The Stockholm Octavo

by Karen Engelmann

  “But why me?”

  “Because our Octavos are interlocked; one event will shift the other. It cannot be otherwise. You have the golden path ahead of you and will get there sooner if we work in tandem.”

  I suddenly felt dizzy—her grand ambition seemed to shift the very floor under my feet, and the creeping illness that had haunted me for days enveloped my whole body. “I think I need a glass of brandy,” I said, tugging at my collar.

  “Yes, a brandy. You have been clearing your throat all evening, Emil; it may be inflamed.” She called for Katarina, who brought two clean glasses, a carafe of water, and a dusty bottle of cognac.

  “May I go now, Mrs. Sparrow?” Katarina asked.

  “Not yet.” She watched Katarina curtsy and hurry back to the kitchen. “She is afraid. And no wonder. Empty rooms and empty pockets are nothing to what will come if the monarchy falls.” Mrs. Sparrow poured herself a glass of water. “You wonder at my fervor for the monarch, Emil, but I am born to it.” She took a long swallow from her glass. “Our family name was really Roitelet, which means ‘wren.’ The wren is known as the king of the birds, the little king. I would have liked my name to be king’s bird here in Sweden as well, but a careless bureaucrat mistranslated it when we arrived from France, and so Sparrow it became. But I will always be Wren in my heart.” She closed her eyes. “My father believed in the monarchy above all else, even more than the church, and taught that creed to me. He said all the good that had come to us in this world had come from two kings—Louis XVI and Gustav III, the Sun and the North Star, the guiding lights of our world. These twenty years of Gustav’s reign have seen a blossoming the likes of which we may never see again. He deserves to live out his vision, and his legacy cannot be the fall of the great House of Wasa. And my legacy cannot be that of a charlatan.” She opened her eyes and picked up the card that lay between us and turned it slowly between her fingers. “Gustav promised to protect me always, but it seems he has forgotten of late. I need to remind him that it’s unlucky to harm a wren; you know that, don’t you? Misfortune follows sure. Everyone knows the St. Stephen’s Day wren brings blessing for the New Year.”

  “But on St. Stephen’s Day the young boys set out to kill the wren, and bring it round to every house, staked up on a pole with its wings spread wide. The king is sacrificed for the common good.”

  “The Stockholm Octavo changes that. We will keep the wren and the king alive in this new year.”

  I finished my brandy in one large gulp. I saw a cage, or worse, a madhouse for the wren. But Mrs. Sparrow did not seem to notice my silence. Rather, she stood and took a taper, beckoning me to follow her down the main hall. She lit a mirrored wall sconce opposite a side table covered with a heavy damask that reached the floor. Mrs. Sparrow pulled the fabric off with a flourish and revealed a wooden bureau inlaid with oak and maple and topped with marble. She removed a key hanging around her neck from a chain and unlocked the bottom drawer. I peered over and saw neatly folded linens and what was beneath them. “So much money!”

  Mrs. Sparrow took my chin in her hand and brought her face very close to mine, her eyes glittering like the coins in the drawer. “Yes it is. I have worked hard all my life, and mean to keep it safe. Once Gustav is away at Parliament, the Patriots will be in a mood to tear the Town apart. They will hunt down every ally the king has, even a small bird.”

  “But you can play both sides,” I said. “Ask Duke Karl for protection.”

  “Duke Karl would nail me to a pole if it hastened his coronation.” She pulled a chair close to one side of the bureau and removed the linens from the drawer—they were in fact drawstring sacks. She sat and began to fill one. “Will you help me or no?”

  More than a dozen loaded sacks, a fortune in coin and currency, made their way into a wooden trunk we pulled from a scuttle in the back hall. Mrs. Sparrow placed a thick fur-lined traveling cloak for camouflage on top then locked the lid. “What am I to do with all this money?”

  “Come now, Emil, did you think you were to keep it? It is enough that you keep Cassiopeia in your rooms.” She closed the empty drawer and locked it, then drew the cloth over the bureau. “Before long you may find yourself a target of inquiry, too. Your rooms will be no safer than mine.”

  “Target of inquiry? On what grounds?”

  “You are my friend. And there is the matter of the fan.”

  “No one knows about the fan,” I said, having second thoughts about the snooping Mrs. Murbeck. “Do they?”

  She looked at me intently. “Cassiopeia knows and will find a way back to her mistress if she can. This is the way of such magical things. Look at what has transpired since I took her.”

  We lugged the box to the door of the servants’ stairs and Mrs. Sparrow called to Katarina to fetch a coach for me. For some minutes we waited, listening to the muffled tap of hail on the shutters. Finally I heard the sled arrive.

  “I need you to deliver the trunk and see it safe inside. Keep your mouth shut,” she whispered, then handed me a small sack of coins. “Payment for the coach and some for your trouble.”

  “Where am I going?” I asked.

  “To Cook’s Alley, to my Trickster.” I could feel the questions work their way into my face. “The Nordéns are my best and only choice. They live on the top floor, over the shop, and will keep my money safe until Gustav has returned.”

  “But they are known Royalists, and Margot a foreigner and Catholic besides.”

  “The Nordéns are in the good graces of The Uzanne for now, and so Duke Karl will make sure they are not harassed. And Christian and Margot are my friends. They are your friends, too. We are lucky.” Mrs. Sparrow gave me a dazzling smile, full of hope and excitement. I remember it well because it was one of the last I witnessed for a very long while. “We will take this game. We will. The stakes are high—the winning cards will make the map of the world, now and forever. Did you stop to consider this, Emil? We are playing for kingdom come!” We both laughed heartily at this, but thinking back there was a subtle undertone in the sound of our laughter; mine was high and nervous, hers had the dark timbre of lunacy.

  “Now, we both must hurry,” she said. “The curtain rises at nine o’clock.”

  We went to the front hallway where I took my cloak and gloves from Katarina. The porter called to the coachman to help him with the trunk. “You may go, Katarina,” Mrs. Sparrow said. Relief transformed the housemaid’s face, and we waited until the darkness swallowed her hurried footsteps to her porter. Mrs. Sparrow took me by the shoulders, squeezing my arms with surprising strength. “I am not sure when I will next see you. My rooms are no longer safe. I must disappear until the Parliament ends.”

  “That may be months,” I said, feeling my throat constrict with a strange sense of loss.

  She nodded. “It is wonderful to have been given a Courier who is so much more than I ever imagined.” She kissed me tenderly on the cheek. “A son, really. Good-bye, Emil.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Courier

  Sources: E. L., M. Nordén, anonymous coachman

  FEVERISH, I STEPPED INTO the waiting sleigh and called out my destination to the driver. The coach smelled of wet wool and men’s cologne, and pine wafted up from the carpet of boughs that had been placed on the floor to soak up the snow and mud. I put my feet up on the trunk; the silver buckle on my left shoe was missing. An income to support years of silver buckles was packed inside that trunk.

  It would be simple to redirect the coachman to Stavsnäs. From there I could go to Sand Island, contact Captain Hinken, board the Henry, and set off with a small fortune. I shut my eyes and tried to imagine a life of comfort in Copenhagen or perhaps south as far as Frankfurt, but I knew I would not be going farther than Cook’s Alley. I was a man of the Town and ever would be, now that Mrs. Sparrow had nailed me fast with a motherly kiss. Perhaps this was her meaning of love and connection.

  The driver gave a cluck and a light snap of the reins and we cut through the s
now and ice onto West Long Street, crowded with Twelfth Night celebrants. But on Brinken, the steep climb that led to the royal palace, the crowd thinned to a scatter. We passed the looming bulk of the Great Church, and then turned onto the plaza at the Castle Yard. “No light in His Majesty’s rooms tonight, see?” the coachman called back. “Perhaps the king has already left for Gefle. He sent his silver throne ahead on a sled pulled by six horses. He’ll be away three, four weeks at the very least. Forever at the most, if the talk I hear be true,” he said.

  “What kind of talk is that, coachman?”

  “Oh there is all manner of talk. Some say that Pechlin plans a Patriot revolt and will have the queen take Gustav’s place as a pretty puppet.”

  “A Danish queen? Never. What about Duke Karl?”

  “Indeed. The duke would like the throne for himself but cannot push his brother off it. They say he’ll have the navy spirit Gustav away. Others think the commoners will take it all home in the end, and we will not have a king at all.”

  “And what do you say?”

  He spat a wad of tobacco onto the street, suddenly wary of all my questions. “Gustav is still king for now, eh?”

  We rode to Cook’s Alley in silence, and the coachman yanked the horse to a violent stop. “Excellent time, and such skillful driving on this damned ice,” I said, paying the fare with a ridiculous tip. He took the bait with a nod, the corners of his mouth turning ever so slightly up. “I wonder if you would be so kind as to help me take this trunk up to my old aunt’s upstairs here. She has been ill and is in need of these medicines and books during her convalescence.” I jingled the coins in my pocket, and he hopped down with a thud, grabbing the handle of the trunk to pull it out.

  “Books and medicine? This must be filled with stones, to weight your auntie’s pockets and throw her in the drink,” he complained.

  We wrestled the trunk out of the coach and walked awkwardly inside. The stairwell was dark, pungent with cooking smells and the muffled sounds of conversation, a child’s laugh, porcelain clink, drifted into the stairwell. By the fourth floor I was quite out of breath, and we set the trunk down. “Naught like honest work,” the coachman noted, picking at his teeth with his thumbnail. “It’s what all the high-and-mighties need—won’t you agree, sir?” I nodded, as I hadn’t breath to say much. “Those what work hard, they deserve to have a say in things, to be rewarded, right?” I wasn’t sure if he meant to enter into a discussion of politics or his tip, and did not reply. He peered up the stairs. There was not even a hint of life at the top. “Your auntie may not have need of these rocks; seems she was tired of waiting on you and gone to her Maker already. Can we leave the trunk here until after the funeral? It’s damned heavy.”

  I jingled the coins softly against my leg, as though considering this suggestion, and then gave him a sad smile. “She would want us to bring it all the way up.” We heaved the trunk up the last flight, I gave him far too many coins, and the coachman scuttled down the stairs. I stood in a patch of illumination from a courtyard window, listening to minute noises behind the Nordéns’ door—whispering and the soft pad of bare feet on wood floor. Thinking Mrs. Nordén might answer, I straightened my sleeves and adjusted the waist of my trousers, then brushed my hair with my fingers, when the door flew open with a bang that nearly sent me backward down the steps. There stood Margot, holding a carving knife. “Margot!” I yelped, my heart racing. “It is your friend Emil.”

  She peered into the dark, her hand still grasping the knife. “Dear God! Emil! I sincerely apologize. I am en garde from all the talk of late!” I replied with a ragged but flowery apology of my own, mentioning Mrs. Sparrow several times and the trunk that she insisted I bring at once, without a note of warning, which was so like the barbarians of my country etcetera, etcetera. She finally set the knife on a sideboard in the entryway and lit an oil lamp, asking me to come inside. In the lamplight I could see that her face had filled out and noted the curve of her belly pushing out beneath her bodice. The entryway smelled faintly of fried fish and lavender. It had plain white plaster walls and a wide plank floor upon which lay a braided runner. On one wall hung a brass cross as in any good Lutheran home, or that of a Catholic. “Christian is finishing a fan and she must be absolutely perfect. He may behave rudely. You understand this, yes?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Perhaps if I might speak to him through the door for just a moment . . .”

  “I did not mean he would bite you,” she said with a laugh. “Come.”

  We hefted the trunk between us through the entryway and down the hall to the room at the very end. The door was just ajar, and warm light seeped out into the gloom. Margot knocked softly and gave a singsong hallo, poking her head through the door. “What is it?” an irritated voice called faintly from inside.

  “We have a visitor,” Margot said and pulled at her end of the trunk to indicate it was safe to enter. She pushed the door wide with her hip, allowing the brilliance of the room to escape. I had seldom seen so many candles lit in one small chamber, and had to close my eyes for a moment against the brightness. The lemon color on the walls was the same as the stripes in the shop downstairs. It seemed like half a dozen mirrors on each of the other three walls reflected the light infinitely back and forth. There were three or four mismatched cabinets, and against one wall was a curtained bed.

  We pulled the trunk into the center of the room, to the foot of the small traveling desk where Christian sat tightening the rivet of a fan under a magnifying glass. The sticks were ebony and plain, the blade gray with thin bands of silver along the top edge and running along each fold. The effect was that of rays of moonlight emitting from the hand that held her. “What lady in the Town has such simple and elegant taste?” I asked.

  “Ah, she is elegant, but she only appears simple. The secret is revealed in the hand of her mistress.”

  “The Uzanne?” I asked. He nodded. “And what is the secret? Your wife has told me every fan has one.”

  Christian looked up for an instant, his face opening to the topic of his work. “That is for the lady to reveal, but I will give you a clue,” he said. “The pinion feather this fan contains will allow her skills to soar, and hold fast the one that she desires.”

  I peered closely at the fan. There was not a feather in sight. “A fine riddle, Christian. But I would worry at giving The Uzanne too powerful a weapon. After the demonstration she gave, it is clear she could engage the royal guard and the king himself and take them all down handily.”

  “The Uzanne could indeed take down a regiment, and there would be a long line of warm and tousled bedclothes along the way,” Christian said, opening and closing the fan to test the action. “She is a soldier of Eros, is she not?”

  Margot stood behind her husband, careful not to jostle him. “Remember our business is art, husband, not war,” she said.

  “I trust The Uzanne has sent her female regiment here to arm themselves,” I said. “The young ladies seemed most eager to perfect their technique.”

  Christian’s smile appeared forced, and he glanced at Margot to find his words. “Business has not been all what we hoped, but we believe the young ladies will eventually see the benefit of owning a Nordén fan, and their coming debut will carry us through the winter and into a sunnier time.” He looked up again, this time with a genuine smile. “There is a child coming, you know.”

  “He knows, Christian. He was the first to know!” Margot said. I could see the combination of joy and fear on their faces.

  Christian closed the gray fan, then stood and shook my hand. “What brings you to us on Twelfth Night? I would have imagined you to be out among the celebrants, young bachelor that you are.”

  “I may yet celebrate, but was asked to serve as a courier for our mutual friend,” I said.

  “He is here with Madame Sparrow’s trunk,” Margot whispered.

  “Ah,” Christian said. His grip upon my hand tightened. “So it comes to the Town.”

  “What is i
t that comes?” I asked.

  He released my hand but stood very still. “This is how it began in France, Emil. Mrs. Sparrow called on us just after Christmas, on St. Stephen’s Day. We spoke at length of the geometry, of our two kings, the ways in which our countries aligned, the darkness that is falling over France. And we discussed a plan should such things come to pass here in the Town.”

  “What plan?” I asked. Margot and Christian shot each other a glance. Neither of them spoke. That Mrs. Sparrow had but an hour ago kissed me as a son yet kept her true plans secret made my throat tighten like a noose. I forced a laugh nonetheless. “Well, she calls you her Trickster, Christian, and telling would ruin the jest.”

  “This is no jest, Sekretaire,” Margot said. “This is war.”

  I heard the word and felt my body stiffen, as if anticipating a blow. When I opened my mouth to deny their fears, I could only focus on my wet shoes tightening around my feet. “Please forgive me,” I said. “My shoes should have been left at the door.”

  They looked at me with a mixture of puzzlement and pity. “You are distraught,” Margot said. “I will bring you some water.” She hurried out of the room, Christian’s eyes following her, and returned with a cup of water so cold that it hurt to swallow. The scratch in my throat had become a throbbing, and I wrapped my scarf more tightly around my neck. “You are so welcome to take a late supper with us, Emil,” Margot said.

  “Thank you, no,” I answered quickly; I was too confused to eat and did not want to talk any more about this coming storm. “It is Epiphany tomorrow and I mean to celebrate tonight as if it were my last.”

  “Good, Emil. Lent will be here soon enough,” Christian said and shook my hand. “We will meet again at The Uzanne’s next lecture.” He gestured to the desk, where the silver edge of the gray fan glimmered. “You will see she is not simple at all.”