At the end of each spring, a ship sailed in to the island from Kalmar, carrying the King and a small number of his courtiers. Small, because the hunting lodge at Ottenby could not have housed so many idlers and servants. Apparently that was the very reason why the King liked this place: he could gallop across the sprawling grasslands of Alvaret on his own, hunting deer. And as the island was narrow, but also extremely long, several miles from Ottenby the King had had it bisected by a wall, from shore to shore – since when no deer could escape him the King. One time Bjorn had seen His Majesty on the other, royal side of the stone wall. He looked like an ordinary reiter riding up to the stag, but when the animal fell and a horn sounded for the end of the hunt, the royal game warden from Ottenby, who had finally galloped up from behind a hill, kneeled before his master and bowed his head. What if the stranger were waiting for just such a moment? To kidnap the King here, on the open plain, would be easy. His accomplices from the sailing ship were sure to appear at a given signal. Bjorn was afraid to think who these audacious men might be. One thing was without doubt: such people do not leave witnesses behind. Yet if at the terrible moment he were already at the pasturage, deep inside the island, could he then see, know or hear anything? Suddenly, however, he imagined this scene too: the reiters with their hunting dogs in the forge, where they find a clue – a lock of the King’s hair, a strip of lace, or the buckle from a shoe. Oh, and this too – two pieces of gold deliberately placed in an obvious spot by the stranger. How long would he withstand the torture? In fact there was not much, absolutely nothing he could have explained. So after several days of anguish, Bjorn adopted a clear plan. Before going to the pasturage, before heading to Alvaret with the sheep, he would make his way to Ventlinge and tell the steward everything, in Jansen’s presence. That was in case the angry man tried to lay charges against him afterwards.
That night he could not sleep. He thought the stranger was coming out of the forge and walking around the house. He got up, went to the window and stared at the farmyard. But there was nothing going on. In the soft, diffused light of the stars the dark walls of the building looked the same as ever. The sea was roaring and the wind was whistling in the plant stalks. Finally, when he fell asleep, he saw great shoals of salmon glittering in the sunlight. He was one of them. He was a silver-scaled, iridescent fish, travelling thousands of miles in the deep with millions of other creatures like him. He was torn from this journey with no goal or beginning by the dog’s hollow growling. His coat was bristling; he was quivering as if in a fever. The room was flooded with white, unnatural light, the source of which was outside. Bjorn went up to the window and squinted. Only in the first instant did he think the forge was in flames. But it was not a fire. A bright glow such as he had never seen before was coming from inside the forge, pouring through its tiny window, illuminating the yard, the walls of the sheepfold, the pigsty, the pine trees, juniper bushes and individual stones, and beaming into the sky; at times it looked just as if the column of light were falling into the stone building from up there, radiating onto the entire vicinity as it did so. Harald crawled up to the window behind his master, licking his feet and whimpering.
‘Stay here,’ whispered Bjorn. ‘I’ll go on my own.’
Only after a few paces, as he came near to the forge, did he feel fear. The wind had dropped, the sea was silent, and there wasn’t a sound, not even the slightest noise to disturb the unnatural silence. Bjorn crossed himself, then hauled a chopping block up to the wall, stood on it and pressed his face to the little window. There he saw the stranger. With his back towards Bjorn, he was leaning over something that looked like a sheet of copper, a page from a missal, or a portable book-rest. Whatever the object lying on the anvil was, the source of light was emanating from there. He was astonished that it could produce so much brightness without blinding. Reaching a hand into the field of light, the stranger extracted something small and flat, which he then held between finger and thumb, and turned high above his head, like someone inspecting a captive dragonfly. This black flake, which looked like the symbols Bjorn had so often seen carved on the stones on Alvaret plain – symbols which the pastor from Ventlinge, and also the pastor from Mörbylånga said were demonic because they were pagan – this small black leaf the stranger was holding in his fingers began to move and shine, until finally, when the letter in that satanic script appeared to be white-hot, the stranger let go of it, allowing it to float to and fro, like a jay’s feather, straight into the field of light. This action, repeated over and over again, had something of a ritual about it, and although Bjorn had never heard of black masses, he felt the insane thumping of his heart, prompted by fear. One time a flaming letter went slightly off course and failed to come down like the previous ones, so to stop it from landing on the dirt floor, the stranger blew with all his might and uttered a phrase, which did not help, or at least not enough to guarantee it a safe landing, and so he had to cross to the other side of the anvil and quickly repeat the operation; at that moment Bjorn caught sight of his face, and it was terrible. He screamed, jumped off the block and ran home, certain the stranger would race after him to punish him. In panic he latched the door shut and started looking for the wooden crucifix he had found here many years ago, among the items left by the unknown owners. The cross was nowhere, but nevertheless he fell to his knees and prayed in his own words, ardently, opening his eyes every few seconds, only to see the devilish light still shining outside. He would certainly have waited it out until dawn, if not for a storm that came over the plateau, blowing a swift gale. Flashes of lightning, almost one after another, ripped the sky apart. Thunderbolts struck the rocks with such force that the entire island shook to its foundations. Bjorn threw his jerkin over his head, called the dog and without looking round at the forge, ran to the sheepfold. He calmed the sheep, walking from one to another. Finally, as streams of rain lashed down on the world and total darkness prevailed, he fell asleep. Next morning, as he drove the flock out to the nearby meadow, he noticed nothing suspicious in the farmyard. When at around noon the stranger failed to appear on the cliff top, with his heart in his mouth, Bjorn looked inside the forge. It was empty. The anvil was sitting in its place, coated as ever in a layer of dust. Nor did he find a single trace on the dirt floor or on the pieces of equipment abandoned long ago. What did he have for the steward now? What was he to report to him? That evening, once the flock was in the sheepfold, he went down to the bottom of the cliff and checked the spot where the sailors had buried the chest. He started to tremble when under the layer of turf he once again felt the lid of the box, which gaped empty as before. It was a sure sign that the stranger would return. But when, and what for, Bjorn had no idea. He merely sensed it had nothing to do with a conspiracy, because the forces that had appeared on the island would have had a thousand opportunities to commit a crime in a far simpler way. Yet he wanted to wipe out the evidence, so under cover of night he dug up the chest, chopped it to pieces, threw all the fittings into the sea, and set fire to the boards in a rocky niche, where a year earlier the animal pyre had burned; at last, to finish he filled in the hole under the pine trees. But it didn’t make his heart feel any lighter. Maybe only Jansen, who knew many old tales, could have heard him out, understood and given advice. But how was he to describe that terrible face? Wrinkled, the skin tanned almost black, with sparse locks of hair falling onto it, it looked as if dug out of the abyss. All this was too hard for Bjorn, and for the first time in many years, his loneliness lay on his shoulders like a huge burden. In the end he did not go to Ventlinge. He wrapped his shepherd’s odds and ends in a linen sheet, and although the grass on the Alvaret plains was not yet fully grown, at dawn he drove his flock from the farmyard, jamming broken yew twigs into the doors of his house and the sheepfold according to the old custom. He set off deep inland, hoping to encounter no evil before autumn.