is of average height with a moth-eaten wolfskin fur thrown over his shoulders. Under this, his clothing matches the rest of the house. What was once magnificent is now falling apart. The breeches are shiny with wear, buttons are missing, seams are dissolving. The man’s face is weak and appears old beyond his years.
“I can see it now. We had those in the navy. It’s a handsome weapon but not exactly the latest model, I see.”
“Don’t be fooled by the state of this place. It has no bearing on this piece. It served my ancestor well, from Narva to Fraustadt, and has never once failed. Have you come to steal wine? Are you alone?”
Cardell’s pulse is throbbing against his eardrums. He is adept at this kind of lie and does not hesitate for a single heartbeat.
“Yes, I came in the vain hopes of finding something that can help me manage the winter. It’s been a long time since I had any friends.”
“Parts of your clothing belong to a watchman’s uniform, if I’m not mistaken. What is such a person doing so far from the city?”
“Perhaps he has left his post and tried to survive as best he can after his earnings have long since been spent on wine. I was told the house was empty and that no one would miss what was taken from here.”
“Turn around now and go back the same way you came. There’s no need to look over your shoulder. I am here, beyond your reach and with the carbine pointed at your back. There is a little shed close to here, at the edge of the fields. That’s where we’re headed.”
Cardell gives him a thoughtful look.
“That musket has quite a fickle mechanism. In the navy, it was said that the gunpowder failed to ignite at least once in every five shots you try.”
The man stands as still as Cardell for a while until his toneless voice is heard again.
“There is a dunghill not far from the place we are headed. It has been many yards deep for generations, fed by the uncleanliness of both animals and humans. Not even the winter cold manages to still its putrid warmth. It bubbles and smokes from inside. Worms older than the linden trees live there. I am not unprepared for visitors. I keep my bullets in that dung heap, and every day I go there with my carbine and exchange my bullets for fresh ones from the heap. Your death in fever and chills is assured if one of them so much as grazes you. The wound will begin to fester, then become gangrenous, and your passing follows only after hellish suffering. My gun has never failed yet. Maybe fate wants this to be the first time. The risk is yours to take.”
Cardell considers the value of his life for a few seconds before he shrugs, turns, and heads down the stairs.
They walk across the snow. The stars and the moon light their way towards the barn, the first of a number of smaller outbuildings. In front of the door there is a heavy latch.
Cardell has trouble grabbing it with one arm but puts his shoulder under the wood and heaves it out of its socket. The door glides open. Cardell is hit by a stench so acrid he lays his sleeve over his nose.
“Jesus.”
“What is your name anyway?”
“I am Mickel Cardell.”
“Well, Mickel Cardell. I have a proposition for you. I want you to think it over carefully before you answer. I wish I could offer you something better, but I have to stay here for a little while longer, waiting for another guest, and I don’t want to risk you returning here with others in tow.”
Somewhere deep inside the shed, Cardell perceives movement. Something large is waking up in there and drawing closer. The links of a chain jangle as it is stretched to its full length. He sees the dog—impossibly huge—with eyes like glowing coals and saliva running out of the corners of its mouth.
“This is Magnus, Mickel Cardell. He will become your tomb, so to speak, once he has consumed your remains. You are a large man. I would prefer not to drag your body across the floor to him, and therefore I offer you this. Go over to the wall and then step as closely to Magnus as you can without him being able to reach you. There you will get on your knees. I will shoot you in the neck, so that you will fall forwards within reach of his chain. It will be a clean death, a quick and humane end, and neither one of us will be stained with your blood. If your inclination instead is towards desperate action, I will shoot you in the stomach and leave you to the cold, the pain, and the chills. Magnus is large enough to keep the shed warm. Unless the bullet lands badly, you will not freeze to death tonight. Perhaps not tomorrow either.”
The hair stands up on the back of Cardell’s neck. He doesn’t know how to answer. He sees a flicker before him and the dancing dots fill the darkness behind the dog with meaning. Black wings in an abyss. Death pulls closer, the same force that almost closed its bone-white fingers around him in the waters around Svensksund. With shaking legs, he places one foot in front of the other and sinks to his knees by the wall, where each knot in the wood has become an eye socket of the grim reaper.
“A little closer, if you please. Both Magnus’s fur and the one I wear have seen better days, but that is no reason to soil them.”
He shuffles closer, inch by inch, on his knees. Magnus’s drooling jaws and greedy predator’s eyes are very close, with a breath that stinks of spoiled meat and blood. A moment later, behind Cardell’s shoulders, there comes the sound of movement and the rustle of frozen clothes. When he turns his head, he sees the outline of Cecil Winge in the open door and sees that even the man in the wolfskin coat has turned around to size up the intruder. A shot is fired with a wet crash. Red is spattered around the room.
It seems to Cardell that the shot reverberates in echo after echo, and that the silence then lingers for an impossibly long time. The smoke of the gunpowder rises towards the beams before it dissipates. He is dead, he knows that, and he understands that the reason he does not feel anything is because he is already beyond pain’s domain, in the place to which he has so longed to go while the Ingeborg’s anchor kept him chained to life. Along his legs he feels the warm flow from the shot that must have struck him in his lower back. Yet he feels no wound, even when his fingers probe for one, and soon his nose tells him that the wet is something other than blood. Alive and unharmed, he hears Cecil Winge’s voice break the silence.
“Of all things you might have shot here tonight, I would have considered the dog the least likely.”
“Magnus has served his purpose. Your name is Cecil Winge. You are the one I have been waiting for. My name is Johannes Balk. The responsibility for Daniel Devall’s fate is mine. You have come to take me to Stockholm. So let us go. There is nothing here for me anymore.”