Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
park, and was protected—we should say grown up—with large old timber.
Near it you found the walled garden, and then entered a close wood
fringing one of the small lakes with which the whole country is pitted.
Then came the wall of the demesne, and you climbed a steep knoll—a knob
of rock lightly covered with soil—and on the top of this stood the
church, fenced in with tall dark trees. It was a curious building to
English eyes. The nave and aisles were low, and filled with pews and
galleries. In the western gallery stood the handsome old organ, gaily
painted, and with silver pipes. The ceiling was flat, and had been
adorned by a seventeenth-century artist with a strange and hideous
“Last Judgement”, full of lurid flames, falling cities, burning ships,
crying souls, and brown and smiling demons. Handsome brass coronae hung
from the roof; the pulpit was like a doll’s-house covered with little
painted wooden cherubs and saints; a stand with three hour-glasses was
hinged to the preacher’s desk. Such sights as these may be seen in many
a church in Sweden now, but what distinguished this one was an addition
to the original building. At the eastern end of the north aisle the
builder of the manor-house had erected a mausoleum for himself and his
family. It was a largish eight-sided building, lighted by a series of
oval windows, and it had a domed roof, topped by a kind of
pumpkin-shaped object rising into a spire, a form in which Swedish
architects greatly delighted. The roof was of copper externally, and
was painted black, while the walls, in common with those of the church,
were staringly white. To this mausoleum there was no access from the
church. It had a portal and steps of its own on the northern side.
Past the churchyard the path to the village goes, and not more than
three or four minutes bring you to the inn door.
On the first day of his stay at Råbäck Mr Wraxall found the church door
open, and made those notes of the interior which I have epitomized.
Into the mausoleum, however, he could not make his way. He could by
looking through the keyhole just descry that there were fine marble
effigies and sarcophagi of copper, and a wealth of armorial ornament,
which made him very anxious to spend some time in investigation.
The papers he had come to examine at the manor-house proved to be of
just the kind he wanted for his book. There were family correspondence,
journals, and account-books of the earliest owners of the estate, very
carefully kept and clearly written, full of amusing and picturesque
detail. The first De la Gardie appeared in them as a strong and capable
man. Shortly after the building of the mansion there had been a period
of distress in the district, and the peasants had risen and attacked
several châteaux and done some damage. The owner of Råbäck took a
leading part in supressing the trouble, and there was reference to
executions of ring-leaders and severe punishments inflicted with no
sparing hand.
The portrait of this Magnus de la Gardie was one of the best in the
house, and Mr Wraxall studied it with no little interest after his
day’s work. He gives no detailed description of it, but I gather that
the face impressed him rather by its power than by its beauty or
goodness; in fact, he writes that Count Magnus was an almost
phenomenally ugly man.
On this day Mr Wraxall took his supper with the family, and walked back
in the late but still bright evening.
“I must remember,” he writes, “to ask the sexton if he can let me into
the mausoleum at the church. He evidently has access to it himself, for
I saw him tonight standing on the steps, and, as I thought, locking or
unlocking the door.”
I find that early on the following day Mr Wraxall had some conversation
with his landlord. His setting it down at such length as he does
surprised me at first; but I soon realized that the papers I was
reading were, at least in their beginning, the materials for the book
he was meditating, and that it was to have been one of those
quasi-journalistic productions which admit of the introduction of an
admixture of conversational matter.
His object, he says, was to find out whether any traditions of Count
Magnus de la Gardie lingered on in the scenes of that gentleman’s
activity, and whether the popular estimate of him were favourable or
not. He found that the Count was decidedly not a favourite. If his
tenants came late to their work on the days which they owed to him as
Lord of the Manor, they were set on the wooden horse, or flogged and
branded in the manor-house yard. One or two cases there were of men who
had occupied lands which encroached on the lord’s domain, and whose
houses had been mysteriously burnt on a winter’s night, with the whole
family inside. But what seemed to dwell on the innkeeper’s mind
most—for he returned to the subject more than once—was that the Count
had been on the Black Pilgrimage, and had brought something or someone
back with him.
You will naturally inquire, as Mr Wraxall did, what the Black
Pilgrimage may have been. But your curiosity on the point must remain
unsatisfied for the time being, just as his did. The landlord was
evidently unwilling to give a full answer, or indeed any answer, on the
point, and, being called out for a moment, trotted out with obvious
alacrity, only putting his head in at the door a few minutes afterwards
to say that he was called away to Skara, and should not be back till
evening.
So Mr Wraxall had to go unsatisfied to his day’s work at the
manor-house. The papers on which he was just then engaged soon put his
thoughts into another channel, for he had to occupy himself with
glancing over the correspondence between Sophia Albertina in Stockholm
and her married cousin Ulrica Leonora at Råbäck in the years 1705-1710.
The letters were of exceptional interest from the light they threw upon
the culture of that period in Sweden, as anyone can testify who has
read the full edition of them in the publications of the Swedish
Historical Manuscripts Commission.
In the afternoon he had done with these, and after returning the boxes
in which they were kept to their places on the shelf, he proceeded,
very naturally, to take down some of the volumes nearest to them, in
order to determine which of them had best be his principal subject of
investigation next day. The shelf he had hit upon was occupied mostly
by a collection of account-books in the writing of the first Count
Magnus. But one among them was not an account-book, but a book of
alchemical and other tracts in another sixteenth-century hand. Not
being very familiar with alchemical literature, Mr Wraxall spends much
space which he might have spared in setting out the names and
beginnings of the various treatises: The book of the Phœnix, book of
the Thirty Words, book of the Toad, book of Miriam, Turba
philosophorum, and so forth; and then he announces with a good deal of
circumstance his delight at finding, on a leaf originally left blank
near the middle of the book, some writing of Count Magnus himself
headed “Liber nigræ peregrinationis”. It is true that only a few lines
were written, but there was quite enough to show that the landlord had
that morning been referring to a belief at least as old as the time of
Count Magnus, and probably shared by him. This is the English of what
was written:
“If any man desires to obtain a long life, if he would obtain a
faithful messenger and see the blood of his enemies, it is necessary
that he should first go into the city of Chorazin, and there salute the
prince….” Here there was an erasure of one word, not very thoroughly
done, so that Mr Wraxall felt pretty sure that he was right in reading
it as _aëris_ (“of the air”). But there was no more of the text copied,
only a line in Latin: _Quære reliqua hujus materiei inter secretiora_.
(See the rest of this matter among the more private things.)
It could not be denied that this threw a rather lurid light upon the
tastes and beliefs of the Count; but to Mr Wraxall, separated from him
by nearly three centuries, the thought that he might have added to his
general forcefulness alchemy, and to alchemy something like magic, only
made him a more picturesque figure; and when, after a rather prolonged
contemplation of his picture in the hall, Mr Wraxall set out on his
homeward way, his mind was full of the thought of Count Magnus. He had
no eyes for his surroundings, no perception of the evening scents of
the woods or the evening light on the lake; and when all of a sudden he
pulled up short, he was astonished to find himself already at the gate
of the churchyard, and within a few minutes of his dinner. His eyes
fell on the mausoleum.
“Ah,” he said, “Count Magnus, there you are. I should dearly like to
see you.”
“Like many solitary men,” he writes, “I have a habit of talking to
myself aloud; and, unlike some of the Greek and Latin particles, I do
not expect an answer. Certainly, and perhaps fortunately in this case,
there was neither voice nor any that regarded: only the woman who, I
suppose, was cleaning up the church, dropped some metallic object on
the floor, whose clang startled me. Count Magnus, I think, sleeps sound
enough.”
That same evening the landlord of the inn, who had heard Mr Wraxall say
that he wished to see the clerk or deacon (as he would be called in
Sweden) of the parish, introduced him to that official in the inn
parlour. A visit to the De la Gardie tomb-house was soon arranged for
the next day, and a little general conversation ensued.
Mr Wraxall, remembering that one function of Scandinavian deacons is to
teach candidates for Confirmation, thought he would refresh his own
memory on a Biblical point.
“Can you tell me,” he said, “anything about Chorazin?”
The deacon seemed startled, but readily reminded him how that village
had once been denounced.
“To be sure,” said Mr Wraxall; “it is, I suppose, quite a ruin now?”
“So I expect,” replied the deacon. “I have heard some of our old
priests say that Antichrist is to be born there; and there are tales—”
“Ah! what tales are those?” Mr Wraxall put in.
“Tales, I was going to say, which I have forgotten,” said the deacon;
and soon after that he said good night.
The landlord was now alone, and at Mr Wraxall’s mercy; and that
inquirer was not inclined to spare him.
“Herr Nielsen,” he said, “I have found out something about the Black
Pilgrimage. You may as well tell me what you know. What did the Count
bring back with him?”
Swedes are habitually slow, perhaps, in answering, or perhaps the
landlord was an exception. I am not sure; but Mr Wraxall notes that the
landlord spent at least one minute in looking at him before he said
anything at all. Then he came close up to his guest, and with a good
deal of effort he spoke:
“Mr Wraxall, I can tell you this one little tale, and no more—not any
more. You must not ask anything when I have done. In my grandfather’s
time—that is, ninety-two years ago—there were two men who said: ‘The
Count is dead; we do not care for him. We will go tonight and have a
free hunt in his wood’—the long wood on the hill that you have seen
behind Råbäck. Well, those that heard them say this, they said: ‘No, do
not go; we are sure you will meet with persons walking who should not
be walking. They should be resting, not walking.’ These men laughed.
There were no forestmen to keep the wood, because no one wished to live
there. The family were not here at the house. These men could do what
they wished.
“Very well, they go to the wood that night. My grandfather was sitting
here in this room. It was the summer, and a light night. With the
window open, he could see out to the wood, and hear.
“So he sat there, and two or three men with him, and they listened. At