A peasant who had murdered a monk took to the woods and was made an
outlaw. He found there before him in the wilderness another outlaw, a
fisherman from the outermost islands, who had been accused of stealing
a herring net. They joined together, lived in a cave, set snares,
sharpened darts, baked bread on a granite rock and guarded one
another’s lives. The peasant never left the woods, but the fisherman,
who had not committed such an abominable crime, sometimes loaded game
on his shoulders and stole down among men. There he got in exchange for
black-cocks, for long-eared hares and fine-limbed red deer, milk and
butter, arrow-heads and clothes. These helped the outlaws to sustain
life.
The cave where they lived was dug in the side of a hill. Broad stones
and thorny sloe-bushes hid the entrance. Above it stood a thick growing
pine-tree. At its roots was the vent-hole of the cave. The rising smoke
filtered through the tree’s thick branches and vanished into space. The
men used to go to and from their dwelling-place, wading in the mountain
stream, which ran down the hill. No-one looked for their tracks under
the merry, bubbling water.
At first they were hunted like wild beasts. The peasants gathered as if
for a chase of bear or wolf. The wood was surrounded by men with bows
and arrows. Men with spears went through it and left no dark crevice,
no bushy thicket unexplored. While the noisy battue hunted through the
wood, the outlaws lay in their dark hole, listening breathlessly,
panting with terror. The fisherman held out a whole day, but he who had
murdered was driven by unbearable fear out into the open, where he
could see his enemy. He was seen and hunted, but it seemed to him seven
times better than to lie still in helpless inactivity. He fled from his
pursuers, slid down precipices, sprang over streams, climbed up
perpendicular mountain walls. All latent strength and dexterity in him
was called forth by the excitement of danger. His body became elastic
like a steel spring, his foot made no false step, his hand never lost
its hold, eye and ear were twice as sharp as usual. He understood what
the leaves whispered and the rocks warned. When he had climbed up a
precipice, he turned towards his pursuers, sending them gibes in biting
rhyme. When the whistling darts whizzed by him, he caught them, swift
as lightning, and hurled them down on his enemies. As he forced his way
through whipping branches, something within him sang a song of triumph.
The bald mountain ridge ran through the wood and alone on its summit
stood a lofty fir. The red-brown trunk was bare, but in the branching
top rocked an eagle’s nest. The fugitive was now so audaciously bold
that he climbed up there, while his pursuers looked for him on the
wooded slopes. There he sat twisting the young eaglets’ necks, while
the hunt passed by far below him. The male and female eagle, longing
for revenge, swooped down on the ravisher. They fluttered before his
face, they struck with their beaks at his eyes, they beat him with
their wings and tore with their claws bleeding weals in his
weather-beaten skin. Laughing, he fought with them. Standing upright in
the shaking nest, he cut at them with his sharp knife and forgot in the
pleasure of the play his danger and his pursuers. When he found time to
look for them, they had gone by to some other part of the forest. No
one had thought to look for their prey on the bald mountain-ridge. No
one had raised his eyes to the clouds to see him practising boyish
tricks and sleep-walking feats while his life was in the greatest
danger.
The man trembled when he found that he was saved. With shaking hands he
caught at a support, giddy he measured the height to which he had
climbed. And moaning with the fear of falling, afraid of the birds,
afraid of being seen, afraid of everything, he slid down the trunk. He
laid himself down on the ground, so as not to be seen, and dragged
himself forward over the rocks until the underbrush covered him. There
he hid himself under the young pine-tree’s tangled branches. Weak and
powerless, he sank down on the moss. A single man could have captured
him.
Tord was the fisherman’s name. He was not more than sixteen years old,
but strong and bold. He had already lived a year in the woods.
The peasant’s name was Berg, with the surname Rese. He was the tallest
and the strongest man in the whole district, and moreover handsome and
well-built. He was broad in the shoulders and slender in the waist. His
hands were as well shaped as if he had never done any hard work. His
hair was brown and his skin fair. After he had been some time in the
woods he acquired in all ways a more formidable appearance. His eyes
became piercing, his eyebrows grew bushy, and the muscles which knitted
them lay finger thick above his nose. It showed now more plainly than
before how the upper part of his athlete’s brow projected over the
lower. His lips closed more firmly than of old, his whole face was
thinner, the hollows at the temples grew very deep, and his powerful
jaw was much more prominent. His body was less well filled out but his
muscles were as hard as steel. His hair grew suddenly gray.
Young Tord could never weary of looking at this man. He had never
before seen anything so beautiful and powerful. In his imagination he
stood high as the forest, strong as the sea. He served him as a master
and worshipped him as a god. It was a matter of course that Tord should
carry the hunting spears, drag home the game, fetch the water and build
the fire. Berg Rese accepted all his services, but almost never gave
him a friendly word. He despised him because he was a thief.
The outlaws did not lead a robber’s or brigand’s life; they supported
themselves by hunting and fishing. If Berg Rese had not murdered a holy
man, the peasants would soon have ceased to pursue him and have left
him in peace in the mountains. But they feared great disaster to the
district, because he who had raised his hand against the servant of God
was still unpunished. When Tord came down to the valley with game, they
offered him riches and pardon for his own crime if he would show them
the way to Berg Rese’s hole, so that they might take him while he
slept. But the boy always refused; and if any one tried to sneak after
him up to the wood, he led him so cleverly astray that he gave up the
pursuit.
Once Berg asked him if the peasants had not tried to tempt him to
betray him, and when he heard what they had offered him as a reward, he
said scornfully that Tord had been foolish not to accept such a
proposal.
Then Tord looked at him with a glance, the like of which Berg Rese had
never before seen. Never had any beautiful woman in his youth, never
had his wife or child looked so at him. “You are my lord, my elected
master,” said the glance. “Know that you may strike me and abuse me as
you will, I am faithful notwithstanding.”
After that Berg Rese paid more attention to the boy and noticed that he
was bold to act but timid to speak. He had no fear of death. When the
ponds were first frozen, or when the bogs were most dangerous in the
spring, when the quagmires were hidden under richly flowering grasses
and cloudberry, he took his way over them by choice. He seemed to feel
the need of exposing himself to danger as a compensation for the storms
and terrors of the ocean, which he had no longer to meet. At night he
was afraid in the woods, and even in the middle of the day the darkest
thickets or the wide-stretching roots of a fallen pine could frighten
him. But when Berg Rese asked him about it, he was too shy to even
answer.
Tord did not sleep near the fire, far in in the cave, on the bed which
was made soft with moss and warm with skins, but every night, when Berg
had fallen asleep, he crept out to the entrance and lay there on a
rock. Berg discovered this, and although he well understood the reason,
he asked what it meant. Tord would not explain. To escape any more
questions, he did not lie at the door for two nights, but then he
returned to his post.
One night, when the drifting snow whirled about the forest tops and
drove into the thickest underbrush, the driving snowflakes found their
way into the outlaws’ cave. Tord, who lay just inside the entrance,
was, when he waked in the morning, covered by a melting snowdrift. A
few days later he fell ill. His lungs wheezed, and when they were
expanded to take in air, he felt excruciating pain. He kept up as long
as his strength held out, but when one evening he leaned down to blow
the fire, he fell over and remained lying.
Berg Rese came to him and told him to go to his bed. Tord moaned with
pain and could not raise himself. Berg then thrust his arms under him
and carried him there. But he felt as if he had got hold of a slimy
snake; he had a taste in the mouth as if he had eaten the unholy
horseflesh, it was so odious to him to touch the miserable thief.
He laid his own big bearskin over him and gave him water, more he could
not do. Nor was it anything dangerous. Tord was soon well again. But
through Berg’s being obliged to do his tasks and to be his servant,
they had come nearer to one another. Tord dared to talk to him when he
sat in the cave in the evening and cut arrow shafts.
“You are of a good race, Berg,” said Tord. “Your kinsmen are the
richest in the valley. Your ancestors have served with kings and fought
in their castles.”
“They have oftener fought with bands of rebels and done the kings great
injury,” replied Berg Rese.
“Your ancestors gave great feasts at Christmas, and so did you, when
you were at home. Hundreds of men and women could find a place to sit
in your big house, which was already built before Saint Olof first gave
the baptism here in Viken. You owned old silver vessels and great
drinking-horns, which passed from man to man, filled with mead.”
Again Berg Rese had to look at the boy. He sat up with his legs hanging
out of the bed and his head resting on his hands, with which he at the
same time held back the wild masses of hair which would fall over his
eyes. His face had become pale and delicate from the ravages of
sickness. In his eyes fever still burned. He smiled at the pictures he
conjured up: at the adorned house, at the silver vessels, at the guests
in gala array and at Berg Rese, sitting in the seat of honor in the
hall of his ancestors. The peasant thought that no one had ever looked
at him with such shining, admiring eyes, or thought him so magnificent,
arrayed in his festival clothes, as that boy thought him in the torn
skin dress.
He was both touched and provoked. That miserable thief had no right to
admire him.
“Were there no feasts in your house?” he asked.
Tord laughed. “Out there on the rocks with father and mother! Father is
a wrecker and mother is a witch. No one will come to us.”
“Is your mother a witch?”
“She is,” answered Tord, quite untroubled. “In stormy weather she rides
out on a seal to meet the ships over which the waves are washing, and
those who are carried overboard are hers.”
“What does she do with them?” asked Berg.
“Oh, a witch always needs corpses. She makes ointments out of them, or
perhaps she eats them. On moonlight nights she sits in the surf, where
it is whitest, and the spray dashes over her. They say that she sits
and searches for shipwrecked children’s fingers and eyes.”
“That is awful,” said Berg.
The boy answered with infinite assurance: “That would be awful in
others, but not in witches. They have to do so.”
Berg Rese found that he had here come upon a new way of regarding the
world and things.
“Do thieves have to steal, as witches have to use witchcraft?” he asked
sharply.
“Yes, of course,” answered the boy; “every one has to do what he is
destined to do.” But then he added, with a cautious smile: “There are
thieves also who have never stolen.”
“Say out what you mean,” said Berg.
The boy continued with his mysterious smile, proud at being an
unsolvable riddle: “It is like speaking of birds who do not fly, to
talk of thieves who do not steal.”
Berg Rese pretended to be stupid in order to find out what he wanted.
“No one can be called a thief without having stolen,” he said.
“No; but,” said the boy, and pressed his lips together as if to keep in
the words, “but if some one had a father who stole,” he hinted after a
while.
“One inherits money and lands,” replied Berg Rese, “but no one bears
the name of thief if he has not himself earned it.”
Tord laughed quietly. “But if somebody has a mother who begs and prays
him to take his father’s crime on him. But if such a one cheats the
hangman and escapes to the woods. But if some one is made an outlaw for
a fish-net which he has never seen.”
Berg Rese struck the stone table with his clenched fist. He was angry.
This fair young man had thrown away his whole life. He could never win
love, nor riches, nor esteem after that. The wretched striving for food
and clothes was all which was left him. And the fool had let him, Berg
Rese, go on despising one who was innocent. He rebuked him with stern
words, but Tord was not even as afraid as a sick child is of its
mother, when she chides it because it has caught cold by wading in the
spring brooks.
On one of the broad, wooded mountains lay a dark tarn. It was square,
with as straight shores and as sharp corners as if it had been cut by
the hand of man. On three sides it was surrounded by steep cliffs, on
which pines clung with roots as thick as a man’s arm. Down by the pool,
where the earth had been gradually washed away, their roots stood up
out of the water, bare and crooked and wonderfully twisted about one
another. It was like an infinite number of serpents which had wanted
all at the same time to crawl up out of the pool but had got entangled
in one another and been held fast. Or it was like a mass of blackened
skeletons of drowned giants which the pool wanted to throw up on the
land. Arms and legs writhed about one another, the long fingers dug
deep into the very cliff to get a hold, the mighty ribs formed arches,
which held up primeval trees. It had happened, however, that the iron
arms, the steel-like fingers with which the pines held themselves fast,
had given way, and a pine had been borne by a mighty north wind from
the top of the cliff down into the pool. It had burrowed deep down into
the muddy bottom with its top and now stood there. The smaller fish had
a good place of refuge among its branches, but the roots stuck up above
the water like a many-armed monster and contributed to make the pool
awful and terrifying.
On the tarn’s fourth side the cliff sank down. There a little foaming
stream carried away its waters. Before this stream could find the only
possible way, it had tried to get out between stones and tufts, and had
by so doing made a little world of islands, some no bigger than a
little hillock, others covered with trees.
Here where the encircling cliffs did not shut out all the sun, leafy
trees flourished. Here stood thirsty, gray-green alders and
smooth-leaved willows. The birch-tree grew there as it does everywhere
where it is trying to crowd out the pine woods, and the wild cherry and
the mountain ash, those two which edge the forest pastures, filling
them with fragrance and adorning them with beauty. Here at the outlet
there was a forest of reeds as high as a man, which made the sunlight
fall green on the water just as it falls on the moss in the real
forest. Among the reeds there were open places; small, round pools, and
water-lilies were floating there. The tall stalks looked down with mild
seriousness on those sensitive beauties, who discontentedly shut their
white petals and yellow stamens in a hard, leather-like sheath as soon
as the sun ceased to show itself.
One sunshiny day the outlaws came to this tarn to fish. They waded out
to a couple of big stones in the midst of the reed forest and sat there
and threw out bait for the big, green-striped pickerel that lay and
slept near the surface of the water.
These men, who were always wandering in the woods and the mountains,
had, without their knowing it themselves, come under nature’s rule as
much as the plants and the animals. When the sun shone, they were
open-hearted and brave, but in the evening, as soon as the sun had
disappeared, they became silent; and the night, which seemed to them
much greater and more powerful than the day, made them anxious and
helpless. Now the green light, which slanted in between the rushes and
colored the water with brown and dark-green streaked with gold,
affected their mood until they were ready for any miracle. Every
outlook was shut off. Sometimes the reeds rocked in an imperceptible
wind, their stalks rustled, and the long, ribbon-like leaves fluttered
against their faces. They sat in gray skins on the gray stones. The
shadows in the skins repeated the shadows of the weather-beaten, mossy
stone. Each saw his companion in his silence and immovability change
into a stone image. But in among the rushes swam mighty fishes with
rainbow-colored backs. When the men threw out their hooks and saw the
circles spreading among the reeds, it seemed as if the motion grew
stronger and stronger, until they perceived that it was not caused only
by their cast. A sea-nymph, half human, half a shining fish, lay and
slept on the surface of the water. She lay on her back with her whole
body under water. The waves so nearly covered her that they had not
noticed her before. It was her breathing that caused the motion of the
waves. But there was nothing strange in her lying there, and when the
next instant she was gone, they were not sure that she had not been
only an illusion.
The green light entered through the eyes into the brain like a gentle
intoxication. The men sat and stared with dulled thoughts, seeing
visions among the reeds, of which they did not dare to tell one
another. Their catch was poor. The day was devoted to dreams and
apparitions.
The stroke of oars was heard among the rushes, and they started up as
from sleep. The next moment a flat-bottomed boat appeared, heavy,
hollowed out with no skill and with oars as small as sticks. A young
girl, who had been picking water-lilies, rowed it. She had dark-brown
hair, gathered in great braids, and big dark eyes; otherwise she was
strangely pale. But her paleness toned to pink and not to gray. Her
cheeks had no higher color than the rest of her face, the lips had
hardly enough. She wore a white linen shirt and a leather belt with a
gold buckle. Her skirt was blue with a red hem. She rowed by the
outlaws without seeing them. They kept breathlessly still, but not for
fear of being seen, but only to be able to really see her. As soon as
she had gone they were as if changed from stone images to living
beings. Smiling, they looked at one another.
“She was white like the water-lilies,” said one. “Her eyes were as dark
as the water there under the pine-roots.”
They were so excited that they wanted to laugh, really laugh as no one
had ever laughed by that pool, till the cliffs thundered with echoes
and the roots of the pines loosened with fright.
“Did you think she was pretty?” asked Berg Rese.
“Oh, I do not know, I saw her for such a short time. Perhaps she was.”
“I do not believe you dared to look at her. You thought that it was a
mermaid.”
And they were again shaken by the same extravagant merriment.
Tord had once as a child seen a drowned man. He had found the body on
the shore on a summer day and had not been at all afraid, but at night
he had dreamed terrible dreams. He saw a sea, where every wave rolled a
dead man to his feet. He saw, too, that all the islands were covered
with drowned men, who were dead and belonged to the sea, but who still
could speak and move and threaten him with withered white hands.
It was so with him now. The girl whom he had seen among the rushes came
back in his dreams. He met her out in the open pool, where the sunlight
fell even greener than among the rushes, and he had time to see that
she was beautiful. He dreamed that he had crept up on the big pine root
in the middle of the dark tarn, but the pine swayed and rocked so that
sometimes he was quite under water. Then she came forward on the little
islands. She stood under the red mountain ashes and laughed at him. In
the last dream-vision he had come so far that she kissed him. It was
already morning, and he heard that Berg Rese had got up, but he
obstinately shut his eyes to be able to go on with his dream. When he
awoke, he was as though dizzy and stunned by what had happened to him
in the night. He thought much more now of the girl than he had done the
day before.
Towards night he happened to ask Berg Rese if he knew her name.
Berg looked at him inquiringly. “Perhaps it is best for you to hear
it,” he said. “She is Unn. We are cousins.”
Tord then knew that it was for that pale girl’s sake Berg Rese wandered
an outlaw in forest and mountain. Tord tried to remember what he knew
of her. Unn was the daughter of a rich peasant. Her mother was dead, so
that she managed her father’s house. This she liked, for she was fond
of her own way and she had no wish to be married.
Unn and Berg Rese were the children of brothers, and it had long been
said that Berg preferred to sit with Unn and her maids and jest with
them than to work on his own lands. When the great Christmas feast was
celebrated at his house, his wife had invited a monk from Draksmark,
for she wanted him to remonstrate with Berg, because he was forgetting
her for another woman. This monk was hateful to Berg and to many on
account of his appearance. He was very fat and quite white. The ring of
hair about his bald head, the eyebrows above his watery eyes, his face,
his hands and his whole cloak, everything was white. Many found it hard
to endure his looks.
At the banquet table, in the hearing of all the guests, this monk now
said, for he was fearless and thought that his words would have more
effect if they were heard by many, “People are in the habit of saying
that the cuckoo is the worst of birds because he does not rear his
young in his own nest, but here sits a man who does not provide for his
home and his children, but seeks his pleasure with a strange woman. Him
will I call the worst of men.”—Unn then rose up. “That, Berg, is said
to you and me,” she said. “Never have I been so insulted, and my father
is not here either.” She had wished to go, but Berg sprang after her.
“Do not move!” she said. “I will never see you again.” He caught up
with her in the hall and asked her what he should do to make her stay.
She had answered with flashing eyes that he must know that best
himself. Then Berg went in and killed the monk.
Berg and Tord were busy with the same thoughts, for after a while Berg
said: “You should have seen her, Unn, when the white monk fell. The
mistress of the house gathered the small children about her and cursed
her. She turned their faces towards her, that they might forever
remember her who had made their father a murderer. But Unn stood calm
and so beautiful that the men trembled. She thanked me for the deed and
told me to fly to the woods. She bade me not to be robber, and not to
use the knife until I could do it for an equally just cause.”
“Your deed had been to her honor,” said Tord.
Berg Rese noticed again what had astonished him before in the boy. He
was like a heathen, worse than a heathen; he never condemned what was
wrong. He felt no responsibility. That which must be, was. He knew of
God and Christ and the saints, but only by name, as one knows the gods
of foreign lands. The ghosts of the rocks were his gods. His mother,
wise in witchcraft, had taught him to believe in the spirits of the
dead.
Then Berg Rese undertook a task which was as foolish as to twist a rope
about his own neck. He set before those ignorant eyes the great God,
the Lord of justice, the Avenger of misdeeds, who casts the wicked into
places of everlasting torment. And he taught him to love Christ and his
mother and the holy men and women, who with lifted hands kneeled before
God’s throne to avert the wrath of the great Avenger from the hosts of
sinners. He taught him all that men do to appease God’s wrath. He
showed him the crowds of pilgrims making pilgrimages to holy places,
the flight of self-torturing penitents and monks from a worldly life.
As he spoke, the boy became more eager and more pale, his eyes grew
large as if for terrible visions. Berg Rese wished to stop, but
thoughts streamed to him, and he went on speaking. The night sank down
over them, the black forest night, when the owls hoot. God came so near
to them that they saw his throne darken the stars, and the chastising
angels sank down to the tops of the trees. And under them the fires of
Hell flamed up to the earth’s crust, eagerly licking that shaking place
of refuge for the sorrowing races of men.
The autumn had come with a heavy storm. Tord went alone in the woods to
see after the snares and traps. Berg Rese sat at home to mend his
clothes. Tord’s way led in a broad path up a wooded height.
Every gust carried the dry leaves in a rustling whirl up the path. Time
after time Tord thought that some one went behind him. He often looked
round. Sometimes he stopped to listen, but he understood that it was
the leaves and the wind, and went on. As soon as he started on again,
he heard some one come dancing on silken foot up the slope. Small feet
came tripping. Elves and fairies played behind him. When he turned
round, there was no one, always no one. He shook his fists at the
rustling leaves and went on.
They did not grow silent for that, but they took another tone. They
began to hiss and to pant behind him. A big viper came gliding. Its
tongue dripping venom hung far out of its mouth, and its bright body
shone against the withered leaves. Beside the snake pattered a wolf, a
big, gaunt monster, who was ready to seize fast in his throat when the
snake had twisted about his feet and bitten him in the heel. Sometimes
they were both silent, as if to approach him unperceived, but they soon
betrayed themselves by hissing and panting, and sometimes the wolf’s
claws rung against a stone. Involuntarily Tord walked quicker and
quicker, but the creatures hastened after him. When he felt that they
were only two steps distant and were preparing to strike, he turned.
There was nothing there, and he had known it the whole time.
He sat down on a stone to rest. Then the dry leaves played about his
feet as if to amuse him. All the leaves of the forest were there:
small, light yellow birch leaves, red speckled mountain ash, the elm’s
dry, dark-brown leaves, the aspen’s tough light red, and the willow’s
yellow green. Transformed and withered, scarred and torn were they, and
much unlike the downy, light green, delicately shaped leaves, which a
few months ago had rolled out of their buds.
“Sinners,” said the boy, “sinners, nothing is pure in God’s eyes. The
flame of his wrath has already reached you.”
When he resumed his wandering, he saw the forest under him bend before
the storm like a heaving sea, but in the path it was calm. But he heard
what he did not feel. The woods were full of voices.
He heard whisperings, wailing songs, coarse threats, thundering oaths.
There was laughter and laments, there was the noise of many people.
That which hounded and pursued, which rustled and hissed, which seemed
to be something and still was nothing, gave him wild thoughts. He felt
again the anguish of death, as when he lay on the floor in his den and
the peasants hunted him through the wood. He heard again the crashing
of branches, the people’s heavy tread, the ring of weapons, the
resounding cries, the wild, bloodthirsty noise, which followed the
crowd.
But it was not only that which he heard in the storm. There was
something else, something still more terrible, voices which he could
not interpret, a confusion of voices, which seemed to him to speak in
foreign tongues. He had heard mightier storms than this whistle through
the rigging, but never before had he heard the wind play on such a
many-voiced harp. Each tree had its own voice; the pine did not murmur
like the aspen nor the poplar like the mountain ash. Every hole had its
note, every cliff’s sounding echo its own ring. And the noise of the
brooks and the cry of foxes mingled with the marvellous forest storm.
But all that he could interpret; there were other strange sounds. It
was those which made him begin to scream and scoff and groan in
emulation with the storm.
He had always been afraid when he was alone in the darkness of the
forest. He liked the open sea and the bare rocks. Spirits and phantoms
crept about among the trees.
Suddenly he heard who it was who spoke in the storm. It was God, the
great Avenger, the God of justice. He was hunting him for the sake of
his comrade. He demanded that he should deliver up the murderer to His
vengeance.
Then Tord began to speak in the midst of the storm. He told God what he
had wished to do, but had not been able. He had wished to speak to Berg
Rese and to beg him to make his peace with God, but he had been too
shy. Bashfulness had made him dumb. “When I heard that the earth was
ruled by a just God,” he cried, “I understood that he was a lost man. I
have lain and wept for my friend many long nights. I knew that God
would find him out, wherever he might hide. But I could not speak, nor
teach him to understand. I was speechless, because I loved him so much.
Ask not that I shall speak to him, ask not that the sea shall rise up
against the mountain.”
He was silent, and in the storm the deep voice, which had been the
voice of God for him, ceased. It was suddenly calm, with a sharp sun
and a splashing as of oars and a gentle rustle as of stiff rushes.
These sounds brought Unn’s image before him.—The outlaw cannot have
anything, not riches, nor women, nor the esteem of men. —If he should
betray Berg, he would be taken under the protection of the law.—But Unn
must love Berg, after what he had done for her. There was no way out of
it all.
When the storm increased, he heard again steps behind him and sometimes
a breathless panting. Now he did not dare to look back, for he knew
that the white monk went behind him. He came from the feast at Berg
Rese’s house, drenched with blood, with a gaping axe-wound in his
forehead. And he whispered: “Denounce him, betray him, save his soul.
Leave his body to the pyre, that his soul may be spared. Leave him to
the slow torture of the rack, that his soul may have time to repent.”
Tord ran. All this fright of what was nothing in itself grew, when it
so continually played on the soul, to an unspeakable terror. He wished
to escape from it all. As he began to run, again thundered that deep,
terrible voice, which was God’s. God himself hunted him with alarms,
that he should give up the murderer. Berg Rese’s crime seemed more
detestable than ever to him. An unarmed man had been murdered, a man of
God pierced with shining steel. It was like a defiance of the Lord of
the world. And the murderer dared to live! He rejoiced in the sun’s
light and in the fruits of the earth as if the Almighty’s arm were too
short to reach him.
He stopped, clenched his fists and howled out a threat. Then he ran
like a madman from the wood down to the valley.
Tord hardly needed to tell his errand; instantly ten peasants were
ready to follow him. It was decided that Tord should go alone up to the
cave, so that Berg’s suspicions should not be aroused. But where he
went he should scatter peas, so that the peasants could find the way.
When Tord came to the cave, the outlaw sat on the stone bench and
sewed. The fire gave hardly any light, and the work seemed to go badly.
The boy’s heart swelled with pity. The splendid Berg Rese seemed to him
poor and unhappy. And the only thing he possessed, his life, should be
taken from him. Tord began to weep.
“What is it?” asked Berg. “Are you ill? Have you been frightened?”
Then for the first time Tord spoke of his fear. “It was terrible in the
wood. I heard ghosts and raw spectres. I saw white monks.”
“’Sdeath, boy!”
“They crowded round me all the way up Broad mountain. I ran, but they
followed after and sang. Can I never be rid of the sound? What have I
to do with them? I think that they could go to one who needed it more.”
“Are you mad to-night, Tord?”
Tord talked, hardly knowing what words he used. He was free from all
shyness. The words streamed from his lips.
“They are all white monks, white, pale as death. They all have blood on
their cloaks. They drag their hoods down over their brows, but still
the wound shines from under; the big, red, gaping wound from the blow
of the axe.”
“The big, red, gaping wound from the blow of the axe?”
“Is it I who perhaps have struck it? Why shall I see it?”
“The saints only know, Tord,” said Berg Rese, pale and with terrible
earnestness, “what it means that you see a wound from an axe. I killed
the monk with a couple of knife-thrusts.”
Tord stood trembling before Berg and wrung his hands. “They demand you
of me! They want to force me to betray you!”
“Who? The monks?”
“They, yes, the monks. They show me visions. They show me her, Unn.
They show me the shining, sunny sea. They show me the fishermen’s
camping-ground, where there is dancing and merrymaking. I close my
eyes, but still I see. ‘Leave me in peace,’ I say. ‘My friend has
murdered, but he is not bad. Let me be, and I will talk to him, so that
he repents and atones. He shall confess his sin and go to Christ’s
grave. We will both go together to the places which are so holy that
all sin is taken away from him who draws near them.’”
“What do the monks answer?” asked Berg. “They want to have me saved.
They want to have me on the rack and wheel.”
“Shall I betray my dearest friend, I ask them,” continued Tord. “He is
my world. He has saved me from the bear that had his paw on my throat.
We have been cold together and suffered every want together. He has
spread his bear-skin over me when I was sick. I have carried wood and
water for him; I have watched over him while he slept; I have fooled
his enemies. Why do they think that I am one who will betray a friend?
My friend will soon of his own accord go to the priest and confess,
then we will go together to the land of atonement.”
Berg listened earnestly, his eyes sharply searching Tord’s face. “You
shall go to the priest and tell him the truth,” he said. “You need to
be among people.”
“Does that help me if I go alone? For your sin, Death and all his
spectres follow me. Do you not see how I shudder at you? You have
lifted your hand against God himself. No crime is like yours. I think
that I must rejoice when I see you on rack and wheel. It is well for
him who can receive his punishment in this world and escapes the wrath
to come. Why did you tell me of the just God? You compel me to betray
you. Save me from that sin. Go to the priest.” And he fell on his knees
before Berg.
The murderer laid his hand on his head and looked at him. He was
measuring his sin against his friend’s anguish, and it grew big and
terrible before his soul. He saw himself at variance with the Will
which rules the world. Repentance entered his heart.
“Woe to me that I have done what I have done,” he said. “That which
awaits me is too hard to meet voluntarily. If I give myself up to the
priests, they will torture me for hours; they will roast me with slow
fires. And is not this life of misery, which we lead in fear and want,
penance enough? Have I not lost lands and home? Do I not live parted
from friends and everything which makes a man’s happiness? What more is
required?”
When he spoke so, Tord sprang up wild with terror. “Can you repent?” he
cried. “Can my words move your heart? Then come instantly! How could I
believe that! Let us escape! There is still time.”
Berg Rese sprang up, he too. “You have done it, then—”
“Yes, yes, yes! I have betrayed you! But come quickly! Come, as you can
repent! They will let us go. We shall escape them!”
The murderer bent down to the floor, where the battle-axe of his
ancestors lay at his feet. “You son of a thief!” he said, hissing out
the words, “I have trusted you and loved you.”
But when Tord saw him bend for the axe, he knew that it was now a
question of his own life. He snatched his own axe from his belt and
struck at Berg before he had time to raise himself. The edge cut
through the whistling air and sank in the bent head. Berg Rese fell
head foremost to the floor, his body rolled after. Blood and brains
spouted out, the axe fell from the wound. In the matted hair Tord saw a
big, red, gaping hole from the blow of an axe.
The peasants came rushing in. They rejoiced and praised the deed.
“You will win by this,” they said to Tord.
Tord looked down at his hands as if he saw there the fetters with which
he had been dragged forward to kill him he loved. They were forged from
nothing. Of the rushes’ green light, of the play of the shadows, of the
song of the storm, of the rustling of the leaves, of dreams were they
created. And he said aloud: “God is great.”
But again the old thought came to him. He fell on his knees beside the
body and put his arm under his head.
“Do him no harm,” he said. “He repents; he is going to the Holy
Sepulchre. He is not dead, he is but a prisoner. We were just ready to
go when he fell. The white monk did not want him to repent, but God,
the God of justice, loves repentance.”
He lay beside the body, talked to it, wept and begged the dead man to
awake. The peasants arranged a bier. They wished to carry the peasant’s
body down to his house. They had respect for the dead and spoke softly
in his presence. When they lifted him up on the bier, Tord rose, shook
the hair back from his face, and said with a voice which shook with
sobs,—
“Say to Unn, who made Berg Rese a murderer, that he was killed by Tord
the fisherman, whose father is a wrecker and whose mother is a witch,
because he taught him that the foundation of the world is justice.”