Cold Sea Stories

Öland

THE SEA HERE is always severe. Even on sultry summer days, when the rocks are as hot as a tile stove, the bright blue surface is eternally coated in the same, forbidding chill. Bjorn was thinking about it as he drove his sheep out of the croft. There weren’t many of them – two young ewes and one old one. A year ago he had had more, but after a hailstorm, when lightning bolts had struck the plateau in quick succession, only three of them were left. Does fear destroy an animal’s sense of direction? That he did not know, but the image of the disaster endured in his memory down to the last detail: the ram – the bellwether – had run straight for the precipice and disappeared, with almost the entire flock after him. Then the stupid, black-horned ram had lain at the foot of the cliff, under a pile of other dead animals, with the waves licking at them. Bjorn had had to report it, and the entire way across the plateau he had trembled with fear. The steward was a bad man, whose lips cast nothing but curses from under his thick, flaxen moustache. So it was this time, too – when he finally grasped what had happened, he flew into a dreadful rage, seized Bjorn by the scruff of the neck, pinned him to the ground and hissed: ‘For such a big loss you will stand before the master – the master will have you hanged!’ But the squire from Ventlinge – whom Bjorn had never seen before – proved merciful. He heard out the steward, stood up from his chair, pointed to the crucifix and said: ‘He tells us to forgive’; then after a pause for thought, addressing the culprit he added: ‘For each ewe you will work out a year, and for each ram two. Then you will leave my land for ever.'

That evening, when Jansen came to the bottom of the cliff with a helper to dress the carcasses on the spot, all three of them had laughed about it. No peasant or even a tenant farmer here had a lifelong right like that: there had been twenty-five sheep and four rams, including the bellwether. Bjorn listened avidly to their stories about the master from Ventlinge. Since returning from the war on the other side of the sea, he spent long evenings alone by the fireplace, reading the Bible aloud. Sometimes he could also be heard through the closed door, calling for his comrades who were killed in battle – those from Dalarna, those from Uppaland and those from Scania. Surrounded by the enemy cavalry, they had fought like lions, but as well as their sabres the Poles had the force of Catholic incantations behind them, and it was those that caused the field by the river to be strewn in hundreds of Swedish corpses that day. Maybe that was why the master from Ventlinge, since returning to Öland from the war, never took part in the royal hunts, had hung his rapier on the wall and read the Bible aloud? At around midnight they finished the work; Jansen loaded a cart with all that could be saved, which belonged to the estate, and the rest they laid on a pile of brushwood. A great, sizzling flame lit up the cliff, and the odour of burning tallow and innards trailed along the stony beach until morning.

However, some odds and ends had been left over from that feast of the gods, and now as he gazed at the pasture, the sheep and the clouds, Bjorn could smell the long forgotten aroma of roasted meat, and with it he felt a gnawing pain in his stomach. He reached into his sack for a piece of dried fish. As he chewed it, he walked up to the precipice. The daily view of the open space where water and air merged together somewhere very far away had never consoled Bjorn, for although the hues and shapes of the clouds often changed here, as did the colour of the sea, the empty void was always the same, unencompassed, like the wind roaring in the grasses on the plateau and the waves splashing against the boulders. Only occasionally, when the visibility was good, could his eyes spy out in the distance the small outline of a ship heading for Kalmar, or south to Karlskrona, but Bjorn had no telescope and was spared the joy of identifying the flags or the sight of the full sails.

But since last year the edge of the precipice had changed out of all recognition. Where the plateau ended, as if cut off by a knife, and the cliff fell away at an almost vertical stroke, a low stone wall had arisen on the orders of the steward, the fruit of several months’ work, and now almost finished. Bjorn leaned his hands on the stones and gazed at the sea. From the southern side, on the dark-blue line of the horizon a small dot had appeared. It was too far away to tell what kind of ship it was, and anyway, what did it matter? The island was bypassed by merchants and mariners. Bjorn turned away from the stone wall and made himself comfortable upon the grass. The sun was already quite high, seagulls, larks and siskins were calling to each other shrilly, the last patches of snow had disappeared from the plateau a couple of weeks ago, and the smell of thawed earth was finally heralding some long, warm days. Bjorn thought about the master from Ventlinge: how noble he must have looked on his charger, rapier in hand, beneath the fluttering banner of the royal ensign, as he gave the order to attack. But what could be the meaning of the incantations Jansen had mentioned? Were the Catholics in a pact with the devil? And if so, why had God given them the victory? Under his drooping eyelids Bjorn could see a nameless river, with the corpses of the masters from Dalarna, the masters from Uppaland, and the masters from Scania floating along it. Their proud emblems, estates, jewels and titles – what were they now, as they lay dead in a foreign land? For a while longer Bjorn’s thoughts revolved around the tumult of battle, until at last, to the tune of the sea’s monotonous roar they lost focus, imperceptibly crossing the border into a dream.

It started with the light, quiet strokes of long oars. The boat was long too, and both ferrymen, dressed rather gaudily, rhythmically leaned forward from the prow and the stern over the calm water, in which the façades of churches, the arcs of bridges and the gates of palaces slowly shifted in mirror image. The passengers – a man of about thirty-five and a small boy – were not talking to each other. Only when the boat had sailed away from the city and its cupolas were glowing honey-gold in the distance did the man place a hand on the boy’s arm and repeat the word: ‘Serenissima!’ The boy began to cry. The boat came alongside a galleon at anchor in the bay. The boatswain’s whistle sounded, and the sails were set. The ship moved off majestically, and the city disappeared in the dawn of the rising sun as suddenly as if it had never existed.

Bjorn awoke with a vague sense of happiness and sorrow all at once. The city was beautiful and the waters in the bay were warm, but the journey – or rather that departure – carried the burden of irreversible events. Bjorn knew that dreaming was dangerous, because dreams offer impossible things, and so after waking it is best to set to work at once. So he did, heading for a small pyramid, where the stones he had gathered from the pasture were heaped on top of each other. He carefully chose a large, angular rock and picked it up in both hands; once he had positioned the point of gravity on his right shoulder, like an athlete he slowly carried the stone towards the precipice. The wall was almost finished now, and Bjorn reckoned with satisfaction that in two, or at most three days he would make his way to the steward to report it to him. He was sure to hear a stream of abuse, but what did it matter, if they entrusted a flock to him again? For the past year he had too often gone hungry, and for the sight of the shed with sheep’s-milk cheeses ripening on long shelves inside it, for that nourishing hope, he was ready to put up with far worse things.

As he pondered it all, he fitted the angular rock into the exact spot where the wall seemed weakest, and then with a sense of satisfaction he looked up at the sea, only to let his jaw drop in amazement at almost the very same instant. The small dot which had been visible on the horizon three-quarters of an hour ago had not moved towards Kalmar as usual, but had most evidently deviated from the common route and was approaching the island. A middle-sized three-mast ship in full sail was growing before his eyes. Now Bjorn could clearly see the crow’s nest with the tiny figure of a sailor; the bowsprit, with yet another observation basket hanging underneath it; and several guns with covers over their muzzles. Two stone’s throws away from the rocky shore the ship made an abrupt turn, furled its sails and stood at anchor parallel to the cliff, which allowed Bjorn, crouching behind his wall, to make out its name. On these waters the name ‘Doña Juanita’ sounded rather unusual, but swallowing his saliva, Bjorn did not stop to wonder about it. His gaze and attention were entirely riveted by the rapid activities amidships. A windlass creaked and the sailors lowered a sloop, in which he saw two rowers and a man dressed in a trailing black coat. There could be no doubt he was the one giving the orders here. In one hand he was holding a hat adorned with feathers, while with the other, as soon as the sloop was bobbing on the water, he made urgent gestures. Their meaning was obvious: cast off the rope, take up the oars, and follow the shortest course to the shore. This hurry seemed strange on a bright, sunny day, when neither wind nor waves could threaten a safe landing. There was a strange silence on board the ship. The sailors at the yardarms and the anchor lines were evidently waiting for the sloop to come back, but this readiness, as if enforced by iron discipline, was being conducted in stillness and total silence. No one called out to anyone else, nor did anyone abandon his post for a moment. But strangest of all was what happened a little later on the shore: the two sailors put down their oars, pushed the sloop onto a gravel bank, disembarked their master, handed him a large sack-like saddlebag, then fetched a chest with iron fittings out of the sloop and set it down in the middle of the beach.

Bjorn froze. He realised the meaning of the fact that there was no flag flying from the ship’s mast. Once, long ago, in a castle dungeon, he had heard some blood-chilling stories about robbers on the high seas. Of all the evildoers in this world they were the cruellest, showing no mercy even to their shipmates. If the ship really did belong to pirates, there could only be one explanation for their visit: there was treasure in the chest, which these people – no doubt being pursued by the royal navy – wanted to hide quickly. Bjorn’s conjecture was confirmed by the man in the hat: now he was walking along the beach, raking up sea kale on the tip of his cane, pausing now and then and looking all around, as if searching for a suitable spot for a hiding place. At the point where the cliff ended, dropping abruptly towards a plain, and the beach bordered on a pine forest, the man stopped beneath a sturdy tree and shouted something to the sailors. They grabbed hold of the chest. It must have been very heavy, because as they carried it they halted several times. Bjorn had to lean over the wall to see exactly what was happening under the tree: the sailors took a pickaxe and shovels out of the chest, closed the lid and set about digging a hole. Damp and stony, the ground did not give way easily, but the work proceeded remarkably quickly. Bjorn was also surprised by the ingenuity with which the chest was finally hidden. The lid was not covered with stones, but camouflaged with turf and some small juniper bushes planted on the spot. Like this it would be easy to get inside the chest without extracting it from the hole.

Eventually the man in the hat went back to the sloop, and the two sailors, wielding the pickaxe and the shovels, followed a few paces behind him, but none of the things that crossed Bjorn’s mind actually occurred on the stony beach at the foot of the cliff. Neither of the pirates fetched his chief a blow on the back of the head, split his skull or stuck a knife in his back, nor did the leader produce pistols from under the tails of his coat, suddenly turn around to face the sailors and fire at them point blank, mowing them down. But instead, on the stony beach at the foot of the cliff something happened that Bjorn could not understand at all. The sailors pushed out the sloop and started rowing towards the ship, on which the sails were already set, while the man in the black coat remained on the shore, taking no notice of the departing vessel, but inspecting something in his saddlebag. Once the ‘Doña Juanita’ had gathered wind, the newcomer threw his bag on his shoulder, drew a fantastic flourish in the air with his cane, glanced up at the rocks and, after finding a narrow gulley in the cliff with a path leading upwards, briskly set off ahead of him. As the path came out on the plateau in the exact spot several dozen paces from the precipice where Bjorn’s stone cottage stood, and in two or at most three minutes the stranger was bound to see it, Bjorn stepped back from the wall, ran across the pasture and hid behind the corner of the empty sheepfold, from where he could watch the newcomer without hindrance.

And the man was behaving very oddly. As soon as he was on the plateau, although he had undoubtedly caught sight of Bjorn’s cottage, he ignored this discovery, and instead of looking around the yard or calling for the farmer, he took a telescope from his bag and for some time watched the sea, following the departing sailing ship. Then he aimed the telescope inland, but what he could be looking for on the island remained an unfathomable mystery to Bjorn – all around stretched a bare plain, and even an eye equipped with a spyglass could not have seen the pinnacles of the church in Ventlinge from here, the smoke from the village or the large oak trees surrounding the squire’s estate. Finally the man folded the telescope, checked the position of the sun and only then, after a few dozen paces, did he investigate Bjorn’s yard. He peeped into the pigsty, went into the forge that hadn’t been active for years, and then finally without hesitating stepped inside the cottage, from where he quickly emerged, finding no one in. He briefly glanced towards the sheepfold, at which point Bjorn began to tremble, feeling as if the stranger’s gaze was capable of penetrating walls. Fortunately the man turned his eyes back in the direction of the plain, and eventually he headed that way, disappearing among the grasses, stones and juniper bushes of Alvaret plain. Bjorn busily noted a few more details in his memory: the newcomer was wearing tall boots, just like the royal reiters; under his coat and doublet he had a white shirt finished in lace; he wore no wig, but his long, raven-black hair was tied in a pigtail by a shiny silver hairpin, and he must have used expensive scent too, because a strong, musky odour lingered for a good few moments wherever he had paused.

Two days later, as Bjorn was coming down from the plateau towards the Ventlinge farm buildings, his mind and soul were full of anxiety. Had he done the right thing by lifting the turf and peeping inside the mysterious chest? What could the fact that it was empty mean? Had he concealed the lid well enough again? Who was the weird stranger, who had strode across the plateau with his saddlebag, telescope and cane, as if taking a stroll about the royal gardens? Why hadn’t he appeared again since then? Yet worst of all was the doubt – should he report it to the steward? The king’s and the squires’ law was clear on this point: no outsider could appear on the island without their knowledge. Anyone who saw a newcomer or a castaway was duty-bound to report it immediately to the steward or the pastor. And now as he descended towards the Ventlinge crofts, Bjorn suddenly imagined all the immense commotion. On hearing the news, the steward would instantly run to the squire’s rooms. The master would send a messenger to the hunting estate at Ottenby, from where the royal reiters would come at a gallop with a force of thirty people. They would have what was needed: dogs, torches, muskets, rapiers and long pikes. No clump of grass, copse, cave or rock, no shepherd’s shack on the plateau or abandoned hut would then be a safe, secure shelter. How would it look? The stranger, running between two riders with his hands tied behind his back and a noose around his neck, would finally reach the spot where the chest was hidden. But what then? Here Bjorn’s imagination let him down, for what could be expected from an empty chest buried between two pine trees? The king’s men would fly into a rage and thrash the prisoner – let him admit the truth and confess his crimes. But could an empty chest be a crime? In the end they’d be sure to hang the man on one of the pine trees. Bjorn had once seen this sort of execution, which the reiters called ‘gee up, pony’. Made to stand on the saddle, the condemned man had been hopping on tiptoes like a dancer, struggling to keep his balance, while the laughing soldiers swigged hooch. Then as if by the way, the officer had made the nag jump, and that was the end of the poor wretch: he was left dangling from the pine tree like a heap of old rags.

So once he was finally standing before the steward, reporting most obediently that the wall above the precipice was finished, and that in this connection, after a year’s break he, shepherd Bjorn, was ready to take on a flock again, with the gracious consent of the steward and with the blessing of His Lordship the squire, and when he heard the bubbling stream of invective that poured over him like pigswill, he decided not to let out a single squeak about the newcomer. Then everything happened according to the old rules. As he made a record in the register, the steward ordered Jansen, the chief herdsman, to count out thirty-three sheep for Bjorn; once that had been done, Jansen gave him a dog too.

‘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.

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.

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!’

The words stuck in his throat. By the bonfire sat a man, the one who had disembarked from the sloop at the foot of the cliffs. Bjorn could not take another step. He was sure that when the stranger turned his face from the fire, he would die, for no one can look death in the eyes twice; but what happened was different. He did turn to face Bjorn, but Bjorn did not die. The face was the one he remembered from before the night in the forge.

‘Do not be surprised,’ said the same, deep voice. ‘Do not be afraid. It is I who need your help.’

‘First I want to know,’ said Bjorn, barely advancing a step, ‘who you are. If you won’t say, I will leave. What I saw then…’

‘Was not for you. Each man may see only as much as he is destined.’

‘So first I must know what I am destined.’

Having said this, Bjorn was surprised by his own boldness. He no longer called him ‘Sir’, he had raised his voice, and yet this man, if he was a man, was capable of far more than a hundred squires from Ventlinge; if he was not a man, things could take an even worse turn.

‘Believe me, it is better not to know. He who knows the future suffers doubly, and sometimes four times over. You do not deserve that.’

‘Your speech is not clear,’ said Bjorn, approaching the bonfire, ‘so who are you?’

‘One of the three, though not the first or the last.’

‘You do not wish to say much. Where do you come from?’

‘We wandered from a far distant country. It is the land of the wise men, so they say. And our return was foretold at the right time. But,’ he said, looking hard at Bjorn, ‘you cannot always return to a city by the same gate.’

‘Do you live in Kalmar? Can’t you get back there? No, you must be from far away. Somewhere much further than Kalmar,’ said Bjorn, and paused for a moment. ‘Are you from Venice?’

‘I was there very long ago. But Venice is not the land of the wise men.’

Only now did Bjorn approach the fire. Slowly he sat down opposite the stranger. He was hungry, so he broke some bread and handed it to his guest. The man took a wineskin from his bag and two silver cups. Bjorn savoured the drink very slowly.

‘Have you never drunk wine before?’ asked the stranger.

‘Never,’ replied Bjorn. ‘Sometimes, after the harvest, I have tasted beer. This,’ he raised his cup, ‘is better than beer.’

The stranger smiled, and it occurred to Bjorn that anyone who ate bread and drank wine in such an ordinary way could not really be a demon, even though his speech was rather unclear. But he did know that gentlemen could be terribly eccentric, so if not for that moment in the forge, now he would no longer have been at all afraid.

‘So what does your city look like?’ he asked, as the man poured him more wine.

‘It has twelve gates. Three at each point of the compass. Before that one must cross a desert and climb a mountain.’

‘And you cannot return by either?’

‘Sometimes the gate is too tight, the road too narrow.’

‘What is the desert like?’

The stranger poured more wine in silence as he sought a definition. Finally he drew an arc in the air and replied: ‘It is almost the same as here, except that instead of moss and grass there is sand everywhere.’

‘Did you travel through so many lands to find me? And what,’ asked Bjorn, gulping, ‘what was that, there in the forge?’

‘I will explain everything. But first could you tell me a story? Your story? What you remember.’

The request amazed Bjorn. No one had ever asked him about his life. Nor had he ever confided in anyone. Occasionally he went back to the past in his dreams, but it caused him pain. He regarded his fate as closed, as if a large, invisible hand had stamped a heavy seal on it. But at the same time there was something tempting about this proposal, some inexplicable hint of hope, which prompted his first words, and then a lot of simple, shyly uttered sentences.

It was hardest of all for him to talk about Venice. He was four-and-a-half when he and his father, a painter of urban alleyways and human faces, had boarded a ship and set off for the Swedish king’s court. For several years they had done perfectly well, although his father had not gained the title of court painter. He was a Catholic and refused to change his faith. However, he had commissions and money. He told his son, soon we will have saved enough to afford the return journey and a happy life. But good fortune had turned its back on them for ever. Arrested on a charge of conspiracy and tortured, he had taken poison, which friends had provided. From them Francesco – for in those days he was not yet Bjorn – had learned that the officials had taken everything his father had put aside. He had been taken into service, first to a stable, then to a pastor. He had had to adopt their faith and take a new name. He ran away from that house, became a vagrant and ended up in prison. The pastor had bought him out, but when the plague had devastated whole villages on the island of Öland, and people were being sought to work there, he had handed the disobedient boy to the estate at Ottenby, taking compensation from the royal game warden. Bjorn had sailed to the island with some prisoners, with whom he spent almost two years putting up the King’s wall. Then, taken into service at Ventlinge, he could choose himself a house to live in. Many of them still stood empty after the plague. He chose the one on the cliff top, at the edge of Alvaret plain, situated furthest away from people and from the village. He did not have the money to be a tenant farmer or a smith. The steward needed shepherds, so he had become one. For the first few years he thought about giving it up, but he had nowhere to go back to. Later on he came to like solitude, and so a good fifteen years had gone by, if he had not made a mistake in the reckoning. The kings had changed, so had the squires of Ventlinge, and the royal game wardens at Ottenby, while each year he followed the same clouds and the same stars in the sky.

‘Sometimes,’ Bjorn concluded, ‘I dream of strange things. A year ago, when I lost the flock, I saw a city with four gates. Apparently it stood here, in the middle of Alvaret, before the people left it in long boats. Jansen heard that a thousand years ago they built a kingdom in the south and that they captured Rome. And now,’ he said, drinking up the wine, ‘I shall listen to your tale.’

What the stranger talked about was not simple, because it had no definite beginning. There was some sort of quarrel in Edessa, during which he had hoodwinked two avaricious Persians. Then there was a conversation with a Sufi in Smyrna, convoluted, too complicated; next a voyage by ship to Tagaste, with no results. Bjorn listened avidly, but understood little. His attention was riveted by a recurring word: the Book. Found, but lost forever, as if it were everywhere and nowhere all at once. He did not know if he had understood properly, but it emerged that this Book was older than the Bible, and that it contained everything that has been, is now, and has yet to be, from a grain of sand at the bottom of the sea to the boundlessness of the starry sky, from the word that was in the beginning, to the terrible riders of the very last days. Something else had been worrying Bjorn ever since he had vaguely yet adequately understood that if the stranger were telling the truth he must have witnessed events so remote in time that he could not possibly be an ordinary mortal. He had seen other great books, forgeries and copies, sometimes so perfect that his mission had seemed to be over. As he described examining these pages and symbols, time seemed to flow by in his story like an unfolding, moving image of something that never actually changed. Imperceptibly he passed into explanations: in a prophecy unknown to him before, which he had found in the scriptorium at the monastery of Notre Dame d’Aiguebelle in Provence, he had come upon a description of the island and the shepherd. He had hired a ship and headed here, to the North, where he had never set foot before.

Bjorn listened in extreme concentration. And when the stranger had finished, he asked to hear the prophecy.

‘Neither Ahuzat, nor Abimelech, nor Phichol, but still one of the three, a son of the Orient, a son of the Supreme Light, the one who, having made obeisance with the others lost the Book on the way, this one, I declare, who for all time has never set his bones to rest, will travel across the cold sea to an island. Its shape a wingless butterfly, its countenance rock and pasture, and girdling it the wall of an irascible king, that fawn nor hind may not leave it.’

The stranger’s lips quivered as he uttered these words. Bjorn tossed another log on the fire and leaned forward to avoid missing a single word.

‘You will take a lone shepherd from a foreign land, pure and just, who will not crave gold, who will break bread with you, and will accept your wine. By a spring at sunrise let him send forth a lamb to pasture; I shall guide it, and wherever it stops, you shall seek that which I sealed in the beginning, until you shall find and I shall open the gate, and wide will be your road again – so say I, whom you worshipped in the form of fire, before I opened the Word to you.’

Bjorn furtively wiped away his tears. Although they contained so many mysterious things, names and expressions, he sensed that these words were referring to him. Someone, maybe as long as a thousand years ago, had known more than even he did about his life, a life which was like slavery, about the King’s stone wall and the pastureland, and about solitude. The stars were still shining overhead, but above the eastern side of Alvaret the first, narrow strip of dawn had appeared.

‘Can you tell me,’ he asked timidly, ‘about what was not destined for me?’

‘I must gather various books along my way.’ The stranger poured them both wine. ‘The one that you saw is the Book of Light. Some take it for the Jewish Zohar, but they are wrong. It is much older and comes from Kashan.’

‘What story does it tell?’

‘Not every book tells a story. This one contains the words of all the languages in the world, but only those in which there is the brightness of truth.’

‘And your face?’

‘You saw the real one. Old age, as it is. Among people I must look different.’

They fell silent. Then, when the sun rose, Bjorn tied on a linen belt and drove a young ram out of the flock. For some time they followed it together: the shepherd with a wooden stick, the stranger with his saddlebag on his shoulder, and the dog.

‘I’d like to go with you,’ said Bjorn, ‘to leave here for ever – take me on board your ship.’

‘Where I am going you cannot follow me. But one day you shall leave the island and you will be happy. As it is written in the Bible: “I shall depart from a foreign land across a which the Lord shall build.”’

These were the stranger’s last words. Bjorn called Harald, and blinking, watched as the man’s silhouette, heading after the ever smaller figure of the lamb, disappeared against the burning disc of the sun, somewhere in the middle of Alvaret.

Towards the end of September, the reverend pastor Jons, parish priest at Ventlinge, found Bjorn standing outside his door. He asked humbly if the pastor would possibly be willing to lend him a Bible. He promised to come to church on Christmas Day and to return the book undamaged. If needs be, he would work in the reverend’s field for as many days as he saw fit. The pastor said nothing, but told him to wait outside, and vanished into the house. He came back with a half leather-bound family Bible and handed it to Bjorn.

‘Open it at any page and read aloud, if you are able to!’

It was Chapter Twelve of the Book of Daniel. Bjorn, who had last pieced together the letters of Swedish script many years ago, stammered syllable after syllable, but with each sentence he found it easier, and when at the end he read out fluently: ‘But you, go your way till the end; for you shall rest, and will arise to your inheritance at the end of the days,’ the pastor, somewhat amazed, nodded benignly. Then he asked: ‘What do you need it for?’ and at once added, as if to himself, under his breath: ‘If such people begin to prophesy too, what will it come to?’ However, he lent the Bible, sternly instructing him to treat it like a treasure, for although he had not bought it, merely inherited it from his predecessor, it was still worth a lot of money.

When, like the others, he drove his flock to the great barns at Ventlinge where the sheep spent the winter, a different time set in for him. He only went to the estate to work off his debt five days a week, and had two for himself. Until the snow fell, he caught and smoked fish, and chopped a supply of firewood. After work he read by the fireside: first the Gospels, the Letters and Acts of the Apostles. He was a little disappointed that only Matthew wrote about the Three Kings. He mentioned gold, frankincense and myrrh, but did not say a word about the lost Book. And he only added that ‘they returned another way to their own land, the land of the rising sun.’ Afterwards, to find the sentence about the ‘fragile bridge which the Lord shall build,’ he carefully read book after book, starting from Genesis. Days went by, his eyes were watering from the flickering firelight, but so far there was nothing about any sort of bridge, let alone a fragile one. Sometimes, when he awoke after a short doze, fearing that he may have overlooked something, he went back two or three chapters and read them again – in vain. If not for the silver cup, he might have thought he dreamed it all one balmy summer’s night, when he fell asleep outside the shelter, stupefied by the scent of herbs and grasses. He set aside the Bible and picked up the vessel. The letters running around it in relief were intertwined with the leaves of a plant he did not recognise. He raised the cup to his nose and slowly drew in air, as if at the very bottom a dried-up drop of wine might give him any sort of explanation.

The day before Christmas Bjorn finished reading the Bible. In none of the books had he found the sentence with which the stranger had so deeply moved him. But the next day he did not return the book to the pastor. There was such a strong blizzard and the snowdrifts were so high that even in the village no one could possibly have dared to go outside. It continued to rage and to snow for the next few days, until finally the sun came out, the wind dropped and a biting frost took hold. Bjorn went out onto the cliff and saw a white expanse, stretching all the way from the island to the distant line of the mainland. The sea had frozen. Never before, since he had been on Öland, had he seen the strait ice-bound. He went home, wrapped some food, the cup, a shirt and foot cloths in a bundle, placed the Bible at the very centre of the table, put out the fire, tied some short, wide slats to the soles of his winter boots, put on his sheepskin coat and hat, called the dog and for the last time closed behind him the door of the house that had never been his property.

He glided across the creaking snow, occasionally sinking up to his knees, but the further he was from the island, the easier the going, because the drifts were smaller. He also crossed places where the layer of snow blown in by the wind was only a few centimetres deep. At those points he paused, swept aside the snow and looked at the ice, under which was the sea. Harald followed along the trail he cut, pleased not to be sinking up to his belly. The red sphere of the sun had passed midday when they came onto the mainland. Bjorn was not sure whether the trickles of grey smoke rising beyond the hill belonged to Brömsebro or perhaps another village, but it didn’t matter. He had no goal, he felt joy in his heart, and he never once looked behind him.

They spent a long time climbing up a hill, now master before dog, now dog before master. And once they were at the top, standing beneath the boughs of trees stripped of their leaves, they could see the roofs of a village and fields covered in snow. There were small, dark figures moving along a frozen river and on ponds. The shouts of children, laughter, the grating of skates and the clash of curved sticks could be heard from afar on the crystal-clear air. Sleighs in harness were driving along the road, with people in fancy dress riding in them. On a bonfire outside a tavern, the innkeeper and a woman were roasting a pig. Harald tensed like a string as he scented the smell of fat mixed with the odour of burning bristles. Perhaps it would induce the master to take them there, perhaps for chopping wood and carrying water the master would be given a bowl of pig’s blood soup and a black pudding, and the dog a bone and some gristle; but Bjorn, whose gaze was following a bird soaring over the valley, had spotted something he couldn’t tear his eyes away from.

At the edge of the village, outside a small building that could have been a stable or a forge, or both of them at once, some horsemen were riding up; there were people crowding among them, and some musicians were approaching. A man in a turban was driving a camel covered with a saddlecloth, another was leading a laden donkey by the halter, a drunkard lying in the snow was singing a serenade, a cripple was hobbling along on a crutch and some beggars were plying their trade. Bjorn headed down the hill, with Harald after him; they crossed a stone bridge over a river, passed a few houses, and finally reached the gathering. Snow began to fall in large flakes, despite which more and more people kept coming, trumpets blared, pipes wailed, cymbals crashed, and a pair of village ragamuffins started to dance. Bjorn pushed his way to the entrance, but the local strongmen would not let him through, demanding a penny in payment for this unexpected show; finally by some miracle he managed to slip inside, but only to the door, from where, on tiptoes, he could see something. The same man, one of the three, was kneeling down, holding a long copper canister. Bjorn recognised him, in spite of the fact that he was wearing a shining coat richly shot with golden threads. From his tube he removed a scroll, unfurled it a little and, bowing his head, showed it to the child. The brilliance that shone out in the chamber dazzled everyone, but not Bjorn. People were coming outside, some astounded, some already bored by this spectacle, and now he could go nearer. The King held the scroll up so close to the child that he could touch it with his small, chubby finger. And just then, on the unrolled page Bjorn caught sight of himself and his father, disembarking from a galleon into a gondola. Slowly they went sailing past the church of Santa Maria della Salute. A bright, warm morning heralded a beautiful day.

‘How good it is to be home,’ said his father. ‘We shall never go to the North again.’

In the shimmering mirror of water Bjorn could see time. Images kept coming forward one after another: walking across the frozen sea, reading the Bible, the campfire on Alvaret, the brilliant light in the forge, the ship sailing in, building the low wall above the precipice, the flock of sheep running straight to their death, moving to the deserted farm, working on the King’s wall at Ottenby, the pastor’s house in Stockholm, prison, vagrancy, serving in the stable, his father’s funeral, their departure by galleon from the place where they now were. The images collided with each other like canoes; time had closed its circle and stopped. Bjorn knew that he no longer had to wander. He felt deep, ineffable happiness.

In spring a coast guard from Brömsebro found the remains of the shepherd from the Ventlinge estate in the partly thawed, frozen snow. He was buried in the local cemetery, from where there stretches a beautiful view of the island of Öland. The parish register records that he was caught in a snowstorm, after walking across the frozen strait for inexplicable reasons. The coast guard from Brömsebro did not confess to anyone that beside Bjorn the shepherd he also found the remains of a dog. Improbable, devilish tales could have arisen from that fact. Nor did he admit that in the dead man’s bundle he found a silver cup. And next spring the reverend pastor Jons recovered his valuable Bible when, on the steward’s orders, the house on the cliff was searched.