As Eirik held the boat against the pier for his father to step out, he heard Olav say: “What is afoot, Halstein?”
The house-carl looked strange and pale. He waited till Eirik had joined his father.
“Jörund is dead this night, Olav,” he said in a low voice.
After a pause Olav asked: “Is it—?”
“The wound is from a dagger. Straight in the breast. More I know not.”
“He was wild and out of his wits,” said Eirik hastily. “God have mercy on his soul—he cannot have been in his right mind when he did it.”
The house-carl gave him a look but made no answer.
Father and son went together into the living-room, Halstein followed them. He had not touched the body. Jörund lay in the south bed—his great naked body with the left leg and arm and shoulder hanging out, the head bent to one side: it looked as if he had tried to get up. There was a wound in the left breast below the nipple, and blood, but not very much, on the white skin, clinging to the tuft of curly hair. On the bench by the bedside still stood the food that Halstein had brought in when he found him.
Eirik was almost as pale as the dead man: in his father’s face he read nothing but the same hate as he had seen in the eyes of Jörund’s wife. This had been his friend—the thought of the other’s derangement and ignominy and miserable death broke his heart as he lifted the ice-cold body and disposed it with the head on the pillow; he tried to close the dead eyes and press together the nostrils.
Olav raised the coverlet, felt about the body. “Where is the dagger?”
The wound was three-cornered, as though made by one of those foreign daggers with a triangular blade; it was clean, and of such size that the weapon must have been thrust in with force right up to the hilt.
Halstein crossed the room quietly and barred the door.
“I must say what has to be said—you are the next friends of the dead man—and it was I who was to answer for him. But when Eirik gave me the key yestereven, I knew not there was another way into this house—”
“Another way—” Father and son said it together.
“When I came in this morning,” whispered the house-carl, pointing to the north bed, which had been Eirik’s when he lived at home, “it was all tumbled in a mess of straw and bedclothes, half across the floor, and the hatch was not quite closed, for some straw was caught in it.”
The two stood stiff and speechless. The north-western corner of the house did not rest upon the rock, but upon a wall of masonry, and when Olav Ribbung built it after the fire, in the time of the Birchlegs, he had made a postern here toward the sea, with a hatch leading to it from the bottom of the north bed. In Olav Audunsson’s time this secret passage had never been used, but it was certainly known to the oldest members of the household, and Eirik himself had sometimes tried it when a boy.
He saw his father was leaning his hand on the table, stooping lower and lower—it looked as if the old man would fall forward in a heap. Eirik took hold of him—Olav half raised his head, and the grey, scarred old face looked as ancient as sin; the mouth was open, but the eyes were close shut. He raised one hand, gently pushed Eirik aside, and went toward the bed, swaying like a blind man.
He bared the breast of the corpse again, fingered the wound, and pushed aside some bloody hair that clung to one of its corners. Then he felt again all over the bed, searching for the dagger.
When he turned round, his son saw that the sweat ran down his forehead below the soft white hair. He looked hither and thither as though at a loss.
“Father?” said Eirik inquiringly, seized with anxiety—but he could not guess what this was.
Olav was moving away, with a strange padding gait, like an animal caught in a pitfall.
“Father,” said Eirik again, “we must go and find Cecilia.”
Olav supported himself against the doorpost of the closet, which was carved with the figure of Gunnar:
“Go you—I shall come—”
“We must make fast the door,” replied Eirik in a low voice, “till we have collected men to view the corpse.” He saw the terror in his father’s eyes. “Remember, his brothers must be fetched.”
Olav gave one loud groan. Then he went out, following his son.
When they entered the women’s house, the widow sat crouching in the farthest corner of the room. Ragna, the old serving-woman, was with her. Cecilia shrank yet closer to the wall, staring at the men with eyes that were wild with terror.
Eirik went forward to embrace her. She resisted:
“Have you seen him?” she whispered.
Eirik nodded, and took her in his arms in spite of her efforts; she was trembling as though seized with spasms. Then he lifted her up like a child, carried her to the bed, and laid her on it. And the father stood watching the two with the same look on his face, which seemed to have been struck inhuman.
Cecilia lay trembling. Little by little her convulsions ceased and she lay still, but her eyes were just as wild and staring as before. Her father had seated himself on the bench; as though absently he still held his old barbed axe between his knees, with his hands resting on its head.
After a while Eirik went out. He called together the men and gave them orders: one was to ride first to Rynjul for Torgrim and Una, then to summon men hither, neighbours who could view the corpse; another he sent up to the churchtown to ask the priest to come at evening and keep vigil over the two bodies. The slain and the slayer—for he would have to persuade Sira Magne that Jörund might be given Christian burial—the deed was done in madness. The message to Gunnarsby he could send on the morrow.
It was some time before he had given his men all instructions. Then it struck him that he must try to make Cecilia take something, if it were but a drink of milk. He went in with the maid who carried the bowl. His sister still lay with staring eyes, and his father sat as before.
She put her lips to the bowl, but pushed it away at once. “I cannot—’twill make me sick—”
Eirik seated himself on the edge of the bed. The serving-women had gone out.
“Sister!” said Eirik all at once. “If you could but weep!”
“Ah—if I could,” she replied tonelessly.
At that her father raised his head. “Would I could help you to that! Would I could help you to it ere it be too late! Better you were burned alive at the stake than that you should fare as I have fared! Never believe you will benefit your children by holding your peace and hardening your heart and soul. Eirik spoke more truly than he knew when he said it had been better for you to live with a mountain troll who devours Christian children than with me!”
The son and the daughter stared at him, uncomprehending.
“I too was young then,” Olav went on; “not many years older than you are now, Cecilia. And ’twas not so grave a thing as this. My deed—I know not if it were a crime; myself I thought to have right on my side. But I concealed it. At first I thought, when the time came that I could do so, I would make confession, repent, and purge my sin. Now the time for that is long past. It has corrupted me, and all that I have touched and taken in my hands has been tainted with my corruption.”
Still Cecilia did not understand, but Eirik:
“Jesus Christ—Father!” he whispered, pale about the mouth.
“Now I cannot repent,” said Olav firmly. “The light that I once had has been taken from me—my repentance is now as the sight of a man whose eyes have been put out. But now I will make my confession nevertheless; Cecilia—you and I will go together, and one fate shall fall upon us both.”
Then she understood. She sat up in the bed with a start.
“I!—Think you that I—!” Her voice was wild and sharp.
Eirik had leaped up and stood in front of his sister. “Father—stop!”
“Then the same fate can fall upon us both,” Olav repeated. “If you must flee the country, we will go together.”
“With you!” His daughter shuddered. “Rather will I do as Jörund h
as done!”
Olav asked: “That foreign dagger you had of me once, when you were a little maid—where have you that, Cecilia?”
“In my coffer.” She stepped out of bed, went across the room to her chest; her brother saw that she was now trembling again, but her mouth was hard set and her eyes flashed. She took from the chest a little coffer and turned out on the bench all that was in it—brooches and chains, a little coral rosary, several knives.
“It is not here. Perhaps Jörund took it,” she said; her teeth were chattering.
“We can go in and search once more,” said Olav quietly.
“No!” she shrank back.
“Dare you go in to him with me?”
“No—” Cecilia bowed her head. “I must not look upon a corpse, as I am now,” she whispered almost inaudibly.
“If you are innocent, it can hurt neither you nor it.”
Her whole body seemed to give way. Her father went on:
“If you are innocent, then go in with me, lay your hand on his breast—”
“No.” She shrieked: “I will not—”
“Monster!”
Eirik sprang to his sister’s side.
As Olav took his daughter by the wrist, she started back, tried to tear herself free, but slipped and fell. She lay on her knees with bent head, struggling with the other hand to loosen her father’s grip. To Eirik it looked as if he dragged her over the floor.
Then he seized Kinfetch, rushed at his father with the axe raised in both hands. Olav saw it, let go his daughter—and, straightening himself, he raised his forehead to the blow-But she too had seen it, flung herself against her brother’s hip; Eirik stumbled, and the steel rang upon the stone curb of the hearth.
“Eirik!” Cecilia’s piercing cry reached him.
He looked into his father’s bloodshot eyes and felt that they gave him his death: it was not hate, it was not anger, it was not the wild and tense excitement of a while ago. He knew not what it was—these were the eyes of a man who came from a land that has never been seen by the living.
The axe fell from his hand. He flung his hands before his face, staggered to the bench and dropped upon it, sat half turned to the wall, with his head hidden in his arms.
He heard that one went out at the door, and at the same moment Cecilia lightly touched his shoulder.
“Eirik—how could you!” She looked as if she could not bear much more. “He is our father—”
“Yes.” He moaned faintly without looking up. “I know it. The Lord have mercy on us. I know it.”
Then he raised his face to her for a moment. “I know it. I would have killed him. I would. My father.”
She broke into violent sobbing and threw herself down beside him. With her face pressed against her brother’s dark hair Cecilia wept and wept, till he drew her down into his embrace and, clinging to each other, they wept with terror at the life in which they were entrapped.
But at last Eirik pushed her from him. “I must go and find him.”
As he went out, she followed, took him by the hand, and squeezed it—they went together like two children scared out of their wits. Outside the door of the great house he hesitated a moment; then they went slowly on, hand in hand, as though seeking their way in a wilderness. When they had reached the end of the houses, they looked down and saw Olav just rowing away from the pier.
“Eirik—what will he do?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “I know not.”
“Eirik,” she whispered again, “could you grasp what he meant—what has he done?”
Again he shook his head. “I know not—”
Their father was rowing northward round the Bull. Then the two turned and went slowly back to the houses. Outside the door of the great house Eirik paused.
“He shall not lie there alone like a heathen dog. I will go in to him—”
Cecilia caught her brother’s arm in a close embrace.
“Then I will go with you. I am not afraid if you are with me—”
Cecilia felt that a shock ran through her brother’s frame—a strange look came into his face—he too must have doubted. But she would not admit the thought. So brother and sister went in together to the dead man.
20
OLAV had never rowed up to Oslo before. Now and again he rested on his oars for a while; the water gurgled underneath the drifting boat. The fiord was calm today, and there was not a craft to be seen.
A light mist had floated up from the south, turning water and sky to grey; the wooded hills grew dark, and the new green of oak and ash made feathery patches against the blue-black firs. Olav plied his oars again.
The flaming terror that had caught his spirit had now burned itself out; he was tired and drab within. He was now on the way to do the thing from which his whole life had been a flight, and this time he knew he would do it; he knew this as surely as he had known all the other times that he would flee from it as soon as he saw a way out. But his soul was grey and cold as a corpse.
He had heard a thousand times that God’s mercy is without bounds, and in secret he had relied on this: what he fled from was always there, waiting for him when he took courage to turn, since it was all that was outside time and change: God’s arms spread out on the cross, ready to enfold him, grace streaming from the five wounds, the drooping head that looked down over all creation, watching and waiting, surrounded by Mary and all the saints with prayers that rose like incense from an unquenchable censer. His servants were ever ready with power to unlock his fetters; the Bread of Life was ever upon the altar. God was without bounds.
But he himself was not, he saw that now. It was too late, after all. The bounds that were in himself had set and hardened into stone—like the stones folk had shown him here and there about the country which had once been living beasts and men.
Now he could no longer repent. There was no longer any love of God within him, nor any longing to find his way back; now he would rather have gone on and on away from God, everlastingly. That was hell. That was the realm of eternal torment, he knew it, but the home of torment had become his home.
The game was played out, and now he might indeed confess and do the penance imposed by the Bishop—it would be of no avail. Absolution cannot absolve him who has no repentance within him. He had lost his faith of a Christian—though he knew that what he had once believed was all that is and was and shall be, and he himself was what was not; but so many times had he chosen himself, and that which was naught, that he had lost sight and sense for that which was Life.
But for Cecilia’s sake he would do it nevertheless. He had learned to know his daughter in these last years; and now it seemed as if he had been long aware that she might end by doing a deed like this. He ought to have acted before.
Eirik had something of this in him; he saw that now. He had hated as a travesty of himself the changeling’s mendacity, hated his lax nature, hated him for never being able to carry through any of the intentions he had formed. Ah, yes, he had married that adulteress. Eirik too had done that. And he had loved Eirik, who lied and boasted and followed every fancy and turned again from every path he had set out on—loved this incubus that he had got on his back, this goblin that had sucked blood of him till they were as father and son after the flesh. The murdered man’s son had avenged his father as secretly as he himself had slain Teit.
He thought he had seen all this in a flash when Eirik rushed at him with the axe lifted to strike and he had held up his head to the blow—with something akin to joy he had seen the end coming. Then the axe had been turned aside in the hand of the son avenger.
And he knew that this had happened for Cecilia’s sake. How it was to benefit his daughter he could not tell. But she was young—she had a long life before her in which to be hardened and die, if she did as he had done. He saw the horror of what he wished to bring about—and he thought of the three little sons who would grow up as children of a mother who had killed their father. But worse still that they should gr
ow up under her hands while she carried such a secret within her. In one way or another he knew it would be the saving of them all if he now laid at Cecilia’s feet the corpse he had dragged about so long: Behold—and take good heed, ere it be too late for you to do the like.
The afternoon was far spent when he rowed westward along the quays of the townsmen: Claus Wiephart’s quay with his warehouse—where he was wont to land—the quay of Mickle Yard, of Clement’s Church, Jon’s quay—on to that of the Bishop’s palace. And he gave a cold and snappish answer when a young fellow came down and called out to him discourteously that he must not put in there with his boat. Olav replied that he intended to tie up his boat here, and that he had business in the Bishop’s castle—as he spoke he remembered that neither in clothes nor in person was he fit for a visit to town, and it vexed him as he crossed the green.
Half an hour later he stood in the narrow square between the Bishop’s palace and the wall of Halvard’s churchyard.
The Bishop was at the point of death. None had time to listen to him or answer his questions—folk hurried hither and thither in the palace: the Lord Helge’s sickness had come upon him so suddenly, and with the Easter festival at hand. True, tomorrow was Palm Sunday, he had forgotten that.
He had never thought that this could happen—that when at last he was ready to throw down his arms, there would be no one to receive his surrender. And now he felt that his deathlike calm was nothing but extreme suspense, for now he was cold and trembling—and in despair at being forced to take the plunge once more; this postponement seemed to him unbearable.
Olav knew not what to do with himself. The mist had condensed into a fine drizzle. The great stone buildings around the square—the wall of the Bishop’s palace and the churchyard fence and the mighty mass of the cathedral with its heavy towers and leaden roof glistening in the rain—loomed even greater in the dark weather. But the bursting poplars that reached over the churchyard wall seemed to curl up their new and fragrant leaves, and the grass grew luxuriantly among the cobblestones of the pavement.
The Son Avenger Page 27