But when Olav told where he came from, the smith looked up and scanned his face: “Then you would have it back in all haste, I trow? So that is the way of it—are they making ready their axes at Frettastein these days?”
Olav said he knew naught of that.
“Nay, nay. Has Steinfinn any plan, he is not like to tell his boys of it—”
Olav looked at the smith as though he would say something, but checked himself. He took his leave and departed.
• • •
They had passed the pond, and Ingunn wished to turn into a road between fences which led up to Green Street. But Olav took her by the arm: “We can go here.”
The houses in Green Street were built on a ridge of high ground. Below them ran a brook of dirty water at the edge of the fields behind the townsmen’s outhouses and kale-yards. By the side of the brook was a trodden path.
Ashes, apple trees, and great rosebushes in the gardens shaded the path, so the air felt cool and moist. Blue flies darted like sparks in the green shadows, where nettles and all kinds of coarse weeds grew luxuriantly, for folk threw out their refuse on this side, making great muck-heaps behind the outhouses. The path was slippery with grease that sweated out of the rotting heaps, and the air was charged with smells—fumes of manure, stench of carrion, and the faint odour of angelica that bordered the stream with clouds of greenish-white flowers.
But beyond the brook the fields lay in full afternoon sunshine; the little groves of trees threw long shadows over the grass. The fields stretched right down to the small houses along Strand Street, and beyond them lay the lake, blue with a golden glitter, and the low shore of Holy Isle in the afternoon haze.
The children walked in silence; Olav was now a few paces in front. It was very still here in the shade behind the gardens-nothing but the buzzing of the flies. A cowbell tinkled above on the common. Once the cuckoo called—spectrally clear and far away on a wooded ridge.
Then a woman’s scream rang out from one of the houses, followed by the laughter of a man and a woman. In the garden a man had caught a girl from behind; she dropped her pail, full of fishes’ heads and offal, and it rolled down to the fence; the couple followed, stumbling and nearly falling. When they caught sight of the two children, the man let go the girl; they stopped laughing, whispered, and followed them with their eyes.
Instinctively Olav had halted for a moment, so that Ingunn came up beside him and he placed himself between her and the fence. A blush crept slowly over his fair features and he looked down at the path as he led Ingunn past. These houses in the town that Steinfinn’s house-carls had talked so much about—for the first time it made him hot and gripped his heart to think of them, and he wondered whether this was one of those houses.
The path turned and Olav and Ingunn saw the huge grey mass and pale leaden roof of Christ Church and the stone walls of the Bishop’s palace above the trees a little way in front of them. Olav stopped and turned to the girl.
“Tell me, Ingunn—did you hear what Brother Vegard said—and the smith?”
“What mean you?”
“Brother Vegard asked if Steinfinn had sent for the armourer to Frettastein,” said Olav slowly. “And Jon smith asked if we made ready our axes now.”
“What meant they? Olav—you look so strangely!”
“Nay, I know not. Unless there is news at the Thing—folk are breaking up from the Thing these days, the first of them—”
“What mean you?”
“Nay, I know not. Unless Steinfinn has made some proclamation—”
The girl raised both hands abruptly and laid them on Olav’s breast. He laid both his palms upon them and pressed her hands against his bosom. And as they stood thus, there welled up again in Olav more powerfully than before that new feeling that they were adrift—that something which had been was now gone for ever; they were drifting toward the new and unknown. But as he gazed into her tense dark eyes, he saw that she felt the same. And he knew in his whole body and his whole soul that she had turned to him and clutched at him because it was the same with her as with him—she scented the change that was coming over them and their destiny, and so she clung to him instinctively, because they had so grown together throughout their forlorn, neglected childhood that now they were nearer to each other than any beside.
And this knowledge was unutterably sweet. And while they stood motionless looking into each other’s face, they seemed to become one flesh, simply through the warm pressure of their hands. The raw chill of the pathway that went through their wet shoes, the sunshine that poured warmly over them, the strong blended smell that they breathed in, the little sounds of the afternoon—they seemed to be aware of them all with the senses of one body.
The pealing of the church bells broke in upon their mute and tranquil rapture—the mighty brazen tones from the minster tower, the busy little bell from Holy Cross Church—and there was a sound of ringing from St. Olav’s on the point.
Olav dropped the girl’s hands. “We must make haste.”
Both felt as though the peal of bells had proclaimed the consummation of a mystery. Instinctively they took hands, as though after a consecration, and they went on hand in hand until they reached the main street.
The monks were in the choir and had already begun to chant vespers as Olav and Ingunn entered the dark little church. No light was burning but the lamp before the tabernacle and the little candles on the monks’ desks. Pictures and metal ornaments showed but faintly in the brown dusk, which gathered into gloom under the crossed beams of the roof. There was a strong smell of tar, of which the church had recently received its yearly coat, and a faint, sharp trace of incense left behind from the day’s mass.
In their strangely agitated mood they remained on their knees inside the door, side by side, and bowed their heads much lower than usual as they whispered their prayers with unwonted devotion. Then they rose to their feet and stole away to one side and the other.
There were but few people in church. On the men’s side sat some old men, and one or two younger knelt in the narrow aisle—they seemed to be the convent’s labourers. On the women’s side he saw none but Ingunn; she stood leaning against the farthest pillar, trying to make out the pictures painted on the baldachin over the side altar.
Olav took a seat on the bench—now he felt again how fearfully stiff and tired he was all over. The palms of his hands were blistered.
The boy knew nothing of what the monks sang. Of the Psalms of David he had learned no more than the Miserere and De profundís, and those but fairly well. But he knew the chant—saw it inwardly as a long, low wave that broke with a short, sharp turn and trickled back over the pebbles; and at first, whenever they came to the end of a psalm and sang “Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritu Sancto,” he whispered the response: “Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.” The monk who led the singing had a fine deep, dark voice. In drowsy-well-being Olav listened to the great male voice that rose alone and to the choir joining in, verse after verse throughout the psalms. After all the varied emotions of the day peace and security fell upon his soul as he sat in the dark church looking at the white-clad singers and the little flames of the candles behind the choir-screen. He would do the right and shun the wrong, he thought—then God’s might and compassion would surely aid him and save him in all his difficulties.
Pictures began to swarm before his inner vision: the boat, Ingunn with the velvet hood over her fair face, the glitter on the water behind her, the floor-boards covered with shining fish-scales—the dark, damp path among nettles and angelica—the fence they had climbed and the flowery meadow through which they had run—the golden net over the bottom of the lake—all these scenes succeeded one another behind his closed and burning eyelids.
He awoke as Ingunn took him by the shoulder. “You have been asleep,” she said reprovingly.
The church was empty, and just beside him the south door stood open to the green cloister garth in the evening sun.
Olav yawned and stretched his stiff limbs. He dreaded the journey home terribly; this made him speak to her a little more masterfully than usual; “ ’Twill soon be time to set out, Ingunn.”
“Yes.” She sighed deeply. “Would we might sleep here tonight!”
“You know we cannot do that.”
“Then we could have heard mass in Christ Church in the morning. We never see strange folk, we who must ever bide at home-it makes the time seem long.”
“You know that one day it will be otherwise with us.”
“But you have been in Oslo too, you have, Olav.”
“Ay, but I remember nothing of it.”
“When we come to Hestviken, you must promise me this, that you will take me thither some time, to a fair or a gathering.”
“That I may well promise you, methinks.”
Olav was so hungry his entrails cried out for food. So it was good to get warm groats and whey in the guest-room of the convent. But he could not help thinking all the time of the row home. And then he was uneasy about his axe.
But now they fell into talk with two men who also sat at meat in the guest-house. They came from a small farm that lay by the shore a little to the north of the point where Olav and Ingunn were to land, and they asked to be taken in their boat. But they would fain stay till after complin.
Again Olav sat in the dark church listening to the deep male voices that chanted the great king’s song to the King of kings. And again the images of that long, eventful day flickered behind his weary eyelids—he was on the point of falling asleep.
He was awakened by the voices changing to another tune; through the dark little church resounded the hymn:
Te lucis ante terminum
Rerum Creator poscimus
Ut pro tua clementia
Sis præsul et custodia.
Procul recedant somnia
Et noctium phantasmata;
Hostemque nostrum comprime,
Ne polluantur corpora.
Præsta, Pater piissime,
Patrique compar Unice,
Cum Spiritu Paraclito
Regnans per omne sæculum.
(Ambrosian hymn, seventh century)
He knew this; Arnvid Finnsson had often sung it to them in the evening, and he knew pretty well what the words meant in Norse. He let himself sink stiffly on his knees at the bench, and with his face hidden in his hands he said his evening prayers.
It had clouded over when they went down to the boat; the sky was flecked with grey high up and the fiord was leaden with dark stripes. The wooded slopes on both sides seemed plunged in darkness.
The strangers offered to row, and so Olav sat in the stern with Ingunn. They shot forward at a different pace now, under the long, steady strokes of the two young peasants; but Olav’s boyish pride suffered no great injury nevertheless—it was so good to sit and be rowed.
After a while a few drops of rain fell. Ingunn spread out the folds of the heavy cloak and bade him come closer.
So they both sat wrapped in it and he had to put an arm around her waist. She was so slender and warm and supple, good to hold clasped. The boat flew lightly through the water in the blue dusk of the summer night. Lighter shreds of mist with scuds of rain drifted over the lake and the hills around, but they were spared the rain. Soon the two young heads sank against each other, cheek to cheek. The men laughed and bade them lie down upon their empty sacks in the bottom of the boat.
Ingunn nestled close to him and fell asleep at once. Olav sat half up, with his neck against the stern seat; now and again he opened his eyes and looked up at the cloudy sky. Then his weariness seemed to flow over him, strangely sweet and good. He started up as the boat grounded on the sand outside Aud’s cabin.
The men laughed. No, why should they have waked him?—’twas nothing of a row.
It was midnight. Olav guessed that they had rowed it in less than half the time he had taken. He helped the men to shove the boat up on the beach; then they said good-night and went. First they became two queerly black spots losing themselves in the dark rocky shore of the bay, and soon they had wholly disappeared into the murky summer night.
Olav’s back was wet with bilge-water and he was stiff from his cramped position, but Ingunn was so tired that she whimpered—she would have it they must rest before setting out to walk home. Olav himself would best have liked to go at once—he felt it would have suppled his limbs so pleasantly to walk in the fresh, cool night, and he was afraid of what Steinfinn would say, if he had come home. But Ingunn was too tired, he saw—and they both dreaded to pass the cairn or to be out at all in the dead of night.
So they shared the last of the food in their wallet and crept into the cabin.
Just inside the door was a little hearth, from which some warmth still came. A narrow passage led in, which divided the earthen floor into two raised halves. On one side they heard Aud snoring; they felt their way among utensils and gear to the couch that they knew was on the other.
But Olav could not fall asleep. The air was thick with smoke even down to the floor and it hurt his chest—and the smell of raw fish and smoked fish and rotten fish was not to be borne. And his worn limbs twinged and tingled.
Ingunn lay uneasily, turning and twisting in the darkness. “I have no room for my head—surely there is an earthen pot just behind me—”
Olav felt for it and tried to push it away. But there was so much gear stowed behind, it felt as if it would all clatter down on them if he moved anything. Ingunn crawled farther down, doubled herself up, and lay with head and arms on his chest. “Do I crush you?” In a moment she was fast asleep.
After a while he slipped from under the warm body, heavy with sleep. Then he got his feet down on the passage, stood up, and stole out.
It was already growing light. A faint, cold air, like a shudder, breathed through the long, limber boughs of the birches and shook down a few icy drops; a pale gust blew over the steel-grey mirror of the lake.
Olav looked inland. It was so inconceivably still—there was as yet no life in the village; the farms were asleep and fields and meadows and groves were asleep, pale in the grey dawn. Scattered over the screes behind the nearest houses stood a few spruce-firs as though lifeless, so still and straight were they. The sky was almost white, with a faint yellow tinge in the north above the black tree-tops. Only high up floated a few dark shreds of the night’s clouds.
It was so lonely to be standing here, the only one awake, driven out by this new feeling which chased him incessantly farther and farther away from the easy self-confidence of childhood. It was about this hour yesterday that he had risen—it seemed years ago.
He stood, shy and oppressed at heart, listening to the stillness. Now and again there was the clatter of a wooden bell; the widow’s cow was moving in the grove. Then the cuckoo called, unearthly clear and far away somewhere in the dark forests, and some little birds began to wake. Each of the little sounds seemed only to intensify the immense hush of space.
Olav went to the byre and peeped in, but drew his head back at once before the sharp scent of lye that met him. But the ground was good and dry under the lean-to roof; brown and bare, with some wisps from the winter’s stacks of hay and leaves. He lay down, rolled up like an animal, and went to sleep in a moment.
He was awakened by Ingunn shaking him. She was on her knees beside him. “Have you lain out here?”
“ ’Twas so thick with smoke in the cabin.” Olav rose to his knees and shook the wisps and twigs from his clothes.
The sun came out above the ridge, and the tops of the firs seemed to take fire as it rose higher. And now there was a full-throated song of birds all through the woods. Shadows still lay over the land and far out on the deep-blue lake, but on the other side of the water the sunshine flooded the forest and the green hamlets on the upper slopes.
Olav and Ingunn remained on their knees, facing each other, as though in wonder. And without either’s saying anything they laid their arms on each other’s sh
oulders and leaned forward.
They let go at the same time and looked at each other with a faint smile of surprise. Then Olav raised his hand and touched the girl’s temples. He pushed back the tawny, dishevelled hair. As she let him do it, he put his other arm about her, drew her toward him, and kissed her long and tenderly on the sweet, tempting pit under the roots of the hair.
He looked into her face when he had done it and a warm tingling ran through him—she liked him to do that. Then they kissed each other on the lips, and at last he took courage to kiss her on the white arch of her throat.
But not a word did they say. When they stood up, he took the empty wallet and his cloak and set out. And so they walked in silence, he before and she behind, along the road through the village, while the morning sun shed its light farther and farther down the slopes.
On the higher ground folk were already astir on all the farms. As they went through the last of the woods, it was full daylight. But when they came to the staked gate where the home fields of Frettastein began, they saw no one about. Perhaps they might come well out of their adventure after all.
Behind the bushes by the gate they halted for a moment and looked at each other—the dazed, blissful surprise broke out in their eyes once more. Quickly he touched her hand, then turned to the gate again and pulled up the stakes.
When they entered the courtyard, the door of the byre stood open, but no one was to be seen. Ingunn made for the loft-room where she had slept the night before.
All at once she turned and came running back to Olav. “Your brooch—” she had taken it off and held it out to him.
“You may have it—I will give it you,” he said quickly. He took off her little one, which he had worn instead, and put it in her hand that held the gold brooch. “No, you are not to give me yours in exchange. I have brooches enough, I have—”
The Axe Page 5