FRU INGER.
Gang efter gang skrev jeg til Peder Kanzler og bønfaldt ham om at give mig mit barn tilbage. Men han vægred sig stadigen. „Slut eder fast og ubrydelig til os“, svared han, „så sender jeg eders søn til Norge; før ikke“. Hvor skulde jeg vove det? Vi misfornøjede var dengang ilde set af mange frygtagtige her i landet. Dersom disse fik nys i sagen – o, jeg véd det! for at stække moderen, skulde de gerne have beredt barnet den samme skæbne, som kong Kristjern skulde fristet, om ikke flugten havde frelst ham. Men foruden det, var også Danskerne virksomme. De forsømte hverken trusler eller løfter for at drive mig over på sin side.
LADY INGER. Time after time I wrote to Peter Kanzler and besought him to give me back my child. But he was ever deaf to my prayers. “Cast in your lot with us once for all,” he said, “and I send your son back to Norway; not before.” But ’twas even that I dared not do. We of the disaffected party were then ill regarded by many timorous folk. If these had got tidings of how things stood--oh, I know it!--to cripple the mother they had gladly meted to the child the fate that would have been King Christiern’s had he not saved himself by flight.
1
But besides that, the Danes were active. They spared neither threats nor promises to force me to join them.
1. King Christian II. of Denmark (the perpetrator of the massacre at Stockholm known as the Blood-Bath) fled to Holland in 1523, five years before the date assigned to this play, in order to escape death or imprisonment at the hands of his rebellious nobles, who summoned his uncle, Frederick I., to the throne. Returning to Denmark in 1532, Christian was thrown into prison, where he spent the last twenty-seven years of his life.
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