The Stockholm Octavo (40 page)

Chapter Seventy-Four
Stockholm, After

Sources: E. L., various

SO ENDED THE GUSTAVIAN AGE,
and another age—my age—began. I spent much time the year following the assassination looking into the histories of my eight. Trawling for information in gaming rooms, kitchens, shops, taverns, manors, archives, churches, and government offices, I gathered, mended, and embroidered their lives into a garment that I wore when I felt my life was of no consequence—which it would have been, without the structure of the others.

Besides the inspired visionary and occasional sharper Mrs. Sparrow, my Octavo consisted of an aristocratic lady, a country girl who wore only gray clothes, a calligrapher, a smuggler, a fop, a shrew, and a fan maker with a French wife. Some of this number had ties of commerce, some had the most intimate of contact, for others the connection was of the most superficial sort—a name they had heard, a face in a crowd. Yet all of them ultimately were connected through me and to me, and brought about my rebirth.

THE COMPANION

Kristina Elizabet Louisa Uzanne

“Jakob's Church,” Louisa said, taking another petit fours from the tray, “and she is lucky to get a plot, popular as it is.” She popped the lilac and white pastry into her mouth, continuing to talk. “It's a very good graveyard; the soil mulches quick and her bones will rest next to the best of them. Several bishops await the resurrection there.” Louisa cleared her throat and took a noisy sip of her tea. “Duke Karl sent a very nice wreath; not grand but adequate. Unable to attend, he said. Court neither. Her sister came, though—all the way from Pomerania. And a cousin from Finland. They couldn't have looked happier.”

We sat in a small front parlor at Gullenborg, the only downstairs room not under renovation. The new owners of the house were absent, and Louisa took full advantage, having New Cook send up a lavish tea when I came to call. “And where will you be going now?” I asked brushing at the crumbs she had blown my way.

“Going?” She wiped her mouth daintily on a starched linen napkin. “Nowheres,
Sekretaire
. The sister sold the place, contents and all; I am hired by the new mistress. She is just married, and sweet and plump as a honey cake. As common, too. Her father is a wine merchant, but she snagged a Finnish lord in Åbo and very much wanted Gullenborg for herself. Apparently she spent time here, training under Madame.” Louisa sighed and bit her lip. “I pretended to remember her, but there were lots of girls passing through. What's strange is that Lady Carlotta tore out the study and sold the fans to a man from St. Petersburg.” She winked at me in the most lurid fashion. “They say for Empress Catherine the Great.”

THE PRISONER

Johanna Bloom

The letter lay before me on the pine table at The Pig, folded up with a white face and sealed with indigo wax that had no mark. Hinken turned away, as if respecting the privacy of a physical reunion. I forced myself to move slowly, fingering the paper and lifting it to my face, smelling the burnt sealing wax and feeling the deckled edge tickle my upper lip. I kissed the front of the letter that bore my name in her script and slipped my index finger under the flap to break the seal. The soft paper yielded up its creases and opened to show the round, clear writing inside.

Johanna claimed to be well and described Charleston as beautiful beyond telling, the citizens warm and charming. But the letter was like the face of a fan hiding the human face behind. This face I could read. “She is unhappy,” I said, looking up at Hinken. “She says she cannot tolerate the trade.”

He noted my quizzical look. “The slave trade,
Sekretaire
. She talked of going north.”

There was, in the pit of my stomach, a chrysalis that gave a slight tap against the wall of its cocoon. I refolded the letter and put it in my breast pocket. “The Town is north,” I said.

THE TEACHER

Master Fredrik Lind

“The Lind House on Merchant's Square seems unchanged by the event,” I said to Master Fredrik.

He looked up from his desk, pen poised in midair. “Would you mind not speaking to me until I finish this line?” He was dressed as a military officer today and had maintained his place as preeminent calligrapher in the Town, serving as the hand of every person of note save those in the inner circle of Duke Karl. When he was finished, Master Fredrik cleaned the nib and climbed off his stool.

“Everything has changed,” he said simply. This included his exaggerated vocabulary and the constant use of gloves, both of which disappeared the day after the assassination; he proclaimed his own skin good enough and in need of airing after so many years under wraps. “But now, I have a surprise for you!” he exclaimed. “I have been studying the Octavo. It adds up to more than eight.” Fredrik took several rolls of paper from a cubbyhole on his desk and brought it to a table near the window where the flat northern light was best. “The work of Nordén and Sparrow has opened a new world to me; ink on paper is how I map it.” He unrolled one of the papers and pressed it flat with his hands.

“If we choose to look at patterns, then the eight can be considered an interlocking mechanism, like so. And we can expand it, as Mrs. Sparrow did.”

“This pattern of the Octavo expands infinitely outward, like a tile floor in a boundless room. I have begun to make such a chart, Emil, beginning with your Stockholm Octavo. And since the event at the center has already occurred and rippled out from there, I have taken the liberty of adding names. You might help me to fill it in further.”

“Mrs. Sparrow should participate in this, Master Fredrik,” I said. “It is really her invention.”

So we took the chart to Gray Friars Alley and asked to see her in the upper room.

“Mrs. Sparrow,” Master Fredrik said, unrolling the paper with an extravagant flourish, “you have revealed a key of the Master Builder. Had you been born a man, you would be named Grand Master of the Freemasons Lodge.”

Mrs. Sparrow wept when she saw it, and said that the Eternal Cipher was more real to her than ever; at last the reach of the Octavo had been mapped on paper for anyone to see and understand.

THE COURIER

Captain Hinken

“America is a dark continent,
Sekretaire,
” Hinken said, waving for the serving girl. “Quite interesting to visit, though. And profitable!” He whistled, long and low. “There is excellent money to be made. Excellent money. I hauled a shipment of Virginia tobacco to Denmark and made as much in three months as I did in nine plying the Baltic. I sail again this coming spring. There is a berth.”

I toyed with a plate of brown beans and he waited for me to jump aboard, but the autumn storm cried through the cracks in the window frames, and I could not imagine an ocean voyage so arduous and with such an uncertain port.

THE MAGPIE AND THE TRICKSTER

Lars Nordén and Anna Maria Plomgren Nordén

“I liked her very very very very much,” Lars confessed to me one drunken night in the Peacock. He was not ready to go home, even though last call had been made and he would be in the rainy street on his backside before long. “Miss Blooooooom.” He was near to falling off his chair by now. “A plain flower but a flower still, what? She had her flower still, it seems.”

If he had not been so pathetic I might have done more than pull him upright with undue force. “But you have won the hand of the lovely plum,” I said. “Half the men in the Town would follow her to Kiruna and back for a glance.”

He scowled and pawed at the smoky air with one hand. “I have a whole tree of rotten plums. Her mother and father moved in and work in the shop, now the Opera is dark half the time.”

“Are you still making fans?”

“No, no. Well, not
Fans
with a capital fancy fucking
F
. We sell scores of cheap printed ones from England that we tart up with lace and feathers. And we do a good trade in knickknacks, shawls, ribbons, and trinkets. The plums don't want the shop to be so French.” He leaned over to me. “Do you know someone who would buy the facade? We are tearing it off next week.”

The sorrow I felt at this finale was too much, and I stood to leave. “Lars,” I said pulling on my coat, “does Anna Maria still own the gray and silver fan? The one she carried to the masked ball.”

“Noooooo, she sold it and all the others she could get her hands on. For a fortune, Mr. Larsson. Assassination souvenirs,” he said proudly, then tried to focus more clearly on my face. “Were you there? I didn't see you.”

THE PRIZE

Christian Nordén / Margot Nordén

Margot and her newborn son moved into a set of rooms on the top floor of 35 Gray Friars Alley, with Mrs. Sparrow's trunk full of money in tow. Mrs. Sparrow made a splendid auntie and spoiled them like they were kin. “The upper room is alive with the perfect sort of spirit at last,” Mrs. Sparrow said, although she knocked on the ceiling with a broom when the noise of the baby's crying grew too loud for her seekers. I visited the Nordéns often and tried to be what I had never been in my life before the Octavo: a consistent and thoughtful friend.

On All Saints' Eve of 1792, I came for a dinner of roast duck with prunes and crackling potatoes. We drank the better part of a bottle of Sancerre and talked of the news from France. It was as if the shock waves from Gustav's assassination had pushed south to France with such force that civilization was toppled there, while Sweden remained calm. There were bizarre and blood-soaked stories of theater patrons tripping home over body parts in the street, the September Massacre, the king and queen humiliated in the Temple tower—their young son taught to revile his parents and call his mother a whore, the lunatic dance of “La Carmagnole,” the severed heads paraded through the streets on wooden poles, the new instrument for efficient execution—La Guillotine. King Louis XVI would stand trial.

“I am so happy you are here instead,” I said.

“Thank you, Emil. I am happy to be here as well,” Margot said. “I screamed and cried against coming to the Town. I did not wish to be saved if I could not live in Paris. But what did I know then of love?”

“Love,” I echoed. I told Margot of my admiration for Christian, and how he had been the Prize of my Octavo—giving me the knowledge of the Divine Geometry, and the opportunity to observe what artistry meant. “He showed me what it means to love the smallest detail. And what it means to love a woman.”

She frowned and made that wonderful pout. “But you have the same qualities, Emil. It is only to coax them out with attention.” She bowed her head but now was smiling. “I mean the attention of someone who loves you.”

It was quiet in the room but I heard the blood beating in my ears and my hands were damp and hot as they pressed together. I had wondered many times how Margot would fare alone and imagined her in ways I dare not say. “Perhaps you . . . ,” I began, turning my body toward her. “Perhaps
we
would make a . . .”

She looked up at me, blue eyes and sharp nose over a mischievous smile. But when she saw my face, her smile faded.
“Non non non
.
”
She shook her head and clasped her hands in her lap, pressing her eyes closed. Then her smile returned, but tempered with sadness this time “You are so kind, Emil, chivalrous and generous. But the missing piece in your heart is not me. We are friends. I will do everything in my power to help you find your way to her.”

THE KEY

Mrs. Sparrow

“I will always be the king's bird,” she said, “and you his knave.” It was near the end of March 1793, and we sat in the upper room playing piquet, our new favorite game. The casement was open to the night air, carrying the scent of hyacinth in from a window box. Mrs. Sparrow was dressed in the mourning garb she donned on the sixteenth of every month and wore until the twenty-ninth.