The Swedish Cavalier

by Leo Perutz

  The thief was transfixed with terror. He recognised the man as the captain of dragoons known far and wide as “the Bloody Baron,” who was evidently quartered here.

  The Bloody Baron was so called because he had undertaken to butcher the bands of robbers that ravaged Silesia and Bohemia. Invested with judicial authority by the emperor himself, he prowled the countryside unceasingly at the head of his dragoons, and all who preyed on other people’s property–vagrants and pickpockets, highwaymen and thieves, miscreants great and small–feared him like Satan personified. The hangman who accompanied him never had rope enough. To him, a lenient sentence meant branding on the forehead followed by a lifetime of servitude in the Venetian galleys. It was to escape death at the hands of this man and his dragoons that the thief had thought to take refuge in the bishop’s inferno, and now ill luck had brought him to this room. The Bloody Baron stood facing him a mere five paces away, and the house was swarming with dragoons. There was no way out, no hope of giving his captors the slip. The thief’s numb terror was mingled with a trace of surprise that the dreaded Bloody Baron should be so small of stature and his chest and legs so apelike in their hairiness.

  Having covered his blind eye with a square of black cloth suspended from a ribbon–the start of his toilette–the captain took his leather riding breeches and belt from the dragoon.

  “Now to discover who you are, fellow,” he said, “but have a care! Do you see this sword of mine?”

  The thief realised that bravado alone could save him now. If he showed fear he was done for.

  “Yes, I see your sword, what of it?” he retorted. “There’s room on it for three dozen sparrows. You could slice off seven heads of cabbage at a stroke.”

  “He has a loose tongue and eyes like a vicious horse,” said the dragoon, who had knelt to pull on his captain’s boots. “If he knew whom he was addressing, he’d sing a different song.”

  “Your neck’s at stake, fellow,” growled the captain. “Any more of that, and I’ll have you taken outside and beaten till your own brother wouldn’t know you.”

  “Leave me be,” the thief protested. “My business isn’t with you. It wasn’t you I sought.”

  “How dare you take that tone to a nobleman and an officer!” the captain roared. “I can see I shall have to teach you some respect and good manners, so that you can properly introduce yourself to the Devil in Hell when I hang you. What were you doing in my bedchamber? Answer me!”

  “What was I doing?” the thief replied in a peevish, impatient voice, as if he had no time to waste on the questioner or his questions. “I was looking for the owner of this house, of course.”

  “You were, were you?” The captain turned to the bed. “Is he from hereabouts, Margret? Do you know him?”

  More dragoons had entered in the meantime, and the acrid smoke of their torches filled the room. The girl who had spotted the thief in the darkness was now sitting on the edge of the bed. Unseen by the dragoons, she had hurriedly pulled her chemise over her head and clamped her skirt between her knees. It was a moment or two before she answered.

  “No, he’s not from hereabouts. I never saw him before.”

  The captain strode over to the thief, boots squeaking.

  “Lousy, scabby, filthy, and in rags,” he said with a laugh. “He doesn’t look as if my lord bishop sent him here with an invitation to dinner. Search the man! He’s a member of Black Ibitz’s band, I’ll be bound.”

  Two dragoons seized the thief and felt in his pockets. One of them found the knife he always carried and held it aloft.

  “I told you so,” said the captain, “He meant to do away with me. Well, fellow, speak: what was that knife doing in your pocket?”

  The thief gave a despairing laugh. “It’s a rare piece brought me by the Spanish Fleet,’ he blurted out, his throat tight with fear. “I sent for it from the New World, to cut my bread and cheese.”

  “You’ll not be cutting much more bread and cheese,” said the captain. He addressed the room at large. “He stole into my bedroom, meaning to wait until I was asleep and then dispatch me with that knife. Lienhard, come here. Ibitz and his men held you prisoner for three days. See if he’s one of them.”

  The dragoon held his torch close to the thief’s face.

  “No, he’s not one of Ibitz’s men,” he said. “I know them all–Afrom, Crooked Michel, Owlface, Gallowsmeat, Whistling Boy, and the Brabanter–but not this fellow. Besides, Your Excellency, we have them all surrounded. None of them can escape.”

  “One lone man would not find it so hard to slip past our sentries,” said the captain. “After all, he stole into the house unobserved. The Devil may trust him, not I.”

  “But he’s not one of Ibitz’s men,” the dragoon said firmly. “There are twenty of them. Tinsmith Hannes, Sainted Jonas, Klaproth, Veiland, Feuerbaum and Mad Matthes–I know them all, but not him.”

  “So tell me who sent you!” the captain bellowed at the thief. “Speak or I’ll have you bent and stretched, so help me God!”

  “I was sent by the nobleman whose servant I am, Your Excellency, and that’s the honest truth.” The thief, mindful that he had Tornefeld’s signet ring as proof of his good faith, was gradually regaining his courage. “I have a message for the owner of this demesne.”

  “Who is your master?” the captain broke in. “By God, the nobility hereabouts employ strange lackeys. What nobleman is it that keeps such a ragged fellow in his service?”

  “My master is his lordship’s youthful cousin and godson,” said the thief. “His lordship stood sponsor at his christening, and—”

  The captain roared with laughter.

  “His lordship’s godson sent you?” he exclaimed. “The devil you say! In that case, welcome to this house. Since you come from his lordship’s godson, may your mission be crowned with success. How old is this famous youngster of a godson, pray?

  “Eighteen or twenty, at a guess–I haven’t known him long,” said the thief, puzzled by the Bloody Baron’s laughter and singular manner.

  The girl, who was now fully dressed, threaded her way through the dragoons and stepped up to the thief.

  “Lies cannot save you, poor man,” she said. “The owner of this house has no godson. No more lies, poor man. You would do better to go down on your knees and beg for Christian mercy.”

  “No, by all that’s holy, no!” cried the captain. “I want to see him sweat like a chicken on the spit, so on with the game! He wishes me to conduct him to the owner of this manor. Very well, his wish shall be granted. Fellow, come with me. Balthazar, my gloves and scarf!”

  With his hands bound behind his back, the thief followed the captain upstairs escorted by two dragoons carrying candles. Now that he was to see Herr von Krechwitz at last, curiosity pricked him more than ever. A new mystery had reared its head: Why should the Bloody Baron, the mortal foe and archpersecutor whom he mentally consigned to perdition, have burst out laughing when told that he, the thief, had been sent by the godson of the owner of the house? And the girl who had shared the captain’s bed–why had she denied the existence of such a godson? What manner of man was it that had no godson at all, when even the poorest day-labourer had one? Was Herr von Krechwitz such a dissolute monster that no mother wished him to stand sponsor at her child’s baptism? Was this lord of the manor a Turk, a Tatar, or a Moor? Or was he such a miser that he begrudged a baby its baptismal thaler? Or was he . . .

  For a moment, sheer surprise stopped the thief in his tracks. The truth had dawned on him at last. Had his hands not been bound behind his back, he would have smitten his brow. All was clear to him now. He now understood why everyone on this estate was dishonest–why the workfolk were unruly and the fields neglected, why the sheep-shed harboured splenic fever–and he cursed himself for a fool and a blockhead because he’d taken so long to divine the reason. “A poor ewe-lamb to be fleeced by all and sundry,” he told himself with a grim smile, clenching his fists. The captain had paused outside the ha
lf-open door of the “Long Room.” He knocked, then strode in with a nobleman’s ceremonious self-assurance, and the dragoons thrust the thief into the room in his wake.

  Yes, it was as just he had surmised: the owner of Kleinroop Manor was a mere child, a girl of seventeen at most, and as slim and dainty as an angel. There were tears in her eyes, the thief could see that at once, and facing her with his elbow propped on the chimney-piece was Baron von Saltza auf Diisterloh und Pencke, the fork-bearded nobleman and usurer to whom the bailiff had sold his young mistress’s greyhound and saddle-horse.

  The captain planted himself in front of her, plumed hat in hand, and bowed.

  “Do I come at an inopportune moment?” he began. “I trust that your ladyship will pardon me for intruding at this late hour, but I must saddle up at crack of dawn and would have deemed it shameful to depart without paying my respects, the more so because I hope to preserve a humble place in your ladyship’s thoughts.”

  The girl smiled and inclined her head.

  “You do me too much honour, captain,” she said in a soft, gentle voice. “It saddens me to hear that you mean to leave so soon. Were you not satisfied with your quarters?”

  The thief gazed at her intently. All his plans lay in ruins.

  “It’s a pity,” he said to himself. “She’s so young, she’ll never believe me if I tell her that her workfolk are a bunch of scheming rogues. Being a child, she still thinks the world an honest place. She’ll never believe me if I cite chapter and verse to prove that she and her people could live on the milk and poultry alone and sell the surplus at market. Her bailiff will have told her otherwise, so every word would be a waste of breath. She’s beautiful, though. I’ve never seen anything lovelier in my life . . .”

  “My quarters are most comfortable, I could wish for no better,” the captain assured her with a bow. “All was perfectly a point, but I’m off to settle accounts with Black Ibitz and his band of villains. We have them surrounded in the Fox’s Earth, and I must join my men by daybreak tomorrow, when the hunt commences.”

  “That’s life for you,” muttered the thief, who was standing in the doorway between the two dragoons. “He’ll harry those robbers in their lair with axe and rope, and they’re only poor folk, but he neither sees nor molests the robbers here in this house, who brazenly waste their mistress’s substance . . .”

  “May your mission be crowned with success, Captain,” said the girl. “Ibitz and his band have wrought havoc, both hereabouts and in Poland. One hears talk every day of their attacking some waggoner or driving off some farmer’s cattle. Truly, Captain, you’re a second St George.”

  “But they’re only poor folk,” muttered the thief, while the Bloody Baron, gratified by this tribute, stroked his luxuriant moustache. “Had they been granted a daily morsel of bread and a thatched roof over their heads, they would have remained honest, but that’s the way of the world. Meantime, the rabble here on this estate . . .”

  “I beg your ladyship’s leave to depart,” Fork-Beard interposed in a harsh voice. “I must see to it that I reach home in good time. If your ladyship should change her mind, I shall be as ready to oblige and accommodate her tomorrow as I am today.”

  “If only my noble godfather would allow me to keep Jason and Diana . . .” said the girl, and her eyes filled anew with tears.

  “Your ladyship can have as many saddle-horses as she pleases,” said Fork-Beard. “The matter rests with her alone. Fine clothes, necklaces, rings, guests every day, a respected place in society–all these are hers for the asking.”

  “It distresses me that I cannot do as my noble godfather wishes,” said the girl, and her voice hardened. “You know it cannot be, any more than the sun can stray from its course. I have pledged my heart and hand to another, and I shall wait for him, if need be, till Judgement Day.”

  “May your ladyship never regret that decision,” Fork-Beard said brusquely. “Meantime, I remain at your service. Are the horses harnessed up?”

  “Heaven preserve the young lady!” the thief said in a horrified whisper. “Can he really have designs on her, the depraved old brute? They’re as ill-matched as lampblack and virgin snow . . .”

  “The horses are harnessed up,” the girl replied. “The sleigh and driver await you in the courtyard.” She paused. “I had pinned my hopes on your generosity, godfather. If you would only let me keep Jason . . .”

  “Out of the question,” Fork Beard snarled. “I bought that mare and that hound myself–I paid good money for them. If economies had been practised in this house, things would never have come to such a pass. One kreuzer begets another, one guilder spawns two, but no one here seems to know that. When firewood won’t burn, your kitchen-maid kindles it with butter by the pound.”

  “What need have you of a thoroughbred hound?” the captain called from the door. “For hunting, a farm-bred mongrel would serve you quite as well.”

  Fork-Beard turned and looked him haughtily up and down.

  “Oblige me, sir, by attending to your own business,” he snarled. “I’ve never meddled in yours. My enemies hereabouts are legion, I know, but many a man would gladly take my place.”

  The captain drew himself up with a grimace of contempt.

  “I’m a poor man,” he said. “All I possess is my imperial warrant and my good name, but I wouldn’t step into your shoes for a thousand thalers.”

  “Look to your own shoes, not mine–they’re not for sale!” bellowed Fork-Beard, pop-eyed and puce with anger. “Out of my way, sir, I’m going!”

  “What was that you said?” the captain inquired calmly. “Beware of apoplexy, sir. You shouldn’t puff yourself up so you’ll burst like Judas on the gallows.”

  “Like Judas on the gallows?” cried Fork-Beard, gasping for breath. “You forget whom you’re addressing, sir. I too am of noble birth. Have a care: I wear a sword, and it sits loosely in the scabbard.”

  The captain stepped aside and gestured toward the open door.

  “Entirely at your service, sir. I shall gladly do you the courtesy of crossing swords with you in the courtyard, nobleman to nobleman.”

  “Just as you please, sir, just as you please,” said Fork-Beard, who had now reached the door, “but I don’t have time to listen to you further. Another time–I have pressing business elsewhere.”

  And he set off down the stairs as fast as dignity permitted. The captain stared after him for a moment, then turned to the girl.

  “I beg your ladyship’s pardon for saying so,” he said, flourishing his hat, “but that godfather of yours is, with all due respect and devotion, a blackguard. A sword-thrust would be too good for him. I’d rather pay a street urchin to punch him on the nose.”

  “He keeps pressing me to marry him,” the girl said with a weary smile. “He has offered to relieve me of all my burdens out of friendship for my late lamented father.”

  “If that’s friendship,” exclaimed the captain, “I’d sooner seek it among the wolves of the forest. Your ladyship is betrothed, I gather. May I be permitted to inquire the name of the man fortunate enough to be able to boast of your ladyship’s affection?”

  The thief awoke from a kind of dream. He had caught himself yielding to a strange delusion: that he was no longer a thief but the man to whom this high-born damsel had pledged herself–that he was holding her in his arms with her cheek against his own.

  He gave a start. “No, no,” he whispered with a deep but inaudible sigh, “may God in his mercy turn my heart from what can never be mine . . .”

  “You’ve always been good to me, Captain, so I’ll tell you,” the girl was saying. “My betrothed is a Swedish nobleman, a friend from my earliest childhood. He has my ring and I have his, but it’s long since I had news of him. ‘He has forgotten you,’ I often think, ‘but you’ll never forget him.’ At other times my hopes revive and I feel that happiness is speeding toward me post-haste. His name is Christian. He’s a godson of my late father’s and a cousin on my mother’s side
.”

  “Can he really be the one?” the thief wondered in boundless amazement. “I’d never have thought it possible. So her heart belongs to that callow youth, that weakling who can’t talk big enough when he’s toasting his toes at the fire but whimpers and wails without cease when the frost nips his ears. She’s keeping faith with a mouse of a nobleman who never gives her a thought. His heart is set on the war and Charles of Sweden, but only if he has a fur bonnet to keep out the cold, and an alamode coat, and a carriage and horses, and pockets full of money, and silk stockings, and taffeta and satin enough to wipe his nose on, and God alone knows what else . . .”

  “What did your ladyship say?” asked the captain. “A godson to your ladyship’s late lamented father? This fellow I’ve brought with me–can it be that he was telling the truth after all? Come here, you quintessence of all gallow’s-birds! Pay your respects to her ladyship and say who sent you.”

  The thief stepped forward and bowed, but he shunned the light cast by the oil-lamp’s two bright little flames and kept his face in shadow. “I must say nothing,” it flashed through his mind, “nothing–not a word about that boy!” As to why he felt so constrained to remain silent and disguise the fact that Tornefeld had sent him, even he had yet to discover the reason.

  “Why stand there hanging your head?” the captain told him angrily. “Speak! Say who sent you!”

  “No, no no!” cried a voice inside him. “She mustn’t know. If she does, she’ll go and sell all she has left. The clothes in her closet, the lace at her neck, her bed linen–she’ll sell them all to provide that boy with fancy coats and silk stockings. She mustn’t learn the truth!”

  He avoided her gaze and said quietly, “No one sent me.”

  “So now it’s ‘No one sent me,’” the captain exclaimed. “Earlier you spoke of a nobleman and told me you were sent by him.”

  The thief drew a deep breath. “I lied,” he said.

  “I thought as much,” growled the captain. “He was trying to talk his way out of the noose.”

  The girl walked over to the thief with noiseless, gliding tread and paused in front of him, but he turned his face away rather than look her in the eye.