Now the Daljunker spoke of Sten Sture. His voice betrayed him, cracking, though he struggled for control. Lars-Goren found himself mentally backing off in a way that obscurely frightened him. But however Lars-Goren backed off from it, there could be no doubt of the Daljunker’s sincerity. His tears, his voice, were not an actor’s effects. He meant and believed every word he said, his tears were no less honest, Lars-Goren would have sworn, than the tears of Gustav Vasa when the bodies burned on Södermalm hill. Yet the whole thing was a lie — absolutely a lie, though conceivably the handsome young man did not know it. The Daljunker, speaking of Sten Sture, who he claimed was his father, was now weeping openly, no longer struggling against the force of his emotion. The Dalesmen all around Lars-Goren and the bishop wept with him. “Madness!” Lars-Goren thought. But the word was not enough.
Lars-Goren caught himself up sternly. “Suppose I am mistaken,” he said to himself. “Suppose Gustav Vasa is dead and has been dead for weeks”—so the Daljunker had claimed—“and I am mistaken. Suppose this is truly, this Daljunker, the king of the Swedes.”
That instant Bishop Brask seized his elbow and said, “Enough. Let’s go!” Lars-Goren studied the terrible weariness in the bishops eyes and, almost unaware that he was doing it, hurled up a prayer.
Fool, thought Bishop Brask, stupid moron fool! His rage was beyond words as he forced Lars-Goren toward the back of the crowd, guiding him ferociously by the elbow. He might have laughed, if he could summon up the energy. Nevertheless, when they had escaped the outermost rim of the crowd, he for some reason did not let go of Lars-Goren’s elbow but, instead, hung on as if Lars-Goren were dragging him back out of Dalarna, north toward Hälsingland, toward safety and hope, as in fact he was.
4.
THE DEVIL TOOK THE FORM of a fly and sat on the mantel in the firelit hall. He felt the threat very strongly here, though it seemed to make no sense. “Perhaps,” he said to himself, rubbing his front feet together in frantic agitation, “perhaps it’s the form of the fly that makes me feel this way. A fly’s a very vulnerable creature. Perhaps it’s only that.” As an experiment, he flew up into the darkest corner of the room and transformed himself to a spider. If anything, the feeling of foreboding grew stronger than before. He looked down, baffled, at Lars-Goren, his family, and their guest, sitting close to the fireplace, their outlines blurring against the white, swirling fire.
There was nothing he did not know concerning the mission King Gustav had assigned to Lars-Goren and the bishop; not a detail he did not know about their long trip north. He had been startled to laughter, hearing King Gustav charge them with his removal, and he was no less inclined to laugh now. Yet his sense of danger was as sharp as the smell of woodsmoke all around him.
He lowered himself on a strand of gossamer to listen more carefully to their talk. As he listened he began to feel not only foreboding but anger. Like all human talk, it was unimportant, senseless, and took forever to get said. Their talk was so trivial he could barely keep his mind on it from sentence to sentence; and as his impatience grew by bounds, so his curious sense of foreboding grew. It would be the death of him, he thought, this inability to concentrate on stupidity not worthy of his attention. Yet surely no one, not even God himself, could keep his mind fixed on this foolish, meandering conversation in which the words of a child had the selfsame importance as the words of Lars-Goren or his wife or Bishop Brask. Still in the form of a spider, he lowered himself to the flagstones and ran nearer, scampered to within half a foot of Lars-Goren’s wife’s shoe.
Now Bishop Brask, to the Devil’s disgust, was spouting poetry. He recited in a high, thin goat-voice, rocking a little in rhythm with the words, his shadow rising and falling on the wall behind him. Lars-Goren and his wife stared into the fire, listening or dreaming. The smaller children watched the bishop with their mouths open. It was an old Swedish tale of love and war, funerals and marriages. Soon, though he fought with all his might against it, the Devil was fast asleep.
5.
THEY STAYED THREE WEEKS at the castle of Lars-Goren, sometimes riding out to watch the peasants at work or to pass an evening in one of the village inns, sometimes sitting with Lars-Goren’s family, the dog nearby, under trees or in front of the fireplace. Bishop Brask was increasingly impressed by the native intelligence of his friend — for indeed, he was beginning to think of Lars-Goren as just that, a friend, though their beliefs were far apart. Once, returning from a long ride to watch timber being marked to be cut for the coming winter’s fires, the bishop said, “You have a good life here in Hälsingland, Lars-Goren. I see how your peasants look up to you, how your wife and children love you, and I’m filled with amazement, exactly as a man might be if he visited Eden.”
They had stopped their horses side by side on a high ridge looking down over fields and the castle. The sun was low on the horizon, the sky deep red above the jagged pines. The dog, Lady, looked up inquiringly.
“Yes, it’s good here,” said Lars-Goren. He sat with his hands on the pommel of the saddle, his face solemn, waiting for the qualification he knew must come.
“But unreal,” said the bishop, with a glance at Lars-Goren. Then he looked down into the valley again.”
“Unreal?” Lars-Goren echoed.
“Like Eden,” said the bishop. “It’s a depressing thought, I admit, but inescapable.”
“I don’t follow,” said Lars-Goren.
The bishop nodded at the valley with its long shadows, the castle set on its hill like a ruby full of light. “It’s one of those dreams of innocence, this place. It’s easy enough to live justly here. What’s to prevent it? But who can live in Stockholm as you live here in Hälsingland? Or think of Paris — Vienna — Rome! The future’s with the cities; you know that yourself.” He gave an apologetic little shrug. “Cities are where the wealth is, and the power that makes your little hideaway safe or not safe. And what are the cities but hotbeds of rivalry and cunning, fear and exploitation? It’s the old story — Abraham and Lot: Abraham up there with his sheep in the mountains, Lot struggling to stay honest down in Sodom and Gomorrah. That’s where the Devil keeps house, we like to say: down in the cities where merchants show their wares by uncertain light and pine sells for fruitwood, where sly politicians thread their lies through truths and half-truths till not even they themselves know which is which. Who can help growing greedy and corrupt, in places like that? Cheat or be cheated, that’s the rule — and the rewards of shrewd cheating are visible on every hand: fine togs in every window, fine leather carriages under every lamp, fine stone houses filled with fight. Lords steal in one way, beggars and cutthroats in another, but in the end it’s all the same, rob and be robbed; it’s the norm, down there.” The bishop tipped his head, sadly smiling, his eyes queerly merry.
“Ah yes,” the bishop continued a moment later, as if answering something Lars-Goren had said, “Complexity’s a terrible thing. That’s what our retreats to the country make us see. How monstrously dull it is, every time we go back to Gustav’s court and catch up on the latest plots and counterplots, learn which new schemer has stuck his head up to tempt the axe! How rich life is here in the wilderness where people can be above-board and open with one another! How clear things become, as they were for Achilles, John the Baptist, St. Francis! No wonder your great religions come from inhospitable regions, and no wonder they tend to sicken when the wilderness gives way to the vast golden cities of Solomon. It’s the same with the arts, or so it seems to me. How fine the old Viking carvings are, or the primitive statues of Africa, or the square-cut tomb of King Edward the First of England — I suppose you haven’t seen it. But then great cities rise, artists grow wealthy, their vision grows confused and complex. What a pity! Irony comes in. Paradox. Soon the only powerful emotion artists feel is nihilism. ‘If I can’t have my Eden, I’ll destroy you all’—the same words the man of religion says when the world grows confusing and complex. ‘The axe shall be laid to the root of the tree!’ Ah yes, poor humanity! Poor Sweden!”