I.
THAT NIGHT AS LARS-GOREN and Gustav were fleeing the city, still disguised as peasants, the Devil stepped out of the narrow alleyway along which they were hurrying and stood with his crooked legs wide apart, his arms reaching out like an ape’s to the walls on either side, and refused to let them pass. Gustav was instantly thrown into a rage. He was a quick-tempered man on the best of days, famous for a farmerish sort of arrogance, and tonight, considering all he’d been through, it was not surprising that the slightest provocation should turn him to a madman. Though he was seven feet tall, he could hardly have believed, if he had stopped to think, that he was a match for the person who stood blocking his way, for the Devil, in the shape he had taken on, was taller even than Lars-Goren. Nevertheless, Gustav put his head down like a bull, raised his fists in front of him, and charged with all his might.
Lightly, so quickly that neither Gustav nor Lars-Goren saw exactly what he did, the Devil sent Gustav somersaulting backward, so that he landed, with a resounding thud, hard on his rear end.
“Your Majesty,” said the Devil, “you’re too impetuous!” He was standing with his legs wide apart as before, but now his huge arms were folded.
Gustav squinted through the darkness and fog, his expression incredulous and close to tears, then over at Lars-Goren to see if he too was seeing and hearing these remarkable things. As if his legs had gone weak, Lars-Goren was leaning against the farther stone wall, pressing his fingers and palms flat against it. Young Gustav Vasa frowned with such intense consternation it seemed that the heat of his brain might burn out his eyes. With one hand he reached up to his head, confirming that his hat had fallen off, then abruptly he shot his eyebeams back into the Devil’s.
“You’ve got the wrong man,” said Gustav. “I’m nobody’s king. I’m a goat-farmer.”
The Devil laughed. “You’re Gustav Erikson Vasa of Rydboholm, kinsman of Sten Sture.”
Again Gustav shot a look at Lars-Goren and this time frowned so hard that his lower lip reached almost to his nose. He looked back at the Devil for an instant, then away again, turning over this thought and that thought so quickly and cunningly that the Devil began to smile. Feeling around him on the cobblestones, he found his hat and, as if paying great attention to it, like a slow-witted peasant, pulled it back over his head. Then, clearing his throat, and watching carefully lest the Devil decide to kick him or hit him again, he got up onto his feet.
“I may or may not be this Gustav you mention,” he said at last. “But I’m certainly no king.”
“Not yet, perhaps,” said the Devil, and gave a little bow.
Gustav shook his head and put his fists on his hips, still scowling as if in fury, then looked up hard at the Devil’s forehead, not quite meeting his eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked. As he spoke he noticed that the person in front of him had lumps on his forehead, like the beginnings of horns. His heart gave a very slight jump.
“Your friend knows who I am,” said the Devil, grinning broadly.
Lars-Goren had his eyes closed, and sweat was pouring into his moustache.
“Hmm,” said Gustav, and raised his fingers to his wild, shaggy beard. After a moment he nodded thoughtfully, then squinted, increasingly cunning, at the Devils large nose. “I warn you,” he said, “never underestimate my friend Lars-Goren!” He spoke with great conviction, but then instandy felt a little embarrassed, for Lars-Goren was making an involuntary peeping noise, like a woman who’s been whipped; and Gustav said crossly, to hide his embarrassment, “So what have you to say to me?”
“You’re heading for Dalarna?” the Devil asked in the tone of a man just making conversation.
“I might be,” said Gustav.
“Good. I’ll come along with you,” said the Devil. “I haven’t seen Dalarna in years. We can talk as we go.”
“Very well then, whatever you say,” said Gustav. He turned to Lars-Goren, who had twisted his face away. The knight’s neck was stretched up horribly, like the neck of a man being hanged. “Come along, Lars-Goren,” said Gustav gently. “Play your cards right, I’ll make you archbishop.”
2.
AS THE THREE WALKED ALONG, keeping to back lanes and narrow paths through immemorially old, blue-black conifer forests, a darkness where no Danish soldier would dare venture—where for all their pride in their Viking heritage, their reputation as drinkers of human blood, no Dane would so much as move his left foot up even with his right—the Devil talked happily, with great animation, of his infinitely complicated schemes. Young Gustav listened in exactly the way the Devil liked, skipping past the trivia, seizing on those slyly planted hints here and there that the Devil’s labyrinthine plot might be of use to him, providing him with weapons that might enable him to do what he desired: avenge his kinsmen. As for the kingship, it was an interesting thought, and Gustav Vasa was by no means unambitious, but it was not at all his first thought, at least not yet. His heart was closed like a vise on anger and sorrow. Also, he knew he would do well to move cautiously. Though he was no more afraid of the Devil than he was of God or Death, he was by nature a suspicious man, wary as a wolf, a quality he knew he would need if he happened to become king.
Lars-Goren, for his part, listened in a very different way. Every word the Devil spoke was to him like crackling fire, for he’d read a good deal about the lives of the saints and the martyrs. One had no chance against the Devil, he was convinced, but also, since the Devil had singled them out, he had no choice but to listen with all his wits, in the desperate hope of understanding the enemy and outstriding him. He studied the Devil’s limping gait, his way of throwing his arms out wide in a parody of heaven’s magnanimity, his way of laying his ears back like a horse and sometimes glancing sharply past his shoulder. As a warrior, Lars-Goren knew weakness and fear when he saw them; but he knew that the Devil was not weak in comparison to them—much less fearful—and Lars-Goren knew, too, as a horseman, that nothing is more dangerous than a powerful creature in a panic.
Lars-Goren, needless to say, was in a panic himself. Stumbling along the path, numbed and blinded by his fear, nearly falling from time to time, clutching his chest with his large right hand to make the hammering of his heart less painful, he tried to think out, slowly and reasonably, what it was that so frightened him. His young kinsman Gustav seemed all but indifferent to the threat of the huge, humpbacked monster lunging through the darkness beside him, occasionally throwing one arm across his shoulders, laughing and ranting like a man who hasn’t spoken in years and now suddenly has found his tongue.
“Surely it’s not Death I’m afraid of,” thought Lars-Goren, rolling his eyes upward toward heaven. A hundred times he’d faced death in battle and once he had very nearly died of a mysterious disease. He’d felt no such fear as this on any one of those occasions. Indeed, lying in his infirmary bed, sick people breathing out their last all around him, more corpses every day, the building full of flies, what he’d chiefly felt was a kind of philosophical curiosity and perhaps a touch of pleasure in finding himself so calm. In the heat of battle, he’d had no time for even that. The horse charging him must be swerved around in time, the sword rightly planted in his antagonists belly or chest. He had been aware, each time, that this thrust, this leap, this dive into the weeds might be the last he ever made; but his mind was on the thrust, the leap, the dive: the idea that he might die, insofar as it was there at all, trailed behind him forgotten, like the faded red streamer on his helmet. Nor had he thought about death at night when he returned to his tent—except once. Once in the middle of the night a cannonball had crashed through his tent and knocked his cot out from under him—it seemed the same instant, though it couldn’t have been, that he had heard the muffled thud of the cannons exploding black powder. Alarm like a rabbit’s had burst in his chest. But even that he had not registered as fear. It had been, he would say, an extreme of startledness, a slam of heart that had nothing to do with his mind, his beliefs and convictions. Afterward—lying on the tent’s earthen floor, his two companions bolt upright in their cots, their faces white as moons, their voices booming, blaming it all on Lars-Goren—he had felt his body shaking like a sail in a storm, all feeling gone out of his hands and feet, his heart still thudding hard, only gradually slowing itself. Not even that was, in Lars-Goren’s opinion, fear. He experienced the violence in his body as not strictly part of himself, no more essential to his mind or soul than the terror of a horse underneath him or a tremor in the earth. No, in plain truth he was not afraid of death. There were in this world, he knew, men who did fear death—men who froze in the face of it, bending to a crouch, muscles locking, hard as steel, men who belched repeatedly and could not speak—but he, Lars-Goren, was not one of them. If he congratulated himself for this lack of fear, and scorned all people more cowardly, he also knew, in secret, that it was all chiefly luck, some accident of upbringing or blood—his father and grandfather had been the same. Should someone have asked him for the formula for bringing up children just like him, he’d have had to admit he didn’t know it.
Neither did it seem to him that his fear was of eternal damnation—hellfire, instruments of torture, and the rest—the things one saw in holy pictures or heard about in stories. Like all Swedes then and now, he was inclined to take the threats of priests with a grain of salt. If hell was as ferocious as the priests maintained, then the justice of God and God himself were in doubt. He had no real question that a god of some kind did indeed exist. His grandmother had been a Lapp, and in his childhood he had visited that queer nomadic people. Second sight was as normal with the Lapps as the ice on their lashes. If a child wandered off and died, they knew where to find it. They saw things thousands of miles away as clearly as an ordinary man sees his fingernails and shoes. Those who had never been acquainted with the Lapps might hotly deny that this was possible, making their faces red, their angry throats swelling up like frogs’ throats; and Lars-Goren could not blame them, nor would he labor to argue the unarguable; but the Lapplanders’ visions were as much a matter of fact to him as the harsh solidity of their reindeer-horn graveyards. What God had to do with those visions he could not say—nothing perhaps—but whatever reservations his reason might cling to, he accepted, below reason, their premise, a world of spirit—vaguely, God. The Lapps’ idea of God or rather of the gods, might seem peculiar to a Christian; their spirit world was neither benign nor malevolent, at least in the Christian way. It was simply there, beneficial or harmful in about the way wolves or reindeer are, a parallel existence neither loving nor malicious, not even consciously indifferent; a force to be reckoned with, avoided or made use of, like the ghosts in one’s hut of stretched hides. Having grown up with the Christian God and stories of His saints, having heard talk of the aloof but concerned everlasting Father from the time he had first learned the difference between Swedish and the various other kinds of noises people made, Lars-Goren had accepted without special thought the Christian opinion that the spirit world was largely paternal and benevolent and because his father had been the kind of man he was, stern, even fierce, but invariably well-meaning, at least when he was sober, Lars-Goren had glided accidentally but firmly to the persuasion that if hell existed, it could only exist because God had gone insane. God might be baffling to a human mind—as mysterious as the beaver-faced Lapps of Lars-Goren’s childhood, those midget relatives whose puffy-lidded, smoky black eyes had nothing recognizably human in them, or nothing except affection—but God, if he was sane, was not ultimately dangerous. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil,” as the Psalms put it. What in all the earth, or even under the earth, should a just man be afraid of?
On the other hand, it was undeniably a fact that, moving through the darkness with Gustav Vasa and the Devil, Lars-Goren was afraid, as frightened as he’d ever been by nightmares, and his fear baffled him. He clenched his fists and sucked in deep breaths, but the fear would not abate. “Ridiculous!” he muttered through his clenched and grinding teeth. But Lars-Goren’s heart went on pounding, pounding, white-hot at the notch of his collarbone. The sound of his heartbeat seemed to thud from the darkness all around him.
3.
“THINGS ARE in confusion,” the Devil’s voice boomed out, “and believe me, the confusion will get worse! That’s the kind of time when a man of cool wits can make his fortune!”
“I have no interest in fortunes,” Gustav said, then compressed his lips. Perhaps he protested too heartily.
“Yes, of course,” the Devil said, throwing his arms out left and right, not in a mood to haggle phrasings. “But I’ll tell you this: it’s a wonderful moment for somebody. If not you, then somebody else.” He laughed.
They were out of the woods now. Ahead of them lay a village. If there were Danish soldiers there, they were not in the streets. The Devil limped boldly toward the lighted windows, and Gustav followed, too interested in what the Devil was saying to think about his safety. Lars-Goren came twenty feet behind them, trembling and watching like a hawk.
“First of all,” said the Devil, his hand on Gustav’s arm, his face pressed close to Gustav’s ear—though he did not for that reason lower his voice—“you see only the evil, not the good in the bloodbath of Stockholm!”
“Good!” exclaimed Gustav, jerking back his head for a look into the Devil’s eyes.
“By all means good!” said the Devil with a roaring laugh. “Think about this, my hot-headed little friend: no one in Sweden will be fooled any longer about the character of the Danes! It’s not new, this murdering way they have, but people will turn their heads—I’ve watched it for centuries.” He shot a look over his shoulder at Lars-Goren, as if measuring the distance between them, and Lars-Goren held back a little. Now the Devil had all his wits on Gustav again. “A hundred times Sten Sture could have seized the advantage and made himself king, but no, he held back, the fool!—contented himself and his thousands of supporters with a miserable regency, played footsie with the Danes, kept his tail between his legs for the highfalutin super-magnates like Ture Jönsson and Bishop Brask. And all for what? For what, my young friend? To be killed and buried and dug up and burned like a dog on a garbage dump—with all his friends!”
Gustav stopped walking and turned to the Devil, angry enough, by the look of his expression, to try one more time to knock him down.
“Now now!” said the Devil quickly, raising his hands in surrender. “No offense! Mere facts! He acted in good faith—he took his little share and left the Danes and super-magnates their big one. I admire him for it, to a certain extent. All the same, the Danes showed their colors—you can’t deny that! We all deplore the bloodbath, that goes without saying. But now that it’s happened it’s no use whimpering and turning our faces to the wall. We have to look at where it leaves us.”
Gustav grunted, carefully noncommittal. His cheeks twitched, and it was clear that he kept his temper only by strong self-discipline.
They were passing a small inn, and when the Devil noticed, happening to glance in the window, he said, “Ha! Here’s an inn, and not a Dane in sight!” In fact there were Danes in sight, Lars-Goren would have sworn, but the instant the Devil spoke, they vanished. The Devil proposed that they stop and have a tankard at his expense, and he would tell young Gustav his mind.
When they were seated and served—the Devil so large, hunched over the table, that his stiff gray cowlick brushed the beams of the ceiling—the Devil continued: “Where it leaves us is this: King Kristian’s whole effort in the Stockholm bloodbath was to make certain nobody was left to oppose him. All the best men of your beloved Sture party he murdered by the axe and the rack. We can grieve that fact—that’s only right and human—but also, if I may say so, we can use it.”
Gustav studied Lars-Goren, who sat in the corner, his hands over his face, his eyes peeking through the cracks between his trembling fingers. At last, looking back at the Devil, Gustav said, “Speak on.”
“Gustav, my friend,” the Devil said, interlacing his fingers and smiling kindly, “the Stures have no one left but you, if you reveal yourself to be willing—though they hardly know your name as yet. And they have no one strong enough to oppose you in the unhappy event that Stures widow should escape execution and try to claim the leadership.”
Gustav thought about it, then warily nodded. In the shadowy corners of the room where the people of the inn cowered, keeping as far as they could from the Devil, a few began to whisper. “Speak on,” Gustav said again.
“In Denmark, King Kristian has troubles of his own,” the Devil said. He leaned forward, smiling, lowering his voice, meeting Gustav’s eyes with his own small fiery ones. “He’s at odds with his barons.” The Devil had a tendency to spit as he spoke. Gustav Vasa drew his face back. “There as in Sweden, Germany, or France,” the Devil continued, “it’s the commoners who pay for the government. For that reason Kristian has wooed his commoners, giving them all sorts of privileges and liberties—he even allows them their Lutheranism, even shows an inclination to practice it himself, to the horror of the aristocracy and the Church. He’s weaker than you think, my dear Gustav! And the commoners aren’t all. He’s grown friendly with the Dutch, hoping for more profitable trade than he can get with the Hanseatic League. The Germans don’t like that, needless to say—especially the Germans of Lübeck, since Lübeck stands to suffer most if the Dutch get their deal. You, now, have friends in Lübeck, I believe.” He raised his eyebrows.
“That may be,” Gustav said, “and again it may not be. I could say I’m no fonder than the next man of Germans.”
Suddenly the Devil’s red eyes flashed. “Don’t be coy with me, Gustav Erikson! I see everything! Everything! You were captured by the Danes in Sten Sture’s war. You escaped from prison and fled to Lübeck. You think I’m so old and blind I miss these things?”
“That may be,” Gustav said more meekly, still cautious and suspicious.
“Very well,” the Devil said, and calmed himself, glancing around the room. “The Stures can’t oppose you—at first, I predict, they’ll take you as their own, thinking they can govern you and dump you when they please—and Lübeck, your good friends in Lübeck, will finance you.”
“And where do I gather my army?” Gustav asked.
He asked it so off-handedly that Lars-Goren knew he’d been thinking about it.
The Devil raised his mug and drank, then wiped his mouth. He smiled. “You’re on your way to the mining community of Dalarna?”
Gustav thought about it, then nodded. “Dalarna,” he said. He turned to his kinsman Lars-Goren. “What do you think?” he said.
Lars-Goren closed the fingers he’d been watching through and lowered his head a little, his lips trembling, saying nothing.
“What is this dependence on cowards and fools?” the Devil asked, lightly sneering. “You can see very well he’s too frightened to add up six and seven.”
“You’re wrong,” said Gustav. “He’s a slow thinker, but very accurate.
“Pray you don’t need his opinion when your house is on fire,” said the Devil, and grinned. Then, before Gustav’s eyes, he turned into a great swirl of gnats and, little by little, dispersed and vanished. He had forgotten, apparently, that he’d promised to pay the bill.
4.
IT WAS A LONG WAY TO DALARNA, the restless, everlastingly troublesome region of the mines. Again and again they were almost caught by the prowling Danes. Twice when they walked into the houses of old friends, the Danes sat waiting, with the friends hanging dead from the beams of the room, like hams; and each time it was only by miracle that Gustav and Lars-Goren were able to escape. Indeed, the near-captures were so frequent that Lars-Goren grew suspicious. Except if the Danes had captured some Lapp and made him work for them, only one person in the world could know who they were and where they were going, and that person was the Devil. Lars-Goren scowled thoughtfully, riding in the covered cart he’d crept into with his kinsman Gustav, who was asleep. Lars-Goren turned over thought after thought, slowly and carefully, like a man sorting boulders, trying to make sense of what was happening. Lars-Goren’s fingertips no longer trembled, his heart no longer pounded, but even now, with the Devil far away, he felt a steady chill of fear. He did not like Gustav’s strange cooperation with the Devil, but he did not waste time over annoyance at what Gustav was doing. He set down in his mind, as something he must think about later, the question of why Gustav was doing what he did, that is, the whole matter of understanding Gustav, to say nothing of the somewhat larger matter of understanding all human beings who take favors from the Devil. Even Lars-Goren, slow and meticulous as he was about thought, could make out at once that the initial fact was simple: by chance he had met and befriended Gustav, and now, whatever he might think of Gustav’s ways (he had, as yet, no firm opinion), the Devil had entered the scene, and where the Devil was involved, Lars-Goren had no choice, as a knight, and a father of small children, but to involve himself also.
And so, setting aside all questions of whether or not his young kinsman was right, Lars-Goren worried questions more immediate. The main question was this: did the Devil have some plan far more devious than the plan he’d spoken of? Had he lied to them? That is, had the Devil some plot which depended on the capture or murder of Gustav and Lars-Goren, a plot which with luck Lars-Goren might help Gustav sidestep? Or was the Devil simply crazy, revelling in confusion, urging everyone around him to frenzied activity, having, himself, no idea under heaven what the outcome would be, merely hoping for the best, like an idiot chess player who occasionally wins by throwing away bishops and queens and confounding his foe?
Lars-Goren brooded on this, riding in the hide-covered peasant-cart, looking down at the pale white blur of his kinsman’s face.
At last the cart stopped, and after three or four minutes the humpbacked driver raised the edge of the hide that served as their tent-flap and peeped in. “Dalarna,” he growled in a voice oddly muffled, and he closed the flap again. Gustav opened his eyes and, gently, Lars-Goren put his hand over Gustav’s mouth, lest the young man forget and cry out, and all be lost.
5.
NOWHERE IN SWEDEN WAS LIFE more grim and unappealing than in the dale of Dalarna. The mountains, high and brooding and disfigured as the Devil himself, gazed down as if vengefully, strewn with slag heaps, pocked with holes like a carcass full of maggots, irregularly shorn as if sick with the mange, the lower slopes crawling with stooped men and animals—pit-ponies, draught-horses, oxen, dogs, and mules—not one of them, man or beast, uninjured—or at least so it seemed to Gustav Vasa, standing bent over like a peasant in line with Lars-Goren, waiting to see the German who did the hiring. There seemed to be no Danes anywhere. Here and there patches of smoke rose and flattened, black against the gray of the clouds. Workmen moved past the hiring line, endlessly laboring back and forth, pushing wheelbarrows or pulling at their sullen mules, some with heavy wooden boxes on their shoulders, some bearing crudely hacked mineshaft timbers, some rolling barrels or carrying buckets of gray water. One had no fingers, another a wooden leg; all of them had scars, barked knuckles, scabs and sores.
“Behold the army of King Gustav,” he whispered to Lars-Goren, and grimly smiled.
Lars-Goren said nothing. They came to the Germans crude table.
“Nimps?” said the German.
“Lars-Goren Bergquist,” said Lars-Goren.
“Erik Bergquist,” said Gustav with a smile.
The German smiled back. “I don’t beliff you,” he said, “but no matter, I write dem down.” He was a short, stocky man, shaved and trim as the Germans always were, even in the country of the mines. When he looked up at Gustav, something made him pause and look closely. “You come to make big revolution?” he asked, then quickly raised his hand, palm out, and smiled. “Never mind! Good luck! We hev new revolution in Dalarna every Tuesday. Tenk Gott for revolution! Otherwise we all go crezzy.”
6.
THERE WAS THAT NIGHT, as there was almost every night in Dalarna, an open-air meeting, with beer drinking and speeches. It was run, though crudely, with all the stiff formality of the annual Ting. To Lars Goren’s vague distress there was still not a Danish soldier in sight—at least not one in uniform—but gradually, as the reason came clear to him, his distress gave way to amusement. For all the wooden politeness of the meeting, the concern for proper order—each man rising and speaking in his turn, and speaking with as much moderation as he could manage—the miners were a fearsome company, not to be trifled with. No Dane, once the miners had found him out, would have lasted a minute in the riot the discovery would have unleashed. On the other hand—as the Danish rulers were undoubtedly aware—whatever the pent-up fury of the miners, there was not much to hear at an ordinary meeting in Dalarna. A man stood up, black-bearded, big-bellied, and harangued his fellow miners about foreigners and Lutherans. He pounded his fist on an imaginary table, his eyes bulged with anger, spittle flew glittering from his mouth past the high, smoking torches. The Germans—there were many of them here in Dalarna, most of them owners, officials, or engineers—nodded solemnly, as if in complete agreement, though in all probability every one of them was Lutheran. Another man, a Swede with long blond hair and eyes sunken in like the sockets in a skull, raised his arms for recognition, to answer the big-bellied man with the beard. “Don’t be fooled!” he cried in his thin, woeful voice. “Whatever people say, there’s a lot we can learn from the Lutherans!” The Germans, as before, nodded solemn agreement. The Swede gave the old and familiar arguments, how the peasants on Church-owned land were for the most part tax-exempt, and the Church owned a fifth of Sweden; how a churchman or even the servant of a churchman, if he committed murder, could be tried only in the churchmen’s special court; how the bishops in the Riksdag and råd had been keeping the government weak at least since 1440, though they themselves dealt in land and trade, even fought wars against their neighbors, like any other nobleman; how the bishop of Skara could produce thirty armed horsemen for knightly service, while even the richest of the lay magnates could bring out only about thirteen. “The True Church,” cried the Swede, shaking his finger at the sky and almost weeping, “is not the bishops but the whole community of the faithful! Let the True Church—the people—get the wealth of the Church, not the bishops!” The men of Dalarna applauded him and shouted encouragement, raising their steins. A bald, nervous German with a rounded back and twitching, pink eyes was granted recognition and spoke against the Lutherans and, especially, against all Germans. “I am one of them!” he cried. “I look in my own filthy soul, and let me tell you, I am horrified!” He began to shake all over. “A German who has got no authority outside him is worse than a filthy beast!” He shook both fists.
Before he knew the reason—perhaps it was the smell, like the stink of a goat—Lars-Goren felt his heart turn to ice. When he swivelled his head around, he saw the Devil standing in the shape of a crow on Gustav Vasa’s shoulder, whispering in his ear. Gustav scowled, his hand on his bearded chin, then slowly raised his eyes to the platform.
The men of Dalarna knew at once, when Gustav began to speak, that this was no ordinary ranter and raver but a man who, if he survived, might change the world.
Lars-Goren could never remember later what it was, word for word, that his kinsman said in that famous speech. Whether it was the Devil’s inspiration or his native ability, never before tested, Gustav addressed them with force, not in grand phrases but like the commoner he was. He spoke of the bloodbath, how the axe had fallen smoothly, without clumsiness or hurry, indifferent as the knife of a Copenhagen housewife chopping mushrooms; how after each stroke, as the head fell away toward the sawdust, shooting out its spiral of blood, the headless body jerking, clutching at the air with its white, blind fingers, the axeman drew his axe back and wiped it with his cloth, looking out over the crowd as if wondering what time it was, then leaned the axe against the sawhorse beside him and crossed another name off, while his two assistants dragged the body away, pulling it by the shoes, and then led up another man, as polite and unhurried as assistants to a rich, fat Copenhagen tailor, and helped him kneel at the block; and how then the axeman dusted his hands, spit on the palms, and casually reached over for the axe.
“How can one reasonably hate such people?” Gustav Vasa asked. He held his arms out, innocent as morning. He was indeed, there on the platform—still and calm in the churning torchlight—the kind of man one could easily imagine one’s king. “Nothing,” he said, “could have been more logical, impersonal, and efficient than the Stockholm bloodbath. Supremely efficient! No question about it, they were much to be admired, these Danes! All their enemies in the party of the Stures they’d removed at one fell swoop, and without a trace of risk! No new leader in the party of the Stures could arise now to trouble them, because no Sture kinsman who’d ever shown the slightest sign of talent had been left among the living. Though the widow of Sten Sture had been spared, she would prove no exception: she would certainly be executed, quietly, in Denmark, for as everyone knows, and as history has shown repeatedly, no tyrant is safe until the last pretender to the throne he has stolen has been slaughtered. No Sture money could be turned to financing revenge for the bloodbath and the horror that attended it, because the estates of the dead—all the wealth of the Stures—had reverted to the Union crown, that is, to Kristian of Denmark. And the wealth of Kristian and his friends would increase. All bureaucratic positions once managed by Stures here in Sweden, from Kalmar to the Pole, would be managed, henceforth, by loyal Danes. Perhaps,” Gustav said—showing his large and perfect teeth in a smile—“perhaps some members of his audience might be imagining they could still look for help from the democratic Lutherans, especially those of the German port of Lübeck, Sweden’s main contact with the League. Alas, an empty dream! Though a Lutheran himself, for all practical purposes, Kristian of Denmark was switching his trade from the Hanseatic League to the Netherlands. Ask any merchant from Muscovy to Spain! Lübeck, for all her wealth and beauty—for all her seeming power—would soon be no better than a ghost town.” Gustav’s voice began to tremble with emotion. “Lübecks halls would soon be empty, her spires stripped of bells. For the overworked, overtaxed miners of Dalarna and for their German owners, officials, and engineers, the last reasonable hope lay in three great piles of blowing ashes on Södermalm hill. The victory of the Danes was complete and elegant. How,” he asked again—his voice trembling more—“could anyone reasonably hate a race of men so efficient?”
The men of Dalarna stared, hardly knowing what to think, stunned by his carefully marshalled, gloomy arguments. The rounded German with the twitching eyes sought recognition, but they ignored him. The Devil, now disguised as a half-wit peasant to Lars-Goren’s left, stood grinning, his bleary eyes glittering. He seemed to have forgotten his position in all this. He rubbed his hands, his head thrown forward, enjoying the suspense and the victory sure to come, grinning and eager as the humblest of mortal partisans. Lars-Goren’s wits reeled, and sweat ran down his face, but it struck him that, if only he could make himself think clearly, he had, there beside him, a clue to how the Devil might be beaten—possibly forever! He knew, even as the notion came to him, that of course it was absurd; yet the strange conviction persisted, scorn it as he might.
The crowd began to whisper, its anger building, and at the last possible moment Gustav Vasa broke his silence. “Men of Dalarna,” he said, “I have told you no reasonable man can hate the Danes, much less dream of beating them. But I do not come before you as a reasonable man. I come as the last, wild hope of the Stures, a Sture myself and a man with powerful acquaintances in Lübeck, men who owe me favors and have even more need of me than you have—more need, as they know themselves, than has all of Sweden!” The shock his words gave them seemed to pass through the crowd in waves, like wind over wheat. “Is it possible?” they said to one another. “Is he mad?”
Lars-Goren began to feel troubled. It was not so much that Gustav was lying a little, though he was, of course—he was not quite as close to the Stures as he pretended, nor did anyone in Lübeck owe him favors. Neither was it, exactly, that for a man in such a passion, Gustav Vasa spoke remarkably well-turned sentences. One fights as one can, Lars-Goren told himself. A man in a fury makes use of his fists in the best way his training makes available to him, so why should Lars-Goren object if his kinsman Gustav used careful rhetoric? Nevertheless, Lars-Goren felt distressed, looking up at the platform from his place beside the Devil. Like torches at a stage play, flickering on the sweatbeads of an actor playing Christ, throwing up a shadow on the wall behind him, so the torches around the platform gleamed and danced and raised shadows over Gustav. Like an actor’s lines, not like real, direct feeling, the well-turned cries of Gustav’s anger rang out over the crowd and rebounded from the mountains. Even the answers of the crowd sounded staged: Is it possible? Is he mad? The smudged faces, swellings, and wounds of the Dalesmen—real as he knew them to be—looked like putty and paint in the torches’ red glimmer, and even the Devil, with spittle on his lip, seemed all at once, to Lars-Goren, like a child in a costume. All the world had gone unreal, mere foolish play—a shoddy carnival, a magic show; and remembering those who had died in Stockholm, those real severed heads, mouths working in the dirt, those real bodies stretched and torn apart on the rack, Lars-Goren began to be filled with frustration and anger that it should all come to this.
“My name,” Gustav Vasa was saying on the platform, “is Gustav Vasa! After my old friend and wealthy, staunch supporter Bishop Brask, who was spared because of his clerical status and his pretended friendship with that filthy pig Gustav Trolle, archbishop, I am the last close relation of Sweden’s fallen hero, the man who should have been our king, Sten Sture the Younger!” He lowered his eyebrows, smiling like a demon, and ground his right fist into his left palm, waiting while they roared their pleasure; then he spoke again. This time Gustav made no secret of his strong emotion. He told them of the death of his father and uncles, the imprisonment of his two lovely sisters; told them—almost gently, though his voice clanged out like a Swedish iron bell and tears streamed down his cheeks—that he, for one, could still unreasonably find it in his heart to hate the efficient and elegant Danes. He, for one, could dream of overthrowing them, dream of sending those noble old sea-kings out to sea for the rest of their days—let them settle in China! He said: “‘And where will this Gustav get his army?’ you ask.” He raised both hands, pointing. “You,” he screamed, “will be my army!”
The Devil, in his excitement, was sobbing and, at the same time, dancing. From every quarter of the crowd rose a roar of approval. Everywhere, miners were kissing each other.
At just that moment a man came running up the hill from the village. He pushed into the crowd, trying to reach the platform shouting something to everyone who would listen. When news of what the man was saying reached the Devil, his hair stood on end and his eyes rolled in fury and confusion. Then, collecting his wits, the Devil made a rush—roaring and swinging his fists to make a path—pressing to the platform, where he whispered in Gustav Vasa’s ear. Together, they melted at once into the crowd and hurried to the darkness beyond the farthest reach of the torches. As well as he could, Lars-Goren followed. He caught up with them at the nearest of the pit-barns, climbing onto horses.
“What is it? What’s happened?” Lars-Goren called out, keeping clear of the Devil, trying to look only at his kinsman.
“It’s Brask!” Gustav answered. “Bishop Brask and his men! Somehow or another they’ve got on to us! Grab a horse, Lars-Goren! If they’ve heard about me and what I’ve claimed for them, they’ve probably heard that you’ve been with me!” He shouted to his horse, wheeled, then galloped off, the Devil galloping right behind him, his black cape flying. As quickly as he could, Lars-Goren caught a horse for himself and set out after them, but as luck would have it, he was too far behind and got lost in the woods. When he found them—or, rather, found Gustav Vasa but not the Devil, sitting at his campfire beside a high mountain lake—Bishop Brask and the noblemen of his party had already caught up with him. Their horses were coming from the woods toward Gustav just as Lars-Goren came toward him from the opposite direction. When Gustav saw them he leaped up in a fury, then at once sat down again and began to bang the earth with his fist, crying without shame, like a schoolboy, swearing his heart out.
7.
BISHOP BRASK WAS A TALL, bald-headed old man, lean and straight of back, with heavy-lidded, pale blue, nearsighted eyes and fingers so stiff and thin that, even in their gloves, it seemed that a strong wind might break them off like twigs. He wore a stern black cloak over his purple outfit, a wide-brimmed black hat with a blue-black feather, and high-heeled boots from Flanders. His attire was like a king’s, by Swedish standards, though Sweden was of course not Germany or France, and in fact when the bishops of Europe were called together he always made a point of not going, lest his poverty be revealed.
He sat on a black horse in skirts and blinders—a sleek, fine animal by the name of Crusader, the old man’s most treasured possession. It was dancing a little now, twisting its head, trying to understand the acrid smell of Gustav Vasa but not giving the question its full attention, trying to work the iron bit out of its mouth, drooling and giving its head quick sideways snaps. Bishop Brask drew the reins in more tightly and pretended not to notice. He stared down gloomily at Gustav, waiting for him to finish. The bishop’s men sat waiting a little behind him, chins lifted, hands folded on the pommels of their saddles, their capes thrown back, like aristocrats posing for a painting.
Lars-Goren got down off his horse, tied it to a tree, and walked toward Gustav. Abruptly Gustav looked up at him, then over at the bishop, and stopped swearing.
As if it were a signal, the bishop got down off his horse and gave the reins to his man. He came toward Gustav, stepping warily, like a man who disliked having to walk on dirt, and he worked the tight leather gloves off his fingers as he came. When he reached Gustav, he gave an ironic little bow surprisingly like the Devil’s and said, “I understand we’re in some way kinsmen.”
“That may be,” said Gustav.
The bishop raised the tips of his fingers to his chin and seemed to muse for a moment, as if his speech were off-the-cuff, though everyone present was aware that it was carefully planned. “Come, come,” he said “there are hardly so many of us left that we can afford to be unfriendly.” Slowly, his frown became a not entirely unpleasant smile, and he stretched out his hand.
Gustav Vasa stared up at him in amazement, prepared to be furious if the thing should prove a trick then abruptly and heartily rose to his feet to shake hands. The firmness of Gustav’s grip made the bishop wince—it looked a little like a sneer of rage to Lars-Goren, but Gustav seemed not to notice. When he had retrieved his hand, the bishop closed it inside the other, as if to keep it from further damage, and changed the sneer to a smile.
“So,” he said, “you made a great impression on the Dalesmen, I understand.”
“I told them what I think,” said Gustav guardedly.
The bishop nodded and moved closer to the fire to look into it and warm his hands. “An interesting speech, by report anyway. You’re quite right, of course. The party of the Stures is finished if it doesn’t find a leader.” He glanced at Gustav, a look simultaneously baffling and direct. Partly, Lars-Goren thought, it was a look of appraisal such as duelists give one another before they fight; but there was more to it than that. Lars-Goren couldn’t make out quite what.
“I realize,” Gustav said, meeting the bishop’s eyes but keeping his voice polite, unassertive, “there are richer and more powerful men than me still living and loyal to the Stures. Yourself, for instance, or the magnate Ture Jönsson. But you’re a bishop, and as for him, with all his holdings in Norway and Denmark—”
Brask waved his hand impatiently, cutting him off. “Yes, yes, all true,” he said. “The miners of Dalarna, Kopparberg, and so on—they’ve never been fond of churchmen or the very rich. You’re the kind of man that appeals to them. One of themselves, more or less.” His lips twitched slightly. He controlled them at once. “Our interests aren’t exactly identical,” he said. “They want a king. That’s not exactly our first priority. But on the other hand, they want a Sture as king; and for our own positions, our little advantages—” He gave a slight wave with his right hand, disparaging the little advantages he enjoyed, the castles and lands he held by favor of the Stures. “We like to see the Sture party reasonably strong. A young man like you, with a gift for persuading the populace and a willingness to do a little fighting if need be …” He bent his head and tapped his chin with one finger. “It would be awkward, of course, if you yourself should decide that you ought to be king.”
Gustav laughed as if nothing could be farther from his mind.
Brask smiled to himself. “By rights, you know, there are people much closer to the throne than you are—if there should have to be a throne.”
“I’m their servant,” Gustav said, and gave a stiff bow, like a farmer.
“Yes, I’m sure,” the bishop said. He turned around to warm his back for a while. Over his shoulder he said, “It’s a tiresome business, isn’t it.”
“Tiresome?” Gustav echoed.
“When I was young,” said the bishop, “I was a great reader of books. They were my chief pleasure—my very life, I would have said.” He shook his head, ironic. “But books are expensive, and you’d be surprised how easily they burn, if the fire gets hot enough. And so one involves oneself in money-grubbing and politics, even war. For the luxury of reading the gentle thoughts of Plato or St. Ambrose, or sharing the pastoral meditations of the Emperor—who turned his back on Rome to run a chicken farm—for the serene pleasure of musing at one’s ease on the glorious illustrations of the Arabs or the masters of Byzantium—one turns one’s whole attention to manipulating fools full of bloodthirst and ambition making them and, when the time comes, breaking them, crushing underfoot all that God and the philosophers have stood for. It’s a tiresome business.”
“I can see that, yes,” said Gustav. He stood looking at the ground, marking it with the side of his foot.
The bishop nodded and for a time seemed lost in thought. His men on their horses sat as still as the trees behind them.
Abruptly, the bishop said, “You’re right about Lübeck. Their money’s the key. Personally, of course, as a Christian bishop sworn to stamp out heresy, I can’t in good conscience have dealings with the Lutherans, though I’m acquainted with a Jew, in a business way. … And you’re right about Dalesmen; there’s the heart of your army—though what they want in the end—taxation of the Church, seizure of Church property, equal say with their betters … Theoretically, in other words, you and I are in quite violent opposition.”
Gustav nodded, slightly smiling.
The bishop’s hand had wandered inside his cloak while he talked. Now, swifter than a striking snake, he drew his sword and slashed at Gustav, aiming straight at his neck. Gustav jerked up his arm to block it—blood rushed down his forearm—and in the same instant he drew his own sword, amazement on his face, and lunged. The bishop lightly sidestepped, released his sword, and threw up both hands. “A test!” he cried, “don’t kill me!” Gustav hesitated, and the bishop lowered his hands. “You’re a quick thinker,” he said, “and you’re clearly no coward.” He smiled. He waved in the direction of his men, and one of them got down from his horse and hurried over to them, bringing liniment and bandages. With a bow almost humble he went to work on Gustav’s arm. Lars-Goren, who had drawn his own sword, slipped it back into its sheath and drew nearer. Meanwhile, the bishop said, “Very well, you shall have your revolution. I’ll support you, have no doubt. Not openly, of course. But then, neither will Lübeck support you openly. It would ruin their chances of wooing Denmark back from the Dutch.”
Gustav gave a cry of pain and raised his fist to hit the man tending him, then thought better of it.
Bishop Brask lifted his sword from the ground where he had dropped it, cleaned the blood off the blade, and put it back in its sheath under his cloak. “Sooner or later, as you know,” he said, “our theoretical opposition will become actual. I’ll be sorry to see that happen. I love grand ideals—eternal friendship, loyalty, all that. In that respect we’re very different, I suspect. Except for a dedication to survival, you have no principles at all. It’s odd that the Devil should have chosen such a man; but then, he’s a fool.” He shrugged.
“For a man of principle,” Gustav said crossly, “you certainly have your little ways.”
“I think you haven’t quite understood me,” said the bishop, “not that it matters, of course; not in the least. You see—” He put on a look so baffled and ironic, above all so extreme in its admission of absurdity—like the expression of a poisoner when he sees that, by carelessness, he’s drunk the wrong wine—that Lars-Goren for an instant felt pity for him. “You see, betrayal of ideals—” He waved vaguely, as if dismissing their pity. “Betrayal of ideals is a great sin and a torment. But what you do, that’s merely savage, merely bestial. Who blames a dog if he eats cow dung? We merely look away in disgust. Dogs will be dogs. But if a man eats dung, and not from madness, which makes him just an animal again, but for some considered purpose not central to his survival but pursuant to his comfort or luxury—then we look away with a vengeance, my friend“—he raised one stern finger—“not in disgust but in scorn!”
“Yes, I see,” Gustav said. If he saw, he was not impressed.
“Perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t,” said the bishop. “It’s not important, of course. You do what’s natural to you, widowing young women, burning down perfectly good buildings. And I, I cunningly support you as long as you’re useful, shifting money and men to your side, providing you with maps and equipment, castles to hide in, information on the enemy’s activities. I have seen to it already that both Dalarna and Kopparberg are armed and equipped, waiting for your command. I will support you, as I say. And then, of course, when you’re no longer useful—” He closed his eyes for a moment and tipped his head up, then opened them, staring into the lead-gray sky. “Such a stupid waste,” he said. “The whole business. I wonder which of us God finds more uninteresting!”
For the first time, Lars-Goren spoke. “Why do you do it then?” His voice broke out louder than he’d intended, sharp as iron striking rock. Gustav gave a start, but the bishop moved only his eyes, studying Lars-Goren. Then, losing interest, he looked away again and lowered his head until his chin was near his chest. “Why do I do it, you say.” His face moved painfully from one expression to another, like the face of an actor constrained to say an overfamiliar line from a too-well-known play. “Why not?” he said at last, and grinned bitterly. He glanced at Gustav’s bandaged arm, nodded to himself, and, without another word, turned abruptly to walk toward his horse. Now as before, he walked a little mincingly, as if he hated the uncertainty of the grip earth gave, hated getting soil and bits of leaf on his shoes. His man gave him a leg up, then went over to his own horse and mounted.
The bishop scowled, made a kind of tsk tsk, then looked, full of gloom, at Gustav and Lars-Goren. “Time for the exit,” he said, “the interesting farewell gesture, the parting bit of wit.” He slung his jaw sideways—exactly as the horse was doing again, trying to be rid of the bit—then breathed deeply, shaking his head. “You know”—he nodded to Gustav Vasa—“you, in my position, would simply turn your horse and gallop off, not true? Man of affairs, much on his mind, no time for entrances and exits; you simply come and go. How I envy you!” He looked up at the sky again. It seemed to have gone darker, affected by his mood “Is Bishop Hans Brask not ten times busier than Gustav Vasa? Yet always, always the intolerable burden of style! Always the cool eye drifting toward the murder!—excuse me, I meant mirror!” He looked flustered, almost shocked. “Stupid slip,” he muttered. He glared at Lars-Goren as if the whole thing were his fault. “Stupid,” he whispered, his face dark with anger, and abruptly, still blushing, he turned his horse toward the woods and galloped off. After a moment his men wheeled around and followed. A little foolishly, as if unable to think what else to do, Gustav Vasa waved.
8.
SO IT WAS THAT GUSTAV VASA became, first, regent, then king, of Sweden. To set off the revolt of the Dalesmen of Dalarna, he scarcely needed to raise his hand. Rumors fanned by the Devil’s huge wings were already widespread of Kristians intention of putting all Swedish mineral exports in Denmark’s control, and there were rumors, too—most of them well-founded—of atrocities committed upon peasants and country priests by the Danish soldiery. On the off chance that anyone alive in Dalarna had not yet heard the rumors, Gustav seized the Lutherans’ printing press at Uppsala and turned it from the printing of Bibles in German and Latin to a different and highly original purpose, propaganda. It was a stroke of genius, that unprecedented use of the new machine. Even in France there were men who gnashed their teeth in envy, wishing they themselves had been the first in the world to think of it.
The miners of Kopparberg soon joined the uprising, then all of Bergslag, then farmers and lumbermen from the areas surrounding; and since Kristians government officials in Stockholm were too busy squabbling among themselves to come up with effective counter-measures, the rebellion gathered momentum. In April 1521 the rebels were able to defeat Kristians forces at Västerås; in May they captured Uppsala. With the speed of an army on sailing sleds, Gustav pushed eastward to the sea to win a port through which supplies could reach him from abroad, and by the beginning of summer his army stood outside Stockholm. Now Hans Brask, bishop of Linkoping, and Ture Jönsson, governor of Västergödand, came openly to his support. It was through their influence that he was elected regent in August 1521.
Kristian of Denmark fumed, pacing, wringing his hands, and swearing; but for the moment he was helpless. For three months he’d been visiting the Netherlands, playing high politics with his Hapsburg relations, pursuing his plan of shifting all his business from the Hanseatic League to the Dutch, where the profits would be greater. He wrote furious, imperatorial letters, the Devil sitting at his elbow, giving him advice, but the letters did no good. By Christmas, most of Sweden was in the hands of the insurgents “Never mind,” said the Devil, his huge, crooked hands calmly folded on the table, his head bowed low, so that Kristian could not see his expression. “Take what they will, these lunatics,” said the Devil, “it will all melt like snow.”
“Like snow, you say,” said Kristian. Even with the Devil, he had a way of staring with one eye wide open, so blue it looked like glass, the other eye closed to a slit. He drummed his dimpled fingers on the table.
Solemnly, the Devil nodded. “You forget, my friend,” he said, “we have on our side the most brilliant general in the world, the magnificent Berend von Melen!”
“Ah!” said Kristian of Denmark, raising both eyebrows and beaming with pleasure. “Ah yes, the German!” He had met this Berend von Melen only twice, and both times had judged him, after careful thought, to be insane. Kristian had been delighted. He had never been much of a warrior himself, and the stories of Vikings he’d heard in his childhood had convinced him that only the insane made good soldiers.
As it happened, and as the Devil was well aware—unless it had briefly slipped his mind—at just the moment when the Devil was giving consolation to Kristian, Berend von Melen was formally switching his allegiance to Gustav Vasa. All that now stood between Vasa’s peasant army and complete victory were the fortresses of Stockholm, Kalmar, and Älvsborg. With the army he had at hand he knew he could not take them, for it was largely an army of volunteers, most of them unpaid, always anxious about their crops and families, eager to go home; but Gustav was by no means out of cards. By April, in return for trading privileges, the two nearest cities of the Hanseatic League, Lübeck and Danzig, were covertly supporting him, sending privately funded armies. By October Lübeck was a formal ally. Gustav was now in control of the sea and able to blockade Stockholm; on land he was now strong enough to invade the Danish provinces of Blekinge, Skåne, and Viken.
Kristian, walking with the Devil on the battlements in Copenhagen, wept and wrung his hands. “What a fool I was, listening to the Devil,” he said. “I’ve lost my kingdom and, for all I know, my immortal soul as well!”
The Devil shook his head as if bewildered by it all. “Who knows?” he said. “Maybe something will turn up.”
He knew pretty well what it was that would turn up. At that very moment the Danish nobility, alienated by Kristian’s legislation on behalf of the peasants and burghers of Denmark—and certain great lords of the Danish church, shocked at Kristian’s flirtation with the Lutherans—were secretly meeting with Fredrik of Holstein, brother of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles. By the end of their meeting, they had elected Fredrik their king.
“I’ll fight him,” said Kristian, when he heard the news. “Nobody’s king of Denmark till he’s sitting right here on this throne, and there’s no room for two!”
“That’s the spirit!” the Devil said eagerly, and ground his fist into his hand. “We’ll fight him!”
One eye wide open, the other almost shut, Kristian looked at the Devil and slowly raised his hand to his mouth. He began to smile like a man who’s lost his senses, like a poor, doltish peasant when soldiers come and murder his parents and take away his horse. The Devil narrowed his eyes to study him more carefully, feeling—for some reason he couldn’t quite get hold of—a mysterious alarm. There were tiers of candles behind the king’s left shoulder, and as the Devil stared intently, trying to make out Kristian’s expression and fathom what it meant, the king’s whole body became, because of the brightness of the light, a blur, a figure as intense and undefined as a sunspot. The Devil, with a feeling of inexplicable dread, looked away.
Kristian had been fooled for the last time. With his family, dressed in the humblest peasant garb, he fled that night to the Netherlands.
9.
DENMARK WAS NOW in great confusion, struggling with government by a foreigner. The multimillionaire merchants of Lübeck met in secret, smiling and nodding their round, plump heads, the Devil inconspicuously seated in their midst. To Fredrik, they would promise their full and unstinting support, they agreed, beaming happily. To Gustav Vasa they would promise the same. Let the stronger dog kill the weaker, or let each dog rule his own yard, growling at the other.
Bishop Brask, when he received the secret messenger from Lübeck, smiled bitterly, showing his long yellow teeth. He went for a walk to get himself in hand, then sent the same messenger to bring him Gustav.
“My friend,” he said to Vasa when he arrived, accompanied by Lars-Goren, “it seems you’ve been made king by the Germans.” He stood grimly smiling, letting the words sink in. When Gustav showed nothing, as if the news were already old and dull to him, the bishop continued, “It’s a curious turn of events, as you must know. You’re not the person we’d have chosen, if we’d had any say in things. By ‘we’ I mean—” He turned away toward the great dark arch of the fireplace, as if embarrassed. The room they met in was comparatively small and gloomy, a mere closet if set against the great halls of Paris or Vienna. They were alone, the three of them, except for a round-backed old monk in the corner, reading a book and muttering to himself in Latin. Gustav Vasa sat on a small wooden bench, his hat over his knees, his gloved hand lying on his swordhilt. He seemed much changed by his experience as head of the rebellion. He’d hardened everywhere—every muscle turned to cable, his skin dark as leather and so tough it seemed unlikely that even a dagger could puncture it—but hardened especially around the forehead and eyes. His expression was like that of a man listening for something, listening so intently that he had nothing left over for what was happening around him, not even the strength or interest to raise an eyebrow. His eyes were serene but as hard as blue steel. He was slightly drunk, just noticeably sullen. They’d stopped at an inn on their way to their meeting with the bishop.
Bishop Brask had changed too, but in a different way. He looked older by fifteen years than he’d looked that day in Dalarna when Lars-Goren had met him, or so it seemed to Lars-Goren.
The bishop cleared his throat and continued, looking out at the night, “King Fredrik has hinted that he may release Kristina Gyllenstierna, Sten Sture’s widow.” He glanced at Gustav Vasa as if to see if he’d heard the news already. Gustav showed nothing. The bishop frowned. “Fredrik knows her claims better than yours—not to put too fine a point on it. No doubt it’s occurred to him that her presence in Sweden would rouse supporters.”
Just perceptibly, Gustav nodded.
“You, of course, would be one of the first,” Bishop Brask continued. “You’re a reasonable man, a just man. You’d hardly deny that her claim is superior to your own.”
Gustav said nothing.
The bishop stretched his neck, adjusting the sagging flesh to the high, tight collar. “Your stance, of course, would have a good deal of influence. You’re a national hero.” Again Brask threw a look at Gustav, then quickly looked away. He interlaced his fingers in a gesture curiously meek and pious, then turned once more to the window. “However,” he said, “what’s right and just is apparently not the point—as usual. The Germans prefer you to Kristina. You’ve made certain agreements with them. The point is simply this.” He sighed heavily and for an instant seemed to lose his thread. Abruptly, he continued, “It would please King Fredrik no end to see us tear ourselves apart in civil war. The Germans wouldn’t like that, of course. Who would, except Fredrik? We can’t move an inch without the Germans. We all know that. And the terrible truth is, even with the noblest intentions in the world—not that I accuse you of any such thing—” He smiled to himself. “Even with the noblest intentions in the world, you might be pushed, one way or another, into pressing your claim. These things happen. Someone might persuade you that you’re the better choice, might stir up your powerful patriotic feelings; or you might perhaps, on some sudden impulse …” Slowly, he turned back to Gustav. “The point, as I was saying is: I’m not in a position to back losers, even if I like them. So you win, it seems.” He smiled again. “It’s an interesting life.” He could hardly have spoken with more weariness and despair if he were saying, “All the world is a grave.”
Gustav Vasa was frowning with that farmerish look he was fond of putting on with those who thought of themselves as his superiors. Lars-Goren, standing at the door, stared hard at a tile halfway between the bishop and himself. His kinsman Gustav sat in the periphery of his vision, yet Lars-Goren saw his expression clearly. It was, if one saw past the peasant mask, the look of a guard-dog, a look so ferociously focused on one thing that it might have been mistaken for madness.
“I don’t ask to be king,” he said. “I don’t want anything to do with your plots and schemes.”
“Of course you don’t!” said Bishop Brask, quickly and reassuringly. He gave a weary little wave. But Gustav was in no mood to be patronized. He stood up, clenching both fists. “My dear bishop,” he said, barely controlling himself, “for all your vast experience and learning, you don’t know anything. I fight your wars, I pull in the help of the Germans, I out-fox von Melen himself and bring him over, and you want some fine lady to be ruler of the Swedes. Have her! Good for you! Just don’t waste my time bringing me to hear your reasons!”
Bishop Brask sadly shook his head and rubbed his hands together. “Come, come,” he said, a kind of whine in his voice “you’re too hard on me! It’s quite true that you wouldn’t be my first choice as king, but you are my choice. Why be difficult? I’ll tell you what it is that I mind most about seeing you chosen. Shall I?” He looked over at Lars-Goren as if asking for his permission too. “What I mind most—on your account as much as mine—is that it will change you from an animal to a man.”
“The day that happens, the Devil will convert to Christianity,” said Gustav.
Abruptly, loudly, the monk in the corner of the room began to laugh. They all knew the voice; it was the Devil. Lars-Goren felt a weakness coming over him.
“I’ve gone about this very badly,” said Bishop Brask, wincing and looking hard at Gustav. His voice, to Lars-Goren’s surprise, became a pitiful old man’s. “I’ve been a good ally to you, Gustav, surely you’ll agree. I’d hoped that if I spoke with you frankly, laid my cards on the table—no tricks, no cunning manipulation—we might become friends.”
“We’ll see,” said Gustav.
“Yes, we’ll see, of course.”
As Gustav moved toward the door, the bishop caught his arm and leaned close, timid and confidential. “Make no mistake, your troubles are just beginning!” he said. “You’ll need every friend you can get! Surround yourself with men who have proved you can trust them! Remember your own!”
Gustav seemed to think about it. “I’ll do that,” he said. “Goodnight.”
“Good-night,” said the bishop, his fragile old fingers snatching at Gustav’s hand to shake it. As Lars-Goren followed, the bishop caught his hand too and shook it heartily. “Good-night, my friend,” he said to Lars-Goren, eagerly fixing him with his eyes. “Good-night and God bless you!” As they walked down the stairs he called from the landing, “Well, good-night then!”
“What do you make of it, Lars-Goren?” Gustav muttered at the door.
“I’d say he’s as good a man as any to nominate a king,” said Lars-Goren.
Gustav nodded. “And after that?”
“He’d like some high office, that’s clear,” said Lars-Goren.
Gustav waited, frowning impatiently.
“He might be a fine and Christian man,” Lars-Goren said, “if he had nothing to think about but books.”
“Appoint him to nothing whatsoever?” said Gustav.
“All I really said—” Lars-Goren began.
“Incredible suggestion!” said Gustav; suddenly smiling, he hunched forward, and lightly tapped his fingertips together near his nose.
ON THE SIXTH OF JUNE, Gustav accepted the crown. Eleven days later, the Danes in Stockholm surrendered. It turned out afterward that the messenger from the merchants of Lübeck had had the papers of surrender in his pocket when he’d come to Bishop Brask.
“Goat-farmer,” said the Devil, “you’ve done well for yourself. I’m sure Mother Sweden can look forward, now, to years and years of peace.”
“That may be,” said Gustav, and glanced at Lars-Goren, who stood gray as ashes, carefully not looking at either of them. It crossed Gustav’s mind that sooner or later, he must drive his friend the Devil out of Sweden.