THE RINGSTETTEN SAGA XXI: THE FATE OF KRISTER

Previously on The Ringstetten Saga:
In late autumn the same year, a detachment shows up near the estate. The rittmeister (captain) who leads the unit is searching for the highwaymen of those woods, a wild ragtag band known as the Värmland Wolves. Surprised by a thunderstorm, the soldiers take refuge at Vänersvik for the night. That evening, the Finnish rittmeister has a conversation with Krister's parents, as our young hero eavesdrops from behind the door. According to the rittmeister, Krister is meant to be a military officer. There is a vacant ensign slot in the garrison of a Karelian fortress, across the country, right at the Swedish-Russian border. The Count and Countess decide to send the other son of theirs to the army, for, according to the rittmeister, "he may become a general if he plays his cards right". And because Kristian is the heir and the other two are spares.
It is thus decided that Krister should be an officer: his dream is finally come true. But insecurity seizes him as well: maybe he will never become a general or a war hero?
So young Krister spends the night awake, much to the surprise of the rittmeister upon finding the boy unconscious in the room he once shared with his twin brother. Our future officer does not even listen to his parents' words of farewell nor feel their kisses, and he falls asleep on horseback, riding behind the rittmeister, as the golden birch leaves fall onto the soldiers' uniforms.
And thus, Krister finally makes it to his first assignment! The military complex surrounded by two concentric star-shaped ramparts with their respective moats (and the many menacing cannons) makes a deep impression in the heart of our young ensign. He asks the guards for the way to the officers' residence, and on the way, he discovers the outpost has got a forge, a bakery, a tavern, and even farm animals like sheep and chickens. All of this business is obviously militarized.
The newcomer is hazed by his fellow officers to take the Commandant's wife by the boobs (the Ramsays, the Commandant's family, living apart from the subaltern officers, are seen as "invisible and powerful gods"). Luckily for Krister, Lady Ramsay's maidservant happens to be taking a stroll in the courtyard and flirting with the officer on duty. Krister rushes forth and grabs the maid. Then, he lies to the other officers about his alleged "success".
A new life begins for Krister von Ringstetten: a life of drilling on the fields and in the woods with his company (training in marksmanship, riding, climbing...). Sometimes, he happens to be on guard duty. But the evenings that he is not on duty, returning thirsty and weary at dusk, he frequents the outpost tavern with his fellow officers. A nice glass of brandy (let it be Cognac) and a deck of cards, and sometimes party until midnight!
It seems that Cupid has either forgotten Krister or realized that the young officer is queer. The Ramsays' twin daughters, Anne-Marie and Marianne, are already betrothed each to an officer of the garrison. And he doesn't take to anyone of them (in spite of their good looks).
Years follow years: the young officer exerts himself by day, and at night he sometimes stands guard in a sentry box (in starry calm, thunderstorm, or snowfall), drinking in the tavern (when he isn't on duty) in the evenings, making good friends in the other subaltern officers. This is routine, though exciting. Such is the life of a military officer in times of peace. The excitement in it all, coupled with his sunny mood, make Krister come of age, though without renouncing to pleasure.
Most of the garrison's officers, including both Colonel Ramsay and our young ensign, support the Hat Party, which defends the need of a Swedish Empire along the Baltic coast (the dream shattered at Poltava), and thus, revenge against Russia for the defeat at the start of the century. The absolutism that follows Gustavus III's velvet revolution, in spite of dissolving the parties, doesn't change the opinion of the local officer class.
The uniform, however, goes through a couple of changes: the tricorn is replaced with a black top hat or "storm hat", and officers have to wear a white kerchief, a sign of loyalty to the new king, tied around the left arm.
Rarely, routine is broken by an unexpected event: a promotion, a demotion, a reassignment that takes a new officer into the outpost or an old friend away, even a rain of frogs takes place in springtime, one day after Krister is made a lieutenant! The most important thing is that peace has lasted for about a decade since young Ringstetten arrived.
One day in early summer 1788, the region is shaken by a rumour that armed Cossacks have crossed the border from Russia into Sweden. Which can only mean W-A-R. The officers that formerly belonged to the Hat Party feel that their prayers for national greatness have been heard.
The leader of the Russian Army is the ruler of the empire herself, a clever Prussian who successfully dethroned her weak-willed consort. Catherine the Great should not be underestimated for being a woman: the Czarina has got decades of experience in statesmanship and warfare. Compared to her, Gustavus III is a newbie (both as a ruler and as a commander).
In such startling circumstances, Lieutenant Krister von Ringstetten is reassigned to another regiment. On the frontline. A dream come true, won't it be?
He is rather impatient upon arriving in camp: meeting the sergeant, a born and raised Karelian, the child musicians, and the colonel's cutesy teenage daughter, a red-haired and freckled perky camp follower... wait a second! Is history repeating itself? And does Charlotte Vandeer actually have a crush on Krister? It seems so. Anyway, he starts viewing the redhead as an annoying stalker... for she follows the young lieutenant like a newly-hatched duckling! She sleeps by his side at the campfire, which gives the colonel an idea: Why can't she marry you? Krister can't say that he's queer, or that she is too young to think of such things (Charlotte is three or four years younger than Liselotte!). He actually loves her... as a friend or a little sister, somewhat to her chagrin.
And he is impatient for his baptism of fire to come, though he finds battle something not that romantic during the first confrontation he takes part in: gunshots echoing across the plains, the scent of blood and gunpowder, glimpses of running, riding, or falling blue and green coats (of friends and enemies, respectively) through the gunsmoke... The Russian ranks cross paths with the Swedes, and the wounded, once hit, scream in agony. The warmth of July days increases, gradually turning into heat. Karelia, a peaceful frontier region, has become Hell on Earth.
During a battle, our young lieutenant falls off his wounded steed. Luckily, he lands on soft ground (on a slain Cossack), but he has no time to react when he feels a glowing object enter his back. He is so startled that he gets instantly dizzy, and then everything turns black before his eyes.
The last he can hear are the survivors of his company, among which the sergeant is not counted:
"Lieutenant! Answer, please!"
"He's still breathing! Come on, let's get him out of here!"
When Krister comes to in a field hospital, his torso wrapped in bandages, he can't comprehend how lucky he has been to have survived. Both the regimental surgeon and Charlotte, who helps the surgeons tend to the wounded, are standing by his sickbed. The lieutenant's mind is initially clouded, but, after some time, he is completely conscious, and he puts two and two together.
The red-haired girl lays something in his hand: a bloodstained chunk of lead, the size of a hazelnut. Krister makes the right guess: it's the bullet that hit him. Somewhat later, while bloodletting, the surgeon explains: "You're ostensibly lucky, Herr Lieutenant! That bullet was a fine one: right on the left shoulder blade! And the marksman was far enough for the bullet not to have plunged deeper! Otherwise, Herr Lieutenant, you wouldn't be here at all!"
These words won't only fill Krister with relief, but also with worry.
At the start of his convalescence, he is impatient to return to the field, but his attitude undergoes a significant change. The lieutenant's wound takes a fortnight to heal, his system being young and resilient. But, while Sweden and Russia fight each other in the outside world, two worldviews dramatically confront each other within him. One of them, from innocent childhood, shows only the bright side of war: the Breitenfelds and Lechs and Lützens of the Memoirs, and those of his many roleplays. The other worldview, more recent, displays an inferno where thousands of young lives are discarded: warfare as a dark board game, meant for important people like kings and czarinas, played with expendable human pieces, and with a prize as absurd as being able to move the line that tells the opponent's lands from one's own.
In the end, the latter view of war is the one to emerge victorious: being a subaltern officer, Krister is, after all, just a piece of middling rank, neither high nor low, in a nonsensical game of war.
Before he can be discharged from the field hospital, yet having fully recovered, he takes his uniform and flees the camp on a short and warm summer night full of stars. Fireflies circle around him, like stars that have flown too close to the Earth. Frogs are heard croaking, and crickets are heard chirping.
At the crack of dawn, he notices an abandoned farm on a hilltop: it will prove a nice resting place on his ramblings. Krister doesn't regret having deserted: rather than that, he's full of confidence.
Inside the farmhouse, he meets dozens of young men dressed like him: in plumed "storm hats" and blue coats with white arm-kerchiefs and epaulets, with short swords and pistols. These Swedish officers, among which Krister recognizes a few comrades from the fortress where he was garrisoned during peacetime, haven't deserted: they're on leave and will soon return to their respective regiments.
All of them share the young lieutenant's view of war as nonsense, and they have written and signed a letter in French, adressed to Her Imperial Majesty Catherine II Sophia Dorothea, Autocrat of All Russias... The message: to reconcile and restore peace to both realms in the name of Gustavus III, King of Sweden. They've even forged the King's handwriting to make it look more convincing!
They couldn't have come up with a better idea!
The farmstead's name is Anjala. The date is the thirteenth of August 1788.
The quill and ink are brought forth one last time, and soon a final signature is written confidently, without the slightest twinge of doubt: Lieutenant Krister von Ringstetten.
Some of the peacemakers leave to give the Czarina the letter, while most of the others return each one to his regiment. Krister, the odd one out, is left alone, to live the errant and wild life of an outcast (he lied to the others, telling them he was still in the ranks, not to be punished).
He lives on berries, mushrooms, and water, sometimes begging before a rectory or a tavern, sleeping in caves and abandoned crofts, sometimes in rectories. Upon seeing Swedish soldiers, he is naturally afraid of being punished for his crimes. Should he encounter the Russian military, he could be taken prisoner or sent to the firing squad, which Krister considers a better fate than being punished by his own.
One stormy autumn evening, he seeks refuge in a village inn, outside which he sees a dazzling baroque carriage fit for an important person, such as a Russian general or the Czarina herself.
The guests are mostly Swedish soldiers, but there is a person who attracts everyone's attention: an outspoken gentleman in his thirties, dressed in a finely powdered wig, a pink brocade overcoat, a cream-coloured waistcoat, bright green breeches, and buckled low shoes. Who's he?
"Not an actor", Krister thinks. "Actors travel in troupes". The landlady gives a clue: she boasts of her good luck to get to serve His Majesty! Thus, the stranger is Gustavus III! What a shocking surprise! Could chance have arranged for the paths of the King and young Ringstetten to cross?
Anyway, Krister asks for a strong drink to warm him from within. The landlady, feeling sorry, offers him a draught of potato brandy. Down the lieutenant's throat it goes, at one fell swoop. Just what he needed after wandering in the cold autumn storm: it feels like swallowing a little flame! And, being generally sober, the effect strikes like lightning: the liquor warms his blood, turning his cheeks rosy and making his eyes glitter. Finally, the effect of brandy even clouds his mind, and he begins to stagger. In such a state, King Gustavus takes the young officer by the hand and leads him upstairs. Both men enter the same bedroom, though one of them is too intoxicated to find out. A valet takes the lieutenant's uniform off, to subsequently undress the ruler. Krister is getting more and more nervous, until he finally tells Gustavus the whole truth under the influence:
"Do as you please with me! Once I was Lieutenant Krister Axel von Ringstetten... Now I am but a miserable sinner! After being wounded, I thought that warfare was nonsensical, and thus, I fled the war front! I have even signed the Anjala officers' letter of peace! Please have me court-martialled, so I may be either banished from this land or imprisoned for a lifetime, if not sentenced to the firing squad! My fate is in your royal hands!"
His Majesty replies with a Cheshire Cat grin, embracing the young officer and taking off the bandages from his torso. The wound on the left side of Krister's back has become a little round scar.
Both men go to sleep together, in the same bed: the officer's head resting on the ruler's chest, so Krister can get to hear Gustavus's frantic heartbeat and his steady breathing. They tickle each other under the cover for a while before falling asleep.
The next morning, Lieutenant von Ringstetten wakes up in a cold sweat, pale as his shirt, with a pulsating pain both in the head and in the rear. During his and his liege lord's levée (courtesy of the same valet who had arranged their evening couchée), he remembers having confessed his crime to the most important person in the Kingdom of Sweden. The officer, filled with guilt and regret, explains this to the ruler. Krister expects, obviously, a court martial and a severe punishment to accept. But, to his surprise, Gustavus III takes him by the hands and replies, with that Cheshire Cat grin-like smile of his:
"Pas de craindre, mon garçon! (Fear not, my lad!) Should I ever dare to punish such a gentleman? You've given me the best soirée in a lifetime, so why should you ever be court-martialled? Thus I pardon you, Lieutenant Krister Axel von Ringstetten! Vous êtes pardonné!"
The young officer didn't see that coming: a royal pardon, instead of a court martial! And besides, His Majesty reunites Krister with his regiment, for the lieutenant to read a few letters from his loved ones. One from a certain estate in Värmland, the other from a bourgeois household on the outskirts of Uppsala.
The latter is, obviously, his ailing brother Kristian's will. He wishes to be buried in the Ringstetten estate garden in Värmland, he has appointed his twin brother Krister (who survived the war, as he has stated in a letter sent to Kristian during his convalescence, before desertion) his heir, consoled his own parents in another previous letter, and there is even an arrangement of a levirate marriage between the widowed Erika and the still unmarried Krister. The young bridegroom is somewhat startled, and he doubts what to do for a while: he's queer, like his liege lord, yet he feels sorry for the plight of Erika and her daughters. And thus, he decides to return to Vänersvik. With Krister comes Charlotte, now a ward of the State and completely orphaned after her father's death on the battlefield. Peace has been signed. And Sweden has proved not to be a fallen empire by winning the war! 
The young girl is somewhat jealous of her beloved's betrothed, which may have devastating consequences...
The promise has nevertheless to be fulfilled. A modest gentleman, his daughter, and her twin children soon arrive at Vänersvik, all dressed in black and having travelled in a black-draped carriage with the lifeless form of a young scholar across a cold, snowy landscape. At the funeral, in a French garden covered in a blanket of snow, they encounter a young man with Kristian's exact appearance, dressed in an officer's uniform. The next day, as Karl Johan returns to Uppsala, Erika and the twins stay on the estate and prepare a second wedding while getting to know Krister. He has become a reserved and cold veteran, at first indifferent to Erika yet compelled to marry her, but soon he feels sorry for her and opens up to his new relatives, though he is at first reluctant to make love and produce an heir, as Linnéa and Tradescantia gradually start to accept him. They even get to visit Miss Ulrika on Honeysuckle Farm, where the young girls will go to school together with peasant children, to bring the elite closer to the common people. And so will the expected male heir: Krister has finally yielded to his duty, and Erika has a bun in the oven!
As for Charlotte, she reacts coolly to the appearance of a young wife for her Krister and two foster sisters for herself. The redhead is five or six years older than Erika's daughters... and there will be a fourth child in November: a little Gustav or Sophia (the Ringstettens' hopes of a male heir are high once more!). But is her coolness for real?

THE RINGSTETTEN SAGA - ARC II GLOSSARY EXPLANATIONS

THE RINGSTETTEN SAGA - ARC II GLOSSARY EXPLANATIONS

• Värmland: the landlocked hinterland province of Sweden where The Ringstetten Saga is mostly set. Life revolves around the lakes, of which the largest is the Vänern. On the shores of the Vänern stands many a whitewashed noble estate, such as Vänersvik (Vänern's Creek), the ancestral home of the Swedish Ringstettens. Most of the province is wooded and mountainous, its residents relying largely on forestry, fishing, and mining. The Wallonian settlements (see "Walloons" below) and the local community of Karlstadt (Charlestown) feature a minority bourgeoisie, of foreign descent, second in importance to the lords and gentry of the province. The Governor of Värmland resides in Karlstadt during most of the year. In summer, his family resides on one of the noble estates by the Vänern.
• The Crown and estate lords: Nearly all the noble estates in Sweden were gifts made by Queen Christina to veteran officers, as payment for their services to Crown and state, and Vänersvik is no exception. The impressive whitewashed chateaux with their ordered French gardens offer a stark contrast to the cottages of the common people and to the Walloons' steel mills. In the late seventeenth century, absolute monarch Charles XI claimed vast tracts of land from the lords and gentry of the Swedish provinces. Said lands started to depend directly from the Crown. Decades later, the war on Russia called up most of the blue-blooded youth of the kingdom to battle. Few officers returned from that campaign, having been either killed in action, died of inflicted wounds, or died in captivity in Siberian prisons and camps.
• Walloons in Sweden: In the Flemish/Dutch theatre of the Thirty Years' War, Jean 't Serclaës de Tilly persecuted many of his countrymen on religious grounds, Flanders and Wallonia being Spanish provinces under Habsburg rule. The surviving Protestant Wallonian refugees found sanctuary in Sweden, where Gustavus Adolphus was delighted to give them asylum. The Walloons opened steel mills, around which real industrial colonies/villages, mostly with an all-Wallonian population, were founded. Sweden could finally, with access to Wallonian, Flemish, and Castilian metalworking technology added to its mineral resources, produce weapons (guns and blades) on a massive scale, which partly explains the Swedish victories in the Thirty Years' War. The van der Heide foundry was such an industrial complex. Its purpose in the narrative being to explore noble/bourgeois relations, said dynamics have been completely explored (initial rivalry, arranged marriage, friendship) in the second story arc.
• Classical myths were in vogue in the eighteenth century, especially those of Ovid's Metamorphoses, such as "Echo and Narcissus", "Salmacis and Hermaphroditus", and "Orpheus and Eurydice", all three of which are quoted in the story arc and mirror its plot.
• Old Gewehr: the veteran of the Polish Wars is based upon a real-life phenomenon. During the absolutist reign of Charles XI, every shire in Sweden (Baltic conquests included) was compelled by royal decree to lodge a soldier, who would represent the Crown at a lower scale than the province governor. Depending on the wealth of the local lord, the soldier would have higher or lower rank. A scarred Ensign Johan Gewehr, assigned to Vänersvik before he could receive his lieutenancy and be titled, came over from Poland with his camp follower wife Kerstin and their children, as married "quartered soldiers" always did.
• Old Gewehr's rank? Referred to as "ensign" in English, he is actually a "fanjunkare" ("Fahnenjunker" in German), a Germanic/Nordic rank in between sergeant major and ensign. Since there seemed to be no corresponding rank in the Anglosphere, he was made "assistant ensign", later shortened to "ensign". A true ensign ("fänrik"/"Fähnrich"), just below lieutenant, would have been a far younger (adolescent) commissioned officer, with an aristocratic surname (for instance, young Gerhard von Ringstetten upon joining the Swedish ranks in 1631).
• Charles XII never married or had any children, he was rather close to his own generals... In fact, all of the Swedish royals (Gustavus Adolphus, Christina, Gustavus III... and Charles XII) featured in the Saga were at least bisexual. Charles XII appears to be strictly queer (a more feminine queer would be Gustavus III in Arc 3).
• Carolean culture of self-restraint: reminiscent of Spartans, Romans, Cromwell's Ironsides, and twentieth-century Fascist dictatorships like the Third Reich. Painful punishments (the cat of nine tails) and war trauma helped the values defended by Charles XII (emotional restraint, and keeping cool, but also strength, prowess, and camaraderie).
• A Saxon Oberyn: Indeed, Augustus the Strong von Wettin was heavy-set, with a passion for ladies, big game, strong drink, warmer climates, warfare, and feats of strength.
• Aurora von Königsmarck: impoverished and comeback court lady, poet, musician, polyglot, electoral mistress, in love with King Charles XII... such a powerful and badass lady, and a countess to boot, existed in real life! After Augustus replaced her with the Austrian lady, when Aurora spent her twilight years in Quedlinburg, she devoted herself to her vassals; to her passion, writing poetry (which became a true solace for her); and to her little boy Maurice. Furthermore, Aurora von Königsmarck kept her wit and her good looks with the pass of decades.
• Philipp Christoph von Königsmarck and Sophia Dorothea: It should be remembered, that the young Count had become not only one of the handsomest men of his time, and was possessed of immense wealth that made the very costly style in which he lived the theme of general admiration; but that he was a remarkably intelligent man, apparently a finished gentleman, a graceful courtier, and a brave and skilful officer. The Count had already distinguished himself in a manner that had brought him no slight degree of fame wherever he had shown himself. His handsome person, graceful manners, and sparkling conversation had combined to make him a great favourite with both sexes; but his principles were very unsettled, and his life was disgraced by a tendency to the licentiousness so common at this period. Aurora’s and Amalia’s guardian, brother, and role model casts one of the longest shadows ever in the Saga. The dashing young count and colonel in command of the Braunschweig Electoral Guard, a great officer and courtier of his days, cultured, learned (even at Oxford!), well-travelled, and inured to war, attractive and popular at court, had a love affair with his childhood friend, kindred spirit, and liege lady, who was out of his league and unhappily married, trapped in an abusive relationship and oppressed by her mother-in-law. Then, when Elector George of Braunschweig, the betrayed husband, found out (from an older court lady whom Königsmarck had scorned), the dashing count went missing, as if into thin air, at the Leineschloss, the spouses’ residence. Sophia was accused of his disappearance, separated from her children (said to be her lover’s) and banished by her spouse to the provinces, confined to Schloss Ahlden, for a lifetime, until she died there more than three decades later. His disappearance let his two sisters, who were also his wards, to fend for themselves, kickstarting Aurora’s ambition. In an Easter egg narrated by Countess Clara Elisabeth von Platen née von Meisenberg, the schemer behind it all, the fate of Count Königsmarck is finally revealed: he was stabbed in the back at the Leineschloss by his own drunken men, plied with liquor, at the Elector’s command, having fallen into an ambush set to take his life, a plot devised by the betrayed husband and by the scorned countess. The death scene is shown just like the one in the lovely romantic film Saraband for Dead Lovers: stabbed in the back by the lieutenant who led the detachment and run through with that officer’s sword, the young colonel staggers and collapses, his life quickly ebbing forth. Then, his lifeless form was concealed under the floor of the hall where he was killed. Definitely, it sounds Shakespearean but it’s real life:
• She (Clara) took an early opportunity of exciting the mind of the Elector against him by the most exaggerated account of what he had said about her, her sister, and Mademoiselle Schulenburg, with a comprehensive addition of offensive observations upon the sovereign of Hanover which he had never uttered. The Elector was very much offended with his Colonel of the Guards for such behaviour to his and his son’s mistresses; but though this was very bad, to speak disrespectfully of his patron was abominable, and he readily gave a promise it should not go unpunished.
  To obtain such proof was now her great object. She was not scrupulous in the means she employed, and if she could not get the testimony she required, She was determined to get something that should be mistaken for it. Excited by rage, jealousy, and hatred, she had sufficient stimulants at work to bring out all that mischievous talent which had so helped her forward during her career, and moreover, she had at her hand agents of all kinds, of whose readiness at any bad purpose she had ample evidence. She well considered her plans, and when they were mature, satisfied of their success, she kept like a bloated spider, out of sight of her victims, but ready to pounce upon them the moment they got entangled in the intricate web she had spun for their destruction.
  Just at this crisis, Count Königsmark returned, brilliant as ever, and completely ignorant of the danger in which he stood. He met with but a cold reception at the Electoral Palace, but this did not appear to give him any uneasiness.
  When he retired to his chamber, he found a note written in pencil, from the Princess, requesting he would visit her that evening. It was an unusual time to go to the Princess’s apartments; nevertheless, he went, and was admitted. On some surprise being expressed that he should have ventured there at such an hour, he produced the pencil note. It was a forgery. This discovery should have put them on their guard, and the Princess ought to have dismissed her visitor as speedily as possible. But they had much to say to each other, and the Princess had communications to make, an opportunity for which might not occur again.
  At last, with many professions of fidelity and devotion, from the Count, and of earnest gratitude from the Princess, the former took his departure under the guidance, to a certain distance from that part of the palace, of the faithful lady in waiting.
  The forged letter of invitation was the work of the crafty Countess Platen, (as she subsequently confessed,) who immediately she learned it had produced the effect for which it had been designed, rushed to the Elector, and made such an enormity of the unseasonable visit of Königsmark to the Princess, recommending the Count’s imprisonment by so many apparently unanswerable arguments, that he was induced to order his arrest. This, however, he did reluctantly, and was quite unaware to what an extent she was deceiving him, and little imagined how much he was about to compromise the honour of his family. The old man was so completely the dupe of her assurances and representations, that he even complied with her solicitations to leave the management of this arrest to her, believing, as he jocosely observed, she was anxious to prevent so handsome a man as his Colonel of the Guards being hurt, should he be so rash as to offer resistance. Three trabants (yeomen of the guard) and their superior were then placed at her disposal, directions being given them by their sovereign to obey the commands of the Countess Platen, in arresting an individual who would be pointed out to them by her. To this the wily Countess induced him to add, that they were to use their weapons, should it be necessary.
  The Countess conducted the soldiers, on quitting the presence of the Elector, into the hall that led by three steps to the apartment facing the Leine Street—from the same place three steps led in another direction to a passage conducting to the adjoining wing of the palace, facing the same street, to the door of the Saloon of Knights. In this apartment, there projected a capacious chimney, behind which the trabants were told to conceal themselves. Whilst they remained here, the Countess furnished them with refreshments, and with as much liquor as she believed would fit them for the desperate work she had in hand. She had chosen her time well, for just when they were ripe for any deed they might be set to do, they heard approaching footsteps. With a hint of the great reward they might expect from the Elector if they exhibited their zeal by seizing his enemy, who she took care to add, having been condemned by the laws, it would be of no consequence how they treated if he attempted to escape —-they were ordered to lie close.
  It was Königsmark, who, having discovered that all the usual outlets were closed, had been obliged to endeavour to make his exit from the palace out of the Saloon of Knights, through the passage into the hall. He was approaching the chimney, congratulating himself that at last he was close to the outer door of the palace, and should soon be at liberty to accomplish the wishes of the Princess, when suddenly a rush was made at him by several armed men. Notwithstanding his complete ignorance as to the number of his assailants, and that it was too dark to see who and what they were, they did not take him so completely by surprise as they had anticipated.
  On leaving the Princess, the forged letter had presented itself to his mind as a snare that could not have been employed without a purpose; that it was the production of an enemy there could be but little question, and he need not have hesitated long before he must have been satisfied who that enemy was. When be ascertained that the doors through which he had hitherto proceeded out of the palace from the Princess’s apartments were locked, he began to fear he was enclosed in a trap. He walked cautiously along, and on the first rush of the trabants his sword was out of its scabbard before they could lay hold of him.
  Urged on by the Countess, and inflamed by the liquor they had drunk, the men attacked him furiously with their weapons. A most desperate conflict ensued, the result of which might have been doubtful—for the Count had inflicted several severe wounds on his assailants—had not the blade of his sword snapped in two. He had endeavoured to give the alarm, but his cries were soon stopped ; and,when his weapon became unserviceable, he was easily secured and carried into the adjoining room.
  Here the alarmed soldiers discovered that the person they had thus arrested was so severely wounded he could not stand upright. He had just strength to murmur an entreaty to “ spare the innocent Princess,” though they murdered him, when he fell into a swoon as they were placing him on the floor.
  The Countess made her appearance directly the wounded man had been brought out of the hall, and the first object that met his eyes on recovering consciousness, was the face of his malignant enemy bending over him with triumphant malice expressed in every feature. He rallied all his remaining strength to denounce her as the infamous wretch she was, but his mouth was stopped by the foot of his assassin, who pretended she had slipped in his blood, barbarously trod on his wounded face. Life was ebbing fast—too fast either to resent or notice the indignity, and in a few seconds the murdered man breathed his last.
  When the yeomen of the guard ascertained that they had killed Colonel Königsmark, their consternation was only equalled by their fear. Of this their wily employer took immediate advantage, by assuring them that they were sure to be hanged by their sovereign, if they did not all join in representing the Count’s death as the effect of his own rashness in resisting his arrest. Stupefied by fright, they were ready to promise anything to save their forfeited lives, and when the horror-struck Elector was summoned to see the result of the order he had entrusted to his reckless mistress, they represented themselves as acting only in self-defence, and the Count as madly rushing on his own death.
  Nevertheless, their royal master was far from being satisfied; indeed, to do him justice, he was exceedingly angry, and no less grieved at so unjustifiable an act. He overwhelmed the Countess with reproaches for having induced him unwittingly to become the abettor of the assassination of so brilliant an officer as his Colonel of the guards, and seemed quite sensible of the odium which must fall upon him for his culpability in so disgraceful a transaction. The Count Königsmark was so well known, that his death thus secretly effected in the Electoral palace, in the dead of the night, when it became public, would raise a storm of indignation throughout Germany, from which he could never hope to escape.
  The Countess at last contrived to pacify him, and, the consolatory plea of all evil-doers, represented that as the deed was done it could not be undone, and that a plan yet remained to escape from the consequences that so greatly alarmed him. Her plan was to prevent any knowledge of it transpiring. She then very cunningly showed how this might be accomplished most effectually, and in his urgent desire to escape from the consequences of his own criminality in suffering so unprincipled a woman to possess the power of which she had made so bad a use, he consented that measures should be taken instantly to prevent the Count’s death becoming publicly known.
  The Countess had little trouble in persuading the trabants to save their necks by doing as she desired them. All traces of the murder were soon obliterated. The dead body was unceremoniously cast into the most filthy receptacle that could be found for it, covered with quicklime, and the place walled up. So secretly and so skilfully were these measures taken, that no one in the palace was aware anything extraordinary had occurred during the night, although some persons had heard a slight disturbance of which they had taken little notice, and from that time to this, notwithstanding suspicions had been created by the mysterious disappearance of Count Königsmark, nothing of a positive nature has been brought forward respecting his fate on which any reliance could be placed. The account we have given is derived from two of the principal actors in the murder. One being the Countess Platen, who made a confession of her criminality on her deathbed; the other being one of the trabants, named Busmann, who on his deathbed also made a confession; and, a rather singular coincidence, both penitents were attended by the same clergyman—a M. Kramer.
  
  

  Thus, then, perished that brilliant adventurer, Count Königsmark, whose large fortune, rare talents, handsome person, and exalted position at court, could not save him from the vengeance of an offended courtesan, who suddenly struck him down, even in the palace of his sovereign, depriving his soul of the consolations of a Christian, and bestowing on his body an unworthy sepulture.

  Although far from being admirers of such delusive recommendations as he possessed, and unfavourably disposed towards him in consequence ofhis laxity of morals and want of principle, we cannot withhold our sympathy from the victim of one of the most cold-blooded assassinations ever planned. Moreover, his dying entreaty in favour of the Princess showed he possessed a spirit worthy of a better atmosphere than that of a depraved court, and under more favourable circumstances than those by which he had the misfortune to be surrounded, it is not improbable he would have been an honour to his country, and an ornament to the world.
  Furthermore, Clara (a born and bred court lady, daughter and wife to counts, raised à la mode through and through, a lovely and artistic wind-up doll made to dress, dance, recite and write poetry and drama, compliment, et cetera, à la manière de Versailles, but foremostly with a talent for intrigue without an equal across Europe, who got married up to rise for power) was haunted and confessed her crimes on her deathbed (the featurette reveals her writing, on her deathbed, confessions of her guilt in the Königsmarck affair, as she tells her POV of the story, with her children by her bedside):
  “It should be remembered, that the young Count had become not only one of the handsomest men of his time, and was possessed of immense wealth that made the very costly style in which he lived the theme of general admiration but that he was a remarkably intelligent man, apparently finished gentleman, graceful courtier, and brave and skilful officer.”
  The Countess was no longer in office; her conscience had begun to trouble her, and she felt uneasy in her mind with respect to the numerous offences against truth and honesty she had committed. In the last years of her life, when her health had become undermined by a long course of profligacy, and the once beautiful favourite was a loathsome object to herself and to all who approached her, the evil she had committed rose in damning array against her soul, and made her life as miserable as it had been vicious. At last she sent for a clergyman, and eased her overburthened mind by making a full confession of her iniquities; among other crimes dwelling on her murder of Count Königsmark, and exonerating the Princess from all blame in her intimacy with him. This confession was wrung from a guilty conscience in the agonies of a deathbed. She died in the year 1706.
  The Countess left one son and one daughter. Of the former we know very little. Of the latter, Sophia Charlotte, however, we are differently circumstanced. The Countess early brought her forward in that hotbed of vice in which she herself had flourished, and not without carefully impressing on her mind the necessity of her advancing her fortunes by the same means by which she had obtained both wealth and distinction. We have already alluded to her proffering the young lady to her own lover, by no means an extraordinary thing for the woman who had recommended her sister to fill the same infamous office with the son she occupied with the father; but her next display of indifference to the most ordinary feelings of decency was strange indeed, as strange as it was revolting. She had introduced her sister to the Crown Prince, she had done the same kind office for her friend Mademoiselle Schulenburg, and when the charms of both were fading, she showed one more act of devotion to the son of her liberal patron, by presenting the sated profligate with her own daughter.
  These infamous transactions are almost incredible—nevertheless they are perfectly true. The Countess Platen's daughter became a favourite mistress of the Elector. She had dissipated the large fortune she had inherited from her mother in every species of extravagance, and after a hasty marriage with a M. Kielmansegge, to conceal her profligacy, rivalled her mother in infamy. The Elector was getting tired of her excesses when, at the time he was about setting off for his English dominions, Madame Kielmansegge, who also took on herself the title of Countess Platen, put herself forward as so devoted to the person of her sovereign, she was ready to accompany him to that country.
• Caroleans (Charles XII's soldiers) killed Russian prisoners: Unfortunately, this is the historical truth. Rather far from Gustavus Adolphus's kindness and mercy towards Catholic POWs, the Swedish ranks of the early eighteenth century took no prisoners. What must it have been like for a young subaltern officer to play executioner towards enemy captives? And, just like in the feuilleton, the real Peter the Great drank to Charles XII and pardoned the Poltava POWs, even paroling the officers (unfortunately, the Russian Empire is rather vast, and commandants in Siberia often resorted to measures interdicted in Saint Petersburg!).
• A white hare crossing the highway: a bad omen in Slavic folklore. Jules Verne invokes this superstition in his Czarist Russian adventure novel Mikhail Strogoff (otherwise known, for instance in Swedish, as The Czar's Courier), and so does Aleksandr Pushkin in Eugene Onegin. Englund and Heidenstam have penned down the legend that Charles XII saw one en route to Poltava, and I had to include it: partially as tribute to Jules Verne, partially as a shout-out to Carroll's Alice novels.
• Never get involved in a land war in Russia! Due to the efficiency of General Winter and General Steppe, combined with the Slavs' trademark scorched earth tactics (retreating eastward, burning their shops and crops in their wake), any attempt is doomed to end in failure, as Charles XII soon discovered. On top of that, one century later, Napoleon Bonaparte (well acquainted with the exploits of Charles XII!) made the same catastrophic mistake. Not to mention Adolf Hitler during the Second World War...
• Poltava, 8th of August 1709: the twilight of Sweden's Golden Age. Since King Charles had been wounded in the left foot during a reconnaissance on the eve of battle, the Swedish army was left in charge of less competent generals (for instance, Rehnskiöld, Gustav Adolf von Ringstetten's superior and leader of the cavalry). The wounded ruler fled southwards, the Swedish ranks were decimated, the few survivors were captured alive and employed as "indentured servants" of the Russian Empire, in fortress prisons and outpost barracks. Just like in the feuilleton, the real Peter the Great drank to his worthy opponent and pardoned the Poltava POWs, even paroling the officers (unfortunately, the Russian Empire is rather vast, and commandants in Siberia often resorted to measures interdicted in Saint Petersburg!): they were able to keep their swords and rank insignia as long as they behaved themselves. Many of the prisoners died in captivity, due to the harsh winters and frequent diseases. In the 1720s, the few survivors who had not fled their prisons and successfully made it to Sweden were finally repatriated. And only a few officers dared to escape clandestinely. The battle itself, which marked the rise to power of the Romanovs and inspired poets such as Lord Byron or Pushkin, is commemorated as a holiday in present-day Federal Russia.
• Rehnskiöld's fate after the battle? He was also taken prisoner, but, due to his higher rank, he was carried into another outpost. Later on, he was freed in 1718, to join the Swedish military, witness his liege's death at Fredrikshald, and then retire to his native estate. All of this is retold in the latest installment of the Saga.
• French Protestants, or Huguenots (the term being a corruption of "Eidgenossen", German for "confederates"), like Katinka's mother Isabeau, were persecuted during the reign of Louis XIV (their faith having been tolerated between the Thirty Years' War and the Sun King's coming of age). Most of them lived in communities along the Atlantic coast. Though the United Provinces (the Dutch federal republic that would become the Netherlands) and Prussia received most of the refugees, there were minorities who found asylum in Russia and Sweden.
• The German researchers: Czar Peter the Great did actually send a scientific expedition into the "Wild East", and its finds (drawings and pressed plants) are still kept in Saint Petersburg. Rhineland-born leader Wilhelm Steller even had a (now extinct) species of manatee named after himself!
• Granny Yaga (Baba Yaga in Russia and Ukraine, Yaga Baba in Bohemia and the Balkans, Vasorrú in Hungary) is one of the most well-known characters in Slavic folklore. Her iconic dwelling, the croft on hen's legs in the swamp in the woods, is retained, and so are her flying mortal and pestle, her guard birches and her pet cat. In Slavic folktales, there is often more than one Granny Yaga, usually three sisters who act as donors to the leading cast. That line, partly as a tribute to the Norns, the Moirae, and Macbeth, was the one I followed (the first Granny Yaga in the woods, "Yaiza" in the steppe camp, and "Yadviga" at court). I made the cats cobalt blue (and able to speak) partly as a visual pun, partly to emphasize the Yagas' otherwordliness. The Yagas also take up a role, in folktale as in the Saga, of wise woman donors similar to that of the Saami Woman (Lappekone) and Finnmark Woman (Finnekone) in the Sixth Story of Andersen's "The Snow Queen", from which some passages are quoted outright. Not by chance, because the "croft on hen's legs" may refer to a njalla, a Saami reindeer meat shed placed on leg-like posts to keep out of both snow and scavengers (wolves, wolverines). Thus, the Granny Yaga character may have been, originally, a Saami shaman, seen as a sorceress through Christian Slavic eyes.
• The plot: the story draws from "Orpheus and Eurydice" (minus tragic ending), "The Snow Queen" (more specifically, the princess character), and "Tam Lin" (in the latter ballad, a mortal held captive and destined for sacrifice by fairies is freed by his beloved Margaret), set against the backdrop of the Great Northern War. Katinka is a tomboyish, spirited version of Margaret. The gap in the palisade recalls Pyramus and Thisbe/Romeo and Juliet. The ostensible victory of the Green Lady is taken from "Salmacis and Hermaphroditus". Unlike Tam Lin, Gustav Adolf has got a reason for the Sidhe to be after him: the young lord's parents promised him to the spirit in times of need: the Jephthah or Isaac folkloric motif of a child rashly promised to the supernatural. The convergent character arcs of Gustav Adolf and Katinka/Katarina are also influenced by Les Misérables. There's also the Frey myth...
• The Frey myth: A real Norse myth... at first a fairytale, later on revealed to be a tragedy, but nevertheless a profound meditation on human nature and a classic story about a star-crossed relationship. This story provided most of the inspiration for Gustav Adolf's development from fallen warrior to reborn landowner.
• Surviving Norse polytheism: in the deepest backwaters of Sweden, the common people still believed in the old gods, even if they went to church, until the mid-twentieth century.
• Tied to a linden tree, with ears unplugged, to hear Kelpie music without drowning: Ilse took actually a cue from Odysseus himself, whose adventures she had read!
• Instant eunuch: One of the funniest scenes includes Gustav Adolf transformed into, well… a person of the third gender. Later on, he becomes a boy-child and a courtier, other non-military people devoid of masculinity. However, it’s by noticing that he’s become a eunuch in the Tatar lands that the former Carolean is startled at first. Perchance because his new identity transcends the Occidental construct of gender as binary.
• Westernization in Russia: at least the higher classes and the military were westernized during the reign of Peter the Great: clean shaven, wearing tricorns, accepting Protestantism (the Czarina, Catherine, was a reverend's daughter, as stated in the Saga!)... A foppish courtier sent to the "Wild East" as a response to disgrace would, though out of place, be historically accurate.
• The lily brand on Isa’s left shoulder: enemies of the State of France were branded with its lily on a shoulder, using red hot irons. The most recognizable fictional character with this “tattoo” is Dumas’s femme fatale Milady de Winter. In the Saga, this French lily functions as a stigma, a sign of Isa’s outsider status and the suffering she has gone through.
• The duel between Etienne and Gustav Adolf: This is my very own tribute to Eugene Onegin, yet, fortunately, without any casualties.
• "A petty fortress and an unknown hand" ("En ringa fästning och en okänd hand"): Do you still remember the words used to describe Charles XII's death during the siege of Fredrikshald, in the arc finale?  

His fall was destined to a barren strand,
a petty fortress, and a dubious hand;
He left a name, at which the world grew pale,
to point a moral, or adorn a tale.

Verses by English eighteenth-century poet Samuel Johnson, employed in the poem "The Vanity of Human Wishes" as a rant against Charles XII's ambition and lust for power. Never having loved nor having been loved, he really deserved to die in a trench, more than probably shot by one of his own officers, during the siege of a frontier outpost. What a stark contrast to the whole-hearted and sympathetic Gustavus Adolphus, fighting for an altruistic cause, violently slain on the battlefield of Lützen, and even mourned by his archenemy!

Returning to Johnson's verses, the author herself has written the translation into Swedish:

Han mötte döden vid en öde strand,

en ringa fästning och en okänd hand.

Kvar lämnades blott ryktet, fruktansvärt,

till att liknelsers sensmoral bli värt.

Swedish magical creatures: Finally, we'll give a review of the supernatural cast of the series, all of them magical creatures in Scandinavian folklore!

1. Tomts ("tomtar") are household littlepeople, who care for human families, their homes, and their pets and livestock. A fisherman's or woodsman's croft only has space for one tomt, while an estate usually lodges a whole family, Vänersvik being no exception. Their favourite dish is oat porridge, of which they gladly accept a bowl from their human masters in exchange for prosperity. But their oats must be sweetened with honey, or else... If in a good mood, tomts may braid their favourite horse's mane and tail, for instance, the Ringstetten war horses (Hoffnung, mare; Étoile, mare; Foudre and Poudre; Nuage, gelding [castrated] and Orage, stallion [both foals of Foudre and Poudre]), as a token of endearment.
2. Trolls are a rock-based, tailed cave people, without much wit and with a short fuse. A pastime among them is for troll mothers to trade a human newborn with one of their own, a so-called changeling ("bortbyting"). They're not only weak in front of iron and steel: sunlight turns them into stone. They hibernate.
3. The Kelpie or Nix, or Näkki ("Näcken") is a freshwater spirit, who usually appears to mortal maidens at rapids, either as a dashing youth, wrapped up in his Rapunzel-long raven hair, playing the violin... or as a majestic wild white stallion with a raven mane and tail. His real form is a centaur with the traits of both his violinist and horse forms. In either guise, he lures the maidens into the stream and drinks up their blood. He has no feelings and shows no mercy.
4. The Sidhe, pronounced "She"; Ellewoman; or Green Lady ("skogsrået") is the spirit of the woods. Here she appears as the spirit of the spring ("källrået")  Every shire in Sweden has its Green Lady, who ensures the denizens' prosperity if being given an offering. These spirits (a one-gender species) appear as beautiful lilywhite females dressed in moss coats, with dark green, tendril-like hair, "snake eyes", and a vixen's tail. Green Ladies, however, tend to fall in love with mortal men, especially dashing young ones... which their own wistful nature, and longer life expectancy, contradict. In addition, a Sidhe may poison a mortal lover with her plant-based or water-based powers by accident, if not drive him insane or kill him outright. If betrayed, the Green Lady may be rather vengeful towards her rival. The one who slept with an ellewoman often wakes up feeling like suffocating and in a cold sweat. They're powerful, clever female spirits, with power over the climate, flora, fauna, waters... and even human emotions! Ellewomen show children lost in the woods the way home and help shepherds of both genders find their missing charges. The only thing that can be done against them, besides threatening them with cold steel, is turning one's coat or jacket inside out (which Gustav Adolf forgot, leaving him vulnerable to her charms). They hibernate... usually. The Ellewoman of Vänersvik is bound to a spring in the woods, the spring she enchants to take shards of the drinkers' reflections (with Charles XI and Gustav Adolf von Ringstetten). This pond is a healing spring since the Ringstettens made a covenant with the Green Lady, a covenant broken when the child she had been promised, grown into a young lieutenant, left for the war front, then returns decades later with a potential rival (Katia). In animal form, she is usually an oversized green frog or a red vixen.
5. The church-cat ("kyrkokatten", "kyrkorået", "kyrkogrimmen") is the spirit of a black cat walled into a church's walls for good luck, to keep away thieves and evil spirits such as trolls or ellewomen. The church-cat of Vänersvik is called Lyckan, "Goodluck/Fortune", and she was walled as a kitten. So she looks like an oversized black kitten.
6. Lake cattle ("sjökor", "sjönötkreatur") are the cattle of the freshwater-folk, and they yield seven times more milk and beef than land cattle. A dozen lake cows were presented to House Ringstetten by the Green Lady as part of their covenant.

The only flaw all these creatures have is their weakness for cold iron and steel, which damage their health and deprive them of their powers... and even of their lives!

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...