THE ROYAL BLOOD OF ALFRED
Brand burns from brand,
Until it is burnt out;
Fire is from fire quickened.
Man to man
Becomes known by speech,
But a fool by his bashful silence.
Ha'vama'l
Brave with fluttering pennant and embroidered linen and sparkling
gilding, amid cheers and prayers and shouts of farewell, on the third
day the "Sea-Deer" set sail for Greenland.
Newly clad from head to foot in a scarlet suit of King Olaf's giving,
Leif stood aft by the great steering oar. The wind blew out his long
hair in a golden banner. The sun splintered its lances upon his gilded
helm. Upon his breast shone the silver crucifix that had been Olaf's
parting gift. His hand was still warm from the clasp of his King's; no
chill at his heart warned him that those hands had met for the last
time, no thought was in him that he had looked his last upon the noble
face he loved. Gazing out over the tumbling blue waves, he thought
exultantly of the time when he should come sailing back, with task
fulfilled, to receive the thanks of his King.
Bravely and merrily the little ship parted from the land and set forth
upon her journey. Every man sat in his place upon the rowing-benches;
every back bent stoutly to the oar. Dripping crystals and flashing in
the sun, the polished blades rose and fell, as the "Sea-Deer" bounded
forward. To those upon her decks, the mass of scarlet cloaks upon the
pier merged into a patch of flame, and then became a fiery dot. The
sunny plain of the city and the green slope of the camp dwindled and
faded; towering cliffs closed about and hid them from the rowers' view.
Leaving the broad elbow of the fiord, they soon entered the narrow arm
that ran in from the sea, like a silver lane between giant walls.
Passing out with the tide, they reached the ocean. The salt wind smote
their faces; the snowy sail drew in a long glad breath and swelled out
with a throb of exultation, and the world of waters closed around their
little craft.
It was a beautiful world, full of the shifting charms of color and of
motion, of the joy of sun and wind; but Alwin found it a wearily busy
world for him. Since he was not needed at the oars, they gave him the
odds and ends of drudgery about the ship. He cleared the decks, and
plied the bailing-scoop, and stood long tedious watches. He helped to
tent over the vessel's decks at night, and to stow away the huge canvas
in the morning. He ground grain for the hungry crew, and kept the great
mead-vat filled that stood before the mast for the shipmates to drink
from. He prepared the food and carried it around and cleared the
remnants away again. He was at the beck and call of forty rough voices;
he was the one shuttlecock among eighty brawny battledores.
It was a peaceful world, stirred by no greater excitement than a glimpse
of a distant sail or the mystery of a half-seen shore; yet things could
happen in it, Alwin found. The second day out, the earl-born captive for
the first time came in direct contact with the thrall-born Kark.
Kark was not deferential, even toward his superiors; there was barely
enough discretion in his roughness to save him from offending. Among
those of his own station, he dispensed even with discretion. And he had
looked upon Alwin with unfriendly eyes ever since Leif's first
manifestation of interest in his English property.
It often happens that the whole of earth's dry land proves too small to
hold two uncongenial spirits peaceably. One can imagine, then, how it
fared when two such opposites were limited to some hundred-odd feet of
timber in mid-ocean.
"Ho there, you cook-boy!" Kark's rough voice came down to the foreroom
where Alwin was working. "Get you quickly forward and wipe up the beer
Valbrand has spilled over his bench."
For a moment, Alwin's eyes opened wide in amazement; then they drew
together into two menacing slits, and his very clothing bristled with
haughtiness. He deigned no answer whatsoever.
A pause, and Kark followed his voice. "What now, you cub of a lazy
mastiff! I told you, quickly; the beer will get on his clothes."
With immovable calmness, Alwin went on with his grinding. Only after the
fourth round he said coldly: "It would save time if you would do your
work yourself."
Kark gasped with amazement. This to him, the slave-born son of Eric's
free steward, who held the whip-hand over all the thralls at Brattahlid!
His china-blue eyes snapped spitefully.
"It does not become the bowerman of Leif Ericsson to do the dirty work
of a foreign whelp. If you have the ambition to be more than--"
He was interrupted by the sound of approaching thunder. Valbrand
descended upon them, his new tunic drenched, the scars on his battered
old face showing livid red.
"Is it likely that I will wait all day while two thralls quarrel over
precedence?" he roared. "The Troll take me if I do not throw one of you
to Ran before the journey is over! Go instantly--"
"I am sharpening Leif's blade," Kark struck in; he had indeed drawn a
knife and sharpening-stone from his girdle. "It is not becoming for me
to leave the chief's work for another task."
The argument was unassailable. To the unlucky man-of-all-work the
steersman's anger naturally reverted.
"Then you, idle dog that you are! What is it that keeps you? Would you
have him attend on Leif and do your work as well? You may choose one of
two conditions: go instantly or have your back cut into ribbons."
If he had not added that, it is possible that Alwin would have obeyed;
but to yield in the face of a threat, that was too low for his
stiff-necked pride to stoop. The earl-born answered haughtily, "Have
your will,--and I will have mine."
If he had had any idea that they would not go so far, it was quickly
dashed out of him. One moment of struggle and confusion, and he found
himself stripped to the waist, his hands bound to the mast, a man
standing over him with a knotted thong of walrus hide. All Sigurd's
furious eloquence could not restrain the storm of sickening blows.
On the other hand, if they had had the notion that their victim's
obstinacy would run from him with his blood, they also were mistaken.
The red drops came, but no sign of weakening. At last, with the
subsiding of his anger, Valbrand ordered him to be set free.
"The same shall overtake you if you are disobedient to me again," was
all he said.
Stripped and bloody, dizzy with pain and blind with rage, Alwin
staggered forward, caught at Sigurd to save himself from falling, and
looked unsteadily about him. When he found what he sought, his wits were
cleared as a foggy night by lightning. With a hoarse cry, he caught up a
fragment of broken oar and struck Kark over the head so that he fell
stunned upon the deck, blood reddening his colorless face.
"In the Troll's name!" Valbrand swore, after a moment of utter
stupefaction.
Alwin laughed between his teeth at Sigurd's despairing glance, and
waited to feel the steersman's knife between his ribs. Instead, he was
dragged aft to where the chief sat on the deck beside the steering-oar.
Leif was deep in consultation with his shrewd old foster-father. Without
pausing in his argument, he sent an impatient glance over his shoulder;
when it fell upon the gory young madman, he turned sharply and faced the
group.
Alwin was in the mood to suffer torture with a smile. The more
outrageous Valbrand depicted him, the better he was pleased. Leif made
no comment whatever, but sat pulling at his long mustaches and eying
them from under his bushy brows.
When the steersman had finished, he asked, "Is Kark slain?"
Glancing back, Valbrand saw the bowerman sitting up and feeling of his
wounds. "Except a lump on his head, I do not think he is worse than
before," he answered.
"So," said Leif with an accent of relief. "Then it is not worth while to
say much. If he had been killed, his father would have taken it ill; and
that would have displeased Eric and hurt my mission. It would have
become necessary for me to slay this boy to satisfy them. Now it is of
little importance."
He straightened abruptly and waved them away.
"What more is there to do about it?" he added. "This fellow has been
punished, and Kark has got one of the many knocks his insolence
deserves. Let us end this talk,--only see to it that they do not kill
each other. I do not wish to lose any more property." He motioned them
off, and turned back to Tyrker.
But there was more to it. Something,--Leif's curtness, or the touch of
Valbrand's hand upon his naked shoulder,--roused Alwin's madness afresh.
Shaking off the hand, fighting it off, he bearded the chief himself.
"I will kill him if ever he utters his cur's yelp at me again. You are
blind and simple to think to keep an earl-born man under the feet of a
churl. You are a fool to keep an accomplished man at work that any
simpleton might do. I will not bear with your folly. I will slay the
hound the first chance I get." He ended breathless and trembling with
passion.
Valbrand stood aghast. Leif's brows drew down so low that nothing but
two fiery sparks showed of his eyes. Through Alwin went the same thrill
he had felt when the trader's sword-point pricked his breast.
Yet the lightning did not strike. Alwin glanced up, amazed. While he
stared, a subtle change crept over the chief. Slowly he ceased to be the
grim curt Viking: slowly he became the nobleman whose stateliness
minstrels celebrated in their songs, and the King spoke of with praise.
A stillness seemed to gather round them. Alwin felt his anger cooling
and sinking within him.
After a time, Leif said with the calmness of perfect superiority: "It
may be that I have not treated you as honorably as you deserve. Yet what
am I to think of these words of yours? Is it after such fashion that a
jarl-born man with accomplishments addresses his lord in your country?"
To the blunt old steersman, to the ox-like Olver, to the half-dozen
others who heard it, the change was incomprehensible. They stared at
their master, then at each other, and finally gave it up as a whim past
their understanding. It may be that Leif was curious to see whether it
would be incomprehensible to Alwin as well. He sat watching him
intently.
Alwin's eyes fell before his master's. The stately quietness, the noble
forbearance, were like voices out of his past. They called up memories
of his princess-mother, of her training, of the dignity that had always
surrounded her. Suddenly he saw, as for the first time, the roughness
and coarseness of the life about him, and realized how it had roughened
and coarsened him. A dull red mounted to his face. Slowly, like one
groping for a half forgotten habit, he bent his knee before the offended
chief. Unconsciously, for the first time in his thraldom, he gave to a
Northman the title a Saxon uses to his superior.
"Lord, you are right to think me unmannerly. I was mad with anger so
that I did not weigh my words. I will say nothing against it if you
treat me like a churl."
To the others, this also was inexplicable. They scratched their heads,
and rubbed their ears, and gaped at one another. Leif smiled grimly as
he caught their looks. Picking a silver ring from his pouch, he tossed
it to Valbrand.
"Take this to Kark to pay him for his broken head, and advise him to
make less noise with his mouth in the future." When they were gone he
turned to Alwin and signed him to rise. "You understand a language that
churls do not understand. I will try you further. Go dress yourself,
then bring hither the runes you were reading to Rolf Erlingsson."
Alwin obeyed in silence, a tumult of long-quiet emotions whirling
through his brain,--relief and shame and gratification, and, underneath
it all, a new-born loyalty.
All the rest of the day, until the sun dropped like a red ball behind
the waves, he sat at the chief's feet and read to him from the Saxon
book. He read stumblingly, haltingly; but he was not blamed for his
blunders. His listener caught at the meanings hungrily, and pieced out
their deficiencies with his keen wit and dressed their nakedness in his
vivid imagination. Now his great chest heaved with passion, and his
strong hand gripped his sword-hilt; now he crossed himself and sighed,
and again his eyes flashed like smitten steel. When at last the failing
light compelled Alwin to lay down the book, the chief sat for a long
time staring at him with keen but absent eyes.
After a while he said, half as though he was speaking to himself: "It is
my belief that Heaven itself has sent you to me, that I may be
strengthened and inspired in my work." His face kindled with devout
rapture. "It must have been by the guidance of Heaven that you were
trained in so unusual an accomplishment. It was the hand of God that led
you hither, to be an instrument in a great work."
Awe fell upon Alwin, and a shiver of superstition that was almost
terror. He bowed his head and crossed himself.
But when he looked up, the thread had snapped; Leif was himself again.
He was eying the boy critically, though with a new touch of something
like respect.
He said abruptly: "It is not altogether befitting that one who has the
accomplishments of a holy priest should go garbed like a base-bred
thrall. What is the color of the clothes that priests wear in England?"
Alwin answered, wondering: "They wear black habits, lord. It is for that
reason that they are called Black Monks."
Rising, Leif beckoned to Valbrand. When the steersman stood before him,
he said: "Take this boy down to my chests and clothe him from head to
foot in black garments of good quality. And hereafter let it be
understood that he is my honorable bowerman, and a person of breeding
and accomplishments."
The old henchman looked at the new favorite as dispassionately as he
would have looked at a weapon or a dog that had taken his master's
fancy. "I would not oppose your will in this, any more than in other
things; yet I take it upon me to remind you of Kark. If you make this
cook-boy your bowerman, to keep the scales balancing you must make him
who was your bowerman into a cook-boy. It is in my mind that Kark's
father will take that as ill as--"
A sweep of Leif's arm swept Kark out of the path of his will. "Who is it
that is to command me how I shall choose my servants? The Fates made
Kark a cook-boy when he was born; let him go back where he belongs. I
have endured his boorishness long enough. Am I to despise a tool that
Heaven has sent me because a clod at my feet is jealous? What kind of
luck could that bring?"
Convinced or not, Valbrand was silenced. "It shall be as you wish," he
muttered.
Alwin fell on his knee, and, not daring to kiss the chief's hand, raised
the hem of the scarlet cloak to his lips.
"Lord," he said earnestly; then stopped because he could not find words
in which to speak his gratitude. "Lord--" he began again, and again he
was at a loss. At last he finished bluntly, "Lord, I will serve you as
only a man can serve whose whole heart is in his work."