Stepping into the Sun by Mark Heidenstam

Author:Mark Heidenstam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2021-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

“So, what do we think? Do we think Dame Veronica, bless her, was right about Gustavus Adolphus; full of good intentions but at heart just another war-monger?”

Gary Barham, jacketless, paced the second-floor classroom between the row of desks and the windows which looked out on to the quadrangle. Only a few minutes remained before lunch but he was anxious to be as thorough as possible with such a crucial question, especially as he was dealing with Hart’s special subject, and still – very much just for now – using the Wedgwood.

“Anyone?”

“Well sir, he was still quite young, I mean for a king; not even forty. If he’d lived he might have been able to force a peace,” suggested Thurlow, whose cultivated tones were going to sound out of place at whichever redbrick or white-tile university agreed to take him.

“You mean, after Lützen would have been much stronger?”

“Sir.”

“The trouble with that idea is that it presupposes a couple of things. Firstly, would he have been more powerful? True, he was a military genius, if that’s the right word to use about such a talent, and he could probably have gone on winning battles. But Sweden never had the slightest hope of dictating terms to France or the Empire. Theirs was the real muscle. The other question is whether he really wanted peace. I know he’s meant to be an authentic hero, but I get the impression he would have cheerfully plundered the whole of Europe, given the chance.”

“There was his plan, sir, wasn’t there?” Thurlow persisted. “The er…”

“Oh yes, the Norma Futurarum Actionum. Why is it these things always have pompous Latin titles? I plead guilty to never having ploughed my way through it. I think we can take Wedgwood’s word that it was about as realistic as the average party political manifesto.”

The bell sounded, but Barham gave no indication that the class was at an end, and continued his walkabout. There was a pause, and then another voice, unsure but eager.

“Isn’t Wedgwood hard on Gustavus out of disappointment, sir?” suggested Crossan, there on a scholarship, already spotted, marked out, and destined.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, the way she describes him early on, it’s almost like a romantic novel.”

“He’s the dashing hero?”

“Yes sir. Then she finds out he’s not perfect after all.”

“She falls out of love with him?” Barham asked, and regretted it on the instant, since it was hardly a question to which the boy ought to have been able to give an informed answer.

“Yes sir,” said Crossan, blushing.

“Aren’t we missing a point, sir?”

“And what might that be?” asked Barham, as he turned to face Bryceland, whose Scottishness gave him an outsider’s assurance lacking in the rest of the class.

“We’re looking at him with twentieth-century eyes. Wedgwood herself says the fact that she wrote the book in the thirties influenced her judgment. But Gustavus was a man of the seventeenth century. We’ve got to think ourselves back three hundred years.”

“And when we do that, what do we decide?”

“That he was

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