The Darkest Room

WINTER 1868

The manor house is large, so large. Kerstin goes from room to room, searching for Carolina, but there are so many places to look. Too many places on Eel Point, too many rooms in the house.

And the blizzard is on its way, it feels like a weight in the air outside, and Kerstin knows there isn’t much time.

The manor house is solidly built and will not suffer in the storm, but the question is how the people will be affected. A blizzard makes everyone gather around the stoves like lost birds, waiting for it to pass.

A difficult summer with poor harvests on the island has been followed by a harsh winter. It is the first week in February, and so bitterly cold on the coast that no one goes outside unless they have to. But the lighthouse keepers and the ironworkers still have to do their shifts over in the towers, and today every fit man except Karlsson, the master lighthouse

keeper, is out on the point getting the lighthouses ready for the snowstorm.

The women have remained in the house, but Carolina is nowhere to be found. Kerstin has searched every room on both floors, and has been up among the beams in the attic. She cannot talk to any of the other maids or the wives of the lighthouse keepers, because they are not aware of Carolina’s condition. They may have their suspicions, but they do not know for certain.

Carolina is eighteen, two years younger than Kerstin. They are both housemaids working for Sven Karlsson, the master lighthouse keeper. Kerstin regards herself as the one who thinks things through and is more careful. Carolina is more lively and more trusting-in some ways she is just as adventurous as Kerstin’s older sister Fina, who went to America last year-and that means she sometimes has problems. Recently Carolina’s troubles have increased, and she has told only Kerstin about them.

If Carolina has left the manor and gone out into the forest or off toward the peat bog, Kerstin will not be able to find her. Carolina knew there was a blizzard on the way-is she still so desperate?

Kerstin goes outside. In the snow-covered inner courtyard the wind comes sweeping down from the sky, whirling between the buildings, unable to make its escape. The blizzard is approaching; this is just a premonition.

She hears a scream that quickly falls silent. That wasn’t the wind.

It was a woman screaming.

The wind tears at Kerstin’s kerchief and pinafore, making her lean forward. She forces open the door of the barn and steps inside.

The cows moo and move uneasily as she searches among them. Nothing. Then she climbs the steep staircase up to the big hayloft. The air is freezing cold up here.

Something is moving over by one of the walls, below

the big mound of hay. Faint movements in the dust and the shadows.

It is Carolina. She is lying on the hay-covered floor, her legs immobile beneath a dirty blanket. Her breathing is weak and wheezing as Kerstin comes closer; her expression is one of shame.

“Kerstin… I think it just happened,” she says. “I think it came out.”

Kerstin walks over to the blanket, full of foreboding, and kneels down.

“Is there anything there?” whispers Carolina. “Or is it just blood?”

The blanket over Carolina’s knees is sticky and wet. But Kerstin lifts one corner and nods.

“Yes,” she says, “it’s come out.”

“Is it alive?”

“No… it’s not… complete.”

Kerstin leans over her friend’s pale face.

“How are you feeling?”

Carolina’s eyes are flickering all over the place.

“It died without being baptized,” she mumbles. “We have to… we have to bury it in consecrated ground so that it won’t walk again… It will be a lost soul if we don’t bury it.”

“We can’t,” says Kerstin. “The blizzard is here… we’ll die if we go out on the road.”

“We have to hide it,” whispers Carolina, struggling to breathe. “They’ll think I’ve been whoring… that I tried to get rid of it.”

“It doesn’t matter what they think.” Kerstin places her hand on Carolina’s burning forehead and says quietly, “I’ve had another letter from my sister. She wants me to go to America, to Chicago.”

Carolina doesn’t seem to be listening any longer, she is just panting faintly, but Kerstin goes on anyway:

“I’m going to go across the Atlantic to New York, then travel on from there. She’s even deposited the money for the

ticket in Gothenburg.” She leans closer. “And you can come with me, Carolina. Would you like to do that?”

Carolina does not reply. She is no longer struggling to breathe. The air is simply seeping out of her, barely audible.

In the end she is lying there motionless in the hay, her eyes wide open. Everything is silent in the barn.

“I’ll be back soon,” whispers Kerstin, her voice full of tears.

She pushes the thing lying in the hay into the blanket, then folds it over several times to hide the marks of the blood and the birth fluid. Then she stands up and takes the bundle in her arms.

She goes out into the courtyard, where the wind is still increasing in strength, and battles her way back to the main house, pressed against the stone wall of the barn. She goes straight to her little room, packs her few possessions and Carolina’s, then puts on layer after layer of clothes, ready for the difficult journey that awaits her when the blizzard has abated.

Then Kerstin walks without hesitation to the large drawing room, where oil lamps and the tiled stove spread warmth and light through the winter darkness. Master lighthouse keeper Sven Karlsson is sitting in an armchair by the table in the center of the room, his black uniform straining at the seams over his belly.

As a servant of the crown, Karlsson is one of the privileged members of the parish. He has almost half the rooms in the manor house at his disposal, and has his own pew in the church over in Rörby. Beside him his wife, Anna, is enthroned on a fine chair. A few maids are hovering in the background, waiting for the blizzard to pass, and in a dark corner sits Old Sara, who came from the poorhouse in Rörby after the master lighthouse keeper put in the lowest bid at the auction to establish who would take care of her.

“Where have you been?” says Anna when she sees Kerstin.

Her voice is always loud and sharp, but now it is shriller than usual in order to be heard above the howling wind.

Kerstin curtsies, positions herself in silence in front of the table, and waits until everyone’s eyes are on her. She thinks about her older sister over in America.

Then she places the bundle she has brought with her on the table, right in front of Sven Karlsson.

“Good evening, sir,” says Kerstin loudly, unfolding the blanket. “I have something here… something you appear to have lost.”