The Willow King Read online

  “Aha,” was all that Laurentius could manage by way of response to Johannes’ story, which seemed to have a whiff of gossip about it.

  He had smiled when he set eyes on the pokey little room. The furnishings consisted solely of a writing table, a fragile-looking shelf leaning against one of the walls and a bed. But it seemed to be a pleasant and comfortable enough place—there was even a small fireplace at the foot of the chimney.

  “What a nice view you have here,” he had said to the landlady.

  With its whitewashed walls, wooden floorboards, which had been scrubbed clean with soap, and little window with a view over the city wall and out onto the wide expanse of low-lying green meadowland, the room had a homely feeling about it.

  Laurentius had agreed right away to take the lodgings until the end of the semester, and he told the landlady he would move in that very same day, once he had fetched his things from the inn. She had nodded and promised to explain the house rules to him when he got back.

  Laurentius had left with a good feeling; even the weather seemed to have got brighter. But his mood was quickly spoilt when he saw the crowd of people gathered in front of the inn. He already had a sense of foreboding as soon as he spotted all the curious onlookers, wrapped in their traditional grey jerkins. But when he saw the old man in his ripped clothes, his spindly legs sprawled across the wet base of the cart, his misgivings had turned into a firm conviction that something was amiss.

  The innkeeper just stayed stooped down, looking out of the window, as Laurentius hurriedly gathered his things. He didn’t want to stay in that vicinity for any longer than was absolutely necessary.

  “How much do I owe you?” Laurentius asked the innkeeper.

  “How are you paying?” the innkeeper replied.

  Laurentius fished out a selection of coins from his purse and tossed them in the palm of his hand, while the innkeeper peered at them, trying to assess their value.

  “Now then, let’s have a look,” he said, and with a deft movement of his fingers he plucked a couple of coins from Laurentius’ hand. “Let’s say that much? All right?”

  Laurentius was still not sure of the value of the local currency or the correct prices of things, so he decided not to argue with the innkeeper’s reckoning. It seemed more or less right.

  “All right. Thank you,” he said to the innkeeper.

  As soon as he stepped outside, two stern-looking soldiers appeared in front of the tavern. They walked straight up to the tanner’s lad and slapped a hand on either shoulder. Laurentius waited in the doorway, instinctively reaching down to the sword hanging from his hip, while the crowd of people grew agitated and started backing away.

  “What the hell?!” someone objected raucously.

  Judging by the wide, foul-smelling leather apron he was wearing, he was probably the tanner. He took two paces towards the soldiers, but then came to an abrupt standstill, as if lost in thought. “Let them take him, then! There’s not much I can do about it anyway,” he eventually said.

  Then he turned to the lad. “You idiot! Why did you have to give it to him so hard?” he yelled.

  The lad looked straight at him, wide-eyed. “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean to kill him. But as soon as I took the pole in my hands it felt like I was under a spell. The others here reckon that the old man was some kind of witch, in league with the demons. There was definitely something not right about him.”

  A murmur of agreement passed through the crowd, and then someone ran up holding a wire cage. It seemed very familiar to Laurentius, but he couldn’t get a closer look at it because of all the rowdy people.

  “He was carrying this thing with him. It looks like some fishy kind of witch’s contraption,” the man who found it announced triumphantly.

  “What are you talking about? It’s a birdcage,” the tanner said gruffly.

  “But where did that ragamuffin get his hands on it? You don’t just find them lying about on the ground—he was definitely planning to use it for some sort of witchery,” the man responded.

  The din of the crowd grew louder and louder, and the soldiers started looking uneasy.

  “There’s nothing to see here. We’re taking him with us. Everyone stay calm,” one of the soldiers ordered the crowd firmly as he started leading the tanner’s lad away. Spurred on by his colleague’s display of initiative, the other soldier grabbed the lad by the collar, and gave him a whack in the stomach with his scabbard for good measure. The lad produced a doleful belching sound, but he seemed more upset than physically hurt. He looked about him with a forlorn, guileless expression for a while, although he clearly realized that he had no choice other than to trudge off with the soldiers.

  The tanner carried on his tirade as they left. “Let them take him, then. What am I supposed to do about it? There’s not much work at the moment anyway—at least the lad will get to eat the king’s loaf for a while. It’s not as if they’ll let him starve there, after all. Plenty of this lot here would be very happy to be thrown into a cell for a while.”

  Having clearly decided to finish on an optimistic note he stood there looking about bellicosely, and at that point he noticed Laurentius, who was discreetly trying to check whether the cage was actually his or not. He was already pretty sure that the ragamuffin in the cart had been the same one who grabbed the cage from him up there by the barn.

  “That cage is definitely some sort of witch’s contraption,” the tanner said to Laurentius, shoving himself up closer to him. “I don’t know what kind of witchery it’s used for, but there’s certainly no good to be had from it. Have a look for yourself.”

  He pushed the cage forcefully into Laurentius’ hands, just in case there were any doubt about what he wanted him to do.

  “Well, have a look, then!” the tanner demanded.

  There was a stifling sweet stench exuding from the man which was nearly strong enough to make Laurentius sick. It came from the pots of urine in which the tanners soaked their leather day in, day out—they stank so badly that the workshops had to be situated outside the city walls. But for Laurentius even the tanner’s stench was more bearable than the smell from up by the barn, which was still swirling in his nostrils.

  “But earlier you said that it was just a birdcage,” objected Laurentius, trying to create the impression that he had just seen it for the first time, although of course he had made it himself and brought it with him across the sea, so was very familiar with it. He noticed that the door had been carelessly twisted to one side and needed fixing.

  The tanner eyed him up and down. “You must be new in town.”

  “Yes,” Laurentius confirmed. “I’m a student. I’ve just arrived.”

  “Be warned that they’re up to all sorts of witchery here. Just recently the printer Brendeken’s son had such a bad spell put on him that hair started growing on his neck and face, and he eventually ended up dead,” the tanner recounted in a lecturing tone. “You probably know very well that witchery is a major concern everywhere now. God knows who’s already fallen victim here, animals even.”

  “Yes, but what has this cage got to do with it?” Laurentius asked, refusing to drop the question.

  “Well those witches have all manner of strange creatures in tow. Ravens and crows, even those foreign types of bird. They carry them round in cages. I’ve seen the pictures in books—the witches always have some sort of animal with them. Bugs, spiders, frogs and the like. Brendeken’s lad splashed some water on Madlen’s cow, and the cow started cursing him in Estonian. The hairs started growing right there and then; they were pulling them out in tufts but it was too late to help him.”

  “But that was a cow,” Laurentius said, hoping that the tanner would recognize that a cow was unlikely to be a suitable animal for a witch.

  “Every witch has some sort of animal with them,” said the tanner, getting angry. “Whether a cow or crow, there’s not much difference.”

  “Actually, there is. Witches are generally thought t
o be accompanied by nocturnal animals,” Laurentius argued.

  “But I know what a cow is. They’ve got horns—look at their skulls. They’re horned!” the tanner insisted.

  Laurentius decided it might seem suspicious if he were to start trying too hard to win the argument. It was generally better not to attract too much attention. If it were to come out that the cage in fact belonged to him then all sorts of trouble could ensue.

  “Usually, yes,” he said, agreeing with the tanner.

  “So there you are, then,” the tanner said in a victorious tone. “What did I tell you? And the fact that this old man was biting people demonstrates all the better that the demons had got to him. They force the possessed to eat human flesh, and all sorts of other abominations. I tell you, the lad did the right thing by knocking him dead. He saved the court a whole lot of time and trouble.”

  Laurentius couldn’t think how to respond to that. He was sure that if he explained how the ragamuffin had run off with his cage it wouldn’t help the tanner’s lad one little bit. It might even make the situation worse—if they could claim that the old man was mad and troubled by evil spirits then the lad would have a better chance of escaping the gallows.

  “Theologians are generally of the view that the majority of cases of witchcraft are just a result of a misunderstanding. One needs to conduct very thorough investigations before starting to accuse anyone of associating with demons,” explained Laurentius, trying to acquaint the tanner with the religious interpretation of witchcraft. “Often people just mistakenly believe that they are witches—such delusions can occur quite often. People claim they see devils and demons, but it’s actually just a goat or some other domestic animal hidden in a bush. Usually it can all be explained by superstition.”

  “Are you trying to say that that old man wasn’t under a spell? Try thinking with your own head for a while, then you might make the obvious conclusions. Those theologians know nothing at all. I can see for myself what’s what. My sight is sovereign, as they say. No special schooling needed for that,” said the tanner, demonstrating his full confidence in his own native wit. “All those straw-heads in the university have just studied themselves stupid, everyone knows that.”

  Laurentius smiled wanly, and turned to leave. There was no sense in arguing with the tanner. Those sorts were always unshakably sure of their own wisdom, and neither theologians nor philosophers could persuade them otherwise. They knew what it meant to see something with their own eyes, and that therefore gave them absolute certainty. They believed that all the information which reached them through their sensory organs was nothing less than the absolute truth. Laurentius wasn’t otherwise much of an adherent of Cartesian philosophy, but he had to agree with the freethinking Frenchman that it is the senses more than anything else which mislead us and cause us to mislead others. This was of course an acknowledged truth, which the sceptics of Antiquity had debated back in their day. Laurentius knew that one should bear in mind at all times that the senses can be deceptive, that phantasms are born there. Maybe that was why Descartes had tried so hard to adhere to the scientific method, to rule out any fanciful notions, to strive towards the clear and distinct classification of concepts. The senses were where phantasms lurked.

  Laurentius walked on, not noticing that out of force of habit he had picked up his cage and was carrying it with him.

  TUESDAY EVENING

  LAURENTIUS HAD ALREADY NOTICED the faint ringing in his ears when he left the inn. It was such a low-pitched sound that his ear’s auditory membrane could barely pick it up; it was more like a vague feeling somewhere at the back of his head, as if someone were breathing onto the nape of his neck—a hollow throbbing in time with the pulsing of the blood through his veins. His ears buzzed, quietly at first, but then more persistently, until the droning and the alien breath passed through his eyeballs and onwards into his brain. That was how Laurentius’ fever always started.

  At the end of his second year at Leiden he had written a disputation on the subject of illnesses which entered people’s bodies by penetrating their sensory organs. Some of them entered through the eyes, others through the ears, mouth, nose or sensitive parts of the skin. When the body was exposed to excessive cold or damp, the tonsils would be the first to show it, by swelling up. It was the bloating of the tonsils and the spread of the illness in the region around them that caused the ears to hurt. The types of illness which entered through the open mouth or nostrils tended to irritate those organs. From there, the infection could reach into peoples’ souls. Laurentius was pretty certain when he had put his body’s humours out of balance. In all likelihood it had been when he helped to lift the carriage out of the mud and had lost Clodia’s wire cage. That was when the vile dampness had entered his soul. It had come from the sopping, rotten surroundings, from the blackened barn, the puddles, the ragamuffin’s blues eyes and the vapour he had expired, and now his body was trying to be rid of it. At least, he hoped that it was the cold and damp which had made him ill, and not something else.

  He smiled ruefully.

  The stench he had first become aware of up at the barn was still swirling in his nostrils—a dire, bitter smell. But now it had established itself in his internal organs too, like a kind of dry rot. The white fungus on the surface was just the outward sign of its presence; the true destructive force was in the writhing roots below, which had worked their way in so deep that even the most skilled of carpenters couldn’t be completely rid of them. Only fire could destroy the fungus, just as only fever could destroy the sickness. Often the whole house had to be burned down to be rid of it, and Laurentius feared that that would be the way with him too. The dry rot of his illness, which he had carried within him since childhood, would not leave him until his body was burned. Either by the fever or at the stake. He had been searching for a cure for his sickness for as long as he could remember, but to no avail.

  He had experienced the first dizzy turn, which sent hot and cold waves coursing through his body, just as he passed the German Gate and arrived inside the city walls. Pulling his coat tighter around himself, he had hurried to his lodgings. The landlady had greeted him cheerfully when they met on the ground floor, but when she noticed the dirty, twisted cage hanging from his hand she had given him a strange suspicious look.

  “So you came back, then. What would you prefer? Shall I have your food brought to your room?” the landlady asked.

  Laurentius gave a quick bow. “Thank you, but not now. I’m still tired from the journey. I would like to rest a while.”

  The landlady nodded and started to explain at length her understanding of the rental arrangements, and how she expected things to be done in her house. But all the rules and regulations just washed over Laurentius as he listlessly stood there, hugging his empty cage close to his chest. The only detail he managed to catch was that he would have to procure the straw and bedding for himself. And he was vaguely aware of the landlady stressing the rule that the tenants could only use the back stairs. He was feeling more and more wretched with every moment.

  “Thank you,” he said to the landlady as he turned to walk away. “I have asked for my chest to be sent here from the inn. The men should arrive soon, but right now I would like to go to my room.”

  The landlady seemed to look uneasily and disapprovingly at him, but she said goodbye politely enough and closed the door.

  Laurentius struggled upstairs and collapsed onto the edge of his bed—his whole body felt strangely heavy, and inside his boots his legs were contorted with cramp. This wasn’t the first time he had fallen ill while abroad. As the medical handbooks warned, sickness was one of the most common dangers of travelling. If the human body was used to a certain environment and had adapted its balance of humours to it, then rapid change could be physically destabilizing, and would be sure to manifest itself in the form of sickness and fever. It was therefore advisable to make frequent stops and avoid crossing excessive distances in a single day. Laurentius was not sure if he
had traversed excessive distances, but it was clear that people were more susceptible while travelling, and that if they lacked the necessary spiritual fortitude, then sickness could easily set in. His parakeet had been his spiritual fortitude.

  “Mmm...” Laurentius mumbled to himself.

  He closed his eyes and tried to focus on something clear and comprehensible. But he still couldn’t get to sleep. He knew that if a sick person let his thoughts wander, the result could be gruesome and unpleasant. He had to wait a little longer. Once his case was delivered, then he could sleep. And dream, perchance.

  He shook his head and tried to make out what was outside the window.

  Fragments of thoughts from his journey and his arrival in Dorpat floated through his mind, disjointed and in disarray. Some of them drifted past slowly, like heavy, phantasmagorical clouds swirling through the sky. Others moved more quickly, like birds flitting past the window. He tried to think about his parakeet, but instead of his tweeting, sanguine Clodia, the image of the old man with his dark, dripping-wet hair loomed before him. He was lying there, sprawled across the cart, his head split open.

  There was a knock at the door, and he woke with a start. A while passed before he remembered where he was. He pushed himself upright with some difficulty, and hurriedly tried to make himself look a bit more presentable.

  “Come in,” Laurentius said, trying to make his voice sound as normal as possible.