PART FOUR

1.

LONG BEFORE HE CAME to the dales of Dalarna, Lars-Goren heard rumors of the trouble there. The Devil was everywhere, gleefully whispering into the miners’ ears. Sometimes he was seen at public meetings, ranting in the torchlight in the shape of a hunchbacked country priest or a twisted old copper hauler. Sometimes he appeared in the darkness of the mines themselves, dropping insinuations about Gustav’s ways.

As soon as he arrived, Lars-Goren sought out the cheerful little German who’d done the hiring when Lars-Goren and Gustav had come here first. He was now much risen in the world, part-owner of the mine.

“Iss a sad bissness,” the German said, shaking his head, smiling brightly. “But vat you going to tell dem, dese miserable people?” He winked merrily and offered Lars-Goren a beer.

At the meeting that night, there was no trace of the careful order that had before been so conspicuous. They shouted one another down, sometimes threw things. Scuffles broke out here and there in the crowd, and gradually it came to Lars-Goren that Germans were as rare here tonight as Danes had been the last time he’d visited. No wonder, for the talk was all of foreigners, and how Gustav’s government had no Swedes in it, to speak of—only Germans, Russians, and Danes.

Suddenly his back turned to ice and he realized that the man at his side was the Devil.

“Well, well, Lars-Goren!” said the Devil, in a voice like an old woman’s. “How things change, from time to time! But have no fear, my friend, don’t be fooled by appearances! I’m as much on your side as I ever was!” Torchlight glittered on his corpse-pale skin and on his mouth, where there were droplets of blood.

“I’m sure that’s true,” said Lars-Goren, just audibly. “I’m sure you’ve never changed sides.” He began to back away.

The Devil’s head shot forward, grinning. “Don’t fool with me, Lars-Goren,” he whispered, “for the sake of your children!”

Blindly, crazily, Lars-Goren began to run. The Devil was right beside him, like a floating fire. Lars-Goren ran so hard he thought his heart would burst but still the Devil was at his elbow. “Christ save me!” Lars-Goren shouted. Suddenly it was dark. He was lying in his bed in Stockholm fortress.

2.

“AH, AH!,” SIGHED GUSTAV, pacing before the window, pulling at his knuckles. He looked fifteen years older but tougher, leaner, more leathery than ever. His beard was like a wild man’s, glittering in the sunlight his eyes, for all his troubles, seemed filled with some crazy joy. Abruptly, he came bounding toward Lars-Goren’s chair. “Anyway, now you’re back,” he said, seizing Lars-Goren’s shoulders, “you can shatter all my plans with good advice!”

Lars-Goren closed his eyes.

“Here now!” Gustav shouted. Lars-Goren opened his eves again. “Here now, my dear friend and kinsman! No napping!” He snapped his fingers. His eyes, peering into Lars-Goren’s, went suddenly unsure, then evasive, looking past Lars-Goren’s ear. “Very well!” he said, and turned away as if angrily, storming back toward the window, into the light. He clasped his hands behind his back and nodded, then laughed. “How simple it all seemed to us when we were poor young idealist fools!”

Lars-Goren for a moment put his hands over his eyes.

“Ah, ah, ah!” groaned King Gustav in sudden agony. He stretched out one arm and clenched the fist. “I meant to make Sweden magnificent,” he said. “I knew what to do, how the government should run, how it could benefit the people.” He jerked his head around and stared at Lars-Goren, sunlight behind his head so that Lars-Goren saw only the outline, like a burn. “But it hasn’t been so easy to put Sweden on her legs! Not so easy, believe me! I was called to rule a country shattered and disorganized by political uncertainty, exhausted by her war of liberation, also bankrupt. And who was to help me with the heavy work of government, from the highest ministerial positions to the work of local sheriffs? All our best people had perished in the bloodbath of Stockholm—not just people who knew the ropes, I don’t ask that; I mean people with the simplest kinds of skills, such as reading and writing! Just reading and writing! Is that so much to ask? But there was no one—anyway, no one Swedish, no one I could trust. In such a case, you take your ministers where you find them!” Again Gustav laughed. Smiling, more sour than the Devil, he raised his left hand, fingers spread, to count on them with his right index finger. “My first chancellor is none other than Erik Svensson, toady to King Kristian of Denmark—a double-dealing Swede who’s already changed sides twice! My second minister is Master Lars Andreae, one of the men who gave the verdict that led to the bloodbath. Ha! My archbishop of Uppsala, Johannes Magnus, is another of the same, even fouler than Master Lars. And then there’s that cabbage-eater Berend von Melen, Kristian’s former general, now husband to my cousin, God help me, and illegally (between you and me) made a member of the råd. There’s the cabbage-eater count John of Hoya, married to my sister—God help me again!—to whom I’ve given, again illegally, the castle and the fief of Stegeborg. I’ve even made overtures to that bitch Gustav Trolle. I say ‘bitch’ of course only because he’s dared to turn me down. My peasants—the poor devils who died for all this—and especially the peasants of Dalarna, God knows—they don’t altogether understand these things.”

King Gustav stopped, legs wide apart, before Lars-Goren’s chair, and smiled as if with satisfaction, his eyelids trembling. “But all that’s nothing,” he said. “Take the matter of taxes. Most of Sweden’s paid no taxes since long before Sten Sture’s rebellion. Poor bastards, they have little enough to give, God knows—and they’re the very same people whose sons I saw butchered in the war. Nonetheless, what am I to do about my loans from Lübeck, eh? What am I to do about piracy, or repairing the fortresses and docks we blew up? What am I to do about the crippled and the starving? Eh?

“Starvation, that’s another thing!” King Gustav clapped his hands. “Whether or not it’s the work of my old friend the Devil, ever since the day I took the crown we’ve been having the most incredible bawl of bad weather! The peasants are down to eating barkbread. They’re calling me ‘King Bark’—it’s a fact! No doubt they’re right; if I were a proper king I’d raise my hands against the snow and the snow would turn away and say ‘Excuse me, sire!’ I’d sing out for rain and the rain would come in gushes. ‘Oh, yer welcome, sire!’ But I’m the only king they’ve got, as they know, or rather as they should know. They don’t. No, they don’t, not at all. That’s another of my troubles.”

He was standing bent toward Lars-Goren’s chair, his hands on his knees, his bearded face thrust forward. “Kristina Gyllenstierna’s on the move—Sten Sture’s widow. She’s sending out letters for help in all directions—no doubt you’ve heard. She’s even written to the king of the pirates, Sören Norby. On which subject more later. Also she has her various old friends, like Bishop Brask. They’ve found plenty to work with, no lack of grievances to nurse: the dearness of the times, the lack of salt, the no-good coin—I’ve been minting pure cowshit, I readily admit it. I’ve analyzed the riches of Sweden, and that’s our best product. Where was I? Ah yes—the grievances. They say I’m plundering the True Holy Church—which I am, so I am. They also say I’ve murdered dear Kristina’s son, someone named Nils—which is an absolute lie; I think so; to the best of my knowledge pure slander.” King Gustav smiled. “So you see, beloved kinsman, I could use a little clever advice.”

Lars-Goren sat perfectly still, dizzy.

“I know,” said Gustav, wheeling away, throwing out his hands to each side, furious, “no doubt it all seems simple to a man like you! You haven’t heard the half of it.”

At that moment Berend von Melen broke in on them.

3.

“FORGIVE ME, YOUR HIGHNESS,” cried von Melen, thumping his chest with his right hand, “I was told you were alone!”

“No reason you should doubt what you’re told,” said Gustav, turning from Lars-Goren angrily. “Everyone in Sweden believes whatever stupid foolishness he’s told.”

“My dear King Gustav!” said von Melen, stiffening, pretending to be insulted beyond measure. Now his arms were at his sides, his right boot thrown forward, the toe cocked out—the stance, it seemed to Lars-Goren, of a comic dancer. He was balding, cleanshaven except for a small jut of beard like an Egyptians. His shoulders were narrow, his belly like a globe below his hollow chest. Except for the pomp of his beribboned chest and the stiffness of his posture, no one would have thought him a military man, but he was said to be an excellent fencer.

“Never mind, never mind,” said Gustav wearily. “I snarl to keep in practice. You’ve met my friend and kinsman Lars-Goren?”

Von Melen bowed deeply, like a performer. He made an effort to seem unimpressed by Lars-Goren’s great size and breadth, but even in the middle of his sweeping bow, von Melen kept his eyes on the knight. Lars-Goren half rose from his chair, nodding back, then sat down again.

“So tell me, what wonderful news have you brought me?” asked Gustav.

“Not news, exactly—” von Melen began, glancing at Lars-Goren.

“I thought not.” King Gustav waved his hand. “Go on.”

Von Melen clasped his hands behind his back and stood cocked forward, head tipped, eyes narrowed to slits. “It’s a delicate matter,” he said cautiously.

Again Gustav waved, this time impatiently. “Delicate matters are Lars-Goren’s specialty. You may speak out as freely as you like.”

“Very well,” said von Melen, and began again. “As you’re well aware, you’ve received great benefits from the remains of the party of Sten Sture.” He waited for acknowledgement from Gustav. None came. Von Melen cleared his throat, professorial, and continued: “These benefits you haven’t always been diligent to repay. I might mention, for example, Sten Sture’s chief chancellor and factotum, Bishop Sunnanväder. What have you done for this man who was once the most powerful lord in all Sweden, a prince of the Church, and a man on whom your election very heavily depended? You invite him to celebrate High Mass on your entry into Stockholm, and you toss him the bishopric of Västerås—a crumb! Or again I might mention Knut Mickilsson, dean of Västerås—another who took a prominent part in securing your election. Again and again you’ve passed over him as if he’d died in the bloodbath.”

“That’s a pity, yes,” said Gustav ambiguously.

Abruptly, like an actor at his important moment, von Melen drew a paper from the pocket of his coat. “Let me read you what they’re saying in Dalarna these days.” He adjusted his spectacles, held up the paper, and read. “‘All those who faithfully served the lords and realm of Sweden, Gustav has hated and persecuted, while all traitors to the realm, and all who abetted the country’s cruel foe King Kristian, and who betrayed Herr Sten and all Swedish men, these he has favored.’” Crisply, he lowered the paper, then folded it and put it in his coat.

“You’re not going to leave me the paper?” Gustav asked.

“Surely, if you like.” Von Melen got it out again and handed it to Gustav. “There are thousands more just like it. As you see, they’ve copied your use of the printing press.”

“Yes, naturally. They’re slow, but they learn.” Gustav glanced at the paper, then carelessly stuffed it in his pocket. “So, von Melen, what is it precisely that you’re after, generously bringing up the names of these nincompoops who’d turn on me in an instant if Fredrik should release Kristina Gyllenstierna?”

Berend von Melen smiled with raised eyebrows and pursed lips. When he thought the expression had made its effect, he said, “I of course come to you as your friend and now cousin by marriage. Also, of course, I have some very slight concern about myself. That letter against foreigners—that filth so typical of the Dalarna mentality—has dark implications. It places Sten Sture and his party on one side, and on the other side you and all of us who have so loyally served your country though not in fact born here. If Kristina should be released, as Fredrik threatens, and the peasants and burghers should join in league with the remains of the party of Sten Sture—the ‘international magnates,’ as you call them …”

Gustav nodded and cut him off. “Yes, yes, enough.” He scowled. “I’ll give it some thought.”

“Meanwhile,” said von Melen with an apologetic gesture, as if sorry to trouble His Majesty with more—and again he showed his peculiar, prissy smile—“if you were to ask me to visit Dalarna, with a small, discreet army, nothing of the sort that would suggest, you know, oppression—”

Gustav scowled more darkly and glanced at Lars-Goren. Lars-Goren looked at his hands, then drawing out his knife, began cleaning his fingernails. Von Melen watched in disgust.

“You must admit,” said Gustav, “it’s an interesting thought.”

“Not a very wise one, I think,” said Lars-Goren. He avoided looking up.

“Not wise?” snapped Gustav, flushing a little, as if the idea had been his own.

Lars-Goren shrugged. “Why send a foreigner to Dalarna, where foreigners are hated? Send him, say, to Gotland—to Visby, say, where the pirates hide between attacks on the merchant ships of Lübeck. Wipe out Sören Norby and his privateers, and—who knows?—perhaps Lübeck will be inclined to grant us an extension on the war-loans.”

“Ha!” said Gustav, clapping his hands and whirling around to face von Melen. “You see how ingenious we are, we Swedes? You, a German, will fight for a cause of importance both to Sweden and to Germany! You’ll win yourself great honor. I think so! Ah, what a day this is for you, von Melen!” In his delight, King Gustav seized von Melen’s arm. “Go prepare! Get whatever you need—don’t be cheap!” He added quickly, “Don’t be too cheap.”

Von Melen’s mouth worked, twisting as if by itself like a snake, hunting for objections. “As you say, Your Majesty,” he brought out. His tiny blue eyes looked hard at Lars-Goren. After a moment he “As you say.” He brought himself to attention as if at some inaudible command from Gustav, turned sharply, and marched out.

Gustav moved quickly to Lars-Goren and bent toward him, his hands on his knees. “You’re good,” he said. “I wish I had ten of you!” Then he laughed. “Poor von Melen! How can he plot against my government with Sten’s bishops when he’s sloshing around off Gotland?”

Lars-Goren laughed too. It was pleasant, this scheming and counter-scheming. Who could deny it? The sound of their laughter set off curious echoes. He glanced around the room.

4.

PLOTS AND COUNTERPLOTS, thrusts and counterthrusts—ah, what a moment it was in the life of the Devil! He was everywhere at once, passing out leaflets—attacks on both sides—in Dalarna and Småland; conspiring both for and against the Dutch with King Fredrik and the tsar; stirring conflict in Stockholm between the city authorities and the pigs and chickens that roamed freely in the streets, the wolfpacks that crept along the hedges. Above all, he paid close attention to Sören Norby and the Stures.

“My friend,” said the Devil, appearing to Sören Norby in the terrifying guise of Sten Sture’s ghost, “you are my last resort now—you and your courageous pirates!”

Sören Norby sat bolt upright, his gray eyes as wide and glittering as coins. “Who are you?” he shouted. He shot his right hand under his pillow for his knife.

“I,” intoned the Devil, “am the ghost of Sten Sture the Younger, foully murdered by King Kristian of Denmark and now betrayed on every hand by my own Swedish kinsmen!” He stretched out his arms, his charred remains still smoking in the tatters of his winding-sheet.

“The hell you are!” Sören Norby yelled, leaping up onto his feet on the bed, the knife in his right hand, his left hand stretched out, fingers splayed wide, ready to fight.

“Hear my words, Sören Norby,” intoned the Devil, the sockets of his eyes staring emptily through the smoke. “Look down at this child beside me, this innocent torn from life!” Little by little, like the master illusionist he was, he revealed to Sören Norby’s horrified eyes the smoldering remains of the infant Sture who’d been exhumed and burned with Sten at Södermalm. The trick was so masterful, as it seemed to the Devil—and the pirate such a stupid and sentimental fool—it was all the Devil could do to keep from laughing. “Ah yes,” thought the Devil, “you swat them as a cow’s tail swats flies when they’re just a little older, but a poor dead infant—how the sight moves you!” Nonetheless he kept his face morose, his tone sepulchral. “Look on these ruins of my child and take thought on my second son Nils, who still lives! I make you his guardian and protector, Sören Norby, and in payment of your kindness I promise you this gift—”With a pass like a magician’s he showed a vision of his widow Kristina Gyllenstierna, stark naked on her pallet in her prison cell in Denmark.

“My lord,” breathed Sören, for the corpse of the infant and the nakedness of Sten Sture’s widow had persuaded him, “I am not worthy!” He sank to his knees and wiped his eyes with his forearm.

5.

FROM THAT MOMENT ON, Sören Norby was like a wildman in his support of the party of the Stures. He sent letters to Denmark, asking for an audience with King Fredrik, which he received. His plea for Kristina’s freedom was so impassioned that Kristina gave him a ring and said she hoped he would think of her as his dear, dear friend. As soon as he was back in Gotland he wrote more letters, one of them to Bishop Brask, telling him of his vision of Sten Sture’s ghost, and all that Sten Sture had said to him, and how he, Sören, had visited King Fredrik in Kristina Gyllenstierna’s behalf, and how the king had listened with interest. Now, to Sören Norby, Gustav Vasa was the Devil incarnate, renegade to the cause of Nils Sture, Sten’s son, and except for the love of Kristina Gyllenstierna, Norby desired nothing in the world with more ardor than he desired King Gustav’s fall. All this, too, he set down in his letter to Bishop Brask, with more in the same vein, and numerous expressions of his respect and good wishes for the bishop.

Bishop Brask held the letter at arm’s length, staring in disbelief.

“Bah, he’s a madman,” said the Devil, seated at the bishop’s elbow. With Brask he was by now so thoroughly comfortable that he made no effort to disguise his appearance, merely scaled it down so that it fit inside the room—hairy-rooted horns, face like an idiot’s, flesh soft and scaly as an enormous, fat snake’s. He sat with his dark, matted legs crossed, jiggling one hoof. His pitch-dark wings, when he half extended them, covered all the wall like a curtain.

“Not mad, I think,” said Bishop Brask irritably. “Misled, no doubt—no doubt by someone we know.” He said no more, at least nothing more aloud. It was true that the Devil could sometimes read one’s mind, that once he’d gotten into you there seemed to be no shaking him; but at least one could in some measure limit the monster’s conversation. That, thought Bishop Brask, was the real horror. Never mind the everlasting fire or the imps with forks. He could bore you, bore you to the ninth pit of madness, and think then of something still stupider, stupidity so deep it was unanswerable, a matter of awe, even terrible worship. Oh yes, Bishop Brask understood the Devil. Perhaps he could even outwit him, he sometimes thought, if he could summon up enough of his heart’s former warmth to make it worth it; but that was something he was in no mood to expect. It was a curious venom, the poison that flowed from the Devil. Say that all human life is idiotic, all human feeling an absurdity, effect without due cause; say that to weep at the death of one child after the deaths of a million million children—centuries of corpses, centuries of mothers gone berserk and wailing, each father turning sharply, heart leaping, at the voice he’s mistaken for his own dead child’s—say that all this is a shameful humiliation, an outrage not to be put up with; say that love and sorrow, considered from the peak of the mountain of eternity, are as paltry and insignificant as the wild, ravished hymning of blue-glinting flies on the four-day-old corpse of a mongrel. Say these things, yes, say all this once, thought Bishop Brask—say it once with conviction—and how are you to rise without revulsion to even the emotion of a heart-felt objection to the death you’ve just swallowed? Dry as a spider, the old bishop listened to the desiccate kiss of his rhetoric, the grotesquely chiming rhymes: conviction, revulsion, emotion, objection. How was he to feel anything worthy of even the debased coin “feeling,” he asked himself, limited forever to the predictable trapezoids of his mind’s drab spiderweb, language? Coin or coign, he thought, and furiously glanced at the Devil.

And so, in secret, in company with the Devil, he sailed to Visby, on the island of Gotland, stronghold of Norby and his pirates.

6.

SNOW FELL SOFTLY OVER THE SHIP and into the water. Sheets of ice, heavy with snow, lay all around him, and more snow lay heavily on the yardarms, the poop and the forecastle, the decks themselves. The sky was brilliant, so charged with light that only with one’s eyes closed to slits could one see anything at all. Bishop Brask, in a fur coat white with sticky snow, and a wide fur cap even whiter than his coat, stood gazing morosely toward the faint shadow he knew to be Gotland, in the distance. They seemed to be making no headway at all. For all he knew, they might the here, not that he cared. The Devil lay below, fuming and restless, eager that the ship get moving again. Bishop Brask, just now, had no time to think about the Devil. He was pondering a curious impulse that had come over him, an impulse so strong and so remarkable in its way that it seemed to him astonishing that nothing had come of it. In his cabin, an hour ago he had thought of writing a long letter to Lars-Goren Bergquist, a letter which would explain to the knight exactly what Bishop Brask thought of life and how it was that he had come to his opinions. He had written, with great firmness and elegance: To Lars-Goren Bergquist, Knight. Dear sir. Then he’d stared at the paper, as white and empty as the world around him now, and had struggled desperately to overcome his sense of the absurdity of the gesture, break past the thousands of reasons for saying nothing—the futility of expression, even will, the certainty that his words would be misunderstood or, if somehow understood, used against him, the firm knowledge that words, however elegant and true (if such things were possible), could hardly undo the past, that in any case Lars-Goren was his enemy, not his friend, and would have no choice, as servant of King Gustav, but to twist the words the instant he read them, lest his strength as an enemy be weakened.

The attempt to write had come to nothing, of course. It was not that fact that he brooded on now, but the odd fact that somehow, below reason and contrary to it, the childish impulse to tell the truth was still alive in him, that indeed he still believed, in some back part of his brain, that there existed some truth to tell.

“I was out of my mind,” he said, too softly for anyone to hear. He shuddered, thinking of the dangers he’d have opened himself up to if he’d written that letter. It was the Devil’s work, he thought; but at once his heart jerked back from that idea, though he could not, when he tried to think it through, make out why. Was it the miserable cold that had sent him this lunatic impulse, he wondered, or the universal whiteness that made nothing more important than anything else?

He was so deep in thought that he at first hardly noticed when one sailor, then another—darting white shadows in the general whiteness—began to shout and point to starboard. As more and more of them came out on deck, some of them pushing roughly past him where he stood, unable to distinguish him from less important white shadows, Bishop Brask rose sufficiently from his half-dream to realize that something was afoot. He moved toward the rail where the others were, and at last he saw what the shouting was about. A great fleet of rowboats was coming toward them, making its tortuous way through the breaks between ice-sheets.

“It’s Norby and his pirates!” someone shouted, seizing the bishop’s arm. “We’re rescued!”

Baffled, Bishop Brask stared hard in the direction in which the man at his side was pointing. He understood only now—and even now without particular emotion—that they had in fact been in serious danger. It was obvious of course, once one bothered to think about it. The huge, clumsy ship was ice-locked. It hadn’t moved all day.

All around him sailors and passengers were shouting, “God bless Sören Norby!”

Considering the conditions, the boats were approaching with remarkable speed, he saw now. When they reached the ice in which the ship was wedged, Norby’s men climbed out of their rowboats and came precariously on foot. Sören Norby was at the head of the party, shouting and waving, grinning like a fool. The ship’s captain ordered ropes thrown over the side, and in no time Norby’s pirates were aboard the ship, holding out fur-mittened hands to the fur-mittened hands of the sailors and passengers, joking in loud voices, and at last helping the ship’s people down onto the ice and guiding them over to the rowboats that would take them to shore. The snow fell still more heavily. Bishop Brask could no longer see even the rowboats, much less Godand. Two pirates helped him down to the ice, careful and respectful young men of maybe twenty. Holding him by the armpits, they led him in, he hoped, the right direction, all three of them taking small steps, shielding their eyes against the light.

How they reached the rowboat Bishop Brask was unable to remember later; all his mind retained was the cold and the whiteness and the blur of fur-wrapped oarsmen as white as the rest. A kind of thudding broke through his gloomy thoughts, a thudding different from that which had risen from the sides of the rowboat as it labored through the ice, and looking up he was dimly aware of pilings and a dock, mittened hands reaching down to him, and high above the shadows of people the shadows of towers, walls, and trees, the white-masked face of Visby.

Then he was seated in the great roaring hall of Sören Norby, every wall piled high with plunder, not treasure-chests and ingots but bedsteads, ornamental chairs, fine tables, sacks of grain, machinery, bundles of clothes, iron weapons, great cylinders of rope. Such was the booty Norby’s pirates had taken from the ships of the Dutch and Germans, Poles and Russians.

“Magnificent, hey?” a voice boomed in his ear.

When the bishop turned, half in a daze, glancing first at the hand on his shoulder, then up at the face, he saw that the man who’d addressed him was none other than Norby. He’d thrown off his coat and stood, wide-shouldered and jubilant, in a short-sleeved burgher’s shirt, grinning like a boy. Bishop Brask smiled faintly. “Magnificent, yes,” he said.

“Come,” said the pirate, “first a bit of food and wine, then talk.’” He lowered his hand to the bishop’s elbow, as if he thought him a feeble old woman, and helped him to his feet. “I have with me other friends from Sweden,” he said, “gentlemen with whom you’re acquainted, I think.” He led the bishop into a high, narrow corridor and down it to a smaller chamber where in the fireplace flames licked eagerly at a great stack of logs. Three men were waiting there, two in humble monks’ garb, though they did not carry themselves like monks, and a third man the bishop knew at once that he’d seen somewhere before, perhaps often, though at first he couldn’t place him. This third man stood staring out the window, dressed in fine clothes and a long, dark blue cape. None of them turned as Sören Norby led Brask to a chair and brought him wine. When the man in the cape finally did turn, he did so with the cool, mechanical elegance of a figure in a masque—the figure of Death, perhaps, or the Devil in one of his more flattering representations.

“Berend von Melen!” Bishop Brask exclaimed, then instantly calmed himself, for it was a matter of policy with him that he never show interest or surprise. Though he had indeed been considerably surprised—not at von Melen’s duplicity, of course, but at the speed with which Norby had arranged all this—Bishop Brask was sure that he’d shown very little, no more than what they’d surely interpret as a flicker of interest.

“Bishop Brask,” said von Melen, and slightly bowed. Now Hans Brask recognized the two dressed as monks—two of the most important members of the party of Sture, Bishop Peder Jakobssen Sunnanväder and Master Knute Mickilsson, both of them passed over, like Brask himself, when Gustav had chosen his ministers. They all shook hands.

Sören Norby was beaming. “Poor Gustav!” he said.

Beware of underestimating Gustav, thought the bishop, but he merely let out a little smile and said nothing. Sunnanväder and Mickilsson were careful not even to smile.

Sören Norby closed the doors to the room, and the talk began. Bishop Brask registered it without interest. All conspiracies were curiously similar, he’d observed long since. Always a few foxes, always a few geese. Now Norby was in the role played once by young Gustav—the man of feeling, radiant with self-confidence and unthinking love of justice. He was a handsome young man, far more handsome than Gustav, with a better sense of humor (insofar as the young can ever have a true sense of humor, he thought), and a far more ingratiating smile. At the biceps his arms were as thick as a normal man’s thighs. Muscle-bound. Not a good quality in a sword fight. But Norby was no duke, no aristocratic duelist, but a pistol man, knife fighter, boxer. He would do.

The plot was uninteresting, though serviceable. Von Melen would come and pretend to attack Visby, put on a fine show but in the end see Sweden’s navy to the bottom of the sea. Sunnanväder and Mickilsson would strike at Gustav from within, from their base in Dalarna, with armies and leaflets. Ah, always leaflets! thought the bishop. The world would never again be the same, now that leaflets had been invented, and firing them off had been refined to a science as precise as the firing of cannonballs. “Poor Gustav,” as Sören Norby called him, had invented the weapon that would sooner or later be the death of him—no doubt also the death of distinguished prose. It was ironic; if he could work himself up to it, the bishop would even call it sad. Gustav, like the Lutherans, had thought leaflets the weaponry of Truth and noble sentiment. So Sören Norby seemed to think them, too. None of the bishops disabused him.

Very well, very well. Bishop Brask sipped his wine, then sat toying with it, watching how it caught the light, breaking it to pieces. Kristina would be released—Fredrik had as much as given Norby his word—and of course it stood to reason. Norby would be regent of Sweden until Nils reached majority, when Nils would become regent, and thus the Union of Kalmar would rise out of Södermalm’s ashes, with Denmark at its head, as in former times. To clinch the arrangement, and safeguard Nils’ position, Kristina and Norby would marry—a state both of them desired, Brask knew. He’d lived long enough to recognize a man in love when he saw one, not that it made his old heart leap. That Kristina should not feel the same was unthinkable. As flies beget flies, love begets love—the thought had no particular disrespect in it, nor did it enter Brask’s mind as an expression of distaste. All of us live on illusion, so long as we can afford it. Hans Brask, in his youth, had been an avid reader of poetry, and not a casual, indiscriminate reader. He knew the difference between Dante and Petrarch, the Song of Roland and some foolish French tale. He had wept, in his youth, at the story of the saintly Jewess Teresa of Avila; he might weep again now if he had time for books. “Faith,” he’d once written, “is creating what we cannot see.” It had a fine ring to it, and in Latin an excellent pun. But faith was for a man in his study, a dreamer, or for a man who had no other options, such as a farmer planting seeds.

Forgetting himself, Bishop Brask heaved a sudden sigh. Bishop Sunnanväder glanced at him with a look of concern. Brask knew well enough that the concern was, like everything else, policy. He waved his hand vaguely and smiled. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just thinking of the snow.” Bishop Sunnanväder glanced at the window, a great blank of white, and his expression changed to cunning. He was a fat man, professionally meek and jovial, a man who always cried at church music—cried genuinely, perhaps, as Brask cried genuinely over poetry—but he was not as good an actor as he no doubt imagined; the look of cunning was always waiting at the edges of his face, prepared to leap out and seize his features.

Norby, for his part, had no time for these delicate dramas. He said, “King Gustav counts heavily on the friendship of Lübeck, but he’s in trouble there. Fredrik of Denmark is no fool, believe me! It was Kristian’s policy to shift trade to the Dutch, but now Kristian himself is in the Netherlands—he and his supporters. Why should Fredrik serve the friends of his enemy? Everything has changed before his eyes, but poor Gustav doesn’t see it!” Norby laughed. “I rob the ships of Lübeck, but I never kill a soul. They expect me—they know when I’m coming. We have an arrangement. I take their goods, I very carefully store them, I prevent them from reaching their Swedish destinations, but when the wind changes—”

“That’s good! That’s very good!” said Mickilsson, eyes widening. Clearly it came as a complete surprise to him. Troublesome, troublesome, thought Bishop Brask. It was all very well to work with innocents like Norby, but to conspire with fools was a dangerous business. However, he let his face show nothing.

Long after all that needed saying had been said, the meeting of the conspirators dragged on. It was the weather, perhaps, the snowy day outside as bleak as their prospects if the plot should fail; here inside, the immense warm fire, comforting as victory. And so they talked and talked, repeating themselves. Gradually Bishop Brask stopped listening entirely, brooding on dangers more remote.

Gustav Vasa would of course destroy the Church; it was a foregone conclusion. He had never claimed he would do otherwise. Already he was hinting that the portion of tithe which was allotted to the running of parish churches should be diverted to the pay of his soldiers. To Bishop Brask himself he had written, “Necessity overrides the law, and not the law of man only, but sometimes the law of God.” And already his minister Lars Andreae had proclaimed, on Gustav’s instigation, the Lutheran doctrine that the Church, properly considered, was made up of the whole community of the faithful, so that the wealth of the Church was in fact the wealth of the people. Already he had turned the printing press at Uppsala to the production of a Bible in Swedish, and, adding insult to injury, had ordered Bishop Brask himself to help with the translation—an order Brask had had no choice but to obey. But what would they gain, overthrowing Gustav Vasa? Now King Fredrik too, it seemed, was warming to the merchantmen of Germany, Luther’s right arm. Bishop Brask began to see more clearly, staring down thoughtfully at his amber-red wine, the strategy of the Devil—and its futility. Keep everything in confusion, that was the Devil’s way of doing things. Baffle and madden the enemy and hope for the best. And if the Devil was as powerless to control things as he seemed, what could the best be, Brask thought, theological, but the will of God? The bishop kept himself from frowning, not wishing to draw attention. Did he believe, he wondered in “the will of God”? Like a reflex, a soul-crushing, weariness came over him. What did it matter what he thought, after all? Life would go on, or would go on until it stopped. If the will of God was inescapable, like the fall of the stones in an avalanche, then it was clearly no business of his. Let the chips, the boulders, the castles fall where they may. He closed his eyes.

He dreamed he was standing before the Pope, who was for some reason enormous, clothed in the brightest red velvet. The Holy Father was raising a silver chalice, holding it carefully between his thumb and first finger, his smallest finger affectedly extended, his face not a man’s but a woman’s, elaborately painted. When he’d sipped, he began to set the chalice down, holding it out over Bishop Brask’s head and lowering it slowly, as if he did not know that Brask was standing there, about to be crushed. “Father!” Bishop Brask squealed, his voice no louder than the hum of a mosquito. Now a great shadow had fallen in a circle around him from the base of the chalice. Just before darkness engulfed him, he saw, high above the Pope’s head, a great circle of blinding light descending like a ring of blue-white fire. The circle seemed as large as the whole world, and it was speedily growing larger, like a planet on collision course with Earth. Bishop Brask jerked suddenly awake, spilling a little flutter of wine. Otherwise, he showed no sign that he’d fallen asleep. Something had crashed, the same instant he awakened. It was a glass Sören Norby had thrown, in high spirits, into the fireplace.

7.

BY THE SPRING OF 1525 the conspiracy was all but crushed. No one in Stockholm was much surprised least of all Bishop Brask, who had read the signs well enough and soon enough to keep himself clear of suspicion. Von Melen, called home from the fiasco at Visby, prudently avoided Stockholm and went to earth in his castle of Kalmar.

Gustav Vasa shook his head in disgust, pacing, as he seemed always to do these days, venting his anger on the huge, patient figure of Lars-Goren and across the room, Hans Brask. “The fool!” he said, shaking his fist before Lars-Goren’s face. “Does he think I don’t know what he’s been up to?” He whirled away, pointing fiercely at Bishop Brask, who sat waiting as patiently as Lars-Goren to learn why he’d been called. “God send me an enemy worth my trouble!” shouted Gustav. “Fools, maniacs. It’s like living in a house full of flies.”

Bishop Brask sadly nodded.

“Pah,” said Gustav, turning away from Brask as if he too were one of the flies. “Who is his houseguest there at Kalmar? Who sleeps in his fluffy German bed and eats his cabbage? Nils Sture! None other! Heir to the family’s pretensions! And by miraculous coincidence—” He turned his back on both of them and stared out the window, breathing deeply, trying without success to control his rage. “By miraculous coincidence this great patriot von Melen is also putting up, as his beloved houseguest, none other than what’s-her-name, daughter of Sören Norby. A pretty match, eh? Nils Sture and Norby’s daughter? He’s a matchmaker, von Melen. His heart rules his head. That’s it, yes of course! Behind all the schemes he’s a softy, yes that’s it!” He spat like a farmer, indifferent to the splendid furnishings. “You know what I would just once like to see in this world?” he asked furiously, stabbing the air with his finger. “I would like to see a little pure unmitigated evil! Yes! Not stupidity, not sniveling little plots and counterplots, not jockeying and jostling—pure outrageous evil.”

He crossed quickly, stooped over, knees bent, to Brask’s chair. “I met the Devil once,” he said, pointing at the bishop’s nose. “I was interested. I was excited! ‘Ha,’ I thought, ‘by God it’s the Devil himself—no joke! Now you’re in trouble, Gustav Vasa,’ I thought. ‘Now you’d better keep a sharp eye out!’” He paused, drew his finger back. More softly, he said, “You didn’t know I’d had meetings with the Devil, eh?”

“I thought perhaps you might,” said the bishop. He glanced at Lars-Goren, whose presence made him strangely uneasy. Lars-Goren showed nothing. If the bishop had somehow revealed himself—he had no idea whether he had or not—Lars-Goren was carefully not showing it.

“Well, I did,” said Gustav. Again he turned away, petulant now. “All in all, he’s proved a disappointment.”

“So we’ve all found,” said the bishop, taking, as he knew, a risk.

But Vasa was in no mood for subtle innuendoes.

“Very well,” he said, “I’m disappointed. Everything in life disappoints me, that’s the truth, but the Devil most of all, lording it over us, wasting our valuable time. I’m not a man to sit quietly and endure a thing like that!”

Lars-Goren glanced at him, perhaps in alarm.

“First I’ll kill Norby,” Gustav Vasa said, fixing his gaze on a spot high on the wall. Abruptly, he glanced at Brask. “You’ve heard, I suppose, that he’s escaped to Denmark?” He hurried on without waiting for a response. “To Denmark—where else?—where he’s collected another fleet. God knows how he does it! Well, I’ll sink him, that’s setded. I don’t know how yet, but sure as I’m standing here I’ll sink him! And I’ll get rid of von Melen and his high-minded friends, all these plotters and meddlers, silly-brained impediments, always crossing me, always bothering me, getting in my way for no good reason—I’ll wipe them off the slate!—and then, gentle-men—” He paused significantly, looking first at Brask, then at Lars-Goren, raising his fists slowly, his eyes like two shining steel rivets: “Then we drive the Devil under the ground!”

Lars-Goren’s hands clenched on the chair-arms, and his eyes opened wider. Bishop Brask faintly smiled, slightly blanching, and sadly shook his head.

Gustav Vasa brought one hand to his chin and looked soberly at Bishop Brask. “Lars-Goren doesn’t worry me,” he said, after a moment. “Lars-Goren is afraid of the Devil, as is right. He’ll be excellent. I think so. But what about you?”

Bishop Brask went on smiling, shaking his head, the spotty skin of his face sagging heavily. “Maybe you can do it,” he said at last. Just perceptibly, he sagged his narrow shoulders. “But tell me. Does it matter?”

8.

PLOTS, COUNTERPLOTS; THE DEVIL was so busy he could barely keep track. By means of agents, Norby’s trusted friends, he lured Sören Norby into secret alliance with the Netherlands and his former lord, Kristian, and managed to put Gotland back in Norbys hands. He persuaded the Lübeckers to try to seize Godand, since Norby had betrayed them and would certainly continue to do so, for love of King Kristian and hatred of Gustav, chief buyer of Lübecks goods. He persuaded King Fredrik to defend Norby’s stronghold and to grant him the town of Blekinge as a life-fief, a base in immediate proximity to the Swedish border and within striking-distance of Kalmar. At once, again at the Devils suggestion—and it seemed reasonable enough, for whatever the nobility of a man’s ambition, he can do nothing without wealth—Sören Norby resumed his indiscriminate attacks on shipping—German, Swedish, Russian, even Danish. Again and again, with elaborate apologies, he sent back to those he pretended were his friends, such as Fredrik and the Lübeckers, whatever booty he’d taken “by mistake”—but it was never all there. “The fools,” said the Devil gleefully, disguised as an old friend, “they’ll never know the difference—take my oath on it!” In August 1526, a combined Swedish-Danish fleet sent most of Norby’s squadron to the bottom: Norby himself escaped by the skin of his teeth to Russia, where at the Devil’s instigation he refused to take service with the tsar and was thrown into prison. There, one day when he was walking along a road in company with other prisoners, carrying his pick—for Norby’s punishment was work in the salt mines of the tsar—the Devil himself visited him in the form of a mule.

“Sören Norby,” the Devil whispered through the mouth of the mule, “don’t lose heart! All is well!”

Norby’s eyes widened and his knees went weak. “God in heaven!” he whispered, “do mules now speak Swedish?” All around him, prisoners moved away from him a little, supposing the man to have gone mad.

“I’m your faithful old helper,” said the Devil, and made the mule’s mouth smile. “I’ve been with you from the beginning, and I’m with you yet.”

“Then you’re the Devil!” said Norby, and this time he spoke aloud, so that the prisoners around him were more frightened than before. “Get away from me! Go!” He burst into tears and, without thinking, took a swing at the mule with the flat of his pick-axe.

“You there!” someone shouted in Russian. It was the guard, just a few feet behind him. “Leave that mule alone!” He brandished his long, narrow club as a warning.

“You see?” said the mule pitifully, pretending to be in pain. “You see what comes of senseless violence? Now use your head, and put your pick on your shoulder, and listen like a creature of reason.”

“Never!” whispered Sören and, balancing the pick in the bend of his arm, put one finger of each hand into his ears.

“What kind of fool are you, trying to block out the voice of the Devil with your fingers?” the mule scoffed. “Plug your ears with pebbles if it pleases you, and sing at the top of your voice to drown me out. I’ll still be heard!”

Norby saw it was true and only from stubbornness kept his fingers in his ears.

“Fredrik’s brother the Holy Roman Emperor will save you,” said the mule. “He’s begun negotiations already!”

“You’re a liar,” said Sören Norby. “What’s it to Fredrik whether I live or die?”

“It’s not for Fredrik that the Emperor’s doing it.” said the mule slyly. “It’s to annoy the tsar, and to gain your services for his Italian war, and also to please Kristina.”

“Kristina,” said Sören Norby, and began to weep again. “Would that I’d never laid eyes on her!”

“Maybe you’ll change your tune one day,” said the mule with a smile. Abruptly, the mule’s whole manner changed; he was merely a mule again, walking along the road with his burden.

“Monster! Unholy deceiver!” whispered Norby. But then he began to think that, all in all, what the mule had said was not unreasonable. He glanced around at his fellow prisoners—stupid idiots, hopeless from the day they were born, one no different from the other, none of them like himself. “The Emperor must know he could hardly find a better man,” he thought. “If I serve him well, and show the Pope I’m no Lutheran, who knows? I may one day be king of Sweden!” He walked with more spirit now, and the prisoners around him hung back farther.

As for von Melen, after various machinations in which the Devil was always his eager advisor, he at last escaped by guile to Germany, where he at once began to work for a new alliance with his former master King Kristian. To be on the safe side—for as a general he knew the wisdom of the groundhog, who always has two or more escape routes—he made himself also a servant of the Elector of Saxony, sworn enemy of King Kristian and the Dutch. He had misgivings, of course, for if either lord should learn of his attachment to the other, von Melen would be in trouble. His misgivings grew to fears and eventually to terrors, so that wherever he went he kept his hands clasped tightly together to prevent them from shaking. One night when he was lowering his knife to cut into the trout on his plate, the trout’s eye rolled to meet his and the trout’s mouth opened.

“Von Melen,” said the trout, “you’re a stupid man!”

Berend von Melen stared in horror and disbelief, but his anger was even greater than his alarm. “What?” he cried. “What did you just say?”

“You’re a stupid man,” said the trout again, as placid and indifferent as when it was swimming in the stream.

“Stupid trout,” hissed von Melen, glancing past his shoulder to be sure no one was watching. “If you think you’re so smart, how come you to be dead and cooked?”

“That may be,” said the trout. “I may have made one small mistake in my life, but it’s nothing like the big mistake you’ve made!”

“Ha?” said von Melen. He drew back his knife, deciding to let the trout speak on.

“You’re a doomed man, trying to serve two masters as a general,” said the trout. “Sooner or later their wishes will conflict. However, if you took a different road, you could please them both and be as safe as a fox in a tree.”

Von Melen scowled. “How?” he said. “Explain.”

“Write!” said the trout, and gave von Melen a cunning smile. “You’re a stylist as well as a famous man. You have all Europe’s respect. Turn these things to advantages, then.”

“Write what?” von Melen asked. He bent down toward the plate. “Poetry? Autobiography?”

“You see?” the trout said. “I told you you were stupid! Write about Gustav Vasa! Vilify his name! Both Kristian and the Elector will be delighted—you’ll be a hero on both sides.” The trout looked pensive, then at last heaved a sigh. “But of course, if you think you’re not up to it—”

“Not up to it!” cried von Melen, and leaped up from the table. “Not up to it, you tell me, you stupid little trout!” He was so excited by the idea—for his hatred of King Gustav was boundless—that he forgot about supper completely and started for the door. With his hand near the doorknob he abruptly paused, turned around, and went back to the table. “Stupid trout,” he said, “you shall see how I write!” And without noticing that the eye of the trout had filmed over he snatched up the plate and carried it with him to his study, where he set it on his writing desk, near enough to watch him. For the rest of his life, von Melen blackguarded Gustav Vasa throughout Europe, comforting his enemies, thwarting his policies, fomenting conspiracies, piling lie on top of lie or, when Vasa made mistakes, trumpeting the truth. He became, from all his writing, as bent-backed as the Devil. His eye took on a glitter, his mouth became parched and cracked. The fish on the plate beside him rotted away to dust.

9.

PLOTS, COUNTERPLOTS; one would have thought even the Devil would eventually have tired of them, but he did not. For this he had one main reason: something was afoot, he could feel it in his bones. He brooded; he travelled far and wide, spying; even at the houses of the very poor he would sometimes crouch at the window, listening; but all to no avail. Of one thing the Devil grew increasingly sure: the trouble was in Sweden.

Once, in the trivial, insignificant city of Härnösand, close to the southern border of Angermanland, he saw, just at sunset, a crowd gathered around a tent which bore the shield of King Gustav. He compressed himself into a pigeon and walked inside. Slowly, carefully, avoiding people’s feet, he made his way to the exhibit at the center of the tent. No one was saying a word; everyone was looking in the same direction. He followed the people’s gaze and saw a large wooden statue—a knight with his lance through a dragons neck. The Devil felt suddenly hot all over, he had no idea why.

“Very well,” he thought, “say the dragon refers to myself, and the knight has vanquished me.” He blinked, then flew up onto a crossbeam to think the matter through. “Why should this hopeful little fantasy alarm me? Am I dead because a silly piece of wood is dead?” He cocked his head thoughtfully. “No.” He began to concentrate on reading the minds of the people. To his astonishment, nothing came. Was it possible? he wondered. Was everyone in the crowd thinking nothing? Nothing whatsoever? Now the crowd began to shift, and he began to get things. A child had wet its pants and was worrying, thinking it might be spanked. An old man had an itch on a part of his back that he could not reach. A man with his arm around his wife was looking at a woman not far off, his mistress.

In disgust, the Devil flapped his wings and flew away through the opening in the tent, changed at once to his own form, and, on his huge, dark wings, soared high into the night. It crossed his mind that the way to be safe was perhaps to kill everyone in Sweden. It was an interesting idea, but it immediately slipped his mind.

He flew to Stockholm, to watch the mock triumphal entry of Sunnanväder and Master Knut. Perhaps he would speak to them, he thought—give them a little false encouragement. Or perhaps he might whisper to the crowd, pass out leaflets, start a riot, and set them free.

Sunnanväder and Mickilsson had fared no better than Norby and von Melen. “Fly to Trondheim!” the Devil had whispered in their ears when the army of Dalarna had surrendered. Little did they know—though the Devil knew—that the archbishop of Trondheim was one of the silliest men who ever lived. They took the Devil’s advice, crossed the Norwegian frontier, and found shelter with the archbishop, who was pursuing political objectives of his own and thought the fugitives might perhaps prove useful. He met them at his door, a candle in his hand, his white hair flowing nearly to the hem of his nightgown, and kissed each of them on both cheeks. All that winter the archbishop treated his guests like princes, sitting up half the night with them, arguing fine points of theology and politics, giving them great feasts on holy days, introducing them proudly to every stranger who landed at that frozen outpost on the edge of the Arctic Ocean. When summer came, he imprudently delivered up Master Knut on the rash supposition that he would be tried in Sweden by an ecclesiastical court. He was tried by the råd—the king himself served as prosecuting counsel—and was speedily condemned to death. In September what had happened to Master Knut somehow slipped the archbishop’s mind and he delivered up his second guest to Gustav. Sunnanväder, too, was at once condemned to death.

So now they entered Stockholm on the backs of asses, Sunnanväder wearing a floppy straw crown and carrying a battered wooden sword such as children might play with, Master Knut in an archiepiscopal mitre made of birch-bark. The crowd laughed and shouted, for here in the capital, the people were all solidly on the side of the king. A mangy dog ran up to bark at the animal on which Sunnanväder rode. Suddenly what came out of its mouth was not barking but speech. “Never mind!” yelled the dog. “They laugh now, these morons. Let us see who does the laughing tomorrow!”

Sunnanväder, weeping, did not bother to look down. Mickilsson, riding beside him, opened his mouth in astonishment. When he could speak, he said, “Peder, am I dreaming?”

Sunnanväder wept and said nothing.

When the parade of humiliation was over, they were shipped unceremoniously, like animals, to Uppsala for beheading.

“So much for my human enemies,” said Gustav when the second head fell.

Lars-Goren said nothing, and the king turned to look at him in a way that commanded speech. “There are always more,” Lars-Goren said. At the last moment, a strange, rapt expression had come over Knut Mickilsson’s face. Lars-Goren’s mind would not let loose of it.

“Nevertheless,” King Gustav said, “the time has come to seek out the Devil.”

Lars-Goren looked down at the severed head in the sawdust. “Surely he’s here,” he said.

Gustav’s look became sharper. “In me, you mean? Speak plainly, old friend and kinsman!”

Around the steeple of the church, sparrows flew crazily, unwilling to rest. Lars-Goren pointed up at them. “In the birds—in you—in the cobblestones under our feet, perhaps. Who knows where the Devil ends and the rest begins?”

King Gustav’s frown was dangerous. “You have your orders,” he said, “you, my best friend, and Bishop Brask, my best enemy. You’ll manage. I think so.”

Quickly, for fear that he might begin to make threats, King Gustav turned on his heel and hurried away.