Short Fiction, Selma Lagerlöf [uplifting novels txt] 📗

throne. “It goes to their very hearts to offer it. May he who will feel sympathy for them! They are mean, avaricious, arrogant. They are no better than the covetous brigand whom I have sent against them.”

A woman has sunk down on the ground by the vats. Does it cost her so much pain to give her gold? Or is she perhaps the guilty one? Is she the cause of the laments? Is it she who has betrayed the town? Yes, it is she who has been King Valdemar’s mistress. It is Ung-Hanse’s daughter.

She knows well that she need give no gold. Her father’s house will not be plundered, but she has collected what she possesses and brings it. In the marketplace she has been overcome by all the misery she has seen and has sunk down in infinite despair.

He had been active and merry, the young goldsmith’s apprentice who served the year before in her father’s house. It had been glorious to stroll at his side through this same marketplace, when the moon rose from behind the gables and illumined the beauties of Visby. She had been proud of him, proud of her father, proud of her town. And now she is lying there, broken with grief. Innocent and yet guilty! He who is sitting cold and cruel on the throne and who has brought all this devastation on the town, is he the same as the one who whispered sweet words to her? Was it to meet him that she crept, when the night before she stole her father’s keys and opened the town-gate? And when she found her goldsmith’s apprentice a knight with sword in hand and a steel clad host behind him, what did she think? Did she go mad at the sight of that stream of steel surging in through the gate which she had opened? Too late to bemoan, maiden! Why did you love the enemy of your town? Visby is fallen, its glory shall pass away. Why did you not throw yourself down before the gate and let the steel-shod heels trample you to death? Did you wish to live in order to see heaven’s thunderbolts strike the transgressor?

Oh maiden, at his side stands Violence and protects him. He has violated holier things than a trusting maiden. He does not even spare God’s own temple. He breaks away the shining carbuncles from the church walls to fill the last vat.

The bearing of all the figures in the picture changes. Blind terror fills everything living. The wildest soldier grows pale; the burghers turn their eyes towards heaven; all await God’s punishment; all tremble except Violence on the steps of the throne and the king who is his servant.

I wish that the artist had lived long enough to take me down to the harbor of Visby and let me see those same burghers, when they followed the departing fleet with their eyes. They cry curses out over the waves. “Destroy them!” they cry. “Destroy them! Oh sea, our friend, take back our treasures! Open thy choking depths under the ungodly, under the faithless!”

And the sea murmurs a faint assent, and Violence, who stands on the royal ship, nods approvingly. “That is right,” he says. “To persecute and to be persecuted, that is my law. May storm and sea destroy the pirate fleet and take to itself the treasures of my royal servant! So much the sooner it will be our lot to set out on new devastating expeditions.”

The burghers on the shore turn and look up at their town. Fire has raged there; plunder has passed through it; behind broken panes gape pillaged dwellings. They see emptied streets, desecrated churches; bloody corpses are lying in the narrow courts, and women crazed by fright flee through the town. Shall they stand impotent before such things? Is there no one whom their vengeance can reach, no one whom they in their turn can torture and destroy?

God in Heaven, see! The goldsmith’s house is not plundered nor burned. What does it mean? Was he in league with the enemy? Had he not the key to one of the town gates in his keeping? Oh, you daughter of Ung-Hanse, answer, what does it mean?

Far away on the royal ship Violence stands and watches his royal servant, smiling behind his vizor. “Listen to the storm, Sire, listen to the storm! The gold that you have ravished will soon lie on the bottom of the sea, inaccessible to you. And look back at Visby, my noble lord! The woman whom you deceived is being led between the clergy and the soldiers to the town-wall. Can you hear the crowd following her, cursing, insulting? Look, the masons come with mortar and trowel! Look, the women come with stones! They are all bringing stones, all, all!”

Oh king, if you cannot see what is passing in Visby, may you yet hear and know what is happening there. You are not of steel and iron, like Violence at your side. When the gloomy days of old age come, and you live under the shadow of death, the image of Ung-Hanse’s daughter will rise in your memory.

You shall see her pale as death sink under the contempt and scorn of her people. You shall see her dragged along between the priests and the soldiers to the ringing of bells and the singing of hymns. She is already dead in the eyes of the people. She feels herself dead in her heart, killed by what she has loved. You shall see her mount in the tower, see how the stones are inserted, hear the scraping of the trowels and hear the people who hurry forward with their stones. “Oh mason, take mine, take mine! Use my stone for the work of vengeance! Let my stone help to shut Ung-Hanse’s daughter in from light and air! Visby is fallen, the glorious Visby! God bless your hands, oh masons! Let me help to complete the vengeance!”

Hymns sound and bells