The Ropewalker by Kross Jaan

Author:Kross, Jaan [Kross, Jaan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857054579
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
Published: 2016-07-28T05:00:00+00:00

The Doctor then added a note to the letter that was not intended to be preserved even in the archives of the duke:

In addition, I do not wish to keep secret from Your Highness that Herr Coadjutor confessed to me the day before yesterday, in somno factitio,* that his ultimate goal is nothing less than the royal crown of Livonia.

The first snowstorm of the year streaked the frozen black ground with white and lashed at faces with icy cruelty. Had the weather not been so forbidding there would no doubt have been more people on Jerusalem Hill at noon that day. Even now there were several hundred at a guess. But grey coats, jerkins and worn dogskin caps outnumbered considerably the velvet berets and mink collars and fur coats that usually predominated at such spectacles.

Bal arrived a little late. At Katharina’s request he had carried firewood to the upper storey before departing, for there were more tasks in the household now than servants, and Johann was busy with other chores, as were the coadjutor’s servants. And they had exchanged what were perhaps the first words since Katharina’s trip to Finland. When Bal straightened up after dropping the wood noisily onto the floor of the small, chilly attic room, Katharina spoke, standing on the other side of the woodpile. She was pressing her cheek against the stove and sliding her hands over its green tiles, as though she could warm the cold stove by her caress, and said, using the formal “you”:

“I was thinking of you all the time I was with the duke.”

Bal was silent.

“But you probably did not think of me . . .”

“Ohh . . . and how . . .”

“. . . But it did not protect me . . .”

“From what?”

“From the cursed spell . . . But thoughts cannot protect me anyway.” Suddenly she turned bright red and ran from the room. And Bal went to his room behind the Frolinks’ kitchen, pushed open the window – because of the heat – and stared out at the snow whirling and whistling through the Old Market, and at people heading towards the Karja Gate. Trying to puzzle it out, he noticed neither the wind blowing into the room nor the people in the square – What confounded spell is she talking about? And then he was plagued by a shameless, painful, indecent, naked thought – What does she mean by saying she thought of me all the while she was with the duke . . .?

And now here he was, trudging through driving snow and a grey throng of people, up the slope of Jerusalem Hill, panting with the effort. And he began to hear, through his own shameless, painful, indecent, naked thoughts, the words tossed about in the crowd: “Just like they do with murdering robbers,” someone said, and it was not clear whether the speaker considered the “just like” right or wrong.

“Worse,” said another. “With murderers they chop the head off first – as an act of mercy.

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