XXI
“What must be is sure to happen”—Northern saying.
“What must be is sure to happen”—Northern saying.
“What must be is sure to happen”—Northern saying.
“What must be is sure to happen”
—Northern saying.
Coming back to his senses, the Songsmith lay awhile adjusting his memory.... Once, he had fallen asleep on bloody grass and wakened amid the silken fragrance of the women’s house.... Here was another change.... Cobwebbed rafters and bare walls and heavy air as close as the grave. He snuffed up a resentful breath of it—then forgot to exhale in the suddenly added consciousness that some one was gazing at him. Turning his head, his eyes met gray eyes staring at him from a jungle of blood-colored hair.
On the bench to which the song-maker had been helped the night before, Helvin Jarl was now sitting, his elbows on his knees, his hands dropped between to hold the sword with which he was stirring and prodding the straw of the floor. He laid the flat of the blade against Randvar’s breast as the Songsmith started up, forcing him gently back.
“Lie still. No one is looking to see whetherwe go through with the foolish rules which some simpleton has laid down. I have sent the guards below.” He took the blade away as he felt the song-maker yield to its pressure, sheathing it as he went on: “Their state was laughable, between not knowing whether they should get my wrath because they had not at once carried you out of here, or because they had not at once slain you. See how they have tried to trim both sides of their sail to the wind, by making you comfortable and at the same time holding you prisoner.”
He nodded floorward, and Randvar noticed for the first time that a charger of food and drink stood within reach of his hand, that a cushion had been put under his head and a cloak spread over him. At another time he might have smiled. Now his gaze came back with unrelieved gravity to the Jarl’s face that in some way was strange to him.
“Which kind of behavior is most to your mind, lord?” he asked.
Clasping his hands behind his head, Helvin leaned back against the wall and returned his look sombrely.
“I am only just getting to know surely, comrade. When they brought me word this morning that you had set free the brat who stepped between Olaf and death, there was a spell when my fingersitched for your throat. You can see that I came to you straight out of the hands of my shoe-boy.” He lifted one of his legs to show that the silk bands which should have been wound around it were still hanging. “If the sight of your peaceful sleep had not fallen coolingly upon my hot humor, there is a likelihood that ... that....” Though his eyes remained upon the song-maker, they set in a vacant stare. “You would be lying there like an empty wine-skin ... and I should be raving beside you, trying to put back the wine I had spilled ... seeing it creep away towards the cracks ... feeling it slip slimy through my fingers.... Ah!”
The hand that had gone out groping before him he dashed against his eyes as though to break the spell that bound them, springing to his feet with a wild cry.
“Why do I torture myself with what is not true? I have not slain you. You are alive, for all that you have the color of a dead man. Speak to me! Drive away this madness!”
White as the dead the song-maker was, as much from increasing alarm as from the weakness of his blood-drained body; yet he managed to lift himself to his knees and then to his feet, to stand steadying himself against the wall. Only his voice failed to obey his summons, so that he was glad to have the pause filled by the thunderingtread of a man hurrying up the steps. In the doorway appeared a guard, his spear gripped in his hand.
“Jarl, was it for help you cried out?” he demanded.
A moment Starkad’s son held his breath, as though the nethermost deeps of his mind must be dredged for adequate words,—then all words seemed to prove inadequate. Snatching a wine-flagon from the tray, he hurled it at the intruder’s head. The force with which it crashed against the doorframe suggested what it would have done to the mark that it missed.
How the guardsman took his leave, Randvar did not see. Dropping down upon the bench, he burst into high-keyed laughter.
“Help—against—me!” he gasped, and leaned there laughing until Helvin’s hand fell upon his shoulder and shook him with friendly severity.
“Stop! That is the end of such laughter that weeping follows it. Stop! Drink this.”
The pressure of a cup against his lip compelled obedience, and the draught brought some of his strength back to him; but the Jarl’s remained the dominating spirit.
“More of that is needed, and food in your stomach. I will be your dish-bearer for a change,” he said, and himself dropped down cross-legged onthe straw beside the charger that he might pass up its contents.
Patient as the hand of a woman, his hand that had sped the missile ministered now to his friend. Now and again, over crust or bone, Randvar met in the gray eyes a brooding tenderness that tightened the muscles around his heart.
It was a relief when Helvin’s mind began to turn away to musing, drawing him over upon his elbow to lie staring into the empty cup he held, like a wizard reading fortunes in the wine-dregs. Dreamy as the note of droning bees, his voice sounded when presently he began to muse aloud.
“I only wish I could have found some excuse to give drink to Olaf.... Every moment I stood by him, I was wondering if there was not some way.... It would not have been necessary to kill him. One drop of the right herb-juice would be enough to addle his wits until he could pass for mad. Whatever he betrayed, I should have only to shrug my shoulders and tap my head. Conceive of his rage! It would have been sport for a king!”
As a dog over a sweet bone, he put out the tip of his tongue and noiselessly licked his lips. Wincing, Randvar spoke hastily:
“Jarl, this is an unprofitable mood! Recall it to your mind that Olaf knows nothing to betray.”
From the folds of strange craftiness that hadbeen drawing over them, Helvin’s eyes looked up dazedly. Then—slowly—the gaze that he met steadied the flickering torch of his reason.
“Why, that is true,” he admitted. “I forgot that he had not yet found the carrion which his vulture-scent warned him of.... Still in the Fates’ hands is that happening.... Only I can see it coming ... slipping through their bony fingers....” In a mutter his voice died away. Stretched at full length he lay in brooding reverie, so sombre a figure that the cup of dregs took on new suggestiveness.
The song-maker began to speak quietly, gazing out through the open door where the rosy snow of blossoming crab-trees was banked against the blue sky, and sun like golden wine steeped all the noonday world.
“It befell me once to see a place far west of here where the earth had shaken and rent a rock in twain, and out of the chasm had leaped a brook of sweet water. So I think this happening with Eric must have shaken me; for like a well of water, a song rose in my mind while I slept,—a song that never had place there before.”
In the black morass of his musing the Jarl turned, lured by the will-o’-the-wisp curiosity.
“Never have I heard of a song coming in that manner,” he said. “Even you have always hammeredthem out before. Has it risen as far as your lips so that any of it could brim over into words?”
Though he continued to gaze out at the blowing trees, the song-maker bent all his energies upon his story-weaving.
“Little of it has yet got so high as that. But it will be a song about the good which is in a man even though his actions appear to be evil.... Perhaps I shall say that he had Thor’s wrath for turning to the Christ-faith; and the Thunderer cursed him so that he had no other choice than to do three nithing deeds, even though his mind was noble.... He will have a friend—perhaps it will be a maiden—who is brave enough to believe in his honorable mind in spite of the unworthiness of his actions.... I do not know yet what those crimes will be ... except that the first must be that he slays a kinsman—”
“Are—you—mad?” Starkad’s son said slowly.
With a start, Randvar turned. That the Jarl had risen gradually from his place on the straw he had realized, but he had taken it for interest. Now for the first time he looked at him. Looking, he sprang to his feet.
“What ails you?”
“Are you mad?”—Helvin repeated his slow question—“that you dare to make my life into a song and tell it to my face?”
“Yourlife!” the Songsmith breathed. Then, even angrily, he swept the suspicion aside with his arm. “Lord, this is an unbecoming jest! You must know that such a song would be true of any man in the world.”
Futile as the dash of waves against a rock, the words fell down unheeded. Unmoved as a rock, Helvin stood gazing at him.
“Has your swooning so dulled your wits that you really cannot see that to sing that song in any one’s hearing would be to tell him that you saw me murder my father?”
It was too late to check the words, though Randvar’s arm had shot out in the attempt. Then he stood with his head gripped in his hands, like a man into whose mind a terrible truth is eating. As though he had forgotten he was not alone, he started when Helvin’s hand fell upon his breast and pressed him back upon the bench.
A strange softness had come into the voice of Starkad’s son,—a softness from which the ear recoiled as the hand recoils from the softness of decayed fruit.
“Now I see by your dismay at finding how near you had come to betraying me that it was neither madness nor treachery that prompted you, but the awful knowledge working in you as the awful guilt has worked in me. Of no avail to remindmyself that he brought it on his own head—that I tried to keep away from him when I felt it coming but he forced me aside with him, goaded me until I could no more keep hold of myself than my shaking hands could keep hold of the leash—It may well be forgiven you that you shudder! I might have known that soon or late the horror must work out of you. Yet am I glad that I trusted you as long as was possible. Bear that in mind about me, even though it must come here to an end.”
With quick light step he went and shut the door. The sound of its closing fell ominously on the song-maker’s ears, even as a sense of smothering fell on him with the passing of the glimpse of sky. He asked slowly:
“Is it my death-warning that you give me?”
Still with gentleness, Starkad’s son shook his head. “Only what my safety has need of I take,—your liberty. I will give you the comforts and amusements you may choose yourself—”
“Amusements!” Rough scorn was in the gesture with which the Songsmith sprang up. “Why do you talk thus, or what do you think of me? Do you forget that I am bred to no lower roof than the tent of the sun? Better might you cage an eagle and bid him be content with a branch where before he had ranged the forest! But I belie youin thinking it! Your sane self could never deal so wrongfully with me,—and you must be sane! Youmustbe sane! No marks of the curse are on you. If you are whole-minded, listen to me! For this song, I take the Cross-oath that it shall never pass my lips—even in solitude. Nay, I will dash it out of my memory! By your love, believe me!”
To take his hand and press and stroke it, the Jarl came all the way from the door.
“Do I not believe you?” he said caressingly. “On your good intentions I would lay down my life. It is luck that I dare not trust so much to. Did I not for a dozen years hide my curse so that not even my own kin dreamed it was there, only to have it burst out like smouldering fire at last? So would your uttermost effort be set at naught with such a secret pressing for outlet—”
Almost with repulsion, Randvar freed himself from the fondling hands, and pushed the other away that he might front him squarely.
“Jarl, as God hears me, I would sooner that you should rage! It is not sound, this softness! Face me like a man—or a devil—or anything but this! Listen, and I will lay the truth before you so that no room shall be left for doubt to stand between us. If it rouse you to anger, so much the better! Lord, I never knew your secret,—only I let you think so because in no other way would you believein my love. Of that hard happening at the Pool, I saw no more than your struggle with the hound. That you loosed him on Starkad, I become aware for the first time—”
He broke off because it was plain that Helvin was no longer listening. He stood gazing at his song-maker, his eyes retreating deeper and deeper between crafty folds.
He said as to himself: “Love of life! How strong it must be in a mightful man like you!... Doubly strong since you have the love of the maiden that is dear to you.... It is not strange that it should be strong enough to make you lie to me—”
“Jarl!” the Songsmith broke in fiercely,—but stopped, conscious that his voice could not carry across the chasm that had opened between them. Only he could see across it the expression with which Helvin was regarding him; and more awful than the slyness of his half-shut eyes was the gaze in which they were widening, the rapt gaze of one who sees beyond the veil.
“Behold, what weird powers are allotted to me!” he said under his breath. “As through a key-hole, I can see through this lie into the hall of What Is To Come. The next time fear pricked you, you would lie again.... And then to keep off fear, you would begin to act lies.... And after that it wouldseem so natural that you would be thinking lies ... lies ... lies ... till, like a worm-riddled boat, only your fair shape would be left. You who were the most unlying and bravest-hearted of men! Rather than you shall come to that pass, I will slay you in your prime.” From the tangled mass of blood-colored hair, his wide eyes turned slowly to the song-maker, fired with crazy purpose.
Then at last Randvar understood that the torch of his friend’s reason—so often flickering, so often burned low—had been extinguished forever. To shut out the sight of the ghastly ruin it left, he hurled himself against the wall and flattened his face against the rough boards. Unreal as the mouthing of a vision, the caressing voice came to him.
“Does your heart speak so heavily about dying? Try if you cannot bring your mind to the mountain-top on which my mind stands. Then shall you see that what looks to be a storm-sky is but a cloud over one valley, while sun hallows all the rest. I kill you when life holds much for you, yet see this! I keep you from sin. I save your memory fair for those who love you. Above all, I preserve our friendship from the first tremble of dissolution. A nobler tree than our friendship never sprang from man-clay. Would you rather see it withered and decayed than laid low in all its glory by one axe-stroke?”
As from a man on the rack, a cry was wrung from the song-maker: “Oh, Powers of Might, must it indeed end so?”
Yet softer grew the voice of Starkad’s son, till it was hushed to the unearthly stillness of a forest-deep.
“Alas, how has the love of woman clouded your eyes, that were once so clear to see the truth! Yet think not I blame the weakness of your flesh. So shrinking is my own that, plain as I see the goodness of the deed, I could not do it as we stand. It is the working of fate that when my Other Shape possesses me, I know no qualms. Until I come in that guise, then! Yet before we part, press my hand once more in love. Friends clasp when they separate for a day,—shall souls sunder forever and say no farewell?”
It was a strange embrace; for in the eyes of Starkad’s son, the doomed man was as one dead; and to the mind of the song-maker, his friend had ceased to live. Like the sound of a clod upon a coffin-lid was the sound of the door closing for the last time between them.