The Stockholm Octavo

by Karen Engelmann

  “You jump to conclusions in every way. The eight are not complete yet. And families are complicated. I say that more from observation than recent experience, I’m afraid.” She rose and poured herself a glass of water. “What of your family? It will help me to read your Octavo if I know more about you.”

  I stood and went to the open window, letting the soft curtain brush against my cheek. “The Town is my family.”

  “But you had parents, perhaps siblings and cousins?”

  “I am told my father was a musician. He died before I knew him. I was named for his best friend, a French violinist, but Emil is too fine a name for me. Everyone just calls me Larsson or, now, Sekretaire.”

  “I like the name Emil. Perhaps you have yet to grow into it,” she said. “Like Sofia.”

  I shrugged. “After my mother’s death I was sent to live with distant cousins when no one else would have me—a sprawling family of nine who scraped the soil in Småland and called it farming. For two years I heaved stones from the ground, stared at black pine forests, and ate bark bread and salted meat from any dead animal my uncle dragged home. One bleak winter month we ate only badger and watery gruel.” Mrs. Sparrow grimaced at this. “But it was there I learned the blissful distraction of playing cards from a neighbor—the only kind and decent person I met. He gave me a deck for Twelfth Night—a generosity born out of pity, perhaps. When my pious uncle discovered the cards he burned them, then beat me bloody. He announced at Sunday services that I dealt in the devil’s tickets and was unfit for human company. He moved me to the barn.”

  “I know well the woes of an outsider,” Mrs. Sparrow said.

  “I ran away, back to the Town, and scraped by, working as a lamplighter, a bird catcher, and finally a dockhand. Do you know what I bought with my first extra shillings?”

  “A decent meal, I hope.”

  “I bought fifty-two of the devil’s tickets, Mrs. Sparrow, and they have taken me far: I started at the wharf, where dockhands fill off-hours with low-stakes rummy. It was enough to keep me until I met Rasmus Bleking, a sekretaire in the Office of Customs and Excise. He needed a boy who knew the Town up and down and could keep his mouth shut. This boy was expected to do whatever Bleking asked, which eventually turned out to be Bleking’s job. He offered a meager allowance, one meal a day, and the attic room above his in a shack in South Borough near Fatburs Lake—a stinking pond of shit, garbage, and cadavers.” Mrs. Sparrow drew in her breath. “But I had my tickets, and my journey had just begun. Bleking was a dunce at gaming and I offered to teach him what I knew. I never gave him a pandering win but took his money fair and square. We played cards day and night until he was a decent match. In exchange, he taught me to read and write—a good trade for him; I could do all his paperwork at Customs. But an even better trade for me. When he died, I kept his work and his room and held on for dear life, until the cards led to Gray Friars Alley and to you. I bought Bleking’s title of sekretaire last year and moved back in with my family, the Town.”

  “And now?” she asked.

  “I have reached my destination, Mrs. Sparrow. I will remain in the Town at Customs until I sell the post or die. Presuming my Octavo forms fast enough to suit the Superior. He is willing to wait until his name day in August, but only because he hates the De Geers.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Snake Cooker

  Sources: E. L., Mrs. S.

  CUSTOMS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN more awful that day. The endless sorting of official documents and the drone of the Superior were enough to cause me a splitting headache. Even the Black Cat failed me, with the coffee brewed from chicory in an attempt to save a few coins. Worst of all, I heard nothing from Carlotta. The lieutenant would have the upper hand, but then I remembered the advantage of my eight. That night a light fog settled low in the streets, but the full moon shone in the heavens, creating an iridescent cloud that enveloped the Town. There was magic in the air, and my hope was rekindled. “The lieutenant has misjudged his rival,” I said, sitting down in my usual spot in the upper room. “I will win her, Mrs. Sparrow.”

  “Is this your notion of love and connection?” Mrs. Sparrow looked at me askance as she shuffled the deck. “It is a deep and mysterious privilege, significant enough to lay the Octavo, and yet you talk as if this girl were the pot in a game downstairs.”

  “I like winning, just as you do,” I said, removing my coat. “Is that not the purpose of the game? Carlotta is the ultimate prize: a pretty bird, a feathered nest, security at home, and a future at Customs.”

  “That sounds like a cage to me.” She pulled the six cards we knew aside and dealt. The Magpie must have been eager to speak, for the card arrived in two rounds.

  “Sixth position. The Magpie. Printing Pads again! You have many persons of industry and trade about you. The Magpie talks and talks—either to you, or about you. Here the talk has many possible sources and subjects. A difficult card to decipher. But a pretty one. I like the lady in it. And her gentleman’s arm so fondly on her shoulder. Five is a number of change and movement. They seem to be enjoying it.”

  I took a sip from the glass of beer Katarina had brought me. “I suspect the lieutenant will have something to say when he sees me with my arm around his Carlotta.” Mrs. Sparrow rolled her eyes. “I cannot help but be inspired by your gift. You have the cards in your bones.”

  “Only because I put them there. On account of the Sight, for I found I needed the cards as much as any seeker.” For a few moments there was only the sound of a sputtering candle. “I wasn’t born to the Sight, despite my given name, Sofia, which means ‘wisdom.’ And it was no gift.” She picked up the deck and tapped it together. “When I was a girl, I loved to see the traveling shows, and my sweet father took me when he could: the fire-eaters, jugglers, acrobats, and gypsies. One summer my father and I were keen to see an actual snake charmer come all the way from the Far East. The vaulted basement of the tavern, where the entertainments were staged, was crowded and full of chatter. My father pushed me to an empty spot in the very front and found himself a seat several rows back. There came a bleating note from a horn, then a roll from a skin drum. Out stepped the snake handler from the doorway to the kitchen. Brown as a nut, his head was wrapped in a saffron turban and his robe a beautiful striped fabric that shimmered in the dim light. The Snake Man spoke a broken French that was badly translated by the innkeeper, but French was my mother tongue. The Snake Man explained that music was the common language of all creatures, and he would now call out the king of snakes. ‘Le Roi,’ he said softly, and began to play on a long thin horn. Out of a black reed basket rose a thick albino snake.

  “By now the cellar had grown stifling with bodies and the terror that snakes inspired, though I felt none of it. The Snake Man could see that I understood him and knew he had me in the grip of his business. He asked if I wished to hold the king of snakes, and I nodded my consent. He lifted the albino gently, gave it a little kiss on the head, and handed it to me. It was luxuriantly smooth, and I could feel the strength of the creature as it wrapped itself about my skinny arm. The snake became calm and still, and so, like the snake handler, I kissed the lovely thing on the head.

  “Someone shouted out from the assembled throng, calling me Eve, and several young men called out that I should reenact the story. Everyone laughed and clapped, perhaps relieved to have a mention of the Holy Book. Someone tossed a withered apple that landed on the table, and a drunken peddler yelled that I should be naked as well. My father went after him tooth and claw. An old woman began calling the names of Jesus and Satan, pointing at the foreigner, and the tavern became a battleground. The Snake Man swiftly gathered his baskets and exited by way of the kitchen, unnoticed in the fray.

  I followed him, meaning to return his snake, but he was already gone. Only the corpulent cook was in the kitchen, making pies. He glanced quickly in my direction and yelled to get out, returning to his crusts. But then he stopped and looked again, this time noting the albino dangling from m
y hands. He came slowly around the table, hands gloved with flour, and quietly shut the door to the cellar room. “I have heard the story, young miss, and always wondered if it was true.”

  I thought he was talking about the Garden and Eve, and wanted a chance to see the serpent up close. I held the albino out for him to touch. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said. With that the cook leapt toward me, snatched the snake from my grasp, and threw the poor creature into a cauldron on the spit. The hiss of the steam and the thrashing of the pale snake above the roiling water haunt my dreams still.

  “ ‘We’ll dip in the broth when he is cooked,’ he whispered, full of excitement, ‘and then we will have visions. My grandmother swore it be true. We shall see, young miss, we shall see!’

  “The snake was dead now, buoyed up by the bubbling liquid, and the fat cook took a bit of coarse black bread, dipped it in the broth, and gave it to me. The door to the cellar room was blocked by his girth and the grim look on his face; I could not leave his kitchen without tasting his wares.

  “ ‘But do you not want visions, too?’ I asked, hoping to escape. He smiled and bowed, as though he were the finest gentleman and waited until I put the bread between my lips and chewed. It had no flavor of Satan’s fire, or icy chill of the beyond. It was only damp black bread. I forced a smile and shrugged my shoulders, desperate to leave. The cook stepped aside and began to laugh. ‘Damned folktale,’ he snorted, stuffing a bit of raw pie dough in his mouth. ‘I just wanted to see if it was true.’ I rushed to the door, put my hand on the iron latch, and then everything in the room, everything in the world, went white.”

  Mrs. Sparrow’s upper room was now lit only by the single sconce that burned on the wall next to the table and a faint orange glow through the door of the stove. I finished my drink in one go. “The white world, was that your first vision?” I asked.

  “That white I saw is what always comes first, before the vision,” she said, grasping her hands in anguish at the memory. “When I came around, my father was holding me and the lady of the house was dampening my forehead with a cloth dipped in cool water. The cook was standing as far from me as he could, and his hands shook as he rolled his crusts and went about his baking. He would not come near, even when my father asked him to help get me up the stairs. Though I felt dizzy, I told my father I could walk and filled my lungs with fresh air. My father was sure I had merely fainted from the excitement, but when we neared Knight’s Bay, it came again, the blinding white. This time a vision followed. I saw water, shimmering purplish black, and a group of ships departing with the tide. The tall dark masts were silhouetted against a dawning sky, and the flap of canvas as the sails were loosed drove a flock of gulls up from their roosts with the most mournful cry. Their flight arced along a path of rosy clouds, and with their wings they blew up a gale, a wind that knocked me to the ground. My father was calling to me from the deck of the farthest ship, but the wind blew him out of sight and then swept back through the streets of the Town like a hurricane. Then there was only the silence.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her and studied them intently. “When I came to I told my father what I saw, but he only pulled me close and told me not to fret; there is no stopping the wind. On St. Martin’s day that year, my father was drowned. He was doing plasterwork at Drottningholm and went by boat. He fell off—or was pushed or blown, no one knows—and pulled under by a strong current. Such winds are a terrible portent. This is why I am afraid for Gustav.”

  I looked away from her then, into the inky corner of the room. “I am sorry for you, Mrs. Sparrow.”

  “I am grateful that you understand. It is not many who do. I have often wished I was a charlatan instead.”

  “But having the Sight . . . is this why you took to the gaming?” I asked.

  “Yes and no. The Sight is no help in winning at cards, but the cards were a way to cope. After a while, the visions would not stop. I sought out others, women burdened with gifts like mine, to learn what I might do to be rid of it. Some of them were fakes, and some were lunatics. The real ones said there was no giving it back, but they all had ways to manage. They knit or made lace, served in coffeehouses and taverns—all work that keeps your mind and hands busy. I worked as a laundress and learned to play cards, and I played anywhere, with anyone. Gaming served as the best means of distraction, and I found that, in the calm the cards brought me, the wild horse of the Sight could be ridden.” She sat back in her chair and placed her hands in her lap. “Then I happened upon a book when I traveled to Paris: Etteilla—Or, A Way to Entertain Oneself with a Pack of Cards by Mr***. It was a complete philosophy and instruction on cartomancy—divination using ordinary playing cards. My life was changed by that book, or saved, I should say. Not only did I find a way to harness and decipher what I saw, I found a trade that could find custom from the cook to the Crown. Else I might have ended up as a sewage barge girl or one of the wraiths in Mr. Lalin’s gunpowder factory—after I was worn through as a whore. Besides,” she said, leaning forward and turning to me with a sad smile, “I had mastered the tools. I only needed to learn what I could make with them.”

  “And now you are making a golden path for me,” I said.

  “Like the merry couple here in your Magpie.” She picked up the cards, tapping them into a deck and placing it facedown. “Just two more cards, Mr. Larsson.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Prize

  Sources: E. L., Mrs. S., Lady C. Kallingbad

  FINALLY, CARLOTTA REPLIED! It seemed the lieutenant was not close enough to the De Geers to reach their pockets. I met her for a hasty picnic in Djurgården, where she kissed me passionately near the blue fence and called me darling. Carlotta was within my grasp, and the Octavo would bring her to me if I pushed my eight in that direction. She was sad that I had to leave our picnic for the Octavo, but I assured her it was crucial to our future happiness. There was a sweetness to her embrace on the dock that felt utterly true, and the feeling stayed with me all the way to Gray Friars Alley. The weather was perfect, and the boundless energy of love in my step as I prepared a proposal in my head. When I entered at number 35, Katarina said the Mrs. was already upstairs and had been all night. “She is eager to deal the Prize,” I said, “and I am ready to take it!”

  “She would rather not see you at all,” Katarina replied solemnly after me as I climbed the stairs two at a time.

  I sat down opposite Mrs. Sparrow, rubbing my hands before the shuffle and pass. There was a potted lavender plant on the windowsill and its perfume was heady. “I smell . . . success.”

  “Do you?” She finally looked up at me, eyes red and face splotchy. “Then you have no nose for news.” She told me the chief of police had been by with word from Gustav: the rescue of the French royal family had failed. They were captured in Varennes, and it would go badly for them all. Gustav would remain in Aix-la-Chapelle for a time to console the émigrés waiting for their sovereign and to devise a new plan.

  “What will happen now?” I asked, all my buoyancy gone. I could not help but think of the children of the French king and queen.

  “If only I could see that far, Mr. Larsson. Right now, we lay your cards.” She dealt in silence for five rounds, the buzz of conversation seeping up from the salon below. The distraction seemed to help Mrs. Sparrow, and when my Prize appeared, she was focused all on the card: the Over Knave of Cups.

  “A man as my Prize?” I said, feeling cheated.

  Mrs. Sparrow assured me this was a fine card to have in the position of Prize. “Cups support the vision of love and connection. And the Over Knave is a person of merit. He holds the painter’s palette, indicating refinement and culture. Whoever he is, he will assist you in your wooing—give you something of value. Perhaps it is a father offering his greatest work: his daughter’s hand. And look, there is the lily. The flower of France.” She looked up at me then, and my sorrow was reflected in her face. “But the lily also grew in Gethsemane on Easter morning. Resurrection. An excellent card.” S
he took her notebook and filled in the seventh rectangle on my chart. “You must go now, Mr. Larsson. I have no heart for games tonight.”

  I faltered on the winding stairs to the street, as if the tremors of the revolution in France had made their way to the heart of the Town. It was too late to return to the soft comfort of Carlotta tonight, but tomorrow afternoon I would ask Mr. Vingström for her hand. The bonds of matrimony suddenly seemed the safest harbor.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Key

  Sources: E. L., Mrs. S., A. Vingström

  AT THREE O’CLOCK I excused myself from coffee and crossed Great Square on my way to the Vingström Wine Shop. I was ready at last to pronounce my love for Carlotta, but when I arrived, the shop was shuttered and locked, leaving me both crushed and strangely relieved. A house girl exiting the courtyard stopped to lace her boot and I asked what had caused this early closure.

  “The Vingströms are seeing their daughter off this very hour, sir. She is sailing for Finland.”

  “Finland!” The stones beneath my feet seemed to give way, and I reached out to the house front for support. “Was there a lieutenant with them?”

  The girl blushed and turned away. “No. I saw nor heard nothing about an officer.”

  “Then why is she going? Will she be back?”

  The girl stared at her feet. “It seems Miss Vingström is in need of penance for her licentious manner of living, and must be removed from the temptations of the Town.” She curtsied and ran before I could respond. I queried the corner tobacconist, the butcher, any number of people on the street, but learned nothing more. I went home in a state of disbelief and lay on my bed until nearly eleven.