They landed exactly at the point where Master Bugge’s castle had stood in olden times. Here Jurgen had walked with his foster parents when they were on their way to the funeral of their kin, the four happiest days of his childhood. Now he was led across the meadow to Norre Vosborg; the elderberry tree was flowering and the linden trees smelled just as they had then. It seemed to Jurgen only yesterday that he had been there.
Under the steep flight of stairs that leads to the castle there is a small door down to a vaulted cellar. It was here that Tall Margrethe had been imprisoned. She had eaten five children’s hearts, for she had believed that she would be able to fly and make herself invisible if she could eat seven human hearts.
There was only one slit in the wall. The smell of the linden trees was not strong enough to enter and freshen the damp and moldy air of the prison. The only furniture was a wooden bench, but if a good conscience is the best of pillows, then Jurgen’s head could rest easily.
The heavy oak door was closed and barred on the outside. Fears, especially those that come from superstition, can creep through the keyholes of castles and fishermen’s cottages, and certainly they have no difficulty entering a dungeon. Jurgen sat in the cellar and thought about Tall Margrethe and her horrible crimes; her last thoughts must have filled the room on the night before she was executed. Jurgen recalled, too, all the stories he had ever heard about the witchcraft performed in the castle when Squire Svanwedel had lived here. That was long ago. But today there were still those who said they had seen the old watchdog, from that time, standing on the drawbridge at night. The terror of these tales made the stone chamber doubly dark. The only single ray of sunshine was his memory of the flowering elderberry and the tall linden trees.
He did not spend many days there. Soon he was taken to Ringkøbing, but the jail there was almost as severe.
Those times were not like our own, the poor were harshly treated. Peasants’ farms, even whole villages, could still disappear and become new estates for hungry noblemen. Under their regime, servants and coachmen were sometimes advanced to being judges, and they for the slightest offense could condemn the poor to the loss of their cottages and a whipping as well. It was far away from the king and his court, who were influenced by the Enlightenment and were bringing about blessed changes in the rest of the country. In Ringkøbing, the law was antiquated; and—fortunately for Jurgen—this meant that it was slow.
He sat in the bitterly cold jail and wondered when it would all be over. His lot in life had been misery and shame, though he was innocent. He had plenty of time to contemplate his fate. Why had all this happened to him? This would all be explained in the life after this, which he knew awaited him. This faith in eternal life had grown within him in the poor cottage on the dunes and was now beyond doubt. What his father in the warmth and sunshine of Spain had not been able to believe had become to the son a light of consolation and hope in the cold and darkness: the gift of God’s grace, and that is never disappointing.
The spring storms came. The thunder of the surf on the west coast could be heard far inland, especially just after the wind had died. The great swells breaking upon the sands sounded like heavily loaded carts driving along a cobblestone street. Jurgen heard it in his prison cell, and it was a diversion. No melody touched him more than this song of the endless ocean, the rolling sea that carried one to all the corners of the world; and wherever one went, like the snail, one had one’s house; in foreign lands the ship was always native ground.
He listened to the deep sound that was like distant thunder, and all his thoughts became memories of things past.
“To be free! To be free! There is nothing better even though your shirt is patched and there are holes in your shoes.” Sometimes in anger and hopelessness, he would hit his clenched hands against the walls.
Weeks, months, a whole year passed; then a ruffian called Niels Thief or the Horse Dealer was imprisoned and what really had happened that night came to light. North of Ringkøbing Fjord lived a poor fisherman who unlawfully kept an inn where he served liquor to anyone with a penny in his pocket. There on the afternoon of the day before Jurgen had decided to leave, Morton and Niels Thief met. They drank a few glasses of schnapps together, not enough to make either of them drunk, but enough to make Morton talk more than he should. He talked big; he told Niels that he was getting married and bragged that he was going to buy a farm of his own. When Niels asked him where he had got so much money, Morton had foolishly patted his pocket and boasted: “It’s all there where it’s supposed to be!”
This stupid display of vanity cost him his life. When he left, Niels followed him and stuck his knife into Morton’s neck to steal the money, which did not exist!
How all the threads of what happened that night were finally unwound does not concern us, it is enough to know that Jurgen was set free. But what was he given in compensation for all his suffering, for the long year he had spent in the cold cell of the prison cut off from his fellow men? He was told that he should be pleased that he was found to be innocent; and now was free to go wherever he wanted to. The mayor gave him ten marks as traveling money. Some of the people of the town gave him good food and beer, because they were decent people. Not everyone “flays you, cuts you to pieces, and fries you.” But Jurgen’s real luck was that the merchant Bronne from Skagen—the man whom he had been on his way to see when he was arrested—was in Ringkøbing. He heard about the whole case and he had a heart that could understand what Jurgen must have experienced. He was determined to show Jurgen that not everyone was evil, that the good and the kind existed as well.
From prison directly to an almost heavenly freedom, to love and friendship; that also Jurgen was to try. No man would offer another man a glass to drain that contained nothing but bitterness. How should God then be able to do it, He who is all goodness?
“Let all that happened be forgotten, bury it!” said merchant Bronne. “Cross out the last year with a thick heavy line. We will throw away the old calendar. In two days we leave for good old Skagen. It is a little out of the way, they say. But I say it is a comfortable chimney corner, with windows open to the whole world.”
Oh, that was a journey! To be able to breathe again! To come from the damp air of the prison out into the warm sunshine. The heather was blooming and the shepherd boy sat on the Viking grave and played on his flute, which he had carved out of a sheep’s bone. It was so warm that Jurgen saw a mirage, a floating forest and gardens that disappeared as they came near it. As in his childhood, he saw the strange columns of smoke, which the people who live on the heath say is Loke driving his sheep.
They were traveling toward the great fjord that cuts Jutland almost in half. When they had crossed it, they entered the ancient land where the Longobards, the people with the long beards, had come from. In the times of King Snio there had been such a famine here that he had wanted to kill the children and the old. The wealthy and clever woman, Gambaruk, who owned much land, had suggested that instead all the young men and women should leave the country and travel to the south where they might fare better.
This old legend Jurgen knew; and though he had never been in the country that the Longobards had conquered, which now is called Lombardy, he could imagine what it looked like. He had, after all, when he was a boy, been in Spain. He recalled the flowers, the fruits in the market place, the church bells, and the humming and buzzing of the great city he had seen; it had been like a beehive. But of all the places he had been, he thought that the loveliest was his homeland; and to Jurgen that was Denmark.
At last they reached “Vendilskaga,” as Skagen was called in the old Norwegian and Icelandic sagas. A landscape made up of dunes and sandy acres, it stretches for miles and miles, till it ends in a peninsula called “the branch,” where there is a lighthouse.
The houses and farms are spread out among the dunes, a desert where the wind plays with white sand. There the voices of gulls, terns, and wild swans are heard, sometimes so loud that it hurts your ea
rs. Five miles south of “the branch” lies old Skagen and here merchant Bronne lived. This was to be Jurgen’s new home. The house had tarred walls, and each of the little outhouses had an old rowboat turned upside down for a roof. The pigpen was made out of the wreckage from ships, and there were no fences anywhere, for there was nothing to fence in. Fish were suspended on poles to dry in the wind. The beaches were strewn with rotten fish. The nets were hardly in the water before they bulged with herring; tons of fish were dragged ashore. There were so many that fish were often thrown back into the sea or left to rot on the beach.
The merchant’s wife and daughter—yes, and his servants too—came out to welcome him when he and Jurgen arrived. It was a jubilant home-coming with no end of handshaking. The daughter had a pretty face and friendly eyes.
The house was large and pleasant. They were served fish: plaice that were fit for the table of a king. And there was wine from the vineyards of Skagen, where the grapes are never pressed but arrive in bottles or in casks.
When mother and daughter heard how much and how unjustly Jurgen had suffered they looked upon him with even more good will and affection. Especially the lovely Miss Clara’s eyes shone with compassion. Here in old Skagen, Jurgen had found a place where his heart could heal. How much that heart had experienced; even the bitterness of love, and that either hardens or softens it. Jurgen’s heart was still soft, and he was young, so maybe it was just as well that Miss Clara was going to Christianssand in three weeks to spend the winter with her aunt. This had been decided long ago.
The Sunday before her departure, they all attended church and received Holy Communion. The church was large; it had been built some hundred years ago by the Scots and the Dutch. It was a distance from the town. Time had been hard on it. The road was sandy, a tiring walk, but one suffered it gladly to come into God’s house and sing a psalm and hear the minister preach. The sand reached the top of the outer side of the wall around the churchyard, but the graves were kept free of sand.
It was the largest church in the northern provinces of Jutland. The Virgin Mary, with a golden crown on her head and the little child Jesus in her arms, looked down most lifelike from the altar. In the choir the Apostles were carved in wood, and along the walls hung portraits of all the mayors and councilors of the town of Skagen. The pulpit too was carved. The sun shining in through the windows reflected on the brass chandeliers that hung from the ceiling. In the nave—as in all the other Danish churches—there hung a model ship.
A sweet childlike feeling of faith overwhelmed Jurgen. He felt as he had when he stood in the cathedral in Spain. But here in Skagen he was conscious that he belonged among the worshipers.
After the service, Holy Communion was celebrated. When he had received the bread and wine, he noticed that he had been kneeling beside Miss Clara. So preoccupied had Jurgen been with the holy act, so much had God filled his mind, that only now did he see the girl. One single tear ran down her cheek. Two days later she left for Norway.
Jurgen helped both on the farm and with the fishing. And there were lots of fish to catch, many more then than nowadays. Schools of mackerel gleamed in the dark night and revealed where they were. The gurnards grunted when they were caught, for fishes are not as silent as they are believed to be. There was more to Jurgen than greeted the eye, too; he kept a secret, but that would one day be told.
Every Sunday when he attended church he looked with fascination at the painting of the Virgin Mary, but his glance would also pause for a moment at that spot where Clara had kneeled and he would remember how kind and sweet she had been to him.
Fall came, with rain and sleet. Everywhere there was water; the sand couldn’t manage to absorb it all, one almost needed a rowboat to get around. The storms came and many a ship was wrecked on the deadly sandbanks. There were snowstorms and sandstorms; sometimes the cottages were almost buried by sand, so that the people had to climb out through the chimney; this was not uncommon in that district.
In the merchant’s house it was cozy and warm. Wood, gathered on the beach, and heather and peat burned in the stoves. In the evenings Mr. Bronne read aloud from the old chronicles. One of the stories was about Prince Hamlet of Denmark who, returning from England, had landed at Bovbjerg, where he fought a battle. He was buried at Ramme, only ten miles from the eelman’s home. That part of the heath was filled with Viking graves. The merchant had seen Hamlet’s.
They liked to discuss what had happened long ago and to talk about their “neighbors” on the other side of the North Sea: the English and the Scots. Jurgen sometimes sang “The Son of the King of England.” When he came to the line: “ ‘The King’s son embraced the maiden so fair,’ ” then his voice would be softer and his dark, shining eyes would glisten.
They sang and they read. Here indeed was wealth: family life—and down to the least of the animals, everything was well kept, both inside and out. On the shelves were polished tin plates; sausages and hams hung from the ceilings; they were well stocked for winter. On the west coast one can still visit these rich fisherman farmers if one is lucky. Their larders are filled and their rooms cozy with homely comforts. Clever they are, with a sense of humor, and as hospitable as the Arabs in their tents.
Except for the four days of his childhood when he had been a guest at a funeral, Jurgen had never found life so interesting or so pleasant as it was now, and that even though Miss Clara was not there; but she was ever present in Jurgen’s thoughts.
In April a ship was to leave for Norway, and Jurgen was to sail on it. He was in fine spirits and he looked healthy and strong. Mother Bronne—as the merchant’s wife was called—declared that he was a pleasure to look at.
“And you are too,” said her husband. “Jurgen has made both the winter evenings and our mother livelier. Why, you have lost a couple of years this winter, you look younger and more beautiful. True, you were the prettiest girl in Viborg when I married you, and that is saying a lot, for I have always found the girls in that town the prettiest in the country.”
Jurgen did not say anything, it was not his place to do so, but he thought of a girl from Skagen, and he sailed up to her. The ship moored in Christianssand. The wind had been fair and the trip had taken only half a day.
One morning merchant Bronne went out to the lighthouse, which is a long walk from old Skagen. The charcoal fire had long ago been put out; the sun was already high in the sky when he climbed up the tower. From there you can see how the narrow peninsula continues as a sand bar for five miles under the sea. Out there, where the sand bar ended, there were several ships. He looked through his binoculars and saw that his own ship, Karen Bronne, was among them.
Clara and Jurgen were on board; the lighthouse and the tower of the church of Skagen looked to them like a heron and a swan floating on the blue waters. Clara was standing by the railing. The highest of the dunes had come into view, just above the horizon. If the wind continued to blow from the same direction, then they would be home within an hour. So near were they to all happiness, and so near were they to death and all its terror.
A plank in the hull burst and the ship took in water rapidly. The seamen did what they could; they set all sails and pulled up a flag to signal distress. They were still five miles out. There were fishing boats about but they were too far away. The wind blew toward land and the currents were favorable, too, but it was not enough, the ship sank. Jurgen embraced Clara with his right arm and held her. She looked up into his face, but when he jumped with her into the sea she screamed.
Like “The King’s son that embraced the maiden so fair,” so in this moment of danger and fear did Jurgen hold onto Clara. How fortunate it was that he was such a good swimmer. He swam with his feet and one arm; with the other he held the young girl up. He used every movement that he knew, and tried to float for a while in order to have enough strength to reach the shore. He heard Clara sigh, felt a convulsion pass through her, and he held onto her even tighter. A single wave broke over them, another lifted them up. T
he water below them was so clear and deep, he thought he saw a school of mackerel pass beneath him; or was it a leviathan that would swallow them? The clouds cast great shadows across the waters, then the sun broke through and the waves glittered and glimmered. Screaming gulls flew above them, and the wild ducks that drifted lazily on the water flew up when they saw the swimmer. Jurgen grew weaker and weaker. Land was still several hundred feet away, but help was near, a rowboat was coming. Suddenly Jurgen saw, beneath the water, a white shape that seemed to be staring at him. A wave lifted him; the ghostly shape came nearer; he felt something hit him and everything around him became dark.
On the sand bar nearest land, just covered by water, lay a wreck. What Jurgen had seen was a carved figurehead; it was the wooden image of a woman, leaning against the ship’s anchor. The wave had lifted Jurgen’s head and banged it down upon the sharp blade of the anchor, which reached almost to the surface of the water. It had knocked him unconscious, and he and the girl he carried in his arms began to sink. A new wave lifted them up, and the fishermen grabbed them and hauled them into their boat. Blood was running down Jurgen’s face, he looked as if he were dead. But his arm still held onto the girl with such force that it was difficult to tear her out of his grasp. Pale and lifeless, she lay in the bottom of the boat.
They tried everything to bring Clara back to life, but she was dead. Jurgen had swum long bearing a corpse, struggling against the sea to save the dead body of the girl.
Jurgen was still breathing. They carried him to the nearest house; there his wound was bandaged by the local blacksmith, who was clever at it, and always called upon when someone was hurt. Not until the next day did the doctor from Hjørring come.
Jurgen’s brain seemed to have been hurt. He raged and screamed, but on the third day he grew quiet and lay still, hardly breathing; his life was hanging by a thread, and the doctor said that, for Jurgen, it would be best if that thread broke. “Let us pray to God to take Jurgen’s life, for he will never be a real human being again.”