Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck

through it, horses and carriages on the church green. The bishop had arrived.
    The priest had met the bishop twice before: once when he himself was a rising star in the court and then, much later, when the bishop came to remove him. The priest couldn’t remember the bishop from their first meeting. The second time it was the bishop who had been acclaimed, raised to nobility by the King, instated as a member ofthe Privy Council. Then they had spent two weeks together traveling north, but on that occasion neither had anything to say. Nothing they were disposed to share with each other, that was.
    The priest took a deep breath, touched the edges of the ribbons to make sure they lay flat on his chest, then turned the iron handle. The wind swept his collar to one side, like a flag in a breeze.
    The bishop was standing beside his carriage, looking up at the bell tower.
    “Olaus,” he said. He had aged: the thin hair wafting in the wind was whiter, his stomach in the black robe, larger.
    The priest bowed. “Welcome.”
    “It turned out well, the tower.” The bishop spoke as a man who could afford to be unhurried by wind, untroubled by his aging.
    “Yes.” The priest turned his back on the structure. “We have prepared a meal for you.”
    The bishop waved with his hand. “Hungry wolves hunt the best. Let’s look at the inventories before we sit down.”
    It was late evening when they at long last sat down for their meal, though still as light as day. The windows were wide open, curtains floating in an indiscernible flow of air.
    “I have no real observations to make on the building itself.” The bishop reached for more bread.
    The priest caught the eye of the verger at the back of the room. This needed to be written down in the Church Book.
    “Upkeep has been good, the interiors are orderly,” the bishop said, mouth full. “What is attendance like?”
    “Four households live in the town all year round: mine, the former priest’s, the night man’s and an old couple, but everyone comes as prescribed during the period between Christmas and Missa Candelarum, and again to the sermon on Lady Day.”
    For those few weeks the town was a town. The settlers, the tradesmen, and the Lapps came and settled into the purpose-builthouses, and, by God, for that period the Church owned them limb and soul. They were preached to, taxed, and judged if necessary, all in the space of those weeks. Then they departed again, leaving behind them the priest and his verger, holding forth in this ghostly place of dark timber.
    The bishop leaned back and cleaned his teeth with his tongue. “No problems with the Lapps?”
    “No.”
    He nodded. “Anvar, the previous priest, did good work with the Lapps. And no issues with any … private sermons?”
    “Is that still ongoing?”
    “Even some of the priests are now in favor. The King takes every offense personally.”
    He would. The King had forbidden it—any self-made prayers, any attempts by common man to explain the scriptures or to proclaim some personal connection with God was a delusion and an affront to the one true relationship between the King and the Almighty.
    The bishop moved, and his chair groaned.
    “We have made much progress in the Catechetical hearings,” the priest said, forcing his mind back to the matters at hand. “You’ll see it in the records. When I arrived, the lack of reading skills was the problem, but we have managed to increase school attendance.”
    The bishop burped.
    The priest nodded in the verger’s direction. “Tomorrow our verger, Johan Lundgren, will tell you about his work teaching the children on the mountains. We’ll show you the finances too.”
    “Yes, and the poor relief and your administration of the royal proclamations.”
    The ubiquitous King.
    “How is he?” the priest asked, though he had promised himself he wouldn’t. He wondered if the bishop would tell the monarch they had met.
    He looked up and found the bishop studying him. “Our