It was long ago, when the world was so young that peace meant little
more than a breathing spell between battles. At the Royal Farm of
Augvaldsnes, in Norway, King Olaf Haraldsson sat at an Easter feast with
his men.
Right and left on either hand the long tables stretched away, cleared of
all their bounty, save two lines of brimming ale-horns. Down the middle
of the hall fires burned brightly, flushing the delicate faces of the
women on the cross-benches, sending the golden light higher—higher—until
every shield upon the tapestried wall flashed back an answer. Overhead,
through the smoke-holes between the sooty rafters, shone the still white
stars.
“So, it may be, the eyes of angels look down upon our earthly pastimes,”
King Olaf said thoughtfully, and his stern face softened with the
satisfaction he had in a scene of such orderly good cheer. Rolling his
ale on his tongue, he settled himself to listen to a man who had just
risen from a place on the left of the high-seat.
Thorer Sel was the man’s name, and he was the bailiff that had this
royal farm of Augvaldsnes under his management. As he stood now, a showy
figure in the firelight, he would have been good to look at if his eyes
had not been shifty and his mouth coarsely overbearing. He smiled
jeeringly at the man who had addressed him.
“So you want to know what took place between me and your friend, Sigurd
Asbiornsson, do you?” he asked.
“If you will,” the man on the bench answered. “I was away on a Viking
voyage last summer when it happened.”
Next above this man on the bench sat a tall, broad-shouldered young
fellow with a frank, comely face and the air of one amiably used to
having his own way. He was the son of King Olaf’s most powerful vassal,
and his name was Erling Erlingsson. Now suddenly he, too, spoke up.
“I, also, would like to hear that story. If it is true, as I have heard
it, then are you the only man in the world who has ever made Sigurd
Asbiornsson bow his neck.”
Thorer Sel threw him a glance over his shoulder.
“I forgot that it would not sit comfortably in your ears,” he said. “It
had slipped my mind that the Halogalander is your kinsman.”
“Kinsman or not, I like to see justice done to men of courage,” young
Erlingsson answered. “I say, in the presence of everybody, that Sigurd
Asbiornsson is one of the bravest men that ever drew sword or breath.”
“The story will show,” Thorer Sel said mockingly, and began forthwith.
“To start at the beginning, Sigurd Asbiornsson is the man who came down
here from the north and bought corn and malt to carry home for the
entertaining of his friends, though it was well known to him that
because of the bad seasons, King Olaf had forbidden that any meal should
be carried out of the south of the country. Dauntless as I am wont, I
went down where he had put in under the island for the night and
stripped him of his cargo and his fine embroidered sail, and drove him
home in disgrace—all in the manner which I will truthfully relate.”
“I have seen that you have his sail in your possession,” Erling said
slowly, “but only he could convince me that you got it without a trick,
if you got it against his will.”
That was not a bad guess, since the only cause to which the bailiff owed
his success was his forethought in providing himself with sixty men, as
against Sigurd Asbiornsson’s twenty, and in falling upon him at the
moment when he and his crew were dressing after a morning swim and stood
utterly defenseless against attack. But a guess is only a guess—and no
one stood up to confirm it.
“The story will show,” sneered Thorer Sel, and proceeded to tell it at
great length, with less and less regard for the truth.
He drew it out so long that many of the feasters tired of him and began
talking among themselves; but four people continued to listen
attentively. One was the Viking who had asked for the tale. Another was
Erling, ominously fingering his sword-hilt. A third was a young girl
sitting among the matrons on the cross-bench—a beautiful girl who bore
her small fair head with brave dignity. The fourth was a strange man in
poor attire who had come in unnoticed among the servants that were
fetching fresh supplies of ale.
The stranger listened the most keenly of all—it almost seemed as if the
bailiff might have left him hanging on the words. Step by step, he was
drawn forward until only a space of bare table lay between him and the
storyteller.
He was a tall man, with a mighty girth of chest and limb. For all that
he wore a shabby hat and held a hayfork in his hand, he did not carry
himself like a churl. As he moved from the shadow of the last pillar
into the firelight, the girl on the cross-bench stifled an exclamation,
and her cheeks went white as the linen before her.
“Astrid, my friend, what ails you?” the housewife beside her asked
kindly.
A woman on the matron’s other side admonished her with a nudge.
“Have you forgot,” she whispered, “that Asbiornsson wooed her before her
father married her to Hall the Wealthy? Naturally she would be troubled
at hearing him ill-spoken of.”
Then both forgot her and their gossip and all else.
“How did Sigurd behave when you unloaded his vessel?” the Viking had
just inquired.
And the bailiff had answered brazenly: “When we were discharging the
cargo, he bore it tolerably, though not well; but when we took the sail
from him, he wept.”
They were the last words Thorer Sel spoke on earth. While they were
still on his lips, the stranger cleared the table at a bound. There was
a flaming of warrior-scarlet from under homespun gray, a hiss of steel,
the sound of a blow—and then the whole room seemed turning scarlet, and
the head of Thorer Sel rolled on the table before the king.
“Sigurd!” the girl on the cross-bench cried piercingly.
“Sigurd!” shouted young Erlingsson, leaping to his feet.
After that, it was hard to tell what any one said. Pushing forward in
obedience to an awful gesture from King Olaf, guards laid hold of Sigurd
Asbiornsson and hurried him from the hall, and thralls came running with
towels and water and a board. While some took up what lay heavily among
the reeds of the floor, others spread fresh linen, and still others
removed the bespattered mantle from the king’s shoulders. Only in one
thing they all acted alike—no man raised his eyes to the king’s furious
face.
Of a different mettle was Erling Erlingsson. Coming back from the door
through which the guards had led his friend, he came straight up to the
high-seat.
“Lord,” he said, “I will pay the blood-money for your bailiff, so that
my kinsman may retain life and limbs. All the rest do according to your
pleasure.”
King Olaf’s voice was very low. It was his way when his rage was
highest.
“Is it not a matter of death, Erling, when a man breaks the Easter
peace, and breaks it in the king’s lodgings, and makes the king’s feet
his execution-block? Though it may well be that it seems a small matter
to you and your father!” His teeth showed through his quietness.
Erling tried his unpractised tongue at entreaty.
“The deed is ill-done, Lord, in so far as it displeases you, though
otherwise done excellently well. But though it is so much against your
will, yet may I not expect something for my services to you?”
After a little, King Olaf said:
“You have made me greatly indebted to you, Erling, but even for your
sake I will not break the law nor cast aside my own dignity.”
By a gesture he forbade a reply, and spoke on, asking what had been done
with the murderer.
“He sits in irons, upon the doorstep, with his guard,” Erling said,
heavily.
Then he roused himself to ask one thing which he thought might not be
denied him.
“Lord, it is a year since I have seen him, and we have been
blood-brothers since we were children. Give him into my charge this one
night, and I will answer for him in the morning.”
After a long time, King Olaf said grimly:
“It is true that to hang a man after sunset is called murder. Take him,
then, for the rest of the night. But know for certain that your own life
shall pay for it if he escape in any way.”
“It must be as you will,” Erling answered, and went out of the
feasting-hall that but a short while before had seemed to him a place of
such good cheer.
Upon the doorstep, ironed hand and foot, Sigurd Asbiornsson sat
listening quietly to the excited expostulations of his guard. Now that
the broad-brimmed hat had fallen off, it could be seen that there was
nothing blood-thirsty in his handsome sun-browned face. Strong-willed
and proud and hard, it might be, and yet in some delicate curve of his
mouth, some light of his fine gray eyes, lay that which won him,
unsought, women’s trust and men’s love. He looked up with a smile to
meet Erling’s troubled gaze.
“Why take your failure so much to heart, comrade?” he remonstrated. “I
came prepared to pay Olaf’s price. Stay here by me that we may at least
have to-night together, for I suppose he thinks too much of his
wonderful laws to hang me before sunrise.”
Nodding, Erling turned and spoke to one of the guards, who caught up a
hammer and commenced knocking the chains off the prisoner’s limbs with
far greater alacrity than he had shown in putting them on.
“What is the meaning of that?” Sigurd asked in surprise.
“Olaf has given you into my charge until morning,” Erling explained
briefly.
For as long as the space between one breath and the next, the prisoner
grew tense and alert.
“What pledge did you give for my safety?” he asked quickly.
Less quickly, Erling answered: “My own life.”
The half-formed hope faded. Sigurd’s mighty frame relaxed.
“I give you thanks,” he said, and no more was spoken on the subject.
One by one, the guards drifted back to the ale-horns, and the friends
were left alone in the starlit silence of the courtyard. Suddenly,
Erling laid hold of the great shoulders before him and shook him
fiercely, while at the same time his fingers clung to them in a caress.
“You madman!” he burst out. “Could you not guess that I was going to
kill him for you? Olaf dare not slay me—a fine would be the uttermost.
What fiend possessed you! Did you imagine Olaf loved you because you had
always defied his laws? You madman! Did you not know that I would do it
for you?”
“Would that have rubbed out my disgrace, if you had done it for me?”
Sigurd asked quietly.
He laid his hands on the other’s shoulders, and they stood breast to
breast and eye to eye.
“Come, come, kinsman, these are useless words; why waste breath on them?
If you knew how Thorer Sel spoke to me that morning—spoke to me before
my men!—and how the tale spread northward until churls that had never
dared sneer behind my back before, taunted me to my face! No, no, it was
the only way to do it, boldly and openly, with every one looking on. Now
I shall leave a clean name behind me. What more could I do if I lived to
be a hundred?”
Erling was silent; only, his hands that rested on his friend’s shoulders
gripped and held them so that marks were left on the flesh, and the two
men remained looking into each other’s eyes until a mist came between.
Then, without speaking, they freed each other; and Sigurd said quickly:
“One more thing lies on me to do. Will you help me?”
“I trust there is killing in it,” Erling said through his teeth.
“It is to get a message to Astrid, Gudbrand’s daughter,” Sigurd replied.
Erling cried out in amazement: “The wife of Hall the Wealthy!”
“Hall the Wealthy has been dead two seasons.”
But Erling exclaimed again: “Gudbrand’s daughter! Of whom you could not
speak bitter words enough—even though you knew they would reach her
ear!”
“I spoke unfairly,” Sigurd said, flushing. “She sent me a token that I
did not receive—I cannot tell you more. I do not ask now that she should
stoop to see me herself, but if she would send some woman who has her
confidence—if I could speak my message to her with the certainty that it
would come truthfully to Astrid’s ear——” His dark face flushed redder
and redder in the moonlight, and he did not turn away to hide it. “It is
the greatest service you could render me, kinsman,” he finished.
Stifling an impatient breath, Erling flung the end of his cloak over his
shoulder and turned.
“The sooner the better, then—before they are gone to bed. Wait in the
herb-garden, yonder. It is the spot where you will be the least liable
to interruption.”
Netted around with bare bushes and strewn underfoot with shriveled
leaves, the herb-garden lay in desolation. Yet even here the slender
sides of branches showed the swelling hopes of springtime. A thought
came to Sigurd of the budding trees at home, and the harvest he would
never reap; then he thrust it from him angrily, and strode up and down
the pathway, waiting.
Three times the wind rustling through the bushes tricked him. But at
last there was the ring of spurs on gravel, and Erling came out of the
shadows, followed by a slender figure wrapped from head to foot in a
hooded cloak of blue.
Trying to guess which one of Astrid’s women the silken folds hid, Sigurd
stood gazing at her silently. She halted before him without speaking;
but Erling said shortly:
“You have little enough time. I was only able to manage it because
Gudbrand is still swilling drink in the hall. The instant I see his
torch-bearers, I shall call you.”
He disappeared again into the gloom that lay between them and the gate.
Unconsciously, Sigurd’s glance must have followed him, for when it came
back to the girl, she had answered the question in his mind. The blue
hood was thrown back, and the moon shone on a small fair head, upborne
with brave dignity, even while the lovely eyes and lips were tremulous.
“Astrid!” he breathed.
She returned his look with the grave steadiness that was a little
pathetic in so young a girl.
“For the second time I have lowered the point of my pride to you,” she
said. “Are you going to make me sorry this time also?”
He began to speak eagerly. It seemed that he would have caught her hands
if he had dared.
“Astrid, I was not to blame! I beg you not to believe that I would
slight a token from you who have always sat highest in my heart. The
churl you gave your rune-ring to—he must have mislaid it, and then
feared to give it to me when he found it afterwards. Not until this
Spring, when he died and his relation came upon it among his things and
brought it to me, did I know that you had sent me a message of love
after your father refused to bargain with me. Because I was not in the
king’s service, Gudbrand was even disrespectful in his treatment of me.
And the next month, I heard that you had married Hall. And I had had no
farewell from you. What could I think but that you had held me lightly,
and lightly let me go? What else could I think?”
“You could have remembered that I was helpless,” Astrid answered slowly.
“Could I wed you against my father’s will? Could I hold back from
marrying Hall, though he was in everything what I detested most?”
She steadied her lip in her little white teeth.
“You could have believed in me,” she said, “as I would have believed in
you. Three seasons we had spoken and feasted and ridden together, and
when had you ever found me changeable toward my friends, or greedy after
gold? You could have believed in me.”
“I ought to have believed,” Sigurd said humbly.
His face had grown white, as no man had ever seen it. Even when spurs
clanked on the path, he stood before her helplessly.
“I ought to have believed,” was all he could say.
Moving a step nearer, she laid her hands upon his breast and looked up
at him with a little flickering smile.
“You would have believed—if you had loved me as I loved you,” she said.
She touched her finger to his lips, as he would have cried out.
“I do not think it is in your nature to feel much love for a woman, my
friend. If you had not loved your own way better than me, would you not
have entered the king’s service to win me, when only that lay between
us? Your land—your chiefship over your men—the freedom to do as you
pleased—all those you loved; and what was left over, you gave to me. It
was not very much, was it? Yet perhaps it does not matter, since I was
so glad to get it.”
Though her eyes were misty with tears, she held up her mouth to him
bravely.
“I give you thanks for telling me,” he whispered softly, when he had
kissed her.
As Erling’s voice sounded urgently, she drew her hood over her head and
was gone.
It was a soberly thoughtful man that was pacing the garden-paths when
Erling came back. They walked away the rest of the night in silence,
while the moon went on in darkness, and the gray dawn which is neither
light nor shadow spread coldly over the sky.
It was this new expression which caught King Olaf’s eye, when he and his
outlaw faced each other again.
With the first burst of morning sunshine, the king came out of the hall
on his way to mass, followed by the high-born people of his household.
Blinking laughingly in the dazzle, and drawing in great breaths of the
fresh sweet air, the retinue made an odd contrast to the other group
waiting on the doorstep—three swarthy thralls testing a coil of rope in
their hairy fists, and Sigurd Asbiornsson once more ironed and guarded.
King Olaf stopped abruptly.
“How is it that things which I dislike are always kept before my mind?”
he demanded. “Why was he not put to death at sunrise?” The guard
answered that the king had named no definite time, and they feared to
misunderstand his will.
“I have seldom heard a poorer excuse,” King Olaf returned coldly.
But he did not make his will clearer. He remained scrutinizing the
prisoner with a touch of uncertainty in his strongly marked brows.
Fearless, Sigurd Asbiornsson looked, as always, but for the first time
that something seemed gone from his boldness which had stirred the
king’s temper against him.
Olaf smiled slowly as a test came to his mind.
“To please your friends, Sigurd,” he said, “I will make you an offer
which you can do as you like about accepting. It is the law of the land
that a man who kills a servant of the king shall undertake that man’s
service, if the king will. Would you submit to that law, and undertake
the office of bailiff which Thorer Sel had, if I gave you life and
safety in return?”
He gathered up his mantle to depart, as he concluded, so sure was he
that his offer would be rejected. Of all the throng, from Gudbrand’s
daughter to Erling, not one believed that it stood any chance of
acceptance. They almost ceased to breathe when—slowly—with a flaming
face and the stiffness of a pride that was cracking at the joints,
Sigurd Asbiornsson bent his head and kissed the king’s hand.
Not to save his life could he have spoken. His power of speech did not
come back to him until the churchgoers had swept on across the court,
and he was left alone with Astrid in his arms.
“Do you believe now that I love you?” he asked, raising her face between
his hands.
Then it smote his heart that he should even seem to reproach her, and he
finished lightly:
“What does it matter? We will make a jest of it between ourselves. Let
the world think me the king’s man—we know that I am yours!”
[Illustration]