People of the Book

by David Stacton

  In the first hours the organist had manned his instrument and boomed psalms down over them until the building shook. He had been stopped. Stöss climbed to the silent loft, among pennants and banners hung up from forgotten wars. They were gone to rot.

  At night the cathedral was damp and full of ungodly subsidences. The old wood paneling contracted with the sound of a wiry old maid cracking her knuckles out of sheer loneliness and staring up at you like a cheerful Norn from under her gardening hat. But what does she need the shears for? In the chancel a child was crying and would not stop. The nave was shadowy as the hold of a stranded ship, and you could hear the storm outside. I must have it, shrieks the wind, with a last horny grab at the sails, and heaves it over.

  That first night most of the people paced slowly up and down the aisles. You caught the rustle of silk skirts, the furtive dazzle of a jewel. On the second morning a wounded man died. The second night was worse. Between firelight and moonlight, the figures in the stained glass danced. On the third day everyone began to feel weak. Staring across from the choir loft, Stöss, who still had one biscuit in his pocket (which he meant to keep), confronted the apse. He wanted to be kind, generous, well loved, and understanding, but when it came to cases, could not bring himself to do so. This tortured him and paralyzed him the more.

  Foreshadowed in an abrupt combustion, somewhere east of the church, behind the windows, the Christus leaped wriggling to life, in a sheer joy of hanging from its nails. Why not? It would be so soothing to die, given we could come back, startle the disciples into proper reverence, and begin afresh. Stöss had spent his life longing for a torture he could not face. How marvelous to be carried seaward in a lemming war. But the drowning man is not afraid of drowning; he is afraid of that irreversible decision his body will make for him, not to swim any more. That’s what he’s trying to get away from; that’s what keeps him going.

  I could lend you, said Christ, the hammer and the nails. But you would need help for the other hand, wouldn’t you? And you have no friends as kind as that. I cannot do everything for you. A man must make his own friends.

  Outside in the streets the army was on a quieter rampage. The glint of perambulating jewels was less than on the other nights. Most of the women were too weak to walk, and as for the men, they had already talked it over, there was nothing left to say.

  Stöss went into the Paradise Chapel to hide. He was in time to see the lead in the windows melt, and the glass descend in rivulets over alabasters of Adam, Eve, Lilith, Paradise, the snake, Nativity, Herod, and the Virgin Enthroned, as fruit sirup sinks into gathered snow, a Persian finish to the feast.

  Ash, char, and cinders came in with the night wind, as though someone had been burning autumn leaves in a winter graveyard. At Magdeburg the graveyard was where prostitutes received their gentlemen callers, and serviced them on the slabs of table tombs, since they were allowed no lodgings in the town: memento mori.

  Stöss fled and found his bishop in the sacristy.

  “A bad business,” said the bishop, drying his hands on a towel, though there was no water. He had just delivered a baby. That is, he had arrived in time to cut the umbilicus and intrude the navel.

  “The glass in the Paradise Chapel is gone.”

  The bishop looked surprised. He did not know Stöss well and did not want to. Then he recollected. “Ach so,” he said. “You were once a painter.” He looked with distaste at his hands, where dried blood still clung to the life line, the mons veneris, and the death line, too, for the matter of that. Which hand shows us the inevitable, and which what we may do of our own accord? He could not remember, but presumed choice to reside in the right, which was slightly larger.

  Stöss looked put out.

  On the fourth day Tilly, who had smelled the smoke, heard the screams, and even had some slight sensation of orange and shadow through his cataracts, made his public entrance into the town and went straight to the cathedral, where he let the people out and bellowed an amnesty. He was annoyed. Not only had all foodstuffs been destroyed, but so had the town, and he had planned to use it as a strategic center of future operations.

  Leaning out of his litter, he was so gracious as to honor the occasion with a Latin tag, thus proving his Jesuitical upbringing:

  “Venit summa dies et ineluctabile fatum.

  … fuit Ilium et ingens

  Gloria Parthenopes,”

  he announced, punning upon the name of the town, which means “of the nymph, of the virgin.” He then had the men locked up, and the women and children sent into his camp, which promptly caught fire, destroying much booty.

  In general, though the survivors live off the horror of it, and in feeling they need no other self-justification soon become obsolete, mankind is quick to forget an atrocity. Those who die, die in vain; otherwise it would not be so easy to shoot them: they had not the vigor to survive. But there are also atrocities which capture the imagination of the time, the whole nation sobs at once, and then locks the barn door with reverent care, much precaution, and a certain shamefaced self-consciousness. Though nobody can abide a martyr in the flesh, they are popular after the event. They have done our suffering for us. From now on, when the Swedes or other Protestants invaded a village, the cry went around, “Magdeburg quarter,” which meant, “Kill them all, it is now justified.” It was the other side committed the atrocity, not we.

  Gustavus said publicly that he would be revenged on the old corporal, or die in the attempt. He then smiled sadly, licked his thumb, and turned the leaf of Grotius over:

  III.xii.8: It will not be improper to observe that rules and practices derive much of their merit from the utility with which they are attended. So that one great quality, to recommend [moderation] will be found in its preventing the enemy from being driven to those recourses, which men never fail, at last, of finding in despair.

  Precisely. The Catholics had provided him—as the enemy always does eventually; we need not manufacture it; we need only have patience and a goad—with the one thing he needed: a propaganda. The phrase Magdeburg quarter would tie the troops together (he had had to raise German levies recently) and give their actions impetus.

  But also:

  II.i.18: Few people are content to proportion their revenge to the injuries they have received … bounds, which in all probability the party aggrieved has exceeded, and therefore in return becomes himself the aggressor. In the same manner, when the Thebans had offered the most equitable terms to the Lacedaemonians, who still rose higher in their demands, Aristides says, that the justice of the cause changed sides and passed from the Lacedaemonians to the Thebans.

  How true. And how convenient. Soothed by his sentries, as homely a sound as dogs barking across a farm field, Gustavus sighed and blew his candle out.

  The reaction to Magdeburg started everyone and changed all policy, except that of Frau Larsen, who had had her startlement already. Frau Larsen said nothing.

  Lars, whose desire was not to kill, listened and looked north again, and thought of Wollin and of nets let down into the sea by knowledgeable hands. He felt uneasy here.

  And in Magdeburg itself, Epiphanius Stöss came blinking out into the charred ruins of a smoking town and then, to his great good fortune, was posted south, a dour man on his dignity but well taken care of, for people said he had been there. He was one of those who leave no mark. Two weeks later and his name was not remembered. In Magdeburg, they began to rebuild.

  13

  The war now went one way, into the hands of Gustavus.

  In July the Queen, whose devotion was a nuisance, arrived, with 8,000 men, at Wolgast, and was conducted to the Snow King by Oxenstierna. She was a princess of the Brandenburg House, and knew how to comport herself. Unfortunately so far she had been able to produce only one girl child, Christina, now five and a half, and being brought up as a boy. She was a small bright thing, willful, and precociously learned.

  Gustavus had no illusions about his wife. She was appropriate in public, b
ut left too much alone, took to piety, too many priests, dark rooms, and astrology. Should he die, the result would be a petticoat government; or worse, a government of surplices. Fortunately he had Oxenstierna, and gave instructions accordingly. Apart from that, what more could you demand, than that the woman be a loyal goose? And that she was. All the same, a little intelligence would have done no harm. But none of the Brandenburg daughters had it. There is no purpose to be served by demanding what is not there.

  However, she was useful. It was a year exactly since Gustavus had landed at Peenemünde, and since Sweden was known not to be a rich country, a show of pomp did not harm. For pomp suggests power.

  Two months later he restored the two Dukes of Mechlenburg to their duchy, from which Wallenstein had been driven. Neither he nor Oxenstierna could stand pomp, pomp hampers the hands that would manipulate power, but pompous the entry into Mechlenburg was.

  The procession commenced with the clergy, strongly supported by troops. Next marched the senators in legal robes, and after them eight hundred of the nobility, the elder Duke on foot and in black to prove humility, with thirty-six halbardiers to guard him and backed by a fusillade of trumpeters, the handsomest men in the armies (Gustavus thought of everything), blowing a jubilee until the plumes in their caps ached.

  They were followed by Gustav Adolf himself, dressed in green, to remind the natives of the Green Man, the ancient terrible wood spirit of the north who sweeps all before him, but who is a beneficent god, bringing prosperity, spring rain, and drowsy crops. The junior Duke of Mechlenburg and Ulric, Prince of Denmark, brought up the rear, followed by the Dukes of Pomerania and Kurland, the princes and princesses of the House of Mechlenburg, two colonels, and one hundred and thirty coaches guarded by 1,800 cavalrymen. This procession, somewhat longer than the main street of the town, accompanied by the nasal skirl of sackbuts and recorders, while the trumpets volleyed like cannon, entered the great church, where a sermon was preached on the text: They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy: Psalm CXXVI.5. From the Dom the procession crossed to the Rathaus, where Oxenstierna took his place on the black and white checkerboard of the marble hall. It is well to remember that that piece we call the Queen is in actuality the Prime Minister or Great Chancellor. In Persia, there was never any piece called the Queen.

  Oxenstierna, with something like the smile of a favorite son, advanced two places. He joyfully bade the people disclaim Wallenstein, which they as joyfully did. Medals with the two reigning princes on one side, and a pious pelican on the other, were then distributed.

  The Green Man and his Great Chancellor then retired to celebrate their private friendship, for they had not seen each other for some time. There was much to discuss. With Oxenstierna there always was, eagerly, boyishly, for they had grown into power together, and had shared many dangers. Though of different sensibilities, they were of one mind. Not even Grotius disesteemed friendship, who, though he attracted such a thing, did little to return it:

  II.ix.8: The opinion of those who think that friendship arises from necessity alone, is rejected, as false, by the more sound Philosophers; as we feel a spontaneous and natural inclination towards friendly intercourse.

  The pompous ass, said Gustav Adolf, for Oxenstierna was the friend of his youth, and though we make others, that is the one we always turn to, whether we have outgrown him or not.

  In the same spirit as that in which children first swap and then win each other’s soldiers, Oxenstierna and Gustav had first made, then run, and now controlled a world. There is no other game as royal as this. Adolescents through the chalk dust of school corridors hasten toward each other with the impatience of lovers, a thing they will never feel again. They had been fortunate; each had found someone to talk to without having to explain. It was a case of Augustus and Agrippa. By comparison Caesar seems a lonely man, forced to explain in the cock’s crow of the night, to men who could never understand him, what that wry smile of his would rather have confided.

  But the roles were reversed. It was Gustavus who was Agrippa, not he. And we who merely plan must ever be struck speechless out of tenderness for the man who merely acts. Because of this Oxenstierna, who was a man of peace, spent his life fighting a war. Despite different powers, attitudes, and stations, the two men had always treated one another, even when quarreling (which both enjoyed to do), with that affection which springs only from a vast mutual respect.

  The word patrician has dropped out of the language. This is a pity: it makes it harder to identify them; we are apt to think them that lesser, incompetent thing, an aristocrat. And it seldom happens that a patrician is also an autocrat, for the autocrat is a maverick, the patrician one of a group. Patricians are best produced in northern lands, where a giggle would sound absurd, and by trading republics, from Venice to Lübeck. Oxenstierna, despite his estates, was autocrat and patrician both, which meant that he had two systems of ethics whirling within him at the same time, which gave him two gyroscopes, and sometimes these cast off sparks. He ruled himself harshly, with amusement, strictly, but justly. His recreation was exercise, not self-indulgence. Unlike aristocrats, autocrats would rather make than spend. They repair fences and enclose fields, know at birth the invisible writing on the tablets of the law, and find Ultima Thule a familiar country. Gustavus was pink, megalocephalic, and commanding; Oxenstierna was stolid, stubborn, pigheaded, and adroit. He wished the King would not risk his life needlessly.

  “Ah well,” said Gustavus. “Ah well.” And throwing his dignity into the corner, like an old hat, he put his boots upon the table, leaned back in his chair, and winked. He was most extraordinarily pleased.

  For an incredible light poured out of Oxenstieraa’s face. Even his enemies were aware of it. It was not benevolent, or kind, or even intelligent, it was just there. He was the logos in person. Therefore, though the impact was dazzling, no one was ever able to say by what it was they had been so struck. It was the eyes mostly, and a sort of sheen about the skin. They were unusual eyes, narrow, deep-set, transparent, and they seemed to be looking out at you from something that was not only a man. In short, he was less a man than a natural force with legs. His words, which bore down entire parties, were not in themselves memorable. Nobody could describe exactly what it was he did. His wisdom was no more than that of a manly Bacon. But decent men swore by it, and what they remembered was something that looked right through you, and you felt none the worse for that; if anything, better.

  And Oxenstierna was as fortunate as his master, for in Gustav those eyes had found a pair of hands which understood them, could refuse them, but which denied them nothing. The brain had at last found its proper body, an intelligent one which knew perfectly well for once what to do with its proper head.

  This collaboration, which in the life of both of them was to last for twenty years, did not cease with death, for Gustav had the zest to deal with remote as well as with immediate contingency.

  “What are we to do with the ninny?” demanded Gustavus, who knew, but wanted to hear what Axel had to say.

  “Have you seen him?”

  “From a distance. It is the best way to see him, so they say.”

  “Hmmmmm,” said Axel, which was what Axel always said. It was the sound of machinery warming up. Eight hours later it delivered itself of an answer, like Friar Bacon’s head, but without stoking and without blowing itself to smithereens. The man’s head was bronze. Gustav, who tended toward a rouged chryselephantine himself, watched this phenomenon with respect.

  Unlike the Germanies, Sweden is a sparsely inhabited country. The fewer the people, the greater the humanity, and humanity is never wrong, for humanity knows how to look after its own. But here in the Germanies there were too many people, none of them Swedes, so the temptation to inhumanity was always great, and sometimes, as is so often true anywhere, completely justified. So one had to be judicious.

  Dismissing for a moment the problems here, Oxenstierna moved his attention, a heavy object, difficult to push about, a
round to the problem of Sir Henry Vane, the alas successor to Sir Thomas Roe, whom everyone had loved. Vane had been here a week, and already nobody could stand him, particularly not the Scots regimental generals, a people who have always bent upon their English cousins a reserved, deliberative, and enraged eye.

  “Is he or is he not a fool, and if so, what are his instructions?” demanded Gustav Adolf. “I do not like the sound of him.”

  14

  Few people ever did.

  Sir Henry Vane, or Fane (he had altered the first letter of his name in order to claim proximity to the more exalted family of Cleveland), was at this time forty-two years of age and hailed from Kent. He was illiterate, of ordinary parts, but boisterous and bold. He had married young a woman of good family, seldom seen, and with her dowry had bought a carver’s place at court, under James I and VI, for £5,000. Though he seldom carved meat, he had his knife in everybody else, had accumulated £50,000 in a questionably short time, and meant to have more.

  To all other merits but his own climb to power he was simperingly, composedly, and blandly oblivious. He was just such a man as Charles I tended to prefer to his own ruin, and saw it as the purpose of his embassy not to treat with, but to display himself for the benefit of, foreigners. Men of talent he disesteemed. Talent is not the trait of a courtier. People of strong will he detested and feared. He felt the quality to be ill-bred. With his superiors, his manner was one of studied superciliousness, that of a top dog warily skirting another dog’s territory. To enter it would have meant a fight. Fighting was vulgar. But to saunter by proved his privilege. More than anything else, he loathed anything that smacked of the hearty. Artificial himself, he could not bear to be jarred. He was not a fop: that was ill-bred too. Indeed, Vane belonged to that group of people which finds everything superior to itself unworthy of admiration, because irrelevant. He had urine-colored hair and a chipped canine tooth in front. He was tall, pink, incompetent, and given to a deliberate and most effective stammer. He had no sense of humor. Had he had, he could not have looked in the mirror and survived. But since he had so much amour-propre and so little courage that he never did an underhanded thing unless he was sure of not being caught, he was in general considered (but only in his own circle) to be amiable enough.