Daniel (36 page)

Sanna promptly began to cry. She pulled her jumper over her face.

‘I don't care why you ran away,' said the man. ‘Children have a hard time. I ran away from Älmhult myself, and I wound up here.'

‘We have to go now,' Daniel said.

The man shook his head. ‘There's no wind. And I certainly won't be rowing you across the Sound.'

‘It's not totally calm,' said Daniel. ‘Your boat is small. It doesn't need much wind.'

The man burst out laughing. He had almost no teeth. Then he snatched up the money that Sanna had in her hand.

‘We can always drift across,' he said. ‘Help me up. My bones are stiff.'

Daniel took hold of his arm. The man kicked the burning twigs into the water, where they hissed and went out.

‘Climb aboard,' said the man. ‘You sit in the middle. There's a blanket there.'

Sanna had stopped crying, but she hesitated to climb into the boat.

‘It'll sink,' she said. ‘The fish will swim into my body and eat me up.'

‘It won't sink,' Daniel told her. ‘Remember what I have in my pocket.'

Sanna stepped clumsily onto the boat.

‘There's water in it!' she shouted. ‘We're sinking already.'

‘Only a few drops,' said the man. ‘There's a bailer somewhere.'

Daniel stepped down onto the boat. When he felt it move, relief washed over him. The man cast off the moorings and shoved the boat out. Then he raised the triangular sail and sat down at the tiller. They drifted slowly across the water. Now and then a gust of wind would catch at the sail.

‘Will we sink?' Sanna asked.

‘We're on our way now.'

Sanna giggled. Then she whispered in Daniel's ear, ‘He didn't get all the money. I have two notes left.'

The boat drifted away from the shore. The water lapped softly against the sides.

‘My name is Hans Höjer,' said the man at the tiller. ‘I'm a thousand years old, I fish, and I know that if I sit by the fire out on the wharf somebody will always come, either to keep me company or to ask me to take them over to Copenhagen. I respect freedom. I don't care whether it's thieves or whores or counterfeiters who want to cross. I don't take murderers on board. But I assume that you haven't killed anyone.'

‘Somebody killed me,' replied Sanna.

‘Not quite,' chuckled Hans Höjer. ‘You're still alive.'

And then he died. Daniel saw him suddenly grab his chest, grunt, try to draw air into his throat, and then fall forward. Sanna didn't see what happened because she was busy wrapping the blanket around herself.

‘Damn, what a smell,' she said.

Daniel didn't answer. He reached out his hand and felt for one of the big blood vessels in the man's throat. He couldn't feel a pulse.

The boat had begun to turn in the wind. The sail was flapping back and forth. Sanna sat with her head sticking out of the dirty blanket and closed her eyes.

‘He's dead,' Daniel said.

Sanna didn't reply.

Daniel tried to think. Why had he died? There could only be one explanation: Daniel was meant to take over the tiller. Hans Höjer had really been sitting by his boat and waiting for them.

‘He's dead,' Daniel said again.

Sanna opened her eyes and looked at him.

‘Who's dead? I know that Vanja's dead. Is someone else dead?'

Then she noticed that there was no longer anyone sitting in the stern at the tiller. She got up on her knees.

‘Is the man dead?'

‘He just fell over and stopped breathing.'

Sanna pinched him hard on the arm. ‘Then we're going to sink.'

‘I'll steer.'

‘What are we going to do with him? Is he just going to lie here and be dead?'

‘I don't know,' Daniel said. ‘First I have to sit down and steer.'

He crawled over the dead man and sat down by the tiller. The line to the sail was loosely lashed. Sanna started digging in the dead man's coat for the money.

‘If he's dead he won't need any money.'

She stuffed the roll of notes inside her blouse and then threw the dirty blanket over the man.

‘Will we be there soon?' she asked impatiently.

‘Not yet,' said Daniel. ‘Not quite yet.'

They sat in silence. Sanna dozed. Daniel could hear her snoring. He waited for daybreak. Only then would he be able to see which direction to sail in. Then he would also decide what to do with the man who lay dead at his feet.

The lookout yawned. He was standing by the railing and scanning the horizon with his binoculars. Daybreak had come slowly across the Sound. At the stern a deckhand was hoisting the three-tongued blue-and-yellow Swedish naval flag in which the coat of arms of the kingdom of Norway was inset. The morning was cool, the water calm. On the east side lay Malmö, to the west Copenhagen. They were steaming slowly northwards. King Oskar had come down with a headache the evening before, and Captain Roslund had hove to during the night. Now they were continuing their slow progress towards Gothenburg, which was the first stop on the journey to Kristiania.

The lookout kept looking though his field glasses. A lone seagull sat bobbing on the waves. In the distance some fishing boats were on their way north, perhaps heading for the rich fishing banks beyond the Danish coast.

Suddenly the lookout spied a boat floating still on the water. It was a very small fishing skiff. He rested his elbows on the railing to steady his gaze. It looked as though someone was preparing to set a net or perhaps a buoy. Then he realised to his shock that someone was tying weights around a human body. He called to the deckhand, who had finished with the flag. Captain Roslund, who was always up early in the morning, stuck his head out from the bridge and shushed him. The Swedish King was sleeping and did not want to be disturbed. The deckhand looked through the binoculars.

‘They're tipping someone overboard,' he said in amazement. ‘Could it be a murder?'

They took turns looking through the glasses again and were convinced. A lifeless body was being wrapped in a blanket with stone sinkers. In the boat were a young girl and a boy who was completely black.

The deckhand shuddered. ‘We have to tell Roslund.'

Together they went up to the command bridge of the
Drott
. The captain listened to what they had to say, shook his head, but then put his own big telescope up to his eye. He gave a start, lowered the glass and then raised it again.

‘We'll have to go over there,' he said. ‘If the King wakes up, let's hope he understands that it was necessary.'

Roslund gave orders to increase their speed slightly. The white-uniformed helmsman was given the new course. Roslund estimated the distance at eight hundred metres.

‘One of them is black,' Roslund said. ‘Could it be a coal stoker?'

‘It's a boy,' replied the deckhand.

 

Daniel saw the large ship approaching. Earlier it had not been moving at all. He was having a hard time fastening the two stone sinkers he had found in the boat. Sanna refused to help him. She had turned her back, playing with one hand in the water and humming, as if what was going on behind her was of no consequence.

When Daniel finally tipped the body into the water the large ship was already quite close.

The body did not sink. It remained floating near the boat.

Someone shouted to him, a man with a peaked cap and gold buttons on his coat. Daniel didn't listen. He tried to force the body under the surface, but it was no use. A lifeboat was lowered over the side and some seamen rowed quickly over to their skiff. Sanna had pulled the dirty blanket over her head, but she kept on humming. Daniel could hear that it was a hymn. The man with the peaked cap grabbed hold of the gunwale.

‘What the hell is going on here? Did you kill him?'

The seamen began to pull up the body. There was another boat next to the lifeboat. Two seamen had guns in their hands.

The body was now halfway out of the water. Hans Höjer's face had turned yellow. One eye was half open, as if even in death he wanted to know what was going on around him.

‘This man has been murdered,' said Roslund. ‘I've seen plenty in my day, but never a little black devil like this all alone out on the Sound. Why is the girl hiding under the blanket?'

Daniel thought he ought to say something. but Sanna, who kept
humming underneath the blanket, upset him and made it impossible for him to find the words.

At that moment there was a whistled signal from the big ship. It cut through the dawn and scared some seagulls from the water.

‘Hell,' said Roslund. ‘What's the King doing up so early?'

He turned round and saluted. A man with a grey beard was standing at the railing. Next to him were two men dressed in black and white. One had a tray in his hand, the other a towel.

‘What's going on?' asked the man with the grey beard.

‘I don't know, Your Majesty. But we discovered someone trying to throw a corpse overboard.'

People had begun gathering at the railing of the big ship. A woman appeared but the man with the grey beard waved her away.

‘Who's hiding under the blanket?'

One of the seamen pulled off the blanket. Sanna closed her eyes and held her hands in front of her face. She kept humming, louder now, and she was rocking back and forth.

‘Bring them aboard,' said the King. ‘But perhaps it would be best to tie up the Negro boy. Quite a remarkable wake-up call, I must say. The sun comes up in the mist and the first thing one sees is a little black boy who has committed a murder.'

Roslund pointed to two of the seamen. One of them took off his belt and tried to grab Daniel's hands, but Daniel sank his teeth into the man's wrist. The seaman yelled and let go of Daniel, who began climbing overboard. There was nothing else to do now. Once again his journey home had been interrupted. Now he was surrounded by men in white who wanted to tie him up, so he might as well die. He would then drift deep in the sea until he finally reached home. That would be better than being buried in the earth behind Hallén's church, where nobody would ever find him.

He made it only halfway into the water. The person who caught him was not one of the seamen but Sanna, who suddenly cast herself over him. He tried to pull himself loose, but she held on, and she was strong. He bit and struggled, but she didn't seem to care.

‘I won't!' he screamed. ‘I want to go home!'

Somewhere inside him his old language welled up and cut through all the words he had been forced to learn. Be and Kiko were inside
him, their voices shouted at Sanna, and they struggled as much as he did. They didn't want to let go of him now that he was so close.

‘We're not going to drown!' Sanna screamed. ‘We're going back home, no matter what happens. We're going home.'

Daniel realised that Sanna had betrayed him. She wouldn't let him die. She forced first Be and then Kiko to release their grip. Two of the seamen dragged him aboard and tied his hands behind him with the belt. He no longer resisted. He just closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep, to force his heart to stop beating. He felt himself lifted up and carried off and then he lay utterly still.

 

When he opened his eyes the man with the grey beard was standing watching him. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot.

‘Hardly one of my subjects,' he said. ‘Not even in the remotest villages in Norway can one find the like. A Negro.'

The man looked at Captain Roslund, who stood next to him.

‘What does the girl say?'