19
Occupying the territory on the opposite side of the Øresund were the Swedes, a race that had waged a continual war against the Danes for more than a hundred years.* They repeatedly sent armies to Denmark, besieged the Danes with occupational troops, bribed the farmers, blackmailed the king, raped the womenfolk, and shot cannonballs over Copenhagen; they had even bullied the Danes into relinquishing the excellent territory of Skåne. The former frequently enlisted the help of a wide variety of foreign nations in their struggle against the latter, though the latter were occasionally able, with God’s help, to convince distant heads of state, such as the Great Czar in Moscow, to send troops to fight against the former.
Now conflict was raging once again and both combatants had sought assistance in distant lands. Jón Hreggviðsson arrived back at his barracks late after having drunk away the golden ring with Jón Marteinsson, and he was in a suitable mood for telling off the scoundrels who never got tired of harassing a lice-ridden Icelander. Unfortunately no appropriate opportunity for fighting presented itself. Extra guards had been posted and everyone was under strict orders to maintain discipline, since the Swedish infantry was thought to be right around the corner. Jón Hreggviðsson gave one or two men an earful but they didn’t pay any attention; no one even wanted to kick him. Everyone was thinking about the war. One man said that the Swedes certainly wouldn’t stop at Skåne—Sjaelland would be next, then it would be Fyn and Jylland.
Someone asked, “Where’s the navy—isn’t the navy going to defend the channel?”
Another said, “The English and Dutch have brought their warships into the channel and have supposedly sent legates to Moscow to talk with the Czar. And our Admiral Gyldenløve’s come ashore and he’s holed up in his palace squeezing Amalie Rose.”
Jón Hreggviðsson sang an introductory verse from the
Elder Ballad of Pontus:
“Dawnlight is breaking. Now we shall raise
Battle-cries once again.
Fare you well, maiden, whose beauty I praise.
Blood pours from murdered men.”
On the next day the men repaired their boots and reinforced the straps on their parkas. Early in the morning on the day after, drums were beaten and pipes, bugles, and krumhorns were blown as the army set off to fight the enemy. Each man had to carry close to fifty pounds upon his back. The weather was damp. The road was an unbroken stretch of mud and many had difficulty keeping the pace, amongst them Jón Hreggviðsson. Inebriated German officers rode alongside the company, bellowing and brandishing whips and pistols in the air. The marching music soon stopped because the pipers’ hands were numb with cold, though it was replaced by the sound of someone whining.
They received news that Swedish warships lay offshore and that the Danish advance guard had already engaged a Swedish scouting party. Jón Hreggviðsson was ravenous; the same went for the Wendish man marching next to him. It kept on raining. Cackling crows flocked in the fog suspended over the bare black treetops. They marched past farms comprised of one-stalled longhouses, the custom in Denmark being that men and sheep lodge together under one roof, each at the opposite end of the building. Horses and sheep grazed in the green hayfields. The houses’ straw-thatched roofs hung down so low that a man walking by would brush his shoulders on the eaves, and the rooms had tiny glass windows covered with curtains. Young girls peeped out from behind the curtains, watching the soldiers who were on their way to thrash the Swedes for their king in this soaking weather, but who were so wet and weary that they gave not even the slightest thought to the girls in return.
In one such village three dragoons came riding up the road toward the division, spurring on their horses with cracks of their whips. They exchanged words with the officers, and the company was ordered to halt. The officers rode alongside the ranks and scrutinized the men. They stopped opposite Jón Hreggviðsson and pointed their whips. One of them called to the farmer, using one of the German names they’d invented for him during the days of war:
“Joen Rekkvertsen!”
He misunderstood the name at first, but when it was shouted a second time his companion gave him a shot with his elbow to let him know that they meant him, and Jón Hreggviðsson saluted in soldierly fashion. He was ordered to break rank.
When the officers had verified the man’s identity two drivers were selected from the ranks, and Jón Hreggviðsson was chained, shoved onto a wagon, and driven back to Copenhagen accompanied by the dragoons.
When they arrived in Copenhagen he was taken to an unfamiliar house, dragged before some German officers, and interrogated. The officers wore colorful uniforms, were girded with swords, and had twisted beards and feather-tassels. They asked whether this man was Johann Reckwitz aus Ijsland buertig. The farmer was sullen and black, muddy and wet, and was being held fast by two armed soldiers. He answered:
“I’m Jón Hreggviðsson from Iceland.”
“You are a murderer,” said the officers.
“Oh,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “Who says that?”
“Does he presume to question us?” said one of the officers in surprise, and the other ordered one of the soldiers to fetch a whip and beat the man. The soldier returned with the whip and beat Jón Hreggviðsson several times, both back and front, then on the nape of the neck and a bit in the face. After a short time the second officer ordered the soldier to stop and asked whether he was a murderer.
“It’s useless to beat an Icelander,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “We notice it about as much as we notice lice.”
“So you are not a murderer,” said one of the officers.
“No,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.
The officers ordered the soldier to fetch the Paternoster, which turned out to be a wreath of knotted cords that they shoved onto the man’s head and twisted with sticks until the knots drove into his skull and his eyeballs bulged. Jón Hreggviðsson realized that this was going nowhere and said that he was a murderer. They ordered that the Paternoster be taken off him.
After this adventure Jón Hreggviðsson was taken to Blue Tower and shoved into a cell shared by murderers of children and hen-thieves; his clothes were removed and he was placed in a foul burlap sack and shackled to the wall. Affixed to the wall was a huge chain ending in three steel cinches. These were squeezed around the man: one around his thigh, another around his midsection, the third around his neck, and a nail was driven in to secure the collarpiece. This was called the King’s Ironwork.
It was past suppertime and Jón Hreggviðsson was given nothing to eat after such a busy day, so as soon as the men who shackled him took their lanterns and left he decided to sing several choice introductory verses from the
Elder Ballad of Pontus
as he sat with his back against the wall.
“For vigor the belly’s our strongest bower,
In the gut our sense does dwell,
For a meal alone has almighty power
For a meal alone has almighty power
Eternal it is as we-e-ell.”
The other prisoners woke up and cursed him. The cell soon resounded with argumentation and agitation, weeping and grumbling, but Jón Hreggviðsson said that he was an Icelander and that he could care less no matter how much they complained, and he carried on with his verses.
After this everyone there realized that it was useless to hope for better, and they gave themselves in silent terror over to the power of their fate.
20
Seldom before had Jón Hreggviðsson encountered another such collection of men with no homes, no families, and almost no knowledge as he did now in this tower. They were tied up like cattle and forced to tease hemp as long as there was any glimmer of daylight. The only sounds they uttered were obscenities or curses. Jón Hreggviðsson demanded that as a soldier of the king he be transferred to the Stokhus, the army’s prison, along with decent folk. The wardens asked in return whether this wasn’t entirely respectable company for an Icelander.
He wanted to know by what laws he’d been sent hither and asked to see a copy of the verdict, and they answered that the king was just. Several inmates who heard this cursed the king and said that he’d get caught in a pinch with Boot-Katrin.*
There seemed to be no path lying from this tower toward life, neither by way of law nor lawlessness. Stout iron staves barred the windows, which were set so high in the wall that it seemed impossible that anyone had ever taken a look out of them. The only entertainment they had in this place was when the fleeting shadow of a broad-winged bird flying past a window passed momentarily over the wall. The oldest of the inmates, a criminal who’d done nearly an entire life sentence here, claimed that twenty years ago he’d once been allowed to look out one of the windows, and he insisted that the tower was either built upon an island far away from land or else was so high that one couldn’t see the ground beneath it; he’d seen nothing outside but an endless expanse of sea.
One day a newly arrived convict brought news that the war was over, at least for the time being. The Swedes had landed at Humlebaek and defeated the Danes. But since the battle hadn’t been a bloody one, loss of life wasn’t a factor in the defeat; nor, for that matter, was loss of land. Our Most Gracious Majesty, on the other hand, had been forced to submit to hard terms of peace: Destroy all major fortifications and pledge to build no new ones. And to top it all off he’d been coerced into paying the Swedish king a hundred thousand special-dollars* in cash.
One of the criminals wanted to know how the king, who was in such bottomless debt that he couldn’t even afford tobacco, had been able to scrape together such a fortune in these difficult times.
“It was Count von Rosenfalk who took care of it,” said the new inmate. “When the enemy started scowling and saying, ‘Out with the money,’ the king sent messengers to this lovely young man and he went straight to his cellar and ordered his servants to bring out the gold.”
The first convict: “Who’s this Count von Rosenfalk?”
The second convict: “Peder Pedersen.”
The first convict: “Which Peder Pedersen?”
The second convict: “The son of Peder Pedersen.”
The other convicts: “Now which goddamn Peder Pedersen?!”
Jón Hreggviðsson: “He leases the harbors in Básendar and Keflavík. I once knew a man named Hólmfastur Guðmundsson who did business with him and his father.”
Jón Hreggviðsson pleaded with the guards day after day, week after week, if not in a rage then with friendly cajolements, sometimes even in tears, that they deliver his request to have his case retried to the castle’s commandant, but it was all in vain: no court would have anything to do with it. The farmer never received any explanation as to how he’d come to be here nor why he’d been sent hither.
One morning when the warden came with rye-meal porridge he went straight over to Jón Hreggviðsson, kicked him as hard as he could, and said:
“Here, take that, goddamn Icelanders.”
“My darling!” said Jón Hreggviðsson, smiling. “I’m so glad you’ve come!”
“I was drinking with one of your countrymen at Doctor Kirsten’s last night,” said the warden. “And he drank my boots off me. I had to walk home barefoot. You can all go together to Hell.”
And now it so happened, because Jón Marteinsson had been drinking with the warden from Blue Tower, that not more than a few days passed before a German officer and two guards strode into the prisoners’ cell. The officer ordered the guards to release Jón Hreggviðsson, and they escorted him out of the cell.
“Are they finally going to behead me now?” he asked happily.
They did not answer.
First Jón Hreggviðsson was taken to the commandant. Several books were leafed through and the name Johann Reckwitz aus Ijsland buertig was found in its place. The officer and the commandant looked at the man and spoke together in German and nodded their heads to each other. Next he was taken to a deep cellar where two old washerwomen stood in a thick cloud of steam over kettles and tubs of water, and these old hags were ordered to scrub Jón Hreggviðsson from top to bottom and to rub lye into his scalp, causing the farmer to feel like he hadn’t landed in a worse spot since the Dutchmen had shined him up in their dogger off the coast of Iceland. Then he was given his uniform, cleaned and mended, and the same boots, newly polished, that he’d managed to keep out of Jón Marteinsson’s hands. Finally a barber’s apprentice was brought in from town to give his hair and beard a close trim, and in the end the farmer looked like a churchwarden on a Sunday. He reckoned that the upcoming beheading would be an elaborate and elegant affair in the eyes of the proud noblemen and their guests.
“Will the ladies be coming as well?” asked Jón Hreggviðsson, but no one understood his question.
A two-horse wagon was waiting outside. The German stepped in and sat down in the backseat. Jón Hreggviðsson sat opposite him, with a guard on each side. Nothing of human life stirred in the German officer after he was seated except when he burped now and then. The guards were silent.
After a long drive into the city they pulled up at a huge house. Before the house was a broad winding staircase and two pillars topped with imperious, dreadful-looking lions, and over the doorway was a grisly stone mask with the face of a beast, a man, and a devil. On the staircase stood troll-sized, heavily armed soldiers, stiff as blocks of wood, their brows furrowed.
Jón Hreggviðsson was led up the staircase, level after level, then through a high and shadowy foyer where candles burned in brackets on the wall. He stumbled on the cold flooring slabs, but they kept going, up more stone steps steeper than the others, where he lost his footing again. They then passed through a great labyrinth of alternating corridors and chambers, where black-clad aristocrats sat in judgment-seats, or where despondent, cowled men, gray-haired and shriveled, bent over their desks and wrote out grave sentences. The farmer was convinced that he’d arrived at the Great Courthouse, to which all the others answered.
They finally entered a medium-sized chamber brighter than the others. The window reached the floor and was heavily curtained, causing dusky shadows to engulf the scene partway, lending the place a miragelike air. Hanging on one wall was a colorful portrait of His Royal Majesty and Grace in his youth, wearing a peruke that hung down to the middle of his upper arm and a fur-lined cloak so long that it trailed for three ells along the floor behind him; there were also portraits of his blessed father of praiseworthy memory and of both of Their Highnesses the queens.
Around an oaken table in the center of the hall sat three peers in wide cloaks, silver-tinted perukes, and imposing ruffs, and one general bedecked with golden braids, golden spangles, and golden spurs, with diamonds on his sword hilt, a blue face, and a beard so twisted that its points reached to the red bags under his eyes.
Out near the window, half-illuminated, half-fused with the curtain’s heavy shadows, stood two notable aristocrats who conversed quietly and paid no heed to the four sitting at the table. It was as if these two bystanders had their home here, and yet not. They did not look at the visitor when he arrived, and the silhouettes of their profiles continued to play against whatever warm light came in through the window. Jón Hreggviðsson thought that if one of these men wasn’t Arnas Arnæus then he wasn’t able to tell people apart.
A secretary came with a book and the process of verifying whether the man was Jón Hreggviðsson began once again. When the verification was completed The Grandees began to browse through their documents and one lifted his chin majestically from his chest and spoke several solemn words to the farmer. When he was finished the blue-faced man with the diamonds on his hilt said several words to the farmer in much the same way, but more brusquely. Jón Hreggviðsson couldn’t understand them.
One of the notable aristocrats walked away from the window and came over to Jón Hreggviðsson. He was a tired and sad-looking man, but unpretentious, with gentle eyes, and he addressed the farmer in Icelandic.
He explained to Jón Hreggviðsson, slowly and quietly, that in the winter word had gotten about that there was an Icelander serving under the king’s standard, an escapee from prison who had during the previous spring been sentenced to death at the Öxará Assembly. No sooner had this been confirmed than the authorities had ordered that the man be arrested and tried without delay. These orders had been a hair’s breadth from being implemented, but at the last minute a noble Icelander had pointed out to the king several faults in the verdicts handed down against Jón Hreggviðsson by both the district and general courts in Iceland. Next the Icelander asked the Three Grandees for the king’s letter. They handed it over and he read several items to the farmer: “Whereas it is in certainty difficult to see by what reasoning judgment in his case has been delivered, We have now according to Jón Hreggviðsson’s most humble wish, most mercifully granted and extended to him, under Our protection, full freedom to travel to Our land Iceland, to present himself in person to his rightful judge at the Öxará Assembly, and, if he so pleases, to appeal his case before Our Supreme Court here in Our city of Copenhagen. He is with this letter equally promised Our most merciful protection to travel a free man from this Our land Iceland and to return to this Our city of Copenhagen to await judgment of conviction or acquittal, according to the just estimation of Our laws and Our Supreme Court.”
The Icelander received a second letter from the general’s hand. He called this second letter by its Latin name, salvum conductum,* and read from it that Johann Reckwitz aus Ijsland buertig, infantryman under the command of Lord Captain Trohe, was hereby granted by Colonel-General Schønfeldt a four-month leave of absence to travel to Iceland to pursue justice in a certain lawsuit, and to return afterward hither to the kingly residence of Copenhagen to continue his service under the standard.
At that the Icelandic official handed the two letters over to Jón Hreggviðsson, the king’s letter of safe-conduct containing the Supreme Court appeal, and the salvum conductum of the Danish army.
Arnas Arnæus stood motionless at the window, light upon one of his cheeks and shadow upon the other, staring absentmindedly out at the street. It seemed as if he had played no part in this meeting, and he did not look in the direction of Jón Hreggviðsson from Rein.
The farmer was never able to remember how he came out of the huge house, but he suddenly found himself standing upon the square outside, the two lions and the hideous head of the man, beast, and devil at his back. The guards who had sat beside him in the wagon followed him out and were gone. The German officer had also disappeared like dew before the sun. The sky was cloudless. The farmer noticed that summer had arrived: the trees stood topped with verdant crowns, a fragrance of copsewood filled the air, and one small sparrow chirped ceaselessly in the dry calm.