Ugge sat for a while deep in thought. At last he said that there seemed to be nothing for it but to hear what the women had to say.
“According to our ancient law,” he said, “women can be regarded as admissible witnesses; though how such a decision ever came to be arrived at is more than a man can guess. It is not our custom to use women’s evidence where we can avoid it; for while to look for truth in a man can be like looking for a cuckoo in a dark wood, to look for the truth in a woman is like looking for the echo of the cuckoo’s voice. But in this case the women are the only persons who saw exactly what happened; and the murder of a priest on holy ground is a matter that must be investigated with care. Let them, therefore, be heard.”
The women had been waiting to be called, and now appeared, all together, the young ones who had danced round the Stone and the old women who had assisted with the ceremony. They were all wearing their finest apparel and ornaments, bracelets and necklaces and broad finger-rings and colored veils. At first they appeared somewhat bashful as they walked forwards into the space between the judges and the semicircle of chosen men. They had the magister with them, looking woebegone, with his hands tied and around his neck a rope, by which two of the old women led him, as they had led the goats to the Stone on the previous evening. A great shout of laughter arose from the assembly at the sight of him entering thus.
Ugge cocked his head on one side, scratched behind his ear, and looked at them with a worried expression on his face. He bade them tell him how Styrkar had met his death; whether their prisoner had killed him or not. They were to speak the truth and nothing else; and it would be a good thing, he said, if no more than two or three witnesses should speak at the same time.
At first the women were afraid of the sound of their own voices and whispered among themselves, and it was difficult to coax any of them to speak aloud; but before long they were persuaded to overcome their shyness and began to testify vigorously. Their prisoner, they said, had gone up to the Stone and cried in a loud voice and had then hit Styrkar over the head with his cross, causing the latter to cry also; then he had dug his cross into Styrkar’s stomach and pushed him off the Stone. On this they were all agreed, though some said that the priest had struck once, and some twice, and they began to quarrel about this.
When the magister heard them testify thus, he became white in the face with terror and astonishment. Raising his bound hands toward heaven, he cried: “No, no!” in a loud voice. But nobody bothered to listen to the rest of what he had to say, and the old women gave a tug on the rope to silence him.
Ugge now said that this evidence was more than sufficient, for even the speech of women could be regarded as credible when so many of them said the same thing. Whether the murderer had struck once or twice did not affect the issue; here, he said, they had before them a clear case of priest-murder committed on holy ground.
“This crime,” he proceeded, “has been regarded ever since the most ancient times as one of the foulest that it is possible to perpetrate, and occurs so rarely that many men sit through a whole lifetime of Things without ever having to judge an instance of it. The penalty for it, which is also of ancient prescription, is, I think, known to no one here save us two old men, Sone and I; unless, perhaps, you, Olof, who reckon yourself to be wiser than us, also know it?”
It was evident that Olof Summerbird was displeased at this question; nevertheless, he answered boldly that he had often heard that the penalty for this crime was that the culprit should be hung by his feet from the nethermost branch of a tree, with his head resting on an ant-hill.
Ugge and Sone beamed with delight when they heard him give this answer.
“It was not to be expected that you would know the correct sentence,” said Ugge, “so young as you are; for to attain wisdom and knowledge takes longer than you would like to think. The proper punishment is that the murderer shall be handed over to Ygg, which in former times was our fathers’ name for Odin; and now Sone will tell us the manner in which the presentation is to be made.”
“Twenty good spears shall be found,” said Sone, “with no rot in their shafts; and to each spear, just below the end of the iron shoe, a crosspiece shall be fixed. Then the spears shall be driven into the ground to half their length, close together with their points facing upwards. On these the murderer shall be cast, and there he shall remain until his bones drop to the ground.”
“Such is the law,” said Ugge. “The only detail you omitted to mention is that he shall be cast so as to land on the spears on his back, in order that he may lie with his face toward the sky.”
A murmur of satisfaction passed through the whole assembly as they heard this punishment described, which was so ancient and rare that nobody had seen it. The magister had by now become calm and stood there with his eyes closed, mumbling to himself; the women, however, received the news of his sentence much less placidly. They clamored that this was a crazy punishment to condemn him to, and they had not intended, when testifying, that anything like that should happen; and two of them, who were related to Ugge, pushed their way through the crowd toward him, called him an old fool, and asked why he had not told them of this penalty before they had testified. They had, they said, given the evidence that he had heard because they wished to keep the Christ-priest, whom they liked and held to be more potent than Styrkar, fearing that if he was acquitted, he would be set free and go back to the Göings.
The most vehement protests came from one of the old women, who was Styrkar’s niece. Eventually she succeeded in quieting the others so that her voice might be heard alone. She was large and coarse-limbed and shook with fury as she stood there before Ugge. She said that in Värend no decision was taken about anything until the women had passed judgment, and that old men there were put out to play in the woods.
“I have nursed Styrkar, troll that he was, for many years,” she shrieked, “gaining my livelihood thereby. How shall I live now that he is dead? Are you listening to me, you crookbacked imbecile? Another priest, young and beautiful, and, from his appearance, wise and tractable also, has come and killed him, and nobody can deny that it was high time that somebody did so. And what do you suggest we should now do! Throw this young man upon the points of spears! What good will that do to anybody? I tell you that he shall be handed over to me, to replace the priest I have lost. He is a fine priest, and when the dance round the Stone was finished he performed to the satisfaction of us all; in nine months the whole of Värend will be able to testify to the efficacy of his magic. The services of such a priest will be sought by many, and all who come will bring him gifts; and I shall thereby be compensated for my loss, whether I have him as husband or as slave. What purpose will be served by throwing him upon spears? It would be better if you sat on them yourself, for it is plain that your age and learning have driven you crazy. He shall be mine, as payment for the murder he has committed, if there be any justice in the world. Do you hear that?”
She shook her clenched fist in front of Ugge’s face and appeared to be considering whether to spit in it.
“She is right, she is right! Katla is right!” cried the women. “Give him to us in Styrkar’s place! We need a priest of his mettle!”
Ugge waved his hands and shouted as loudly as he could in an endeavor to quiet them; and beside him Olof Summerbird was near to falling backwards from his stone in his delight in the wise man’s discomfiture.
But Sone the Sharp-Sighted now rose from his stone and spoke in a voice that made everyone suddenly quiet.
“Peace has been pronounced upon this assembly,” he said, “and it is a quality of wise men to endure women patiently. It would be an ill thing if we should allow the peace to be broken, and particularly ill for you, women; for we could then sentence you to be birched before the assembly, with good switches of birch or hazel, which would be sadly ignominious for you. If that were to happen, all men would snigger at the sight of you for the rest of your days, and I think none of you would wish that to happen. There
fore let there be an end to your screamings and vituperations. But one question I would ask of you before you depart from this place. Was Styrkar struck by the Christ-priest, or was he not?”
The women had now become calm. They replied with one accord that he had not so much as touched Styrkar; he had merely shouted something and raised his cross, at which the old man had fallen backwards and died. This, they declared, was the pure truth; they could, they said, tell the truth as well as anyone, if only they knew what purpose it would serve.
The women, including Katla and her captive, were now ordered to leave while Ugge debated with his chosen twelve over a suitable sentence. Several of them thought that the priest ought to be killed, for there could be no doubt that he had slain Styrkar by trollcraft, and the sooner one got rid of a Christ-priest, the better. But others opposed this argument, saying that any man who had managed to troll the life out of Styrkar was worth keeping alive. For if he had succeeded in doing this, he must also have been able to perform efficaciously upon the women; besides which, there was the old woman’s argument to be considered, for, as she had asserted, it was true that no compensation could be claimed from the Göings for the loss of her man. The end of it was that Ugge declared that Katla should keep the Christ-priest as a slave until the fourth Thing following this one, extracting from him as much service as she could during that period. Neither Sone nor anyone else had any fault to find with this judgment.
“I could not have judged the matter better myself,” said Orm to Father Willibald when they were discussing the case later. “Now he will have to get along with the old woman as best he can. He was reckoning on becoming a slave of the Smalanders anyway.”
“For all his weaknesses,” said Father Willibald, “it may be that God’s spirit was upon him last night when he went up to denounce the heathen priest and his abominable practices. Perhaps he will do great works now, for the glory of God.”
“Perhaps,” said Orm, “but the best of it is that we are now rid of him. When a man is campaigning or a-viking, it is only right that he should indulge his lust for women, even if they belong to someone else; but it seems wrong to me that a man of his mettle, a Christ-priest and a good-for-nothing, should cause women to lose all sense of decency as soon as they set eyes on him. It is not right; it is unnatural.”
“He will have plenty of opportunities to atone for his sins,” said Father Willibald, “when that old crone Katla gets her claws into him. Certain it is that I would rather be in the hungry lions’ den with the prophet Daniel, whose story you have heard me recount, than in his clothes now. But it is God’s will.”
“Let us hope,” said Orm, “that it will continue to coincide with our own.”
The Thing continued for four days, and many cases were judged. The wisdom of Ugge and Sone was praised by all, save those who received the wrong end of their decisions; and Olof Summerbird, too, showed himself to be a shrewd judge, rich in experience despite his youth, so that even Ugge was forced on more than one occasion to admit that he might, with the passing of the years, attain some wisdom. When difficult cases arose, in which the parties refused to come to any agreement and the representatives of the tribes involved in the dispute could not agree, the third judge was called upon to help them reach a decision, such being the ancient custom; and on two occasions, when the dispute lay between the Virds and the Göings, Olof Summerbird officiated as the impartial judge and acquitted himself with great honor.
Thus far all had gone well; but gradually the common members of the assembly began to show signs of increasing unrest as time went on without any good fight developing. A combat had, indeed, been ordered on the second day, as the result of a dispute between a Finnveding and a Göing concerning a horse-theft, for no witnesses could be found and both parties were equally obstinate and equally cunning at prevarication; but when they fronted each other on the combat place, they proved so unskillful that they straightway ran their swords through each other’s belly and fell dead to the ground, like two halves of a broken pitcher, so that nobody gained much pleasure from that contest. The tribesmen made wry faces at one another when this happened, thinking that this was proving a very disappointing Thing.
On the third day, however, they were cheered by the appearance of a complicated and difficult case, which promised excellent results.
Two Virds, both known men of good reputation, named Askman and Glum, came forward and told of an instance of double woman-theft. Both of them had lost their daughters, buxom young women in the prime of their beauty, who had been stolen by two Göing otter-hunters in the wild country east of the Great Ox Ford. The identity of the thieves was known; one of them was called Agne of Sleven, son of Kolbjörn Burnt-in-His-House, and the other Slatte, known as Fox Slatte, nephew to Gudmund of Uvaberg, who was one of the twelve Göing representatives. The theft had taken place a year previously; the two young women, it appeared, were still in the clutches of their captors; and Askman and Glum now demanded treble bride-money for each girl, as well as reasonable compensation for the injury caused to the Widow Gudny, Glum’s sister, who had been with the girls when the theft had taken place and had been so affected by the incident that for a good while after it she had been out of her proper mind. This good widow, they explained, they had brought with them to the Thing; she was well known to have an honest tongue, and, since many could testify that she had by now returned to her full senses, she would, they claimed, be the best witness to tell the assembly exactly what had happened.
The Widow Gudny now came forward. She was of powerful and impressive appearance, not yet old enough to frighten men; and she described clearly and earnestly how the incident had taken place. She and the girls had gone into the wild country to gather medicinal herbs and had had to spend the whole day there, because these herbs were rare and difficult to find. They had wandered farther afield than they had intended, and a terrible storm had suddenly broken over them with thunder and hail and pelting rain. Frightened, and drenched to the skin, they had lost their way; and after wandering for some time without coming upon any track or landmark, they had at last arrived at a scraped-out cave in the earth, in which they had taken shelter. Here they began to feel the effect of cold, hunger, and fatigue. There were two men already in the cave, hunters who lived there while trapping otters; and she was relieved to see that they did not look dangerous. The men had given them a friendly welcome, making room for them at their fire and giving them food and hot ale; and there they had remained until the storm ceased, by which time it was night and very dark.
Up to then, she continued, she had only worried about the storm and the ache that she was beginning to feel in her back as the result of being cold in wet clothes. But now she began to fear for the girls, which worried her much more. For the men were now in high spirits and were saying that this was the best thing that could have happened, for it was a long time since they had seen any women; and they were liberal with their ale, which they kept in a keg in their cave, and warmed more of it against the cold, so that the girls began to grow muzzy, being young and inexperienced. She had asked the men, in a pointed manner, to describe to her the way back to their home, and they had told her; but apart from this they had shown no concern for the girls’ safety except by sitting close to them and feeling them to see if they were dry. This went so far that after a while Fox Slatte picked up two small bits of wood and told the girls that they were now to draw lots to decide which man each was to sleep next to. At this she had declared vigorously that the girls must straightway go home, finding their way as well as they might in the dark. For her own part, she was compelled to remain in the cave because of the severe pain in her back.
“I spoke thus,” she said, “because I thought that the men might give way and let the girls go in peace if I undertook to remain with them. I was ready to make this sacrifice for the girls’ sake, since, whatever the men might do to me, it would be less horrible for me than for them. But instead of being accommodating, the men grew angry and add
ressed me in the most insulting terms and seized hold of me and threw me out of the cave, saying that they would speed me on my way with arrows if I did not instantly depart from the place. I spent the whole night wandering in the forest, in terror of wild beasts and bogies. When I reached home and told what had happened, people went to the cave and found it empty, with no trace of the men or the girls or the otter skins. For a long while after this I was sick and half crazed because of the treatment I had endured at the hands of these foul ruffians.”
Here the Widow Gudny ended her testimony, having spoken her last few sentences in a voice dimmed by weeping. Gudmund of Uvaberg now rose and said that he would present the case of the two young men. He was doubly qualified to do this, he said, partly because he was wiser than they, and so better able to choose his words, and partly because he had on more than one occasion heard the whole story of events, not only from Agne of Sleven and his nephew Slatte, but also from the mouths of the young women themselves. He therefore was as well informed about this matter as anyone, if not better; and as regards the testimony of the Widow Gudny, to which they had just been listening, he would say this, that much of it was according to the facts, but most of it contrary to them.
“Slatte and Agne both say,” he continued, “that they were sitting in their cave during the storm, which was so severe that they were barely able to keep their fire from blowing out, when they heard groans outside. Slatte crept out and saw three figures moving in the rain with their skirts wrapped round their heads. At first he feared them to be trolls; and the women supposed him to be one when they saw his head suddenly appear from the earth, so that they quaked and screamed with terror. Realizing from this that they must be mortals, he approached and calmed them. They accepted his invitation to join him in his cave and seated themselves round the fire. The girls were very fatigued, and were sniveling with distress; but there were no tears coming from the widow, and she showed little evidence of exhaustion. She kept her eyes fixed upon them incessantly as she sat drying herself before the fire; she wanted her back rubbed, and every part of her body warmed with otter skins; then, after she had drunk of their hot ale like a thirsty mare, she became merry and took off most of her clothes. She did this, she explained to them, so that she might feel the heat more, since heat was what she needed most.
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