Chapter 1 1
Autumn becomes winter and the year turns. Winter becomes spring and a fairy tale is told in the City-between-the-Bridges—one of the cautionary variety, although it is not children that it frightens, but grown men. Among the alleys by night wanders a phantom figure, and if sinners of a certain kind cross its path then things do not end well. As to its appearance, testimonies vary. It is big—that all agree on—and ugly, its face not that of a human, its skull scarred and bald but for odd wisps of hair. Some know more of it, and they say that its one hand is as scorched earth and that all hope is lost for any who venture within its reach. As for its origins, a fog of guesses and rumors arises. It is said that it burned down the Horn Hill orphanage but was itself caught in the flames. Hell hath denied it entry, and this lost soul seeks out its old haunts. A crime has been committed for which it has been sentenced to atone. Now it is a symbol of all that is pitiable.

The yard slopes, and that has never bothered Frans Gry when sober, but when drunk the angle constantly baffles him. No matter how hard he tries to navigate the straight route from door to privy, it begins to wind; he drifts off down the hill, and those damned nettles find gaps and holes in his stockings as if that is all they are good for. His revenge is always the same: one step backwards, breeches down and shirt up, piss on them; to hell with the fly-ridden privy. Intoxication protects him from the evening chill. He grunts and strains to piss. With each passing year, he must go more often, although it becomes ever more difficult to pass water. The nettles are likely still damp from his last visit, but then again there are plenty of others that may benefit from his efforts. After shaking off and tucking away, Frans stands for a while, looking around. The stone hovels are already past their best—it’s hard to believe that they’re just a few decades old, their foundations laid on the hill cleared by the Great Fire of 1759. Somewhere down in the gap behind the bottommost building is the Golden Bay, the City-between-the-Bridges in its center. He wishes the whole island would go straight to the seabed under the weight of the palaces of the rich. They swagger about by day uselessly lisping away in court French, while he can barely afford to buy wine so sour that the corners of his mouth convulse with every sip. In his mind’s eye, he sees the slops rising and foaming their way up the ornate staircases—the latrine barrels discharged straight into the lake have dispatched a brown fleet to storm and soil such opulence. Bewigged bitches choking on the sewage into which they have slipped, their chevalier menfolk howling in nasal soprano as they cling to the branches of the crystal chandeliers. Come to think of it, the Great Flood needn’t stop there. The tide is most welcome to make its way up his own slope too, just as long as the waves stay below his own floor. Farewell, loafers, whores, and beggars! He lets out a sigh that begins in longing and ends in resignation, because the dream is just as fleeting as it is beautiful. The mills grind on—a damned racket, all creaking and pounding. Yet that is better than the racket inside the houses—children running all over the place, one indistinguishable from another. If you take up the chase, then you need only turn a corner and—hey presto!—you have no idea which of the little bastards is which. You just have to grab the most obvious child by the collar and rap its jaw as a warning to the others. He wishes everything to hell and staggers back to his room; his wife is out gadding about somewhere, and while she will be given a hiding upon her return, just to be sure, he is content to drink on in peace, without nagging, without the usual gibes about rent and food.

He sits there rocking, with the bottle in his hand, his thoughts dwelling on bygone days. With the inertia of inebriation, he arranges every word in the defense he has assembled to explain the adversities he has met in life—a task that has been going on for years, performed with as much zeal as if he were some priest’s son reciting the catechism to him. Momentarily satisfied, his mind wanders to more agreeable things: to life as it should have been if his qualities had been appreciated; toasts of Rhenish wine from glasses of crystal, oysters, raisins and waffles, a beautiful girl in his arms. And retribution over all those who have wronged him—his detractors cudgelled, the lot of them, their limbs broken on the wheel, and braided around its spokes, in full sight from where he sits at his feast.

A knock on the door. Damn them all—what good has ever come of such a thing? He leaves the discordant sound unanswered and returns to his own preoccupations. And now the door flies off its frame, kicked to splinters, and someone grabs him by the scruff of the neck and tosses him down the stairs, his limp inebriation the only thing saving him from broken arms, legs, or back. He rolls from kick after kick to his buttocks and thighs, the threshold striking his forehead, then out into the stinging wind of the spring night and into the shelter of the wet nettles, where he lies still and dazed for a while, hoping that his misfortune will disappear as quickly as it arrived. Then a popping sound echoes between the house fronts—one as familiar to him as his own voice: the cork of the bottle from which he’s just drunk. There is so much one can tolerate, but there are limits. Frans rises on shaky legs again, and feels the air whistling as the bottle passes a hair’s breadth from his ear and bids the cruel world farewell in a crash against the wall behind him. Soon he feels a fist in his hair with a grasp hard enough to knock him off his feet and drag him onto bare ground, where he lies gasping for air, every breath a reminder of blossoming bruises. Someone paces back and forth before him, only their contours shown by the failing light, the neck thrust forward on broad shoulders, arms thick and brutish. Life has not so blocked Frans Gry’s nose for danger that he cannot sense that worse looms. Pent-up wrath lingers in the air like thunder, the figure before him tense as anchor ropes in the frames of a ropery. In a panic, Frans seeks a reason and finds too many from which readily to choose. He begins at the mildest end, in the hope of haggling down the sum total.

“I know the walls are thin, and I’m told I snore badly…”

“Hold your tongue.”

Gry counts his sleeping dogs and chooses one at random.

“Unless I am mistaken, I returned every penny that I owed Jan Faithless at the Last Farthing long ago. He was so drunk when the loan was made that I’m amazed he remembered it at all.”

“Shut up.”

The voice is deep but hoarse at the same time, as if it springs from a throat unused to human speech. Only now does Gry remember the fairy tales he has heard, and he puts two and two together. The monster has come; he himself is its prey. He does as he has been told.

“The woman whose bed you share has a daughter of her own. Lotta Erika. Thirteen this year.”

He nods reluctantly.

“You sought her out beneath her sheets. She clawed at your eyes. You chased her out of the house.”

Frans Gry’s jaw drops, as if of its own volition, but he has sobered up enough to stifle his excuses.

“Tomorrow she returns home. The next finger you lay upon her I shall feed to the pigs.”

The figure approaches, crouching an arm’s length away, and Frans Gry locks his gaze onto his own stained knees to spare himself the nightmare of looking at its face. A rap across his shin makes him cry out, because the hand that strikes him is as hard as a cudgel.

“Ideally, I would render you harmless forever. Break arms and break legs. There is but one reason why I do not: you must keep the girl in food and shelter. Be the stepfather she would wish for herself. As if she were your own. As if you wanted nothing but the best for her. Solely for her sake do you leave here of your own volition. She can easily find me. If I hear otherwise, you shall see me again. Is that understood?”

“But I…”

“There is work, albeit of the kind you consider yourself too good for. Carrying pig iron to the scales. Clearing dung from the barns. Turning dunghills. Good men find occupation. You, however, are all but worthless.”

The words awaken a vague recollection, one that stifles the final glow of intoxication. Frans Gry flips through his memories, seeking a hole where it all fits: the voice, the body. As he sits quietly, the monster rises, turns on its heel, and begins to move towards the place where the houses thin out and the road makes off towards Polhem’s Lock. Gry holds his breath until he is alone, and there, in the void of his thoughts, the images he has sought emerge. A face and a name.

“Cardell! Mickel Cardell! You were on the Ingeborg! I was on the Alexander! We were at anchor off Crow Island when the Stedink fired and the Prince Nassau responded as best he could. I saw you burn and sink.”

Context begins to solidify around the figure: he tenses his brow as if to force his brain into obedience, and grimaces with distaste as his memories arm him.

“They say you were there when Horn Hill burned down. They say it was your fault. They call you a child killer.”

Rarely has he thought so clearly. Hatred and humiliation harry the conclusions straight into his arms.

“You’re here for the sake of your own conscience, not Lotta’s, you selfish bastard.”

He’s on his feet now, and staggers a few steps towards Cardell’s departing shape, raising his voice to a wheezing roar.

“She’ll always get her bread, of that you can be sure, but welcoming little ones into the sunshine opens no graves. Do you think you’re better than me, Cardell? You’re not. You’re worse. Worse! Beside you, I am a saint. There is no blood on my hands.”

His own words startle him and he hurries across the yard, across the threshold, and up the stairs, letting out a pained whine at the door—now smashed to splinters, no longer affording any protection. He does what he can to piece the largest parts back together, and keeps them in place with his back as he sits on the floor, alone again, shaking with relief, with terror, with triumph.

Cardell has stopped around the corner out of sight, and there he allows his panting breaths to quieten. He wishes he had made it out of earshot, but every word is like the lash of a whip. For a long time he stands still, seeking comfort in the fact that he has at least helped the girl Lotta Erika to something better. She is not the girl he was seeking, but still…

He finds them all over in his search—these distressed little red herrings, and he helps them whenever he can. Sometimes they help him in return. The street girls are many—their hearing is good, their eyes keener. In their innocence, they gain easy entrance to where he himself is barred.