The Son Avenger

by Sigrid Undset

  Eirik’s eyelids dropped again.

  Olav then heard how this had come about. It was two house-carls who had fallen out as they were saddling the horses—they seemed to have been old enemies—and it had come to blows; their arms had been left indoors since the sitting of the court, so they took to their knives. When Eirik had tried to come between them, they had both turned on him, and then he drew his dagger, but only to defend himself; neither of the house-carls had received more than a few scratches. Now they lay bound in a cellar.

  Eirik came to his senses for a while early in the night; he whispered that if this proved his bane, he did not wish a charge to be made against the poor men, but he forgave them as he hoped God would forgive him.

  To this Olav made no answer. Neither he nor Reidulf meant to spare the men if Eirik’s wounds should take a bad turn. But all went well; Reidulf had sent for an old man who could stanch blood and was a good leech. A week later Olav was able to move his son to Hestviken, and there he himself and Ragna tended the wounded man so well that Eirik was on his feet again before Whit Sunday.

  After this, peace was re-established between father and son. But while he lay sick Eirik had dropped out of the way of saying his hours and all his other practices; on getting up he did indeed resume them, but either kept them less strictly than before or concealed them better from his house-mates. And if Olav came upon him while he said his paternosters, or noticed that Eirik imposed on himself any kind of self-discipline, his son was sure to hear of it later in the day.

  “’Tis a good thing, Eirik,” his father said with a quiet laugh, “that we have seen your hand still knows its way to your dagger. Else it would not be well for the rest of us to dwell under the same roof with so pious a man as you have grown.”

  Eirik turned red. It hurt him that his father should talk in this way, but Olav said it so good-humouredly, and he had never been able to resist his father when he showed him the smallest speck of kindness.

  4 Psalm xlv, 1.

  13

  ERIK lay awake in bed one morning at Gunnarsby. Jörund was putting on his clothes in another corner of the room. Cecilia came in from outside with something and exchanged a few words with her husband. Then he said:

  “Will you not speak to your brother of that matter we talked of?”

  “No. I have told you I will not.”

  Jörund muttered something in anger. Then he followed his wife out.

  Eirik got up and dressed himself. When he came out Cecilia was sitting on the earthen bench outside the house with her son in her lap. The child crawled over his mother and wanted to be caressed; Cecilia pressed the boy to her, but looked as if she were thinking of other things. Eirik greeted his sister and stood looking down at her.

  “What did Jörund wish you to say to me?”

  “Since you heard that”—Cecilia glanced up with her clear, cool look—“you must also have heard my answer.”

  “Was it about my leaving the convent?” asked Eirik. “Has that made it worse for you here at Gunnarsby?”

  “Oh—’tis not that alone.” Her eyes still rested on her brother’s tall and handsome figure as he stood before her with the morning sun shining on the brown locks of his bent head. He was dressed in a dark-red gown that reached to the knees and fitted his broad shoulders well, a leather belt with silver buckle about his slim waist. She liked him better thus—it had revolted her to see her lively, handsome brother in the frock of a barefoot friar; never could she believe that was a life for Eirik. “There is much else—”

  Eirik said: “Even with a sister’s portion in Hestviken, Jörund will get more with you than his brothers got with their wives. Brynhild has four brothers, and Lucia’s father had to make dear amends to the King for the foolish game he played when the Duke lay before Akershus.”

  Cecilia nodded. “Jörund knows that—they all know it. But that makes it no easier for Jörund now—we live here, the youngest of this crowded household, and we must bow to the others in everything.”

  “Is it Mistress Brynhild?” asked Eirik.

  “Brynhild I like best. She says what she means. But true it is that she and Jörund have never been friends. And Aake and Lucia do not like me.”

  Eirik looked down at the young mother. He had guessed this during his stay here—neither Jörund nor Cecilia had an easy lot.

  “Tell me withal what Jörund wished you to say to me,” he asked her. “Tell me,” he repeated, as his sister blushed but would not answer.

  Suddenly, with a movement of impatience, Cecilia set the babbling child down on the ground. The infant rolled over and made ready to scream—Eirik took him up on his arm.

  “Ay, ’twill be no longer than to Clement’s mass5—and then I shall have another one like this.” Cecilia drew two or three deep breaths. “I cannot deny—I would give much if I could be spared giving birth to the child here in the hands of these brothers’ wives. Even if Hestviken is to be yours—could we not live there together? He and Aake, they could never bear each other. Jörund has wished this ever since we were married. He begged me—’twas one of the first nights we slept together—he begged me ask Father if we might take up our abode with him. But if he could wish that—if he would rather dwell with Father, who is so glum and hard to get on with, than with his brothers—then ’twould be all the easier one day when Father is gone and you are the master—you and he have been fast friends so long.”

  “Is it your wish,” asked Eirik, as Cecilia had to stop and take breath, “that I speak with Father—ask him if you may come out to us by autumn?”

  “Yes,” said Cecilia, and blushed again.

  Eirik handed her the child, which was struggling to get back to its mother. Then he turned and went to find Jörund.

  All that forenoon the two friends were together on the outskirts of the manor; they walked hither and thither, sat or lay on the ground, and Jörund talked without ceasing. He swore that he had not taken it amiss when he heard Eirik was not to be a monk after all; he at least had never forgotten that probation was probation—but Aake and Steinar and their wives had uttered words that provoked Cecilia to retort—and Eirik knew well enough how stubborn and unbending she was when she thought differently from others. She often did so here, and it generally happened that there was some truth in what she said. But it was unbearable for them to stay here—the dissension between him and his brothers had become ten times worse since he had married Cecilia. But if they came to Hestviken, he was sure he could live happily with her. Then he began to talk of the table silver in Cecilia’s dowry—Aake’s wife had found out from Magnus, the goldsmith of Oslo, that this was the old silver that Olav had brought out at the betrothal feast; Olav had had it refashioned, but that, they declared, was cheating his son-in-law of the heritage—and Cecilia had given them an answer.

  Eirik’s head reeled with listening to Jörund’s complaints when at last they returned to the manor.

  As Eirik rode homeward he was determined that his father must yield, though it might be difficult to obtain the old man’s consent. What happened was the only thing he had not looked for: Olav said yes without hesitating. So Jörund and Cecilia moved to Hestviken that autumn. They were given the women’s house to live in.

  Soon after, Cecilia gave birth to her second son. He was called Torgils—by mistake: the boy came into the world half-suffocated, and the women fetched in Eirik to baptize him in emergency. In his hurry he gave the child the first family name he could think of. Olav was angry—the boy ought to have been called Audun after his father and his little dead son, and he had no wish to have Foulbeard’s name perpetuated in the family—though the man’s own offspring had used it and two of Arne Torgilsson’s daughters had named children after their grandfather.

  One day Eirik said to his father: “Could you not be less curt of speech with Jörund? He thinks you like him not.”

  “No, I cannot,” said Olav gruffly. Then he added, already a little more graciously: “Jörund can hardly expect me
to treat him as if he were still our guest, now that he has taken up his abode here.”

  Olav had reached a point where he was no longer able to keep up his ill will toward Eirik. The young man had compelled a certain respect from his father: he was now in his second year at home, and the change that had come over him since his stay in the convent still lasted. Olav noticed that Eirik always tried to do what was right and had achieved a mastery over himself that Olav would have sworn Eirik could never attain. His father felt something like shame when he recalled that at first he seemed to have expected and almost wished that Eirik would relapse into his old bad ways.

  Without any design on their part, without their even being clearly aware of it, they drew more closely together, all these people who for so long had formed one household. Since Jörund Rypa’s coming they felt that they had grown into unity, and he was a stranger.

  He idled among the houses, as though out of place—doing nothing. Nor had he a hand for any of the work that was to be done at this manor. He went out in the morning, stood at the stable door and watched his man grooming the horses that were his; if the weather was not too bitter he sauntered down to the pier, stood there awhile looking out and spitting into the sea. He had been out with the boats a few times, but then he would go no more. Then he lay dozing on the bench in his own house—there was so little sleep to be had at night with the two children, he complained. When Olav and Eirik came in with the boatmen—this was in the fishing season—he turned into the old house and sat there; but the men were tired and hungry and had no thought of beguiling the time for Jörund Rypa. When the season for catching auks came on he revived somewhat and went out with the others—but then they had a week of tearing northerly gales, and that put an end to it.

  The others saw little of Cecilia; she spent her time in the women’s house or with the maids in the cook-house and outhouses.

  There was great shortage of fodder in Hestviken that year, as they had Jörund’s beasts as well as their own, and they had had to make use of an old byre that had been in a tumbledown state as long as any could remember. It was mended in some sort, but the starving animals suffered horribly in it. Cecilia would come out in tears when she had been feeding the cattle there. Not often had anyone seen her weep for what might befall folk, but one evening as she came from the byre and met Eirik in the outer room, she threw her arms about his neck in the darkness.

  “Eirik—you who pray so much to God, can you not pray that spring may come early this year?”

  “I do so, you know it well.”

  After Olav had gone to bed that evening, Eirik went to him in the closet and told his father what he had been thinking—that they should take up the farm in Saltviken again. Olav thought they had more profit of the land, using it as they did now, for pasture and hay, than if they let it out at rent. Eirik replied that he did not mean they should take a tenant there, but should carry on the farm with men from here: “if Jörund is to keep ten cows and four horses here at Hestviken, then we ourselves must raise far less stock than before, or move some of it out.”

  At last he got a kind of consent out of his father. Eirik took with him Knut and Svein, Ragna’s young sons, and rowed south only a couple of days later with two boatloads of fencing. They spent a whole week there, making ready what they could. No sooner was the frost out of the ground than he set off again, this time with some of the cattle; and before Harvard’s mass6 Eirik had fenced in most of what had been the home fields, with bush fencing if with nothing else. In time even his father would have to grant he was right—this could be made a good farm.

  Olav Audunsson himself had been in to Oslo for the winter fair. And as usual he had made some bargains, which were to be completed by Halvard’s mass. He would now send Eirik in to the town, and Eirik asked Jörund to go with him.

  The brothers-in-law stayed in the town a couple of days over the feast; they had met acquaintances, and in the evenings they drank in one house or another. Eirik had a care of himself—he would not enter any of the places where formerly he had been too well known; this was one of the reasons he had asked Jörund to accompany him: if he was with a married man it seemed more natural that he should refuse to go to the common inns and confine himself to the halls of the guilds and the townsmen’s houses. Another reason was that he guessed Jörund was weary to death of Hestviken.

  The evening before St. Eirik’s Day7 they both came home late to the armourers’ yard and they were in drink, so that Eirik overslept next morning. On that day at any rate he had meant full surely to hear mass among his own brethren—he had not succeeded in reaching the convent since the first day he was in town—but once more it was too late. The masses were now over in all the churches except St. Halvard’s; he would have to go there, and to the Minorites’ for vespers.

  But as he prayed during the mass, the thought came to him that he would ask at the convent for some cuttings of the great cherry tree below the hill. Near the houses in Saltviken was a hollow beside a sunny ledge of rock, just the place where fruit trees might thrive. There were many places at Hestviken too, but his father had laughed at him when he proposed it: this was no knightly manor, that they should plant rose gardens or pleasances. But Eirik already thought of Saltviken as his own manor.

  When he came back to their lodging he heard from Galfrid that Jörund had gone out with some men who lived in Brand’s Yard. He went after him and found his brother-in-law in a house at the far end of this yard, in company with some men who kept cocks there. First they watched the cockfight, and then they went into an upper chamber and drank. After a while some women came in—one of them, called Gyda Honeycake, Eirik had known in old days. She seated herself on his knees, and he drank with her, fondled the wench too a little, thinking all the time that the wisest thing he could do was to go his way, but feeling ashamed because of the other men. Then the dice-box was brought out. Eirik had no desire for gaming, since he had promised to keep himself from such things—but it was not always possible. At the same time he was shy of refusing before the others. There happened to be a man there, one whom Eirik did not know, who said he cared not to throw dice, but was there anyone who would play chess? Here he was freed from two temptations at one stroke, since he could not play chess with Mistress Honeycake in his lap; so Eirik declared himself willing and set the girl down, not without a secret regret at being rid of her. But the stranger, Helge, was so good a chess-player that Eirik soon forgot all else in the game. He would have liked to stay away from vespers too, but when the bells began to ring he remembered the cherry trees, and now he had set his heart on them. So he took his leave. Jörund stayed on. Eirik saw that he was already far gone in drink; he himself had been sobered by his zeal for the game as soon as he had found how skilful an opponent he had. Jörund was playing wildly, but Eirik gave little thought to that: the man was always lucky at dice; besides, he was married now, he could surely take care of himself.

  And it had already passed out of his mind when he stood once more in his own church and joined in the singing of Ave Maris Stella and the Magnificat. After the service several of the brethren came down to him and he went with them into the convent; now he had to talk with them all, and soon the hour of the evening meal arrived. The end was that Eirik was to sleep in the guest-chamber that night; next morning after mass they could take up those shoots for him. The fruit trees were far advanced, but Father Einar thought that if the shoots were well wrapped in moss and birchbark and he sailed straight back to Saltviken and planted them that evening, they would take root.

  Eirik was in church for complin and slept in the guest-chamber, and in the light spring night he was roused by the monk who came with his hood drawn over his head and whispered: “Benedicamus Domino.” And he went to matins, and back to bed again, and to mass. Then for the first time he remembered the purse with the money he had received for his father—it lay at the bottom of his bed in the Richardsons’ house—but surely it was safe enough there.

  When once th
e brethren had procured the cherry-tree cuttings for him, they found many another thing to give him from their garden. Eirik carried the whole load down to the boat, got hold of an old sail, and wrapped his cuttings to keep them from the sun. It was high noon ere he returned to the armourers’. There he was told that Jörund had come in for a moment the evening before, but he had not been home that night.

  Eirik walked into the town to seek out his brother-in-law. In Brand’s Yard he met Helge, and from him he heard that late in the evening he had gone with Jörund Rypa to a house where no man would have liked to find his sister’s husband. He was still sitting there when Helge left. Eirik asked Helge to go thither with him, but when they came to the house they were told that Jörund had gone home a little while before. So Eirik went back to their lodging.

  There he found Jörund, engaged in packing their belongings. He looked somewhat the worse for wear. Eirik could not bring himself to say a word. He put together the last of their baggage. When he felt in his bed for the purse, it was gone.

  “I have taken charge of that,” said Jörund. “I could not tell how long you would be taken up with those brethren of yours—”

  Eirik turned sharply on his brother-in-law. But then he swallowed the answer that was on the tip of his tongue. ’Twas bad enough as it was—would be made no better by talking.

  So they went down to the boat. During the sail they did not exchange an unnecessary word. Eirik was glad enough they had none of the house-folk with them, so Cecilia would not hear of her husband’s doings.

  After supper that evening Eirik gave his father an account of how he had discharged his business. “Jörund has the purse with the money on him.”

  Jörund Rypa stood up. “Dear father-in-law of mine—sooth to say, I have not the money here. It fell out that I met a man who made a claim on me—I was in his debt for a mark and a half of silver—a dalesman it was, the man who sold me Greylag, but he had gone home when I had the money for him—so now I borrowed this money of yours, to be rid of the old debt.”