IN THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD
It is better to live,
Even to live miserably;
..........
The halt can ride on horseback;
The one-handed, drive cattle;
The deaf, fight and be useful;
To be blind is better
Than to be burnt;
No one gets good from a corpse.
Ha'vama'l
"Egil! Egil Olafsson!" It was Helga's voice, with a note of happiness
thrilling through it like the trill in a canary's song.
Egil turned from the field in which his men were and came slowly to
where she stood leaning over the fence that separated the field from the
lane. He guessed from her voice that they had told her the secret, and
when he came near enough to see, he knew it from her face; it was like a
rose-garden burst into bloom. His lowering brow scowled itself into a
harder knot. With the death of his father, he had thrown aside the
scarlet clothes of Leif's men, and wore the brown homespun of a farmer.
From his neck downward, everything spoke of thrift and industry and
peace. But his fierce dark face looked the harsher for the contrast.
Helga stretched her hand across the fence. "I am going to see Alwin, for
the first time after all these months. They told me two days ago, but
this is the first chance I could find. But even before I saw him, I
thought it right to see you and thank you for your wondrous goodness.
Sigurd has told me how they carried Alwin to you in the night, and you
received him and sheltered him, and--"
Egil silenced her with a rough gesture. "I kept my oath of friendship;
speak no further of it. Do you know where he is hidden?"
"Sigurd told me he is in the cabin of your old foster-mother, Solveig. I
do not remember whether that is to the left or the right of the lane.
But it is a most ingenious hiding-place. No one ever goes there, and
Solveig is the most accomplished of nurses."
"Since you do not remember where it is, I will walk with you, if it is
not against your wish." He shouted some final directions to the men in
the field, then leaped over the fence and strode along beside her.
He appeared to have nothing to say, after they were once started, and
they went through lane and pasture and field in silence. But as soon as
she broke out with fresh praise for his kindness, he found his tongue in
all its curt vigor.
"Enough has been said about that. I have been wishing to speak to you of
something that happened at the feast the other night. Do you know that
my kinswoman Astrid told Gilli of her wish to buy your bondwoman, and--"
For a moment there was something wolfish about Helga's white teeth. She
struck in quickly: "Yes, I know. Gilli agreed to sell Editha to her, the
day we sail. It is exactly what I expected of him. If Astrid should
offer a little more, he would be apt to sell me. He is the
lowest-minded--Bah!" It seemed as though words failed her. She threw her
hands apart in a gesture of utter detestation. The glow was gone out of
her face.
"What I wanted to say is, that if it is your wish, I will persuade my
mother to withdraw her offer."
After a while Helga shook her head. "No. He would only sell her to some
one else. It would trouble me to think of her among strangers, and your
mother would treat her kindly." She paused, at the top of the stile they
were climbing over, to look down at him earnestly. "I should be thankful
if you would promise me that, Egil. You are master now, and can have
your will about everything. Promise me you will see that she is well
treated."
"I promise you." Helga threw a grateful look after him, as he went along
before her. "Your word is like a rock, Egil. One could hold on to it
though everything else should roll away."
The cloud was passing from her face. By the time she gained his side,
the rose-garden was once more radiant in sunlight.
"After all, I do not feel that I have a right to let anything grieve me
much, since God has given Alwin back from the dead. I set my mind to
thinking of that, and then everything else seems small and easily
remedied. Even Gilli's coming it is possible to turn to profit. I have a
fine plan--"
She broke off abruptly as, through a clump of white-birch trees, she
caught sight of a tiny cabin nestled in their green shelter.
"That is Solveig's house; now I remember it! How is it possible that it
has held such a secret for four months, and still looks just as usual?
Let us hurry!" She seized his arm to pull him along. Only when he
wrenched away and came to a dead stop, did she slacken her pace to stare
at him over her shoulder.
"Do you wish to drive me crazy?" he shouted.
She thought him already so, and drew back.
He waited to take a fresh grip on his self-control. When he spoke at
last, it was with labored slowness: "Every week for four months I have
come to this door and asked the Englishman how he fared; and he has not
wished for anything that I have not given it to him. The night they left
him with me, I could have put my fingers around his throat and killed
him; and no one would have known. But I held my hands behind me, and
allowed him to live. So far, I have kept my oath of friendship. Do you
wish me to go in with you and break it now?"
Before she could gather her wits together to answer him, he was gone.
Standing where he had left her, she stared after him, open-mouthed,
until her eye fell upon the cabin among the bushes, when she forgot
everything else in the world. She ran toward it and threw open the door.
The low room was smoky and badly lighted. Before she could distinguish
her lover in the dimness, he was upon her, calling her name over and
over, crushing her hands in his. She cried out, and lifted her face, and
his lips met hers, warm and living. It was the same as though nothing
had happened since last she saw him.
No, not quite the same; she saw that, the instant she drew back. Alwin
was very thin, and in the half-light his face showed white and haggard.
An ugly scar stretched half across his forehead. At the sight of it her
eyes flashed, and she reached up and touched with her lips the fiery
mark.
"How I hate Leif for that!" Then she saw the greatest change of all in
him, the quiet grimness that had come upon him out of his nights of pain
and days of solitude.
"That is unfairly spoken, sweetheart. I have but paid the price I agreed
to pay if luck went against me. Leif has dealt with me only according to
justice; that I will maintain, though I die under his sword at the
last."
She drew a quick, sharp breath. In the joy of recovery, she had let
herself forget that he is only half alive who lives under the shadow of
a death sentence. She set her teeth over her lip to stop its trembling,
and stiffened herself to the iron composure of a shield-maiden.
"It is true that you are yet in great danger. His anger has not yet
departed from him, for not once has your name passed his lips. Sit down
here and tell me what you think of your case."
Alwin recalled the weeping and fainting of his mother's waiting-women,
in that far-off time of trouble, and pressed her hand gratefully as he
took his seat by her side upon the bench. "You are my brave comrade as
well as my best friend. I can talk with you as I would with Sigurd."
Just for a moment she laid her cheek against his shoulder. "It gladdens
me that you are content with me as I am, instead of wishing me to be
like Bertha of Trondhjem and other women," she whispered.
Then the memory linked with that name caused her to straighten again and
look at him doubtfully. "Has Solveig told you all the latest tidings?"
"She has told me nothing for a week. She is up at the hall just now,
helping with the spinning; but Editha was here two days ago. Is it of
King Olaf that you are thinking? She told me of the battle; and I am
full of sorrow for Leif. She told me that his room was draped in black,
and that he stopped preparing for his exploring voyage and shut himself
up for four days and four nights, without eating or speaking."
"He has begun his preparations again. His sorrow is not worth
considering. Or, rather, I shall grieve with him when he grieves for
you. The tidings that I mean concern Gilli of Trondhjem. Do you know
that he has come to take me away?"
She wanted to see the despair in his face, that she might feel how much
he cared; then she hastened to reassure him. "But do not trouble
yourself over that. Even though I go with him, it will do no harm. If he
tries to marry me to anyone, I will pretend that I think the marriage
beneath me. I will work upon his greediness, and so trick him into
waiting; and in a year you will come and rescue me."
"If I am alive!" Alwin interrupted her sharply. He sprang up and began
to pace the floor, clenching his fists and knocking them together. "If I
am alive I will come. But it is by no means unlikely that Leif will
carry out his intention. Then you will be left in Gilli's power
forever."
She laughed as she went to him and brought him back and pushed him down
upon the bench.
"See how love makes a coward of a man as well as of a woman! But do not
trouble yourself over that, either. Have you never heard the love-tale
of Hagberth and Signe? How, the same moment in which she saw him hanged
upon the gallows, she set fire to her house and strangled herself with
her ribbons, so that their two souls met on the threshold of Paradise
and went in together? If you die, I will die too; and that will arrange
everything." She clung to him for a moment, and he feared that she was
about to dishonor her shield by a burst of tears.
But in an instant she looked up at him with her brave smile. "We will
end this talk about dying, however. Remember the old saying, 'If a man's
time has not come, something is sure to aid him.' There is another fate
in store for you than to lose your life in this matter, or you would
have died when Leif struck you down. I love the cap that saved you! We
will not talk about dying, but only of our hopes. I have planned how
Gilli may be made useful, so that on his vessel you can escape to
Norway."
She put her hand over his mouth as he would have spoken. "No, listen to
me before you say anything against it. Gilli will sail next week. At
that time Leif will be absent on a visit to Biorn Herjulfsson, who has
just returned to Greenland from Norway. With Leif, Kark will go, so that
we shall not have his prying eyes to fear. What would prevent you from
stealing down to the shore, the night before we sail, and swimming out
to the ship and hiding yourself in one of the great chests in the
foreroom? The steersman will not hinder you, for I have spoken so many
fine words to him, with this deed in view, that he is ready to chop off
his head at my bidding. Thus will you get far out at sea before they
discover you. Gilli will not know that he has ever seen you before, you
are so white and changed; and when he has taken away all the property
you have on you, he will say nothing further about the matter. So will
you be brought to Norway,--and thence it is not far to your England,
though I do not know if that is of any importance. But if you say that
this plan is otherwise than ingenious, I shall be angry with you."
Alwin vented a short laugh. "It is most ingenious, comrade. The only
trouble with it is that I have no ambition to go either to Norway or to
England."
This time it was he who sealed her lips, as her amazement was about to
burst through them.
"Give me a hearing and you will understand. I do not wish to go to
England because I could do nothing there to improve my credit in any
way. My kin have disappeared like withered grass, and the Danes are
all-powerful. I do not wish to go to Norway because there I could never
be more than a runaway slave; and though I strove to my uttermost, it is
unlikely that I could ever acquire either wealth or influence,--and
without both how would it ever be possible to win you? See how the North
has conquered me! First it was only my body that was bound; and I was
sure that, if ever I got my freedom, I should enter the service of some
English lord and die fighting against the Danes. And now a Norse maiden
has conquered my heart, so that I would not take my liberty if it were
offered me! No, no, sweetheart; I have thought of it, night and day,
until at last I see the truth. The only chance I have is with Leif."
Helga wrung her hands violently. "You must be crazy if you think so! He
would strike you down the instant his eyes--"
"It is not my intention that he shall know me until he has had cause to
soften toward me. Do you not remember Skroppa's prophecy? has not Sigurd
told you of it?--that it is in this new untrodden country that my fate
is to be decided? I will disguise myself in some way, and go on this
exploring expedition among his following. I shall have many chances to
be of service to him."
"But suppose they should not come soon enough? Suppose your disguise
should be too shallow? His eyes are like arrows that pierce everything
they are aimed at. Suppose he should recognize you at once?"
The new grimness again squared Alwin's mouth. "Then one of two things
will happen. Either he will pardon me, for the sake of what I have
already endured; or else he will keep to his first intention, and kill
me. In neither case will we be worse off than we were four months ago."
Such logic admitted of no reply, and Helga gave way to it. But so much
anguish was betrayed in her face, that Alwin gave another short laugh
and asked her:
"Who is it now that love is making a coward of?"
She shook her head gravely. "I am no coward. It gladdens me to have you
face death in this way, and to know that you will not murmur even if
luck goes against you. But I do not wish you to throw your life away;
and you know no prudence. Let us speak of this disguise. What have you
fixed upon?"
"I acknowledge that I have accomplished very little. Solveig has told me
of a bark whose juice is such that with it I can turn my skin brown like
that of the Southerners. And I have decided to make believe that I am a
Frankish man. I know not a little of their tongue, which will help to
disguise my speech. But how I am to cover up my short hair, or account
for my appearance in Greenland--" He shrugged his shoulders, and dropped
his chin upon his fist.
Helga clasped her hands around her knee and stared at him thoughtfully.
"I have heard Sigurd tell of a strange wonder he saw in France,--I do
not know what you call it,--like a hood made of people's hair. A girl
who had lost her hair through sickness was wont to wear it; and Sigurd
did not even suspect that it was rootless, until one day she caught the
ends in her cloak, and pulled it off. If you could get one of those--"
"If!" Alwin murmured. But Helga did not hear him. Suddenly, in the dim
perspective of her mind, she had caught a glimpse of a plan. As she
darted at it, it eluded her; but she chased it to and fro, seeing it
more clearly at each turn. Finally she caught it. She leaped up and
opened her mouth to shout it forth, when an impulse of Editha's caution
touched her, and instead, she threw her arms around his neck and laughed
it into his ear.
He drew back and gazed at her with dawning appreciation. She nodded
excitedly.
"Is it not well fitted to succeed? You can escape to Norway as I
planned, and after that you can easily reach Normandy. All that you lack
is gold, and Leif and Gilli have covered me with that."
His face kindled as he mused on it. "It sounds possible. Sigurd's
friends would receive me well for his sake; and after I had got
everything for my disguise, I would have yet many good chances to return
to Nidaros and board the ship of Arnor Gunnarsson, who comes here each
summer on a trading voyage. Coming that way, who could suspect
me?--particularly when it is everyone's belief that I am dead."
"No one!" Helga cried joyously. "No one! It is perfect!"
In a sudden burst of gratitude, he caught her hands and kissed them.
"All is due to you, then. It is an unheard-of cleverness! You must be a
Valkyria! Only a great hero is worthy of a maid like you."
Laughing with pleasure, she hid her face on his breast. And it must be
that her plan possessed some of the advantages she claimed for it, for
it came to pass that, on the same day that Gilli and his daughter set
sail for Norway, a fair-skinned thrall with a shaven head disappeared
from Greenland so completely that even Kark's keen eyes would have found
it impossible to trace him.