The king lifted his bearded jaw to the heavens, his eyes rolling back in his head.
He knew his moment had come, too.
Nine
Bridget and Merle walked home.
“Merle,” said her mother. “You have been naughty.”
Merle had been waiting for this.
“I know.”
“You lied to me and that is very bad.”
They stopped walking, Bridget looked down at her daughter.
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” said Merle.
“Very well,” said Bridget. “We will say no more of it. Anyway, I knew you were lying to me, because I found apples in your bedroom.”
Merle blushed. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.
“But I want to say something else,” Bridget said. “What you did today was good, and very brave. You might have saved the old man’s life.”
“He’s called Eric Carlsson,” said Merle, suddenly bright again. “He’s a painter.”
Bridget nodded, and smiled.
“He certainly is that,” she said. “But listen, I think he needs our help, just for a while. So we’re going to make him a hot meal every day, and you can pick him a few apples every day, too. Would you like that?”
Merle nodded happily, her hair fell across her eyes.
“But we’ll do it together, and you must promise me you won’t go on your own again. Yes?”
“Yes,” said Merle. And she felt happier, because this time she knew she meant it.
Ten
Every day, they took Eric some food, and while Bridget tried to make sense of the kitchen, Merle sat and talked to the old painter.
Bridget was amazed what they found to talk about, the young girl and the old man, but talk they did, while she tidied and cleaned and swept in the cavernous building that Eric had made his home.
Often, when she came into the room where they sat, the conversation would falter a little; when she left, she’d hear them chatting away again. She didn’t mind. She was pleased that her daughter had a friend, even if he was ten times her age, and she was pleased for the old man, too.
Bridget eavesdropped on their chatter one day, as she swept the early fallen leaves from the gallery right outside the painting room, as she called it. It was as if Eric was the child and Merle the adult; his talk was fun, light, silly, and hers was, too, at times but scattered in her foolishness would be unexpected words of deep maturity, as if she were old beyond her years.
Out of sight behind the gallery door, Bridget pictured them. The old thin man, and the paint-spotted, wrinkled skin on the back of his hands, clutching the leather of his big armchair. At his feet, little Merle, gazing up at him, as if gazing at the moon, her skin smooth and fair. Merle was holding a thin, worn, but well-loved paint brush, Eric was explaining about oil paints, how each color has a different nature, and must be treated with respect, as if they were all caged animals. About how paintbrushes can tame the beasts, and put them on the canvas, to make beauty, or power.
* * *
One thing that Bridget heard confused her utterly. She’d asked Merle about it later, as they walked home.
I might be lots of people, she’d heard Merle say to Eric, seriously. Why do I have to be just one? I am lots of people and I love all of them and they love me.
Bridget didn’t hear Eric’s reply, and when she’d asked her daughter about it, Merle shook her head, puzzled.
“Sorry, Mommy,” she said. “I don’t think I remember that. That’s funny.”
And she’d wrinkled her nose, and giggled.
* * *
Another day, Bridget was surprised when she came out of the kitchen into the painting room, and found the old man laughing himself silly at something Merle had said.
He seemed to be better, and after a few days, the point was proven.
* * *
Bridget and Merle were at home, having supper.
They were talking about Eric when there was a knock on the door. The front door.
“That’s odd,” said Bridget, getting up, because nobody ever used their front door.
She came back into the kitchen a few moments later, bringing Eric with her.
“Look,” said Bridget, “speak of the Devil!”
“Mommy, that’s rude!” cried Merle.
“No, it’s just what you say when, well, when that happens.”
They fussed over Eric, and sat him down, and though he refused food, he accepted a cup of tea with a smile.
“Well, look at you!” Bridget said, after a while. “All dressed up!”
“Mommy, that’s rude,” said Merle, but the old man laughed.
“I thought I should make an effort,” he said.
Eric wore a smart black suit, obviously quite old, but still presentable, and a clean white shirt. His shoes were clean, and almost shiny.
“So, to what do we owe the pleasure?” asked Bridget.
“Does there have to be a reason for a friend to call on another friend?”
Merle tugged her mother’s sleeve.
“Mommy, is Eric our friend?” she whispered.
Bridget laughed.
“Of course Eric is our friend.”
“But actually, there are two reasons for me being here.”
He cleared his throat and had another sip of tea.
“For the first, I have come to thank you, for helping me.”
“But of course we were going to help you,” Bridget said. “You don’t need to thank us.”
“But I do. Not just for the food, and so on … Maybe I should explain. I have not painted anything for years.…”
He hesitated, waiting for some kind of response.
“But that painting…?”
“I have been working on that painting for a long time. About a year. But let me put that in perspective for you. Before I began this painting, I had not painted anything, anything, in more than twenty-five years.”
He was silent for a time, perhaps, thought Bridget, remembering things that he would rather not remember.
“When I was young,” Eric said sadly, “the pictures poured out of me. Like water. I could not stop them. I could not paint fast enough to paint everything that was in my head. I felt like a magician, making magic. From nowhere, images would come, and in a few hours or days, another object existed in the world where none had existed before. Like magic.
“I painted portraits, landscapes, still life—I painted everything. Then, I made a little money with some simple pictures. For someone like me, it was unbelievable. I was born in a poorhouse, you see. I begged on the streets until I realized that I could earn more by sketching. Suddenly, I had everything.
“I was married then. My wife was young and beautiful, and we had three beautiful girls, almost as beautiful as Merle here.”
Merle giggled at this, and sat up straighter.
“I had everything, and for a time, for a very fair amount of time, we were happy. Then…”
He paused.
Bridget looked at Merle, briefly, then back at Eric.
“Then what?” she asked.
“My wife died. With the birth of our fourth child. She was perhaps too old, and … well. And I stopped painting. But you know, it wasn’t just losing Martha that stopped me painting. Something else died then, with her. The ideas stopped coming, I was confused, I didn’t know what to paint, but it was worse than that.
“One day, after a year or two had gone by, I realized I no longer wanted to paint. At all. I had had enough. The well, if you understand, had run dry. That was the worst thing. I no longer wanted to be that magician.”
Bridget nodded, but frowned. “But this painting…?”
Eric shrugged.
“Maybe the well filled up again.” He winked. “Maybe. Because about a year ago, I picked up a pencil, and I made a sketch. In about half an hour I sketched out that whole painting. The next day, I built the wooden structure on which it sits. The day after, I began to paint. It has taken me a year to f
inish it.”
“Finish it? Finish it?” cried Merle. “Have you finished it?”
Eric nodded, smiling.
Then he laughed spontaneously.
They laughed, too. Merle clapped her hands.
“Which brings me to my second reason for coming here today. I have been approached by the National Museum. They are very interested in my new painting. Without being modest, they are of course interested to see what the great Eric Carlsson has been up to in twenty-five years. There is talk that it will hang on the grand staircase in the museum, adorning that splendid marble space. It will be the very first and last thing that visitors to the museum will see.”
“But what does this have to do with us?” Bridget asked.
“Because tomorrow I have some gentlemen from the museum coming to view the painting. And I should be honored if you, both of you, would be there, as my neighbors. As my friends.”
Merle almost exploded. “Oh, can we, Mommy? Please say yes!”
Bridget laughed, and held her daughter’s hand. “We’d be honored. But tell us, what is the painting called? Does it have a title?”
“Yes,” said Eric. “It is called Midwinterblood.”
Eleven
In the dimly lit room where Eric Carlsson’s painting towered above the figures viewing it, there was silence.
The three men from the National Museum stood on one side; Eric, Bridget, and Merle stood on the other.
The eldest of the men from the museum cleared his throat.
“Can you explain a little about it, Mr. Carlsson?”
Eric nodded, stepped forward slowly, supporting himself on a stick.
“It is a scene from legend, from the sagas. It depicts the sacrifice of King Eirikr, on this very island here, to appease the gods, and to appease the people, after his crops failed for the third year in a row.
“It is a blood sacrifice, because after two lesser sacrifices, after the previous famines, the high priest has declared that nothing else will suffice. To appease the gods, you see.”
The man from the museum inclined his head.
“Sacrifice. That’s a somewhat … outdated … notion, isn’t it? In this modern world?”
“Outdated?” echoed Eric. Suddenly, he felt very old. He felt that he didn’t understand.
“The theme is old, but not outdated,” he explained, feeling bewildered. “And it refers to the island, this island, whose very name is written in blood!”
“Really?” said one of the men.
“Indeed. People think the name of this island means ‘blessed,’ and so it does, but ‘blessed’ does not mean what people think it does. In the old tongue it was bletsian and before that blotsian, and before that, just blod. It means sacrifice.
Sacrifice.
“To bless means to sacrifice, and in blood.”
There is a pause. A long pause.
Then, “Good. Well, thank you for your time here today, Mr. Carlsson.”
With that, they left.
Merle and Bridget went soon afterward, leaving Eric alone. Bridget tried to explain to Merle that Eric was tired, and needed to rest.
* * *
Eric sat in the darkening room staring up at his masterpiece.
Sacrifice, he thought. Outdated?
Young upstarts from the city. Just because we have entered the modern world, have we done with suffering? Have we done with love, and loss? Have we done with wars? Then, there will be sacrifice! And when a parent works themselves to death to feed their child? Sacrifice?
And when a mother dies in childbirth?
Sacrifice.
He shook his head.
“Well,” he said bitterly to the dusky room. “So it is.”
* * *
Bridget and Merle saw nothing of Eric for several days.
Then, one morning, as they came downstairs for breakfast, they saw a letter on the doormat.
It was addressed to Eric Carlsson, and had been opened, but turning it over, they saw their own names on the back of the envelope, and a short note, in Eric’s hand.
My friends. Here is their answer. The fools! Yours ever, E.
Bridget opened the letter, and read the official response from the men from the National Museum. She skimmed through the formalities, to the conclusion.
The whole thing is as unreal as an opera, one cannot believe what is happening, one cannot connect emotionally with what is taking place. MIDWINTERBLOOD is a creepy, scandalous scene of dubious historicity and is no more relevant to us, modern men, than a scene of cannibalism from the darkest Africa.
Tor Bearvald, National Museum
Merle hopped around at her mother’s side.
“What is it, Mommy? What does it say?”
Bridget stroked her daughter’s hair.
“I’m afraid it’s some bad news for Eric.”
Twelve
After breakfast, during which Bridget said not a word, she told Merle to go up to her room, and to play with her hare, until she came home again.
Merle obeyed, her eyes wide with wild imagination.
* * *
Bridget walked up and down the hill, to the western side, and straight around to the side door of Eric’s church.
She found him, still sitting in the chair, in front of the painting.
She put her hand to his cheek, gently, and then snatched it away. He was cold.
There was no sign of violence, or other harm, and she knew that he had died from grief.
In his hand, was a thin, worn, well-loved paintbrush.
* * *
She gently reached back again, and closed his eyelids, shutting their final dead view of his masterpiece, the masterpiece for which he had given everything.
For which he had sacrificed himself.
* * *
Suddenly there were footsteps, and Merle ran into the room.
“You didn’t make me promise,” she said.
“Oh, darling, come here,” Bridget said, and they rushed into each other’s arms, the small girl understanding some of what was going on, and feeling the rest.
They stayed that way, for a long time, and then Bridget straightened.
“Well, we’ll have to try and sort things out,” she said, but Merle wasn’t listening.
Then Bridget looked at the paintbrush in Eric’s hand, and now she saw what she had missed before.
The brush was still wet.
“Look, Mommy,” Merle said, pointing at the picture.
Bridget looked toward where Merle had spotted something.
Something had changed.
* * *
The vast splendid horror of the painting remains, but there, in the background, is a new figure. Standing on the gallery, just behind the king, leaning around a pillar, only half visible, is the face, the shoulder, and the arm of a small girl. She’s holding an apple out toward the king, placing it on the balustrade of the gallery.
She looks toward the king, smiling.
Her face is unmistakable.
It is Merle.
One
After supper, the twins went up to bed.
Their parents were surprised at how docile they had become. At home, in Leipzig, the children had been becoming more and more of a handful, either fighting each other, or working on some mischief together.
Herr Graf was unwell; he had barely been able to complete his third symphony in time for its first performance at the Gewandhaus, and it would not have done to keep the Gewandhausorchester waiting; he may have shot to stardom as a young composer, but he was fully aware how easily his success, his fame, and his money could be taken from him again.
His doctor advised a health cure, and recommended an almost unheard of island called Blest, in the far north. His doctor had met an Englishman who had been entirely cured of his tuberculosis after a spell there.
Herr Graf had a desire to travel alone, but Frau Graf was a strong-willed woman, and insisted that she and their son and daughter would not be separated. Now, he
was glad that she had, because something was working a miracle not only on his own fragile health, but on the good humor of his children, too.
“Good night, Pappa,” they said in unison. “Good night, Mamma.”
And then they trotted up to the bedroom that lay at the far end of the single corridor in the upper floor of the house they were renting.
Yes, the children were enjoying their holiday, especially as it had meant dispensing with their tutor, when they would usually have been at school.
This was true, but there was another reason. They really liked the lady who their parents had arranged to look after them, a calm and kind lady named Laura.
Every night after they had said their prayers Laura would sit on the end of the bed and tell them a story.
Both children, brother and sister, thought that she was very beautiful, and listened, mesmerized, as she told her stories. The stories Laura told them were not like the dull ones they heard from their tutor, with boring children doing boring things.
No, the stories she told them were exciting. Stories full of wild adventures, of trips to mysterious lands, of brave heroes and wicked villains, and they loved them.
* * *
That night, Laura stood by the window, combing her hair. She was looking out at the night sky. She seemed more thoughtful than usual.
“Have you noticed, children? The nights are getting longer now,” she said, turning toward them, smiling. “It is a hunter’s moon tonight. And with a moon like this, I think there is only one kind of story to tell. A ghost story!”
The children giggled with delight.
“Would you like that?”
The children nodded.
“Very well, a ghost story it is.” She grinned.
“I shall leave the curtains open. Blow out your candle, and I will tell you the story by the light of the moon.”
The children giggled again, and blew out the light.
Laura sat down on the end of the bed, combing her hair with long, measured strokes.
Two
“This is a story from the island itself,” Laura said. “It’s hundreds of years old, no one knows exactly. But everything I tell you is just as it happened.”
* * *