“_What must be is sure to happen_”
—Northern saying.
Coming back to his senses, the Songsmith lay awhile adjusting his
memory.... Once, he had fallen asleep on bloody grass and wakened amid
the silken fragrance of the women’s house.... Here was another
change.... Cobwebbed rafters and bare walls and heavy air as close as
the grave. He snuffed up a resentful breath of it—then forgot to exhale
in the suddenly added consciousness that some one was gazing at him.
Turning his head, his eyes met gray eyes staring at him from a jungle of
blood-colored hair.
On the bench to which the song-maker had been helped the night before,
Helvin Jarl was now sitting, his elbows on his knees, his hands dropped
between to hold the sword with which he was stirring and prodding the
straw of the floor. He laid the flat of the blade against Randvar’s
breast as the Songsmith started up, forcing him gently back.
“Lie still. No one is looking to see whether we go through with the
foolish rules which some simpleton has laid down. I have sent the guards
below.” He took the blade away as he felt the song-maker yield to its
pressure, sheathing it as he went on: “Their state was laughable,
between not knowing whether they should get my wrath because they had
not at once carried you out of here, or because they had not at once
slain you. See how they have tried to trim both sides of their sail to
the wind, by making you comfortable and at the same time holding you
prisoner.”
He nodded floorward, and Randvar noticed for the first time that a
charger of food and drink stood within reach of his hand, that a cushion
had been put under his head and a cloak spread over him. At another time
he might have smiled. Now his gaze came back with unrelieved gravity to
the Jarl’s face that in some way was strange to him.
“Which kind of behavior is most to your mind, lord?” he asked.
Clasping his hands behind his head, Helvin leaned back against the wall
and returned his look sombrely.
“I am only just getting to know surely, comrade. When they brought me
word this morning that you had set free the brat who stepped between
Olaf and death, there was a spell when my fingers itched for your
throat. You can see that I came to you straight out of the hands of my
shoe-boy.” He lifted one of his legs to show that the silk bands which
should have been wound around it were still hanging. “If the sight of
your peaceful sleep had not fallen coolingly upon my hot humor, there is
a likelihood that ... that....” Though his eyes remained upon the
song-maker, they set in a vacant stare. “You would be lying there like
an empty wine-skin ... and I should be raving beside you, trying to put
back the wine I had spilled ... seeing it creep away towards the
cracks ... feeling it slip slimy through my fingers.... Ah!”
The hand that had gone out groping before him he dashed against his eyes
as though to break the spell that bound them, springing to his feet with
a wild cry.
“Why do I torture myself with what is not true? I have not slain you.
You are alive, for all that you have the color of a dead man. Speak to
me! Drive away this madness!”
White as the dead the song-maker was, as much from increasing alarm as
from the weakness of his blood-drained body; yet he managed to lift
himself to his knees and then to his feet, to stand steadying himself
against the wall. Only his voice failed to obey his summons, so that he
was glad to have the pause filled by the thundering tread of a man
hurrying up the steps. In the doorway appeared a guard, his spear
gripped in his hand.
“Jarl, was it for help you cried out?” he demanded.
A moment Starkad’s son held his breath, as though the nethermost deeps
of his mind must be dredged for adequate words,—then all words seemed to
prove inadequate. Snatching a wine-flagon from the tray, he hurled it at
the intruder’s head. The force with which it crashed against the
doorframe suggested what it would have done to the mark that it missed.
How the guardsman took his leave, Randvar did not see. Dropping down
upon the bench, he burst into high-keyed laughter.
“Help—against—_me_!” he gasped, and leaned there laughing until Helvin’s
hand fell upon his shoulder and shook him with friendly severity.
“Stop! That is the end of such laughter that weeping follows it. Stop!
Drink this.”
The pressure of a cup against his lip compelled obedience, and the
draught brought some of his strength back to him; but the Jarl’s
remained the dominating spirit.
“More of that is needed, and food in your stomach. I will be your
dish-bearer for a change,” he said, and himself dropped down
cross-legged on the straw beside the charger that he might pass up its
contents.
Patient as the hand of a woman, his hand that had sped the missile
ministered now to his friend. Now and again, over crust or bone, Randvar
met in the gray eyes a brooding tenderness that tightened the muscles
around his heart.
It was a relief when Helvin’s mind began to turn away to musing, drawing
him over upon his elbow to lie staring into the empty cup he held, like
a wizard reading fortunes in the wine-dregs. Dreamy as the note of
droning bees, his voice sounded when presently he began to muse aloud.
“I only wish I could have found some excuse to give drink to Olaf....
Every moment I stood by him, I was wondering if there was not some
way.... It would not have been necessary to kill him. One drop of the
right herb-juice would be enough to addle his wits until he could pass
for mad. Whatever he betrayed, I should have only to shrug my shoulders
and tap my head. Conceive of his rage! It would have been sport for a
king!”
As a dog over a sweet bone, he put out the tip of his tongue and
noiselessly licked his lips. Wincing, Randvar spoke hastily:
“Jarl, this is an unprofitable mood! Recall it to your mind that Olaf
knows nothing to betray.”
From the folds of strange craftiness that had been drawing over them,
Helvin’s eyes looked up dazedly. Then—slowly—the gaze that he met
steadied the flickering torch of his reason.
“Why, that is true,” he admitted. “I forgot that he had not yet found
the carrion which his vulture-scent warned him of.... Still in the
Fates’ hands is that happening.... Only I can see it coming ... slipping
through their bony fingers....” In a mutter his voice died away.
Stretched at full length he lay in brooding reverie, so sombre a figure
that the cup of dregs took on new suggestiveness.
The song-maker began to speak quietly, gazing out through the open door
where the rosy snow of blossoming crab-trees was banked against the blue
sky, and sun like golden wine steeped all the noonday world.
“It befell me once to see a place far west of here where the earth had
shaken and rent a rock in twain, and out of the chasm had leaped a brook
of sweet water. So I think this happening with Eric must have shaken me;
for like a well of water, a song rose in my mind while I slept,—a song
that never had place there before.”
In the black morass of his musing the Jarl turned, lured by the
will-o’-the-wisp curiosity.
“Never have I heard of a song coming in that manner,” he said. “Even you
have always hammered them out before. Has it risen as far as your lips
so that any of it could brim over into words?”
Though he continued to gaze out at the blowing trees, the song-maker
bent all his energies upon his story-weaving.
“Little of it has yet got so high as that. But it will be a song about
the good which is in a man even though his actions appear to be evil....
Perhaps I shall say that he had Thor’s wrath for turning to the
Christ-faith; and the Thunderer cursed him so that he had no other
choice than to do three nithing deeds, even though his mind was
noble.... He will have a friend—perhaps it will be a maiden—who is brave
enough to believe in his honorable mind in spite of the unworthiness of
his actions.... I do not know yet what those crimes will be ... except
that the first must be that he slays a kinsman—”
“Are—you—mad?” Starkad’s son said slowly.
With a start, Randvar turned. That the Jarl had risen gradually from his
place on the straw he had realized, but he had taken it for interest.
Now for the first time he looked at him. Looking, he sprang to his feet.
“What ails you?”
“Are you mad?”—Helvin repeated his slow question—“that you dare to make
my life into a song and tell it to my face?”
“_Your_ life!” the Songsmith breathed. Then, even angrily, he swept the
suspicion aside with his arm. “Lord, this is an unbecoming jest! You
must know that such a song would be true of any man in the world.”
Futile as the dash of waves against a rock, the words fell down
unheeded. Unmoved as a rock, Helvin stood gazing at him.
“Has your swooning so dulled your wits that you really cannot see that
to sing that song in any one’s hearing would be to tell him that you saw
me murder my father?”
It was too late to check the words, though Randvar’s arm had shot out in
the attempt. Then he stood with his head gripped in his hands, like a
man into whose mind a terrible truth is eating. As though he had
forgotten he was not alone, he started when Helvin’s hand fell upon his
breast and pressed him back upon the bench.
A strange softness had come into the voice of Starkad’s son,—a softness
from which the ear recoiled as the hand recoils from the softness of
decayed fruit.
“Now I see by your dismay at finding how near you had come to betraying
me that it was neither madness nor treachery that prompted you, but the
awful knowledge working in you as the awful guilt has worked in me. Of
no avail to remind myself that he brought it on his own head—that I
tried to keep away from him when I felt it coming but he forced me aside
with him, goaded me until I could no more keep hold of myself than my
shaking hands could keep hold of the leash—It may well be forgiven you
that you shudder! I might have known that soon or late the horror must
work out of you. Yet am I glad that I trusted you as long as was
possible. Bear that in mind about me, even though it must come here to
an end.”
With quick light step he went and shut the door. The sound of its
closing fell ominously on the song-maker’s ears, even as a sense of
smothering fell on him with the passing of the glimpse of sky. He asked
slowly:
“Is it my death-warning that you give me?”
Still with gentleness, Starkad’s son shook his head. “Only what my
safety has need of I take,—your liberty. I will give you the comforts
and amusements you may choose yourself—”
“Amusements!” Rough scorn was in the gesture with which the Songsmith
sprang up. “Why do you talk thus, or what do you think of me? Do you
forget that I am bred to no lower roof than the tent of the sun? Better
might you cage an eagle and bid him be content with a branch where
before he had ranged the forest! But I belie you in thinking it! Your
sane self could never deal so wrongfully with me,—and you must be sane!
You _must_ be sane! No marks of the curse are on you. If you are
whole-minded, listen to me! For this song, I take the Cross-oath that it
shall never pass my lips—even in solitude. Nay, I will dash it out of my
memory! By your love, believe me!”
To take his hand and press and stroke it, the Jarl came all the way from
the door.
“Do I not believe you?” he said caressingly. “On your good intentions I
would lay down my life. It is luck that I dare not trust so much to. Did
I not for a dozen years hide my curse so that not even my own kin
dreamed it was there, only to have it burst out like smouldering fire at
last? So would your uttermost effort be set at naught with such a secret
pressing for outlet—”
Almost with repulsion, Randvar freed himself from the fondling hands,
and pushed the other away that he might front him squarely.
“Jarl, as God hears me, I would sooner that you should rage! It is not
sound, this softness! Face me like a man—or a devil—or anything but
this! Listen, and I will lay the truth before you so that no room shall
be left for doubt to stand between us. If it rouse you to anger, so much
the better! Lord, I never knew your secret,—only I let you think so
because in no other way would you believe in my love. Of that hard
happening at the Pool, I saw no more than your struggle with the hound.
That you loosed him on Starkad, I become aware for the first time—”
He broke off because it was plain that Helvin was no longer listening.
He stood gazing at his song-maker, his eyes retreating deeper and deeper
between crafty folds.
He said as to himself: “Love of life! How strong it must be in a
mightful man like you!... Doubly strong since you have the love of the
maiden that is dear to you.... It is not strange that it should be
strong enough to make you lie to me—”
“Jarl!” the Songsmith broke in fiercely,—but stopped, conscious that his
voice could not carry across the chasm that had opened between them.
Only he could see across it the expression with which Helvin was
regarding him; and more awful than the slyness of his half-shut eyes was
the gaze in which they were widening, the rapt gaze of one who sees
beyond the veil.
“Behold, what weird powers are allotted to me!” he said under his
breath. “As through a key-hole, I can see through this lie into the hall
of What Is To Come. The next time fear pricked you, you would lie
again.... And then to keep off fear, you would begin to act lies.... And
after that it would seem so natural that you would be thinking lies ...
lies ... lies ... till, like a worm-riddled boat, only your fair shape
would be left. You who were the most unlying and bravest-hearted of men!
Rather than you shall come to that pass, I will slay you in your prime.”
From the tangled mass of blood-colored hair, his wide eyes turned slowly
to the song-maker, fired with crazy purpose.
Then at last Randvar understood that the torch of his friend’s reason—so
often flickering, so often burned low—had been extinguished forever. To
shut out the sight of the ghastly ruin it left, he hurled himself
against the wall and flattened his face against the rough boards. Unreal
as the mouthing of a vision, the caressing voice came to him.
“Does your heart speak so heavily about dying? Try if you cannot bring
your mind to the mountain-top on which my mind stands. Then shall you
see that what looks to be a storm-sky is but a cloud over one valley,
while sun hallows all the rest. I kill you when life holds much for you,
yet see this! I keep you from sin. I save your memory fair for those who
love you. Above all, I preserve our friendship from the first tremble of
dissolution. A nobler tree than our friendship never sprang from
man-clay. Would you rather see it withered and decayed than laid low in
all its glory by one axe-stroke?”
As from a man on the rack, a cry was wrung from the song-maker: “Oh,
Powers of Might, must it indeed end so?”
Yet softer grew the voice of Starkad’s son, till it was hushed to the
unearthly stillness of a forest-deep.
“Alas, how has the love of woman clouded your eyes, that were once so
clear to see the truth! Yet think not I blame the weakness of your
flesh. So shrinking is my own that, plain as I see the goodness of the
deed, I could not do it as we stand. It is the working of fate that when
my Other Shape possesses me, I know no qualms. Until I come in that
guise, then! Yet before we part, press my hand once more in love.
Friends clasp when they separate for a day,—shall souls sunder forever
and say no farewell?”
It was a strange embrace; for in the eyes of Starkad’s son, the doomed
man was as one dead; and to the mind of the song-maker, his friend had
ceased to live. Like the sound of a clod upon a coffin-lid was the sound
of the door closing for the last time between them.