The Stockholm Octavo

by Karen Engelmann

  “Shhhhhhhhhh!” she hissed at me, then placed the third pass.

  “There she is!” I felt the thrill all players know, when the card they have been watching for appears.

  “Your Companion.” Mrs. Sparrow placed the Queen of Wine Vessels in the first position on the chart, then sat back in her chair. She was not smiling the way she did with ingénues looking for romance. “The Companion is of crucial importance, for the eight will gather in her orbit. She will appear in your life, your conversations, your dreams. She will be drawn to you, and you to her. You might work together, or you may be opposed.”

  “I am certain we will be a harmonious pair,” I said.

  “The Queen of Wine Vessels is a woman of power and means—the wine vessels are the suit of abundance. Usually money. But any card can play the role of benefactor or adversary. Do you see the false sleeve? The gloves that have been removed? There is the twisting vine of entanglement. In other words, be careful.”

  “I feel quite safe, Mrs. Sparrow. For, could not the sleeve be merely fashion, and the gloves removed so I might take her warm hand in mine? The twisting vine is the fertile harvest, and the vessel carries an intoxicating wine to my table, doubtless one from the Vingström cellars,” I said, envisioning Carlotta’s rich soft mouth.

  “Don’t be so cocky, Mr. Larsson,” she huffed. “This is not some card game you have played before. The Companion may lead you to love, and not be the lover at all. There are seven persons yet to meet.”

  “But she might be,” I said.

  “She might, yes,” Mrs. Sparrow said begrudgingly. She gathered up the entire deck and placed it facedown in the center of the diagram.

  “What’s this? Quitting already?” I asked, my voice too loud for the intimate scene.

  “The ritual is set. Once a position is filled, the cards are done until the following day.”

  “But, you made this up; you can change the ritual if you please.”

  “The ritual comes through me, not from me. It comes from the Divine. Or the cards themselves, perhaps. I don’t know. The Octavo requires eight consecutive nights. We will meet again tomorrow, and for the six nights following.” She took a quill and ink from the drawer under the table and noted my card and that of my companion in a slim leather journal. “Be here by eleven,” she said, blotting the page with sand from a shaker.

  “You really mean I am to come here every night?” I asked.

  “Yes, Mr. Larsson. You took an oath.”

  “Surely your regular clientele will not have the patience for such a drawn-out game?”

  She laughed and went to get her clay pipe and flint from the sideboard. “I would never lay the Octavo for the merely curious. That would be like asking an alewife to think like an alchemist. This is far too serious. And the stakes are too high.”

  “And what stakes are those?”

  She lit a candle with the flint and held it to her pipe, sucking at the stem to pull the flame to the bowl. She drew in a mouthful of smoke, then exhaled a single ring. “Love, Mr. Larsson,” she said, a half-smile on her lips. “Love and connection.”

  Chapter Four

  The Highest Recommendation

  Sources: E. L., Mrs. S., Katarina E.

  INSPIRED BY THE APPEARANCE of the Queen of Wine Vessels, I wrote Carlotta the next morning and received a reply in the afternoon post. She wrote that she found my mysterious story of the eight cards compelling and my pen forceful, and would contact me with a time and place where we might meet. Progress toward the golden path already! I reported to the Superior and my colleagues at Customs that I had my hook in a matrimonial catch we would soon celebrate with a heady punch. The eleven o’clock hour could not come soon enough, so I started out early for Gray Friars Alley, planning to pass the time at whist. I knocked at Mrs. Sparrow’s and after some time Katarina cracked open the door. “Sekretaire. Mrs. Sparrow said you would come at eleven.”

  I peered over her shoulder. The hallway was empty, and the gaming rooms dark. “Where are the players?”

  “You will have to wait.” Katarina showed me to the seekers’ vestibule, a small side chamber near the stairs that led to the upper room. It was lit with a single candle inside a glass-globed sconce, and three wooden chairs stood against one wall. I waited nearly an hour then finally heard footsteps on the stairway. I went to the hall to see who had kept the tables quiet and heard Mrs. Sparrow’s voice, full of urgency. “No, Gustav, this vision was a warning for you.”

  So it was true! I backed into the waiting room and watched my king from behind the door. My first glimpse of Gustav had been at his coronation, when I was eight and he was twenty-five, then a youthful hero. As Gustav rode past that lovely May morning, there was a glint of gold against the blue wash of sky, and I caught one of the coins he threw, surely meant for me. In the two decades since, Gustav established a glittering court, the Royal Theater, the Opera, and the Swedish Academy. Voltaire had called him the Enlightened Monarch.

  Gustav pulled on a white leather glove trimmed with silver threads, glinting in the lone, lit sconce. “I do not see your vision as dark, Sofia.” Mrs. Sparrow hmmphed at this, and he turned so I could finally see his face. Gustav had grown paunchy, his posture was crooked, as if the weight of his years was pulling him slowly apart. He looked like any man in his late middle years, searching for answers like any seeker. “That sounded rude, Sofia, and you know I mean no disrespect. Tell me this vision once more, and I will tell you what I divine from it.”

  Mrs. Sparrow closed her eyes. “The sun is setting, the sky ranging blue to fiery orange in the west, with arcs of clouds reaching up into heaven. There is a large fine house, like a palace, and a great black traveling coach waits outside, the horses snorting and rearing up, desperate to escape. A wind comes up, a fierce gale. The coach, the horses, and the fine palace are blown away like sand and drift over the Town like diamonds, like stars, and then fall into the inky blue depths of Knight’s Bay and are gone. Everything lost, Gustav. Everything.” She grasped his arm. “It is this wind I find alarming. It cannot be stopped.”

  “We cannot stop the wind, dear friend, and I mean to sail on it.” Gustav took Mrs. Sparrow’s hand and held it in his own. “I am delighted with this vision, Sofia. You misunderstand the meaning—not because you lack skill, but information. Try to see it from my perspective: a fiery sunset, a regal but empty house swept by a violent wind—these point to the revolution in France, the king and queen wrongfully held against their will.” Gustav lowered his voice, but his excitement came through. “This vision confirms the success of a rescue plan already in motion, and at the center of this escape is a black traveling coach—just as you described it. The royal family will travel in disguise to a fortress near the Luxembourg border. Young Count von Fersen is in Paris right now to see it through. He is loyal to the crown, unlike his father, the Patriot. Near midsummer the coach will depart, the house will be saved, and the revolutionary traitors will be scattered like dust in the Seine.”

  “You know my feelings for France. I would be overjoyed with your success,” Mrs. Sparrow said. “But this is your vision and the wind . . . the wind is a terrible sign. You must look to your own house.”

  “True, my house appears to be empty.” Gustav released her hand and snapped a loose thread on his glove. “Allowing commoners some privileges revealed the true loyalties of my court. But I must support the monarchies of all nations if the nobility is to survive at all.” Gustav waved his hand, and an officer appeared from somewhere down the shadowy hall. “I am born to the task of ruling, just as you were born to the Sight. We cannot put those burdens down, however much we wish.”

  “Please stay. We could begin the Octavo tonight,” she said.

  “There are not eight nights to give you, as much as I would like it. I am leaving in a few hours for Aix-la-Chapelle. I will be there to welcome the French royal family.” He took on a blue silk cloak proffered by his man, and handed Mrs. Sparrow a leather pouch. “Thank you for yo
ur concern, Sofia.”

  “We are old friends, Gustav,” she said softy.

  “I am counting on the few that remain,” he said. “The chief of police is available if you need him. And Bishop Celsius is doing penance; he and his clergy will bother you no longer.” The king leaned in and gave her a kiss on each cheek. “I will call again after the French king is secured. Then you will have to pay me to interpret the signs.” She laughed at this, and I heard their footsteps recede. There was no rattling carriage outside; they had but a short wet walk up Gray Friars Alley to the Great Church. Just beyond was the palace.

  “Mrs. Sparrow,” I whispered from the waiting room. She whirled around with a start. “It’s Mr. Larsson.”

  Her shoulders relaxed but her voice was harsh. “Gustav does not look kindly on spies not in his employ.”

  “Happily, Katarina let me in,” I said, still amazed at this intimate glimpse of my king. “Is he often in your company?”

  “Not as often as I would like. We have been friends for more than twenty years, Mr. Larsson.”

  “How could you have met the king? You must have been but a young girl?”

  “Gustav was going to France with his youngest brother, Fredrik Adolph—Duke Karl was not invited. Their mother thought him unworthy.”

  “And the princes needed a seer?”

  She laughed and sat on one of the waiting room chairs. “They needed a laundress with excellent French. My father was a master craftsman, working at Drottningholm Palace. He got wind of this and offered my services, thinking it would be my chance to serve the monarch and secure employment—suitors avoided a girl with the Sight, so this was our great hope for my future. And father desperately wanted me to visit my homeland—he was afraid I would forget. My French was flawless, and my mother had well taught me the secrets of bleach and starch. I accompanied this merry entourage as a servant, but my clairvoyance piqued the interest of the crown prince, so I was treated well. Gustav and his little brother Fredrik took Paris by storm—balls and hunting with King Louis and Marie Antoinette, meeting the Montgolfiers with their gigantic balloon, attending the most exclusive salons. Karl is angry about it still.”

  “Did you read the cards for Gustav in Paris?”

  “I hadn’t learned to read them yet; it was the visions I relayed. His crown hovered very near, and I said it. There were a few who mocked me and called me the devil’s whore and worse. But Gustav was my loyal protector, and I was correct; the old king died while we were in Paris, and Gustav was crowned the following May, in 1772. He still values the intuitive and seeks out many who practice the arts: magicians, astrologers, geomancers. He has hired an alchemist of late to fill the royal coffers.”

  I sat in the chair beside her. “And what need do you fill?”

  “The need for real friendship and truth. And nothing else.” She glanced at me through narrowed eyes. “There are few that dare to offer those, and even fewer that are heeded, as you observed. But he is a great king, Mr. Larsson.”

  “A great king,” I echoed. “And he is no doubt right, Mrs. Sparrow. About the vision, I mean. His grasp of the world far exceeds ours.”

  “He is still a man, Mr. Larsson. He sees what he wants to see.” She leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, as if she might fall asleep. “Best we move on to you,” she grumbled, rubbing her eyes. We climbed the stairs and sat. A summer rain rattled the window, and the room was cooler than the night before. She took the two cards we knew from the deck, then shuffled for a long while and placed the cards in the center of the table.

  I cut the deck and she dealt. After four rounds, the second card of my Octavo emerged: the Prisoner—Ace of Printing Pads. We leaned in to study the card.

  A cherubic face was centered at the top of a heraldic shield. A bird hovered just under the chin. Two lions faced off below in separate fields, and one of them held a sprouting seed or a rhizome. “The Ace is a young person, or one of limited experience and an impressionable mind. It signifies new beginnings. Could be male or female,” she said.

  “Cattails. They will no doubt be poor,” I said, noting the two thrusting up on either side of the Printing Pad that hovered above the angel’s head. I thought of my impoverished cousins, who had used the cattail heads they did not eat as candles, dipping them in wax and lighting the stem as a wick.

  “Not necessarily. The Printing Pad is a sign of business and commerce, so this might be someone who can make do with little means. They will be closely connected to your Companion, and the Queen of Wine Vessels is a card of wealth, so they may prosper from her friendship. But this is your Prisoner.”

  I peered at the lovely cherub. “Could this be Carlotta?”

  “Perhaps, but the cards do not call out their living counterparts until all eight are in place.”

  “I cannot wait, Mrs. Sparrow!”

  “But you must. It is only six more days.” She smiled at my impatience. “You are not rushing off to meet the French royals with Gustav, are you, Mr. Larsson?”

  “My Queen is here in the Town.”

  “When you are certain, you can keep your Prisoner bound or free them as best suits your true goal—whatever it may be.”

  “You know my true goal,” I said.

  Chapter Five

  A Game of Chance

  Sources: E. L., Mrs. S., Katarina E., Lady C. Kallingbad, Porter E., A. Nordell, med mera

  IT CAN BE FAIRLY STATED that everyone loses at cards. What is interesting is how and what they lose, and what happens as a result. Count Oxenstierna behaved a perfect gentleman when he lost two huge parcels of land while playing La Belle. The company was stunned by his civility, but the storm that followed at home was a juicy topic of conversation for months. Apparently it involved his wife, his grown children, a number of the household staff, and the Irish wolfhounds. But innuendo and hearsay are meager refreshments compared to the thrilling feast of a significant loss in the flesh. So it was when I watched two wealthy women wager their most valuable folding fans. I distinctly heard the sound of a card player, baiting a trap, and at that moment I began to pay attention to the game instead of focusing all of my being on the beautiful breasts of Carlotta Vingström. The player engaged in this hazard was the baroness, known to everyone as The Uzanne, a woman who never lost.

  LET ME TELL YOU about The Uzanne. She had been baptized Kristina Elizabet Louisa Gyllenpalm, and while all those names had regal implications, they were never used. As a child she was addressed as Young Mistress. After her marriage: Madame. But in conversation she was called The Uzanne—perhaps because there could only be one. The Uzanne was a collector of folding fans. She had first become fascinated with fans at the age of fifteen, when she witnessed a cousin exactly her age but neither as rich nor beautiful captivate an entire salon with her artful fluttering. The Uzanne, still Young Mistress then, convinced the cousin to instruct her in this arresting language. These signals were known to men and women alike, and as with any language, the more you practiced the more you could express. Soon the student’s skills exceeded those of her teacher. Snaps, drops, turns of the wrist, taps, flutters, and long languorous strokes all filled the gap left by the unspeakable words of desire. The Uzanne knew which angle to hold the fan over her breasts if she did or did not want to be thought a courtesan, and how a certain look cast over a half-folded fan could bring any man to her side. Society clamored for The Uzanne’s presence at salons and balls. The jealous cousin attempted revenge, pairing The Uzanne with a common dolt at the spring cotillion. So The Uzanne took on the persona of tender matchmaker, and signaled her cousin’s status as eager virgin to an epileptic Finnish earl ready to fill the empty trough of his marriage bed. The Uzanne shed the prettiest of crocodile tears as she waved good-bye to her cousin, sailing for Åbo—a hideous village that served as Finland’s capital city.

  The Uzanne had found her weapon. For several years, she practiced without ceasing, traveling to Paris and Vienna to learn from the mistresses and queens who ruled from behind the t
hrone, visiting the fan makers and requesting tips and tricks. At nineteen, she had her greatest triumph: waving the wealthy young Baron Henrik Uzanne into her arms and then into her bed. Within three months, they were wed. Only her older sister, who had been engaged to this nobleman, was crushed. Young Mistress proudly took on the old French surname, which had come to Sweden a century before. She never spoke of the fact that the Uzanne name arrived with an ambitious mercenary who hacked his way up the ranks.

  Henrik was the perfect conquest: highly sought after, aristocratic, good-looking, pleasant company, and with enough money of his own to let her do as she pleased. Over time, she found that Henrik was more than just a trophy of her exemplary skills. He loved her, and she found the passion of her life in him. Henrik was deeply engaged in politics, and introduced The Uzanne to the games of government, which were more intriguing than those of romance and court. He first humored her interest, then found she was an astute observer and analyst. The Uzanne and her Henrik plotted with the Patriots for the return to a government ruled by the nobility, with a figurehead king in Duke Karl. Their scheming drew them closer than most married couples; no one could understand their lack of casual trysts. Henrik did sigh at their childlessness, but The Uzanne had no ambitions to motherhood right away. Besides vanity and the risks of childbirth, she thought children to be the greatest inconvenience imaginable. She allowed Henrik free rein with her maids, with whom he fathered several adorable bastards, and that small friction was removed. Unfortunately when she decided it would be wise to produce an heir, it was too late.