Marie Grubbe Read online

  They were standing by the cathedral door, and a weak, almost bleached ray of light fell from inside onto their pale faces and the dark knot of heads behind. People continued to come by themselves, in pairs and small groups, talking and laughing politely until they reached the entrance to the cathedral, where they suddenly became silent, looked gravely ahead and changed their pace.

  Søren wanted to see more of this finery, and he whispered to Marie that they should also go in. They might as well try, since nothing worse could happen than that people might chase them away. Marie shuddered at the thought of her being asked to leave a place where common tradesmen could show themselves, and she kept Søren back when he tried to pull her along. But suddenly she had a change of mind and pushed ahead eagerly, dragging Søren with her. She walked fast, without showing any fear, care, nor surreptitious vigilance. On the contrary, she seemed determined to be noticed, and hurried on. At first, no one stopped them, but when they were just about to enter the lit, crowded nave, they were noticed by one of the church wardens posted there, who cast a glance of horror their way and then with quick indignant steps, waving his hands eagerly and dismissively, chased them all the way out through the door. Here he remained for a moment, surveying the crowd reproachfully as if he found them responsible for what had just taken place, then gravely he retraced his steps and with a shudder, returned to his post.

  The mob welcomed those sent away with loud, scornful laughter and a shower of mocking questions that made Søren mutter under his breath and look around threateningly. But Marie was content, for she had exposed herself to the blow which respectable people always had ready for him and his like, and she had received it.

  *

  In one of the roughest inns in Aarhus, on the evening before St Olaf’s Day, four men sat playing the game of cards called styrvolt.

  One of the players was Søren the Overseer. His partner, a handsome man with coal black hair and a dark complexion, was a juggler and magician who went by the name of Jens Sleight-of-Hand, while the other two in the company were joint owners of a mangy bear. They were both really hideous. One had a huge hare-lip and was known as Salmand the Bear Baiter, while the other was tall, one-eyed, broad-jawed, pockmarked and had the nickname Rasmus Spy, apparently because the skin around his injured eye had puckered in such a way around it that he looked as if he were keeping himself ready to spy through a keyhole or some other small opening.

  The cardplayers were sitting at one end of the long table below the window. A candle and a jug without handles stood on the table. On the opposite wall hung an open folding-table secured by an iron hook. At the other end of the room ran the bar counter, where a thin, long-wicked candle stuck in an upturned funnel threw a drowsy light onto a shelf behind. On that lay large square bottles of spirits and bitters, some litre and quart measures, and half a dozen glasses for snaps,which found ample room beside a basket full of mustard seeds and a large lantern with panes made of the bottoms of broken glasses. In one corner of the room, beyond the counter, sat Marie Grubbe who was knitting when she was not asleep. In the other there was a man with his back bent forwards, resting his elbows on his knees. He was carefully engaged with pulling his black felt hat as far down over his head as possible, and when he had done that, he would grab hold of its broad brim, turn it round and round, squinting all the while and with his mouth drawn (presumably because it was pulling on his hair) till the hat came slowly off his head and he would start all over again.

  “It’s the final game of cards we’re playing,” said Niels Sleight-of-Hand, putting down a card.

  Rasmus Spy knocked his knuckles on the table to tell Salmand that he should trump. Salmand trumped with a two.

  “A two,” shouted Rasmus. “Haven’t you nothing but twos and threes in your hand?”

  “Lord,” muttered Salmand, “there’s always been poor folk and a few beggars.”

  Søren the Overseer trumped with a six.

  “Oh, God,” moaned Rasmus, “is he going to get it for a paltry pope? Why the devil are you sitting there being stingy with the trumps, Salmand?”

  He put down a card, and Søren took the trick.

  “Kirsteen the mosquito,” said Søren, playing the four of hearts.

  “And her half-mad sister,” continued Rasmus, putting down the four of diamonds.

  “A styrvolt will do,” said Jens, using the ace of trumps.

  “Trump, will you, trump if you are never going to trump again,” shouted Rasmus.

  “It’s too high,” moaned Salmand and played a card.

  “Then I’ll use a seven, and then another one,” said Jens suddenly.27

  Søren collected the tricks.

  “And here comes the buckskin,” continued Jens, playing the eight and the nine in trumps.

  “And here comes the yellow nag,” shouted Salmand, trumping with the two of hearts.

  “That’s not going to reach the stable,” laughed Søren, overtrumping with the four of spades.

  “Lost,” roared Rasmus Spy, throwing down his cards. “Lost with the two of hearts, that took some doing. Yes, it’s certainly a damn good thing that we aren’t playing any more. Let them kiss the tricks they’ve won.”

  While they were counting up the points, a well-built, expensively-dressed man entered. He immediately took down the folding table and took a seat nearest the wall. As he passed the cardplayers, he touched his hat with a silver-topped cane and wished a good evening to all.

  “Thank you,” they replied and then all four of them spat.

  The newcomer brought out an envelope full of tobacco and a long chalk pipe, filled the pipe, and knocked the table with his cane.

  A barelegged girl brought him a brazier full of embers and a large stoneware jug with a pewter lid.

  He took a small pair of copper tongs out of his waist pocket and put the embers in his pipe, arranged the jug in front of him, leaned back and made himself as comfortable as the place allowed.

  “What does an envelope of tobacco like that cost, master?” asked Salmand, filling his little pipe with tobacco from a sealskin pouch with red strings.

  “Twelve skilling,” replied the man, adding as if to excuse such recklessness, “but it is so salutary for the lungs, I must tell you.”

  “How are things otherwise with yer trade?” continued Salmand, lighting his pipe.

  “Good enough, thank you for your generous enquiry. Good enough, but one doesn’t get any younger, I’ll confess.”

  “Well,” said Rasmus Spy, “but you don’t have to move about to get yer customers, as there are always those that bring them.”

  “Indeed,” laughed the man, “and that makes it a good trade, and you don’t wear out your jaws prattling to folk about your wares, but they must take them as they come, and can neither pick nor choose.”

  “And they don’t ask for nowt to be thrown in,” continued Rasmus, “and never want any more than what they’re entitled to, fair and just.”

  “Master, do they scream much?” asked Søren almost in a whisper.

  “Well, they seldom laugh.”

  “Oh, it’s an awesome trade.”

  “Then you won’t help me, even though I’ve been reckoning with you?”

  “Ye haven’t been reckoning with us, have ye?” asked Rasmus, rising threateningly from his seat.

  “I have been doing no reckoning at all, none whatsoever, but I am looking for an apprentice, who could be of some assistance and who could take on the trade after me, that’s what I’m looking for, I’m telling you.”

  “And what wages is such an apprentice entitled to?” asked Jens Sleight-of-Hand gravely.

  “Fifteen rigsdaler per annum, one third of your expenses for clothes, and one mark for every rigsdaler received as my rate for work undertaken.”

  “What are the rates?”

  “According to the rates, I get five rigsdaler for every whipping at the post, seven rigsdaler for a whipping out of the town, four rigsdaler for a banishing from the county,
and the same for branding.”

  “And for the finer work?”

  “That unfortunately, does not come so often, but it is otherwise eight rigsdaler for chopping off a head – that is with an axe, with a sword it is ten – but there can be seven years between such occurrences. Hanging is fourteen, ten for the actual work, and four for taking the body down again from the gallows. The wheel and stake is seven rigsdaler, but that is for the whole body, and then I have to supply a post and fix the body to it. Anything else? Let me see, then there’s breaking of arms and legs according to the German fashion, followed by breaking on the wheel, that’s fourteen. For a quartering followed by the wheel, I get twelve, and then there’s pinching with red hot tongs, that’s two for every pinch – that’s all, nothing else, except as might suit the particular occasion.”

  “It is not difficult to learn, I suppose.”

  “The trade? Anyone can do it, but how, that’s the rub. It takes dexterity and experience, as in all other trades where you use your hands. Whipping at the post is not such an easy thing to get right. It requires a certain movement of the hand to get those three flicks to bite with every swing of the whip, finely and fluently with the full rigour of the law, as if you were waving a piece of cloth. Then a sinner might mend his ways.”

  “I think perhaps I would do it,” said Jens and sighed as he spoke.

  Those sitting close shrank away a bit.

  “Here’s your reward!” tempted the man sitting by the folding table, spreading out some shiny silver coins on the table in front of himself.

  “Think it o’er!” begged Søren.

  “Think and wait, starve and freeze, birds of a feather that flock together,” replied Jens, rising from his seat. “I bid ye farewell as an honest guild-brother,” he continued, offering Søren his hand.

  “God speed, guild-brother, and God be with ye,” Søren replied.

  He went round the table, repeating his words and receiving the same response from each of them. To Marie too, Jens said goodbye and to the man in the corner, who had to let go of his hat for a moment.

  Jens then approached the folding table and the man sitting there, who put on a very solemn expression, laid down his pipe, and said, “I, Master Hermann Køppen, executioner in the town of Aarhus, receive you in service as apprentice to carry out the duties of an apprentice, to the glory of God, your own advancement, and to serve the honourable guild of executioners.”

  While making this unnecessary and pompous speech that seemed to give him deep satisfaction, the master pressed the shiny coins of hire into Jens’ hand. Then he rose, bared his head, bowed and asked them whether they would allow him the honour of inviting the honest witnesses to a drink of polak.28

  When he did not receive an answer to his question, he began to insist that it would be a very, very great honour for him to offer them a drink of polak, with which they might toast among themselves the good fortune of their former companion.

  The three men at the long table looked questioningly at one another, and nodded almost at the same time.

  The barelegged girl now brought a plain clay bowl and three green glass tumblers dotted with green and yellow stars. When she had put the clay bowl in front of Jens, and the tumblers in front of Søren and the bear baiters, she fetched a large wooden jug, filling first the tumblers, then the clay bowl, before finally pouring the rest into Master Herman’s personal cup.

  Rasmus pulled his glass towards himself and spat. The other two did the same, and then they sat there for a while looking at one another, as if none of them wanted to be the first to drink. Meanwhile, Marie Grubbe went up to Søren, whispered something in his ear which he answered by shaking his head. She was about to whisper once more, but Søren was not listening. She stood there for a moment, uncertain, then she grabbed his tumbler and threw the drink on the floor saying that he should not drink what the hangman offered. Søren jumped up, grabbed her hard by the arm, pushed her out of the door and ordered her roughly upstairs. Then he demanded a quart of aquavit and returned to his seat.

  “My poor Abalone should ha’ tried to do that,” said Rasmus drinking.

  “Yes,” agreed Salmand. “She can’t thank the Lord enough that she isn’t my good woman, I should certainly give her something else to do than go around pouring God’s gifts on the ground.”

  “But you see, Salmand,” objected Rasmus with a conspiratorial glance at Master Herman. “Your good woman is no fine lady of some noble family and their like, she’s a common cur like us, and so she gets the beatings she deserves, as is the custom among common folk; but had she instead been some fine, noble creature, then yah’d ne’er dared lay hands on her noble backside, but allowed her to vomit in yer face, should it please her.”

  “The devil I would,” swore Salmand. “I would beat her black and blue till she could neither open her eyes or her mouth, I would, and I would clear her head of all her fine notions. You just ask my woman whether she’s familiar with that lovely chain that Nalle is standing there with, and you’ll see she gets a pain in her back just hearing it mentioned. But should she come here and knock my drink on the floor, if she was the emperor’s own daughter, his flesh and blood, she would get a thrashing, as long as I can lift a hand and there’s some life left in my body. Who the Hell does such a damned doll think she is? Is she more than other people’s wives that she dares shame her husband in good men’s company? Does she think that she’s too good to be touched by someone who’s drunk the health of this decent fellow? No, if you’ll listen to me, Søren, then…” and he made a movement as if beating the air with his hand, “otherwise you’ll never get any decent use out of her.”

  “But who would dare?” Rasmus asked Søren mockingly.

  “Take care or yer face will touch the ground.”

  Then he left. When he had entered their room, he kicked the door shut and began to untie the rope that held their few clothes together. Marie was sitting on a wooden frame that had been knocked together to make a bed.

  “Are you angry, Søren?” she asked.

  “That ye’ll see.”

  “Take care, Søren! No one has raised a hand to me since I was a child, and I won’t take it.”

  She could do what she pleased, he said. A thrashing was what she was going to get.

  “Søren, for God’s sake, don’t lay a cruel hand on me or you’ll regret it.”

  But Søren grabbed her by the hair and hit her with the halter. Marie did not scream but only moaned as she was struck. She did not rise from the floor.

  She had taken herself by surprise. It was as if she were lying there waiting for some seething hatred towards him to be born in her soul, an implacable, unforgiving hatred. But it was not there. There was only a terribly deep, gentle sorrow, like a quiet grief over a lost hope… how did he have the heart to do it?

  * * *

  27 The two sevens in the trump colours are the highest.

  28 A mixture of mead and aquavit.

  XVIII

  Erik Grubbe died in May 1696, eighty-seven years old. The inheritance was immediately divided between his three daughters. But Marie did not get much. Before he died, the old man had deprived the estate of most of the capital by issuing letters of credit among other things, to the disadvantage of Marie and to the advantage of the other two daughters.

  The share that Marie received was, however, enough to make her and her husband from beggars into decent folk, and if they had used the inheritance sensibly, they could have secured a steady income to the end of their days. Unfortunately, Søren decided to throw himself into horse trading, and after a few years most of the money was lost. The rest was, however, enough that Søren could secure for himself a ferry house on Falster, Burdock House, and that is how the money was used.

  In the beginning they had to toil very hard, and Marie was often at the oars. But after a while, she was mostly employed selling the beer that was part of the licence to run the ferry. On the whole they lived together very happily. Marie continue
d to love her husband more than anyone in the world, and if he was drunk and beat her from time to time, then it did not matter much. She knew that this was an everyday occurrence in the society she had joined, and if she ever lost patience, she could easily console herself with the thought that this Søren, who was so hard and rough, was the same Søren who had once shot another human being for her sake.

  The people whom they ferried across were mainly peasants and pedlars, but from time to time it did happen that some bigwig came along. And so Sti Høg appeared one day, and Marie and her husband rowed him across. He was sitting at the back of the boat so that he could talk to Marie, who was using the back oar. He recognised her as soon as he saw her, but he did not show any signs of surprise; perhaps he had known that he was going to find her there.

  Marie had to look at him twice before she could recognise him, for he was much changed. His face had become red, fat and bloated, his eyes were runny, his lower jaw hung as if he had lost movement in the corners of his mouth, his legs were thin and his big stomach hung out; in short, all the obvious signs of a life full of every kind of excess that dulls the mind, and this was what his existence had mainly consisted of since he left Marie. As far as the external events were concerned, his story was that he had for some time been gentilhomme and maître d’hôtel for a princely cardinal in Rome and converted to Catholicism. He had gone to stay with his brother, Just Høg, when he was an envoy in Nimwegen in Holland, and had reverted to being a Lutheran, before returning to Denmark, where he now depended entirely on the generosity of his brother.

  “Is that,” he asked, nodding in the direction of Søren, “is that the man I predicted would come after me?”

  “Yes, it is,” Marie replied slowly. She did not feel like answering his question at all.

  “And he is greater than I… than I was?” he continued his questions, straightening himself in his seat.

  “Ah, there is no comparison, your honour,” she replied, affecting the manner of a peasant woman.