Bjorn awoke with a vague sense of happiness and sorrow all at once. The city was beautiful and the waters in the bay were warm, but the journey – or rather that departure – carried the burden of irreversible events. Bjorn knew that dreaming was dangerous, because dreams offer impossible things, and so after waking it is best to set to work at once. So he did, heading for a small pyramid, where the stones he had gathered from the pasture were heaped on top of each other. He carefully chose a large, angular rock and picked it up in both hands; once he had positioned the point of gravity on his right shoulder, like an athlete he slowly carried the stone towards the precipice. The wall was almost finished now, and Bjorn reckoned with satisfaction that in two, or at most three days he would make his way to the steward to report it to him. He was sure to hear a stream of abuse, but what did it matter, if they entrusted a flock to him again? For the past year he had too often gone hungry, and for the sight of the shed with sheep’s-milk cheeses ripening on long shelves inside it, for that nourishing hope, he was ready to put up with far worse things.
As he pondered it all, he fitted the angular rock into the exact spot where the wall seemed weakest, and then with a sense of satisfaction he looked up at the sea, only to let his jaw drop in amazement at almost the very same instant. The small dot which had been visible on the horizon three-quarters of an hour ago had not moved towards Kalmar as usual, but had most evidently deviated from the common route and was approaching the island. A middle-sized three-mast ship in full sail was growing before his eyes. Now Bjorn could clearly see the crow’s nest with the tiny figure of a sailor; the bowsprit, with yet another observation basket hanging underneath it; and several guns with covers over their muzzles. Two stone’s throws away from the rocky shore the ship made an abrupt turn, furled its sails and stood at anchor parallel to the cliff, which allowed Bjorn, crouching behind his wall, to make out its name. On these waters the name ‘Doña Juanita’ sounded rather unusual, but swallowing his saliva, Bjorn did not stop to wonder about it. His gaze and attention were entirely riveted by the rapid activities amidships. A windlass creaked and the sailors lowered a sloop, in which he saw two rowers and a man dressed in a trailing black coat. There could be no doubt he was the one giving the orders here. In one hand he was holding a hat adorned with feathers, while with the other, as soon as the sloop was bobbing on the water, he made urgent gestures. Their meaning was obvious: cast off the rope, take up the oars, and follow the shortest course to the shore. This hurry seemed strange on a bright, sunny day, when neither wind nor waves could threaten a safe landing. There was a strange silence on board the ship. The sailors at the yardarms and the anchor lines were evidently waiting for the sloop to come back, but this readiness, as if enforced by iron discipline, was being conducted in stillness and total silence. No one called out to anyone else, nor did anyone abandon his post for a moment. But strangest of all was what happened a little later on the shore: the two sailors put down their oars, pushed the sloop onto a gravel bank, disembarked their master, handed him a large sack-like saddlebag, then fetched a chest with iron fittings out of the sloop and set it down in the middle of the beach.
Bjorn froze. He realised the meaning of the fact that there was no flag flying from the ship’s mast. Once, long ago, in a castle dungeon, he had heard some blood-chilling stories about robbers on the high seas. Of all the evildoers in this world they were the cruellest, showing no mercy even to their shipmates. If the ship really did belong to pirates, there could only be one explanation for their visit: there was treasure in the chest, which these people – no doubt being pursued by the royal navy – wanted to hide quickly. Bjorn’s conjecture was confirmed by the man in the hat: now he was walking along the beach, raking up sea kale on the tip of his cane, pausing now and then and looking all around, as if searching for a suitable spot for a hiding place. At the point where the cliff ended, dropping abruptly towards a plain, and the beach bordered on a pine forest, the man stopped beneath a sturdy tree and shouted something to the sailors. They grabbed hold of the chest. It must have been very heavy, because as they carried it they halted several times. Bjorn had to lean over the wall to see exactly what was happening under the tree: the sailors took a pickaxe and shovels out of the chest, closed the lid and set about digging a hole. Damp and stony, the ground did not give way easily, but the work proceeded remarkably quickly. Bjorn was also surprised by the ingenuity with which the chest was finally hidden. The lid was not covered with stones, but camouflaged with turf and some small juniper bushes planted on the spot. Like this it would be easy to get inside the chest without extracting it from the hole.
Eventually the man in the hat went back to the sloop, and the two sailors, wielding the pickaxe and the shovels, followed a few paces behind him, but none of the things that crossed Bjorn’s mind actually occurred on the stony beach at the foot of the cliff. Neither of the pirates fetched his chief a blow on the back of the head, split his skull or stuck a knife in his back, nor did the leader produce pistols from under the tails of his coat, suddenly turn around to face the sailors and fire at them point blank, mowing them down. But instead, on the stony beach at the foot of the cliff something happened that Bjorn could not understand at all. The sailors pushed out the sloop and started rowing towards the ship, on which the sails were already set, while the man in the black coat remained on the shore, taking no notice of the departing vessel, but inspecting something in his saddlebag. Once the ‘Doña Juanita’ had gathered wind, the newcomer threw his bag on his shoulder, drew a fantastic flourish in the air with his cane, glanced up at the rocks and, after finding a narrow gulley in the cliff with a path leading upwards, briskly set off ahead of him. As the path came out on the plateau in the exact spot several dozen paces from the precipice where Bjorn’s stone cottage stood, and in two or at most three minutes the stranger was bound to see it, Bjorn stepped back from the wall, ran across the pasture and hid behind the corner of the empty sheepfold, from where he could watch the newcomer without hindrance.
And the man was behaving very oddly. As soon as he was on the plateau, although he had undoubtedly caught sight of Bjorn’s cottage, he ignored this discovery, and instead of looking around the yard or calling for the farmer, he took a telescope from his bag and for some time watched the sea, following the departing sailing ship. Then he aimed the telescope inland, but what he could be looking for on the island remained an unfathomable mystery to Bjorn – all around stretched a bare plain, and even an eye equipped with a spyglass could not have seen the pinnacles of the church in Ventlinge from here, the smoke from the village or the large oak trees surrounding the squire’s estate. Finally the man folded the telescope, checked the position of the sun and only then, after a few dozen paces, did he investigate Bjorn’s yard. He peeped into the pigsty, went into the forge that hadn’t been active for years, and then finally without hesitating stepped inside the cottage, from where he quickly emerged, finding no one in. He briefly glanced towards the sheepfold, at which point Bjorn began to tremble, feeling as if the stranger’s gaze was capable of penetrating walls. Fortunately the man turned his eyes back in the direction of the plain, and eventually he headed that way, disappearing among the grasses, stones and juniper bushes of Alvaret plain. Bjorn busily noted a few more details in his memory: the newcomer was wearing tall boots, just like the royal reiters; under his coat and doublet he had a white shirt finished in lace; he wore no wig, but his long, raven-black hair was tied in a pigtail by a shiny silver hairpin, and he must have used expensive scent too, because a strong, musky odour lingered for a good few moments wherever he had paused.