Indeed. There are no foreshadowings that I could tell...the characters have a lot of choices for how the climax will shaketh down...
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Indeed. There are no foreshadowings that I could tell...the characters have a lot of choices for how the climax will shaketh down...
As a managment consultant, seems like I should have gone for teacher, or at least therapist... could have save some money
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I don’t know about that. I just looked up what a management consultant makes in Minnesota. To be a teacher and make that much, you would need to have the equivalent of two masters degrees or a PhD and probably coach a few extracurricular activities.
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Ulvila, Suomi
May, 1193
May, 1193
It had been disillusioning for Thorfinn to realize that the nobles of his father’s court lied like any other men did. Not that he had expected them to be honest; far from it. He had seen too much of the world in Nidaros to believe that the aristocracy was good or especially honorable. He had, however, gotten to the age of sixteen believing that the nobility were more skilled in their lies–that they would extend gossamer webs of deception that no mortal man could possibly hope to tear asunder.
Instead, they lied like laborers did, or artisans. The most skilled, like Duke Mielus of Oulu, might aspire to be as esteemed a liar as your average dockside confidence man–but even Mielus might struggle if asked to run the old Frisian-prisoner scheme on a passing merchant. He might have had the raw talent, to be sure; but there was a boldness and a conviction that a man could attain by knowing that he would starve if he failed to fool. Mielus could never have that.
Here they were at breakfast, for example. Mielus was complaining about Thorfinn’s father, and not for no reason. “And now his majesty wants to go after the hospice. The hospice! As if we can afford to alienate the tietäjät, with your aunt not yet in her grave. It’s madness.” Thorfinn nodded, absently. He had learned that his role in these conversations was to be the callow youth, ever in need of education. It made him seem like less of a threat, which was good.
If Thorfinn’s experience was to be relied upon, now the duke would attempt some clumsy move at establishing a complicity between the two of them. Sure enough, Mielus sighed and offered him a small, exasperated smile: “I swear to the gods, if the people knew how much it took for the two of us to keep your father on track…”
Thorfinn nodded. “It is… not easy,” he said, as if he were just the eager young acolyte.
But inadvertently, Mielus had raised a good question. Why had he risked so much to install a man on the throne that he neither respected nor truly controlled? What had he hoped to gain from that?
Unless he does not mean Father to rule for long. That was an ominous thought. Was he trying to see if Thorfinn was biddable, a suitable puppet? Playing for time until his daughter bore a lawful heir to the throne?
His thoughts were interrupted when a page came in to say that his majesty wanted to see ‘Prince Turo’ at once. Thorfinn gritted his teeth and said that he would be right along.
Thorfinn had never seen his father look quite as fine as he did these days, nor quite as bad. Father was dressed finer than he could remember seeing him, and a collection of royal servants had done wonders for his grooming. Still, all the servants in the world could not conceal the sagging jowls, the bags under his eyes, and the way that his hands shook in the morning. Father blamed that last on the sneak attack by his cousin Elzbieta, but that didn’t explain why the other hand was also afflicted.
Father greeted him with a smirk and a poke to the midsection. “Been enjoying the rich food at court, poju?”
Thorfinn hated the way that his father made reference to his weight, but he dared not let that show. “You wanted to see me?”
“Tyyne is coming this evening with her brothers to prepare for the wedding. You will show the lads a good time, I assume? Your opposition to my new bride has become apparent, and it’s causing trouble.”
Thorfinn stiffened, because Father had hit on something that he had hoped to hide. “I’m not opposed to the wedding,” he said, his tone sullen and unconvincing.
Father put a hand on his shoulder, and gave him a look full of paternal affection. “I know you miss your mother. Of course you do. I miss her too.”
Thorfinn found, to his horror, that he was crying. Father pulled him into a hug and held him as he sobbed. He hated this, hated being weak in front of this cruel man who had fathered him, but he could not help himself. The slightest bit of kindness was placed before him and he leapt upon it with the desperation of a starving animal.
When he had finished, Father gave him a sympathetic look. “I lost my mother too, when I was six. I don’t remember her well, but often I would think–if only my mother were here, maybe things would be easier. My father and I had such a difficult relationship.” He sighed and looked out the window. “I think it’s harder, when the mother’s gone. A child needs nurturing, gentleness… A woman’s touch. I guess I was never very good at that.”
Thorfinn was stunned to hear his father speaking so introspectively. It was hard to accept that this was the same man that he remembered from childhood. He worried that it was an act. He hoped that it wasn’t.
“But here’s the thing, poju,” Father was saying now. “She left us. You’re almost a man now, you should know the truth. When times got hard, when my bitch sister had us exiled, she left. She couldn’t handle the poverty or the struggle, she had to flee south to return to her silks and her sweetmeats and all the little niceties that I couldn’t give her any more.”
Thorfinn frowned. What his father was saying did not sound right to him. It would have been easy to believe that Father was correct on this, that his own memory was faulty. He had been so very young before they had been exiled, but he could have sworn he had overheard the servants talking, saying… What could he remember, though?
“I understand, Father,” he said at last, not knowing what else to say. “I’ll be happy to show Tyyne’s brothers a good time.”
Father smiled, and clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s a good lad. One less thing to worry about.”
The conversation turned then, as Father groused about the latest outrage from the Swedish king. The Swedes had won the duchy of Uppland back, but now King Brage was demanding the duchy of Västerbotten in recompense for the death of his chancellor, Duke Harald Sigurdrsson. Thorfinn was scarcely listening, however. He was still thinking about his mother.
When Thorfinn left his father’s solar, he went to find a servant. “Run out to the market this morning, there are a few things I need.”
The servant nodded. “Gifts for your father’s betrothed, your highness?”
Thorfinn shook his head. There was somebody else who knew why his mother had left, and he meant to ask her while he still could.
*****
Marja was dressed in tattered rags. Her hair was a tangled mess, her face smeared with grime. And yet somehow she looked more regal to Thorfinn in this cell than his father had on the throne.
She said nothing to him as he entered, only looked at him as if nothing could surprise her any more. Thorfinn did not attempt a pleasantry, feeling the falseness of it. Instead, he just reached into his satchel and produced the three gifts that he hoped to entice her with: a quill, ink, and a sheaf of paper. Her eyebrows raised as she considered them, and he could see the longing in her eyes, but in the end she refused. “If you mean to get Ulli’s location out of me…”
“We know where your son is. Mielus got the reports weeks ago. Your Lady Strauwing brought the prince safely to Zaporizhia.” He could see the tension on her face, so he added, “Even Father’s not mad enough to start a war with the horse lords of the Pontic Steppe. Not with the Swedes rattling their sabers.”
Her eyes kept trailing back down to the sheaf of paper. “So what do you want?”
“The truth. About my mother. My father.”
“The truth is that your father is going to have me executed tomorrow,” she said coolly. “If you’re not here to free me, then I don’t see why I should tell you anything.”
He shrugged. “Even if I wanted to… I don’t think I could.”
Her eyes flicked to the door. “The guards down here. Mielus’ men?”
He looked at her in surprise. “How did you know that?”
She snorted. “I knew every man in my father’s service. You don’t?” He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being judged, and not well.
Thorfinn threw up his hands helplessly. “I can’t free you. I truly cannot. But if there’s something that you want to write, some last words–I can find a ship and have it sent to them. They won’t refuse the king’s son.”
Marja studied him closely. “Your father must have told you some terrible things about me.”
“He did,” Thorfinn admitted. “But the woman he told me about wouldn’t have given herself up for her son.”
The admission made her soften, if only just. “Ask your questions.”
“Why did my mother leave?” To his shame, he found that he could not look at her as he spoke. Instead, he inspected the stonework behind her, and only met her gaze when he could tell she was hesitating. “Whatever the truth is, I want to hear it.”
Her tone was soft, but her words were not. “He beat her half to death. Choked her, broke her arm. Kept her as a virtual prisoner. He would have killed her, in all likelihood; and make no mistake, your father has killed women before.”
“She didn’t come back for us,” he said. Like it was a confession. Like it meant that he had failed her, somehow. In that moment he felt as if he had.
“You reminded her. Of him.” She said it as a bare statement of fact, without judgment.
Her words, as harsh as they were, had the ring of truth to him. Perhaps that’s why he was so shaken by them. It had been easier to imagine that his mother was some invulnerable woman, above the violence and cruelty that his father had dealt out to his children so often.
Thorfinn found that he wanted to weep again, but when he looked at Marja there in her cell, he realized the monstrous selfishness of that. The thought of him, demanding sympathy from a condemned woman less than a day from her own death, was surely appalling. It sounded like something that his father might do. Instead, he simply said, “I believe you.”
“You have a responsibility, Thorfinn.” Her gaze was intent now. “You know him, what he’s capable of. You have to protect the kingdom from him.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, again unable to meet her eyes.
“Yes, you do. It’s not fair that you should have that responsibility. You’re just a boy, and I know he must have hurt you too. But you have the blood of kings in your veins, Thorfinn. That’s what it means to be a Virtanen.”
Thorfinn gave his hands a close inspection. “I wouldn’t know how.”
“I can tell you what I know, but it has to be quick. Tomorrow I’m otherwise engaged.” Marja’s laugh was sharp and mirthless.
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Allies, I think, is too strong a word. But Thorfinn is still a boy and still receptive to new ideas. And he's got a reasonably good bullshit detector.
There was one bit of foreshadowing in an early chapter. Nobody brought it up in comments, but it's there.
For the record, I'm an administrator at a private university in the US, so I doubt I make that much either. Of course, in a year or two I hope to be graduate school so I really am bad at chasing that dollar.
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Thorfinn has the wisdom to keep playing his shell game. I wonder what he will do with it.
NOOO!!!!
This is a bad end to a good woman. I hope that Turo gets his if she gets hers.
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Oof! I’m finishing up my second masters degree right now. Why do we DO this to ourselves???
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This is Turo we're talking about... He's never been one for calm thinking, and he's likely even more confident than ever before now that he's back in power.
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I hated discovering this too...that the rich and powerful are just as dumb as everyone else, often more so...
...even Thorfinn falls for the lies...
This very much reminded me of Game of Thrones, the conversation between Tyrion and Snow at the end about what to do with Daeneryis...
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Thorfinn has the truth now. But what to do with it? He's a smart boy, yet he's surrounded by a bunch of scheming nobles and their soldiers.
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*returns after a few months* Oh I wonder how Marja is doing, I like her…Oh…Oh no
All jokes aside, this has been a great journey, I still have hopes for Marja but can see this ending in tragedy.
I think Thorfinn has it in him to rise to the occasion but it really is a lot to ask of him. Even if he does take the throne, I wonder if there can ever be reconciliations between the family branches or if we’re doomed to see Ulli return to avenge his mother
All jokes aside, this has been a great journey, I still have hopes for Marja but can see this ending in tragedy.
I think Thorfinn has it in him to rise to the occasion but it really is a lot to ask of him. Even if he does take the throne, I wonder if there can ever be reconciliations between the family branches or if we’re doomed to see Ulli return to avenge his mother
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Thorfinn still has time to do the right thing now.
But he also has time later - time that Marja dies not - to do the right thing later.
I was a little jolted by they're sudden return to Turo's presence. What happened with all the time they had in the journey back? I was thinking Marja might have time to talk to Thorfinn.
Rensslaer
But he also has time later - time that Marja dies not - to do the right thing later.
I was a little jolted by they're sudden return to Turo's presence. What happened with all the time they had in the journey back? I was thinking Marja might have time to talk to Thorfinn.
Rensslaer
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I too have been pondering the switch in our point-of-view character.
Discovering Marja’s likely fate near the end of Thorfinn’s chapter helped soften the blow, as at the moment of discovery I was looking through Thorfinn’s eyes, not Marja’s. It occurred to me later that most novels I’ve read don’t pull their punches like that, and led me to wonder if you’re kinder to your readers than your publishers would like, should you be planning on publishing novels someday.
You have the skill to wring our hearts, Cora. Are you saving the gut-punch for Marja’s final chapter, or are you being merciful to your readers? Should you be merciful?
Heh, if you’re saving the gut-punch for later, answering my questions now would be awkward, wouldn’t it? Sorry about that!
(Boo-hiss to autowrong changing Marja to Maria every time!)
Discovering Marja’s likely fate near the end of Thorfinn’s chapter helped soften the blow, as at the moment of discovery I was looking through Thorfinn’s eyes, not Marja’s. It occurred to me later that most novels I’ve read don’t pull their punches like that, and led me to wonder if you’re kinder to your readers than your publishers would like, should you be planning on publishing novels someday.
You have the skill to wring our hearts, Cora. Are you saving the gut-punch for Marja’s final chapter, or are you being merciful to your readers? Should you be merciful?
Heh, if you’re saving the gut-punch for later, answering my questions now would be awkward, wouldn’t it?
Sorry about that!(Boo-hiss to autowrong changing Marja to Maria every time!)
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To be honest, the moment Marja gave herself up to let Emma and the Prince escape...the possibility of a public and messy death has been top of the plausible ending for Marja in my head.
Something special will have to happen to change things...which is possible, there was a glimmer of something interesting in the last chapter that wasn't explained...so maybe...
On the subject of being kind to readers, that is a great question. Jak once pointed out that he was glad at one point in Last Mission that the hero didn't persist in a specific medical condition for very long, as the story would then be really dark. I thought about how I might write that if it were true and found my spirit essentially refusing to go that far into the dark to even think about plotting it.
I don't know about other's writing style...but I often have to experience mentally the story before I can get the responses of the characters right...which means I need to think through how each character perceives and responds...and doing that with something really awful...is really tough.
We've never gotten more than hints of Emma's story...and only hints of Irene's struggle in this arc of the Sword...
Is the goal of Cora not to dwell on the evil lest we think it normalized? Is the goal not to dwell on it to save herself from having to vicariously experience it during the writing process?
Only Cora can tell us for sure.
I only know the concept surprised me when it was raised and my spirit essentially refused to enter the writing process on some topics...
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Hey! I just nominated you for an AARland Choice Awards award for this last quarter. I hope that everyone who follows will participate by voting.
It’s also a great way to learn about other high quality AARs that you haven’t read. See here the details: Q2 2025 ACAs.
It’s also a great way to learn about other high quality AARs that you haven’t read. See here the details: Q2 2025 ACAs.
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I would feel the same way, I think.
Absolutely true. Turo is a very impulsive person, and he's only gotten worse with power.
I think Thorfinn was so starved for kindness from his father that he would accept even this thin substitute. I think children of abusive fathers often feel like that.
A good question.
Thanks!
You're right. Thorfinn really leaves this chapter in an impossible situation. And yet, if not him, who?
I didn't think that Thorfinn would warm to Marja right away, to be honest. And Marja's highest priority at first would be to give Emma and Ulli time to get as far as possible.
This is an interesting conversation. Obviously, you'll see on Wednesday how much my punches were or weren't pulled.
I will say that abuse and violence against women comes up a lot in the stories that I find the most meaningful, because that's a big part of the world that we live in and I don't believe in shying away from it. At the same time, it really rubs me the wrong way when an author, particularly a male author, really gets into depicting male violence against women (sexual or otherwise). There is something about it that can read fetishistic to me.
I do think that if I were starting this story over, I would feature a lot more of Irene's marriage to Turo, both to flesh out Turo's character and to humanize Irene more. I'm trying to humanize the antagonist in part 4 in a way that I'm not sure I ever did with Turo. I would not have written more about Emma's background, because I think the reader gets broadly what happened and anything more would be irrelevant to the story of her as a trauma survivor imo. To the degree that I was squeamish, it's that...
...well, I'll tell you that on Wednesday.
Thanks! I just voted too, and everybody who follows this should vote too. (Not necessarily for me, for somebody.)
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I think about this, too. I've written some dark scenes. I always think that if the message is "isn't this so sick and twisted? It's awesome!" is what comes through, then that's a bit of a problem. I also wonder if sometimes, it can be more powerful to leave things unsaid so that the reader pretty much knows what's happened but we don't see it happen. That's sometimes a much more realistic way of approaching the situation because so much is hidden beneath the surface.
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Caught up... again. It's amazing how quickly the winds of fortune can change. Not historically inaccurate, either. Like everyone else, I'll be waiting to see what happens.
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Epilogue
The execution of Marja Virtanen took place on the first day of Vakkajuhlat, the great festival of the spring sowing. King Turo had arranged an extensive public trial over the course of the winter, in which courtiers and local townspeople were paid handsomely to tell extravagant lies about the now deposed queen. To him, the execution was to be the final symbol of his victory over the forces that had been arrayed against him, personified as always by his sister Marja.
In this, as in so many other things, Turo had failed to consider how his actions would be understood by others. The people of Ulvila had been suspicious of Marja when she was queen, but once she had been brought low, they recalled how they had loved her. Had she not been observant to the gods? Had she not spent generously on the poor and sick? Had she not been the greatest champion of Otso Longshanks, her beloved father? And above all else, had she not tirelessly defended the people against her brother, who–they now understood–was petty and cruel?
In the provinces, where she was not known, Marja’s reputation was far darker. Children were told that Bloody Marja would come for them if they committed any of a number of juvenile sins. These simple folk did not know the queen as intimately, and so fashioned a likeness of her out of superstitions and propaganda. But in Ulvila, she was well known, and at the time of her death, beloved.
Public outrage began when it became apparent that the king’s men were erecting a gallows in the middle of the square where the tanners plied their noxious trade. As a noblewoman, Marja had the right to a beheading rather than a hanging. The latter was understood to be crueler, and in many cases slower, since oftentimes the neck was not broken immediately. This was a flagrant insult to a daughter of King Otso, and lost on nobody.
The second wave of outrage came when Marja was presented to the crowd on a cart, bound and gagged. The bindings were understood as necessary, the gag was not. Many palace servants and minor courtiers had observed that her trial had also been conducted in absentia. Plainly there were truths that she knew that would ruin the king, if shared. What those might be were a matter of great speculation in the days after her execution.
When Turo arrived before the crowd, there to witness his final victory over his hated sister, he was startled to see many thousands regarding the spectacle in silence. The trial had been a great success, he had been assured, and he could not account for this coldness. The mob usually enjoyed the spectacle of an execution, but in this case the public mood was funereal.
It was noted too that the king’s son was absent from the execution. A page was dispatched to the king’s solar that morning, telling him blithely that his highness was sick. When the king made further inquiries, it became clear that his highness would not attend the execution unless physical force was employed to carry him there. Once there, the prince explained, he might of course say any number of things, unless his majesty cared to have him gagged as well. Upon further reflection, Turo decided that his son should not overtax himself.
When the queen was hanged at last, somebody in the crowd began to groan in unconscious sympathy. The reaction spread, from one person to two, from two to four, until it sounded like the agonies of a titanic beast there amongst them. To the king, that terrible noise was like his sister’s final victory over him. It was perhaps rather a sign of his great gift for turning friends into enemies.
The body of the late queen was burned in a small ceremony, in accordance with Finnish customs. Her bones were buried in an unmarked grave, and the king would not permit her name to be added to the karsikko tree beneath her father’s. No public marker of her death existed until after the death of Turo I. Then the abbess of the hospice, one Guðrún of Oslo, successfully obtained royal permission to commemorate the life of Marja Virtanen there in the community where she had felt most at home.
*****
After Thorfinn had that final conversation with his aunt, he began to meet with the men of his father’s guard. Many of them had first volunteered under his grandfather, many years before, and such men knew a lot about where the metaphorical bodies were buried. Of course, they did not trust him automatically. Turo was not well loved, so his son was viewed with some suspicion. Then there was the touchy issue of his accent, for he talked like a Norwegian Christian even though he was neither.
Here the assistance of his friend Frithjof was invaluable. The baker’s boy had arrived from Nidaros as the duke had promised, and thereafter he became known as the prince’s manservant. However, the prince could scarcely treat his closest friend like a servant, not when he still struggled with the notion that he was a person who might have servants at all. And so it became known that the prince’s man was a charming sort who could get away with anything.
Frithjof had a thousand funny stories and a fondness for dice, and a man like that will be welcomed in any barracks or tavern in the world. Slowly he made the prince seem more approachable, as he had when they were boys together in Nidaros. After a few months, one began to hear the old veterans say that Prince Thorfinn was a good sort, and sensible. Among the men of the guard, this was high praise indeed.
As Thorfinn’s star rose, his father’s was on the decline. The execution of Marja was supposed to be the king’s finest victory, and yet somehow he had lost face as a result. Turo took it as a rebuke, and became aggrieved as oft as he was not. He had been known to drink before, but now it was said that the king was rarely sober. He scarcely managed to consummate his marriage with Queen Tyyne of Oulu, the washer-women whispered; and they saw the royal bed-sheets and knew about such things.
Early in the fall, just after the first frost, the king suddenly fell ill. It was a modest ailment, easy for a healthy man to shake off, but Turo was not healthy and the tietäjä Agafana was concerned. The king was eventually obliged to take to his bed, where he enjoyed a fitful and feverish sleep. Turo’s children gathered at his bedside, watching with curiosity more than concern to see if their father would die.
Just after sundown, however, Agafana declared that the fever had broken and the king should be well again on the morrow. The twin princesses, Hilja and Venla, shrugged their shoulders and returned to bed, saying nothing. Soon only Thorfinn remained by his father’s side. He sat and stared.
Frithjof arrived at the midnight hour, concerned for his friend’s well being. Thorfinn only smiled, however, and asked if the lad might give him and his father some privacy. For a few minutes at least. The baker’s boy, who was no fool, studied his friend closely before slowly nodding.
The prince then rose, with a pillow in one hand, and gently pushed it down on his father’s face. The king died after a brief futile struggle just after midnight on the third day of October, 1193. He was forty years old.
In the years to come, Thorfinn often had cause to recall his aunt’s words: You’re nothing like him. He prayed that they were true. He feared that they were not. In his final hours, as an aged and respected monarch, he pondered them, and found that he could not answer the question they posed.
*****
The prince chose Toomas to deliver Marja’s letters, as the man had been guard to Lady Strauwing for some ten years. He was a Viro man, and amiable enough in his way, but he kept others at one remove and thus had few intimates. When tasked with the long and potentially hazardous journey, Toomas had only nodded and said that he might leave upon the morrow.
He took ship on the Good Prince Mieletty. The Mieletty was a Suomi merchant ship which plied the trade from Ulvila, traveling west along the Gulf of Suomi with stops at Tallinn and Helsinki, before sailing up the Neva as far as Novgorod. Colloquially the ship was known as ‘Wolf’s-Bane’, for reasons that Toomas found obscure, and her crew believed that the ship was under a hex. He had not known these things when he boarded, but it suited his humor to learn that he was embarking on this dark mission on a cursed ship.
Once at Novgorod, Toomas took a horse and rode south to the White Russian city of Orsha. He was stopped on several occasions by steppe riders, who raided the Christian kingdom of Vladimir with some frequency. Once these men learned that he was on a mission to Zaporizhia, however, he was inevitably left to continue on his way unmolested. Such was the reputation of the Mad Greek and his sons. He took ship again at Orsha, and sailed down the Dnieper to the coastal city that the Greeks called Alector.
He was presented to Lady Strauwing immediately upon arrival. She had taken on the role of royal physician, and wore the robes of office appropriate to such a station. Only the moon of Kuutar, which still hung around her neck, was left to signify that she marked herself an exile from her adopted homeland. The lady began to weep when she saw Toomas, knowing that there was but one reason why he would have come.
Toomas was invited to winter there on the Black Sea coast, since it was by then nearly fall. He spent the winter assisting the lady in her work as physician, tramping through the grasslands to find herbs or haggling at the market over unguents and salves from the south. It was a peaceful life, he decided, and far from the bad memories he had of the north. And so he stayed.
The lady did not seek intimate company for a number of years after the queen died, but she became convinced over time that Marja would not wish her to be alone. So there were other women in her life after that, although none for very long. Some were fair and some were kind and some were clever. All were competing with a ghost, however, and it proved a competition that they could not win.
Instead, it was Toomas who served as her faithful companion, as a friend and a confidant. The distance that kept him isolated from his fellow guardsmen proved to be just the thing that Emma needed most during her own widowhood. In later years, visitors to the court sometimes imagined them to be husband and wife. She would smile when the assumption became clear, and shake her head, and say that her love had died years ago in the land of the frozen north.
*****
Marja’s letter to her son Ulli was lengthy, and written in a dense and careful script, as if she felt keenly the limitations of the pages given to her. It began with tales of the Virtanens–legends and folklore about the lineage going back to the ancient king Kaleva, mixed with more personal tales of her father and her brother Ulavi. She made no reference to her other brother, nor of her husband.
She wrote, too, of Emma, and of her love for Emma. She understood that the boy must have perceived them both as terribly old women, the middle years of a person’s life being quite unimaginable to a seven year old mind. So she wrote of the times when they were young at great length, so that Ulli would later remember them as if he had been there.
She then took a mother’s prerogative to give counsel. Rather a lot of counsel, in fact, regarding any number of imagined scenarios. She emphasized that as a noble it would be his responsibility to protect the weak, and that the privileges he would enjoy were but a means to that fundamental end. This was most important, she wrote, when the malefactor was somebody close to you, somebody that you might be inclined to excuse.
She did not wish him to claim the throne in Suomi, although he held a colorable claim, and in the end he did not. Ulli Virtanen became a skilled warrior at bow and blade, and Princess Irene was once heard to remark that he rode well–for a Finn. He grew from warrior to warchief, serving as a beg with his own herd that eventually numbered into the thousands.
He fought heroically against the Mongols when that fierce storm swept in from the east. When Zaporizhia fell before them, he took his family and went south, to the pagan khanate that occupied the old lands of Byzantium. There he lived a quiet life in the shadow of the Theodosian walls, enjoying the company of his grandchildren.
Ulli read his mother’s words often, particularly in the first few years after her death. They were his constant companion while on campaign. When the pages became brittle and stained with sweat and watermarks, he copied them himself by hand. By then, he need not have bothered. He knew it by heart. His children rolled their eyes when he began a sentence with, My mother always said… And yet they would remember her words too, in fragments at least.
*****
Marja’s letter to Lady Strauwing was shorter, if no less heartfelt:
Emma:
The only thing that I regret is that I ever hid my love for you.
M.
End of Part Three
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