The Trial of Sören Qvist. Janet Lewis
set in the barley field, that was ripe for mowing. I came back and stood here in front of this house and looked at him, and saw the turf all bloody under where he was hanging. They did that because they thought to mock him, to mock a priest for wearing a beard. You remember how thick and strong a beard he had, and how he used to tug at it with his fingers when he was thinking? The fire burned almost all night. Then, before morning, it began to rain. And so, year before last, when Torstenson came, we all hid. Pastor Juste went through the village and gathered all his people together, and we hid in the beechwood, and so we are still alive. The Swedes burned much and stole everything. Still, it was not quite so bad as when the Catholics came.” She stopped speaking. Then she said, “That God should make such men.”
“I was with Wallenstein’s men,” the beggar muttered, as if to himself. “I was with them in Bohemia. But,” he added piously, “when they took the road to Jutland, I left them. Not for anything would I have come back to soldier in Jutland.”
“God may take that into consideration when your time comes,” said the housekeeper, “that you burned houses only in another country. Well, it is late. Come. I will show you where you can sleep.”
The beggar picked up his hat from the floor beside him and stood up, unwillingly. He looked at the embers on the hearth, red-golden, translucent, showing, some of them, the exact shape of the twig or branch, transmuted but intact, and all veiled in a blue flickering.
“A pity to leave so good a fire,” he said.
The housekeeper stood with her hand on the door, waiting for him.
“I never thought to give food or drink to one of Wallenstein’s men,” was all she said.
“Well, thanks for the food,” said the soldier, “all the same.”
He moved limping toward the door, his hat in his hand, but turned once more to look back at the glowing hearth.
“I can surely see Pastor in the morning?” he asked.
The old woman answered by a nod.
“This Morten Bruus,” he said again, delaying his departure. “If all the farms in Jutland have been twice robbed, I suppose he can no longer be very rich. Were his buildings fired, like the others?”
“Oh no,” the old woman answered, “he had the devil’s protection on him, if you ask me. His buildings were never fired, nor his fields trampled, and he died the richest man in Vejlby parish, or in this one, too.”
“Do you say so? Well then.” The beggar considered this information and then inquired with an air of great caution, “Did he leave a rich widow, this fellow Bruus?”
“Never a wife, never a widow, nor any kith or kin,” said the old woman.
“Nor any friend? Did he leave his goods in gift to a friend?”
“Living or dead, he never gave anything to anyone, that I ever heard of,” she answered him. “You are very curious about Morten Bruus. Did you know him ever?”
The beggar stretched out his one arm in a gesture of exultation.
“That is what I shall tell the pastor in the morning,” he said. “I shall be rich. I have been the poorest and now I’ll be the richest. I am Morten’s brother Niels.” He gave a short laugh, the sound of which rung against the copper pans hanging upon the farther wall and echoed sharply back, with neither mirth nor friendship. The old woman lifted her head and drew back a step, exactly as if she had been struck in the face.
“So then,” she said with scorn. “Perhaps you were never with Wallenstein’s men, either. Perhaps I may forgive you that. A pig bit off your arm, doubtless, and you have come all the way from Aalborg, perhaps, but you have never been out of Jutland in all your life. This is a fine story about the brother of Morten Bruus, but you have come to the wrong house with it.” She pushed the door wide open and stood waiting for him to leave. The cold air poured in upon them from the blackness without. “You should be sent away for such lying,” she said, “but the pastor has said you might sleep with the beasts. Well, good night,” she added impatiently.
But the beggar stood his ground.
“I am not lying,” he said. “I am really the brother of Morten Bruus. I can prove it, since it’s true.”
“You are Niels Bruus?” said the old woman.
“Niels, the brother of Morten.”
“Oh, what a scurvy liar,” said the old woman with deeper scorn. “What a poor and pitiful liar. Listen to me. With my own eyes I saw the body of Niels Bruus dug out of the ground many, many years ago, and he was so long dead he stank. Yet you come and tell me that you are Niels Bruus.”
The effect of these words upon the beggar was strange. He stared at the old woman with eyes gone blank with astonishment, and his jaw sagged. Then he began to grin, a stupid evil grin, and then he broke into laughter. He struck his hat against his thigh to emphasize his enjoyment of her statement, and his laughter, filling the small room, seemed to her the most stupid, the most evil sound she had ever heard.
“Stop,” she cried. “Be quiet,” and stamped upon the brick floor with her wooden shoes, opposing one noise to another, in a kind of panic. “Are you gone crazy?”
The beggar paused in his laughter to ask, “And was my face all battered, mistress?” Then, as he saw her blench from him, “And did you see a fine lead earring in this ear?” and he pointed, with his hat, to his left ear.
The old woman’s face filled with horror. She lifted a hand and crossed herself, slowly.
“Tell me,” said the beggar, “did Parson Sören see me too? And smell me, ha? Tell me, who dug me up and where was I buried?”
The old woman, having retreated from him a few steps, stopped and, composing herself, her face full of loathing, placed both hands firmly on her hips and replied in a steady voice, as if she were exorcising a demon:
“I saw in Pastor Sören’s garden Morten Bruus himself strike the spade into the ground and uncover the body of Niels, his brother; I, and many others. It would take more than a beggar from Aalborg to make me think other than that Niels is dead and buried in Vejlby churchyard. Do you think to be rich with Morten’s money? Oh, what a fool!”
“But I know that the face was battered, and that the body wore my clothes, and that my lead earring was in the left ear, yes, just as I used to wear it. How do you think I know all that?”
The woman gave a shrug of the shoulders.
“Anyone can know all that,” she answered.
“Well, but I know more,” said the beggar. His voice became quiet and sly. “I know that Morten buried the body. That is why he could find it. It was,” he said, ever more sly and confidential, “a little joke that Morten played on Pastor Sören. Morten did not love the pastor, if you remember.”
His eyes were fixed upon the round blue eyes of the old woman, and he thought he saw a horrified belief grow slowly in those honest blue eyes.
“Yes,” he cried triumphantly, “a little joke that Morten played upon the pastor, and I can tell you all about it.”
The old woman turned her back upon him abruptly and crossed the kitchen to the pastor’s door. She knocked, her back still turned upon the beggar, then entered the pastor’s room and closed the door behind her.
The beggar could not stand still for excitement. He limped to the hearth and stood staring briefly at the golden embers under their veil of blue. Then he limped across the room to the wall in which once had been the door to the New Room. With that door gone, the kitchen seemed very small; aye, and with the door to the parson’s study closed. He looked at all the cupboards with shut doors and tried to remember in which one the old woman had locked the cheese; then, growing aware that his feet hurt him, he returned to the stool by the hearth and drew off his boots. The bricks were cold to his feet, but the air of the room was warmer than the wet