that was why I was on my way to Karlsholm. A man of Gus’s wealth and prestige would be able to protect himself; he probably knew the King personally. But first he had to be convinced of the danger, and it wasn’t the sort of danger one can explain over the telephone to a comparative stranger.
We stopped for lunch at a pretty inn on a blue lake. Having eaten a dozen smoked salmon sandwiches (they were small sandwiches), I protested, but Tomas indicated, with sidelong looks and some hemming and hawing, that he had been directed to make periodic stops. I guess both he and his employer thought ‘bathroom’ a vulgar word.
As the afternoon wore on, our deliberate pace began to get on my nerves. I didn’t suggest that Tomas drive faster; I assumed Gus had ordered him not to joggle the merchandise. Under different circumstances I would have enjoyed the leisurely drive. The scenery was lovely – blue lakes set like jewels amid wooded hills, forest of birch and pine, red farmhouses with hand-carved gables, stretches of beach with healthy-looking brown bodies lying in rows like herring – doing just what I had planned to do on my holiday. Replete with sandwiches and wine, I dozed off. It had been a hard night.
When I woke up the sun had disappeared, and the skies were a depressing grey. We stopped again at a restaurant outside Mora, on Lake Siljan. I tactfully had tea, in order to give Tomas time to do whatever he wanted to do. It was after five. Gus had optimistically underestimated the length of time the drive would take. A fast driver could have done it in five or six hours, but we had been chugging along at a steady fifty – far less than that superb automobile was capable of doing. A glance at my map reminded me that Dalama is a good-sized region, stretching all the way to the Norwegian border. Karlsholm was in the far northwest corner. We still had a way to go.
It may have been the change in the weather that induced a vague apprehension, formless as the clouds that hung overhead. I began to regret that I had not gone to the police before I left Stockholm. At the time it had not seemed the most practical solution. It is difficult to convince a stolid bureaucracy to take one seriously, especially with a story as wild as mine. I’d have done it in time; my credentials are impeccable, and I could have dragged in Schmidt and my buddies in the Munich police force. But it takes most men, including policemen, quite a while to get past my physical characteristics. Thirty eight, twenty-six, thirty-six, if you want to know. I’m not proud of them; they have been a distinct handicap to me throughout my life. I’m a historian, not a centrefold.
As I was saying, I had decided it would be easier to convince Cousin Gus and let him argue with the cops, especially since I wasn’t absolutely certain I was right. My reasoning made good sense to me, but I had very little solid evidence with which to back it up. All the same, as I sipped my tea and stared at the shadowy outlines of the high hills ahead, I regretted my decision. Too late now.
Shortly after leaving the restaurant we turned off the modern highway onto a side road that twisted across the hills. It got narrower and more winding, dipping and rising again between aisles of birches whose black-striped trunks resembled processional pillars set up by a modern architect. Now and then the trees thinned out, giving views of upland meadows and barns like those of Austria and Switzerland, with steeply pitched roofs and solid, windowless walls. We were high in the hills now, in the
Once Tomas had to pull far to the right to let a truck get past. We met little traffic; occasionally we passed hikers striding along with their backpacks jouncing. One turned and hoisted a hopeful thumb. Tomas didn’t stop. The hitch-hiker had brown hair and a beard. So did the male half of the next pair we overtook. The girl’s bowed shoulders looked tired as she trudged along behind her companion. I leaned forward, then remembered the car was wired for sound. ‘I don’t mind if you want to pick someone up, Tomas.’
The peaked cap didn’t turn. ‘No, miss. Not when you are here.’
Gus’s orders, no doubt. He must picture me as a fragile flower too. He was due for a shock when he saw me.
It was difficult to carry on a conversation with a disembodied voice and the back of a head. I was dying to pump Tomas about his employer, but doubted that he would indulge me. He didn’t appear to be the gossipy type. I remembered a story I had once read that typified the sturdy independence of the people of this region. Some years back, when the crown prince was vacationing at Lake Siljan, he recognized a farmer who had been part of a delegation that had come to the palace. Thinking to make a gracious gesture, he sent an equerry to command the farmer to an audience. The farmer sent word back – he was sorry, but he had to go to town to lay in his winter supply of liquor. If His Highness was still around, he might be able to get over to see him Thursday or Friday.
Between dense walls of fir and alder the road slipped down into a little clearing. A cluster of roofs and a bulbous wooden spire appeared, and Tomas said, ‘Karlsholm, miss. We are soon home.’
I wondered where Gus’s house could be. There was no sign of a mansion pretentious enough to match the Mercedes. The village was small – thirty or forty houses, a church, and a few larger structures that might have been public buildings. We passed through Karlsholm in about a minute and a half, even at a decorous pace, and climbed again. The car crested a low ridge.
Below lay the lake, almost as symmetrical in reality as it had been on the map – a steel-grey coin, dropped carelessly from an Ice Giant’s pocket, encircled by sombre groves and backed by the misty shapes of high mountains. But the map had not shown the island. It was shaped like a lopsided triangle, and at one end of it rose the black metal roof and white walls of a large house. Like the kings of Sweden, Gus had built his castle on his own private island.
Tomas stopped the car by a building near a small quay. It appeared to be a combination garage and boathouse, with a gas pump and shop. Sheltered by the overhang of the shop roof stood a row of chairs occupied by four or five elderly men looking as stiff and wooden as their seats. It made me feel right at home; there were always a few retired men with nothing better to do hanging around the gas station in Meadowbanks, Minnesota.
They were all tall and lean, with long, tanned faces and hair that could have been grey or bleached blond. A row of keen blue eyes studied me without blinking. Not a muscle cracked until I smiled and lifted a hand in greeting. Then five heads nodded in unison, but nobody smiled back.
A younger man wearing overalls came out of the shop, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. He was tall and blond and blue-eyed – it was getting monotonous, but that kind of monotony I can endure.
Tomas said, ‘My son, Erik.’ Apparently everybody was supposed to know who I was, but I said, ‘Hi, I’m Vicky Bliss,’ and held out my hand. Erik grinned and shrugged apologetically, indicating his grimy fingers. The old men watched stonily as Erik helped his dad unload a number of parcels from the car and stow them away in a neat little cabin cruiser. She was a beauty, and I’d love to have handled her, but I wasn’t even allowed to stay up above. The minuscule cabin was as shipshape as the exterior; brass gleamed, mahogany shone, and a Formica-topped table held more magazines, bottles of beer, and mineral water, and a tray of open-faced sandwiches – caviar, this time.
Needless to say, the caviar and the beer were still intact when we docked. The trip took only about ten minutes.
I found myself on a windswept jetty with a flight of steep wooden steps ahead. Tomas gestured towards them, raising an inquiring eyebrow, and when I nodded he got back into the cockpit and started easing the boat towards a covered shed at the end of the jetty.
At the top of the steps a gravelled path led through formal gardens to the front of the house. It looked even bigger close up than it had from a distance. Part creamy stucco, part grey weathered wood, part stone, it appeared to have grown over the centuries as naturally as the trees that sheltered it.
A man stood at the door looking eagerly in the direction of the stairs, and when he started forward I understood why he had not met me at the dock. Even with the aid of his stout wooden stick he limped badly, dragging one foot.
I knew what his first words would be. ‘I am so happy! Come in, come in, you must be tired. It is a long journey.’
He looked just the way I had pictured him – in fact, he looked like the five old gents at the garage, except for the smile that gave his lined face an inner radiance. Like many men of his colouring he had worn well; he might have been any age between forty and seventy, and with the exception of the bad leg he had kept in good shape.
With a wide, hospitable gesture he showed me into the house. The hallway was dark and narrow, with pieces of heavy furniture lined up in rigid rows. A doorway on the left led to a lighted room. I turned in that direction, but
