All of them watch Elsa in silence. All of them let them pass.
After a few steps Elsa lowers her eyes to the cobblestones and stares at her feet. The shame envelops her like a heavy blanket. It’s those staring eyes. She’s unsure if it’s her own shame she feels or theirs; if she’s ashamed of herself for letting them lead her like a dog, or of all of them. Of what they’ve become.
When Elsa hears the sound she looks up. She can’t contain the scream that tears from her throat.
“Birgitta!”
The cobblestones in the middle of the square have been torn from the ground, exposing the earth beneath them like a sore. In the soft gash of soil stands a thick pole, a birch shorn of bark and branches.
Birgitta is tied to the pole.
Thick ropes run around her waist, binding her to the trunk. The ropes cut into the soft, tender flesh around her midriff, which, so soon after giving birth, is still bulging. It must be terribly painful. Her arms have been pulled back and bound behind the pole, and her head is lolling. Elsa can’t see Birgitta’s face, but she can see her bare feet and swollen ankles below the loose shift she is wearing. Blood has run down the inside of her legs, drying on her feet and pooling underneath her.
“Birgitta,” Elsa repeats, this time scarce more than a whisper.
She doesn’t move.
“Elsa,” the pastor’s soft voice greets her.
Until this point he has blended into the crowd, but now he takes a small step forward, out into the empty space that has formed around Birgitta.
“At last,” he says.
His face is calm and peaceful, and this scares Elsa more than anything else so far.
“What have you done to her?” she asks. Her voice is hardly more than a croak, her tongue dry and rough. The August sun has started to drop below the horizon, but the afternoon heat is still heavy and oppressive.
“It is time now, Elsa,” Pastor Mattias says softly. “It is time to take the next step. Too long have we allowed evil to live among us. To corrupt us. But no more.”
Elsa wants to tell him that he’s insane, out of his mind. But when she looks into his gray eyes she sees a cold light shining from within, one that silences her before she can even say a word.
If Kristina was born yesterday she must have been conceived last winter. In December. Just a few weeks after he arrived.
When had he started to whisper into his followers’ ears that she was evil? That she was possessed by demons?
Even if she could speak, who would believe her? Would it not sound just like the vicious lies one might expect of one who served the devil? Just as he has always said.
Speechless, Elsa looks around at those standing closest to her. Her neighbors. Her friends.
Who of them would believe her if she tried to tell them the truth?
“You are evil,” Elsa says to the pastor, her voice shaky and hoarse.
He doesn’t get angry, doesn’t get agitated, simply shakes his head sadly.
“Do you hear that?” he asks the congregation around them. “Do you hear how evil spreads like venom? It infects like a disease, passing from one to the other, mangling the soul until there is nothing left to save.” The pastor turns his cold, calculating gaze on Elsa.
“Is there anything left in you to save, Elsa?” he asks.
She wants to spit in his face, but she can’t. She’s too afraid, too thirsty. Too weak. Too defeated.
“We’ll soon see,” he says, and it’s as though none of the others are there, as though he is whispering quietly in her ear.
He looks out at the crowd.
“It is time,” he says, his voice louder now, more resounding. It jangles out over the square, making even the last of the hubbub die down.
“Time to drive the evil from our midst. To receive God’s light. It is time to choose—and to choose the light.”
He pauses.
“Are you willing to choose the pure way?”
It starts as a whisper, uncertain and hesitant, but then it grows to a raging tempest, a preposterous cheer that verges on hysteria.
He raises his arms. The sight of his beautiful white palms immediately silences the crowd. They are as though entranced, a swaying delirium that runs like waves through the whole village.
“Kaj?” he says, and, though it’s hardly louder than his normal speaking voice, in the silence it carries regardless. Elsa sees a movement in the crowd, sees it part once again.
Kaj Andersson leads the ranks. He is tall and strong now, with curly, sandy-blond hair and a square jaw, but Elsa remembers him as he used to be, when he and Margareta went to school together. All elbows and grazed knees.
There are four of them in all, all tall boys and men, with broad shoulders and bulging arms. Each of them carries a large wicker basket filled with stones.
The stones are smooth and round, water buffed. They look like they have been collected from the riverbed. Kaj and the other three put the baskets down in front of the pastor and straighten up. The pastor smiles warmly at them and gives them a small nod. Kaj nods in response and disappears back into the crowd.
Elsa catches sight of Dagny behind the pastor’s back. She is standing stock-still, her eyes glassy. Frank’s brother, Gösta, hovers behind her like a warning. He doesn’t need to restrain her, though; she doesn’t seem to be in any condition to attempt an escape.
Ingrid is standing immediately in front of Dagny. The red lipstick she always wears has
