But Faaborg, though thus removed from his path, was by no means done with.  Rumours began to be circulated that a strange light appeared every night above the dead man’s head as he swung on the gallows.  The city was full of superstitious awe and of whisperings that Heaven was thus bearing witness to the Treasurer’s innocence.  And even the King himself, when he too saw the unearthly light forming a halo round his victim’s head, was filled with remorse and fear to such an extent that he had Faaborg’s body cut down and honoured with a State funeral.

He was still, however, as far as ever from solving the mystery of Dyveke’s death; and the longer his desire for vengeance was baffled, the more clamorous it became.  Although nothing could be proved against Torbern Oxe, Christian was by no means satisfied of his innocence, and he decided to discover by guile the secret which all other means had failed to reveal.  He would, if possible, make his steward his own betrayer.  One day, at a Court banquet, he turned in jocular mood to the minister and said, “Tell me now, my dear Torbern, was there really any truth in what Faaborg told me of your relations with my beautiful Lady!  Don’t hesitate to tell the truth, which only you know, for I assure you no harm shall come to you from it.”

Thus thrown off his guard and reassured, the steward, who, like his master, had probably drunk not wisely, confessed that he had loved Dyveke, and had asked her to be his wife.  “But, sire,” he added, “that was the extent of my offence.  I was never intimate with her.”  During the remainder of the banquet Christian was most affable to the indiscreet steward, not only showing no trace of resentment, but treating him with marked friendliness.

The following day, however, Torbern was flung into prison, and charged, not only with his confession, but with the murder of the woman he had so vainly loved; and, in spite of the storm of indignation that swept over Denmark, the pleadings of the Papal Legate, Arcimbaldo, and the tears of the Queen, was sentenced to death for a crime of which there was no scrap of evidence to point to his guilt.

This gross act of injustice proved to be the beginning of Christian’s downfall.  His cruelties and oppressions had long made him odious to his subjects, and the climax came when a popular uprising hurled him from his throne and drove him an exile to Holland.  An attempt to recover his crown ended in speedy disaster, and his last years were spent, in company with his favourite dwarf, in a cell of the Holstein Castle of Sondeborg.

As for Sigbrit, the woman who had played such a conspicuous and baleful part in Christian’s life, she deserted her benefactor at the first sign of his coming ruin and ended her days in her native Holland, bemoaning to the last the loss of her “little dove,” whom she had seen raised almost to a throne and had lost so tragically.

CHAPTER IX