Nay, let me take him.
It is not safe--there may be men who hide....
Hallgerd, look up; call Gunnar to you there:
_HALLGERD is motionless._
Lad, she beckons. I say you shall not come.
GUNNAR, _laughing._
Fierce woman, teach me to be brave in age,
And let us see if it is safe for you.
_He leads RANNVEIG out, his hand on her shoulder; the hound goes with
them._
STEINVOR.
Mistress, my heart is big with mutinies
For your proud sake: does not your heart mount up?
He is an outlaw now and could not hold you
If you should choose to leave him. Is it not law?
Is it not law that you could loose this marriage--
Nay, that he loosed it shamefully years ago
By a hard blow that bruised your innocent cheek,
Dishonouring you to lesser women and chiefs?
See, it burns up again at the stroke of thought.
Come, leave him, mistress; we will go with you.
There is no woman in the country now
Whose name can kindle men as yours can do--
Ay, many would pile for you the silks he grudges;
And if you did withdraw your potent presence
Fire would not spare this house so reverently.
HALLGERD.
Am I a wandering flame that sears and passes?
We must bide here, good Steinvor, and be quiet.
Without a man a woman cannot rule,
Nor kill without a knife; and where's the man
That I shall put before this goodly Gunnar?
I will not be made less by a less man.
There is no man so great as my man Gunnar:
I have set men at him to show forth his might;
I have planned thefts and breakings of his word
When my pent heart grew sore with fermentation
Of malice too long undone, yet could not stir him.
O, I will make a battle of the Thing,
Where men vow holy peace, to magnify him.
Is it not rare to sit and wait o' nights,
Knowing that murderousness may even now
Be coming down outside like second darkness
Because my man is greater?
STEINVOR, _shuddering._ Is it not rare.
HALLGERD.
That blow upon the face
So long ago is best not spoken of.
I drave a thrall to steal and burn at Otkell's
Who would not sell to us in famine time
But denied Gunnar as if he were suppliant:
Then at our feast when men rode from the Thing
I spread the stolen food and Gunnar knew.
He smote me upon the face ... indeed he smote me....
O, Gunnar smote me and had shame of me
And said he'd not partake with any thief;
Although I stole to injure his despiser....
But if he had abandoned me as well
'Tis I who should have been unmated now;
For many men would soon have judged me thief
And shut me from this land until I died--
And then I should have lost him.... Yet he smote me....
ASTRID.
He kept you his--yes, and maybe saved you
From a debasement that could madden or kill,
For women thieves ere now have felt a knife
Severing ear or nose. And yet the feud
You sowed with Otkell's house shall murder Gunnar.
Otkell was slain: then Gunnar's enviers,
Who could not crush him under his own horse
At the big horse-fight, stirred up Otkell's son
To avenge his father; for should he be slain
Two in one stock would prove old Njal's fore-telling,
And Gunnar's place be emptied either way
For those high helpless men who cannot fill it.
O, mistress, you have hurt us all in this:
You have cut off your strength, you have maimed yourself,
You are losing power and worship and men's trust.
When Gunnar dies no other man dare take you.
HALLGERD.
You gather poison in your mouth for me.
A high-born woman may handle what she fancies
Without being ear-pruned like a pilfering beggar.
Look to your ears if you touch ought of mine:
Ay, you shall join the mumping sisterhood
And tramp and learn your difference from me.
_She turns from_ ASTRID.
Steinvor, I have remembered the great veil,
The woven cloud, the tissue of gold and garlands,
That Gunnar took from some outlandish ship
And deemed a thing from Greekland or from Hind:
Fetch it from the ambry in the bower.
_STEINVOR goes out by the dais door._
ASTRID.
Mistress, indeed you are a cherished woman.
That veil is worth a lifetime's weight of coifs:
I have heard a queen offered her daughter for it,
But Gunnar said it should come home and wait--
And then gave it to you. The half of Iceland
Tells fabulous legends of a fabulous thing,
Yet never saw it: I know they never saw it,
For ere it reached the ambry I came on it
Tumbled in the loft with ragged kirtles.
HALLGERD.
What, are you there again? Let Gunnar alone.
_STEINVOR enters with the veil folded. HALLGERD takes it with one hand
and shakes it into a heap._
This is the cloth. He brought it out at night,
In the first hour that we were left together,
And begged of me to wear it at high feasts
And more outshine all women of my time:
He shaped it to my head with my gold circlet,
Saying my hair smouldered like Rhine-fire through,
He let it fall about my neck and fall
About my shoulders, mingle with my skirts
And billow in the draught along the floor.
_She rises and holds the veil behind her head._
I know I dazzled as if I entered in
And walked upon a windy sunset and drank it,
Yet must I stammer at such strange uncouthness
And tear it from me, tangling my arms in it--
I could not so befool myself and seem
A laughable bundle in each woman's eyes,
Wearing such things as no one ever wore,
Useless ... no head-cloth ... too unlike my fellows.
Yet he turns miser for a tiny coif.
It would cut into many golden coifs
And dim some women in their Irish clouts--
But no; I'll shape and stitch it into shifts,
Smirch it like linen, patch it with rags, to watch
His silent anger when he sees my answer.
Give me thy shears, girl Oddny.
ODDNY. You'll not part it?
HALLGERD.
I'll shorten it.
ODDNY. I have no shears with me.
HALLGERD.
No matter; I can start it with my teeth
And tear it down the folds. So. So. So. So.
Here's a fine shift for summer: and another.
I'll find my shears and chop out waists and neck-holes.
Ay, Gunnar, Gunnar!
_She throws the tissue on the ground, and goes out by the dais door._
ODDNY, _lifting one of the pieces._
O me! A wonder has vanished.
STEINVOR.
What is a wonder less? She has done finely,
Setting her worth above dead marvels and shows....
_The deep menacing baying of the hound is heard near at hand. A woman's
cry follows it._
They come, they come! Let us flee by the bower!
_Starting up, she stumbles in the tissue and sinks upon it. The others
rise._
You are leaving me--will you not wait for me--
Take, take me with you....
_Mingled cries of women are heard._
GUNNAR, _outside._ Samm, it is well: be still.
Women, be quiet; loose me; get from my feet,
Or I will set the hound to wipe me clear....
STEINVOR, _recovering herself._
Women are sent to spy.
_The sound of a door being opened is heard. GUNNAR enters from the left,
followed by three beggar-women, BIARTEY, JOFRID, and GUDFINN. They
hobble and limp, and are swathed in shapeless nameless rags which trail
about their feet; BIARTEY'S left sleeve is torn completely away, leaving
her arm bare and mud-smeared; the others' skirts are torn, and JOFRID'S
gown at the neck; GUDFINN wears a felt hood buttoned under her chin, the
others' faces are almost hid in falling tangles of grey hair. Their
faces are shrivelled and weather-beaten, and BIARTEY'S mouth is
distorted by two front teeth that project like tusks._
GUNNAR. Get in to the light.
Yea has he mouthed ye? ... What men send ye here?
Who are ye? Whence come ye? What do ye seek?
I think no mother ever suckled you:
You must have dragged your roots up in waste places
One foot at once, or heaved a shoulder up--
BIARTEY, _interrupting him._
Out of the bosoms of cairns and standing stones.
I am Biartey: she is Jofrid: she is Gudfinn:
We are lone women known to no man now.
We are not sent: we come.
GUNNAR. Well, you come.
You appear by night, rising under my eyes
Like marshy breath or shadows on the wall;
Yet the hound scented you like any evil
That feels upon the night for a way out.
And do you, then, indeed wend alone?
Came you from the West or the sky-covering North,
Yet saw no thin steel moving in the dark?
BIARTEY.
Not West, not North: we slept upon the East,
Arising in the East where no men dwell.
We have abided in the mountain places,
Chanted our woes among the black rocks crouching;
_GUDFINN joins her in a sing-song utterance._
From the East, from the East we drove and the wind waved us,
Over the heaths, over the barren ashes.
We are old, our eyes are old, and the light hurts us,
We have skins on our eyes that part alone to the star-light.
We stumble about the night, the rocks tremble
Beneath our trembling feet; black sky thickens,
Breaks into clots, and lets the moon upon us.
_JOFRID joins her voice to the voices of the other two._
Far from the men who fear us, men who stone us,
Hiding, hiding, flying whene'er they slumber,
High on the crags we pause, over the moon-gulfs;
Black clouds fall and leave us up in the moon-depths
Where wind flaps our hair and cloaks like fin-webs,
Ay, and our sleeves that toss with our arms and the cadence
Of quavering crying among the threatening echoes.
Then we spread our cloaks and leap down the rock-stairs,
Sweeping the heaths with our skirts, greying the dew-bloom,
Until we feel a pool on the wide dew stretches
Stilled by the moon or ruffling like breast-feathers,
And, with grey sleeves cheating the sleepy herons,
Squat among them, pillow us there and sleep.
But in the harder wastes we stand upright,
Like splintered rain-worn boulders set to the wind
In old confederacy, and rest and sleep.
_HALLGERD'S women are huddled together and clasping each other._
ODDNY.
What can these women be who sleep like horses,
Standing up in the darkness.... What will they do....
GUNNAR.
Ye wail like ravens and have no human thoughts.
What do ye seek? What will ye here with us?
BIARTEY, _as all three cower suddenly._
Succour upon this terrible journeying.
We have a message for a man in the West,
Sent by an old man sitting in the East.
We are spent, our feet are moving wounds, our bodies
Dream of themselves and seem to trail behind us
Because we went unfed down in the mountains.
Feed us and shelter us beneath your roof,
And put us over the Markfleet, over the channels.
We are weak old women: we are beseeching you.
GUNNAR.
You may bide here this night, but on the morrow
You shall go over, for tramping shameless women
Carry too many tales from stead to stead--
And sometimes heavier gear than breath and lies.
These women will tell the mistress all I grant you;
Get to the fire until she shall return.
BIARTEY.
Thou art a merciful man and we shall thank thee.
GUNNAR _goes out again to the left._
_The old women approach the young ones gradually._
Little ones, do not doubt us. Could we hurt you?
Because we are ugly must we be bewitched?
STEINVOR.
Nay, but bewitch us.
BIARTEY. Not in a litten house:
Not ere the hour when night turns on itself
And shakes the silence: not while ye wake together.
Sweet voice, tell us, was that verily Gunnar?
STEINVOR.
Arrh--do not touch me, unclean flyer-by-night:
Have ye birds' feet to match such bat-webbed fingers?
BIARTEY.
I am only a cowed curst woman who walks with death;
I will crouch here. Tell us, was it Gunnar?
ODDNY.
Yea, Gunnar surely. Is he not big enough
To fit the songs about him?
BIARTEY. He is a man.
Why will his manhood urge him to be dead?
We walk about the whole old land at night,
We enter many dales and many halls:
And everywhere is talk of Gunnar's greatness,
His slayings and his fate outside the law.
The last ship has not gone: why will he tarry?
ODDNY.
He chose a ship, but men who rode with him
Say that his horse threw him upon the shore,
His face toward the Lithe and his own fields;
As he arose he trembled at what he gazed on
(Although those men saw nothing pass or meet them)
And said.... What said he, girls?
ASTRID. "Fair is the Lithe:
So fair I never thought it was so fair.
Its corn is white, its meadows green after mowing.
I will ride home again and never leave it."
ODDNY.
'Tis an unlikely tale: he never said it.
No one could mind such things in such an hour.
Plainly he saw his fetch come down the sands,
And knew he need not seek another country
And take that with him to walk upon the deck
In night and storm.
GUDFINN. He he he! No man speaks thus.
JOFRID.
No man, no man: he must be doomed somewhere.
BIARTEY.
Doomed and fey, my sisters.... We are too old,
Yet I'd not marvel if we outlasted him.
Sisters, that is a fair fierce girl who spins....
My fair fierce girl, you could fight--but can you ride?
Would you not shout to be riding in a storm?
Ah ... h, girls learnt riding well when I was a girl,
And foam rides on the breakers as I was taught....
My fair fierce girl, tell me your noble name.
ODDNY.
My name is Oddny.
BIARTEY. Oddny, when you are old
Would you not be proud to be no man's purse-string,
But wild and wandering and friends with the earth?
Wander with us and learn to be old yet living.
We'd win fine food with you to beg for us.
STEINVOR.
Despised, cast out, unclean, and loose men's night-bird.
ODDNY.
When I am old I shall be some man's friend,
And hold him when the darkness comes....
BIARTEY.
And mumble by the fire and blink....
Good Oddny, let me spin for you awhile,
That Gunnar's house may profit by his guesting:
Come, trust me with your distaff....
ODDNY. Are there spells
Wrought on a distaff?
STEINVOR. Only by the Norns,
And they'll not sit with human folk to-night.
ODDNY.
Then you may spin all night for what I care;
But let the yarn run clean from knots and snarls,
Or I shall have the blame when you are gone.
BIARTEY, _taking the distaff._
Trust well the aged knowledge of my hands;
Thin and thin do I spin, and the thread draws finer.
_She sings as she spins._
They go by three,
And the moon shivers;
The tired waves flee,
The hidden rivers
Also flee.
I take three strands;
There is one for her,
One for my hands,
And one to stir
For another's hands.
I twine them thinner,
The dead wool doubts;
The outer is inner,
The core slips out....
_HALLGERD re-enters by the dais door, holding a pair of shears._
HALLGERD.
What are these women, Oddny? Who let them in?
BIARTEY, _who spins through all that follows._
Lady, the man of fame who is your man
Gave us his peace to-night, and that of his house.
We are blown beggars tramping about the land,
Denied a home for our evil and vagrant hearts;
We sought this shelter when the first dew soaked us,
And should have perished by the giant hound
But Gunnar fought it with his eyes and saved us.
That is a strange hound, with a man's mind in it.
HALLGERD, _seating herself in the high-seat._
It is an Irish hound, from that strange soil
Where men by day walk with unearthly eyes
And cross the veils of the air, and are not men
But fierce abstractions eating their own hearts
Impatiently and seeing too much to be joyful....
If Gunnar welcomed ye, ye may remain.
BIARTEY.
She is a fair free lady, is she not?
But that was to be looked for in a high one
Who counts among her fathers the bright Sigurd,
The bane of Fafnir the Worm, the end of the god-kings;
Among her mothers Brynhild, the lass of Odin,
The maddener of swords, the night-clouds' rider.
She has kept sweet that father's lore of bird-speech,
She wears that mother's power to cheat a god.
Sisters, she does well to be proud....
JOFRID AND GUDFINN. Ay, Well....
HALLGERD, _shaping the tissue with her shears._
I need no witch to tell I am of rare seed,
Nor measure my pride nor praise it. Do I not know?
Old women, ye are welcomed: sit with us,
And while we stitch tell us what gossip runs--
But if strife might be warmed by spreading it.
BIARTEY.
Lady, we are hungered; we were lost
All night among the mountains of the East;
Clouds of the cliffs come down my eyes again....
I pray you let some thrall bring us to food.
HALLGERD.
Ye get nought here. The supper is long over;
The women shall not let ye know the food-house,
Or ye'll be thieving in the night. Ye are idle,
Ye suck a man's house bare and seek another.
'Tis bed-time; get to sleep--that stills much hunger.
BIARTEY.
Now it is easy to be seeing what spoils you.
You were not grasping or ought but over warm
When Sigmund, Gunnar's kinsman, guested here.
You followed him, you were too kind with him,
You lavished Gunnar's treasure and gear on him
To draw him on, and did not call that thieving.
Ay, Sigmund took your feuds on him and died
As Gunnar shall. Men have much harm by you.
HALLGERD.
Now have I gashed the golden cloth awry:
'Tis ended--a ruin of clouts--the worth of the gift--
Bridal dish-clouts--nay, a bundle of flame.
I'll burn it to a breath of its old queen's ashes:
Fire, O fire, drink up....
_She throws the shreds of the veil on the glowing embers: they waft to
ashes with a brief high flare. She goes to JOFRID._
There's one of you
That holds her head in a bird's sideways fashion:
I know that reach o' the chin.... What's under thy hair?--
_She fixes JOFRID with her knee, and lifts her hair._
Pfui, 'tis not hair, but sopped and rotting moss--
A thief, a thief indeed.... And twice a thief....
She has no ears. Keep thy hooked fingers still
While thou art here, for if I miss a mouthful
Thou shalt miss all thy nose. Get up, get up;
I'll lodge ye with the mares....
JOFRID, _starting up._ Three men, three men,
Three men have wived you, and for all you gave them
Paid with three blows upon a cheek once kissed--
To every man a blow--and the last blow
All the land knows was won by thieving food....
Yea, Gunnar is ended by the theft and the thief.
Is it not told that when you first grew tall,
A false rare girl, Hrut your own kinsman said
"I know not whence thief's eyes entered our blood."
You have more ears, yet are you not my sister?
Our evil vagrant heart is deeper in you.
HALLGERD, _snatching the distaff from Biartey._
Out and be gone, be gone. Lie with the mountains,
Smother among the thunder; stale dew mould you.
Outstrip the hound, or he shall so embrace you....
BIARTEY.
Now is all done ... all done ... and all your deed!
She broke the thread, and it shall not join again.
Spindle, spindle, the coiling weft shall dwindle;
Leap on the fire and burn, for all is done....
_She casts the spindle upon the fire, and stretches her hands toward
it._
HALLGERD, _attacking them with the distaff._
Into the night.... Dissolve....
BIARTEY, _as the three rush toward the door._
Sisters, away:
Leave the woman to her smouldering beauty,
Leave the fire that's kinder than the woman,
Leave the roof-tree ere it falls. It falls.
_GUDFINN joins her. Each time Hallgerd flags they turn as they chant,
and point at her._
We shall cry no more in the high rock-places,
We are gone from the night, the winds and the clouds are empty:
Soon the man in the West shall receive our message.
_JOFRID'S voice joins the other voices._
Men reject us, yet their house is unstable....
The slayers' hands are warm--the sound of their riding
Reached us down the ages, ever approaching.
HALLGERD, _at the same time, her voice high over theirs._
Pack, ye rag-heaps--or I'll unravel you.
THE THREE, _continuously._
House that spurns us, woe shall come upon you:
Death shall hollow you. Now we curse the woman--
May all the woes smite her till she can feel them.
Shall we not roost in her bower yet? Woe! Woe!
_The distaff breaks, and Hallgerd drives them out with her hands. Their
voices continue for a moment outside, dying away._
Call to the owl-friends.... Woe! Woe! Woe!
ASTRID.
Whence came these mounds of dread to haunt the night?
It doubles this disquiet to have them near us.
ODDNY.
They must be witches--and it was my distaff--
Will fire eat through me....
STEINVOR. Or the Norns themselves.
HALLGERD.
Or bad old women used to govern by fear.
To bed, to bed--we are all up too late.
STEINVOR, _as she turns with_ ASTRID _and_ ODDNY
_to the dais._
If beds are made for sleep we might sit long.
_They go out by the dais door._
GUNNAR, _as he enters hastily from the left._
Where are those women? There's some secret in them:
I have heard such others crying down to them.
HALLGERD.
They turned foul-mouthed, they beckoned evil toward us--
I drove them forth a breath ago.
GUNNAR. Forth? Whence?
HALLGERD.
By the great door: they cried about the night.
_RANNVEIG follows GUNNAR in._
GUNNAR.
Nay but I entered there and passed them not.
Mother, where are the women?
RANNVEIG. I saw none come.
GUNNAR.
They have not come, they have gone.
RANNVEIG. I crossed the yard,
Hearing a noise, but a big bird dropped past,
Beating my eyes; and then the yard was clear.
_The deep baying of the hound is heard
again._
GUNNAR.
They must be spies: yonder is news of them.
The wise hound knew them, and knew them again.
_The baying is succeeded by one wild howl._
Nay, nay!
Men treat thee sorely, Samm my fosterling:
Even by death thou warnest--but it is meant
That our two deaths will not be far apart.
RANNVEIG.
Think you that men are yonder?
GUNNAR. Men are yonder.
RANNVEIG.
My son, my son, get on the rattling war-woof,
The old grey shift of Odin, the hide of steel.
Handle the snake with edges, the fang of the rings.
GUNNAR, _going to the weapons by the high-seat._
There are not enough moments to get under
That heavy fleece: an iron hat must serve....
HALLGERD.
O brave! O brave!--he'll dare them with no shield.
GUNNAR, _lifting down the great bill from the wall._
Let me but reach this haft, I shall get hold
Of steel enough to fence me all about.
_He shakes the bill above his head: a deep resonant humming follows. The
dais door is thrown open, and ODDNY, ASTRID, and STEINVOR stream through
in their night-clothes._
STEINVOR. The bill!
ODDNY. The bill is singing!
ASTRID. The bill sings!
GUNNAR, _shaking the bill again._
Ay, brain-biter, waken ... Awake and whisper
Out of the throat of dread thy one brief burden.
Blind art thou, and thy kiss will do no choosing:
Worn art thou to a hair's grey edge, a nothing
That slips through all it finds, seeking more nothing.
There is a time, brain-biter, a time that comes
When there shall be much quietness for thee:
Men will be still about thee. I shall know.
It is not yet: the wind shall hiss at thee first.
Ahui! Leap up, brain-biter; sing again.
Sing! Sing thy verse of anger and feel my hands.
RANNVEIG.
Stand thou, my Gunnar, in the porch to meet them,
And the great door shall keep thy back for thee.
GUNNAR.
I had a brother there. Brother, where are you....
HALLGERD.
Nay nay. Get thou, my Gunnar, to the loft,
Stand at the casement, watch them how they come.
Arrows maybe could drop on them from there.
RANNVEIG.
'Tis good: the woman's cunning for once is faithful.
GUNNAR, _turning again to the weapons._
'Tis good, for now I hear a foot that stumbles
Along the stable-roof against the hall.
My bow--where is my bow? Here with its arrows....
Go in again, you women on the dais,
And listen at the casement of the bower
For men who cross the yard, and for their words.
ASTRID.
O, Gunnar, we shall serve you.
_ASTRID, ODDNY, and STEINVOR go out by the dais door._
RANNVEIG. Hallgerd, come;
We must shut fast the door, bar the great door,
Or they'll be in on us and murder him.
HALLGERD.
Not I: I'd rather set the door wide open
And watch my Gunnar kindling at the peril,
Keeping them back--shaming men for ever
Who could not enter at a gaping door.
RANNVEIG.
Bar the great door, I say, or I will bar it--
Door of the house you rule.... Son, son, command it.
GUNNAR, _as he ascends to the loft._
O, spendthrift fire, do you waft up again?
Hallgerd, what riot of ruinous chance will sate you?...
Let the door stand, my mother: it is her way.
_He looks out of the casement._
Here's a red kirtle on the lower roof.
_He thrusts with the bill through the casement._
A MAN'S VOICE, _far off._ Is Gunnar within?
_THORGRIM THE EASTERLING'S VOICE, near the casement._
Find that out for yourselves:
I am only sure his bill is yet within.
_A noise of falling is heard._
GUNNAR.
The Easterling from Sandgil might be dying--
He has gone down the roof, yet no feet helped him.
_A shouting of many men is heard: GUNNAR starts back from the casement
as several arrows fly in._
Now there are black flies biting before a storm.
I see men gathering beneath the cart-shed:
Gizur the White and Geir the priest are there,
And a lean whispering shape that should be Mord.
I have a sting for some one--
_He looses an arrow: a distant cry follows._
Valgard's voice....
A shaft of theirs is lying on the roof:
I'll send it back, for if it should take root
A hurt from their own spent and worthless weapon
Would put a scorn upon their tale for ever.
_He leans out for the arrow._
RANNVEIG.
Do not, my son: rouse them not up again
When they are slackening in their attack.
HALLGERD.
Shoot, shoot it out, and I'll come up to mock them.