The houses around the innermost yard stood on the very bank of the Alna. There was a smithy, a stable with lofts, and a fine stone house. A great rosebush grew against the wall of the dwelling; beside it stood a young man and two women, who bent down and smelled the roses. Olav recognized the young slender one with the long auburn plaits; she was Alis Galfridsdatter, he had seen her at her father’s house. The other was one of her married sisters.
Alis had seen him; she whispered something to the young man. Then she turned and went, giving Olav Audunsson a shy greeting as she slipped past. She had a fine, healthy, freckled face, wore a rose in her bosom, and carried roses in her hand.
The man came up slowly and greeted Olav: “Have we such great honour?”
His smile was boyishly self-confident—he must be twenty now, thought his father.
“I had a mind to see you again—”
“And indeed ’tis long since the last time. And the years seem to have dealt hardly with you—you are grown old, Olav Audunsson! But go in—”
So he sat on the bench in the smith’s house, and in the corner opposite sat the man who was his only son.
The lad was handsome—as he himself had been in his youth—a good deal bigger in stature, but not so shapely and well-knit. But he had the same fair complexion, the bright silvery sheen of hair and eyebrows, the white skin, and the clear grey eyes rather far apart.
Olav soon found that it was no easy matter to converse with Björn—he had nothing to say to him. His mother, his stepfather, his brothers and sisters, they were all well and prosperous; and so was Björn himself. His house declared plainly enough that the young man held his own.
“You are young to be a householder and practise your craft as your own master?”
“Oh, I have stood on my own feet since I was fifteen.”
Olav said he would fain see proofs of Björn’s skill—he had heard it greatly praised. Björn replied that he had nothing here which was worth showing: “but you can go up to Laurence’s Spital and look at the ironwork on the south door of the church and the three candelabra that hang in the nave. They are the best I have wrought till now. I have no leisure today or I would have gone with you—”
“Is it true,” asked Olav with a little laugh, “that the master of whom you learned your craft is of giant race?”
“He told me naught of that. And I never ask folk uninvited questions.” This was meant for a reproof, his father saw, and he was inclined to smile. Never had he seen a man so heartily self-sufficient as this lad.
“But a good smith he was—none better in Norway,” said Björn. He went across to a chest, came back, and handed Olav a lock and key for a coffer. “This I wrought while I was with him. The locks I make now are more cunning. If you like it, you may have it, Olav.”
Olav thanked him and praised the work.
“’Tis not from your father’s family you have this skill,” he said tentatively. “We were never good handicraftsmen in our race.”
“My father’s family I know not at all,” replied Björn in a clear voice.
“And that you resent?” said Olav in the same tone.
Björn looked him straight in the eyes, with his pert young smile. “Nay, Olav, that I do not. You begat me—and I say you did well in that. And have you done no more for me since—then I hold you have done me no ill there.”
Olav looked at his son—wondered whether the boy knew what he was saying, or were these words put into his mouth?
Björn got up and went to the shelf over the door. “But you must think I am inhospitable.” He filled the cup and drank to his father: “Hail to you, Olav Audunsson! It cheers my heart none the less to know you have sat on my bench for once.”
Olav accepted the drink, with a little smile. “I cannot say your looks betray it, Björn!” It was wine, and good wine.
“Ay, but I mean it—and I wish you to have a token to remind you of it.” Again he went to the chest. This time it was a brooch, fairly large and gilt all over; in the centre was an image of Mary with the Child, and around it a wreath of bosses, each of which bore an angel’s face.
“Nay, Björn—that is far too great a gift, I will not have it!”
“Yes, take it now. Do you not remember I had a gold ring of you once?”
“Is it that you wish to quit scores with me, then?”
“No, no, not that either. I may tell you, Olav, ’tis with that ring I shall plight my troth to Alis Galfridsdatter at Clement’s Church door on the eve of Laurence’s mass.”
“’Twill be honoured, then.”
As Björn went with him to the door, Olav asked: “Your mother—she is well content with your choice of a wife?”
“Mother—” For the first time Björn’s smile was purely gay, with no challenge in it. “Mother is content with me, whatever I do.”
“That is well,” replied Olav. “Then I know that you have always done what is right and manly.”
They pressed each other’s hand at parting and Olav went.
Olav walked over toward his inn, half smiling. He might rest content with this Björn. Young and overconfident—but they were faults that life mends in a man—and God grant the lad might lose little of himself in the mending. So that the man might fulfil the promise of the boy, when once he was full-fledged.
What Björn had said was true—he might have done more for this son of his. Other men treated such matters differently—had their bastards brought up in their own homes or in those of their friends. He had indeed given the mother her farm, but Björn seemed to count that for nothing—and true it was, she owed her prosperity to herself and that husband. And if Torhild had not married, perhaps he and Björn would have seen more of each other. Although the true reason was that he felt he could not bear to look a son constantly in the face whom he had no power to bring into the family and set in his place—and so all else he could do was nothing worth.
And whatever the lad had meant in saying it, there was truth in his words: that, if he had done nothing for Björn but beget him, he had thereby done him no ill. The son who stood outside the family and would not call him father—he was also outside the family misfortune.
3 That is, the little river Alna, on the bank of which stood the ancient town of Oslo.
4 June 10.
19
FOR the third time Eirik brought in the corn frozen and half-ripe. It froze down here by the lake earlier than anywhere else in the country round. It was not so great a disaster either—they could always make gruel from it, and grain for malt and bread they could buy. Meat and fish were the foods they had in plenty, and in Lent it was all to the good if they had to go a little hungry.
He smiled when he thought of the first year’s Lent. He kept the fast as had been his custom since he was in the convent, drank nothing but water once a day, and put a piece of ice in his mouth if he was too thirsty at other times. At night he slept on a sack of straw in the porch. He did not ask what Eldrid did. But one morning when he came in he saw her lying on the floor—she was still asleep. Then she said that she lay there every night, after he had gone out to rest, and as she saw that he went barefoot in his shoes, she did the same.
“You must not, for you are not used to it.”
Eldrid said she had been shriven every year in Lent and had received corpus Domini on Easter Day—but she had only done so to avoid being cited.
“It is well that you have left such evil ways,” said her husband.
“Nay, I made a vow that night I waited for you on the road—when you had been out to Hestviken.”
“Then they did some good, the foolish thoughts you had. But I had told you I should be home again the third evening.”
“Had you not kept your word,” said Eldrid, “I know not what would have become of me.”
“God help you, Eldrid—but you ought to know better than most, that no man is worth much as he is in himself.”
“You are not like other folk.”
“Oh, but I am. In
most things I have not been-better than my fellows, and in some I have been worse.” But he had never spoken Bothild’s name to his wife.
Now he knew the lake from end to end, and the woods around, the paths and the wastes. There was not much to be done on the little farm, so he had ample time to roam about to his heart’s content. When he found, the first winter, that Eldrid had skis—they made it easier for her to move about among the outhouses, so long as she had no horse—he too had to make himself a pair. When he had accustomed himself to the use of them he liked this mode of travelling so well that he ran on skis oftener than he rode. There were times when he was out from morning to evening; often he did not come home till late at night—until it chanced that there was some piece of work or other that he could postpone no longer. Then he would find a host of other things that it might be well to get done, and for a while he would not leave the houses, had scarce time to swallow his food and none at all to rest; in the evenings he sat by the fire with knife and chisel, awl and sinews, and worked, while Eldrid sewed and span, as silent as her husband.
They never talked much together, beyond what the work required. They knew not much more of each other’s earlier life than they had known when they met. But he felt that her life had gone up in his, she drifted with him as a boat drifts with the stream, and both were content it should be so.
He had been two years at the Ness when Brother Stefan came to preach at Saana church for a few days in Ascension week. On the last day Eirik persuaded him to come home to the Ness and stay the night there, and the next morning he accompanied Brother Stefan by a short road through the forest into the next parish.
They sat talking for a long time on a ridge, whence they had a view of tarns and forest, but never a homestead under the broad sky, and Eirik’s dogs lay in the moss at his feet. Eirik cleared his mind to Brother Stefan of all that he had not been able to bring out in confession, because it had not to do with sin or grace, but with the All in which all things move and have their being.
While they were talking thus, Brother Stefan said he counted it a gain that Eldrid was no longer bound in thraldom by her own hate. “But it will not be your lot to live all your days here at the Ness—have you thought of how it will be when one day you two move out to Hestviken?”
“No,” replied Eirik. “It must be as God pleases—if we ever come there. Father may live to see eighty years. Moreover, Eldrid is a discerning woman, and open to reason. The finest and most promising foal may be spoilt by cruelty and foolish treatment.”
“You must not liken a Christian soul to an unreasoning beast,” said Brother Stefan.
“That old Ragnhild you saw at our house—she told me—Harald Jonsson once bound Eldrid to the post of the loft ere he rode from home; he would have her stand there till her feet swelled so that she could bear no more—if he could make his wife so meek that she would show him kindness. Ragnhild set her free the second night and tended her—she was sixteen at that time, Eldrid. She had been Harald’s leman, and he sent her away when he wedded Eldrid, but afterwards he took her back to Borg; she was to help him break in Eldrid—this Ragnhild.”
They sat in silence for a while, both of them.
Brother Stefan said they had grieved, all the brethren, when they heard the course Eirik had taken: Brother Arne had vowed to scourge himself every Thursday evening so that the blood flowed about his feet, till he heard his brother had repented.
Brother Arne, who had been the companion of his novitiate, was the one for whom Eirik cared most of all in the convent-he was but a young lad and had been with the Minorites from a child. Eirik now bade Brother Stefan take Arne his greeting and his thanks.
When they came down into the neighbouring parish, at the first fence about a green field Eirik said farewell to his friend. Brother Stefan gave him his blessing; then the monk went on toward the village, and the solitary hunter, with his bow over his shoulder and his hounds at his side, turned back to climb the hill again.
That summer went by at the Ness, and most of another winter. In Candlemas week there was severe cold. Eirik was up on the hill in the daytime, felling timber; but one night he woke to find Eldrid trembling by his side. She said she had fallen into the spring that day, as she was fetching water for the byre, and thought she must now be too old to go about in ice-covered clothes. Eirik then found out that the old serving-woman, Ragnhild, had a way of being out of temper with her mistress at times, and then she shut herself up in Holgeir’s cabin till the mood passed off. While it lasted Eldrid herself did all the work of the farmyard; they had no herdsman in winter.
Soon after she grew hot as coals all over, had some bad fits of coughing, and then began to be light-headed, wailing and muttering and throwing herself hither and thither. For some days she lay grievously sick. The first evening she began to be better, on seeing her husband come in with the milk, she asked after Ragnhild. Eirik laughed and said the old hag’s wrath had fallen on them both—none knew why—so she still sat in her corner, and he had seen to her duties.
“Nay, Eirik, this is too bad—milking and cleaning byres is no work for a man.”
“Who milks in the monasteries, think you?” asked Eirik with a laugh.
Next day came Gaute Virvir, Eirik’s old friend from home. He had had business in the neighbourhood and so bethought him that he would visit the Ness. He found Eirik occupied in feeding the cows. Eirik gave his guest such welcome as he could, his wife being sick. Gaute had just had judgment given against him in the matter of an estate, so he was in a gloomy mood and the news he gave of his neighbours at home was told with a sad mien, like a tale of disaster. Olav still dwelt at Saltviken, and Cecilia’s last child had died just after baptism, and Gunhild Bersesdatter was now Sir Magnus’s wife and dwelt in the Lady Ingebjörg’s bower—the knight was one of the Duchess’s liegemen.
Eirik thought that, all in all, the tidings he had from home were not bad. It was hard on Cecilia that she had lost a child. But it seemed they managed just as well without him; his father and Cecilia together had the whole charge of the manor, he could guess, and Jörund was allowed to play the master—so doubtless he had become more tractable.
Three summers he had lived here, and soon the third winter would have gone by—Eirik was thinking of this one evening as he stood at the outer door looking out into the blue-grey dusk. The whole ness, which faced the sun, was brown and bare of snow; the eaves dripped a little; this evening was so mild that no icicles hung from them. In the forest the snow still lay deep, but the surface of the lake was black with melting ice, and along the shore the evening sky was mirrored in clear water—which had grown broader since the day before.
Then he became aware of something black moving over the ice down by the end of the lake—it looked like two figures, and they had dismounted and were leading their horses. Eirik ran toward them—he must stop them, bring them in to land at the only place where the ice could be called anything like safe. As he ran down, calling to them to stay where they were, he wondered a little who they might be—there was no other house but the Ness on the whole lake, so they must be bound thither.
As he hurried across the flat among the glassy pools of water, he saw that one of them must be a woman. But not till he had come close to them did he recognize Cecilia.
“In God’s name, let me help you ashore. Take the horses, Svein, and I will lead Cecilia.”
He thought he could see in the dim light that there was something wrong with her, wondered whether it was only fear when she saw how unsafe the ice was, or whether it was something else as well.
When they reached land, Eirik said: “You can find the way now, Svein. My wife will be asleep already, but you must go in and wake her, tell her who is coming.” He took Cecilia’s horse. “You must mount, Cecilia—the snow is knee-deep here across the marshes.”
Then she threw her arms about her brother’s neck and clung to him, and he could feel how she was trembling.
“I am come to beg you go back
with me,” she said in despair. “It has come to such a pass that I can bear no more.” She gave a violent shudder. “I cannot bear to look upon Jörund again.”
Eirik pressed her to him. “’Tis best you come indoors first,” he said; “take off your wet garments. For it must be a long tale you have to tell, I am afraid.”
“The end of it is,” said Cecilia, as she released her brother, “that yesterday he struck Olav, Anki’s son, so that the lad died this morning. Then I bade Svein saddle my horse—”
Eirik stood aghast:
“The cripple! Can such things be!—What have you done with your children?” he asked abruptly.
“Tore has them. But he has never done aught to the children—I charged them at home,” she went on, as he led her horse along the shore, “to send no word of this to Father. I dare not—till you are there. You are the only one who can help us—perchance.”
Eldrid met them at the door of the house. Eirik could see afar off that she had swathed her head in her long, snow-white church-coif. She gave Cecilia her hand and bade her welcome.
Indoors Eldrid had stirred up the fire on the hearth; she led Cecilia to the warmest seat on the bench, took her wet cloak, and thrust a pillow behind her guest’s back.
“You must be tired, Eirik’s sister—you have ridden all the way from Hestviken in this heavy going, your man says.”
Eirik saw that his sister looked about her with wondering eyes—the room was tidy and snug, even if it were small and low, and the beds were well provided with bedclothes and skin coverlets—and then she looked up at her brother’s wife. Eldrid had not aged in these three years, and in her kirtle of dark colours, with the white linen headdress falling low over her back, she looked like a fine elderly woman.
“I think, Cecilia, you had better go to bed at once, wet and cold as you are—and I will bring your supper.” She took the young wife to their own bed, knelt down, and drew off her footgear. “Your feet are like ice—you must take the coverlet from the other bed, Eirik, and warm it; then I can wrap it about your sister.”
The Son Avenger Page 25