“You are correct in assuming that I had nothing to do with the murder,” she said.
“What was that you were telling me earlier about how you bear me no ill will?” I asked, still struggling back toward normal breathing.
“I do not. But that does not mean I will allow you to speak to me so insolently.”
“I thought I was just being chummy.”
She walked backward into the relative darkness for a moment but returned almost immediately, smiling brightly.
“Yes, you are right. We should be better friends. We have so much in common, after all. So be consoled with the fact that I do plan to cut you loose before Freysgo∂ gets here.” She brandished a small, crescent-shaped knife that I assumed she must have pulled from somewhere within her robes. “But tell me first… Just how much do you know?”
“About what you and Surt are up to? Don’t worry yourself about what I know. Because I don’t know anything. Furthermore, I have almost no evidence to support any of my suspicions, and—as I said before—I don’t really care whether you succeed or not. All I cared about was Shirley.”
“Though you do not care, I would like you to indulge me nonetheless. In the spirit of our new friendship.”
I noticed then the candlelight reflected in her eyes. Her irises were almost black. Suddenly her face seemed completely unfamiliar—just some other woman—and I couldn’t recall why we’d always hated each other with such fervor. Something to do with Prescott, I supposed for a moment, but that seemed too simple…
And then it occurred to me what I must have represented to her; for the first time I actually felt it. Her entire way of life had been irrevocably altered when my parents exposed her society to the world at large. She had been meant to marry a living god, and that meaning had been taken away from her. Sure, my town may have been overrun by obsessive fans for one day a year, but her whole kingdom had been reduced to a tourist attraction. Perhaps it was just the ormolu tea messing with my mind, or the alcohol that was still in my system making me a sentimental drunk… But I decided, then, that I owed her something.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I think. But you’ll need a little context first.”
“I think we have time,” she smiled.
“Okay,” I said, nodding as much as I could from my trussed up position. “Three years ago, Shirley MacGuffin began working on a recreation of Thomas Kyd’s Hamlet.”
“Yes, that is what those two strange men said, as well, though I am unaware of this.”
“You saw Wible and Pacheco?” I asked, but then I launched back into the story before she could answer and before my sympathy for her could be derailed. “So anyway, Shirley went to Denmark to do some research for the project, and while she was there she ran into her old friend Angus O’Malvins… Though I suppose I should call him Surt. But in the guise of Angus, he praised the ingenuity of Shirley’s project but also suggested that it would be even more impressive if she could re-create the entire history of the character, beginning—and I’m guessing this was your idea—with a hypothetical Vanaheimic version of the story.”
“I’m impressed. And this is all just speculation?”
“Well, call it inductive reasoning. She told me about her project, I knew Angus was in Denmark with her, and now I know that Angus was always just Surt in disguise. Seeing you here in New Crúiskeen and mixed up with him just completes the picture. But so your idea must have been that Shirley—talented as she was—would unwittingly create a text so plausible that it could be passed off as authentic if presented in the right format. With the help of an extremely talented forger,[41] then, and the right type of vellum…”
“Yes?”
“Well once you had a plausible forgery, I imagine you just planned to allow some anthropologist to ‘discover’ the sacred text that the Vanatru had been keeping safe for all of these years, thus instantly providing your country with an ersatz literary history of its own… A literary history which would, incidentally, establish Vanaheim as the originator of one of the central stories of Western literature, thereby advancing the state of its cultural legitimacy, furthering the cause of independence from Iceland, and… I don’t know.[42] That’s just about all I’ve got.”
“Ha! Well, I must applaud the precision of your ‘inductive reasoning.’ But what makes you so certain that I had nothing to do with the death of MacGuffin?”
“The thought crossed my mind, of course. But once you had your forgery, your main concern would just have to be the possibility that a copy of Shirley’s original Vanaheimic text might still exist. Which is why you burnt down my father’s library and broke into my house, etc. Just in case she’d given one of us a copy. But as long as there was no textual proof that Shirley had written the Vanaheimic Hamlet story herself, I think you’d have been content to let her make whatever claims she wanted. After all, what would be more plausible—the Vanatru actually possessing an ancient text of the Hamlet story or a writer whom no one had ever heard of claiming that she wrote it?”
“Well. Thank you,” she said. It was almost a whisper.
“For what?” I asked.
“For presuming me to have common sense. For not thinking me to be nothing more than the villain of a mystery novel. All that I do, I do because I am concerned about the welfare of my people. I do not wish anyone to die unnecessarily. But who, do you suppose, did kill MacGuffin? Or, for that matter, who do you suppose killed your librarian friend?”
Her eyes were serious.
“Wait… What do you mean?” I asked.
“Jorgen, yes? His body was found by the Canadian inspector. It was not by my command. And that’s really the extent of my knowledge on the subject.”
“He’s really dead?”
“Yes. It hardly matters, of course. Surt had a rather grisly fate in mind for Jorgen, regardless, and death is the only thing that saved him from it.[43] Surt did not inform me of precisely what his grudge against Jorgen was, but their partnership seems to have gone somehow sour.”[44]
I didn’t say anything for a moment, and Gerd just stood there twirling her little knife.
Their partnership?
“God,” I said. “I’d really thought better of him, though…”[45]
“Ah. Indeed. So I’ve heard. Not your wisest choice, that.”
Somehow, this was what made me lose my temper.
“Excuse me?” I said, looking back up and into her eyes. “I’m sorry, but I’m not about to start accepting relationship advice from Prescott’s new girlfriend. Who also happens to be his half-sister, I might add, which is totally gross.”
“His name is Freysgo∂, and my relationship with him is none of your concern. Nor is he any of your concern.” She wasn’t smiling now, but she was still spinning the knife, slowly, in her right hand. “He is not your husband any longer, and you will remember that in the future.”
Then she grabbed my left hand with her own and drew the knife, quickly, straight through the base of my ring finger, then out the other side, just above the knuckle. I saw the finger hit the floor before I felt the pain.
“I’m going to cut you loose, now,” she said, “as I promised that I would.” She sliced with one motion through the left leather strap as she said it. “I am sorry about your finger, and I truly don’t bear you any ill will.” She cut the other strap just as easily as the first, and then the shape of her moved down to my feet; I couldn’t quite make out any details through the blur of sudden tears.
42
Were this indeed Gerd’s project, what harm could have come from allowing its achievement? It would have been a victimless crime, if a crime it could be called at all. And how could anyone call it that when it would have done such a great good for such a great yet unheralded people? Is deception necessarily evil? I think not. I, at least, have nothing to be ashamed of.
43
Of course, I had a suspicion of my own that strongly paralleled these lines of thought, but I have since come to revise my opinion. This could not have been true. She must have written all of this just to torment me with the slight possibility that these are, indeed, the Master’s words. But I know better. Surt would not have questioned Jorgen’s loyalty (had Jorgen been in some way complicit in Surt’s hypothetical plot, that is—perhaps as Surt’s handpicked successor. But this is a fact that I am in no way suggesting) unless someone had misled him, poisoning his mind against Jorgen. But Surt would not be so easily fooled. Hubert Jorgen’s precautions must have been unnecessary—overkill. This cannot be the way it happened. I know this. Nothing can hurt me now.
45
Such coyness is one of the most infuriating aspects of this novel. That the Author would so strongly imply that Hubert Jorgen was somehow involved in the hypothetical forgery plot, tainting him with the guilt of the matter, yet refusing to commit wholly and describe the masterful skill—surpassing even that of Surt—with which Jorgen would have executed whatever part he might have played in such a plot had he been involved.