Snowdust whirled and snarled around the dead woman’s feet. The dead eyes stared as if with indifference at Lars-Goren, but seeing that she did not step aside or turn her eyes, Lars-Goren knew it was no ordinary human indifference. Perhaps, he thought, it was the indifference of a judge, or perhaps the indifference of a divine messenger, one who had no stake in this at all.
“If it seems to you proper,” he said cautiously, bowing like a servant, “may I ask your name?”
As if a feeble spark of life had come into her, the dead woman smiled. The lips moved stiffly, like old leather. After a moment, in a voice hoarse with disuse, she spoke.
“You would not remember my name, Lars-Goren, though you heard it once or twice. I was a peasant on your estate. You who should have been my protector were my murderer.”
Lars-Goren stared, a blush of anger rising into his cheeks. Even from the dead he was not a man to tolerate a slander. Yet something made him hesitate, and the dead woman spoke again.
“I was an excellent servant in my younger days,” she said. “I worked hard in my hut and in the fields, and I raised twelve children, nine strong boys and three girls. But evil times came. With your lordship’s blessing six of my sons moved south to join Sten Sture and his war, and there they lost their lives. Then the six that remained to me died one by one, four by the plague, two by accidents. My husband sickened with grief and hanged himself; you yourself signed the paper that refused him Christian burial. Suddenly I was alone in the world, avoided by all my former friends because they thought me bad luck, or possessed. Children tormented me, men and women avoided me; soon they would not let me into their fields. It was said I was a witch, and though at first it was not true, in time it became so: by curses and charms I kept myself safe from my Christian tormenters. I kept them afraid of me, and by my power to make them tremble — worse yet, by my power to do evil to and for them — I kept myself in clothing and food. No one was ever less evil at heart than I was, at least in the beginning; but I grew bitter, as one does. I learned to enjoy my malevolence, for it gave me revenge on those who tormented me, stronger than myself. But of course it could not last. They were many; I was alone. The strength was in the end all on their side. They spoke with your lordship. You ordered me burned — burned alive, the most painful and shameful of all deaths. An old woman, a faithful servant for years and years, and a miserable victim to whom a just man would have shown mercy! Did you ask me why it was that I behaved as I did? Did you think of my humanness and misery at all? No, you listened to my enemies and condemned me as you would some old dog that has turned to killing sheep. But a dog you would have killed with a gun — one flash of pain, then peace. A dog, you would have buried. Such is the justice of Lars-Goren, advisor to King Gustav, a lord with whom neither those above nor those below find fault, except for me. Lars-Goren, whose power comes from God himself, so we’re told. Vicegerent of angels! Then God damn the angels in heaven, says the witch!
“Now in rage and misery I roam the world’s edges, restless and unappeasable, for I refuse to go to the place appointed to the wicked, because I hate the injustice of my damnation, and refuse too to go to the place appointed for the just, though nothing but my anger prevents it. I have deigned to offer only one small prayer to heaven, that you and I might meet somewhere on common ground, at the edge of our two worlds, that I might strike at your devilish complacence with my tongue; and today that prayer is answered. Though it may not bring me to rest, I have been given the chance to say what I have to say to you: that if I am damned, then you are ten thousand times damned, Lars-Goren. You are called a great fighter and a wise counsellor, and you are praised as a man who is afraid of nothing in the world except the Devil. But I have come to tell you you are a coward and a fool, for you shiver at a Nothing — mere stench and black air, for that is what he is your wide-winged Devil — and in the presence of the greatest evil ever dreamt of, the fact that we exist in the world at all, helpless as babes against both evil and seeming good, you do not have the wit to blanch at all.”
All this, in spite of the rage in her heart, she spoke calmly. Lars-Goren, on his side, though he now understood that the ghost was incapable of doing him harm, was like a man with the wind knocked out of him; try as he might, he could not draw breath or speak. Whether it was rage or horror he felt, it had nothing directly to do with the old woman. “So this is then devil!” he thought. “So this is existence!”
But Bishop Brask, the great cynic and disbeliever, felt nothing of the kind. He had known for many years that the world is full of sickness and evil. He was thinking of how Lars-Goren had left his family and home, riding to his almost certain death or at any rate a bitter life of exile. If he was guilty, and he was, he was guilty in the same way the angry old witch had been: a victim of chance and unreason. He acted, or at any rate he so believed, by the commandments of a god who had not spoken to anyone sane for fifteen centuries.
Bishop Brask cried out, “Old woman, what right have you to chide like this?” His voice was sharp with indignation, his face twisted by both anger and the pain shooting up in him, almost past bearing; and, not like a ghost impervious to his power but like a fearful peasant, the old woman turned her eyes to him and clasped her bony hands. He raised his arm as if to strike her. “Wretched creature,” said the bishop, his face wildly trembling, “even in death you’re an animal, not human! Here you are, free as a bird in the realm of the eternal, free to learn the secrets of everything — free by your own admission to roam heaven and hell if you please — and all you can think of is petty human spite! Have you sought out the children and husband who died before you? No! Not even that! And you ask divine wisdom and love of Lars-Goren? Admit it, walking dung-heap! You were a witch from the day you were born!”
“Stop!” Lars-Goren whispered, his face dark red. His right arm moved, wobbly, toward the bishop’s elbow. Now a frail thread of his breathing came back. He straightened a little, making both of them wait. Even for a man whose condition was normal there was little enough air, in the sharp, icy wind, to breathe. After a full minute, when he’d filled his lungs insofar as was possible, Lars-Goren spoke again. “She’s right and you’re right,” he said. “It’s right to cry out for justice beyond anything else. If we can dream of justice, surely God can too, if he’s still conscious. No harm that she blames me for her misfortunes. We taught her the system, we aristocrats. ‘Look to us,’ we said. ‘We’ll take care of you.’ If we too were victims of a stupid idea, that’s not her fault.”
Bishop Brask stared at him with distaste, as he’d have stared at an insect, bit his lips together and kept silent.
“Old woman,” Lars-Goren said, “I accept the ten thousand damnations you put on me. I take it all in your place. Now go where you belong. I absolve you of all guilt. Go at once!”
The old woman’s eyes narrowed. They seemed to have come to life. “Are you God then?” she asked bitterly. “Are you a priest now?
“Accept it,” Lars-Goren said. He thought of saying more. He thought of reasoning with her, showing her that all human beings make mistakes, that knowledge is progressive, if it exists at all, that the justice he offered her came in fact from her own thought or dream. But he was sick with reflection and not immortal, like her; he had no time, no strength. “Go where you belong,” he said, speaking very sternly.
“Go to the place appointed.” He raised his fist as if to strike her. “Go now, this instant, or I warn you—”