“_Nose is next of kin to eyes_”
—Northern saying.
With signs of the day’s ruffling influence still visible at his
mouth-corners, Randvar, Rolf’s son, put aside the cables of wild
grape-vine that drooped curtain-like over the end of the home-trail, and
paused to look before him.
“Poor and mean must this have seemed in my mother’s sight,” he mused.
A few steps ahead the path broadened into an open grassy space, in whose
middle rose a low round tower, touched by the last rays of the setting
sun. Built of gray stones held together by gray mortar, it stood out
coldly amid the green and garnet and golden maples that walled it round;
and among branching trees and wreathing vines its outline was as stark
as the outline of an Iceland rock. No spire sprouted from its flat top;
no balconies rounded out beneath the windows of its upper story, and its
lower part was no more than eight gray pillars standing in a circle. On
one of them now a tangle of fish-nets was hanging; against another
leaned a frame on which a wild-cat skin had been stretched to dry, and
before a third stood a herring-keg and a barrel of wild-grape wine.
Between the pillars, eight wide archways gave plain view into the round
ground-room, in whose centre a fire was burning under a kettle. A
flaxen-haired girl moved back and forth before the fire, and under one
of the arches a tall, muscular woman stood looking out and wiping her
heated face upon her homespun apron.
Understanding that her watch was for him, Randvar raised his hand in
greeting; but his gaze remained on the small deep-set window high up on
the Tower’s seaward side, where he had often seen his mother’s face
looking out over the green wastes of trees and the blue wastes of water
that stretched between her and the home she had left. It seemed to him
now that he could see her again, flower-fair and crowned with hair like
winter’s pale sunshine. The contrast between her delicacy and the rough
setting came home to him with new force. In the bubbling caldron of his
mind, awe came uppermost.
“It was a wondrous thing, my mother’s love,” he murmured as he moved
slowly forward.
The greeting of the woman in the archway brought him back to the
present. She was a weather-beaten woman, almost as severe in outline as
the Tower itself, and with but little more color; yet proof remained
that she had once been as freshly blooming as her daughter, and her
work-roughened hand had a gentle touch as she laid it on his arm. She
spoke quickly, regarding him with keen eyes.
“There is a new stain on your kirtle, foster-son, and a cut in the
middle of it. What have you been doing to yourself?” As she talked, she
was unfastening a buckle, and now laid bare his blood-soaked shirt.
He looked down at it with surprised recognition. “Did the courtman do
all that? I had altogether forgotten it.”
“Courtman! Have you seen someone from the Jarl’s Town?” The girl caught
him up and left her broth-stirring eagerly, but her mother motioned her
away.
“Go up and get one of his linen shirts out of my chest, and fetch down
the ointment,” she ordered her; then to her foster-son: “Bring in the
water-pail and pull off those things and sit down here. Some day your
carelessness will bring it to pass that you bleed to death, and it will
not be a brave end, but a foolish one.”
“None the less is it pleasant to realize what state the French One’s
fine clothes must be in,” Randvar chuckled, as he allowed himself to be
pushed down on a bench by the fire.
The girl, returning headlong down the ladder-like stairs, repeated her
entreaty for news; so while his foster-mother washed his wound, and his
foster-sister rolled bandages for him, he related his adventure.
They listened without interruption until he came to the appearance of
Brynhild and her following, when both stayed their hands to question him
eagerly.
“Was Eric with her?”
“How did he look?”
“What did he say?”
“Did he send us a message?”
The first warm color came into the cheeks of Erna, the woman; her eyes
shone hungrily.
Regarding her, her foster-son began deliberately to parry. “What did he
say? Snowfrid, you are a simpleton! Do you suppose that folks gabble
like wild turkeys while a noblewoman and her frippery are standing
around? As for his looks, I can tell you that a red-headed woodpecker
would get bashful beside him, all in green cloth from top to toe, with
his hair cut like the Jarl’s. I did not wonder at all that the maiden
wanted him for a page only from seeing him pick up her necklace in the
road.”
The thin lips of Eric’s mother relaxed unconsciously into a smile, as
her hands took up the last bandage; but Eric’s sister gave her flaxen
braids a toss.
“I think he would not have been hindered from asking about us if he had
wished,” she said. “It is my belief that the young one is puffed up with
pride. Three times has the trading-ship on which he went up to see the
wonders of the Town been back without bringing him for so much as a
visit. It is my belief that he was ashamed to speak to Rand—” She was
startled into swallowing the rest of the word by the sharpness with
which Erna turned upon her.
“I know that he was not,” his mother said, sternly. “That his wits get
dizzy from living with high people may well be. I was foolish myself
about court ways when I came to be bowermaid to King Hildebrand’s
daughter; but that he should ever fall off so much as to be ungrateful
is not likely. I know that he remembered what is due to Freya’s son, and
greeted him with respect.”
Randvar’s face was hidden by the shirt he was drawing on, but from its
linen depths he chuckled.
“Never fear but what he greeted me! And named me to his mistress
besides, else might she have thought me some shaggy beast.”
“There!” said Erna; and Snowfrid, somewhat abashed, turned her attention
to dishing up the evening meal of venison broth and bread.
After the meal was under way, however, it occurred to her to ask
concerning the appearance of Brynhild the Proud.
The power which the mere mention of that name had to upset his peace of
mind amazed Randvar, even while he curtly denied any recollection of her
whatever. It was a relief when at last eating was over, and Snowfrid had
gone off to carry a jug of broth to the cabinful of old men, who were
all that was left of Rolf’s lusty crew. Erna took up her knitting, then,
and retired into her wonted silence and to her wonted seat on the other
side of the fire; and he was free to stretch himself upon the floor of
cedar boughs, and yield unreservedly to the strange turmoil of his
thoughts.
Gazing out where the moon was steering between white cloud-reefs towards
the open blue, he spoke dreamily: “Foster-mother, you knew the turns of
Freya’s mind as a forester knows his home-trail—tell me how she took
this life here.”
Without lessening the click of her needles, Erna glanced over at him. “I
suppose you were made curious by seeing for the first time what kind of
things a high-born maiden is accustomed to. It is the truth, however,
that Freya took it well. Out of everything she made a jest. She used to
look at the leaf-walls around the Tower, and say that no queen had such
an elf-woven tapestry, or changed her hangings so often. She was always
smiling.”
“Her lips were always smiling,” Randvar said doubtfully, “but her eyes?
It may be that I do not remember aright, since I was but a child in age
when she died, yet it seems to me now that her eyes were always
sorrowful.”
To that, Freya’s bowerwoman made no answer. The pause lasted so long
unbroken by anything save the rattling of her wooden needles and the
chirping of the crickets under the stone hearth that presently her
foster-son threw a twig at her.
“Wake up, foster-mother! Are you going to have a weird spell, that you
drowse and do not hear me?”
“Do your words need an answer, foster-son?” Erna returned. “As well as
I, you should know that Freya’s nature was not such that she could be
altogether happy in a life that sprang from the death of her kin.”
“I had forgotten that,” Randvar admitted.
She looked at him again across the fire. “This is where you show Rolf’s
breed. I think he never even guessed it. Yet always the memory that he
was the slayer of her father lay between them like a blade that no
tenderness could sheathe. She loved him in spite of it, but I speak no
more than the truth when I say that it was the effort of doing so which
wore her out before half her life was lived.”
Supporting himself on his hand, Rolf’s son sat up and gazed at her
earnestly. “The strange wonder is that she could feel any love towards
him! Until to-day, what I could not get through my head was how my
father could gentle himself to so weak a thing as a woman; but now I
regard it as the greatest wonder that so proud and fine and wonderful a
thing as a high-born maiden should give herself to a rough-minded
brawling—”
“You need not take it upon yourself to speak in that manner of Rolf,”
Erna interrupted him with some sternness. “All the fineness that was
possible to his nature he gave her. For Freya, he who had never handled
aught but a sword, toiled and sweat like a thrall to build this Tower;
and afterwards he made his drinking-bouts as mild as a woman’s, lest she
be touched with fear. And when she died, he slew himself from grief, as
not many men have done before him. It is true that your mind is higher
than his, through having her blood in your veins; but enough of his
rough temper is in you, and his heedlessness about clothes and polite
ways, to make any girl but a forest-bred wench like Snowfrid turn her
eyes from you as from a bear.”
Wincing, Randvar dropped again to his elbow, averted his crimsoning face
from the firelight. It came as a welcome diversion that at that moment
Snowfrid’s voice was heard out in the darkness.
But Snowfrid’s half-frightened giggle, as she answered the questions of
some one coming after her, was a surprise. It was not after that fashion
that she conversed with Lame Farsek or his half-dozen decrepit old
mates. Her mother and her foster-brother bestirred themselves to look
out.
Erna’s surprise was not lessened to see her daughter emerge from the
bush-shadows followed by a strapping fellow in the brass helmet and
leather clothes of the Jarl’s guard; and Randvar’s astonishment
increased as he recognized in the visitor the guardsman who had first
spoken up for him in his adventure with Olaf and the Jarl’s daughter.
While Erna rose hastily, smoothing down her apron, he leaped to his feet
with a thumping heart. If by any possibility Brynhild should have sent
him a message!
Even more than in the morning, the man-at-arms looked the soul of bluff
good-fellowship as Snowfrid led him up to them, naming him as Bolverk of
the Jarl’s guard, and explaining stammeringly that she had found him
beating about in a berry-tangle in search of the path. He added a wink
for her to his jovial recognition of the Songsmith, vowed that if the
soldiers of the Jarl’s Town had but dreamed to what that path led, it
would have been beaten broad enough to need no hunting for. Snowfrid
relapsed into a blushing examination of her braids which struck her
foster-brother as particularly ill-timed and foolish. He said with
impatient politeness:
“It is to be regretted that the path failed your need, Guardsman
Bolverk, for it must needs be urgent to bring you here at this hour.”
The guardsman made an effort to pull his round face to a solemn length.
“Certainly it is no light errand that keeps me abroad, though my being
here springs from a whim of Helvin, Jarl’s son—I should say, Helvin
Jarl, for Starkad, his father, is dead. Saints grant him as much rest as
he will accept of!”
After the manner of people hearing news, all three cried the word after
him, “Dead!” Then Erna murmured, “Thus the old leaves drop off, one by
one!” And Snowfrid cried impulsively: “Now will the young man take some
comfort?” And Randvar smote his knee.
“No longer ago than this morning was I talking about Helvin, and how his
father’s death would but free him from one trap to spring another on
him.”
Bolverk’s ruddy face relaxed into its wonted curves. “So you all know
what manner of man he was? Then I need not pretend to shed tears for
him, though I should think it sinful to wish any but an enemy such a
death.”
Even while they drew near together, the women questioned him with their
eyes. Randvar put it into words.
“In what manner did he come to his death? I saw him ride past to the
hunt,—I suppose it was caused by a fall from his horse?”
The guardsman shook his head ponderously. “No such quiet end for Starkad
the Berserker. One of the hunting-dogs sprang on him and tore his throat
to pieces. Ingolf brought the tidings just after we parted from you. The
place where it happened was on the brink of as hideous a pond as a bad
dream ever painted. I went and looked at it afterwards. I give you my
word that the water was as black as—”
“The Black Pool!” cried Erna and Snowfrid together. Randvar had become
as motionless as the bench on which his foot was resting.
Bolverk nodded. “Naught else should it be called; any dead branch
sticking out of it gets the look of a bleached bone. You may imagine
what a sight it was to come upon,—Starkad sprawling on the brink, and
Helvin leaning against a tree, more white than a halter-corpse, except—”
“Helvin!” This time the echo came from Randvar.
Drawing a step nearer, Bolverk lowered his voice.
“I will not be so mean as to draw the cup back after you have had one
swallow. Only I ask you to forget who brought the tidings hither. The
hound was Helvin’s. He had taken it out of the pack and kept it with him
because of a wound in its foot, and it is thought that it did not attack
the Jarl without cause. Father and son had many words about something
before they set forth this morning. When Helvin dashed ahead by himself,
the Jarl sent men after him to fetch him back. And when at last they
came to the point where the party broke up, and the women went aside to
the waiting-place and each man struck out for himself, Starkad forced
Helvin to ride apart with him, though it was seen by every one that the
young man had the greatest dread of accompanying him. What passed
between them Helvin does not tell, and no one dares ask, but it is
guessed that Starkad worked himself into a Berserk rage and fell upon
him—”
“Odin!” gasped Erna, and at the same time crossed herself.
“And that the dog broke loose to protect its master. And many believe
that the taste of blood maddened it so that it went so far as to attack
Helvin when he dragged it off the Jarl, for the claws had torn the
silver lace on his sleeves, and one of the proofs that he must have been
grappling with it when he slew it is that his kirtle is all one gore of
blood—What do you say?”
But Randvar would not repeat the curse that had been wrung from him; and
Bolverk, encountering Snowfrid’s horrified gaze, became diverted by the
amiable desire to recall her blushing smile.
“And that,” he went on, “is the beginning of the reason why this
bright-haired maiden of victory found me battling with thorns and led me
to Valhalla. When a move was made to go back to the Town, Helvin seemed
to come crazy out of his black silence. He vowed that he would have one
night of freedom before the rule came on him, and forbade any to follow,
and broke from us into the forest—It is likely you know, also, that he
has dreaded the rule more than most men dread Hel! But old Mord, who was
the first of Starkad’s advice-givers, counselled us to follow at a
distance, that we might be within call in case danger threatened him
from Skraellings or other wild animals. In the moonlight we kept him in
sight almost to the head of your Island, but there it happened that we
lost him. The rest declared that he had turned aside, and I declared
that he had not; so I set out alone, and finding so plain a path, kept
on out of adventuresomeness. It is possible that I shall have to stand
some banter, and yet I cannot find it in my heart to be sorry about my
blunder.” Again he winked at Snowfrid over the huge fist caressing his
yellow mustache, then drew himself up with a prodigious sigh. “My one
regret is that I must now return to my duty. Will you not guide me back
as far as the cabin, my fair one? I cannot seem to remember the way at
all between here and there.”
Snowfrid’s eyes answered him delightedly, but her lips waited bashfully
for her mother. She ran no risk in doing so, however, for under Erna’s
apparent sternness there lay as much Norse simplicity as Norse kindness.
She said, “Go, child, of course,” and poured Bolverk so excellent a
stirrup-cup, and shook his hand so warmly at parting, that he went away
without even observing that the master of the Tower had bidden him no
farewell, but still stood with his foot on the bench and his eyes on the
fire.
Erna looked at him curiously when she had resumed her seat and her
knitting. At last she spoke:
“Hard tidings are these and great to hear; yet I cannot see, foster-son,
that they touch us so nearly as you appear to feel.”
“You will see when I tell you what spell some troll laid upon me,” he
retorted. Straightening, he went and threw himself down in his favorite
place upon the fragrant mat, and began to pour out wrathfully the story
of his adventure at the Black Pool.
“There you have it all before you,” he wound up. “I was made to behave
in an unfavorable manner before the man with whom, above all others, I
would wish to stand well. I thought, first, it was some poison from the
Pool that beset me; but since it worked no harm to any one else, I know
it was a curse turned on me alone—Hel take the luck! Hel take it, I
say!”
When she had let her suspended breath go from her in a yawn, murmuring,
“That was a strange happening—a strange happening,” she answered
gravely: “You throw blame undeservedly. It is your guardian spirit that
has given you power to feel it better than others when an evil deed is
in the air. I have often heard of people who had such a gift—”
He flung up his arms to snap the fingers sharply. “Take my share of such
white-livered gifts! Power? I call that a weakness which makes me a
stick in the hands of something stronger than I! If I knew what part of
me it had root in, it should not last long.”
“You will bring punishment upon yourself for your ungratefulness,” she
said, but said it without force, seeming to wander among her thoughts.
His scorn held the field.
“I should be glad to hear what I am to be grateful for! Nothing could
make Helvin believe now that I am any better than a coward. It shows
what a cur he took me for that his first impulse was to send an arrow
after me. I am as much outlawed from his following as though a lawman
had laid a ban upon me.”
She had no answer to that, or else the heat of the fire was making her
drowsy. Leaning forward, she sat blinking at it, her arms folded on her
knees.
Breaking up twigs with one hand to jerk them into the flames with the
other, he went on piling up causes for bitterness, though he no longer
spoke them aloud,—they came from too near his heart for that.
“I should have helped him, if I had acted out my own nature, and he
would have done me honor in return. I should have left this emptiness of
beasts and trees to measure myself against men. It would go hard with me
if I could not prove myself more than that grinning French-broken ape.
She showed him favor; she would have shown me more.... She might ... in
time ... she might even.... More unlikely things happened to my father!”