Anna Stina feeds Maja and Karl until the milk inside them makes a clucking sound as she rocks their contented bodies to sleep. A hot stone, round and smooth and wrapped in the blanket, gives them warmth. She sets the burrow’s cover of woven branches into place, testing their strength one by one, and strews the top with leaves to conceal the entrance. She studies the position of the sun. Three hours, four at most, then she has to be back. A final, anxious look at the opening that can no longer be distinguished from the rest of the hill, and then she hurries away towards the City-between-the-Bridges in the knowledge that every moment counts.
The crowds are already great on the bridges over the Stream, and as she tries to make her way over to the Knights’ Isle she has reason to be thankful for her slender body, slipping easily between elbows and hips. From his stone plinth the bronze image of a king of old gazes out indifferently over the hustle and bustle. At the bridge, members of the Royal Dragoons are standing to attention alongside the guns that have been rolled into place to bar the flow of people. She passes by unnoticed. On the other side of the water, it is as if the ground has been raised and covered in human heads of all kinds. Not a cobblestone can be seen for the throng. As she turns around, she can see how street urchins have climbed onto the roofs to straddle the ridges for a better view. The square itself is packed to bursting, from those who have been pressed up against the church to those shoving each other in panic to avoid being pushed into the canal or over the railing of the bridge. From time to time, screams and splashes bear witness to the fact that not everyone succeeds, followed by laughter and hilarity from fishermen who have rowed over in their boats to save the drowning from their fate at the price of the contents of their pockets.
The alleys continue to empty people out into the crowd, so many of them that Anna Stina can’t believe the city can accommodate them all. In the middle of the square, the scaffold looms over the masses. On the steps of its wooden structure, the provost waits, hooded. Beside the pillory also stands a gold-decorated officer with his hands behind his back. He looks out across the heads of the people as he restlessly shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Around the platform, the guardsmen stand in a group, each one carrying a long pole, soon to be collectively presented as a living fence to keep the crowd at bay.
The people are of a different kind than Anna Stina is used to, the atmosphere different to the public punishments she has witnessed before growing old enough to choose not to attend. It’s not only the mercurial mob here, excited to forget their daily toil by satisfying a shared bloodlust. It’s as if all of Stockholm has come out. High and low are both in attendance. Every window in the palace wings lining the square is packed with gentlefolk leaning out as far as they dare to catch a better view, and those who can’t get in have arranged their carriages so as not to jostle with commoners. There are as many women as men.
An unrest spreads through the crowd, like water disturbed by a tossed pebble. The cart has been spotted, but the woman in black and brown that is seen at the gate of the courthouse eschews the transportation and strides out of the gate herself, walks down the stairs, and on towards the scaffold. The guardsmen link their poles to make a chain, pushing at the throng with all their might. A path is cleared sufficient for the condemned to walk across the square with an officer on each side, to the pillory.
Anna Stina begins to make her way forward, closer and closer, ducking under elbows and dancing past knees. She needs to reach the front to be able to see. The voices of the people murmur around her. A man in a handsome coat and embroidered waistcoat whispers theatrically to a companion, “Shall we have Paris in Stockholm now? The aristocracy sent to the scaffold for the amusement of the mob. Hell! Dark times indeed, my brother. I’ve never thought well of little Reuterholm, but not even I ever accused him of being a Jacobin.”
A little while later she passes a fat man in stained clothing who prompts laughter from his peers by shouting at the prisoner.
“Malla! Malla Rudenschöld! When’ll it be my turn? In all of Stockholm, it is only Duke Karl and me who haven’t fucked you yet!”
A small group of women point the finger.
“Harlot!”
Another, a few rows closer, hears the exclamation and hisses in her companion’s ear.
“Shh! If she had had the sense to be more of a whore she would have been free as a bird. Had it been me, I’d have spread my legs for the duke, closed my eyes, and pretended that it was Armfelt I was squeezing between my thighs.”
Rumors are flying from lips all around Anna Stina. Someone claims that Baron Reuterholm demanded the death penalty but was forced to see reason at the last moment. In revenge, he has made sure that the rods with which Magdalena Rudenschöld will soon be flogged have been soaking in brine all night.
“Traitor! Serves you right for selling out your motherland!”
“Russian whore!”
“Now it’s time to taste a different kind of rod!”
She makes her way closer. Like a ghost, she glides through the crowd until she stops an arm’s length from the array of pikes. Any closer, and all she’ll see is the sweaty face of an infantryman. Only a couple of feet away, Rudenschöld is led up to the scaffold.
As if a single entity, movement ripples through the crowd. It sways back and forth. Sudden pushes from one side force everyone to stagger forward and back in order to stay on their feet. Anna Stina finds herself leaning on a servant-girl her own age, brightly dressed, in open disobedience of the sumptuary law, in a dotted calico jacket with French sleeves and blue trim over a cotton skirt in red and white. When Anna Stina looks around she finds others like her, others who have realized that there is safety in numbers and that the watchmen on this day have better things to do than chastise the well-dressed. Their eyes meet as they are knocked together shoulder to shoulder. Anna Stina leans closer to make her voice heard above the din of the people.
“Who is she? What has she done?”
The young woman blinks at her in surprise, and giggles.
“What’re you talking about? Have you been living under a rock?”
Before Anna Stina has time to answer, the young woman leans closer and cups her hands confidingly over Anna Stina’s ear, happy to have found someone for whom the story has not been told to death.
“You know Armfelt? Old King Gustav’s best friend, the most handsome man in the realm. Until last year, Malla Rudenschöld was the most celebrated lady at court, and both Duke Karl and Armfelt competed for her favor. Of course she chose Armfelt—who wouldn’t? Well, Armfelt is exiled, trying to muster allies to put an end to the tyranny of Reuterholm. Now they say that Malla has been his confidante in Stockholm, and that she has done everything she can to further his cause.”
The girl cranes her neck to get a better view of Rudenschöld’s labored way up the stairs.
“You know, when Reuterholm’s men broke into Armfelt’s estate, they found more than a thousand of Malla’s love letters in a rosewood chest bound with red velvet. A thousand! Can you believe it? And he saved them all, to read them over and over. Some of the best ones have been printed as broadsheets. Isn’t it romantic?”
The young woman’s look of anticipation changes into open disappointment when Magdalena Rudenschöld can finally be seen in her entirety on the platform.
“I thought she’d be more beautiful. To think that Armfelt would fall for someone like that.”
The young woman hushes Anna Stina even though she is the only one speaking.
“They’re starting.”
Anna Stina has never seen anything like it. In her experience, the kind of people who gather around the scaffold are of one mind, all spite and excitement. The mood on this square is different; a hesitation, an ambivalence. A young officer with a weak chin and receding hairline can barely conceal his emotion as he leads Malla Rudenschöld up to the pillory to leave her in the charge of the provost. The latter hesitates as he approaches her with a chain and neck iron to fetter her to the pillory, and when she shrinks from his touch, he stops altogether. Instead of locking the iron around her neck, he stands confused. No one comes to his aid. Maybe he had been expecting the applause of the audience at this moment. Finally he takes a step back and leaves his prisoner unbound. Everything stands still. The silence is unbroken. Sweltering, like the calm before a storm.
Magdalena Rudenschöld stands there in brown clothes and a black coat, a garb completely different from the kind she has worn for balls and at court. Her hair is blond, cut short and combed to hang down on either side. Her skin is pale from the months spent in confinement. For close to half an hour, she just stands there, mostly with her eyes downcast, but sometimes looking out at the crowd of thousands. Twice she is given a drink of water. No one touches her, there are no whipping rods to be seen. Finally she sways, her legs can no longer bear her weight, and she sinks down on the planks without a sound. The nearest officers hurry over, fan her face, and lead her back to the wagon she had refused before. It trundles off, accompanied by the curses with which the driver and the city guardsmen try to force people to step aside. The crowd draws Anna Stina with it, and she has no other choice but to follow it slowly towards the Lock. In the distance, she can see a flock of guttersnipes and chimney sweeps’ apprentices running out into the street in front of the wagon and beginning to march as if on parade: one a drum major with a broom held high, the others hung with wood shavings for decoration. The policemen who are following the procession turn a blind eye. Slightly behind Anna Stina, a man who has been watching the same events over the shoulder of a friend, leans forward.
“Doesn’t Reuterholm understand how clear it is that he has bribed both the police and the beggar children from the state’s coffers? If the man had had an ounce of sense he could have staged a more believable performance.”
His friend spits in the gutter.
“I don’t know about you, but as a subject of the realm, I have a hard time taking it as a compliment that the highest man in the land is an imbecile.”
“God help this poor bloody country.”