The king's ring

by Zacharias Topelius

"Out with the witch!" shouted the most excited, and some threw lighted brands against the gate, hoping to set it on fire.

Fru Marta had on the ramparts two old cannon from Gustaf I.'s time, called "the hawk" and "the dove." Their functions were to respond to the salutes of vessels arriving in the harbour, and to roar forth the delight of the people on royal christening days and nuptials. It is true that the ramparts lay outside the high fence with its iron spikes, which constituted the only fortification of the castle, and were thus easily accessible to the besiegers. But Fru Marta thought correctly, that a cannonade from the ramparts would frighten the enemy, and serve as a signal of distress, to summon assistance from the man-of-war and the town. She therefore ordered two of her soldiers to steal out under cover of the night, load "the hawk" and "the dove," and directly after the blank charges were fired, to return quickly to the castle.

The effect was instantaneous. The uproar ceased at once, and Fru Marta did not let the opportunity slip from her grasp.

"Do you hear, you pack of thieves?" she screamed, mounted on a ladder, so that her white night-cap was seen in the moonlight just above the gate, "if you don't take yourselves off this minute from his Majesty's castle, I will make my cannon shatter you into fragments, like cabbage stalks, you noisy, drunken swine! Angry dogs get torn skins; and the chicken who sticks his neck in the jaws of the fox will have to look around to see where his head is. I will cut you to pieces, you rowdy set," continued Fru Marta, getting more and more excited. "I will let them make mince-meat of you, and throw you to the——"

Unhappily the brave commander was not allowed to finish her heroic speech. One of the crowd had found a rotten turnip on the ground, and hurled it with such good aim at the white night-cap, which shone in the moonlight, that Fru Marta, struck right on the brow, was obliged to retreat, and for the first time in her life had her tongue silenced. A huge laugh now spread through the crowd, and with it Fru Marta's supremacy was at an end. The enemy battered still more arrogantly against the gate, the hinges bent, the boards gave way, and finally half of the gate fell in with a great crash, and the whole crowd rushed into the courtyard.

Now one would say that Fru Marta would have to surrender. But no, she quickly withdrew with all her force to the interior of the castle, barred the entrance, and placed her musketeers at the windows, threatening to shoot down the first comers. Such determined courage ought to have succeeded, but the infuriated mob neither heard or saw. One of the front men, who had found a crowbar, began to batter the door...

Then confusion and outcries arose in the rear of the crowd ... those in the middle turned round and saw through the broken gate, as far as one could discern in the moonlight, the whole way filled with heads and muskets. It was as if an army had sprung from the earth in order to annihilate the besiegers. Could it be the shades of all the dead champions of Korsholm, who had risen from their graves to avenge the violence offered against their old fortress?

In order to explain the unexpected sight which now alarmed the crowd, one must remember that a large portion of the country people from the adjacent hamlets had flocked to the town to witness the departure of the recruits. It should also be mentioned that the peasant king had remained all night in Vasa, probably in the secret expectation of hearing some news about Bertel from the crew of the "Maria Eleonora." The burning of the ale-house and the march of the intoxicated crowd towards Korsholm had set all Vasa in commotion, and when Meri arrived in breathless haste, imploring her father to rescue the imprisoned lady, she found everywhere willing ears. The East Bothnian is soon ready for battle, and when the peasants learned the insults put upon old Bertila, their best man, the ancient animosity arose within them against the soldiers. They forgot that many of their own sons and brothers were conscripts; they could not neglect such a fine chance to give the soldiers a thrashing, both in the name of humanity and loyalty to the crown. They marched therefore, with Bertila at their head, about a hundred strong, to the rescue of the castle, and what in the moonlight appeared to be pikes and muskets, were mostly poles and rails, which had been hastily snatched up, the usual weapons employed in the battles of that region.

As soon as the soldiers saw that they were attacked in the rear, they tried to conceal their alarm with loud shouts and cries. Uncertain of the enemy's strength, some of them already wished to beat a dangerous retreat over the spiked fence; others imagined that they had to deal with an army of goblins, called up by the incantations of the foreign witch. They were soon aroused from this delusion, however, by hearing the sounds of Malax Swedish, and Lillkyro Finnish, which could reasonably be thought to come from human and not spectral lips. At the moment the outer enemy blocked the gate with his forces, a silence arose on both sides, during which one could hear two voices speaking, together: one from the castle window, and the other from the ramparts.

"What did I tell you?" shrieked Fru Marta from the window; "didn't I tell you, drunkards and vagabonds, that you ought to think seven times before putting your noses between the wedges of the tree, and if the tail has once got into the fox-trap, there is nothing left but to bite it off. A large mouth needs a broad back, and now hold yourself in readiness to pay the fiddler."