The judge looked at him for a long moment without stirring, almost as if he had not spoken. Then he said, “Let me question you a little. You have asked us to remember Niels. If you are Niels, you will remember something of Vejlby, and of Aalsö. You were a boy here. Did you do your catechism with Pastor Qvist?”
The beggar shook his head. “With Pastor Peder Korf,” he said, and added piously, “I did it none too well, more’s the pity.”
“But why not with Pastor Sören?” inquired the judge. “You were of his parish.”
The beggar shrugged his shoulders. “We were none too good friends with Pastor Sören when I was a boy. Morten had quarrels with him, and Morten sent me to Pastor Korf. I did not always come when I was sent.”
The judge considered this awhile and then said, “You must have known Vejlby well, however. Tell me something of Vejlby. The inn there—tell me, what was the name of the inn at Vejlby and where did it stand?”
“That is easy,” said the beggar. “Everyone knows that the name of the inn was the Red Horse, and it stood on the market street, facing the east.”
Juste Pedersen was about to interrupt, when Tryg checked him with a motion of his hand.
“Was there anything else you can remember about the Red Horse Inn?” he inquired.
The beggar had a faint smile. “It was also called the Sign of the Three-legged Horse,” he said.
“He is wrong enough there,” said Pastor Juste, “but he has probably been at a great many inns in his day, and perhaps we should not reckon this too seriously.”
“But he is not wrong,” said the judge. “When the Germans came, they burned the inn, and the new inn stands, as you are thinking, in quite another spot and has another name, but the old inn stood, as he says, on the market street facing east, and the artist who made the sign, for reasons of his own, painted the red horse with three legs.” He reached into his pocket for a white linen handkerchief and wiped his hands upon it nervously. “In a horse-trading country, Pastor Juste, you will grant that even the churls remember a horse with three legs. But your memory is not always so clear,” he said, turning again to the beggar, “and one thing else puzzles me. Why have you not asked Vibeke Andersdaughter to identify you?”
“Ah, she,” said the beggar. “I have been a long time trying to remember her name. I know now. She was Pastor Sören’s housekeeper in the old days. She has changed. She is old now. Besides, I never paid much attention to her.”
Tryg looked at Vibeke. She answered slowly, “He might be Niels Bruus. I think he is Niels Bruus.”
“Well, am I not Niels Bruus now?” demanded the beggar. “You say so—Vibeke says so.”
“There is nothing so far,” said Tryg very slowly, “to prove that you are not Niels Bruus. The whole matter now lies in how honest an explanation you can give . . .” He paused, and the beggar took the words out of his mouth.
“Of the corpse in the garden, eh? Well, I will tell you.”
“Speak a little slowly,” said Juste. “I cannot write too fast.”
“Well,” said the beggar, “as you know, I was a servant to Pastor Sören Qvist.”
“Tell me,” said Tryg curiously, “you that left Jutland because you were afraid of Morten, were you never afraid of Pastor Sören?”
“Oh no,” said the beggar promptly. “The pastor was a good man. Even when he was angry, and struck me, I was not afraid of him, for he was still a good man. But Morten—Morten had always a kind of devil in him. Even when we were children I was always afraid of him. He was always much cleverer than I. He was older, too, and more handsome, but he was always cleverer. And always I did what he told me to. So when he told me to plague the pastor and make him angry; I did. Then Morten rewarded me. Morten did not love the pastor. Do you understand?”
“I begin to understand,” said Thorwaldsen. “Go on.”
“Then one day I made Pastor angry and he knocked me down. I remember it was nutting time. I ran home to Morten and told him what had happened, and he praised me and gave me good food. Then he locked me up. I thought that was strange, but Morten was cleverer than I. Master Thorwaldsen, cannot I have one swig from your mug? It makes me thirsty to talk so much.”
The judge swore under his breath, but pushed the pewter mug toward the beggar, who drank, and drank again. Finally he set the mug on the table, wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his crimson doublet, and went on with his story.
“Morten locked me up until midnight. This was at Ingvorstrup. Then he came, and he gave me a spade to carry. We went out toward Revn, and beyond, as well as I could tell, but we stopped at a crossroads. There was a suicide buried, not many days before. Morten said dig, and I dug, but Morten pulled the body out of the ground. I was frightened. I had not been a soldier then. I was not used to such things. Neither had the suicide been exorcised.” He shuddered, and Vibeke crossed herself.
“We made the earth smooth again, and tramped on it to make it just as it had been. He hid the body in a beechwood, and we went back to Ingvorstrup. The sky was already getting light when we reached home. Then Morten locked me up again. The next night he came and fetched me, and took me to the beechwood. There he made me undress. Then he undressed the corpse. I tell you, I was frightened, and I asked him what he thought he was going to do, and he told me he was going to play a little trick on Pastor Sören, and that I should ask no more questions. Then he made me dress in the clothes of the suicide. That I did not like. And he dressed the body in my clothes, with everything I had been wearing, even to my earring. I had only one earring. Even that he took.
“Then he struck the dead man in the face with the spade two or three times, and once on the crown of the head, and he said, laughing, ‘That is to make him look more like you.’ Then he put the body in a sack that he had brought with him, and he said to me, ‘Carry the sack.’ ‘No,’ I said, but I had to carry it all the same.”
The beggar paused and looked into the mug, which was empty, and no one offered to refill it.
“I had to carry the sack all the way to Vejlby to the road that runs east of the pastor’s garden to Tolstrup. I tell you, it was heavy. But Morten carried the spade. There we went into the wood that is on the hillside overlooking the garden, and we waited, and watched the road and the parsonage for some time. It was moonlight and we could see very well. But everything was still. No one came on the road. By and by Morten said to me, ‘Go down to the house, to Parson’s room, and bring me back his nightcap and his dressing gown.’ But that he did not make me do. I was too frightened. I should have fallen on my knees before the hedge if I had tried to do that.
“Then Morten said, ‘I will go myself,’ and he left me, with the sack alone in the woods. I swear to you, I wished that I had never seen my brother Morten. I cursed him and I cursed the hour. But he came back after a little while, and he was wearing the dressing gown and the nightcap, and never a cat had heard him. He was clever, oh, he was. He reached into his pocket, then, and took out a little leather bag. I heard it go clink.
“He untied the bag, and he poured out on the ground a little pile of silver. No, a big pile of silver. I had never seen so much money all at once before—no, nor since. Then he made me hold the bag, and he counted the money back into it, a piece at a time. There were one hundred rix-dollars. The moonlight came through the leaves and shone on every piece, so that he knew I could see that they were all good.
“He said, ‘I am going to play a little trick on Pastor Sören, and you talk too much. You must go out of Jutland. I will give you that bag which you hold in your hands, but if you ever so much as show your nose in Jutland again, I will say that you stole the money, and have you hanged for it. Go now, and remember, my word against yours, and I am much cleverer than you.’ Such a brother he was.
“I went that night as far as I could. I slept by day, and traveled by night, until I was in South