So now they entered Stockholm on the backs of asses, Sunnanväder wearing a floppy straw crown and carrying a battered wooden sword such as children might play with, Master Knut in an archiepiscopal mitre made of birch-bark. The crowd laughed and shouted, for here in the capital, the people were all solidly on the side of the king. A mangy dog ran up to bark at the animal on which Sunnanväder rode. Suddenly what came out of its mouth was not barking but speech. “Never mind!” yelled the dog. “They laugh now, these morons. Let us see who does the laughing tomorrow!”
Sunnanväder, weeping, did not bother to look down. Mickilsson, riding beside him, opened his mouth in astonishment. When he could speak, he said, “Peder, am I dreaming?”
Sunnanväder wept and said nothing.
When the parade of humiliation was over, they were shipped unceremoniously, like animals, to Uppsala for beheading.
“So much for my human enemies,” said Gustav when the second head fell.
Lars-Goren said nothing, and the king turned to look at him in a way that commanded speech. “There are always more,” Lars-Goren said. At the last moment, a strange, rapt expression had come over Knut Mickilsson’s face. Lars-Goren’s mind would not let loose of it.
“Nevertheless,” King Gustav said, “the time has come to seek out the Devil.”
Lars-Goren looked down at the severed head in the sawdust. “Surely he’s here,” he said.
Gustav’s look became sharper. “In me, you mean? Speak plainly, old friend and kinsman!”
Around the steeple of the church, sparrows flew crazily, unwilling to rest. Lars-Goren pointed up at them. “In the birds — in you — in the cobblestones under our feet, perhaps. Who knows where the Devil ends and the rest begins?”
King Gustav’s frown was dangerous. “You have your orders,” he said, “you, my best friend, and Bishop Brask, my best enemy. You’ll manage. I think so.”
Quickly, for fear that he might begin to make threats, King Gustav turned on his heel and hurried away.
PART FIVE
1.
BECAUSE IT WOULD BE USELESS to try to flee to Europe, especially for Lars-Goren, who had no friends there, Lars-Goren and the bishop fled north, on the pretext that there, where his home was reputed to be, they were most likely to find the Devil.
It was a bitter trip for Lars-Goren. They followed the same route he had taken in happier times, when King Gustav was newly crowned and full of high hopes and idealistic plans for Sweden. It was almost the same season as when he’d ridden north before, to be united again, for a little, with his family; the summer was just a little farther along — there was fog in the valleys, mornings and evenings, and sometimes, as they passed through open farmland, a sharp smell of autumn. Sometimes tears filled his eyes as he rode, his thoughts dwelling on his wife and children, his household servants, and his peasants. Even the foolish flattering priest whom he’d visited on his last trip and whom he’d known since childhood, Father Karl, who was always trying to advance himself by making up stories of what others had said — even that man Lars-Goren remembered fondly now. “I’ll miss him,” he was saying to himself. For he knew he could hide only so long at his own home castle. Gustav, in his present tyrannical mood, would be sure to hound them. Gustav’s plan might be mad — so Lars-Goren believed it — but the king was perfectly serious about it. After a time, their failure to report success in their struggle with the Devil would turn the king against them, and all the force of his frustration would come down on their heads. It was a strange thing that a king should have such a power — that the people should voluntarily grant him such power — but it was a fact of life, clearly, and had been so for centuries, all over the world. Thus in time Lars-Goren would become a danger to his household by being there; to save them, he would have no choice but to press on, God knew where. His responsibilities would fall to Erik. “God bless him,” Lars-Goren thought. Bishop Brask glanced at him, then tactfully looked away. They rode on, moving toward Uppsala, in silence.
In this cloud of gloomy thoughts, Bishop Brask was something like a lightshaft of relief. He was not a man Lars-Goren greatly liked or even admired, though he was clearly no fool; but he was at least a distraction, a point of interest. For hours at a time he would ride without a word, lost, perhaps, in his own gloomy thoughts. He rode with his back very straight, like a man in pain, or like a prisoner riding with a rope around his neck. He seemed to look neither to left nor right nor off into the distance, but only at his horses ears. His attire was elegant, like a rich lord’s, yet when one looked more closely, as Lars-Goren had ample occasion to do, it was not all it might be: the collars and cuffs had been shrewdly repaired, the cloth stretching over his knees was thin, no more substantial than a fine lady’s hankie. He rode the same horse he’d been riding when Lars-Goren had first met him beside the high mountain lake in Dalarna, the splendid black stallion he called Crusader; but the horse was old now, and though he still habitually fought the bit and sometimes rolled back his eyes, recalcitrant, there was no longer spirit in the horses rebellion; it seemed more crotchety, like the fussing of an old man no longer aware that he’s fussing. He snatched leaves from the branches of trees as he passed, and Bishop Brask, each time, would give a perfunctory little jerk at the reins; but neither of them was any longer interested in the struggle. When they cantered, even for short distances, the bishops horse breathed harshly and took crafty advantages, favoring his forelegs as he came out of jumps, breaking stride for swamp-ground, throwing his head for leverage as they climbed steep hills. As if respectfully, Lars-Goren’s horse Drake held in a little, though Drake, at ten, was at the height of his powers. Crusader was perhaps sixteen. The bishop found excuses, perhaps without knowing it, for moving his horse no faster than he had to, and Lars-Goren, half-unconsciously fell in with this. It was only when he realized that they wouldn’t reach Uppsala until the middle of the night that he saw clearly how slowly they’d been moving, and the reasons. But no matter, he told himself. There might come a time when speed would make a difference, but except for Lars-Goren’s strong wish to see his family, there was no great hurry just yet. At times, as if to distract Lars-Goren from the slowness of the pace, the bishop would look over at him with his milky old eyes and speak. Once he said, “I’ve been interested, watching this hobby of the king’s — breeding livestock. I visited one of the farms, outside Vadstena. He’s a fascinating man, King Gustav. One wonders how much he understands, how much he merely acts.”
Lars-Goren raised his eyebrows, waiting, inviting more. The bishop for a moment sucked his lips inside his teeth, looking down at Crusader’s mane; then he continued: “It may be more important than people think, this business of breeding livestock. It’s been a favorite occupation of kings for centuries, clear back to the Greeks, and as I once mentioned in one of my books — perhaps you’ve read it—‘what kings do for sport will in the end stand the world on its ears.’ Heaven knows what I meant, exactly, but in this case it may well apply.” He nodded thoughtfully, smiling a little, as if the conversation were ended.