straightened his cap and shook his head in reflection.
‘And when the Count found out . . . something in his mind must have snapped, because he set fire to the manor house and shot himself in the head. If not for the servants, the whole mess probably would have burned down. They managed to save the house and the children, but the Count was dead as a doornail.
‘After the tragedy with the ship, they installed a foghorn at the lighthouse. Whenever it sounded, the superstitious islanders said the Countess was standing on Devil’s Rock, calling for her lover. And then people began to spot the Countess on the cliff. Always in a fog. She continued to appear for many years.’
‘It must have been their imaginations,’ Sofia said.
‘Hardly,’ replied Björk. ‘She was real, believe me. Meanwhile, the Count’s children, who still lived there, fell ill and the barns burned down. The curse went on for years, until the Count’s son was fed up and moved abroad. The estate sat abandoned for several years.’
‘And then?’
‘The misery continued. A doctor bought the manor in the late 1990s. Lived there with his daughter. Big plans for the place — he wanted to turn it into some sort of rest home. But his daughter died in a fire, in one of the barns. An accident, they said, but I wasn’t fooled. The place is cursed.’ Björk held up one finger. ‘I’m not done yet — around the same time, a boy jumped from Devil’s Rock, hit his head, and drowned. The current took him. Since then, diving from the cliff has been forbidden.’
Sofia wondered if the old man was just making this up, but there wasn’t the slightest hint of teasing in his expression. Why would Oswald want to establish his centre in such a place? It seemed incredible.
‘So you can go look at all that, the lighthouse and the cliff?’ Wilma asked.
‘Yes, the lighthouse is still there, but the foghorn is no longer in use. Otherwise it’s all the same. And now the manor is being run by lunatics again, as you’ll soon discover.’ At last a booming laugh welled from his throat.
‘Do you know Oswald?’ Wilma asked.
‘Nah, he’s far too uppity to spend time with us islanders. He always stays in his car when he takes the ferry over.’
Sofia gazed into the fog. She thought she could see a faint outline where the horizon should be.
‘Here she is now!’ Björk cried.
Slowly, majestically, the island took shape. The contours of the firs on the hills, small boats at rest in the harbour, and shadows of houses here and there. The shrieking of the gulls reached the ferry. The fog was lifting. A pale sun, which couldn’t quite pierce the clouds, hung like a yellow blob in the grey sky.
‘See you on the evening ferry, then,’ Björk said as he guided the boat toward the pier. ‘There are two ferry departures each day. The morning ferry at eight and the evening ferry at five.’
When they stepped off, they immediately found themselves in the village, which was like a summer paradise. Small cottages with turrets and gingerbread; cobblestone streets and boutiques. Children were playing along the quay. Summer visitors drank coffee at an outdoor café. It was only early June, but vacation life was in full swing here.
Barely fifty metres from the ferry pier was a cobblestone square with a fountain in the middle. A woman in a grey uniform was waiting for them. She was thin and almost as short as Sofia. Her blonde hair was up in a bun and her face was pale, with delicate features. Her eyes were large and almost colourless; her eyebrows were white.
‘Sofia and Wilma? I’m Madeleine, Franz Oswald’s secretary. I’ll be showing you around today. First we’ll have a quick look around the island and then we’ll go up to the manor.’
She led them to a station wagon that was parked on one side of the square and opened the car door for them.
‘There are roads along the coast on both sides of the island,’ she explained. ‘Farther inland it’s mostly forest and heath, but I thought I would show you the landscape before we head to ViaTerra. There’s a lookout point on the northern tip of the island where you can look out over the Skagerrak Sound.’
‘Where’s the manor?’ Sofia asked.
‘On the north end. Just a short walk from the lookout.’
The western coast was flat, with sandy beaches and grass lawns full of picnic tables and grills. A couple of jetties extended like bridges into the hazy heat of the sea. Small boats were moored on the jetties and the shore was lined with boathouses. The eastern coast was barren and wild. The cliffs plunged to the sea just past the edge of the road.
They drove to the end of the island and parked the car, then walked across an expanse of heath to the lookout point, where the cliffs sloped to the water.
The fog had lifted and the sun was high in the sky. It was glittering blue as far as the eye could see, aside from the white flash of a lighthouse on an islet. Right away Sofia’s eyes were drawn to a rocky cliff that jutted out over the sea. It looked like a trampoline.
‘Is that the cliff you call Devil’s Rock?’
Madeleine gave a snort.
‘We don’t, but I guess the superstitious villagers do. As you can see, though, it’s only a cliff.’
‘We were given a warning on the way here. The ferry man, Björk, told us some creepy stories about the manor.’
Madeleine shook her head.
‘Oh, he’s not all there. He only does that to scare off our guests. The islanders have been so bloody suspicious since we moved here. They’re allergic to change. But we don’t care. Come on, let’s go see ViaTerra!’
They travelled back along the coast road for a bit and turned off at a wide gravel drive that was lined with huge oaks whose foliage loomed over them like a cupola. And suddenly they were at the manor house gate, which was at least three metres high, made of wrought iron, and adorned with winding curlicues, angels and devils, and an enormous keyhole.
‘Do you open it with a huge key?’ Wilma joked.
Madeleine just shook her head.
‘No, no; there’s a guard, of course.’
Only then did Sofia notice him. He was in a sentry box built into the wall. He waved them in, and the gate gave a creak and slowly swung open.
She didn’t know quite what she’d been expecting to find within the gate. Maybe an eerie, tumbledown mansion full of towers and crenellations. Instead, what spread before them was a palace. The property had to be half a kilometre square. The manor house in the centre looked like a castle and had three storeys. The façade must have been recently sandblasted; it was brilliantly white. There was a large pond in the middle of the lawn before the grand house, with ducks and a pair of swans swimming in it. There was a flagpole beside the motor court, but instead of a Swedish flag it was flying a green-and-white one.
Along the west side of the wall was a row of several long annexe buildings tucked into the edge of the woods. The roof of another long building was visible behind the manor house, and in the distance there was a pasture full of grazing sheep. Only a few people were visible: a couple drinking coffee in the yard outside the annexes and two people in uniform moving rapidly across the drive.
Sofia looked up at the manor again and discovered that something was carved into the upper part of the façade in large letters.
We walk the way of the earth, it read.
She stood there as if she had just fallen from the sky and took in all the splendour. She exchanged meaningful glances with Wilma and turned to Madeleine.
‘What a place!’
‘Yes, isn’t it fantastic? We’ve put a lot of work into it. Franz had a vision, and I think you could say we brought it to fruition.’
Sofia