“Bishop Brask,” he said aloud, as if the man were still there.
A shudder passed through him and he tried to remember what he’d been thinking, all this way, but all that came into his mind was light and fields, a dark, dead tree somewhere in one of the forests he’d passed, beside the road, also one toothless old woman who had waved and smiled, then crushed her hat down under one hand and vanished into the weeds.
With his knees he started the horse forward again. He began to pass the huts of the people who owed their allegiance to him. Small huts, well kept, better than most, he would have said; but then, the war had never come to Hälsingland, and though the sons of these peasants had fought with Lars-Goren, they had been lucky from the beginning: all but a few hundred had come home without a scratch, as if the Devil, for some reason, had decided to leave them alone.
Toward dusk, Lars-Goren reached the village closest to his own estate, and here, unaccountably, he found himself full of dread. He tried to think of what he would say if someone hailed him, and his distress increased. But tall and erect though he was, no one noticed him. And so, long after sunset, he came to his home estate. Though summer was at its height, the air was frosty. The fields lay perfectly still, bathed in mist, nothing stirring but rabbits and a fox and what might have been a deer. On the hill overlooking the river, his castle stood unlighted, as if everyone had died. He knew, of course, that that was nonsense, an idle nightmare rising and sinking again in an instant. Nevertheless, he swallowed hard, like a man full of fear and remorse. The horse, called Drake, or Dragon, looked back at him. He patted its neck. They moved on and came to the plank road, loud under his horse’s hooves, that rose abruptly to the castle gate.
At the gate he reined up his horse and sat for a while, like a man coming back to his sanity. He knew now why the castle was dark. There were no dangers here, no passing strangers. His people had simply gone to bed. He looked at the stones of the castle wall, docile and familiar yet unearthly in the moonlight, moss-hung, mysteriously alive, as it seemed to him, not stones but something stranger, perhaps a towering stack of sleeping sheep. He looked at the planks of the huge oak lift-door, built by his grandfather, heavy not for defense against enemies but to carry the weight of carts. At last he got down from his horse to go to the door and bang the knocker.
2.
HIS WIFE, LIV, STOOD IN THE KITCHEN cooking for him—“No need to wake the servants,” she had said, but he’d known what she meant. She would rather be with him alone after all this time. Around her, except where the fireplace-glow reached, the stone walls were gloomy and dark, a world paradoxically intimate and foreign after all he’d seen in Stockholm. He sat at the heavy pine table, far away from her, where they could watch each other. The room had no windows. In winter, that region could be bitterly cold. The red light from the fireplace where she cooked flowed over her and threw a tall shadow on the wall to the left of where Lars-Goren sat. His wife’s long hair, yellow-red and translucent as cloudberries, was tied up in a bun.
At first she asked him questions, which he answered briefly and negligently, much as he’d have answered some stranger at court to whom he was obliged to be polite though neither had any great investment in the other. Then, noticing what he was doing, he tried to answer more expansively, telling her about Gustav, what life was like in Stockholm under the new regime, how the city and the people there had changed since shed seen it last. She listened as if with interest, occasionally asking about some family they knew but they both sensed that it was not yet time for details, or sensed that he couldn’t yet give her the details most important to him, above all the stories of his encounters with the Devil himself. They let the conversation die, he by pretending to sink into thought, she by working more actively at the fireplace. When the silence grew embarrassing, she took up her part.
She told him, as she worked, who had died, who had married, which children had been ill. Her words were brief and clipped, with long pauses between them. Sometimes she would turn and look at him for a moment. Occasionally she smiled, but it was not the smile he remembered. Then, gradually, as the food smells grew thicker and sweeter in the room, both of their hearts seemed to warm a little. She filled a dish from the kettle and brought it over to the table, checked the beer-pitcher to see that it was not yet empty, then sat down across from him to watch him eat. When he bowed his head to pray, she also bowed. Afterward he said, “One of these days—”
She nodded.
He regretted that she’d nodded. He would have liked to try to put it in words. But since shed given him no choice, he began to eat, shaking his head and saying nothing.
Then, forgetting that he’d decided to say no more, Lars-Goren said, blurting it out with great urgency, like a child, “I always feel guilty, coming through the villages when I’ve been away so long.” His wife was looking down at her pale, folded hands, her eyes unusually dark under the half-lowered lids. He sipped his beer, spilling a little of it down his beard and quickly wiping himself, then leaned forward on his elbows, looking at her forehead, and continued, “I feel even guiltier coming here.”
She raised her eyebrows as if questioningly, though still she kept her eyes on her hands.
He began to nod thoughtfully, his lower lip over his upper, his eyebrows low. At last he brought out, his voice oddly thin, at least in his own ears, like the bleating of a sheep, “There are evils in the world that a man can’t take the blame for, evils that nobody can do anything about — my going away, I mean. Not being here to see the children grow up.”
The softness of her voice startled and unnerved him. “I know.”
He thought of touching her hand, then thought better of it. “Surely it’s the truth — at least I think it’s the truth — that when a man in my position … having people who depend on him, the country not safe unless he goes out and does what he can to make it safe …” He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling hollowed out and helpless, like a child who’s been caught in a lie, though Lars-Goren was not lying. “If I could stay here all the time, the way a husband should,” he said, “if I could watch over the peasants, see to their welfare, settle their disputes—” His fingertips were trembling.
“Hush, Lars-Goren,” she said, “eat your supper.” She was looking at him now, her eyes a faded blue, beautiful, like ice come alive. As if shed come to some decision, she reached out and touched his left hand. “I know how it is,” she said. “You do what you have to do. I’m glad you’re home.”
Lars-Goren closed his hand tightly around his wife’s hand, small and strong, and his head swam with thoughts he had no words for. She rose, with her hand still in his, and as if at a signal, he too rose. “That’s all you want to eat?” she asked, eyes widening in surprise, as if she didn’t know — and perhaps indeed she didn’t — that it was she who had given him the signal to rise and come with her.
“No,” he said, “it’s good, but I’ve had enough.”
She led him to the beds of the children, one by one, and at each bed he stood for a long moment gazing at the face he knew as well as he knew his own heart yet at the same time seemed not to remember. It had been more than a year, and the changes in his children were so mysterious and painful — or the fact that he hadn’t been there to watch them change was so painful — that he felt again, more strongly than before, that helpless hollowness of a child in despair. Holding his wife’s hand, bending forward to see, he wore an expression of fear and foolish eagerness, a face prepared against the chance that the child should awaken and discover him standing there.