The Swedish Cavalier by Leo Perutz

Author:Leo Perutz [Perutz, Leo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781559701709
Google: NDKG5cLl258C
Amazon: 1611458854
Publisher: The Harvill Press
Published: 1993-01-14T23:00:00+00:00

Part Three

The Swedish Cavalier

it was early afternoon when the Swedish cavalier reached the deserted mill.

The sun stood high in the cloudless sky and a summery hush enveloped the countryside. Not a breath of wind was stirring, not a bird chirping. All that broke the silence was the song of the crickets and the low, organlike hum of the bees. A gaudy butterfly disported itself amid speedwell, cardamine and dandelion. In the far distance, where the bishop’s forges and smelting furnaces lay, a pall of black smoke hung over the pine forests.

The Swedish cavalier saw it and was assailed by a faint sense of unease, as if it held some danger for him, but he dismissed the notion with a shake of the head before it had properly taken shape. Then he dismounted and tethered his horse to a willow tree so that it could graze in a circle.

The door of the miller’s house was locked. No smoke rose from the chimney, and the shutters were closed. The erstwhile miller, whom he had once, at an evil hour, mistaken for a ghost arisen from the grave, a poor soul from Purgatory, must be whipping his team along some highroad on the way to fetch merchandise from distant lands for his master the bishop. Even if his waggon came rattling up the hill at this moment, who would fear him now?

The Swedish cavalier sat down in the tall meadow grass and stretched his legs. Resting his back against the brickwork of the miller’s well, he daydreamed with half-closed eyes.

He recalled how, poor and wretched and numb with cold, he had made his way to the mill through waist-deep snow, and how he had there acquired the arcanum, the key to his good fortune. Well, now he was a grand gentleman with plumes in his hat and money and letters of credit in his pockets now he could proudly pass for one of the nobility. Let the miller come, him and his crooked mouth! Purgatory was a fiction, not a real place—it existed only in priests’ heads, so he had been assured by the Brabanter, who had travelled far and wide and been wherever folk broiled bacon over coals.

He gave a start. What was that sudden hubbub? To hear it, one might have fancied that Venice had fallen into the hands of the Grand Turk. What did the unseen people want, and what were they shouting? A multitude of voices both deep and shrill, they came from all sides, from far and near, and their cry was always the same: “Make haste! Make haste! Make haste!”

What manner of people were these, and what did they want? The Swedish cavalier looked about him, but there was no living soul to be seen except his horse, which was standing beside him munching heather, toothwort and tufts of grass, and nothing to be heard-no cries, no shouts-save the hum of the bees.

He leaned back against the brickwork and let his head loll forward on his chest.

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