When the door was unlocked again for the evening meal, there was a whispering between the prison governor and the woman. A lacquey was also sent, who stood outside the outer door and called the prison governor to him (my bed stands just opposite the doors, and thus when all three doors are opened I can see the staircase door, which is the fourth). I do not know what the woman can have told the prison governor, for I had not spoken all day, except to ask her to give me what I required; I said, moreover, nothing more than this for several days, so that the prison governor grew weary of enquiring longer of the woman; for she had nothing to communicate to him respecting me, and she tormented him always with her desire to get away; she could not longer spend her life in this way.
But as she received no other consolation from him than that he swore to her that she would never get away as long as she lived, for some days she did nothing else than weep; and since I would not ask her why she wept, she came one day up to my bedside crying, and said, ‘I am a miserable being!’ I asked her why? what ailed her? ‘I ail enough,’ she answered; ‘I have been so stupid, and have allowed myself to be shut up here for the sake of money, and now you are cross with me and will not speak with me.’ I said, ‘What am I to say? you wish perhaps to have something to communicate to the prison governor?’ Upon this she began to call down curses on herself if she had ever repeated to the prison governor a word that I had said or done; she wished I could believe her and speak with her; why should she be untrue to me? we must at any rate remain together as long as we lived. She added many implorations as to my not being angry; I had indeed cause to be so; she would in future give me no cause for anger, for she would be true to me. I thought, ‘You shall know no more than is necessary.’
I let her go on talking and relating the whole history of her life—such events as occur among peasants. She had twice married cottagers, and after her last widowhood she had been employed as nurse to the wife of Holger Wind, so that she had no lack of stories. By her first husband she had had a child, who had never reached maturity, and her own words led me to have a suspicion that she had herself helped to shorten the child’s days; for once when she was speaking of widows marrying again, she said among other things, ‘Those who wish to marry a second time ought not to have children, for in that case the husband is never one with the wife.’ I had much to say against this, and I asked her what a woman was to do who had a child by her first husband. She answered quickly, ‘Put a pillow on its head.’ This I could only regard as a great sin, and I explained it to her. ‘What sin could there be,’ she said, ‘when the child was always sickly, and the husband angry in consequence?’ I answered as I ought, and she seemed ill at ease. Such conversation as this gave me no good reason to believe in the fidelity which she had promised me.
The woman then took a different tack, and brought me word from the coachman of all that was occurring. Maren Blocks sent me a prayer-book through her, and that secretly, for I was allowed no book of any kind, nor any needles and pins; respecting these the woman had by the Queen’s order taken an oath to the prison governor. Thus the year passed away. On New Year’s day, 1664, the woman wished me a happy year. I thanked her, and said, ‘That is in God’s hands.’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘if He wills it.’ ‘And if He does not will it,’ I answered, ‘it will not be, and then He will give me patience to bear my heavy cross.’ ‘It is heavy,’ she said, ‘even to me; what must it not be to you? May it only remain as it is, and not be worse with you!’ It seemed to me as if it could not be worse, but better; for death, in whatever form, would put an end to my misery. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘is it not all one how one dies?’ ‘That is true,’ I answered; ‘one dies in despair, another with free courage.’ The prison governor did not say a word to me that day. The woman had a long talk with the coachman; she no doubt related to him our conversation.
In the month of March the prison governor came in and assumed a particularly gentle manner, and said, among other things, ‘Now you are a widow; now you can tell the state of all affairs.’ I answered him with a question, ‘Can widows tell the state of all affairs?’ He laughed and said, ‘I do not mean that; I mean this treason!’ I answered, ‘You can ask others about it who know of it; I know of no treason.’ And as it seemed to him that I did not believe that my husband was dead,[E29] he took out a newspaper and let me read it, perhaps chiefly because my husband was badly treated in it. I did not say much about it—nothing more than, ‘Writers of newspapers do not always speak the truth.’ This he might take as he liked.
I lay there silently hoping that it might be so, that my husband had by death escaped his enemies; and I thought with the greatest astonishment that I should have lived to see the day when I should wish my lord dead; then sorrowful thoughts took possession of me, and I did not care to talk. The woman imagined that I was sad because my lord was dead, and she comforted me, and that in a reasonable manner; but the remembrance of past times was only strengthened by her consolatory remarks, and for a long time my mind could not again regain repose. Your condition, my dearest children, troubled me. You had lost your father, and with him property and counsel. I am captive and miserable, and cannot help you, either with counsel or deed; you are fugitives and in a foreign land. For my three eldest sons I am less anxious than for my daughters and my youngest son.[E30] I sat up whole nights in my bed, for I could not sleep, and when I have headache I cannot lay my head on the pillow. From my heart I prayed to God for a gracious deliverance. It has not pleased God to grant this, but He gave me patience to bear my heavy cross.
My cross was so much heavier to me at first, as it was strictly forbidden to give me either knife, scissors, thread, or anything that might have beguiled the time to me. Afterwards, when my mind became a little calmer, I began to think of something wherewith to occupy myself; and as I had a needle, as I have before mentioned, I took off the ribands of my night-dress, which were broad flesh-coloured taffeta. With the silk I embroidered the piece of cloth that I had with different flowers worked in small stitches. When this was finished, I drew threads out of my sheet, twisted them, and sewed with them. When this was nearly done, the woman said one day, ‘What will you do now when this is finished?’ I answered, ‘Oh, I shall get something to do; if it is brought to me by the ravens, I shall have it.’ Then she asked me if I could do anything with a broken wooden spoon. I answered, ‘Perhaps you know of one?’ After having laughed a while, she drew one forth, the bowl of which was half broken off. ‘I could indeed make something with that,’ I said, ‘if I had only a tool for the purpose. Could you persuade the prison governor or Peder the coachman to lend me a knife?’ ‘I will beg for one,’ she answered, ‘but I know well that they will not.’ That she said something about it to the prison governor I could perceive from his answer, for he replied aloud, ‘She wants no knife; I will cut her food for her. She might easily injure herself with one.’[76]
What she said to the coachman I know not (this I know, that she did not desire me to obtain a knife, for she was afraid of me, as I afterwards discovered). The woman brought the answer from the coachman that he dared not for his life. I said, ‘If I can but have a piece of glass, I will see what I can make that is useful with the piece of spoon.’ I begged her to look in a corner in the outermost room, where all rubbish was thrown; this she did, and found not only glass, but even a piece of a pewter cover which had belonged to a jug. By means of the glass I formed the spoon handle into a pin with two prongs, on which I made riband, which I still have in use (the silk for this riband I took from the border of my night-dress). I bent the piece of pewter in such a manner that it afterwards served me as an inkstand. It also is still in my keeping. As a mark of fidelity, the woman brought me at the same time a large pin, which was a good tool for beginning the division between the prongs, which I afterwards scraped with glass.
She asked me whether I could think of anything to play with, as the time was so long to her. I said, ‘Coax Peder, and he will bring you a little flax for money and a distaff.’ ‘What!’ she answered, ‘shall I spin? The devil may spin! For whom should I spin?’ I said, ‘To beguile the time, I would spin, if I only had what is necessary for it.’ ‘That you may not have, dear lady,’ said she; ‘I have done the very utmost for you in giving you what I have done.’ ‘If you wish something to play with,’ said I, ‘get some nuts, and we will play with them.’ She did so, and we played with them like little children. I took three of the nuts, and made them into dice, placing two kinds of numbers on each, and we played with these also. And that we might know the ⊙ which I made with the large pin,[77] I begged her to procure for me a piece of chalk, which she did, and I rubbed chalk into it. These dice were lost, I know not how; my opinion is that the coachman got possession of them, perhaps at the time that he cheated the woman out of the candles and sugar left. For he came to her one day at noon quite out of breath, and said she was to give him the candles and the sugar which he had brought her from Maren Blocks, and whatever there was that was not to be seen, as our quarters were to be searched. She ran out with the things under her apron, and never said anything to me about it until the door was locked. I concealed on myself, as well as I was able, my pin, my silk, and the pieces of sewing with the needle and pin. Nothing came of the search, and it was only a ruse of the coachman, in order to get the candles that were left, for which she often afterwards abused him, and also for the sugar.
I was always at work, so long as I had silk from my night-dress and stockings, and I netted on the large pin, so that it might last a long time. I have still some of the work in my possession, as well as the bobbins, which I made out of wooden pegs. By means of bags filled with sand I made cords which I formed into a bandage (which is worn out), for I was not allowed a corset, often as I begged for one; the reason why is unknown to me. I often beguiled the time with the piece of chalk, painting with it on a piece of board and on the table, wiping it away again, and making rhymes and composing hymns. The first of these, however, I composed before I had the chalk. I never sang it, but repeated it to myself.