The Son Avenger

by Sigrid Undset

  He was roused by spots of rain—the first he saw was that the stones were thickly splashed, but not all wet; he saw there was blood on the stones where he had lain, and he felt his face stiffened and wet with blood. He saw the grey trail of the shower as it swept up the course of the stream, while the wood was whitened by a gust that reversed the leaves.

  Olav stood up, feeling as if all the marrow had been taken from his bones. He had a terrible pain in the head—not from the fall, but from within—and in the heart, as he realized that she had been here and was gone, and that the vision had been a revelation of other times than these, times that he believed to have gone by more than a generation ago. Body and soul were rent with a pain unlike any other he had known, and he thought: “This is Death.”

  Then the fit of pain passed over; he got back his breath and shook himself under the pouring rain. As he leaped back across the brook, he found he was trembling and weak all over.

  The rain streamed down as Olav a moment later hurried across the pasture. Tore and the woman were peeping out through the door of the shed. “What have you done to yourself, Olav?” asked the house-carl in surprise.

  Olav had forgotten the blood on his face. He answered that he had run his forehead against the trunk of a fir. He flung himself down on the couch at the far end of the sæter hut and lay prone with his hands before his face, trying to get to the bottom of this. The other two stood at the door looking out at the rain.

  The sun was shining again, and the woodland gleamed, green and blue and fine after its bath, as Olav and Tore rode on in the afternoon. Olav was deep in thought. But at the bottom of his soul, deeper than doubt and disquietude, lay joy. He had seen that death had not yet parted him from her, and that his own youth was living somewhere in time and space, in spite of all he had done to kill it.

  They did not reach Hestviken till night. Olav helped Tore with the horses—they put them in the stable, in case there might be another thunderstorm during the night. Then a strange thing happened as Olav reached over to pat the colt that stood in the stall next his saddle-horse: the animal plunged, making a great clatter, shied and backed. When Olav in surprise was going up to it, the colt went quite wild.

  “It seems the horse is afraid of you!” said Tore.

  Olav had to leave its stall; he said nothing.

  He fell asleep as soon as he lay down. In the morning his memory of the vision was half faded, or as though it had happened long ago. But as he was about to dress, he went to the door of the closet to look over his shirt—he was afraid he had got ticks from the sæter. Then he saw with the corner of his eye that he was bleeding behind the shoulder—there was the mark of a bite. As he looked at it fresh blood oozed out of the little tooth-marks.

  Once more the choking, bursting pain returned in his head and heart, and Olav had to clutch the doorpost until he had mastered the thought that this inconceivable thing was true—however it might have come about.

  He had had a little scar there. Ingunn had bitten him once in wantonness—one night when he had been with her in her bower at Fretrastein. It was an age since he had thought of it, for the mark had almost faded out with the years, and it was so far back on his shoulder that he could not see it without turning his head. But now the blood trickled red and fresh from the little pits left by her teeth.

  8 Constantinople.

  10

  OLAV went about like a sleepwalker in his own house, while the daughters of Arne and his kinsfolk and friends made ready for the great bridal journey. His whole mind was turned inward, upon the memory of his vision. He had to think out what it might betoken, that she had come back thus.

  The scar on his shoulder continued to bleed in the mornings. He felt nothing of it at other times, but if his thoughts ever strayed for a while from his meeting with his dead wife, it recalled itself to his mind by a little pricking or smarting.

  His past now seemed so far behind him that he no longer knew what was true memory and what was dream. But he thought he remembered that she had said that night, laughing, that she would mark her own with a bite. And had she now come to remind him of that?

  Now he would soon be left alone again. All that he thought he could never part with would soon have slipped out of his hands. Soon he would be as alone in the world and as free as when he bound himself to his child bride.

  It was a long and weary road he had travelled since their young days. And when he thought of it, the time they had lived their life together as man and wife here in Hestviken was but the smallest part of it: for twelve years they had dwelt together, but the years of his outlawry in his youth had been near ten, and now it was over thirteen years since she died. Never before had he chanced to think about it—the time they had been suffered to live together as married folk had really been short. It had appeared to him that they had belonged to each other as long as he could remember, and this did not cease with her death. It was only when his own life began to dry up and wither, as a tree grows old, hollow, and decayed, with fewer and fewer branches that burst into leaf in spring, that he had ceased to feel they were bound together, in a far deeper sense than he had ever been able to see; but the brief years in which they had been suffered to enjoy each other’s love, at Frettastein that autumn and the first years here at Hestviken, had been but the visible sign of the mysterious relation between them.

  And had it now been vouchsafed her to fulfil her promise and come to him—the living to the dying—and had she been permitted to renew the mark she had put on him in wild girlish wantonness, then it must have been in order to remind him that the bond between them was not yet broken, that their pact still held, and that she could still claim him for her own.

  If that were so, they could not be parted, unless God’s judgment parted them as far asunder as heaven and hell—when finally they had become as unlike each other as the free and blest spirits in God’s presence are unlike the Devil’s fettered thralls.

  Another thing he saw, though he knew not how it came about that he could see it: that souls have no age. Sin and grace fashion them and give them shape, but not as years and labour and sickness mark the bodily husk. Ingunn’s ravaged body and his own weatherbeaten, war-scarred frame were but as hard-worn garments; that was what the makers of images meant when they painted souls as naked little children, the angels and devils taking each their own as they issue from the mouths of the dying. Old age does not survive death; but the blest and the lost shall receive their everlasting destiny in the full force and wakefulness of youth. And that too they had been taught by Brother Vegard—in eternity all are ever young.

  There were fifty in the company, with house-carls and serving-women, when Cecilia Olavsdatter’s bridal progress set out from Hestviken. With pack-horses and cattle it was a brave train passing through the countryside. Olav looked at it well pleased: as his neighbours reckoned such things, he had prospered of late years. Since the Swedish troubles he had enjoyed honour in the district; all knew that he might have had power there, had he cared to use it; wealth he had, and his children had turned out so as to bring him joy and honour. To no man had he made complaint in the hard years, and none had seen him puffed up in the days of prosperity—this world had never been able to prevail against him.

  So now he must follow the course that his heart had prompted all these years—fall at the feet of Christ crucified and confess that he had lived the whole time secretly at war with God and now knelt before Him, vanquished.

  What might afterwards befall him he could not tell. ’Twas unlikely any man would care now to drag forth into the light his manslaughter of long ago. That was only a sting he had pressed into his own flesh—it had worked out again long since and was forgotten, but the wound had spread and consumed him.

  The likeliest penance to be imposed on him would be to make a pilgrimage that might last until his death, old as he now was. And he thought upon it with an easy heart, at the very moment when he surveyed the marks of his prosperity—he would gladly leave it all
, suffer hands and feet to be fettered, wander as a penitent pilgrim from sanctuary to sanctuary, begging his food—

  But every time he thought of Eirik a thrill of anxiety went through him. His son was only present to his mind as he knelt before the choir of the convent church, erect and radiant in his bridegroom’s attire. Eirik had given himself to God, without fear and without self-seeking. And as he came forward in the frock of a barefoot friar to bid the world farewell—in the eyes of his father, who dared now give free play at last to his love for his son, all the brightness of the scene was centred on Eirik’s narrow, shining crown.

  To him he would now say: “I am not your true father—your father’s slayer I am.”

  If Eirik raised him up after that—then all would be well.

  How Cecilia would take it was a question to which he gave little thought.

  The wedding at Gunnarsby passed off bravely; it brought honour both to the Rypungs and to Olav. Cecilia Olavsdatter was so fair a bride that she shed a radiance about her when she appeared with the golden crown upon her loose and frizzly flaxen hair.

  It struck Olav next morning, when he saw the young wife attired with the linen coif—her hair had been the fairest thing about Cecilia, and now that it was hidden away, she seemed much smaller, so pale and light-eyed was she, and short of stature. But the place was strange to her, she was unused to her condition—no doubt she would be brighter when she was used to the married state and to Gunnarsby. Jörund seemed mightily pleased with his bride.

  The sixth day of the wedding—Olav was to take his departure the day after—the Kolbeinssons showed him and some of his nearest kin the jewels that their mother owned and that they would one day share among them. She had a great treasure, Gunhild Rypa, and many beautiful things.

  The Kolbeinssons and the young wives of Aake and Steinar grew very animated after a while. And again it came upon Olav that he did not altogether like these folks. It struck him as immodest and unmannerly that they could not handle the valuables in a calmer and more dignified way—their voices jerked up and down, now loud and sharp, and the next moment smirking and bland, as they watched each other with greedy and suspicious glances. “’Twill scarcely be an amicable division of the inheritance when the mother is gone,” thought Olav. That at least they had not failed in, the gentlefolk among whom he had been fostered, nor himself either—not letting it be seen that either loss or gain disturbed their serenity.

  He chanced to look at his daughter. She stood silently by her husband’s side. Olav read in her eyes that her thoughts were the same as his, and he felt a little sting as he recalled that tomorrow he was to ride away and leave her behind with these folks.

  In the evening he went out strolling with his daughter on a path that led down to the lake. He himself had asked her to go with him—he wished to find out how she was doing in her new home. But Cecilia said nothing about that, and Olav could not bring himself to ask any questions.

  Only when they were going up toward the manor again did the man say: “Now thus it is, Cecilia—you know that the day will come, mayhap sooner than any of us looks for it, when you will return to Hestviken, and then all will be yours. Bear that in mind if it should chance now and again that you feel a longing for your home at first.”

  “God grant you a long life, Father,” the bride hastened to say. “Have you never spoken of it with Jörund—that he should move to Hestviken in your lifetime?” she then asked.

  Olav had never thought of this, so he remained silent. There was no great comfort in the thought: he did not believe he would care to live under the same roof as his son-in-law. So he merely answered:

  “Likely enough when you have been some time here at Gunnarsby you will be unwilling to leave the place. Here you have young people in the house”—he meant to say something of young women of her own age, but shrank, when it came to the point, from reckoning Cecilia’s sisters-in-law as an advantage—“wide lands and many neighbours. And you will be free to go abroad and will have much at your command.”

  To this Cecilia made no reply.

  Next morning Olav left the table before the other guests; there were many who were to ride homeward in his company, so he thought he ought to see to the saddling and packing of the horses. When he came out on the steps of the barn—where their saddles and harness had been stored—he heard Cecilia’s voice within; she was talking to old Tore. His daughter said:

  “To think that you are to be parted from me—can you not come hither and dwell with us at Gunnarsby? Brynhild and Lucia have their own henchmen and waiting-women; they can scarce grudge me a man who can tend my horses and serve me.”

  “God forgive us, Cecilia”—the old man laughed—“could you not find a man who is even worse fitted to be a lady’s henchman at Gunnarsby?”

  Olav could not help smiling at the thought. Tore was a strange figure, he was so huge and broad in the chest and shoulders, but his legs were short and crooked, he had a round head with long grey hair hanging stiffly about it, his face was covered with little wrinkles, red and fleshy, and his eyes were dull as those of a boiled fish. He was strong as a giant and chose the hardest work, a man of few words and one to be trusted; one could not call his manner discourteous, but he was sufficient to himself and could never have learned such meekness as the servants at Gunnarsby had to practise—and now his age was three score years and more.

  “I should be so kind to you!” Cecilia begged.

  “You are as good as gold, I know that. But now I have served your father twenty years and more, and if the truth be told, ’twould be harder for Olav to get on without me at Hestviken than the man himself can guess, or anyone else.”

  “’Twill be hard for me to do without you. No friend have I had so faithful as you, since I was so small that you let me ride on your back.”

  “When I am too old for aught else,” said old Tore with a laugh, “I will come and be nurse to your children, Cecilia.”

  “Ay, will you promise that?”

  Olav went in. Cecilia was sitting on the old house-carl’s knees and had put her arm round his neck; she looked into his ugly face like a child begging for something.

  Olav nodded to the two. “You are unhappy at parting from Tore, I can see.”

  Cecilia had risen hastily, and now her face was as calm and stubborn as usual.

  “I have asked Tore, Father, if he would come and live with us here at Gunnarsby.”

  “’Tis not sure, Cecilia, that it would go well with him here-old folk are ill matched with new customs.”

  Tore agreed with his master.

  In going eastward the bridal progress had been compelled to follow the best roads there were, but on the homeward journey Olav, together with some of the guests who wished to travel rapidly, took the same short cut through the forest as he had ridden in returning from Gunnarsby the first time.

  They rested at the same sæter as before. And while his companions lay and took their ease in the meadow above, Olav stole from them and walked down by the bank of the stream.

  The sun was shining, and nothing was changed—only the willow-herb was pale and flowerless; it had begun to shed its seed, which drifted like silvery down in the breeze. Olav stood for a while gazing over at the scree, but today he could see nothing strange.

  For the first time it occurred to him that his vision might have been a phantom—or something else: “a negotio perambulante in tenebris, ab incursu et dæmonio meridiano.” Thus in the evening prayer one asks for help against the thing that walketh in darkness, and against the assaults of evil spirits at noonday. And in truth he had often felt that just in the stillness of the noonday heat there are many things abroad that one cannot see.

  Or what if it had been she, but with some other purpose—to beg him take good heed, ere he gave away their only child—

  Then Olav shook it from him. He would hold to what he had believed at first.

  Coming through the church town Olav was told that there had been a fire at Hes
tviken. The great old barn to the east of the manor and the haystacks had been burned down.

  It had begun in the forest away on the north side of the inlet-fishermen had made a fire over on the Bull—and then it had caught the heather, and the fir forest was burned up, but the flames were checked at the cleft that runs inland and is overgrown with lime and hazel. But for a while the wind had blown from the north, and sparks had fallen on the roofed haystacks outside the barn; then hay and barn had gone up in a blaze—for a time the houses beyond had been in danger.

  It was strange how unhomely it had made the place look, thought Olav, as he stood next morning looking over toward the Bull—with the stumps of trees that stood out, jagged, blackened, and scorched red, or lay fallen on the burned moss. A thick band of charcoal and soot floated along the beach all the way.

  The barn was the only building at Hestviken that belonged to the great days of the manor, so Olav was sorry to lose it. And now they would be in sore straits for fodder in the coming winter.

  He had now to think of rebuilding and of getting in what might serve for fodder. Then came the seal-hunting and the fishing season. Olav had his hands full with one thing and another throughout the autumn and winter. His house-folk remarked that he gave unusual care to all that he did that winter. To Tore he had dropped hints that led the men to suppose he was minded to make another journey in foreign lands next summer, and perhaps he intended that Jörund Kolbeinsson should come to Hestviken with his wife.

  Olav was happier at home than he had been in all the years he had been there. He liked the loneliness and he liked the busy activity, for he felt it to be a preparation for departure. He even got to like the view of the Bull’s neck with the burned wood when he was used to it, especially after the autumn storms had cleared it and snow had fallen. It had a more open look.