Chapter 8

Thorstan ran out to sea for half a mile or more and stood off until the weather cleared a little. When it did they all saw the crags and headlands of an iron coast. The only thing to do was to keep within hail of it until they found some sort of haven. Thorstan said he would spend the winter there, whatever country it might be. Already it was cold, and wherever the land stooped low enough there was snow to be seen lying.

An opening in the land was reported next day, and as they drew near they could make out a firth and a muffled ship lying at anchor within it. The tide serving, Thorstan ran in between low hills all smothered in snow. A settlement of white, muffled houses lay on the shore of a bay, a deserted quay, a few boats drawn up on the beach: not a soul was to be seen; the winter swoon was over all.

He drew up within hail of the silent ship and anchored in that black water. The rattling of the chain and splash of the anchor echoed among the hills, but awoke no man. "Are we, dying, come to a city of the dead?" he thought. The chill lay on his heart like lead; the thought of Gudrid gave him a dull ache; even the passion of desire to save her was dead within him. He did what came up before him to be done, but could not provide nor foresee.

"Here we must see the winter out," he said, and had the boat out so that he might go ashore and seek quarters. First he went below to see Gudrid.

He found her in the bed, rigid with cold, almost too cold to shiver. He leaned over her in an agony of pity. "Oh my heart! Oh my poor heart!" She looked up at him and smiled in his face. She was not able to speak.

"I shall see the winter out here," he told her. "I must find out where we are--I believe that we have beaten back to Greenland. If that be so, then we may be able to reach home; but if that is not possible, then we stay here. I will get quarters for the men, and for ourselves, please God. My love, trust me to do for the best--and wait for me here."

She nodded her head two or three times, but her eyes were shut and she did not look at him again. He dared not kiss her for fear of finding out how cold she was. How could it be that men were allowed to suffer so? He found some more covering for her bed before he left her.

The boat took him ashore; he went to the nearest house he saw and thumped on the door. There was no light to be seen, and for long there was no sound to be heard inside; but at last he heard the bolts drawn back. A white-faced woman peered at him through a crack.

"Let me in, for the love of God," said Thorstan. Then she beckoned him in.

A sick man lay muttering in a bed; children huddled about a turf fire. The place was very nearly dark, but he made out some six souls to be there. He found out that he was come to Lucefrith in West Greenland; the winter sickness was heavy on the place. The woman did not refuse to take one of his men, and did not agree. She seemed stupid with misery. He told her that he should send her a man, and went out. In every house in the Settlement was much the same story. Sickness and death on all hands, but no refusals. At the end of his rounds he had managed to place out all hands. There remained himself and Gudrid. There was no place for them--not room enough to die in. He had asked if there were no headman in Lucefrith, and was told of one Thorstan Black; but he, it seemed, lived far off--over the hills, they said--and no way of getting at him through the snow.

Then he went back to the ship and told his men to get ready to go ashore. He took them off by companies in the boat, and saw them all indoors before he left them. The last man under cover, he rowed back alone to the ship. At this extremity, with frozen death and silence all about him, he felt a strange uplifting of the heart in the thought that he and Gudrid were now alone indeed--they two and Love. And what if Death were a fourth in the party? Ah, he was welcome too. But before Death came Love should be there. He rowed gaily, fiercely, that he might be with her the sooner.

He was warmed by his exercise when he was on deck again, and wildly happy in the thought which possessed him.

He went below and saw his love watching for him. "My heart, I am coming to you," he said. He took off his furs and most of his clothes and got into the bed with her. He held her close to him, with a passion which despair may have quickened into flame. Wildly as he had loved her since she had given him herself, he never loved her as he did now, when the end seemed close upon them.

For a week they lived so, the supreme week of Thorstan's and Gudrid's lives. They were utterly alone, and they never left each other's arms, but when Thorstan was busy mending the brasier fire, or getting food. They cherished each other, the fire in them at least never went out; they loved and slept, they loved again and slept. It was the last leap of their fire, it was the swan-song of their love maybe; but it was beautiful, and as strong as if they were breasting a great flight through space. Thorstan sang to Gudrid, he told her tales of lovers, he put their joint lives into verses; but he had not a word to say of the future. Here fate was too heavy for either love or religion. Fate stood with stretched-out arms holding a black curtain over what was to come. Thorstan had seen behind it. He knew. But Gudrid had forgotten, and he would not tell her. As for Gudrid herself, the glory was to have Thorstan find her so lovely, and her love so full, was enough for her. She lived on his needs. To fill them was her utmost desire, and to be to him a never-failing well was a crown of stars. She seldom spoke; she was as silent as the earth below the rains and heats of heaven, and as receptive. She neither asked nor pondered what was to be the end of this rapturous dream. If she had, her utmost desire would have been that they should die together in some nuptial sleep, and lie still, folded under the snow.

But Fate ordered it otherwise. The day came when they heard the knocking of oars, and then while they lay clasped, listening, a great voice hailing the ship. They looked at each other. "The dream is over," Thorstan said. "My love, the world is about us again." She clung to him. "Let us stay here--let nobody forbid us that." "Nay, but I must go out and see who is coming."

He dressed and went on deck. A large man muffled to the eyes in a bearskin was below him in a boat, standing up in it holding on to the side. He pulled open his hood and showed a red face, black beard and a pair of merry eyes.

The two hailed each other, and then the new-comer said, "They told me in the Settlement that you were under the weather here. It will have gone hard with you, I doubt. And your lady with you! Now I make known to you that I am Thorstan of this place, called commonly Thorstan Black, and at your service."

Thorstan said: "Then I must be Thorstan Red, for Thorstan is my name, and the red is of Nature's doing, and my father's. I am Eric's son of Ericsfrith. I was making the western voyage, but was driven out of my course in a gale, and forced to beat up here against my will. My men are in the Settlement, but I and the good wife could find no better quarters than these."

"I will show you better," said Thorstan Black. "I knew nothing of your coming till last night when a man came up asking for fuel. You shall come off with me now if you will. In a week's time you will be able to walk ashore. My mistress will be glad of your company, and so shall I be."

"Thank you for that," said Thorstan. "We take your offer gladly." He asked him up, but Thorstan Black said he was very well where he was.

Gudrid was dressed when he came down for her. The dream was broken, and neither of them spoke of it. Their preparations were soon made, and then they left the ship.

Thorstan Black rowed them ashore with strong and leisurely strokes. He told them that he lived over the ridge beyond the Settlement. He had a sleigh of dogs waiting for him, packed up Gudrid, put Thorstan one side of her and himself the other, cracked a great whip, uttered a harsh cry; and they were off. The dogs panted and strained at the ropes; sometimes one yelped in his excitement. And so they came to a broad-eaved house, and were welcomed by the good wife, whose name was Grimhild.

XX

The winter fell upon them in bitter earnest within the next fortnight. The snow was up to the top of the windows, and being there, froze hard, and had to be cut away with an axe. That was how they made a road to the byres where the stock were, and where they must be fed. The two Thorstans worked hard at this and at fuel-getting, and hewing of wood. Gurth the reeve helped them, but he was ailing already with the sickness, and not much use.

Grimhild, a strong-faced, huge woman, managed all the house, but Gudrid helped her now willingly. There were no maids there. In the evenings they sat by the fire and told tales. It was as merry as might be, and with Thorstan Black there was always some fun to be had. He was the lightest-hearted man and the happiest whom Gudrid had seen in Greenland, where mostly, it seemed, men had to fight with life at too long odds to have any heart left over for pastime. Thorstan Black owned to it. "There is no people but ours of Iceland, I do believe, who would hold out against this white death," he said. "So fast as we come we die of it. Then come others, and so the game goes on. It is the fighting we love; we were always fighters--what with horses, or our young men. But here we fight with the earth, sea and sky, and do little slaughter of our own kind."

"It is the fog that kills us," said Grimhild; and Gurth smothered his cough and hugged himself over the fire.

Gudrid said: "Why should you stay here? I think it is a terrible country. We shall go to Wineland as soon as the spring comes." Then she told them of that good country--of the tall trees, and the clear sky, of the dew which was sweet to the taste, of the vines tumbling over the hot rocks, the birds' voices in the forest, and the strange stars at night. Grimhild was moved by the recital.

"Ay," she said, "I have heard tell of such lands, and you may see them, being young. But this place has made me old, and almost broken my heart. In a little while I shall ask no better than to be laid in the snow."

Thorstan Black patted her on the back.

"Courage, old lass," he said. "You and I have seen the worst of it. I think it may be better hereafter. As for your land of summer all round the year, I know not that it would suit Icelanders. If you take our hardihood from us, what have we left? That which swills and eats heavily, and plays the mischief. Nay, give me a dark ghyll in Iceland, with a river racing down its length, and the sea never far off. That means more to me than your vines and soft winters. As for this stricken land, we shall beat the sickness yet. A man tempers himself. There should be a fine race here one day, of them who have got through."

Gurth turned up the whites of his eyes. He was very sick.

By and by they had news from the Settlement, where things were going badly. The sickness was very rife. Many of Thorstan's men from Ericsfrith were dead of it. They took down stores in the sleigh, and were much concerned at what they saw and heard. The strangers from the east were all sick; six were dead, and could only be buried in the snow. Thorstan promised that he would take all the bodies back to Ericsfrith if he had to heap the ship with dead men. When they returned to the homestead the first thing they heard was that Gurth was dead.

Gradually, as the winter thickened, gloom began to fall upon the housemates. The hall grew cold; it was as if there were no heat in the burning coals; as if the cold was become master of the fire. Grimhild grew strange in her ways. She was always listening, waiting for something. She said she expected a visitor, but would never say who it was. She became very silent, and tried to avoid the others. Thorstan Black told Thorstan Red that he feared the worst. "The trustiest woman!" he said. "She has stood by me in sickness and health for twenty years--and now she turns her back on me--hunches her poor shoulders and will take no comfort from me. That's a sure sign of the sickness. You distrust your old friends first." "Is that the way of it?" said our Thorstan, with fear in his heart.

Grimhild grew more and more remote, but remained on terms with Thorstan Red, in whom she confided some of her growing fancies. "The dead are unquiet," she told him when she had him out of range of the others, "and how should I be quiet? They are all about us. So soon as it grows dusk they come out of the snow. I hear them quarrelling, murmuring, and some of them grieve. I shall be with them soon--and perhaps you will see me there. It has been bad enough other winters, but none so bad as this. There are strangers here--that's how it is. We shall never quiet them till we have burned the bodies. That's the only way."

"They shall be burned, mistress," said Thorstan. "I will see to it."

She looked at him queerly, with one eyebrow arching into her hair. "You?" she said, then turned away her face. "Well, well--Christ have mercy on us."

When the fever took her and seemed to stretch her skin to cracking-point, she would not go to bed, and nobody could persuade her. She huddled by the fire, rocking herself, until the evening; but directly it was dusk she was restless. The wind used to moan about the house, and she heard in it the voices of the dead. She thought she could distinguish one from the other. "Gurth is railing--hark to him. . . . That was Wigfus answering, and that deep one is Kettleneb. Oh, let me rest--have done!" She wandered forth and back, but was mostly in the kitchen, listening at the door. Thorstan Black grieved for her and used to try to coax her back to the fire. She scowled at him as if he were a stranger, and would not let him touch her. Gudrid was afraid to go near her.

Once when she was out there on a wild moon-lit night, the others by the fire heard her cry aloud; and then she called on Thorstan. The two Thorstans looked at each other. Thorstan Black said, "It's you she wants. Go and talk to her." Thorstan Red went out.

Grimhild had the kitchen door open; dry snow was sweeping in upon her; the front of her gown was white with it. "Look at them there," she said; "look at them. Gurth is whipping them round the garth. See how they huddle--heed their crying. There, there--and there go I among them, wringing my hands." She clutched his arm. "Hush--and there go you."

Thorstan's heart jumped, and then fell quiet. "Do you see me there, mistress?"

"You are standing there in the shadow of the byre. He will not touch you. Round and round. No rest in the snow." Then she turned to him and screamed: "Don't let him touch me!" She caught at him and he tried to draw her into the house; but she struggled fiercely, and before he could stop her she was outdoors racing through the snow. Thorstan shouted to his host, who came to him in a hurry. "She's gone," said Thorstan Red. Thorstan Black and he went out together, but by now she had passed through the garth and was deep in the snow beyond. They got her home at last, but she was quite mad and fought against them all the way.

They put her to bed and kept her there by main force until she was exhausted. They were up with her all night, and she died in the small hours of the morning. There was nothing for it but to bury her in the snow.

Gudrid laid her out while Thorstan and his host were making the coffin. She put candles at her head and feet in the Christian fashion, with a cross of wood between her hands. Then she knelt by the bed to watch the corpse. It was piercingly cold, and she grew numb with it, and then drowsy. It is likely that she dropped off to sleep as she lay, for she came to herself with a start and saw the corpse sitting up, staring with open and glassy eyes. Her heart stood still, she neither felt nor thought. How long they were, the living and the dead, staring at each other, Gudrid could never have told--she was incapable of moving, being frozen with terror and cold. Presently the dead woman's mouth opened, as if she were going to speak; and then her head fell forward and she dropped. Gudrid staggered to her feet and ran out of the house. She found the men in the outhouse, and caught Thorstan Black by the wrist. Her face told her story; it was no longer that of a sane woman. Thorstan went back with her.

That night they buried Grimhild in the snow; and Thorstan Red took the sickness. He told Gudrid of it when they were in bed. He held her closely in his arms and spoke with passion: "My love, I am sick, and it may go hard with me. Remember now what I say--that the thing which I may be is not I. Be not afraid of it. You have had the best I could be--and it was you who made me. Remember what we have been, and think of me as dead already. And when I am dead, take my body back to Ericsfrith."

She clung to him, but not with tears. Tears were denied her now. The cold had mastered even them. For now she knew what must come.

XXI

The Greenland sickness took mainly the same course, varying with the patient's personal quality. It began with a high fever, intense surface irritation; there ensued violent rheumatic pains, mental alienation, delirium, madness and death. It was characteristic, as has been said, that the sufferer turned from his kind, and turned markedly from whom he knew best.

Thorstan made his preparations carefully, and instructed Gudrid. As a wife who may be allowed a last word with her husband condemned to die, she took and gave her kisses. The time was too great for tears, the heart too faint for strong embraces. All she could do she did. She would obey him, she would not show herself; but she would be always at hand. She sat mostly at the head of his bed in the wall, hidden by a curtain, but ready to fetch and carry; to bring him food which Thorstan Black could give him; hot stones for his feet, hot rags to ease the pain in his limbs. He hardly opened his eyes, hardly ever groaned; but when the fever ran high he talked incessantly, in fierce and rapid whispers--and she heard told over again the week of rapture and dream under the snow in the empty ship. She suffered greatly under this affliction, both by the memories it evoked and the knowledge that such things could never be again. Her modesty might have been offended; but Thorstan Black was very kind to her. He used to go gently away when the sufferer began to speak, and would contrive his returns so as not to intrude on any privacy. Her heart was full of gratitude to the black-bearded giant, so huge and so gentle.

The fever seemed to eat Thorstan up; he became so thin that his cheeks sank away into hollows, and his bones stuck out so sharply that the skin cracked. Gudrid began to have horror of him. She thought that her lover was dead, and that this was some terrible mock-image of him sent there to haunt her. She seemed to become younger as he grew more like an old man. She was afraid to be left alone with him. Love had been frightened out of her, and even pity scarce dared to be there. She could not believe that this was the man who had so keenly loved and worshipped her body, and by his music had uplifted her soul. She had seen Thore die and had been compassionate to the end. She remembered how she had kissed him in the very article of death, and shuddered as she thought of kissing this living corpse. Her eyes besought Thorstan Black not to leave her, and he rarely did--for by this time her husband's weakness was such that, whatever he may have said in his fever, he could hardly be heard.

Towards the end--as Thorstan Black knew it must be--he persuaded Gudrid to lie down at night while he kept watch by the bed. And so she did. The poor girl was worn out, and went to sleep almost at once.

About midnight she was awakened. Thorstan Black stood by the bed with a taper. She gaped at him, cold to the bones.

"Come, my dear," he said. "He is asking for you." She said nothing. Then in the silence she heard her husband's voice, calling "Gudrid, Gudrid, Gudrid." She fell trembling, and knew not what she said. Thorstan Black put his cloak over her, and helped her out of bed. Her knees shook. "Is he dead? Is he dead? Oh, don't leave me. I'm frightened--he looks so strange--don't leave me, Thorstan."

"No, my dear, I won't leave you," he said, and put his arm round her, for she seemed about to fall. "Come," he said, "I'll take you, and stay by you."

She mastered her fear. "Yes," she said, "I must go. Oh, but you are so good to me."

"Don't go if you are afraid," said Thorstan. "He may be dead by now."

"No, no," she said, "not yet. I must hear what he says, for it may be he knows what the course of my life must be. If God will help me, I will go. But you will come too--you promised."

Thorstan thereupon lifted her up in his arms, and carried her into the room where Thorstan Ericsson lay. He went to the side of the bed and sat down, holding Gudrid on his knee. So they waited fearfully for the dead man to speak.

Thorstan Ericsson sat up in his bed; his eyes were so deep in his head that nothing showed of them but dark caves. His mouth was open, as if his jaw had dropped. But no sound came from him.

Then Thorstan Black said: "My namesake, you called to Gudrid, and I have her here beside you. What do you desire of her?"

The dead man spoke. "Gudrid, are you there?"

"Yes, Thorstan," she said quaking.

"I will tell you, my wife, that you need not grieve for me, nor fear me, for I shall never hurt you now--nor could I have the heart. I am come to a good place, and am at peace. Now you are to know that you will be married to an Icelander who will be kind to you, and give you what your heart desires. But your life will be longer than his, and your end will be pious--and that, too, you will desire before you reach it. And I pray you to take my body back to Ericsfrith and give me holy burial. Farewell, Gudrid, and have no fear for me."

Gudrid, cold as a stone, sat on Thorstan Black's knee as if she had been a child, and stared at the figure of her love. She could not say anything to him, she dared not touch him. His head sank forward, and he fell back in the bed and lay still. Thorstan Black touched him. He was stone cold.

The good giant thought now of Gudrid only, and talked to her gently for a long while, comforting her. He promised that he would never forsake her until he had brought her safely home to Ericsfrith. He would take Thorstan Ericsson to his own ship, and all the bodies of the crew who were dead should be put with him there until such time as they could sail. "And as for you, dear child," he said, "remember that you and that true man have had the best that life can give you--for than wedded love there is no more blessed thing. Think of me, my child, who lived happily with my good wife a twenty years, and think that you are better off maybe than I. For love such as yours is not a thing that can live--no, but it must needs change as it grows older. You change, and the world comes in between; and so it changes too. Now you have had love at the full--and it is ended at the full. You should be thankful for that. And be thankful too that he is at peace, and his fate rounded--and nothing for him now but folded hands and quiet sleep. Why, look at him now, Gudrid. Even now he smiles quietly, as who should say, I have done with it all. Look at him, and have no more fear of so gentle a thing."