Excerpts from
Madam King
By Maria Helleberg
No infringement of Mistress Merete’s rules
went unpunished. Margrete was not going to show her weakness. She had made that
promise to herself the first time Mistress Merete had ordered her to put her
hands on the table, and then used the cane. It was not that Mistress Merete was
angry or enjoyed beating, it was a principle. And bracing yourself only helped
for a moment, the pain stabbed through all other feelings.
- Lash upon lash for small sins, just a few for the big sins, because a good
child repents the big ones automatically, but the small ones might grow, said
Mistress Merete in a sing-song voice and explained that this was how she had
been brought up by her mother, Mistress Birgitta.
Margrete gradually became good and tired of this Mistress Birgitta who had
never put a foot wrong. This magnificent woman who remained faceless, even
though every day Mistress Merete made the girls read aloud from her mother’s Revelations.
Margrete noticed all the similarities; Mistress Birgitta had been a chatelaine
like Mistress Merete, she knew how to churn butter and judge the ripeness of
corn. She knew how giving birth ripped through a woman’s body and she knew the
taste of pain.
It only went wrong once.
Margrete was reading aloud, dawdling and half asleep, but she woke up when she
saw Mistress Merete standing in front of her, deathly pale and with a
trembling, tight-lipped mouth. Margrete lifted her eyes from the beautifully
formed letters on the page. Mistress Birgitta had not wanted to give her
youngest daughter to the man this daughter had fallen in love with. But
Mistress Birgitta’s husband, Squire Ulf, had liked the lecherous hound and
insisted on the marriage. On the wedding night, just as she was about to lead
her daughter to the marital bed, Mistress Birgitta withdrew to privacy and
while praying that God would allow her to die, an as yet unacknowledged foetus
in her body began to speak to her and plead for mercy.
- It was my sister Cecilia, said Mistress Merete in a tight voice, taking the
parchment from Margrete. – It is a story from which children derive no benefit
and cannot understand, she added, surprising Margrete even more because
Mistress Merete seldom explained herself, she struck.
- And who was the daughter who married her seducer? asked Margrete innocently.
She did not even have time to shut her eyes before Mistress Merete’s hand hit
her cheek. She winced and put both hands over her face and eyes, hiding in
order to avoid further blows.
It was Mistress Merete, it suddenly struck her mind in an echo of the slap.
Translated by Gaye Kynoch
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