“Strange words from a bishop.”
“Yes, I admit it. I’m not at my best, I’m afraid. I might say this in my defense. … More rhetoric, you’ll notice. ‘I might say this in my defense.’ But never mind, never mind. I might say this, as I was saying: I haven’t made the trip out of ignorant faith, like you, my dear knight. No offense! Merely an observation! You, Lars-Goren: with no place to turn, where do you turn? Back home! Not because your wife or your children can help you, or your peasants and villagers, most of whom have never seen a war. And even if they had, of course, even if every last one of them was a seasoned veteran, what could little Hälsingland do against all Sweden? Can your castle withstand a siege by Gustav? Will he forget you, abandon you to your family? Never! Then why have you come? Because you’ve come, that’s all. Surely you’re aware of it yourself, my friend. Home is, for no reason you can find words for, the seat of your power. If something will turn up, it will turn up — or so you imagine — there. You’re wrong, that’s my opinion, or at any rate my guess. It’s a fool’s faith. And yet you act on it! That’s the beauty of faith. One acts on it.”
“But not you, you claim.”
“Not me. No.”
“You’ve lost me again. Why is it you’ve come?”
Ahead of them, they could see light. We’ll soon be out of the woods, thought Bishop Brask. But only in the literal sense, of course. That was one of the fundamental symptoms of despair, it struck him now — the discovery that the literal world was no adequate metaphor. He could write a book on despair — who could do it better? But of course one couldn’t write in this condition. And what good would it do anyway, a book on despair? Whom would it serve? On the other hand, what difference if anyone was served? On the other hand, why write at all?
Out of the dimness Lars-Goren was asking again: “Why is it you’ve come?”
Strange to say, Bishop Brask thought, framing the words he might say to Lars-Goren but did not have the energy to say, I was once in love. Yes, me! Hans Brask, Bishop! It was an illicit love — to say the least! A young man! and worse yet, eunuchus ex nativitate. Nevertheless it was so. I was in love.
It was not a feeling one could explain to a man like Lars-Goren, but it had been real, and powerful. He remembered how his friend, a young prior, had changed the light and air he walked in. Perhaps there were women who could have, for some, the same effect; but it had seemed to Hans Brask, and seemed to him yet, that nothing in the world could be more beautiful than the gentleness of that man. When he listened to someone arguing a position of some kind — whether Brask or someone else — he had listened with a strange openness of heart, his head slightly forward, encouraging, as if to say “Yes! Yes, good! That’s an interesting point!” He was like the Christ Hans Brask had in those days imagined, divine in the invulnerability of his spirit. If someone attacked or insulted him, the young prior dismissed it instantly as something he himself might have done if he had misunderstood in exactly the way his attacker did, for no one would hate anyone, he was persuaded, if understanding were complete. He was a grinner and a nodder. You spoke, he nodded, pulling out your words as a fisherman pulls a fish. When he disagreed, he said so — but enough, enough!
Yet the thought of the young man would not leave him. He saw in his mind how his young friend had walked, head thrown forward, mouth sombre, as determined and prepared for disaster as a Jew, walking — almost running — as if rushing toward some encounter he feared but would not duck. Once, arguing some idiotic point of theology, Hans Brask had burst into tears and the young man had seized his trembling hands. It was the only time they’d touched, except, perhaps, for a casual pat on the shoulder, a collision — he remembered it distinctly — in the hallway. Yet the whisper of the priests skirts at the door was slaughtering, his scent unearthly — but enough.
They came out into the light of an open field, a little village in the distance. Peasants were cutting hay, the last of the season. The scent of it was dizzying. Grasshoppers and honeybees were everywhere. It came to Bishop Brask that he had ridden for a long time in silence, not answering Lars-Goren’s question. He said, “I’m sorry. You must forgive me. You asked me something — what was it?”
Lars-Goren rode with an easy comfort that made the bishop suddenly conscious again of the pain in his back and upper thighs. Lars-Goren cast back in his mind, trying to remember. Bishop Brask remembered first.
“Ah yes,” he said, “why is it that I’ve come with you? That was your question.” He thought about it, frowning hard. “I don’t know,” he said at last. He knew for an instant what the truth was — it leaped up in him like a shock of excitement, a remembered nightmare — but then his despair was back, and, wearily, he shook his head.
At Gästrikland, all one heard anywhere was excited talk of the Daljunker. From the emotion he roused, he might have been the Messiah come back in glory. Lars-Goren and the bishop, after conferring together, veered toward the west, into Dalarna. It was evening when they arrived in Kopparberg. The city was in a furor. The Daljunker had arrived sometime this morning, they were told, and would speak to the assembly tonight Lars-Goren and the bishop hurried to join the crowd.
Lars-Goren could not say what he’d expected, exactly — certainly a Dalesman, crude but impressive; otherwise why would the Dalesmen have rallied to his cause in such enthusiastic force? But whatever it was that Lars-Goren had expected, the Daljunker, when he appeared, was a surprise.
He was an elegant young man with golden hair and manners he could only have gotten from a life among aristocrats. If he’d been fostered in Denmark, his speech did not show it. Every slightest gesture was Swedish to the core. His attire was magnificent. King Gustav himself had no such fancy clothes, and even if he had, he could never have worn them with such a casual perfection. In face and figure, he was beautiful — authentically so: he was no womanish imitation, no painted doll, no fop. What he said was not true — Lars-Goren and Bishop Brask knew it. Was he simply a magnificent actor then? If so, he was the finest in the world. Was he mad? If so, he showed not the faintest hint of it.
His voice rang, though he did not seem to shout. The torchlight around him did not seem, tonight, like the torchlight of a stage but simply torchlight. Lars-Goren mused on it so deeply that he almost missed the Daljunker’s words. Surely, Lars-Goren thought — and he had never thought more carefully, more critically than tonight — surely the Daljunker would have the same effect in the middle of the day. His confidence in what he was saying was hypnotic.
The Daljunker cried out, as if in authentic agony, that King Gustav, Sweden’s great hope and the hope of the whole northern world, was dead. Listening, Lars-Goren for a moment believed it and was shocked to the bone. He glanced at Bishop Brask, who very slightly, glumly, shook his head. Lars-Goren stared in amazement at the Daljunker. “He was Sten Sture’s kinsman!” the Daljunker cried. “He fought King Kristian and King Fredrik and Sören Norby and the bishops! He made us proud to be Swedes! It is said that he killed Nils Sture, but that is not true! So brilliantly and cunningly that even the international magnates were fooled, he slipped Nils Sture out of prison, so that here and now he can stand before you all and cry, The king is dead — long live the king!’
“Le roi est mort,” Bishop Brask whispered, not turning his head. “He must have studied in France.”