“_By bending most, the truest sword is known_”
—Northern saying.
Across the court-yard came the Jarl’s sister and her following of
white-armed maids and graceful pages, and the evening breeze went before
her like a herald. With sleepy sighs, the budding fruit-trees dreaming
in the starlight bestirred themselves to offer tribute of fragrant
bloom, made the earth fair for her treading, made the air sweet for her
breathing. Floating down upon her bosom, the roseate petals blended with
it as flower with flower. Drifting down upon her hair, they lay like
unmelting flakes amid its golden fire. So wondrous lovely was she thus
crowned that Yrsa walking beside her had an impulse of admiring
affection, and slipped a caressing hand into hers.
Immediately after she would have withdrawn it, making excuses for her
boldness, but that Brynhild’s gray eyes came down to her as serene as
the starlit sky. Gathering up the timid fingers with her own firm supple
ones, she drew her foster-sister’s arm around her; and so they moved on
together to the women’s house that awaited with open doors their return
from evening service. Gaining the light that came through the dusk to
meet them like a golden welcome, the Jarl’s sister paused to look back
and raise a warning finger.
“Keep in mind our guest,” she cautioned.
Soft as the rippling chat and laughter had been, it smoothed out now to
waveless quiet. With only the swish of trailing silk, the rustle of feet
through grass, they went up the bright path to the door.
On the threshold they were met by the stately old stewardess, who was
mother to Yrsa and the foster-mother of Brynhild the Proud. Cheerily the
Jarl’s sister accosted her:
“If he has changed by so much as the set of an eyelash, good Thorgerda,
I expect you to tell me without delay,” she said. Then she took her hand
from Yrsa’s, took a swift step forward, as from the lace lappings of the
head-dress the old face looked towards her somewhat soberly. “It is not
possible that you are going to tell me that his heart-wound is serious
after all! That the saints would let it be so, when I have been daily to
their altars praising them for the miracle by which they saved him!”
“By no means,” Thorgerda answered hastily. “Just after you left, I
looked at it again; and it has knit together as by a miracle during the
sleep which has held him so strangely. But as I was putting the bandages
back, he came out of his sleep.”
“Ah!” Brynhild said softly, and put an uncertain finger to her lips.
“What was his mood?” she asked at last.
“I wish I were altogether sure, foster-daughter. If I tell the truth of
him, I must say that there is a squareness to his mouth which I—But you
shall hear—But, first, be pleased to come in and take your seat. It is
not fitting—”
“I will not take time to put one foot over the threshold until I hear
what lies so near my happiness,” the Jarl’s sister interrupted her. Her
foster-mother began without preamble.
“Thus it was, then. The first thing I knew, he had put up his eyelids
like a man putting off blankets, and was gazing at the embroideries on
the bed-curtains. Then he saw me, where I stood near the head, and asked
me slowly what place he was in. I said it was the room in the women’s
house whither it was the Jarl’s custom to send sick courtmen to be taken
care of,—I thought it unadvisable to be hasty in speaking your name. And
then—”
The Jarl’s sister crossed the threshold to get nearer to her. “And
then?”
“For a while his expression told me nothing. He lay so long staring
ahead of him that I thought he was falling asleep again, and turned to
leave. He has more strength than you would think likely in a man so
drained of blood. A rustle made me turn back to find that he had pulled
himself up and was looking about for his clothes.”
A sound that was half a laugh and half a sob came from Brynhild’s round
throat. “His clothes! Those slashed and slitted—blood-sponges! Yet what
said he when he saw what garments we had prepared?”
“Nothing, foster-daughter. As yet, stained and tattered leather and
gold-embroidered fabric are all one to him. I pointed out where they
hung, and did not even tell him that they were useless to him. As I had
expected, he was not long in finding it out. With his first motion to
rise, he fell back on his pillows, nor even argued with me when I proved
to him how foolish he was to attempt to move. Yet if I know anything
about the set of a man’s mouth, he will not do our bidding long,” the
old dame ended somewhat unexpectedly.
The Jarl’s sister made Yrsa a sign to help her off with the lace scarf
that lay around her shoulders, like a mist about a rose.
“I will go to him,” was all she said.
If Thorgerda had any thought of dissuading her, it was abandoned upon a
second glance. She spoke only a word of admonishment as Starkad’s
daughter turned towards the foot of the hall.
“So it shall be, then. Still it is good counsel to tread softly. It may
be that he is sleeping. I advised him to do so when I left.”
The girl nodded her bright head impatiently, then shook it at the
thralls who sprang forward from the benches at her approach. Hushing
with her hands the rustling of her skirts, she hastened down the hall to
the western guest-chamber, and gently pushed open the door.
The song-maker was not sleeping. Instead, he had risen and dressed
himself in the garments of grape-purple,—as the sheen on ungathered
grapes the precious embroideries were sparkling with every move he made
in the flickering torch-light. Under one of the fragrant juniper
wall-candles, he stood buckling the last buckle of the tunic. From the
task he did not look up as the hinges creaked, but seemed to take for
granted that it was Thorgerda returned.
“I beg that you will come in and close the door behind you before you
make any fuss,” he said.
She came in and closed the door behind her, without making any fuss; and
he went on, his eyes still aiding his fingers.
“While it is altogether unlikely that the Jarl’s sister would raise any
objections to my departure, yet because Helvin sent me here it might be
that she would think it her duty to make some protests; so I beg of you
that you will not say anything to her about my going.”
Again from the fountain of Brynhild’s white throat welled up a sound
that was half of laughter, half of weeping.
“I will promise you that,” she answered.
He looked up, then; and from bloodless white, his face went blood-red.
After a moment, he made her the most ceremonious salutation at his
command.
“I ask you to understand that I mistook you for your stewardess,” he
said. “She was with me but a short while ago, when I came back to my
wits. It may be you know that I have been out of them these days, or I
would have gone before.”
To grope along the walls for the weapon that was missing from his belt,
he turned away. She had a strange feeling that his mind was so far from
her as scarcely to realize that she was there. She offered the feeble
commonplaces she might have offered a stranger.
“Why should you leave? It is the custom for Jarl’s men to be taken care
of here.”
From his eyes that were like dark caves in the side of a snow-mountain
came forth a flash as he glanced round at her. “That you have a poor
opinion of me I know, but I did not know you thought me capable of
making Helvin’s order an excuse for quartering myself upon you.”
Feeling with his hands where the sword leaned in a corner, he brought it
forth, and stood gazing at the highly polished blade. Once more she had
the sensation of being forgotten.
“It is cleaner than it was the last time I saw it,” he said, “but I
liked it better then. What is Olaf’s fate?”
She answered mechanically: “It is told that he still keeps his bed at
Mord’s house.”
“Is that true?” he asked wonderingly, and a smile that had no connection
with her widened his nostrils. When he had laboriously buckled on the
sword, he came unsteadily towards her. “All the thanks that are due to
your women I pay,—or at least I pay all I have. If you will allow me to
pass now, I will take the task off their hands.”
Some of her sense of strangeness was lost, then, in alarm. But even
before she could tell him of his weakness, he was forced to catch at a
chair’s high back to save himself from falling.
“And bid one of your servants give me his shoulder across the
court-yard,” he murmured.
“I will bid two of them take you by force and put you back in bed where
you belong,” she said indignantly, and turned to throw open the door.
Though he remained leaning heavily on the chair, he spoke slowly: “If
you do—I swear to you—that I will struggle against them—until every
wound on me starts open.”
She took her hand from the door, but only to make of her rounded arms a
bar across it, defying him:
“You would not struggle against me.”
Holding to the chair-back he stood looking at her, at first in surprise,
then with weary patience.
“I should have remembered,” he said, “that it would be a part of your
high breeding not to let me feel that I had been a burden on your
hospitality.”
Of one color were her cheeks and her rose-red kirtle, as she shaped her
unskilled lips to pleading. “It was not Helvin who ordered them to bring
you here. It was I who asked it.... I shared the care of you with my
women ... and found it ... no burden.”
Lowered for the first time was the lofty banner of her head. His gaze
rested on it wistfully even while he continued his slow progress towards
the door.
“My wounds have made you wondrous kind,” he said. “I have heard it told
that such crimson mouths, for all that they are tongueless, are full of
eloquence for women. But you see that they are healing fast. It would
not last much longer anyway. Let me go while I can.”
Pain sharpened his voice, yet his hand was in every way gentle when he
put aside the living bar that dared not tempt his weakness by overmuch
resistance.
Almost in fear she looked up at him. “Randvar! Has it happened that this
has slain your love for me?”
He touched with his lips the wrist he had taken. “I wish it had done so;
then I should dare to stay and sun myself, and take it easily when,
to-morrow or the day after, the skies change and you storm me forth with
hard words—”
“Never, my loved one! Never again!” Aprilfaced, she leaned towards him.
“It will always be good weather for you now. Always! You a song-maker,
and doubt the summer because of a storm or two!”
“It must be because I am a song-maker that I have had faith in so many
things,” he answered. “It is mercy I am asking of you, Brynhild. You
have so much for my body,—have a little for my mind, that since first I
saw you has been a leaf in the wind of your moods. Let me go while I
can, before your fairness knits the net once more around me.”
As gently as might be, he gathered her other wrist into his clasp, and
holding the two in one hand, laid the other on the door. She dared not
struggle with him. But one way was left her. Light as the apple-blossoms
float down, she drifted to her knees.
“My friend, you prayed me once to let you stay because to you it meant
so much and to me—you thought—it meant so little. I beg the boon back
from you. Stay, because it will be easy to you who are so generous in
giving, and to me it would be so hard to give you up.”
As he had done that day in the road, he passed his hands before his eyes
to clear them.
“This—and my blood on Eric’s blade—are the two last sights that ever I
thought to see,” he murmured. “Yet since that one was true, it may be
that this other is.” Looking down at her, a faint smile touched his
mouth. “What dream-mockery to see you so,—you who twist me between your
fingers like any willow out of the forest! But your work will seem
better to you if you have your way in this. Until your mind changes,
then!”
Releasing her, he sat down on the stool beside the door, his elbows on
his knees, his head on his hands. From kneeling, she sank into a sitting
posture on the rush-strewn floor beside him, glad perhaps to hide her
face against his sleeve. It was he who kept their footing against the
swaying shimmering dream-river that seemed to rise about them, and
forded it at last to the shore of reality.
“Yet what right have I to a place in your hall, who have made myself an
outlaw?”
Stifling a sigh, she walked on land again.
“It is unlikely that you will be banished. In the teeth of all the
lawmen, Helvin has refused it. And while it may not turn out to your
honor with the advice-givers, I think the Jarl will push it through by
boldness. To-day, he rode out himself to seek counsel from Flokki of
Iceland, who is the greatest man for bending the law to his wishes. I
might be tempted to reproach you for doing this joy to your foe, my
friend, if I did not guess that I have some blame for your temper.”
Perhaps she wanted to lure him into taking her part against herself, but
he did not even see the bait. Through the hands still supporting his
head, he spoke absently.
“You had not the most share in the matter, Jarl’s sister. For the
hardships he dragged me under with Helvin, I should have followed up
Olaf; and on top of that, there was the trap he baited with Eric. Eric!
Who would have believed a false heart grew in the boy!”
Looking up through his hands, she saw how bitter his mouth had become.
Of a sudden she rose and pressed her lips to it, as one who would draw
poison from a wound.
“The little viper! Never think of him!” she breathed.
Whether it changed his look she did not see, for even more quickly she
dropped back and hid her eyes upon his arm. Only she knew that he sat a
long time looking down at her.
“At least you cannot take the memory of that from me. Give you thanks
for that!” he said at last, and for an instant she felt the touch of his
lips upon her hair. But he ventured no further caress. When he spoke
again, she knew that his gaze had gone back to the rush-strewn floor.
“What I should do is to be grateful that I was hindered from killing the
boy. To have had that news come to Erna’s ears—” She felt the muscles
harden in his arm with the clinching of his fist. Then he went on
somewhat anxiously: “Yet she would like his deed little better. I hope
there is no likelihood of her hearing of it. It seems that he has not
fled to the forest, since you say he was before the lawmen. I suppose
Olaf has taken him under his safeguard?”
She shook her head without raising it. “You do not know Thorgrim’s son,
if you think he troubles himself about a tool after it has served his
purpose. In the first place, he prevented the boy from running away that
he might send him as a witness before the lawmen. Then, when that had
been accomplished, he resigned him willingly to Helvin’s demand. Nothing
has been done to him as yet, for it was not until to-day that the
herb-woman would say how it was like to go with your life—so has your
heart-wound puzzled everyone—but to-morrow they are to take him out and
hew off his hand—” She broke off in a gasp, as the Songsmith’s fingers
crushed her arm unknowingly.
“Ill will it be, then! Do they forget that he is but a child?”
The eyes which she lifted to his were Valkyria’s eyes, that would look
without flinching on the torture of a friend’s foe.
“Now you argue like the goddess Frigg when, because it was young, she
allowed the mistletoe-bush to become the shaft which killed Balder the
Beautiful. If you had got your death from the boy, Helvin would have had
him slain,—and it would have been rightly done!”
The song-maker’s broad shoulders shrugged as once more he leaned forward
upon his knees.
“Though it may sound less well to your ears, Jarl’s sister,” he said
dryly, “the true reason why Helvin is set against the boy is because the
young one was the hinderance in the way of my killing Olaf. Is it also
out of love towards me that Eric’s friends have failed to help him? Or
is it another reason that no one dares to go against the Jarl’s
pleasure?”
“It might be that and yet be no shame to their manhood,” she answered
suddenly, and put back the clustering masses of her hair to look at him
with earnestness. “An unheard-of thing is his temper becoming, Randvar!
The evening after the duel, he rode out to Mord’s house and went in
where Olaf lay and stood for the space of two candle-burnings staring
down at him, without speaking, only tearing his mantle between his
teeth. And yesterday when he was here, he put to me the most unexpected
question. He asked me if ever I saw our father in my sleep, or in dark
corners. And when I said, ‘By no means,’ he laughed—cold trickled over
me at the sound!—and muttered that Starkad showed favoritism in giving
all the visits to him. Heard you ever anything to equal that in
strangeness?”
“Never,” the song-maker assented. But he said no more, nor moved so much
as his bent shoulders. After a glance up at him, she began studying his
face from the ambush of her hair, and sank so deep in musing that she
started when he spoke.
“Where have they caged the cub?”
“In that storehouse loft, which has been thought bad enough to be a
prison since a guard killed another one there by pushing him through the
floor-hole so that he drowned in the beer-vat below.” She came further
out of her study to slip her hand into his, where it hung between his
knees. “Laugh if you will, my friend, still I shall hold it for true
that no one has freed the little snake because no man will lift a finger
for one who has injured you. Only bolts keep the door—no guard stands
watch there—any could have helped him if they had a mind.”
He did laugh, shortly and suddenly; then pressing her hand, he released
it and stood up.
“By this time, the Jarl will have returned from Flokki’s; and I will go
to him.” As she rose swiftly, he lifted one of her silken braids and
laid it lightly across her lips. “Noble maiden, I am a wild hawk that
has been caged over-long. Let me stretch my wings, and I shall come back
all the more gladly,—if so be your kind mood lasts until to-morrow.”
Above the shining bar of her hair, her color flamed so brightly that she
was fain to extinguish it upon his breast. Her words came to him
faintly:
“Will you believe, when I tell you that I have made this plan,—that
to-morrow shall be our wedding-day?”
He stood a long time looking down at her, then said slowly: “If—after
this—you fail me, I shall lose the wish to live.”
“If ever I fail you again, I give you leave to die,” she answered.
Then she let him take from her mouth a kiss of farewell; she clasped
behind her the hands that wished to hold him back, and let him go forth
into the starlit night.