Wolf Winter (27 page)

“Don’t stand in front of the window,” Maija said. “I don’t know what you think you can see.”

Her daughter sighed and moved to sit down opposite her.

“The Lapps see murdered souls in the Northern Lights,” Frederika said.

“Who told you that?”

“I think you said it.”

“Did I? I don’t remember that at all.”

“Why did you say it if you didn’t believe it?”

“Perhaps I needed to believe it then,” Maija said, irritated. “I don’t know.”

“The priest would say seeing them is wrong.”

Maija stood up. “Frederika, we don’t have time for this. We have a lot of work to do. You and your sister are going to spin wool, and I am going to set traps.”

The night had been bitterly cold, but it had been calm. Without the wind, the timber of the house squeaked and ticked. It was hard to make yourself go outside. The body protested as if, this time, it might be allowed to have a say. But the conversation with her daughter drove her on. She found her skis where she’d placed them against the wall of the house, pushed them to the ground, and placed her feet in the straps.

Did you ever see the dead?
What a question. Maija didn’t know when it had started, this … tendency of Frederika’s. It might have been when she and her sister had found Eriksson’s body. Maija needed to speak to her. She would put a stop to this right now, explain why it was so vital they stuck to reason. She might have to tell her what could happen when people didn’t. Maija summoning up Jutta in her imagination was different. That was a bad habit. Jutta used to say that the older you got, the more present your past became, and that might be true.

Did you ever see the dead? Pfha. She was her father’s daughter all right.

That was terrible, and it wasn’t true. Frederika was the one most like herself, and she was strong. Even as a newborn, Frederika had known what she wanted, how much she was going to eat and when. She had never needed Maija in the same way as Dorotea did. It was strange. Frederika was the child Maija had expected she would have, the one that looked like her and had her character. Dorotea didn’t resemble Maija in the least. Her features were so neat and pure, they made Maija think of glass. Her bones were fine. Maija used to think of Dorotea as her hand-out child. She hadn’t expected she would have a daughter like her—she was a gift. And yet it was Frederika that Maija had never had. If Maija got close to Frederika at night, she woke up and moved away. Dorotea still liked to lie close to you, thin fingers twitching, touching your arm or your side. “Wandering fingers,” Maija and Paavo used to joke as they fought for the spot closest to Dorotea in bed. Her feet would move up yours to seek warmth, feeling like small, cold frogs.

Dorotea’s feet … there was still blackening and blistering, but her daughter seemed better. She couldn’t walk for long but managed short stretches. She bore the agony well, apart from when Maija cleaned her feet. Then the pain took over, Dorotea cried, and there was nothing Maija could do to ease it for her. Nothing. Then Maija’s helplessness turned to rage, and she seethed with anger that they had to go through this on their own.

And not one letter had they received from Paavo.

They were supposed to be the weaker ones. He was supposed to worry about them—not the other way around. Before they married, it had been different. She’d had to pry anything about how he himself was out of him. They’d been equals. She assumed that at some stage she must have given him the permission to lean on her for strength. She knew women who wouldn’t have taken it. Though she also knew women who’d had to take a lot more.

There was a slight wind now and some brightening of the sky. Snow drew in sleepy veils along the slope in front of the house. She would set a couple of snares by the river, some midforest, and then a few more by the marsh. She’d gone through it in her head many times already: how much meat and fish they had in storage. It wasn’t enough to take them through winter. There was plenty of hay for the goats; if necessary, they could slaughter, but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Animals provided milk and clothes. Slaughtering them was the beginning of a downward spiral that was difficult to break. When the river froze solid, they’d start fishing again. In the meantime she’d try to catch a rabbit or a bird. It might have been this that drove Elin insane—the prospect of not having enough food.

The memory of the recent storm was a dark cloud in the corner of her mind, but you had to go on, keep moving, find new ways, look again. They’d manage. Though it had felt better when the priest was with them. Someone to share things with—even if it was despair.

The river ice looked thick. She imagined it working, thickening, underneath the snow. In a few more cold days they’d be able to walk on it. She found rabbit tracks in the forest on her way to the marsh and set two traps close by. She tried to visualize the animal hopping along its habitual path, almost as if she could make it happen.

Did you ever see dead people?
she thought again as her hands pressed down the jagged iron mouth of the trap. She tore at the snow to remove enough of it.

She set one more trap south of the marsh and then skied onward toward the bog itself.

Once again he was in the middle of the otherwise empty field. She took a big step on her skis, bringing her closer to one of the fir trees so that he wouldn’t see her. Gustav was poking with a large stick in the snow. But why? She didn’t think there were any fish in the marsh, so what was he looking for?

He began to run. Maija sat down. He ran with heavy steps in the deep snow. As he came closer, she heard him wheeze and whimper. He fell down on his knees in the snow and howled to the sky until his voice broke.

She was shaking. A grown man’s screams were awful to hear.

The war. It hadn’t occurred to her that the soldiers too could become damaged. She’d only thought about the pain and agony they inflicted wherever they went. Perhaps before, Gustav had been normal.

She was tired when she got back to the homestead and stuck her skis in the snow by the porch. There was a thick branch, and she reached for it.

“Don’t take it,” Frederika said. She was coming from the barn with a bucket in her hand.

“Why?”

“I’m going to use it later,” Frederika said.

Maija was tired and cold. She didn’t ask.

When the priest arrived, the widow was cutting her maid’s hair, her own blonde hair gathered into a knot at her neck. She was laughing, her cheeks were red.

“There.” She pulled the towel off the maid’s shoulders. “Like new.”

The girl touched her bare neck and curtsied.

The widow smiled at the priest. “It had to be done. Now you.”

She nodded to the chair in front of her. “Might as well while I’m at it. Can’t have a priest who looks disheveled.”

The priest sat down. The widow dipped the comb in the bowl beside her and combed his hair. Cold water trickled along his throat and dripped onto his collarbone. The skin drew together in small bumps. He hated having his hair cut in winter. She took a strand of hair between her fingers and snipped it above his collar.

“Your journey to the coast,” he said.

“Mm-hm?”

The widow ran a finger down his scalp, gathered another lock.

“You said you visited family?”

She didn’t respond.

He half-turned his head but couldn’t see her. The
chtt, chtt
of the scissors made him sleepy.

“I thought you didn’t have any relatives,” he said.

The widow stopped cutting. There was a pause, and then she walked round in front of him. Behind her the window was a black tablet framed by green cotton curtains. “No.” She looked straight at him and crossed her arms. “No, I don’t.”

“Then why did you lie to me?”

Her mouth fell open. “Lie? I didn’t lie to you. You assumed I had gone to see family, and I did not correct you.”

“I think that counts as a lie.”

She shook her head and walked to the back again. Her fingers tugged at his hair.

“In fact, I went there for you,” she said.

He tried to turn, but she pushed on his cheek. Not very gently.

“You are too young and too good to waste away here.” She let go of one tress and took the next. Efficient now. “I couldn’t understand why Karl-Erik wanted you to investigate Eriksson’s death and not the authorities from the coast.”

“Maybe he wanted to avoid spreading fear,” the priest said.

“That may be, but by not telling the authorities, he is, in fact, culpable of a crime. And a bishop who commits a crime can be replaced.”

Her voice was mild, as if to lessen the impact of her words. She still shocked him. Accusing somebody higher up in the order established by God was like accusing God Himself. Moreover, he had thought the widow and the bishop were close.

“Enquiries could be made by people in the right places to see whether a younger priest, a former court priest, might be more suitable for the role.”

The priest turned around, and this time she let him.

“Who? The King …?”

“Friends of my late husband,” Sofia said. “Friends of mine.”

He had to admit to feeling disappointed.

“Close your eyes,” she said and combed his bangs down. The cold edge of the scissors pressed hard against his skin as it moved across his forehead.

“My husband was here by choice,” she said. “He felt he had a calling. But there was a time before, when he was more driven, and we made a lot of connections.”

Her voice was neutral, but the priest could imagine it would have been a real disappointment, this novel calling of her husband’s.

“There is no need for you to stay here, but you do need new friends,” she said. “The King is not the most … steadfast of men when it comes to his friendships.”

The priest remembered once a new man in their midst, the King gushing over this novel acquaintance. The priest hadn’t liked the newcomer. Ambition had shone brightly out of his eyes. At dinner one of the others, Maximilian, had caught the priest’s eye. “Don’t worry,” he’d said, smile on his lips. “The King tires quickly. He’ll be gone soon.”

Instead, it was the priest who was gone.

The widow tapped him on the shoulder and put the scissors on the kitchen table. As she walked across the room to pour the water bowl out, her purple dress flowed over the floor. Her hair had come undone and was falling over her shoulders.
New allies,
he thought.
Allies who were certain to come with obligations.

“So what would you suggest we do?” he asked.

She looked over her shoulder at him and smiled.

“The markets at the coast are held a few weeks before ours—the coming one and the one around Lady Day,” Sofia said. They were sitting together on her settle. She was balancing on the edge, one leg crossed over the other. She had spread her drawings out on the table in front of them. “People from the south come to trade with
birkkarlarna,
who then come to trade with us. This year I decided to go, to meet up with old friends, and ask for the news.” She smiled at the priest. “I talked about an amazing new priest in the Lappmark who ought to go far.”

He cleared his throat.

“I also took my drawings.”

Sofia’s foot with its heeled shoe bounced in the air. The fire crackled. She shook her head. “There was something about him, Eriksson,” she said. “He was completely insolent. Even though I was a priest’s wife, he’d hold my gaze just that little too long when we met.”

She scoffed and looked at him. The priest knew he was supposed to feel angry, but he didn’t.

“The people on Blackåsen were afraid of him. I always wondered what hold he had on the others. I realized that a bit more knowledge of the settlers’ pasts might do us good. And I must say, what I found out was rather amusing.”

She touched Gustav’s drawing and lined it up straight with the others.

“So what did you learn?”

Sofia picked up the drawing. “A lieutenant acquaintance of my husband’s recognized Gustav as a soldier in his regiment. He was assumed dead in the Battle of Fraustadt.”

Fraustadt. Gustav and the priest would have been in the same place. One of Sweden’s greatest victories. Yes, hundreds of fellow soldiers died but, against that, thousands of Slavs from Sachsen, Poland, and Russia. Gustav would have either deserted or been captured.