had my old heavy sword and his thing was light; but he sprang aside from
me, and my sword whizzed past his shoulder. Then I turned and rushed him
again, and again he sprang aside, his sword brushing my hair; and again
I rushed him, and again he jumped aside, this time he struck me through
the right forearm. So it went on till the shadows began to creep a
little way from the trees, and I was very bloody and he had but one
hurt; and then as I drew back to hit him, caring little for myself, his
sword was through me, and I fell and kicked up the snow, then turned on
my back. Then suddenly I was still and men pressed around me, saying,
"He is dead"; but, I saw with my open eyes, Heinrick leap upon the
ice-crust, and with his naked sword cutting the air as he ran in rage or
wantonness, he fled, and was so far away that my men stood there
staring. Then they carried me back to the banqueting-hall and through
into my own chamber, and as we passed the kneeling figure of Father
Cefron, I heard the men who carried me answer to the women by the fire,
who whispered to them, "Dead on Easter morning, 'tis an awful day; but
old men die, and so has Father Cefron--though he was a learned man."
Late that day the women came and washed me in my chamber and swathed me
in white folds, and they pulled down my eyes so that I could not see,
and they pushed up my jaws, but it seemed I needed not to breathe; and
that night three women and a man sat with me all night, and the next
night after that two women, and the next night after that one man, he
who had followed me through the gardens before I had found about Elsa,
who was my wife; and on the fourth morning, late after the sunrise,
they lifted me and carried me forth upon their shoulders, a great white
cloth with fringes hanging over me; and then I heard the tramp of many
feet, and women crying, and the consoling tones of men, and I heard the
pipe of children in the distance, and the crackling of the snow beneath
the feet of the four men who bore me; and at last they laid me down upon
the stones and they pulled down the cloth from my face and then I heard
a voice speaking very low--the voice of Elsa, who had been my wife,
"Peace be to thee where thou art"; and I tried to turn from the cold
breath--for I could feel the cold as I could feel the warmth of that
breath--but I could not, for my flesh was dead but my spirit lived within
me. Then they carried me into some dank-smelling place; I knew they had
to stoop, for I could hear their shoulders scrump along the passage,
they laid me down on a shelf of stone and took the white thing quite
away, and then they left me, and then I heard a sound of labouring at
the door, and then a crash.
Slowly in the darkness I fell away, but the life that runs through the
body gathered itself away from the fallen parts, and when I was brown
and thin my self burnt strong, and then I heard a note of freedom in the
dark. It was like music, as my body went, and as my legs and arms became
slim sticks, and as the years made my hands and feet not like human
hands and feet, and as the inside of my body dried and fell; and one
spring and summer passed and my spirit grew ever nearer its birth, I
heard the soundless music breathing freedom night and day. At last my
brain grew hard as my heart had grown years before, and all the parts of
me decayed and shrivelled up until I was a brown, slim, wrinkled, hide
that held some bones: no more. At last a great storm shook the place one
night, and snow came in and wind and rain, and then my spirit was freed
at last; for, sagging from its place, a rock fell inwards where I lay,
and my brown bones were crushed and scattered.
Then I rose through the storm of the night, and I held to the tops of
the trees, and I dropped and the water drenched me as it rushed past
the banks of the streams, and I seized branches in the moonlight and
threw them aloft and had joy to see the wind carry them. Then I came to
myself again, and coming to the earth, tramped through the wood, to give
me customs as live mortals have; for I was alive, having been killed,
and though my body was dead and myself invisible but potent with hard
grasp of hand, and flight in air, and strength of foot, I walked on the
earth a thing that no God surely ever wished to make in his creation. I
was a man with all a man's forces and all a man's heat, but I was as air
to everything, and I held myself as I pleased. Soon I came to the old
hall, and entering through the great door--for doors were nothing to me,
yet I could open and shut them with my hands--I found the banqueting hall
most desolate and only some few seats now near the fire; and passing on
into the upper rooms I heard deep snoring coming from one of them, and
looking in, I saw a young man that I did not know, who lay and slept
beside a great wolf-dog. The wolf-dog turned and raised its head and
howled, and I crept down the stairs again and out and on.
So all that night I journeyed toward the shore, and as the morning broke
the far blue ice stretched before me and I travelled on. I travelled on
over the ice-cakes, shoving on with my rusty sword where water was; and
so from crack to crack and block to block, I crept until I was half-way
across; then I sat down and laughed and nearly fell back into the water,
for the ice-block tipped. I had forgotten that the air was mine, and
that as the birds, or as the winged men and women that the priests have
in pictures, I could go where I would; so I rose from the ice, and the
wind sang across my rusty sword-hilt, and the air was keen, so that I
opened wide my mouth and crossed the ice to land. So in three days I saw
a great smoke rising, and a low stone hill that lay between the last
snow and the bend of the sky. This I passed over in the night time, and
the lights shone there for miles from the city and then I went on
through the moonless night, until a great hall stood against the sea
there. This I knew was Elsinore, and so I stopped and rested in a pack
of straw that lay in a stable near the castle's rearward gate. The
tempest howled around me and the straw whistled as if for fear, but I
lay quiet, for all long cares had quite dropped away.
The next day and the next night too, I lay and rested there in a strange
content that hurt me sometimes when I felt it most; but on the third
night, having gained great strength, and ground my sword--when lights
gleamed down from the castle windows and Elsinore was gay for some
king's whim--I went across the moat and through the gates, and by the
side-door of the castle to where a sleeping soldier stood, his lantern
flaring. I entered into a long corridor, and passed down to a door that
just shone at the other end. I opened it, and came into a small, gay
room where three young pages sat, who cried out at the draught from the
opened door: they did not see me, and I kept my sword away from them,
though I remembered that, I being invisible, they could see as well on
whichever side of me I held it. Then opened I the other door: at once
the full lights blazed upon me, and the hum and sweet wail of
dance-music came, with smell of flowers, and I wondered as the old
flowers sent me their greetings if he was here, as I thought he would
be. Then stealing through the room, through the dancers, I passed into a
corner where sat some young tired men who looked like sleeping. He was
not there. I passed between the dancers once again, and came into a
corner where there sat some foreign-looking men with light-haired
dames--bowing and paying them compliments, I think. I passed between the
dancers then again, and passed before where sat the king and queen both
weary-looking; yet with quick eyes, I could not find him. Then the music
ceased and the dancers went back to their seats once more. Then passed I
down the middle of the hall into the farthest corner, where there sat a
group of ladies speaking in low voice, and men who leaned and talked
and laughed and grinned, and as I passed through the crowd I saw the
face of Him, and all the floor trembled. He sat back in the corner, very
old: his long white hair fell on his sloping shoulders; his thin white
hands were clasped upon his knees and his thin legs were thrust in
velvet boots from which the fur stuck out. He had strange gold things on
his chest and front, and a short beard that straggled round the chin,
but his long hair fell over it; and every moment he would lean forward
and mutter to the women near him some tale of woman's talk forgotten
when half finished. I stood looking, in a corner where the stair ran up
to the musician's gallery, I stood beneath the stair where I could see
his face from out the shadow and where no one could see the sword, and
there I stood and I hated him until there was a sound of rustling in the
hall and of men's feet upon the smooth wood floor; and as I turned to
look I saw the king and queen rise and go out, and then after a little
time the others also went, and nearly last, he rose. A man had come to
him from the pages' room and now held him under one arm as he tottered
across the floor. I followed slowly, my old sword tight grasped. At last
we reached the little gay-draped door. The pages' room was empty, and
the corridors laughed to our heel taps as if mocking the dancers. And so
we went out. There was a great chair there held by two men; into this he
went; but I had my own mind of where to go so my old rusty sword was
through the back of the hind chairman in a moment's time, and as he
fell, the forward man ran round to try the door again, crying out; but I
swung my sword and hit him in the side, and the old blade grided in so
that the stuff came out, and he fell down dead on the steps. When the
noise these men were making had stopped, I went and opened the door and
sat me down inside with Him, and in a very few soft words told Him who I
was; but being so old He could not understand though He was very
frightened and knelt down trembling in the bottom of the chair. Then I
asked Him where were horses, and He told me, mumbling, and I went to a
farmer's stable and took a horse out, first feeding him well and giving
him drink; then on this horse I put Him and wrapped Him in the
horse-cleaner's old rugs and cloths. Then mounting up behind him, I
guided the beast to the main road that runs along the water, and for
many hours we travelled, jolting, in the darkness. Then the moon rose,
and all the world was silver, and the sea lay black except where the
sword-blade from the moon was laid across it. The moon was high. It was
as light as day when I turned inland from the sea at last, and
underneath great trees, and past small hills that rose and left dark
hollows where drifts lay, we went. It was as light as the light of day,
when all the hills seemed to rise up about us in their whiteness, and
the trees stood black on the summits, white on their tops, and casting
huge shadows that moved.
"Here," I said; and getting down from the horse, I turned to Him and
lifted Him down also. "This is the place," I said; and taking Him under
the arms as I had seen the serving-man do, I led Him down into the
valley where the snow did not break to our tread, and standing there in
the valley, holding Him under the arms, I called aloud three times the
cry of a wolf. For a long time we stood there in silence till the cry
had long echoed away; then from the right of me there slid a white wolf
from the hill-top. He slid to the bottom of the hill a little way from
me, and then sat on his haunches and looked at us with his red eyes.
Then came three more wolves, slowly, over the snow; they came down from
under the beech trees that were in front of us, and these also sat down
on their haunches and stayed looking at us with their eyes. Then came
one wolf more from in front of me, who did as the others had done. Then
others came, till there were almost thirty of them, and they sat and
stared at us; but whether they could see me I know not. The moon was
just over us, and neither He nor the wolves cast any shadow. I turned
and took Him in my arms, and holding Him to me, I whispered in a low
voice, "You will fight holmgang here with me to-night." He did not
understand, and His fine white hair lifted a little in the breeze. From
above on the hill-top looked the horse that we had ridden, stupidly; I
had tied him to a branch of beech, and the wolves sat round making no
noise except the whispering and the brushing of their tails in the
snow-glaze. I still held Him in my arms. "You will fight now," I said,
"before the moon casts its shadow, and then I will leave You"; and he
shuddered a little, and shook his head, this time half-understanding. I
held Him close, pressing the horse-cleaner's cloths about Him. "You must
take out your sword, and you must fight with me--you must fight with me
here, now."
"Why?" He murmured feebly, His head sinking on my shoulder.
"Because I say it!" I answered in the same low voice; and with that I
held Him from me and began to untie the cloths. When He was free, I drew
myself apart and unsheathed my old sword, leaving the belt and scabbard
lying on the snow by one of the wolves. Now I went up and whispered to
the trembling figure again, "You shall fight!" I whispered, still in a
low voice.
"I will not fight!" He said.
"You will fight for your honour!"
"I will not fight!" He replied.
"You will fight for your name."
"I will not fight," He said once again.
Then I stopped for a moment. Then I went up to Him slowly, and
whispering to Him, "I was the husband of Elsa, and you broke my life
when you were young, and now that you are old and I am dead, I shall
kill you here where the wolves stand"; and with that, lightly, that I
might not strike Him down, I hit Him on the cheek.
For an instant He stared at me, one side of His face white as the other
grew crimson, and His old eyes flashed for a moment, and His shoulders
squared themselves; but His arms, after one quick motion, hung still at
His sides, and I heard Him murmur again, "I will not fight!" Then a
wrath seized me, and swinging my sword on high I stepped slowly towards
Him and let my point drop back slowly over my shoulder till it hung down
to the snow, then wheeling suddenly and bringing it forward with a
shortening of the arms and a yell that echoed through the empty forest,
I hit Him with the rusty blade where the neck branches to go to the
shoulder, and my blade travelled till it struck the hip-bone on the
other side. Then with my foot on His waist, I drew my sword out and
wiped it on the snow; wiping it many times till it was quite clean, then
picking up the sheath and buckling the belt around me, I covered my
sword and passed between two of the wolves and up the hill, and away to
where the horse was tied. The moon fell down straight into the valley,
and as I rode back again the way I had come under the dark trees and
past the glittering hill-tops, I heard behind me melancholy howling
coming from the place where the wolves danced.
This is all of my tale, except that I stabled the horse before dawn at
the farmer's, and gave him food and drink, and then walked by the sea
road as the dawn broke.
THE SACRILEGE
The hall was raised at one end into a square stage, where the smoke
would gather when the men sat late near the fire, and from this stage
two doors opened at the back corners. One of these doors was curtained
and led to the apartments of the men of the castle. The other was carved
with strange images, and by it stood a long square table of carved oak.
We men sat below at the long board which ran the length of the hall. It
was my lord and the monks who lived upon us who sat upon the raised
staging; the monks eating at their carved table apart.
It was after the dinner, and Father Peter rose in his place. Motioning
to his followers to pass through the door that led to the chapel, he
came and bent and whispered to my lord, who set down his beer-mug on the
instant, frowning; then, after a moment's thought my lord lifted his
hand and spoke to us all in a loud, clear voice:
"Father Peter and I would speak alone in the hall. It would please me
that you men take your beer on the battlements."
The men went shuffling, all but myself, for I was my lord's own man and
counted as nothing more than his follower, doing things which women
usually do for men, for he would have no women-folk about him.
Now Father Peter, folding his fat hands across his chest, lowered his
head and frowned reflectively. My lord sat silently in the great chair
with one leg over the arm.
"Lord Rolf," said Father Peter at last.
"Yes, Father Peter," answered my lord.
"Lord Rolf, Christian of this castle," said Father Peter again.
"Ay! Christian, and certainly lord of this castle," answered my lord,
smiling.
Father Peter raised his head, and lifting one arm, pointed at my lord.
"I have caused it that we should be alone, that I might pray with you,
for you are not so good a Christian as I would have you be."
"Yes," said my lord.
Then Father Peter, tumbling to his knees, prayed for a long time, while
I standing by the fire, cursed his Latin. Then he got up again and
coming to my lord he touched him on the shoulder.
"Have you felt that prayer?" he said in a deep voice.
"I have heard it," said my lord looking down.
"Then I will even say something that will appeal to you in a more
militant way--something that has been in your mind for a long time, my
lord." Father Peter became impressive. "The black frocks that sit and
bend over that carved table by that carved door are a greater nation
than ever the nation of Denmark will be, or any nation will be, until
another nation of such frocks rouses itself against us; and so long as
we shall hold the souls of men, and their hopes and fears of the
hereafter, in our hands as a sword, so long shall we be more powerful
than any sword forged by gnome or fairy."
Father Peter, extending both hands in blessing over Lord Rolf's head,
turned hastily and went through the door that leads to the chapel. Now,
this I would not stand, nor my lord, and we dared not tell it to the men
for fear of violence, that the priests, who had forced themselves upon
us in our house, and built their chapel leaning against our keep, should
threaten us over the tables where they fed with us. This had been a long
time coming, for Christianity sat hard upon us. There were no tortures
in the time of Thor and Odin; and, as I said, Christianity sat
grievously upon us.
Ah! Well! To the next scene. My lord was in the passage before Father
Peter's room, and he knew that Father Peter would return alone from the
chapel after his last devotions, and when Father Peter's dark bulk
turned the corner of the oak stair my lord spoke to him out of the
shadow.
"Father Peter, you have said some words to me to-night in my hall. They
were not churchmen's words."
Father Peter hesitated a moment, then throwing back his head:
"No," he said; "they were words militant, for the Church is born
militant; and she shall ride you as a plough-horse. Let me pass on from
my devotions."
"No, Father Peter," said my lord in a quiet voice, reaching one arm out
of the shadow. "You go where you have taught us that there is more
devotion than there is upon this earth. For three years you and your
crew have eaten, slept, and builded on my lands, until now my house is
but very little my own."
Father Peter took a step forward, but the long white arm barred him
across his thick throat. He strode one step farther forward, pushing the
arm aside, and, turning in the direction of my lord's voice, snarled
like a dog, calling him long names from books I never read. Whether my
lord was mad, or whether the humiliation of the past three years had
hurt his heart, I do not know, but he reached both arms around the
priest, and lifting him in the air, flung him face-downward against the
window, where it ran to the floor. I went to my lord and caught his
hands behind him. Then drawing long breaths, we walked silently toward
the black form at the window foot. Stooping, I put my hand over its
mouth and over its fat chest. There was a drawing up of legs and
something like a laugh, deep in the throat. Then Father Peter died.
* * * * *
The snow chunked under our weary feet and our staffs were useless in the
thaw, and ever behind, when the wind was still, and when there were no
pines near us to whisper as of safety, we could hear the sound of the
horses, and we would look at each other and step higher, and take longer
strides for a few yards. My lord was very weary, for he was a man who
loved warmth, and he could not bear the cold of the indifferent sky
above him and the unfeeling purity of the snow that lay about us.
Far away was the glimmer of sea. There was no dawn, but a streak of
yellow in the east, that grew and lengthened and widened, and then
became flame-coloured and then disappeared, and a little sun came from
the sea, but it had no light and the snow had glimmered more under the
moon. There were but two of us left. We had been seven at first, but of
the others three had turned back and two lay in the snow on our way. It
was the ninth day that we had left the hall; and ever the men of the
Bishop of Lund, three hundred and fifty of them, came after us on their
light horses, and ever we doubled and crouched over the snow, like hares
hungered or hunted. At night we would make fires of the pine-cones, and
in our helmets melt the snow into water, lowering our helmets into the
snow again to cool them afterwards. We had eaten all our bread, but of
fish we had plenty, though I was sorry for my lord. So all that day we
hastened, and when the night came we lay back to back in a hollow of the
snow on a little hill that looked over a bay. The bay was frozen, and I
remember the winter moonlight kept me awake as it shed itself upward
from the ice into my face; and whenever I looked out over the
snow-sweep, its long white track seemed to point to where we lay. Deep
into the night, when the sighing wind had ceased to scud the drift-snow
into our hiding-place, my lord turned over and shook me feebly. "Man!"
he said; "he was right when he said the Church was born militant, and
that only a greater power like itself shall cast a shadow on men. We
broken clans, that call ourselves nations, are little things. What shall
I do? Tell me, what shall I do?" I looked at him in the surprise of one
just waking, as he knelt above me, one hand on each shoulder. "Man!" he
said, again, shaking me, "what shall I do? They are coming; I can hear
them under the snow. I can hear the ice of the bay cracking to their
boats, and I can hear the whispered warnings of the pine trees when they
bend to the stirred air of their innumerable breaths. Man! what shall I
do?" Awake now, I saw that my lord was full of terror, like a child, and
bringing him close to me, I rolled him in his clothes and put him deep
in the snow again, piling some of my own things over him, and he slept
complainingly and fitfully like a child who has been punished.
It was just before the dawn when we heard the far-away shouting of the
Bishop's noisy troop, and crawling to our feet we left our hole in the
snow and crept down the side of the hill toward the water. Here my lord
thought it was easier walking on the ice, but soon we heard the sound of
horses on the strand, and as it was a road to them not like the snow
above, we climbed again to where the deeper drifts were and passed
unseen. So half that day we travelled, and twice they went ahead of us
going by the strand, but both times a few horsemen only; so we dared not
turn back, for we knew the others were spread out on the uplands. Late
in the afternoon we came to the long point of rock that stretches from
our island towards the mainland, and here my lord stopped. "If we had a
boat," he said, trembling I think with eagerness; then, pulling his grey
beard, he whispered to himself only, "Who can fight against the
Church,--who will not fight?" Then turned he again and went on along the
shore; and thus late in the evening we came to a solitary beech which
rose from out a hollow in the hills. Great formless mounds of white lay
near, the fallen ones who had left this old tree lonely; and leaning
against this solitary trunk we passed our night, until the coming of a
glorious dawning fell on our faces as they lay against the smooth
beech-bark, and awakened us early--I think earlier than any of the
Bishop's men awakened that morning, for though we waited to eat we heard
no sound of their pursuing until nearly the noon-time; then from far off
came the familiar thud of horses' hoofs and the crisp jingle of the
bridle-reins, in the far-carrying, cold, morning air.
It was the next day after this, when my Lord Rolf seemed to hesitate,
walking by himself, telling even me nothing, and when it came to the
sunset and a cold yellow edged the dark sky over the sea, and the
snow-drifts looked ghostly at any distance, he spoke to me after many
trials with himself.
"Do you know where we are?"
"No," I said.
"Do you know that by to-morrow at noon we shall have returned?"
I looked at him startled.
"Returned to the hall?"
"Yes," he said; "we shall have been round the island."
"And when we shall have returned?" I asked.