The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (52 page)

I ordered the deceased to be returned to the grave, and after some hesitation the skins were once more folded around her body and she was placed in the position in which she had lain, and earth was thrown on top.

Thereafter I said the Lord's Prayer and led the congregation in hymns. They dispersed, moist-eyed and joyful.

Surely there could be no stronger evidence that the Lord is with us here in the Eternal Fjord! Once more I thank Him for having found me worthy to be a part of this!

.  .  .

Again, during a nightly wandering, I saw the procession of the dead moving along the same path through the air and across the ford. Moreover, the sound of French horns and drum rolls of numerous kettle­drums echoing among the fells. Among the wandering souls was my own self, in my discarded vestments, which fact I noted with peace of mind. I am prepared for the Apocalypse, and for Kragstedt and his men with their blunderbusses and wicked, worldly intent, who soon will come to us under full sail.

My wife received me on my return home. I confided my vision to her and she was most kind. We wept together.

.  .  .

My wife has disappeared. She has abandoned me!

They tell me she left upon a boat heading out of the ford, most likely to the colony.

I cannot grasp it and understand neither the widow nor myself. How could I have failed to see it coming?

The widow is to me, and has always been, an enigma. Not long ago she told me she had nothing left to live for. What does she now want at the colony?

I search everywhere, but am unable to find the crucifix. She has stolen my gold for the second time.

.  .  .

Maria Magdalene believes Habakuk to have taken the widow to Holsteinsborg. This in no way seems to surprise her or make her sorrowful. He fears the inevitable confrontation with His Royal Majesty's representatives in the colony, she says. He could not abide the thought of being arrested and thus has fled to the north. It is but natural.

Natural! But dear Maria, he is your husband!

Habakuk is his own master, she says calmly and quite detached. He does what is best for him. Is that not true of us all?

No. We are Christians!

To which she merely smiles.

But the widow, I say. What does she want at Holsteinsborg?

The ways of the widow are unknowable, she says. Perhaps she is in love with Habakuk. They are old acquaintances, you understand, Magister, from the time she stayed with us some years ago. Besides, she is not well liked by the women here; once they ganged up against her, and even now, with all of us made good Christians, they whisper behind her back.

So this is what she is at! Not only has she broken my trust, abandoned me and robbed me of my gold, she has also betrayed me in the most despicable of ways in order to pursue her base and lecherous desires. Alas, her tears the other night – how false!

We can now only await a flotilla of the Trader's men, armed to the teeth, once rumours of my whereabouts reach beyond the ford.

Despair and misery are inadequate words to describe the emotions that course through me this night.

Diary, the Second Part

Sukkertoppen Colony

1 August, AD 1793

Again today I stood watching for the ship by which I hope to return home. It did not appear. The Trader believes it will reach us before the end of the month. He is expecting
Der Frühling
once again this year with Captain Valløe at the helm. I have not divulged to him my knowledge about Valløe and his crew. Perhaps I am in doubt as to whether my vision of the spirits was veritable or mere phantasmagoria? In two or three weeks at the most, I shall know.

It has become my habit to clamber up on to this windswept crag that faces the sea and to stand and gaze southwards in the direction in which, hopefully, I shall soon sail. I await reply to my request, written and sent one year ago, to be released from this calling and be replaced by a successor, though at the time I could hardly have predicted the events that have now rendered my departure so imperative. Each day I fear I shall be put in chains, yet I believe the Trader finds amusement and much retribution in allowing me to remain in uncertainty.

.  .  .

The diary I kept while at the Eternal Fjord has been lost. I did not leave it behind, despite the chaotic circumstances of my departure. And yet it is nowhere to be found. I hope it is gone, burned or sunk to the bottom of the ford, that it may not have fallen into the possession of the wrong people. The Trader might find in it an effective means to end me, one that would allow him to complacently wash his hands of me.

.  .  .

The full extent of what has happened at the settlement of Igdlut is unknown to me. I hope to receive an epistle from Maria as to the measure of the catastrophe.

I was dragged from sleep in the night, staggered outside and saw the ship at anchor in the bay. The entire settlement was thrown into confu­sion and uproar. They had armed themselves with the store of rifles, despite Maria Magdalene's urgent calls to remain passive, as good and decent Christians ought. Constable Bjerg could then be seen on the shore, striding back and forth with his sabre like a commandant, and at his side the Trader Kragstedt, he too with sabre, and dressed up like an admiral of the fleet. They beckoned to me and I approached them, although the people wanted to hold me back and stop me leaving.

Palasi
, they pleaded, stay with us, do not go!

Maria Magdalene said: Morten, my good friend, do what is right for you to do. Do not fear for us.

And thus I left them. My thought was to bring the Trader and the constable to reason and to mediate between Maria Magdalene and the colony's representatives in good order. Yet, when I came to the shore, rifle shots rang out from the land and from the ship. They were shooting at each other! I cried out that in the name of Jesus they must desist, but the Trader's reply was to put me in chains and ferry me in the rowing boat to the ship, a whaler out of Holsteinsborg. Here, chained to the main mast, all I could do was witness the crime then committed against my beloved companions of Igdlut. A cannon was brought forward and numerous rounds of grapeshot fired towards the land, causing much damage to their dwellings. I saw the people inside them flee in panic to the fells, there to vanish from sight, whereupon the ship's captain sailed ashore with a number of armed seamen and they charged forward with torches and set fire to the dwellings and to our splendid church. When they returned they were well pleased with their work, for most of the settlement and surrounding grass was now ablaze, and not one of their number was harmed. And no knowledge could I gain of the plight of my friends.

In chains I was brought here, though released before our arrival at Sukkertoppen, now to go freely about without notion of what is to happen. Am I to be considered a delinquent or a free man? Will Kragstedt have me tried and put to the pillory? I am in no doubt that he is within his right to do so.

Such uncertainty is worse than chains and a dungeon!

2 August

My old friend and helper, Bertel, has come back, though not as friend and helper, rather as my enemy and opponent. Where he has been this past year and what has occupied him, he refuses to say. But he has resumed his position of catechist, as I myself carry out the duties of priest in these final days, and we work together and even play an occasional game of chess. Despite his demeanour I am glad that he had not, as many feared, perished, perhaps even by his own hand, for the last that was seen of him he appeared melancholy and withdrawn.

All this pains me. There was a time we got on so well and could almost be considered good friends. But so it is and I shall let it lie. I bless you, dear friend, and wish you well!

4 August

Under cover of night a kayak messenger has delivered to me an epistle from Maria Magdalene. She is well, thank goodness, and in good spirits, though her people are spread to all corners, the settlement charred and all but deserted, and the church quite consumed by fire. Habakuk has returned and she has forgiven him. The woman is foolishly kind! She, if anyone, abides by the Lord's command to forgive not seven times but seventy times seven! He travelled with the widow to Holsteinsborg, as was told to me at the time. There he seems to have delivered her, my illegitimate and faithless wife. What business she might have had at the place, I know not, and Maria's letter says nothing of it. Yet the rumour quickly spread that the priest of Sukkertoppen was now living with the prophets, which fact prompted the colony managers at both Holsteins ­borg and Sukkertoppen to join forces and set out upon their destructive and punitive journey into the ford. Habakuk was committed to the pillory ‘to cool off', but someone must have helped him, for in the night he escaped his chains, thereafter to return home
post festum
with his tail between his legs and full of contrition.

The prophetess herself escaped to the fells. Constable Bjerg must yet be a good man, since he gave half an hour of warning before his men set rigorously about the settlement with their torches and grapeshot, whereby one and all were afforded time to flee. One of those from her house, a young lad who threatened one of Kragstedt's constables with a rifle, and perhaps accidentally fired it, was struck by a bullet in the shoulder, but has now all but recovered from his injury. A majority of the settlement's dwellings burned to the ground. The thought of it makes me recall my first sight of the place several years ago, when we came by boat and the smoke of three score chimneys coiled in the air, and young Bjerg so aptly exclaimed that it seemed like an entire peasant village. Most of the settlement's stores were lost to the fire, goods traded from British and other seamen all went up in smoke, and likewise many firearms and much of their gunpowder. And yet not all has perished, their stores of meat survived, and those few remaining have what they need to sustain themselves through this approaching winter.

Maria Magdalene and her unfortunate husband now inhabit a small peat hut at the shore, where they were settled before the reveries gathered momentum. They lack nothing, she assures me with indomitable spirit. Habakuk is, it seems, no longer wanted by the authorities, nor indeed is she. Kragstedt has stated that Dr Rantzau's orders are of no consequence insofar as they are valid only for the Mission, and moreover that he has seen no warrant of arrest. Which is a lie, but let him lie by all means! He is a trader before a commandant and sees advantage in pursuing the matter no further. So be it.

All this I write to Maria Magdalene, the only person besides my deceased sister Kirstine whom I can say to be a true and intimate friend. I enclose with my letter two of my clay pipes, a good portion of tobacco and some tea, and deliver the little bundle to the kayak messenger.

May he return safely!

8 August

Bloody discharge and pains of scurvy. Am quite exhausted. At the place of the prophets my constitution was good, better than since my earliest youth, but now, after only two weeks, the body is once more in rapid decline. Another winter and I shall end beneath soil.

11 August

Still no ship. Autumn's eternal refrain. I clamber upon the rocks and see many things, though never this much-awaited ship.

They say the widow is back! I have yet to see her and have no wish to do so. She must meet her deserved fate alone and I doubt it will be a happy one. They say she again lives with the savages in their peat dwelling. It is as if she were hiding from something. What happened, I wonder, at Holsteinsborg? It seems she makes a living from hunting with bow and arrow, and from fishing in the rivers, though is hardly contented by it – I know her only too well! However, it has become known that she is now a christened woman and, as such, must be assumed to be relatively safe against attack from her own kind.

12 August

She came to me this evening, scratching at my door, whispering that she wished to confess her sins, to cleanse herself of guilt. What shameless­ness! Naturally I did not let her in, but stood back from the window, hidden from view, and waited until she went away. She wishes to ingra­tiate herself by admitting her treachery and thinks that all will be made good by it!

That I could be lured into the mortal sin of leading this warped individual to baptism! It is an act that will haunt me for the rest of my days.

And now I feel a tinge of pain at these harsh words. Only a month ago I considered her to be my wife and kissed her feet in gratitude. Alas, such trickery and pretence. When eventually I am departed from the colony I shall lay down my vestments for good!

Sleepless. Pleased at my dismissal of the widow, no matter how painful. What did she want with me?

Night, 14 August

The widow at my door again. I held it ajar and we spoke through the crack. She informed me of what deed she has committed against her father. Missionary Oxbøl.

May the Lord have mercy on your wretched soul! I told her. I wished at that juncture to close the door, but she jammed her foot inside.

She said that only the gallows now remains, or else suicide, a choice that is entirely her own. If only someone would give her a helping hand, she said, that she might avoid forfeiting her salvation.

That salvation has been forfeited already, I said, with your father's blood on your hands.

You can absolve me of my sins, she said. You told me yourself that confession is the washing away of sin.

I then said the Lord's Prayer, while her foot remained in the door, and through the crack gave her bread and wine in absolution.

Now I can die and see my little girl again, she said. Will you help me with that too, Morten?

Your death is your own business, I said. I will have nothing to do with it.

I am the only person in the colony who knows it was you who set fire to the colony house, she then said. If you won't help me, I'll go to Kragstedt and tell him.