Chapter V (4)

“Afraid I’m not. It will go with me as it may. To be sure, I am no better than the others. Only I’m perishing of cold.”

“Come here to the door then, but don’t be frightened. Do you see out there in the doorway the rascals have set a little wooden casket. It cannot be very heavy, but perhaps you will have room in it. If you dare lay yourself in the casket, perhaps I can smuggle you out of the town.”

“That I surely dare.”

Her teeth chattered and she trembled, but she straightened herself up a little, let the chemise hang free, and went out on the stones in the doorway.

The pastor lifted off the moist lid, which was loose, and found nothing else in the plundered casket than shavings and a brown blanket.

“That was just what I needed,” she shivered. She pulled up the blanket, wrapped it over her, stepped up, and laid herself on her back in the shavings.

The pastor bent over her, laid both his hands on her shoulder, and looked into her fearless eyes. She might be eighteen or nineteen years old. Her hair was stroked smoothly back to the braid.

As he stood so, it came over him that he had not always looked on her in the past with as pure and fatherly feelings as he himself had wished and as he had pretended to do. But now he did so. His long white hair fell down as far as her cheeks.

“May it go well with you, child! I am old. It matters little whether my life goes on for a while still or is destroyed in the day that now is. I have been in many a piece of mischief and many an ill deed in my time, and for the forgiveness of my sins I will also for once have part in something good.”

He nodded and nodded toward her and raised himself.

There outside the clamor sounded louder than ever. He laid on the lid and fastened in the long, crookedly set screws as well as he was able. Then he knelt, knotted a rope crosswise around the casket, and with strong arms lifted the heavy burden on his back. Bending forward and staggering, he strode out into the open air.

“Look there!” shouted one of the pillagers at the fire, but his nearest comrade silenced him with the word: “Let the poor old man alone! That’s only a miserable beggar’s casket.”

Sweat trickled out over the old man’s face, and his back and arms ached and smarted under the severe weight. Step by step he moved forward through the dark streets. Every now and then he had to set down the casket on the ground to take breath, but then he stood with his hands on the lid in constant fear of being challenged and hustled away or of being stabbed by some roving band of soldier revelers. Several times he had to step to one side because of the heavy wagons, loaded with men and women, who were to be taken hundreds of miles into Russia to people the waste regions. The great conquering czar was a sower who did not count the seeds he strewed.

When finally the old war-pastor reached the town gate and the watch came to meet him, he roused his strength to the utmost with all the collected will-power of his anxiety. With a single arm he held the casket in place on his back, while with his free hand he drew the Riga riksdollar from his pocket and handed it to the sentry as a bribe.

The soldier motioned to him to go on.

He wanted again to move his foot forward, but now he was unable. Through the town gate he saw the river glimmer on the open plain, but then it grew dark before his eyes. Still afraid for his burden in his helplessness, he softly and cautiously lowered the casket beside him on the stone flagging. Thereupon he fell forward and died.

The other men of the watch sprang forward and began to curse and complain. No casket could remain standing there in the door of the gateway.

The officers, who were sitting and gambling in a room of the casemate, now came likewise to the spot. One of them, a little dry, weather-beaten figure with rectangular spectacles, who was more like a clerk than a soldier, took a lantern, came forward and held the lid slightly ajar with his scabbard.

First he drew back his head precipitately, nearly dropping the lantern. The next time he bent down and looked in, he dwelt on the action longer and more searchingly, and afterwards passed his hands over his whole face to hide his thoughts. Then he unhooked his spectacles and stood pondering. When he bent the third time, he sent the light back and forward through the crevice,--and there inside lay Lina Andersdotter quite calmly, screwing up her eyes at him in the lantern’s light without herself knowing what was going on.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

He laid aside the lantern and went a couple of paces up and down through the door with hands crossed behind his back. There came then into his frigid expression a sly and merrily vibrating life, and unnoticed he took some August apples and thrust them into the casket. Thereupon he began to give commands.

“Come here, boys! Let eight men take the casket to General Ogilvy, salute him and say that this is a small gift from his humble servant, Ivan Alexievitch. Eight of you others who have just come from working on the walls go after it and roll up your leather aprons like trumpets, in which you are to blow the regimental march. But in front of all two men are to go with rushlights. Forward, march!”

The savage soldiers looked open-mouth at one another and obeyed. Laughing, they lifted the casket on their muskets. Two long stalks, tarred and twisted about with straw, were brought forward from a corner of the gateway and lighted at the lantern; and as the procession set itself in motion into the field toward the camp, the musicians tooted the march in their aprons:

O you, who have chosen a gun to bear,
You care not for lodging or bed, lad,
You feed like a prince on the finest fare,
Of girls and of lice you’ve enough and to spare,
But when will you ever be paid, lad?

When they came to the camp, the soldiers rushed together around them in the torch-light. General Ogilvy, who was sitting at table, came out of his tent.

“Beloved little father,” said one of the bearers, “Lieutenant Ivan Alexievitch humbly sends you this gift.”

Ogilvy grew pale and bit his lips under his bushy gray mustaches. His face, wrinkled and strained to harshness, was at bottom good-natured and friendly.

“Is he out of his right mind?” he thundered with pretended wrath, though in reality he was as frightened as a boy. “Put down the casket and break off the lid!”

The soldiers pried it open with their blades, and the dark lid rattled to one side.

Ogilvy stared. With that he burst out laughing. He guffawed so that he had to sit down on an earthen bench. And the soldiers laughed too. They laughed down through the whole lane of tents, so that they reeled and tottered and had to support themselves one against another like drunkards. Lina Andersdotter lay there in the casket with a half-eaten apple in her hand and made great eyes. She had now become warm again and was as blooming of cheek as a doll.

“By all the saints,” Ogilvy burst out. “Not ever in the catacombs of St. Anthony has man seen such a miracle. This is a corpse that ought to be sent to the Czar himself.”

“By no means,” answered one of his officers. “I sent him two little fair-haired baggages day before yesterday, but he only cares for thin brunettes.”

“So it is,” answered Ogilvy, and turned himself bending toward Narva. “Salute Ivan Alexievitch and say that, when the casket is returned, there shall lie in the bottom of it a captain’s commission.--Hey, sweetheart!”

He went forward and stroked Lina Andersdotter under the chin.

But at that she sat up, took hold of his hair, and gave him a resounding box on the ear, and after that another.

He did not let it affect him in the least, but continued to laugh.

“That’s the way I like them,” he said, “that’s the way I like them. I will make you queen of the marauders, my chick, and as token thereof I give you here a bracelet with a turquoise in the clasp. A band of our worst rabble stole it just now from the casket of Countess Horn in Narva.”

He shook the chain from his wrist and she caught it eagerly to her.

When later in the evening the cloth was laid in the tent, Lina Andersdotter sat at the table beside Ogilvy. She had now got French clothes of flowered brocade and wore a head-dress with blonde-lace. But what hands! She managed to eat with gloves, but under them swelled the big, broad fingers and the red shone between the buttons.

“Hoho! hoho!” shouted the generals. “Those hands make a man merrier than he would get with a whole flask of Hungary. Help! Loosen our belts! Hold us under the arms! It will be the death of us.”

Meanwhile she helped herself, munched sweetmeats, and sat with her spoon in the air. If anything tasted bad, she made a face. Eat she could. Drink, on the contrary, she would not but only took a swallow in her mouth and then spurted the wine over the generals. But all their curses and worst expressions she picked up while she sat ever alike blooming and gay.

“Help, help!” shrieked the generals, choked with laughter. “Blow out the light so they can slip her away! Hold our foreheads! Help! Will you have a little pull of a tobacco pipe, mademoiselle?”

“Go to the deuce! Can’t I sit in peace!” answered Lina Andersdotter.

There was one thing, though, that Ogilvy skillfully concealed so that the laughers should not turn to him and nudge him in the ribs and pull his coat-tails and say: “Oho, little father, you’ve got into water too deep for your bald head. Bless you, little father, bless you and your little mishap!”

He pretended always to treat her with slightly indifferent familiarity, but he never sat so near her that his dog could not jump up between them. He never took hold of her so that anyone saw it, and never either when no one saw it, for then he knew that her hand would catch him on the face so that the glove would split and the red shine out in all its strength. It was enough that, notwithstanding, she now and then gave him a slap in the middle of the face, and no one did she snub worse than him. But at all that he only laughed with the others, so that never before had there been in the camp such a clamor and bedlam.

Sometimes he thought of knouting her, but he was ashamed before the others, because everything could be heard through the tent, and he feared that they then would the more easily guess how things stood and how little he got along with the girl. Wait, he thought, we shall be sitting alone sometime under lock and key. Just wait! Till then things may go on as they do.

“Help, help!” shouted the generals. “That’s how she carries her train. We must take hold of it. Lord, lord, no; but just look!”

“Take it up, you,” said she. “Take it up, you. That’s what you are for.”

And so the generals were cuffed and bore her train, both when she came to the table and when she went.

Then it happened one evening when she sat among the drinking old men that an adjutant stepped in, hesitating and embarrassed. He turned to Ogilvy.

“Dare I be frank?”

“Naturally, my lad.”

“And whatever I say will be forgiven?”

“By my honor. Only speak out!”

“The czar is on his way out to the camp.”

“Very good, he is my gracious lord.”

The adjutant pointed at Lina Andersdotter.

“The czar has a fancy for tall brunettes,” said Ogilvy.

“Your Excellency, in these last days he has changed his taste.”

“God! Call the troops to arms--and forward with the three-horse wagon!”

Now the alarm was struck. Drums rolled, trumpets shattered, weapons clattered, and shouts and trampling filled the night. The drinking party was broken up, and Lina Andersdotter was set in a baggage-wagon.

Beside the peasant who was driving, a soldier sprang up with a lighted lantern, and she heard the peasant softly inquire of him the purpose of the flight.

“The czar,” answered the soldier in a monotone and pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at the girl.

At that the peasant shrunk together as at a frost-cold breeze and whipped the small, shaggy horses more and more wildly. He hallooed and beat and urged them into a thundering gallop. The lantern-light fell caressingly on the fir bushes and the burnt homesteads; the wagon banged and tottered among the stones, and creaked in its joints.

Lina Andersdotter lay on her back in the hay and looked at the stars. Whither was she carried? What fate awaited her? She wondered and wondered. On her wrist hung the bracelet as a talisman, a pledge for the accomplishing of Ogilvy’s wonderful prediction. Queen of the Marauders! It sounded so grand, though at first she had so gradually discovered what the word really betokened. She stroked and plucked at the small silver rings. Then she sat up and scanned the stony road in the lantern’s light. Cautiously she moved further and further out. Unnoticed, she climbed slowly over the wagon-sill and lowered her feet to the ground. Would she be crushed and left lying? For a few steps she dragged along. Then she lost her hold, stumbled, and fell lacerated among the bushes.

On thundered the baggage-wagon with its three galloping horses, and the lantern-light vanished. Then she got up and wiped off the blood from her cheeks while she wandered forth into the trackless woods.

When she met barbarous-looking fugitives and they saw her pretty face, they at once picked berries and mushrooms for her and followed along. She got a whole court of ragamuffins and she treated them so ill that they scarcely dared to touch her dress, but sometimes they stabbed each other. Finally she took service with a skipper’s wife, who was to sail with her husband to Danzig. Scarcely had it begun to grow dark when the ragamuffins came out one after another and took service for nothing. The skipper sat on his cabin in the moonlight, blew his shepherd’s pipe, and congratulated himself on having got such a willing crew. And never had an old woman seen a stronger serving-maid. But hardly had they put to sea when Lina Andersdotter sat herself beside the skipper with her arms crossed, and all the ragamuffins lay on their backs and sang in tune with the pipe.

“Do you think I’ll scour your bunks?” said she.

“Beat her, beat her,” cried the old woman, but the skipper only moved nearer and blew and blew on his pipe. Night and day the vessel rocked on the bright waves with slack sail, and the skipper played for Lina Andersdotter, who danced with her ragamuffins, but down in the cabin sat the old woman crying and lamenting.

When they came to Danzig the skipper stuck the pipe under his arm and slunk off the vessel at night with Lina Andersdotter and her ragamuffins. They guessed now that she thought of going to the Swedish troops in Poland and compelling the king himself to give her his hand.

When she with her followers stepped humming in among the Swedish women of the camp, there was uproar and alarm, because for two days they had sat by their wagons without food. The last provisions had been delivered to the sutlers and divided among the soldiers. Then she stepped forward to the first corporal she happened on and set her hands on her hips.

“Aren’t you ashamed,” said she, “to let my women starve, when in spite of all you can’t get along without them?”

“_Your_ women? Who are you?”

She pointed to her bracelet. “I am Lina Andersdotter, the Queen of the Marauders, and now take five men and follow us!”

He looked toward his captain, the reckless Jacob Elfsberg, he looked at her pretty face and at his men. How the line surrounded her with their muskets, and the women armed themselves with whip-handles and pokers! At night when the light of the camp-fire tinged the heavens, the king, inquisitive, got into his saddle. As the wild throng came back with well-laden wagons and oxen and sheep, the troops cheered louder than ever: “Hurrah for King Charles! Hurrah for Queen Caroline!”

The women thronged about the king’s horse so that the lackeys had to hold them back, and Lina Andersdotter went to him to shake hands with him. But he thereupon rose in his stirrups and shouted over the women’s heads to the corporal and the five soldiers: “That’s well maraudered, boys!”

From that moment she would never hear the king named, and whenever she met a man, she flung her sharpest abuse right in his face, whether he was plain private or general. When Malcomb Bjorkman, the young guardsman--who, however, was already famous for his exploits and wounds--held out his hand to her, she scornfully laid in it her ragged, empty purse; and she was never angrier than when she heard General Meyerfelt whistling as he rode before his dragoons, or recognized Colonel Grothusen’s yellow-brown cheeks and raven-black wig. But if a wounded wretch lay beside the road, she offered him the last drops from her tin flask and lifted him into her wagon. Frost and scratches soon calloused her cheeks. High on the baggage-wagon she sat with the butt of a whip and commanded all the wild camp-followers, loose women, lawful wives, and thievish fellows that streamed to them from east and West. When at night the flare of a fire arose toward heaven, the soldiers knew that Queen Caroline was out on a plundering raid.

Days and years went by. Then, after the jolly winter-quarters in Saxony, when the troops were marching toward the Ukraine, the king commanded that all women should leave the army.

“Teach him to mind his own affairs!” muttered Lina Andersdotter, and she very tranquilly drove on.

But when the army came to the Beresina, there was murmuring and lamenting among the women. They gathered around Lina Andersdotter’s cart and wrung their hands and lifted their babies on high.

“See what you have to answer for! The troops have already crossed the river and broken all the bridges behind them. They have left us as prey to the Cossacks.”

She sat with her whip on her knee with her high boots, but on her wrist gleamed the silver chain with its turquoise. All the more violently did the terrified women sob and moan around her, and from the closed baggage-wagons, which were like boxes, crept out painted and powdered Saxon hussies. Some of them, none the less, had satin gowns and gold necklaces. From all sides came women she had never seen before.

“Dirty wenches!” muttered she. “Now at last I have a chance to see the smuggled goods that the captains and lieutenants brought along in their wagons. What have you to do among my poor baggage-crones? But now we all come to know what a man amounts to when his haversack is getting light.”

Then they caught hold of her clothes and called upon her as if she alone could seal their fate.

“Is there no one,” she asked, “who knows the psalm: ‘When I am borne through the Vale of Death’? Sing it, sing it!”

Some of the women struck up the psalm with choked and nearly whispering voices, but the others rushed down to the river, hunted out boats and wreckage from the bridges, and rowed themselves across. Each and every one who had a husband or a beloved in the army had hoped even at the last she would be taken along and hidden; but all the worst women of the rabble, who belonged neither to this man nor to that, stood with their rags or their tasteless, ridiculous gowns in a ring around Lina Andersdotter. Meanwhile swarms of Cossacks, who had crossed the river to snap up any straggling marauders, were sneaking up through the bushes on their hands and knees.

Then her heart failed her and she stepped down from the wagon.

“Poor children!” she said, and patted the hussies on the cheek. “Poor children, I will not desert you. But now,--devil take me!--do you pray to God that he will make your blood-red sins white, for I have nothing else to offer you than to shame the men and die a hero’s death.”

She opened the wagon-chest and hunted out from among her plunder some pikes and Polish sabres, which she put into the hands of the softly-singing women. Thereupon she herself grasped a musket without powder or shot and set herself among the others around the cart to wait. So they stood in the sunset light on the highest part of the shore.

Then the women on the river saw the Cossacks rush forward to the cart and cut down one after another of them with the idea that they were men in disguise. They wanted to turn their boats, and soldiers sprang down from their ranks to the water and opened fire.

“Hurrah for King Charles,” they cried with a thousand intermingled voices; “and hurrah--No, it’s too late. Look, look! There is Queen Caroline who in the midst of the harlots is dying a virgin with a musket in her hand!”

CAPTURED

Far out in the wastes of Småland and Finnved wondrous prodigies appeared in the air and after that work lost all worth and the morrow all hope. People either went hungry or ate and drank with riot and revel amid half-stifled curses. At every farm sat a mother or a widow in mourning. During the day’s occupation she talked of the fallen or the captives, and at night she started from her sleep and thought she was still hearing the thunder of the hideous wagons on which teamsters in black oil-cloth cloaks carried away those who had died of the plague.

In the church of Riddarsholm the body of the Princess Hedwig Sofia had lain unburied for seven years from lack of money, and now a new coffin had been laid out for the old Queen Dowager Hedwig Eleonora, Charles’s mother. Several sleepy ladies-in-waiting were keeping the death-watch, and wax-lights burned mistily around the dead, who lay wrapped in a simple covering of linen.

The youngest lady-in-waiting arose yawning, went to the window, and drew back the black broad-cloth to see if dawn had not appeared.

Limping steps were heard from the ante-room, and a little man of a gnarled and rugged figure, who in every way tried to subdue the thump of his wooden leg, advanced to the coffin and with signs of deep reverence lifted aside the drapery. His fair, almost white hair lay close along his head and extended down his neck as far as his collar. From a flask he poured embalming liquid into a funnel, which was set in the royal corpse between the kirtle and the bodice. But the liquid was absorbed very slowly, and, waiting, he set down the flask on the funeral carpet and went to the lady at the window.

“Is it not seven o’clock yet, Blomberg?” she whispered.

“It has just struck six. It’s an awful weather outside, and I feel in the stump of my leg that we’re going to have a snow-storm. But then it’s a long while since one could foretell anything good in Sweden. Trust me, not this time either will there be enough money for a decent funeral. It was only the beginning when the sainted Ekerot prophesied misery and conflagration. And perhaps the fire didn’t go on over the island in front of the castle! Over the plain of Upsala it threw its light from cathedral and citadel. In Vasterås and Linköping the tempest sweeps the ashes around the blackened wastes--and now there’s burning in all quarters of the kingdom. Forgive my freedom, gracious mistress, but to tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie. That’s my old maxim that saved my life once down there by the Dnieper River.”

“Saved your life? You were then a surgeon in your regiment. You must sit down by me here and tell the story. The time is so long.”

Blomberg spoke resignedly and a trifle like a priest, from time to time lifting his dexter and middle fingers with the other fingers closed.

Both cast a glance at the corpse, which slept in its coffin with gracefully disposed locks, and wax and rouge in the deepest of the wrinkles. Thereupon they sat themselves on a bench in the window nook outside the hanging broad-cloth, and Blomberg began whispering his narrative.

* * * * *

I was lying unconscious in the marshy wilderness at Poltava. I had stumped along on my wooden leg and got a blow from a horse’s hoof, and when I came to, it was night. I felt a cold, strange hand fumble under my coat and pull at the buttons. An abomination before the Lord are the devices of the wicked, I thought; but gentle words are pure. Without becoming frightened, I seized the corpse-plunderer very silently by the breast, and by his stammered words of terror I perceived that he was one of the Zaporogeans who had made an alliance with the Swedes and followed the army. As surgeon I had tended many of these men, as well as captured Poles and Muscovites, and could make myself tolerably understood in their various languages.

“Many devices are in the heart of man,” said I meekly; “but the counsel of the Lord, that shall abide. No evil can befall the righteous, but the ungodly shall be filled with misfortunes.”

“Forgive me, pious sir,” whispered the Zaporogean. “The Swedish czar has left us poor Zaporogeans to our fate, and the Muscovite czar, whom we faithlessly deserted, is coming to maim and slay us. I only wanted to get me a Swedish coat so that in a moment of need I could give myself out as one of you. Do not be angry, godly sir!”

To see if he had any knife, I searched out flint and steel while he was speaking and made a fire with dry thistles and twigs which lay at my feet. I noted then that I had before me a little frightened old man with a sly face and two empty hands. He raised himself as vehemently as a hungry animal that has found its prey and bent in the light over a Swedish ensign who lay dead in the grass. Thinking that a dead man might willingly grant a helpless ally his coat, I did nothing to hinder the Zaporogean; but as he drew the coat from the fallen one, a letter slipped from the pocket. I saw by the address that Falkenburg was the name of the boy who had bled to death. He lay now as fairly and peacefully stretched out as if he had slept in the meadow by the house where he was born. The letter was from his sister, and I had only time to spell out the words which from that hour became my favorite maxim: To tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie. At that moment the Zaporogean put out my light.

“With your wise consent, sir,” he whispered, “do not draw the corpse-plunderers hither.”

I paid little attention to his talk, but repeated time after time: “To tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie. That is a big saying my old fellow, and you shall see that I get along further with it than you do with your disguise.”

“We may try it,” answered the Zaporogean, “but we must promise this, that the one of us who survives the other shall offer a prayer for the other’s soul.”

“That is agreed,” I said, and gave him my hand, for it seemed as if through misfortune I had found in this shaggy-bearded barbarian a friend and a brother.

He helped me up and at daybreak we fell into the long line of stragglers and wounded that silently tottered into Poltava to give themselves up as prisoners. They willingly tried to conceal the Zaporogean among the rest. His big boots with their flaps reached up to his hips and his coat-tails hung down to his spurs. As soon as a Cossack looked at him, he turned to one of us and cried with raised voice the only Swedish words he had come to learn in the campaign: “I Shwede, Devil-damn!”

My Zaporogean and I with eight of my comrades were assigned quarters in the upper story of a big stone house. As we two had come up there first, we picked out for ourselves a little separate cubby-hole with a window on an alley. There was nothing else there than a little straw to lie on, but I had in my coat a tin flute, which I had from a fallen Kalmuck at Starodub, and on which I had taught myself to play a few pretty psalms. With that I shortened the time, and soon we noticed that, as often as I played, a young woman came to the window on the other side of the alley. Possibly for that reason I played more than I should have otherwise cared to and I know not rightly whether she was fairer and more seemly than all other women, or whether long sojourn among men had made my eye less accustomed, but I had great joy in beholding her. However, I never looked at her when she turned her face toward our window, because I have always been bashful before women-folk and have never rightly understood how to conduct myself in that which pertains to them. Never, too, have I sought fellowship with men who go with their heads full of wenches and do nothing but hanker after gallant intrigues. “Let everyone keep his vessel in holiness,” Paul saith, “and not in the lust of desire as do the heathen, which know not God; also let no one in this matter dishonor and wrong his brother, because the Lord is a powerful avenger in all such things.”

I recognized, however, that a man should at all times bear himself courteously and fittingly, and as one arm of my coat was in tatters, I always turned that side inward when I played.

She usually sat with arms crossed above the window-sill, and her hands were round and white, though large. She had a scarlet-colored bodice with silver buttons and many chains. An old witch who often stood beneath her window with a wheel-barrow and sold bread covered with jam called her Feodosova.

When it grew dusk, she lighted a lamp, and since neither she nor we had any shutters, we could follow her with our glance when she blew on the fire, but I found it more proper that we should turn away and I therefore set myself with my Zaporogean on the straw in the corner.

Besides the prayer-book, I had a few torn-out leaves of Müller’s “Sermons,” and I read and translated many passages for my Zaporogean. But when I noticed that he did not listen, I gave it over for more worldly objects and asked him of our neighbor on the other side of the alley. He said that she was not unmarried, because maidens in that country always wore a long plait tied with ribbons and a little red tuft of silk. More likely she was a widow because her hair hung loose as a token of sorrow.

When it became wholly dark and we lay down on the straw, I discovered that the Zaporogean had stolen my silver snuff-spoon, but after I had taken it back and reproached him for his fault, we slept beside each other as friends.

I was almost bashful, when it was morning again, at feeling myself happier than for a long time, but as soon as I had held prayers with the Zaporogean and had washed and arranged myself sufficiently, I went to the window and played one of my most beautiful psalms.

Feodosova was already sitting in the sunlight. To show her how different the Swedes were from her fellow-countrymen I instructed my Zaporogean to clean our room, and after a couple of hours the white-washed walls were shining white and free from cobwebs. All this helped me to drive away my thoughts, but as soon as I set myself again at rest, my torments of conscience awakened, that I could be happy in such misery. In the hall outside, my comrades sat on floor and benches, sighing heavily and whispering about their dear ones at home. In due turn two of us every day were allowed to go out into the open air to the ramparts, but when I laid myself on my straw in the evening, I was ashamed to pray God that the lot next morning should fall upon me. I knew very well within myself that, if I longed for an hour’s freedom, it was only to invent an errand to the house opposite. And yet I felt that, if the lot really fell upon me without my prayer, I should still never venture to go up there.

When I came to the window in the morning, Feodosova lay sleeping in her clothes on the floor with a cushion under her neck. It was still early and cool, and I did not have the heart to set the tin flute to my mouth. But as I stood there and waited, she may have apprehended in her sleep that I was gazing at her, for she looked up and laughed and stretched her arms out, and all that so suddenly that I did not manage to draw back unnoticed. My brow became hot, I laid aside my flute, and behaved myself in every way so clumsily and unskilfully that I never was so displeased with myself. I pulled and straightened my belt, took my flute again from the window, inspected it, and pretended I was blowing dust out of it. When finally the Russian subaltern who had charge over us unfortunates informed my Zaporogean that he was one of the two who were to go out into the city that day, I drew the Zaporogean aside into a corner and enjoined him with many words to pick a bunch of yellow stellaria such as I had seen around the burned houses by the ramparts. At a suitable opportunity we should then give them to Feodosova I said. She appeared to be a good and worthy woman, who perchance in return might give us poor fellows some fruit or nuts, I said. The miserable bite of bread that the czar allowed us daily did not even quiet our worst hunger, I said.

He was afraid to show himself out in the sunlight, but neither did he dare to arouse mistrust by staying in, and therefore he obeyed and went.

Scarcely was he out of the door, though, when I began to regret that I had not held him back, because now in solitude my embarrassment grew much greater. I sat down on the bed in the corner, where I was invisible, and stayed there obstinately.

Still the time was long, for thoughts were many. After a while I heard the Zaporogean’s voice. Without reflecting, I went to the window and saw him standing by Feodosova with a great, splendid bouquet of stellaria, which reminded one of irises. First she didn’t want to take them but answered that they were impure, since they had been given by a heathen. He pretended that he understood nothing and that he only knew a few words of her speech but with winkings and gestures and nods he made it intelligible that I had sent the flowers, and then at last she took them.

Beside myself with bashfulness, I went back into the corner, and when the Zaporogean returned, I seized him behind the shoulders, shook him, and stood him against the wall.

But scarcely had I let go my grasp when he with his thoughtless vivacity stood at the window again, made signs with his hands and threw kisses on all five of his fingers. Then I came forward, pushed him aside, and bowed. Feodosova sat picking the flowers apart, pulling off the leaves and letting them fall one by one to the ground. Vehemence helped me so that I took courage and began to speak, while I was still considering how it would be most polite to begin a conversation.

“The lady will not take amiss my comrade’s pranks and unseemly gestures,” I stammered.

She plucked still more eagerly at the flowers and answered after a time, “My husband, when he was alive, often used to say that from heel to head such well-made soldiers as the Swedes were not to be found. He had seen Swedish prisoners undressed and whipped by women and had seen that the women at the last were so moved because of their beauty, that they stuck the rods under their arms and sobbed themselves, instead of those they tormented. Therefore have I become very curious these days.... And the love songs which you play sound so wonderful!”

Her speech pleased me not altogether, and I found it little seemly to answer in the same spirit by praising her figure and white arms. Instead I took my flute and played my favorite psalm: “E’en from the bottom of my heart I call Thee in my need.”

After that we conversed of many things, and though my store of words was small, we soon understood each other so well that never did any day seem to me shorter.

At mid-day, after she had clattered about with jugs and plates and swung a palm-leaf fan over the embers in the fire-place, she lifted down from the ceiling a landing-net with which formerly her husband had caught small fish in the river. Into the net she put a pan with steaming cabbage and a wooden flask with kvass, and the net was so long that she could hand us the meal across the street. When I drank to her, she nodded and smiled and said that she did not regard it as wrong to feel pity for captured heathens. Toward evening she moved her spinning-wheel to the window, and we kept on conversing when it was dusk. I no longer felt it as a sin to be happy in the midst of the sorrow that surrounded us, because my intent was innocent and pure. Just as I had seen the stellaria shining over heaps of ashes among the burned and desolate houses by the ramparts as a song of praise to God’s goodness, so seemed to me now the joy of my heart.

When it became night and I had held prayer with my Zaporogean and yet once more reproached him that he had stolen my snuff-spoon, the garrulous man began to talk to me in an undertone and say: “I see clearly, little father, that you are in love with Feodosova, and in truth she is a good and pure woman whom you may take to wife. That you never would enter upon any love-dealing of another sort I have understood from the first.”

“Such stuff!” answered I, “such stuff!”

“Truth is in the long run less dangerous than lying, you used to say.”

When he struck me with my own maxim-staff, I became confounded, and he proceeded.

“The czar has promised good employment and wages to everyone of you Swedes who will become his subject and be converted to the true faith.”

“You are out of your wits. But if I could get off and take her home with me on horseback, I would do it.”

Next morning, when I had played my psalm, I learned that today it was my turn to go out under the open heavens.

I became warm and restless. I combed and fixed myself up even more carefully than at other times, and changed to the Zaporogean’s ensign coat so as not to wear my torn one. Meanwhile I deliberated with myself. Should I go up to her? What should I say then? Perhaps, though, that would be the only time in my life when I could get to speak with her, and how should I not repent thereafter even to my gray old age, if out of awkwardness I had missed that one chance! My heart beat more violently than at any affair with the enemy, when I stood with my bandages among the bullets and the fallen. I stuck the flute into my pocket and went out.

When I came down on the street she sat at the window without seeing me. I would not go to her without first asking leave, and I did not know rightly how I should conduct myself. Pondering, I took a couple of steps forward.

Then she heard me and looked out.

I lifted my hand to my hat, but with a long ringing burst of laughter she sprang up and cried, “Haha! Look, look, he has a wooden leg!”

I stood with my hand raised, and stared and stared, and I had neither thought nor feeling. It was as if my heart had swelled out and filled all my breast, so that it was near to bursting. I believe I stammered something. I only remember that I did not know whither I should turn, that I heard her still laughing, that everything in the world was indifferent to me, that freedom would have frightened me as much as my captivity and my wretchedness, that of a sudden I had become a broken man.

I remember vaguely a long and steep lane without stone pavement, where I was accosted by other Swedish prisoners. Perhaps, even, I answered them, asked after their health, and took some puffs out of the tobacco pipes they lent me.

I believe I disturbed myself over the fact that it was so long till night, so that I had to return the same way and pass her window in brightest daylight. By every means I prolonged the time, speaking now to one man, now to another, but shortly the Russian dragoons came and ordered me to turn about to my place.

As I went up the lane, I persuaded myself that I should not betray myself, but should salute in a quite friendly manner before the window. Was it her fault that so many of the Swedish soldiers of whom she had had such fine dreams were now pitiful cripples on wooden legs?

“Hurry up there!” thundered the dragoons, and I hastened my steps so that the thumping of my wooden leg echoed between the walls of the houses.

“Dear Heavenly Father,” I muttered, “faithfully have I served my earthly master. Is this the reward Thou givest me, that Thou makest of me in my youth a defenseless captive, at whom women laugh? Yes, this is Thy recompense, and Thou wilt abase me into yet deeper humiliation, that thereby I may at length become worthy of the crown of blessedness.”

When I came under the window and carried my hand to my hat, I saw that Feodosova was away. That gave me no longer any relief. I stumbled up to my prison and at every step heard the thumping of my wooden leg.

“I have talked with Feodosova,” whispered the Zaporogean.

I gave him no reply. My happiness, my flower, that had grown up over the heaps of ashes, lay consumed; and if it had again shone out, I myself, in alarm, would have trampled it to death with my wooden leg. What signified to me the Zaporogean’s whisperings?

“Ah!” he went on, “when you were gone, I reproached Feodosova and said to her that you were fonder of her than she realized, and that, if you were not a stranger and a heathen, you would ask her to be your wife.”

In silence I clenched my hands and bit my lips together to lock up my vexation and embarrassment, and I thanked God that he abased me every moment more deeply in shame and ridicule before men.

I opened the door to the outer hall and began to talk to the other prisoners:

“As wild asses in the desert we go painfully to seek our food. On a field that we do not own we must go as husbandmen, and harvest in the vineyard of the ungodly. We lie naked the whole night from lack of garments, and are without covering against the cold. We are overwhelmed by the deluge from the mountains, and from lack of shelter we embrace the cliffs. But we beg Thee not for mitigation Almighty God. We pray only: Lead us, be nigh unto us! Behold, Thou hast turned away Thy countenance from our people and stuck thorns in our shoes, that we may become Thy servants and Thy children. In the mould of the battle-field our brothers sleep, and a fairer song of victory than that of the conquerors by the sword Thou dost offer to Thy chosen ones.”

“Yea, Lord lead us, be nigh unto us!” echoed all the prisoners murmuringly.

Then out of the darkest corner rose a lonely, trembling voice, which cried: “Oh, that I were as in former months, as in the days when God protected me, when His lamp shone upon my head, when with His light I went into the darkness! As I was in my autumn days, when God’s friendship was over my tent, while yet the Almighty was with me, and my children were about me! Thus my heart cries out with Job, but I hear it no longer and I stammer forth no longer: Take away my trials! With the ear I have heard tell of Thee, O God, but now hath mine eye beheld Thee.”

“Quiet, quiet!” whispered the Zaporogean, taking hold of me, and his hands were cold and trembling. “It can be no one else than the czar who is coming below in the lane.”

The lane had become filled with people, with beggars and boys and old women and soldiers. In the middle of the throng the czar, tall and lean, walked very calmly, without a guard. A swarm of hopping and shrieking dwarfs were his only retinue. Now and then, turning, he embraced and kissed the smallest dwarf on the forehead in a fatherly way. Here and there he stood still before a house and was offered a glass of brandy, which he jestingly emptied at a single gulp. It could be nobody but the czar, because one saw directly that he alone ruled over both people and city. He came so close under my window that I could have touched his green cloth cap and the half-torn brass buttons on his brown coat. On the skirt he had a great silver button with an artificial stone and on his legs rough woolen stockings. His brown eyes gleamed and flashed, and the small black mustaches stood straight up from his shining lips.

When he caught sight of Feodosova, he became as if smitten with madness. When she came down on the street and knelt with a cup, he pinched her ear, then took her under the chin and lifted up her head so that he could look her in the eyes.

“Tell me, child,” he inquired, “where is there a comfortable room where I can eat? May there be one at your house?”

The czar had seldom with him on his excursions any master of ceremonies or other courtier. He took along neither bed nor bed-clothes nor cooking utensils; no, not even a cooking or eating vessel; but everything had to be provided in a turn of the hand wherever it occurred to him to take lodging. It was for this reason that there was now running and clatter at all the gates and stairs. From this direction came a man with a pan, from that another with an earthen platter, from yonder a third with a ladle and drinking utensils. Up in Feodosova’s room the floor was strewn deeply with straw. The czar helped with the work like a common servant, and the chief direction was carried on by a hunchbacked dwarf, who was called the Patriarch. The dwarf every once in a while put his thumb to his nose and blew it in the air straight in front of the czar’s face, or invented rascal tricks of which I cannot relate before a lady of quality.

Once when the czar turned with crossed arms to the window, he noticed me and the Zaporogean, and nodded like a comrade. The Zaporogean threw himself prostrate on the floor and stammered his “I Schwede. Devil-damn!” But I pushed him aside with my foot and told him once for all to be silent and get up, because no Swede conducted himself in that fashion. To cover him as much as possible, I stepped in front of him and took my position there.

“Dat is nit übel,” said the czar, but at once fell back into his mother speech and asked who I was.

“Blomberg, surgeon with the Uppland regiment,” I answered.

The czar scanned me with a narrowing gaze that was so penetrating I have never seen a more all-discerning look.

“Your regiment exists no longer,” he said, “and here you see Rehnskiöld’s sword.” He lifted the sword with its scabbard from his belt and threw it on the table so that the plates hopped. “But for certain you are a rogue, for you wear a captain’s or ensign’s uniform.”

I answered, “‘That is a hard saying,’ saith John the Evangelist. The coat I borrowed, after my own fell in rags, and if that be ill done, I will yet hope for grace, because this is my maxim: To tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie.”

“Good. If that is your motto, you shall take your servant with you and come over here so that we may prove it.”

The Zaporogean trembled and tottered as he followed behind me, but as soon as we entered, the czar pointed me to a chair among the others at the table as if I had been his equal and said: “Sit, Wooden-Leg!”

He had Feodosova on his knee, without the least consideration of what could be said about it, and round them stamped and whistled the dwarfs and a crowd of Boyars who now began to collect. A dwarf who was called Judas, because he carried a likeness of that arch-villain on the chain around his neck seized a handful of shrimps from the nearest plate and threw them to the ceiling, so that they fell in a rain over dishes and people. When in that way he had made the others turn toward him, he pointed at the czar with many grimaces and called cold-bloodedly to him: “You amuse yourself, you Peter Alexievitch. Even outside of the city I have heard tell of the pretty Feodosova of Poltava, I have; but you always scrape together the best things for yourself, you little father.”

“That you do,” chimed in the other dwarfs in a ring around the czar. “You are an arch-thief, you Peter Alexievitch.”

Sometimes the czar laughed or answered, sometimes he did not hear them, but sat serious and meditative, and his eyes moved meanwhile like two green-glinting insects in the sunlight.

I called to mind how I had once seen the most blessed Charles the Eleventh converse with Rudbeck, and how it then came over me that Rudbeck, for all his bowings, amounted to far more than the king. Here it was the other way about. Although the czar himself went around and did the waiting and let himself be treated worse than a knave, I saw only him--and Feodosova. I read his thoughts in the smallest things. I recognized him in the forcibly curtailed caftans and shaven chins at the city gate.

There was a buzzing in my head, and I knelt humbly on the straw and stammered: “Imperial Majesty! To tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie, and the Lord said to Moses: ‘Thou shalt not hold with the great ones in that which is evil.’ Therefore I beseech that I may forego further eating. For behold I am soon done with the game, and my gracious lord--who is both like and unlike Your Imperial Majesty--has in the last year turned me to drinking filtered marsh water.”