Cold Sea Stories Page 8

  ‘With a sheepdog,’ he said, ‘it’ll be easier for you. And he’ll always warn you of outsiders!’

  This last remark made Bjorn feel extremely anxious. Could Jansen have guessed something? Strictly speaking, it was impossible. The chief herdsman only visited the shepherds in particular instances, and at the time when the stranger had landed at the foot of the cliff he must surely have been occupied elsewhere. On the other hand, what if he had come that way by chance and seen the unusual sailing ship that day? Jansen had uttered the word ‘outsider’ so specifically, as if he knew everything. Perhaps he was trying to test Bjorn? In any case, the dog really was helpful. On the way back from Ventlinge he remained so alert that Bjorn took to him at once. Every time he rounded up the flock, the year-old, fully-grown sheepdog ran up to Bjorn wagging his tail and barked merrily: ‘All in order, we can carry on!’

  That evening, once he had shut the flock in the sheepfold and lit a fire in the hearth, Bjorn realised that the dog should have a name.

  ‘All right,’ he said, patting him on the nose, ‘you’re going to be called Harald. Just like our proud squire.’

  Harald licked his new master’s hand and stretched out before the fire, while Bjorn scooped the remains of the millet porridge from a clay bowl, which, boiled without a single speck of fat, he and the dog had eaten earlier. There was nothing in the house to eat now, but the summer – with its lush pastureland – was only just setting in. Bjorn closed his eyelids, and brought all its wonderful abundance to mind: rabbit meat roasted on a bonfire, sheep’s milk and curds, the scent of juniper in the sunshine, the aroma of honey from wild hives, and also the unusual taste of the water from one particular spring on Alvaret plain, to a mug of which he liked to add a few mint leaves.

  ‘If such is the will of God,’ he sighed, laying down to sleep, ‘we shall live to see it all.’

  For the first time in years he had used the plural. Perhaps the dog could sense it somehow, because as soon as Bjorn was lying on the bench with his sheepskin coat covering him, Harald jumped onto his master’s legs, rolled into a ball and went off to sleep with him.

  II

  A few days later they caught sight of the stranger. He was coming up from Alvaret plain along the gravel road, straight towards the farmyard. He looked exactly the same as the other time, after landing on shore. When he was only three paces away, instead of barking at him, Harald began to whine and fled into a corner of the yard. Bjorn felt a strange, piercing chill in his heart. Wherever this man had spent the last few days, his clothing, saddlebag and boots were not at all dirty.

  ‘Are you alone here, shepherd?’ he asked in a deep voice.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Bjorn, ‘I am always alone.’

  ‘Can you find room for me?’

  ‘I have no bed for myself, let alone for such a gentleman.’

  The stranger nodded politely, as he was not expecting any other answer. He pointed his cane at the old forge building, and without looking at Bjorn, headed towards it, adding: ‘This will do for me, shepherd.’

  In the dark interior, abandoned for years, golden pillars of dust went spinning like the beams of a lighthouse as the stranger reached up on tiptoes to open a tiny window.

  ‘I have no blanket, jug, candles or food. In a few days I’ll be off with my flock to Alvaret. I’ll be back when the grasses turn yellow. You should not stay here alone, sir.’

  Bjorn was not sure if the man was listening to him.

  ‘I do not need a servant,’ said the stranger, examining the anvil and a tattered pair of bellows with interest, ‘but for these four walls I will give you a piece of gold.’

  Bjorn quickly withdrew his hand as the man took a shining metal disc from his bag.

  ‘You must get out of here when I leave for the pasturage, Sir. Unless you ask the steward. Everything here belongs to the squire. Everything,’ Bjorn repeated emphatically, ‘do you understand?’

  ‘Including the stars and the sea? And your soul? Does that belong to the squire too?’

  It was a strange remark. Bjorn shrugged his shoulders and left the forge, pushing away Harald, who was now fawning on him.

  ‘Next time you’re to bark at him, not tuck your tail under, got that?’

  The dog’s good, wise eyes showed understanding. But for the next few days the stranger gave the sheepdog no cause to bark. Until noon he never came out of the forge at all. Then he spent long hours on the cliff top, as if waiting for a ship or watching the seal herds. At night he came out in front of the forge and gazed at the stars: now with the naked eye, and now through his telescope. But if there really was something unsettling about his behaviour, it was his silence. Not once did he ask Bjorn a question. He never lit a fire or took water from the spring. He must have slept on the dirt floor covered by his coat. But what did he eat? How did he quench his thirst? Maybe he had some provisions in his bag, but how long could they last him for? Bjorn noticed that the stranger never once went down to the foot of the cliff. Yet there, under the pine trees, his empty chest was buried. So he was waiting for something, not guarding it. This obvious fact suggested an idea to Bjorn, and suddenly all the strange elements came together into such a striking whole that the very thought of it took his breath away.

  At the end of each spring, a ship sailed in to the island from Kalmar, carrying the King and a small number of his courtiers. Small, because the hunting lodge at Ottenby could not have housed so many idlers and servants. Apparently that was the very reason why the King liked this place: he could gallop across the sprawling grasslands of Alvaret on his own, hunting deer. And as the island was narrow, but also extremely long, several miles from Ottenby the King had had it bisected by a wall, from shore to shore – since when no deer could escape him the King. One time Bjorn had seen His Majesty on the other, royal side of the stone wall. He looked like an ordinary reiter riding up to the stag, but when the animal fell and a horn sounded for the end of the hunt, the royal game warden from Ottenby, who had finally galloped up from behind a hill, kneeled before his master and bowed his head. What if the stranger were waiting for just such a moment? To kidnap the King here, on the open plain, would be easy. His accomplices from the sailing ship were sure to appear at a given signal. Bjorn was afraid to think who these audacious men might be. One thing was without doubt: such people do not leave witnesses behind. Yet if at the terrible moment he were already at the pasturage, deep inside the island, could he then see, know or hear anything? Suddenly, however, he imagined this scene too: the reiters with their hunting dogs in the forge, where they find a clue – a lock of the King’s hair, a strip of lace, or the buckle from a shoe. Oh, and this too – two pieces of gold deliberately placed in an obvious spot by the stranger. How long would he withstand the torture? In fact there was not much, absolutely nothing he could have explained. So after several days of anguish, Bjorn adopted a clear plan. Before going to the pasturage, before heading to Alvaret with the sheep, he would make his way to Ventlinge and tell the steward everything, in Jansen’s presence. That was in case the angry man tried to lay charges against him afterwards.

  That night he could not sleep. He thought the stranger was coming out of the forge and walking around the house. He got up, went to the window and stared at the farmyard. But there was nothing going on. In the soft, diffused light of the stars the dark walls of the building looked the same as ever. The sea was roaring and the wind was whistling in the plant stalks. Finally, when he fell asleep, he saw great shoals of salmon glittering in the sunlight. He was one of them. He was a silver-scaled, iridescent fish, travelling thousands of miles in the deep with millions of other creatures like him. He was torn from this journey with no goal or beginning by the dog’s hollow growling. His coat was bristling; he was quivering as if in a fever. The room was flooded with white, unnatural light, the source of which was outside. Bjorn went up to the window and squinted. Only in the first instant did he think the forge was in flames. But it was not a fire. A bright glow such as he had never
seen before was coming from inside the forge, pouring through its tiny window, illuminating the yard, the walls of the sheepfold, the pigsty, the pine trees, juniper bushes and individual stones, and beaming into the sky; at times it looked just as if the column of light were falling into the stone building from up there, radiating onto the entire vicinity as it did so. Harald crawled up to the window behind his master, licking his feet and whimpering.

  ‘Stay here,’ whispered Bjorn. ‘I’ll go on my own.’

  Only after a few paces, as he came near to the forge, did he feel fear. The wind had dropped, the sea was silent, and there wasn’t a sound, not even the slightest noise to disturb the unnatural silence. Bjorn crossed himself, then hauled a chopping block up to the wall, stood on it and pressed his face to the little window. There he saw the stranger. With his back towards Bjorn, he was leaning over something that looked like a sheet of copper, a page from a missal, or a portable book-rest. Whatever the object lying on the anvil was, the source of light was emanating from there. He was astonished that it could produce so much brightness without blinding. Reaching a hand into the field of light, the stranger extracted something small and flat, which he then held between finger and thumb, and turned high above his head, like someone inspecting a captive dragonfly. This black flake, which looked like the symbols Bjorn had so often seen carved on the stones on Alvaret plain – symbols which the pastor from Ventlinge, and also the pastor from Mörbylånga said were demonic because they were pagan – this small black leaf the stranger was holding in his fingers began to move and shine, until finally, when the letter in that satanic script appeared to be white-hot, the stranger let go of it, allowing it to float to and fro, like a jay’s feather, straight into the field of light. This action, repeated over and over again, had something of a ritual about it, and although Bjorn had never heard of black masses, he felt the insane thumping of his heart, prompted by fear. One time a flaming letter went slightly off course and failed to come down like the previous ones, so to stop it from landing on the dirt floor, the stranger blew with all his might and uttered a phrase, which did not help, or at least not enough to guarantee it a safe landing, and so he had to cross to the other side of the anvil and quickly repeat the operation; at that moment Bjorn caught sight of his face, and it was terrible. He screamed, jumped off the block and ran home, certain the stranger would race after him to punish him. In panic he latched the door shut and started looking for the wooden crucifix he had found here many years ago, among the items left by the unknown owners. The cross was nowhere, but nevertheless he fell to his knees and prayed in his own words, ardently, opening his eyes every few seconds, only to see the devilish light still shining outside. He would certainly have waited it out until dawn, if not for a storm that came over the plateau, blowing a swift gale. Flashes of lightning, almost one after another, ripped the sky apart. Thunderbolts struck the rocks with such force that the entire island shook to its foundations. Bjorn threw his jerkin over his head, called the dog and without looking round at the forge, ran to the sheepfold. He calmed the sheep, walking from one to another. Finally, as streams of rain lashed down on the world and total darkness prevailed, he fell asleep. Next morning, as he drove the flock out to the nearby meadow, he noticed nothing suspicious in the farmyard. When at around noon the stranger failed to appear on the cliff top, with his heart in his mouth, Bjorn looked inside the forge. It was empty. The anvil was sitting in its place, coated as ever in a layer of dust. Nor did he find a single trace on the dirt floor or on the pieces of equipment abandoned long ago. What did he have for the steward now? What was he to report to him? That evening, once the flock was in the sheepfold, he went down to the bottom of the cliff and checked the spot where the sailors had buried the chest. He started to tremble when under the layer of turf he once again felt the lid of the box, which gaped empty as before. It was a sure sign that the stranger would return. But when, and what for, Bjorn had no idea. He merely sensed it had nothing to do with a conspiracy, because the forces that had appeared on the island would have had a thousand opportunities to commit a crime in a far simpler way. Yet he wanted to wipe out the evidence, so under cover of night he dug up the chest, chopped it to pieces, threw all the fittings into the sea, and set fire to the boards in a rocky niche, where a year earlier the animal pyre had burned; at last, to finish he filled in the hole under the pine trees. But it didn’t make his heart feel any lighter. Maybe only Jansen, who knew many old tales, could have heard him out, understood and given advice. But how was he to describe that terrible face? Wrinkled, the skin tanned almost black, with sparse locks of hair falling onto it, it looked as if dug out of the abyss. All this was too hard for Bjorn, and for the first time in many years, his loneliness lay on his shoulders like a huge burden. In the end he did not go to Ventlinge. He wrapped his shepherd’s odds and ends in a linen sheet, and although the grass on the Alvaret plains was not yet fully grown, at dawn he drove his flock from the farmyard, jamming broken yew twigs into the doors of his house and the sheepfold according to the old custom. He set off deep inland, hoping to encounter no evil before autumn.

  III

  The pasturelands here had no set borders, and if he had to move on, he chose a route where it was easy to move between sheltered spots. Devoid of trees, Alvaret offered some hollows which, though shallow, were numerous. Shielded from the wind and overgrown with juniper, they were the only places on the island unreached by the constant rumble of the sea. By day he heard the sheep bleating, the larks singing, and sometimes Harald barking. The dog quickly learned to hunt rabbits and they were never hungry by the campfire. At night Bjorn spent hours staring at the stars, and was sorry he didn’t know their names. Nevertheless, as every summer, he felt almost happy. Almost, because sometimes, against his own will, he thought about the stranger’s visit. These considerations led nowhere, and tormented Bjorn, but under their influence he did take certain precautionary measures. Even by day he avoided the large boulders standing in circles, which he knew to be even older than the oak trees at Ventlinge. Formerly, especially on moonlit nights, he liked to lie down in the very middle of a circle and gaze at the sky, feeling the ground breathing and the ring of stones safely encompassing him. He had never believed in elves or devils seizing people’s souls right here. Now he was afraid of these places, copiously scattered over the plain, and if one of the sheep happened to stray into a stone circle, Bjorn called the dog and told him to chase it out, while crossing himself as in church. But nothing evil happened. Bjorn wandered with his flock first to the north, then went back south again; once every five days Jansen and his helper tracked him down without difficulty, to take away the curds on a two-wheel cart and give him some clean milking pails. Usually as well as bread, they brought fresh news from Ventlinge. A fine Polish-bred steed had broken a leg beneath the King; the accident caused no harm, but the reiter officer had had to kill the horse with a shot in the ear. The wife of the pastor from Mörbylånga had happily given birth to a seventh daughter, which was celebrated by communal singing of psalms. The fishermen from Degerhamn had caught such a large cod that the entire village had had a sumptuous supper. Bjorn listened, nodded his head, and replied, but he was glad when they went away. Now, even if Jansen had come alone, without the helper, he would not have wanted to talk about that incident. It was left further and further behind him, and although the chopped-up, burned chest was a real and painful element in all this, the rest might be wished away – a delusion.

  He headed north again, along the eastern edge of Alvaret, to the hollow where his favourite spring was located. As no saint had ever visited the island, it did not have its own name. Yet Bjorn knew that with the addition of mint leaves, its water had great power. It only took a few sips for his tired body to feel new strength. But he could not enjoy refreshment straight away. There at the dip in the rocks, master and dog stopped dead at the sight of a deer. The animal raised its mighty head and reluctantly stepped back a couple of paces from the spring. Harald barked,
Bjorn called him to heel, and the stag, as if he were the rightful owner of this place, slowly moved onto a hillock, from where he looked round at the intruders once again, before disappearing among the juniper bushes. Bjorn was in no doubt: the animal could only have ended up in this part of the island if he had jumped the King’s wall, yet he had never heard of such a thing before. Unless the stag were older than the monarch’s whim and had spent his entire life at liberty, on this side of the wall, but in that case how old must he be? Bjorn remembered that when he was brought to the island, before becoming a shepherd, he had spent almost two years with the prisoners, finishing building the wall. But it was long enough ago for him to have lost track of time.

  He lit a bonfire, told the dog to keep watch, and headed downhill to the seashore, which on this side of the island was almost flat, grassy and swampy like a peat bog. He attached a stone to a mesh net and cast it far into the sea, carefully fastening the line on shore. Halfway back he met Harald. The dog cringed at his feet with his tail between his legs, blocking the path, and when Bjorn tried to move ahead, he began to bark.

  ‘Has our stag come back?’ said Bjorn. ‘All right, all right, I know that’s no morsel for us! For meat like that you go to the rope! Stop barking!’