Wolf Winter (49 page)

There was a rustling noise behind him on the square. Olaus’s fingers flew up to touch his collar, and he turned around to watch the horse and carriage arriving. The coachman halted the horse in front of the church and he walked to greet it.

“Welcome,” he said.

The horse snorted, and the voice of the coachman calming it was that of a young girl.
The war has taken all our men,
Olaus thought.

The passenger stumbled as he stepped down from the carriage, tired after his journey. He was pale and had a slight figure. Blond. He bowed far down over Olaus’s hand.

“My name is Laurentius,” he said as he rose. He bent his head back to take in the full sight of the church, and his mouth opened. “It is beautiful,” he said.

His first assignment, Olaus was certain.

“Isn’t it just,” he said. He unfastened the key ring from his belt and gave it to the young man. “For the church, the stables, and your dwelling. Your farmhand and your housekeeper will show you around. You’ll have to recruit a new verger. The former one … left us.”

Laurentius took the heavy ring and turned it around in his hand as if studying it. “There is a lock on the church?”

So young,
Olaus thought. “It’s the largest one,” he said and bent to lift up his pack.

Confusion on Laurentius’s face. “You’re leaving? I thought we would have time. To talk about the church … its history, the parishioners …” As the knowledge that he was already left to his own devices dawned on the young man, his face weakened to that of a child.

“Don’t worry,” Olaus said. “The former priest’s widow lives right there.” He turned Laurentius around and pointed. “In the vicarage. She was her husband’s right hand. Nowhere else have I heard of a woman who has contributed so much to the service of the Lord. I recommend you make her acquaintance a matter of priority. Her year of grace is soon over.”

“But won’t you introduce me to her?”

Olaus hesitated. “No.” He threw his knapsack into the cart and climbed after it. “But give her my regards.”

He was leaving. The pain throbbed so bad inside him, for a moment he thought he’d never manage. He inhaled.

“The settlers on Blackåsen,” he said. “Look after them.”

He left the new priest standing alone in the yard.

“As far south as you can take me,” Olaus said to the girl on the coachman’s seat.

“I was supposed to take you to the bishop at the coast,” she said.

He shook his head. “South,” he repeated.

As the coach set in motion, Olaus removed his collar and folded it up. He hesitated, then he took out the bundle of letters the bishop had given him for Maija from her husband. The bishop had promised to deliver them but hadn’t as he didn’t know what the new stable boy would inadvertently divulge about who had been in town at what time or other things that would mean nothing to him but might to somebody else.

Olaus wouldn’t see Maija again. And Paavo was most likely already on his way back. He threw the letters and his collar into the forest.

The carriage bumped along the road, and Olaus turned around. Not for the church or the old vicarage, no. Absolutely not to look at the mountains. No, he wanted to see the bell tower. One last time.

Maija was walking toward the top of Blackåsen Mountain. There were light green buds on the spruce trees. New grass already pushed up through what had moldered: spiky, tall at once, as if it had been before it even began. From the trees above her came the quickening song of a meadow pipit in flight. With every sign of spring, winter distanced itself. With every sound of the new, the past paled. She thought it would be the same for the other settlers too, hoped even for Daniel and Anna and little Sara. This winter would be one they wouldn’t talk about, they would not be able to explain to someone who hadn’t been there. It would be a winter they would choose to forget. Once Gustav had told Maija, Nils, and the others about causing the forest fire that had set off so many things for Daniel, Daniel had released his grip around Maija’s arm and walked out. With him gone, none of the others touched her.

Her quest to find Eriksson’s killer had almost lost her everything. Now, in the light of spring, she couldn’t understand what had taken her, why she hadn’t been able to leave be. She guessed they would never know what really happened to Eriksson, but it was over.

Maija reached the summit and looked out over the verdant valley, toward the blue mountains on the horizon. She had to shade her eyes with her hand, so strong was the light. Winds from the west. A warm puff against her forehead. She breathed. She drank the fresh air. It was as if winter had lasted for a hundred years.

Paavo would be back any day now, she thought. She wasn’t certain what to feel about it. She didn’t want him to come, and yet she did. Together they would make it better again. She wouldn’t see the priest until the Catechetical hearing in September, and that was a good thing, although he was the one she missed so much, her heart could break. She would tell the priest that. Perhaps she would tell him all about herself. The priest was the kind of man you could talk to, and
through meeting him, in a strange way, the past felt less present. Perhaps she could reconcile with it. The other day she had thought about the gifts she used to have and wondered whether they were lost to her forever or whether they were still there inside her.

Dorotea’s feet were already healing. The toes were gone, but the scarring was white and neat. She would always have a limp. The thought had brushed by her that perhaps Frederika had been right and the cutting had been unnecessary. But that was a thought she couldn’t allow to grow roots, so she sent it over the cliff and down into the valley.

She wanted her daughters. She turned and, as she half-ran down the path toward their homestead, a memory of Frederika as a baby came to her. Frederika had been in Jutta’s arms. Maija had been sitting with them, fat and so tired, locked into her own head alone with all those thoughts … someone had made a joke—she couldn’t remember who or what was said, but she remembered laughing for the first time in months. And when she looked up, her baby was watching her and her little face was lit up, her mouth open. Her baby had been laughing because her mother laughed.

A movement to her left made Maija stop. She advanced, holding her breath, pushing the branches away.

In the midst of the trees there was a small clearing. Six small, dark brown beings, biting each other, rolling around, nuzzling. Wolf puppies. At the far end of the opening, under a fallen silver tree trunk, lay the pale bitch. She was looking straight at Maija, her brows raised. Her jaw was open. She was smiling.

Maija watched the little ones play. But the rest of the pack wouldn’t be far, ready to assimilate the new ones, love them as their own. She let go of the branches, stepped backward, and came face to face with Fearless.

Fearless’s face was dirty, his silver hair dark gray. He had aged. She hadn’t thought about him, and now she felt guilty.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “I was wrong about … so many things.”

“And right,” he said.

The dirt on his face: vertical streaks on each cheek. As if he had cried mud.

He has lost a wife and child. Until she … until Gustav had told them, Fearless had had no idea what had happened to his family. Now he did.

“Tell your daughter I am back,” Fearless said and took a step to the side to pass her.

Maija felt cold. “What does that mean?”

She tried to meet his gaze, but he was looking far beyond her.

“What have you done?” she said.

“The customs of vengeance are older than both you and me,” he said. The tone of his voice was the sort you used to comfort a child.

“What have you done?” she repeated, although in some corner of her mind she already knew.

“I buried Gustav alive in the marsh. Facing them.”

Frederika leaned back against the warm wood of the barn. The sleeves on the dress her mother had woven had become too short, and her hands on the grass by her sides looked large. The air was soft and sweet. There had been the rich spirals of a nightingale’s song—spring had indeed come, but now the yard was quiet.

Fearless was still on Blackåsen, although his footsteps were absenting themselves.
That’s good,
she thought. Fearless could finally travel home to the high mountains. And not far from Blackåsen, in her mind’s eye, she could see Antti, motionless by the river, waiting for his elder.

Her mother’s movements had ceased. Where there had been swells, there was now a mere flutter. Frederika wondered if her mother was crying. She had never seen her mother cry, and so she didn’t know.

Frederika felt the other woman approaching, the one she was waiting for. Then came her footsteps, muted on the grass.

“Frederika?”

Her voice was jovial but forced. Her blonde hair was tied up in a twist that had come loose. Her cheeks were red, her breathing awkward.

“I had such a strange dream.” Their eyes met, and Kristina’s smile disappeared. She nodded, efficient now. “You called for me, and I came. How peculiar.”

“It was you who killed Eriksson,” Frederika said.

Kristina sighed.

“He deserved to die,” she said then.

“Perhaps. But that’s not why you killed him.”

Kristina made a face. “Ah, and so you know that too. My husband has a weakness. He likes children …”

Frederika nodded. “This is why you send your daughters away,” she said.

Kristina hesitated. “Yes,” she said.

“To be on the safe side,” Frederika said.

“To be on the safe side.”

“And why you wore an amulet with marjoram.”

“I do what I can.”

“So what happened?”

“When Nils helped restore the schoolhouse, he and Lundgren must have discovered they had this in common. I watch my husband, Frederika. By God, I do. But I can’t always be with him. I didn’t know he had taken it up again until, two years ago, a girl became with child. I had to ask the bishop for help. After this I was certain that Nils had learned his lesson, but no …”

Frederika felt the low churning in her stomach. Not one thought for the children.
You’re forgetting it could have been my sister,
she thought.

“So what happened?” she asked.

“Whoever the young girl was this time, she told Eriksson. He came to our home to find Nils, knife in hand. I sent Eriksson to the King’s Throne, said he’d find my husband there. As he left, I followed him.”

“Then the bishop lied when he said you and Nils were with him at the time of the murder …” Frederika said. “Why is he helping you?”

“There are big things at stake. None of us is willing to risk that. Not now when we are so close.”

Frederika saw before her the man in the blue jacket and boots that reached his thighs, walking the trench. She remembered the faceless shadows following him. That was what Kristina was talking about. That’s what she considered more important than the suffering of the children.

“Does Nils know it was you who killed Eriksson?” Frederika asked.

“I didn’t lie about Nils being at the summit of the mountain. And I made certain Nils saw what I had to do for his sake. He was full of remorse, of course.”

“And then you sent him to us to talk of sorcery,” she said.