Sjöborg castle, which in the latter months of the year 1295 was honoured by the presence of royalty, and had been the theatre of such important events, stood desolate and deserted on the morning of the following new year. The gate was shut, and the floating bridge removed. The sentinel was no longer on guard on the battlement over the gate; within, no sounds of gaiety and occupancy were heard; without the southern rampart and the narrowest part of the lake which insulated the site of the castle stood a gallows, at the end of what was called the king's garden, where the roads met from Esrom and Gilleleié. On the gallows hung a lifeless corpse in a short sheep-skin coat, and with a pair of shaggy boots on the legs. A pair of ravens flapped their wings over the sinner's head, and around the stiff frozen body fluttered a flock of screaming crows.
The aged Jeppé, the fisherman from Gilleleié, who on fast days was accustomed to bring fish to Esrom, and to the kitchen of Sjöborg, was returning at day-break from the ferry, opposite the closed castle gate, with his flat fish basket at his back, and stood almost under the gallows ere he was aware of it. His servant, a young fisherman, followed him also with a basket at his back.
"It was true then, after all," said the old man; "they have made quick work of it here. The bird hath flown, and the cage stands empty. Our young king hath been wroth in earnest--by my troth, he does nothing by halves. We may now carry our cod to Elsinore. But what the devil ails the birds to-day?"
"Look, look, master!" shouted the lad; "there he hangs."
"Our Lady preserve us!" exclaimed Jeppé, and stopped. "Ay, there he hangs, indeed, in his old sheep's skin, and in the boots I brought him from Skanór fair, those he squeezed out of me for the freight and the sixteen marks. Why, the soles are whole as yet! I told him not to wear them out with his courtier-like scrapings. Faugh! he looks ugly in the face. 'Tis no wholesome sight on a fasting stomach. Let's take a sup, Olé." He took a little wooden flask out of the basket, drank, and reached the flask to the lad, while they gazed with mingled curiosity and dread on the corpse.
"By our Lady! a foul human carcass is truly soon provided for," resumed the old man, clearing his throat after the strong drink, while he crossed himself, and put up the flask. "Well, I say now what I said before; paid as deserved. He who deals against law shall be dealt with without law. One should otherwise, it is true, speak well of the dead; and this I must say, Jesper Mogensen was in some sort a pious man; he neglected neither mattins nor mass; he went to confession every other day. That we none of us do. But the crow is never the whiter, let her wash herself ever so often, and I would not have given a rotten herring's head for all his piety. What said I the other day to boatman Sóren? 'Mark,' said I, 'that craft will one day run aground under the gallows.' That one could see with half an eye. We will pray an honest prayer for his soul, however, Olé, although he hath haggled many a shining piece from us, and cheated the king out of more pecks of silver pieces than the ravens have now left hairs on his sinful head. Would it might fare somewhat better with him where he now is than it fared with his prisoner at Sjöborg! Much better it were a shame to ask, for a pitiless master he ever was, and graceless rulers are shut out from the Lord."
"True, master," answered the young fisherman; "but might one not almost say the same of our young king himself, to say so with all reverence and respect?"
"Of the king? Art thou mad, Olé?" exclaimed the old man, with warmth; "art thou clean devil-blinded and possessed? Is that the Christianity thou learn'st in the monastery? Thou art a pretty fellow, truly!"
"Be not wroth, master!" answered the lad; "but truth is truth, nevertheless, whether it be sour or sweet, or whether it tweak the nose of high or low, says Pater Gregor, and we Danes are a free folk who dare to speak out in council[[14]], whether it be against great or small; that you know as well as I, master. The king, by my troth, is not the man to put mercy before justice where the outlaws or their kindred and friends are concerned. Now, there, are Marsk Stig's pretty daughters; he has pent them up in the maiden's tower at Vordingborg, only because their father was an outlawed man; that's not very merciful. Then there's the bishop they have so long plagued and tortured; that's a bad business, says Pater Gregor. Whether or not he was leagued with the outlaws or the Slesvig Duke no one knows or can prove; but, however that may be, he was a mighty man of God, whom none but the Lord and the pope could condemn, says Pater Gregor."
"Ay, indeed! He talks too much, that Pater Gregor," muttered the old man, seating himself thoughtfully on his fish basket. "Those pious sirs of the cloister may say what they will; but this I know, that a more just-dealing king we have never had in Denmark. As to his stringing up that fellow----"