Carried to the 64th latitude we found there a good and safe haven in what is known as the Baal’s River on the western side of Greenland. Before we came to this land, approximately two miles from it, a number of Greenlanders approached us in their small boats. Here I saw the people for whose sake I had taken such hardship upon myself. Their first scrutinies put me in a disconsolate frame of mind, as they too indeed seemed disconsolate and pitiful; for what is more wretched than life without the knowledge of God? I could do nothing but sigh, on their behalves and mine.
FROM HANS EGEDE’S JOURNAL, 1721
On the afternoon of the second Friday after Easter, 16 April 1728, Copenhagen’s old palace opens its mouth and shuts it again with a bang. A closed carriage rolls out, drawn by a team of two horses, a carriage without distinguishing marks or monograms of any kind, its curtains drawn. On one window’s sill, beneath the curtain, rests a pale and dappled hand bearing a signet ring. On the box next to the driver sits a footman in black livery and hat, while on the small platform at the rear of the carriage stands a young groom, his long hair flowing behind him. The horses, two mares, are white like the palace from which they have just been disgorged. Horse hooves and iron-clad wheels clatter echoingly across the rickety wooden bridge that leads over the moat between the main building and the palace square, becoming a flat metallic thrum upon the cobblestones. The carriage careens through the slush as the driver flicks the whip, directing the horses into a left-hand bend made uncomfortably sharp by the limited leeway between the gate and the Chancellery buildings opposite, as well as by the traffic of coaches, handcarts and Amager wagons that busy about the square. Elegantly, if somewhat hazardously, it beats a narrow path among them, lurching on over the Højbro bridge to the square that is Amager Torv before grinding to a halt amid the general bustle that surrounds the market stalls. The two horses stamp impatiently. The hand in the window is withdrawn.
Did you see that? a young lad asks, dragging a handcart loaded with a pair of barrels towards a farmer, perhaps his father.
No. What? says the father.
It was the King.
You’re seeing things, lad.
Didn’t you see the ring?
The passenger inside sees and hears the exchange, but then they are gone. He smiles to himself. My subjects, he thinks. How strange they are.
The carriage continues towards the Nørre Port gate, and soon they are out in open country. The passenger with the signet ring draws the curtain to one side with the back of his hand and gazes out.
Spring, he thinks to himself in wonderment. The same miracle every year.
His mind still rings with the tones of the minuet his fool played for him on the clavichord as he changed into his riding dress. Its subtlety and elegance, but also its strict regularity. It is the kind of music that puts him in mind of the new architecture, though he is unsure as to whether he likes either. But still, the music is hard to escape once it has wormed its way into the mind. He moves his lips: ba-da-dam, bam-bam ba-da-dam, and then a trill that he imitates with a roll of the tongue. There, now I am smiling, he thinks. Who would have thought?
The winter has been long, a harsh and tedious cold, with much snow. Now the snow is retreating from the fields. Anemones and whatever they are – the names escape him – peep out of the ditches, and the beech is on the brink of coming into leaf. Already, cows and sheep graze at the roadside. The air is mild, though the lingering frost of night nips still. He finds the winters increasingly arduous, and every year when the season is at its darkest he finds himself in doubt as to whether another spring will be granted him at all. The year, or perhaps life itself, is like the hill of Valby Bakke. You haul yourself up it with much difficulty and exertion, eventually reach the top; and there, the light returns, the land lies open before you, and off you hurtle.
His head and body ache after having sat in conference all morning with the Privy Council, putting his name to resolutions, listening to the mind-numbingly meticulous reports of his ministers. Afterwards, the surgeon administered a cupping and an enema for good order, prodding and pressing his abdomen and enquiring about his rheumatism, then attended to his secret ailment, emerods, golden so-called, swabbing them with a pungent and abrasive tincture. Thereafter he was allowed to go. Now, in the Deer Park, his Grand Chancellor and friend, Count Holstein, together with his former page Henrik, stands waiting for him with the horses, ready for the hunt. A small, private occasion, not the public event of later in the year. Just him and his friends. He has looked forward to the day for weeks.
King Frederik is fifty-seven years old. He has survived the pox, wars, bubonic plague and a failed marriage. His face is furrowed, scarred by the pox, but his only real suffering is age, this slumberous state of which seemingly he cannot be rid. He has served his country as absolute monarch for nearly thirty years, exactly half his life. It wears him down. Previous sovereigns had things easier. They weren’t as close to the people. He though must wade among his subjects and all their various problems from morning till night. And yet he is not unfond of it. The sense of his finger resting on the people’s pulse. His working day is long, he travels the entire land inspecting regiments and construction projects, naming ships, opening institutions, cutting silk ribbons, sending criminals to gaol, pardoning others, wording, as good as single-handedly, the new ordinances that are put up on the gates and walls all about the land. People have no idea of the trouble it is to be absolute. He is his people’s servant, a duty he takes seriously and of which, moreover, he is proud. But sometimes one has to get away.
The thing is, one cannot. Not properly. For wherever one goes, one’s person is always in attendance, lugging with it its portfolio of problems, its every malaise and noxious effluvium. The self cannot be escaped. His fingers pick out a fan from the pocket of the carriage door. The Queen must have left it there. He flicks it open and fans himself, savouring the waft of scent, cloying and yet piquant. Engelshjerte, my angel heart. He loves her still. They have succeeded in maintaining a form of innocence in their love for each other. Whenever he creeps into her bed chamber, he feels he is about something forbidden. The thought excites him. He has barely touched another woman since they married. He married her twice, in fact, first left-handedly while Louise was still alive, then again immediately after her death. Perhaps it was too soon, yet it was important to cement her position. The thought of her still makes him lustful, her magnificent hips and thighs, the golden mound of her pubic hair that seems almost to float above her warm and fragrant sex. He smiles to himself as the carriage rumbles past scatterings of cows and goats. In the matter of children, however, she has been unfortunate, the poor woman. One after another they have died in infancy or early childhood. Louise, at least, left two, including his son Christian, the crown prince, the only person of whom he is truly afraid. Bad-tempered and sullen he is, smug and self-satisfied, always quick to claim the moral high ground. The Crown Prince despises his stepmother, the Queen, and most likely his father too. How will he conduct himself when I am gone? No doubt he will get rid of Anna Sophie at the very first. I must speak to him. Otherwise he will pull everything down that I have built up, and he will piss on my grave.
The carriage rattles and rolls. He must release a belch. His hand grips the windowsill. Now they follow the shore of the Øresund strait. Across the water lies the enemy. Skåne, the lost land. It was not my doing, he ponders. One may inherit land. Yet one may also inherit land that is lost. He sighs. At least Karl is dead. That’s always something. The man who fired the bullet that struck the Swede king between the eyes ought to have been rewarded with his own estate. But no one knows his name. Most probably it was one of his own. The treacherous Swedes. They are the yellow of their flag. The blue is their simple-mindedness. A dangerous mixture.
His thoughts wander as the land drifts by. He thinks of the grand new colonization plan in which he has entangled himself. He has met all through the week with the Commandant Landorph and the Baron Pors, whom he has personally appointed governor of the colony, as well as with others who will be going with them. Together with his privy counsellor Hvidtfeldt he has drawn up a list of convicts, soldiers from Bremerholm, considered suitable as crew. He has spoken to several of them personally, probing them about this and that in the company of an officer. Of course, they have not been informed as to the nature of the plans being made for them. But they will be told in good time. If it should come to their ears that they are destined for Greenland, one would surely risk them absconding. That, certainly, would be his own impulse. He well remembers the Pastor Egede, who went there as a missionary some years ago with all his family, a wife and four children, and with whom he has since carried on a regular correspondence. A Norwegian, as unyielding as the rock of the country that bore him. He did not much care for the man, the great hook of his nose, the glare of his gaze, and yet felt him to be of the required substance and equipped for the task. Now all sails are set, and a new colony is being added to the Danish crown. Perhaps, if they are successful in their endeavours, it might make up for the matter of Skåne.
Egede sends him gifts from the place, among them a small figure of bone, a devil of some sort, carved by a savage. For some reason he carries it around in his pocket, often taking it into his hand and turning it absently until it has become quite smooth. It is his talisman. He dares not show it to a soul. It lies in his hand now. Such a hideous grin it has, he thinks to himself with a shudder of discomfort. Such sharp teeth and piercing eyes. It resembles evil itself, and yet is impish and fun. It is God laughing, he thinks to himself. And then, immediately: No, what nonsense. I should say the Lord’s Prayer.
Perhaps there is gold there, he muses, stroking the figure with his thumb. Egede seems to suggest so. Perhaps also silver and copper, and iron too. Immeasurable riches. Shipload upon shipload of precious metals. If fortune is with me I shall be remembered as the king who resurrected our economy and restored greatness to Denmark. He must force himself to get a grip before he starts imagining streets paved with gold, processions in homage to him, regattas. We could do with a new palace, he thinks, rather more modestly. Certainly there ought to be money enough for that.
And then there are the heathens. He studies the figure in his hand. The savages. Not only must the economy be saved, there is also the matter of salvation in the life to come. How many Greenlanders must be living in savagery, yet to even hear of Jesus, not to mention be delivered in Him. Surely, if he were to be seen as the man who led an entire heathen population to salvation, his posthumous reputation in the eyes of God and men would be enhanced indeed. He drops the figure back into his pocket.
///
I am Aappaluttoq, the Red One. I am flying. My arms held against my frame, I thunder across the sky, and my hair is a comet’s tail in my wake. I am two places at once. Lying in the peat-hut, bound by hand and foot, biting the bitter floor of soil, and nestled snugly in the King’s inside pocket.
///
Frederik has always been terrified of hell. Especially when he was young and travelled around southern Europe leading a life of debauchery, his terror was sometimes unbearable. Nights of feasting, drinking and whoring, days of remorse and contrition. Later, after he married and became king, this fear of hell abated. Now it has returned to him as his death day approaches like a dark and relentless wave. And, in the nature of things, a king has much to do penance for, it is something that cannot be helped. The imperative of difficult decisions. Among them the matter of his failing Louise, his manoeuvring her into obscurity. No doubt she resides in her heaven now with no longer a care, rubbing her hands in glee as she awaits her reward, to see him hounded into the flames. He shifts uneasily at the thought and feels the hard nodule of his anus contract in spasm.
Why this tendency of his to think only of the most unpleasant matters? He has long since resolved not to torment himself with what he cannot alter. And yet it comes stealing.
I should have stayed in Italy that time, he tells himself. And married Teresa. It was not a sin, that which took place between us, or only a small sin at most. It was love. Everything else has been but failed attempts to carry out my duty. She committed herself to the nunnery, I to becoming king. It was my father who scuppered it, who destroyed my happiness. But no, I shall think no more about it. His hand reaches into his pocket for the figure again, but he forces himself to refrain.
He stares out at the iron sea, the feathery clouds against their background of blue. The wind has picked up. The chopping waves are tipped with white. The yellow hills of Skåne seem almost to smile at him kindly. Falsely immaculate.
He instructs the driver to turn down to the shore and pull up. He climbs out and pisses into a bush, inhaling the air of spring deep into his lungs. He walks on the beach with the carriage following on at a distance, the liveried footman a few paces behind. He gathers a small handful of the flattest stones and endeavours to skim them across the water, though clearly he has lost the knack, for they leap up as they strike the surface and then vanish immediately with a plop. The footman reminds him not to get his feet wet, for the weather remains chilly at this early time of year, and submissively he withdraws a step or two from the water’s edge and walks on, sensing a calmness inside him for being here, between the sky and the sea, where a king is but a man. Reaching the Deer Park he makes sure to halt at the famous spring and swallow a cup of its invigorating waters, breaking the used cup against a tree as is the custom.
Henrik, the king’s former page, a tall black man from the West Indies, born a slave though long since a deservedly free man, stands waiting for him at the hunting lodge. They greet each other heartily. Henrik has recently married, and the King jokes about their now infrequent meetings, for not even a king can compete with a woman. Henrik laughs good-naturedly. He is the same age as the King, though looks younger, a stately and elegant man. He wears a powdered wig with a pigtail, a tight-fitting blue coat of elegant cut and gleaming black riding boots with spurs.
Frederik looks at him. You were the finest jewel in my crown, he says. Why on earth did I get rid of you?
His Majesty bestowed upon Henrik the honour of marriage, the blackamoor says.
I should never have allowed it, Frederik replies. The bonds of Hymen must surely be more burdensome than those of the King. And Henrik laughs too, and bows deeply. They are physical in conversation, nudging and back-slapping, occasionally seeming almost on the verge of rough-and-tumble, as when they were children together and would roll about the floor. Now, though, they are too old for such behaviour.
A clamour of braying dogs comes from the kennel.
I hear the hounds are ready.
And hungry beasts they are too, Your Majesty. They have not eaten in two days.
Count Holstein joins them, leading his horse, a great black stallion, by the bit. Holstein was his page too in boyhood. Now he is Grand Chancellor. The dullest of worlds, where boys become grand chancellors and kings. Henrik disappears into the stables to fetch the king’s mount.
How fat you’ve grown, Frederik says.
The word is stout, Your Majesty.
Do you think the horse can carry you?
It could carry a king, Holstein retorts.
I should never have made you Grand Chancellor. Not only are you fat, you are also impudent. How is the Grand Chancellor’s wife?
Stouter, the count replies with a grin. And how is my king?
Well, he says.
Henrik appears with his white mare, Celeste. She recognizes him at once, and, knowing what his presence here means, whinnies with delight, tosses her head and rolls her eyes. He takes the reins from Henrik and holds her head in his hands, scratches behind her ear and places a kiss on her forehead. Have you missed your daddy, my girl? He climbs into the saddle and trots a couple of circles, wincing now and then on account of his tender arsehole. Henrik brings him a small silken parcel containing a cutlet of veal. Frederik raises himself and positions the cutlet between his buttocks, seating himself and shuffling it into shape as Holstein respectfully looks the other way. Ah, that’s better. It is a trick he learnt from Tsar Peter, a lump of meat between anus and saddle, to alleviate the discomfort of the haemorrhoids.
Gentlemen. Let the hunt begin.
The gamekeeper appears now with the bloodhound, and his helpers, equipped with convoluted hunting horns, follow on with the pack of hounds as yet leashed. The dogs quiver with excitement and can barely be held back.
Henrik has mounted his stallion. The King and his two former pages proceed towards the woods, side by side at a slow walk, so close together that their knees now and then touch as they follow the gamekeeper and his hound. They enter the trees. The dogs are well trained and know they must not bark. Quietly sniffing the ground, their snouts sweep over the bed of the woods as they pass on, and after a short time they are out of sight. The three men talk of this and that as they ride. An hour passes.
The gamekeeper returns and points. There. A fine stag. A splendid head of antlers.
Frederik waves his hand. Let the dogs loose.
The leashes are released. The hounds have the scent and stand at the ready, a front paw raised here and there in tremulous excitement. The horns are sounded. The dogs hesitate a moment and then tear away. Frederik and his two friends spur their mounts and follow on at a trot.
He has always been fond of riding. He was given his first horse at the age of five and took part in his first hunt aged eight. It was the only time he was ever really together with his father, a man who in all other situations was remote and elevated, and even later, when Frederik grew up, he found him unapproachable and felt he barely knew him, this man, the King, who would not involve his son in the governing of the realm, nor even call upon him to attend a meeting of the Chancellery. The matters of state were a mystery to him until suddenly his father met his death in that fateful encounter with the stag, here in this very park, and he, Frederik, became king from one day to the next, bound to manage all the affairs of the kingdom. A king is a lonely man. The only place in which he may find intimacy and affection is in the marital bed, and here, on the hunting grounds.
He stands with knees bent in the stirrups, anus lifted from the soggy cutlet, leaning forward a measure, careful to avoid the branches that whip back towards them as they ride, following Celeste’s rhythm, delighting in the way she steers them so elegantly past all obstacles, and he tightens his knees around her girth as she prepares to jump, and encourages her with little words of love and devotion. The two others are ahead of them now, the path too narrow for three horses abreast. He sees them from the corner of his eye, hunched forward like himself. The deer, a fine specimen indeed, with splendid antlers, runs in great leaps and bounds, changing its direction all the time, the hounds snapping at its heels, though well knowing that they must not bite, but simply run the animal into the ground. Frantically they bay, and he hears how joyful they are in all their ferocity, and he too is heartened now, he feels himself godly and young again, as if not a single winter had been added to his age since he was twenty years old.
Now they emerge from the trees and the entire scenario opens out before him, Holstein at his left, Henrik to his right, the hunt attendants blowing their horns to excite the hounds, no matter that their efforts are clearly superfluous, and there, at the head, alone and condemned, the deer, its graceful movements which at once gladden him and move him to tears. For some obscure reason, the animal reminds him of himself.
///
Johan Hartman is twenty-two years old. He is enlisted in the Fynske Land Regiment but has granted himself leave in order to come to Copenhagen. Some would say he has deserted. It is a serious matter. A man could be sent to Bremerholm to be whipped and toil himself to death. The first two weeks in the city he spent drinking and whored himself senseless, squandering all his money. He then met a girl, Sise, a servant in a drinking house in Vestergade, a sewer of shoes and boots by trade, though circumstances forced her to serve in order to get by. In the daytime she plied her trade, sewing and mending, and in the evenings and nights she swung beer tankards and plates filled with stew across the counters and tables, supplementing her meagre income the way people do in such places. Johan had her now and then in one of the upstairs rooms. She was young and decent, ruddy-cheeked and healthy as a milkmaid, and with all her teeth intact. He liked that. Five marks, she demanded, and he would place the money in a bowl by the bed. The third time he went upstairs with her, he said he had no money left and moreover had no intention of paying her again. She yelled at him and made a commotion, and was about to call the landlady, but he managed to quieten her down and told her of the idea he had.
We’ll move in somewhere together and start up on our own.
Why?
Because I like you.
But you don’t even know me, and I don’t know you.
All in good time.
All right, she said. But I won’t lie with you for free. I’ve never lain with anyone for free. Only if they forced me.
I won’t force you to do anything, he said.
And they shook hands.
They found a basement room in the Klædebo quarter and made a cobbler’s workshop of it, where she sat between great piles of the stinking footwear people brought them, mending the broken leather she then treated with pig’s fat, replacing heels, pulling out twisted tacks and putting in new ones, and when he came in to see her she would turn and smile at him with a row of tacks between her lips. He found her custom, of one sort as well as another. He made sure only men of some decency were allowed the pleasure of lying with her. They earned enough, but they were so young, and neither had ever learned to save and be sensible with money. For every five marks they earned, they spent ten. And thus it was that their debts grew as their income increased. They had to pay for laundry, materials and equipment, food and wine, bribes for the watchman, and of course the rent for the room. The landlord too had to be bribed, but when eventually they found themselves unable to pay two weeks on the run, they fell out with him and he reported them for running a brothel.
I want no more of that ungodly traffic, he told them.
Johan promised to find the money, but the man would hear none of it. The watchman, now in collusion with the landlord, came the same day and took Sise off to the Spinning House, which is to say the women’s gaol in Christianshavn. And there she sits now. He dare not write to her, for he has deserted from his regiment on Fyn and risks being sent to Bremerholm.
He has wandered about for some days after Sise was taken from him. The spark he once felt is dampened now, and he cares not what is to become of him. His yearning for her is a physical hurt, and not even at the bottom of the deepest cup of ale is any relief to be found for such a hurt, all that may be found there is more hurt. It feels like the fear of death, mingled with anger. He thinks of her all the time, he sees her radiant and naked in his mind’s eye, and he resolves that if ever he is reunited with her, he will never again give her out to unfamiliar men. He will take her with him to Germany, from where he hails, and there they will settle on a farm north of Hamburg.
He wakes up in a tree. The thought of where he is, however, does not present itself to him as he wakes, and although he has wedged himself well into a fork between two branches, the mere motion of waking is sufficient to dislodge him and he falls to the ground, befuddled by sleep, head heavy with drink. The earth is damp and cold. He feels certain he will become ill, perhaps succumb to pneumonia. Yet he remains there upon the mouldy earth, among rotting leaves and branches. The treetops are aflutter with birds. They sing and chirp. He reminds himself that it is the spring. Somewhere, he hears the sound of baying dogs. He is afraid of dogs, and scrambles to his feet, tilting his head to listen. But they seem not to be approaching.
He brushes the dirt from his clothes and pats his pockets. But he has nothing, not even anything to eat, and no longer a penny to his name. Where am I? Ah, the Deer Park. Now he remembers. A soldier friend brought him out here to the nearby pleasure garden, where he spent the rest of the money he had earned with Sise. It doesn’t matter now, he tells himself. I am nothing without her. I might just as well go down to the Sound and drown myself.
He staggers on his way. Icy water seeps into his boots. He finds a path and follows it for a while. Hearing the baying hounds again he makes ready to leap into a tree. But then they are gone.
He wanders out onto an open expanse of land which slopes gently away towards the Øresund. He strides over its soggy ground, through the patches of snow that still remain here and there. Eventually he stops and turns. He looks towards the fringe of the woods. Is there a thunderstorm on its way? The sound he hears is indeed like thunder. But in April? No, he must be imagining things. He sniffs the air. Thunder is a thing that may be smelled. A fresh, metallic smell. If it is not thunder, then perhaps it is summer lightning. Or a salute of cannon from a ship. Perhaps the Swedes have invaded again. In which case, armies must be mobilized and he will be sent to the gallows if he fails to turn up. The gallows make a man famous. But the pleasure is brief.
All is quiet again. He walks on, only to hear behind him a sudden flapping in the air, and as he swivels round he sees pigeons alight from the treetops. Something must have alarmed them, for they are a long time grouping together again. Eventually, though, they find each other and angle across the sky to vanish behind the trees across the open land.
And then he hears the dogs again. This time it sounds like they are coming towards him. He stands a moment, his boots sinking into the sodden earth, and tries to work out from which direction they are coming, in which direction he should run. But he cannot move, he is petrified with fear, and all he can do is stand and stare towards the woods.
The first thing he sees is a stag come tearing through the scrub, hurtling towards him, a springing, zigzagging flight. Then come the dogs, a whole pack, snapping at its rear. They have yet to see him. But he realizes it is too late to run. There is nowhere to hide, and his boots are stuck. He doubles up, ready to protect himself with his arms, and then he catches sight of some men emerging from the trees, blowing their horns, and after them three riders side by side, with flowing wigs and gold-braided coats, one a black man of imposing proportion, upright in his stirrups. And now they come, a living nightmare, steering directly towards him, albeit seemingly more interested in the stag than in him. The hunted animal flies past, closely followed by the slobbering hounds, and he drops to his knees, arms above his head, in the midst of rippling canine muscle and fur. But the dogs charge past without noticing him, followed by the tramping hornblowers and, eventually, the three horsemen amid the thud of hooves.
He curls up on the boggy ground and lies there until the hunt has come to a halt, then gets to his feet to see the stag sunk to its knees under buckled legs, the dogs dancing about it, their thin tails thrashing as they bark and snap at the air. The three riders dismount and one of them, he recognizes him now, having seen him several times at the garrison on Fyn, draws his hunting knife, grips the stag by the antlers and cuts its throat. He signals to the dogs and immediately they throw themselves upon the now dead animal, tails whipping the air, tongues licking greedily the gushing blood.
Johan removes his feet from his helplessly entrenched boots and walks barefoot, as if drawn on a lead, towards the three horsemen. The blackamoor is the first to notice him.
Who are you? he says. What are you doing in His Majesty’s hunting grounds?
I got stuck, he says, pointing back at the boots which protrude from the ground.
The two other horsemen, one of whom is the King, turn and look at him with curiosity. The King holds his glistening knife in his hand. His face is benevolent, satisfied after the kill.
Bow to His Majesty, says the blackamoor. Say your name, soldier.
He knows how pitiful he looks, barefoot, his clothes little more than rags, smeared with the green mould from the tree in which he slept, and yet he kneels, as proud as he is humble, swipes off his hat and bows to his king.
My name is Johan Hartman, Your Majesty. Enlisted in the Fynske Regiment.
The Fynske? says the King. Then what is he doing here?
Your Majesty, Hartman splutters, abruptly breaking down into a sobbing that feels utterly marvellous. It’s a very long story.
///
He skins the stag himself, slicing out the innards and tossing them to the dogs. It is a most splendid bloodbath, a foul and delightful mess. Eventually, he mounts with the others and together they ride back to the hunting lodge where they partake of a good meal. He has invited the soldier to come with them. He has always been fond of such chance encounters with his subjects and finds it amusing to bestow on them unexpected privileges. The man stuffs himself. Clearly, he is hungry indeed. Now and then he lifts his gaze and looks across the table at the King. Frederik smiles back at him, lifts his glass and toasts.
What meat is this? the guest enquires.
Cutlet of veal, Count Holstein replies, fixing his smiling gaze on the man. How does it taste?
Delicious, Your Grace. I’ve never tasted such a tender cutlet in all my life.
The laughter that erupts around the table is friendly. He finds himself blushing.
A fire burns in the fireplace. The walls around them are decorated with portraits of family members, most of them dead. Frederik converses with his friends, jokes with them, listens to their versions of the hunt, contradicts them, a comradely banter. Their guest sits with a timid smile on his lips, wishing to join in, though lacking the courage. Not until they have finished the meal and he is seated with a glass of sherry does Frederik address him again: Let me hear now what you have to tell.
Afterwards, he allows him a lift into the city on the back of his carriage. He leaves him in the charge of an officer who is instructed on the King’s order to accompany him to Bremerholm. Fair is fair. But the King promises to look closer into the matter with a view to finding a solution to Hartman’s predicament, perhaps even bringing him together with his sweetheart again. Love is the most beautiful thing of all in life, for a king as well as a soldier. It humbles us all and makes us equal.
Come to think of it I may already have the answer, he says, his hand curling around the bone carving in his pocket. And for your fiancée too. Be patient, my friend, and you will hear of it.
With that, he takes leave of the soldier and drives home to his dearest angel heart. He places the figure on the bedside table, but his queen does not care for it, it frightens her, and she tosses it into the drawer.
So now I lie in darkness. Now I wake.
Where have you been, Red, my fellows wish to know, laughing as they loosen the straps with which they have bound me. Far away, eh?
To the other side of the sea, I mutter. Give me something to eat.