against the wall, there was a rustling and scraping, and with that Lina
Andersdotter stepped out in nothing but her chemise, bare legs, and a
torn red jacket without sleeves but with a whole back to it, over which
hung the braid of her brown hair.
The light of the fire fell in through the window. Squatted together she
held her chemise between her knees, but her fresh, downward-bent face
with broad, open features was as merry as if she had just stepped out of
her settle-bed on a bright winter morning in the light of the dawn.
The blood ran impetuously enough through the veins of the white-haired
chaplain, but in that moment he was but master and father.
“I did not know that in my simple house folk had learned such a
ceremonious feeling of delicacy,” said he, and gave her a friendly pat
on the bare shoulders.
She looked up.
“No,” she said, “it’s only because I’m so wretchedly cold.”
“Ah, well, that’s natural. That’s the way I like people to talk in my
house. But I have no garments to give you. My own hang on me in tatters.
The house may burn at any time. I myself can maybe sneak out on my way
unaccosted, and I have a Riga riksdollar in my pocket. Who asks about a
ragged old man? It’s another affair with you, Lina. I know these wild
fellows. I know but one way to get you off, but I myself shrink from
telling it. Naturally, you are afraid.”
“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.”