Silhouette in Scarlet - Elizabeth Peters [7]
I don’t know how long I wandered in purposeless content before I gradually realized I wasn’t relaxed any longer. Instead of admiring red wooden horses and knit ski caps, I was scanning the crowd, looking for a familiar profile. Instead of enjoying the diversified types strolling with me, I was beginning to feel surrounded and hemmed in. My back tingled with the uneasy sensation of being watched by unfriendly eyes.
It was with an absurd sense of escape that I emerged from the crowded streets into Stortorget, the Great Square of Old Town. I’d seen so many pictures of it, on postcards and travel folders, that it was like an old familiar habitat. Earnest tourists were aiming cameras at number 20, the tall red brick house with its exuberant wedding-cake gable, which is the most popular subject for photographers; it would reappear on screens in a thousand darkened living rooms later that summer while guests tried to muffle their yawns and the host’s voice intoned, ‘Now this one is someplace in Stockholm – or was it Oslo?’
The square was filled with people, but it didn’t give me the sense of claustrophobia the streets did. Rows of green slatted benches were flanked by great tubs of red geraniums, and the sun slanting down between the tall houses made the flowers glisten as if freshly painted. I decided my neurotic fancies were due in part to hunger, so I bought some jammy pastries from a shop and sat down on one of the benches where I could see the baroque tower of the Cathedral beyond the Borsen and the slit-like street beside it. When I had finished the pastries I licked strawberry jam off my fingers and continued to sit, staring dreamily at the green-patined curves of the cupola.
I guess my feet did stick out, but he could have avoided them. I didn’t see him; I felt an agonizing pain in my left instep and heard a crunch and a thud and a curse as a large object fell flat on the bricks at my feet.
I let out a howl and bent to clutch my foot. He let out a howl and stayed where he was, face down on the ground. He looked just as big prone as he had upright – a fallen Colossus, a toppled Titan.
If the same thing had happened in Denmark, we would have been swarmed over by helpful natives. Swedes don’t interfere unless arterial blood is jetting. There were a few murmurs of inquiry and one man took a tentative step towards the recumbent body, but retreated as soon as it heaved itself to hands and knees.
When he turned his head our eyes were on the same level. His weren’t blue, as a Viking’s ought to be; they were an odd shade of brown, like coffee caramels. Between the bushy brows, the bushier moustache, and the thick hair that had fallen over his forehead, I could see very little of his face. What I could see was bright red, and his eyes glittered like bronze spearpoints.
‘Clumsy, careless – ’ he began. Then his eyebrows rose and disappeared under his hair. ‘You were at the airport!’
It sounded like an accusation. I half expected him to demand indignantly, ‘Are you following me?’
‘Yes, I was at the airport. So what? I think my foot is broken. Why the hell didn’t you look where you were going?’
Still on hands and knees, he gave his head a toss that flung the blond berserker locks away from his eyes. Caesar had a trick like that when he was trying to be cute. I laughed. The Viking staggered to his feet, swayed, swore, and clutched his knee. The woman sitting next to me on the bench picked up her parcels and beat a hasty retreat. It may have been tactful consideration for a wounded fellow creature, but I think she was afraid he was about to fall on her.
He took the vacated seat. We sat in stiff silence for a few seconds while he rubbed his knee and I nursed my foot.
Finally he muttered, ‘Sorry.’ His voice was rather light for such a big man, once he had conquered the anger that had deepened it to