The Axe

by Sigrid Undset

  Every morning, when she awoke, she played that her husband had risen and gone out. She lay listening to the sounds of the great farm, playing that she was at Hestviken; and she played that it was Olav who had the hay carted in, that they were his horses and sledges, and that it was he who set his folk to their work. When Steinar lay still for a moment in her bed, she laid her thin arm about the boy, pressed his fair head against her breast, and to herself she called the boy Audun, and he was her son and Olav’s. Then he wanted to get up and out, struggled to free himself from her embrace. Ingunn coaxed him to stay by giving him dainty morsels of food she had hidden in her bed, telling him stories, and playing at being a mother who was talking to her child.

  The first thing that waked her out of her dreams and play when she came to Berg was Lady Magnhild’s taking the coif from her. Never before had she looked upon it as a shame that she had become Olav’s own. At Frettastein she had thought so little, only loved. Only when both Olav and Arnvid were suddenly so urgent to go to Hamar and have Olav’s right to her acknowledged had anything like confusion been aroused in her. But when the good Bishop sent her the modest white linen and bade her bind up her hair, she grew calm again. Even if she had wronged her uncles, who should have been her sponsors after her father’s death, the lord Torfinn would surely make all well again, and then she would be as good a wife as all other married women.

  She was chilled with humiliation in the unwonted feeling of being bareheaded, after wearing the married woman’s garb for a year and a half. It was as though she had been immodestly bared by violent hands—as they did with women thralls in the slave market in former times. She excused herself from going across to Magnhild’s house when strangers were there. She did not willingly show herself abroad among folk except in church—there all women had to cover their heads. Ingunn drew the hood of her cloak over her face so that not a hair was seen. To make some small amends for having to clothe herself as was unfitting for her, she put away all jewels, wore none but dark, plain kirtles, and did her hair in two hard, stiff plaits without ribbons or other adornment.

  • • •

  Then came the spring. One day the ice sank in the bay, the water lay open and clear and reflected the green hills on both shores. Now Berg was at its fairest. Ingunn led her grandmother out on the sunny side and sat with her, sewing the shirt for Olav Audunsson. Olav had told her that Hestviken lay on the fiord.

  She found some trifles to busy herself with in the loft-room that belonged to Aasa. Morning after morning she spent up there, rummaging and tidying. Ingunn took the shutter from the little window and leaned out.

  A boat was rowing under the opposite shore—the dark reflection of the wooded hill was broken by long streaks. Ingunn played at its being Olav and the boy who were in the boat. They were rowing this way—Ingunn could see it. They put in at the hard and Audun helped his father to make the boat fast. The father stood up on the wooden pier and the boy was busy in the stern of the boat, collecting their things. At last he took his little axe, Olav held out his hand and helped him up—ay, the boy was now as big as Jon, her youngest brother. The two came up the path toward the house, the father first and the son following.

  She also had a little daughter, whose name was Ingebjörg. She was out in the yard—she was just coming from the storehouse, carrying a great wooden tray full of bannocks. She broke one of them up and scattered the crumbs to the hens—no, the geese. Ingunn remembered that they had had geese at Frettastein when she was a little child, and there was something grave and imposing about the heavy white and grey-flecked birds. They would have geese at Hestviken.

  Softly, as though she were doing something wrong, she stole to the door and shot the bolt. Then she took a coif from her chest and wound it about her head. Ingunn turned her belt, so that the buckle was at the side; she hung on it all the heavy things she could find—a pair of scissors and some keys. Thus adorned she sat on the edge of the empty bedstead that was in the loft; with her hands in her lap she turned over in her mind all the things that had to be done before her husband and children came in.

  At Berg it was only now and then that they heard anything of the remarkable events which took place in Norway that year. Almost no news reached Ingunn, shut up as she was in her grandmother’s house. So it was like a bolt from the blue when she heard one day that Bishop Torfinn had been declared an outlaw and was said to have left the country.

  It was their parish priest who brought this news to the house, one day at the beginning of winter. For some months the lord Torfinn had been on a visitation in Norddalen, and from thence it seemed he had intended to meet the Archbishop somewhere in the outer islands. But before he could do so, these barons, who now possessed all the power in the realm, had outlawed the Archbishop and several of the other bishops and persecuted them till they fled the country in all directions. Bishop Torfinn was said to have gone on board a ship, but none knew what had become of him since, or when he might return to his see. The parish priest did not grieve for this—the Bishop had reproved him for indolence and for neglecting to punish the sins of great folks as they deserved; but the priest thought himself a good shepherd enough, and there was no need to treat his flock in the Bishop’s way; he had been very angry with that stiff-necked monk, as he called him.

  It was clear that the conflict between the bishops and the young King’s advisers was concerned with great matters of state, and this marriage suit of Olav Audunsson was a trifle of no account—although it was brought forward as an instance of the Bishop of Hamar’s intolerable obstinacy and desire to upset the ancient laws of the land. But the parish priest wished to remain good friends with the rich lady of Berg—and perhaps he had no idea how little this affair of the marriage of two children meant outside the parishes where the families of the young people were known. From the way he talked, it might be thought Bishop Torfinn had been outlawed mainly because he had held his hand over the Steinfinnssons’ worst enemy.

  Ingunn was seized by a terrible dread. Scared into wakefulness, she saw again her position as it was in reality, and all her dreams collapsed suddenly, as a flowery meadow is blighted by a frosty night. She realized with a shiver that she was but a defenceless and deserted orphan, neither maid nor wife; she had not a friend to maintain her rights—Olav was away, none knew where, the Bishop was gone, Arnvid was far off and she could not send him a message. She had no one on whom to lean, except her old grandmother, who was in second childhood, if her ungentle kinsmen were minded to take revenge on her.—She clung, a little trembling, quivering creature, to the only firmness in her weak, instinct-governed soul—she would hold fast to Olav and be true to him, even if they were to torture her to death for his sake.

  At about this time—during Advent—Tora Steinfinnsdatter and her husband, Haakon Gautsson, came to Berg. Haakon had not yet found a place where he cared to settle for good, and now Tora was expecting a child before Yule. So it was the intention of the young people to stay at Berg that winter. Ingunn had not seen her sister for two years, and her brother-in-law she had never met till now. He did not look amiss—he was a powerfully built young man, with handsome features and curly chestnut hair, but he had little brown eyes placed close together at the high root of his hooked nose, and he squinted not a little.

  From the first day he met his wife’s sister with ill will. In words and bearing he plainly showed that he counted Ingunn naught else than a seduced woman who had disgraced herself and her whole family. He was intensely pleased with his marriage, proud of Tora’s beauty and of her good understanding, proud that she was soon to bear him an heir to all the riches he boasted of possessing; he allowed himself to be guided by his wife in all things—which was well for Haakon. But though this was so, and though poor Ingunn had been ignorant of the honour and good fortune she missed in giving herself to Olav Audunsson—when she might have been married to Haakon Gautsson—Haakon had conceived a hatred for her, since she had preferred a young lad, her father’s serving-man and one of w
hose family and fortune none here in the Mjösen country knew anything certain, to him, the knight’s son from Harland.

  And the younger sister went about in her fruitfulness, gleaming pink and white, proud of her matronly dignity, though she owned neither house nor farm to rule over. The white wimple, which she wore with honour and by right, reached nearly to her feet; a heavy bunch of keys jingled at her belt—though God alone knew what the houseless man’s wife was to lock or unlock with them. But Tora bore herself so that every mother’s child at Berg, and even the lady Magnhild, would do anything to honour her and her husband, and the women made all preparations to receive the child they expected with such pomp as became the son of so great a man.

  Through all the time of their growing up Ingunn had known well enough that Tora was seldom pleased with her conduct—thought her elder sister wanting in affection to their parents, thoughtless and lazy, and that she should have sat quietly with their mother and the maids in the women’s room instead of always running out to play with Olav and his friends. But Tora never said anything—she was two years younger, and that is a great deal in childhood; Ingunn cared very little what Tora might think. And the last autumn at Frettastein Tora had kept silence about what Ingunn knew she must have guessed and been dismayed at. But only when they were in the guest-house at Hamar had her sister spoken of the matter, and then Tora had judged her and Olav’s conduct with unexpected leniency and had been kind to Ingunn while they stayed there. One thing was that Tora had always been fond of her foster-brother with true sisterly affection—she liked Olav better than her own brothers and sister, because he was quieter and more natural—and then the Bishop had given some countenance to Olav and Ingunn, and all the people the sisters met in the town followed the lord Torfinn in their judgment; even if Olav had returned wrong for wrong, they had nevertheless done a greater wrong who had sought to break a handselled betrothal because the bridegroom was young and lacked powerful spokesmen. No one doubted that the Bishop in the end would force such a settlement of the suit as would be honourable to Olav. So at that time Tora had not thought that Ingunn’s rashness might prove a disgrace to them all.

  Now it was otherwise. She could not forgive Olav for having slain her near kinsman, and she spoke harsh words of the way he had rewarded them all for having taken him up, a friendless child, and fostered him in the Steinfinn kindred. Toward Ingunn she was not unfriendly—but, for all that, Ingunn guessed what Tora thought of her: that from a child she had been such that her younger sister was not surprised at her ending in misfortune—but Tora wished to be kind and not to make it harder for the poor thing to bear the fate she had brought upon herself.

  Ingunn bowed in silence beneath Tora’s gentle little words of pity, but when the talk turned to Olav’s misdeeds, she tried to raise her voice in opposition. It availed but little; the other held such an advantage; that she was the elder was of no weight now, since Tora was the married woman. Tora had experience and the right of judging between other grown people. Ingunn was left with her experiences to which she had no right: of a love for which all seemed minded to punish her, of household management and bringing up of children, at which she had played in her dreams, but never set her hand to in reality. She felt poor and down-hearted as she sat in her corner and saw how Tora and Haakon filled the whole house with their life. In her dark, penitential garments, with the two smooth, heavy plaits hanging over her shoulders, as though it were their weight that bowed her head and bent her back, she looked like a poor maidservant beside the young, richly clad wife.

  Tora had a son, as no doubt had been the hope of her and Haakon—a big, promising child, as all said who saw the boy. Ingunn was set to stay by her sister, while Tora was lying in, and thus she was occupied in tending her nephew. She had always been very fond of little children, and now she conceived a great affection for this young Steinfinn Haakonsson. When she had to take him into her bed at night to give the mother better rest, she could not help it—she had to play at the boy’s being her own. She had to warm herself awhile at her old fancies that she was at Hestviken, in her own house, and that she was living there with Olav and their children, Audun, Ingebjörg, and the new little one. But now she felt with bitter truth that it was but a poor web of dreams that she had to wrap herself in, while she saw her sister well and warmly enfolded in her tangible wealth, with husband and infant son and all the crowd of their servants, who took up so much room in the place, and the chests and sacks of their goods that were stacked up in the lofts and storehouses.

  Haakon wished to hold a great christening ale, and Lady Magnhild offered to bear half of the cost. Not only Haftor Kolbeinsson, who had become a great friend of Haakon, but the uncles, Kolbein and Ivar, came to the feast, and these stayed for some days after the other guests had left.

  One evening the kinsfolk were sitting over the supper-table in Lady Magnhild’s room; Aasa Magnusdatter was there too and sat in the high seat, with Ingunn by her side to help her with her food and drink, for the old lady’s hands were very shaky. Otherwise she had been in much better health this winter; it had rejoiced her greatly to be a great-grandmother; this last piece of news she never forgot, but often asked after the child and wished to see it.

  This evening the men’s talk turned upon the conflict between the barons and the bishops, and the Toressons pretended it was certain which side would win. It was the bishops who would have to give in, content themselves with the power that was theirs by right as the spiritual fathers of the people, but let the old laws regarding laymen’s dealings with one another stand unshaken. As to Bishop Torfinn, many of the priests here in his own diocese now thought he had gone too far: “I have spoken with three parish priests, good and learned men of God,” said Kolbein, “and all three answered me that they were willing to say the bridal mass on the day we give away Ingunn here.”

  Lady Magnhild answered: “It is clear that the Bishop’s interpretation cannot possibly be right. It cannot be God’s commandment that His priests should hold with loose-minded and self-willed young people, or that Holy Church should help wicked children to force through their will against their parents—”

  “Nay, indeed,” said the others.

  Ingunn had turned scarlet in the face, but now she straightened herself and defiance struggled with fear in her look—her eyes seemed unnaturally large and dark as she turned them upon her uncles.

  “Ay, ’tis of you we are speaking,” Kolbein answered back. “You have been a burden to your kinsfolk long enough now, Ingunn. It is time you had a man who can bridle you.”

  “Can you find a man who will take me?” asked Ingunn scornfully. “So wretched a wife as you would make me to be?”

  “We shall not speak of that,” said Kolbein furiously. “I thought you had had time to find your wits again. So shameless you cannot be, I ween, that you lust after living with a man who has stained his hands with the blood of your cousin—even if you could get him?”

  “ ’Tis not the first time a man has come to grief through his wife’s kinsfolk,” said Ingunn in a low and faltering voice.

  “Say no more of that,” replied Kolbein angrily. “Never will we give you to Einar’s slayer.”

  “Ay, that you have power to refuse—maybe,” said Ingunn. She felt that all around the table were staring at her. And she was strangely fired by the thought that she had thus stepped out of the shadow of subjection. “But if you would give me to any other—you will find that is not in your power!”

  “In whose power think you that you are?” asked Kolbein scornfully.

  Ingunn’s hands grasped the bench she was sitting on. She felt her cheeks go white. But this was herself—she was not dreaming. It was herself who spoke, all were staring at her. Before she could get out her answer, Ivar put in a conciliatory word: “In God’s name, Ingunn—this Olav—no man knows where he may be. You yourself know not whether he is alive or dead. Will you pass all your days as a widow, waiting for a dead man?”

  “I know that h
e is alive.” She thrust her hand into her bosom and drew out a little silver-mounted sheath-knife which hung by a string around her neck. She drew the knife and laid it before her on the table. “Olav gave me this for a talisman, before we parted—he bade me wait so long as the blade was bright, he said—did it rust, then he was dead—”

  She breathed hard once or twice. Then she became aware of a young man sitting lower down the table, who stared at her excitedly. Ingunn knew that his name was Gudmund Jonsson and that he was the only son of a great house in the neighbouring parish; she had seen him once or twice here at Berg, but never spoken to him. Now she guessed at once—this was the bridegroom her uncles intended for her; she was quite certain of this. She looked the young man straight in the eye; her own glance was firm as steel, she felt.

  Then said the conciliatory Ivar Toresson, scratching his hair: “Such talismans—oh ay, I know not how much one may believe in such things—”

  “I trow, my Ingunn, you will soon see who is to decide your marriage,” Kolbein broke in. “So you will oppose us if we give you to a man whom we reckon to be an equal match for you? Whom will you turn to then—since your friend the Bishop has taken to his heels, out of the country, so that you cannot crawl under his cloak?”

  “I will turn to God my Creator Himself,” said Ingunn; her face was white as a sheet and she half rose from the bench. “Relying on His mercy, if you drive me to commit one sin to avoid a greater. Ere I let you force me to be an adulteress and enter the bridal bed with another man while my true husband lives, I will throw myself into the fiord out there!”

  Both Kolbein and Ivar were about to answer her, when old Aasa Magnusdatter put her hands on the table, raised herself with difficulty, and stood up, tall and thin and stooping; she blinked at the men about her with her old red and running eyes.

  “What is it you would do to this child?” she asked threateningly, laying her bony claw of a hand on Ingunn’s neck. “You wish her ill, I know. Ivar, my son, will you do the work of this bastard brood of Borghild? They would harm Steinfinn’s children, I see that—are you to lend them a hand in it, Magnhild and Ivar? Then I fear I have too many left to me in you two!”