Gustav Vasa shook his head in disgust, pacing, as he seemed always to do these days, venting his anger on the huge, patient figure of Lars-Goren and across the room, Hans Brask. “The fool!” he said, shaking his fist before Lars-Goren’s face. “Does he think I don’t know what he’s been up to?” He whirled away, pointing fiercely at Bishop Brask, who sat waiting as patiently as Lars-Goren to learn why he’d been called. “God send me an enemy worth my trouble!” shouted Gustav. “Fools, maniacs. It’s like living in a house full of flies.”
Bishop Brask sadly nodded.
“Pah,” said Gustav, turning away from Brask as if he too were one of the flies. “Who is his houseguest there at Kalmar? Who sleeps in his fluffy German bed and eats his cabbage? Nils Sture! None other! Heir to the family’s pretensions! And by miraculous coincidence—” He turned his back on both of them and stared out the window, breathing deeply, trying without success to control his rage. “By miraculous coincidence this great patriot von Melen is also putting up, as his beloved houseguest, none other than what’s-her-name, daughter of Sören Norby. A pretty match, eh? Nils Sture and Norby’s daughter? He’s a matchmaker, von Melen. His heart rules his head. That’s it, yes of course! Behind all the schemes he’s a softy, yes that’s it!” He spat like a farmer, indifferent to the splendid furnishings. “You know what I would just once like to see in this world?” he asked furiously, stabbing the air with his finger. “I would like to see a little pure unmitigated evil! Yes! Not stupidity, not sniveling little plots and counterplots, not jockeying and jostling — pure outrageous evil.”
He crossed quickly, stooped over, knees bent, to Brask’s chair. “I met the Devil once,” he said, pointing at the bishop’s nose. “I was interested. I was excited! ‘Ha,’ I thought, ‘by God it’s the Devil himself — no joke! Now you’re in trouble, Gustav Vasa,’ I thought. ‘Now you’d better keep a sharp eye out!’” He paused, drew his finger back. More softly, he said, “You didn’t know I’d had meetings with the Devil, eh?”
“I thought perhaps you might,” said the bishop. He glanced at Lars-Goren, whose presence made him strangely uneasy. Lars-Goren showed nothing. If the bishop had somehow revealed himself — he had no idea whether he had or not — Lars-Goren was carefully not showing it.
“Well, I did,” said Gustav. Again he turned away, petulant now. “All in all, he’s proved a disappointment.”
“So we’ve all found,” said the bishop, taking, as he knew, a risk.
But Vasa was in no mood for subtle innuendoes.
“Very well,” he said, “I’m disappointed. Everything in life disappoints me, that’s the truth, but the Devil most of all, lording it over us, wasting our valuable time. I’m not a man to sit quietly and endure a thing like that!”
Lars-Goren glanced at him, perhaps in alarm.
“First I’ll kill Norby,” Gustav Vasa said, fixing his gaze on a spot high on the wall. Abruptly, he glanced at Brask. “You’ve heard, I suppose, that he’s escaped to Denmark?” He hurried on without waiting for a response. “To Denmark — where else? — where he’s collected another fleet. God knows how he does it! Well, I’ll sink him, that’s setded. I don’t know how yet, but sure as I’m standing here I’ll sink him! And I’ll get rid of von Melen and his high-minded friends, all these plotters and meddlers, silly-brained impediments, always crossing me, always bothering me, getting in my way for no good reason — I’ll wipe them off the slate! — and then, gentle-men—” He paused significantly, looking first at Brask, then at Lars-Goren, raising his fists slowly, his eyes like two shining steel rivets: “Then we drive the Devil under the ground!”
Lars-Goren’s hands clenched on the chair-arms, and his eyes opened wider. Bishop Brask faintly smiled, slightly blanching, and sadly shook his head.
Gustav Vasa brought one hand to his chin and looked soberly at Bishop Brask. “Lars-Goren doesn’t worry me,” he said, after a moment. “Lars-Goren is afraid of the Devil, as is right. He’ll be excellent. I think so. But what about you?”
Bishop Brask went on smiling, shaking his head, the spotty skin of his face sagging heavily. “Maybe you can do it,” he said at last. Just perceptibly, he sagged his narrow shoulders. “But tell me. Does it matter?”
8.
PLOTS, COUNTERPLOTS; THE DEVIL was so busy he could barely keep track. By means of agents, Norby’s trusted friends, he lured Sören Norby into secret alliance with the Netherlands and his former lord, Kristian, and managed to put Gotland back in Norbys hands. He persuaded the Lübeckers to try to seize Godand, since Norby had betrayed them and would certainly continue to do so, for love of King Kristian and hatred of Gustav, chief buyer of Lübecks goods. He persuaded King Fredrik to defend Norby’s stronghold and to grant him the town of Blekinge as a life-fief, a base in immediate proximity to the Swedish border and within striking-distance of Kalmar. At once, again at the Devils suggestion — and it seemed reasonable enough, for whatever the nobility of a man’s ambition, he can do nothing without wealth — Sören Norby resumed his indiscriminate attacks on shipping — German, Swedish, Russian, even Danish. Again and again, with elaborate apologies, he sent back to those he pretended were his friends, such as Fredrik and the Lübeckers, whatever booty he’d taken “by mistake”—but it was never all there. “The fools,” said the Devil gleefully, disguised as an old friend, “they’ll never know the difference — take my oath on it!” In August 1526, a combined Swedish-Danish fleet sent most of Norby’s squadron to the bottom: Norby himself escaped by the skin of his teeth to Russia, where at the Devil’s instigation he refused to take service with the tsar and was thrown into prison. There, one day when he was walking along a road in company with other prisoners, carrying his pick — for Norby’s punishment was work in the salt mines of the tsar — the Devil himself visited him in the form of a mule.
“Sören Norby,” the Devil whispered through the mouth of the mule, “don’t lose heart! All is well!”
Norby’s eyes widened and his knees went weak. “God in heaven!” he whispered, “do mules now speak Swedish?” All around him, prisoners moved away from him a little, supposing the man to have gone mad.
“I’m your faithful old helper,” said the Devil, and made the mule’s mouth smile. “I’ve been with you from the beginning, and I’m with you yet.”
“Then you’re the Devil!” said Norby, and this time he spoke aloud, so that the prisoners around him were more frightened than before. “Get away from me! Go!” He burst into tears and, without thinking, took a swing at the mule with the flat of his pick-axe.
“You there!” someone shouted in Russian. It was the guard, just a few feet behind him. “Leave that mule alone!” He brandished his long, narrow club as a warning.
“You see?” said the mule pitifully, pretending to be in pain. “You see what comes of senseless violence? Now use your head, and put your pick on your shoulder, and listen like a creature of reason.”
“Never!” whispered Sören and, balancing the pick in the bend of his arm, put one finger of each hand into his ears.
“What kind of fool are you, trying to block out the voice of the Devil with your fingers?” the mule scoffed. “Plug your ears with pebbles if it pleases you, and sing at the top of your voice to drown me out. I’ll still be heard!”
Norby saw it was true and only from stubbornness kept his fingers in his ears.