XXIV

“He is happy who gets himself fame while living”—Northern saying.

“He is happy who gets himself fame while living”

—Northern saying.

It was two Norse weeks after the death of Olaf, and it was nearly two-score miles south of the Black Pool. Filtering through the dark forest, a long ray of sun lay on Freya’s Tower and revealed it as a sanctuary embattled. Here, from the lengthening shadows, the bright beam picked out a circle of shaggy deerskin-clad foresters hammering arrow-heads at a forge made of bowlders. There, in touching the earth, the slanting ray touched another brawny group squatted at knife-sharpening. Yonder, the light streaming golden down a tree-aisle broke over a deerskin-garbed sentinel pacing to and fro. Now the murmur of blended heavy voices and heavier laughter swelled like the noise of the breakers,—until some one’s exuberance betrayed him into a burst of over-facetious song, when he was silenced by nudges and missiles and thumbs pointing Towerward. Now the lull that followed was broken byscattered hails and chaff, as a Skraelling burdened with a double string of glistening fish came like a shadow up the path of sunshine.

Making his way gravely between the jovial groups, the red man gravely evaded the jesting hands stretched out towards his treasure, and stalked on to the Tower. At the foot of one of the gray columns, he lowered the silvery mass to the earth and stood awaiting a chance for speech with his white brother’s new wife.

In the dim ground-room there was the flutter of a blue robe—the glint of red-gold hair—and she had appeared in one of the rude archways. Against its gray gloom, the glowing beauty of her face was like a fire; while the stark pillars were a foil for her body’s soft and flowing curves. Without speaking, the savage stood gazing at her,—even as every woodsman within eyeshot had stopped short in speech or work to gaze. It was she who spoke, composedly, giving him thanks for his gift, then went and poured him a horn of wild-grape wine and brought it to him.

Even while his mouth busied itself with the drink, his eyes stared at her over the silver rim. But as he gave the horn back, he spoke in broken Norse:

“Say to the white chief that the men of the stone-axe race have set up their houses aroundhim. Say to him that they turn their weapons whither he points. Say to him that they will bring him the white sachem’s red scalp whenever he gives the sign.”

The hand of the white sachem’s sister made a convulsive movement that lost her the horn, but her brave gray eyes continued to meet his steadily.

“I will tell him,” she answered. “His heart will be thankful towards his friends.”

Though his face remained set in her direction, the Skraelling turned the rest of him and moved away as he had come, until his dusky shape was lost in the dusky wood.

Gazing after him with unseeing eyes, she stayed a moment in the archway, while—mute and motionless as so many bowlders—the foresters stayed gazing furtively at her. Then a curly-headed boy in a page’s ragged dress of blue came out of the Tower and broke in upon her thoughts, as he bent to pick up the forgotten cup.

“How clumsy in their manners such creatures must look to you, Jarl’s sister, it is easy for me to understand, for in former days they went against my taste also. But when your experience of life has been as broad as mine has, sooner will you choose their ugly worth than the fair falseness of the Town-people. I say it, though I am hard to please!”

A note of unsteady laughter shook the long breath with which the Jarl’s sister straightened; but her arm lay lightly around the boy’s neck as they went back in-doors, and he expanded under the caress as a bantam that is about to crow.

“It is my wish that you should always lean upon me! I told my mother this noon—when she asked me to fetch you the fowl and the loaf—that it was in my mind to visit you as often as I could find time. And I told her that I meant always to wear these fine clothes so that you should feel at home with me, and not feel that I had grown savage and terrible like the others around you. And perhaps it will also help you to lose it out of your thoughts for a while that you are poor, with no one to wait on you.”

Though she laughed again, the sound was more soft than a caress.

“Poor?” she repeated. “Listen, little Viking! Once I was poor, when I thought there was no more to the world than the few hedged roads I knew, and my life was but an empty round that others marked out for me, and I had nothing but ring-bought gifts to give my friends. But now! Now when each hour some wondrous path undreamed of is opened to me—Now that my life is a fabric I weave myself till from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet I thrill with the joy ofthe work—Now that my breast is so full of love that ofttimes it aches with the burden and yearns for a worldful of folk to lavish it upon—”

Her ecstasy mounted higher than her words could follow. While it soared, she stood silent. When, because it was of earth, it sank again earthward, she spoke under her breath:

“Only shall I be poor, Eric, if the Fates take from me the man who has wrought this change in my nature. If it happen to him to meet with—with my kin—some day—and the same overtake him that overtook Olaf—”

Her hand gripped the boy’s shoulder so that he would have cried out if he had not guessed from the whitening of her lips how much harder Dread was clutching at her heart. Gritting his teeth, he supported her manfully.

“There is no man like Randvar in all the new lands,” he panted, “and I would fight for none as I would fight for him.”

Loosening their hold, the fingers rose and swept his cheek fondly, and the Jarl’s sister moved away and bent over the smouldering fire to stir it. Though she did not turn again, her voice came to him with its wonted gracious composure.

“Have thanks for your friendship, little friend! And give my thanks to your mother for her good gifts; and tell her that if she does not come oftenerto visit me I shall take it as a sign that because she has gone to live in Snowfrid’s booth, she feels that I have crowded her out of her home. Will you bear that in mind?”

For the fourth time since he had begun to think of tearing himself away, Eric picked up his feathered blue cap.

“Naught shall be forgotten, Jarl’s sister,” he reassured her. “And now I fear that I must in truth take leave of you. With Bolverk so often away on hunts, I find that the wants of Snowfrid and my mother put not a little care on my shoulders; and my intention is that they shall never lack for anything now that I have come home to take care of them. Jarl’s sister, I bid you farewell until to-morrow.”

The purpose of the plumed cap became apparent as by its aid he added elaborate flourishes to his bow. Then fixing the bauble upon his curly head, he went away hurriedly, as became one weighted with responsibility; and as became one torn between love and fear, the Jarl’s sister went up the ladder-like stairs with a hand pressed to her heart, and crossing the strange little fur-hung bower, dropped down beside Freya’s window to watch as Freya before her had watched.

Higher and higher slanted the long rays, until only the tree-tops knew their golden glory. Thehorizon became as a band of red fire behind the black net-work of the woods. The lower that fire burned, the farther the great outside world seemed to fall away from the little world of the Tower. As though to make a stand against impending isolation, the foresters drew their circle closer and beaconed it with cheery fires. Over the young wife’s vigil crept a spell of awe, so that though she leaned wide-eyed upon the sill she did not see the one for whom she watched when presently he came up a twilit trail, a spear gleaming on his shoulder, Bolverk’s brawny bulk looming beside him.

It was he who espied her—her bright head like a star hung low in the gloaming—and slackened his pace to stand looking at her.

Following his friend’s gaze, Bolverk spoke with his buoyant laugh: “Small wonder you stare, comrade, at seeing Freya’s ghost filling Freya’s blue kirtle!”

The song-maker roused himself with a deep breath that was like a sigh. When he moved forward again, the springiness was gone from his step.

“Would that I did not see the ghost of Freya whenever I looked at my wife!” he said. “Like goblin-bells they start out of space and clang in my ear, the words Erna spoke that night by the Tower fire,—‘Freya loved Rolf in spite of all, butit was the effort of doing so that wore her out before half her life was lived.’”

A second time Randvar came to a stand-still; and as the sun from the wood, so had the light fled from his face and left it a place of shadowy dread.

“Suppose,” he said, “that my quarrel with—the Jarl—come to no round end one way or the other but, as oftenest happens, drag on and on in uncertainty.... Suppose the Jarl’s sister wearing out year after year between these walls of solitude ... eating into her memory, the murder of her father ... burning into her eyes, the thing we saw at the Pool ... gnawing at her heart, her fear for me.... Suppose it should not be her love that gave way—”

“Nor her life!” Bolverk finished hastily. “Nor her life!”

But the weight did not lift from the Songsmith’s bent shoulders. He said slowly: “When grisly thoughts had dwelt long enough in her brother’s mind, it was not his body that they killed, but his reason.”

Gasping a dread word, Bolverk caught him by the arm. In heavy silence they walked the rest of the distance that lay between them and the cordon of fires.

Giving them greeting and at the same time demanding their news, a score of voices broke in upon their reverie. In a moment, the song-maker wasthe centre of a cordial group that listened eagerly while he told how the Skraelling chief had received him, and approved boisterously the new trading treaty which the chief had granted to the new colony at the Tower.

“No better pleader than you was Njal of Iceland!” growled the veteran in bearskin. “Next spring we shall send to Nidaros a richer ship than ever sailed from Norumbega; and no less a man than you shall stand by the steering-oar.”

“Yes! Yes!” the chorus gave jovial approbation, and made a jesting onslaught as though they would have raised him to their shoulders. But his expression grew in grimness as he motioned them back.

“A ship that had a corpse on board would get better luck than one that had me at the steering-oar,” he said. “I have told you without deceit that I stand so with most Northmen that my name and the word traitor has the same meaning. Never make the mistake of thinking that I shall let you put me forward where I should draw down hatred and failure on your heads. When you have lent me your weapons to guard my wife, you have done me as great a service as a man can do another, and I have reaped all the good of your love that I can bear. Never can I repay you as it is!”

He broke off abruptly. Perhaps they were gladthat he did not wait for them to answer, but leaving them strode on towards the Tower. Yet it would have been no unworthy response if they had put into words what spoke from their hard faces as they watched him gain the firelit archway and take his young bride in his arms. To search with passionate anxiety the eyes she lifted to his, he held her there, forgetful of all the world beside; while her hands betrayed a passionate eagerness to clasp his hands, to cling to his deerskin-sleeve, to feel him safe and whole.

It may be that when life is at its fullest, the need of words falls away like a husk that is shed. By-and-by when the two had gone in to their rude hearth, tongue-speech grew less and less frequent between them, less and less until—like candle-light into sunshine—it faded into the perfect communion of silence.

Bringing the fowl from its bed in the hot ashes, the bread from its birch basket, the wine from its cask, the young mistress of the Tower moved to and fro in the firelight. Resting on a fur-heaped bench in the shadow, the young master followed her every motion with worshipful eyes. Sometimes, as their gaze met, the gracious gravity of her demeanor sparkled into a moment’s playful mimicry of some pompous servitor they had known in the pageantry of the Jarl’s house, and their laughter,bass and treble, blended in a full chord. Sometimes it was his hand that encountered hers, and closing on it with an inarticulate cry, put it to his lips in place of wine, and pressed it there while for them both Time ceased to be.

And then again, a moment came when for him all jest went out of her service, when to see her waiting before him in Freya’s faded robe of blue was a thing he could not bear. Rising, he took horn and trencher from her hands and flung them aside, and almost roughly placed her on the cushion-heaped bench, and placed himself on the cedar mat at her feet.

“One high-seat you shall have, and one thrall!” he said fiercely; and drawing his harp towards him, he played for her as he had never played for himself nor yet for the Jarl in all the splendor of his feast-hall.

She made but one alteration, stretching out her hand that it might thread his hair as his head leaned against her knee; then with eyes softly closed and lips softly parted, she rested listening.

Floating through Paradise on the wings of the music, she knew nothing of it when the circles of the outlying camp-fires were thrown into commotion as reeds by an incoming wave. Only when Randvar plucked a twanging discord fromthe harp-strings, and then flung the instrument from him, did she start awake.

One hand stretched behind him to grasp her robe, and one hand thrust across him to clutch his knife-hilt, he had risen to his knee before her. Over his shoulder she saw what he saw—a brass helmet glowing in the firelight where the path gave upon the open, more brass helmets glinting like fire-flies far up the dusk of the trail. Now four figures separated themselves from the throng, and pushing through the wavering rank of foresters, came Towerward,—two figures in dark robes and one wearing the plumed cap of a courtman and one clad in shining mail.

“Mord—and the Shepherd Priest! Gunnar—Visbur!” the Songsmith told them off mechanically.

The arms Brynhild had locked around his neck tightened as she whispered at his ear: “God be praised, Helvin is not there! Love, if they meant us ill, they would not have fetched Gunnar and the Priest, who are our friends.”

But Randvar’s voice was harsh as he loosened her hands that he might rise. “If they mean us well, why do they come with a troop of armed men at their heels?” Never quitting his grip on his hilt, he strode forward and stood a pace beyond his threshold, awaiting them.

Glancing down at her poor attire, it seemed foran instant as though the Jarl’s sister would have shrunk back into the shadow; and then as one would catch up a deserter she caught herself, and holding her head high, moved forward until she stood at her husband’s side.

At sight of the Songsmith, the sentinel of the path cried out earnestly: “We let them through, Rolf’s son, only because they pledged you peace. If they have spoken false—”

He did not finish, but it was not needful that he should. Around the ring of hunters, like the light of a moonbeam, sped the glint of steel. And still beyond that, where wood encompassed the open, there passed of a sudden a noiseless stir, as if from every tree-shadow there had glided a lithe and dusky body. Joining soundlessly as shadows blend, the dark mass drew nearer, until here the firelight was reflected in rows of glittering eyes, there through the gloaming gleamed the pale shapes of stone axes uplifted. It is no shame to the courage of Gunnar the Merry that his handsome face blanched as his glance made the circuit. Mord spoke sternly when they came to a halt before the young master of the Tower.

“What right have you to speak of peacefulness, Randvar, Rolf’s son, that surround yourself with outlaws and savages of the wood, ready to do murder at your bidding?”

Even in the twilight it could be seen how the blood mounted in the Songsmith’s brown face, but there was no wavering in his mouth’s steady line as he answered.

“I take friendship and help where I find them freest and truest, and I expect evil from the quarter whence evil has risen against me before. Though you come in the name of the Jarl, to whom you hold me traitor, I shall not yield a whit more. Your blood be on your heads if you heed me not!”

From the gathering circle of foresters came back a sound like an ominous echo; and the murmur was taken up in the wood beyond, till it rose like the roar of the wind in the trees. But all at once Visbur made a long stride forward and held out his huge hand.

“Never look at me with that look on your face comrade!” he said gruffly. “I know now that you were no traitor to Starkad’s son, and Rolf’s self would not be gladder of the knowledge. Take now my hand as a token that you will accept atonement from me.”

The Songsmith and his young wife spoke in one breath: “You know—?”

“From him who alone had the right to tell it,” Visbur answered briefly. “While the day was still young, we came upon Starkad’s son in the forest near the Town, with Olaf’s blood yet onhim. Because his wits were not in him, he mistook us for Shapes risen to torment him, and stood and shouted his secret at us in defiance. And then his strength went from him; and he fell down to the earth; and death came to him where he fell.”

“And it was on your name that he called as he died,” the gentle voice of the Shepherd Priest sounded amid the stillness that had spread. “Because I was the first to reach him and raise his head to my breast, it is likely he thought it was you, for he spoke your name in a tone of love; and that was his last breath.”

No longer was there steadiness in Randvar’s voice as he tried to speak. Of a sudden it broke, and he turned away from the eyes upon him and stood with his face in the shadow, his clinching hand still holding his young wife to his side. What she said softly in his ear—whether of grief for her kin or gratitude for her loved one’s safety—none could hear.

Then it was Mord the Grim who spoke with ceremony: “Now the end of it is that Helvin Jarl has been five days dead and five days buried, and we have come to offer the rule to you, Starkad’s daughter, who are the next of kin—” He lifted his hand as, turning, Starkad’s daughter would have interrupted him, indignantly. “To you and to your husband, who is of all men most belovedby the folk of the new lands. To you two together.”

What Brynhild cried out, as she stretched her hands towards them, could not be heard for the acclamations that burst from the listening foresters. Then, drowning even that, rose the clangor of the guardsmen’s shields as they pounded on them with their swords.

Once more the Songsmith’s lips became unsteady, so that he dared not trust his voice to them; but presently he turned and made the shouting throng a gesture of acceptance of their honor and of thankfulness for their love, and all understood him.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTESSilently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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