The Seventh Child (69 page)

On the patio high above Hell’s coast, the national minister slowly cocked his head to look at Carl Malle, who had spent the night in the guesthouse and was now savoring a grand brunch served by their silent hostess. Malle was responsible for the plan that had failed so disastrously that they now were both in danger.

He’d
been married to Lykke for five years when they realized
she’d
never conceive. Then the girl in the prison became pregnant, and
he’d
proposed to his wife that they adopt a child from Kongslund, with the simple idea that, if she agreed, they’d get Eva’s child—Lykke would never find out that her husband was actually the biological father.

It was diabolical, and diabolically logical.

But Lykke hesitated—she intuitively knew that men deceive—and met his suggestion with silence. That had been the most terrible time in his life, because the child was already born. The famous orphanage at Strandvejen was only waiting for their decision. The convicted murderer’s child had been delivered in secret at Rigshospital and brought to Kongslund by Magna, and Malle’s plan for Enevold to convince Lykke to adopt had seemed utterly simple, as well as the right thing to do for the child, morally speaking.

On Christmas Eve 1961, he asked her again, and at that moment, Lykke flew into a fit of rage like
he’d
never seen before. She announced her decision without glancing up, her gaze fastened to the seasonal tablecloth that
she’d
embroidered herself with little reindeer, and made it clear that she never wanted to hear the word adoption again. If he pressured her further,
she’d
leave him and tell everyone who asked that the man all Danes admired as the youngest resistance fighter—and the most promising politician of his generation—had sacrificed his life’s companion because she hadn’t been able to bear him a son.

He’d
known then it was over, that there was nothing he could do;
she’d
checkmated him. It would be the end of his career if she did what she threatened, and he couldn’t produce the conclusive piece of evidence that
she
was to blame for their shared, childless misery.

Later that night, while they mechanically sang Christmas hymns (she in perfect pitch as always),
he’d
been on the verge of saying the one thing that couldn’t be rescinded:
You’re the one who is infertile!
He’d
known for a year and a half—since Eva’s pregnancy. But that judgment would be accompanied by a revelation he feared more than anything—and of course he couldn’t tell her the rest of the story, neither the part about the girl in the prison nor about the boy now in Magna’s care. It was a story that would trigger a scandal of enormous proportions, and
he’d
probably be arrested.

“If only we had—” he began, but he was unable to complete his sentence.

“Yes. If only
you’d
been able to
…
talk some sense into Magna,” said Malle, who knew what his old resistance buddy was thinking. “But no one ever succeeded in doing that. God himself must be tired of her
…
organizational talents
…
if he was stupid enough to let her in
…
”

The national minister didn’t respond to Malle’s cutting joke.
He’d
told Magna about Lykke’s irrevocable decision three days after the fatal Christmas dinner. They’d been sitting in her second-floor office behind a closed door, and
he’d
sensed the ambitious matron’s instant terror at the danger Lykke’s decision had exposed them to. Magna had stared into the dark night sky above the sound with a look that left no doubt about her decision. She would cover up all evidence of their brazen maneuver as thoroughly as she possibly could; the child would have to leave Kongslund shrouded in as much secrecy as it had entered, and any remnants of its identity would be erased with the meticulousness that characterized Magna. If this were revealed, her life’s work would be over—and thousands of destinies would no longer benefit from her enthusiastic repairs. Of course,
she’d
never let that happen.

Magna had predicted the worst possible scenario, he realized, and
she’d
had an emergency plan prepared before Eva gave birth. Not once had she given in to Enevold’s pleading to see the baby. She wouldn’t have allowed it until the adoption was cleared, and
she’d
been as relentless with him as with any other biological parents who begged her for mercy when they regretted their decision to relinquish their child. What was best for the child always came first, and from the beginning, Magna had sensed Lykke’s resistance, even though Enevold had tried to dismiss it. “If you don’t manage to persuade her, I am going to protect this child,”
she’d
said. “This is the indispensable condition of this orphanage. No adopted child will ever be put in the situation where it is sought out by its biological parents—unless the child wishes it. And only when they’ve grown to adulthood.”

It sounded like a tenet of the Mother’s Aid Society. But
she’d
never let Ole see the child. The second Lykke refused, she became even more stubborn.

He’d
had no means by which to persuade Magna. He couldn’t lure her or threaten her, since any hint of the scandal they were both involved in would pull him down into the depths. And then
he’d
never see his son.

That night at Kongslund,
he’d
walked downstairs; and in his grief, he understood that his plan was doomed to fail, or she would have stopped him. Yet
he’d
continued down the stairs, past the woman in green who more than one hundred years earlier had fallen in love with another bastard child—King Frederik VII—and followed him to his grave.

He opened the door to the infant room as carefully as he could so as not to awaken the sleeping children (the “elephant children,” he sentimentally called them), and stepped inside. A green night-light illuminated the room, and he stood for a bit as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. He looked around: there were four beds along one wall, four along another, and he edged closer as his heart beat at a pace that would have worried an older man. He knew so little about infants that he couldn’t even tell their sex as he stared at their tiny faces. In despair he leaned over them, one after another, examining them for any trait that might reflect his own: the shape of the eyes, the curve of the nose. But he found nothing convincing. One of the children had long black hair, most likely a girl, and
he’d
continued to the next bed. There, yet another blue elephant tossed its trunk toward a sleeping face, as though wanting to protect the child from the man who leaned in. In all, there were seven babies in the room that night; the eighth bed, the one by the window, stood vacant, as he would recall many years later. To him, the babies seemed practically identical, aside from slightly different hair length and color; and he felt a powerful anger toward the woman who controlled their lives, and whose will he could not budge.

Magna had been standing in the doorway for some time before he noticed her presence. “Just go away,”
she’d
said, like an exorcism from the age when superstition had ruled the world.

It was a muted death knell to any hope he may have harbored—and at that moment he had actually felt like killing her. Probably the only thing that kept him from doing so was that it would eliminate his last chance of ever finding his child.

That night
he’d
believed that analysis and planning would, in the end, give him what he wanted. But for some reason that he never understood, Magna would not ever come close to succumbing to his pressure.

As the morning mist perched on his Hell’s cove, he sat at the table brooding over the plan that not even Malle knew about. Once he became prime minister,
he’d
order DNA tests of the boys
he’d
been looking at that night: Asger, Severin, Orla, Peter, and Nils. Back then, the technique didn’t exist, even if it had been possible to persuade Magna to do such a thing. The first time
he’d
ordered Malle to do the tests as best he could—back when Malle was still in the police force—there’d been no conclusive result. The technique was too new and untested, the specialists said. Later, Malle had refused to make another go at it—it was simply too risky, he insisted. He was no longer in the force, and too many others would be involved; they’d begin to wonder about the inquiry and the whole investigation, and the risk was simply too great.

But no one would be able to refuse the prime minister’s order. It could be done in secret, as a state matter, and only he and the medical doctor would know. It would be safe then for him to do it.

And then
he’d
finally find the child
he’d
lost. His son.

In a way, life itself—the continuation of his lineage—had entered into a furious race with death.

It was crucial that the man in the most powerful office in the nation die before he could issue the fatal order to fire his minister of national affairs over that silly business with the Tamil boy.

There was a knock on the door in the southern annex a couple of minutes after midnight. This was the very back door that Agnes had opened the morning when the foundling was discovered.

The night-shift attendant opened the door this time to find Asger Christoffersen standing there.
He’d
arrived by taxi all the way from Central Station. He didn’t look like someone
who’d
enjoyed a peaceful trip after a pleasant day. Presumably,
he’d
been thinking about the confrontation in his parents’ living room ever since leaving Aarhus.

When the others had gone to bed, I made a pot of tea and carried it into the sunroom, where he sat with his eyes closed and his hands folded as if in prayer.

He told me about his visit to his childhood home. About the failure that
he’d
asked them to admit to, and about how they’d reacted. It sounded as though he was asking for forgiveness.

I was flabbergasted. “You’ve carried that rage for all these years—then it’s over in only a few minutes, and you just walk away, even feeling guilty about the ones who caused it all? Something else must have happened. Things can’t just end like that, over a stupid dinner conversation—with
eggplant
.” I wasn’t sure why I used the last word as an accusation.

“I don’t know why it ended up like that, Marie. But now I’ve said it, and maybe they’ll think about it. My father was a great teacher, especially to the most challenged students.” Asger looked at me almost defiantly. It was absurd. “He had an amazing ability to understand all kinds of problems. He created courses for other teachers about how to handle the difficult kids—the ones no one wanted to teach. He was Goodness itself.” Asger paused. “I’m sorry
…
I’m babbling,” he said.

After we finished our tea, he followed me up to the King’s Room.

He hesitated in the doorway. I waited for him, standing by the window until he decided to enter. For a little while, we stood together in the darkness without touching, studying the sky over Hven. He was taller than me by almost two feet.

Maybe it was the grief he felt following his visit with his adoptive parents, whom
he’d
left on the dining-room floor; or maybe it was simply his physical proximity that made me uneasy; but I asked him to sit in my wheelchair and use the telescope.

His long legs curled up on the footrest, and he had to bend down a ways to be at the right level to see into the ocular. He stared into the darkness. “It’s very beautiful, Marie,” he said.

It sounded as though he said, “
You
are very beautiful, Marie.” But of course that would be a delusion of the worst kind, as Magdalene would have reminded me.

Then he angled the telescope up a little bit. “I see the Big Dipper and the fog
…
”
He’d
never been closer to me. “I’ve always longed
…
longed for—”

I froze.

“Andromeda,” he said.

I slowly exhaled.

“Actually, I don’t think we humans are meant to get too close to the final truths,” he said. “Throughout the ages, science has always thought that it knew everything—everything worth knowing on earth—but it’s never been the case, has it? Maybe someday, death itself will prove to be the door to eternal life just like the believers claim—we just can’t measure it with our scientific instruments. Maybe someday it’ll turn out that the priests and the believers held the long end of the stick—and not the scientists.” Asger smiled again. “But nonetheless, I’m grateful you led me to my biological mother. Did you have the file?” His change of topic was so sudden that he caught me off guard, and I instantly decided to tell the truth, a rarity for me.

I could tell Asger sensed the presence of the ghost in the King’s Room, and he turned to face me. His intuition was impressive.