[Illustration:
[See p. 131
“SHE KNELT DOWN BEFORE HIM.... THE WOMAN IN HER PLEADED AS BEFORE A
LAWMAN”
]
_Randvar the Songsmith_
_A Romance of Norumbega_
_By_
_Ottilie A. Liljencrantz_
_Author of
“The Thrall of Leif the Lucky” etc._
[Illustration]
_New York and London
Harper & Brothers Publishers
1906_
Copyright, 1906, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
Published February, 1906.
“_Yet onward still to ear and eye
The baffling marvel calls;
I fain would look before I die
On Norumbega’s walls._”
—_John Greenleaf Whittier_
_The Skeleton in Armor_
_By_
_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_
“_Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?_”
_Then, from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seem to rise,
As when the Northern skies
Gleam in December;
And, like the water’s flow
Under December’s snow,
Came a dull voice of woe
From the heart’s chamber._
“_I was a Viking old!
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told,
No Saga taught thee!
Take heed, that in thy verse
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else dread a dead man’s curse;
For this I sought thee._
“_Far in the Northern Land,
By the wild Baltic strand,
I, with my childish hand,
Tamed the gerfalcon;
And, with my skates fast-bound,
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
That the poor whimpering hound
Trembled to walk on._
“_Oft to his frozen lair
Tracked I the grisly bear,
While from my path the hare
Fled like a shadow;
Oft through the forest dark
Followed the were-wolf’s bark,
Until the soaring lark
Sang from the meadow._
“_But when I older grew,
Joining a corsair’s crew,
O’er the dark sea I flew
With the marauders.
Wild was the life we led;
Many the souls that sped;
Many the hearts that bled,
By our stern orders._
“_Many a wassail-bout
Wore the long winter out;
Often our midnight shout
Set the cocks crowing,
As we the Berserk’s tale
Measured in cups of ale,
Draining the oaken pail,
Filled to o’erflowing._
“_Once as I told in glee
Tales of the stormy sea,
Soft eyes did gaze on me,
Burning yet tender;
And as the white stars shine
On the dark Norway pine,
On that dark heart of mine
Fell their soft splendor._
“_I wooed the blue-eyed maid,
Yielding, yet half afraid,
And in the forest’s shade,
Our vows were plighted.
Under its loosened vest
Fluttered her little breast,
Like birds within their nest
By the hawk frighted._
“_Bright in her father’s hall
Shield gleamed upon the wall,
Loud sang the minstrels all,
Chanting his glory;
When of old Hildebrand
I asked his daughter’s hand,
Mute did the minstrels stand
To hear my story._
“_While the brown ale he quaffed,
Loud then the champion laughed,
And as the wind-gusts waft
The sea-foam brightly,
So the loud laugh of scorn,
Out of those lips unshorn,
From the deep drinking-horn
Blew the foam lightly._
“_She was a Prince’s child,
I but a Viking wild,
And though she blushed and smiled,
I was discarded!
Should not the dove so white
Follow the sea-mew’s flight,
Why did they leave that night
Her nest unguarded?_
“_Scarce had I put to sea,
Bearing the maid with me,—
Fairest of all was she
Among the Norsemen!—
When on the white sea-strand,
Waving his armed hand,
Saw we old Hildebrand,
With twenty horsemen._
“_Then launched they to the blast,
Bent like a reed each mast,
Yet we were gaining fast,
When the wind failed us;
And with a sudden flaw
Came round the gusty Skaw
So that our foe we saw
Laugh as he hailed us._
“_And as to catch the gale
Round veered the flapping sail,
Death! was the helmsman’s hail,
Death without quarter!
’Midships with iron keel
Struck we her ribs of steel;
Down her black hulk did reel
Through the black water!_
“_As with his wings aslant,
Sails the fierce cormorant,
Seeking some rocky haunt,
With his prey laden,
So toward the open main,
Beating to sea again,
Through the wild hurricane,
Bore I the maiden._
“_Three weeks we westward bore
And when the storm was o’er,
Cloud-like we saw the shore
Stretching to leeward;
There for my lady’s bower
Built I the lofty tower,
Which, to this very hour,
Stands looking seaward._
“_There lived we many years;
Time dried the maiden’s tears;
She had forgot her fears,
She was a mother;
Death closed her mild blue eyes,
Under that tower she lies;
Ne’er shall the sun arise
On such another!_
“_Still grew my bosom then,
Still as a stagnant fen!
Hateful to me were men,
The sunlight hateful!
In the vast forest here,
Clad in my warlike gear,
Fell I upon my spear,
O, death was grateful!_
“_Thus, seamed with many scars
Bursting these prison bars
Up to its native stars
My soul ascended!
There from the flowing bowl
Deep drinks the warrior’s soul,
SKOAL! to the Northland! SKOAL!_”
_Thus the tale ended._
_Randvar the Songsmith_
I
“_A man’s foes are those of his own house_”
—Northern saying.
In the old world over the ocean the storm of the Norman Conquest was
raging, but no rumble of it reached across the water to the new world
and that oasis in the wilderness which men call now the lost city of
Norumbega, but which was known in those days as the Town of Starkad
Jarl. There in the primeval forest the breath of October was a silver
elixir in the air, and the morning breeze carried only the notes of
hunting-horns. When half a dozen young Norsemen came galloping down a
tree-arched aisle, their talk dealt with no greater matter than the
latest freak of their Jarl’s freakish son.
“It is seen from the hoof-marks that he has not turned aside. We need
not wait long to overtake—”
“Suppose he should not want to turn back—”
“Heard I never of a jarl’s hunt that began by hunting the Jarl’s son!”
“He was quiet in riding out of the Town with us; what caused him to spur
ahead?”
“Only that he had a whim to be alone, as he is apt.”
“I remember how he broke away once last spring.”
“It may be that this fall he has done it once too often. Starkad is
wroth.”
So the talk ran on until the tall leader drew rein, signalling to those
behind him to check their pace.
“Slowly!” he said. “Yonder is his horse tethered. It would ill become us
to ride upon Starkad’s son as though we were charging a boar.”
“Even though we shall be as ill-received as if we were,” the youngest of
the horsemen added with a laugh of some uneasiness.
The leader smiled tolerantly. He wore on his long body fine clothes of
scarlet leather, and on his thin lips the semblance of a perpetual
smile.
“Everything grows big in your eyes,” he observed. “There! I think I see
gray cloth among those green bushes. It were best to ride on until we
come where he may see that there are too many of us to withstand; then
one of us can dismount and approach him with the message.”
The youngest of the riders laughed again, this time somewhat
sarcastically. “No one is better fitted to take that task on him than
yourself, Olaf, Thorgrim’s son. For what else did you spend your
fosterhood in France but to get smooth manners to use in rough places?”
“Yes, yes! By all means, Olaf is the man!” the others chorussed, a hint
of malice in their promptness.
If Thorgrim’s French-reared son read the sign, it made no difference in
the confidence of his bearing. He answered that if it was their wish he
would certainly undertake the errand, and immediately swung from his
saddle as gaining the green bushes, they came into view of the wearer of
the gray kirtle.
Prone on the earth’s broad bosom the young noble had thrown himself and
lay with his head pillowed on his folded arms, a figure of utter
abandon. Only at the clink of spur and bridle-chain did he turn upon his
side and fling back a mass of blood-red hair from a face of startling
pallor. What look came into it when he beheld the horsemen, they were
not near enough to tell. By the time Olaf stood before him, his teeth
were showing a snarl.
“Well, dog, you have tracked your quarry,” he said. “No wonder your
trainers set store by you! What is the rest of your master’s bidding?”
Olaf laughed lightly. “Certainly, Jarl’s son, you should be a scald; you
speak so glibly in figures. Starkad sends you orders to turn back and
take your place again in the following.”
Starkad’s son drew himself slowly into a sitting posture. Then of a
sudden his body was convulsed with laughter,—laughter mocking as the
mirth of a devil.
“Who am I that I should stand in the way of the Jarl’s will?” he gasped
between his paroxysms, and shaking with them rose to his feet.
But when he had come where the youngest of the riders was holding his
horse in waiting, either the young man’s ill-concealed uneasiness, or
some reminder growing out of it, caused his mood to change. With his
foot in the stirrup he lingered, sobering until his face betrayed even
the pinching hand of dread. Vaulting into his saddle, he spoke to his
attendant without looking at him.
“I see they have turned my hound Sam into the pack, though the wound on
his foot is still unhealed. Will you, Gunnar, do one thing for me?
Separate him from the rest and bring him to me in a strong leash.”
“In this as in everything you have only to speak to have your will,”
Gunnar gave the prescribed answer absently. It was not until he felt the
foot of a friend behind him that he awoke to the mockery of the phrase,
and glanced up appalled.
But the exasperation lightning at him did not strike. Amid silence,
breathless, storm-charged, the Jarl’s son took the reins from him,
wheeled his horse and rode back up the leafy path and out of sight.
In a moment Olaf was spurring after Starkad’s son, but the remainder of
the escort appeared to be in no great haste to follow. First they waited
while Gunnar examined the buckle of his girth; then they turned to
scrutinize two figures just emerging into the open from a brush-hidden
trail a few paces on their right.
Two young stags browsing the scarlet berries under the pines would
scarcely have looked more natural to the scene, for one was a savage of
that new-world race which the early Norse explorers called Skraellings,
with hair as black as freshly turned leaf-mould, and a shining naked
body of the hue of an oak-leaf in November; and the other, in the
deerskin garb of a forester, with uncovered locks reflecting the sun,
was a descendant of the Vikings themselves and showed untamed blood in
his handsome face as he raised it to look ahead at the horsemen.
The red man the courtiers passed over indifferently, but on the white
one they were beginning favorable comment when the call of a distant
horn cut them short. Wheeling hastily, they gave their horses spur and
rein, and passed up the shaded alley like a whirl of frost-tinted
maple-leaves.
Upon them, the young forester made but one remark. He and his companion
had halted as at a parting of the ways, and his hands were busy
detaching a deer’s-horn cup from his belt.
“I would travel a day’s journey to see a horse run like that,” he said.
“Often I dream of feeling one between my knees, and waken because my
enjoyment is too real for a vision.”
The young savage’s throat gave out a sound of comprehending, and his
friend did not wait for a longer response. He had filled the horn from a
flask of porcupine-skin that hung around his neck; now he raised it
aloft.
“To you, comrade! May your arrows and your swallows always go the right
way. Skoal!” he toasted, then refilled the cup and handed it to the
other, who answered in the same Northern tongue, though haltingly.
“To my brother! May he drink much of his enemies’ blood—as much as his
friends have drunk of his wine. Skoal!”
It was not seen that the Northman made any grimace. While his mouth
showed no bloodthirstiness, its hard line bespoke one used to grim ways.
He said carelessly:
“My foster-mother has the gift of double sight, but even she has never
seen that I have enemies. How came that notion into your head, brother?”
After the manner of his kind, the Skraelling was deliberate in
answering, letting the purple juice trickle slowly down his throat; but
he finished at last, and nodded in the direction of the departed
courtmen.
“There went some of the young men who follow the head of my brother’s
people. They are more bright than white fire-bugs with the gifts they
get for their friendship. My brother is also young—a warrior—the son of
a warrior—yet he lives apart in the forest, with a handful of women and
old men—gets himself nothing. It must be that he has enemies among his
people.”
The young forester shrugged his broad shoulders. “No gifts would I buy
at the price Starkad Jarl asks, comrade. My little foster-brother Eric
is page to his daughter; I know the lot of those who follow him. When he
gives the sign they go to roost, whether they are sleepy or not. When
his priest rings a bell they say their prayers, even though it break in
at a time when cursing would come more easily to them. It is not allowed
them to enjoy any sports that he sets his face against; and they drink
no lower in the cup than he gives them leave. May illness eat me if I
would ever tame myself to run with such a pack! That a man like my
father should have been willing to lie quiet in a woman’s net is
something I shall never be able to comprehend. I understand him better
when I see how he built the Tower with the lower part left open so that
the wind could blow on him all the year round and help him to forget
that he was under a roof.”
Once more the Skraelling’s deliberate speech was delayed, this time by a
baying of deep-voiced hounds rumbling up out of the distance like
thunder. Following it, the pack streamed past—stragglers bursting from
the brush behind them to skirt them with extended noses or jostle
between them, leaving froth-flecks on their sides—and hard after the
hounds rode the hunting party, led by a band of green-clad pages winding
gilded horns. With the leisureliness of one whose pride forbids a
display of curiosity, the Skraelling set his eagle face again over his
shoulder; and his companion, who had started to remark upon the scene,
gave up with a shrug the attempt to make himself heard against the
blaring.
The din passed at last, and on its heels came a colorful train—stately
old priests and chieftains gravely discussing the hunts of their youth,
high-born maidens with shining uncovered locks, and matrons whose lace
veils floated cloudily from their moonlike faces, stocky young thralls
bent under hampers and wine-skins, and towering leather-clad guardsmen
bearing bright spears on their shoulders. With the hoof-beat of the
prancing horses deadened by the matted leaves, they went by as lightly
as shapes in a vision, each for an instant illumined as he passed where
a shaft of sunlight fell through a rift in the arching tree-tops.
As the first pair of the noble maidens reached it, sitting gracefully
erect in their saddles like gilded chairs, the forester motioned towards
them.
“The one with her face turned away is the Jarl’s daughter, Brynhild the
Proud. It is said that she is worth looking at, though it has never
happened to me to do so.”
If the Skraelling looked at her, that was all the notice he vouchsafed.
It was not until the last maiden had gone by that he was stirred to
interest.
“That is the great sachem that the sun now shines on?” he asked.
“That is Starkad Jarl,” the Northman confirmed; and even as he said it,
the old man with the jaw like iron and the beard like steel had passed
on into the shade, and the light was playing on the comely group that
followed, revealing foppish secrets of gay embroidery and golden buckle.
“Here are the battle-twigs we saw a while ago,” the young forester
added. “I wish I knew if any of them is Helvin, the Jarl’s son.”
The Skraelling answered but one word. “Blood!” he said; and while the
young men remained in sight his eyes rested on one in garments of gray,
whose bowed head was hooded by hair of the very shade of clotted blood.
Looking after the young courtmen, the forester seemed to lose all who
followed. When leaves had blotted out the last guard’s broad brown back,
and the music of the horns had dwindled to a silver speck in the gray
silence, he spoke musingly:
“Take Helvin, now, if you wish to judge what metal comes of Starkad’s
forging. It is said that he was born with the wanderlust upon him, so
that his every breath is a panting to take ship and travel over the
sea-king’s road wheresoever the wolf of the sail might choose to drive
him. But because the sons that came before him are dead, and the only
other heir is a maiden, his sister, it is not allowed him to risk his
life. It may be they will find out that they have cherished the scabbard
and rusted the blade,—they say that the fire cased in his flesh has
given him an unlucky disposition.”
The savage’s black eyes gave forth a sympathetic flash, though his
training in repression kept the feeling out of his voice. He said
calmly:
“A day will come when it will be over. The old man cannot live forever.
Already he has passed so far beyond the timber-line that nothing grows
on his scalp.”
The Northman shook his head. “Starkad’s death will bring Helvin no
nearer what lies at his heart; he is oath-bound to take the rule after
his father,—so full of fear are they lest quarrels over the inheritance
gnaw at the root of the Jarldom. But I will say that I think his rule
will prove to be a good thing for the Town, which is now in danger of
becoming more lifeless than a bone-heap. From all I have heard of his
dislike of making a show of himself and his love of free ways, I have
good hopes of him. It has often been in my mind to take service under
him when he shall get the leadership. For Starkad I have no respect
whatever. It is told that when he was young he was called Starkad the
Berserker, and had the most hand in every Viking voyage and man-slaying;
but now that the sap has dried in him, and he has put on Olaf the
Saint’s religion, he expects all men to live like monks.”
The Skraelling gazed reflectively in the direction of the vanished
cavalcade.
“Truth to say, the young braves of my race do not feel much love for the
white man,” he said, presently. “He comes among us as one who comes
among animals—driving them out to possess himself of their
feeding-ground—dealing with them only when he wants profit out of their
hides. The grayheads give us counsel to live in peace with the settlers
of Norumbega. On the four trading-days of the year when they let us into
their walls, they trade us useful things for our furs. But those of us
whose teeth are still firm in our jaws do not like it to be led in as
white men’s cows are led in to be milked, then turned out to pasture,
the bars put up behind them.”
Straightening, he stood a bronze image of wounded pride. The young
forester, as he bent to fasten one of his moccasin-strings, looked up at
him understandingly. The softening feature of the Northman’s face was
his eyes, deep blue as an evening sky, under level brows, broad and
dark. When the thong was tied, he put out a hand and rested it on his
companion’s bare shoulder.
“Judge not, brother, all of the white race from the behavior of one
overbearing old man. It seems to me as if your people and my people
should dwell together like sons of one father. Our hands are equally
open to a friend, and no less hard-clinched against a foe; and you do
not surpass us much in freedom and fearing nothing. When it has befallen
the other white men to see the wonder of your woodcraft as I have seen
it, and to be sheltered and fed by your hospitality as I have been,
there will be much awanting if they do not hold you as high in honor as
I do.”
Unbending gravely, the born heir of the forest laid his hand upon the
breast of the forest’s adopted son.
“I know good of you; I will try to believe good of your people,” he
said. “Come back with me now, brother. The lodge of the sachem, my
father, is open to you. Always open to you.”
A second time the Northman shook his head. “That cannot be, comrade, for
I came up here to learn a trap secret from an old huntsman, and having
got it, I must hasten back and put it to use before I forget it. Do you
on your side bear in mind, when next you paddle your bark-boat near the
island, that the Tower will offer heartier welcome to none than to you.”
His hand fell from the bronze shoulder to the bronze palm, and with a
strong clasp the two men parted,—the red man to melt into the russet
shades beside them, the forester to go forward in the wake of the
hunting party.
Had it blazed its path with axes, the cavalcade would scarcely have left
a plainer track. Wherever foot and hoof had failed to print themselves
on the path of leathery leaves, there was always the clew of a bruised
lichen or a fern with a broken spine. Swinging along easily, mile after
mile, the forester devoted his superfluous breath to humming scraps of
melody and his alert eye to reading the fantastic runes. Here a bleeding
tangle of wild grape-vine stretched out plundered hands. Yonder a long
golden hair, floating like fairy gossamer from a low-growing limb,
showed how the forest had exacted weregeld. Still farther on, a patch of
flattened moss and ploughed-up earth told sly tales of a horseman
brought low. When he came at last to the place where his road branched
westward from theirs, he yielded the rune-page with regret.
That he might overtake any of the company did not occur to him. His
attention was centred in his song, gradually becoming articulate and
rising melodiously from under his breath. It broke a word in two when he
caught the hoarse snarl of a hound in the thicket ahead.
As well as though he could see through the intervening leaves he knew
the hideous landmark that lay before him,—a pond which the Skraellings
called by a word meaning “the black pool,” because some sinister
combination of soil and shadow gave its water the appearance of being
dully thickly black. Tradition added that rather than enter it, a
fleeing stag would let his pursuer kill him on the brink. If any hunted
thing had been brought to bay there now, the finish might be worth
seeing. Quickening his step, the young Northman leaped the stony channel
of a dead brook and swept aside the screening boughs.
Set amid frost-blasted bushes and leafless barkless tree-skeletons, the
Black Pool met his gaze; but it was no four-footed creature that fought
for life at the black water’s edge. Above the brush rose the gray-clad
shoulders of the young courtman with the blood-colored hair. Rearing as
tall as he, one of the great hunting-dogs had sprung upon him; while one
hand strove to draw his dagger, the other was struggling to hold foaming
jaws from his throat.
To see his peril was to will to aid him; and with the forester, to will
was to act. But even as the impulse thrilled him, a strange sensation
blotted it out. With his first forward motion, he was seized by a sudden
whirling madness as though he had stepped within the ring of a whirlpool
and was being sucked into a black abyss of horror.
It lasted but an instant. Battling against it, his fingers clutched
instinctively at his knife-hilt, missed it and closed instead upon the
blade, and the smart of cut flesh brought him to himself. But in the
time that he hesitated, the courtman’s hand had freed his weapon and
plunged it into the straining throat; there was a death howl, the hiss
of spurting blood, and the danger was over. The great body relaxed,
stiffened, sank heavily out of sight between the bushes, and the young
man stood wiping his blood-bathed face upon his sleeve.
Bewilderment and shame claimed the forester. He with a lion’s strength
in the girth of his chest and in his long sinewy limbs—he whose coolness
had cheated Death a hundred times—_he_ to falter when a man was in
jeopardy of life before him! It was beyond belief.
He saw without caring that the courtman seemed all at once to become
aware of another presence, and turned and espied him. He heard without
heeding a peremptory order to approach. All that he was conscious of was
a desire to get away and fight it out with himself. Raising his hand in
apology, he stepped backward, pushed between two tall bushes, and let
the wiry brush spring to like doors behind him.
As he drew clear of the branches a silvered arrow sped above them, so
well aimed that it severed a lock of his hair. He caught his breath with
a short laugh.
“I forgot that high-born men do not take it well to be disregarded,” he
muttered as he plunged into the undergrowth.
What would he have said if the shaft could have whispered as it whistled
past that—back under the frost-blasted bushes—Starkad Jarl lay murdered,
and that he of the guilty blood-colored hair believed the forester had
witnessed his deed!
II
“_No tree falls at the first stroke_”
—Northern saying.
“One touch of a certain three-cornered leaf,” the forester reasoned as
he moved along the winding trail, “is able to make a man’s flesh change
color and swell over his eyes like a wild hog’s fat. More power lies in
the earth than simpletons think of. What would be wonderful about it if
such water should breed a vapor befogging to the wits? Not the wits of
all men, perhaps—it was seen that the courtman had his about him—but
those of all who have not Sigmund’s strength against poison.” Reasoning
relapsed into mortification. “It goes hard to be taught that I am one of
the weaklings. Troll take the Pool!” For a while his track over the soft
leaf-mould showed that his heels ground deeply.
Presently he made an effort to crowd the incident out of his thoughts by
taking up the broken thread of his song, and reeling it off with a
dogged energy that sent the words far through the silent forest and set
its echo-heart athrob. They were brave words, telling the brave old tale
of the wooing of Fridtjof the Bold; perhaps they would have charmed away
his ill-humor if they had not been cut short.
Parting like gold-embroidered tapestries, two yellow-leaved bushes a
little way ahead disclosed another courtman from the hunting train, a
young man magnificent in scarlet leather clothes of distinctly un-Norse
make. After a critical survey of the figure in deerskin, he lifted the
forefinger of one gloved hand,—a gesture that had upon the forester the
effect which the scarlet dress would have had upon a bull.
“Fellow,” he said blandly, “I have to tell you that your voice has had
the good luck to please a noble maiden’s ears. Follow me that she may
gratify her curiosity.”
Akin to the motion of his finger was a perpetual slight smile moulding
his thin lips. The forester took note of that also, and felt antagonism
become a deep satisfying force within him. Coming slowly to a halt, he
picked his answer with drawling deliberation.
“Fellow, if you had not the good luck to be foreign to the forest, I
would make you unpleasing to a noble maiden’s eyes. As it is, I have to
say that to see me following you would be more apt to provoke curiosity
than to gratify it,—and you may take that as best suits you!”
The stranger took it with the utmost quietness, observing as though to
himself that it was surprising there should still be places where a
churl thought he had the right to choose when he was commanded; but
while he was saying it he was stepping from the bushes. Now he drew his
sword from its jewelled sheath.
The gleam which the steel sent through the glade was reflected in the
forester’s face. He made cordial haste to pluck forth his hunting-knife.
Glancing from that short blade to his own long one, the courtman
hesitated an instant; then he laughed softly at himself.
“It is no lie about Norse habits that they stick to one like iron in
frosty weather!” he murmured. “Almost I was in danger of treating the
matter as a combat between equals.”
Having escaped that danger, he wasted no more time on preliminaries, but
delivered his first thrust. If his opponent had stood upon ceremony, he
would have been disabled by a pierced right arm.
Luckily it was the school of emergency that had given the forester his
training. Though a smothered word betokened surprise, his instant leap
backward carried him lightly out of range, and yet not so far out of
reach but that his knife was able to strike up the other’s point and
take advantage of the opening to land a stroke upon the tasselled
breast. A buckle turned the blade away, but the profanity of the contact
could not be denied. The courtman lowered his weapon for the purpose of
removing his gold-stitched gloves.
“I see now that I shall have to let off more of your hot blood than I
thought,” he remarked as he tucked the gloves under his belt. “Since you
_will_ have it—”
Driving suddenly past the other’s guard, he drove his sword into the
deerskin shoulder,—would have driven it through, indeed, if the bite of
the knife into his wrist had not momentarily relaxed his grasp.
The forester recovered his balance coolly.
“It will then be a fair bargain if I let off some of your breath,” he
returned, and straightway asserted the one advantage he had foreseen to
offset the difference in blade-lengths by leading his adversary a round
of gnarled roots and hidden hollows and tangles of creeping things.
As a trout knows the rapids, his feet knew the snares; but to the
stranger it was like walking in fetters. What with the distraction of
watching his footing and the difficulty of aiming, two out of every
three thrusts went astray; while for every lunge that went home he got a
wound in return. Twice his foot twisted on a hidden stone and he
measured his length on the ground, plastering pineneedles and earth to
every blood-stain. Twice he tripped over a root and fell headlong and
almost into the arms of his jeering opponent. That the combat was
between equals, there could now be no question.
That there could be any doubt of his ultimate victory, however, did not
appear to enter into the courtman’s reckoning. After each fall he merely
became a little more quietly determined, came on with a little more
glitter in his ice-blue eyes. His unshaken assurance exasperated the
forester at last; when he saw a chance to end it, he seized the
opportunity promptly.
At the next lunge, instead of springing aside he took advantage of a
hollow behind him to duck suddenly, so that the blade hissed like an
outleaping flame above his head. Then, before the other could recover,
he sprang upon him. Seizing his sword-wrist in an iron grip, he forced
it aside, tore his own right arm free from the clutching fingers, and
raised it to strike.
His arm rose,—but it did not fall. In the very instant of aiming, a
cloak flew between him and his mark, enveloping him head and shoulders,
smothering him head and face. Muscular hands followed the cloak,
pinioning his elbows and dragging him backward. Through the folds he
caught a babel of exclamations; above them a girl’s anxious voice
calling, “Is he wounded?” and a man’s rough tones answering dryly, “Only
enough to spot his clothes, Jarl’s daughter.”
Jarl’s daughter! The forester had left off struggling—he understood that
it would be foolishness in that grasp—now his wrath gave place to
disgust. This was a pretty trick of the Fates, who had already snatched
the fruit of victory from between his teeth, to follow it up by
delivering him over to the upbraidings of an hysterical girl! Sullenly
he gazed before him when at last they plucked off the cloak.
The first thing he saw was his little foster-brother in his gay page’s
livery, just picking up the courtman’s plumed cap; but the sight did not
improve his temper for he found that the boy avoided his glance of
greeting. His brows drawing together, his gaze moved on over the
picture.
It was a maiden’s following, certainly. The rugged men-at-arms
surrounding him were far outnumbered by the slim pages who made a green
hedge around the wounded favorite. Bright against the dark background,
groups of maids and matrons rustled and fluttered. Only one figure in
the scene had composure, a girl standing a few paces ahead of the
others, erect and motionless as a stone column against tossing trees. It
was her stillness that drew the forester’s attention to her curiously;
then, looking, he forgot curiosity, forgot his recognition of her for
the Jarl’s daughter, felt only the thrill of her beauty.
Long of limb, long of throat, she was nobly tall, her eyes but little
below the level of his own. The habit fitting close the flowing curves
of her body trailed heavily behind her, and a velvet mantle dragged from
jewelled clasps; but her broad sloping shoulders bore their weight as
lightly as her proudly poised head held up its great braids, hanging far
down the purple folds like cables of red gold. No power had the sight of
bared blades and struggling men to deepen or pale the exquisite color of
her face, or shake the pride of her beautiful mouth. In their high
spirit, her clear gray eyes were Valkyria’s eyes. Gazing at her, his
heart leaped in his breast; he understood, for the first time, why a
sea-wolf of a Viking might lie quiet in the net of a woman.
For the first time, also, he knew envy of his foe. Brushing aside the
pages, the courtman advanced now, the long end of his mantle drawn up
gracefully over his shoulder to hide the stains of his tunic. It was
maddening to see how fit he looked to bend before Brynhild the Proud and
set to his lips the hand she gave him.
“I should be glad to know, madam, that I am pardoned for thus marring
your pleasure with alarm,” he said. “Scarcely can I be easy in my mind
until I hear that.”
To see such favor as hers squandered on such as he was worse than
maddening. She answered most kindly:
“No man should have a better right to mar my pleasure than you who have
so often made it. And it was bearing my message that became a misfortune
to you! Will you receive my necklace for weregeld?” Reminded by the
law-term, she glanced for the first time towards the prisoner, her white
lids drooping coldly. “Let Visbur lay bonds on the fellow and take him
where the lawmen can deal with him.”
It was not the tightening grip of the men that wrung words from the
forester’s silence; it was the pang of standing ill with her that caused
him to speak earnestly.
“One thing I wish, Jarl’s daughter, and that is that you yourself would
hear how little I am to blame.”
Again she looked at him, this time squarely.
“You will have no cause to complain of the lawmen’s justice,” she said.
“Then will they judge me innocent, and how shall it be made up to me
that I have endured the disgrace of bonds, and been a gazing-stock for
your followers? Be as fair in your actions as you are fair in your face,
noble one.”
The guards around gasped, but she did not belie her Valkyria eyes. As
steel answers steel with a spark they answered the demand, even while
her proud mouth resented his boldness in every curve. After a moment she
turned back where a tree had fallen across the glade, and seated herself
upon the mossy trunk.
“Will you lay it upon Norse custom and not upon me, my friend Olaf, if I
think it necessary to grant the forester’s request?” she asked. “And
will you support me further by feigning that this is a law-place and
telling me here what he did that you disliked?”
“Is it true that Norse custom is so childish?” Olaf queried, with rising
shoulders. Then as she continued to look at him entreatingly, he
yielded, smiling, to come forward with playful ceremony and take up his
stand before her.
While he was bowing, however, one of the guards—a burly ruddy-faced
fellow—entered into the conversation, after the off-hand manner of
Northern retainers. Hemming loudly, he held up the horn-handled knife
which he had taken from the forester’s unresisting hold.
“This can be told about the youth, Jarl’s daughter,” he said, “that he
is no better than a crazy Berserker. Behold with what a cheese-cutter he
met the flail of Thorgrim’s son!”
“And not alone met, but also mastered the flail!” a second guard
chuckled; while a third, their grizzled old leader, vented a gruff laugh
and openly patted his prisoner on the back.
“I will hang you if Starkad’s daughter decides that way,” he declared,
“but you may hang me if I do not tell afterwards that you were a young
hawk!” Whereupon a rumble of acquiescence came from every point where a
brass helmet gleamed amid the russet leaves.
At any other time the forester might have shown appreciation of their
friendliness, but just now it was the favor of the purple-robed judge
upon which his heart was set. The silver-trunked birches behind her were
not more impassive than her finely chiselled face, as she ignored all
but the man she had addressed.
When quiet was entirely restored, Olaf spoke lightly: “Most gentle
law-giver, if it is through Norse eyes that we must look, I have to tell
you that the churl is in no way to blame. That he should show rudeness
is a result to be expected from the barbarity in the land. That I who am
French-bred should have a wish to civilize him was no less to be
expected. As has been pointed out, he had no more than a hunting-knife;
while my feet are more used to paved roads than to fox-trails. It made a
merry game, altogether too merry to fall to the ground here. But for
Norse law, fairest law-woman, there is no handle to take hold of. Turn
him loose, and forget that so unworthy a happening ever quickened your
fragrant breath.” He ended with another bow, his last words almost lost
amid the applauding murmurs of the women and the pages.
With an unconscious gesture of relief, the Jarl’s daughter rose quickly.
“Now as always, your broad-mindedness puts all other Norsemen to shame,”
she said. “For taking it in this way and making my task easy, I thank
you much.” A second time she extended her hand to him, while over her
shoulder she spoke coldly to the prisoner: “I give you peace, woodsman.
Go your way.”
“Come behind the bushes and tell us more news about this fight,” the
burly man-at-arms muttered in the forester’s ear as he gave him back his
hunting-knife.
Pretending to hustle him along, they accompanied him eagerly, the
gentlewomen making a great show of getting out of his path as out of the
way of a bear unchained. But after he had made a dozen paces, the
forester stopped, shook them off and turned back to Brynhild the Proud.
“This I will beg of you, Jarl’s daughter,” he said, “that you will tell
me why you wanted to see me.”
The guards gave him admonishing nudges. The prettiest of the veil-bound
matrons uttered a little scream of derisive laughter. The Jarl’s
daughter turned haughtily.
Of her alone he seemed to be conscious as he advanced. “You admit that I
am not blameworthy, yet I see that I have your dislike. Is it because I
appear to you no better than a savage? I beg you to believe that I am
not one. I beg you to believe that if I had known it was you who wanted
me, I would have been as glad in coming to you as the lark in rising to
the sun.”
Her gaze moving up and down between his moccasins and his mane of
sun-burnished hair, she studied him wonderingly; but she was bred too
high to flout him. She said, at last, with an inclination of her head:
“I owe you thanks for good-will. I will also confess that I was made
curious by the Song of Fridtjof you were singing. You are the
forester—are you not—whom men call the Songsmith? I have heard my
brother tell of hearing you sing once, as he happened to be passing a
hunter’s cabin. I wished to ask why you sang words about Fridtjof that
my father’s minstrels do not sing.”
“That, and more, I will tell you,” he answered. “The end of the song, I
made out of my own imaginings. In the unsettled places where I live, one
hears only those verses which the old people brought over the ocean
under the hatches of memory. I got a habit of finishing out such
fragments in the way I thought likeliest to be right. From that my
nickname sprang. My foster-father, who had worked at a forge in his
youth, said that all the skalds he had met with were like traders, who
do no more than pass on what other men have made; but that a singer who
melts scraps together and hammers them out in new shapes is a
songsmith.”
The figure appealed to the guardsmen, drawing forth laughter and
compliment; but that to the Songsmith was nothing beside the fact that
in the expression of their mistress curiosity had deepened to interest.
“Why, that is no small thing to do!” she said. “Times out of number,
when I have been listening to my father’s skald, I have wished that he
could make an ending which would be new even if it were untrue, so that
there might be something to keep awake for.”
Calmly oblivious to maidens’ frowns and matrons’ murmurs, she let
herself sink again upon the tree-trunk, and made him a sign to come
nearer.
“I want to know why you have not brought such an accomplishment to
market?” she inquired. “Where is your home?”
“It is not so easy to tell that, Jarl’s daughter, since it is unlikely
that you have ever heard of Freya’s Tower. But it stands south of here,
on an island which a bridge links to this—”
For the first time, one of the court-maidens drew near,—a slender spray
of a girl, whose face was a pink bud peeping from a wood of brown hair.
“_I_ have heard of it!” she cried, eagerly. “The skalds are not so bold
as to sing songs about it; but no maiden but knows how the Swedish
Viking Rolf stole King Hildebrand’s daughter out of her father’s court
in Norway, and brought her to these shores and built her a bower and—”
Her impulse would have carried her still further if the Jarl’s daughter
had not laid a light hand on her arm.
“I also know of the place,” Brynhild said. “Is it there you live? A band
of Rolf’s comrades still live there, I have been told—Yet are you too
young to have place among them! Will you tell me your name and kin?”
As he started to reply, the Songsmith’s glance fell upon the handsome
little page who had refused to recognize him, and who had now taken
advantage of the delay to approach Olaf the French and set about
removing the débris of dead leaves from his gold fringes. The forester’s
dark eyes gave out a glint of mischief.
“Willingly—and more than that—Jarl’s daughter,” he answered. “I will
have one of your own train name me to you, so that you may know it is
well done.” Stepping aside, he touched the boy on the shoulder. “Eric,
look up here and tell your mistress my name and kin.”
In a panic the youngster whirled, denial trembling on his tongue. Then
he met the unswerving gaze from under the level brows; his eyes fell and
his color rose. Seemingly without his consent, his lips formed the
words:
“Randvar is his name; and he is the son of Rolf and Freya, King
Hildebrand’s daughter.”
Brynhild rose from her seat. “The son of King Hildebrand’s daughter!”
she repeated, and all her gentlewomen breathed it after her.
But it was Rolf’s name that the guardsmen echoed, closing in upon Rolf’s
son to shake his hand and his shoulder.
“Rolf the Viking! A well-known name have you!”
“Now he was my shipmate for five years!”
“My father harried England with him—”
“A better warrior never fed the ravens!”
“Small wonder his son measured a knife against—”
“I take credit upon myself that I was the first to clap you on the
shoulder!”
But between the brass helmets Rolf’s son caught a glimpse of the Jarl’s
daughter, and made the discovery that in turning his low rank into a
high one he had but turned the cheek of his offence. She said, when she
could make herself heard:
“There seems to me to be two sides to this matter. For a churl to bear
such a bold look beneath his brows would be bad enough, but I find it
far worse that a man of high birth should form himself after the manner
of savages. Have you no regard for your King’s blood?” Again her glance
took stock of his deerskin husk and his untrimmed hair.
That she could not also take stock of the brand of temper with which the
King and the Viking had bequested him, was shown by the fact that, even
more than her words, her look was a challenge. In the fillip of a finger
perversity possessed him, and moved him to answer:
“If my King’s blood cannot show itself through a layer of deerskin,
daughter of jarls, I hold it for a spring that is run dry.”
A wrinkle of displeasure marred the satin smoothness of her forehead.
“That speech would make your fortune with my brother. Pray keep such
word-flourishes for him. I would show you honor if I might. This empty
forest life is unbecoming a man of your birth. You are welcome to join
my following and make new song-endings in my household, if you like.”
His voice was more indifferent than formality prescribed, his bow less
deep.
“With all thankfulness, I should not like it,” he answered.
Her frown was more than a wrinkle as she asked him, “Why not?”
“I do not lack reasons. One is that I think my life more full than
yours, that is laid out in straight lines like an old woman’s
herb-garden and weeded of all excitement. Another is that I do not think
a man adds any honor to himself by following a woman.”
Again she was the only quiet figure amid a hubbub, the women crying out,
the guards themselves growling remonstrance. She stood queenfully quiet,
though her face blazed.
“Even churls are apt to behave with respect towards me,” she said, and
the contempt in her voice was keen enough to draw blood in his cheeks.
He answered in kind.
“I behave with respect when I give you the truth. Are lies more to your
mind?”
The tumult passed into the more alarming accompaniment of silence. The
flash of her steelgray eyes was as though they had drawn swords. From
weapon-play Rolf’s son had never turned back; he faced her readily, his
look giving back whatever it received.
So they fronted each other until there was kindled in Brynhild’s face a
kind of fury, the rage of a Valkyria upon encountering her match. Just
in time, the words on her lips were checked. Like a pebble into a pool,
a page’s voice fell upon the pause.
“Ingolf comes seeking you, Jarl’s daughter.”
The spell was shattered. In less time than it took the Songsmith to
shift his weight, Brynhild had shifted her expression, recalled to her
wonted world. Women and pages started up like a covey of impatient
birds. With his blandest smile, Olaf stepped forward and claimed his
own.
“In all likelihood, madam, the messenger brings word that your noble
father is ready to take his meal, and seeks you at the spot where he
left you. Will you allow me so much happiness?” Baring his head, he
extended his hand.
She laid hers upon it immediately, motioning Eric to take up the
grape-purple train. All at once she seemed to the forester to have
withdrawn herself an immeasurable distance beyond his ken. Across the
space her voice came to him coldly.
“I would have shown you friendliness, Freya’s son, but it may be that
this way is better. The truth grows in me that you would hardly know how
to behave in a court. It is likely you have chosen your life wisely. I
wish you good luck in it, and bid you farewell.”
She bent her head; her women dropped him awe-struck courtesies. Under
cover of a salute, Olaf’s hard blue eyes held him long enough to remind
him that their quarrel was by no means at an end. Then, leaning on the
courtman’s arm, the Jarl’s daughter turned and left, nor looked back,
though Rolf’s son watched as long as he could catch any gleam of her
bright hair.
When the band had crossed the glade and gained the trees, they met the
helmeted figure; and following the instant of meeting, it seemed to the
forester that the breeze brought him a sound of shrieks. But whatever
their cause, it did not delay the departure. Soon the many-colored troop
had become blended with the many-colored leaves, and forest solitude
closed again around him.