LITMIR.BIZ

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mounted. The King had ridden past, and it was announced that he would stay. Life began to look reasonable, and people braced themselves for what was coming.

      In the afternoon of the following day, the suburb outside of West Gate was set on fire, and the smoke, drifting over the city, brought out the crowds again. At dusk, when the flames reddened the weatherbeaten walls of Vor Frue Church tower and played on the golden balls topping the spire of St. Peter’s, the news that the enemy was coming down Valby Hill stole in like a timid sigh. Through avenues and alleys sounded a frightened “The Swedes! The Swedes!” The call came in the piercing voices of boys running through the streets. People rushed to the doors, booths were closed, and the iron-mongers hastily gathered in their wares. The good folk seemed to expect a huge army of the enemy to pour in upon them that very moment.

      The slopes of the ramparts and the adjoining streets were black with people looking at the fire. Other crowds gathered farther away from the centre of interest, at the Secret Passage and the Fountain. Many matters were discussed, the burning question being: Would the Swedes attack that night or wait till morning?

      Gert Pyper, the dyer from the Fountain, thought the Swedes would be upon them as soon as they had rallied after the march. Why should they wait?

      The Icelandic trader, Erik Lauritzen of Dyers’ Row, thought it might be a risky matter to enter a strange city in the dead of night, when you couldn’t know what was land and what was water.

      “Water!” said Gert Dyer. “Would to God we knew as much about our own affairs as the Swede knows! Don’t trust to that! His spies are where you’d least think. ’Tis well enough known to Burgomaster and Council, for the aldermen have been round since early morning hunting spies in every nook and corner. Fool him who can! No, the Swede’s cunning—especially in such business. ’Tis a natural gift. I found that out myself—’tis some half-score years since, but I’ve never forgotten that mummery. You see, indigo she makes black, and she makes light blue, and she makes medium blue, all according to the mordant. Scalding and making the dye-vats ready—any ’prentice can do that, if he’s handy, but the mordant—there’s the rub! That’s an art! Use too much, and you burn your cloth or yarn so it rots. Use too little, and the color will ne-ever be fast—no, not if it’s dyed with the most pre-cious logwood. Therefore the mordant is a closed geheimnis which a man does not give away except it be to his son, but to the journeymen—never! No—”

      “Ay, Master Gert,” said the trader, “ay, ay!”

      “As I was saying,” Gert went on, “about half a score of years ago I had a ’prentice whose mother was a Swede. He’d set his mind on finding out what mordant I used for cinnamon brown, but as I always mixed it behind closed doors, ’twas not so easy to smoke it. So what does he do, the rascal? There’s so much vermin here round the Fountain, it eats our wool and our linen, and for that reason we always hang up the stuff people give us to dye in canvas sacks under the loft-beams. So what does he do, the devil’s gesindchen, but gets him one of the ’prentices to hang him up in a sack. And I came in and weighed and mixed and made ready and was half done, when it happened so curiously that the cramp got in one of his legs up there, and he began to kick and scream for me to help him down. Did I help him? Death and fire! But ’twas a scurvy trick he did me, yes, yes, yes! And so they are, the Swedes; you can never trust ’em over a doorstep.”

      “Faith, they’re ugly folk, the Swedes,” spoke Erik Lauritzen. “They’ve nothing to set their teeth in at home, so when they come to foreign parts they can never get their bellyful. They’re like poor-house children; they eat for today’s hunger and for to-morrow’s and yesterday’s all in one. Thieves and cut-purses they are, too—worse than crows and corpse-plunderers—and so murderous. It’s not for nothing people say: Quick with the knife like Lasse Swede!”

      “And so lewd,” added the dyer. “It never fails, if you see the hangman’s man whipping a woman from town, and you ask who’s the hussy, but they tell you she’s a Swedish trull.”

      “Ay, the blood of man is various, and the blood of beasts, too. The Swede is to other people what the baboon is among the dumb brutes. There’s such an unseemly passion and raging heat in the humors of his body that the natural intelligence which God in His mercy hath given all human creatures cannot hinder his evil lusts and sinful desires.”

      The dyer nodded several times in affirmation of the theories advanced by the trader. “Right you are, Erik Lauritzen, right you are. The Swede is of a strange and peculiar nature, different from other people. I can always smell, when an outlandish man comes into my booth, whether he’s a Swede or from some other country. There’s such a rank odor about the Swedes—like goats or fish-lye. I’ve often turned it over in my mind, and I make no doubt ’tis as you say, ’tis the fumes of his lustful and bestial humors. Ay, so it is.”

      “Sure, it’s no witchcraft if Swedes and Turks smell different from Christians!” spoke up an old woman who stood near them.

      “You’re drivelling, Mette Mustard,” interrupted the dyer. “Don’t you know that Swedes are Christian folks?”

      “Call ’em Christian, if you like, Gert Dyer, but Finns and heathens and troll-men have never been Christians by my prayer-book, and it’s true as gold what happened in the time of King Christian, God rest his soul! when the Swedes were in Jutland. There was a whole regiment of ’em marching one night at new moon, and at the stroke o’ midnight they ran one from the other and howled like a pack of werewolves or some such devilry, and they scoured like mad round in the woods and fens and brought ill luck to men and beasts.”

      “But they go to church on Sunday and have both pastor and clerk just like us.”

      “Ay, let a fool believe that! They go to church, the filthy gang, like the witches fly to vespers, when the Devil has St. John’s mass on Hekkenfell. No, they’re bewitched, an’ nothing bites on ’em, be it powder or bullets. Half of ’em can cast the evil eye, too, else why d’ye think the smallpox is always so bad wherever those hell-hounds’ve set their cursed feet? Answer me that, Gert Dyer, answer me that, if ye can.”

      The dyer was just about to reply, when Erik Lauritzen, who for some time had been looking about uneasily, spoke to him: “Hush, hush, Gert Pyper! Who’s the man talking like a sermon yonder with the people standing thick around him?”

      They hurried to join the crowd, while Gert Dyer explained that it must be a certain Jesper Kiim, who had preached in the Church of the Holy Ghost, but whose doctrine, so Gert had been told by learned men, was hardly pure enough to promise much for his eternal welfare or clerical preferment.

      The speaker was a small man of about thirty with something of the mastiff about him. He had long, smooth black hair, a thick little nose on a broad face, lively brown eyes, and red lips. He was standing on a doorstep, gesticulating forcefully and speaking with quick energy though in a somewhat thick and lisping voice.

      “The twenty-sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew,” he said, “from the fifty-first to the fifty-fourth verse, reads as follows: ‘And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?’

      “Ay, my beloved friends, thus it must be. The poor walls and feeble garrison of this city are at this moment encompassed by a strong host of armed warriors, and their king and commander has ordered them, by fire and sword, by attack and siege, to subdue this city and make us all his servants.

      “And those who are in the city and see their peace threatened and their ruin contrary to all feelings of humanity determined upon, they arm themselves, they bring catapults and other harmful implements of war to the ramparts, and they say to one another: Should not we with flaming fire and shining sword fall upon the destroyers of peace who would lay us waste? Why has

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