Where Monsters Dwell (40 page)

“I hate doctor shows,” she said cheerfully.

“Me too,” he said, “but in a good way.”

“Morris gave me two weeks off.”

“Great, then you can come with me to Oslo. I have to go to a christening, and you really ought to see more of the country than just Trondheim.”

“That sounds nice. But I like Trondheim. I like the rain and the cold.”

“How much do you like it?” he said, feeling a butterfly awaken in his stomach.

“Maybe,” she said, “I like it as much as you hope I do.”

31

Ø
rland, 1555

The priest sat in
his house and looked down over the meadow outside. A little girl came walking along the path that led up to his dwelling. It was little Mari, who had lost her parents to the plague. That was the week before the bodies of Lady Inger and her daughter were brought back from the shipwreck on the way to Bergen. Johannes the priest had presided at both families’ funerals. The one for Lady Inger and her family was resplendent, with oak caskets and family crests in a packed
Ø
rland church. The one for Mari’s parents was modest, outdoors. Mari had wept at the burial. The priest had invited her over so that he could see what he could do for her.

Now he sat reading his diary. He had made it himself from calfskin, and the pages at the back were made of the skin he had brought with him from Bergen, where he had encountered the beard-cutter for the last time. Nothing provided a better writing surface than this parchment. As he read he kept glancing out the open window. Mari was coming closer on the path. She was so skinny, that girl.

His eyes shifted back to the pages of the book. The last pages he had dedicated to them, to the blood and the entrails. Next to the book, on the table in front of him, lay the bundle of skin wrapped around the knives.

What he had written inside this bundle were his worst thoughts. The thoughts from which he couldn’t manage to free himself. They dealt with the way he had taken their lives, how he had flayed the skin off them, how he had sliced into them, and then what was concealed within.

But that was all they were. Just thoughts and nothing else. He had never laid a hand on any of them. Ever since the archbishop had sent him out here to Fosen he had been a good priest, first Catholic and then Lutheran. It hadn’t cost him as much to convert as he had thought. At some point he realized that religion was not the most important thing. Human beings were more important. He discovered that despite what had happened to him in life, he liked people. He wasn’t like the beard-cutter, whose life he had spared that time in Bergen. He had merely knocked him unconscious and taken his knives. The knives and the old skin from the German witch. He had used the skin to make the last pages in this book, and on it he had written his darkest thoughts. Because he did have dark thoughts, there was no use denying it. But by writing them down he had kept them away from the rest of the world. He had found a place to hide the devil that lived inside him. And after that, he was not a bad priest.

Now he wrote one last sentence in the middle of the book, far from those dark pages. It was a sentence that a lucky monkey had once put on paper in Alexandria, at least if one were to believe his great teacher from Padua. When he was done writing, he picked up the bundle, which was also made from the witch’s skin. It not only contained the gruesome fantasy about a vivisection, but it served to protect the beard-cutter’s knives. The fantasy was harmless as long as he left it where it was, and he had actually saved some lives with these knives over the years. The last time was when a landowner down by the sea went berserk with an ax and slew five people on his farm. Four others had also been injured, but Johannes the priest managed to save their lives with most of their limbs intact. The five who died were buried at the old grave site out by the chapel. They were the last ones to be buried there, for soon after the superintendent in Nidaros decided that the grave site would no longer be used. The grisly murders were now forgotten. Only the survivors remembered what had happened, and they recalled how Johannes the priest had saved their lives, but not all of their limbs, with his knives and needles.

Mari was so close now that he could hear her footsteps. He had good news for her in these different times. He had already found her a place on one of the farms in the parish, where, for a certain fee, they had promised to take her in. He didn’t have much to offer in the way of payment, nothing but the knives and the book he had spent the last half of his life writing. He wasn’t afraid to give these items away. The people at the farm couldn’t read. He had made them promise not to sell them before he died, and if they were ever sold, the knives and the book must always stay together. Future owners would have to swear to this, too. The farmer had agreed to this peculiar request.

He lay the bundle down behind him on the bed as Mari entered the room.

How he longed to rid himself of these devilish thoughts once and for all. He was approaching old age now, and he wanted to spend it in peace.

AFTERWORD

Everything of importance in
this novel was made up, and it goes without saying that all the characters are fictitious. Yet the story does contain the names of several historical figures who were real enough in their day. Some of them even play an active role in the plot of the novel. I’m thinking primarily of Broder Lysholm Knudtzon and Alessandro Benedetti. But even though these individuals were once alive, they appear here exclusively as characters in a novel, with traits borrowed from a time long past. This applies especially to Master Alessandro.

The real Alessandro Benedetti (1445–1525), also known as Alexander Benedictus, lived and worked in Padua. We know that he, like Master Alessandro in the novel, traveled extensively throughout the Mediterranean region, and that he collected books. Whether he was a friend of the renowned book printer Manutius who worked in Venice, however, is somewhat less certain. Alessandro was best known for having written the work
Historia Corporis Humani,
in which he describes how a surgeon can transplant skin from a person’s arm to his nose. He learned the method from the Branca family of doctors, who performed the procedure in Sicily as early as the fifteenth century.

In 1497 Alessandro wrote down some fundamental guidelines for the design of an anatomical theater: It must have an auditorium that ensured good viewing for all, a well-lit table in the center; good ventilation; and guards to prevent undesirables from entering. We don’t know whether Alessandro really managed to build an anatomical theater, but if he did, he certainly wouldn’t have done so in his own yard. But we do know that such theaters were erected in several locations during the sixteenth century. At first they were temporary buildings of wood, like that in the master’s yard. Near the end of the century, permanent buildings were constructed at a number of universities. This was done first in Italy, and then the rest of Europe followed suit.

Alessandro’s own career as an anatomist is not well documented. We do not know how many dissections he performed, or what methods he used. The fictional Master Alessandro is thus based equally on the somewhat later and far more famous anatomist Vesalius (1514–64), about whom we know conclusively that he personally performed many dissections. The cemetery called the Graveyard of the Innocents, which in the story lies outside the city walls of Padua, was actually located in Paris, where the Belgian Vesalius studied and first began his anatomical investigations. He described how in the dark of night he would fetch remnants of corpses from this and similar cemeteries around the French capital. When he later went to Padua and began to work at the university there, Vesalius found the freedom he needed to become the greatest anatomist of his time.

It is also Vesalius who is known for having revised much of the teachings of the Greek physician Galen (ca.
A.D.
130–200). As mentioned in the novel, Galen didn’t dissect human beings, but animals. Yet most of his knowledge was in reality based on the work of earlier Greek anatomists, primarily that of the famous and infamous Herophilos (4th century
B.C.
). It is said that condemned prisoners were delivered to him so that he could dissect them alive.

The most famous work of Vesalius is the anatomical atlas
De humani corporis fabrica
(1543).

With regard to Broder Lysholm Knudtzon (1788–1864), it is true that he was born into a family of merchants in Trondheim, and that he was more interested in culture and science than in the business of trading. It is also true that he was a close friend of Lord Byron, and that he collected Byron’s books in particular. At his death he left his book collection to the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences. The collection is today part of the Parchment Division of the University Library in Trondheim, also called the Gunnerus Library. Unfortunately, Knudtzon burned many of his letters. It is said that he did an especially thorough job of burning those from Lord Byron. Did Broder Lysholm Knudtzon ever go out to Fosen, taking with him a book that he thought to be cursed? That is doubtful.

Other historical figures mentioned in the novel, such as Edgar Allan Poe, don’t figure directly in the plot. The anecdotes about Poe are true for the most part, or at least based on long-established myths. Small details about Poe were also made up. It would be a mere coincidence should it turn out that Poe actually did own a book by Lord Byron bound in skin that he purchased from a hatter who emigrated from Trondheim to the United States.

Johannes the priest is a product of the author’s imagination, and there is also no
Johannes Book
in the book vault of the Gunnerus Library. However, Absalon Pederssøn Beyer’s diary, and the same gentleman’s history of Norway, are part of the collection, providing one of the most interesting literary sources we have from the 1500s, a time in Norway that was otherwise largely lacking in good writing.

—Jørgen Brekke, 2011

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J
Ø
rgen Brekke was born in the small town of Horten, Norway, and currently lives there with his family. Brekke has been a teacher and a freelance journalist, but is now a full-time writer. He’s the author of
Where Monsters Dwell
and a forthcoming sequel.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

WHERE MONSTERS DWELL
Copyright © 2011 by J
Ø
rgen Brekke. Translation copyright © 2014 Steven T. Murray. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by Rob Grom

Cover art:
The Damned Souls in Hell
by Signorelli Luca, 1499–1504, 15th century fresco © Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images; bridge and river © Giorgio Magini/istock.com; man in tunnel © Vova Pomortzeff/Alamy

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication is available upon request

ISBN 978-1-250-01680-5 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-250-02604-0 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781250026040

First published in Norway by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag in 2011

First U.S. Edition: February 2014