“Clockwork automata and African beetles and tusks of the Arctic Narwhal,” writes the Vicomte de Barras in a letter to his wife, “such are the artifacts found in Herr Magnus Engstrom’s collection at his snowbound château. It is, my dear, an astonishing display. And yet, when finally I beheld Engstrom’s centerpiece—the so-called Saint of Fribourg—it became difficult for me to consider any other object. I could not wrest my gaze from that miraculous figure. The girl is said to have perished some two hundred years ago. Her corpse, however, remains inviolate. She looks as though she sleeps. It seemed that she might turn her head in her glass casket, at any moment, and ask me to lift the latch.”
Documents from a vault at Saint Nicholas’ Cathedral report that the body described by Barras and others was unearthed in the excavation of a mass peasants’ grave. Workmen knelt and prayed at the site, for it appeared they’d found a “sleeping girl” buried with the bones in the earth. Bishop Schiner of the cathedral was summoned, and after examination, declared the body to be in a rare state of miraculous incorruption. He ordered the remains transported to the cathedral’s reliquary where he would begin a petition for canonization. It appears, however, that the corpse’s presence—venerated or not—began to trouble the monks who lived in the adjoining monastery. The Fribourg Saint was said to manifest a number of disquieting phenomena. Dutifully, Bishop Schiner reported these to the high council, wondering if they bore the mark of Christian miracle. The council’s answer was clear. Not more than a year later, an abrupt and unceremonious sale of the relic was made to Magnus Engstrom.
In his journal of inquiry, Engstrom records the events that transpired upon the saint’s arrival at his château: “I found myself intrigued by stories of her so-called miracles,” he writes, “and I was eager to begin my own experiments. An emissary of the church used a pry bar to open the crate, and I must admit that my immediate reaction was one of dismay. I thought, surely, I’d suffered a fool’s sale. The girl, nestled in the straw-filled box, was most certainly alive—cheeks rouged, eyes barely shut. The emissary understood my reservations and bid me to place my hand on the girl’s cheek. When I did, I found that, although her skin was supple, it was cold. I took the snood from her head and found her hair was soft, pliant. Even her fingernails had not turned brittle. She appeared entirely unmarked by time. Upon closer examination, I discovered that catgut had been used to sew the insides of the girl’s lips together. It seemed even the Saint of Fribourg had not escaped the ancient and superstitious practice of sealing the mouth, ensuring the dead could not speak from the grave. When I made mention of this to the emissary, he looked grim and said it was oft best not to question old beliefs.”
Ensuing pages in Engstrom’s journal are devoted to a defense of his investigation into the nature of the perhaps holy personage. At the age of thirty-five, Engstrom had everything to prove and hoped the saint could help him finally make his name. The youngest son of prosperous Baron de Steiger, Engstrom had suffered a series of illnesses during childhood that put him in a state of extreme melancholy and nervous exhaustion. For most of his adolescence, he could tolerate neither light nor sound and kept himself in dark and silent rooms, warmed only by a small fire, the light of which was muted by a heavy iron grate. It was within the confines of these rooms that he began his study of scientific aberrations—from the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (said to be a mammal that sprouted from the vines of a rare fern) to documented occurrences of human resurrection that occurred long after that of Christ.
These early interests led to a series of failures. Engstrom attempted then to pen a Cyclopedia, in which he wished to gather all human knowledge. The writing was abandoned after the completion of only one volume, a tome that was composed entirely of a lengthy description of a rare cave-dwelling fish in Southern France. There was also the strange episode in which Engstrom secured a portion of his father’s wealth to purchase a rural village near Bern that had been abandoned during the plague. Engstrom announced he would use the village to create a replica of the Heavenly Domain as described by the Englishman John Styron. Styron had famously suffered a blow to the head while on a sailing vessel, which resulted in an ecstatic vision of Heaven. The project was abandoned after the Mansion of God (said to be a series of houses within houses—each decreasing in size) was set afire by local vandals.
Magnus Engstrom’s family disapproved of his curious obsessions, and it was well known that his inheritance was left in a precarious state if he could not appease his father and become a gentleman of some substance. The cabinet of wonders at the snowbound château was Herr Engstrom’s desperate attempt at claiming legitimate status and repairing his name. He modeled his cabinet on the wunderkammer of Rudolph II, endeavoring to present the world in its entirety in the space of a single room. Engstrom wished to take his cabinet to a level of extremity never before seen. “I shall soon be turning visitors away,” Engstrom writes. “The aristocracy will clamor to have a look at my collection and to hear of the experiments I’ve performed. I will be able to charge even my own father special alms for admittance.”
Engstrom’s most serious failure—the one for which he was so often judged—was of a social, not scientific, nature. And it seemed even the wondrous Saint of Fribourg could not aid him in this respect. Herr Engstrom asked for the hand of seventeen-year-old Lady Margaret of Wisberg in a further attempt to please his wealthy father. Lady Margaret was a child of the age, intelligent and serene, and though her mother was against the proposed marriage, her own misguided father saw fit to comply. After a somber and candlelit wedding beneath a canopy of lilies and Edelweiss, Herr Engstrom brought Lady Margaret to the cold environs of his château at the foot of the Bernese Alps, and there he perpetrated what appeared to outsiders as a systematic neglect of her needs. He withheld even a modicum of affection, thinking only of his cabinet of wonders, leaving the château often to pursue and purchase rarities. It became clear that his sensibilities were not suited to the comforts and traditions of marriage, and his abandonment of Lady Margaret left her in a state of perpetual misery.
Isolated from her family and the beautiful fields of Wisberg where she’d been raised, Lady Margaret found little to occupy her heart. She wore a dark mantle over her dresses and a gable covered her hair. She was often seen walking the lonely mountain paths above the château, gazing down at the road that led to the city of Bern—perhaps dreaming of worlds not encased in ice. When she was overcome by the tedium of her existence, Lady Margaret was known to take a lantern from the house and explore a system of tunnels in the mountain pass above the château. Children of the village took to calling her the Gespenst, meaning “specter,” and warned each other to stay clear of her cold lantern’s light. In a letter to her mother, Lady Margaret herself writes, “If I cannot find peace in my own house, at least there is the house of the Earth to soothe me. Children watch for me in the caves, thinking I am to be feared, and perhaps they should fear me. I will become an illustration for them—so they might not suffer a fate similar to my own.”
Lady Margaret was ordered by her husband not to enter the cabinet of wonders, as such scientific endeavors were perceived as unfit for the attentions of women. But on one icy winter’s day when Herr Engstrom was, once again, absent from the château, Lady Margaret forced a weak-willed servant to open the door to the wonder room. She’d heard rumors about a dead girl in a glass box and wanted to see for herself if such rumors were true. In her personal journal, Lady Margaret describes the scene: “Among all the awful glass-eyed chicanery and the various depictions of the physically deformed, I found her. Though I expected the girl’s presence to be frightening or grotesque, it was quite the opposite. A blessed calm came over me, and my first thought was that she looked like my own mother. The girl in the box had a clean and healthy face, as though she was familiar with country work. It’s strange to say, but I was pleased to see such a face. I’d been surrounded for so long by the jaundiced visages of wealth. I dismissed the servant, and opened the lid of the box, so I could touch the gentle girl within. And it was when I put my hand on her own folded hands that chords of strange music drifted toward me—as if the girl was singing. I drew my hand back, waiting for her eyes to open, knowing I might faint were she to do so. But the saint remained still. I touched her again and listened to the music that emanated from her body—a heavenly song. I wondered if the girl might be filled up with angels. Finally, I grew drowsy from listening. I said a prayer and kissed her on the cheek before taking my leave of the cabinet. I hope kissing her was not too bold a thing, for hers was indeed a holy presence.”
Documents regarding the sale to Magnus Engstrom make it clear that the body’s sainthood was never officially decreed. According to papal law, incorruption could have a variety of possible causes, not all of them wholesome. Remarks were even made regarding the will of demons. Offices of the Canon in Rome believed Bishop Schiner had been hasty in his petition, and the bishop himself eventually agreed. He includes in his tract a list of priests who abandoned the monastery due to the presence of the Saint of Fribourg, all of them men of good standing. In an addendum, he also discusses the phenomena surrounding the body. These occurrences appear in two distinct categories. In the first are her curative properties. The Fribourg Saint was said to possess the power to reinvigorate spoiled fruit, meat, and plant life. If given a sufficient amount of time, her presence could restore organic matter to its original vitality. Her second power was more ambiguous and, according to the bishop, more troubling. Apparently, she was known to cause visions. “The brothers have experienced every sort of poisonous dream since the coming of the incorrupt body,” writes Bishop Schiner. “They have described nights full of talking wolves and dancing women. They have seen an absence in the starlit sky where God should be. One of our most stalwart brethren even described a dream in which he rose from his bed, went to the reliquary, and held the dead girl against his own body. He says the warmth of his flesh awakened her, and she attempted to speak to him though her mouth appeared sealed shut. He is glad the girl could not speak, as he believes she aimed to enchant him.”
Magnus Engstrom did not fear the saint’s purported abilities, and he began his experiments almost immediately upon his taking possession of her. He writes: “I was skeptical to say the least regarding the phenomena surrounding the Fribourg Saint. Men of the cloth often exaggerate such happenings due to their solitude and religious fascination. I set out to test the girl myself, using scientific principles of observation. On our first evening together, I placed a shriveled plum on the saint’s breast. It is said that spoiled fruit revives in her presence. I invited several persons to the cabinet the next morning to examine the plum along with me—these included the esteemed Alaric Glaus and Lucillius of Ghent. I was astonished to see that the plum had regained some of its color and did, in fact, seem less desiccated than on the previous evening. My comrades were incredulous, claiming I might have replaced the plum during the night, so I invited them to repeat the experiment and stand guard. We placed the same plum on the breast of the saint for a second night, and the next morning, my near exhausted friends found that the plum had regained a full state of freshness. When we cut the fruit open, its flesh was unmarred by decay, and when we tasted it, it was sweet.”
Engstrom records a number of other such experiments. The saint revived a dying fern and was also able to cure a sick stable hound. The dog was locked in the cabinet overnight, and a terrible howling came from the room. None of the servants dared open the door. They expected to find the dog dead the next morning for all the awful noise it made, but instead they found it rejuvenated and twice as fast at catching rats.
These findings pleased Herr Engstrom, but he was not yet satisfied. Bishop Schiner had already documented similar occurrences, after all. In order to make a name for himself and to be seen as a true man of science, Engstrom needed to discover something new and definitive regarding the saint. “I shall endeavor to take my experimentation a step further than the bishop’s own,” he writes. “I will determine whether the saint can also heal herself. In doing so, I believe I may well begin to discern the very nature of the saint’s incorruption.”
No record indicates how Lady Margaret became aware of her husband’s experiments. Perhaps it was from the gossip that was prevalent at the House of Engstrom. In her diary, Lady Margaret writes: “I care not a thing for hounds or plums. I know only how the blessed girl makes my own body feel. She raises my spirits, fills me with a joy I have never before experienced. I find I cannot stay away from her. I sit with her when Magnus is gone, and she sings for me. The music nurtures. It enlivens. I wonder what color her eyes would be if she were to open them. I like to think they would be not a single shade, but rather a complicated mix of watery blues and earthy greens.”
The joyful tone of Lady Margaret’s journal darkens when she discovers the nature of Herr Engstrom’s future experiments. “I have learned that Magnus wishes to cut open my poor lady’s foot,” writes Lady Margaret. “He tells his awful companions (Glaus and Lucillius) that he will make a small incision between her toes. He wants to see if she can heal herself. The thought of him testing my lady in this manner is abhorrent. Let him do what he will to me, but he mustn’t disturb her. She cannot leave this house even to walk the mountain paths. Her songs have grown mournful, for she too seems to know of his intentions. I must come to her aid, even if such action presents personal danger. . . . When Magnus left this evening to meet with his men at a tavern, I went directly to the cabinet. I’ve stolen the key from a servant so that I may come and go as I please. I sat with my lady and listened to her weeping song, attempting to console her. I confessed that I could not physically thwart my husband, but I would do whatever else was in my power to stop him.
“I do not know when her lament became a lullaby, but soon enough, I could not hold my own eyes open and fell asleep there, lying next to the bier where the glass box rests. In a dream, I saw my lady slip from her glass case like some lovely white shadow, and she came to nestle next to me on the stone floor. Her eyes were still closed. She ran her cold fingers through my hair and touched my cheeks, as I have seen the blind do. And then my lady made a magnificent gesture. She gave me the gift I’d hoped for since the moment I first saw her exquisite form—she opened her eyes. Their color was not the bluish-green I expected. No, they were a stark and shining white—like the eyes of a marble statue—with a hard black pupil cut from the center of each. Still, I was not afraid. As she held me, she began to weep. Her tears were white as milk. I kissed those white tears from her cheeks, and they turned my tongue and throat and stomach cold. From those tears a new resolve rose up in me. I pray that my poor and inelegant soul proves strong enough to do what I must.”
Lady Margaret’s journal grows silent for a period of three days after her experience in the cabinet. When her narrative resumes, it appears she is forcing the rigid script onto the page. “Despite my best intentions, I could not stop him. I could not stay my husband’s hand. Magnus locked me in our bed chamber for hours because I would not cease my berating of him and his awful experiments. He said the saint was no business of mine. He’d purchased her from the bishop and would do with her as he pleased. There was a look in his eyes that made me wonder if he might harm me. He is a fool, of course, but perhaps a dangerous one, for he believes strongly in his convictions. That evening, he made the incision in the saint’s foot, between her first and second toe, while Alaric Glaus and Lucillius looked on. My lady’s music turned to a scream as he cut her, and I could hear her voice beating against every stone in the house. I hoped she might bring the whole of the château down on our heads to punish us all for Magnus’s desecration. I feel ashamed to be his wife. I know I must take a more extreme course of action, and certainly I must be quick. There is talk that Magnus intends to perform a further surgery. I can barely write this—he wants to examine my poor lady’s vital organs. Her heart and her liver. For whatever mad reason, he wishes to see if they too remain incorrupt.”
The incision between the toes of the saint did not heal as Magnus Engstrom expected. Nor did it bleed or fester. His writings become frustrated, as he wonders how the saint cannot heal herself if she can heal so much else. It is this frustration that precipitates his need to view the body’s internal organs. He wishes to learn the extent of the incorruption—is the Fribourg Saint merely a shell, and if not, what inhabits her interior? Is her still heart as perfect as her flesh? Engstrom notes Lady Margaret’s unnatural attachment to the body as well: “I fear that the presence of the saint in our household is causing my wife to have nervous attacks, as I myself was once known to have. I refuse to remove the body from the cabinet; it is possible that my wife shall simply be removed from the house instead. While drunk last evening at the tavern, Alaric Glaus suggested poisoning. The comment was meant to be humorous, of course. But I have begun to wonder if there is a substance that will not kill Lady Margaret but render her ill enough that she will be forced into some warmer climate where she can convalesce. In any case, I will not let her ruin my opportunities with the Fribourg Saint.”
What occurs next is beyond the full comprehension of this record. The final events surrounding the body of the Fribourg Saint caused Magnus Engstrom to impose exile upon himself. He lived out his days far from his home, on an island off the coast of Italy. The house on the island was utterly bare, washed clean by salt from the sea. It was so unlike his decorated cabinet at the château. He was said to sit in a wooden chair and look toward the water. When asked if he felt remorse over what had happened to his young and pretty wife, Engstrom merely shook his head, and said, “I do not know what happened to Margaret. No one can know such a thing.”
Lady Margaret’s final journal entry is fragmented, written in haste, perhaps in one of the caves above the mountain pass. The journal itself, chewed by the teeth of an animal, was discovered by a shepherd in a field beyond the château. “When Magnus took his leave, I acted. A new song filled the house, a cacophonous symphony. It might have driven me mad had I allowed it. How was it possible that only I could hear her songs? I went to the cabinet, bringing with me the milk cart that the servants use to carry milk between the barn and the main house. My lady was heavy, her joints stiff. I overturned the awful glass coffin and scattered the scarab beetles while trying to free her. Glass panes broke when the coffin’s corner struck the floor. I put my lady in the milk cart, careful as I could be. I kissed her, asking forgiveness.
“No servant attempted to stop me as I left the château. They understood something had gone wrong when Magnus cut my lady’s foot. They feared the woman in the box. Some of them who attend services at the cathedral have encountered rumors that the Fribourg Saint’s body is inhabited by a demon. Only God and the Devil can ignore the arrow of time, they say. Such thoughts are foolish, of course, and peasantlike. I put on a pair of Magnus’s fur boots and my own mantle for warmth. I pulled the milk cart through the snow toward the cave where I sometimes went to escape the confines of the house. It was my intention to keep my lady there until a carriage passed by on the road below. I would signal to the carriage with my lantern, and my lady and I would go together to the walled city of Bern. Perhaps I’d make a place there where she could be celebrated by all—not a stale museum as Magnus created, but a shrine. Yet no carriages appeared. The sun began to sink lower in the western sky, and I felt the bite of winter’s cold there in the cave. No one would travel the road during the night, and I would have to suffer until morning.
“My lady sang to me in thankful, warming chords. I pressed my body to hers and fell in and out of restless sleep. In a dream, I put my lips against her own soft lips and discovered the reason she could not sing through her mouth. Her delicate lips had been sealed with some form of strong black string. I pulled at the string, breaking the fibers loose, stitch by stitch. When her mouth was free, my lady’s jaw fell open and she released such a glorious song, finally able to use her own voice once again.
“I was so pleased to hear the vibrant music fill the cave. She told me her history in song—how she’d been born in Fribourg to a good mother and a good father. She’d been careful with her life, never acting foolishly, never eliciting her parents’ scorn. Then one day, she met a man in her father’s field beyond the village. She and the man walked together in the green wheat, and she did not fear him. His eyes were gentle, and his words were kind. When the two of them sat together by a stream, the man revealed to her that he was not a man at all. He was an incarnation of the Holy Ghost. Being a girl of some intelligence, she did not believe him immediately and asked that he prove himself by giving her a blessing. He dipped his hand in the stream and let her drink cool water from his palm. As she drank, he put his hand over her mouth and then over her nose. He pressed his hand firmly upon her, stopping her breath, and despite her struggling, he would not release her. He said she had been good for all her days, and she would be good for all of time. As I pictured this, I could not help but think of Magnus touching her with his terrible hands. I thought of all the cruelties he perpetrated in his prison of a house. My lady said she died there by the stream, left to wonder if she was full of the Spirit or simply full of water from a murderer’s palm.
Following this passage, there is an omission in the journal, though it is not clear if the omission is due to damage from weather or because Lady Margaret became physically unable to write. The ink grows splotched and eventually an excess of it runs in dark lines down the page. How long she was in the cave remains unknown. Temperatures in the region certainly become life-threatening on winter nights. Yet, at least for a time, Lady Margaret survived. The final words in the journal are written in what appears to be a new style of handwriting, plainer and more decisive than Margaret’s previous script. “I wonder now—am I sleeping or am I awake? Did I leave the dream of death where my lady died by the stream, or have I discovered some state between consciousness and reverie? The cave is dark. The oil is nearly gone from my lantern. When last I reached for my lady’s hand, I felt only loose bones. Yet I do not despair, for she isn’t gone. I can still hear her song. It echoes magnificently off the cave walls, so loudly that I wonder, at times, if I might be singing it myself. In any case, I know what I must do. I will gather her bones inside the folds of my mantle and leave the cave under night’s cover. Magnus will not see. I’ll make my way past the walls of the castle, through the snow. And eventually I’ll find a good place for burying. I won’t be leaving her in the ground though. She’ll never be in the ground again, for when next I approach a looking-glass, I will not see my own eyes, plain and blue, reflected back. Instead, they are sure to be a revelation.