“You'd really better make yourself scarce for a while. For a couple of years, even, until this dies down.”
“I can go back to the farm —”
“Scarcer than that. You'd really better get off Bornholm entirely. Maybe go to Norway and see if they'll let you join one of their troll-hunting units. Or why not join our army? They're asking for volunteers to begin the reconquest of the mainland.”
“Join the reconquest and make myself scarce at the same time? Maybe I'll do that.”
Arne Larsen had been the innkeeper at The Old Soldier Inn in Rønne for almost fifteen years, ever since his mother died five years after his father. He enjoyed keeping the Inn; it brought in many regulars from his own community of Little Copenhagen, and some from the greater Rønne community, not to mention visitors from as far away as Iceland. There were also visitors from nearer at hand, such as Mikkel Madsen.
Mikkel Madsen, who should be at work in the middle of the day instead of sipping a beer and chatting with Carryn.
Mug of beer in hand, Arne worked his way through the inn, smiling and bantering with the regulars, nodding welcome to the visitors, ultimately dropping into the seat across from Mikkel. “Thought you were working in the library, young man.”
The other had the grace to look a little abashed. “I was. But I'm not anymore.”
Arne had grown fond of Mikkel, whom he had first met three years earlier in the company of Alfred Madsen, a second cousin to both of them. He had watched the young man — a good quarter century younger than Arne — grow from a naive and troubled farm boy to a respected and courageous Guard. After finishing his two-year service as a Shore Guard a couple of months earlier, he had remained in Rønne, living at the Old Soldier, and working in the city's one library.
“What happened?”
“This Icelander came in and wanted a history book by Makan Grímsson. It's a history of Bornholm, and it claims that Bornholm was a Swedish island conquered and oppressed by Denmark! It's nonsense from start to finish, and I told her so!”
“That's probably a little outside your job description.”
“Yeah, a little. It turns out her name's Lísbet Grímsdóttir and she's Makan's sister and she didn't appreciate my questioning his scholarship. So she threw the book at me.”
“Oh dear.”
“Well, I did try to catch it but I more batted it away from my face and it got a bit damaged. At least Hedvig heard the shouting and got there in time to see her throw the book, so she knew I didn't damage it. So Lísbet is banned from the library and I'm not. Still, getting in shouting matches with patrons wasn't my job so …”
“So you're here in the middle of the day.”
“Pretty much, yes. I'll look for another job tomorrow.”
They finished their beer together and Arne went back behind the bar to relieve Saffi while Carryn brought Mikkel another beer.
Arne and Saffi were organizing lunch preparations when Carryn slipped into the kitchen, giggling, to tell them that Mikkel was back. Since his hours at the bakery were from three in the morning to well past noon, something had obviously gone wrong. Father and daughter glanced at each other, shrugged identically, and went on with their work.
Arne personally brought Mikkel his lunch. “So, Mikkel, what happened at the bakery?”
“I've been making the muffins for the past couple of weeks. And, you know, muffins are pretty boring. We had plenty of angelica, so I just put that into the last batch. But people are so boring and conventional! They didn't want any of the muffins at all! They'd take one bite and throw them away, and they didn't pay for any of them. So, well, Lorens wasn't happy with me and … yeah, I'll look for another job tomorrow.”
Mikkel was chatting with Carryn again, Arne saw. Those two got along well; there was a decade gap in their ages but they had similar mischievous personalities. The innkeeper didn't mind so long as Carryn took care of serving and the two of them refrained from playing pranks in his inn. Mikkel never flirted with Carryn, as Arne was glad to see since she was married to a sailor. Actually, Mikkel never flirted with anyone, which Arne found a little troubling.
Mikkel really shouldn't be chatting with Carryn before suppertime, however. In fact, Mikkel shouldn't be at the Old Soldier at all before suppertime. With a sigh, Arne poured a mug of beer for himself and started towards the younger man's table.
Abruptly Carryn shrieked and leapt back, hastily turning to give the alarmed patrons a big, false smile. Seeing Mikkel stuffing something into his pocket, Arne worked his way through the crowd a little more quickly, smiling and murmuring reassuringly, until he reached Mikkel's table. With a laugh, Carryn hurried back to serving.
“Why did Carryn scream, Mikkel? I did tell you not to pull pranks in my inn.”
Mikkel pulled something from his pocket and tossed it on the table, the older man managing not to recoil at the sight. It couldn't actually be a black viper if Mikkel was handling it so casually. “Did you know there's a shop on the east side that makes toy animals? They'll even make animals that you request. Like this one!” Mikkel allowed a little excitement into his voice and expression.
The thing was quite convincing in appearance, made of cloth and, Arne found when he picked it up, stuffed with seeds so that it could be posed realistically. “Nice. And I suppose this led to your being fired again?”
“Not that one. One of the others. I put in a cabinet, and Rebekka opened it and the snake fell out and she starts screaming 'Kill it! Kill it!' and Jokum comes running over with a broom and whacks at it until it comes apart all over the counter.” He was chuckling now. “And they both start yelling at me, and Jokum tells me to get out and never come back. And he didn't even give me a chance to tell him about the others. They'll find those pretty soon though.”
Arne held his head for a moment, then shook it in some resignation. “Put that thing away, Mikkel. Don't wave it around in my inn. Mikkel, when's your birthday?”
“The eleventh.”
“You'll be twenty-one on the eleventh, right?” Denmark in the age of the Rash was aggressively skeptical, but the number seven was still magical. A boy became a man, a girl a woman, at age fourteen, but young people were not considered truly mature until age twenty-one. Arne doubted Mikkel could ever be considered truly mature, this day's events being case in point.
“Well, yes.” The younger man was a little shamefaced as they regarded each other silently for several seconds before Arne stood, shaking his head, and went back to the bar with his untouched beer.
Arne was fond of Mikkel and often thought he would have welcomed the young man as a son-in-law; if his daughter, Saffi, had not been married to a sailor already, he would probably have tried some matchmaking.
Or perhaps not.
This time it was Saffi who came to him, giggling, to say that he should go talk to Mikkel at his usual table in the back.
“What, fired again?” It was late evening, the normal time for Mikkel to come back from his work at the Silver Plate Inn, which was not really an inn at all but a very upscale restaurant, its guest rooms having been converted to private dining rooms.
“No, he says not,” she answered, still giggling. Arne poured himself a beer, suspecting this might be a long talk, and made his way back to Mikkel's table. He frowned as he approached, seeing the younger man drying his eyes on his sleeve. If the impassive Mikkel was crying, that hardly seemed a matter to giggle about.
Mikkel looked up, giving Arne his usual slight welcoming smile and gesturing him to a seat. His eyes were still watering and …
“Mikkel, you stink! What is that stink?”
“Horseradish!” Mikkel answered with some glee.
“Why do you — Wait, I'm not sure I want to know. Were you fired again?”
“No, this time I quit.”
Arne took a deep draught of his beer. “Okay, tell me about it.”
“You know I was hired as a server and busboy. But the head cooks, Knud and Sofia, like to hang out in the storeroom and get drunk, so I've been doing more and more of the organizing and cooking because the junior cooks are all idiots. And then today, Embla tells us we have this big banquet, but those two were already too drunk to be of any use, and I had to grab Knud before he stuck his hand in the scalding-hot soup, and I just pushed them in the storeroom and told them to stay there.
“So I organized the cooking for the banquet and we got it all done and maybe it wasn't perfect but it was done, and then Embla comes down and yells at us because we had the wrong dessert! And I took too long to carry it up there because I had to cook and to supervise the juniors! So I took a whole horseradish root and tossed it in the grinder and ground it up as fast as I could. And as we were all running away from the fumes, I remembered to throw my apron at her and tell her I quit. The kitchen will air out in a day … or two … I suppose.” He blotted his watering eyes again.
“Uh.” Arne didn't really have an answer to that story. He downed the rest of his beer to give himself time to think. “I don't think you'll be welcome to work in any kitchen in Rønne after that, uh, action.”
“No, probably not. It was worth it, though. I'll look for another job tomorrow.”
The atmosphere of the inn was strange, boisterous, almost … gleeful. Arne looked around, puzzled, before approaching Magdalone Svendsen, a woman of Little Copenhagen, a decade or so younger than Arne. “What's going on?”
“Your boy Mikkel,” she began, unable to continue for her chuckles.
“What's he done now?” Arne demanded of the room in general.
“He threw —” Dedric Jeppesen was outright laughing too hard to finish.
“He threw the governor's grandson —” Lauritz Jensen picked up the story.
“Onto a dung heap!” half the inn chorused before raising their mugs in a toast.
Arne covered his face with both hands. The governor was highly unpopular in the Little Copenhagen community, and not all that popular with the rest of the Rønne population, and his grandson was widely viewed as a worthless lecher. In an abstract sense, Arne was glad to hear that he'd been thrown onto a dung heap, but he really wished Mikkel hadn't done it.
As he removed his hands, his patrons began applauding, Knowing what he would see, he turned to find Mikkel himself hesitating in the doorway, uncertain in the face of this reception. “Mikkel,” Arne said with what he considered to be great patience, “let's talk in the back.”
Mikkel made his way through the main room, impeded somewhat by the many backpats and even hugs that he received from celebrating patrons. When he failed to free himself from the embrace of a fairly inebriated Kirsten Jensen, Arne pulled him away and dragged him the rest of the way to the privacy of a storeroom.
“Mikkel, what were you thinking?! Why a dung heap?”
“Maybe I didn't know the dung heap was there,” Mikkel ventured. To Arne's skeptical glare he added, “Or maybe I did. But he deserved it.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I told him to keep his grimy paws off of Mariela. The third time I told him, and the third time he just ignored me and pawed her anyway, I carried him out and threw him on the dung heap where he belonged.”
“Is Mariela your girlfriend?” Arne asked, distracted by the possibility.
“No. And it doesn't matter anyway. He had no business putting his filthy hands on her like that. He made her cry!”
“The governor's grandson,” Arne said, closing his eyes and shaking his head.
“I didn't know that. I really didn't know that,” Mikkel added, seeing the older man's doubts. “But I would have thrown him out anyway. He's garbage. He made her cry!”
“Yes, I understand.” And he did understand. Mikkel was no respecter of persons; if the man's behavior was intolerable, Mikkel wouldn't tolerate it. That was an admirable trait, but wasn't going to smooth his way through life. “Still, he's the governor's grandson. This … is likely to cause problems for you, Mikkel. You'd really better make yourself scarce for a while. For a couple of years, even, until this dies down.”
“I can go back to the farm —”
“Scarcer than that. You'd really better get off Bornholm entirely. Maybe go to Norway and see if they'll let you join one of their troll-hunting units. Or why not join our army? They're asking for volunteers to begin the reconquest of the mainland.”
“Join the reconquest and make myself scarce at the same time? Maybe I'll do that.”
And he did.