Wolf Winter (39 page)

“It is not me who spreads fear,” she said.

“This is a community. We help each other. If we begin to suspect one another, then where will it end?”

Daniel nodded. Anna too. Maija thought about secrets. Bad secrets.

“Spoken by the one who’ll go to any length to ensure his sins remain unknown,” she said.

“Maija?” The priest’s voice, shocked.

Nils shook his head. “You are accusing me,” he said. Something in his voice troubled her, “—a nobleman. In front of all these people. May I ask what I stand accused of?”

“I think you killed Eriksson,” she said.

Someone inhaled.

“Maija?” The priest said again.

A block of a man emerged from his place by the wall. Purple cloth swept the floor and filled up the room. A bishop? He raised his hand. They all stared as if spellbound.

“Speak,” he said to Maija.

Maija swallowed. She hadn’t seen him. The others were avoiding her gaze. All but one.

“Eriksson knew things about them. Secrets.” She met Nils’s gaze. “But whatever he had found out about you was really bad.”

“Rubbish,” Nils said.

“Bad enough for you to kill him.”

Nils shook his head. “This is senseless,” he said.

“In your home, on the wall, there is a carpet worth a fortune. You don’t need tax exemption. Was that what Eriksson knew about you and your past? Did he blackmail you? Why did you leave the south, Nils?”

“You want to know about Eriksson. About which secret of ours he knew?” Kristina’s voice was calm. Maija swirled around. She searched for her in the dark, found her by one of the tall windows.

“As it seems that women are speaking out now, so shall I,” Kristina said and took a step forward. “Naturally, Eriksson knew why we left Stockholm. He did his homework about us, like he did with everybody else. My husband had many, shall I say, acquaintances among the foreign emissaries. The King decided my husband’s allegiances were in question and forced us away.”

Kristina shrugged. “Me, I don’t know what the King imagines will happen when he doesn’t recompense his men. And I don’t know what you think it will do to us if people know.”

Maija’s mind was buzzing. Secrets—the glade where they found the body—the body itself.

“There was a piece of blue glass where Eriksson was killed. The Lapps said they had given it to Nils.”

“I’ve already explained that to you,” Nils said.

“There were herbs on Eriksson’s sleeve,” Maija said, “Marjoram. It cleans wounds, removes pain. Nils had toothache.”

Kristina studied Maija.

Maija remembered giving her word to Fearless that she would not tell anyone, but still she continued, blazing straight forward on the path she had begun.

“And so, last night, someone killed one of Fearless’s reindeer. Whoever did it, took only the skull. They placed it on Eriksson’s grave. There was blood.”

“But that just proves the Lapps are up to something.” Lisbet’s voice.

“Maija, I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nils said.

The village.
Think,
she told herself. How does the village link to Eriksson’s death? She couldn’t see it. Nils had grown to like the idea of the village after Eriksson’s death, not before. What was she missing? There was something she was missing.

“Nils couldn’t have killed Eriksson,” the bishop said. “I know this for a fact. He and Kristina were my guests at the time I understand the murder occurred.”

Impossible. The air left her lungs.

The priest said nothing. Anna was staring down at the floor. Nils and Kristina were both looking at the bishop. The pores on the bishop’s skin were large. In the light of the fire they looked like black spots. Maija focused on those on the left side of his nose.

“The reindeer skull on Eriksson’s grave,” she said, “it was done to frighten us so that we would accuse the Lapps.”

“I would be worried, indeed, if I didn’t know this was a lie,” the bishop said.

“Why Maija,” the priest said, hesitantly, “I took the bishop to Eriksson’s grave this morning. There was nothing amiss.”

Maija sat in the darkness, by the window. The moon rang on snow and echoed along the streets of Settler Town. Daniel and Anna had returned. Not a word was said, and now they were asleep, thick sighs in the air.

Someone had once said to her that the able noble wife should know to speak Latin to the cultivated and talk like a peasant to the peasants. Maija thought of Kristina’s square chin, how the corners of her mouth were downturned, and the wrinkles between her eyes, deep enough to bring the brows almost together. Kristina was Nils’s equal. Or more. She thought of the story Henrik had told about the merchant who came home to find his load packed with vermin and felt certain it wasn’t Nils who had been behind that but his wife.

The priest’s face when he looked at Maija. Pity? He was right: she was pitiful.

Jutta was standing beside her, arms crossed. The stain that was their kin’s past colored them both.

“Nils needs to be stopped,” Maija said. “It’s people like him who start the hunts for sorceresses.”

Jutta didn’t say a word.

Maija sat straight, without allowing her spine to touch the wood of the chair. If she relaxed now, she would surely die.

“How could you have allowed this to happen?”

The priest and Fearless stood at the center of the room while the bishop paced before them, back and forth, his coat slithering behind him, purple flashes as he turned. By the wall Sofia had lowered her head.

“And in the vicarage. God have mercy on you.”

He turned again. “A peasant accusing nobles. A woman accusing a man. Do you not see what … what …” The bishop’s face was red. He grasped for words. “This is blasphemy—a questioning of God’s order, a challenge of God Almighty Himself …”

He took out a kerchief and wiped his forehead, then his eyes fixed on the priest.

“I ordered you,” he said, “to find out the truth. I told you to close this subject down. Discreetly, I said. Instead, we have parishioners running amok. Control your flock, in the name of God.”

He raised his hand to stop the priest from speaking and moved on to Fearless. Fearless was motionless, no reaction showing on his face.

“You are part of this Church,” the bishop said. “Do not think this does not concern you.” He remained standing, staring at the Lapp as if to imprint on him his words. “And if I find that your people have begun to root in their past again, you shall be made to pay, and pay dearly.

“I shall tell you what will happen,” the bishop said then. “If there is no clarity in the matter of Eriksson’s death by the time of the Lady Day sermon, I myself shall lead the investigation. And if I cannot find the answers, then, as the law has it, you, as Eriksson’s fellow-beings, will be forced to share the burden of the penalty.

“This … this Maija …” The bishop wiped his forehead again. “She has to be punished, of course.”

The priest’s eyes caught on Sofia. There was an expression on her face as she looked at the bishop—not a smile, but contentedness. A cat in sunshine licking its paw.

Let it run, the priest’s father would have said. Bend your head, let it run. Welcome the castigation of those wiser than you. The priest had seen it a hundred times—how things ran and ran across his father.

“Is it really necessary?” the priest said. “Her husband is absent for winter. She is frightened. It can be weeks before settlers see anyone, and that is not a good environment for anyone. People can get confused.”

“She falsely accused a nobleman, and this in public.”

“She is a simple peasant.”

“Thus more reason to lay down the law to her.”

“Maija may be impetuous, but she means well.”

The bishop’s eyes narrowed, evaluating, perhaps, whether here was some other sin for him to discover. “She may no longer attend Mass,” he said.

Leniency with a potential sorceress, mercy for a whore, but exclusion of a frightened settler woman?

“That is a severe punishment,” the priest said slowly. “None of us is entirely without sin. I am certain God takes the motivations behind our actions into consideration.”

Careful,
the bishop’s face told him.
I am but waiting to find faults with you.
“Tell her,” he said, “that I shall personally pronounce the rest of her sentence at the sermon on Lady Day.”

It was his duty to tell her, but he would not do it in front of the other parishioners. The priest hoped the bishop’s final penalty would be one of shaming her as opposed to doing her bodily harm—though he guessed Maija might favor it the other way.

When he entered, Maija was putting on her kerchief. She paused in her movement.

“Leave us,” she said to her daughters without looking at them.

She stood up straighter, waited for him to speak.

“You may no longer come to Church,” he said, “and the remainder of your penance will be declared at the Lady Day sermon. By the bishop.”

She barely opened her lips as she slowly let her breath out.

“And my daughters?” she asked.

“They are welcome to attend sermons. Should they so want.”

People were cruel. The parishioners would make them suffer on behalf of their errant mother.

“I promise you, I’ll do my best to keep the peace if they come,” he said.

Maija nodded a few times to herself.

“What will you do?” he asked.

She was squeezing her fingers into her palms, as if to drive strength into herself. She stood up taller and inhaled. “We shall pack up and leave.”

Still he remained standing.

“Accusing Nils was rash, Maija …” He shook his head. “But something is wrong.”

She made a small movement of her head.

“It’s just that …” she started, but then it was she who fell silent. “Good-bye,” she said instead and avoided his gaze.

Candlemas too was a miserable affair.

It was their first night back home on Blackåsen Mountain. Maija sat up, her nightdress pasted to her breasts and lower back. She waited until her breathing returned to normal, then she rose, pulled the sweaty gown over her head, wiped her neck and stomach, and dropped it on the floor.

Just a dream. She felt in the dark for her trousers and her shirt, found them, and pulled them on. She stood for a moment beside the bed. From beneath her came the sound of Dorotea’s snuffles. Maija wanted to lie down beside her daughter, put her arm around her, and inhale her dreams. She’d never been able to do that with Frederika, she thought then; not once had the girl relaxed and given herself over to her mother’s cuddles. And the thought was back, unwelcome, but there nevertheless:
I don’t know her.

Maija shivered. It was just the nightmare, holding her bones. She’d had this one before, but not since they left Finland. The events in town had left their mark. She had the right to be frightened. She’d seen people broken in both body and mind. Never the same again after a Church penance, and now she would have to wait six weeks to hear hers.

On the table there was a small covered plate containing leftovers from their evening meal. The fish was for the girls to have in the morning. Maija lifted the cloth. Her mouth watered. She’d had nothing today but tea. She wrapped the cloth around the plate again. She thought she had known hunger before this winter, but she had not. Real hunger did not just make you irritated and weak or make your stomach grumble. Real hunger was pain.