The pasturelands here had no set borders, and if he had to move on, he chose a route where it was easy to move between sheltered spots. Devoid of trees, Alvaret offered some hollows which, though shallow, were numerous. Shielded from the wind and overgrown with juniper, they were the only places on the island unreached by the constant rumble of the sea. By day he heard the sheep bleating, the larks singing, and sometimes Harald barking. The dog quickly learned to hunt rabbits and they were never hungry by the campfire. At night Bjorn spent hours staring at the stars, and was sorry he didn’t know their names. Nevertheless, as every summer, he felt almost happy. Almost, because sometimes, against his own will, he thought about the stranger’s visit. These considerations led nowhere, and tormented Bjorn, but under their influence he did take certain precautionary measures. Even by day he avoided the large boulders standing in circles, which he knew to be even older than the oak trees at Ventlinge. Formerly, especially on moonlit nights, he liked to lie down in the very middle of a circle and gaze at the sky, feeling the ground breathing and the ring of stones safely encompassing him. He had never believed in elves or devils seizing people’s souls right here. Now he was afraid of these places, copiously scattered over the plain, and if one of the sheep happened to stray into a stone circle, Bjorn called the dog and told him to chase it out, while crossing himself as in church. But nothing evil happened. Bjorn wandered with his flock first to the north, then went back south again; once every five days Jansen and his helper tracked him down without difficulty, to take away the curds on a two-wheel cart and give him some clean milking pails. Usually as well as bread, they brought fresh news from Ventlinge. A fine Polish-bred steed had broken a leg beneath the King; the accident caused no harm, but the reiter officer had had to kill the horse with a shot in the ear. The wife of the pastor from Mörbylånga had happily given birth to a seventh daughter, which was celebrated by communal singing of psalms. The fishermen from Degerhamn had caught such a large cod that the entire village had had a sumptuous supper. Bjorn listened, nodded his head, and replied, but he was glad when they went away. Now, even if Jansen had come alone, without the helper, he would not have wanted to talk about that incident. It was left further and further behind him, and although the chopped-up, burned chest was a real and painful element in all this, the rest might be wished away – a delusion.
He headed north again, along the eastern edge of Alvaret, to the hollow where his favourite spring was located. As no saint had ever visited the island, it did not have its own name. Yet Bjorn knew that with the addition of mint leaves, its water had great power. It only took a few sips for his tired body to feel new strength. But he could not enjoy refreshment straight away. There at the dip in the rocks, master and dog stopped dead at the sight of a deer. The animal raised its mighty head and reluctantly stepped back a couple of paces from the spring. Harald barked, Bjorn called him to heel, and the stag, as if he were the rightful owner of this place, slowly moved onto a hillock, from where he looked round at the intruders once again, before disappearing among the juniper bushes. Bjorn was in no doubt: the animal could only have ended up in this part of the island if he had jumped the King’s wall, yet he had never heard of such a thing before. Unless the stag were older than the monarch’s whim and had spent his entire life at liberty, on this side of the wall, but in that case how old must he be? Bjorn remembered that when he was brought to the island, before becoming a shepherd, he had spent almost two years with the prisoners, finishing building the wall. But it was long enough ago for him to have lost track of time.
He lit a bonfire, told the dog to keep watch, and headed downhill to the seashore, which on this side of the island was almost flat, grassy and swampy like a peat bog. He attached a stone to a mesh net and cast it far into the sea, carefully fastening the line on shore. Halfway back he met Harald. The dog cringed at his feet with his tail between his legs, blocking the path, and when Bjorn tried to move ahead, he began to bark.
‘Has our stag come back?’ said Bjorn. ‘All right, all right, I know that’s no morsel for us! For meat like that you go to the rope! Stop barking!’
The words stuck in his throat. By the bonfire sat a man, the one who had disembarked from the sloop at the foot of the cliffs. Bjorn could not take another step. He was sure that when the stranger turned his face from the fire, he would die, for no one can look death in the eyes twice; but what happened was different. He did turn to face Bjorn, but Bjorn did not die. The face was the one he remembered from before the night in the forge.
‘Do not be surprised,’ said the same, deep voice. ‘Do not be afraid. It is I who need your help.’
‘First I want to know,’ said Bjorn, barely advancing a step, ‘who you are. If you won’t say, I will leave. What I saw then…’
‘Was not for you. Each man may see only as much as he is destined.’
‘So first I must know what I am destined.’
Having said this, Bjorn was surprised by his own boldness. He no longer called him ‘Sir’, he had raised his voice, and yet this man, if he was a man, was capable of far more than a hundred squires from Ventlinge; if he was not a man, things could take an even worse turn.
‘Believe me, it is better not to know. He who knows the future suffers doubly, and sometimes four times over. You do not deserve that.’
‘Your speech is not clear,’ said Bjorn, approaching the bonfire, ‘so who are you?’
‘One of the three, though not the first or the last.’
‘You do not wish to say much. Where do you come from?’
‘We wandered from a far distant country. It is the land of the wise men, so they say. And our return was foretold at the right time. But,’ he said, looking hard at Bjorn, ‘you cannot always return to a city by the same gate.’
‘Do you live in Kalmar? Can’t you get back there? No, you must be from far away. Somewhere much further than Kalmar,’ said Bjorn, and paused for a moment. ‘Are you from Venice?’
‘I was there very long ago. But Venice is not the land of the wise men.’
Only now did Bjorn approach the fire. Slowly he sat down opposite the stranger. He was hungry, so he broke some bread and handed it to his guest. The man took a wineskin from his bag and two silver cups. Bjorn savoured the drink very slowly.
‘Have you never drunk wine before?’ asked the stranger.
‘Never,’ replied Bjorn. ‘Sometimes, after the harvest, I have tasted beer. This,’ he raised his cup, ‘is better than beer.’
The stranger smiled, and it occurred to Bjorn that anyone who ate bread and drank wine in such an ordinary way could not really be a demon, even though his speech was rather unclear. But he did know that gentlemen could be terribly eccentric, so if not for that moment in the forge, now he would no longer have been at all afraid.