Part 10

“Oh my comrade, what shall I do to ease you?” he said. “Will you that I should grapple with you and pluck out the barb, though your heart-roots come with it? Or are there any kindly services I might do to heal the flesh and let the thing remain imbedded and forgotten? Do you prescribe now for my love,—I swear no dose shall be too bitter. Though that course be not so good, I would still go to her myself on your behalf, were there hope that she had a heart in her bosom to answer when one knocked.”

“It is not that she has not a heart, lord. It is that I am not high enough to reach the bolt upon its door,” Randvar answered sadly. He wrung the hand that had clasped his, then threw himself down upon the chest and buried his face in his palms. His words came disjointedly.

“Think only what her love would be like, who is so steadfast in her friendship! Had you seen her that day of the Treaty when she came upon me in my bonds—! Why do I rail at her pride, when I would not have her bright head held one jot lower? When Mord turned upon me, I had her as my shield—Lord, when Olaf came against me with his knife, she closed with him! Her slim fingers twined vinelike around the great hole of his wrist. And one of her long braids flew out as she whirled and brushed like a bird’s wing across my lips! Likely it is the last time they will ever feel it.” He got up suddenly and resumed his walking, too deep in wretchedness to heed the quiver of mocking laughter to which Helvin was stirred.

“Think only what her love of her brother must be like, who was so cool-witted while she thought he was being slaughtered!” Starkad’s son murmured.

As swiftly as the mood came, so swiftly it passed. Stepping forward, he began to move beside his friend, speaking indulgently:

“Be of good cheer, comrade,—I foresee now that you shall even kiss her lips if you will.”

Randvar came to himself with a start, and stopped short in anger. “Lord, there are some remedies that even you may not try upon me. If this is done to deride—” His manner changed as he met the gentleness of the gray eyes. “Bear with me! I know you mean me only good. But I cannot see your cheer.”

“It is not to the man down in the thick of the fight, but to the man up in the crow’s-nest, that it is given to see which way the battle is going. You see only the fury of your foe. I see that she is putting that fury forward to hide the weakness that lies behind it.”

Again the song-maker checked his pacing, but this time to ask wonderingly: “Lord, what mean you?”

“My meaning is that she has found out that her breast holds love for you.”

“_Love!_”

“What else, my friend, would make Brynhild the Cold forget her estate and show openly—to Mord—to Olaf—to whomsoever chose to look—the store she set by your safety?”

So lightning-bright grew the radiance in Randvar’s face that it could last only lightning-long, then flickered and died in gloom.

“Lord, how dare I believe that? It might have been no more than friendliness, or woman’s pity.”

Through the mass of dark hair from which he had plucked off his jewelled cap, the Jarl ran his white hands, throwing back his head with a movement of impatience.

“Why is it that it comes so much easier to believe in Hel than in Valhalla? Is it because the earth-clods we are made of weigh us down when we try to mount? If I cannot prove her love to you through her gentleness, then will I prove it through her hardness. No ball leaps up high that has not gone down hard,—had she stooped no lower than pity, she had never risen so high as hate. Now I can make a guess that the most surprised person to whom Brynhild betrayed her love was Brynhild herself! One thing I hope,—that it was not this moment which a bantering fate took to make you smile?”

“What other time should it have been, lord? It was not until the excitement was over that I called to mind how she had boasted that nothing could shake her coldness. When I saw her—sword in hand—eyes ablaze—Odin himself would have drawn back his lips!”

“Then would Odin himself have gone behind the clouds for a while,” Helvin said; and one of his rare smiles, faint as a glimmer of arctic sunshine, touched the curves of his mouth. “Think of the firebrand it hurled into her pride, when she thought that this love which she herself had just discovered had been betrayed to you, and that you were triumphing—”

The Songsmith cried out the word “Triumphing!” with such bitterness in his voice that, to hide a smile, the Jarl turned away and feigned to be absorbed in a kirtle on the wall, nor looked around again until Randvar appealed to him. Dropped heavily upon the chest, the Songsmith sat frowning desperately at the floor.

“If you, lord, would but do one thing which is easy to you?” he said. “Furnish me with some errand that will bring me into her presence, even against her will. I mean so to act that it will be made evident to her that she misjudged in fearing I should become forward.”

Again the Jarl set his foot upon the coffer and his elbow on his knee, but the look he bent on his friend now had a hint of amiable amusement.

“True it is that much lies on that! You might feign sickness and be taken into the guest-chamber off the women’s hall, where it is the custom for sick men to—But the ill luck might befall you that unless you seemed balancing on the grave-edge, she would leave you to her women. Better would it be to make up some errand concerning the dress of state which she and her maids are covering with needlework for my wear—Yet that is not certain, either, for I have some fear that she might hear your message and then dismiss you before you could get out your conciliating words.”

Some diffidence had come into the Songsmith’s manner, as if he foresaw chaff for what he was about to say. Yet now he said it:

“One plan came to me, lord, by which I could show without words that I had a desire to please her. You heard how she spoke of woodsmen?... More than once has she upbraided me for wearing clothes unbefitting the son of Freya, the king-born. For myself, I prefer to be the son of Rolf the Viking, but for her sake—to show that I will do all in my power to deserve the honor she does me—I would go so far as to change—”

He broke off in embarrassment, for even as he had feared, the Jarl’s whimsical amusement increased. Laying hold of the shoulder before him, Helvin shook it banteringly.

“Let us hope it will not be with you as the priest’s story says it was with Samson and Delilah! And I will forbear reminding you that in casting off your forest garb you cast off my livery, and confess that I no longer stand first in your allegiance— Nay, I said that I would forbear reminding you of that, so never stir your tongue to protest. Now that I see that you have not thrown your dice for a worthless stake, I begin to find interest in the game. Call the trader in to set forth his goods. You shall go to her at once, while her heart is still at war with her temper for having ill-treated you. There is no good striving against me! I say you shall. Call Asgrim—Nay, if you will not, I will do it myself—Ah, that is better! Since I have staked my reputation as a foretelling man, I am going to see that the game is played properly.”

XII

“_The mind rules one-half of the victory_” —Northern saying.

“Jarl, it is not fitting that you should even seem to attend on me! Let me accompany you to your hall as becomes me, and afterwards go my way alone—”

“And rob me of a chance to see the horses come up to the post in a race I have wagered on?” the Jarl interrupted. “Out upon your idea of fitness! I am not sure that I shall not even go upon that slope behind the women’s house and watch you through a broken window I know of. Would it not give you a sense of being supported to feel my eyes upon you?” He walked on as one serenely unaware that his companion had stopped short in dismay.

He did not go so far as to carry out his threat, however. When—by snow-banked roads and snow-buried lanes, dim in the early gloaming—they had come to the court-yard and the looming pile of the women’s house, Helvin halted in the shadow of a tree.

“I think I will go no farther,” he said. “If it happen as I expect, they will not close the doors after you immediately, as after one whose welcome is certain. I shall be able to see some of the sport from here, before the banging of them in my face tells me that my foretelling has come true.”

“It is for you to decide,” Randvar made use of the proper phrase. And he had made a stride forward when—like the jerk of a cord suddenly stretched—an impulse turned him back.

“Lord,” he said, almost with fierceness, “tell me that you were jesting when you accused me of forsaking my allegiance to you. Say that you do not hold me for a deserter, or my foot shall wither before ever it makes a move to leave you!”

Out of the shadow in which he stood, Helvin’s voice sounded presently like a harp strain with one minor chord.

“We must take this, comrade, as it is. It was a jest,—and it was the truth. You could no more hold back than I could stay you, and I would not keep you if I could. All that man can give to man, you have given me,—I ask not woman’s share besides. Go, and good go with you for your love!”

Down in the shadow, their hands met and clasped; then the song-maker turned and once more went forward towards the dark mass. After some delay the broad doors opened before him, and—as had been foretold—did not close after him.

Through the ruddy gap, the Jarl’s gaze followed his song-maker into a fire-bright hall whose wall-benches were aflower with women in kirtles of deep red and dull yellow and corn-flower blue. Like green beads from a broken necklace, pages were scattered over the floor playing a game of ball; and dodging between them and stumbling over them, swarthy thrall-men were bringing in tables for the evening meal. A fancy came to amuse the Jarl that it was like the arrival of a war-arrow in a peace-camp when his messenger stepped into the ring of the firelight. From chess-board and bead-stringing and gossip, the women turned with smothered exclamations; while the purple-robed girl in the high-seat sat like one stricken motionless, her hand still holding out the silk ball she was winding from the skein which a page held apart before her.

Splendid in raiment now was the son of Freya, the king-born. As sun-burnished waves shone his newly trimmed hair, and his garments were all of velvet banded with fine sable, and sable lined the cloak that fell from his mighty shoulders. Regarding him, another fancy brought a smile to the Jarl.

“He put on fine clothes as a man puts on armor, and like a flight of arrows are the glances shot against him. I would lay down my life on it that he would sooner go against arrows.”

If that were so, still no one could tell from the song-maker’s bearing whether desperation or confidence ruled in his mind. Passing between the fires, he came before the footstool of Brynhild the Proud. When he had made salute, he stood waiting in the attitude of courtly submission, one hand on his hilt and one on his breast, an attitude that took on new meaning because proud strength spoke from every line of his virile face and his sinewy body.

Motionless, she sat gazing at him, whether in speechless displeasure or speechless amazement, no one could tell from her expression. Signing the petrified page to withdraw out of ear-shot, she said at last:

“This behavior seems to me so bold that I have never seen any act so bold as this. What is your errand with me?”

“I will speak it aloud and not mutter about it,” he answered. “I have two. The first, which I care the most about, is to reconcile myself to you. The other is a message from the Jarl, which I hold as a shield against an unfavorable reception.”

She drew back to the extreme limit of her high-seat, her face set like a cameo against the dark wood. The best she could do was to observe presently, with haughtiness:

“To me it would seem more becoming to carry out your lord’s business first.”

“Becoming it might be, but more imprudent than to lay aside a shield in unequal combat.”

“Unequal?” She managed to curl her flowerlike lips. “Hear a wonder! On Treaty Day, you claimed the victory over me.”

“Said I that I got the victory over you? Here now I do confess that you have me at your pleasure. If you bid me leave you, I can do nothing against it. If you refuse me your friendship, no power is strong enough to get it for me; though no man on earth will lack joy more than I, if that must be.”

One swift look she sent round to make sure that no one else could hear the low-voiced words, then sat tapping the chair arm with her jewelled fingers, her bosom rising and falling like a white billow under the lace of her kerchief. Out of the stormy deeps, passionate words rose at last.

“I do not wish that you should value me like that, any more than I want to feel the way you make me feel. Do you not know that your offence against me was heavier even than Olaf’s? He pushed my hands away, and recked little what I said; but you—though you stood with bound hands—you laid hold of my mind and moulded it to your will! You made of me—of _me_—a screaming shield-maiden, ready to slay my childhood’s friend! And then you stood there and laughed in your triumph!”

He said slowly: “True enough I laughed—for one breath’s space—and that passed for an offence; but for three months you have made me the soberest man in the New Lands. Is not that atonement?”

A glance she flashed to challenge his sincerity, but her eyes could not withstand his eyes’ steady wooing. She spoke without looking at him:

“If that were all! But you have done more. There is that which survives even that madness. Some door you have opened in my mind through which all my peace and pride have gone. Things I have never wanted before, now look good to me; and all I have seems as nothing, and the heavens reel around me, and I do not know one day what I am going to want the next. You have made me a thrall-woman in my own eyes, in proving to me that the passions that shake such base creatures can also shake me—that I can fear like them—hate like them—sin like them—love like them! Only if this be love, I tell you this,—that I will never yield to it! _I will not love you!_”

Her gaze was meeting his now with all a Valkyria’s weapon-play. It was he who lowered his eyes, lest their fire offend her.

“Why you should love me, I know no reason at all,” he said. “I hope for it only as a priest hopes for a miracle. This alone I know,—that I love you, so that to waken in the morning and look forward to the hope of speaking with you is to sit in a Greenland winter and look forward to the summer. Will you not grant me the boon I beg because to you it means so little, and to me it means so much?”

“I will not say that it meant little to hear your songs and your adventures,” she answered presently, with courtesy. Soon after that, in the gloaming of her eyes a light flickered starlike. “Any more than I can deny that Freya’s son can be a courtman when he chooses,” she added. Then her mouth became as grave as it was gracious. “It may be that if you will give me your promise never to talk to me about—miracles—”

“So shall it be that I will take banishment from you as from a lawman, if once I break the agreement!”

After a moment she rose with queenful composure, stretching out her hand to the group around the entrance.

“Why do you allow the doors to remain open?” she called. “Our guest will not leave until he has partaken of our hospitality.”

With a crash, the great doors swung to, startling the Jarl where he stood in the darkness of the court-yard. At first he smiled whimsically, and made a gesture of drinking to his companion within. Then, as he turned to go back alone, the smile faded. The face he lifted to the stars seemed to be asking a bitter question of the planet that had stood over his birth.

XIII

“_Mix hops with honey when thou mead wilt brew_” —Northern saying.

Stirring before the great awakening, the southern slopes had thrown off their coverings of snow, and bared their brown bosoms to the fresh wind. The pools of the muddy road gave back unclouded blue, and blithe as the call of the robins in the sunny meadows were the voices of the young courtmen who had met at a crossing of the ways. Winter maintained its hold only on the face of Mord the Grim, as looking back from the crest of the hill he was riding over, he saw that the centre of the group was the Jarl’s tall song-maker.

Some of the young nobles had set forth to shoot ducks from the broken ice of the river, and were unfolding their plans to the forester’s sympathetic ear. Some were seeking ground for a horse-race, when the sod should be firm enough, and were demanding of the favorite that he use his influence with the Jarl to have a feast given in honor of the sport. And others, who knew that Rolf’s son was now on his way home to the Tower to take part in the wedding-feast of his foster-sister, were chaffing him about the effect his fine clothes of buff leather would have upon such Skraellings as he might encounter. The chatter came to an end only when the hoof-beat of two horses was heard on a road near by; and one youth surmised that it must be the bridegroom and the priest, whom Randvar was waiting to join; and another stepped out to look around the curve, vowing that if Bolverk’s dress was too fine it should be subdued by a rain of mud. The youth stepped back, however, with a shrug.

“Only Brynhild’s pet page; and behind him, Olaf the French. Tighten the peace-bands on your sword, Songsmith!”

A third gave Randvar’s ribs a nudge with his elbow.

“No better than wasted breath is that warning!” he laughed. “As though the Songsmith had any cause now to be jealous of Olaf, Thorgrim’s son!” So the laughter and chaff went up boisterously.

The Songsmith who had stood quietly listening, save for an occasional word of comment or banter, became yet more silent, and gave his entire attention to remedying a mistake in the lacing of one of his high Cordovan boots.

On his bent head, half the hail of jests continued to fall; and the other half flew on to meet the boy just turning into the road, fresh as a sprouting grass blade in his green livery.

“Lucky Bolverk, to be allying himself with such splendor!”

“Picture the cub doing the honors from the high-seat!”

“Are you going to give the bride away, young one?”

“Oh, why give your sister to an every-day body like a guardsman, Eric?”

“Nobody less than the Jarl himself—”

“Ay, the Jarl, by all means! Has it not been proved that jarls’ sisters take well to forest-bred men?” Again a shout of laughter went up, and the song-maker gravely addressed himself to the relacing of his other boot.

Because Randvar remained stooping, the page on his arrival did not notice him; disdainfully he answered the merry group before which he had drawn rein.

“No intention have I to break through the brush to any wedding-feast. My errand hither is to tell the Songsmith that my mind has changed about going,—only I shall tell him that it is because Brynhild cannot spare me. He is to meet Bolverk here and go with him; but they must get along without me. It is to be seen that he left the Tower too late to outgrow his fondness for moose-hump! Much better would you save your banter for his backwoods’ ways.”

Like the impudent red-breasted bird now strutting on a stone wall across the road, Eric thrust out his chest with an air. Laughing and nudging, the young courtmen made a semicircle around him.

“Oh, a well-bred man is what you are, that is clear as day!”

“Small wonder you have no admiration for that lout of a song-maker!”

“Tell us what you think of the showy clothes he has begun to—”

“Yes, give us your opinion of his habits!” they chorussed.

Still like the bright-eyed bird on the wall, Eric cocked his handsome little head knowingly; but even as they waited in laughing expectation, Olaf the French came cantering around the bend, and Eric’s censure gave way to eulogy as he turned and recognized the new-comer.

“I will tell you a man I have got admiration for, and that is the one who comes riding hither! When I have my growth, I shall be as near like him as possible; and I am going to France with him whenever he goes back,—am I not, Olaf?”

“So it shall be,” Thorgrim’s son assented benignly, as he returned with inimitable grace the rather careless greetings of the group.

Importance swelled in Eric’s chest until it burst out of his lips as ecstatically as the red-breasted bird’s song.

“That will be the finest part of my life! I shall wipe this little town of cabins off my mind as completely as I have wiped off that old Tower,—and that is as much gone from remembrance as though it had never been. Do you know, masters, it looks to me sometimes as though I could never have been born there? What seems likeliest is that some great chief of Norumbega had one child too many, so that he gave it to thralls to carry into the forest; and then Erna came along and found it and called it hers, so much nobler is my nature than my moth—” He left the word unfinished as his rapt gaze came down for the first time to the Songsmith, where he had risen and stood beside Gunnar the Merry. “By that I do not mean that she is not a worthy woman,” he added hastily.

His foster-brother answered not a word. Stepping to the head of Eric’s horse, he said briefly:

“Get down.”

It did not appear that the page liked the tone overmuch, but neither did he seem willing to trifle with it. He made a parade of stretching in his saddle.

“You need not say it as though I meant to keep on,” he retorted. “I have been waiting until you came, as every one here knows, to get down and talk to you.” Slowly he dismounted, taking great pains to keep his bright spurs out of the puddles.

“Give me now that chain off your neck, as a gift for your sister.”

The page muttered something about meaning to give her a better gift, when he should have had time to visit the trading-booth; but his foster-brother’s hand remained before him, immovable as a stone cup. He dropped the chain into it at last, and watched ruefully the stowing away of the trinket in the pouch of buff leather. Then the owner of the pouch made another demand:

“Now give me a message to go with it. Say, ‘I send therewith my hearty greeting.’”

At that, Eric so far forgot his finery as to stamp and spatter it with mud. But after a second look from under the heavy brows, he said the words, rebelling only when the circle of grinning courtmen sent up a roar of laughter at the contrast between the sentiment and the tone in which it was uttered.

“In meddling in private affairs you show bad manners,” he told them, and sent Rolf’s son a glance that was half sulky, half coaxing. “Nor do I think you have any right to scold me after I have made atonement.”

Far from scolding, his foster-brother turned to one of the courtmen who had come from a horse-fight and borrowed his riding-rod of twisted leather.

“You have made atonement for slighting Snowfrid,” he said, “but for the way you behaved about Erna, you cannot redeem yourself from stripes. Pluck off your kirtle and stand forth.”

“Foster-brother! If you will listen while I explain—”

“Already you have talked enough. Stand forth.”

“Foster-brother—”

“In a word, you will take it or run.”

“That is a good hint, young one,” laughed Gunnar the Merry. “Pick up your heels.” Then he laughed again at the glare that Eric turned on him.

“Will you keep your nose out of this?” the small Viking demanded. “If you think I am afraid to bear a flogging—!”