The Swedish Cavalier

by Leo Perutz

  “Where do you hail from, you poor man?” she asked. “You’ve come far, from the look of you–your face is pinched with hunger. Quickly, go down to the kitchen and have the maid crumble you some bread in a bowl of soup. First, though, tell me if Christian Tornefeld sent you to me. Where is he, and why did he not come himself?”

  “If I tell her,” the thief reflected, “she’ll go to him. If she doesn’t have a carriage and horses, she’ll brave the snow on foot.” And he seemed to see Tornefeld’s smiling face. The boy was holding her in his arms just as he himself had held her for a moment in his wild imaginings.

  He stared at the floor. “I’m unacquainted with the gentleman,” he replied. “I know nothing of him.”

  “I thought as much!” the captain said again. “How would this wretched tinker be acquainted with a gentleman of quality? He’s one of Ibitz’s gang, or I’m a Dutchman.” He turned on the thief. “Now, fellow, tell us what or whom you were after when you stole into this house.”

  The thief felt the cold sweat break out on his brow. His last hour seemed nigh, but he clung to his decision: for good or ill, he would never let the captain wrest the truth from him.

  “I came to steal,” he said in a defiant tone.

  “In that case,” said the captain, “the gibbet shall have its due. Make your peace with God, fellow. You must hang.”

  The girl gave a low cry. “No, don’t hang him! He looks so poor and wretched, I’ll warrant he’s never known a single day’s happiness in his life.”

  “He looks so godless and infamous, I’d credit him with any piece of mischief,” the captain said, scowling. “I know better than your ladyship how to deal with the likes of him.”

  “Don’t hang him,” the girl entreated, raising her hands. “He did nothing. His only crime is to be poor and half-starved. Let him go, Captain–let him go for my sake.”

  The thief stood there transfixed. Never before had he heard anyone utter such words. Folk had cursed and beaten him all his life, threatened him with gaol and the gallows. Children had pelted him with stones in the street, yet this high-born damsel had taken pity on him. Having looked death defiantly in the face, he now had the strangest sensation. His throat tightened and his cheeks twitched convulsively. He would have given anything to do the girl a service of some kind, but he still didn’t tell her–couldn’t tell her–that Tornefeld was waiting at the mill.

  “Your ladyship knows that my dearest wish is to serve her she has only to command,” the captain said with ill-concealed annoyance. “The fellow’s a bad lot, but since your ladyship insists . . . Sirrah, you owe your escape from the gallows to her ladyship’s gracious intercession.”

  The lingering howl of a dog drifted up from the courtyard.

  “I’m much obliged to you, Captain, and I’ll not forget it,” the girl said quickly. “That was Jason, did you hear? He’s pining for my company–I believe he can sense that he and Diana are about to be taken from me. I must go and bid my dear old friends farewell.”

  She hurried from the room and down the stairs. The captain walked slowly after her. At the door he turned.

  “I’ll be damned if he isn’t one of Ibitz’s band,” he told the dragoons. “He may have escaped a hanging, but not a thrashing. Take him and tan his hide–give him five-and-twenty of the best, then let him go. He can run and tell his master, Black Ibitz, that I’ll come for him tomorrow with fire and steel. There’ll be a fine day’s hunting in the Fox’s Earth.”

  The thief stood below in the courtyard, his face to the wall, while two dragoons held him by the arms and a third wielded the hazel switch. Blow after blow came whistling down on his bare back. Meantime, not a hundred paces distant, the youthful lady of the manor was taking leave of her dearest companions. The dog jumped up at her, barking, as she clasped her mare around the neck. “Farewell, Diana,” she said in a voice brimming with sorrow and affection. “I’ve always held you dear. And you, my Jason, God protect you, for we must go our separate ways.” Fork-Beard, a thickly muffled figure ensconced in the sleigh, smote his fists together impatiently. Her adieus were taking too long for his taste.

  The thief did not witness this valedictory scene, he only heard the dog barking and the horse whinnying. The hazel switch continued to whistle through the air, but he never flinched. “Lay on, lay on!” he hissed through his clenched teeth. “I’m not of noble blood, perhaps, but I’m not a common usurer. Lay on, lay on! I’m only of humble birth, but I don’t make money and horses and carriages out of other folks’ poverty. Lay on, lay on! What a noble crew they are, Fork-Beard, who ran from the captain’s sword, and Tornefeld, the would be warrior who fears to get his fingers frozen! Lay on, lay on! I’m of different mettle–I’d make a better nobleman than either of them.”

  And an outrageous thought took shape in his feverish brain: he fancied that he was indeed a nobleman, not a vagrant and thief, and that he must return and instil order into the estate and its workfolk, for everything here–the girl, the manor, the farm buildings and fields–was destined to be his. “I’ve sat long enough at the table of the poor,” he grunted. “Now I’ve a mind to sit at the master’s table.” Born in the throes of searing pain, this thought possessed him, and every stroke that came whistling down on his back burned it deeper into his soul.

  Not that he noticed, his chastisement had ended. The hazel switch was tossed aside and landed in the snow. One of the dragoons returned the thief’s shirt and jacket and gave him a swig of brandy from his canteen.

  “Now be off with you,” he urged, “before our captain sets eyes on you again.”

  They took him under the arms and began to lead him toward the gate, thinking that his legs might give way, but he spurned their assistance and walked off through the snow, unsteady but erect. In the gateway he turned. He could see the girl and the house and the courtyard and the overturned harrow jutting from the snow, and his gaze embraced them all as if they were already his. Then he strode on. The wind lashed his face, the snow crunched beneath his feet, and the maple trees flanking the drive bowed their wind-whipped branches to the ground as if prescient of the future: as if, in bowing to the man who was leaving the manor behind him, they were saluting its future lord and master.

  He had as yet no plan in mind when he passed through Lancken village with its yapping dogs and wailing bagpipe and took the road that led to the mill. He knew only that his back was smarting, and that he must return as a nobleman on horseback with plumes in his hat and money in every pocket. He couldn’t, after all, keep his promise to the miller and enter the bishop’s inferno. “I haven’t yet resigned myself to hell,” he muttered as he trudged through the knee-deep snow. “Did we strike a bargain? No! No bargain is well and truly struck until it’s sealed with a glass of brandy. The miller begrudged me a brandy, so now he has only himself to blame. The dragoon that held me while the other flogged me–he gave me brandy to drink afterwards. Yes, brother! Thanks, brother! I drank to my return. That bargain stands. Yes, brother, that bargain was well and truly struck.”

  Into the bishop’s hell on earth? Never! That was a thing of the past. He would return to the world and join battle once more with the powers that had opposed him throughout his life. Tempted by the great game of chance, he would hazard one more throw of the dice. To him, who had never once contrived to trick frugal countryfolk out of food enough to eat his fill, it now seemed that all the world’s gold was his for the taking.

  He needed and must somehow acquire the arcanum of which Tornefeld had made so much. That piece of sacred parchment, or whatever else it might be, was the key to all wealth and happiness. Let Tornefeld see how well he fared without it in the Swedish army.

  In the Swedish army? No, Tornefeld must never join the Swedish army, never return on horseback in plumed hat and handsome clothes. She loved him–he was dear to her heart, so he would have to vanish for ever. “Into the bishop’s inferno with him!” muttered the thief, and at that moment it occurred to him how he could rid him
self of Tornefeld and keep his promise to the miller’s ghost: Tornefeld would enter the bishop’s inferno in his place. For nine years? For all eternity! Once under the lash of the overseer and his foremen, that mother’s boy of a nobleman would not last two months. Stronger men than he had succumbed before their nine years were up.

  And then, while these thoughts were passing through the thief’s mind, he seemed to see Tornefeld lying in the snow at his feet, as he had that very morning, devoid of hope and mortally tired, and he was once more overcome with pity for the youngster who had lain there babbling about his nobleman’s honour. “On your feet, friend!” he wanted to say–“On your feet, I won’t abandon you!” But he stifled his compassion. It couldn’t be: Tornefeld must disappear for ever. “Farewell, farewell!” he shouted into the teeth of the snow-laden gale. “There’s nothing more I can do for you. The girl I saw weeping–I cannot banish her from my heart.” So saying, he took leave of his comrade in adversity. So saying, he passed sentence on Christian Tornefeld.

  When the thief was a stone’s throw from the mill, its ghostly owner, still clad in his waggoner’s smock and feathered hat, loomed up ahead of him as suddenly as if he had sprung from the ground. The thief would have slipped past, but there were deep snow-drifts to left and right, and the miller refused to budge.

  “Let me pass,” said the thief, his teeth chattering. “I wish to go inside. It’s cold, and the night will turn still colder. I heard the cry of the screech-owl.”

  “Why should you care if the night turns colder?” the miller demanded with a chuckle as hollow as if it had issued from the depths of a well. “You’ll not freeze. You’ll learn this very night how to rake coals from a fiery furnace.”

  “Not tonight,” said the thief, who had plucked up courage again. “Grant me until tomorrow. Today is Wednesday–an unlucky day, for that was when Our Lord Jesus was betrayed.”

  He had thought that the ghost would promptly vanish and return to Purgatory at the sound of Christ’s holy name, but the miller continued to stand there looking him in the face.

  “I cannot wait,” he said, shaking the snow from his smock. “You must come with me tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be gone.”

  “I know, I know,” groaned the thief, and a shiver ran down his spine. “Tomorrow you’ll be a little heap of dust and ashes. Let me go, sir. I’ll say a Miserere for you and a De profundis–those are the favourite fare of poor dead souls.”

  “What are you blathering about, you numskull?” the miller exclaimed. “You can keep your De profundis. Tomorrow at cock-crow I leave for Venice to fetch merchandise for my noble master: crystal goblets, bolts of velvet, gilded wall-paper, and two of the new Spanish lap-dogs.”

  “What need has your bishop of gilded wall-paper and bolts of velvet?” growled the thief, who had always disliked the high and the mighty. “He should share his wealth with the poor of the land, not live in luxury and splendour.”

  “My gracious lord is a secular prince as well as a bishop,” the miller explained. “The man you see riding in a gilded carriage and six–that’s the prince. But go to Mass on Lady Day and you’ll see the bishop, a devout, modest, and altogether holy man.”

  “What if the Devil carries off the secular prince?” the thief said sarcastically. “What becomes of the bishop then?”

  “Silence!” cried the miller, filled with indignation. “What an uncouth tongue you have, fellow! Now come with me and learn to earn your bread by honest toil.”

  But the thief remained where he was.

  “Circumstances have changed,” he said. “I shall not be going with you after all.”

  “Did I hear aright?” the miller exclaimed. “You’ve lost your taste for an easy life? You fool! War and slaughter, fire and pestilence are raging on every side, but the bishop’s domain is at peace.”

  “Peace is not the thing I seek,” the thief replied. “I wish to go out into the world and prove myself as a free man.”

  “It’s too late for that,” the miller said angrily. “We struck a bargain, so you must come with me. I hold you to your word.”

  “You cannot hold me to my word,” the thief retorted. “No bargain is properly struck until it has been sealed with a glass of brandy. I’ve no notion how it is in hell, but that’s the custom here on earth.”

  “Brandy be damned!” cried the miller. “I plied you generously with bread and sausage and beer.”

  “You’ll be paid your due,” the thief told him. “My companion who sits in your parlour over yonder–he’ll go with you in my place.”

  “That fellow?” the miller said indignantly. “It’s you I want. Why should I take that idle youth? He’s no use to me–he eats more than he’s worth. He’ll cost my noble master more in a day than he’ll earn him in a week.”

  “He’s weakened by hunger and hardship,” said the thief. “Let him but regain his strength, and you’ll see how well he can wield a crowbar and break rock from a quarry barehanded.”

  “You’re the one I want!” the miller bellowed. He came close to the thief and caught him by the jacket. “It was you I struck the bargain with. I’ll not let you go.”

  The thief felt the nightmarish weight of the miller’s icy hand on his chest. He fought for breath, and his heart seemed constricted by bands of iron. It was clear to him that this poor soul from Purgatory was endowed with superhuman strength. He strove to escape, but in vain. And then, in his extremity, he remembered the spell–the form of words that would exorcise a ghost–and recited it in a quavering, breathless voice:

  In Jesu’s name and Mary’s,

  go down upon your knees,

  and pray that Child and Virgin

  your soul from sin release.

  “What’s that you’re bawling?” the miller demanded. “This is no time for prayer!” But he was down on his knees, and the thief found that he could breathe and move once more: the nightmarish weight had gone from his chest. “Help me up!” cried the miller. “Why the devil did you push me? See, now I’m kneeling in the snow.”

  The thief was convinced that he hadn’t pushed the miller at all. The formula that had sprung to his lips in the nick of time that was what had compelled the ghost to release him and fall on its knees.

  “Have I your leave to go?” he asked, bending down.

  “Go where you please, no one needs you,” snapped the miller. He seized the thief’s hand and hauled himself erect. “That gibberish of yours was enough to show me what manner of man you are. Hurry off to the gibbet and find someone to hang you. I want no more to do with you.”

  The way to the mill was now open. The thief walked on, chuckling to himself. He had won the battle. He was no longer in thrall to the ghost of the man who left his grave for one day each year in quest of living flesh and blood with which to repay a pfennig of his debt to his former master, the bishop. He did, however, have another battle to win: a battle with Tornefeld, who must disappear into the bishop’s inferno, leaving him, the thief, in possession of his noble name and the arcanum that guaranteed good fortune.

  Tornefeld jumped up from the bench beside the stove as soon as the thief walked in.

  “At last!” he said petulantly, rubbing his eyes. “You’ve kept an honest cavalier waiting long enough, in all conscience!”

  The thief made haste to shut the door behind him, for the wind had blown a cloud of wet snowflakes into the room.

  “I came as fast as I could,” he said. “What’s more, I had good reason.”

  “Well?” Tornefeld demanded. “What news of my affairs?”

  “Bad news,” said the thief, hanging up his patched and threadbare coat to dry in front of the stove. “It will scarcely gladden your heart.”

  “Didn’t you speak with my noble godfather?” asked Tornefeld.

  “No,” the thief replied. “He’s gone by special mail to the world hereafter. He grants no audiences these days.”

  “Is that the truth?” Tornefeld cried. “Is he really dead?”

 
“I swear it,” said the thief. “As sure as I hope for salvation, he’s dead. But friend, how downcast and forlorn you look!”

  “Dead,” Tornefeld murmured in dismay. “My noble godfather dead, and I’d pinned all my hopes on him. He was my father’s cousin and good friend, God rest them both. Who presides over the estate now?”

  “A girl,” said the thief, gazing into the fire. “A mere child. So kind, so young–as beautiful as a seraph come to earth.”

  “The demoiselle his daughter, Maria Agneta, ma cousinel” Tornefeld exclaimed. “If she’s still there, I’m saved. Did you speak with her?”

  “Yes,” the thief lied, “but she couldn’t call you to mind at first. Only when I showed her the ring.”

  “Ah,” Tornefeld broke in delightedly, “then she knew who had sent you! Did you tell her that I’m here at the mill, and that I need a carriage and horses and a coat and–”

  The thief persisted in his lie.

  “Yes, but she refused me. She’s poor. She herself can barely make ends meet, she told me. The estate is in debt. No money in the house, horses and carriages in pledge. ‘My cousin must make his own way to the Swedish army,’ she said.”

  “No money?” Tornefeld repeated sadly. “Ah, but you should have seen Kleinroop Manor in the old days: never a day without fire beneath the spit, or guests at table, or fish in the trough, or game in the larder. As for money, my noble godfather could have built three churches with twelve spires, he was so wealthy.”

  He fell silent and hung his head.

  “So the demoiselle didn’t remember me?” he continued with a weary smile. “Years have gone by since I saw her last, it’s true. We were children, the two of us. We swore eternal love and devotion, but that’s forgotten–buried beneath the sands of time.”

  He paced the room before coming to a halt beside the thief.

  “I’m alone in the world–alone and without a patron–but I must join the Swedish army notwithstanding. I must!”