The Stockholm Octavo (39 page)

Chapter Sixty-Nine
Blood Oranges

Sources: E. L., Dr. af Acrel, sickroom guests, Captain Jo. C•••

THE NEXT DAY,
I resumed my watch at the palace. There I met the Superior, who shared my affection for Gustav and my unkempt appearance; neither of us had slept well since the attack or taken much care with our grooming. Our days were given over to watch and worry. His nights were given over to prayer. My nights were given to the cards and long walks down Blackman Street to the corner of Baggens, leaning in for a glimpse of the orange house. The Superior and I were sharing the latest word from Gustav's bedside when I saw her on the far side of the colonnade. In truth what I noticed first was the basket, filled with fruit, brilliant against the gray throng. The basket was carried by a young girl of perhaps seven, with hair so blond it was almost white, dressed in a velvet coat the color of dawn. The child carried her basket as if it contained the crown jewels, her face a mixture of pride and fear. Someone was bringing a treasure of Spanish blood oranges to the injured king. It was The Uzanne.

The crowd parted for the child. The Uzanne followed, a gray silk fan trimmed with silver clasped unopened in one hand, the other outstretched just above the girl's shoulder but not touching it, as if she were guiding the child forward by magnetism alone. The Uzanne, too, had a radiant smile. I called her name and pushed through the crowd to confront her, to knock the oranges from the basket and keep her from entering, but the guards, noting my unkempt appearance and wild red eyes, held me back. I called out to The Uzanne again and she turned her head. Her look of irritation was barely masked. “
Sekretaire
?” she said.

“
Sekretaire
Larsson, Madame. We met at one of your lectures.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “You are . . . well?”

“I was saved, Madame, saved by . . .” I stopped before I said Johanna's name or hurled an accusation that I could never prove. The people around me were quiet now, listening. “I believe I was saved by your generosity. I meant to thank you in person, but my convalescence was lengthy and the contagion deadly.”

She turned around to face me full on and took two steps in my direction, the blond child left alone with the basket of fruit. “So you found the medicines to be beneficial?”

“The one that I could swallow. The other bottle was broken, and a pity . . . your girl promised an incomparable rest.” I shook my head in mock sorrow. “I trust she returned your fan? I hoped to have the pleasure myself.”

The Uzanne leaned forward. “We have met more than once, I think.”

“I am often mistaken for someone else,” I said, pressing through the crowd to get close.

“That can be useful.” The Uzanne held up her fan, as if to snap it open, but stopped herself. “You have been of service to me before,
Sekretaire
. Perhaps when this is over, you will assist me once again. Something else of mine has gone missing.”

“When what is over?” I asked, lunging for her. A guard clamped hold of my arm and squeezed until it felt the bone might break. “When what is over? Your murder of the king?” I shouted. The Uzanne turned and put an arm around the child, shepherding her inside. I continued shouting as they disappeared into the crowded hallway outside Gustav's chambers, then was evicted from the outer courtyard with a wicked boot for yelling like a madman.

I waited until well after dark but did not see her leave. When I questioned visitors to the sickroom, they reported that The Uzanne spent at least a quarter of an hour with His Majesty, pledging her love for Sweden, and cooling him with her fan. She promised to help him rest, a favor he was much in need of in his suffering. The witnesses said that she performed some kind of magic, for His Majesty had never rested so well in years.

Chapter Seventy
Equinox

Sources: E. L., Mrs. S., Captain H.

THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED
became a blur; the combination of fear and hopeful anticipation caused a constant humming in my ears and a nervous jumpiness about my limbs. Only when I held a hand of cards did I feel at ease. The gaming at Gray Friars Alley had resumed in full, and even the seekers were beginning to come with their queries. The police were instructed to protect Mrs. Sparrow on orders from the military governor of the Town, Duke Karl. He had not forgotten the sibyl who had seen his two crowns, and one was close at hand.

“It's the spring equinox.” I heard Hinken's voice behind me. It was midnight, March the twenty-first. “I will be sorry to miss the first snowdrop.”

“And why is that?” I asked, distracted by a player who seemed to see my cards before I laid them.

“We will be at sea,
Sekretaire
. I came to tell you good-bye.”

“Trump,” said my nemesis.

I spread my cards faceup on the table and turned to Hinken. “When?” I asked.

“High tide. In five hours.” He carried a plate of flounder in white wine and mussel sauce and held it up to his nose, inhaling gratefully. “The last supper,” he said. “Are you coming?”

I felt the blood pounding in my ears and Mrs. Sparrow's sphinxlike gaze on me from across the room. My opponent at the table scooped my coins into his pile of winnings. “Coming where?”

“To say good-bye,
Sekretaire
. You gave away your berth, remember, and the
Henry
is packed to the rafters. Our passenger'll be appearing late, near to half-past four.” He wagged his empty fork at me. “Don't try to come to Auntie's either. She'll have my balls if there is trouble.”

 

THE FIRST OFFICIAL MORNING
of spring was hardly one a poet might conjure. The penetrating damp was visible in patches of rolling fog, and the dark in the east was so dense it made one doubt the sun's existence. But torches crackled in the spitting wind and the muffled voices of sailors carried a celebratory note, excited to be free of winter's bonds at last. There were four ships setting out, so Skeppsbron Quay was crowded with crews loading the last provisions on board. I found her near the
Henry
's bow, sitting next to a crate of clucking chickens and staring out at the Salt Sea. She did not embrace me, or stand, or even smile, but wrapped her gray cloak more tightly around her. “Why are you sitting with the livestock, Johanna? There is a warming hut nearby,” I said.

“The hens are a good reminder of what I had become, and why I am going.” She finally turned to me, her face undecipherable. “Has she come for you yet?”

I told her about the blood oranges, the white-haired child, the gray and silver fan. “I only saw her once, but she is there every day.”

“So she will have everything she wants in the end,” Johanna said.

“No. No she will not.” I grasped her pale hand, wanting to insist that she stay, that I was sure we need only find her eight; that we could stop The Uzanne and all would be well. But I was no longer sure of anything—except that The Uzanne could not have Johanna Bloom. My throat thickened beyond speech, and I took the fan box from my pocket and pressed it in her hand. Johanna opened it carefully, as if some viper might spring from inside, then stared down at the fan resting on the blue velvet lining. She snapped her open, and the white of the silk shimmered in the torchlight, the blue and yellow butterflies animated by the play of shadow and light. Then Johanna closed her, pleat by pleat, an expertise that was the result of hours of practice, and placed her in the box. “No, Emil. The Butterfly was meant for your fiancée.” She replaced the lid of the box and handed it back to me. “I would never hold you captive in a life you did not want.” Two crewmen came and took the chickens, leaving a wake of feathers and piercing, hysterical squawks. She embraced me then and her gray cloak fell back and off her shoulder. She was wearing a dress the color of a June sky.

There is no other history of that particular day.

Chapter Seventy-One
A Moment's Rest

Sources: E. L., guards and palace staff

THE WATCH OUTSIDE
Gustav's palace continued another eight days, but I did not see The Uzanne again; perhaps she was allowed to use a private entrance, for witnesses claimed that she was there every morning, requested to attend His Majesty by Duke Karl himself. I harassed the guards constantly, begging to speak to Gustaf Armfeldt, or Elis Schroderheim, or some other loyal friend to His Majesty, to tell them what I knew: that The Uzanne meant deadly harm. But I was rebuffed and accused of lunacy by everyone: Gustav was moved to tears of joy at her return to his side. She always brought some rare gift; a pineapple caused a near riot in the sickroom. And she always held the same gray and silver fan clenched tightly in her exquisitely gloved hand. “Besides,
Sekretaire,
” a guard said to me, “the murderer has already been caught—a former page to His Majesty, Captain Jacob Johan Anckarström.”

“How can Anckarström be the murderer if His Majesty is not dead?” I asked.

The guard looked me in the eye. “I have been in the room. It will not be long.” He said there were many who never left; they slept on mattresses spread over the floor, did not eat, wept quietly, whispered. A screen was placed around the king's bed. On a small table in front of the screen was an oil lamp with a paper shade, the only light allowed in the room at night, casting strange shadows and illuminating in a ghostly light the painted figures watching from the ceiling. A night clock hung from a column. The king asked over and over again what time it was. He coughed incessantly. His wound began to putrefy, and the stench pervaded the air.

On March the twenty-ninth of 1792, His Majesty King Gustav III of Sweden died. His last words were these: “I feel sleepy, and a moment's rest would do me some good.”

Chapter Seventy-Two
The King's Mercy

Sources: E. L., Mrs. S., Stockholm
Post
, execution witnesses, police spy, Pastor Roos, L. Gjörwell

EVERYTHING ABOUT THE TOWN
withered as the trees leafed out, and I walked through early spring an invalid, as did many others whose world was slowly ending before their eyes. It was possible now to study the calamity rather than just endure it, and as the details emerged, the darkness triumphed. Just one day after King Gustav's death, the investigation into the assassination was closed, by order of Duke Karl. Of the two hundred names that Chief Inspector Liljensparre connected with the assassination, only forty were held for questioning. Of the forty, only fourteen were arrested and held. Those who were jailed saw their prison sentence become more like a visit to a country house, with parties and dinners held for family and friends. These fourteen accused conspirators were to stand trial and face the gallows after the man who fired the shot was publicly beheaded and disemboweled.

But King Gustav extended his legendary clemency even from the grave. Duke Karl claimed he had taken a sacred oath at the insistence of his dying brother Gustav: no one but Johan Jakob Anckarström was to be executed for the crime. Amazingly, no one in the crowded bedchamber of the dying king had heard this merciful decree except Duke Karl. Thirteen of the accused conspirators were sent into exile; the fourteenth, General Pechlin, was sentenced to life in Varberg Prison, where Duke Karl could keep him safe.

The gory public spectacle of Johan Jakob Anckarström's death took place at Skanstull on a beautiful spring day in late April—the twenty-seventh to be exact. I did not attend but heard the details at Mrs. Sparrow's, where I spent that day and most of the night. The assassin was beheaded and his right hand severed, then the body left to lie until the blood ran out. His head and hand were nailed to the top of a tall pole near the gallows. His body was disemboweled and quartered, lashed to a wheel, and his remains left to rot.

Within a month, the bones were picked clean. Gustav's son, thirteen years old, was placed on the throne and Duke Karl declared regent. The Royalists were systematically exiled or disgraced. The Patriots and aristocracy returned to power, and The Uzanne prepared to become First Mistress at last.

Chapter Seventy-Three
Powder and Corruption

Sources: Louisa G., New Cook

THE UZANNE “RETIRED”
to Gullenborg during the trial and execution of Anckarström, despite an urge to be present on the viewing stand behind Duke Karl. She planned to keep her distance and wait for the political dance, always rough and clumsy after such an event, to settle into a rhythm she knew. The Uzanne waited for word to come to the palace, but Duke Karl never called for her. No one called. One rainy May night, just before Ascension Thursday, The Uzanne sat in her silent study at Gullenborg and stared at the one glass case that would always remain empty. Looking at the blank spot still filled her with anger; it was the only thing she felt now beyond the occasional need to eat and sleep. The mantel clock tolled seven over a faint tapping at the door. “What?” she asked, her voice shrill and high.

New Cook bit her lip, still unsure of her place at Gullenborg. “A warm supper would be a comfort, Madame, and the young stable boy brought me two fat rabbits some days ago. They are well hung now and will make a savory ragout.” New Cook took a deep breath and continued. “If I may say, Madame, you have become too thin.”

“You are right, Cook,” The Uzanne said, catching sight of her reflection in the dark window glass. “And how did you know that I am fond of rabbit?”

“It's my job to know, Madame.” New Cook curtsied, thrilled with this exchange, and hurried back down the kitchen stairs. “This is the night we will finally bury Old Cook,” she said to the skinned rabbits, hanging from hooks in the larder. “What was it the gentleman said she liked best, boys? Strips of carrots thin as matchsticks. Pearl onions, but not so many as to be cheap. A thick sauce with rosemary and a splash of Burgundy wine. And where are they now?” she muttered, looking through the bins and jars. New Cook took the hearth stool and clambered up, reaching to the back of the uppermost shelf until her hand felt the smooth cool curve of a canister pressed against the wall. She screwed off the lid and dipped in a finger and brought it to the tip of her pink tongue but did not taste. “Here they are! Just as the s
ekretaire
said: the Madame is extra fond of a certain dried mushroom. Morels ground into a fine powder. Fit for a king, he said.”

The two rabbits were transformed into the most succulent of dishes, tender morsels bathed in a rich, dark sauce. The Uzanne requested a second portion, an almost unheard of compliment. “It was exactly what I was wanting,” The Uzanne said, putting down her knife.

“I am learning Old Cook's secrets, Madame.” New Cook blushed with pleasure. “I found the dried mushroom powder on a high shelf, just as I was told.”

The Uzanne's eyes were closed and her face still, but she gripped the edge of her desk as if she were falling off a cliff. “Told by who?”

“A
sekretaire
. He said you told him you were missing something and wanted his help in finding it.” New Cook trembled with excitement at her success. “Would Madame want something sweet now?”

“No, Cook,” The Uzanne said, turning to the empty case on the wall. “I feel a little sleepy, and a moment's rest would do me some good.”