“_Mix hops with honey when thou mead wilt brew_”
—Northern saying.
Stirring before the great awakening, the southern slopes had thrown off
their coverings of snow, and bared their brown bosoms to the fresh wind.
The pools of the muddy road gave back unclouded blue, and blithe as the
call of the robins in the sunny meadows were the voices of the young
courtmen who had met at a crossing of the ways. Winter maintained its
hold only on the face of Mord the Grim, as looking back from the crest
of the hill he was riding over, he saw that the centre of the group was
the Jarl’s tall song-maker.
Some of the young nobles had set forth to shoot ducks from the broken
ice of the river, and were unfolding their plans to the forester’s
sympathetic ear. Some were seeking ground for a horse-race, when the sod
should be firm enough, and were demanding of the favorite that he use
his influence with the Jarl to have a feast given in honor of the sport.
And others, who knew that Rolf’s son was now on his way home to the
Tower to take part in the wedding-feast of his foster-sister, were
chaffing him about the effect his fine clothes of buff leather would
have upon such Skraellings as he might encounter. The chatter came to an
end only when the hoof-beat of two horses was heard on a road near by;
and one youth surmised that it must be the bridegroom and the priest,
whom Randvar was waiting to join; and another stepped out to look around
the curve, vowing that if Bolverk’s dress was too fine it should be
subdued by a rain of mud. The youth stepped back, however, with a shrug.
“Only Brynhild’s pet page; and behind him, Olaf the French. Tighten the
peace-bands on your sword, Songsmith!”
A third gave Randvar’s ribs a nudge with his elbow.
“No better than wasted breath is that warning!” he laughed. “As though
the Songsmith had any cause now to be jealous of Olaf, Thorgrim’s son!”
So the laughter and chaff went up boisterously.
The Songsmith who had stood quietly listening, save for an occasional
word of comment or banter, became yet more silent, and gave his entire
attention to remedying a mistake in the lacing of one of his high
Cordovan boots.
On his bent head, half the hail of jests continued to fall; and the
other half flew on to meet the boy just turning into the road, fresh as
a sprouting grass blade in his green livery.
“Lucky Bolverk, to be allying himself with such splendor!”
“Picture the cub doing the honors from the high-seat!”
“Are you going to give the bride away, young one?”
“Oh, why give your sister to an every-day body like a guardsman, Eric?”
“Nobody less than the Jarl himself—”
“Ay, the Jarl, by all means! Has it not been proved that jarls’ sisters
take well to forest-bred men?” Again a shout of laughter went up, and
the song-maker gravely addressed himself to the relacing of his other
boot.
Because Randvar remained stooping, the page on his arrival did not
notice him; disdainfully he answered the merry group before which he had
drawn rein.
“No intention have I to break through the brush to any wedding-feast. My
errand hither is to tell the Songsmith that my mind has changed about
going,—only I shall tell him that it is because Brynhild cannot spare
me. He is to meet Bolverk here and go with him; but they must get along
without me. It is to be seen that he left the Tower too late to outgrow
his fondness for moose-hump! Much better would you save your banter for
his backwoods’ ways.”
Like the impudent red-breasted bird now strutting on a stone wall across
the road, Eric thrust out his chest with an air. Laughing and nudging,
the young courtmen made a semicircle around him.
“Oh, a well-bred man is what you are, that is clear as day!”
“Small wonder you have no admiration for that lout of a song-maker!”
“Tell us what you think of the showy clothes he has begun to—”
“Yes, give us your opinion of his habits!” they chorussed.
Still like the bright-eyed bird on the wall, Eric cocked his handsome
little head knowingly; but even as they waited in laughing expectation,
Olaf the French came cantering around the bend, and Eric’s censure gave
way to eulogy as he turned and recognized the new-comer.
“I will tell you a man I have got admiration for, and that is the one
who comes riding hither! When I have my growth, I shall be as near like
him as possible; and I am going to France with him whenever he goes
back,—am I not, Olaf?”
“So it shall be,” Thorgrim’s son assented benignly, as he returned with
inimitable grace the rather careless greetings of the group.
Importance swelled in Eric’s chest until it burst out of his lips as
ecstatically as the red-breasted bird’s song.
“That will be the finest part of my life! I shall wipe this little town
of cabins off my mind as completely as I have wiped off that old
Tower,—and that is as much gone from remembrance as though it had never
been. Do you know, masters, it looks to me sometimes as though I could
never have been born there? What seems likeliest is that some great
chief of Norumbega had one child too many, so that he gave it to thralls
to carry into the forest; and then Erna came along and found it and
called it hers, so much nobler is my nature than my moth—” He left the
word unfinished as his rapt gaze came down for the first time to the
Songsmith, where he had risen and stood beside Gunnar the Merry. “By
that I do not mean that she is not a worthy woman,” he added hastily.
His foster-brother answered not a word. Stepping to the head of Eric’s
horse, he said briefly:
“Get down.”
It did not appear that the page liked the tone overmuch, but neither did
he seem willing to trifle with it. He made a parade of stretching in his
saddle.
“You need not say it as though I meant to keep on,” he retorted. “I have
been waiting until you came, as every one here knows, to get down and
talk to you.” Slowly he dismounted, taking great pains to keep his
bright spurs out of the puddles.
“Give me now that chain off your neck, as a gift for your sister.”
The page muttered something about meaning to give her a better gift,
when he should have had time to visit the trading-booth; but his
foster-brother’s hand remained before him, immovable as a stone cup. He
dropped the chain into it at last, and watched ruefully the stowing away
of the trinket in the pouch of buff leather. Then the owner of the pouch
made another demand:
“Now give me a message to go with it. Say, ‘I send therewith my hearty
greeting.’”
At that, Eric so far forgot his finery as to stamp and spatter it with
mud. But after a second look from under the heavy brows, he said the
words, rebelling only when the circle of grinning courtmen sent up a
roar of laughter at the contrast between the sentiment and the tone in
which it was uttered.
“In meddling in private affairs you show bad manners,” he told them, and
sent Rolf’s son a glance that was half sulky, half coaxing. “Nor do I
think you have any right to scold me after I have made atonement.”
Far from scolding, his foster-brother turned to one of the courtmen who
had come from a horse-fight and borrowed his riding-rod of twisted
leather.
“You have made atonement for slighting Snowfrid,” he said, “but for the
way you behaved about Erna, you cannot redeem yourself from stripes.
Pluck off your kirtle and stand forth.”
“Foster-brother! If you will listen while I explain—”
“Already you have talked enough. Stand forth.”
“Foster-brother—”
“In a word, you will take it or run.”
“That is a good hint, young one,” laughed Gunnar the Merry. “Pick up
your heels.” Then he laughed again at the glare that Eric turned on him.
“Will you keep your nose out of this?” the small Viking demanded. “If
you think I am afraid to bear a flogging—!”
The end of the sentence was that his gay tunic lay on the ground and he
stood forth in his shirt of fine linen, his arms locked upon his sturdy
chest. From that attitude he did not flinch when the lashes fell, though
they were neither light nor few. When it was over, the young men gave
him good-humored applause.
Gratification pulled at his mouth-corners as he looked at them out of
the corner of his eye; but enough vanity had been taken out of him so
that when his gaze passed on to his stern foster-kinsman, he showed only
as a shamefaced little boy, now humbly desirous of being restored to
favor.
“If you think it will give my kinswomen a great deal of pleasure, I will
go to the feast with you,” he offered, when he was clothed again and
lingered shaping mud-balls with the toe of his boot.
“If I have my way, you will not be allowed to go back until it will give
you so much pleasure that you cannot stay away,” the Songsmith returned
severely, rejecting utterly the blandishments of the rosy coaxing face.
The culprit gave up the attempt, after a while. Climbing into his saddle
he rode back up the highway—his sleeve in suspicious proximity to his
eyes—and vanished into a brush-walled lane.
Watching the dejected withdrawal seemed to suggest to Olaf the French a
welcome thought. He moved his horse a step forward, and broke in upon
the scattered chatter.
“Surely,” he said, “if you, Rolf’s son, choose to attack a young friend
of mine, and I choose to avenge the boy on you, that should be
sufficient to excuse me in challenging you?”
Over his shoulder, Randvar looked at him with his short laugh,—he had
stepped aside to whistle back his horse from the meadow in which it had
strayed to browse.
“Surely! If you, Thorgrim’s son, believe that you could get that excuse
accepted,—in case you were alive to offer it!” he consented.
But three of the young courtmen spoke in the same breath: “Far from it,
Olaf! Unless you were the boy’s master.”
Rolf’s son said nothing, only stood waiting with his bridle in his hand.
But gradually Olaf settled back in his saddle, and sat thoughtfully
stroking his short mustaches. “Ill might it be, then, since I lack a
lawful claim. I should kill you, and then if I could not save myself
from outlawry, I should get no good from your death.”
“This I take the ring-oath on, that I would do my best to keep you from
being put in that unsatisfying position,” Randvar retorted.
It seemed to Gunnar the Merry that the conversation had gone as far as
was advisable; and he said so, good-naturedly, several others seconding
him. And while they debated, their cause drew strength from another
source.
Standing farthest out in the road, where he could see around the curve,
a youth named Aslak called out that the bridegroom and the priest were
coming at last. With that announcement, all seriousness was put to rout;
it was not even noticed that on a sudden impulse, Thorgrim’s son wheeled
and galloped back up the highway and disappeared into the lane whose
bush-whiskered mouth had already swallowed up the crestfallen page.
Around the bend bowled the wedding party, the gorgeous bridegroom
explaining at the top of his lungs how mistakes in the coming home of
his marriage clothes had detained him. At sight of him, such cheers and
chaff arose that he shouted himself hoarse with trying to repay a
quarter of it, gave it up finally and set spurs to his horse and fled,
followed by the ruddy-cheeked priest, cursing genially at the unwonted
jolting of his fat sides. After them galloped the laughing song-maker,
dividing his gibes between the group behind and the pair before.
What could have suited his wild blood better than to wander through the
wonder-world of awakening forest? What could taste sweeter than a
wedding-feast to a man who was watching his own hope grow with every day
of spring shine and spring storm?