THE RINGSTETTEN SAGA XVI: HOPE LOST AND REGAINED

Previously on The Ringstetten Saga:
Charles XI is already good and deceased, succeeded by his son and namesake, an emotionally cold young ruler who wants to find excitement and pleasure on the battlefield.
On Midsummer Night 1701, a sixteen-year-old Ilse disappears, leaving behind what appears to be a suicide letter in her own bedchamber. She has actually joined Andreas and his troupe, to live the life of an itinerant performer. But she is pronounced dead (thought to have drowned in the lake) by her family, leaving Gustav Adolf on his own. And what does her brother do in spring the next year, if not enlist in the Swedish Army and leave for the war on Czar Peter the Great (Actually, any competent commander should know that getting involved in a land war in Russia is not such a good idea. But, alas, young King Charles is merely concerned with glory and reputation) that is being fought in Eastern Europe?
(Actually, any competent commander should know that getting involved in a land war in Russia is not such a good idea. But, alas, young King Charles is merely concerned about glory and reputation)
The farewell to the dashing blond ensign knows no equal within this story arc when it comes to heartwarming: his mother and sister burst into tears, Annika has made some cakes, Etienne gives Gustav Adolf a steel crucifix to replace the one made from nails, which is missing. 
Lying about his age to enlist in the army (he is actually fourteen, but he says he is sixteen!), he is soon made a lieutenant, and everything seems to indicate that his only officer friend is that dashing drunken freethinker and resident outcast of the regiment's surgeon, the closeted male-whore Jamie Fitzwilliam, that Gustav Adolf is closely knit with his men (a motley crew of Swedish, French, British, stateless… soldiers), but indifferent to his liege and to his general, Rehnskiöld. For the Carolean army has developed a culture strictly based on masculinity: every Swedish military man serving Charles XII must always steel his heart and mind, not caring for pain, love, elation, or any other feeling, positive or negative, and restrain every form of emotional expression. And not marry unless the King himself has found a wife (Charles is only concerned with warfare, and determined never to wed).
Thus, when Charles XII and Rehnskiöld have Russian prisoners of war beheaded, he is left not to express his own conflicting feelings under death penalty, as he swings the rapier that signals the firing squad to fire their guns.
Yet those unfortunate Cossacks will soon be avenged by Fate on the 8th of July 1709...
Gustav Adolf is also made cupbearer to his liege lord and general, becoming, a tad against his will, their mutual catamite in the Royal Swedish Ménage à Trois.
En route to the war front at Poltava, a white hare crosses the Swedish Army's path. The pathfinder warns the leaders that it's a not so good omen. Though Charles and his generals don't believe in the sign.
Already in early July, they have taken Poltava and broken the bridge across the Vorskla, when suddenly, after a few days of waiting, the enemy host repairs the bridge, crosses the stream, and encamps. The Swedes, excited, leave the fortress and encamp across the Vorskla, facing the encampment of flags white, blue, and red, and green-coated enemies...
A fortnight later, a messenger in uniform reaches the Ringstetten estate with an important message for His Lordship and Her Ladyship: something has befallen their only son on the battlefield...
In the Ukrainian provinces, on the 7th of July in the evening, King Charles is shot in the left foot by a sentinel guarding the Russian camp, where the Swedish ruler had been on a recon mission.
It feels like a red-hot poker sinking into his left ankle and then towards the front of the foot, and while others are concerned about the trail of blood in his wake, he merely tsks: "Trifles, trifles, I'll take that shot out myself!"
The spirits in the Swedish intrenchment sink deep into the mire when Charles is brought to the surgeon's and leaves the army in charge of General Rehnskiöld, a less charismatic leader, for the battle of next day.

With what few refreshments they have against the hot sun and burning fever (luckily, there was a spring at the edge of the battlefield; clear water out of a silver cup, served with sagas of Gustavus Adolphus as background music!), the thirsty, delirious ruler is out of the picture. Shards of the bullet and of many shattered tarsal bones are taken out, and Charles even cuts the gangreen with his own right hand at the edges of the wound (before swooning in a cold sweat), but still tainted veins have begun to spread up his bandaged left leg, which he has to raise  while lying on this improvised litter…
What's more, the heat is sultry as sultry can be in the Russian steppe in July, the spring under the hawthorn not sufficing to quench the thirst of officers, men, and horses alike. The Swedish host, already decimated by General Winter, dwindles even more under General Summer... but Czar Peter will be the one to deliver the finishing stroke.

The warrior king not being in his right mind, he slurs that morning, half-conscious in a daze of heat, to strike the enemy and give l’ordre de bataille. Rehnskiöld, in council with the other generals, takes this as a command. The hot-blooded general’s been waiting in the summer heat, the injury in the left side of his chest from a grenade that struck him at Veprik in midwinter -contusion, broken ribs, punctured lung, a pain that only his death will assuage- hurting him and raising his impatience… and then l’ordre de bataille: “I am ready for anything His Majesty would please to give me as command.”

Debacle ensues.

Rehnskiöld’s regiment strikes the Russians and retreats like a wave against a cliff. Over and over again. Unlike the litter-ridden King of Sweden, the Czar commands his ranks on his white mare, even if a gunshot’s pierced his tricorn hat. The Czarina -herself a vicar’s daughter, a Carolean’s bride, and a born Swedish subject- supplies the weary wounded on her side with vodka and bandages.

Rehnskiöld’s regiment strikes the Russians and retreats like a wave against a cliff. Over and over again. Other Swedish officers fare even worse… or is it better? Venerable colonels and young lieutenants alike have had their hearts pierced, their throats slit, or their heads severed by cold steel or hot lead, and been consequently earthed, while the rank and file become a feast for ravens. Yet the fate of the prisoners of war is far worse than death...

The Battle of Poltava will go down in Swedish history as the Twilight of its Golden Age: the Swedish ranks are decimated, King Charles XII must flee south in a wounded state, much like Tilly decades before. Nine thousand slain and six thousand prisoners! The night after the battle, he spends it under the shade of a hawthorn with the enemy in hot pursuit, in danger every moment of being taken by the enemy: horse after horse breaks down under his free men. At the time of crossing the Dnieper, he is still unconscious. The flight of Charles and his few free men becomes a real inferno in the summer heat of the steppes, the young ruler ablaze with thirst and fever, delirious and litter-ridden, the July and August sun adding up to the fire in his wounded foot, poisoning his blood... and there's not a single spring around to quench his burning thirst.
Is this the end of the young fool who called himself King of Sweden? We shall find out at the end of this tale.
Those of his officers and men who have not been slain have been taken prisoner, to arrive in Siberia as "indentured servants" of the Russian Empire.
That evening, before the long journey eastward, the Swedish officers are invited to a feast in the Czar’s pavilion. There, Peter Romanov explains that they can keep their swords, as he raises one glass of champagne or Riesling after the other to the younger Swedish ruler, whom the Czar calls his teacher and sees as a worthy opponent... until, at the umpteenth glass, he gets really intoxicated.
This will be one of the very few chances they will have to refresh themselves. The sun to their backs does not equal that the heat of the day, and that of their wounds, will disappear. Furthermore, after sunset, even in this season, the nights are as deathly cold as the winter days. “If King Charles hasn’t died of thirst, he may freeze to death…” Either one demise or the other ends the lives of most of the prisoners of war.

Lieutenant Gustav Adolf von Ringstetten, who has lost his crucifix in the battle, is among the surviving captives. And so is Fitzwilliam, whom the detachment keeps as a spare surgeon to heal their own officers, and who keeps a positive outlook on life as he tends to the others’ wounds, regardless of nation or allegiance, including those of Gustav Adolf… which he takes special care of.

He was captured when unconscious, to be taken with most of the Swedish prisoners to a stanitsa, a wooden outpost half-lost in the vast steppe west of the Urals. Under military supervision, the captives are now obliged to mow the tall grass, in the blazing heat of the day, and lift it onto sleighs and carts. 
In winter, they have to perform various chores for the officers, and even the commandant, of the stanitsa. Such as burning charcoal. A far luckier Gustav Adolf von Ringstetten is employed as a cupbearer at the commandant’s, whose eye he has caught...
Those of his friends who weren't slain at Poltava or died along the way lose their lives due to the harsh conditions at the indentured servants' quarters. Including Jamie Fitzwilliam, which makes Gustav Adolf lose all hope and cheer.

Racked with survivor's guilt, the young lieutenant asks himself why he didn't fall on the battlefield like his royal namesake. Three years of toil and trouble harden his smooth hands and downy cheeks, but it is his lonely and broken soul, bereft of hope, that suffers the most.
Rehnskiöld was taken prisoner as well, but he is confined elsewhere.

Meanwhile in Värmland, Liselotte dies of old age, and she is buried beneath a more modest rune stone next to her spouse.

The Ringstettens hope for their imprisoned son to return from Russia as soon as the war is over, or else the foundry Walloons will become their masters and heirs.

For Midsummer Eve, the minstrels return again. This time, they have learned some more tales abroad. A veiled young girl (Ilse incognito) sings one of these as a duet with Andreas: "The Ballad of Isabeau Fournier".

The titular character of this song is a dark-haired French Protestant commoner girl, orphaned and exiled by Louis XIV's persecution (even branded with the fleur-de-lys lily on her left shoulder by French soldiers who tried to rape her), who joined Czar Peter's entourage in the Low Countries. Aleksei and Vladimir, two Protestant officers of the Czar's personal guard, were smitten with her. When she married the former while in Prussia, in Küstrin to be more precise, the latter contrived to get Aleksei drunk, have him killed in a duel, and remarry the widowed and pregnant Isabeau, accepting her unborn child as his.

Such misconduct had Czar Peter reassign Vlad, with Isa in tow, to a wooden fort, a stanitsa way east into the Russian hinterland. There, their daughter was born and christened Ekaterina (though she is familiarly known as Katia or Katinka). The outpost is mostly populated by Protestant Russian military and their families, and it currently serves as a prisoner camp for Swedish POWs.

Guess who is one of those captives?

Yes, it is Gustav Adolf.

The relationship between Vlad, now commandant of the fort, and Isa has grown cold as the steppe air in midwinter: he merely sees her as his trophy wife (and Katia as their trophy child). Their blond and amber-eyed marriageable daughter has grown up in the officers' residence, among stories and crafts, and entertaining the children of other officers. Whether her own French mother (the lily on whose left shoulder raises many a question to her daughter), German explorers who stop for a rest (Steller's expedition, but more than that and more relevantly, suave and worldly Low Countries courtier/anatomist/infantry officer/botanist/inventor/upper-class Renaissance man Frederik Gustav Kuyrijsk, who hates military men and impertinent questions, and feels more comfortable at any ruler's court than in the too provincial stanitsa), or Tatars who pay tribute to the garrison, the spirited Katia grows up curious about other cultures and nations, wishing to discover them.

Gustav Adolf has, in the meantime, caught the attention not only of his sergeant overseer, but also that of the commandant, nicknamed "Caligula", himself. Vladimir is astounded by the young Swede's resilience, and he starts not only to abuse the lieutenant by having him carry pines the size of the watchtowers while whipped with a cat of nine tails... but also by having him run the gauntlet on the outpost courtyard as a show for the garrison, just for fun. And also arranging boxing matches between “the Swede” and his boldest non-commissioned officers. 
And why? Because of his bloody reassignment! Not only was he denied social life at court (while others, like “that lucky bastard Kuyrijsk”, are allowed this privilege), he was also denied a glorious death and/or feats of daring-do on the battlefield! If he couldn't fight for czar and country at Poltava, at least he can smite the enemy captives to death while they're in his power... and do whatever the hinterland assignment may provide to his comfort...

Though an overly effeminate fop like Vlad (in that "big wig" and with that beauty mark) may seem out of place in the "Wild East", at least he has become a corrupt governor, free to trick and insult the Czar behind his back. In other words, the commandant's will is the law in his province. And he exercises the same authority towards his wife and child, unaware that Katia also has secrets and plans of her own...

She has been watching Gustav Adolf from her bedchamber window every evening at dusk. And he has become aware that he is being watched...

Within the fort, the guardhouses and the prisoners' quarters are separated, like in Nazi concentration camps, by a sentinel-patrolled fence. And there is a gap in the fence, through which the Swedish lieutenant and the half-Russian mademoiselle can contemplate a person like themselves, but with gender for an only difference.

As they converse in secret, they find out that they have finally met each other's intellectual equal, as they tell each other stories and discuss myths together in French. Gustav Adolf confesses that he misses his native shire in Sweden, and Katinka wants to go there with him and experience some real-life adventures, no longer those in books. He wonders why the Russians don't kill their prisoners, she answers that maybe it's a sign that he was meant to live and return alive to Värmland. She wonders how she can be free but "imprisoned" (sheltered as an aristocratic only child), while the captives are able to leave the fort. Every day at dusk, they are both there, by the fence, each on one side, to cheer each other up... looking, full of nostalgia, at the setting sun.
However, as a Swedish officer, the lieutenant can't marry until his liege has found a consort. But Charles XII is married to war and most likely to die childless. Katia suggests that the Swedish ruler is most likely to be killed in action at an early age or to have died of the wounds he sustained, leaving Gustav Adolf's heart far lighter than before. They also teach each other languages for the upcoming prison break: he learns Russian from her, while she learns Swedish from him.
She always has a drink of vodka to quench his thirst, a woolly blanket for the winter cold, ice and bandages for his injuries, and a friendly smile. “When I was thirsty you gave me to drink, when I was freezing you clothed me warm, when I was hurt you healed me, when I was in prison you visited me…” he sighs.
They also exchange folk stories from their own countries and experiences from their lives. While Gustav Adolf tells his new friend about his royal namesake’s feats of derring-do, Katia tells the Swedish lieutenant her favourite story, that of the Minstrel Czarina:
"There once was a young czar who went to war and disappeared on the battlefield. His lady wife, rather than stay at court and wait for his return, resolved to cut her hair and go forth into the wide world as a minstrel playing her music, dressed up as a lad, with a gusli (a harp-like instrument) strapped to her back, and set off into the world, not before entrusting the regency of the realm to her trusted council.
After much wandering, she reached a Tatar encampment and found her spouse prisoner there. The minstrel played so wonderfully that the Tatar warlord was moved to tears and accepted her request to set a certain prisoner of war free. Upon returning to their court together, the minstrel told the czar who "he" actually was..."
The lieutenant loves this story as well, especially the fact that it reminds him of the Orpheus and Eurydice story with an unexpected happy ending. Katia thinks, coincidentally, the same, and she aspires to be like the Minstrel Czarina someday.
Moreover, they share each other’s first love stories: Katia’s infatuation with Kuyrijsk and Gustav Adolf’s with Aurora, neither of which has reached a happy ending. Both young people wish that they had met each other’s cultured, graceful, and mature first love. And soon, they realise that they have, after all, got each other instead.

The Commandant has grown suspicious, as the garrison's younger officers vie for Katia's affections and she spurns them all. Furthermore, there is unrest brewing throughout Russia and it appears that all the Swedish POWs across the vast realm, including women and children, are planning a coup to flee their imprisonment and return to their promised land. One winter evening, he sends Gustav Adolf into the woods to get some tinder from the legendary and well-known Baba (Granny) Yaga: a wise old crone who lives in a stove hut on hen's legs in a swampy clearing with her blue cat (really cobalt blue!) and flies every night across the land in a huge mortar, with the matching pestle for an oar. Katia and the officers' children have been scared into better behaviour with the threat that she'll kidnap them otherwise.
At dusk, Gustav Adolf reaches Yaga's cot and discovers that she is not evil, but merely misunderstood, receiving her tinderbox and a track of fireflies to guide him back to the fort.
When winter changes into spring, Katia has already decided to take Gustav Adolf back to Sweden. Isabeau is worried about her daughter's escape, but subsequently reassured, though not without difficulties. The girl herself has packed a spare gown, a wooden doll she's made herself for comfort, a sharp knife, some bread, and diluted vodka for the summer-long trip, and she keeps on taking Swedish lessons in secret from her beau.
On a warm springtime's night, Katia, dressed as a Cossack, finally makes it past the fence and wakes Gustav Adolf up, while whispering about their freedom plans. The Russians did not confiscate the Swedish officers' weapons after Poltava: the young lieutenant in blue is still armed on parole and able to defend his beloved.
Both leap over the fort palisade, in the most iconic scene in the story arc, on twin mares stolen from the officers' stables: Gustav Adolf on white Foudre (Lightning) and Katinka on black Poudre (Gunpowder). When the garrison's officers give chase, the fugitives seek shelter in the woods, where they transform into flying squirrels and their steeds into flycatchers (black and white passerines). When the detachment returns empty-handed to the guardhouse, the commandant suffers from a heart attack, clenching his chest and falling unconscious.
In the meantime, the two squirrels and their flycatchers are still bound for Sweden, always heading towards the setting sun. They encounter Yaga in her mortar, and the crone and her cat explain that she has given them the ability to shapeshift through the wooden doll, now kept inside one of Katia's flight membranes, which they have to squeeze to transform into the most convenient shape there can be.

After a couple of weeks, the woodland segues into steppe, and they encounter a wedding procession of a nomadic clan: a child bride, Leyli, travelling from her parents’ encampment to her husband’s with her entourage. Katia turns herself into a female falcon and Gustav Adolf into a eunuch (calling himself Karel), while the flycatchers become horses once more. Turns out that our heroine knows both nomadic clans. The freeriders assume that the horses, eunuch, and falcon are wedding gifts sent by the Russians as a token of peace. Even more, Leyli wants to keep the newly re-humanized Gustav Adolf (shocked by the fact that he has become a human once more, but with darker skin and a shriller voice) for a confidant, dissatisfied with her adult husband. 
Never mind, it’s just to spend three days with the riders. The suspiciously Yaga-like shaman, named Yaiza and also endowed with a literally blue cat that can speak, gets to know them, recognizes them, and helps them escape by fooling the rest of the clan with an illusion that will make the runaways invisible, rendering an ordinary falcon as "Katia" and Yaiza's cat as Karel the eunuch.

During a hunt after the ritual wedding, the eunuch and his pets flee the encampment, and they enter the woods once more, pursued by a detachment of Tatar riders until they enter the woodland once more, where the nomads can’t ride that fast or see them that clearly.

Fortunately, both Katia and Gustav Adolf are safe and sound.

After a week and a half or two, they enter another stanitsa in the midst of a vast sunflower field, turn into orphan children (“Katinka” and “Vaniushka”) with wooden dolls, and are received by the local Orthodox priest and his wife. When they have rested there for a whole month, they take their leave of their kindly guardians and leave their horses, still remaining as dolls, behind. They’re even shown the way to Saint Petersburg, where, according to “Katinka”, they will seek their fortune.

As soon as the outpost is out of sight, and as a summer storm breaks out, they turn into flying squirrels once more, to continue their journey faster through the woods.

Until, in late summer, they reach a vast and elegant baroque palace, that Katia mistakes for Versailles. They fall off a fir tree becoming human again. But they are wearing court dresses instead of their military uniforms, and approached in that state by finely dressed and French-speaking lords and ladies, including a sharply-dressed Kuyrijsk in silks and velvet, who mistake them for newcomers of their rank from the provinces. Turns out that their "Versailles" was the Czar's French-style court, on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, and our hero and heroine receive some aid from His Imperial Majesty (whom they had met downtown, saving a girl-child Sophie from drowning in a canal) to board a clipper, across the Baltic, bound for Kalmar, Sweden. Once they have landed and resume their ride on land towards the Ringstetten estate, summer turns into autumn.

In the Swedish woods, Gustav Adolf and his fiancée transform back into their usual selves, Katia discarding her Cossack's uniform and putting on the frock she had packed in advance. The two young riders, galloping through copses of emerald firs, golden lindens, and golden birches, are completely unaware of what will occur once they have reached Värmland. Something that will shatter their hopes and put them on trial.
For a white hare crosses the riders' path before they reach the Ringstetten estate. Just like before the Poltava debacle, the omen repeats itself...