V
“His hands are clean who warns another”—Northern saying.
“His hands are clean who warns another”—Northern saying.
“His hands are clean who warns another”—Northern saying.
“His hands are clean who warns another”
—Northern saying.
“Wait a moment,” Erna commanded, quickening her descent of the stairs.
Wrapped in his cloak of russet homespun, Randvar had just come in from his morning swim, and was hastening where his heap of clothing waited by the fire. He quieted the chattering of his teeth to look at her inquiringly.
Two days and three nights had passed since the strain of using her double sight had numbed her wits; once more she was her capable keen-eyed self. Yet there was a quiver of unusual emotion in her stern face as she came up and laid her hand upon his arm.
“I want to find out whether you are in danger of sinking by swords,” she said with her customary terseness, and her grasp tightened determinedly as he started to move away.
“I have declared, foster-mother, that I will endure no more magic though my life lies on it!”
“What magic is it that my palms, like those of many another witchcraft-knowing woman, have the power to feel where steel is going to pierce a vital part, and to strengthen that part? I tell you to let me have my will. I dreamed last night that I saw a wounded eagle, which may well be your Other Shape.”
“Foster-mother, I tell you that any more of this spell-work is going to put me into a bad temper; and it is my wish to behave well towards you the last morning we are together.” Involuntarily, his voice softened.
Though usually she disdained them, she was not without a knowledge of woman’s weapons. She assumed them rather than lose her point.
“Maybe so, but you behave all the other way to set your self-will against my peace of mind. Do you think I could bear Eric’s absence if I had not the assurance of my hands that his body is sound?”
Wondering whether she had also tested the soundness of Eric’s head tempted the Songsmith to a chuckle. The discovery that half the fierce brightness of her eyes was due to tears finished his disarming. Half sighing, half growling, he let his cloak slip off his shoulders.
“When did I ever get my will against you,—after I got out of swaddling-bands? I ask, however,that you do not keep me feeling foolish here longer than is necessary.”
Probably it was the same to her as though he were still in swaddling-bands, when once she had closed her eyes that all her forces might be concentrated in her sense of touch. The palms she pressed upon his firm cool flesh—polished satin-smooth by the water, glistening satin-fair in the firelight—moved as tenderly as though the sinewy frame were still the soft child-body that she had tended in its helplessness. Each time his glance fell upon her worn face with its mouth hard-set in anxiety for him, he swallowed his impatience one time more; and when the waxing light made delay no longer possible, his efforts to free himself were begun with all gentleness.
“Foster-mother, be good enough to remember that I cannot start later than sunrise, if I am to reach there by sunset.”
She clutched him with one hand, while the other pressed hard upon his left side.
“I thought I felt a place—stand still!—over your heart. It would be a death wound, indeed.There!Cold! A spot as cold as Hel’s mouth!” She opened eyes dilated with excitement in a face that had become ashen pale.
An involuntary shiver passed over him, cooling his impatience. He watched thoughtfully whileshe began to knead his flesh with her warm and tingling finger-balls. After a time he said:
“It cannot be gainsaid that this is a better place to give a thrust than to take one. I admit that I expect to meet some unexpected things in the path I am entering. Not a little overgrowth hides it. Although I cannot tell why, much that the Jarl said that night came to me as a surprise. I suppose that the strangeness of his temper is the explanation of it.... Yet there is one thing that I can find no answer to,—why should he act as if it were important to him to have an unknown man like me in his following?”
Instead of answering, she began to rub at what she considered a vulnerable place in his discretion. “Never make the mistake of belittling yourself like that, and least of all where strangers can hear you. The result might be that they would take you at your word and believe you to be a man of no mark.”
He stirred impatiently. “Brisk enough am I, and many shall give place to me; but this I know not,—why it should matter to the Jarl of New Norway where I spend my days.”
Neither did she know, when she came to think it over. She soon gave up the attempt to fall back upon what she did know.
“It will be all the same in the end. I have doneall I can in protecting your vitals. Safe into the fray you will go; safe out of the fray you will come,—if you do not let your flesh get cut so that you bleed to death. Stand still that I may see if I have brought back the life-warmth.... Yes ... yes, the cold is entirely gone.” When she had pulled herself up stiffly by his arm, she released him. “Scant time will you have to jump into your clothes. The sun is not far away when the top of that chestnut-tree stands out so boldly.”
“That is true!” he assented, and cleared at a bound the distance between himself and his clothing.
For a while there were no other sounds to be heard save the simmering of the kettle and the song of Snowfrid overhead, sweet as the lilt of a meadow-lark in a field of golden grain.
As he rose from swallowing his last mouthful of broth, the girl came clattering down the stairs, waving over her head a great sword whose hilt was of iron inlaid with silver, and whose sheath was made from a rattlesnake-skin.
“I knew that though you should forget to say farewell to me, you would remember to wait for this,” she said. “I took it up-stairs last night and polished it a long time after you were all asleep. Does it not look well?”
“I did not remember it,” Randvar admitted, “so little used am I to anything more than a hunting-knife.”Taking it from her as she unsheathed it, he felt its edges critically, and feigned to test them on one of her yellow braids. “The hilt cleaves to my hand like the palm of a friend. I shall feel more self-respecting to go among strangers with my father’s sword at my side. Perhaps some of his good-fortune will come from it to me.” His brown face reddened, and he turned it away suddenly to watch the girl’s nimble fingers fastening at his hip the sword-belt which she had drawn across his shoulder.
But Snowfrid jumped up with her usual liveliness, crying, “If your luck is most good, it may even happen that the Jarl will make you a guardsman like Bolverk,” and he bestirred himself to tease her as usual.
“Pooh! If he cannot do any more for me than that, I shall come home again!”
The emphasis with which her hands planted themselves upon her hips boded ill for him, but Erna came between them to make sure that the strap which held his harp to his back was also secure. When that had been seen to, there was no further excuse for lingering.
Stretching out his arms to his foster-mother, he said: “Live as well as you can, and do not worry about Eric or me. Your luck will take care of me, and I will take care of him.”
She clasped him around the neck, and kissed him with passionate fierceness.
“If you owe me anything, pay it to Eric,” she whispered in his ear, and then turned away and began violently to stir the soup.
At that, Snowfrid took a hand from her hip to draw the back of the wrist across her eyes, and signified that she was going to see him off by slipping out ahead into the gray light.
Though the darkness had melted from the air, there lingered in it yet that chill of unreality which makes earth and trees and even rocks seem but phantoms of themselves. As they crossed the grass, Randvar said, “It has the look of a dead world that is waiting for the sun to bring it to life,” and the girl shivered assent and drew closer to him.
At the entrance to the path she stopped, and he turned for a parting look at the dwelling that his father’s gentled strength had built and his mother’s courageous love had hallowed. In the grayness it loomed as remote and unreal as all the rest, the firelight that showed wanly through the archways only adding to its shadowy strangeness.
“It seems to me that life is only just beginning for me, too,” he said slowly as he gazed.
“You ought not to feel so,” the girl cried reproachfully.“You ought to feel that you are going away from your father and mother.”
He shook his head. “I feel instead that I am coming closer to them. It was my father’s lot before me to leave his home and go forth to try what the gods would grant him.” As standing on the same spot he had lifted his hand in greeting to Erna, so now he raised it in farewell to the home scene. “It was a good dream while it lasted, but I am glad to be awake at last.”
Snowfrid burst into tears on his shoulder. “It is a wicked thing that men must grow up and go away!”
Times there were when she would have been shaken off with severity; even now he put her from him hastily, though he bent and kissed her, bantering.
“What foolishness is here! If a guardsman had not grown up and gone away from his home, where would your fun have come in?”
Rain clouds were not so thick in her blue eyes but that sun shone through at that. Tiptoeing to reach his ear, she whispered, “Remind him of me, sometimes!” Then hiding her face, she fled back to the Tower; and he set forth laughing.
A silvery haze veiled all but the path just before his feet, so that he appeared to be ever advancing from mystery to mystery. He would havebeen less than a song-maker if it had not seemed to him a symbol of the unknown life into which he was entering, if he had not given himself unreservedly to musing on his hopes and fears. His feet travelled the trails by instinct that day, and by instinct forded the streams and threaded the marshes; his mind was travelling the roads of the Jarl’s Town, fording the deeps of Brynhild’s pride, threading the maze of Helvin’s temper.
Burning its way through the grayness, the sun came out. Like a ball of fire, it rolled up the eastern slope of the heavens. Like a ball of fire, it rolled down the sky’s western side. Still he walked in a dream, conscious only of the light of his visions. It was not until the hills showed like nicks in the fire-ball’s rim, and he had reached the last knoll rising between him and the sight of the Jarl’s Town, that he was recalled to the present.
Half-way to the crest loomed a mass of cinder-hued rusty-veined rock. Rounding this brought him suddenly upon Eric the Page, squatted on his heels beside a patch of the wintergreen berries which the youth of New Norway valued next to honey. In the process of adjusting his attention to this abrupt demand, the Songsmith stood gazing at him; but the youngster scrambled up with an involuntary “Odin!” which was as much a prayer as an exclamation. When, presently, Randvarput out a hand and lifted him by his embroidered collar, he began to talk much more like a small boy caught robbing a trap than the haughty page of a Jarl’s daughter.
“Now, foster-brother! I have not done anything. I did your bidding with her. I have not done anything, foster-brother.”
“Plain enough you have it before your mind what I ought to do,” Randvar said with his short laugh. Then he gave him a slight shake and let him go. “Have it even as you have chosen. It may be that I shall not find it harder to forget you than you found it to forget me.” While his one hand quitted the gay collar, his other took toll from the berry-laden cap, and he passed on.
That he should not be allowed to forget, however, he was able to guess. It was no surprise when the boy’s voice sounded again at his elbow, in the wheedling tone that was as familiar as the gleam of his curly head.
“Foster-brother, what is the need of taking it in that way, either? I could explain it with a mouthful of words if you would listen.”
As the Songsmith could not deny some curiosity to hear the explanation, he allowed his pace to slacken. Eric read the sign quickly.
“You need not think it was lack of friendliness. As well as you, I know that because I have beenable to get honor and fine manners for myself is the more reason why I ought to protect and help lesser men, and I have the intention to do so. But the truth is that in these clothes you look so like a dead tree that has got out of a moss-bed and walked in from the forest, that I became too embarrassed at the thought of any one’s remembering that I used to be like you to be able to think of aught else. It was not until afterwards that it crossed my mind that you might feel hurt, and I got ashamed of myself.”
Of a sudden, Randvar began to laugh and pulled the boy up to him and hugged him; and then of a sudden he frowned and held him off at arm’s-length.
“I suppose,” he said, “that is also the explanation why you have not been home to see your kinswomen since the Jarl’s sister picked you out for her page three seasons ago,—not because you do not have love towards them, but because you dislike to be put in mind of the poor way in which you used to live?”
Eric did not answer immediately, but walked a while making embarrassed snatches at the flaming sumacs they were passing.
“I have so little time,” he muttered at last.
The Songsmith looked down at him severely. “Whether your dignity takes it well or not,” hesaid, “I am going to tell you that I think you in a worse way than the man in the were-wolf story. Every ninth night it happened to him to change his man’s shape for a wolf’s body, but never did he lose his man’s nature. Even when his appetite forced him to prey upon cattle, his man’s eyes looked out of the wolf’s sockets in loathing. You have shed your forest ways for these mincing court manners, but you have changed your manful nature also, that used to have honesty in it, and love of kin. I foresee that as time goes on there will be a harder nut to crack than this which we two have just had a hand in.”
Enough honesty remained in the boy so that he showed himself abashed. Again his voice cajoled, when it came after a long interval of silent plodding.
“Ihavegot love towards my kin. I was going to send good gifts to them the next time a trading-ship went that way. I will send some back by you now, if you are willing to take them. I suppose you fared hither to see Starkad set adrift?”
“To seewhat?” Randvar repeated, losing sternness in surprise.
A change of subject appeared to be much to Eric’s taste. He launched forth eagerly:
“They are going to set him adrift on the river, of course. Is it possible that you have not heardof it? Saint Olaf was disposed of in that way, because after the battle his foes would for no sake allow him to be buried on Norwegian ground. His friends put his body on a boat and sent it out to sea; and so bound was old Starkad to follow him in everything, he gave orders long ago that this should be his end also. It will happen as soon as the sun sets, and it will be a great sight to see. I came over here myself to look at it, since Brynhild has little need of pages while she sits mourning in her bower.”
Randvar made no answer, for they came just then to the top of the ridge and saw below them the broad river, uncoiled through the land like a Midgard serpent of glittering gold, and saw beyond it the spreading grain-fields and vine-clad slopes of the Jarl’s Town, its light streaks of stone walls winding between dark tree-trunks, its clusters of brown roofs blotting the gay autumn foliage, its clouds of gray smoke drifting across the bright face of the sky.
Around every group of roofs circled broad acres of farm-land and pasture-land, for the settlement was no straggling line of cabins, no huddle of tented booths, but a typical Norse town almost as prosperous as Nidaros itself. From the Jarl’s domain, the scores upon scores of great estates radiated like spokes from a hub, separated from it and fromone another by stretches of wood and grassy common, and bound together by tree-arched lanes and broad white roads, and by the shining highway of the river with its stone wharves and anchored ships.
Truly it was a wonderful sight to come upon in the midst of the new-world wilderness. The two on the ridge lingered to gaze at it, and Randvar’s air-castles paled beside the deeper interest of reality.
He said thoughtfully: “It is a testing-place of men’s mettle. They alone will get fame here of whom it can be said that they are well-tempered.... Only by many accomplished men coming to a spot at one time, with all their wealth on their backs, could such a stronghold be built inside the space of two-score years. Do you know, young one, how many people make up the Town?”
“While I cannot say for certain,” Eric answered, “I think I have heard it reckoned that there are two thousand, counting in women and thralls; for it is said that every one brought all his kin and his property with him. That was not a little to take out of Norway at one time. Starkad was wont to say that if Saint Olaf’s foes did get a great gain over him in the battle in which they slew him, yet was it some loss to them when so many of his following preferred rather to go into exile than to bear the new rule—”
Randvar’s uplifted hand checked him. “Hush! I heard a horn,” he said, and they held their breath in listening.
For the first time they noticed that the sounds of the day had waned with its light, which was now almost gone, no more of the sun’s fiery ball remaining than would have served for a signal-light on the hill-top. Already the eastern side of the trees was sombre with shadow; and the lazy splash of the river seemed to fill the world until, faint and sweet, the funeral music was brought to them by the breeze. Growing momently stronger with the emerging of the train of sable-garbed horsemen from the little wood through which the road ran, the dirge throbbed solemnly in their ears.
Upon Eric the Page it seemed to be borne in suddenly that he was in charge of a grand spectacle with which to amaze and delight his forest-bred companion. He assumed the responsibility willingly.
“Now am I well pleased,” he said, “that you are going to get so good a chance to see something of court ways. That is the black bearskin that they are carrying the corpse on. Those men riding beside it are the priests. The tall haughty one is the Bishop. The name given him is Magnus Fire-and-Sword, because he has the custom ofburning and slaying all who do not believe as he does. The clumsy one coming last men call the Shepherd Priest, because it was his lot to herd sheep on a Swedish dairy-farm before it came into his head to be a holy man. The leather-clad fellows who ride after him with bags at their saddle-bows are guards bearing the treasures that are to go with Starkad,—his armor and his weapons and his jewelled ornaments, even the gold circlet he wore on his head. The new Jarl would have it so; he would not keep so much as a—That is he—Helvin, Starkad’s son—with the red hair—riding a black horse—do you see?”
Randvar nodded absently; since first the black horse came into view, his eyes had been fixed upon its rider.
“He bears himself as stark as the dead man,” he muttered, then finding that he was speaking aloud, shook himself back to attention.
Wading waist-deep into the water, the eight bearers of the litter had placed their burden upon the black-draped boat waiting on the darkening waves. Now the contents of the treasure-bags were handed to them, piece by piece, and they built with it a glittering bulwark around the moundlike form. Then the oldest of the advice-givers, an old man gnarled and bald as an ancient oak, came stiffly down the bank with a lightedtorch in his hand, and laid the flame against the rope of plaited straw that held the boat to the shore.
Leaping out hungrily, the yellow tongues licked up the morsel and reached out for the food that lay beyond, while the loosened boat swung gently from the land. With the rush of wind, the fire rose crackling and hissing, and gradually the sunset light was lost in the new glare that filled the river valley. Rising as it rose, and quivering like it, rose the voice of the dead Jarl’s skald, chanting his death-song.
In the red glare the boat slipped seaward. As it drifted past them, the man and the boy on the knoll could see every firelit jewel sparkling and flashing in a ring of splendor around the form under the black pall. Then it drifted farther, and once more the sunset glory became visible around it. By-and-by it was no more than a star in the gathering dusk; and the old skald’s voice—strained thin and high in the effort to send his song after the departing voyager—cracked and broke, and there was silence on both sides of the river.
On the side opposite the Town it was Eric who broke the pause, rousing-himself with a yawn and a stretch.
“I declare this to be the best entertainment Starkad ever gave me,” he remarked. “But onecannot be always enjoying himself. I suppose you will pass the night at the hostelry before going back?” He brushed a leaf from his tunic with Olaf’s own elegance of gesture, then made use of Olaf’s own oath as he glimpsed his companion’s face. “By Saint Michael! you look as solemn as though you were going to be buried yourself.”
Straightening from the cramped attitude of the watcher, the Songsmith shook off the mood that had held him and became quietly purposeful. He said briefly:
“I go neither back to the Tower nor forward to the hostelry, but to join the Jarl’s following. Does it lie within your knowledge whether it is the custom to go directly to him? Or should I speak first to one of those around him?”
Whether or not the knowledge lay in Eric, his mouth was blocked by amazement; only horror could leak through.
“Go to Helvin Jarl in those clothes! He would order his dogs set on you! You look more like a stag than a man.”
It is likely that he went on at some length, but Randvar gave him no further attention. Making his way down the hill and across the bridge, he came into the crowd just beginning to disperse. His final decision was to submit the question of etiquette to Bolverk, whose burly figure had comeinto sight in the throng; but before he could reach the guardsman, his glance encountered Helvin’s.
Rigidly erect rode the young Jarl in his sable mourning clothes, his face an ivory mask to hide what lay beneath it; but into his eyes there leaped now such a look as a man gnawed by torturing fear might give the man who brought him relief. What the look meant, the Songsmith did not ask himself; he knew only that response to it rose in him as rises a river in flood-time. Like a wooden bridge before a freshet, etiquette was swept out of his thoughts.
Pushing between the courtmen, he made his way to the Jarl. Without speaking, Helvin put out a hand and gripped the deerskin shoulder, and so rode holding to it as Rolf’s son walked beside him.