Part 11

The end of the sentence was that his gay tunic lay on the ground and he stood forth in his shirt of fine linen, his arms locked upon his sturdy chest. From that attitude he did not flinch when the lashes fell, though they were neither light nor few. When it was over, the young men gave him good-humored applause.

Gratification pulled at his mouth-corners as he looked at them out of the corner of his eye; but enough vanity had been taken out of him so that when his gaze passed on to his stern foster-kinsman, he showed only as a shamefaced little boy, now humbly desirous of being restored to favor.

“If you think it will give my kinswomen a great deal of pleasure, I will go to the feast with you,” he offered, when he was clothed again and lingered shaping mud-balls with the toe of his boot.

“If I have my way, you will not be allowed to go back until it will give you so much pleasure that you cannot stay away,” the Songsmith returned severely, rejecting utterly the blandishments of the rosy coaxing face. The culprit gave up the attempt, after a while. Climbing into his saddle he rode back up the highway—his sleeve in suspicious proximity to his eyes—and vanished into a brush-walled lane.

Watching the dejected withdrawal seemed to suggest to Olaf the French a welcome thought. He moved his horse a step forward, and broke in upon the scattered chatter.

“Surely,” he said, “if you, Rolf’s son, choose to attack a young friend of mine, and I choose to avenge the boy on you, that should be sufficient to excuse me in challenging you?”

Over his shoulder, Randvar looked at him with his short laugh,—he had stepped aside to whistle back his horse from the meadow in which it had strayed to browse.

“Surely! If you, Thorgrim’s son, believe that you could get that excuse accepted,—in case you were alive to offer it!” he consented.

But three of the young courtmen spoke in the same breath: “Far from it, Olaf! Unless you were the boy’s master.”

Rolf’s son said nothing, only stood waiting with his bridle in his hand.

But gradually Olaf settled back in his saddle, and sat thoughtfully stroking his short mustaches. “Ill might it be, then, since I lack a lawful claim. I should kill you, and then if I could not save myself from outlawry, I should get no good from your death.”

“This I take the ring-oath on, that I would do my best to keep you from being put in that unsatisfying position,” Randvar retorted.

It seemed to Gunnar the Merry that the conversation had gone as far as was advisable; and he said so, good-naturedly, several others seconding him. And while they debated, their cause drew strength from another source.

Standing farthest out in the road, where he could see around the curve, a youth named Aslak called out that the bridegroom and the priest were coming at last. With that announcement, all seriousness was put to rout; it was not even noticed that on a sudden impulse, Thorgrim’s son wheeled and galloped back up the highway and disappeared into the lane whose bush-whiskered mouth had already swallowed up the crestfallen page.

Around the bend bowled the wedding party, the gorgeous bridegroom explaining at the top of his lungs how mistakes in the coming home of his marriage clothes had detained him. At sight of him, such cheers and chaff arose that he shouted himself hoarse with trying to repay a quarter of it, gave it up finally and set spurs to his horse and fled, followed by the ruddy-cheeked priest, cursing genially at the unwonted jolting of his fat sides. After them galloped the laughing song-maker, dividing his gibes between the group behind and the pair before.

What could have suited his wild blood better than to wander through the wonder-world of awakening forest? What could taste sweeter than a wedding-feast to a man who was watching his own hope grow with every day of spring shine and spring storm?

XIV

“_More than all winter can one spring day yield_” —Northern saying.

The third month of spring was come upon the year when the Songsmith rode back through the forest from his visit at Freya’s Tower; and the spirit of spring was come upon him, so that his blood worked in his veins like sap in a tree.

Sometimes the billowy clouds above him parted over tender blue, and let through bursts of radiant sunshine that tiled his path with gold and golden-lighted the dim aisle stretching out before him. Sometimes they drew together in a lowering mass of gray, and let fall snow-flakes to lie daisy-like upon the patches of springing green. Sometimes it was bright streaks of rain that fell, meeting his cheek like so many soft mouths, changing with the returning sun into laughing eyes winking from every leaf. Whatever came, he took as joyously as the teeming earth.

The thrill that the earth must have known when it looked up at the first rainbow, the Songsmith knew when he came at last to the cross-roads and, through a bushy lattice, glimpsed bright-colored mantles and divined that Brynhild had ridden out to meet him.

Feigning that she had checked her horse only to give her pages more time to search the sodden thickets for flowers, she was lingering between the budding walls of the lane, herself very like a spring flower in her wrappings of leaf-green. When the horseman appeared at the head of the lane, her first impulse was plainly to wheel and ride away from him; her second, to draw her queenful self erect and flash such lightnings from her eyes’ gray sky as should strike dead any presumptuous thought.

But he had no need to tame his joy for it had mounted to that height where it was changed into a delicious terror. Almost was it beyond his power to salute her, to answer becomingly the merry welcome of her women. When at last he had reached her side and dismounted to receive her greeting, the touch of her white hand lighting birdlike on his brown one made his fingers tremble so that she could not fail to mark it.

A moment it seemed as though the blissful panic would even fall on her, so speechless she sat before him, the wild-rose color blowing in her cheeks. But even at the first hint of a surprised pause in the women’s chatter, she recovered herself, and spoke with gracious composure.

“The weeks have seemed long without your songs, my friend. They say my brother has begun to suffer in his temper through missing you and them. Tell us if you gained enough pleasure by the visit to make up his loss; and tell us about the bride, and how her mother likes her strapping new son.”

She said “us,” but after a little space of polite pretence it became doubtful how much interest her maidens had in the telling. As if enamoured of the song-maker’s sleek black horse, they gathered around it to caress its arching neck while they listened. From that, they drew off to the side of the path to pluck up young grass spears for its refreshment; then still farther off to the hedge of lilac bushes, gemmed with long green buds. The time came at last when all who had not slipped through the hedge had vanished around it, into the road, whence the murmur of their voices came back sweetly, blending softly with the tinkle of a brook flowing somewhere through the thicket.

It did not appear that their mistress knew whether they stayed or went, save that she seemed to feel more freedom now in allowing her eyes to follow their inclination to droop and rest on the trailing sprays of fragrant buds with which the pages had filled her lap. Her lover neither knew nor cared. He rambled on without even knowing what he was saying, more than that it was something which held her listening while his eyes drank their fill of her exquisite face. He would have stood there gazing at her in silence, when he had finished telling of the feast, if she had not roused herself hastily to end the pause.

“It has the sound of a song come true,” she said. “I wish I had better tidings to give in return than this which you will think bad, that your little foster-brother has deserted my service for Olaf’s, Thorgrim’s son.”

“For Olaf’s!” he repeated in surprise. “What possessed the cub?”

“It surprised me also,” she assented, “for since he came to me, we have never been apart either in word or deed. Yet Olaf looks grand in his eyes, and lavishes on him a great store of gifts and privileges. I am afraid he will get spoiled by it.”

His straight brows joining, the Songsmith gazed before him reflectively.

“I wonder if it would have been better had I taken him with me?” he mused. “Yet would it have been to Erna a lasting sorrow to see the change in him.... And it would have made him set greater store by himself to see their mean clothes....” His musing branched unconsciously. “It is a poor place, the Tower, yet I would not trade it for the Jarl’s house to be born in.”

“Tell me how it appeared to you now?” she asked him, smiling. “The Tower that let the wind blow in all the year around! Did it stir your wild blood so that it became a hardship for you to come back to walls?”

It seemed that she saw the danger of such a question as soon as she had given it voice, for she half put out her hand to snatch it back. But he read the meaning of the gesture and obeyed it.

“It was no hardship to come back, Jarl’s sister.... Yet the place had never seemed to me so fair. When I came home to it, that day after it had happened to me to meet you in the forest, I saw only its bareness and its poverty. Now it was as a song, every stone a word to tell of my father’s love. I never knew a greater love among all men upon earth. Night after night, while the others slept, I walked before the gray pile and read its runes. Great bowlders are there that must have challenged his strength to wrest from their beds in the earth, which yet he wrestled with rejoicingly, since even so ingloriously he was conquering something for his beloved one. The fragments over the archways—— Could you but see, Jarl’s sister, the patient labor of their fitting! Never monk toiled more devoutly with his brush! Night after night, it was as though Rolf walked beside me pouring out his mind, so could I enter into his joy that knew his love returned. Knowing that, what was it to fight Hildebrand and twenty—forty—horsemen! Here I, his son, may not even end where he began. I—”

He broke off because her hand had risen to forbid him, and stood awhile with head bent and turned aside, his breath coming fast. But she did not call her women as he had feared; he had time to master himself and begin again.

“The stones Rolf placed were the words of the song; the memory of my mother was the music. When I said the Tower was poverty stricken, I was blind. More rich than an altar-shrine I think it, now that I know what a woman’s love may mean. Jarl’s sister, you could not even dream such visions as my memory gave me to see in the moonlight there!... Visions of my king-born mother watering linen on the grass before the Tower ... bringing drink to Rolf as he rested from his labor ... standing waiting to bear back the cup when he should have finished, the leaf-shadows playing on the soft masses of her hair.... Waiting before him, Freya, the king-born! As I live, it looks to me now as if it must have been a dream! Here, I cannot myself believe it.”

“I can,” the Jarl’s sister said dreamily, then started awake as she saw passion flame up in his face past any checking. As a straw, it burned away the barrier she sought to raise.

“Brynhild! If you had aught to give me, it cannot be that you would hold it back! I will await your pleasure. I will wrestle with the roughness in me even as Rolf wrestled with the bowlders, till I have made my mind a place more worthy of your dwelling. But even as Freya cheered with her love the man who loved her, give me some token that in time your pride will yield! Some sign!”

“What would you?” she murmured. “My hands—”

He seized them both, crushed them against his lips. But he stayed not at the arm’s-length she would have kept him. Holding her hands, he leaned nearer; and the mystic might of spring throbbing in his veins purpled his eyes and held her like a spell.

“Your mouth!” he prayed. “Olaf—Gunnar—fifty others—have had your hands. Your mouth!”

He knew not that he drew her towards him; doubtless she knew not that she yielded. Only, each knew that her lips were there before his, and he had gathered their perfect flower.

XV

“_Bare is back without brother behind it_” —Northern saying.

The waning light falling into the Jarl’s bedchamber from its one small window under the eaves disclosed dimly the figures of the priest and the counsellor and the courtman, as they waited in the middle of the floor, but showed little more than the mass of the high curtained bed that stood under the window against the wall. The old advice-giver, declaiming before it, had the feeling that he was talking into space, even while he knew that somewhere in the gloom beneath the hangings the young ruler must lounge listening to him.

“Whether you take it well or not, you shall not keep on in a false step for want of my foresight. Long ago I told you that the son of Freya, the king-born, was trying to get friends behind him. Now I tell you that he has got them. Courtmen tag at his heels. Traders and guardsmen clink horns at the sound of his name; while the saying runs that hunters show fight if they think that so much as his cloak-hem has been trod on. In a year more, he will have wormed his way into the high-seat. I foretell it.”

Mord’s voice rose to a wrathful climax; and the gesture of his knotted hands, when it looked as though the silence of the bed was going to continue unmoved, suggested that he would like to use them on the sullen shoulders.

But the Jarl’s voice sounded presently in measured accents: “Has it come to your ears that men are speaking against my rule?”

Slightly appeased, Mord’s hands relaxed to smooth his beard. “I do not mean that, Starkad’s son. You mistake me if you think I mean that the fellow has yet power enough to get you disliked. Well spoken of over all the land is your rule. Only—”

Measured and relentless as the boom of surf, the Jarl’s voice sounded through his. “When it happens that they do find fault, come and tell me of it; and I will listen patiently. Only about aught which belongs to my life as a free man—”

A moment it seemed as though his control weakened, as if measure might be lost in fury; but he recovered himself and beat it out slowly to the end.

“Witness, priest! and Olaf as well! I know how well-beloved the Songsmith is; and I know also how little loved I am. Plain as you, I see how proud my sister is; nor do I forget that she is my heir. Yet I have given leave to the son of Freya, the king-born, to woo and wed her and join his power to her ambition. Judge from that how I trust him, and take other counsel than to slander him to my ears again.”

Deeper than ever seemed the stillness when he had ceased. All that stirred it was the grating of iron hinges, as Mord jerked open the door which led from the alcove-chamber out into the great living-room of the body-guard.

The action let in a rush of ruddy firelight that illumined the counsellor’s bent figure from head to foot, made a leap at the silver rosary of the black-robed priest behind him, a snatch at the shining lute in the hand of Olaf the French, and came to a halt only at the edge of the curtained bed. Gradually, amid tumbled cushions and blankets of fur, Helvin’s brooding recumbent figure became visible. Frowning at it, Mord paused.

“So, I suppose, it must be; but never yet have I thought your behavior more untoward. I think now that it would have been good counsel if Starkad had given you a voice in things here, so that you might have found out the danger in it.”

As one expecting an explosion, the priest involuntarily shrank into himself; but what came instead was a sly chuckle.

“It has crossed my thoughts also that Starkad might have managed some things better,” Helvin’s voice drawled. “I wonder how it looks to the old troll himself now.”

The advice-giver turned on the threshold to say with sternness: “Young lord, is it in that manner you speak of the honored dead?”

For all answer, there came from the bed a peal of mocking laughter.

Like one who dares trust himself no longer, Mord made a swift stride through the door and away; and the Shepherd Priest spoke soothingly:

“Most dear lord!”

It could be seen that the Jarl lowered one of the fists propping his chin and turned and looked at him. He said presently, with ominous slowness:

“Are you going to take the text now, priest, and edify me with exhortations about honoring the dead? If so, pray begin by explaining why a man should be honored only because he changes from serving the Devil on earth to serving him in—”

The priest lifted a gentle hand. Brawny shepherd’s hand though it was, it had no lack of dignity.

“My lord and son, turn not your good gift of speech to your own ill. I would in no way vex you. That you were sorely tried under Starkad’s rule was before all eyes. How should I who have not felt the burden chide you that your back is weary? Only I would beseech of you that fairness towards him which we show to you, when in your less worthy turns of mind we still remember how noble is your nature. Old sayings have it that men are wolves and bears in their Other Shapes,—it is but a turn of the cloak to hold with the Christ-faith that the blackest-hearted man has a better self within him. Believe of your father that he had a gentler spirit somewhere hid, that his life bound him as yours binds you. Believe, and pardon.”

From resting on his elbow, Starkad’s son started passionately upright.

“Pardon,—and give up my hate that is as meat to my teeth! Priest, are you Northern born and know not that such satisfaction comes from hating a foe as makes the joy of loving a friend look like pale moonshine by red fire? My foe was what he was—doubly my foe in that he owed me help—and blow shall go for blow between us. Pardon that I may be pardoned? Rather than forgive him one jot of his punishment would I share his torture and count it gain! Rather would I burn by his side until that spirit which cannot be subdued by Norway’s rocks or Greenland’s snowwastes or Iceland’s belching mountains has burned out of both of us, and left no more than two dead cinders! Nor will I bear rebuke!”

“Nay, how should I do aught else than sorrow for you who choose for yourself so hard a way?” the old priest said sadly. “Methinks my heart would break over you if I did not know that even at the goal of that road, at the end of that torture, One will stand waiting for you beside whose love mine is but a taper to a star. His mercy be upon you and save you from yourself!”

As a star through the night, shone his soul through his swarthy face; but Starkad’s son averted his eyes that he might not see it.

“Everything bides its time. When I feel desire for that goal, it may be that I shall believe in it. You are an honest man,—do what you can among my people. For my malady, your medicine is too mild.”

With a hand raised in dismissal, he met the hand raised in benediction and flung himself back on his cushions, speaking curtly to Olaf, Thorgrim’s son.

“Do you sing, until I decide whether your jingling or my humor makes the worst discord in my ears.”

As a man wakened out of deep abstraction, the courtman came to himself with a start. Though he sought to cover it with his graceful bow, and set his shapely fingers instantly to their task on the lute-strings, his customary tactfulness was lacking. In the middle of the first verse of his ballad, the Jarl’s hand—that had come out into the firelight and begun to pick and tear at the gold-embroidered flowers of the bed-hangings—flew up irritably.

“What the devil! Have you nothing but tinkling love-tunes in stock? Do they rear their men in the women’s house in France? Some song of might—fire—you milksop!”

Murmuring apologies, Olaf tried plainly to regain his wonted poise; but before he had got out so much as the first couplet of the battle-song he had struck into, the hand had leaped from the embroidery, snatched his instrument from his hold and dashed it against the opposite wall.

“Fool! I have warned you that battle-songs are my love-songs,” Helvin’s voice rose in thunder. “To sing them to me when I am doomed to inaction is to heat the fever in my veins to madness! Oh, where in the Troll’s name is the Songsmith? The three weeks leave I gave him was up when the candle of the sun marked noon to-day; and here the sun is burned out, and he has not come. What can he mean by it?”

Olaf laughed, neither mirthfully nor yet perfunctorily, but with the frank discordance of his mind.

“Lord, who shall take it on him to say what any one means at this court? If it were in France, now, I could interpret your relations well enough; but here—here you go not by any rules I know. I give up the riddle.” With a gesture of less than usual grace and more than usual feeling, he went over to pick up his lute.

But Helvin spoke with unusual softness from the darkness of the bed-curtains: “How would you interpret our relations if you were in France, beausire?”

“Nay, noble one, it has no meaning here,” Thorgrim’s son answered almost impatiently, “here where no house reaches underground, and women count for naught. There, men would say that the fellow had some secret of yours in his power and you took insolence from him because you feared to resent it.”

That he was aiming a shaft is unlikely for he did not look up to see if the shot told, but went on examining the broken strings, his mouth working like that of a man who is trying also to mend a rift in his damaged composure. It was not until the stillness behind the curtains had lasted so long as to become ominous that he started as though struck by a possibility, lowered the lute slowly, and slowly turned his gaze towards the recumbent figure.

Even the restless hand had been drawn in from the light now; crouching as for a spring, Starkad’s son loomed in the dimness. Like vultures hovering over their prey, Olaf’s eyes settled on him, tearing their way in as though they would reach the inmost places of his heart.

So they faced each other until they were startled by an outburst of jovial voices in the guard-room without, shouting the name of Rolf’s son with words of noisy welcome.

Straightening, then, Olaf made a salute of studied mockery.

“Lord,” he said, “I will give place to your—confidant.”

The Jarl stretched out an arm grown strangely unsteady, and spoke in a voice become strangely breathless. “Wait! You think that I am afraid to make him smart for an offence? Wait a little.”

Surprise took some of the assurance from Olaf’s bearing, as he resumed his place at the bed-foot; then, in expectant malice, he folded his arms and leaned against the carven post to watch through the open door the song-maker’s buoyant approach.

Delayed by the questions rained on him, by the hands thrust out to clasp his, Randvar was long in making his passage through the hall; but the alcove doorway framed him at last, a vision of light and of life as the fire-glow touched his burnished hair and the new happiness in him rang in his voice of greeting.

The Jarl’s grim tone sounded doubly grim by contrast. “However wroth I was before, now I am half as wroth again. What befits you, lazy-goer, is humblest explanation.”

Accustoming his light-filled eyes to the gloom, the Songsmith had lingered on the threshold; now as he was about to advance he stopped once more, attuning his harmony-filled ears to this discord.