We, the Drowned

Contents

Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Map

I

The Boots

The Thrashing Rope

Justice

The Voyage

The Disaster

II

The Breakwater

Visions

The Boy

North Star

III

The Widows

The Seagull Killer

The Sailor

The Homecoming

IV

The End of the World

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright © 2006 by Carsten Jensen og Gyldendal

Translation copyright © 2010 by Charlotte Barslund

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Jensen, Carsten, date.

[Vi, de druknede. English]

We, the drowned / Carsten Jensen ; translated from the Danish by Charlotte Barslund with Emma Ryder.

p. cm.

Translation of: Vi, de druknede—T.p. verso.

ISBN 978-0-15-101377-7 ISBN 978-0-547-73736-2 (pbk.)

I. Barslund, Charlotte. II. Ryder, Emma. III. Title.

PT8176.2.E44V513 2010

839.8'1374—dc22 2009046568

Translation of Vi, de druknede

This translation has been sponsored by the Danish Arts Council Committee for Literature.

eISBN 978-0-547-50467-4

v5.1115

Cover design: Suzanne Dean

Cover illustration: Joe McLaren

The author is grateful for financial assistance from the following:

Statens Kunstfond

Litteraturrådet

Autorkontoen

Statens Kunstråds Litteraturudvalg

Politikens Fond

J. C. Hempels Fond

Konsul Georg Jorck og hustru Emma Jorcks Fond

Fonden Erik Hoffmeyers Rejselegat

For Lizzie, the love of my life

I

The Boots

MANY YEARS AGO there lived a man called Laurids Madsen, who went up to Heaven and came down again, thanks to his boots.

He didn’t soar as high as the tip of the mast on a full-rigged ship; in fact he got no farther than the main. Once up there, he stood outside the pearly gates and saw Saint Peter—though the guardian of the gateway to the Hereafter merely flashed his bare ass at him.

Laurids Madsen should have been dead. But death didn’t want him, and he came back down a changed man.

Until the fame he achieved from this heavenly visit, Laurids Madsen was best known for having single-handedly started a war. His father, Rasmus, had been lost at sea when Laurids was six years old. When he turned fourteen he shipped aboard the Anna of Marstal, his native town on the island of Ærø, but the ship was lost in the Baltic only three months later. The crew was rescued by an American brig and from then on Laurids Madsen dreamt of America.

He’d passed his navigation exam in Flensburg when he was eighteen and the same year he was shipwrecked again, this time off the coast of Norway near Mandal, where he stood on a rock with the waves slapping on a cold October night, scanning the horizon for salvation. For the next five years he sailed the seven seas. He went south around Cape Horn and heard penguins scream in the pitch-black night. He saw Valparaiso, the west coast of America, and Sydney, where the kangaroos hop and the trees shed bark in winter and not their leaves. He met a girl with eyes like grapes by the name of Sally Brown, and could tell stories about Foretop Street, La Boca, Barbary Coast, and Tiger Bay. He boasted about his first equator crossing, when he’d saluted Neptune and felt the bump as the ship passed the line: his fellow sailors had marked the occasion by forcing him to drink salt water, fish oil, and vinegar; they’d baptized him in tar, lamp soot, and glue; shaved him with a rusty razor with dents in its blade; and tended to his cuts with stinging salt and lime. They made him kiss the ocher-colored cheek of the pockmarked Amphitrite and forced his nose down her bottle of smelling salts, which they’d filled with nail clippings.

Laurids Madsen had seen the world.

So had many others. But he was the only one to return to Marstal with the peculiar notion that everything there was too small, and to prove his point, he frequently spoke in a foreign tongue he called American, which he’d learned when he sailed with the naval frigate Neversink for a year.

"Givin nem belong mi Laurids Madsen," he said.

He had three sons and a daughter with Karoline Grube from Nygade: Rasmus, named after his grandfather, and Esben and Albert. The girl’s name was Else and she was the oldest. Rasmus, Esben, and Else took after their mother, who was short and taciturn, while Albert resembled his father: at the age of four he was already as tall as Esben, who was three years his senior. His favorite pastime was rolling around an English cast-iron cannonball, which was far too heavy for him to lift—not that it stopped him from trying. Stubborn-faced, he’d brace his knees and strain.

"Heave away, my jolly boys! Heave away, my bullies!" Laurids shouted in encouragement, as he watched his youngest son struggling with it.

The cannonball had come crashing through the roof of their house in Korsgade during the English siege of Marstal in 1808, and it had put Laurids’s mother in such a fright that she promptly gave birth to him right in the middle of the kitchen floor. When little Albert wasn’t busy with the cannonball it lived in the kitchen, where Karoline used it as a mortar for crushing mustard seeds.

It could have been you announcing your arrival, my boy, Laurids’s father had once said to him, seeing how big you were when you were born. If the stork had dropped you, you would have gone through the roof like an English cannonball.

"Finggu," Laurids said, holding up his finger.

He wanted to teach the children the American language.

Fut meant foot. He pointed to his boot. Maus was mouth.

He rubbed his belly when they sat down to eat. He bared his teeth.

"Hanggre."

They all understood he was telling them he was hungry.

Ma was misis, Pa papa tru. When Laurids was absent, they said Mother and Father like normal children, except for Albert. He had a special bond with his father.

The children had many names, pickaninnies, bullies, and hearties.

"Laihim tumas," Laurids said to Karoline, and pursed his lips as if he was about to kiss her.

She blushed and laughed, and then got angry.

Don’t be such a fool, Laurids, she said.

IN 1848, WAR BROKE OUT between the Danish crown and the rebellious Germans across the Baltic in Schleswig-Holstein, who wanted to cut their ties with Denmark. The old customs steward, de la Porte, was the first to know because the provisional insurgent government in Kiel sent him a proclamation, accompanied by a request to hand over the customs coffers.

All of Ærø was up in arms, and we immediately formed a home guard led by a young teacher from Rise, who from then on was known as the General. On the highest points of the island we erected beacons made of barrels filled with tar and old rope, attached to poles. If the German came by sea, we’d signal his approach by setting them alight and hoisting them up.

There were beacons at Knasterbjerg and on the hills by Vejsnæs, and all around our coast, guards watched the horizon closely.

But all this war business soon became too much for Laurids, who never had much respect for anything to begin with. One evening, as he was on his way home from Eckernförde Fjord, he passed Vejsnæs, where he neared the shore and yelled, The German is coming! His voice rang out across the water.

A few minutes later the barrel at the top of the hill was set alight, then the one on Knasterbjerg, and the others followed all the way down to Synneshøj, almost fifteen miles away, until the whole of Ærø was illuminated as on bonfire night.

As the flames rose, Laurids lay in his boat, laughing his head off at the mayhem he’d caused. But when he reached Marstal, he saw lights everywhere and the streets teeming with people, even though it was late evening. Some were shouting incomprehensible orders; others were whimpering and praying. A belligerent crowd was marching up Markgade armed with scythes, pitchforks, and the odd gun, and terrified young mothers rushed around the streets, clutching wailing babies, sure that the German would skewer them on his bayonet. By the well on the corner of Markgade and Vestergade a skipper’s wife was arguing with a servant girl. The woman had got it into her head that they should hide in the well and was ordering the girl to go first.

After you, madam, the girl insisted.

We men were ordering one another about as well, but there were too many skippers in our town for anyone to heed anyone else, so all we could agree on was a solemn vow to part with our lives only at the highest possible price.

The upheaval reached the parsonage in Kirkestrædet where Pastor Zachariassen was entertaining guests. One lady fainted, but the pastor’s twelve-year-old son, Ludvig, grabbed a poker, ready to defend his country against the advancing enemy. At the home of Mr. Isager, the schoolteacher, who also doubled up as parish clerk, the family prepared for imminent attack. All twelve sons were on hand to celebrate the birthday of their mother, the portly Mrs. Isager; she equipped them with clay pots filled with ashes and commanded them to throw the contents in the face of the German, should he dare to storm their house.

Our flock moved on through Markgade toward Reberbanen led by old Jeppe, who was waving a pitchfork and yelling that the German was welcome to come and get him if he dared. Laves Petersen, the little carpenter, was forced to return home. He had bravely slung his gun over his shoulder and filled his pockets to bursting with bullets, but halfway down the street, he suddenly remembered he’d left his gunpowder behind.

At Marstal Mill the miller’s hefty wife, Madam Weber, already armed with a pitchfork, insisted on joining the fight, and because she appeared more intimidating than most of us men, we instantly welcomed her to our bloodthirsty ranks.

Laurids, who was an emotional man, was so fired up by the general fighting spirit that he too ran home to find a weapon. Karoline and the four children were hiding under the dining table in the parlor when he burst in and proclaimed cheerfully, Come along, kids, time to go to war!

There was a hollow thud. It was Karoline, banging her head against the underside of the dining table. She crawled laboriously out from under the tablecloth, stood to her full height, and screamed at her husband, Have you completely lost your mind, Madsen? Children don’t go to war!

Rasmus and Esben started jumping up and down.

We want to go! We want to go! they yelled in unison. Please, please, let us go.

Little Albert had already started rolling his cannonball around.

Have you all gone stark raving mad? their mother shouted, boxing the ears of whichever child came near. You get back under that table right now!

Laurids ran into the kitchen to find a suitable weapon. Where do you keep the big frying pan? he called into the parlor.

You keep your hands off it! Karoline shouted back.

Well, I’ll take the broom then, he announced. The German will be sorry!

They heard the front door slam behind him.

Did you hear that? whispered Rasmus, the eldest, to Albert. Father wasn’t even speaking American.

The man’s insane, their mother said, shaking her head in the darkness underneath the dining table. Have you ever heard of anyone going to war with a broom?

Laurids’s arrival in our militant crowd stirred great delight. True, he had a reputation for being cocky, but he was big and strong and good to have on your side.

Is that the only weapon you’ve got?

We had spotted the broom.

It’s good enough for the German, he replied, brandishing it aloft. We’ll sweep him right out of here.

Feeling invincible, we roared with laughter at his joke.

Let’s leave a few pitchforks behind, Lars Bødker said. We’ll need them for stacking the bodies.

By now we’d reached the open fields. It was half an hour’s march to Vejsnæs, but our pace was brisk and our blood was up. At Drejbakkerne, the sight of the flaming beacons further fueled our fighting spirit. But at the sound of horses’ hooves in the darkness we froze. The enemy was upon us!

We had hoped to surprise the German on the beach, but here on the hill the terrain still favored us. Laurids positioned himself for battle with his broom and we followed suit.

A voice rang out behind us. Wait for me!

It was the little carpenter, who’d gone home for his gunpowder.

Shhhh, we warned. The German is closing in.

The hoofbeats grew louder—and it became clear that there was only one horse. When the rider appeared out of the darkness, Laves Petersen raised his gun and took aim. But Laurids pushed down on the barrel.

It’s Bülow, the controller, he said.

The horse was dripping with sweat, its black flanks pumping in and out. Bülow raised his hand.

You can go home. There’s no German at Vejsnæs.

But the beacons were alight, Laves called out.

I’ve spoken to the coast guard, Bülow said. It was a false alarm.

And we left our warm beds. For what? For nothing!

Madam Weber folded her arms across her chest and fired us all a warning glance as though looking for a new enemy, now that the German had failed to show.

At least we’ve proved that we’re ready for him, the controller said soothingly. And surely it’s good news that he’s not coming at all.

We mumbled in agreement. But although we saw his logic, we were sorely disappointed. We had been ready to stare the German in the face, and death too—but neither had made it to Ærø.

One day that German will be sorry, Lars Bødker said.

Starting to tire, we decided to head home. A chilly shower had started to fall. In silence we reached the mill, where Madam Weber parted company from us. Turning to face our miserable flock, she placed her pitchfork on the ground as though presenting a rifle.

I wonder, she said in an ominous voice, which one of you jokers got decent folks out of their beds in the middle of the night to go to war.

We all stared at Laurids, towering there with his broom on his shoulder.

But Laurids neither flinched nor averted his eyes. Instead he looked straight at us. Then he threw his head back and started laughing into the rain.

SOON WAR BROKE OUT in earnest and we were called up for the navy. The naval steamer Hekla anchored off the neighboring town of Ærøskøbing to pick us up. We lined up on the wharf and as our names were called, one by one we jumped into the launch, which took us to the steamer. We’d felt cheated out of war that evening in November, but now the wait was over and we were in high spirits.

Make way for a Dane with his life, his soul, and his sea bag! yelled Claus Jacob Clausen.

He was a small, sinewy man who liked to boast that a Copenhagen tattoo artist called Frederik the Spike had once told him he had the toughest arm he’d ever stuck a needle into. Clausen’s father, Hans Clausen, had been a pilot, as had his grandfather, and Clausen wanted to follow in their footsteps; what’s more, the night before we embarked he’d had a dream that told him he’d emerge from the war alive.

In Copenhagen we were inspected on board the frigate Gefion. Laurids was separated from the rest of us and was the only one to join the Christian the Eighth, the ship-of-the-line, whose mainmast was so tall that from top to deck, it stood one and a half times the height of the church tower in Marstal. We had to crane our necks to take it in, but the dizziness it induced filled us with pride about the great deeds we’d been summoned to perform.

Laurids watched us as we left. After a year on the American man-of-war Neversink, the Christian the Eighth suited him. He’d soon feel at home on her deck—though when he saw the rest of us disappear up the gangway to the Gefion, he must have briefly felt abandoned.

So off we went to war. On Palm Sunday we sailed along the coast of Ærø, past the hills at Vejsnæs, where Laurids had turned the island upside-down with his cry The German is coming! Now the Dane was coming, and it was the German’s turn to light his tar barrels and take off like a headless chicken.

We moored off Als and waited. On Wednesday we set course for Eckernförde Fjord and reached its mouth late that afternoon. There we followed the order to line up on the quarterdeck: in our homespun shirts and cloth trousers of blue, black, or white, we were a motley crew. Only the ribbons on our caps emblazoned with the name Gefion and a red and white cockade announced that we were members of the king’s navy. The captain, who was dressed in his finest uniform, complete with epaulettes and a sword, gave a speech in which he ordered us to fight like brave men. He shouted three cheers for the king and waved his tricorn, and we joined in with all our might. Then he ordered the cannons to be fired so we raw recruits could hear how they’d sound in battle. A formidable roar rolled across the sea, accompanied by the acrid smell of gunpowder. A strong breeze was blowing, carrying the blue haze of cannon smoke off on the wind. For several minutes we couldn’t hear a thing. The noise from the cannons had deafened us.

Two steamers arrived, and we recognized the Hekla, the ship we had sailed in from Ærøskøbing. We were now a full squadron. The next day we geared up for battle, settling the cannons in their ports, positioning the pumps and hoses where they could be put to immediate use if fire broke out on board, and placing case shots, grapeshot, and boxes of cartridges by each cannon. Over the past few days we had practiced this drill so many times that we knew most of the naval commands by heart. We were eleven men to each cannon, and from the moment the first command sounded—Get ready! followed by Fuse powder and paper! and Insert cartridge! to the command Fire!—we scrambled around one another, terrified of making a mistake. We were used to working in threes or fours on our small boats and ketches but now suddenly we were to be masters of life and death.

All too often we’d stand there, baffled, while the gun captain screamed something like Tend the vent! or Search the piece! What the hell did that mean in plain Danish? Whenever we succeeded in performing a complicated routine without errors, the captain would congratulate us and we’d erupt in cheers. Upon which he’d look first at us, then at his cannon, and finally down at the deck, and shake his head.

You bunch of puppies, he said. Just do your best, damn you!

We weren’t entirely sure which German we were supposed to be shooting. It surely couldn’t be old Ilse with the crooked hip who sold us our beloved schnapps when we moored our boats at Eckernförde Harbor. Nor Eckhart, the grain trader: we’d struck many a fine bargain with him. Then there was Hansen, the innkeeper at Der Rote Hahn. What could be more Danish than the name Hansen? And we’d never seen him anywhere near a gun. None of them could be the German; that much we understood. But the king knew who the German was. As did the captain, who had been cheering with such bravado.

We approached the fjord. The enemy batteries on the coast started to thunder, but we were outside their range and they soon grew quiet. We were given schnapps rather than the usual tea. At nine o’clock came the beating of the tattoo; it was time to turn in. Seven hours later we were roused from our slumbers. It was Maundy Thursday, April 5, 1849. Again we got schnapps rather than tea, and a barrel of beer awaited us on the deck. We could drink as much as we wanted, so morale was high by the time we raised the anchor and headed into the fjord.

We had no complaints about the victuals on board His Majesty’s ships. Food had been scarce when we’d had to supply it for ourselves. They said you’d never see a seagull in the wake of a Marstal ship, and that was true enough: we never wasted a crumb. But on top of tea and beer, the navy gave us all the bread we could eat and more. Lunch was a pound of fresh meat or half a pound of bacon, dried peas, porridge or soup; in the evening it was four weights of butter, and a schnapps to go with it. Long before we smelled our first whiff of gunpowder smoke, we loved the war.

Now we were inside Eckernförde Fjord, where the shores were closer and the cannons’ positions clearly visible. Kresten Hansen leaned over to Ejnar Jensen and confided in him, yet again, his conviction that he wouldn’t survive the battle.

I’ve known it since the day the German demanded the duty coffers. I’m going to die today.

You know nothing, Ejnar replied. You had no idea the battle would be on Maundy Thursday.

I’ve known a long time: the hour is upon us!

Shut your trap, growled Ejnar. He’d suffered Kresten’s bleating ever since they’d packed their sea bags and laced their boots.

But Kresten was unstoppable. Breathing in rapid gasps, he placed a hand on his friend’s arm.

Promise me you’ll bring my sea bag back to Marstal.

You can bring it yourself. Now stop it, before you scare the living daylights out of me too.

Ejnar threw an anxious glance at Kresten. We’d never seen our friend in such a state before. Kresten was the son of the skipper Jochum Hansen, an official with the harbor authority. Kresten took after him, right down to the freckles, the strawberry blond hair, and the silent manner.

Here, Ejnar said, handing him a pitcher of beer. Get that down your neck.

He held it to Kresten’s lips, but the beer went down the wrong way; he spluttered and his eyes grew glassy. Ejnar slapped him on the back, and Kresten gasped and wheezed, the beer pouring from his nostrils.

You dumb oaf, Ejnar laughed. You won’t drown if you’re meant to hang. You nearly finished yourself off there. You’re doing the German out of a job.

But Kresten’s eyes remained distant.

The hour is upon us, he repeated in a hollow voice.

Well, I for one am not going to be shot. Little Clausen had joined in the conversation. I know, because I dreamt it. I was walking down Møllevejen, going into town. There was a soldier on either side of me, ready to shoot. Then a voice called out, ‘You shall go!’ And so I did. The bullets whizzed past my ears, but none of them hit me. So I’m not going to get shot today. I’m certain of it!

We looked across the fjord: the surrounding fields were clad in spring green, and a thatched farmhouse lay snuggled in a small grove of lime trees in bud, with a road flanked by stone walls leading up to it. A cow grazing by the roadside turned her back to us and flicked her tail lazily, oblivious to the war approaching by water.

The cannon batteries to starboard were closing in; we saw the smoke, then heard their thunder roll across the water like a storm gathering from nowhere.

Kresten leapt up.

The hour is upon us, he said.

A tongue of fire flashed from the Christian the Eighth’s starboard stern. We exchanged puzzled glances. Had she been struck?

Being unfamiliar with warfare, we did not know what a direct hit might entail. There was no reaction from the ship-of-the-line.

Why don’t they shoot back? Ejnar asked.

Because they’re still not crosswise to the battery, Clausen answered knowledgeably.

A moment later a cloud of pewter smoke on the starboard side of the Christian announced that they were indeed responding. The battle had begun. Fire and earth exploded on the shore and tiny matchstick men rushed around. A good easterly wind was blowing and soon it was Gefion’s turn to deliver a broadside. The roar from the huge sixty-pound cannons made the whole ship shudder. Our stomachs lurched. We pressed our hands to our ears and screamed from a mixture of fear and elation, astounded by the force of the impact.

Now the German was getting a real hammering!

After some minutes, the firing from the battery on the point ceased.

By now we had to rely solely on our eyes because we couldn’t hear a thing. The shore looked like a desert landscape, with sand shoved up in piles. The black barrel of a twenty-four-pounder stuck up in the air, flipped over as if by an earthquake. No one was moving.

We slapped one another’s backs in mute victory. Even Kresten appeared to forget his grim premonitions of doom and surrendered to the general ecstasy: war was a thrill, a rush of schnapps that fired up your blood—only the joy was wider and purer. The smoke drifted away and the air cleared. Never before had we seen the world with such clarity. We stared like newborn babies. Rigging, masts, and sails formed a canopy above us like the foliage of a fresh-sprung beech forest. Everything bore an otherworldly sheen.

Christ, I feel all solemn, Little Clausen said, once our faculties had returned. Damn, damn, damn. He couldn’t stop swearing. Damn me if I’ve ever seen the like.

We’d heard the thunder of cannons being tested the previous evening, but actually witnessing their effect—that did something to a man.

Yes, Ejnar reflected. Those cannons make Pastor Zachariassen’s hellfire seem tame. So what do you say, Kresten?

Kresten’s expression had turned almost pious. Fancy me living to see this, he said quietly.

So you’ve stopped thinking you’re going to die?

Oh, I’m more certain of it than ever. But I’ve stopped being scared.

We couldn’t claim this incident as our personal baptism of fire, because the sixty-pound cannons that we manned were mounted on the top deck on the port side, and the fighting was to starboard. Our turn would come soon, when we sailed deeper along the fjord toward Eckernförde, where two more batteries awaited on either bank. But this was no great threat, as we saw it. It wasn’t yet eight in the morning and the battle was already half won; we even began to fear the war would end before it had begun. We’d just had a taste of it, and now it looked as if the German might be beaten before lunch.

The Gefion continued toward the head of the fjord; the northern battery lay straight ahead. We were only two cable lengths from the southern battery when we shivered the topsails so they spilled the wind. We struck the jib and let go a drag anchor on the port side so that we lay facing the enemy with our broadside, and the Christian the Eighth did likewise. It was time to fire.

Our blood sang. We were like children waiting to see Chinese fireworks. Fear had melted away completely and only anticipation remained. We hadn’t yet recovered from our first victory, and a second one awaited us.

Then the Gefion started to move. The drag anchor was failing to hold her and the strong current propelled us toward the southern battery. We looked across to the Christian the Eighth. The huge ship-of-the-line was adrift too and already coming under intense fire from the shore. Its sailors lowered the heavy anchor to stop her from drifting and let off a violent salvo, which burst from her side, from stem to stern. Cannon smoke erupted from the ports, floating across the fjord to form a rapidly growing cloud. But there hadn’t been time to adjust the cannons before the ship’s unexpected drift toward the shore, and they’d fired too high, hitting the fields behind the batteries.

A moment later it was our turn. We were now close enough to the coast to be within firing range of the German rifles. The current and the wind continued to torment us, and we were crossing the fjord with both broadsides facing the empty water. Only our four stern cannons had a chance to respond to the vicious fire from the battery on shore.

The first hit cleared our aft deck of eleven men. We’d been calling the cannonballs gray peas, but the thing that shot low across the deck, tearing rail, cannon ports, and people apart in a shower of wooden splinters, was no pea. Ejnar saw its approach and registered every meter of its journey as it swept across the deck, shearing the legs off one man and sending them flying in one direction while the rest of him went in another. It sliced off a shoulder here and smashed a skull there. It was hurtling toward him, with bone splinters, blood, and hair stuck to it. He let himself fall backward and saw it shoot past. He later said that it took off his bootlaces in passing; that’s how close it came before it tore out through the quarterdeck aft.

To Ejnar that cannonball was a monster with a will of its own. It showed him what war was: not a battery that exploded and sent matchstick soldiers fleeing, but a dragon that breathed hot fire on his naked heart.

The deck was in chaos; a wild-eyed officer screamed at him to go to the mast with the helmsman and a soldier. The order made no sense, but he did as he was told. The soldier collapsed straightaway in a pool of blood. It looked as if he’d imploded: a hole had opened in his chest and blood gushed out. Ejnar saw a man’s eye explode into a red mess and another man’s skull torn off. That was a strange sight: pink brain matter exposed and splattered as if it were porridge, and someone had slammed a wooden spoon into it. Ejnar had not known that such things could happen to human beings. Then a second cannonball struck and killed the lieutenant. As he witnessed Armageddon, Ejnar went hot and cold and his nose started bleeding from the shock.

Another officer with blood pouring down his face ordered him to cannon number seven. Ejnar had originally been assigned to number ten, but that one had taken a direct hit and now stood lopsided by the cannon port. Around it lay a roil of motionless bodies in a slowly spreading pool of blood. Small streams of urine formed deltas between their legs. He could not see if Kresten or Little Clausen was among them. A severed foot lay a short distance away. Like the dead men, Ejnar had wet himself. The roar of cannons had caused an earthquake in his intestines, and he’d filled his trousers too. He knew that people emptied their bowels at the moment of death, but he hadn’t imagined that it could happen to the living as well. The notion that war made a man of you vanished as he felt the stickiness slide down his thighs. He felt half corpse, half baby, but soon discovered that he was not the only one. The stench of upturned privy buckets wafted across the deck. It wasn’t just coming from the slaughtered. Most of those still fighting had soiled pants.

The gun captain at cannon number seven was still alive, bleeding from a cut above his eyebrow where he’d been hit by a flying splinter. He screamed at Ejnar, who could hear nothing, but when he pointed at the cannon, Ejnar understood that he wanted him to load it. His arms were too short to reach, so he had to climb halfway out of the cannon port in order to stuff the cannonball into the muzzle, exposing himself to the enemy battery. As he worked, only one thought occupied him: when was the next round of schnapps?

Meanwhile, the Gefion had managed to reposition herself so her broadsides were aligned with both shores. But the steamer Geiser, which had tried to come to our aid with a hawser, had taken a hit to her engine and was being pulled out of the battle, and so was the Hekla, whose rudder was shot to pieces. The wind was due east and the loss of the two steamers, which were supposed to tow us, meant that we were unable to retreat if things went wrong.

However, our luck was about to change. The northern battery took one direct hit after another, and we saw the matchstick soldiers on the beach run for cover. Their cannons were undamaged and new soldiers kept running to man them, so there was hardly any respite from their fire, but still, it was halfway to victory. The quartermaster came around with a pail of schnapps, and we accepted the outstretched mug solemnly, as if it were communion wine. Fortunately the beer barrel had survived intact and we paid it frequent visits. We felt utterly lost. The constant bombardment and the randomness with which death scythed us down had exhausted us, although the battle was only a few hours old. We kept skidding in sticky pools of blood and there was no avoiding the spectacle of all the horrifically maimed bodies. Only one sense was spared: our deafness prevented us from hearing the screams of the wounded.

We were afraid to look around, for fear of staring straight into the face of a friend, snared by eyes that might plead for relief one moment and burn with hatred the next, as though the fallen blamed us for our luck and wanted nothing more in this world than to exchange fates with us. No one could offer a single word of comfort; it would pass unheard in the din from the cannons. A hand on the shoulder would have to do. But already those of us who were still uninjured were keeping to ourselves and avoiding the stricken, even though they were the ones in need of consolation. The living closed ranks against those marked for death.

We reloaded the cannons and aimed as the gun captains ordered us, but we’d stopped thinking in terms of victory or defeat. Our battle was to escape the sight of the wounded, and questions rang in our heads like an echo of the destruction around us: Why him, or him? Why not me? But we didn’t want to heed them: we wanted to survive. Nothing existed beyond what we could see through the barrel of a gun.

The schnapps had worked its blessed magic. Drunk now, we surrendered to a blankness born of terror. We sailed on a black sea and we had only one goal: not to look down and drown in it.

Ejnar climbed in and out of the cannon port. It was a beautiful spring day and every time he appeared in the mild sunshine, he expected a bullet to his chest. He was muttering to himself, though he’d no idea what he was saying. He was a sight to behold, smeared in soot and blood, with a bleeding nose, which from time to time he would wipe with his sleeve before tilting his head back to try and stanch the flow. There was an acrid taste in his mouth that only repeated swigs of schnapps could relieve. Eventually his tension loosened into lethargy and his movements became mechanical. But he was in no worse a state than the rest of us, with his bloodstained appearance or his soiled trousers: none of us looked alive anymore. We resembled ghosts from a battle fought long ago: corpses on a muddy battlefield where we’d lain for weeks, forgotten in the pouring rain.

Three times we saw the men on the northern battery relieved, and not one of the shots fired by the matchstick soldiers appeared to miss its target. It seemed that the batteries on both sides of the fjord had concentrated their fire on us.

At one o’clock a signal flag was hoisted on the mangled rigging of the Gefion. Its message was intended for the crew of the Christian the Eighth: we can do no more. Most of our cannons were now abandoned and the ones firing were undermanned. Those of us still standing were working amid piles of corpses and the dying, who reached out for us in their delirium, pleading for company in the mire of guts, blood, and voided bowels.

The signal we sent was in code. The enemy on the shores of Eckernförde Fjord couldn’t understand it, but the Christian the Eighth knew exactly what it meant.

On the ship-of-the-line there was no significant loss of life as yet. Early that morning a quartermaster from Nyborg had been killed and since then two men had been wounded, but the vessel had been spared any major hits. At the same time, Commander Paludan was forced to acknowledge that our squadron’s bombardment of the batteries on the northern and southern shores had inflicted no significant damage. The battle had now been raging for more than six hours and there was no prospect of victory. Retreat was impossible; anyone could see that.

The two steamers, the Hekla and the Geiser, were out of action, and the wind was set against us. So when Commander Paludan decided to raise the flag of truce, it was not a surrender, not yet: merely a pause in the battle.

A lieutenant was rowed ashore with a letter and returned soon after, with the message that a reply would be forthcoming in an hour. Christian the Eighth’s top and lower sails were fastened and the crew given bread and beer. There was still order on deck, and though everyone had been deafened by the cannons, there was no mood of resignation. At most the crew felt a vague unease about the course of the battle. They could see that the Gefion was in a bad way, but there was no way they could imagine the bloody chaos on our deck.

Laurids Madsen sat by himself with his bread, busy satisfying his hunger and as yet unaware of his fate.

By now thousands of people had spilled out of the town of Eckernförde and were crowding both shores. Watching them as he munched his bread, Laurids soon realized that it was not curiosity that had brought them out. They were lighting huge fires in the fields and collecting the cannonballs that lay scattered on the beach, then shoving them in the fires and heating them until the iron glowed red before transporting them to their own cannons. Horse-drawn land artillery appeared on the high road from Kiel and spread out behind the stone walls that bordered the surrounding fields.

Laurids recalled his father’s account of the war against the English, when Marstal came under attack. Two English frigates had anchored south of the town; they had come to hijack the town’s ships, of which there were roughly fifty in the harbor. The English sent out three launches crammed with armed soldiers, but the inhabitants of Marstal, together with some grenadiers from Jutland, managed to drive them off. They could scarcely believe their own eyes when the English started retreating.

Well, I never did understand what that war was really about, his father said afterward. The English are good sailors, and I’ve no quarrel with them. But our livelihoods were at stake. If they took our ships, that would be the end of us. That’s why we won. We had no choice.

On the deck of the Christian the Eighth Laurids sat beneath the flag of truce, watching the teeming crowds on the shores. He wasn’t sure he understood war any better than his father had. They were defending the Danish flag against the Germans, and that had sufficed for him up until a moment ago. War was like sailing. You could learn about clouds, wind direction, and currents, but the sea remained forever unpredictable. All you could do was adapt to it and try to return home alive. Here the enemy was the cannon fire in Eckernförde Fjord. Once it had been silenced, the way home would lie clear. That was the war, as far as he was concerned. He was no patriot, nor was he the opposite. He took life as it came. His horizon was one of mast tops, mill wings, and the ridged turret on the church: the skyline of Marstal, as we saw it when we approached from the sea. Here were ordinary people throwing themselves into war: not just soldiers, but people from Eckernförde, a port where he’d often docked with cargoes of grain, the very place he’d sailed from on the evening he’d turned all of Ærø upside-down. Now the Eckernfördeners stood shoulder to shoulder on the beach, just as the Marstallers had once done. So what the hell was this war all about?

A boat was launched from the beach. In it sat the lieutenant from the Christian the Eighth, returning from a third round of negotiations. On each occasion the battle had been deferred. The ceasefire had lasted two and a half hours and it was now half past four. From the furious way the sailors were tugging at the oars, it was clear that something decisive had happened. Then out of nowhere the cannons on the beach burst into a roar. The flag of truce was still fluttering from the mast, but the war had resumed.

The Christian the Eighth returned fire immediately, while the Gefion, silent as a ghost ship, tried to get out of the way. We had given up and were using our last strength to inch ourselves forward with the kedge.

Now the enemy changed tactics, aiming the batteries on both sides of the fjord at the Christian the Eighth rather than us, in an attempt to set her alight. Many of the cannonballs that struck her were red-hot from lying on the field fires half the afternoon. The Eckernfördeners had made good use of their time.

Within seconds, the deck was covered with fallen and wounded men. The attack had come out of the blue. Fires flared in several places, and we immediately deployed pumps and hoses to swill death off the deck, but the crackling flames had already taken hold.

Commander Paludan now saw that the battle was lost. The Christian the Eighth swayed to escape the line of fire, but the wind was still set against her and all she succeeded in doing was traversing the current, losing the advantage of facing the shores broadside-on. Second-guessing the commander’s plan, the Germans immediately aimed at her sails and rigging. They weren’t going to let us cut and run.

The heavy anchor was raised, but to huge losses. Firebombs landed on the bows; grenades exploded between the legs of the poor souls manning the capstan. They called for reinforcements and the new arrivals kicked aside the dead and the wounded with their boots. Then fresh grenades blew off the bars of the capstan, leaving ragged wood stumps, shattered bones, and mangled fingers. Finally the anchor was pulled up, dripping with mud and seaweed. This feat alone cost the happiness of ten families. Their sons and fathers would never return home.

The jib was raised, the topsail sheets secured, and the sails hoisted. As a top-man, Laurids went up with the others and clambered onto the yardarm, from which he had an excellent view of the battle.

The sun was setting on the horizon, casting its soft light across the fjord and the landscape. Wisps of cloud fanned out across the blushing sky; only a few hundred meters from the fjord everything was peaceful and springlike. But the shores were black with armed people and the artillery was firing away from behind the shelter of the stone walls. From the beach, red-hot cannonballs flew in an endless cannonade, while civilians in the thousands raised their guns and took aim.

Once, Laurids had hung off the far end of a yardarm through a whiteout south of Cape Horn, his hands freezing to lumps of ice. He’d had to crawl back to the rigging, clinging to the yard with his arms and legs—but he hadn’t been afraid. Now his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t undo the simplest knot.

Sails, masts, and rigging had been torn apart during the firing. Around him other top-men fell one by one, hit by grenades or fireballs or spear-sized shards from the stricken masts, tumbling down between half-raised sails, ropes, and halyards, plunging to the deck far below or plummeting into the water. Then he gave up and made his way back to the rigging.

On deck chaos reigned. The sails couldn’t be hoisted because the halyards and braces were shot to pieces. Some of the crew were pulling like mad at the cross-sail and had almost managed to raise it when suddenly the blocks and tackle—heavy enough to crush any man in their path—came hurtling down.

Every attempt to rescue the Christian the Eighth had failed. Sailing her had become impossible and in any case the wind blew directly toward land. A severe gale was brewing and the mighty ship drifted helpless to the shore, where she foundered just east of the southern battery, which continued its ferocious shelling of the now defenseless ship. Only her stern cannons could have been used in this position, but she’d tilted so violently that nothing would hold in place.

Then the cry went up: Fire on board!

The earliest shouts had been cries of wolf compared to this. A fireball had pierced the innermost battery and lodged in the starboard hold. The blaze spread quickly, threatening the powder magazines. Other areas had caught too. The men worked the pumps, but in vain. The flames had the upper hand.

At six o’clock the flag was lowered and the Christian the Eighth ceased firing, but the bombardment continued for another quarter of an hour before the enemy’s lust for victory—over a battleship that only hours before seemed invincible—was assuaged.

Commander Paludan was rowed ashore as a sign of surrender, and it was at that point that the crew’s courage finally plummeted. They gave up fighting the fire and shuffled around, filthy and foul-smelling. Their seamanship was of no use to them now, and they had no experience of war or of defeat: they’d imagined the battle would be a laugh, and now their souls were drained of energy and their heads empty of all but the echo of cannons. This last shameful part of the battle had lasted one and a half hours, but it felt like one and a half lifetimes. They could see nothing beyond this. They were utterly spent.

Some sat down on the deck in the midst of the sea of flames, as if clergymen’s pulpit warnings about the fires of hell had become reality, while others stood motionless, staring straight ahead, their inner mechanisms broken. Lieutenants Ulrik, Stjernholm, and Corfitz rushed around, screaming into the men’s faces: they must act, they were needed more than ever, if complete disaster was to be prevented and the honor of Denmark saved after a battle that they could hardly pride themselves on. But they’d been deafened by the cannons, and only pushing, shoving, and kicking would stir them.

Laurids let himself be herded to the powder magazine farthest astern, but it was slow work throwing the kegs into the water. They were only five men, and whenever a new crewman was forced into the chamber, he’d rush straight back out.

Suddenly came the cry All men up!

They knew instantly what that meant. Exchanging looks of alarm, they dropped the bombs and the kegs and raced up the ladder to find sheep, calves, pigs, hens, and ducks out of their enclosures, running on deck among the terrified sailors. A pig rummaged about, sticking its snout into bloody piles of guts, slurping things up.

The men raced about, each on his own urgent mission. Some hunted for their clothes and sea bags, while others climbed onto the rail as though contemplating jumping into the cold water. No one paid heed to the wounded men, who got in the way and were carelessly trampled. Their screams of agony went unheard; most of the crew were still deaf after the hours of intense shelling.

Laurids rushed downstairs to the sickbay, concerned that the wounded might be abandoned. Smoke seeped up through the heavy oak planks. Covering his mouth with his hand, he stepped into the murky room, where an orderly, covering his face with a cloth, came up to him.

Is anyone coming? Laurids realized his hearing had returned. We’ve got to get the wounded upstairs. We’re choking down here!

I’ll go get help! Laurids shouted back.

On deck there was no sign of the officers who had kicked the crew and whacked them with the flat side of their blades; instead he saw a crowd of men flocking to an open gangway with a Jacob’s ladder, and ran over to them. The evacuation was already in full force. He spotted a couple of the lieutenants slashing through the crowd with their swords as they tried to reach the gangway. The ship’s second in command, Captain Krieger, stood to one side, watching it all with an odd, distant gaze, his binoculars slung across his back, a gilt-framed portrait of his wife tucked under one arm, and the other raised in salute.

You have shown yourselves to be brave men, he muttered over and over again, as if blessing his woeful flock. You have done your duty. You are all my brothers.

No one took notice of him; each man was focusing on the most important obstacle in his path to salvation: the back of the sailor ahead of him, blocking his access to the open gangway. Laurids made his way to Krieger and screamed into his face:

The wounded, Captain Krieger, the wounded!

The captain turned to him, but his gaze remained distant. He placed a hand on Laurids’s shoulder. Laurids felt it tremble, but the captain’s voice was calm, almost sleepy.

My brother, once we are ashore, we shall speak like brethren.

The wounded need help! Laurids screamed once more. The whole ship is about to blow sky high.

The captain’s hand stayed on Laurids’s shoulder.

Yes, the wounded, he said in the same monotonous tone of voice. They too are my brothers. When we are ashore, we shall all speak like brethren. His voice disintegrated into mumbling, and then he began again, reeling off the same phrases. You have shown yourselves to be brave men. You have done your duty. You are all my brethren.

Giving up on the captain and turning to the men who were struggling to reach the open gangway, Laurids grabbed them by the shoulder one by one, shouting his message about helping the wounded into their faces. The first man reacted by punching him on his chin. The second shook his head in disbelief and then threw himself with renewed energy back into the brawl.

The evacuation had picked up pace. Fishing boats set off from the beach to rescue the crew from the battleship that only a few hours earlier had been bombarding them, while the ship’s own main launch shuttled continuously between ship and beach. Laurids leaned over the rail and spotted the roaring fire leaping out of the stern cannon ports. It was only a matter of time.

Smoke was pouring out of every hatch, making it just as difficult to breathe above deck as below. Once again he rushed down to the sickbay but was soon forced to abandon the idea: the smoke was now so dense and suffocating that it seemed impossible that anyone might have survived.

Is anyone here? he called out, but there was no reply.

The smoke seared his lungs and a fit of coughing sent tears streaming down his cheeks. He hurtled back up to the deck, squeezing his burning eyes shut in pain, temporarily smoke-blinded. He slipped and fell on the deck, slick from human excretions and spilled organs. His hand touched something soft and wet, and he shot to his feet, rubbing his palm on his soiled trousers in terror. He couldn’t bear the thought that he’d touched another human being’s blood and guts. It felt as though his soul had been scalded.

He staggered to the rail, where the smoke was thinner, and tried to regain his vision. Through a mist of tears he made out the launch, which had run aground on a sandbank, forcing the crew to jump into the water and wade ashore, where the enemy soldiers were waiting for them. Then the launch came unstuck and immediately set course for the Christian the Eighth, while several of the fishing boats close to the ship started heading back to the shore. The launch too turned around. Howls of protest erupted from the open gangway.

Laurids stepped back from the rail into the billowing clouds of smoke.

I SAW LAURIDS, Ejnar would always say later. I swear I saw him.

Ejnar was standing on the beach when the Christian the Eighth blew up. He’d been taken ashore from the Gefion under guard and grouped with the other survivors from the frigate, waiting to be led off. The German soldiers seemed taken aback by their own victory and looked as if they had no idea of what to do with us. Our numbers kept swelling as men from the two vanquished battleships filled the shore.

Then the warning cry rang out across the water.

Most of us, tired and disheartened, had been sitting on the beach with our eyes fixed on the sand as the soldiers pointed their bayonets at us with hands that trembled. But now we looked up. At the stern of the ship-of-the-line, a pillar of fire shot up with a deafening boom. Then more: column after column of flame broke through the deck as the powder magazines ignited. In seconds, the masts and yards were reduced to charcoal, while the sails fluttered off in huge flakes of ash and the great oak hull became a weightless toy in the brutal hands of the blaze. But the worst was yet to come. The immense heat had set off the vanquished ship’s cannons, which at the moment of capitulation had been loaded. Now, simultaneously, they discharged their deadly contents toward the shore.

Screams of horror rose from the crammed beach when the cannonballs started crashing down on us. Death was arbitrary. Burning debris rained from the heavens, wreaking destruction wherever it landed, so that the hour of victory was marked only by the sound of men screaming. This, then, was the dying ship’s final salute to the victors and the vanquished: a murderous broadside that attacked both friend and foe alike. War showed its true face out there in the fire shower on Eckernförde Fjord.

For a moment it looked as if everyone on the beach had been killed. Bodies were strewn everywhere and not a single man was standing. Many were lying face-down with their arms outstretched as if they were praying to the flames that leapt on the water. Here and there a piece of wreckage lay burning in the sand. Slowly, some of the prostrate figures got to their feet, anxiously eyeing the burning ship. Cries came from the water. Several of the boats that had hurried to rescue the ship’s crew had been struck and set ablaze. Lieutenant Stjernholm and four men had been heading for the beach with the ship’s coffer, but their launch’s stern had been blown off when the Christian the Eighth exploded. The coffer was lost, but the lieutenant managed to save himself. Only one of the men from the launch was with him when he staggered ashore, drenched. The rest had drowned.

The beach was quiet except for the faint moaning of the wounded and the crackling of the still-burning wreckage, when suddenly a loud yell echoed across land and water.

I’ve seen Laurids! I’ve seen Laurids!

We raised our heads and looked around. We’d recognized Ejnar’s voice, and most of us presumed the poor man had lost his mind. Then chaos erupted across the entire beach and everyone began shouting, as if the only way to feel alive was to kick up all the ruckus you could. In the confusion we could have escaped our captors, but we’d lost our nerve—and with it our ability to act. We had to content ourselves with having simply survived: we could run no more.

Our captors weren’t much better off. They led us away from the beach, their faces frozen, mute witnesses to the destruction they’d so closely avoided themselves. Our march looked more like a wholesale retreat from the theater of war than an organized transportation of prisoners.

The Germans had routed us, but their faces showed no signs of triumph. Horror at the unthinkable forces that war had unleashed united both victors and vanquished.

THEY TOOK US TO Eckernförde Church. Straw had been spread across the floor so we could collapse and rest our weary bodies. We were soaked through and shivering with cold. Once the sun had set, the April night grew chilly. Those of us who’d managed to save our sea bags changed our clothes and lent our less fortunate comrades what they needed. Soon food rations arrived: whole-grain bread, beer, and smoked bacon collected from the town’s grocers. No one in Eckernförde had expected to see the town filled with prisoners of war. On the contrary, they’d been expecting Danish soldiers to be patrolling their streets before the day was out. Now, instead of being under guard themselves, the town’s citizens were playing host.

Old women appeared in the church to sell white bread and schnapps to those with money. One of them was Mother Ilse, with the crooked hip. She stroked one prisoner’s cheek with a sooty finger and muttered, You poor lad.

She’d recognized him from his previous visits to the town. We’d all bought schnapps from her in our time. The man grabbed her hand.

Don’t you call me a poor lad. I’m alive.

It was Ejnar.

In the long pause that had followed the hoisting of the signal flag, Ejnar had wandered the deck looking for Kresten, but he could find him among neither the living nor the wounded. Many of the dead were lying face-down, and he’d had to turn them over. Others had had their faces shot off. But Kresten wasn’t among the bodies around cannon number seven.

Torvald Bønnelykke, who’d been standing by one of the other cannons, came up to him.

Are you looking for Kresten? he asked.

He