III
“Nose is next of kin to eyes”—Northern saying.
“Nose is next of kin to eyes”—Northern saying.
“Nose is next of kin to eyes”—Northern saying.
“Nose is next of kin to eyes”
—Northern saying.
With signs of the day’s ruffling influence still visible at his mouth-corners, Randvar, Rolf’s son, put aside the cables of wild grape-vine that drooped curtain-like over the end of the home-trail, and paused to look before him.
“Poor and mean must this have seemed in my mother’s sight,” he mused.
A few steps ahead the path broadened into an open grassy space, in whose middle rose a low round tower, touched by the last rays of the setting sun. Built of gray stones held together by gray mortar, it stood out coldly amid the green and garnet and golden maples that walled it round; and among branching trees and wreathing vines its outline was as stark as the outline of an Iceland rock. No spire sprouted from its flat top; no balconies rounded out beneath the windows of its upper story, and its lower part was no more than eight gray pillars standing in a circle. Onone of them now a tangle of fish-nets was hanging; against another leaned a frame on which a wild-cat skin had been stretched to dry, and before a third stood a herring-keg and a barrel of wild-grape wine. Between the pillars, eight wide archways gave plain view into the round ground-room, in whose centre a fire was burning under a kettle. A flaxen-haired girl moved back and forth before the fire, and under one of the arches a tall, muscular woman stood looking out and wiping her heated face upon her homespun apron.
Understanding that her watch was for him, Randvar raised his hand in greeting; but his gaze remained on the small deep-set window high up on the Tower’s seaward side, where he had often seen his mother’s face looking out over the green wastes of trees and the blue wastes of water that stretched between her and the home she had left. It seemed to him now that he could see her again, flower-fair and crowned with hair like winter’s pale sunshine. The contrast between her delicacy and the rough setting came home to him with new force. In the bubbling caldron of his mind, awe came uppermost.
“It was a wondrous thing, my mother’s love,” he murmured as he moved slowly forward.
The greeting of the woman in the archway brought him back to the present. She was aweather-beaten woman, almost as severe in outline as the Tower itself, and with but little more color; yet proof remained that she had once been as freshly blooming as her daughter, and her work-roughened hand had a gentle touch as she laid it on his arm. She spoke quickly, regarding him with keen eyes.
“There is a new stain on your kirtle, foster-son, and a cut in the middle of it. What have you been doing to yourself?” As she talked, she was unfastening a buckle, and now laid bare his blood-soaked shirt.
He looked down at it with surprised recognition. “Did the courtman do all that? I had altogether forgotten it.”
“Courtman! Have you seen someone from the Jarl’s Town?” The girl caught him up and left her broth-stirring eagerly, but her mother motioned her away.
“Go up and get one of his linen shirts out of my chest, and fetch down the ointment,” she ordered her; then to her foster-son: “Bring in the water-pail and pull off those things and sit down here. Some day your carelessness will bring it to pass that you bleed to death, and it will not be a brave end, but a foolish one.”
“None the less is it pleasant to realize what state the French One’s fine clothes must be in,” Randvarchuckled, as he allowed himself to be pushed down on a bench by the fire.
The girl, returning headlong down the ladder-like stairs, repeated her entreaty for news; so while his foster-mother washed his wound, and his foster-sister rolled bandages for him, he related his adventure.
They listened without interruption until he came to the appearance of Brynhild and her following, when both stayed their hands to question him eagerly.
“Was Eric with her?”
“How did he look?”
“What did he say?”
“Did he send us a message?”
The first warm color came into the cheeks of Erna, the woman; her eyes shone hungrily.
Regarding her, her foster-son began deliberately to parry. “What did he say? Snowfrid, you are a simpleton! Do you suppose that folks gabble like wild turkeys while a noblewoman and her frippery are standing around? As for his looks, I can tell you that a red-headed woodpecker would get bashful beside him, all in green cloth from top to toe, with his hair cut like the Jarl’s. I did not wonder at all that the maiden wanted him for a page only from seeing him pick up her necklace in the road.”
The thin lips of Eric’s mother relaxed unconsciously into a smile, as her hands took up the last bandage; but Eric’s sister gave her flaxen braids a toss.
“I think he would not have been hindered from asking about us if he had wished,” she said. “It is my belief that the young one is puffed up with pride. Three times has the trading-ship on which he went up to see the wonders of the Town been back without bringing him for so much as a visit. It is my belief that he was ashamed to speak to Rand—” She was startled into swallowing the rest of the word by the sharpness with which Erna turned upon her.
“I know that he was not,” his mother said, sternly. “That his wits get dizzy from living with high people may well be. I was foolish myself about court ways when I came to be bowermaid to King Hildebrand’s daughter; but that he should ever fall off so much as to be ungrateful is not likely. I know that he remembered what is due to Freya’s son, and greeted him with respect.”
Randvar’s face was hidden by the shirt he was drawing on, but from its linen depths he chuckled.
“Never fear but what he greeted me! And named me to his mistress besides, else might she have thought me some shaggy beast.”
“There!” said Erna; and Snowfrid, somewhatabashed, turned her attention to dishing up the evening meal of venison broth and bread.
After the meal was under way, however, it occurred to her to ask concerning the appearance of Brynhild the Proud.
The power which the mere mention of that name had to upset his peace of mind amazed Randvar, even while he curtly denied any recollection of her whatever. It was a relief when at last eating was over, and Snowfrid had gone off to carry a jug of broth to the cabinful of old men, who were all that was left of Rolf’s lusty crew. Erna took up her knitting, then, and retired into her wonted silence and to her wonted seat on the other side of the fire; and he was free to stretch himself upon the floor of cedar boughs, and yield unreservedly to the strange turmoil of his thoughts.
Gazing out where the moon was steering between white cloud-reefs towards the open blue, he spoke dreamily: “Foster-mother, you knew the turns of Freya’s mind as a forester knows his home-trail—tell me how she took this life here.”
Without lessening the click of her needles, Erna glanced over at him. “I suppose you were made curious by seeing for the first time what kind of things a high-born maiden is accustomed to. It is the truth, however, that Freya took it well. Out of everything she made a jest. She used to lookat the leaf-walls around the Tower, and say that no queen had such an elf-woven tapestry, or changed her hangings so often. She was always smiling.”
“Her lips were always smiling,” Randvar said doubtfully, “but her eyes? It may be that I do not remember aright, since I was but a child in age when she died, yet it seems to me now that her eyes were always sorrowful.”
To that, Freya’s bowerwoman made no answer. The pause lasted so long unbroken by anything save the rattling of her wooden needles and the chirping of the crickets under the stone hearth that presently her foster-son threw a twig at her.
“Wake up, foster-mother! Are you going to have a weird spell, that you drowse and do not hear me?”
“Do your words need an answer, foster-son?” Erna returned. “As well as I, you should know that Freya’s nature was not such that she could be altogether happy in a life that sprang from the death of her kin.”
“I had forgotten that,” Randvar admitted.
She looked at him again across the fire. “This is where you show Rolf’s breed. I think he never even guessed it. Yet always the memory that he was the slayer of her father lay between them like a blade that no tenderness could sheathe. Sheloved him in spite of it, but I speak no more than the truth when I say that it was the effort of doing so which wore her out before half her life was lived.”
Supporting himself on his hand, Rolf’s son sat up and gazed at her earnestly. “The strange wonder is that she could feel any love towards him! Until to-day, what I could not get through my head was how my father could gentle himself to so weak a thing as a woman; but now I regard it as the greatest wonder that so proud and fine and wonderful a thing as a high-born maiden should give herself to a rough-minded brawling—”
“You need not take it upon yourself to speak in that manner of Rolf,” Erna interrupted him with some sternness. “All the fineness that was possible to his nature he gave her. For Freya, he who had never handled aught but a sword, toiled and sweat like a thrall to build this Tower; and afterwards he made his drinking-bouts as mild as a woman’s, lest she be touched with fear. And when she died, he slew himself from grief, as not many men have done before him. It is true that your mind is higher than his, through having her blood in your veins; but enough of his rough temper is in you, and his heedlessness about clothes and polite ways, to make any girl but a forest-bred wench like Snowfrid turn her eyes from you as from a bear.”
Wincing, Randvar dropped again to his elbow, averted his crimsoning face from the firelight. It came as a welcome diversion that at that moment Snowfrid’s voice was heard out in the darkness.
But Snowfrid’s half-frightened giggle, as she answered the questions of some one coming after her, was a surprise. It was not after that fashion that she conversed with Lame Farsek or his half-dozen decrepit old mates. Her mother and her foster-brother bestirred themselves to look out.
Erna’s surprise was not lessened to see her daughter emerge from the bush-shadows followed by a strapping fellow in the brass helmet and leather clothes of the Jarl’s guard; and Randvar’s astonishment increased as he recognized in the visitor the guardsman who had first spoken up for him in his adventure with Olaf and the Jarl’s daughter. While Erna rose hastily, smoothing down her apron, he leaped to his feet with a thumping heart. If by any possibility Brynhild should have sent him a message!
Even more than in the morning, the man-at-arms looked the soul of bluff good-fellowship as Snowfrid led him up to them, naming him as Bolverk of the Jarl’s guard, and explaining stammeringly that she had found him beating about in a berry-tangle in search of the path. He added a wink for her to his jovial recognition of the Songsmith,vowed that if the soldiers of the Jarl’s Town had but dreamed to what that path led, it would have been beaten broad enough to need no hunting for. Snowfrid relapsed into a blushing examination of her braids which struck her foster-brother as particularly ill-timed and foolish. He said with impatient politeness:
“It is to be regretted that the path failed your need, Guardsman Bolverk, for it must needs be urgent to bring you here at this hour.”
The guardsman made an effort to pull his round face to a solemn length. “Certainly it is no light errand that keeps me abroad, though my being here springs from a whim of Helvin, Jarl’s son—I should say, Helvin Jarl, for Starkad, his father, is dead. Saints grant him as much rest as he will accept of!”
After the manner of people hearing news, all three cried the word after him, “Dead!” Then Erna murmured, “Thus the old leaves drop off, one by one!” And Snowfrid cried impulsively: “Now will the young man take some comfort?” And Randvar smote his knee.
“No longer ago than this morning was I talking about Helvin, and how his father’s death would but free him from one trap to spring another on him.”
Bolverk’s ruddy face relaxed into its wontedcurves. “So you all know what manner of man he was? Then I need not pretend to shed tears for him, though I should think it sinful to wish any but an enemy such a death.”
Even while they drew near together, the women questioned him with their eyes. Randvar put it into words.
“In what manner did he come to his death? I saw him ride past to the hunt,—I suppose it was caused by a fall from his horse?”
The guardsman shook his head ponderously. “No such quiet end for Starkad the Berserker. One of the hunting-dogs sprang on him and tore his throat to pieces. Ingolf brought the tidings just after we parted from you. The place where it happened was on the brink of as hideous a pond as a bad dream ever painted. I went and looked at it afterwards. I give you my word that the water was as black as—”
“The Black Pool!” cried Erna and Snowfrid together. Randvar had become as motionless as the bench on which his foot was resting.
Bolverk nodded. “Naught else should it be called; any dead branch sticking out of it gets the look of a bleached bone. You may imagine what a sight it was to come upon,—Starkad sprawling on the brink, and Helvin leaning against a tree, more white than a halter-corpse, except—”
“Helvin!” This time the echo came from Randvar.
Drawing a step nearer, Bolverk lowered his voice.
“I will not be so mean as to draw the cup back after you have had one swallow. Only I ask you to forget who brought the tidings hither. The hound was Helvin’s. He had taken it out of the pack and kept it with him because of a wound in its foot, and it is thought that it did not attack the Jarl without cause. Father and son had many words about something before they set forth this morning. When Helvin dashed ahead by himself, the Jarl sent men after him to fetch him back. And when at last they came to the point where the party broke up, and the women went aside to the waiting-place and each man struck out for himself, Starkad forced Helvin to ride apart with him, though it was seen by every one that the young man had the greatest dread of accompanying him. What passed between them Helvin does not tell, and no one dares ask, but it is guessed that Starkad worked himself into a Berserk rage and fell upon him—”
“Odin!” gasped Erna, and at the same time crossed herself.
“And that the dog broke loose to protect its master. And many believe that the taste of bloodmaddened it so that it went so far as to attack Helvin when he dragged it off the Jarl, for the claws had torn the silver lace on his sleeves, and one of the proofs that he must have been grappling with it when he slew it is that his kirtle is all one gore of blood—What do you say?”
But Randvar would not repeat the curse that had been wrung from him; and Bolverk, encountering Snowfrid’s horrified gaze, became diverted by the amiable desire to recall her blushing smile.
“And that,” he went on, “is the beginning of the reason why this bright-haired maiden of victory found me battling with thorns and led me to Valhalla. When a move was made to go back to the Town, Helvin seemed to come crazy out of his black silence. He vowed that he would have one night of freedom before the rule came on him, and forbade any to follow, and broke from us into the forest—It is likely you know, also, that he has dreaded the rule more than most men dread Hel! But old Mord, who was the first of Starkad’s advice-givers, counselled us to follow at a distance, that we might be within call in case danger threatened him from Skraellings or other wild animals. In the moonlight we kept him in sight almost to the head of your Island, but there it happened that we lost him. The rest declared that he had turned aside, and I declared that he had not; so I set outalone, and finding so plain a path, kept on out of adventuresomeness. It is possible that I shall have to stand some banter, and yet I cannot find it in my heart to be sorry about my blunder.” Again he winked at Snowfrid over the huge fist caressing his yellow mustache, then drew himself up with a prodigious sigh. “My one regret is that I must now return to my duty. Will you not guide me back as far as the cabin, my fair one? I cannot seem to remember the way at all between here and there.”
Snowfrid’s eyes answered him delightedly, but her lips waited bashfully for her mother. She ran no risk in doing so, however, for under Erna’s apparent sternness there lay as much Norse simplicity as Norse kindness.
She said, “Go, child, of course,” and poured Bolverk so excellent a stirrup-cup, and shook his hand so warmly at parting, that he went away without even observing that the master of the Tower had bidden him no farewell, but still stood with his foot on the bench and his eyes on the fire.
Erna looked at him curiously when she had resumed her seat and her knitting. At last she spoke:
“Hard tidings are these and great to hear; yet I cannot see, foster-son, that they touch us so nearly as you appear to feel.”
“You will see when I tell you what spell sometroll laid upon me,” he retorted. Straightening, he went and threw himself down in his favorite place upon the fragrant mat, and began to pour out wrathfully the story of his adventure at the Black Pool.
“There you have it all before you,” he wound up. “I was made to behave in an unfavorable manner before the man with whom, above all others, I would wish to stand well. I thought, first, it was some poison from the Pool that beset me; but since it worked no harm to any one else, I know it was a curse turned on me alone—Hel take the luck! Hel take it, I say!”
When she had let her suspended breath go from her in a yawn, murmuring, “That was a strange happening—a strange happening,” she answered gravely: “You throw blame undeservedly. It is your guardian spirit that has given you power to feel it better than others when an evil deed is in the air. I have often heard of people who had such a gift—”
He flung up his arms to snap the fingers sharply. “Take my share of such white-livered gifts! Power? I call that a weakness which makes me a stick in the hands of something stronger than I! If I knew what part of me it had root in, it should not last long.”
“You will bring punishment upon yourself foryour ungratefulness,” she said, but said it without force, seeming to wander among her thoughts. His scorn held the field.
“I should be glad to hear what I am to be grateful for! Nothing could make Helvin believe now that I am any better than a coward. It shows what a cur he took me for that his first impulse was to send an arrow after me. I am as much outlawed from his following as though a lawman had laid a ban upon me.”
She had no answer to that, or else the heat of the fire was making her drowsy. Leaning forward, she sat blinking at it, her arms folded on her knees.
Breaking up twigs with one hand to jerk them into the flames with the other, he went on piling up causes for bitterness, though he no longer spoke them aloud,—they came from too near his heart for that.
“I should have helped him, if I had acted out my own nature, and he would have done me honor in return. I should have left this emptiness of beasts and trees to measure myself against men. It would go hard with me if I could not prove myself more than that grinning French-broken ape. She showed him favor; she would have shown me more.... She might ... in time ... she might even.... More unlikely things happened to my father!”