WOOD-BIDERS.
Very home-sickness, and nothing else, drew Thorstein back to Hougun. He
stayed awhile in York, hoping for news; but the only news was of Olaf’s
death, sudden and strange,—the hand of God manifest, folk said, and St.
Balthere’s vengeance on the church-burner. So all was fear and flight in
the old city and throughout Deira.
Then Thorstein took leave of his friend the Dane merchant, and shirking
talk with the Minster-priests, won his way back over the Keel, and
wandered homewards.
Out of the Northmen’s land he was free from their laws. But in those days
a stranger was a stranger, in whatever land he abode. If he had no strong
friends he was nought. So that between wandering abroad and wood-biding
at home there was little to choose.
Now the way of the wood-biders was this. When a man was utterly outlawed
no friend might receive him, under pains and penalties; every enemy
had the right to hunt him like a wild beast, and to get the reward for
killing him, if reward were offered. So there was nothing for it but to
stay in the forests, hiding in some cave or secret hut of tree-boughs and
turf, and living on what he could hunt, or maybe rob from the neighbours
who had put him out of law. In this manner, not so long afterwards,
William of Cloudeslea and Robin Hood fled to the green-wood, where the
king’s sheriffs could not take them. And even to these days, men who have
been in trouble with the law have been known to hide themselves in the
wide woods that cover the Furness fells, skulking by day and prowling by
night; sometimes friendly enough with the poorer sort, and troublesome
only to the gentle-folk and greater farmers of the neighbourhood, whose
stock they pilfered: and their hiding-places are well known to those that
know the country well. In the end these wood-biders either got their
peace with the law, or were hunted down, or died like wild beasts in the
wood.
Thorstein was not without hope that his business might be done by his
friends, whom he never doubted. But when he came one morning to Lowick,
risking his neck for the sake of news, he heard that things were no
forwarder.
“But,” said Halldora, “hark to this. Two days ago, as I was sitting in
the sun—it was bright autumn weather—and the child was kicking about
on the grass, I heard him crowing and chuckling; and I looked up from
my sewing, and there he was, staring at somewhat, and laughing. Then I
was ware of one among the trees hard by,—for it was on the edge of the
wood,—looking eagerly at us though the branches. I could see nothing but
the gleam of an eye, and a white hand. I made no stay, but caught up the
barn and ran for it. And yet by the white hand, I reckon yon was a woman;
and none of the folk hereabouts, be they fell-folk or farm-folk, by the
same token. But by the gleam of eyelight, I reckon she was gradely tall
for a woman. What dost make of that, lad?”
He went straight to Greenodd, caring nought who might meet him. Into the
hall he strode, and “Mother,” said he, “where is Raineach?”
She was not so very far to seek after that; nor so very hard to suit when
he found her. The true tale had come out on both sides. Unna had told
her of Orm, and of Asdis, and of Thorstein’s beguiling; and Raineach
had given her own story,—how she was carried to York, after finding
that Thorstein had left thinking of her; and then of her adventures at
Olaf’s castle there; and then how they were sent away, and sailed round
by Pictland and Orkney and the South-isles; and then how the wind had
brought them to the Cumberland coast, and how she wept at the sight of
her fells again; and how the queen was sorry for her, and said at last,
“There, wench; hie away with thee, and have better luck than to be a
king’s castaway.”—“And maybe,” said Raineach, reddening, “she was a bit
weary of me, for there was always some stir forward, and she had no man
now to keep her folk under. Any way, by dint of this and that, I made
shift to get clear of them all; and short was the way hither, for fells
are easier to pass than foes.”
O but Raineach was grown great and strong, and more than womanly, for
she was such a one as a giant’s daughter should be; but as fine spoken
and as fair-skinned as a princess, with her three winters of court and
castle-biding. She had got used to outlandish doings and unkind havings,
one could see that by the very way she supped her porridge. But when
Thorstein told her to think twice before she took him,—and he did so,—how
she laughed! The rose-red came and went, up and down the bonny slim
cheeks. She reached out both her hands, and held his. It was good to feel
that firm grasp.
“How many times dost thou reckon I have thought of it, lad, before now?”
They walked together over the fells by woodland paths where none could
spy them, to a little village near the shore of Duddon firth. There they
found the priest whom Raineach had known of old, he who had given that
counsel to her when she sold her cross to the wood-wrights. He was a
strange figure, with high shaven brow and hair long behind; the beard
thick above his mouth, and cropped below. And his little church was more
like a hut of the fell-folk than the clay daubing at Cartmel; for he was
one of the old sort, and of the rule of those Irish priests who came over
sea and settled up and down the Cumberland coasts, building them stone
cells, and there serving those Irish saints, like Patrick and Sanctan and
Bega, whose names are still known hereabouts, and were known long before
the York Minster-priests came to that land.
There was no grand wedding, with neighbours to feast and gifts to
scatter. They knelt alone in the bare little cell before the priest,
and in his own speech he blessed them in the name of the Father and Son
and Holy Ghost, and bade them be one heart and soul, world without end.
It was no wedding at all, the heathen Northmen would have said, this of
the outlaw to the stranger, unwitnessed and unwarranted. But then, to
the Christians the bridals of the Northmen were nothing, no more than a
manner of partnership in trade, that could be on and off like any other
bargain in worldly matters.
It was Thorstein’s hope to rebuild his own house at Blawith, if he had
to do it with his own hands, none aiding him. And if he could but settle
there again and hold his own, far away as it was from the neighbours and
buried in the woods, he thought the turn of the tide would come, and
after a while he would be once more a free man among his own people. So
he knocked up a shed among the ruins, and gathered together such trifles
as he could save out of the wreck. But they had not been a week at work
on the new home, when before daylight one morning the dogs awakened them,
and they fled into the wood, only just in time. Their little cot was
ablaze, and a band of armed men was slashing about, and hunting for them
up and down.
[Illustration: PEEL ISLAND]
But they would not leave hope, so fully persuaded as they were that
better days were coming. It was the back-end of the summer by now, and
winter was upon them. It would not do to risk another door-doom; and
as they cowered in hiding—wood-biders well skilled in the craft—they
talked out a plan to put more than dry land between themselves and their
enemies, until the time should come when they might get peace.
In the midst of Thurston-water there is a little island, lying all alone.
When you see it from the fells, it looks like a ship in the midst of the
blue ripples; but a ship at anchor, while all the mere moves up-bank
or down-bank, as the wind may be. The little island is ship-like also
because its shape is long, and its sides are steep, with no flat and
shelving shores; but a high short nab there is to the northward, for a
prow, so to speak; and a high sharp ness to the southward, for a poop.
And to make the likeness better still, a long narrow calf-rock lies in
the water, as if it were the cockboat at the stern; while tall trees
stand for masts and sails.
The island is not so far in the water but that one can swim to shore,
nor so near that it would be easy to attack it without a boat: and at
that time boats there were none on these lakes, except maybe a coracle
or two of the fell-folk. For fishing, no spot could be better, nor for
hunting, if one wanted a safe home and hunting-tower. And if need were to
run down Crake to Lowick for news or victuals, that could be done with
little risk. This should be their hold and their home, they planned. Here
they would make themselves secure, and let the storm drift over their
heads.
So said so done. By nightfall they were on the island, with little goods
indeed, but with a fire alight, and a rough lair of branches wreathed
to shelter them. Into it they crept, and cuddled together as when they
were children, laughing at their makeshifts and eager over their designs.
Through the shivering, falling leaves the moon shone, patterning the
grass of the glade in their dell, and dying out as the clouds raked by;
flashing again, and fading. The woof of the waves against the rock-wall
of their castle, and the voice of the wind flying past, booming in the
great forest that rose steep over against them on the eastern shore,
and then shrieking in the branches overhead,—all these touched them not
in their shelter, and only made their peace more peaceful, and their
security more secure. It was the old time come again for both of them,
and they were as lightsome as children in their new happiness.
“Hark to the wind,” said Raineach, “afar and away there: it will be down
at the water-foot now, ruffling the great oak trees as if they were
barns’ curly heads. It is coming up-bank. Ah, it is catching the nab end:
hark to the dash of the waves on the shore and on the rock in the water.
Here it comes. That was a big one, Thorstein: it made the ground shake,
like a ship-deck. I had liefer be here than on shipboard, though. Shall
we hold, thinkst thou?”
“Oh aye; the trees sway a bit and the roots jar in the mould: but we are
snug enough here. It’s not the wind will harm us.”
“Nay, the wind is bonny. It sings. They used to sing a deal in Dublin,
the bards, and there were your skalds, they called them, in York: whiles
they sang me songs all to myself. They were fools. It was like this:—The
red fern is tall and fair. She sways in the autumn breeze. Swords flash:
blood flows. The red fern heeds them not.—Nay, nor I didn’t. Not I. They
sang nought. But yon wind, what does it sing? Home again, child: home
again, old playfellow: home!—Make a hole, lad, through the bield to spy
at. There’s no window in our island palace: and I want to see the fells,
and count them. Nay then; it’s no use: we are all umbered up with trees.
Aigh! it is wolf dark: pull the boughs again, Thorstein; the wind blows
at me through the spy-hole.”
“The pet of Dublin and the pride of York has got over nice and nesh with
her queens and earls and such like, I doubt, for a bield in the wild
wood. Nay, don’t nip like that, Raineach: it hurts, thou great rough
minx!”
“I’ll be named no names then. Did I hurt thee? Truly? Beat me. But thou,
Thorstein, never cast up against me what was none of my doing. I did
no wrong to thee, of all people. None. The wind knows. Hark, it begins
again. What is it saying?—The red fern grows round the tall great stone,
out on the fell: on the fell. And it grows and it grows, and it hides it,
and it smothers it, and it chokes it, all in its red red hair!”
“Oh let be, lass; I am that weary. What is the night for but to sleep? It
will be up and doing, over soon.”
“There, then, shut eyes. Bad lad, they are not shut. I can see them,
I can see them in the dark, shining.—Dost thou mind the wild cat,
Thorstein, and how angry we were? Now we are never to be angry again, are
we? Shut eyes and snore, I say, or I’ll beat thee.”