Sigurd thought now that it would be of no use to seek any help from
King Harald again; and he kept himself concealed all the autumn and the
beginning of the winter. He lay hid in Bergen, in the house of a priest.
King Harald was also in the town, and many great people with him. Now
Sigurd considered how, with his friends' help, he might take the king by
surprise, and make an end of him. Many men took part in this design; and
among them some who were King Harald's court-men and chamberlains,
but who had formerly been King Magnus's court-men. They stood in great
favour with the king, and some of them sat constantly at the king's
table. On Saint Lucia's day (December 13), in the evening when they
proposed to execute this treason, two men sat at the king's table
talking together; and one of them said to the king, "Sire, we two
table-companions submit our dispute to your judgment, having made a
wager of a basket of honey to him who guesses right. I say that you
will sleep this night with your Queen Ingerid; and he says that you will
sleep with Thora, Guthorm's daughter."
The king answered laughing, and without suspecting in the least that
there lay treachery under the question, that he who had asked had lost
his bet.
They knew thus where he was to be found that night; but the main guard
was without the house in which most people thought the king would sleep,
viz., that which the queen was in.