have work at the castle.”
Terje laughs scornfully and spits into the straw. He’s one of them—a human being. He’s tall and redhaired, with a chest like a Scanian rebel. He is usually quite handsome, but ever since Candlemas he has been sick with consumption. Now he looks shrunken and withered; his smell has taken over the whole room. I ought to be used to it. There are all sorts of different smells in the world when you live between the legs of goodfolk.
I go over to Terje and study his face. I see the dull look of his eyes and his hair, which sticks out in greasy tufts. Then I wipe the fever from his brow. Sickness is Our Lord’s way of rooting out His children. The Devil is more merciful. The Devil has always been more merciful.
“Don’t you want to hear anything about the fine people in the castle?” I ask.
“No.”
“They have chairs made of gold in the offices, and there are mirrors on the walls—even on the inside of the doors.”
“What for?”
“So they’ll have a good view when they scratch themselves on the ass.”
Terje laughs hoarsely. I stretch out my hand to him, but he knocks it away. Then I go over to my little box. It’s filled with herbs and healing salves: amanita, swallowwort, and mustard plasters. There is also a secret compartment containing tinctures. I open the box using a rusty nail that hangs around my neck. Then I select the herbs for a miracle-working elixir. And as I work, the voices come to me. They’re like birds flying around my head, birds that demand to be heard.
I turn around to look at the Scoundrel.
“You’ll be dead by tomorrow,” I say.
Terje nods, slowly and sadly. Outside the dogs are baying, and a drizzle settles over the city like a delicate silk coverlet.
WHEN TERJE CROAKS, he’ll be the third scoundrel that I bury. Scoundrels don’t last very long, especially when they’ve been thrown in irons at Bremerholmen. But they’re needed in the house, particularly for a wench like me.
“What the hell did the king want with you?”
Terje has a malicious look on his face. I ignore him and pour beer into the birchwood tankards.
“He probably wants to use you for a footstool.”
I slap his face. Terje puts his hand to his cheek but is wise enough not to say anything more. He makes do with giving me a glare, but a glare that doesn’t seem to belong to him.
I go over to the fireplace. The elixir is brown and bubbling; a bittersweet scent spreads through the room. I light another candle. There is only a small peephole in the cellar, because who would want to look out at Vintapperstræde? And who would want Vintapperstræde to look in at us?
“Sørine?”
“Yes?”
“You’re a good sort.”
I smile sadly. A few minutes later Terje starts to snore. It’s a familiar sound. I don’t like to admit it, but I’m fond of the sound. Terje’s snoring makes me feel calm. I don’t know why.
I PUT THE box of herbs away and take out my diary. Writing is my solace. When I write, I have control over the world. Then all that exists are the letters of the words and myself. Then I can speak the truth about human beings. I can study those peculiar creatures as if I were a mathematicus. And that’s a necessity, because they would never dream of doing it themselves.
I learned to read and write at an early age.
My father brought in a castigator when I was eight years old. He was an elderly man with bloodshot eyes. Like all castigators, he was more interested in chastising than in teaching. I had my lessons at the parsonage, in a dank little room where I was supposed to stay so as not to frighten the parishioners. Slowly I began to catch on. I was taught the Bible and Luther’s catechism. It was tedious reading, but the words fascinated me; they were like building blocks. Words could become sentences, sentences became pages, and pages became gospels. When I write in my diary it’s my spirit that hovers above the waters. Then I’m the one who gives names to the world. Then I’m the one who becomes Our Lord.
I cast another glance at Terje and take off my homespun jacket. It’s much too hot in the cellar. There are bugs everywhere, laying eggs in our hair and in the goat milk. I have always preferred winter. It’s less filthy, more callous.
I decide to lie down in the straw for a moment.
My body aches all over—in the bones, in the joints, and in my crooked legs.
I close my eyes and say a prayer. It’s a prayer that I’ve often repeated.
The next morning Terje is dead.
A SPIDER’S WEB of slime fills the Scoundrel’s throat. His mouth with the three teeth gapes open all the way down to his guts. His lips are blackish blue.
I study him with curiosity. Terje’s gaze is fixed on eternal heavens. The Devil, not God, has come to get his soul, because the Scoundrel belongs to the Evil One. It’s in Hell that a man will quench his thirst. It’s in Hell that he meets buxom gypsy women and enjoys the most fiery liquors. Hell can only be a solace after Bremerholmen and consumption.
I try to roll Terje onto his side, but he’s too heavy. So I stick a hand under his body, down into the straw, down to the mice and the rats and the vermin. And there, as I thought, I find a little leather pouch. It contains no less than twelve gold rigsdaler. A fortune to me.
I give the Scoundrel a reproachful look and try to close his mouth, but it keeps falling open. As if Terje is trying to say something, as if there’s a drinking song that he wants to sing before he loses his audience. Or maybe it’s just something that he wants to complain about—the way everyone complains in this rathole called Copenhagen.
I shove an angry hand under Terje’s jaw.
Suddenly something gives way. I let loose a sob. No more than one protracted howl, before I pull myself together again.
I look around the cellar. Soon I have to go up to the castle, but first I need to find the night-soil man so that he can come and get Terje. It usually costs three skillings, unless the body is especially heavy.
The cellar has changed. You would think that something had been removed, but instead something has been added.
When I step out into the street, I sense that Terje is going with me, that he’s lurking near my left shoulder, and that he’s looking at the world with a more blissful form of disgust.
4.
I MET MY SCOUNDREL WHEN HE WAS WORKING AT TORVET, the marketplace square, with the executioner. He had just started as the executioner’s assistant and was carrying out his work with great zeal. There was plenty of variety for a restless soul like his. Some of the poor wretches were beaten with the bat; others were flayed or broken alive on the wheel. It was hard work, but well-paid. A branding paid four rigsdaler, decapitation by sword brought ten daler,
