My maid Maren, Lars’ daughter, had risen so high in favour at court, that she often sat in the women’s apartment, and did various things. One day the woman said to me, ‘That is a very faithful maiden whom you have! She speaks before them up there in a manner you would never believe.’ I replied: ‘I have permitted her to say all she knows. I have no fear of her calumniating me.’ ‘Have you not?’ she said ironically. ‘Why does she throw herself, then, on her bare knees, and curse herself if she should think of returning to you?’ I said: ‘She wished to remain with me (according to your own statement), but she was not allowed; so she need not curse herself.’ ‘Why then do you think,’ said she, ‘that she is so much in favour at court?’ ‘Do you mean,’ I replied, ‘that if anyone is in favour at court, it is because their lips are full of lies? I am assured my maid has calumniated no one, least of all me; I am not afraid.’
The woman was angry, and pouted in consequence for some time. Some weeks afterwards Maren, Lars’ daughter, was set at liberty, and became waiting-maid to the Countess Friis: and Balcke brought me some linen which she still had belonging to me. The woman was not a little angry at this, especially as I said: ‘So faithful I perceive is my maid to me, that she will not keep the linen, which she might easily have done, for I could not know whether it had not been taken from her with the rest.’
All my guards were very ill satisfied with Balcke, especially the woman, who was angry for several reasons. He slighted her, she said, for he had supplied a basin for the night-stool which was heavier than the former one (which leaked); but she was chiefly angry because he told her that she lived like a heathen, since she never went to the sacrament. For when I once received the holy communion, while Balcke was attending to me, he asked her if she would not wish to communicate also, to which she answered, ‘I do not know German.’ Balcke said, ‘I will arrange that the clergyman shall come to you whose office it is to administer the Lord’s Supper to the prisoners.’ She replied that in this place she could not go with the proper devotion: if she came out, she would go gladly. Balcke admonished her severely, as a clergyman might have done. When the door was closed, she gave vent to puffing and blowing, and she always unfastened her jacket when she was angry.
I said nothing, but I thought the evil humour must have vent, or she will be choked; and this was the case, for she abused Balcke with the strongest language that occurred to her. She used unheard-of curses, which were terrible to listen to: among others, ‘God damn him for ever, and then I need not curse him every day.’ Also, ‘May God make him evaporate like the dew before the sun!’ I could not endure this cursing, and I said, ‘Are you cursing this man because he held before you the word of God, and desires that you should be reconciled with God and repent your sins?’ ‘I do not curse him for that,’ she said, ‘but on account of the heavy basin which the accursed fellow has given me, and which I have to carry up the steep stairs;[91] the devil must have moved him to choose it! Does he want to make a priest of himself? Well, he is probably faultless, the saucy fellow!’ and she began again with her curses.
I reproved her and said: ‘If he now knew that you were cursing him in this way, do you not think he would bring it about that you must do penitence? It is now almost two years since you were at the Lord’s table, and you can have the clergyman and you will not.’ This softened her a little, and she said, ‘How should he know it, unless you tell him?’ I said, ‘What passes here and is said here concerns no one but us two; it is not necessary that others should know.’ With this all was well; she lay down to sleep, and her anger passed away; but the hate remained.
The prison governor continued to lie in great pain, and could neither live nor die. One day at noon, when Balcke unlocked (it was just twenty weeks since he had come to me), a man came in with him, very badly dressed, in a grey, torn, greasy coat, with few buttons that could be fastened, with an old hat to which was attached a drooping feather that had once been white but was now not recognisable from dirt. He wore linen stockings and a pair of worn-out shoes fastened with packthread.[92] Balcke went to the table outside and carved the joint; he then went to the door of the outer apartment, stood with his hat in his hand, made a low reverence, and said, ‘Herewith I take my departure; this man is to be prison governor.’ I enquired whether he would not come again to me. He replied, ‘No, not after this time.’ Upon this I thanked him for his courteous attendance, and wished him prosperity.[93]
Peder the coachman locked the door, and the new prison governor, whose name was Johan Jäger,[E37] never appeared before me the whole day, nor during the evening. I said to the woman in the morning, ‘Ask Peder who the man is;’ which she did, and returned to me with the answer that it was the man who had taken the Doctor prisoner; and that now he was to be prison governor, but that he had not yet received the keys. Not many days passed before he came with the Lord Steward to the old prison governor, and the keys were taken from the old man and given to him. The old man lived only to the day after this occurred. In both respects his curiosity was satisfied; he saw the man who was to be prison governor after him (to his grief), and the doctor who attended him obtained his Tyrelyre before the year was ended.
The new prison governor Jäger[E37b] did not salute me for several weeks, and never spoke to me. He rarely locked my doors, but he generally opened them himself. At length one day, when he had got new shoes on, he took his hat off when he had opened the door, and said ‘Good morning.’ I answered him, ‘Many thanks.’ The woman was very pleased while this lasted. She had her free talk with Peder the coachman (who still for a couple of months came to the tower as before) and with the prisoner Christian, who had great freedom, and obtained more and more freedom in this prison governor’s time, especially as Rasmus the tower-warder was made gatekeeper, and a man of the name of Chresten was appointed in his place. Among other idle talk which she repeated to me, she said that this prison governor was forbidden to speak with me. I said, ‘I am very glad, as he then can tell no lies about me.’ I am of opinion that he did not venture to speak with me so long as Peder brought up the food to the tower, and was in waiting there; for when he had procured Peder’s dismissal on account of stealing, he came in afterwards from time to time. The very first time he was intoxicated. He knew what Peder had said of Balcke, and he informed me of it.[94]
Before I mention anything of the prisoner Christian’s designs against me, I will in a few words state the crime for which he was in prison. He had been a lacquey in the employ of Maans Armfelt. With some other lacqueys he had got into a quarrel with a man who had been a father to Christian, and who had brought him up from his youth and had taken the utmost care of him. The man was fatally wounded, and called out in the agonies of death: ‘God punish thee, Christian! What a son you have been! It was your hand that struck me!’ The other lacqueys ran away, but Christian was seized. His dagger was found bloody. He denied, and said it was not he who had stabbed the man. He was sentenced to death; but as the dead man’s widow would not pay for the execution, Christian remained for the time in prison, and his master paid for his maintenance. He had been there three years already when I came to the prison, and three times he was removed; first from the Witch Cell to the Dark Church; and then here where I am imprisoned.[95] When I was brought here, he was placed where the Doctor is, and when the Doctor was brought in, Christian was allowed to go freely about the tower. He wound the clock for the tower-warder, locked and unlocked the cells below, and had often even the keys of the tower.
I remember once, when Rasmus the tower-warder was sitting at dinner with the prison governor in my outermost cell, and the prison governor wished to send Peder on a message, he said to Rasmus: ‘Go and open! I want Peder to order something. ‘Father,’ said Rasmus, ‘Christian has the key.’ ‘Indeed!’ said the prison governor; ‘that is pretty work!’ And there it rested, for Rasmus said, ‘I am perfectly sure that Christian will not go away.’ Thus by degrees Christian’s freedom and power increased after Peder the coachman left, and he waited on the prison governor at meals in my outermost room.