“_Where I see the ears, I expect the wolf_”
—Northern saying.
Neither of them paid any attention to Snowfrid on her return, and the
girl on her side seemed to find her thoughts quite as interesting as
conversation. After a few minutes, she said that she was going to bed,
and lighted a splinter at the embers. The firelight, as she bent, showed
her bashful mouth to be smiling with the memory of kisses. She seemed to
be walking in a blissful dream as she went lightly up the stairs.
What aroused Randvar, finally, was the consciousness that his
foster-mother was moving with unnatural deliberation. Sitting up to look
at her, he found that her gaze had become fixed upon the space beyond
the fire, and she was lifting her arm from her knee to stretch it out in
that direction.
“Look at that wolf yonder,” she said.
“A wolf?” He rose to his feet, bent to pick up a brand. Then as his gaze
followed her finger, he dropped the wood impatiently. “It is the fire
dazzling you. There is no wolf there.”
Yawning, Erna lifted both her arms to stretch them above her head. “I
forgot that I was seeing with the eyes of my mind, instead of with the
eyes of my body,” she said. “It stood yonder, where the moonlight ends
and the firelight begins. There was a goldlike glow to its fur, and its
eyes were as bright embers. It must have been the Other Shape of Helvin
Jarl.”
The voice in which he repeated the name was in such contrast to her
monotone that it startled himself; he went on with stern restraint: “Do
you intend to tell me that Helvin Jarl’s wanderings will lead him here,
where I shall have to face him and explain what ailed me to-day?”
She would not curtail the yawn that was stretching her jaws, but she
nodded.
Randvar made no attempt to hide his impulse, snatching his coat down
from the antler-rack for instant flight.
“It is a good thing that you can do the honors without me,” he said. “I
shall spend the night with the birds in Fenrir’s Jaws.”
But Erna’s mouth was again practicable for talking, and she was using it
drowsily. “Yes, I know for certain that he will come by here. And I am
altogether too sleepy to remember anything about manners. I will lose no
time in getting out of your way.” Rubbing her eyes with one hand, she
gathered up her knitting with the other, as oblivious to his position as
though she had never understood it.
It came back to her foster-son, then, that mental numbness follows as
well as precedes the use of double sight. There was nothing to do but
throw the cloak upon the floor and himself into a sulk, while she moved
through the routine of her nightly tasks, making sure that Snowfrid had
covered the jar of venison broth, letting down against the fresh night
wind two or three of the bearskin curtains with which the arches were
provided.
“If I should ever get so dulled by wine as she by this,” he fumed
inwardly, “I should smart for it while her tongue could wag; yet how
much better is she than drunk?”
When she had climbed stiffly up the stairs, and the light of her
torch-splinter had been swallowed by the upper darkness, his resentment
overflowed his lips.
“Again I declare my belief that weird powers are an accursed hindrance.
What avail is it to warn a man of coming evil if no way is shown him to
ward it off?” He emphasized his words by a kick at the great log just
before him.
The sudden flare of flames and flight of sparks and jarring of charred
parts asunder seemed to afford him some relief; while regarding them, he
bethought him of a loop-hole.
“After all, I do not know how we make it out that the visitor must be
Helvin! A wolf is the animal-spirit that runs before many a valiant man.
Nine chances to one, it will be no more than the French Olaf in search
of him.”
The possibility made his alarm seem senseless. Snapping his fingers at
the world beyond the bright ring, he gave the log a second kick, this
time of friendly correction.
“Comes the Devil himself, he must have no fault to find with the
hospitality of Freya’s Tower,” he said, and set to work to replenish the
fire.
Tearing the great saplings free from the pile and breaking them
resoundingly under his heel, he worked too vigorously for a while to
leave any space for brooding, and he had no opportunity to take it up
again when the task was finished. Even as he rose from laying on the
last bough and turned again to the outer dusk, he saw the grape-vine
thrust aside from the head of the path—saw a man appear in the opening
and stand there—a peculiarly proportioned man whose breadth of shoulder
and length of arm suggested that he had been formed for towering
tallness, and that it was blasting mischance which had stopped him at
medium height.
Randvar’s panic took the form of obstinate unbelief. Even when the
apparition quitted its hold on the vine and came slowly towards him over
the grass, he doggedly refused to believe that the Fates would be so
contrary.
But on the spot where the moonlight ended and the firelight began, the
visitor came to a stand-still; the red glow meeting him eagerly
illumined him from head to foot. There was no mistaking the gray
garments, blood-drenched and torn; there was no mistaking the mass of
blood-red hair; and looking at the haggard face in the sinister frame,
the Songsmith’s own figure came back to him, “fire cased in flesh.” In
the ash-gray eyes, live embers were glowing. Suddenly something else
came to Randvar,—a consciousness that murderous hatred was looking at
him out of those eyes.
Scorn he had been prepared for, but this—this amazed him. It was
instinct that acted to stiffen him alertly as he made salute, saying, “I
give you welcome, Helvin Jarl.”
Whatever his temper, Starkad’s son had a Jarl’s dignity of bearing. He
answered grimly:
“I hold that welcome for true which is told by the face as well as by
the tongue. I think you did not expect to see me so soon?”
That seemed so easy to answer that Randvar had said “No,” before he
recollected the truth, when he amended it with “Yes,” and stopped short
in angry confusion. His embarrassment was not lessened by the inevitable
next question:
“Why did you run away when I called to you?”
He said desperately, at last: “Jarl, I do not know how to put it into
words. You can believe that I went mad.”
He had braced himself to meet jeering laughter, to endure it without
strangling the jeerer. It took him a breath’s space to realize that
Helvin’s mind was no longer on him. The arm by which he had been
steadying himself against the pillar had doubled under him like a broken
reed; now he swung forward against the stone, and would have pitched
into the fire if Randvar had not leaped the flames and caught him.
When he had lowered him upon a bench with his back against a support,
the next move was naturally to fill a horn at the wine-cask and bring it
to him. Remembering only his old feeling towards the Jarl’s son, Rolf’s
son performed the service with swift good-will. He was recalled to their
present relations by Helvin’s lifting a hand in refusal of his
hospitality.
It obliged him to fall back a step and hesitate, balancing the rejected
cup, but it emboldened him presently to protest.
“Jarl, it does not seem to me that this matter is going according to
good sense. That I have done nothing to earn friendship, I own; but I
deny that I have done aught to call for ill will. If you think me a
milksop, I cannot come to words with you about that; but it is the truth
that I would have been eager in joining you.”
Leaning back with closed eyes, Helvin’s face was yet drawn awry by
mocking laughter.
“Eager!” he murmured. “Eager!” Then, “It may be that if I had not come
here to-night, your eagerness would have urged you to seek me out in the
Town?”
“Surely not. I did not say that I had the wish to be thrown out of your
hall.”
“More likely would you have been carried out,” Helvin answered dryly.
Despite his resentment, Randvar had a feeling of admiration for a man
who dared say such a thing to him,—a man whose exhausted body would have
been a rag in the forester’s hands. He said, as he turned and threw the
untasted wine into the fire:
“If you have set your heart on hating me, have it your own way. It must
be because your temper has been tried to-day. I will only say that I am
sorry, for I have always felt a liking towards you.”
Though his head continued to lean heavily against the pillar, the Jarl’s
eyes opened to flash at him. “Excepting once to-day and once last
season, when you sang in a hunter’s cabin, I do not know that I have
ever seen you.”
“I mean that I have been so told about you—” Randvar was beginning, but
was checked as much by his own sense of intrusion as by a flame from the
smouldering eyes.
The young Jarl went on haughtily: “It had come to my mind, before, that
my affairs must be a juicy mouthful for gabblers to chew over the fire;
but I did not know that the things they said were the kind to attract
friends to me, and there will be much awanting before I believe it.”
Randvar gave up then; shrugging, he said only: “Believe whatever you
like about it; yet I wish I had a chance to prove my good-will.”
Again he expected the jeering laughter, and again he missed his
foretelling. A long time Starkad’s son sat staring out at the darkness,
strange expressions playing over his white face like flickerings of his
inner fire; then, at last, his thoughts formed themselves into
slow-spoken words:
“Never could it happen that my look encountered you without recalling
how I saw you this morning,—yet what else is to be done? To hold enmity
against a man who offers me good-will—This, at least, you have never
heard of me, Songsmith, that I am low-minded! Only one way is open to
me.” He stretched out his hand for the horn. “I will accept it from you
now,” he said, and drained gratefully the second draught his host
brought him, the rich juice imparting some of its own warm life to his
ghastly face. He drew himself erect as he gave back the cup. “There
shall be peace between us, only I make it a condition that you shall
enter my following.”
Once or twice before the conversation had taken turns unexpected to
Randvar, but nothing to compare with this.
“You make that a _condition_!” he repeated.
Helvin’s finely marked brows drew nearer together. “You should not take
it ill, if you have as much mind to serve me as you said a while ago.
You shall have the honorable post of my song-maker,—my father’s skald is
years overdue in Valhalla.”
To imagine such an offer in his day-dreams had seemed to the Songsmith
as natural as eating; but hearing it now in his waking ears, he wondered
if he were not asleep. He said, “I give you thanks,” but so dazedly that
like lightning playing over a distant peak, a flash of that
devil-mockery flickered over Helvin’s face.
“What now! Does your brisk friendship get weak in the knees when it
comes to trusting yourself in my power?”
Flushing, Rolf’s son swallowed a boast and answered only: “Why should I
be afraid, Jarl? You have given me your word that this happening shall
not weigh against me.”
Again it struck him as odd the way Helvin leaned forward and scrutinized
him, long and incredulously.
“I did not mean because of this matter,” he said, at last. “I meant
because you might feel some doubts about the turn of temper I have.” The
strange mockery of the smile in which his lips drew away from his white
teeth, as he said that, was made stranger still by the awful intentness
of his eyes.
So much strangeness began to tell upon Randvar’s stock of patience. He
said bluntly:
“Jarl, if the truth must be told, I have no doubts whatever about your
temper, for I have seen plainly that you have a very bad one. But
neither have I been used to lamblike men. Willingly will I strike a
bargain on these terms, if I have the choice.”
After they were out, the words struck him as being a trifle
unceremonious; he did not wonder much that Starkad’s son should sit
staring like one dumfounded. But that scorn should gradually grow up in
his face!
“Behold, I believe you!” the young Jarl said with biting slowness. “I
believe you have the Devil’s boldness to match against my Devil’s
nature,—and at the back of that, the ambition of Lucifer! Now, it is
told that the closeness of a court breeds rottenness; but what shall be
said of such foulness as this, out in the forest’s untainted air? When
such as I go before, a worse is not to be looked for behind; and this
man knows it; and still is he willing to sell his manhood for my
miserable gifts!”
It was not only his voice and his words that bit, but his look as well.
Rolf’s son winced under the smart, and spoke between his teeth.
“Such wrong you do me, Helvin, Jarl’s son, that it will be hard work for
you to atone for it. If I had been willing to sell my manhood for gifts,
would I not have put on your father’s yoke? That I want to become your
man is because I expect that you will make following you an honor. The
evil I know of you I think no more your fault than I think it blame to
an oak that a poison vine is thrown around its branches. Now, as things
stand, I believe you will shake it off, and the oak strength in your
breast will send your mind up oak-high and oak-broad to be a strong
pillar to other men.”
He had got his temper back by the time he finished. From under his level
brows, his eyes looked steadfast as sunlight into the face of his lord.
As the sun draws a tree upward, so the young Jarl was drawn upright by
the look.
“All my life,” he breathed, “have I believed that of myself, but never
did I think to find another who would believe it—who could believe it!
Does not some troll mock me?”
The Songsmith answered: “I think you know that I speak the truth.”
Looking into his eyes, it seemed that Helvin did know it. It seemed that
he was opening his lips to say so, when into the stillness was dropped a
sound like the distant clink of spur against stone. In the beat of a
pulse, his face had become distorted by that hatred which springs from
fear. He dropped back upon the bench, his words slipping out
disjointedly.
“Let us see who has dared to follow me—who has dared! Mind this—that you
make it appear as if I lingered to hear you sing. Go yonder to your
harp, if that be a harp!”
Though of home-make and rude shape, it was a harp that hung on the
pillar above the bed of fox-skins. Laying it on his breast, the
Songsmith played as he was bidden,—random chords that fell absently from
the ends of his fingers. Standing there in the shelter of the bearskin
that had been drawn across the arch, he could not longer see the head of
the path; but he knew when the pursuer emerged from the bushes by
Helvin’s smothered cry:
“Olaf!”
Gripping the edge of the seat, the Jarl leaned there gazing out with
distended eyes. “He is the likeliest man to find it out and follow....
Since the day of my birth he has hounded me.... He followed me into the
world by an hour, but I think he will go out of it before me.”... His
voice died away in murmur,—ceased at last so that between the
harp-chords could be heard the soft rustle of footsteps through grass.
Soon after that, the imposing form of Olaf the French came into the
range of the Songsmith’s vision.
Not to Randvar either had it occurred that Olaf could be seeking any but
the Jarl. It amazed him, also, that at sight of the gray-clad figure
leaning on the bench Thorgrim’s son showed unmistakable surprise.
“Lord!” he said. Then, with the suavest gesture in his stock of French
graces: “Lord, I would give much if I had not this appearance of having
so little regard for your orders as to come prying upon your grief.
Believe me—”
“My grief!” Helvin repeated. “My—” A quiver of terrible laughter
undermined his voice and it fell; then, in the drawing of a breath it
rose defiantly. “Since this matter has been spoken of, let me make it
plain to you that you may make it plain to others, and tongue need never
be laid to it again. _I have no grief._ Nor to save any one’s feelings
will I make pretence of any. Let no man urge it on me, if his ears would
go unscathed!”
Olaf made no attempt to urge it, certainly. As in toleration of some
noble whim, he smiled blandly and bowed acquiescence. After a moment the
Jarl resumed curtly:
“If it was not to seek me that you came hither, what may it be that you
want?”
That it might be to finish their interrupted duel had already occurred
to Randvar; but if he imagined that Olaf would have any difficulty in
presenting their quarrel in a light favorable to himself, his estimate
fell short. The French One answered without hesitation:
“It so happens that I am in this neighborhood, Jarl, because your men
have made a night-camp near the head of the Island. And I am come to the
Tower to fulfil a task I have set myself, which is to avenge on this
fellow his insolence towards your sister.”
“My sister!” the young noble repeated, sitting erect.
“In this wise will I answer you, lord, as is the very truth. This
morning the gold-adorned maiden chanced upon him in the forest; and
after the fashion of damsels with things that are new to them, she
showed interest in his jingling accomplishments. Word followed word
until, on discovering that there was gentle blood in him, she had gone
so far as to honor him with an invitation to join her following. You
would say that if he had one good strain in him he would have shown
thankfulness for her favor. Instead of that, however, he answered her
even with ill-temper, jeered at the life she offered him, ended the talk
by informing her that he did not think her service good enough for him.
If you think I am making it out worse than it is, I shall not blame
you,—only ask him to deny it.”
It is strange how different one’s own sentiments can seem when echoed by
another’s mouth, and after time has allayed the irritation from which
they sprang. The song-maker had enough gentle blood to dye his face at
the recollection of his quarrel with the beautiful Brynhild; nor could
he meet the glance the Jarl bent on him, but stood grinding the cedar
twigs under his heel and wishing that they were some portion of the
French One’s comely body.
But Helvin Jarl spoke tranquilly. With the passing of his belief that
Olaf was in pursuit of him, fierceness like a storm wind had passed from
his bearing and left him jarlfully poised.
“That is to be said of his fault, beausire, that it needs mending; but
hardly are you the man to do it. This one thing is enough to hinder it,
that you are known to be the most jealous of all my sister’s suitors.
Think only how spiteful tongues might slander you, and say that instead
of resenting rudeness you were in truth avenging it on the Songsmith
that Starkad’s daughter showed him such great kindness! Better that you
hand it over to me, beausire, since, besides being her brother, I am
also answerable for this man. For I may as well take this time to make
it known that the Songsmith has consented to enter my household, and
make for me the songs which, even before I strayed here to-night, I
found pleasure in. What needs be said, I will say, beausire, and
overtake you shortly.”
Rising, he made a gesture of dismissal which, if it lacked French grace,
had at least Norse decision. Before it Thorgrim’s bland son was forced
to bow, and, bowing, to back out of the circle of the firelight. When he
had become a dark shape in the moonshine, the Jarl turned to where his
new follower was waiting in keen discomfort.
“Do not imagine,” he said, “that I am going to pretend to be surprised
that you lost your temper with my sister. So has her haughtiness grown,
that what I wonder at is that some man is not driven to slay her. Only
for your own sake do I remind you—as so often I have been reminded—that
good manners are like a coat of mail in that every breach of them opens
a hole for the thrust of your enemies.”
Of reproof it was the mildest. In his self-dissatisfaction, the
song-maker was even moved to outdo it, and muttered with another kick at
the log in front of him:
“You say less than you might if you wanted to push the matter. It is
seen that your sister thinks me no better than a boor.”
“I should be two-faced to say more,” Helvin returned, “for to me the
happening is even of service. Now, when I no longer have before me the
honestness of your face to make me believe in you, it will stand me in
some stead to be able to tell myself that I know you spoke the truth
about scorning court ways and preferring my service over that of
another, as has not been the case before. Do not take it ill that I need
proof. This happens to me for the first time that I trust any one. Yet I
wish it were possible for you to fare back with me to-night.”
Remembering the crops that must be talked over with Erna, the traps that
must be explained to the old Vikings, the young master of the Tower
hesitated; but the instant the Jarl read his difficulty, he ended it
courteously.
“I see, however, that you have needful business to arrange. Take two
days to attend to it, and join me on the third day at sunset. Only
assure me that you will not fail me on that day.”
Rather an appeal than a command did it become in the gentleness of his
voice, the friendliness of the hand he stretched out. Taking the hand in
both of his, the Songsmith answered from the sincerity of his heart:
“May my luck fail me if I fail you either in this or in greater things!
For all it is worth you have my loyalty, I take oath on it.”
Returning the pressure of the Songsmith’s warm clasp, the Jarl’s gaze
held him long and strangely.
“I believe you,” he said. “For whatever it is worth, I swear you my
friendship—for whatever it is worth!”
On that they parted.
V
“_His hands are clean who warns another_”
—Northern saying.
“Wait a moment,” Erna commanded, quickening her descent of the stairs.
Wrapped in his cloak of russet homespun, Randvar had just come in from
his morning swim, and was hastening where his heap of clothing waited by
the fire. He quieted the chattering of his teeth to look at her
inquiringly.
Two days and three nights had passed since the strain of using her
double sight had numbed her wits; once more she was her capable
keen-eyed self. Yet there was a quiver of unusual emotion in her stern
face as she came up and laid her hand upon his arm.
“I want to find out whether you are in danger of sinking by swords,” she
said with her customary terseness, and her grasp tightened determinedly
as he started to move away.
“I have declared, foster-mother, that I will endure no more magic though
my life lies on it!”
“What magic is it that my palms, like those of many another
witchcraft-knowing woman, have the power to feel where steel is going to
pierce a vital part, and to strengthen that part? I tell you to let me
have my will. I dreamed last night that I saw a wounded eagle, which may
well be your Other Shape.”
“Foster-mother, I tell you that any more of this spell-work is going to
put me into a bad temper; and it is my wish to behave well towards you
the last morning we are together.” Involuntarily, his voice softened.
Though usually she disdained them, she was not without a knowledge of
woman’s weapons. She assumed them rather than lose her point.
“Maybe so, but you behave all the other way to set your self-will
against my peace of mind. Do you think I could bear Eric’s absence if I
had not the assurance of my hands that his body is sound?”
Wondering whether she had also tested the soundness of Eric’s head
tempted the Songsmith to a chuckle. The discovery that half the fierce
brightness of her eyes was due to tears finished his disarming. Half
sighing, half growling, he let his cloak slip off his shoulders.
“When did I ever get my will against you,—after I got out of
swaddling-bands? I ask, however, that you do not keep me feeling foolish
here longer than is necessary.”
Probably it was the same to her as though he were still in
swaddling-bands, when once she had closed her eyes that all her forces
might be concentrated in her sense of touch. The palms she pressed upon
his firm cool flesh—polished satin-smooth by the water, glistening
satin-fair in the firelight—moved as tenderly as though the sinewy frame
were still the soft child-body that she had tended in its helplessness.
Each time his glance fell upon her worn face with its mouth hard-set in
anxiety for him, he swallowed his impatience one time more; and when the
waxing light made delay no longer possible, his efforts to free himself
were begun with all gentleness.
“Foster-mother, be good enough to remember that I cannot start later
than sunrise, if I am to reach there by sunset.”
She clutched him with one hand, while the other pressed hard upon his
left side.
“I thought I felt a place—stand still!—over your heart. It would be a
death wound, indeed. _There!_ Cold! A spot as cold as Hel’s mouth!” She
opened eyes dilated with excitement in a face that had become ashen
pale.
An involuntary shiver passed over him, cooling his impatience. He
watched thoughtfully while she began to knead his flesh with her warm
and tingling finger-balls. After a time he said:
“It cannot be gainsaid that this is a better place to give a thrust than
to take one. I admit that I expect to meet some unexpected things in the
path I am entering. Not a little overgrowth hides it. Although I cannot
tell why, much that the Jarl said that night came to me as a surprise. I
suppose that the strangeness of his temper is the explanation of it....
Yet there is one thing that I can find no answer to,—why should he act
as if it were important to him to have an unknown man like me in his
following?”
Instead of answering, she began to rub at what she considered a
vulnerable place in his discretion. “Never make the mistake of
belittling yourself like that, and least of all where strangers can hear
you. The result might be that they would take you at your word and
believe you to be a man of no mark.”
He stirred impatiently. “Brisk enough am I, and many shall give place to
me; but this I know not,—why it should matter to the Jarl of New Norway
where I spend my days.”
Neither did she know, when she came to think it over. She soon gave up
the attempt to fall back upon what she did know.
“It will be all the same in the end. I have done all I can in protecting
your vitals. Safe into the fray you will go; safe out of the fray you
will come,—if you do not let your flesh get cut so that you bleed to
death. Stand still that I may see if I have brought back the
life-warmth.... Yes ... yes, the cold is entirely gone.” When she had
pulled herself up stiffly by his arm, she released him. “Scant time will
you have to jump into your clothes. The sun is not far away when the top
of that chestnut-tree stands out so boldly.”
“That is true!” he assented, and cleared at a bound the distance between
himself and his clothing.
For a while there were no other sounds to be heard save the simmering of
the kettle and the song of Snowfrid overhead, sweet as the lilt of a
meadow-lark in a field of golden grain.
As he rose from swallowing his last mouthful of broth, the girl came
clattering down the stairs, waving over her head a great sword whose
hilt was of iron inlaid with silver, and whose sheath was made from a
rattlesnake-skin.
“I knew that though you should forget to say farewell to me, you would
remember to wait for this,” she said. “I took it up-stairs last night
and polished it a long time after you were all asleep. Does it not look
well?”
“I did not remember it,” Randvar admitted, “so little used am I to
anything more than a hunting-knife.” Taking it from her as she
unsheathed it, he felt its edges critically, and feigned to test them on
one of her yellow braids. “The hilt cleaves to my hand like the palm of
a friend. I shall feel more self-respecting to go among strangers with
my father’s sword at my side. Perhaps some of his good-fortune will come
from it to me.” His brown face reddened, and he turned it away suddenly
to watch the girl’s nimble fingers fastening at his hip the sword-belt
which she had drawn across his shoulder.
But Snowfrid jumped up with her usual liveliness, crying, “If your luck
is most good, it may even happen that the Jarl will make you a guardsman
like Bolverk,” and he bestirred himself to tease her as usual.
“Pooh! If he cannot do any more for me than that, I shall come home
again!”
The emphasis with which her hands planted themselves upon her hips boded
ill for him, but Erna came between them to make sure that the strap
which held his harp to his back was also secure. When that had been seen
to, there was no further excuse for lingering.
Stretching out his arms to his foster-mother, he said: “Live as well as
you can, and do not worry about Eric or me. Your luck will take care of
me, and I will take care of him.”
She clasped him around the neck, and kissed him with passionate
fierceness.
“If you owe me anything, pay it to Eric,” she whispered in his ear, and
then turned away and began violently to stir the soup.
At that, Snowfrid took a hand from her hip to draw the back of the wrist
across her eyes, and signified that she was going to see him off by
slipping out ahead into the gray light.
Though the darkness had melted from the air, there lingered in it yet
that chill of unreality which makes earth and trees and even rocks seem
but phantoms of themselves. As they crossed the grass, Randvar said, “It
has the look of a dead world that is waiting for the sun to bring it to
life,” and the girl shivered assent and drew closer to him.
At the entrance to the path she stopped, and he turned for a parting
look at the dwelling that his father’s gentled strength had built and
his mother’s courageous love had hallowed. In the grayness it loomed as
remote and unreal as all the rest, the firelight that showed wanly
through the archways only adding to its shadowy strangeness.
“It seems to me that life is only just beginning for me, too,” he said
slowly as he gazed.
“You ought not to feel so,” the girl cried reproachfully. “You ought to
feel that you are going away from your father and mother.”
He shook his head. “I feel instead that I am coming closer to them. It
was my father’s lot before me to leave his home and go forth to try what
the gods would grant him.” As standing on the same spot he had lifted
his hand in greeting to Erna, so now he raised it in farewell to the
home scene. “It was a good dream while it lasted, but I am glad to be
awake at last.”
Snowfrid burst into tears on his shoulder. “It is a wicked thing that
men must grow up and go away!”
Times there were when she would have been shaken off with severity; even
now he put her from him hastily, though he bent and kissed her,
bantering.
“What foolishness is here! If a guardsman had not grown up and gone away
from his home, where would your fun have come in?”
Rain clouds were not so thick in her blue eyes but that sun shone
through at that. Tiptoeing to reach his ear, she whispered, “Remind him
of me, sometimes!” Then hiding her face, she fled back to the Tower; and
he set forth laughing.
A silvery haze veiled all but the path just before his feet, so that he
appeared to be ever advancing from mystery to mystery. He would have
been less than a song-maker if it had not seemed to him a symbol of the
unknown life into which he was entering, if he had not given himself
unreservedly to musing on his hopes and fears. His feet travelled the
trails by instinct that day, and by instinct forded the streams and
threaded the marshes; his mind was travelling the roads of the Jarl’s
Town, fording the deeps of Brynhild’s pride, threading the maze of
Helvin’s temper.
Burning its way through the grayness, the sun came out. Like a ball of
fire, it rolled up the eastern slope of the heavens. Like a ball of
fire, it rolled down the sky’s western side. Still he walked in a dream,
conscious only of the light of his visions. It was not until the hills
showed like nicks in the fire-ball’s rim, and he had reached the last
knoll rising between him and the sight of the Jarl’s Town, that he was
recalled to the present.
Half-way to the crest loomed a mass of cinder-hued rusty-veined rock.
Rounding this brought him suddenly upon Eric the Page, squatted on his
heels beside a patch of the wintergreen berries which the youth of New
Norway valued next to honey. In the process of adjusting his attention
to this abrupt demand, the Songsmith stood gazing at him; but the
youngster scrambled up with an involuntary “Odin!” which was as much a
prayer as an exclamation. When, presently, Randvar put out a hand and
lifted him by his embroidered collar, he began to talk much more like a
small boy caught robbing a trap than the haughty page of a Jarl’s
daughter.
“Now, foster-brother! I have not done anything. I did your bidding with
her. I have not done anything, foster-brother.”
“Plain enough you have it before your mind what I ought to do,” Randvar
said with his short laugh. Then he gave him a slight shake and let him
go. “Have it even as you have chosen. It may be that I shall not find it
harder to forget you than you found it to forget me.” While his one hand
quitted the gay collar, his other took toll from the berry-laden cap,
and he passed on.
That he should not be allowed to forget, however, he was able to guess.
It was no surprise when the boy’s voice sounded again at his elbow, in
the wheedling tone that was as familiar as the gleam of his curly head.
“Foster-brother, what is the need of taking it in that way, either? I
could explain it with a mouthful of words if you would listen.”
As the Songsmith could not deny some curiosity to hear the explanation,
he allowed his pace to slacken. Eric read the sign quickly.
“You need not think it was lack of friendliness. As well as you, I know
that because I have been able to get honor and fine manners for myself
is the more reason why I ought to protect and help lesser men, and I
have the intention to do so. But the truth is that in these clothes you
look so like a dead tree that has got out of a moss-bed and walked in
from the forest, that I became too embarrassed at the thought of any
one’s remembering that I used to be like you to be able to think of
aught else. It was not until afterwards that it crossed my mind that you
might feel hurt, and I got ashamed of myself.”
Of a sudden, Randvar began to laugh and pulled the boy up to him and
hugged him; and then of a sudden he frowned and held him off at
arm’s-length.
“I suppose,” he said, “that is also the explanation why you have not
been home to see your kinswomen since the Jarl’s sister picked you out
for her page three seasons ago,—not because you do not have love towards
them, but because you dislike to be put in mind of the poor way in which
you used to live?”
Eric did not answer immediately, but walked a while making embarrassed
snatches at the flaming sumacs they were passing.
“I have so little time,” he muttered at last.
The Songsmith looked down at him severely. “Whether your dignity takes
it well or not,” he said, “I am going to tell you that I think you in a
worse way than the man in the were-wolf story. Every ninth night it
happened to him to change his man’s shape for a wolf’s body, but never
did he lose his man’s nature. Even when his appetite forced him to prey
upon cattle, his man’s eyes looked out of the wolf’s sockets in
loathing. You have shed your forest ways for these mincing court
manners, but you have changed your manful nature also, that used to have
honesty in it, and love of kin. I foresee that as time goes on there
will be a harder nut to crack than this which we two have just had a
hand in.”
Enough honesty remained in the boy so that he showed himself abashed.
Again his voice cajoled, when it came after a long interval of silent
plodding.
“I _have_ got love towards my kin. I was going to send good gifts to
them the next time a trading-ship went that way. I will send some back
by you now, if you are willing to take them. I suppose you fared hither
to see Starkad set adrift?”
“To see _what_?” Randvar repeated, losing sternness in surprise.
A change of subject appeared to be much to Eric’s taste. He launched
forth eagerly:
“They are going to set him adrift on the river, of course. Is it
possible that you have not heard of it? Saint Olaf was disposed of in
that way, because after the battle his foes would for no sake allow him
to be buried on Norwegian ground. His friends put his body on a boat and
sent it out to sea; and so bound was old Starkad to follow him in
everything, he gave orders long ago that this should be his end also. It
will happen as soon as the sun sets, and it will be a great sight to
see. I came over here myself to look at it, since Brynhild has little
need of pages while she sits mourning in her bower.”
Randvar made no answer, for they came just then to the top of the ridge
and saw below them the broad river, uncoiled through the land like a
Midgard serpent of glittering gold, and saw beyond it the spreading
grain-fields and vine-clad slopes of the Jarl’s Town, its light streaks
of stone walls winding between dark tree-trunks, its clusters of brown
roofs blotting the gay autumn foliage, its clouds of gray smoke drifting
across the bright face of the sky.
Around every group of roofs circled broad acres of farm-land and
pasture-land, for the settlement was no straggling line of cabins, no
huddle of tented booths, but a typical Norse town almost as prosperous
as Nidaros itself. From the Jarl’s domain, the scores upon scores of
great estates radiated like spokes from a hub, separated from it and
from one another by stretches of wood and grassy common, and bound
together by tree-arched lanes and broad white roads, and by the shining
highway of the river with its stone wharves and anchored ships.
Truly it was a wonderful sight to come upon in the midst of the
new-world wilderness. The two on the ridge lingered to gaze at it, and
Randvar’s air-castles paled beside the deeper interest of reality.
He said thoughtfully: “It is a testing-place of men’s mettle. They alone
will get fame here of whom it can be said that they are
well-tempered.... Only by many accomplished men coming to a spot at one
time, with all their wealth on their backs, could such a stronghold be
built inside the space of two-score years. Do you know, young one, how
many people make up the Town?”
“While I cannot say for certain,” Eric answered, “I think I have heard
it reckoned that there are two thousand, counting in women and thralls;
for it is said that every one brought all his kin and his property with
him. That was not a little to take out of Norway at one time. Starkad
was wont to say that if Saint Olaf’s foes did get a great gain over him
in the battle in which they slew him, yet was it some loss to them when
so many of his following preferred rather to go into exile than to bear
the new rule—”
Randvar’s uplifted hand checked him. “Hush! I heard a horn,” he said,
and they held their breath in listening.
For the first time they noticed that the sounds of the day had waned
with its light, which was now almost gone, no more of the sun’s fiery
ball remaining than would have served for a signal-light on the
hill-top. Already the eastern side of the trees was sombre with shadow;
and the lazy splash of the river seemed to fill the world until, faint
and sweet, the funeral music was brought to them by the breeze. Growing
momently stronger with the emerging of the train of sable-garbed
horsemen from the little wood through which the road ran, the dirge
throbbed solemnly in their ears.
Upon Eric the Page it seemed to be borne in suddenly that he was in
charge of a grand spectacle with which to amaze and delight his
forest-bred companion. He assumed the responsibility willingly.
“Now am I well pleased,” he said, “that you are going to get so good a
chance to see something of court ways. That is the black bearskin that
they are carrying the corpse on. Those men riding beside it are the
priests. The tall haughty one is the Bishop. The name given him is
Magnus Fire-and-Sword, because he has the custom of burning and slaying
all who do not believe as he does. The clumsy one coming last men call
the Shepherd Priest, because it was his lot to herd sheep on a Swedish
dairy-farm before it came into his head to be a holy man. The
leather-clad fellows who ride after him with bags at their saddle-bows
are guards bearing the treasures that are to go with Starkad,—his armor
and his weapons and his jewelled ornaments, even the gold circlet he
wore on his head. The new Jarl would have it so; he would not keep so
much as a—That is he—Helvin, Starkad’s son—with the red hair—riding a
black horse—do you see?”
Randvar nodded absently; since first the black horse came into view, his
eyes had been fixed upon its rider.
“He bears himself as stark as the dead man,” he muttered, then finding
that he was speaking aloud, shook himself back to attention.
Wading waist-deep into the water, the eight bearers of the litter had
placed their burden upon the black-draped boat waiting on the darkening
waves. Now the contents of the treasure-bags were handed to them, piece
by piece, and they built with it a glittering bulwark around the
moundlike form. Then the oldest of the advice-givers, an old man gnarled
and bald as an ancient oak, came stiffly down the bank with a lighted
torch in his hand, and laid the flame against the rope of plaited straw
that held the boat to the shore.
Leaping out hungrily, the yellow tongues licked up the morsel and
reached out for the food that lay beyond, while the loosened boat swung
gently from the land. With the rush of wind, the fire rose crackling and
hissing, and gradually the sunset light was lost in the new glare that
filled the river valley. Rising as it rose, and quivering like it, rose
the voice of the dead Jarl’s skald, chanting his death-song.
In the red glare the boat slipped seaward. As it drifted past them, the
man and the boy on the knoll could see every firelit jewel sparkling and
flashing in a ring of splendor around the form under the black pall.
Then it drifted farther, and once more the sunset glory became visible
around it. By-and-by it was no more than a star in the gathering dusk;
and the old skald’s voice—strained thin and high in the effort to send
his song after the departing voyager—cracked and broke, and there was
silence on both sides of the river.
On the side opposite the Town it was Eric who broke the pause,
rousing-himself with a yawn and a stretch.
“I declare this to be the best entertainment Starkad ever gave me,” he
remarked. “But one cannot be always enjoying himself. I suppose you will
pass the night at the hostelry before going back?” He brushed a leaf
from his tunic with Olaf’s own elegance of gesture, then made use of
Olaf’s own oath as he glimpsed his companion’s face. “By Saint Michael!
you look as solemn as though you were going to be buried yourself.”
Straightening from the cramped attitude of the watcher, the Songsmith
shook off the mood that had held him and became quietly purposeful. He
said briefly:
“I go neither back to the Tower nor forward to the hostelry, but to join
the Jarl’s following. Does it lie within your knowledge whether it is
the custom to go directly to him? Or should I speak first to one of
those around him?”
Whether or not the knowledge lay in Eric, his mouth was blocked by
amazement; only horror could leak through.
“Go to Helvin Jarl in those clothes! He would order his dogs set on you!
You look more like a stag than a man.”
It is likely that he went on at some length, but Randvar gave him no
further attention. Making his way down the hill and across the bridge,
he came into the crowd just beginning to disperse. His final decision
was to submit the question of etiquette to Bolverk, whose burly figure
had come into sight in the throng; but before he could reach the
guardsman, his glance encountered Helvin’s.
Rigidly erect rode the young Jarl in his sable mourning clothes, his
face an ivory mask to hide what lay beneath it; but into his eyes there
leaped now such a look as a man gnawed by torturing fear might give the
man who brought him relief. What the look meant, the Songsmith did not
ask himself; he knew only that response to it rose in him as rises a
river in flood-time. Like a wooden bridge before a freshet, etiquette
was swept out of his thoughts.
Pushing between the courtmen, he made his way to the Jarl. Without
speaking, Helvin put out a hand and gripped the deerskin shoulder, and
so rode holding to it as Rolf’s son walked beside him.