The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden (39 page)

* * *

Gertrud was not happy that Celestine and the others had dragged a politician home, because she didn’t like such people. The king, however, was fine. And how! Since the 1970s, Gertrud had kept a picture of him and the queen in the outhouse, and they had been good company with warming smiles as she sat there in zero-degree temperatures to do her business. At first it hadn’t felt quite right to wipe one’s backside in front of one’s king, but the pros had won, and after a while she had grown used to it. To be honest, ever since Sjölida had acquired an indoor toilet in 1993, she had missed those times spent with Their Majesties.

‘Nice to see you again,’ she said, shaking her king’s hand. ‘Is all as it should be with the queen?’

‘The pleasure is all mine,’ said the king, adding that the queen was well, while he wondered to himself where he might have met this lady before.

Holger One herded everyone into Gertrud’s kitchen, with the intention of holding an interrogation with His Majesty and giving him an ultimatum. Gertrud asked if they’d remembered to buy food, especially now that they had guests. And the king, besides. And that other man.

‘I am Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt,’ said Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, extending his hand. ‘Pleasure.’

‘Answer the question,’ said Gertrud. ‘Did you buy any food?’

‘No, Gertrud,’ said Nombeko. ‘Other things got in the way.’

‘Then we’ll all just have to starve.’

‘Couldn’t we call for a pizza?’ the king wondered, thinking that at the gala banquet they had probably left the sautéed scallops with lemon balm pesto behind and were up to the poached halibut with pine nuts and asparagus.

‘Phones don’t work out here. It’s the politicians’ fault. I don’t like politicians,’ Gertrud said again.

Fredrik Reinfeldt thought for the second time that this wasn’t happening. He had just heard his king suggest takeaway pizza for himself and his kidnappers.

‘If you kill some of the chickens, I can scrape up a casserole,’ Gertrud realized. ‘Unfortunately I sold off my five hundred acres of potato fields, but farmer Engström probably won’t notice if we swipe fifteen of his fifteen million potatoes.’

Amid all this, Holger One was standing there with pistol in hand. Takeaway pizza? Chicken casserole? What was going on? The king was supposed to be abdicating or else going up in atoms.

One whispered to Celestine that it was time for them to put their feet down. She nodded and decided to start by explaining the situation to her grandmother. And so she did, very briefly. The fact was, the king had been kidnapped, and the prime minister was part of the bargain. And now she and Holger were going to force him to abdicate.

‘The prime minister?’

‘No, the king.’

‘That’s a pity,’ said Gertrud, adding that no one should have to abdicate on an empty stomach. Were they going to make chicken casserole, or what?

The king thought homemade chicken casserole sounded both hearty and good. And if he was ever going to get anything in his stomach, it was clear that he himself would have to get moving.

He’d been on a few pheasant hunts over the years, and from the start, when the king was just a crown prince, people hadn’t lined up to dress his haul for him. The young man had had to be toughened up, and now he thought that if he had been able to shoot and pluck a pheasant thirty-five years earlier, he should be able to behead and pluck a hen today.

‘If the prime minister will get the potatoes, I can deal with the chickens,’ he said.

Since by that point Fredrik Reinfeldt was almost certain that what was happening really wasn’t, he walked out to the potato field, pitchfork in hand, dressed in patent-leather shoes and an Italian tailcoat from Corneliani. In any case, it was better than the alternative – getting chicken blood on his shirt and God only knew where else.

The king was quick on his feet for a man of his age. Within five minutes he had caught three young cocks, and with the help of the axe managed to separate heads from bodies. Before doing so he had hung his uniform jacket on the outer wall of the henhouse, where the Order of the Seraphim, Gustaf V’s Royal Jubilee medal, Gustav VI Adolf’s memorial medal, the Order of the Sword and the Order of the Polar Star glittered in the evening sunlight. The Order of the Vasa, on a chain, was hanging on a nearby rusty pitchfork.

Just as the prime minister had suspected, the white dress shirt was soon dotted with red.

‘I have another one at home,’ the king said to Nombeko, who was helping with the plucking.

‘I thought you might,’ said Nombeko.

When she stepped into the kitchen a moment later, with three plucked chickens in her hands, Gertrud clucked happily that it was casserole time! Holger One and Celestine sat at the kitchen table, more confused than usual. Even more so when the prime minister came in, with muddy feet and a bucket of potatoes. And then the king, in a dress shirt covered in chicken blood. He had forgotten his uniform jacket and the Order of the Vasa on its chain back at the henhouse and on the pitchfork.

Gertrud took the potatoes without a word and then commended the king on his skill with an axe.

Holger One was displeased that Gertrud was fraternizing with His damned Majesty. The same went for Celestine. If she had been seventeen, she would have left immediately, but now they had a task to accomplish, and she didn’t want to have to be separated from her grandmother out of anger once again. Unless they were forced to blow both people and chickens sky-high, but that was another matter.

One still had his pistol in hand, and it bothered him that no one seemed to care. Nombeko thought that what he deserved more than anything was a twisted nose (she was no longer angry enough to be able to kill him), but she also wanted to enjoy Gertrud’s chicken casserole before, in the worst case, life on earth was over for all of them. And after all, the biggest threat to that wasn’t the bomb, but that scatterbrain waving the weapon.

So she decided to help her boyfriend’s brother with some logic. She explained that the pistol was unnecessary if the king didn’t run away, and if the king
did
run away, Holger still had thirty-eight miles to set off the bomb instead. Not even a king could run that far in under three hours, even if he had taken off all those heavy medals.

All Holger had to do was hide the key to the potato truck. Once that was done, he would have created a balance of terror at Sjölida. No one would need to keep their eyes on anyone else. Instead, they could eat their food in peace and quiet.

One nodded thoughtfully. What Nombeko had said sounded reasonable. Plus, he had already stuffed the key to the potato truck in one sock without realizing how clever this was. After another few seconds’ worth of thinking, he put the pistol in the inner pocket of his jacket.

Without putting the safety on first.

While Nombeko was talking reason into One, Celestine had received orders from her grandmother to help cut up the chicken into casserole-size chunks. Meanwhile, Holger Two was instructed to mix drinks
exactly
according to her instructions: a splash of Gordon’s gin, two splashes of Noilly Prat, and the rest equal amounts of schnapps and Skåne akvavit. Two didn’t really know what she meant by a ‘splash’, but once he’d decided on an amount he thought that two splashes was probably double as much. He sneaked a taste of the finished concoction and was so happy with the results that he tasted it once again.

At last, everyone was sitting at the table except for Gertrud, who was putting the finishing touches to the casserole. The king looked at the two Holgers and was struck by how similar they were.

‘How can anyone tell you apart, if you also have the same name?’

‘One suggestion is to call the one with a pistol “the idiot”,’ said Holger Two, feeling a certain amount of satisfaction at having said it out loud.

‘Holger and the Idiot . . . yes, that might work,’ said the king.

‘No one calls my Holger an idiot!’ said Celestine.

‘Why not?’ said Nombeko.

The prime minister felt that it was in no one’s best interests for a fight to break out, so he hurried to praise Holger for having put away the weapon, which led Nombeko to elucidate the prevailing balance of power for everyone.

‘If we catch Holger, the one we don’t call an idiot when his girlfriend is listening but are welcome to otherwise, and tie him to a tree – then the risk is that his girlfriend will set off the bomb instead. And if we tie her to a tree next to the first one, who knows what the girl’s grandmother will think to do with her moose-hunting rifle.’

‘Gertrud,’ the king said approvingly.

‘I’ll have you know that if you touch my little Celestine, bullets will fly in every direction!’ said Gertrud.

‘Well, there you go,’ said Nombeko. ‘We don’t need the pistol. I even got the idiot to realize that a while ago.’

‘Dinner’s ready,’ said Gertrud.

On the menu was chicken casserole, home-brewed beer and the hostess’s own special blend of schnapps. People could help themselves to casserole and beer, but Gertrud would handle the schnapps. Everyone got his own glass, including the feebly protesting prime minister. Gertrud filled them to the rim and the king rubbed his hands:

‘A little bird told me that the chicken will be delicious. But now let’s see about the rest of it.’

‘Cheers, King,’ said Gertrud.

‘What about the rest of us?’ said Celestine.

‘Cheers to the rest of you, too, of course.’

And she drained her glass. The king and Holger Two followed her example. The others sipped theirs more tentatively, except for Holger One, who couldn’t bring himself to drink to the king, and the prime minister, who poured his schnapps into a geranium when no one was looking.

‘Why, it’s Marshal Mannerheim!’ the king said approvingly.

No one but Gertrud knew what he was talking about.

‘Splendid, King!’ she said. ‘Might one tempt the king with another? After all, a person can’t stand on one leg.’

Holger One and Celestine felt increasingly troubled by Gertrud’s delight in the man who was meant to abdicate. And who was, moreover, sitting there in a bloody dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves instead of a uniform jacket. One didn’t like not catching on, even though he was quite used to it.

‘What’s going on?’ he said.

‘What just happened was that your friend the king recognized the world’s most excellent drink,’ said Gertrud.

‘He’s not my friend,’ said Holger One.

* * *

Gustaf Mannerheim was no bluff of a man. After all, he had served in the tsar’s army for several decades, travelling around Europe and Asia by horse.

So when Communism and Lenin took over Russia, he went back home to Finland, which was free, and became a commissioned officer and eventually president. He was designated Finland’s greatest soldier of all time, receiving orders and distinctions from all over the world – and on him was conferred the unique title of Marshal of Finland.

Marskens sup
, or ‘the Marshal’s shot’, came into being during the Second World War. It was one part aquavit, one part vodka, a splash of gin and two splashes of vermouth. The drink became a classic.

The first time the Swedish king had enjoyed it was on a state visit to Finland more than thirty years earlier, when he had been king for just over a year.

Twenty-eight years old, nervous and with trembling knees, he had been received by the experienced Finnish president Kekkonen, himself a bit older than seventy. With the prerogative of age, Kekkonen had immediately decided that the king needed to get something inside his chest, which was already so heavy with medals, and after that the rest of the visit went swimmingly. A Finnish president doesn’t serve any old drink; it had to be
marskens
and thus was born a lifelong love between king and schnapps, while the king and Kekkonen became hunting pals.

The king emptied his second schnapps, smacked his lips, and said, ‘I see that the prime minister’s glass is empty. Shouldn’t he have a refill, too? By the way, hang up your jacket. Your shoes are covered in mud anyway. And it goes halfway up your legs, I see.’

The prime minister apologized for his appearance. In the light of what he now knew, of course, he ought to have arrived at the palace for the gala banquet in overalls and rubber boots. And he added that he preferred to refrain from drinking; anyway, it seemed that the king was drinking for them both.

Fredrik Reinfeldt didn’t know how he should tackle his carefree king. On the one hand, the head of state probably ought to take this exceedingly complicated situation seriously and shouldn’t just sit there drinking buckets of alcohol (in the prime minister’s moderate eyes, two glasses was about as much as a bucket).

On the other hand, the king seemed to be creating confusion among the revolutionary republican ranks around the table. The prime minister had registered the whispering between the man with the pistol and his girlfriend. Clearly, something was bothering them. The king, of course. But not in the same way that he was bothering the prime minister. And not, as it seemed, in that simple, down-with-the-monarchy way that had probably been the start of it all.

Something was up, anyway. And maybe if he just left the king alone, they would find out what it was. It would be impossible to stop him anyway.

He was the king, after all!

* * *

Nombeko was the first to empty her plate. She had been twenty-five before she’d eaten until she was full for the first time, at the expense of President Botha, and since then she had taken advantage of every chance she got to do so.

‘Is it possible to have seconds?’

It was. Gertrud was pleased that Nombeko was pleased with the food. Gertrud was pleased in general, it seemed. It was as if the king had touched her soul. With something.

Himself.

Marshal Mannerheim.

Or his shot.

Or a bit of everything.

Whatever it was, it might be a good thing. Because if the king and Gertrud together managed to confuse the coup-makers, the latter’s idea of what must happen next would become muddy.

A spanner in the works, as it was called.