Wolf Winter (45 page)

“I don’t know how to thank you.” She put her hand on Eriksson’s sleeve when he appeared. His arm felt hard and cold. “If you hadn’t kept me with Dorotea when she was getting her tuition …”

He didn’t meet her gaze.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered and removed her hand. “Did he get to one of yours? Was that what Elin found out that destroyed her?”

He didn’t answer, but narrowed his eyes as if in pain.

After a while he said, “Elin should have known earlier. She could have known. She had lived the same thing when little, for God’s sake! Jessika didn’t say anything, but once I was gone, it didn’t take Elin long to figure out what was wrong.”

Then the J had been for Jessika,
Frederika thought.

“Neither of you could imagine such evil,” she said.

They stood still and allowed the shadows from the trees to lengthen.

“Will you be leaving now?” she said.

Eriksson pressed his lips together. “It’s not over yet,” he said.

Frederika knew he was right. She didn’t want to look at the protective circle of wind that she’d cast around herself and Dorotea but could tell it was almost worn through. At night she heard the
wolves yelping. Their barks were growing more confident. Eager. She could try to throw another circle, but she wasn’t certain it would work a second time.

Frederika was on the porch looking toward the top of the mountain, when, on day four, Fearless arrived, leading a white reindeer on a rope.

“I’ve come to pick up the goats,” he said.

“Does that mean spring is coming?”

“In a while. We are getting ready to leave for the high mountains.”

“Thank you for the reindeer.” She took the rope.

When he had fetched his goats, he didn’t leave, but stood and peered at her.

“I thought spring would have arrived by now,” she said. “That after Lady Day, winter would let go.”

“I’m guessing she didn’t bring the right things,” he said, “Lady Day. Or maybe not all of it.”

Did he know what was missing? Frederika wondered if it was possible to have a vocation and then shut it off or whether bits still leaked through—signs you couldn’t avoid seeing. If you once thought you had the truth, could you ever leave it behind even if you rejected it, or would you carry it with you, that option of a different life?

They faced each other. Around them the air began to pulse louder.

“You wouldn’t have burned it,” she said, and her voice sounded like that of somebody much older. “Your drum. It’s holy.”

“It belonged to the past.”

“You couldn’t have. You wouldn’t.”

He stepped backward and broke the circle that had been drawn around the two of them.

She watched him leave, and then she turned to the creature. It looked more like a white cow than a deer. Its muzzle was round, its antlers slight. She hoped her mother wouldn’t kill it but knew they
had to. If only Fearless had brought them an ugly beast. The animal was rooting in the snow beside her, but the lichen lay too deep.

She pulled on the rope and headed for the barn. She hesitated and, instead, tied the rope around one of the pillars by the building. She walked inside and took some of the goats’ food and put it before the reindeer. She watched it eat and stroked its side.

She was right. Fearless would never have burned the drum. Even if he no longer believed, he wouldn’t have destroyed it.

She thought about seeing inside someone and of tracking the wolves’ whereabouts from afar. Both times she had used what Jutta had taught her. The only other thing she could remember Jutta teaching her was her litanies: “The shrewdness of the fox, the wisdom of the owl, the strength of the bear …” Perhaps that too was something you could learn? To dip into the strengths of other beings?

But there was more than the old wisdoms. When she had called for her mother the night the wolves attacked, that summoning had come all by itself. And what the mirror had showed her—that too had happened on its own.

So it could be done without someone teaching you. And you didn’t need a drum, because there were other ways. You just needed to open up to it. How much? Open everything. Not keep any reserve for yourself. Give it your all, saying, “I am willing. Take me.” Even be prepared to die. And then … then what?

She didn’t know. She couldn’t know until she had tried it.

It was easier than she had thought. But also much more difficult. She would no longer be her own person. The spirits would make their demands, and she would have to respond. In return, what she asked for would be given to her. But the sacrifice could be great. The spirits could ask for something that meant the world to her.

Footsteps in the snow.

“So he’s been for his goats?” her mother asked.

“Yes.”

They watched the white animal.

“You know what,” her mother said. “I think he brought us a cow.”

“I know,” Frederika said.

“No, really. I think this animal has milk.”

Her mother’s eyes were scrunched up, as if she were laughing.

Olaus felt stripped without his pretenses. He also felt fresh and, ah, it was true: he had never felt more peaceful. His future was a muddle, all things unclear, all things ripped up, destroyed. And still he was happy. The power of confession was immense, he thought. What a shame it wasn’t a part of the Lutheran faith. Confessing all to another human being and still be—

He didn’t dare to think the word.

He cleared the path outside his dwelling from snow. Then, gripped by an impulse, he walked across the green to shovel Sofia’s too. She was standing in the window, and he waved to her. They’d have to talk.
Soon,
he thought.

He went to check on his animals. Their trays were full of food. He patted the flank of a cow.

As he took his evening meal, he thought of his father. He remembered the balding head, the slack chin, and the full lips with what, for once, wasn’t hatred. He didn’t know what his father had done to be punished with the hangman’s role. He’d never asked, and now he was gripped by the desire to understand. They’d parted in anger. He, impetuous and proud, unable to wait to leave his home, refusing to accept his lot. His father shouting to him as he walked out, “You’ve rejected everything I stand for.”

“Stand for,” he had scoffed to himself as he walked away. But it had been true. His father had been principled, and despite his profession, he’d been a good man.

He wished his father could see him now.
Forgive me, Father.

“We are what we are,” he whispered to himself, “and I am grateful.”

He couldn’t sleep, and that wasn’t because of his father, but because of Maija. He kept seeing her before him. That wiry figure. Those large eyes, her white-blonde hair.

“Strange that the bishop didn’t know.” In his head he mimicked her slow, sing-song accent.

He recalled Maija’s hand against his cheek. Strong and dry. Warm. How close she’d been standing. So close, he ought to have felt her heart.

Oh, what was he doing?

He turned on his side. The sheet was swirled around his legs and he kicked at it, once, then several times. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up.

“You’re my priest,” she had said.

He sighed. A grunt that went all the way to his core. He placed his own hand on his cheek as if hers were still there for him to touch. He allowed his body to respond to the thought.

“Strange that the bishop didn’t know,” she’d said.

Beata, Ulla, Sara … what other letters had Frederika mentioned? A K, an A, and a J. Olaus suddenly remembered the entry in the Church Books:
K against the church.
Perhaps one of the girls had spoken to the old priest about what was happening on Blackåsen and …

Hold on … the family who had disappeared from Blackåsen overnight. What were their names? The Janssons?

The cold tore at Olaus as he crossed the yard. He unlocked the church, ran up the stairs to his room, found the Church Books first, and lit the candle second. He turned the large pages. Births, deaths …
the Janssons.
His finger trembled as it followed the entries.
Arva Jansson. Born 1711.
A as in Arva.

A young girl.

Olaus had to sit down. He felt sick.

If the
K against the church
had been the same K whose initial had been carved in the windowsill, that would mean one of the girls had told the old priest and he had dismissed the claim.

The old priest had been many things, but he had been conscientious. A claim like that—a man of the Church behaving
inappropriately—even if the old priest had dismissed it, he would have told the bishop. He would have had to. It was too grave. And then there was what Mårten had said about a bishop who, the year before Olaus arrived, in secret, had sent away a young girl who was with child. That had been Arva and her family, the Janssons.

There was more … something the housekeeper had said. South, he realized. Much later, just before he died, after returning from Blackåsen’s Catechetical hearing, the old priest had asked his carriage to be prepared for him to travel south. Not east. Whatever it was the old priest had found out then, he had felt he couldn’t tell the bishop, and he’d prepared to take his tale south.

There was no question about it—the bishop had known.

Olaus hit the table with his hand.
The swine,
he thought, and didn’t know whether he meant the verger who’d enacted the deeds, the old priest who, at first, hadn’t listened to a girl in distress, or the bishop, who had known and not punished the culprit—or all three of them.

He had to knock for a long time before there was movement inside the vicarage. Then there were footsteps, and Sofia opened the door, her head still in a night bonnet.

“You.” She smiled, voice thick with sleep.

“You too knew,” he said.

She stepped aside to let him in and closed the door behind him. “Knew what?” she said, blinking.

“About Lundgren.”

When she realized what he was saying, she looked shocked.

“Heaven forbid,” she said.

He had to hand it to her—she was playing her part well.

“Your tax man helped the bishop arrange a trip south for a girl in trouble. On their own, the Janssons would never have got access to the bishop. It was you who convinced him to help.”

“I don’t know of any trip. This is ridiculous,” she said.

He grabbed her arm. “Don’t lie to me.”

Her mouth opened and then closed again.

His grip around her arm tightened. “What I cannot grasp is why—why would you protect someone like Lundgren? Tell me, or I shall persecute you myself. Do not think that the bishop or your mighty friends will be able to help you.”

She shook him off.

“After all I have done for you. For the mercy of God, I did not know. What monster could have known and kept silent? They are children!”

Well, that was that,
Maija thought for the hundredth time. She brushed the floor of the cottage with the broom. Once all the dirt was cornered, she dampened a cloth, gathered it up, and shook the rag over the fire. She felt hot and took off her jumper. It fascinated her how eating this little for so long had changed her body. Her arms sticking out from inside the short-sleeved shirt were thin and straight, their veins large. She’d seen similar changes in the other settlers. Everyone was hungry. Even the priest had thinned. His body had been angular and …